About this time yesterday, I was down on our finger in the harbor taking care of my boat. A couple, a man and a woman materialized, just out for a look-around stroll. The man appeared to be about ten years older than I and the woman a mite younger than he. Both of them looked every inch sailors, but they were dressed like New Englanders, not Californians. They were both of lean stature and weathered face. He was sort of dependant on her for moral and physical support. I initiated a conversation. He had circumnavigated the earth twice under sail. I expressed my respect for that. His boat was in Mexico, her boat was in Maine. They had never sailed together, and I got the impression they would never be able to. But they clearly loved each other and they embodied the words my minister said to me from his pulpit Sunday:

As we age, we should aim to get better as opposed to getting bitter.

Heard on NPR This Morning

Interview  with James Ellroy:

Ellroy: "I'm looking for the guy who invented sex."
Interviewer: "Why?"
Ellroy: "I want to find out what his next project is."

Taxes

Tax the 1%

Make that 76!!

Ezekiel J. Emanuel makes a compelling argument. Please read it all here! Here are some salient excerpts:

Rather than saving more young people, we are stretching out old age.

. . . .over the past 50 years, health care hasn’t slowed the aging process so much as it has slowed the dying process.

. . . .a key issue with aging: the constricting of our ambitions and expectations.

. . . . My view does have important practical implications. One is personal and two involve policy.

Once I have lived to 75, my approach to my health care will completely change. I won’t actively end my life. But I won’t try to prolong it, either. Today, when the doctor recommends a test or treatment, especially one that will extend our lives, it becomes incumbent upon us to give a good reason why we don’t want it. The momentum of medicine and family means we will almost invariably get it.

My attitude flips this default on its head. I take guidance from what Sir William Osler wrote in his classic turn-of-the-century medical textbook, The Principles and Practice of Medicine: “Pneumonia may well be called the friend of the aged. Taken off by it in an acute, short, not often painful illness, the old man escapes those ‘cold gradations of decay’ so distressing to himself and to his friends.”

My Osler-inspired philosophy is this: At 75 and beyond, I will need a good reason to even visit the doctor and take any medical test or treatment, no matter how routine and painless. And that good reason is not “It will prolong your life.” I will stop getting any regular preventive tests, screenings, or interventions. I will accept only palliative—not curative—treatments if I am suffering pain or other disability.

I am 75. I have reached Emanuel's goal line. Touchdown! But now I am entering the endzone. Does that mean I'm celebrating? I don't know. But this week I have purchased the only item which was ever on my bucket list. And it's been on that short, short list a very long time. Expensive. A stretch. Definitely out of my comfort zone. But there it is...

Inherited Wealth

Heard this in an interview by Terry Gross on NPR yesterday:

Terry Gross:

. . . . . thinking about the psychological impact of inherited wealth, the raging desire to get rid of it and the raging desire to hang on to it, the demoralizing effect of already having what almost everyone else was sacrificing their precious lives to acquire, the more or less secret superiority and the more or less secret shame of being rich.

Can you talk about the downside of that kind of legacy of money?

Edward St. Aubyn:

Generating their characteristic disguise as the philanthropy solution, the alcoholic solution, the mask of eccentricity, the search for salvation and perfect taste, the defeated, the idle and the frivolous, and their opponents, the standard bearers, all living in world that the dense glitter of alternatives made it hard for love and work to penetrate.

And as we know, Freud famously said that love and work is what keeps us sane. So the downside of this world being talked about there or being thought about . . . is that it's very difficult for love and work to penetrate it.

Why is this so evocative for me? Guess I'll have to read the last volume of Edward St. Aubyn's autobiographical novel? And find out? I think so....

Eight Bells

It's hard to talk about Lewis. He was a dependable crew for us for a few years. He was good foredeck. Fearless in stormy seas, as I remember. On the subject of  spinnaker/no spinnaker, he would always say "Put it all up! Let God take it down." He always said he would solve problems. Trouble-shooter. That's what he said he was. Lewis also found me a very crewman, who's turned out to be a golden and valuable, almost indispensable bowman. I am eternally grateful.

The problem with Lewis was chemistry. After a couple of years, he and I parted our on-board companionship. By mutual and unspoken consent. Ashore, Lewis & I continued to celebrate our friendship. He always had a strong and warm smile & hand shake. Besides sailing memories, we shared a diagnosis. Prostrate Cancer. He was a significant younger man than I. I always thought he had more time than I. But he passed sometime today. (The note was up on the board tonight.) The business between us was unfinished.

MoveOn Dot Org Rally

Planning to meet up at Congresswoman Lois Capps office today, mid-morning.

Dear Congresswoman Capps:

In some parts of the country, state laws cutting early voting opportunities and implementing misguided voter purges have deterred citizens from the ballot box. In other regions, poor election administration has left people standing in line for hours in order to vote. Our democracy must be centered on principles of one person, one vote. The Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014, has already been introduced. Please support this critically important measure!

Ralph W. Rawles

Santa Barbara CA 93109

Doberwoman will accompany me. Yep, she's being used as a political pup today.