Too Old To Fly

April 30, 2020 The Long Haul Day 42 George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley. Who are they? Presidents of course! But their mugs adorn our paper currency, specifically the $1, $2, $5, $20, $50 and $500 bills. To the extent that Americans know what these guys looked like, it is because they stare quickly at their faces before paying for a gallon of milk, a six pack of beer or Ben and Jerry’s  latest. We do not want to mistake a $20 for a $1; George keeps us from making that costly error! You are out of my league if you pass over a William McKinley to pay for a pint of Chunky Monkey. You are out of my league if you have ever seen a William McKinley. You are either a banker or a drug dealer if you have ever seen a William McKinley! We learned about the presidents in school but most of us know these guys because we carry their image in our wallets, purses and pocketbooks. Will our grandchildren know these presid

April 28, 2020 The Long Haul Day 40 We are all socialists now! The word “now” is relative; the phrase is not new. It crops up every time a major crisis disrupts our lives. After President Obama was first elected, a Newsweek cover declared:  “We are all socialists now.”  The American right attacked the Obama presidency as socialist, meaning foreign and un-American. The Obama stimulus package was socialist. Obamacare was socialist. This was the right-wing, bird-song for eight years. Bernie Sanders brought some legitimacy to the term in the 2016 election. Before Bernie, socialism was a synonym for communism and the deadly, the iron-fisted rule of its most infamous adherents: Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot. This is especially true for the “boomer” generation that is only just now beginning to cede power in this country. Bernie’s vision never had a chance. It did not matter that he embraced the politics of Sweden and not the Soviet Union. A socialist is a socialist is a social

April 26, 2019 The Long Haul Day 38 Quarantine fatigue is the latest weapon in Covid-19’s well-stocked quiver. A Trojan horse has suddenly appeared outside our sturdy, fortified homes, sweetly luring, enticing, cajoling survivors to lower the drawbridge and breach the walls that protected us during the six-week Covid-19 siege. A simple, hypnotic, siren-song, quietly repeated thousands of times each day, draws many like lemmings looking for a cliff. “Come out! Come out! All clear! All clear!” Quarantine is difficult. It is growing harder to huddle in the safety of our homes. We are anxious to return to our “old” lives even if it means marching into the bright light of an uncertain future. So it is clear that if a poison arrow does not drop the first to slowly cross the moat, the numbers returning to the world will swell and produce a surge that for some will be a short march toward disease and death. Covid-19 has an agenda: Infect everyone on the planet. Left unchecked, re

April 24, 2020 The Long Haul Day 36 Nothing about the Covid-19 virus makes sense! The more we learn, the more confused we become and the less we know. It is a given that politics will do little to help us understand and defeat the virus. Our political system was irreparably broken long before Covid-19 reached our shores. It will not be repaired in the next election either, no matter who is elected president for we are a nation divided against itself. We are politically divided by almost every demographic: age, geography, income, education, race, religion etc. The list is endless. Doubters and optimists need only look at the political makeup and actions of Congress to come face-to-face with the inescapable reality: Nothing unifies us, not even the greatest threat our nation has faced since World War II. A vibrant, roaring economic comeback will not help us understand and defeat the virus either. It will surely make things worse, prolong the outbreak and lead to more cases an

April 22, 2020 The Long Haul Day 34 Old lives matter! This blog post is about, well, this blog. Why I write it, why it is so often dark and why I am very careful not to mince words. Some background! Before the coronavirus turned the world upside down, I had decided to write a column about aging and the confusing, often mind-numbing, day-to-day decisions older Americans face in retirement. I planned to focus on practical issues and offer pragmatic solutions. For example, seniors are easy pickings, prey really, for sharp-tongued, fast-talking salespeople flogging the latest, better-buy-it-today cell phone plans or Medicare supplement. If you doubt me, consider this: Late September, I sat in a storefront trying to buy an iPhone 10 for my wife, the day before the iPhone 11 was released. As I waited for my wife’s new phone to be cloned, I heard the following conversation at the next table. It is reconstructed here: 70-plus-woman - “My son told me to buy an iPhone 10.” Sa

April 20, 2020 The Long Haul Day 32 Science or economics? Physicians or politicians? Hearts and minds or pocketbook-pragmatism? The Covid-19 pandemic has produced a lot of questions; the wrong answers will kill us. Who do Americans trust the most? Or the least? What is the right way and right time to release us from our homes? Who will safely lead the country, all of us, back to prosperity? When will it all end? The discussion is raging and one thing is clear: for-the-moment science is losing the debate and that means older, vulnerable Americans are losing. And it means more older, vulnerable Americans will die. Our first problem is that our policy is being driven by a leader who has says one thing and does another. His motto: “Do not do as I say; do as I tweet! The President told us to wear masks yet he does not wear one. Even his wife wears a mask in public, but then she is European by birth. The President issued clear guidelines that warn Americans to stay home

April 18, 2020 The Long Haul Day 30 It is a virus. It kills people. There is no cure, no vaccine. There is no miracle drug on the near or distant horizon. And there is no bomb-proof, works-every-time treatment. Covid-19? Yes! But also: The Common Cold. The common cold is a rhinovirus and American adults on average come down with a cold two to four times a year. Women catch colds more frequently than men, according to one study. Villanova University warned its students recently to take precautions because Americans catch colds about one billion times every year. The common cold leads to other disease, typically viral and bacterial pneumonia but also less obvious conditions like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD,) a lung disorder that includes emphysema. So the common cold is a killer because it can and does morph into conditions that end lives. This is now the standard being used to determine the causes of death in the coronavirus outbreak. If a Covid-19 nursin

April 16, 2020 The Long Haul Day 28 Sex, beer, drugs and rock and roll! These popular majors will no longer be available to college students when they start or return to their studies in the fall. The Bachelor of Arts degree in kegger-party-planning and core-curriculum-courses like exam-week, one-night-stands and tailgating efficiently are likely gone for a year or more. Sports teams, cash cows that they are, will still attract athletes, coaches, trainers and administrators but they will play to empty stadiums and gymnasiums, the roar of the crowd reduced to a whisper coming from their own bench. Alas cheerleaders, if they exist, will be little more than socially-distanced, digital images; emotionally empty holograms of their high-kicking, game-day-selves.  Sports viewing and personal-sports-commentary-courses will still be offered as part of the popular physical education curriculum. This is not an alternative-reality vision of a distant, dystopian future. It is now. It is c

April 14, 2020 The Long Haul Day 26 Seniors are scared! Nursing homes are now high-priced warehouses where old people go to die. Assisted-living facilities are a target-rich environment for the coronavirus. No-one will choose to move to either ever again. These harsh thoughts are real and suddenly front-and-center for the frightened, grey-haired, social-security set. Covid-19 has been discovered in at least 2,300 nursing homes across 37 states. More than 2,000 have died. The real number of cases and deaths is much higher. The National Health Service in Great Britain reported a week ago that the nation’s Covid-19 statistics might be 15 percent higher than the official figures because of unreported cases and mislabelled deaths in nursing homes. Older Americans are not waiting for the economy to restart. Of course, we care about restaurants reopening and getting people back to work but mostly seniors are waiting and wondering if they will ever be safe again. Safe means l

April 12, 2020 The Long Haul Day 24 Happy Easter! Later today we will celebrate Easter with family, like always. By noon a wood-fire will be lit in the sturdy, cast-iron, camp-grill that sits out the back door overlooking the pond.  A 20-pound, free-range-turkey, the last of six raised on the farm last summer, waits in the kitchen, butterflied, brined and basted ready to be laid upon an upright grill modified to act as a smoker/cooker. Coals transferred from the camp grill will be used in the smoker to cook the freshly spiced bird. Homemade breadsticks, pretzle-likes lumps of dough cooked fresh yesterday, Cabot cheddar cheese and a mystery dip will be served as appetizers. Simple, mashed-carrots and the exotic Pommes Anna are today’s sides. Pommes Anna is actually quite simple, it requires only potatoes, spices, lots of butter, olive oil and salt. The preparation is exotic. Peeled-potatoes, thinly sliced with a Japanese mandolin, are arranged in a skillet or pan in tight, c

April 10, 2020 The Long Haul Day 22 Who exactly is thinking about buying underwear in the middle of a global pandemic? Are you sitting at home worrying about the leaves that are clogging up your gutters? Does it really seem like a good time to stock up on Frog Tape? Is this really the best time to buy a Buick? That said this may be the perfect time to get that self-winding, string trimmer you have been dreaming about. CNN, MSNBC and FOX advertisers think it is the perfect time to buy these things. Or more accurately, they believe it is the best time to promote these things. Cable news is on 24/7 in many homes around the world, viewers watching breathlessly as reports of the coronavirus unfold one deadly statistic after another. Cable news networks broadcast Governor Andrew Cuomo’s press briefings everyday.  Yesterday the governor reported that more than 7,000 New Yorkers had died from Covid-19 related diseases. Just before Governor Cuomo spoke an announcer, speaking in an e

April 8, 2020 The Long Haul Day 20 “Hello in there, hello.” John Prine, arguably the greatest songwriter of our time, wrote this haunting elegy in 1971 about a lonely, aging couple, together but alone, waiting around to die. Prine, 73, died yesterday from complications related to the coronavirus. I saw Prine perform just once, in a bar in Nashville, on the night before I flew to Poland in a mammoth Air Force C-5 cargo plane with a crew of US Army helicopter pilots going behind the iron curtain for the first time to test their navigation skills in a friendly competition with Warsaw Pact troops. I went along as a journalist. Fast forwarding to the end of that story: the Americans won but they cheated, though I did not know it at the time. All is fair in love and war games, I guess. Prine was, as always, brilliant and he sang his signature homage to the aging. He told a journalist much later: “I don’t think I’ve ever done a show without singing ‘Hello in there.’ Nothing in it we

April 6, 2020 The Long Haul Day 18 Hopes and Dreams! Some are delayed. Some simply postponed. Some placed in suspended animation. Others are gone forever. Everyone has them, we are all dreamers. Old and young and rich and poor! The successful among us  dream big. Losers dream even bigger.  The downtrodden may have lost hope but they still have dreams. Olympians have pushed their hopes and dreams forward a year. Training schedules are being adjusted, dream horizons recalibrated. Roger Federer and Serena Williams, arguably the two best to ever swing a tennis racquet, both still hope for one more grand slam title. They are in their late 30s, ancient for a singles’ tennis player. Their dreams may elude them forever. All professional sports except soccer in Belarus have been put on hold. You can read about the Belarus games on the US sports pages. That says a lot about the insatiable, indiscriminate appetite of sports fans; remember fan is short for fanatic. Wait, not all spor

April 4, 2020 The Long Haul Day 16 Quarantine is over; lockdown has begun? What is the difference? Here’s my explanation. Quarantine is supposed to protect the world from us. Lock down is supposed to protect us from the world! If you think this distinction means little, think again! Yesterday I hugged my grandchildren for the first time since we left for California on March 4. I saw my infant granddaughter up close for the first time in a month. She was four and a half months old,  a squirming swaddle still tethered to her mother’s shoulder when we headed west. Now she sits up unsupported, neck rotating on her shoulders, wide, excited eyes following her three brothers’ frenetic, predictable-only-to them-movements through the kitchen and the TV room, past the piano and wood stove before exploding back to the kitchen. We were separated from the “little family up the hill” as we call them when we were in quarantine. We are all locked down together. This is a huge difference.

April 2, 2020 Sheltering in Place Day 14 “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.” “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Jean Baptiste Alphonse Kerr Our formal quarantine ends tomorrow. Little will change; if anything our movement may become even more restricted. It was not supposed to be this way. After our six-day, overland road trip, we knew we would have to hide out for two weeks. But then our lives would change, become less restricted. The new, normal here in rural nowhere USA would be little different than before we left. Except of course, the weather would be better. Well the new normal for us and most all other Americans is more of the same. We will be locked down until May 1 at a minimum. I fully expect our movement will be restricted until June 1. Quarantine is easy here. If we could turn off our wifi and unplug the cable news, we could hide from demons, death, danger and destruction that swirl all around us. We would not be protected from t