"Don't call me OLD! It's demeaning!"

Ahh, feedback.  Don't we all just love it?  You don't want me to call you old.  I sort of understand.  Got it.

But, well, here's the deal: I was young (38) when I took all those extra credit classes on the study of aging, so I guess that's why I am so comfortable with my status as "old", now that I am considered old by every human I meet.  Fooling no one these days.

Because of my education on aging, I learned about myself before I became myself....or something like that.

Our First Lesson on aging was that it is not "them and us".
It is US!  There is no "them" in this human process of aging.
Aging starts the moment we stop physically growing.  Through education I slowly became comfortable with the concept of my own aging.  So naturally I am comfortable with your aging and the word OLD is a term of great respect.

Our Second Lesson on aging was about  the false perception of disease as "old".
Old and disease are NOT synonymous, but we look at the white- haired or bald people who are suffering with a disease and we think "old".
In our classes on aging we worked on unhooking the disease/old image and learning what it actually means to be old and healthy.
          Old...............good
          Disease........not good
Yeh, yeh, yeh, I know the frequency of certain diseases go up as we age.
     Just like the risk of slipping on a small rock and being thrown off balance to a fall and a broken ankle increases for the 100 mile hike compared to the one mile hike.
     But the relationship of age and disease is not solid, nor is the relationship of long hikes and broken ankles solid.

     Let's look at old in a better light.  Old and healthy is possible for some and is great to see.

Old is worth looking at! 

(Looking at disease can scare the liver out of you.)

So look around for the centenarians who are still smoking at 100 yrs of age,
          or sky diving,
               or driving the same car they've had for 85 years,
                    or still participating in "youthful" activities like sex (OMG), or other stuff .  
They are downright worth focusing on.  And since the USA has the highest number of centenarians (over 70,000 last count and still climbing) you should be able to find some, at least in the news.  (and I don't mean the ones wrecking their cars into crowds!)

Maybe you are one!  (and I don't mean wrecking your car into crowds!)

     Running, skydiving or lighting a cigarette from the candles on a Happy 100 Birthday cake (did you see those pictures on the internet?), centenarians are not as camera shy as you might expect.
                         

Thank you for visiting,
Your old friend,
Riverwatch

"Why was I spared?"

"I kept asking myself, why was I spared?"

It has been 40 years since she coded (died) and had to be resuscitated.  It was a successful resuscitation and her eyes were opened in a new way to her life.  Now, after 40 years of searching for the meaning of continuing life against the odds, Marian has this year found the answer.  The answer is the life-saving service she is giving to a family member whom no one else could have helped.

To stand as an old person and feel your significance is not really rare.
To have to wait 40 years for the answer to the riddle to be revealed to you is not really rare either.

My own search for meaning is what makes me human, and frankly I think most of that searching is taking place on the twilight landscape of old age.  Aging often sends us back to the drawing board.
 I do not want to believe I am no more significant than a moth, eating, reproducing, dying, bits and pieces of useful fodder fluttering into the teeming life around me.

Ahhhh, the thoughts of the old people.  If you feel these thoughts are "made up", you ain't old!  Consider yourself young and enjoy it while it lasts.

As another friend,Yvonne, said in her late 70's, having buried 2 husbands and 2 children and a beloved granddaughter, "I was walking along the beach with nobody to talk to and I thought Is this it?  Is this, then, all there is?  Is this it?"
Why was Yvonne spared while younger or other family members were not? Of course she wonders! 
"The Thinker", sculpted by Rodin, looks middle aged, maybe even younger and in his prime.  I think he should have been sculpted as an old man.  Gnawing on his hand, he could be on the beach somewhere, engraved: "Is this, then, all there is?"
Actually, I think Rodin should have sculpted him chewing on his fingernails.  (See? I can improve on any great work!)

Surely we are not just higher smarter animals.  We are different, aren't we?  I mean, REAL different?

So, ok, we now know higher animals are way smarter than we used to think they were!
We've learned, they, like us, make tools.
We've learned, they, like us, have somber or noisey "get-togethers" over the dead bodies of deceased members of their group.
We've learned they, like us, have great abilities to communicate with members of their species...even with us (if we put forth the effort!).
We've learned they, like us, can expand their learning, and language and adapt to changing landscapes.  
We've learned, they, like us, develop personal relationships inside their group and outside their group.
We've learned, they, like us, sometimes wage war.

So are we "REAL different" from our animal friends just because we are top of the class while they are more focused on recess?

I am thinking we are different.  Because we search for meaning.
Human beings search for significance.  We look upward without even knowing sometimes why we look up.  I think that upward look is about trying to connect with the Larger Force (whatever we perceive that force to be).  It is a search for meaning, for significance and it is universal.

I have already figured out how insignificant I am....too much evidence to ignore!  For one thing, looking at the political leaders of this world, the "creme de la creme" is frightening .  This is the best we can do?  Scares me for what it means about humanity in general!  Really.  Is this the best we, the masses,  have to put forth to lead us?
Not just American creme de la creme.  Have a look-a-round at the entire world.  Creme de la creme?
 Sometimes we seem so close to the animal kingdom!

I assure my significance by attaching to the Great Significance out There....
Who whispers to me of a world I have never seen nor tasted......... 
Who whispers, "My ways are not your ways and your ways are not My ways."

Thank goodness my brain is not as handy dandy as it used to be.  Because now that the search for significance and attaching is on-going, I must garner instructions from afar, not from mankind, especially not from the creme de la creme.
I must garner instructions from way outside my brain.....beyond the pull of the animal kingdom .....beyond the earth.
(A brain could feasibly get in the way if it were sharper than heck...and you are beginning to wonder about my old brain, aren't you?  Be honest.)  Not to worry.  It was never creme de la creme.
 
I must be a Vessel....an empty Vessel and that is a lot easier to achieve these days.  Another good thing about aging!!!!!

Need to be an empty vessel?   I bet you can achieve it, you oldie but goodie!

Signing off as I try to decide if one more dark chocolate chip will make me feel more significant or less significant,

Thinking of you,
grateful for your visit to this blog,
Riverwatch, the researcher 

PS  I have just discovered that chocolate has a certain cool ability to make you less concerned about your significance.

Yum!  Is it recess time yet?

Breened

                                        B R E E N E D

I thought I would write about another normal aspect of aging that we all experience in the twilight zone, a characteristic that is universal.  But I am too happy at the moment to develop it.  And I do not feel like walking over to the stereo, looking for a lonesome song like "Where Are You?" by Enya to create a sad mood so I can blog about the isolation of the aged.
       "the aged":  that's us  (ask any 20 yr.old)
I'll write about our isolation later.

But today it is Vocabulary Building time!
I told you I make up words .  For real.  Here is one I made up about 5 years ago because I couldn't find a word suitable to explain an important verb of life.
I had been out in the sunshine wrapped in a gentle breeze and something great happened to me.  I was breened.
I knew it!  And I knew the word for it.  Breen.  (vocabulary comes from afar, as in "up there", you know)

Breen:  to put back together

Not every human can experience being breened and that may be why there was no word for it until I made one up (or had Someone "up there" help me out).

You know your body is laced with sinews that keep you put together.  And some of you people have such genetically flawless sinews (long enough, flexible enough and with excellent eyelets) that no matter what, you never come undone.  You never need breened.
But some of us, especially in my family, come apart at the seams from time to time.  Suddenly our sinews are flapping in the breeze and we are frantically praying, "Father, help me.  I'm coming apart!"
To be "put back together" at a time like that is an incredibly gratifying experience.  It is to be breened!
Sunshine and intimate breezes can breen me.
What breens you if you are flapping in the breeze?

My little 10 year old granddaughter was having a come-apart, a meltdown, tears flowing, sinews flapping when she spied her 3 year old cousin.  The dimpled one.  The "I love Everybody and Everything" one.  My darling 10 year old sobbed harder.  "Look at her!" she sobbed broken hearted for her own circumstance.  "She will never have a melt- down!  She will never know what this is like!!  She is a Person of Joy!"

I knew how she felt.  We have three Persons of Joy in our family.  Good sinews, they wake up happy.  Even as babies, they all woke up full of joy, singing.  Their names are Lee Jonathan, Gretchen and Yumiko.  Oh, they have their bad moments as we all do, but their seams never come undone.  They are Persons of Joy.
     The rest of us love them.  But we don't even pretend to understand them.

Blest they are, but look at it this way:  they will never know what it feels like to be breened! 

 Say what you like, adversity has its place in expanding experience and building vocabulary.

Feeling good,
Riverwatch

Fellowship of the Wise

                                           

                             FELLOWSHIP OF THE WISE     

     

Grateful for the fellowship of being in a group of women, drinking coffee and chatting, I had my ears wide open.

No, I wasn't listening to their aches, pains and gripes in order to help them!  Just because I am old does not make me a saint.  Just because I am an RN doesn't make me much of a saint.

I was carefully listening to their aches, pains and gripes because all of us at the table were in various degrees of decay and I was deeply interested in finding out if my aches, pains and gripes were below average, average, above average or off the charts.

It was universally agreed in our little corner of the world that getting old is very very very very very difficult.

Still, not all of us are negative.  Somebody said, "Is there anything about aging that is good?"

Gladys had a ready answer.  Having spent decades as a school teacher, Gladys was educated in more ways than one.  She said, "One thing I like is that I have lived long enough to see some situations from beginning to end and what did not make sense earlier makes sense now that I see how it played out.  I really do feel wiser than I did when I was young.  I am wiser."

So many of the other women agreed with her that I decided to keep my mouth shut.

But I can tell you, confidentially, that I've had the opposite reaction to aging!  Before the Curtain was completely up in Act II of many Life Situations, I had it all figured out.  When the Final Curtain would close in Act III, I would sit there wondering, even unbelieving.

So while Gladys relaxes and ties bright pink coherent bows on the Plays of Life post Act III, feeling wise,  I sit there in the audience untying my hasty bow and using the somewhat tarnished ribbon to re-thread through my now old brain, feeling stupid.

Some of us feel wiser as we age.

Some of us don't.

But I can tell you this for true:  there is no substitute for feeling brilliant when you are young!!  Even if that feeling is fueled mostly by mania, caffeine, stupidity, and lack of watching enough complete Plays! 

I raise my glass to youth and the euphoria that sometimes comes to visit when all is well , ie as in young.  

Feeling smart is an intense Trip.....and getting old and realizing I was stupid is only mildly gloomy.  
And I notice Gladys is not euphoric about her real wisdom.  
Sane and happy, yes.  Euphoric? No. 

I think I may have gotten the better deal. 

Feeling stupid in a sort of wise way,

Riverwatch

R e t i r e? N e v e r !

 




  I don't know why I read the Wall Street Journal.  It doesn't speak to me.  But I have an  87 yr. old friend who is still wheeling and dealing and she assumes I want to exercise my mind.  So she saves her WSJ for me.

     Ahhh, rich people do age differently than poor people!  Maybe that's why she is so alert and "with it".......and I am having to hunt for my Xanex.

     One little article did catch my eye.  It had a picture of a handsome grey-haired man with the article.

     I noticed right off the bat he has great teeth!  (I'm looking at everybody's teeth these days trying to figure out:  crowns or dentures?  I'm getting too preoccupied but it costs lots of money to have gorgeous teeth when you are old....and teeth have become a health-financial-moral-physical-vanity decision challenge for me!)

     Mr. Goldsmith of New York is only 58 so maybe his teeth are real.  Nope.  They are too uniform and perfect.

     If nursing has taught me nothing else, it has taught me that the human body is not uniform and perfect.

     Mr. Goldsmith is obviously rich and "working busy", beautiful smile and all!

     But here is what caught my eye besides his teeth.  To quote him, "I'll retire when 6 of my closest friends carry me into the church."

     Ahhhh.  Hope.  Hope springs eternal.

     He probably has not read the statistics:  40% of all the 'work-force pieces' go out of the arena BEFORE retirement, mostly due to health issues.

     Don't most of us think we can work right up until the Chariot arrives for us?

     Think again.  It can be a rocky road descending into the twilight zone of aging.

     At 58, Goldman has already started his descent.

     But maybe he'll be like my 87 yr. old friend with her WSJ.

     However, there's a significant chance he may be like me.

     Naw, not like me......those teeth are gonna last 100 years at least!

     I feel a migraine coming on.

     Aging is a snap.
     It is all that disease stuff that gets you.

     Disappointed.
        Nevertheless, I am strengthened by your visit,
                                       Riverwatch
                                  

Angels Are Also Men

     I don't know about you, but my first big adventure into the greater world came in the form of a cross country train trip.  I was 18, on break from nursing school (yes, I graduated from high school at age 17), money in my purse, and no parental guidance.  Parental input, yes.  "Don't go."
     Gone!  "See ya!"     wouldn't want to be ya!

     I bet you agree with me, if you are old, that 18 is just about the nicest age of all.

     My sister and I had recently joined a "new religion" and I was traveling west to visit her at BYU  in Provo, Utah.
     Words cannot describe the happiness of this entire trip.  Even when the drunk young man began edging in on me about 4 hours into the trip.  I changed seats.  He followed and set up camp in the seat directly behind me.  Suddenly there was an old white haired man standing in the aisle by my seat.  "Young lady, would you like me to sit with you?"

                      "Oh, yes.  Thank you!"

I shared the rest of the journey, even when we changed trains in Chicago, with Mr. Dreher, (or Drehner......or some last name that was not pronounced like it was spelled.)
He was an Austrian Jew and was absolutely fascinating.  His entire family had been lost in the holocaust....parents, brothers, sister, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, wife.  A complete wipe-out of a family except for him.
Sole survivor, he came to America.
     While I rattled on, feeling it my duty to convert him "to the only true church on the face of the earth"(I was not only sincere, I was arrogant) , he taught me about Judaism. He belonged to that unorthodox faction of Judaism that teaches there is no resurrection.     I was fascinated because he seemed happy.

     "How can you be happy?" I asked.

     "Because I am good for good's sake.  Being good is sane."
And he explained about life as constant, but where form and structure give way to the big ever-changing picture....
where life is eternal, but form and structure are lost at death.

 "I am like a leaf on a tree," he said.  He was at peace with the world.

     Now that I am old, I think his peace came from living in the present.
The pain and horror of the past had catapulted him to where he would avoid the trap of "mentally revisiting" the past that calls us to re-live instead of live.

My angel friend lived completely in the today of the time.

Maybe that is what an earth-angel is....somebody who is completely in the present.  No past.  No future.  This day is The Day!

     A 94 year old woman asked me recently, "Why doesn't somebody teach me how to age?  What am I supposed to be doing?"
 

     Perhaps the answer for us all, not just the elderly, is:  Live in today.  This is the day which God has given us.  Rejoice and be glad in it.
By the way, that was exactly what my 94 year old acquaintance was doing, but she just wasn't sure of herself.

     And if you do not believe in life after death, remember what Socrates is supposed to have said at age 70 before his execution:
"All that is in me tells me there is life after death, but if I were to look back on my life to a night where I slept without dreams, I would rank that as one of my better times."

Shalom, my friends,
Riverwatch

You old Influencer!

So I have always loved to read about Socrates from his student Plato.
Socrates was executed (399 years BC) at the old age of 70 for corrupting young minds and being influential.
They sentenced him to death and then made him drink the poisonous hemlock.
He left no written words.  No auto-biography.
What we know about Socrates we have to glean from other people.



Before we think Socrates was unusual in his being a threat ........a threat of influence while  old , think about yourself.  Not Ron Paul.  Yourself.
Are you influential?  Is there anybody out there who wishes to "dismiss you" as old and not with it...or old and out of date.....or out of touch.....or downright stupid?
Is there anybody out there marginalizing you?    If so, you have remained influential.  Good for you!

I'm remembering when my grandparents....all 3 of them...were bit by bit marginalized and "dismissed"  by my parents.  Oh, my parents loved them.....well, they loved their OWN parents, not the other person's parents.... so lack of love wasn't the problem.  The problem was my grandparents were influential without even trying!  And my parents did not want the youth being corrupted by thinking individuals who thought differently than they did!!
So there was a subtle , and sometimes not so subtle, campaign waged against my grandparents' input and influence.  It didn't work but temporarily, just like killing Socrates did not destroy his influence.  I actually think about my grandparents a LOT, now that I am old.  And I remember their words and deeds.  They have shining halo's and my parents' halo's look a little tarnished.  But maybe that is from the beam in my own eye.

My friend Ellen dropped by to see me one day  a few weeks before Christmas a couple of years ago.  She told me there was a crisis in her home.  She and Vernon ( in their  70's)  had received a big box from one on their sons.  This son, she confided, had not spoken to either one of them for 15 years because they had sided with his now ex-wife in the divorce that had taken place.  Now suddenly and without warning, they received a big box from him.  She told me it was still sitting there in the living room unopened because they were afraid to open it for fear it might be a bomb or something.

I think her visit to me was to just alert someone to what may have happened if their home were suddenly leveled with them in it!

Yes, I think the threat of hemlock casts a shadow, even today.

Enjoy your influence, even if nobody else does,
Thanks for visiting,
Riverwatch



PS  Vernon bravely opened the box a couple of weeks later and it was filled with nice presents.  I guess that makes up for 15 years of rejection and a Big Scare.  Let's hope so.  Or there's no moving forward for this Planet of the People!

A Little Bit of Plagiarism

One nice thing about getting old.....and there really are some nice things, and when I find out what they are I shall let you know......

One nice thing about getting old is that any cheap drunken lawyer can defend you successfully if you get charged with plagiarism.
Your memory really is shot, and all kind of people can testify to that as the reason you did not give the real author credit.

Additionally, you haven't made any money from the words and stories you stole, and on close inspection it becomes apparent you didn't even quote the whose-it author correctly.  Slam dunk.  The case against you is thrown out.

The following is by......I have no clue, can't remember....
But it was in a book....or a magazine...or something...
Last year.....or last decade....or last century .......(does it really matter?)

It was the published short stories of several people.....the assignment had been to tell a whole big story in 6 words only.

One author wrote:        For sale
                                     Baby shoes
                                     Never worn.
I almost cried .


Another author (one of our kind, as in OLD)  wrote:
                                          Sex Dreams
                                          At Seventy
                                          What Next?

I wish I could remember the other short stories of 6 words or less.  and I am a little embarrassed I only remember these two.  Hum.
All the little stories were powerful , but hey, you remember what you remember!



Glad you dropped in,
Riverwatch

Use it or lose it.

     

Use It




Aging is not a disease any more than the ninth month of pregnancy is a disease.

Feeling wretched does not have a "diagnostic code" because it is a mere state of mind, a true mental outrage that running and playing are not on the agenda for today.
Well of course, running and playing ARE on the agenda for some old people, even some very pregnant young people, but I am just trying to make a point.
Most of us old people feel a little wretched from time to time.
It is what it is.

One wretched characteristic of aging is the loss of muscle strength that we ALL experience on this twilight zone landscape.
No, old age does not cause paralysis or neuropathy.  Those are caused by disease.
 (I should slide in a little warning here that weak muscles CAN also be caused by certain diseases & ominous side effects to certain medications.)
But in the healthy aging person, loss of muscle strength is expected.  Some people were never strong to begin with, but for those of us who were, it is wretched to push the couch and have it remain stationary.  Or to try to open the door to a public building and struggle so much a young person rushes to aid you!

But though our muscles are aged, they do respond positively to exercise until the day we die.

Use it or lose it is not a lie.  It is possible to increase our fading strength.
However, it is a daily chore, because we go backwards a lot faster than we did at age twenty.

I can see why some old people give up on the exercise.  It needs done daily and we are  so tired!!

And we have such interesting thoughts pop into our minds, probably because of all the junk mail the local Mortuaries send!!!
Addressed to me, 
I never open the envelopes, yet their very arrival creates thoughts!

When I took out a loan to build my home, the mortgage people misspelled my name on every page in spite of having spent two sessions face to face with me.  
They had my credit history, my Wage and Earnings, my Tax Returns, my bank account number..and my name! Nevertheless, they misspelled my name.
Yet when the flyers come from the Mortuary people, they have my name spelled exactly perfect! Like they got it off my Birth Certificate.

That's not a good sign.

One time when the ominous envelop arrived, I checked my absent neighbor's mailbox to see if they received a flyer.  Nope.
Very targeted advertising and I was the target!  Not even addressed to "Occupant".

That's not a good sign.
                         **********************


I never gave any thought to burial until I was in my 60's and I was laying down on my sweaty back on the grass trying to recover from a little bit of yard work and avoid a stroke.  As I lay there , the thought came to me, "When I die, I want buried FLAT.  Please oh please don't stand me up in my grave!  I am so tired!"
Even Egyptian Pharaohs were stretched out flat for burial.  Who in their right mind would make a dead body stand up even if it would save space? (some young person might)
However, all those thoughts were before Hurricane Katrina.
Being a hypochondriac, I was mesmerized by all those caskets that floated up, having lost their moorings during the storm of all storms. Mesmerized and horrified.  Were you?
That is the exact time a new plan formulated in my brain: I want my body cremated after I die!

There is a Rose Garden in the town I live in where you can have your ashes scattered among the roses, mixed in with the ashes of other's . ******* Doesn't that sound cooler than heck?

And I have lived long enough to also see the beauty of scattering  ashes to the winds.  However, I do remember from the Hunger Games series, what Katniss said in "Catching Fire" (or was that "Mockingjay"?) as she walked in the dusty ashes of a town full of people bombed to ash:  "It's not what I'm breathing that bothers me so much as who I am breathing."
     So, I plan to opt for the Rose Garden.

Or, I could be like my mom who died young before getting to enter the twilight zone.
Death overcame her while the sun was still shining brightly.  She was dismissive about what to do with her left-over body.  "I don't care what you do!  I won't be there!"

Yes, it is possible to leave somebody else holding the bag.
                              Good-bye, Mom.
There probably are great lessons to be learned from getting caught holding the bag.  I can just imagine my mom smiling as she departed the scene, perhaps saying, "See ya!  Wouldn't want to be ya!"


Thank you for your visit to this dreary post,
Riverwatch

PS  This post started off upbeat. I don't know what happened!  Probably the mail from the Mortuary addressed to ME!  Crap.

"You Do What Life Calls Upon You To Do"

    




     I was 35 and she was 53.
She was just starting her descent into  the twilight zone of aging.  Of course I already considered Bonnie old in spite of my nursing education.  See.....age is relative.
     Everything is relative, including the compass.

When you are 35...... 53 is OLD!

     I was reeling from my recent divorce, from having four small children to raise alone (I'm sorry.  Where I come from we do not rear children, we raise them....and it shows.), and working full time as a critical care nurse in a busy urban (didn't we used to say metropolitan?) hospital.

     I think I was crying real tears to Bonnie about being overwhelmed with the new landscape I was on and the fact that I was too tired to fix supper.
(I'm sorry.  Where I come from we do not dine, we sup.)
Supper for my kids was  cereal and milk...& hey! don't judge me harshly. We had warm toast.  The kids didn't care.  Nobody wanted to wash and dry pots and pans.  With somebody missing from the table, the table lost its charm and it became "ok" to scatter about the house to eat, including in front of the TV.  Cereal and milk travel semi-well across carpet.  

     Still and all, I felt like life was meant to be different
.
     Bonnie was kool, and Experienced.  She said simply, "You do what life calls on you to do."

     I stopped whining and looked at Bonnie.

     She elaborated, "I never thought I'd ever quit cooking, but Glen and I now eat TV dinners or eat out.  That's what life calls on us to do now.  I never thought I'd have to take heart medicine.  But life calls on me to take digitalis, so I do.  You just do whatever life calls on you to do."

     Bonnie's words are still a guiding neon billboard in my life.

     Over the years I have watched Bonnie experience many changes in the landscape around her....so much joy and so many hard things: precious little grandchildren grown and scattered, sadness about outcome in her children's lives as adults, loss of her beautiful large home, a move to Assisted Living, the death of her husband, and now the Alzheimer's Unit.

 No, Bonnie no longer recognizes who I am, but she is still a trouper, feebly doing whatever life calls on her to do.  The human spirit that has allowed our species to survive and flourish is still holding sway for Bonnie.

     Bonnie remains a guidepost for sane living.



Thanks for visiting me,
Riverwatch

Hey, Baby Boomers!

Hey , Baby Boomers  (ages 48-66 in the year of our Lord  2012)

Did you see that scarey little article by Stern and Heavey 8/15/12 of Reuters?
"Will Baby Boomers Live as Long as Expected?"   These authors were rattling  on about the state of your health.
Studies refining the trajectories for American lifespans have a Frowny  Face for you!





teensdiva.com






Did you know that?  I didn't.  Did you know you have increased rates of obesity, increased rates of cancer, and  increased rates of suicide?!  Of course you are living longer (except for those suicides) but you are SICKER, ie, increased frailty, increased risk from cardiovascular disease, and increased declining cognitive functioning.

I am always stunned at some of these lofty studies.
Ever since I wrote a letter to my congressman informing him I am Pro-Choice and why, and he wrote back thanking me for my Pro-Life support I have NOT been blinded by dazzling statistical data!
You shouldn't be blinded by the data either.
I am a nurse, and I smell a political rat here.
Sure enough, after spreading gloom the article dropped into the Social Security Math issue.    As if!    Like I am surprised.

I read some of the comments following the article and mostly they were "buy in" to the "OMG" ambiance.
However, one person caught my attention.  He said half of his classmates were already dead.  And he noticed that people born  earlier...1917..lived much longer.
He is on to something.  My cousins and I have noticed the same thing.  Most of our parents and grandparents lived to be really really old....and members of our generation are dropping like flies.....not necessarily dead, but sick.

Ok, here it is folks.  We are living in a very toxic environment, not the least of which is the Electro-Magnetic Field that fuels our Information Age.  Look it up.

https://oehscience.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/dirty-electricity-is-not-getting-any-cleaner/


Read the book on Dirty Electricity.


Find us a solution.  Before that cognitive decline becomes apparent.

Your older sibling who still has faith in you,
Riverwatch
Hey, I am not that much older.