Aging Is a Damned Nuisance
I was fortunate as a college teacher to be able to keep on teaching until I was 74. Then I realized that I was beginning to fade with my last class of the day and that it was time for me to retire. One figures that one will be able to put one's feet up and relax with retirement. No way! It is then that the problems begin. We lose dear ones. Then one figures I might enjoy getting in touch with some of my old friends with whom I have been out of touch for decades. One is all to often in for a shock when one Googles and finds that they left this world some years ago.
It is the physical stuff that really is a nuisance. Most of us have some condition or another that requires pills, pills, or some equivalent that measure out the hours of one's day. Yuk! And if one has had some bone injury many years past, one discovers that one can predict the weather with it -- it hurts again which it has not done for decades when the pressure or weather change.
Most irritating for me personally is that I cannot go and do all those things that I put off for so many years until I was free of binding responsibilities. In my case I have a bone spur pressing on a spinal nerve which requires heavy pain killers and which keeps me tied pretty much at home to avoid setting off pain responses and dizziness from the heavy med.
Frankly I don't know where I would be if the internet had not come along when it did. Reading books and articles has been hard with my eyes, but my computer opens the world to me. I can blog which I am doing here and I have made many new friends around the globe who share concerns -- both from Israel and Palestine, for instance. I also started some discussion group things in areas of interest of my own listed below. Some are pretty barren, but some are most active with no particular efforts on my part apart from getting rid of the spammers.
Many of my students have presumably stuck with my student list which I had set up for them to share things -- they did not, but still seem to be there. Battles rage on some of them over peace and Israel/Palestine, for instance. Some people really hate each other and say so frequently. One never knows what is going to turn up.
If you want to become a blogger, just enter that to Google and you will get there. There are some enjoyments along with one's grief. And if one has been able to do things one wanted such as teaching was for me, death is no big deal. As Socrates suggested, either one gets to see one's old friends again or else gets the best sleep one has ever had.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FindingHumaneJobs
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurStupidEconomy
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
It is the physical stuff that really is a nuisance. Most of us have some condition or another that requires pills, pills, or some equivalent that measure out the hours of one's day. Yuk! And if one has had some bone injury many years past, one discovers that one can predict the weather with it -- it hurts again which it has not done for decades when the pressure or weather change.
Most irritating for me personally is that I cannot go and do all those things that I put off for so many years until I was free of binding responsibilities. In my case I have a bone spur pressing on a spinal nerve which requires heavy pain killers and which keeps me tied pretty much at home to avoid setting off pain responses and dizziness from the heavy med.
Frankly I don't know where I would be if the internet had not come along when it did. Reading books and articles has been hard with my eyes, but my computer opens the world to me. I can blog which I am doing here and I have made many new friends around the globe who share concerns -- both from Israel and Palestine, for instance. I also started some discussion group things in areas of interest of my own listed below. Some are pretty barren, but some are most active with no particular efforts on my part apart from getting rid of the spammers.
Many of my students have presumably stuck with my student list which I had set up for them to share things -- they did not, but still seem to be there. Battles rage on some of them over peace and Israel/Palestine, for instance. Some people really hate each other and say so frequently. One never knows what is going to turn up.
If you want to become a blogger, just enter that to Google and you will get there. There are some enjoyments along with one's grief. And if one has been able to do things one wanted such as teaching was for me, death is no big deal. As Socrates suggested, either one gets to see one's old friends again or else gets the best sleep one has ever had.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FindingHumaneJobs
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurStupidEconomy
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net
posted by Ed Kent at 9:51 AM
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