Cultural Opposites—N.Amer., S.Amer.—and Simon Bolivar

Cultural Opposites—N.Amer., S.Amer.—and Simon Bolivar

Few books have been more enlightening than a biography I recently read on Simon Bolivar by Marie Arana. Simon Bolivar is often compared to George Washington of the United States. George Washington led the Revolutionary War which freed the U.S. from Britain. Simon Bolivar freed 6 countries in South America from Spanish Rule. Washington was a tall impressive figure while Simon Bolivar was 5’6 inches, slight of build, and only his eyes reflected the magnitude of his imposing will. Both men sought a more ideal society but the American population was far different from the South American population, just as Britain was a far different oppressor than Spain. Simon Bolivar was a far superior military commander than George Washington. Washington needed the forces of France to win the Revolutionary War, while Simon Bolivar needed only Simon Bolivar to rout Spain completely from South America. The American Revolutionary War was relatively short, the War by Simon Bolivar to rid South America of Spain was a much longer one. 

My knowledge of South America, as with most Americans, has always been rather scant. These countries are down there but they seem more violent, less tolerant, less stable, less educated, and poorer than Americans in general. I always wondered why—after all, both continents were rural at the time of Washington and Bolivar, both rich in natural resources, and so why did they evolve into such differing cultures? I suppose children are likely to reflect parental influence, so it seems South Americans are likely to reflect the different culture of Spain and Britain. Compared to Spain, Britain’s treatment of her colonies was far more humane, fair, and enlightened than the inhumane, unfair, and unenlightened cruelty exercised by Spain over her American colonies. If ever the phrase “violence begets violence” has truth, it certainly did with South America and Spain. 

Two thirds of South American citizens back then were mixed race. North Americans slowly learned to tolerate distinct racial and religious groups. In South America, it was always more everybody for himself/herself. From the git-go, starting with Columbus, Spain had no use whatsoever with anyone not born in Spain. Spain was ruled essentially by the Catholic Church, and in those days, the Catholic Church ruled more like a heartless mafia then a peace loving religious organization—which is not to say, as always, that some strict catholics were not ideal ethical ‘saints’.  Columbus was a devout catholic, an arduous seeker of gold, power, and cruelty to those not native Spaniards. Spanish rule was based almost entirely on violence and submission of native Americans.  Aided by diseases to which the native populations had little resistance, Columbus just quickly made many native populations become extinct, working them to death, outright torturing hundreds of thousands, making slaves, bringing some back to Europe as trophies, and so on. Writings by Columbus are a picture of a deranged cruel insensitive oppressor.

Here are a few gems from Columbus:

"The Indians are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say, 'no,'" the Columbus quote in Stephan's tweet reads, "To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone."

"They would make fine servants," a second quote from the tweet reads. "With 50 men, we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." 

“They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

“While I was in the boat, I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the said Lord Admiral gave to me. When I had taken her to my cabin she was naked—as was their custom. I was filled with a desire to take my pleasure with her and attempted to satisfy my desire. She was unwilling, and so treated me with her nails that I wished I had never begun. But—to cut a long story short—I then took a piece of rope and whipped her soundly, and she let forth such incredible screams that you would not have believed your ears. Eventually we came to such terms, I assure you, that you would have thought that she had been brought up in a school for whores.” (one of Columbus’s sailors)

“Endless testimonies . .. prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy…

And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them head first against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, “Boil there, you offspring of the devil!” Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck, saying, “Go now, carry the message,” meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them…”  (Bartolome DeLas Casas—the priest who accompanied Columbus).

This then, is how it all began—the Spanish Conquest of South America. 350 plus years later, a typical Spanish colony consisted of Spanish born, crown appointed overseers; below them the Creoles—whites born in the colonies, then came the part white/Indian (mestizo), part white/black (mulattoes), black/Indian (sambas). Finally came the slaves. Sexual combinations of all sorts was a way of life. Simon Bolivar’s 46 year old father married a 14 year old neighborhood child and the first child was Simon Bolivar. The priest who had baptized Simon died when Simon was very young and surprised everyone by naming Simon the sole heir of his vast fortune—three plantations, 95,000 cacao trees, and all his slaves. His father died when young and the Spanish courts dictated who would raise unruly Simon, worth so much in inheritance from the priest. His primary caregiver was a black slave named Hipolita. His formative years were unique in that Simon was known as a prankster, a pampered child who spent his days cavorting with the slaves’ children, running wild. By the end of the first decade of Simon’s life he had lost his father, mother, grandparents, a sister, and most of his aunts and uncles on the Bolivar side. 

Simon ended up in Spain where he then received a good education, became an avid reader, appreciated fine culture and fell in love with a young gal Maria Teresa, then moved back to Venezuela to live the life of a rich plantation owner. Except Maria Teresa died and after that, Simon Bolivar became a prodigious lover for the rest of his life, with a few constant companions along the way. Maria died within 5 months of reaching Venezuela. Bolivar later stated “I loved my wife very much and at her death I took an oath never again to marry. As you can see, I have kept my word.”  Then again, he rarely slept alone except on the battlefield.

Around this time Simon Bolivar met Alexander Van Humbolt, a noted explorer of South America. Later Humbolt wrote “I confess I was wrong back then, when I judged him a puerile man, incapable of realizing so grand an ambition (freeing South America from Spanish rule).

At about this time John Adams wrote this about the possibilities of democracies in South America: “you might as well talk about establishing democracies among the birds, beasts, and fishes as among the Spanish American people.”  This would prove to be very true.

Simon Bolivar was not the only person eager to lead a revolt against Spain in various South American Countries. But he was low on the totem pole because of his age and perceptions of him. The consensus in Venezuela among the potential leaders of a revolt was that Simon Bolivar was “too untried, too impulsive, too incendiary”.

The social atmosphere was difficult. The Catholic Church was adamantly opposed to independence. So were the lower classes who felt their oppression might get worse without Spain offering them some protection against the upper classes. It will not be the purpose here to go through the tedious path of Bolivar’s rise to be a leading revolutionary force. 

In the first attempts by military leaders to lead a revolution, the Spanish forces ordered troops to sack towns, rob the innocent, kill anyone who got in their way. Houses were torched and the residents mowed down as they tried to flee the fire, prisoners had their throats cut, their ears lopped off, and body parts were worn as trophies by the Spanish troops. Even Spanish priests were heard encouraging fellow soldiers to spare no one over the age of 7. 

In short, these budding revolutions were nothing like the battles for independence in the United States where battlefield military victories were, with few exceptions, the sole determinate of who was winning or losing. While major revolutionary generals with larger forces were getting massacred by Spanish troops, Bolivar was putting together an army of raggedy ‘have nots’ with nothing to lose. Bolivar was a master of psychological warfare and given the social environment of the time, understood that an army of people with nothing to lose would be able to beat larger armies of soldiers living the ‘good life’.  Simon decided he would operate on his own with his rag tag band of soldiers. He declared, “We’ve run out of goodness” and he put it in writing that all Spaniards in Venezuela would be exterminated. “Count on death even if you have been indifferent. For non Spaniards “count on life, even if you have been guilty of past allegiance to the Crown.”  From then on the war for independence would be fought on the terms established by Spain and the Catholic Church.

Probably neither side foresaw the long term consequences of such terroristic mind sets on both sides of the battles. Simon at least took this road as a last resort. He didn’t start this mentality. Simon used surprise, endless surprise before and during the battles. This was no sophisticated army, this Bolivar army. There were no uniforms, no educated soldiers, no ‘softies’ among the ranks.  All the pent up anger of an army of ‘have nots’ would roar down when least expected, looking like savage beasts intent on murdering anything in sight. Bolivar, with a vastly smaller army, used advance spies to spread the word that he had far more men, that the attack would be a surprise, that he was known to lure whole armies into endless traps, appearing to flee when he was just setting up the pursuing army for an attack from the rear or finding themselves is the wrong terrain to defend themselves. Almost overnight, Simon Bolivar’s reputation unnerved the Spanish forces. As a consequence, fearing for their lives, Spanish forces would often abandon a town before Simon could attack, and Bolivar would enter the town a hero with little bloodshed. Also, Bolivar never rested, his pursuit was incessant, his bag of tricks endless, and the Spanish soldiers began to feel it better to escape than run the risk of personal and brutal deathly harm. Stated Bolivar: “A weak man requires a long fight in order to win. A strong one delivers a single blow and an empire vanishes.”

At about this time Bolivar would lead his forces atop his white horse Palamo, with a bright-eyed mastiff dog at his side, a dog which would be at his side for eight years, while ‘Petita”, his girlfriend for the next six years would always be in camp with him and his army. Also with him at his side was his old black nursemaid, Hipolita. 

The situation reminds us of what Voltaire said early in history: “All murderers will be punished, unless of course they kill in large numbers, to the sound of trumpets”  Aligned with another saying “Violence begets violence”, the battles for independence from Spain established a culture of violence and cruelty to others which would remain intact in South America right up to the present. It is the same kind of violence which perpetuated the endless violence in the Middle East right up to today. 

Spaniards living in a town were often taken to the market place, and en route be shot limb by limb while bands would play music as the dying Spaniard would wiggle until, responding to the cheers of “kill him” the soldiers would then put a final bullet to his brain. It should be noted that Simon himself never participated in these cruel scenes—he was not by nature a cruel person, but he understood that most of his army were seeking revenge on the people of privilege and wanted to level the class structure. Simon saw no other way to get the Spanish out of South America. It was sort of a message to ‘run for your life while you still have one”.  And it worked for the most part. Many a Spanish person, in the army or not, began to sense they better get back to Spain while they still could.  

The Spanish soldiers had muskets, but these muskets required six complicated actions to reload, and by that time Bolivar’s rough hewed crude ruffians would be upon them with the fury stored up in them from decades of abuse by Spanish rule. 

Simon Bolivar was wise enough to realize he was primarily skilled as a warrior, not that interested in the daily run of any government. From his first successes he never wavered here as evidenced by one of his first speeches to a conquered nation or area: 

“I am not your sovereign.  To save you from anarchy…I exercised supreme power. i gave you laws, I gave you government… You honor me with the illustrious title of Liberator.  The officers, the soldiers of your army—those are your liberators, they are ones who deserve the nations’ gratitude. You know very well that they are the authors of your rebirth… I beg you now to release me from a charge that is far greater than my capabilities.  Elect your representatives, your magistrates, a just government, and rest secure that the forces that Rescued the Republic will protect your liberty…A country in which one lone person exercises all power is a country of slaves!” 

It would not be until the end of his life (in his mid 40’s) that Bolivar realized the culture he helped create, was not suited for democracy. What kind of government it was suited for is elusive. Violence had been instilled as the most effective way to control the people and intolerance of diversity was so ingrained for centuries that cooperation and respect were never able to gain a foothold as strong priorities. Bolivar himself, when betrayed by those he trusted, would respond with blind anger. When Bolivar learned that a trusted general was involved in a plot to have the captured prisoners  engage in a violent uprising, he had every Spanish prisoner in a huge area marched out of their prison and beheaded. Every one of them. 

While killing in cold blood sickened Bolivar, one of his main strengths was creating fear amongst his opponents. He tended to look the other way when some of his generals reveled in death and torture. Simon once expressed: “Our people are nothing like Europeans or North Americans; indeed, we are more a mix of Africa and South America than we are children of Europe…It is impossible to say with any certainty to which human race we belong. Most of our Indians have been annihilated; Spaniards have mixed with South Americans and Africans; their children, in turn have mixed with Indians and Spaniards…we all differ visibly in the color of our skin…..even the slightest alteration can throw off, divide, or undo its delicate balance.”  Thus he proposed an educational body that would be responsible for instilling ethics and civic responsibilities. 

Time after time a freed nation would install him as a dictator to rule over them. But Bolivar would just as quickly tire of it as he stated: “I am not versed in the art of government. I cannot and do not wish to govern, for to do it well one must have an inclination or, better yet, an uncontrollable passion of it. For my part, each day I feel a growing repugnance toward the command.” Bolivar’s greatest hope was that South American nations would become an integrated whole so that their world influence would be maximized.

The physical stress Simon Bolivar put on his body via many military battles and traveling over the South American continent to help one country, then another, expel Spaniards from their nations, took a heavy toll on his body. From arthritis to endless battle injuries, Simon was often in extended periods of pain. To relieve the pain he became addicted to opium for long periods of time. His energy level was truly amazing and long standing. By age 38 Simon was an ‘old’ man. He was still nimble of movement but he was emaciated, riddled with fevers and other mysterious medical conditions. 

Towards the end of his life, which was to end at age 46, Bolivar was a spent liberator. He succeeded in driving the Spanish out of South America, but he paid dearly for the effort. Most of his relatives were dead, his wife was dead.  Always on the move he had few close friends and many of his favorite generals and soldiers had been killed in battle, captured—tortured— then killed. He managed to have loyal female companions till the end, but by the end he could not even walk. Most of the countries he freed were total disasters politically, corrupt, powerless to unite the various constituents of their nation, and all this depressed Bolivar. He used violence, ruthlessness, and fear to expel the Spanish, but in the end he realized all the violence and intolerance could not just be suddenly turned off.

Of all the countries he saved from the Spanish, Peru he considered the most messed up. He felt sorry for the Indians”  “I want to do all that is possible for them. First, for the good of humanity; second, because they have a right to it; and, ultimately, because doing the right thing costs so little and is worth so much.”  He ordered roads built, demanded that monasteries be converted into schools, built an aqueduct, established colleges—but little changed. He finally concluded that wealth and slavery had ruined the country.  His dream of a strong confederation of South American nations faded, as the differing nations distrusted each other, were fearful of each other, and cooperated little with each other.

Bolivar had little appreciation of the United States. He realized the culture in the U.S, was different from the backward, violent culture of South America.  He stated: “The united States seems destined by Providence to plague South America with torments in the name of freedom.”  Nearing the end of his life he commented pointing to his emaciated arms: “it isn’t nature that reduced me to this, but the pain gnawing at my heart. My fellow citizens couldn’t kill me with daggers, so they are trying to kill me with ingratitude. When I cease to exist, those hotheads will devour each other like a pack of wolves, and what I erected with superhuman effort will drown in the muck of rebellion.”  While the colonies were dead, the colonial mentality was very much alive. Most of the countries he liberated were economically worse off than under Spain. Like the words of an old song: “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

“The America’s that were emerging under Bolivar’s horrified eyes were feudalistic, divisive, militaristic, racist, ruled by warlords who strove to keep the ignorant masses blinkered and under bigoted control.”

In the end Bolivar was destitute. Early in his life he was a very wealthy man via inheritance. At the end he was destitute. He had turned down every compensatory award every government had offered him. He had pressed his salary on others, or neglected to collect his salaries. He had little to show for all these sacrifices. In his 47 years of life he had traveled 75,000 miles under extremely difficult terrain, earning the nickname ‘iron ass’. He had seemingly inexhaustible stamina. But it all took a tremendous toll on his body and he died young a totally spent emaciated skeleton of his former self.

He listed what two decades of battling for liberation had taught him: 

“1. South America is ungovernable

2. He who serves a revolution ploughs through the sea’

3. All one can do in South America is to leave it

4. South America is bound to fall into unimaginable chaos, after which it will pass into the hands of an undistinguishable string of tyrants of every color

5. Once we are devoured by all manner of crime and reduced to a frenzy of violence, no one—not even the Europeans—will want to subjugate us

6. And finally, if mankind could revert to its primitive state, it would be here in South America, in her final hour”

Does all that went down in South America have any relevance to current day world politics?  Perhaps, but cultures are becoming more global. Plus today, with everything being so global, all nations are now faced with repercussions from global human overpopulation. Human population cannot continue to double with every generation as it has done in my lifetime. Without global realistic minimum wages, workers across the planet are doomed. Then there is climate change which has taken many decades to develop and cannot be reversed quickly. A vast toxic distribution of wealth is taking place across the globe under every form of government. This is leading to modern day terrorism and will likely generate chaos when the masses of poor revolt. Violence is becoming more and more acceptable as a means to an end and ever more random and ever more violent.   Change is coming but God only knows what the future will really look like. Given the way God’s laws govern the evolutionary process, maybe God doesn’t know either. But the brilliance of Evolution is that no matter how dire the environment becomes, things bounce back even if it take millions of years for it to bounce back. For those of us with such limited years left, the future becomes almost irrelevant. 

Simon Bolivar is truly one of the most intriguing individuals to study. With the best of intentions he used violence as a means to an end, but this generated violence to drive Spain out of South America itself generated a pattern of behavior which was self destructive to civilized governance and any peaceful socially tolerant culture. It all started with Columbus and his attitude toward native Americans. The survival of the Catholic church in South America is another interesting phenomenon. The church was a major player in the class warfare back in the days of Bolivar.  Blind religious faith seems to be the opiate of the downtrodden. No matter how badly a religion treats a population, many people need the faith religion brings them. While the Catholic Church in South America is vastly different from the Catholic Church in colonial days, the Church too, seems incapable of bringing about the kind of tolerant prosperous peaceful society so badly needed throughout South America. The book Bolivar by Marie Arana is a masterpiece of insightful information about human nature and why South America remains such a troubled region of the world. 

Measuring Contentment

Measuring Contentment

Polls taken on Americans have repeatedly found that older Americans feel more contented than younger Americans. This seems, on the surface, rather strange. If someone asked me, would I choose to be age 25 again instead of over 75, the answer would be yes. And yet I am one of those older people who feel I am more contented today than at any age in the past. Below are some of the points made by the latest study on contentment in Americans.

Research: Older adults are happiest Americans

• By LINDSEY TANNER
  MEDICAL WRITER
   CHICAGO

• A certain amount of distress in old age is inevitable, including aches, pains and deaths of loved ones and

• friends.But older people generally have learned to be more content with what they have than younger adults, Yang said.

This is partly because older people have learned to lower their expectations and accept their achievements, said Duke University aging expert Linda George. An older person may realize "it's fine that I was a schoolteacher and not a Nobel prize winner."

While younger blacks and poor people tended to be less happy than whites and wealthier people, those differences faded as people aged.

In general, the odds of being happy increased 5% with every 10 years of age.

Overall, about 33% of Americans reported being very happy at age 88, versus about 24% of those age 18 to their early 20s. And throughout the study years, most Americans reported being very happy or pretty happy; less than 20% said they were not too happy.

It's all good news for the aging population. However, Yang's study also found that baby boomers were the least happy. They could end up living the unfortunate old-age stereotype if they can't let go of their achievement-driven mind-set, said George, the Duke aging expert.

So far, Baby Boomers aren't lowering their aspirations at the same rate earlier generations did. "They still seem to believe that they should have it all," George said. "They're still thinking about having a retirement that's going to let them do everything they haven't done yet."

Previous research also has shown that mid-life tends to be the most stressful time, said Cornell University sociologist Elaine Wethington. "Everyone's asking you to do things and you have a lot to do. You're less happy because you feel hassled."  End of statements from the study.

Repeatedly in my musings is the notion that the goal of life is to maximize our level of contentment. Also pushed is the idea that our level of contentment is largely based on the extent we follow the Golden Rule—the inference here being  that both the receiver and giver both then reach higher levels of contentment. Contentment, it is suggested, has little to do with EXCESS power, wealth, physical attractiveness, intelligence, athletic skills, popularity, fame, and so on PAST a certain level.  Be all this as it may, just how do we measure contentment anyway? 

In this musing I am going to wing it using my own thoughts on how I measure my contentment level. For a start, contentment levels sort of relate to the levels of stress hormones in our body. Not at any given moment, but more the chronic levels. It is sort of a lack of stress=contentment. Part of stress, like any other aspect of our particular life, depends to some extent on genetics and our environment. Our genetics we can’t change, our environment sometimes we can. On top of this everything here gets mixed in with acquired attitudes, values, addictions, compulsive behaviors, and personalities. It’s complicated.

So in this musing the goal is to measure our contentment level by our mental state regarding certain parts of our life. 

First, the object is to wake up mornings with the least amount of stress about the day to follow. This is more difficult to achieve in our formative and productive years. Too many things on our plate can be stressful. But we also need remember that achievements, which are important to contentment, are rarely achieved without some self or outside stress to motivate us along. It is not surprising that an older population has more contentment. A lot of the stresses in the productive years are no longer necessary—EXCEPT some people can’t let go which often means the stress is there and they are no longer in a position to do much about this stress. Letting go is a positive thing and this includes various aspects of our lives. 

Each retired person has to let go of different things in different ways. For me it became obligatory to let go in various areas of my life. This list would differ from one person to another. I gave up a highly landscaped acreage and sizable house because it is was hard to be contented with so many obligatory yard and housekeep demands on my time. 

Plus, everyone need accept their ever increasing physical and mental limitations with age. So I moved to a high rise condo where everyday I do what I want to do as often and long as I want to do whatever. That’s a big chunk of stress gone right there. 

Then there are the social obligations that we amassed over time in our productive years. This includes family, friends, co-workers, and the less fortunate in life. By the time most people reach retirement they are entitled to reduce the stress from these varied social involvements. Those who still try to be an active parent to their offspring will find increased stress here as the real goal of parenthood ought to be one of having raised offspring to be independent adults. It is stressful not to be able to let go. The real obligation now falls on offspring to provide meaningful support for the parents just as the parents provided meaningful support to offspring during their formative years. The actual situation here is all over the place, but each parent has to establish the least stressful approach toward adult offspring. Parents will have little luck dictating a successful interaction with adult children. One of the least rewarding situations is to place monetary support or future inheritance over the head of any offspring. American culture is a real failure here. The primary responsibility is to raise children responsibly during their formative years. After that,  any future support should be the responsibility of government, no matter the form, toward all adult citizens. Excess wealth fairly earned during anyone’s life should be returned to society  upon death so all young people have a more level playing field. Just handing a lot of money to adult offspring is not going to generate any real contentment to such offspring. They need to earn their own successes just like other young people. Genetic cabals of wealth have never served well any civilization.  Parents who go down this road create needless stress for themselves and amongst their offspring.

As a general rule, those in their terminational years need to find ways to amuse themselves independently of others. This is a very difficult task if one has developed a lifestyle in which others are depended on to give meaning to our lives. These others tend to fade away for one reason or another as our older years progress. Offspring have their own lives to live, spouses die, go in different directions, or themselves are medically limited to be able to provide the kind of meaningful support they may have given earlier in life. Grandchildren grow older and increasingly have their own peer support and attachments. Neighbors, colleagues, previous sport mates, church congregations, and all sorts of group attachments become frayed or lost for all kinds of natural reasons. It is easy to misjudge the duty of others as some sort of noble and obligated duty, when the reality is that we have become pests or irrelevant. Now that we have more time to do things, we fail to realize that many others don’t have the time to spend with us doing this or that. For example, I thought when I retired I would travel more, or pay more attention to others, or deal more in person with the less fortunate in life. Our plans may or may not work out so well with the others as we envision doing more of the things we like to do with them. That can be very stressful. Part of the trouble is that almost everyone lives for a better future. If others are in their formative or productive years, the elderly by definition are not much of their future, but the past. Often, the more we increase our efforts to be part of their life, the greater the odds we have become a rather annoying pest. 

I love to tell the story of this gal who said to me once years ago, “How come you get invitations to join the younger people in the building and I don’t?” I smiled and replied “Because you would be foolish enough to attend.” People don’t dislike older people, but they do dread older people becoming a pest. They want to be nice, and often are, but they usually are not going to welcome us in as a major player in their lives. When we think otherwise we are often irrational. Most of the problems those in their formative years or productive years face, are not problems we can solve for them. If we cannot, as individuals in our terminational years, accept that times change—when they always do—and simply let the next generation do their thing as our generation did our thing—well, the scene becomes a nightmare for those elderly who want badly to impart their ‘aged wisdom’ on the next generation. I, for example, live in a high rise condominium building, and have the time to become involved in condo matters, but I accept that those in their productive years should run this show. I don’t show up at association meetings and lead any charges about anything—and others know well my attitude—I will abide by whatever the majority wants, and if I don’t like it here at some point, I will move elsewhere. No one really wants to hear a lot of “In my day”, “My past experience has demonstrated”, “Others I have talked to feel”, “I, for one, demand” and so on. Instead we are better to ‘let it go’ for our sake, and theirs. 

In short, our ability to be satisfied in the grandstands, watching the show, relates directly to our own level of personal contentment. After all, I will be dead sooner, rather than in some distant future, so if I cease to be at any point now, there is no tragedy. 75 years is a long time to have had a good life. The tragedies are those who die young or never had much of a good life and still are suffering. Perspective is everything. If we cannot keep things in proper perspective our terminational years will be stressful. If we can’t accept death, our terminational years will not be contented ones. If we cannot go gently down the stream and find ways to amuse ourselves, it is going to be a frustrated and futile existence for us in our terminational years. It need be remembered that terminational years have nothing to do with contentment or happiness or unhappiness etc——it is a time span, period. The last lap in our terminational years, the dying process, will come soon enough and be short or long and drawn out. That is a total another matter. 

Every phase of life necessitates dealing with sadness, disappointments, challenges, losses, and bumps of all sorts. Now what would motivate anyone to insist, when older, that they want to stay on the playing field and be involved in the rough and tumble game of life? What non stressful outcome can possibly come of that?. Recently I attended some huge horse show, an acrobatic entertainment spectacle in which a balcony ticket was $144.00 before parking fee, taxes, program, popcorn, etc. Normally, I would not spend that kind of money for any kind of show. So I went, by myself, as I usually go to a lot of places by myself. The couple next to me were somewhat old, not ancient like me, and were a delight throughout the show. The gal next to me suddenly remarked, why are you here alone? I replied, “You want the truth? If I were to pressure someone else to come with me, God only knows what kind of event I might be pressured to attend with them in the future.” My goal, remember, is to do the kind of things I want to do every day as the spirit moves me. I told the couple, “As far as amusing me, this show and the two of you are doing an excellent job. We are having a lot of laughs and seeing some spectacular acts, just a perfect situation, at least for me.” At the end of the show they asked if maybe we should have dinner together some time. I smiled and replied, “And talk about what—your grandchildren or my health, or our different careers, and so on—when none of this is relevant to us personally in our daily lives. We live an hour and a half apart.”  “He replied, “You really are different, but in a pleasant way”. They were taking UBER home and volunteered to have the driver drop me off at the suburban train station. I thanked them but pointed out part of the pleasure that day was the walk to the nearest bus which would take me to the train station. It would be a new walk through different terrain and I enjoy that. That I love to walk (no power walk) for lengthy walks and sort of take in everything I see during a walk and get to think about whatever topic I want while walking, is a blessing. Things I love to do don’t cost much money at all. Now how lucky can I be? That horse show was a rare exception for me, there are precious few shows worth $144 to see. Frankly, I had to weigh spending my money on that show or putting it in my FANAFI Fund where it would pay for 70 unfortunate young kids to get vaccinated against diseases which can kill them. The FANAFI Fund usually wins because I am lucky enough that the things I like to do don’t cost much money. Everything is relative. It is not like I have to sacrifice the things I like to do in order to give out monetary grants to those charities which make life better for the less fortunate. It’s win-win for me and those less fortunate. Luck is always involved in life. 

We all, to varying degrees, understand that diversity is important for progress in the evolutionary process. Too often though, we try so hard to peg diversity in terms of right and wrong, sinners and non sinners, or good and evil. Forget that. Ethics is all about The Golden Rule and we all understand that is an ethical principle. 

As we get older, for most older people excitement and new challenges are no longer a priority. Been there and done that. The terminational years provide the time for us to review our past life, condense as much of it as we can into practical understandings of life, and seek the peace which comes with solitude and activities which we can still enjoy by ourselves. The object is simple enough—to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, practice the golden rule with our time or money, be pleasant natured with those with whom we come in contact, tap as often as we can into the goodness most people have to offer us, let the next generation run the show, and if our financial situation is ample enough, we can enjoy every day, bad health not withstanding. While we can measure our contentment level as described in this musing, we can’t measure the contentment level of others. We can, individually and collectively through government, measurably increase the contentment level of others via the Golden Rule. Family values is more relevant during the formative years. After these years are past, it is human values which become the focal point and this has been true for all the prophets in all the major religions. 

A legitimate question arises thusly: What about someone whose whole adult life was involved round the clock with social interactions of some sort—their kids, friends, co-workers, church members, politics, whatever? Is it realistic to tell them to just find ways to amuse themselves? Perhaps getting very active in charitable organizations is the answer for them. This way they get the social interaction they crave and yet do so without becoming a pest to those in their productive years who just don’t have the time to amuse an older person. I can remember my grandmother, who had like 7 offspring,  literally whine to me, maybe a ten year old kid, that none of her adult kids paid much attention to her. I would wander cross country for the sake of something to do and visit her before returning. To get the attention of her adult kids she would take one family out to Sunday dinner every Sunday. I hated those outings because sitting through church all morning, and then half the afternoon out to some restaurant was torture for me. The Devil in me made me ask the puzzling question in my mind: “Why does Grandma always pay for the meal?”  There was stunned silence. Then one of my parents sort of mumbled that “Grandma enjoys taking us out to dinner”. Logic in my mind then dictated “But didn’t she pay for your meals for all the years you were young?”. I guess I wasn’t the easiest kid to raise. But this issue stuck with me all my life and when I was an adult it was a rare time when I allowed my parents to buy me a meal. They argued they could afford it. And I would retort that if they wanted to be kind, be kind to those who are less fortunate. I think most parents in their terminational years want to feel gratitude from their offspring. The only thing someone in their terminational years owes to their offspring is some independence and that only happens when the older parent has found ways to amuse himself/herself most of the time. 

Today modern medicine can keep us alive for decades more than in the not so distant past. There are many medical conditions which leave a parent in need of constant attention. We all have seen dedicated offspring spend decades caring for an invalid parent. I still have no perfect answer for this. This treatise here obviously does not apply to an invalid parent. At least not in the sense that the parent should just find ways to amuse themselves. But I also mentioned that after the formative years it is the government which is responsible for the special needs of all adult citizens. That means round the clock care should be provided by our collective tax base. Do I know how much tax money this would require to provide proper care for all adult invalids? A lot, but then I have never been one of those who feels government should stay out of our private lives and let capitalism run amuck with few or no regulations and no limits. It is no accident that those countries which rank highest on the happiness scale are those countries which provide basic needs for all their citizens. None of these people have to worry about good health care, good education, decent wages, employment, and so on. The basic needs are there for all citizens. Of course the trade off is high taxation. While many Americans struggle and worry about many basic needs, in these other countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc they are left with pleasant decisions about what to do with the money left over from taxation. America is basically a dog eat dog society and proud of it—well I guess the less fortunate are a tad less happy. 

While some people use religion as the basis for adhering to the Golden Rule, far more religious people end up using religion as a cover for their selfish ‘family values’ mentality. The focus in almost entirely on themselves, they circle the wagons, then flail away at all the perceived ‘heathens’ here, there, and everywhere. While claiming their religious belief is one of peace and tolerance their feelings are one of hate, distrust, and desire to make others follow their own inherited religious rituals, practices, and behaviors. And whenever they manage to literally attack these heathens it is never enough to kill them outright but cruelly kill them in the most torturous way available at the time and location. Religious wars are the most brutal and cruel imaginable. They burn witches at the stake, behead people, torture them in captivity, among other ways which vary from era to era way back to when stoning people to death or quartering them alive after hours of painful torture, etc. But religion also often affects the believers in their terminational phase of life. Religious people tend to be scared to death of dying. This “am I going to Heaven?” mentality becomes a livid feeling with which to deal. We all have heard too many people wail “Why is God letting all this happen to me?”. And worst, they never feel they can have a peaceful dignified death when they have had enough of life, but are required to hang in there and let God decide when enough is enough—OR ELSE they are going to Hell. The difficult fact is this: until by law people are allowed to control their own dying process, then each individual will have to themselves arrange a peaceful and dignified death when they have had enough. Or, have made plans with friends to accomplish this if they are mentally incapable of accomplishing this themselves. Some states now allow letting the patient control their dying process, but only if several doctors will sign off that they will be dead in 3 months. That doesn’t do much for those with Alzhiemer’s and any number of neuro-muscular disorders, and so on. 

This fits in here because knowing that we can control our own dying process takes a lot of fear out of dying. Heaven or no Heaven, we don’t have to fear dying, it is a natural consequence of birth. Nobody is turning over in their grave about anything. We don’t fret about not having been alive for the millions of previous years in the evolutionary process and why the hell would we fuss about not being around in the probable endless years in the future evolutionary process?  The attitude which should predominate, especially in the terminational years, is gratitude that happenstance gave us life.   We won the lottery when a particular sperm united with a particular egg.

In summary, each individual in their terminational years should give thought to their own nature, own situation, and try to find ways to amuse themselves in ways which do not make themselves a pest/burden to others where and when this is possible. When we live long enough it has been said we become twice a child. Studies have shown that young people are not the happiest or most contented segment of society. Of course not, so much to learn, so much to endure, so little control over their own lives. The whole point here is simply this: when possible, as often as possible, every person after retirement should try to find ways to amuse themselves and let those in their productive years manage their own lives. This maximizes contentment for all concerned. I often wonder how these ‘nuclear’ ‘family value’ families celebrate holidays in any meaningful way. After all, they are in each other’s face most days all year long. Having said this I suspect it is not always a bad thing.  As so often is the reality, what works for one may not work for another, so I will cover myself with the following:

Most of my musings are hardly the comprehensive last word about any topic. At best a few ideas get tossed around and sometimes a few questions answered or things to ponder provided, but they end because I tire of writing about the topic or am missing any more ideas on the topic. These musing weren’t written to educate others, but to organize my own thoughts so I achieve more understanding about the topics. It’s a selfish venture, one that enables me to feel more contented about life, myself, and others. My musings are not professional publications, properly proofread, all resources properly listed, nor any claim that the topic has been carefully researched to death. Essentially, it is just my peculiar way to have one more way to amuse myself in my terminational phase of life.  Of course in the process Google gets a workout, past readings get utilized, and my own life experiences incorporated into the musing in question. 

Life, Luck, Prayer, Contentment

Life, Luck, Prayer, Contentment

Some would say my obsession with musings about varied aspects of life, including the formative, productive, and terminational years is just too morbid, unhealthy, or at minimal, too excessive. “What is the point?” may well be the question many ask themselves.  I have asked myself the same question many times in my life time, and this musing tries to answer the question.

Diversity is a requisite factor in God’s Evolutionary process. Without diversity there is no progress.That the process is slow is obvious considering such a long evolutionary history. The human species always behaves too much as if we are really running the show, determining the future, are God’s favorite species, can achieve some sort of Heaven after death, can have a personal interaction of some sort with God, that God is judging us, that no matter our sins, we can at any point be forgiven and be salvaged for some sort of Heaven. Be this as it may, none of this is evident throughout the history of our own species. If God was in anyway protecting certain human groups this would be evident enough. That is, for the Group God is protecting, that group would have clearly a better record regarding any of the things for which humans pray. No such stats exist. Clearly God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process apply to all humans with no evidence that God interferes with His own laws to protect any individuals. 

It is hard for me to remember when I first stopped praying to God. I do know I felt more and more uncomfortable pretending God was going to aid me and leave so many others, with so much more severe difficulties than I, in the lurch. We all see heart wrenching situations in which so many good, helpless humans have the most horrible things happen to them. Unless one wants to consider God a sadist, He is not personally singling anyone out for such bad luck. Just our genetic and environmental variations are grossly unfair. While the evolutionary process is obviously amazing, progressive, and everlasting, a lot of individual members of all species pay a heavy price. Humans are the only species advanced enough to collectively help the less fortunate to attain more contentment in their lives. That is essentially the ethical nature of our species. It has nothing to do with inherited religions, form of government, culture, and so on. The irony is that while we pray to God to help ourselves or others, it is all of us, collectively, which have to provide this help. It’s the Golden Rule. Everyone everywhere understands that this Rule is an ethical truism.  Which is not to say such understanding generates much ethical behavior by everyone. 

Given that we all seek to maximize contentment in our lives, this musing will look at the impact of Luck in our lives. All of us could make a list of all the good and bad luck we have encountered in our lives. Then again, what would be the point? Luck is what it is by definition. We can’t change that. If we win the lottery, we win the lottery. We can’t influence whether we win or not unless we simply refuse to play the lottery. If we no play, we no can win. Life is similar except we don’t get to decide whether we play. Happenstance does that. If we suffer too much bad luck I suppose we can end our lives, but that is about the only way to escape. Some really good people, by most anyone’s measure, die young. They didn’t deserve to die young, and it does nothing to simply pass it all off as ‘God operates in mysterious ways.’ It would be like saying that the person who invented Poker is responsible for those who lose. 

Since we all strive to maximize contentment in our lives, it probably starts by accepting a lot of the realities of life, including the need for us to be ethical as a means to achieve more contentment. Those who help others and those who receive help achieve more contentment in their lives. Those who get too wrapped up in themselves or ‘family values’ never achieve much contentment in their lives. All of us know people with few material possessions who are far more contented in life than a Donald Trump or an Ayatollah, or a Kanye West, etc.—who are perpetually angry about most everyone and everything in life. 

Until we accept the realities of life, it is hard to maximize contentment. We are going to die, we are going to have bad luck, we are not always going to have a level playing field, we didn’t get to choose our parents, our place of birth, the schools we went to, our youthful peers, and the list goes on an on. We are what we are, others are what they are, and collectively we can, in theory make the lives of all more contented. Praying to God is not the answer, our collective action is the only avenue for achieving the maximum contentment for the greatest number of people. Some can share excess wealth, all can contribute time in their lives to help others, and some can take difficult stands at work or via politics to help meet the needs of the less fortunate. How we employ the Golden Rule will vary just like so much else in real life varies. 

A friend once said to me: “You always seem to have good luck and survive difficult situations.” I have pondered this like I ponder a lot of aspects of life.  It seems to have been true. No one was more frail (an exaggeration of course) than I as a child. I got just about every childhood disease imaginable except polio. The antibiotics to treat most of these diseases had become available less than ten years before my birth. And the one prevalent disease, for which there was no medicine to cure, was polio, and I didn’t get that disease. Clearly, this is luck, pure and simple. I was able to attend a prestigious college only because of a track scholarship— that I ever ran track at all was never my idea but the consequence of a young track coach who virtually stalked me until I did go out for track and cross-country. The scholarship was pure good luck. I was not the best biology student by far and yet got chosen by my undergraduate department Chair to be the Senior Biology Course Assistant. I got fired after two years teaching and coaching at a rural high school after clashing with the Principal but that only resulted in the Chairperson of the Physiology Department at the Univ. of Wisconsin Medical School allowing me to achieve a Ph.D. in Physiology while teaching Student Nurses in another state. That was pure luck. On my first University teaching job I was promoted and tenured early by the Chairperson of my department because in her words “You are good for our students, but you need to be tenured right now before you make too many enemies.” What is that but sheer luck?  Such good luck continued right up until I retired. But enough of me as an example of good luck. 

Naturally I pondered why so many persons, many of whom I was not really close to at all, kept pulling my career out of the ‘fire’. I concluded this: we can make waves and survive if the waves are never about our own personal acquisition of titles, power, or money. When we fight battles for those who are powerless to help themselves, there will often be someone in a position to save our ass because they see it as an injustice to nail someone just because they make a lot of enemies defending those less fortunate. This is not to say I never had any bad luck. In fact the worst of bad luck impacted negatively on my personal life in a rather permanent way. This is what it is: good luck and bad luck operate independently by definition. 

Enough good luck enables us to enter our terminational years with gratefulness as the main emotion. If we cannot be grateful for our formative and productive years, then the terminational years become a challenge. Too many people who should be grateful are not, for varied reasons, and this limits the amount of contentment they attain in their terminational years. Everything is relative, and if we can’t view life through that prism, then we become hampered by an attitude of “enough is never enough”. A high percentage of persons who become quite wealthy can never shake that “enough is never enough’ trap and their level of daily contentment is simply sad. 

What about those who say “we create our own good luck and bad luck”. The trouble with that is, if we create it, then it is not luck at all. Nothing seems more disingenuous to me than most of those who proclaim “I achieved my successes the old fashioned way, I earned them.”  For the most part it is gross exaggeration as it would certainly be for me to feel that way.

Bad luck exists, of course, but what should we do about our past bad luck in our terminational years? Fostering regret during our terminational years is simply useless and ignorant. Once we understand and accept how the laws which govern the evolutionary process work, it is foolishness to keep swimming upstream against the injustices inherent in the process. If we suffer some bad hands in a poker game, we don’t blame the person who invented the game for the bad hands. We don’t blame the other participants in the game either unless they cheated. And we continue to play the game if that is our inclination because we enjoy the times we win. Life is of the same ilk.

Here is the ultimate reality: Our level of contentment depends on the amount of good luck we get in life and the good luck others get via us. If we simply take and not give, our contentment will be limited. It is not possible, given the nature of the evolutionary process, for everyone to achieve the same level of contentment. There is no singular way for such diverse people to achieve the same level of contentment.  But, proper behavior collectively can maximize the degree of contentment for everyone. For all the affluence and ‘good life’ many of us now live, we are well aware that millions of people on this planet today are suffering from outrageous personal situations. With endless media access we have become numbed by the injustices heaped on so many fellow human beings. My own level of personal contentment exists alongside a heavy sadness for the environmental predicament faced by millions of my own species. It is enough to make empathetic people be teary eyed for them. In another instance of luck, I don’t have any expensive hobbies at all, so it is little effort on my part to spend more each year on the less fortunate than I do on myself. It isn’t even close. It is an obligation that I feel strongly about. When I retired, my time spent helping the less fortunate one on one had to end. It is too emotionally taxing. There are several ways to help the less fortunate, and at this stage in  life it is through my FANAFI Fund. 

Human behavior is evolving too. The bind here is human activities are hurting so many species that we are now in one of the 6 greatest extinction periods in Evolutionary History. At the same time humans have overpopulated our planet. With natural resources limited we are now in a phase where more and more people seek a good size piece of the pie. We are getting on each other’s nerves 24 hrs a day big time. While ‘Rome burns” we are mostly busy amusing ourselves. The distribution of global wealth is creating massive shifts to a very rich few. In the U.S. 2-5% of the population owns 90% of our national wealth. Capitalism is great, but only if it has fair regulations and limits. When the wealthy set the regulations and limits, there ends up being no limits and endless loop holes in tax codes so that it becomes easier and easier for the already wealthy to accumulate even more wealth at an exponential rate.  

Relevant Attestations:

Be prepared, work hard, and hope for a little luck. Recognize that the harder you work and the better prepared you are, the more luck you might have. Ed Bradley

Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind - listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody. Eubie Blake

Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination. Christopher Isherwood

Your competition is not other people but the time you kill, the ill will you create, the knowledge you neglect to learn, the connections you fail to build, the health you sacrifice along the path, your inability to generate ideas, the people around you who don't support and love your efforts, and whatever God you curse for your bad luck. James Altucher

It's hard to detect good luck - it looks so much like something you've earned. Frank A. Clark

My success was due to good luck, hard work, and support and advice from friends and mentors. But most importantly, it depended on me to keep trying after I had failed. Mark Warner  (I like this one)

The latitude and longitudinal lines of where you are born determine your opportunity in life, and it's not equal. We may have been created equal, but we're not born equal. It's a lot to do with luck and you have to pass that on. Brad Pitt

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Ambition drives you on, ability certainly helps, but the fickle finger of fate and luck are great things. Fergus Henderson

Females in Modern Day Sports

Females in Modern Day Sports

It is hard, at least for me, to accurately gage to what extent females like participating in sports or how good they could be, or should want to be, excelling in sports. I don’t think my mother ever played in any sport, and if she did, I just know she would have been terrible. Perhaps this is a cultural, era dependent, thing. Back in the ‘good ole days’, if a girl wanted to participate seriously in sports her parents would likely start worrying about that daughter. Males were to play sports and women stick to the kitchen, the laundry room, and the bedroom in the not so distant past. For the first 10 years of my mother’s life, women were not even allowed to vote. Today I think, by law, women’s sports must be given the same financial support given men’s sports.   

Most of the stats in this musing come from articles in Outside magazine. Today women comprise 46 percent of outdoor sport persons. That surprises me too, I figured they would first get involved in indoor sports before heading out into the more rugged outdoor sports. It has always been assumed that males will always dominate sport performances because of their genes and the the presence of testosterone to build massive muscles. Plus, everyone kind of assumed that when it comes to endurance and physical toughness, men will always be far superior to females. Only recently have women  been allowed in the military in combat roles. Maybe my mother, given a combat helmet, could have been a marine, but that’s a stretch for me outside her demeanor around the house when I was growing up. Smile. 

So it comes as a surprise that women are starting now to compete seriously with men in the most brutal of endurance sports. Huh?  Common sense dictates that a female entering the 106 mile Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc foot race would quit early on. Poor thing, just over her head in such a race. Well, some female named Rory Bosio in 2013 ran in this race, finished the course in 22 hours, 37 minutes—finishing 7th overall. I reckon there will always be some freaks of nature now and then, so case closed. Not exactly. 

I thought Trump winning the Presidential election was the surprise of the century but Pam Reed won consecutive 135 mile Badwater Ultramarathons, Amelia Boone took second place at the World’s Toughest Mudder—a 24 hour race in which Pam covered 90 miles. She was 10  miles ahead of the third place finisher, also a female, and Lael Wilcox became the first women to win the Trans Am, a 4,300 mile cycling ‘sufferfest’ from Oregon to Virginia. She covered the route in 18 days. Maybe the trick is to name your daughter Rory or Lael. Whatever happened to Millicent, or Mary, or Elizabeth? Perhaps as soon as we can find a runner named Honschnivel, males can recapture the titles here. 

So far it is true that females are only getting these big victories in the super long most difficult races, not the shorter distances like the typical 25 mile marathon. Imagine being married to Lael, having an argument and screaming: “Now you come back here, don’t make me run you down and pummel some sense into you.”

It is beginning to feel like the longer and more arduous the event, the better chance a female will win the contest. Another interesting fact (not an alternate fact straight from Trumpity Dumpty’s mouth) is that while all athletic records keep improving, the rate of improvement is much higher in women’s records than men’s records. 

Limited, but recent studies seem to suggests that women are more resistant to muscle fatigue than men, that women have a greater number of fatigue resistant muscle fibers than men, and while women have smaller muscles, they don’t tire as quickly. All these years I thought this was only true for mouth muscles. Smile. 

To pile it on here, some studies indicate in these long races that women are much better at pacing themselves. Rebecca Rusch, a long distance cyclist  tells this story: “The guys are always asking why I start out so slowly, and so when she was passing a male toward the end of a race she asked him.”Why do you finish so slowly?” 

None of this matters all that much to me personally. I walk long distances as a hobby, but from now on when I am miles from the parking lot, and encounter a lone female walking or jogging alone in a forest preserve, I will certainly refrain from the devilish question “Hey there sweetie, you do know the nearest parking lot is 4 miles away, heh-heh”.  Be bad for my ego to get run-down and beaten up by some short shapely light weight female en route to her car 50 miles away. 

Maybe we need a female President—am kind of tired of macho males engaging in endless invasions while addicted to  wealth/power to the extent ‘enough is never enough’.  Times sure do change, except so far Americans still prefer some macho Archie Bunker prototype for President. We went from a President who seemed never to find a group he didn’t try to protect and make their lives more pleasant, to a President who seems to have no group outside his own ’trophy’ wife and family that he genuinely likes, and is hell bent on teaching every minority group, of any ilk, a lesson or two. We will now see how all this works out. 

Just before he died, Don Rickles told me since women are only gaining the upper hand in the most extreme endurance contests, it only proves that more and more women are becoming insane. Exercise and health is a very slippery connection. Neither of my parents ever undertook any kind of exercise regime in their lives, and ate whatever they felt like all their lives. My dad lived to be 89 and mother 97 or 98. I wonder what the life span will be of those who participate in these extreme endurance competitions?  Actually, most of these extreme endurance events are fairly new. At 77 I have already completed my extreme endurance event as well as used up of my reservoir of endurance. My response to most challenges in life today are more like “Oh, to hell with it”.