We had a pretty warm autumn here along Colorado’s Front Range, which meant that many late blooming plants and shrubs were in flower for an unusually long time. It was quite nice actually.
That all ended in the last week in October, when temperatures plunged down the low teens. Bitter cold, combined with over six inches of snow, led to most plants checking out for the year. However, as the calendar rolled over into November, we had a period of above average temps. They used to call the warm spell that followed the first hard frost of the season “Indian summer”.
Do they still call it that, or is that problematic now? Screw it, I’m sticking with Indian summer. Indian summer. Indian Summer. We had a very nice Indian summer during the first couple of weeks in November.
And there were a surprising number of plants that were still in flower even up to November 20th. Not a lot, but still a surprising number.
While everything else in the birdbath garden gave up the ghost until spring, ‘Monch’ asters were still going strong.‘Raydon’s Favorite’ aster was also still putting on a show in the driveway border. As an added bonus, its foliage turned a deep burgundy color, providing a stunning contrast with the purple flowers.This ‘Jupiter’s Beard’ normally blooms in early summer. But it put on a nice show in late autumn, even after being squashed flat by the heavy snow that fell a couple of weeks earlier.An autumn crocus in bloom in front of the deck in mid-November. Even though it looks like a crocus, and has crocus in its name, it is in fact not related to the crocuses that bloom in spring. Different species with similar attributes.
The show has since come to an end, but the late season display certainly cheered me up. After all, I’ve got to slog through the long, cold, dreary months of winter before life returns to the garden. The longer the display, the shorter the misery!
I think I should plant more autumn crocuses along here next year for more impact. It’s a such a nice send off for the garden.
“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
William Shakespeare
If Stacy Schiff’s Samuel Adams: Revolutionary (The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams a book by Stacy Schiff (bookshop.org) is any guide, then Mr. Samuel Adams was one who had greatness thrust upon him. A shadowy figure to history, Adams could be considered the godfather of America’s Founding Fathers, for he pushed for independence far earlier than his contemporaries were prepared to do so. Shadowy, because much of what we know about Samuel Adams comes from second and third hand sources. For obvious reason, Adams was very cagey about leaving a paper trail behind.
While certainly not born to poverty, Adams was born with one foot in a cement block. His father ran into financial problems, and back then the debts of one generation were passed on to the next. But Adams was a bright young man and there was enough money for him to attend Harvard. Ironically, while at Harvard he gave a dissertation arguing against the colonies severing their bonds with the Monarchy.
After graduation, Adams attempted several business enterprises with less than stellar results. There is a brewery in Massachusetts named after him, but Adams was not a brewer. He raised hops, and apparently not very successfully. Thanks to some pull from friends and family, he was appointed as a tax collector. In those days, tax collectors were given a portion of the taxes they brought in. No chance of that ever being abused! Even so, Adams was an indifferent collector, which certainly didn’t help his finances.
Over time, Adams slowly morphed into the so-called radical we know him as today. Interestingly, Adams was not given to fiery oration. In fact, one might even consider him a bit of a stoic, in the proper sense of the word. Now days people believe that stoics try not to feel or show emotion. That’s incorrect. A true stoic has no problems with emotional displays or feelings, as long as they don’t override reason.
This behavior is probably why he was so successful in drawing people to his cause, in spite of all the risks that entailed. Pretty impressive for a man who was considered a bit of a wastrel in his youthful days.
Overall, I found Stacy Schiff’s bio of Adams to be quite interesting and educational, as well as an enjoyable read. I’m not a huge fan of biographies. If done right, they can be very enjoyable. If done wrong, they can be a real slog. Stacy Schiff’s Samuel Adams: Revolutionary is a biography done right.
I highly recommend it.
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—————————–News and notes–————————
Sad news to report: The Tattered Cover independent bookstore has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. For those who don’t know, The Tattered Cover was at once upon a time one of the largest bookstores in the United States, with well over 300,000 titles in its inventory. By comparison, when I worked at the regional flagship store for the now defunct B. Dalton Bookseller, we had at most 15,000 titles in stock. And that was at one of the largest B. Dalton’s in the country!
The Taj Majal of bookstores
Tattered Cover started out as just another used bookstore in Denver. Joyce Meskis purchased the store in 1971 and successfully grew the business until it finally got so big, she was able to move into a four-story building located at 1st Avenue & Milwaukee Street in Cherry Creek 1986. This store was the Taj Mahal for bibliophiles in the Denver metro area.
Unfortunately, that behemoth known as Amazon began to kill off independent bookstores across the land. The rise of e-books also changed the bookselling landscape. And Tattered Cover had to adapt. Joyce Meskis downsized and moved the store to a location with a lower lease closer to the Capital.
Her declining health forced her to sell her beloved store in 2015. The new owners tried to revive Tattered Cover’s prospects by opening up three smaller stores along the Front Range. Apparently, this strategy didn’t work.
Sadly, the fate of The Tattered Cover is uncertain at this point.
You don’t become cooler with age, but you do care progressively less about being cool, which is the only true way to actually be cool. Call it the geezers paradox.
I just want to make clear at the outset that I do not read Buzzfeed. I think it’s a garbage site run by garbage people. However, a site I do respect linked to an article written on Buzzfeed that quotes older folk about some of the positives of getting older. Here’s the link: People Over 60 Share The Things That Get Better Later In Life. I will admit, in spite of its source, that I found the article insightful.
Just be aware, if you click on the link, that it sends you to Buzzfeed.
If you chose not to click, basically the article is a list of 19 things that people 60+ years say they enjoy about being older.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Getting old is hard.
There is a saying attributed to Bette Davis, probably apocryphal, that getting older ain’t for wimps. And there certainly is a lot of truth to that. By age 60, our bodies are wearing out. Joints ache, vision gets worse, medical issues start to become urgent. We grow weaker with each passing year, and there’s only so much we can do about it. Our bodies suffer from something call “sarcopenia”. That’s the gradual loss of muscle and strength over time. You can strength train to slow the loss, but the loss will still occur. Even if you have strength trained your entire life, you will not be as strong at 60 as you were at 20.
And of course, we aren’t quite as sharp mentally as we used to be. We forget things (reading glasses anyone?) or have difficulty staying up on all the latest technology (what the hell is a Spotify?) or getting pissed off when they rearrange the grocery store.
And, of course, we are all too aware that we have more years behind us than we do in front of us.
So, there is no question that getting old can be a figurative and literal pain in the ass.
But there is a bright side.
But there are also a lot of compensations for those of us lucky enough to have reached our autumn years. That is why I found the article so interesting: many of the things other older timers mentioned are things I have come to realize myself.
I’m not going to go over every single point made in the article, but I do want to highlight a few that resonated with me.
1. “Clothes. The new rule is casual and comfortable, sometimes even tattered. Bras last for years now because I rarely wear them, and I haven’t bought anything new in a while. You can dress however you want. No one cares how you dress, and that makes me happy.”
When me and my buddies were in our late teens and early twenties, it was not uncommon to see an old man out working in his yard dressed in a button-down shirt, Bermuda shorts, black socks and black shoes. I’m not saying all the old-timers used to dress like that (for example, my dad never wore shorts), but it was not as rare as you might think.
And my friends and I used to laugh at them. Don’t they now how square they look? Now that I have attained old geezer status, I understand. If they were aware at all of how “uncool” they looked, they still didn’t give a shit! They were comfortable and they could not have cared less what we youngsters thought. Nowadays, I myself dress in stereotypical old-timer clothing: white New Balance tennis shoes, white ankle socks, khaki cargo shorts or blue jeans (depending on the weather), and a t-shirt. I am terminally un-hip, and I frankly don’t care.
6. “Anxiety. At least for me, I’ve gotten quite better at managing the anxiety of the unknown and keeping it in its rightful place.”
I don’t think it was getting older, per se, that helped me manage my anxiety better. Going to therapy, and being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, led me on the path to gaining an understanding my anxiety and ways to treat it.
I do think that being an older man gave me the insight and wisdom to accept that I have a problem, and finding ways to keep it from spiraling out of control like it used to in my younger days.
7. “I spend way less money on crap I don’t need. That extra money is used for lots of travel, and I have more time to do exactly what I want. Sans enduring a few aches and pains and, of course, aging, I would definitely say the years beyond 60 are the BEST so far.”
Man, did this one hit home. Over the past couple of years, Mrs. Vintage and I have been methodically purging our home of all the excess crap we have accumulated over the years. It’s amazing how often we will ask each other why we bought all this shit. All that junk clutters up both the house and the mind. By that I mean we were aware of all the stuff we had, but we never used most of it, and didn’t know what to do with it all.
Now, before we buy anything more permanent than groceries, we ask ourselves, “do we really need this?”. And I’ll throw out a confession: for years I swore an oath that I would not use an e-reader to read books. Actual physical books are sacrosanct! Well, not so much it turns out. Digital books are usually cheaper, and don’t take up physical space. The only time I buy a real book is it’s one I really wish to include in my library.
8. “Knowing that you are fully formed. You don’t have to take on any more self-improvement projects, even though you surely can if you really want to. But I don’t need to improve my posture, my vocabulary, or my attitude; I can do whatever I want now. As long as I don’t fart in front of people, just leave me alone and let me do whatever it is I’m doing. And if I’m doing it wrong, don’t bother telling me! I’m most likely not going to get any better at it, and that’s okay with me.”
I came to realize this myself a few years ago. I even mentioned how I felt this way in one of my New Year’s blog posts (Happy New Year 2020). I’ve come to realize that, overall, I am a pretty decent guy and always have been. As a friend of mine stated, I’m a reasonably pleasant fellow. I haven’t murdered anybody or dealt crack out of a car. I was gainfully employed for most of my adult life, served my country for 30 years, and I helped raise two awesome daughters who far outshine their mom and dad. I’ll admit that I’m far from perfect, and I’m ok with that.
11. “Just the feeling of having survived for so long. You’re at ease whenever you do something. And when you tell stories about your life or how life was like growing up, people occasionally look at you in awe.”
A couple of years ago I was working over the winter at a golf course. There was a young man, let’s call him Jack, who was also employed at this course over the winter. Jack had recently graduated from Arizona State University with an engineering degree. Unfortunately, poor Jack’s final grade point average was not stellar, and as a result he was really struggling to gain employment in his field.
Ol’ MrVintageMan took young Jack under his wing and began mentoring him. I taught him how to improve his resume (never lie, but nothing says you have to tell the whole truth), suggested ways to make him more invaluable to a potential employer, and various ideas to shine despite his deficient GPA. Along the way, I regaled him with tales from my 30+ years of aviation and avionics experience.
Long story short, he changed his career direction and began to focus on aviation engineering. And by the time summer rolled around, he was gainfully employed in his new career field.
To a young person with limited experience and being less than worldly, our seemingly mundane life can sound like an incredible adventure to them. Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve seen some things!
18. “To each their own, but by 60, I felt as if I had my life figured out. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I no longer had the feeling that I had missed the ‘life manual’ everyone else seemed to have.”
I can’t really say that I feel like I have my life figured out. But I do feel that I have successfully muddled through. I’ve had my share of ups and downs, and I handled them all, some better and some worse. I can say that I no longer feel like I am missing out, that other people seemed to have their shit together while I was still trying to find my shit in the first place. Somehow, I had misplaced my shit.
I can say that, like this individual, that my life wasn’t exactly what I wanted. My younger self had visions of grand adventures, a la Indiana Jones or Jack T. Colton. But my younger self was an naive idiot.
But I truly believe that if I could go back in time and tell my younger self all the things I had seen and done, he would actually be quite impressed.
My own thoughts
Bonus. ” I have learned to be more grateful for the life I have been given. I really and truly am blessed. You remember the song “Soaking up the Sun” by Sheryl Crow? There’s a line from that song that has always struck me: it’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you got. That line rings truer for me the older I get. And it’s not about the material things, it’s about all the good things that have come into my life that I appreciate now more than I ever did”.
I am sure I am not the only one who took so much for granted in my younger years. I may have stressed about my future, but I never had any doubt that I had a future. I never had to think much about my health. Fortunately, I still don’t.
However, I am now very aware that far too many of my friends and acquaintances did not reach old age along with me. Hell, even people I didn’t know, but knew of them didn’t make it to their 60’s. Just this month, Tim Wakefield, retired pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, passed away at the age of 57.
I have finally learned to truly appreciate all the blessings in my life. I try, though I may not always succeed, to find something to be grateful for every day. For after all, I don’t know how many days I may have left.
How about you? What things have gotten better for you as you have reached the autumn years?
