PAST 90 (2): TOO EARLY RETIREMENT?

PAST 90 (2)

Eighteen years ago, I published a memoir titled Looking for the Future*. This time around, I simply intend to write little vignettes of memory and reflection as they occur to me, not in chronological order or in any overall design. I may retell a few stories that were in my memoir — people don’t usually remember someone else’s stories as the years go by.

Inevitably, in the stretch of time between memoirs, my life has changed drastically. The biggest changes are those of loss, although change also evokes gain through new experience. Our daughter Carla was lost to breast cancer in 2003. Roz, my wife for 67 years, died in 2009 after a long ordeal of illness and physical disability. More than other ghosts of dear departed, Roz and Carla come back to me often in dreams and loving memory.

My new life is good, better than I could have imagined in my sad and loneliest days. Gail and I are married. We share a new love and ways of living that are different for each of us than in our past experience (more about that in later installments).

What I never expected was that my retirement years would stretch out as long as they have. 1984-1987 was transition time to full retirement, first giving up teaching and then winding down my research program and closing my laboratory. My active faculty career at the University of California lasted 26 years, beginning at UC San Diego and continuing as Professor of Molecular Biology/Immunology at Berkeley. Now it’s 29 years since I gave my last class lecture in Immunology.

Why did I retire when so many good and healthy years were still ahead? Does what I’ve done with my retirement years justify that choice?

Tough questions.

Of course Roz’s medical problems  — she had five back and hip surgeries in the 1980s — pressed me to an early decision. She had to retire from her long career of leadership in the field of developmental disabilities. I made her care my priority and took on cooking and housekeeping, even with a bit of enthusiasm. None of that do I regret, up to and including pushing the wheel chair in her last couple of years.

Still, that’s not the whole story. I guess I longed for a change of intellectual pace. I was very unhappy over growing commercialization and intrusive corporate influence that are the downside of astonishing advances in science and technology. Still, I could have adjusted to rapid changes in my field and in academia. But something else also kicked in, a current that remains a constant through all the choices, hopes (and wishful thinking) that have shaped me. I wanted to devote more time to political thinking, to try to better understand and write about social change.

How can I answer whether retiring when I did was right or wrong for me? I can’t. If I knew how long the last chapter would be, I might have made different arrangements. It’s something perhaps to think about once in a while, not to worry over.

*Click on the link and the book can be read on line. If you want your own copy, email your address to me at lwofsy@berkeley.edu and I'll mail it to you.

PAST 90 (1) : Looking Anew Through Eyes Grown Old

From here on my blog switches gears back and forth between memoir (“Past 90”) and OpEds on current happenings. “New Post” announcements will usually be sent out for OpEds, not memoir entries — just an occasional reminder invitation to visit me at this site if you have the time and inclination.

PAST 90

There was an article recently about a woman of 104 years busily engaged in writing a book that is eagerly awaited by scholars acquainted with her earlier writings. That’s beyond remarkable. She still has her marbles and memory (at least enough of them) and the work habits to carry on.

I’m “only” 91 and in pretty good shape for my age, so I feel obliged (to myself) once more to reflect in writing on my life and times. Years ago I would have thought such ambition remarkable for a nonagenarian. Now, however, it’s nothing to brag about. Being over 90 is almost unthinkable for me, but the put-downs greet me: ‘Oh, someone I know is 98 and still playing tennis, or 93 and jogging around Lake Merritt!’

Though the last of Shakespeare’s seven stages may come later than it used to, it still looms over our vanishing years.

Aging is full of surprises. They start appearing early. It was a shock, when playing pick-up basketball into my late 40s, I suddenly discovered I could no longer leap high enough to reach the rim of the basket. I felt I was jumping as always, only the results were different. Not long after, an opposing team assigned a 12 year old to guard me. It was past time for me to give up.

That was long, long ago. Getting back to surprises of the present, particularly the ones that may impinge on my writing ambitions: I get very sleepy throughout the day. I doze briefly but repeatedly when I read, go to a play or a concert or watch tv (I avoid lectures altogether). Even news of great interest — in newspapers, on the internet or tv — is not sure to keep my eyes open without cat naps. I still manage to take things in and I’m passionate about what goes on in the world, about books and music as well as politics, but it’s a constant challenge of will.

Then there’s the memory problem. A lot is remembered, even details, but the wheels turn very slowly to churn up what’s there. A serious surprise is the deficit in concentration. I used to be able to keep more than one thing in mind at a time, to hang on to thoughts and call them up as I wished. I even remembered dreams and ideas that came to me as I lay in bed. Now nighttime thoughts mysteriously disappear in seconds — something seems very clear and important and a moment later I can’t even recall the subject.

I think this “concentration” problem — difficulty with multi-tasking or multi-thinking, the tendency to be easily distracted — is a common and serious aging affliction. At least it is for me. Maybe that’s what makes driving somewhat riskier for old folk. My reflexes are good and I drive well, but I have to focus with determination and avoid being distracted by conversation.

Here I am, on the high end of physical condition and mental health compared to most people past 80 years of age, but I now have a different grasp of “dementia” than when I first heard that jarring term. For most people, aging doesn’t bring a drastic loss of mental function as with Alzheimer’s or anything like it. But things are not what they used to be. How could they be? Even though I still walk the three miles around Lake Merritt with friends, as I have for more than 20 years, I puff and wheeze on small inclines or stairs. How could my old mind not do some wheezing of its own? 

Of course the marvelous brain, even an old brain, is much more malleable and capable of adapting to new challenges than an old knee or hip. I’m counting on that.

Anyway, on with my journey. 

SCANDAL TIME OR SCOUNDREL TIME?

With unintended help from a stumbling Administration, the GOP seems to be succeeding in changing the subject. There ought to be outrage over the GOP’s extreme attack on the people, its total blockade against anything and everything government should be doing in critical times.  Instead, it’s Darrell Issa time, time to go for blood against Obama.

It’s not beside the point that the Administration has made itself vulnerable. Still it’s the people who suffer the consequences if the GOP can call the shots, shifting public attention away from the most urgent problems and from its obvious commitment to political sabotage.

Obama’s vulnerability stems in part from his loyalty to the “national security” state. He has failed to challenge effectively past violations of civil liberties and international law made in the name of “homeland security”. In the main, his administration has carried those policies forward, claiming executive powers to cover unlawful detentions, illegal surveillance, and even targeted assassinations. As in the past, government conceals inconvenient facts; secrecy prevails over the public’s right to know. (Look what’s happening to Private Manning who dared to blow the whistle.)

Of course, these are not the things Darrell Issa and John Boehner want to investigate. It seems the IRS’s selective and stupid offense to the Tea Party is what matters, not exemptions granted wholesale to superPACs to legitimate their money laundering scam.

Discredited as the rightist Congress and the GOP have become, they see witch hunts and obstruction as the tested way to force the Administration into unending crisis and collapse. If Obama only plays defense and appeasement in the face of “scandal”, inflated or not, the glimmers of remaining hope in his presidency may be overwhelmed. But the people and the country will suffer the heaviest defeat if the fight against the “sequester” and the austerity disaster is derailed.

We’ve seen this sort of thing before, but the stakes get higher all the time. Corrupt and racist political demagogues have been thwarted and beaten back many times in our history, often when expectations were dire. 

Huge majorities of Americans want gun control, oppose the “sequester”, and distrust war mongers; still Congress says “No”. It should be possible, with struggle, to bring things into better balance.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS

There is so much bad news these days. Unspeakable tragedies pile on top of another, today’s moving yesterday’s out of the headlines and soon out of view. There are exceptions, like the Boston Marathon bombing, with CNN running the same horror reels non-stop.

Over 600 garment workers dead in Bangladesh; desperate hunger strikers force-fed at Guantanamo; the blast at the fertilizer plant in Texas; today's Pentagon report of thousands of rapes in the military. And the political news: Congress refuses to act on gun control favored by over 90% of the public; while the ranks of the long-term unemployed swell, Congress sits on the sequester that over 85% of the public wants eliminated; the risk of regional war grows in Syria as Israel bombs Damascus, and John McCain insists that Obama follow suit.

Is the list too long? Should we balance it with some good news? Actually it’s a short list, readily expanded with specifics of human tragedies too many to keep in mind.

I believe deeply in keeping hope alive. But Pollyanna doesn’t do it for me. Truth is not found by looking for the middle, while equating positions to the left with rightwing extremism. Problems are not dealt with by finding comfort in important advances in some social and cultural areas while the odds remain stacked in favor of big money and while reactionary politicians play “dog in the manger” with government. Gradualism is not a remedy while the arctic ice melts and the oceans rise.

Somewhere, some time in this irrational age, transformation has to be fueled by popular upheaval and legitimate anger as well as hope.

It’s always time for conversing respectfully with the many of our compatriots who line up on the political Right. But don’t believe that conversation will change Wayne LaPierre, the Koch brothers, or politicians beholden to big money. Some liberals like to say that there’s good in everyone, that no one is evil, if only we sit down together and look for points we can agree on. Really? It’s an injustice to millions of good people who identify as Conservative to refuse to distinguish as evil those who purposefully wield political and financial power — who thwart democracy, foster social and economic inequality, are unmoved by poverty and human suffering, and always seem ready to risk the next war. The people are not the enemy no matter how views differ. But there’s no denying: there are enemies of the people and their motives are evil.

This is a rant. I know. By itself it goes nowhere. I’ll look for the positive, though not in a balance of “good news”, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Great Artist

I’ve never studied art, just enjoyed viewing great art at museums and exhibits over the years.  But I believe that Hung Liu, whose work I saw yesterday exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California, is truly marvelous. For me, it was one of the art experiences of a lifetime. Her work, shown in an expansive exhibit, is remarkable in its embrace of humanity and its emotional range. It fills my mind and heart with many thoughts, moods, questions and a deep feeling of gratitude to Hung Liu. Please, if you live in or visit the SF Bay area, spend some hours with “Summoning Ghosts”, the Art of Hung Liu, at the Oakland Museum through June 30^th.