Mar2

From a Facebook thread – my comments

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These were comments made on a thread discussing proposals to eliminate special discounts for seniors.

1.Hmmm, how am I supposed to get wealthier?
2. I wouldn’t get rid of transit cost breaks, as you actually want to get ageing drivers off the roads.
3. It is all part of the tendency to pit one group of Canadians against another. Non-union workers against unionized ones, rural against urban, young against old. “They” forget that not only will we all become older, but that we all have family members and friends in all age groups. Children will not hate their parents for ageing and becoming an alleged “drain” on the system, because they know that those same parents were the ones who cared for them and paid for the advantages that they will enjoy as they too become older.
4. It gets worse if even if you have a decent pension it may not be indexed. You just have to hope that you don’t outlive your money.
5Just looking at a table that outlines how you have to use up money in RRIFs. The government is bound and determined to get its pound of flesh from you, and the amount increases steadily the older you get. So even those who have been able to save through the medium of RRSPs, and might be considered relatively well to do, face a future where there is really no way to increase your wealth unless you were already truly wealthy. I hate to think what the future holds for those among us who haven’t got even a minimum amount saved.
6. I’d actually like to know more about the statistics that are being used. I’d like a definition of “senior”. Because nearly all the senior citizens are actually not “baby boomers” – they are on their way, but so far only the first couple of years worth of the cohort have retired. I suspect that this cohort is NOT as well off as their parents, because many of us were starting careers just as the post war boom was ending and the financial changes wrought by Reagan and Thatcher were about to hit. We were slammed by the major inflation caused by the Arab oil embargo in the early 70s, from which I bet the middle class has never really recovered – has anyone studied this? Certainly in my family we are not nearly as well off as the parents were at their retirement.
7. I asked about the definition of “senior” because the assumption seems to be that the generations of seniors grow ever richer, but I don’t think the policymakers are really looking closely enough at the boomer generation – they seem to think this generation is the wealthiest ever, but in fact I think it must have been the generation preceding us, and the policymakers are talking about changing things NOW, just as a possibly less wealthy generation begins to retire. These policymakers and their predecessors have known for decades that there would be a bump in the population of old people. Just as they had to build more schools to accommodate them when they were children, they will have to find sensible and humane ways to accommodate that same population as it ages. It is a temporary plight, and there are fewer old folk in the cohort than there were children, because we are dying off at the usual rate. They could have created a special fund that would now be available to help with such things as affordable cohousing, better access to geriatric medicine, accessible public transportation – all things, by the way, that would benefit the entire population. But no, the governments of the day just took that extra bump in tax revenue, from the large working cohort and… well, what did they do with it?

May17

Blind sailors

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What is wrong with the world today? Where does one begin? But surely at the heart of it is the fact that we have forgotten who we are, where we came from, and have lost all bearings so that we have no idea where we are going. We are blind sailors on ships that have lost their sails, tossed rudderless on black waters. And yet we think we are the crown of creation.

Apr29

God’s Image

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“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” ~ Genesis 1:27

A dust mite observed through a microscope can be seen to have a hide with a pattern like a human fingerprint. This is to be expected as these creatures make their living by feeding on the flakes of skin we continually shed. Perhaps our resemblance to God is of the same order as the dust mite’s resemblance to us.

Mar25

Women and Leisure

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Several weeks into my recuperation from the broken leg I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and thought, “My goodness, you look well!” realizing almost instantly that it was because I was so well rested. I have probably just emerged from the most prolonged rest of my adult life. My best week during this time of recovery was the week before I was told I could put weight on the injured limb. I felt well, was not in pain, but still couldn’t usefully do anything in the way of housework. I don’t think I realized what a precious and transient time this would be. I wasn’t really aware of the gift until it was over. Once I could easily carry a cup of hot tea across a room, or walk up and downstairs, or push a vacuum cleaner, it was all over. The more I am able to do, the less son and husband do. Why? Why is any contribution considered “helping” me, when really it should be an equitable contribution to the function of the household. Where have I gone wrong?

Feb24

Housebound

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There are different ways of being housebound. For many years I have been “bound” by my possessions. Just as I was feeling a lightening of being when I started shedding layers of possessions I was suddenly confronted by another meaning. Having slipped on ice, it turns out that I have a broken leg. Not a serious break, but enough to keep me off my feet for several weeks. Now I am confronted by a new awareness: how difficult it is to live when your arms are occupied by crutches and you can only bear weight on one leg! Worse is the inability to go outside unaccompanied. One afternoon my husband came into the living room and asked me if I wanted the blinds closed, to get the sun out of my eyes, and I was suddenly appalled at the thought and said, no I am enjoying this dazzle, because I cannot get outside. 

I’ve found social networking a bit of a lifeline and this morning when my housemates had all left and I discovered that the internet had not been turned on (switch is in a remote corner of the basement) I was devastated. The thought of eight hours with only the radio as a connection, no interactive possibilities, was unthinkable. I managed to get myself down to the basement and thought, well, now I am here, let’s enjoy the old desktop, so much easier to use than the PlayBook.

When I was growing up in a small town my girlfriends and I used to visit old ladies who would give us tea and cake.  I don’t know how this started but it was something we did as a matter of course, and enjoyed doing.  I kept in touch with several old ladies after I left home, sending them Christmas cards, usually with a new embroidered cotton hanky enclosed as a tiny gift until, one by one, I would get a letter from a relative of theirs telling me that this or that aged friend had died. I did have in the back of my mind, although it was not my motivation, a thought that someday there would be a young person or two who would similarly treat me, would be little threads connecting me to the larger world inhabited by the younger people, the mobile people, the ones who are not tied to the inside of their home. But is is a different world now.

When I retire (and I will be mobile again) I must remember the really old, the permanently housebound, and find ways to become friends with some of them, to be in what remains of my own privileged life a sort of connection for them to the world they are now largely cut off from.

Jan31

“Humanity?”

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The human race is a horror.  We slaughter sharks by stripping them of their fins and dumping the rest of their bodies, still alive, to die in the ocean.  We tear apart the body of mother Earth to suck out the last drops of fossil fuels to feed our appetite for electricity and mobility.  We destroy habitat for innumerable species in every part of the planet, from mountains to rivers to forest, grasslands, reefs and the deep ocean.  If we disappeared from the planet tomorrow not a single place would suffer from our absence.  What can any of us do in restitution?  How can we as individuals learn to tread as lightly as possible on this miracle of a planet?

Jan22

Downsizing

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The process of getting rid of one’s possessions is an interesting exercise.  In some ways it is like peeling away the layers of an onion. Each time you think you are reaching the core, but then another layer is revealed.  Sometimes I think that there will be nothing left, but I remain hopeful that at the heart there is a little green shoot, the germ of a future life.

Although the “purging” has been difficult, somehow it is becoming easier as I travel this path.  I think the turning point came when I took my university textbook copies of Keats and Shelley and placed them on the pile of books to leave my house.  From then on whenever I hold a book in my hand and begin to waver I think to myself, if you can get rid of Keats and Shelley why can’t you say goodbye to this?  A different, more positive, atmosphere now surrounds the whole adventure.  My motives for keeping or discarding are becoming clearer.

For example, I was planning to keep a particular fantasy trilogy for some reason, although many others had been put in the goodbye pile.  I thought, maybe I should try reading a few pages to see what I think of these books now.  I have to say I didn’t even get to my goal of reading the first forty pages.  It was enjoyable enough but not anything I now feel worthy of precious shelf space.

So why had I felt so attached?  I understood at last it was only because I had had so much trouble finding the third volume in the trilogy.  Somehow that effort had given those books a greater value in my mind.  This insight made it easier for me to say goodbye, and I had learned an important lesson about myself and why I think I value some things.  Now I know that I must question my motives, my feelings of attachment, all the time.

Nov9

Remembrance Day

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I’ve always struggled to the cenotaph, in good weather and bad, because I remember hearing about the young men who died in the mud in the first world war, and because I had a father whose entire life from the age of 22 was coloured by what happened in the second world war. When I was a child there were old men with squeaky voices, who much later I realized had been damaged by gas attacks in WW1. Now all the old men are gone, and their replacements are youth who have been damaged by the questionable involvements of the past few years. But they are still human beings who were harmed by war. We go to the cenotaph to remember the disgrace that war is, not its “glory.” and vow that we will do what we can to prevent it. “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” ― Edmund Burke

Oct9

Sequel to Tommy Douglas’s story about the mice and the cats

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A little political tangent:

Remember Tommy Douglas’s story about the mice who kept electing cats to rule them? They kept switching between black cats and white cats. Until in a little place called Nova Scotia they finally elected mice to govern them. These governing mice were so concerned about re-election that instead of looking after their mice citizens as well as they could have, they began dressing up and pretending to be cats, so that they could be assured of keeping the “cat” vote (remember, this is a land of mice). Finally the mice had to go to the polls again, and by this time they were so confused by the dressed up mice, who were neither mice nor cats, that they returned to what they recognized, and elected cats again.