Maintaining One's Health and Energy into the Seventies and Beyond

This is a photo of a rare Brazilian iris called Mericus or Apostles sent by my friend Sharon in Virginia

A lot of people have asked me: where do you get your energy? I don’t know the exact answer, but I can tell you the things I do that contribute to it. First of all, I learned a few years ago about telomeres. They’re part of our cells. If our telomeres are happy and doing their job of replacing cells as needed, our body keeps thriving. If not, we begin to die.

You’ve noticed that some people as they age remain healthy and vigorous; others begin to "fail," as my mother used to say. I believe my telomeres are happy. I still work hard, doing farm work, one to four hours a day, depending on the season. Right now, in the spring planting season, after I walk one and a half to two miles, I spend about three hours digging (I farm with hand tools), weeding, watering, but I break it up.

I learned from Frank Lloyd Wright, who was active and creative into his nineties, the trick of varying my activities. So I write first thing, then walk, then check e-mail, then go dig for fifteen-twenty minutes, then do something quiet in the house, then dig another short time; then eat lunch and read a book (presently Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now but often a mystery novel), then dig another short time; then work at teaching preparation, editing, or my own writing for two hours, then have yoghurt and read twenty minutes.

Then more outside work, 4-5, with a break if it’s digging, to check email. Then read a little, eat some fruit; then wash the accumulated dishes, which I’d rather do before than after supper, because I love to sip my tea and read until 7; then outside awhile, depending on the light. Then two hours writing. Then last email check; then read, bath, bed. I sleep seven-eight hours normally, and even if by 11 P.M., I’m very tired, I sleep soundly and wake refreshed.

Attitude makes all the difference in our motivation. I have so many things I want to do before I die. I feel good. Off and on, I have minor problems (crippled toes, corrected by good shoes), poison ivy (inevitably, but once mistaken for shingles), a repeat mammogram, but the spot was a tiny cyst, not cancer).

A couple of years ago I had touch of flu, despite flu shot, aggravated by a smoking woodstove (lesson learned), so one morning I couldn’t breathe and had to be taken by ambulance to the Emergency Room. The nurse on duty, seeing me come in, said, "You’re going home." He had correctly assessed that I wasn’t very sick, but I had to have all those expensive tests (EKG, chest x-ray) to prove it.

Fortunately, my regular doctor understands that I’m in quite good health, sees me accurately. I argued him out of hormone replacement therapy, and now he says I was right. I recently argued him out of cholesterol medicine, when mine was borderline, and he himself researched in The People’s Pharmacy books about oat bran and red yeast rice. I already put oat bran in the bread I made and ate it as a hot cereal for lunch in cooler weather. I began taking 1200 mg of red yeast rice a day, and my cholesterol came down.

I’m a passionate person, and I like to save money so as to save time to write. I’m still working for living at nearly seventy-four, but it’s teaching, editing, and farming, all of which I enjoy, and they balance each other. We have to use our minds and bodies to keep them in prime shape. When I tell my doctor about some of the gymnastics I go through to pick figs that are out of reach or to re-set the chickens’ flexible fence and untangle all the poles and strings, he says, "Good! Good! You’re using your muscles." And "I wish all my patients were farmers."

For me the hardest part is getting started. Once I get seeds in the ground, begin a poem or a book, I’m committed. I have to finish it. My friend Sharon in Oregon said to me, when we were in our forties, "It’s important to have something to look forward to every day." I look forward to my morning diary with (now) cocoa and toast, yoghurt and fruit. For years it was coffee, but I let that go recently, and I do sleep better. I preserve that early morning time, even getting up earlier if I have to leave the house early for an appointment.

But I need a healthy life in order to do all the writing I still have to do. I have learned by reading, especially in the AARP magazine, the qualities found in people aging well, and I think these things are true of me, and I nourish them.

1) I enjoy my life.
2) I’m still working and enjoy my work.
3) I get exercise almost every day.
4) I sleep well.
5) I like other people and help them when I can. I’ve learned to know better when they need to learn to help themselves.
6) I feel spiritually connected to the larger world around me, to the deeper world within me.
7) I have friends to whom I can speak freely, and I have people in my life who cherish and value me, and a few who hate me, but I don’t dwell on them. I do tend to speak my mind.
8) I can concentrate on reading, on thinking, on writing, and forget where I am. I experience the Muse, when words flow easily as if of their own accord.
9) I don’t regret anything for me about my life, because I learned from everything, especially from my mistakes and my suffering. I am sorry that my mistakes caused my children to suffer, but they’re all grown now, sturdy, competent, learning as they go, too.
10) I can adapt and cope. It’s not always fun. I hate car problems, escaping chickens, hard freezes which destroy a whole year’s fruit corp, or sudden illness, which means I have to go to the doctor. But I do what I need to, and then I write about it. The interruptions and problems often stimulate my best writing.

I pay attention to my body, rest when tired, don’t overeat, and now I don’t eat after supper, as I sleep better. I also attend to my moods. If I get discouraged, I write about it or talk to a friend. Mostly, I’m cheerful and content with my life. I wish to get more books published, and I work on that.

I also wish for a partner/lover, but I’m fine on my own. Perhaps I’ll get some of these wishes and maybe not. But I can appreciate and enjoy what I do have: my little farm, overrun by violets at the moment–so beautiful, if only most of them weren’t in the vegetable garden. I also have my writing, a life-long commitment, a real vocation, and more time now to do it and attend to publishing it.

My family–children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren–is dear to me, and it’s always a joy to hear from them and see them, but they have busy, interesting lives of their own, and so do I. I have good friends, nearby and through e-mail, and good neighbors–we help each other. I have no complaints. I may be poor technically, as far as money, but I know I’m rich. I have what I need and all the riches that money can’t buy.

Penny Weaver bakes gingerbread

These boys are good friends of mine, fishing in Finland, where the water is clean, recycling is a serious business, and they have very few nuclear plants.  Below is an excerpt from my third mystery novel, Nuclear Apples?  Penny Weaver is making gingerbread.
NUCLEAR APPLES? Prologue: September 15, 1992
 Penny Weaver dragged her 20-pound bag of rye flour out of the freezer, got soy flour from the refrigerator, and lifted down a quart jar of black strap molasses. With curtains of rain falling and her housemates out this Friday evening in September, she could take over the shared kitchen and fill it with the aroma of ginger and cinnamon. She had loved transforming a rainy day with gingerbread when her kids were little. Now, in her post-menopausal zest phase, she baked for pure pleasure and to think what she could do to help Cathy’s husband, Rick, who’d been arrested for murder.

His arrow had been found in the heart of P.R. Whopper, the public relations executive of their local public utility company, Carolina Power Development Corporation, nicknamed by local residents CPD, by which they meant: Certified Public Darkness.

Clearly Rick had been framed. The fact that he was African American and had been going after CPD for years didn’t help. Their group, ACTNOW (Against Continued Transporting of Nuclear Objectionable Waste), had unnerved CPD with their campaign to prevent more storage of hot nuclear waste at the plant 10 miles down the Haw River from Riverdell. Rick had educated their community group about the dangers of additional storage of "hot" rods in water.

Julia Spencer-Fleming's mystery One Was a Soldier--Review

One of my very favorite contemporary mystery writers is Julia Spencer-Fleming.  Another is Louise Penny, then old favorites:  Laurie King, Elizabeth George, Susan Hill, Sara Paretsky.  I was able to receive an advance review copy of Julia's new book, and I met her in 2008.  She's a warm, thoughtful, compassionate woman, and her book is amazing.  Here's my review:
***
Julia Spencer-Fleming, One Was a Soldier. A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery. Minotaur Books. St. Martin’s Press. Publication: April 2011. ISBN: 978-0-312-33489-5 $24.99.
 Who would have thought it possible to combine an anti-war novel and a mystery? We certainly have more and more contemporary mystery authors taking on social issues, but even so I was surprised at the courage and inventiveness Julia Spencer-Fleming exhibits in her new and seventh mystery in the Millers Kill series, One Was a Soldier.

We aren’t in combat or in Iraq, except in memory, but we meet five vets, including Clare Fergusson, returning from Iraq, in a therapy group offered to help them adjust to being home and dealing with the residual emotional issues that hang around much longer than the time frames of the actual military service.
The novel is structured around this support group, and the subplots, as we follow each member’s conflicts with being back, are skillfully and subtly put into their places in the main mystery plot like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, as we untangle who did what, why, and how. We read to learn how these five, some of whom we’ve known in earlier books and some whom we meet here, will cope with their families and loved ones and in their workplace, but we get key information at the same time to all the puzzles that hover around these characters.

Why is it an anti-war novel? Because we live through the excruciating emotional aftermath of having done military service, as a surgeon, a helicopter pilot, a guard of prisoners, a financial specialist, and a soldier who early lost his legs. All five struggle with basic, very powerful human emotions: despair, rage, shame.

This novel is different from the other six, bolder, insistent that we come to know personally what the men and women of our armed forces suffer afterwards. One has lost his legs, but the others seemingly can pick up the lives they had been leading before, only that doesn’t prove easy.

For instance, we’ve known and loved Clare, Episcopalian priest and helicopter pilot, who is always doing something to offend somebody in her parish, but now we get a close-up view of her as a newly returned major, wading into the aftermath of a bar fight as one in command, and trying, despite nightmares and her reunion with Russ, to pick up all her parish duties at once, as well as help out in the emotional crises of her fellow soldiers in the support group.

The group itself doesn’t begin promisingly, but gradually the vets come to each other’s support. Not much has changed in the small town of Millers Kill, but the vets have changed and must change again in order to be truly at home. Addictions, memory loss, nightmares, the temptation of suicide, and the illegal activity one was pulled into "over there" all make for agony, whose only cure is the love of those they love, but each one is walled off at first, trying to do it alone, trying not be vulnerable or needy. The overriding realities here are that war leaves deep scars, both the seen and the unseen, and that love can sometimes heal even those.

I recommend reading this one after reading the other six novels, beginning with In the Bleak Midwinter. Interestingly, I had heard Julia Spencer-Fleming say, at a reading in 2008, when novel six came out (I Shall Not Want), that she planned only one more in the series, but this one hints at more Russ and Clare books to come.

Despite its being different, the town characters are all there, in the police department, the church, and the new hotel and spa. The love story that has pulled readers through six other books engages us here, too. There is no dearth of conflict for any of the soldiers, including Clare.

Be prepared to be taken in hand by a masterful, passionate storyteller and to learn, as well, what we all need to know as citizens about what our country is asking of its armed forces, many of them National Guard, in Iraq.

Judy Hogan, Moncure, N.C.

Penny Weaver: Post-Menopausal Zest Woman

Russian hollyhocks from Nadya.

***

Excerpts from The Sands of Gower: A Mystery Novel
 Maybe this summer on Gower she would find a real partner, who wouldn’t mind her poetry. She scared men off when she let them know she was interested, especially if she wrote them a poem. Fifteen years out of a miserable marriage, and she still hadn’t found a new love. Of course, she had goals of her own. She wasn’t going to waste her post-menopausal zest years hung up in some man’s idea of how she should serve his needs. She’d wasted too much time already doing that.

Her three children were launched now, theoretically, and her ex-husband, whom she was very sure that she did not want to remarry, could be held off more firmly. She could focus on herself, create more time for her poetry. She did want to remarry. She had often argued that it was possible for a woman to have both a marriage and her own quest plot. Now was her chance.

... . So she kept coming back. Her youngest child, Sarah, had just gotten married, and she was rewarding herself with two months this time. Evelyn, who, each time they said goodbye, wondered gloomily if she’d ever see her again, as she was 75 now, had agreed to give her her favorite single room. She could write a whole book of new poems and settle into the more human rhythms she always found here.
Only herself to see to. Only her teeth to worry about getting brushed; only her money to be sure not to lose. As they turned into the village of Pwll-du, she felt the familiar tug of that wonderful time alone. She would write. She knew it. The words were already taking on a presence in her mind.   Judy Hogan

The Gift-Giving Circle

Nadya's apples and plums (village near Kostroma on the Volga)

One of the ways I enjoy my post-menopausal zest years is that I have by this time in my life, after living below the poverty line for years, and rarely above it, developed a community of people around me who help me and whom I help.  I wrote about this in my 2009 holiday letter.  This will also give  you a feeling for my daily life and the rich bounty of people and their gifts that are part of it. 

What strikes me most about 2009, which was a harder year than usual, were all the gifts I received. It’s true that, if I’d needed less, I’d have been given less. In a period when the world and our larger American society, are so focused on the ills of the market economy, I’m struck by how effectively the gift economy has worked for me this year.

I first became consciously aware of the two economies when I read Lewis Hyde’s The Gift 20 years ago. It’s primarily about the artist’s gift. His theme is that, when we have been given a creative gift–and as practicing artists and writers know, that’s mysterious–although we may sell our created works or our creative talent in the marketplace, that is not essential. What’s essential is to give that gift away. "The gift must always move." At the time I read The Gift, I was teaching the free "Roadmap to Great Literature for New Writers" program in the Durham and Burlington libraries. I had received Humanities "gifts" to teach, and the students, having received the gift of the classes, wanted to give to me. They gave me time and money for my Carolina Wren Press, a coffee pot, plants, strawberries, a lake cottage for a week, a lovely cup with a drawing of Penelope at her loom, with a whip painted on the handle, a tribute to my determination to have them read good books and write well, to "get them off their asses."

Then I realized how, all my life, beginning as a minister’s child, I have lived more in the gift than in the market economy, as most cultures in our world still do. When I visited Russia first in 1990, I was immediately struck by the intensity and extravagance of their gifts. If they had two eggs, then my son Tim and I should have them; if they succeeded in getting ahold of some candy, it was ours. We came home, heavy with gifts, tangible and intangible. That set off my desire to give back, which I did for the next ten years, writing grants, hosting Russians through the Kostroma Committee of Sister Cities of Durham, but the Russians, who had less, generally, than I did, and I lived simply, always outdid me.

Still the gifts kept moving. They still do, and my life continued as part of the gift economy, specifically in my first owned home in Moncure, in my largely African American neighborhood. I knew no one. My students came often to clean up the yard, paint and finish the house. I was given an old wood cookstove by B.D. Goolsby, my friend Elaine’s husband, who died October 12, and my student then (now published novelist), Dawn, and her husband, Jim, helped move it here, and today, as winter’s chill moves in, it is radiating heat, stocked with wood split by Gene, and more wood is outside, prepared by Terrie and Cheryl, who tell me, "Call when you need more."

I’ve had many small but frustrating challenges this year, and my friends and neighbors have rallied round. My son, Tim, visited in June. On his way back from the beach in my tried, true, but aging pickup, the fuel pump went out. We got it towed, and my faithful mechanic, Al, who sold me this truck in 2003 and has kept it running, as Al has kept all my old vehicles on the road since the late 80s, happened to have on hand a used, working fuel pump, which he installed, saving me considerable.

I asked Emma next door if she could give me a ride out to Al’s, and she said I could use their extra car, so Tim and I easily retrieved my truck, and I also got my baking done that week. Emma and Robert, my nearby neighbors, have helped me in countless ways over the last eleven years. Robert and his nephew Tutty, have killed chickens for me, mowed, weed-eaten, raked, fixed the mower, and I am always invited to come get a plate at their big family gatherings. One of their friends, Chainsaw, has brought me wood several times. At Christmas I share this holiday letter with the folks who gather on Robert’s porch to talk and laugh or to play horseshoes in the yard in good weather, and several have showed up at Christmas with gifts or to give me a hug.

Emma and Robert's dogs, Lucky and Spud, announce and inspect all my visitors. Robert and Emma have looked after my chickens and cat when I go out of town. Robert recovered slowly after several surgeries and chemotherapy, from his cancer. Now Emma is having surgery on her neck and has a long recovery ahead. I’ve offered to help in any way I can, but, just as with the Russians, I don’t expect to win in the "gift wars." The point, I’ve learned, is not exactly equal exchanges but that the gift keeps moving.

There are times in every life when people need us in ways we can’t refuse. We know we have to respond. True, too, that not all gifts are wise. They can be a subtle use of power to control or given without love, from guilt or an exaggerated sense of obligation. We can learn to tell the difference. Our best gift to someone in emotional pain may not be to rescue but to listen.

Other small crises this year--financial, car, farm--set off unexpected help. Doug replaced my computer with one he’d built and keeps up with my various computer glitches. Karl (taking time from Those Democrats) helped me prop the peach trees, heavily laden with their new crop, repaired the back door and the toilet, and would take only food in exchange.

Sharon and John up in DC area hosted me, as once they hosted Russians from Kostroma, in Alexandria, when I attended my first Malice Domestic mystery conference in Arlington in early May, and Sharon not only gave me bag lunches but initiated me into the mysteries of the Metro, which I rode to the conference each day
.
Again this year I baked bread in The Bread Shop, with its helpful, cheerful staff, and took my extra figs, herbs, eggs, to the Pittsboro Farmers’ Market. I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped this year, but the other farmers were generous traders, so my leftover bread helped me bring home vegetables, fruit, meat, goat cheese. My cukes gave out early, but Andrew’s made possible bread and butter pickles. Next year I hope to have other outlets for my extra produce, and already Angelina’s Kitchen wants me to make some breads for her and says she’ll always buy my zinnias and cosmos.

All these gifts create a feeling of opulence. Money can’t ever give you that degree of feeling valued and cared for that such gifts do. I already know that Angelina will give me more than I can ever give her, because every time I go into her take-out restaurant, she gives me delicious food: spanakopita (spinach pies), a lamb giro sandwich, amazing chicken soup.

I do have to think more about money now, what I can not spend, and how I can earn what I need most effectively, so that I use my abilities and don’t get exhausted. I’ve always lived simply and benefitted from the gift economy, but it strikes me now that those Americans who don’t remember when most of us had barely enough and many, not enough, in the 30s and 40s, may not realize the riches all around them, if they begin, even in their poverty, to give what they have.

All gifts don’t lift the economic burden, but all genuine, heart-whole gifts lift the spirit of those who give and those who receive. This can make all the difference. This is a truth that people all over the world, most of whom have much less than we Americans, even now, know in their bones and hearts. It is how they cope, how they find joy in straitened circumstances.  Judy Hogan

Not Getting Sick

My Russian friend Vera, with wild flowers.

***
NOT GETTING SICK
 It’s how most of us think of health. Health is from the word heal and related to the word whole. In our American culture there are many things that tend to make us sick. Poor diet, even though we have the opportunity to eat better and more wisely than most of the world’s peoples. A stressful life style. Relying a lot on medicine.

There was a time when doctors solved disease by bleeding all their patients. In the Middle Ages. That seems laughable to us now. Fifty years or so ago they cut out the offending organ–tonsils, uterus, whatever. Now we are inundated with medicines. A young medical student told me that drug companies regularly took them to lunch. He told of how there is now a very expensive medicine for, say, high blood pressure, when the patient had had one almost as good, but the new one may cost five times as much.

Of course, some people do need medicine, but I question every medicine they want to give me or people I’m helping in a hospital. For instance, both during and after menopause, good doctors wanted me to take hormone replacement therapy. I gather that the research showed that it helped women with preventing heart disease and osteoporosis. But later research has also shown that it may increase your risk for cancer, and that an active woman may avoid both heart disease and osteoporosis. The logic of statistics doesn’t necessarily mean that you will benefit from the medicine the doctor wants to prescribe.

Also many doctors prescribe medicine for depression when it may not be needed. At this time in my life, at age 62 [I’m now 73 and it’s still true], I take no prescription medicines, which always surprises medical people. I do take a multi-vitamin (organic) every day, and I deliberately eat a balanced, vegetarian diet most of the time. I understand that the human body needs exercise. I have had to work on myself to make that part of my daily routine, but now it is for 30 minutes a day. I miss a day occasionally, but I average six out of seven days.


My staple is a complete protein bread of rye and soy. I was fortunate in being diagnosed with Meniere’s disease in my late 20s, which by my late 30s, led me to seek lifestyle advice from doctors and others. This is a syndrome of the inner ear. When it hits most severely, you feel that you are being whirled around. You grab hold of whatever you can to prevent yourself (as it seems) from being thrown around. The only thing you can do to stop it is lie down flat. If you persist, you vomit.

I learned to prevent my Meniere’s disease by walking, leading a less stressful life, eating well (less wheat when they told me I might be mildly allergic to it), getting plenty of vitamin C and the B vitamins. I do this with lots of brown rice and organic rye-soy bread (Bs) and yoghurt and orange juice every day (Bs and C).

Soy-Rye Bread (Complete Protein)

In a very large bowl, as the sponge tends to rise up over the sides, put 1/4 cup of black strap or other molasses, honey, brown sugar, or other sweetener.
Add 2 cups boiling water (you may use purified or spring water, as I do) and dissolve the sweetener.

Add 3 more cups of water and 4 cups of rye flour, using a whisk to beat it in. It should be a thick gravy consistency. Then add (when it’s warm but not hot) 2 T of active dry yeast (or 2 cake yeasts or packages of yeast). Mix in well. Cover with a piece of plastic (I use a grocery store plastic bag), then a towel. Let this rise for 1-12 hours. You can do it overnight. The sponge dough strengthens the yeast and gives the bread a slightly sour taste.

Add 1-1/3 cups of soy flour with 2 T. salt, beating well; then 1-1/3 cups of bran or oat bran with 1/4 cup of oil or olive oil; then add about 6 cups of white, bread flour (unbleached, if you can get it–whole foods stores often have it). I add flour, several cups at a time until dough gets stiff and hard to mix. Then, still in the large bowl, I knead it, adding as little flour as possible. It’s sticky, and throw in a little flour and keep going. Experience makes it easier. Knead it about 10 minutes until it’s elastic. Then cover it with the towel and let it rise about an hour until it’s double in bulk.

Divide into 4 loaf pans, let rise another hour or so until double in bulk, and bake at 350 degrees F. for about one hour. You can’t ruin it or hurt yourself by having a piece when it’s hot! The loaf is tender and gets a little smushed. Oh, well. It’s wonderful hot. It keeps well in the freezer. You can store it sliced and remove slices as needed, or store in halves and remove a half at a time. It’s best fresh–no preservatives. This bread is the secret of my success! I live on it.

From The PMZ Poor Woman’s Cookbook, p. 11-13.:

Pleasure

PLEASURE

 That's sage in bloom in my herb garden from last spring.  Sadly I lost it last summer.  Have to begin again from seeds.
***

I have often been surprised by people telling me that they didn’t understand how I could be so disciplined in general, and, in particular, about getting my writing done. The fact is that I have strong desires. And I give them their head a lot. So I love to write, and I have built my life around that love. My approach to getting sick is to indulge myself before I get so sick that I can’t enjoy it. It saves time. If you get very sick, then you can do nothing and you have to work harder when you get well.

I try to make my life pleasurable. I give myself rewards if I need to do things I don’t much enjoy. Sometimes on weekends I make a dessert to have when I write, because it seems to help me write to feel self-indulgent. People who are dieting are urged to separate eating from activities. But if you want to write, you need rituals that are pleasurable around it. So I combine writing with food and drinks. I drink my morning coffee when I write in my diary. Or, on weekends, I might make one of the following desserts. Note that I make them healthy, too, so that my indulgence, though it feels wicked to me, is actually good for me. This is one of the many tricks I play on myself. But they work!

If you make banana bread, applesauce cake, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, try substituting for each cup of white flour, 2/3 cup of rye or whole wheat flour and 1/4 cup of soy. You’ll need a little less than a full cup, because these flours (rye, whole wheat, soy) are heavier. I use this substitution in everything that has in it strong flavors, like chocolate, spices, etc. It also works quite well with muffins, banana bread, etc.

GINGERBREADBeat 1 cup of shortening (or butter or 3/4 cup canola or other vegetable oil), add 1 cup brown sugar, and blend, then 2 eggs, then 1 cup of molasses (black strap or cane). Separately sift and mix 2/3 cup of soy with 1 t. salt, 1-½ t. of baking soda, 1 t. ginger, 1 t. cinnamon. Mix this with 2-1/6 cups of rye or whole wheat flour. Then add in 3 parts, alternating with 1 cup of boiling water, stirring after each addition, to the shortening/oil mixture. Pour batter into a greased 12 x 16 or two 8 x 8 inch pans. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 35 to 40 minutes. Delicious warm or cold. Especially on a rainy day.

I want to thank my followers and those leaving comments to cheer me on.  A new venture is both exciting and at times overwhelming.  As to what I used to do when I awakened by hot flashes during the night, I would throw off the covers and go back to sleep.  By day, I'll take off the layers I needed to for comfort. 

But the biggest thing is seeing menopause  as normal and prelude to the best time in a woman's life, which in Russia they call the "baba summer."  You become a baba at 40.  Probably Americans at 50, kids raised, more time for us.  Their name for Indian Summer is Baba Summer.  Enjoy your baba summer, expect to live well, actively, healthily for a long time, and you probably will.  After the 20s, the rest of our lives depends on our attitudes, which goes for men, too.  Men welcome here, too.  Zest can begin for men, too, around 50.  Why not?  Judy Hogan