Best Inventions in My Lifetime

 I'm going to ignore all the medical advances in my lifetime - there are far too many and I am incredibly grateful for all of them. 

So this is a very personal list of those made in my life time which have enhanced my comfort and efficiency. And yes, time management.

First of all:

Birth control! What a difference to my life compared to the life of my mother and grandmother and all before them. Choice! Career options! Independence! 

Automatic washing machines, dishwashers, dryers. Unheard of when I was a child. I do remember my mother's old hoover, a huge purchase when I was about seven or eight. Two small tubs, one a spin-dryer, in the same machine. Eased her workload considerably.

Calculators, mainframe computers, floppy disks, all the way to personal computers. And printers. And laser printers. Bye bye typewriters! At home! Home offices! The foundation of my own business! True independence!

Reel to reel tapes, recording music off the radio when I was a teenager. On to cassette tapes, not forgetting 8-tracks, on to CDs, on to Ipods and Spotify and 5,000 pieces of music on a tiny hand held device. To be played at whim. Anytime and anywhere. Mirabile dictu! And the miraculous VCR all the way to streaming today. 

And last, but not least (believe me, I can think of many more) cell phones, the internet, then the internet and world wide web on our actual mobile phones! 

I've seen many, many changes in my lifetime. Not least of which was the enormous radio with a huge battery my dad would listen to at a local farmer's when we children spent our summers on an electricity free island. It's aerial was strung up outside the kitchen window to the second floor as heaven forbid they might miss a hurling match from Croke Park in Dublin. Pre transistor. I was about 13 when I saw my first transistor - my cousin was gifted it. I was sick with envy. 

What changes have you seen in your lifetime? 

Slump

We all get them, n'est pas?

I was feeling "off" yesterday and a few health issue challenges threw themselves at me. A good reminder of the fallibility of the aging body. I find this was succeeded by floating anxieties which pop over the parapet and remind me of poverty, forgetfulness, who do I think I ams, and a kind of general malaise of why botherism.

Cheer deserts me, every perceived slight is taken to a deeply personal level and scrutinized carefully for even more hidden pinpricks of disdain or contempt.

Are you still with me? Can anyone relate?

I try and counter all this with my daily dose of Tao.

Today it was to scrutinize all the tiny physical things around me and reflect on their origins, transitions and possible 100 year decay far into the future and way beyond my lifetime.

Then I focus on what I see: the glorious sunshine, startling greens, transcendent blues outside my window, my blackboard of writing projects.

What I hear:: silence, the flapping of the flag against the pole outside, the odd birdcall
What I touch: the keyboard now, lastly the knitting of a shawlette that I had to rip out as my pattern didn't work. A gift.
What I smell: some wonderful incense, a healing scent, to lift the spirit.

What I learn: Trying so desperately not to let my new phone (the old one was whimpering and finally died) frustrate and defeat me in a challenging learning curve of swiping, shaking, touching what I shouldn't touch, installing endless apps, promptly forgetting the new system protocols, digging for accounts and passwords and finding I am an inpatient whiny mess after about 15 minutes of this. Not helped at all by losing all historical texts (essential in the case of my friend with dementia challenges) and having wires crossed in my contact list - now sorted.

Living in Tao I am not. Though I try.

Terminal Technology

So. I write to my friend who is, to all intents and purposes, terminal. In the hospital. With bags and tubes and discomfort and pain and anger and frustration and fear.

These are her wishes. This is her e-mail from last night exactly as written:

Not a great day

Cleaning draining

Dr visits

Intravenus injections daily now - no oral

Learned how to check blood

Endericonolist testing gor cancer now

Sugars still up but coming down

No visitors please right now

No calls

Cannot answer easily

Easier to communicate by email

I am not going anywhere

This is my reply:

I hope today is less painful for you.

I hope your spirit can take little journeys inside you to better places.

I remember an A-Frame near Tweed where we had such a happy weekend sitting by the water. I was knitting. You were cross stitching. And we talked and talked.

I still have your needlework (in a frame) hanging on my wall.

{{{{{Dxxxx}}}}}

I thought to send a shared memory every day. I think that would help me if I were her.

Who's to tell? Who's to know?

I know I wouldn't want anyone around me. Email is good. Very, very good. The right distance.

And PS - this blog is anonymous, otherwise I would never breech her confidence.

Cartoon of the Week

click to enbiggen

This was sent to me today and it seemed oddly apt to yesterday's post.

A Double Life (or on second thoughts, make that a triple or more).

(Photo, taken by, ahem, me, is of Cape St. Mary's, Newfoundland & Labrador, home to - literally - millions of seabirds) Cape St. Mary's


I think many of us are leading more than one life these days. I know I am. And the odd thing is they are all weirdly separate. I say weird, because I’m an old fart now and these simultaneous multiple lives of mine weren’t even imaginable just a few short years ago.

I can be consulting with a client in China (and China is soooo economically hot right now!) for a couple of hours in the morning, while he is having his late dinner. I can be writing an article in the afternoon for an Irish magazine, I can be taking photographs of the ocean at five, trying to capture a hitherto unseen shade of blue on film, and by night, in front of the fire, I can be designing a new knitting pattern or chatting with knitters (or Knitwits as we call ourselves!) around the globe - one in Connemara, on the West Coast of Ireland, I particularly enjoy.

And what has made all these parallel lives possible? The wonderful world of the internet of course. The World Wide Web.

“You should be written up, Mum,” my eldest daughter, who is extremely high tech, says to me, “You must be one of the few sixty-mumbles who has so utterly embraced the information technology highway.”

Well, yes and no. I meet my compatriots out there blogging well into their eighties. My good friend Miriam, seventy-five, was forced into going on line. By whom? Her mother, who is ninety-three and says it’s the only way to keep in touch with her great-grandchildren and Miriam should be ashamed as they are her grandchildren. Miriam’s mother gave her some lessons on the fine art of e-mailing and now she, too, climbs on board every day.

What I truly love about all of this multiple personality way of life is that I can work in my underwear if I want, and be anywhere I want, which for me is by the ocean in an outport of Newfoundland most of the time, and at any time I want, like 2.00 a.m., which for an incorrigible nighthawk like me works out beautifully.

I still have a lot to learn about I.T., but I suppose being ready, willing and able is half the battle.

And PS, I used to be sooooo jealous of you guys who could link so effortlessly.....and I finally did it, see above, wahoo..

Now if I could only figure out how to link and list my favourite blogs, I'll be, like, so totally insufferable...