Old Age is a New Adventure

Two weeks ago, surgery restored my smashed left elbow to something like its previous shape. The next morning, after surgery, another doctor gave me some stunning news: I needed to start taking large doses of Vitamin D right away and when I get home, call the hospital and come back for a Dexascan.  The doctor said I had low bone density, a significant Vitamin D deficiency and said I should join an osteoporosis support group. 

Wow!!

I knew this day was coming. Someday my bones would be frail enough that it would be stupid to ride a bike.  I did not know the day would be so soon. 

The strange thing, from inside my mind, was my feelings of excitement—not loss or panic.  Since the early 90s when I became bike obsessed, every day, every trip, every vacation, and all future plans were built around riding.  I took two bikes to Iraq on deployment. I took a bike with me on more than 30 business trips in three years between 1998 and 2001. 

One of the first things I thought about was how different the world would look if the bike were not part of the trip. I have been to Paris two dozen times in the last two decades. I have never been to The Louvre.  Because visiting the premiere museum in Paris takes all day and when I am in Paris some part of every day, I ride with the racers at the daily training race at L’Hippodrome in Bois de Boulogne.  One way or another, The Louvre never happened.

I then imagined myself walking across every bridge from the Eiffel Tower to Ile de Cite because I would not feel the need to ride. 

As I healed from major injuries several times over the last 30 years, my focus always was getting back on the bike.  When I broke my neck, I spent 90 days in the neck and chest brace. On the 91^st, I rolled down the hill I crashed on.  Now, I was oddly delighted that I would not be focused on getting back on the bike. It was a relief.

I knew Old Age would impose limits on me, like not riding, but I expected the limits to feel like fasting or waiting in line—deprivation.  But against all my expectations, I feel excitement. I have a new frame to view the world.  I started thinking about moments over the last five years when I began to deal with the effects of change from aging and other causes.

If I had to date the beginning of Old Age, I would say it was July of 2015.  On June 30, 2015, I retired. I had worked summers and Saturdays and sometimes after school since I was 12. I had a full-time job from my 18^th birthday until the day I retired. I have not worked a day since.  I have not missed it.  In June of 2015, I went on my last Army training exercise and took the Army fitness test for the last time.  Soon after, I left the Army. With the rise of Trump and his popularity among soldiers, I was glad to be gone.  It was a big change to no longer be a worker or a soldier, but after a half-century of defining myself as both, I was neither and I was unexpectedly happy.

I started meditating. I started taking Yoga.  After years of resisting both, I was open to both and began practicing. I am currently not doing Yoga in part because of COVID-19 and now because of my injuries but have been meditating daily for years.

Also, in 2015, my workouts changed.  The swimming and running that carried me through an Ironman race in 2014 were history for me.  Both shoulders had torn ligaments. My left knee ached and would be replaced three years later.  No more Army fitness test meant no more pushups.  The bike was my only workout besides yoga. 

And coincident with my own advancing age, in 2016 America became senile. America elected a racist who wanted to make America white again.

Since 2017, much has changed in my thought and spiritual life because America is in rapid cognitive decline. More on that soon.

After Reading "Ally" I Wished Romney Won in 2012

After reading “Ally” a memoir by Michael B. Oren, I was wistfully wishing Romney had won the 2012 election.  Oren was the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. from 2009 to 2013.  Reading his book reminded me of how much I disliked President Obama’s foreign policy.  On Israel, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and the Arab Spring, I did not like the way America interacted with the Arab World. 

Of course, I liked the Bush administration policy much less.  The Iraq War was an epic foreign policy failure. I liked the Obama foreign Policy far better than that of Bush 43. 

But reading Oren’s book reminded me that Obama was only better, he was not good.

Although foreign policy is necessarily the focus of Oren’s book, as I read, I began to image what would have changed here in America if Obama was defeated in 2012.

It would have been a defeat for the batshit TEA Party/Rush Limbaugh/Roy Moore/Evangelical/racist wing of the Republican Party. Romney and Ryan were RINOs according to the Sarah Palin radical idiot wing of the party. 

Romney in power would have been a sane and sensible version of Conservative, but the most important thing Romney would have done is killed any chance that the horrible racist pig now in office could ever be President.  Trump could not have run against Romney in 2016 and whoever ran as a Democrat would have run against a moderate version of Conservative. 

If Romney served eight years, the despicable, deplorable core of Trumpism would be older and weaker. A Democrat would be at a distinct advantage in 2020 after eight years of Romney. Even if Trump somehow got the 2020 nomination, he would have lost. 

By the time 2028 rolled around, Trump would be senile or dead and his most batshit followers would be the same.  The Republican candidate of 2024 or 2028 could well have been Paul Ryan.  A Romney win in 2012 would have kept Trump and the third-rate losers around him from ever getting near the White House. 

In politics, the lesser of two evils is often the best one can get.  Romney, whatever his flaws, would have been infinitely better than the vain little coward we have now.

The 1965 Movie Battle of the Bulge

My son Nigel and I watched the 1965 movie Battle of the Bulge just before Memorial Day. I first saw this in Boston at the Loews theater, one of the few theaters in Boston that had the Cinemascope projector allowing them the full screen effects of this movie.  The Theater had velvet curtains and plush seats. I had never been to a place so opulent.

I loved the movie. It certainly had some influence on my later career as a tank commander.  But even as a 12-year-old I had read it enough about in World War II to know that the tanks on this screen were from between World War II and what was then the present day.  Sherman tanks were actually M 24 Chafee tanks in the tigers were M 47 Patton tanks.

It was fun to watch Telly Savalas as a Tank commander/Black market entrepreneur, a roll he would hand off to Donald Sutherland and take to another level in 1970 in Kelly’s Heroes when Savalas became a bank robber.

For my son, I could also place this movie among the other World War II movies we watched recently.  Fury, which had actual Shermans and an operational tiger tank, was four months after the Battle of the Bulge. Band of Brothers has the Battle of the Bulge near the center of the drama. In the movie Patton the Battle of the Bulge is near the end.  Last fall I visited Bastogne and Malmedy.  I brought out some of the pictures from that visit.

So along with this movie we had a world war two review.

The Unpardonable Sin is Pride

The Unpardonable Sin has haunted believers for more than two millennia, at least until recently.  I remembered this while reading one of the “Master and Commander” novels.  The ship’s doctor visits an insane asylum in early 19^th-century Europe. At that time the two most common delusions were those who either believed they were God and capable of forgiving sin or those who believe they had committed the unpardonable sin and were waiting for hell to open up and swallow them.

Even 50 years ago I remember people deeply worried about having committed the unpardonable sin. At the time exactly what that sin is seemed to be a mystery. After I read “Inferno” by Dante I assumed that the unpardonable sin was pride. Dante puts pride in the bottom of hell. Pride is the central sin of Satan recorded in the Bible. If you are proud you have no need for forgiveness putting you either equal to God or better than God. That sin cannot be pardoned, because you could not be pardoned if you have no faults.

CS Lewis says the doors of hell lock from the inside. If this is true it is because the proud person could never ask for forgiveness, the admission to heaven.  So rather than admit wrong that person locks himself in hell forever.

Until 2016, I thought I believed with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks that the line between good and evil runs through each human heart. The rabbi says all believers in monotheism believe this.  The alternative is to believe the line between good and evil is between us and them. In Game of Thrones the Lannister queen is identified as evil when asked by her son if someone is an enemy. Her reply is, “Our enemy is anyone who is not us.”

For decades when I heard someone say, “I will never forgive…” I would have moment of pain thinking, ‘Oh please don’t say that.’  Sometimes I would imagine I could smell sulfur when I heard those words. But now I live in a country in which believers worship a man who says, “I have no need for forgiveness.” In Trump’s America the smell of sulfur and brimstone is everywhere.

Racists Hate Science and Destroy What They Love

Berlin 1945, the end of a racist empire

I just finished a long book about the Holocaust.  The author, Timothy Snyder, begins the book showing that Hitler used the Jim Crow south as a model for the racist state he dreamed of. Hitler also admired America’s long history of betraying and murdering native Americans. He saw the Volga River in Russia as his own Mississippi River and the Slavic people of eastern Europe as the native population to destroy. He would make Germany great and has rich as America by taking over all of eastern Europe and Russia as far as the Volga and getting rid of all the Jews in the process.

Hitler believed that conquest of these lands was necessary because the German land could not support the population of Germany. It is one of the terrible ironies of his anti-intellectualism that he held back the green revolution that would feed all of Europe and much of the world after he was dead, and the fascists were out of power in defeat. By the 1960s every free democratic country could not only feed itself but had surplus food to export. Part of that food surplus went to the Soviet Union because the green revolution there was stopped by the perverse biological beliefs of Joseph Stalin.

In 2016 Trump took control of the Republican Party by being openly racist instead of pretending not to be racist as the party had done since Nixon. Trump has spent three years destroying the environment and laws protecting the environment. He attacks the green new deal and all environmental initiatives as socialism. Like Hitler a century ago Trump is an idiot who could make America better, but his prejudices and hatred of science rule his third-rate mind.  Stupid people are always the most stubborn.

Hitler took control of Germany with the votes and the backing of Evangelical and Catholic Christians by making them so afraid of socialism they embraced Hitler’s racism. The southern churches that backed slavery then Jim Crow laws are now the state church of Trump. They are anti-science, anti-intellectual and they want an apocalypse not a living planet.  If the resistance to environmental progress seems crazy in America it’s because people with vile beliefs and vile goals really are looking forward to Armageddon. 

Snyder’s book: “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning” traces the history of the Holocaust in every country that the Nazis controlled. Throughout the book the terrible suffering that racism brings to the world is clear. Also clear is the terrible irony that some of that suffering is because racists are anti-science and anti-intellectual and their a thorough stupidity ruins even their own world.

Out of the Cast, Therapy Begins Today

My high-tech arm brace

Today I had went to see my surgeon and to get my first physical therapy session.  The cast came off shortly after I arrived at the office. I got x-rays. The technician doing the x-rays explained very carefully what the doctor needed to see and did her best to make sure I was not in pain. She could see from the previous x-rays that I was a mess or at least my elbow was a mess.

After the x-rays the surgeon came to the exam room. Even with a mask on he had the look of someone who is very happy with their work. He told me that everything looked very solid. He showed me the plates and screws holding it together my humerus bone and my ulna. He told me he had to break the ulna to fix the joint. So, my broken bone count is 40.

The surgeon said the break in my elbow was not because of fragile bones. He said the break would have been the same in a 20-year-old who hit the ground in the same way. That was good to know.

After the doctor left, two medical technicians put me in the device you see in the photo. They said I should keep this on except in the shower. I was happy to know I can take a shower now. It won’t be comfortable sleeping in this, but it won’t be any worse than the cast and the sling.

After the doctor visit, I went to another part of the building and had my first physical therapy session. I will write more about that soon.

Protesting personal protective equipment is sooooooooo American

These guys don't protest helmet rules

In 1981, I was a staff writer at the Elizabethtown Chronicle. I was assigned to write about the anti-helmet law demonstration at the state capital. I was the only motorcyclist on staff and always wore a helmet, so I was not sympathetic with the demonstrators.

I wrote about the demonstration and reported the opinions of the demonstrators as accurately as I could. I remembered some of their arguments from a decade before when I heard the arguments against wearing seat belts. The protesters insisted that riding a motorcycle was just as safe with or without a helmet.

Since it was a weekly newspaper, I had a chance to update my story the next day with a report of the death of a motorcyclist leaving the rally riding home in the middle of the night with a blood alcohol level that made him legally drunk. He died of massive head injuries. Since he was dumb enough to drive a motorcycle while drunk his lifespan was probably destined to be short anyway.

Personal protective equipment has always been controversial in freedom worshipping America. We are free to be as stupid as we want to be. We do not want people to tell us to wear masks or seatbelts or helmets or safety glasses or wash our hands.

We wear personal protective equipment for ourselves and for those who love us and for those who could be hurt if we don’t as in the case of facemasks. The trouble is there is no dramatic feedback for safety. We wear a seat belt and walk away from an accident that could have killed us.

There is an old proverb that says above all do not become a proverb. Do not be that blind man who refused safety glasses at work. And do not be the motorcyclist who protested helmet laws and died on the way home of massive head injuries. Fifty years post mortem you are still a proverb.