Old Man
Old man take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you were, said Neil Young in a song that pretty much bought him a ranch. The version he told in a documentary was this: About that time when I wrote ("Heart of Gold"), and I was touring, I had also --just, you know, being a rich hippie for the first time-- I had purchased a ranch, and I still live there today. And there was a couple living on it that were the caretakers, an old gentleman named Louis Avila and his wife Clara. And there was this old blue Jeep there, and Louis took me for a ride in this blue Jeep. He gets me up there on the top side of the place, and there's this lake up there that fed all the pastures, and he says, "Well, tell me, how does a young man like yourself have enough money to buy a place like this?" And I said, "Well, just lucky, Louis, just real lucky." And he said, "Well, that's the darnedest thing I ever heard." And I wrote this song for him. Another version has him saying that he got the money from his writing songs, to which he basically got the same reply. There was a time when "kids" called their dad the old man ("pop" was in use across other parts of the U.S.) But times changed, and the meaning of old man went from what was a reference to one's father to what was became what one called a spouse or a partner, echoed by Joni Mitchell on her equally famous Blue album (that is, in the days when people still used the word "album" to describe a recording format).
So what good is bringing this up, this glance back at the past, at times long gone? It might have been among the same thoughts of Stephanie Meeks (president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation) who wrote in an introduction: Historic places connect us to the striving and struggles of earlier generations and of generations to come. They tell us who we are. And they help us understand that, though we ourselves may be mortal, our actions will echo on after we are gone, just as those of previous generations inform our world today. Her words came from the book Why Old Places Matter by curator Thompson M. Mayes, who added: From the removal of a single, gnarled pear tree that has delighted us with its bloom in spring and its fruit in the fall, to the inexcusable demolition of public buildings such as schools and churches that give our communities their identity, we are steadily losing our old places. The loss is a soul-destroying severing of people from place, identity, and memory.
Around the same time I happened to be starting a book by Roger Angell, one of my favored authors, a book which was ironically titled This Old Man.* Why him? Here's an excerpt from a piece the wry now-98-year old author published in The New Yorker in 2015: Check me out. The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if I’d been worked over by the K.G.B. No, it’s more as if I’d been a catcher for the Hall of Fame pitcher Candy Cummings, the inventor of the curveball, who retired from the game in 1877. To put this another way, if I pointed that hand at you like a pistol and fired at your nose, the bullet would nail you in the left knee. Arthritis. Now, still facing you, if I cover my left, or better, eye with one hand, what I see is a blurry encircling version of the ceiling and floor and walls or windows to our right and left but no sign of your face or head: nothing in the middle. But cheer up: if I reverse things and cover my right eye, there you are, back again. If I take my hand away and look at you with both eyes, the empty hole disappears and you’re in 3-D, and actually looking pretty terrific today. Macular degeneration. I’m ninety-three, and I’m feeling great. Well, pretty great, unless I’ve forgotten to take a couple of Tylenols in the past four or five hours, in which case I’ve begun to feel some jagged little pains shooting down my left forearm and into the base of the thumb. Shingles, in 1996, with resultant nerve damage...I’m not dead and not yet mindless in a reliable upstate facility. Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice --they’re sad and shocked but also a little pissed off to be here-- to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. It must be this hovering knowledge, that two-ton safe swaying on a frayed rope just over my head, that makes everyone so glad to see me again. “How great you’re looking! Wow, tell me your secret!” they kindly cry when they happen upon me crossing the street or exiting a dinghy or departing an X-ray room, while the little balloon over their heads reads, “Holy shit -- he’s still vertical!”
Which ironically brings me back full circle because also at the same time I happened to be listening to a series of lectures on moral decision making,** with the particular lecture at the time asking what we may owe to our parents and our elders. In China Xiao (roughly pronounced as Tshao) encompasses the deference one is expected to give to one's parents or one's elders. But as The Week (and the lectures) pointed out, author Jared Diamond has quite a different view of how the U.S. and the U.K. treat the elderly: Anthropologist Jared Diamond, who has studied the treatment of the elderly across cultures, has said the geriatric in countries like the U.K. and U.S. live "lonely lives separated from their children and lifelong friends." As their health deteriorates, the elderly in these cultures often move to retirement communities, assisted living facilities, and nursing homes. Often the elderly are viewed as no longer functional or productive (work is cited as an example); the youth-oriented culture of both countries has them seen as less of a contributing factor and now more as a burden. But as Diamond notes, we may be missing a golden opportunity; a review by The London Review of Books (on his 2012 book, The World Until Yesterday) wrote: Why, Diamond asks, should we not plumb this vast historical record of human experience for what it might teach our WEIRD – ‘Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic’ – societies? Though they are the most thoroughly studied of societies, they are totally unrepresentative. If we wish to generalise about human nature, not to mention the history of human experience, we must, he argues, cast our net more widely. (quote from Diamond's book): Traditional societies in effect represent thousands of natural experiments in how to construct a human society. They have come up with thousands of solutions to human problems, solutions different from those adopted by our own WEIRD modern societies. We shall see that some of these solutions – for instance, some of the ways in which traditional societies raise their children, treat their elderly, remain healthy, talk, spend their leisure time and settle disputes – may strike you, as they do me, as superior to normal practices in the First World. The reviewer does go on to caution: The lens through which Diamond, an unrelenting environmental biologist, sees the world affords striking insights but there are still massive blind spots. (Diamond is listed as a "self-trained" anthropologist)
As one ages it is natural to reflect back a bit, to relish that diminishing sense of immortality and abandon and to wonder just what others will think about you once you're gone...as if it matters. So said Mark Wheeler in an Angell-like piece I dug up in my archives (yes, I'm still cleaning out those cabinets). This came from a piece nearly 25-years old in Discover (but then, when you're gone the age and the years don't matter): So. You’re dead. Deceased, expired, done for, defunct -- no more. What now? you’d ask, if only you could. But you can’t, because of course you’re history -- suffering from the ultimate outta here. You could say I’m bugged by the big D. Death, that is. Chances are you’re bugged by death, too, especially if you’ve attended your Lordy, Lordy, I can’t believe I’m 40 birthday wake. I have, and I’m damned cranky about it. It’s got me thinking about life (short), death (long), and south (due) -- the direction in which various anatomic parts like hair, stomach, and neurons are inexorably heading. Indeed, it’s got me thinking like 120-year-old Jeanne Calment, the world’s oldest human, who when asked what kind of future she expected, replied, A very short one...Death is one reason that lately, when I can’t sleep, I don’t count sheep to get drowsy. I count corpuscles. Not all of them, of course; just my own. Specifically, the 100 billion or so within me that kick the bucket each and every day, having exhausted their 120-day life expectancy. Sure, there are trillions of them in our bodies, and when they die, hematopoietic cells in our bone marrow produce healthy new ones to replace them. All in all, a nice, evolutionarily refined and tested give-and-take relationship -- unless, of course, all my cells decide to kill themselves, which, it appears, the mutinous little SOBs are perfectly capable of.
That might not be a bad way to go, Wake-like, departing memories for everyone that you were a good person, respectful, and provided a few laughs. But then that's for those on the outside, those still living, the young and the not-so-old (as you, anyway). Mayes' book mentioned above might have just as easily been titled Why Old People Matter, perhaps not all the time as living treasures but perhaps not as living "things" to be thoughtlessly discarded either. We'll all be there, if we're lucky (probably me before you, dear readers). Parents and elders have stories to tell, and not just to grandchildren being lulled to sleep. There are often insights captured in hidden cubbyholes and perhaps difficult to dig up, curiosities not about times past but of perhaps of times ahead (yours). In the end we may all prove to be more alike than we imagine, not only as humans but as the young singing to the old. Old man take a look at your life, I'm a lot like you were.
*The "recommend" of Angell's book came from columnist Amy Dickinson when asked to list six of her "best books," a regular feature of The Week. Among her list was also Growing Up by the late Russell Baker of which she wrote: When I first read this book, published in 1982, I was fresh out of college, and the author's wisdom --"Make something of yourself"-- sliced through me. Baker's pastiche of memories contains unforgettable female characters (mother, aunt, wife) up-and-down luck (the Depression, World War II), plus humor and pathos. As to Angell, he used to write a lot on sports, particularly baseball, and I remember how his insights on how coaches would relay signals to the catcher who would then relay them to the pitcher, a signal that basically noted that the batter likely had a history of always swinging the bat when he had two strikes on him so the pitcher should thus throw the next pitch low and inside; of course the batter's coaches would do the same signaling about how the pitcher had a history of throwing a certain pitch when faced with two strikes in the count. Angell's insight and writings caused me to change the way I watched the game (which is admittedly not very much)...but even back then I loved the way he wrote.
**The lecture series by Professor Clancy Martin (no relation) asks: What does it mean to live a good life? If we want to live ethically, it stands to reason that our daily habits and overall goals must align themselves with a certain moral code. Is it ethical to pursue money, property, and social status? Do we have a moral obligation to give to charity, take care of our aging parents, or shop locally? Where is the line between personal freedom and societal good?
So what good is bringing this up, this glance back at the past, at times long gone? It might have been among the same thoughts of Stephanie Meeks (president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation) who wrote in an introduction: Historic places connect us to the striving and struggles of earlier generations and of generations to come. They tell us who we are. And they help us understand that, though we ourselves may be mortal, our actions will echo on after we are gone, just as those of previous generations inform our world today. Her words came from the book Why Old Places Matter by curator Thompson M. Mayes, who added: From the removal of a single, gnarled pear tree that has delighted us with its bloom in spring and its fruit in the fall, to the inexcusable demolition of public buildings such as schools and churches that give our communities their identity, we are steadily losing our old places. The loss is a soul-destroying severing of people from place, identity, and memory.
Around the same time I happened to be starting a book by Roger Angell, one of my favored authors, a book which was ironically titled This Old Man.* Why him? Here's an excerpt from a piece the wry now-98-year old author published in The New Yorker in 2015: Check me out. The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if I’d been worked over by the K.G.B. No, it’s more as if I’d been a catcher for the Hall of Fame pitcher Candy Cummings, the inventor of the curveball, who retired from the game in 1877. To put this another way, if I pointed that hand at you like a pistol and fired at your nose, the bullet would nail you in the left knee. Arthritis. Now, still facing you, if I cover my left, or better, eye with one hand, what I see is a blurry encircling version of the ceiling and floor and walls or windows to our right and left but no sign of your face or head: nothing in the middle. But cheer up: if I reverse things and cover my right eye, there you are, back again. If I take my hand away and look at you with both eyes, the empty hole disappears and you’re in 3-D, and actually looking pretty terrific today. Macular degeneration. I’m ninety-three, and I’m feeling great. Well, pretty great, unless I’ve forgotten to take a couple of Tylenols in the past four or five hours, in which case I’ve begun to feel some jagged little pains shooting down my left forearm and into the base of the thumb. Shingles, in 1996, with resultant nerve damage...I’m not dead and not yet mindless in a reliable upstate facility. Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice --they’re sad and shocked but also a little pissed off to be here-- to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. It must be this hovering knowledge, that two-ton safe swaying on a frayed rope just over my head, that makes everyone so glad to see me again. “How great you’re looking! Wow, tell me your secret!” they kindly cry when they happen upon me crossing the street or exiting a dinghy or departing an X-ray room, while the little balloon over their heads reads, “Holy shit -- he’s still vertical!”
Which ironically brings me back full circle because also at the same time I happened to be listening to a series of lectures on moral decision making,** with the particular lecture at the time asking what we may owe to our parents and our elders. In China Xiao (roughly pronounced as Tshao) encompasses the deference one is expected to give to one's parents or one's elders. But as The Week (and the lectures) pointed out, author Jared Diamond has quite a different view of how the U.S. and the U.K. treat the elderly: Anthropologist Jared Diamond, who has studied the treatment of the elderly across cultures, has said the geriatric in countries like the U.K. and U.S. live "lonely lives separated from their children and lifelong friends." As their health deteriorates, the elderly in these cultures often move to retirement communities, assisted living facilities, and nursing homes. Often the elderly are viewed as no longer functional or productive (work is cited as an example); the youth-oriented culture of both countries has them seen as less of a contributing factor and now more as a burden. But as Diamond notes, we may be missing a golden opportunity; a review by The London Review of Books (on his 2012 book, The World Until Yesterday) wrote: Why, Diamond asks, should we not plumb this vast historical record of human experience for what it might teach our WEIRD – ‘Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic’ – societies? Though they are the most thoroughly studied of societies, they are totally unrepresentative. If we wish to generalise about human nature, not to mention the history of human experience, we must, he argues, cast our net more widely. (quote from Diamond's book): Traditional societies in effect represent thousands of natural experiments in how to construct a human society. They have come up with thousands of solutions to human problems, solutions different from those adopted by our own WEIRD modern societies. We shall see that some of these solutions – for instance, some of the ways in which traditional societies raise their children, treat their elderly, remain healthy, talk, spend their leisure time and settle disputes – may strike you, as they do me, as superior to normal practices in the First World. The reviewer does go on to caution: The lens through which Diamond, an unrelenting environmental biologist, sees the world affords striking insights but there are still massive blind spots. (Diamond is listed as a "self-trained" anthropologist)
As one ages it is natural to reflect back a bit, to relish that diminishing sense of immortality and abandon and to wonder just what others will think about you once you're gone...as if it matters. So said Mark Wheeler in an Angell-like piece I dug up in my archives (yes, I'm still cleaning out those cabinets). This came from a piece nearly 25-years old in Discover (but then, when you're gone the age and the years don't matter): So. You’re dead. Deceased, expired, done for, defunct -- no more. What now? you’d ask, if only you could. But you can’t, because of course you’re history -- suffering from the ultimate outta here. You could say I’m bugged by the big D. Death, that is. Chances are you’re bugged by death, too, especially if you’ve attended your Lordy, Lordy, I can’t believe I’m 40 birthday wake. I have, and I’m damned cranky about it. It’s got me thinking about life (short), death (long), and south (due) -- the direction in which various anatomic parts like hair, stomach, and neurons are inexorably heading. Indeed, it’s got me thinking like 120-year-old Jeanne Calment, the world’s oldest human, who when asked what kind of future she expected, replied, A very short one...Death is one reason that lately, when I can’t sleep, I don’t count sheep to get drowsy. I count corpuscles. Not all of them, of course; just my own. Specifically, the 100 billion or so within me that kick the bucket each and every day, having exhausted their 120-day life expectancy. Sure, there are trillions of them in our bodies, and when they die, hematopoietic cells in our bone marrow produce healthy new ones to replace them. All in all, a nice, evolutionarily refined and tested give-and-take relationship -- unless, of course, all my cells decide to kill themselves, which, it appears, the mutinous little SOBs are perfectly capable of.
That might not be a bad way to go, Wake-like, departing memories for everyone that you were a good person, respectful, and provided a few laughs. But then that's for those on the outside, those still living, the young and the not-so-old (as you, anyway). Mayes' book mentioned above might have just as easily been titled Why Old People Matter, perhaps not all the time as living treasures but perhaps not as living "things" to be thoughtlessly discarded either. We'll all be there, if we're lucky (probably me before you, dear readers). Parents and elders have stories to tell, and not just to grandchildren being lulled to sleep. There are often insights captured in hidden cubbyholes and perhaps difficult to dig up, curiosities not about times past but of perhaps of times ahead (yours). In the end we may all prove to be more alike than we imagine, not only as humans but as the young singing to the old. Old man take a look at your life, I'm a lot like you were.
*The "recommend" of Angell's book came from columnist Amy Dickinson when asked to list six of her "best books," a regular feature of The Week. Among her list was also Growing Up by the late Russell Baker of which she wrote: When I first read this book, published in 1982, I was fresh out of college, and the author's wisdom --"Make something of yourself"-- sliced through me. Baker's pastiche of memories contains unforgettable female characters (mother, aunt, wife) up-and-down luck (the Depression, World War II), plus humor and pathos. As to Angell, he used to write a lot on sports, particularly baseball, and I remember how his insights on how coaches would relay signals to the catcher who would then relay them to the pitcher, a signal that basically noted that the batter likely had a history of always swinging the bat when he had two strikes on him so the pitcher should thus throw the next pitch low and inside; of course the batter's coaches would do the same signaling about how the pitcher had a history of throwing a certain pitch when faced with two strikes in the count. Angell's insight and writings caused me to change the way I watched the game (which is admittedly not very much)...but even back then I loved the way he wrote.
**The lecture series by Professor Clancy Martin (no relation) asks: What does it mean to live a good life? If we want to live ethically, it stands to reason that our daily habits and overall goals must align themselves with a certain moral code. Is it ethical to pursue money, property, and social status? Do we have a moral obligation to give to charity, take care of our aging parents, or shop locally? Where is the line between personal freedom and societal good?
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