Pergolating Part Deux
Slowly but surely. This week we planted Silver Lace Vine on the uprights. I know, it’s one of those out of control plants, but considering the erratic weather we want something highly resistant. I already spend much of the year pruning the various wisteria, now I’ll spend the rest of the time pruning these. I also got another Willy Guhl planter. If you’re in France keep your eye open for these in the classifieds. They look like this but there are many variations.
Sometimes you can find them for next to nothing in the classifieds when people don’t know what they are. If it’s signed Eternit, you know it’s the real thing. They sell for quite a bit in the design shops (high hundreds to thousands) but I got one for 15€ and the other for 75€. I’ve started repainting the outdoor iron chairs which we had since Spain, next the table base. Everything black to match the pergola.
In other news, the protests in France are fairly ridiculous. This is one of the most generous countries in the world. Most of these people wouldn’t last 5 minutes in America. I’m all for a generous welfare state, but I’m also for people understanding the value of it. Not to mention the old European retirement model is entirely obsolete. We live longer, we live better and stopping being active is no good for anyone. I’d suggest a model where there’s transition from physical labour to less physical labour – so just throwing this out there, but people train and then re-train for something else later. This is in the case of professions that are hard on the body, everyone else can just suck it up and work until they’re 64. Mike is over that mark and works every day.
Across the Atlantic they’re talking about reparations in San Francisco. This is an absolutely fascinating discussion that people find highly emotive. As someone who sees this from some distance, I’ve always thought “reparations” should be provided to disadvantaged communities in the form of a high quality free education and free healthcare. Instead of this somewhat silly idea of pay-outs, imagine the glory of funding “private schools” for free in poor areas. Free community college or free attendance at a state university or technical school? Some European countries already offer this sort of thing to the entire population, surely the US can do this for the poor. I even get semestral messages from the URSSAF telling me part of my taxes go into a “training” account which exists so my knowledge doesn’t become obsolete. I’ve only been here 8 years and there are thousands sitting there available to pay one of the courses of my choice (approved by the government.)
In less fun news Mike’s prostate treatment is going to have to be longer than we’d hoped. Seven weeks of radiation and 18 to 24 months of hormone therapy. I’m not complaining because the important thing is that it can be treated, right?
My Mazamet 
God bless Mike. Keep the faith – all will be good 🙏🙏🙏
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Yes it will! 🙂
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In Canada for my generation they moved retirement from 65 to 67. I don’t expect there really to be anything left when I get there. I’ve said this all my life since childhood.
I did a month of radiation and was exhausted from it. I was supposed to do 5 years hormone therapy but managed only 1.5 years because that too exhausted me and I needed to keep working. I hope it’s easier on Mike!
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I don’t see myself ever retiring. If I didn’t do what I do I’d go crazy.
Mike’s going to do 7 weeks of one hour long daily sessions of radiation. Was your 1.5 years enough to get the result you wanted?
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The 1.5 years will give me some recurrence protection theoretically but you are supposed to do 5 years. So my recurrence likelihood is higher.
In my case I’d love to retire now and do whatever I wanted to do. I also worry it will be hard as I age with various conditions I have as working now is sometimes a challenge. But I have no choice. So I keep going.
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Because of the age difference I need to keep him going for quite a while because I don’t mow the lawn 😀
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It’s good that Mike’s cancer is so carefully monitored. Hopefully it’s just a blip on his road to recovery. Having retired in my early 50s I guess I should avoid having an opinion, it can only lead to hypocrisy.
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Yes, a blip!
And you stay busy, don’t you?
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Not as much as I should because my arthritis keeps me from doing too much. With spring here I should be more active again.
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Same here 😀
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I hope readers understand this is not a joke but a unanimous recommendation from city supervisors on the Reparations Committee to city council.
What, exactly, defines a ‘disadvantaged community’, I wonder? Being a member qualifies one for a home for a dollar, $97K per year for 250 years, zero taxes, and these are just the headliners! It only costs a mere $600,000 from every excluded household to pay up….
So why do I think descendants of Jews denied mortgages and exempted from equality rights all over the US simply would never qualify? Or, maybe they would… if every member on the reparations task force were Jewish. Maybe their exclusion from reparations is based on not enough homeless Jews currently squatting in public spaces in San Francisco? Besides, they’re probably considered too white by those relying on skin tone alone to determine qualifications. Talk about having skin in the game!
And what about those Japanese Americans who had property confiscated less than 100 years ago? Does each descendant get double, maybe 500 years of tax freedom? 1000? $196,000 per annum?
What about descendants of much abused Chinese railway workers, or the Irish of New England? I wonder… how many offspring of Irish Jews of mixed marriages with Asians are there, I wonder? Where’s that darned box for intersectional heritage on the census that can be checked off for that? Damnitall, we’re talking group equity here, so this stuff REALLY maters.
And I can’t help but wonder what specific percentage of bloodline establishes ‘disadvantaged community’ lineage? Paternal? Maternal? Some selected group identity label of an ancestor? And what’s the dollar figure scale relative to this disadvantaged inheritance?
With group equity on the line, and to be truly caring we must all stand for exact equity between all groups it goes without saying, and with significant financial gains to be had based on the results, what could be more important to establish than exacting boundaries to determine what does and does not constitute membership to ‘disadvantaged communities’? Race alone just doesn’t cut it, I’m afraid.
I can’t believe people might question any of this. I mean, who doesn’t want to help ‘disadvantaged communities’? And what’s a mere $600,000 to all of those ‘advantaged communities’ (aka, ‘households’)?
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So you don’t think my “schools in poor neighbourhoods” idea could be a good angle? Possibly targeting people in public housing?
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Nope. Doesn’t work. I prefer a strong social safety net and equality rights.
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You think focusing resources in troubled areas wouldn’t work? That’s part of a strong safety net, isn’t it?
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‘Focusing resources’ is one of those catch-all phrases that sounds so good but tends to unravel in reality. In some cases yes, in some cases, no. It depends. Are schools a ‘resource’ that by placement alone can be ‘focused’? I know lots of schools that try and then fail to alter the very outcomes that are the central subject to ‘refocusing’. So then the argument usually swings to ‘appropriate funding’ so that more funding assumes greater ‘focused’ effect. This, too, usually fails. And then we look at the data, rinse, and repeat… because real and lasting solutions, I think, do not come from without.
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That’s interesting. Would I be wrong in saying Canadian outcomes (as in mobility) is better than US mobility? I have a memory of reading that somewhere. Where do you pinpoint the major factors of difference? Health? Education? Birth control? Something else?
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The truth is that Canadian education is in steep decline… but has yet to reach the public school level of the US. We’re getting there. I think once upon a time but not so long ago education in Canada was raising the social tide in many ways. This was an essential component of multiculturalism – using the public classroom to impart socially cohesive values aimed at both integration and increasing levels of wealth.
And then came identity politics, followed by social media. Just deadly.
Now we graduate just about everyone as an ‘honours’ student (80% or above) nearly half of whom are functionally illiterate and numerically challenged with many incapable of critical thinking or crafted thought. They make wonderful social critics, however, especially in a complete misreading of history, and are excellent word police, substituting what sounds good for cohesive and rational meaning. Everyone is (in practice) ‘streamed’ towards ‘higher’ education and so now we suffer from a lack of people who can build and fix stuff. They’re there, but a fast dwindling cohort. I mean, when you go that route, you actually have to produce something tangible and that also works, so fewer and fewer young people can cope with that systemic harm.
But, unlike previous generations, at least most students can use and read emojis, so that’s something I guess.
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https://stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/social-mobility-is-twice-as-great-in-canada-as-in-the-united-states/
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That is very interesting, Pink. Thanks for the link.
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I’m with you, Pink. Every kid deserves a quality education. Add to that a good free breakfast and lunch program in poorer neighborhoods and a solid annual health checkup, with whatever medical care the kids need. Fewer students per teacher, yes. After school programs, with tutoring? Yes. Arts and sports, for the kids that don’t need tutoring? Yes, once their homework is done. And these should be color-blind. Every poor kid is disadvantaged. Their parents, white, black and brown, are probably among the working poor, maybe working more than one job, maybe single-parent households. Kids are so quick to notice differences and to tease and all. Every kid should be treated equally.
I worked in the public schools, in special ed. A lot of my kids were living in dysfunctional situations and were just stressed. They came to school hungry, badly dressed, etc. Maybe their parents were badly educated and saw school as babysitting, nothing more, so no help there, or maybe they were just too tired to care or don’t speak English. School is the place where we have a chance to give those kids the tools they need to be successful. The routines give them stability, which they may lack at home. And two healthy meals, guaranteed, might be the only proper food those kids get. Some of my kids were malnourished.
Singling people out based on race is by definition, racism. There is already too much of that.
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So here’s the question: if increasing educational funding improves educational outcomes, why hasn’t increased educational funding improved educational outcomes?
Public K-12 education spending has increased from 2.3% of GDP in 1950 to 5.5% of GDP in 2015. So where is the improvement if school funding really is part of the solution?
Most people seem blissfully unaware that majority-black and hispanic schools in the US receive significantly more per-pupil funding than majority-white schools. Shhh. We don’t want the group-disparity-is-caused-by-systemic-racism believers to have to face reality and question their core assumptions when everyone apparently KNOWS systemic racism is the cause of this disparity.
Ahem.
They also seem unaware that overwhelming empirical evidence shows that students sort themselves into academic ability bands regardless of race in the performance spectrum early in life. And this remains consistent over time. Imagine how education policy might be altered if there really is such a thing as individual academic potential!
But people don’t want to hear this; they presume every student is a budding genius except for external factors that POLICY/MONEY can do something about. This is called optimism bias and it rules public education. And nowhere is this bias more pronounced – in spite of achieving spectacular failure over the past 50 years to produce parity in education outcome (equity) – than assigning more and more ‘resources’ to ‘disadvantaged groups’ that nets no real world achievement. In any other field of endeavour, this failed result of a set goal would be marked as an F… except in education where we assign an A+ for effort!
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Interesting. So you think the problem isn’t the funding but the educational model? As a whole or just in impoverished areas? I’ve spent my life hearing that people in private schools do better than people in state schools, isn’t that funding related?
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Opportunity plays a significant role here. I’m thinking of your mobility reference between US and Canadian students and I suspect the opportunity to attend colleges at much lower rates of tuition and a huge grab bag of scholarships in Canada translates into the rise of living standards for the very poor. That, plus a much stronger social safety net than the US, I think allows
access to and then elevates opportunities.
But I am loath to only compare with the US when I see multilingual students and vastly lower illiteracy rates coming out of Scandinavian countries, which also improves opportunities.
As for private versus public schools, my experience (so it’s strictly anecdotal) is a much higher level of nepotism for private school graduates… in fact, I think the Canadian Liberal government decision makers (elected or not) boils down to about 6 guys who share the same lake at the cottage.
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So how can the model be improved?
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By policy, do you mean?
The current Canadian government’s solution is that it wants the country to absorb increased immigration to four and five times what it was two decades (and all those prior except the ‘massive’ waves back in the 1800s – smaller than the current yearly rates). Robbing ‘Peter’ – aka the developing world specifically – to pay ‘Paul’ – aka servicing the needs of the Canadian economy – is the current model… now that we are having such difficulty graduating people who can do stuff… a ‘sudden’ situation that has been unfolding for four decades. Just this year, a radical suggestion has come forth that there should be some way to stream students into these high paying under serviced jobs and so some provinces are thinking of allowing the final two years of high school be redirected by those who want to ‘switch’ to prepare for college admission. The problem, however, is that reading, writing, and the ability to work with numbers accurately is growing ever more scarce among these very students. I asked a person working on a house in construction if there wasn’t an app for that job yet that would do all this for him. He just wanted an app that would shovel the snow.
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By policy I mean the very system we function in. Precisely because I think mobility is important, so Canada is doing something a whole lot better than other countries.
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Love the furniture. The retirement craziness, not so much. Retirement isn’t a one size fits all kind of thing. Over 50 folks can have health issues. Good luck trying to prove disability. Ageism is real, especially if you work in the tech sector, so good luck finding a job if you’re let go. Even in France, you can be let go. Women often find themselves leaving work to take care of aging parents, so what happens to them? As I understand it, with the new rules, if you’re not putting in basically all of your adult years at some full-time job, you’re kind of screwed. On the other end, I have friends who loved their jobs and were forced to retire because France also has a maximum age for some workers.
I’ve lost track of the various debates. I hope they managed to get rid of the byzantine system of special regimes, which mainly served to protect the unions, never mind the workers.
In the US, the age at which one could start to collect Social Security was set at 62, but up to 69-½, I think, the longer you waited, the larger your monthly check. So 65 was kind of a nominal retirement age, with some flexibility. Also, your payment is based on your income, so full-time, part-time, whatever. And life expectancy was 70. Now my sister tells me she is expected to work until 67, but she should live for a good 20 years after that, so she’s still getting a better deal than our grandparents.
I don’t know, Pink. I’m looking at a lot of people who hate their jobs and really don’t care about running the budget numbers or anything else. I think we should be looking at work itself. How can we make work less awful for these people? Remote working, flex time, shared jobs, everything should be on the table for rational discussion. I’m seeing nothing, really, that is rational in these debates.
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I’m with you, I think reform is key. A whole new model, the possibility of four hour work weeks, different pay scales. And transforming how we think of work. As Lisa Simpson famously said, there’s no such thing as unskilled labour.
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Soon, any retrained folks will have to compete with the robotic workforce. I’d bet on the robots.
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it’s not just retrained people, but those people who simply aren’t able to take jobs that require a certain level of intelligence. what does one do with an unemployable set of people?
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I think there’s still a market for them. I would pay extra or tip generously to not have to fill the car tank with gas. Like in the old days.
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heh, I just barely remember that being a thing. New Jersey and some other state don’t allow you to pump your own gas. But now with electric cars, I can see just pulling in somwhere, and a automated plug just hooking up.
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Really? I remember in my childhood all those sorts of things, including bagging groceries, window washing etc were all done by other people.
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well, we still have baggers, sometimes.
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Statistically, 1/2 of the world’s population has an IQ < 100. Which occupations require little brain, more back, yet instill a sense of pride when accomplished? I'd wager the production of food. Return to the soil, be it in vertical greenhouses or artisanal farms.
The issue is the organization and orchestration of the work. Wouldn't it be wild if we needed an Artilect to take over the world's economies to ensure that humans were well tended.
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not sure what an “artilect” is. I grew up on a farm, and when my dad grew up, he went from draft horses to tractors. Now we have computer controlled equipment, and mechanized harvesting of lots of things. A strong back isn’t needed that much anymore, only in very poor places.
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Artificial Intellect.
And I’m attempting to allude to the return of folks to old-style farming/gardening as a means to produce useful output as well as feel productive and integrated within society.
The automation of all things is coming, but the production of food can be done with minimal tools and intelligence. Forgoing that, plugging the less than useful/capable into VR machines and having them become faux-Matrix battery cells may be the only alternative.
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that’s very…. weird.
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I’ve always thought of myself as an artificial intellect. They put me in those special GT classes when I was 8. Then I passed university exams just before my 16th birthday. At which point I decided I’d never let them be right! And I think I’ve succeeded 🙂
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I think statistically that’s both generous and inaccurate. You’d have to break it down further for a real sense of effect. <70, <80, <90 and where they are. Then we can be honest and discuss what to do.
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I’m irreplaceable 😆
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You certainly are.
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My uncle has just been through that radiation and HRT treatment for the same thing with good results. He seems to have enjoyed the effect of the hormones too.
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Enjoyed as in it worked or enjoyed as in drugs that get one high? ☺
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He said it made him feel calmer and less irritable/aggressive
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a very good idea about retirement, and a very good idea about reparations.
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At the risk of pissing on the campfire here, reparations is a serious and very worthy idea, and it needs to focus on money, not little tokens or handouts or dubious nostrums like edumacation.
The enduring black- white wealth divide in the US demands serious action, so whitey’s gonna have to pay this time. Same in the former colonial powers Canada and France. Social science has documented the harm that racism has done and is doing now, so it’s time for some restitution, spelled in the only language that seems to matter –
M-O-N-E-Y, baby.
Retirement should be a right, also – who wants to give up a chance to not have to be an underling for idiot bosses and corrupt systems?
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Lol Now tell me, hand on heart, if you believe that’s going to happen? Have you seen the Belgian project? Their idea of reparations is a museum.
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Oh no, this is strictly a dream in a dystopian world. But on boy is it fun to see the knees a’jerkin. William Darity has written the book on the case for prosecuting US reparations, which is next on my night table. I hope there’s a section on how to get some Canadian whiteys to start paying back some of that stolen loot ‘n treasure.
Meanwhile , the American Mussolini is about to get handcuffed, so what a great week for pipe dreams! Who said miracles can’t happen?
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Let’s start with you paying… I don’t know… $50,000 to start (after tax money, of course)? And the same for the next 12 years. And then for the next 250 years you pay municipal, state, and federal tax while your neighbour – whose bloodline apparently descends from a ‘disadvantaged community’ pays zero. I’m almost sure there would be absolutely no resentment from you, your kids, their kids, their kids, and so on, while these ‘reparations’ are paid by your children and their children. Go ahead: YOU set the example, pay this money yearly, and impose YOUR choice on YOUR children.. because, well, YOU thought this was a good idea.
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Taxes, oh those taxes. Tax fairness would be a necessary corollary – getting rid of all the tax cheating and criminal evasions by the corporations and white – collar psychopaths would be just a start, followed by all the genocidal thievery by war departments and giveaways to housing developers – that should give than enough to fund these long overdue reparations for on-going harm by whiteys.
Of,course, we could also just tax the hell out of these criminal tech/network/surveillance companies destroying the internet and the environment, and use those funds to undo the present horrors tied to historic settler colonialism. So many choices!
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Yes, many choices. But I still think we should start with YOU.
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Damn, I’m honored. You sure about that? Me? Start with me?
Not Elon? Warren Buffett? George W? Your guy Stephen Harper? Doug Ford- oh, that’s right, he’s dead, I think. Jordan “The Cryer” Peterson?
Sure, just show me the receipts of a fair tax imposed upon any these criminals, or on any war armaments corporation, or on any of the deadbeat lunatics currently in office, or on yourself for that matter (you do pay taxes, don’t you?)and then I’m eligible. Without those receipts, I’m afraid those bills due for reparations are going to come directly to you.
These internet Bumfights are always good entertainment for the bots. However, it’s probably best we go back to drinking out of our paper bags at the opposite end of the campfire.
Well, Pink did start it. Reparations now!
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You keep changing the locus of control of your opinion to someone else, someone out there, someone you presume is better able to afford it, and so on. No, no, no. You need to pay. If you hold this opinion honestly and earnestly, then start with yourself. Take out a mortgage if you’re having trouble coming up with $50,000 for each of the next twelve years to pay this portion and spread paying it back over twenty or twenty five if you need to. Of course, you will also be paying increased taxes to make up all those $1 homes ‘sold’ to thousands and thousands of people from ‘disadvantaged communities’ as part of this brilliant reparation package so we’ll have to make up the municipal tax shortfall for only the next 250 years. I know you won’t mind doing your part and seem eager to force your children to do theirs. That’s great! That interest rate rise, however… well, too bad for you but, hey, reparations now must take precedence. You don’t mind becoming the working poor to facilitate meaningful social justice, do you? After all, it’s only money. Let’s make sure it’s YOUR money first, though, so you can get the full value of exporting your own virtue and imposing it on others.
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I’m going to keep this bumfight response short.
1. You still have not uttered a peep about what you or any of you racism-denying friends are going to do to lessen the black-white wealth divide. Not a single worthwhile proposal, other than making snide Gov. Ron DeFatFace air-quotes around the term “disadvantaged communities.” You have nothing to offer on the subject. Why post about something that you don’t or can’t read about?
2. Your projections about others are as dumb as the milieu you are imbedded in. I am neither “working” nor “poor,” having once been both. There are no biological children on this end. No one gives cares whether you do or don’t.
3. You get half-points for using the idiotic phrase “virtue,” but you forgot the Alt-right companion term of choice “signaling.” Your brown-shirt friends are going to be mighty disappointed in you. Hillary called you all a “basket of deplorables,” and for one time in her life she was right. Learn some new catchphrases, or just stop trying to mumble.
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So you won’t walk the talk and it’s all someone else’s fault. Good to know where your virtue truly stands.
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Do you two need a private room? 🙂
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Sorry to hear that Mike’s treatment is to take longer than expected, but at least it shows diligent monitoring.
The black paint against the greenery and that vine is going to be super.
As to the retirement age…..start at the beginning. Give kids a safe environment in which to learn. Give them food, a secure routine and teach them practical as well as academic skills with which they can make a living, train for more skilled work and contribute to a national pension scheme – which should be invested in national industries, not used as a Ponzi scheme.
As for the ‘reparations’ scheme – pure racism.
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I have a lot of personal experience being raised in a home that had one of the Ministry of Education committee members talking about all this stuff. Post WWII, the committee came out recommending and overhaul that started streaming kids into two directions at about age 14. Universities would receive the academic stream, colleges the practical. So an entire college system was created to teach all the practical trades and services so that people could be prepared to enter the workforce with usable skills and universities to teach with a focus to licensing in various professions.
The college system exploded by the 80s, which is when governments decided to de-stream for political/budgetary reasons. After all, everyone KNEW streaming was caused by and then had become an extension of racism and colonialism, donchaknow. Don’t we want EVERY student to become a post-doctoral expert? If you disagree, you must be a racist, you see, and probably hate children from ‘disadvantaged communities’. Who needs plumbers and electricians? We need more lawyers and Gender Studies professors, I guess.
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The people sitting in the front seats in society loathe and despise those whose work they rely on to live. They have no intention of providing good education, housing or health services as they are detached from society in general and see no need to do so.
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….. until they try to do a renovation. And then they find out why knowledgeable and experienced tradespeople are rather important. And highly valuable.
Just a quick personal note: my son, to whom we gave a lump sum education fund to cover tuition in whatever program he wanted to pursue, went to university for a year, announced it was not ‘cost-effective’ writing essays (some mandatory courses about historical grievances and the social effects and challenges of ethnic and gender diversity), switched to a co-op college program, graduated without student debt and purchased a Tesla with cash earned while at school, went straight into a high 5 figure job, now a 6 figure job a few years in, and is actively head hunted every month by all kinds of companies large and small and governments of all levels for his network/security skills. Compared to his friends who went the university route, he can ‘do’. And so he has all kinds of choices and opportunities as well as a strong sense of appreciation from community members where he works. Especially with baked goods! And that demonstrated skill-based ability makes all the difference. When I have an issue with something on the computer, I call him and give him remote access, where his first command is for me to “take your hand off the mouse and step away from the keyboard.” That’s when the magic happens. I think every household these days should have such an expert in the family.
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Indeed, but they can afford to pay the rates demanded by a skilled tradesman….doesn’t bother them that tradesmen are a rare breed and that society in general needs more of them.
Your son was lucky to have parents who were level headed about education and outcomes. When I see parents in the U.K. delighted that their kids are going to ‘uni’ I wonder what they use for brains.
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Lovely! And give my best to Mike, I don’t have cancer, but have prostate problems (intelligent design, my ass). As to raising the retirement age . . .it is complicated. This is being discussed in this country re Medicare (national health care for senior citizens). The problem is life expectancies. Many people of color do not live long enough to qualify and those who do don’t benefit for long.
The major recipients of our Social Security pensions are old white women (who live longer than any other group, including white men).
As to the protests, the privileges taken away are very, very hard to get back.
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Wishing Mike the best.
I don’t have to retire, though retirement age is 60 for those in public sector.
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Are there pensions in Kenya or is it a case of redistribution of green beans and lions?
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It depends on rank. Junior officers get maize seeds and beans to go plant. Senior officers in addition to maize and bean seeds, they get a grade cow.
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Sorry to hear that about Mike’s prostate situation but you’re right, it can be treated and is being treated. Keep us updated.
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Will do! Mike’s doctor is Nicolas Doumerc in Toulouse, and he’s sort of world famous for his skills, so that’s on our side 🙂
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Good to hear that!!
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Read the reparations article – wow. The cost of living in San Francisco is astronomical. I looked into a job there a few months back, and I would need to make three times as much money to live in the same near-poverty conditions I’m in now. Unfortunately, employers don’t consider that, so they only pay the same as I make here. $5 million will change the lives of people who get it, but I’m not convinced it’s proportional to the type of lives they would have lived had the local government behaved differently eighty years ago.
I’m glad Mike has a care plan. It feels clear and specific, which I would find comforting. I wish the both of you grace and kindness as you go through the process.
Your patio looks beautiful. Perfect for a glass of wine at twilight.
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A glass of wine, or more 🙂
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The pergola is going to become your favourite spot in the garden! As for the retirement protests, I had to wait until I turned 65 before I qualified for the pension here in Australia. For men it’s longer. By contrast, my Mum got the pension at 60. I think the cost savings by government are inevitable, I just wish that there were jobs to be had as you wait for retirement.
I know you’re already keeping Mike as healthy as possible, but perhaps look into foods that boost the immune system? Hugs to you both.
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Definitely! He’s been on a special diet since all this began. It’s pescatarian, low in fats, etc. etc. Hugs back!
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I know this will sound like an old wives remedy, but ask Mike’s specialist about iodine, and if it would do no harm when in combination with his other treatments. If it’s ok, paint a little on an unobtrusive part of Mike’s skin every day. I learned about iodine shortly after I finished my radiation treatment back in 2010. The idea is that iodine is like ‘fuel’ for your immune system.
I can’t say whether it helped me or not, but if it does no harm then why not give it a try?
p.s. tell Mike I think of him often. I think we’ve all come to know him a bit through you. 🙂
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Absolutely! I’m open to trying all sorts ☺
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-hugs-
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oh…iodine stains clothes while it’s wet! And if it takes 24 hours to become completely absorbed then Mike’s immune system probably doesn’t need it. If it’s absorbed [fades] faster then it shows his system is using.
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I’m considering changing careers for the 3rd time… its not fun anymore.
Your reparations idea might have made sense in the abstract ca. 1962 or so, but in concrete terms of making things better for people, nah, those days are gone.
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I’ve had to adapt to the market now four times. From religious sculptures to tapestries to silver, then back to religious sculptures. It is complicated but does keep us on our toes.
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Well, I agree that we live longer and we live better. But I have lived with a tradesman for over 30 years. I have watched him age before my eyes from all the physical work. He does like it, but with our move from Hawaii to New Mexico, he now has the luxury of only working three days a week. And I don’t foresee him ever stopping work. But for someone like him, he can transition to some kind of art(isan) work. Neither of us wants to sit around, and at 70 this year, I can outwork most men in their 50’s. And I love physical work, I just can’t do as much of it as I used to, which is fine. The important thing is that we have choices, and it would be great if everyone had enough creativity left in them after a lifetime of work to dream up new projects. And that’s my two cents worth! ☺️
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I think that’s really the aim. Creating a world where we have choices and transitions, instead of one where we hit a certain age and become obsolete. I remember at one point being rejected for a job at the age of 31 because they didn’t want anyone with previous work experience 🙂
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It isn’t that just the craziest?!🙄
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