Posted inGrowing older Home life

When it comes to friends, quality is more important than quantity

It's been a while since I've heard the proverb, two's company, three's a crowd.  But it fits with an important conclusion in a story I came across in the May 11, 2026 issue of TIME magazine, "The Myth of the Adult Friend Group." Here's a PDF version of the story in case that link doesn't work for you. The Myth of the Adult Friend Group The author, Meehika Barua, speaks of chasing the fantasy of TV shows like Friends and Sex and the City where a tight-knit group of close friends hang out daily, sharing the ups and downs of…
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Posted inGrowing older Retirement community

We need more ways for seniors to live in their community, not in an institution

My wife and I aren't super old. We're just old. Of course, our age limit for "super old" keeps increasing as our birthdays add up. I've had 77 so far. Laurel is a bit younger. What hasn't changed over the years is our reluctance to move from the non-easy-care house on ten rural acres that we've lived in since 1990. I've tried to explain the reasons for this in various blog posts. Here's a sampling: I'm 65. Where's my "Aging Hippie" retirement community? Musings on the problem of where to live after retiring Why it makes sense for seniors to…
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Posted inGrowing older Home life

My take on why old guys like me are so set in our ways

I'm now the person that I was always afraid of becoming. An old guy (I'm 77) who is really reluctant to deviate from his accustomed lifestyle. I'm not exactly the proverbial senior citizen sitting on his porch who screams at playful neighborhood children, "Keep your damn ball out of my front yard!" But I can understand why that dude would say that. Because the older I get -- and so far I haven't found any way to stop that inexorable trend -- the more I cling to habits in an almost obsessive fashion. The reason I do this, so far…
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Posted inGrowing older Humor

At my advanced age, it’s tough to decide if I should get a 3-year subscription to a magazine

Hate to break this news to you younger folks, but things get more difficult once you're a senior citizen like me. I know, you're familiar with stories of hearing difficulties, driving at night. opening jars with twist tops, and remembering where you put your damn reading glasses. There's lesser known troubles, though. Here's one that I encountered today. Two facts collided. One was that I turned 77 last month. The other was that I needed to renew my subscription to New Scientist magazine, a weekly published in Great Britain that I like a lot. Usually I renew for another year.…
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Posted inGrowing older Humor

Hearing “right on” from a young clerk, I thank her for keeping hippie lingo alive

To establish my credentials for writing about hippie lingo of the 1960's, I present into evidence this photo of me that dates from the late 60's during my yoga phase, which followed my psychedelic phase. It was taken (unposed, I should add) by a friend from my childhood home who had sponsored a gathering where I led a group in some yoga postures and meditation.  To add to my hippie credentials, I wish to point out that I went to college from 1966-71 at what I liked to call the "Stanford of the South Bay," San Jose State College, so…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

Death Clock app tells me I’ll die on December 7, 2039 at age 91. I’ll take it.

Thanks to a story in the Washington Post, "How many years do I have left? An app gave me helpful insights," today I learned how long I have to live -- based on the answers I gave to 29 questions. The story gave some examples of the questions. Although the specific date of death is obviously not intended to be accurate — the app’s disclaimer says it’s “for fun only” — it does tie your personal habits to your likelihood of living into old age and tells you what lifestyle changes might buy you more time. Thus Death Clock AI’s…
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Posted inGrowing older Retirement community

Us seniors are getting screwed by the lack of Medicare long-term care

My wife and I are in our mid-70s. We're old, but not super old. Currently we're doing just fine living at our home on ten non-easy-care acres in rural south Salem, Oregon.  Yet it's becoming increasingly obvious that with increasing age comes a diminished ability to do the things that need doing. That's why we're having more yard work done by hourly workers, use a handyman to do some routine chores we used to do ourself, and have made changes such as putting screens on our gutters and railings along our outside walkway. Such is absolutely normal. Every old person,…
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Posted inGrowing older

It’s tough to grow old. Government should be doing more for the elderly.

I don't want to burst any young person's aging bubble, but the plain truth is that the so-called Golden Years are anything but -- if "golden" is viewed as a blissful retired condition filled with travel, golf, and other pleasant activities that supposedly dominate life of the elderly. Speaking as a 76 year old who has friends in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, I can confidently say that while growing old has its positive side (such as more free time), doctor visits, aches and pains, chronic medical conditions, and an increasing inability to do activities that used to be much…
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Posted inGrowing older Home life

My 76th birthday has me thinking about sending death letters before I die

For a while I've been pondering the notion of sending death letters to friends, family, and other people important to me -- not letters to be delivered after I die, but while I'm very much alive, not even sick.  This idea has gained strength as I approach my 76th birthday. That sounds damn old to me. Which, it is. My sister died at 71. My mother died at 73. My father, almost entirely absent from my life, died at 73 (best I can estimate; I'm not sure about the exact age). So while I'm pretty healthy at the moment, having…
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Posted inBooks Growing older

Oh, no! Just learned that yuppies were baby boomers. I’m crushed.

Since I was born in 1948, naturally I've always considered myself to be part of the baby boomer generation. And since I went to college at San Jose State University from 1966-71, the height of the Flower Child movement in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as elsewhere, and I embraced marijuana, psychedelics, long hair, and other trappings of that movement, naturally I've always considered myself to be a hippie who just happens to look now like the old man that I am. What I've never considered myself to be is either a yuppie or the generation that spawned…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

After five months, I finally get medical treatment for my severe sciatica

If you've ever had severe sciatica pain, you'll find this blog post a heck of a lot more interesting than if you haven't. Usually that nerve pain is produced by problems with the spine, either degenerative or following an injury.  I wrote about my current bout with sciatica back on March 23 in "If you're wondering about my absence, the answer is sciatica." An excerpt: It can be an extremely annoying pain. My worse moments have been in the middle in the night when I need to use the bathroom, or when I get up after sleeping. A few times…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

If you’re wondering about my absence, the answer is: sciatica

There's lots of painful medical conditions. In my 75 years, I'm only become intimately acquainted with one of them: sciatica.  If you're unfamiliar with the term, I'm glad for you. Because sciatica pain, which for me is in my right leg, hip, and buttock areas, can range from mild to excruciating. I'm familiar with the whole range.  Injury or pressure on the sciatic nerve creates the pain of sciatica. So sciatica is a symptom of an underlying medical problem. However, that can be tough to figure out. Thus I tend to view sciatica as the problem, though I realize to…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

Health care workers, it’s the system that bothers me, not you

Way back when (to be more specific, the 1970s and 1980s), I was, in order of my career moves, a research associate in the Oregon Medical School Department of Family Practice, a manager with the State Health Planning and Development Agency, and the executive director of Oregon Health Decisions, a pioneering community-based bioethics effort. As I like to say, I must have done a terrific job, because now our state's health care system is running perfectly smoothly with no problems. Of course, that's a blatant falsehood. Oregon, along with the rest of the United States, has a disjointed health care…
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Posted inGrowing older Home life

Our 2023 Christmas letter is about cars that act like old bodies

Here's our 2023 Christmas letter, hot off the press of my mind this afternoon after I decided that I really wanted to write it, notwithstanding my wife having said that we shouldn't send one out this year, because there's nothing interesting to report on in our lives. To which I thought, What?! How could that be, given all that happened with us in 2023? What she meant, I think, is that we haven't gone on any exciting trips or done anything noteworthy. That may be true, but exciting and noteworthy is in the eye of the beholder. Plus, that's not the…
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Posted inGrowing older

Hearing “Hey, Old Man!” got me thinking about people treated as an object

Above is the short version of what happened to me yesterday in downtown Salem (Oregon). But since I'm a wordy Old Man, I'm going to share a longer version.  As background, I am indeed old, 75. And a man.  So it doesn't bother me when my Tai Chi instructor, whom I've known for about 22 years, beginning with his instruction in a hard style martial art, refers to me in class as Old Man. For I'm the oldest man in the class, though my instructor is 70, just five years behind me. But it did bother me when I was…
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Posted inGrowing older

I’m thankful for a 98 year old guy I barely know

With thankfulness in the air, given that Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I feel a push to make this a theme of my daily blog post (I have three blogs and write something for one of them each day.) I don't want to run through a litany of all the things in my life that I'm thankful for. That's boring, and I'd end up feeling that to balance things out, I should also mention all the things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Which also would be boring. So here's one short, simple moment of thankfulness that happened to me…
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Posted inGrowing older Retirement community

Why we’re still postponing living in a retirement community

Recently someone emailed me, saying that they'd Googled "hippie retirement community," apparently found my 2013 post, I'm 65. Where's my "Aging Hippie" retirement community?, and wondered if my wife, Laurel, and I had downsized or moved into a community. Short answer. No and no.  A bit of arithmetic, which thankfully I'm still capable of, reveals that if I was 65 on November 24, 2013 when I wrote the earlier post, and today is November 14, 2023, then I must be 75 now.  Bingo! Right on. Nobel Prize in Mathematics please. I was going to reply to the email message with…
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Posted inGrowing older Salem

I’m an old man who wears purple

It was a good day for me to wear purple. But I didn't know that when I chose a jacket to wear on a decidedly cold February day here in Salem, Oregon. It felt like a Patagonia jacket day. I have quite a few colors. Green, orange, black, blue, gray, and my very first Patagonia jacket, a purple one that I got for half price, probably because Patagonia had figured out that not many men wear purple. I like the jacket. I like purple. However, the first time I wore it to my Tai Chi class, someone said, "You're brave," because…
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Posted inGrowing older

Time has a different flavor for old folks like me

Remember when you were three? Probably not. I recall what that age was like via my memory of what my young daughter and her friends would say when asked how old they are. "Three going on four." They were so eager to be older, they'd fudge their age to get the next birthday into the answer. Believe me, those days are long gone for us old folks. I'm fine with saying "73" when asked my age. What's more annoying is having to scroll down through history when a web site wants me to select the year I was born. 2000's,…
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Posted inGrowing older Health

Not so fun day: I probably have glaucoma

I thought the day started off badly when our dog threw up three times on our living room carpet. But it got considerably worse when I exited my visit to Retina Consultants here in Salem with a probable diagnosis of glaucoma. Well to be exact, Dr. Justin Baynham told me that my test results were "suspicious of glaucoma."  I'm trying to look at the bright side. Maybe it's good that my optometrist at Eye Care Physicians & Surgeons, Dr. Rebecca Chung, also wasn't completely sure that I have glaucoma. That's why she referred me for a consultation at Retina Consultants. …
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