Preserving Legacies with the Daughters of Utah Pioneers

 

September 2024 Meeting
of the Ephraim Camp of the
Daughters of the Utah Pioneers

When I moved to Ephraim in December of 2023. It is located in Sanpete County, part of Central Utah. 

I soon learned that the locals like to ask you about your people--and they do not mean your parents. They want to know who your great, great grandparents are. 

Scandinavian Heritage

This area was settled for years by Native Americans, but Ephraim as well as all of Sanpete County focus a lot on the immigrants who arrived primarily from Scandinavia in the 1850s.  During the weekend of Memorial Day, this town holds a Scandinavian Days Festival, and people want to ask if your ancestors came from Norway, Sweden, Finland, or Denmark. I hear less about Iceland, but that is a Scandinavian country, too. 

I have some relatives from Copenhagen, but none of them ended up in Sanpete County. 

Daughters of Utah Pioneers

Older Adults and Youth: Connecting the Past and the Future in the Present

 

Image by COD Newsroom
via Creative Commons

I have observed a stereotype that older adults talk about the past with the evaluation that they do so too much.  When someone is 80 years old, they have a lot more past behind them than future in front of them. 

Personally, I enjoy talking to people who have skill sets and a knowledge base that I do not have.  It’s fascinating to hear people report on time periods, places, and events that I have never experienced.  Older adults function like living libraries. 

I have worked in higher education for over four decades, and I have noticed that young adults tend to talk a lot about the future. They can spend a lot of time sharing their plans on what they are going to do.  They have a lot more future in front of them than past behind them.

Over the years, the age difference between the traditional college-aged student and my age has widened gradually. I could be impatient about the blueprints they have to build castles—seemingly in the air. However, I learn a lot about the rising generation and some of the growth industries and technologies that I have not studied.  Young adults are the stewards of the future, including my future. If I live long enough to achieve frailty, I will be dependent to a large degree on people younger than I.    

Drinking More Water

 

Image by Kate Ter Haar
via Creative Commons

Oh, I did everything to ensure that I gained weight during the first half of this year: 

• I did not drink enough water. 
• I stopped lifting weights. 
• I decreased my exercise regime from 12 classes a week to 2 classes a week.
• I ate a lot of carbs. (I made sourdough bread every day during the month of April.)
• I lounged around in bed and ruminated about the difficulties of moving. 

So it was no surprise that I stopped fitting into many of my more tailored dresses and many of my "perfect fit" jeans and slacks. 

I am too cheap to buy a new wardrobe, so I am rededicating myself to a better diet and a more rigorous fitness routine. 

Waterllama Report
for 4 Weeks

I downloaded an app to remind me to stay well hydrated. Central Utah has a very dry climate, and I was eating too much in order to get hydrated. I should just drink water! 

I'm trying to drink 64 ounces at minimum during each day. 

My goal is to drink at least 32 ounces of water (light blue) out my total goal of 64 ounces of liquids. 

For the other 32 ounces, I am trying to drink beverages that are more hydrating, such as low-glycemic Gatorade (medium blue), sparkling water (same light blue as water), herbal tea (green), and milk (gray).  

Juice and yogurt count, too. (The yogurt is pink on the chart to the left. I did not have juice over the last four weeks. I prefer to eat an orange or an apple than drink its juice.) In the winter I will eat more soup, which also counts, but not as much as water! 

I do sometimes drink protein drinks (dark purple) and diet sodas (light lavender), but I try to keep those to a minimum since they are less than 90% hydrating according to my Waterllama app. 

I was snacking as a way to pull water out of granola bars and bread. That was not very efficient, and this was going to sabotage my A1c! 

I am eating less now that I am properly hydrated. 

Related:

Age-Related Risks for Dehydration

Remarkably Bright Creatures: Book Review

 

Published 3 May 2022

In her 2022 novel Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt creates a story of people who are looking to belong, looking for what is lost, and finding connections in unexpected places.  And the story is facilitated by an intelligent, observant octopus named Marcellus. 

Marcellus lives in the Sowell Bay Aquarium where a widow named Tova works.  Tova is entering late life and dealing with some challenges to her health. She is also spending a lot of time reviewing her life and wrestling with some regret.  She does not have a lot of social connection; however, she meets a shopkeeper from Scotland and conducts some awkward low-level flirting with him. 

Tova's story alternates with Cameron, a man leaving his twenties without having a solid job or strong social connections. His mother abandoned him, and he has had trouble dealing with his mother's shortcomings so that he can progress with his own life. 

I admit that I was more interested in the octopus and in Tova than I was with Cameron initially. I feel as though I have observed a lot of young people who are drifting and lost. However, I finally found a way to connect with Cameron and care about his well being. This happened when he (mild spoiler alert) got a job at the aquarium where Tova works and Marcellus lives. 

It's a gentle read that deals with some heavy themes: love, loss, family, aging, purpose, regret, forgiveness and more.  It's 300 plus pages, but it was still a quick, engaging read. 

Related: 

Books on Aging

Late Life Happiness Boost: U Shaped Happiness Curve

 

Image by Smithsonian Institute
via Creative Commons

There are many researchers of the human life span that question the phenomenon of a "Midlife Crisis." However, there are researchers seeking to establish that people tend to experience a dip in happiness in midlife that creates a U shape: measurable happiness in ones 20s, a dip in their 30s to 50s, and a boost in their 60s and 70s.  

The Economist published a 2010 article. There is a paywall, but you can view a graphic that illustrates the concept. 

Midlife is a time where many adults are overburdened with responsibilities: they are trying to work for promotions; they have children at home who need their time and attention; they are trying to adjust expectations for their marriages, which can lead to divorce or newly negotiated roles within the family system; they are comparing their visions for their life with the realities of their life; they are hitting their limitations, which not only includes financial limitations but limitations to their character and health. 

Managing expectations vs. reality is sobering if not terrifying. 

Empty Nesters and Friendship

Karen, Kim, and Kelly
June 2024

 Yes, my children have launched. They are now 23 and 26. They both left the nest a while ago. However, I am feeling their absence more because I moved to Utah in December of 2023, and my children live in Indianapolis.  

Ouch! 

However, there are some silver linings.  I have more time to connect with some of my friends.  For example, I was able to drive down to Cedar City to see my friend Kim and her sister Kelly. Kim has some grandchildren who live there, so she tries to travel from Orange County to Iron County about once a month. 

I have known these two since the early 1970s when we were tweens all lived in Orange County, California.  We know each others stories, so we can connect very quickly even after significant absences. 

There are too many great quotes about friendship to review. However, here are three that I find help me explore the benefits and the workings of friendship: 

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: Book Review

 

Published 15 Mar 2012

I don't know how this book escaped my attention, but I saw a trailer for the film based on Rachel Joyce's 2012 novel, so I decided to read it.   The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry describes the journey that pensioner Harold Fry takes from the southwest of England (Devon) to the northeast (Northumberland). This is no small matter. It's a trek of over 500 miles. 

Fry kind of stumbled into this exertion.  He had intended just to mail a letter to a former co-worker, so he went out his front door without his phone and with the inadequate pair of deck shoes on his feet.  He finds himself lost in thought, so he decided to walk to the town post office, only to decide to walk the entire distance to see his former co-worker, Queenie Hennessy, who is in a hospice dying of cancer. 

The book does describe the English countryside and a number of characters whom Fry meets. However, the primary task of the novel is a life review for Fry. He spends those hours walking thinking about his life: his childhood, his career in sales at a brewery (from which he has retired), his marriage, his son David.  

Apparition of Arran: An Elder Tale from Scotland

 

Tree arch and bridge near Shiskine
on the Isle of Arran, Scotland
Image by Andy Jamieson via Creative Commons

I have joined a discussion group where most of the participants are college professors or members of the foreign service.  In late May of 2024, I was charged by leading a discussion. I decided to talk about psychological models of growth in late life using elder tales as illustrations of those points. 

(See Related below for some details about the psychologists / psychiatrists that I referenced.)

I ended up sharing about eight tales, many of which are retold here on this blog. (Again, see Related for the root post about elder tales.)  However, I had not yet retold this tale from Scotland. 

I enjoy it because it demonstrates resiliency in the protagonist. It also illustrates how older adults who have achieved wisdom are more comfortable with the topic of death and the notion of having a connection with those who are already deceased. 

But enough of the "explaining." Let me just retell this tale, which I found in this 1999 collection by Jane Yolen: Gray Heroes: Elder Tales from around the World. Penguin Books. 

Image by Brianann MacAmhlaidh
via Creative Commons

85th Birthday Celebration on Mother's Day

 

Donna Webb Lloyd's
85th Birthday

I was born in Utah, and I attended college in Utah, but I haven't lived here since the early 1990s.  I often miss family milestones. However, I live just 90 miles away from where we celebrated my mother's 85th birthday this year.  

It was a great blessing to attend.  

My mother and step-father live in an assisted living center. They moved there in the fall of 2019.  I have five step-brothers, and four of them also live in Utah (but not in the same county). 

Patchwork Country Fitness

 

Yoga Class at Hub City Art Gallery
in Mount Pleasant, Utah

I knew that I would have an adjustment moving to a rural county in Utah.  The whole county only has approximately 29,000 residents, and many of the people here work in agriculture, so they get plenty of exercise at work. Many of the women raise a half dozen or so children, chickens, and goats. Additionally, many keep a garden--which is also requires significant physical exertion.  Others have modest household incomes, so joining a gym is a luxury they usually don't pursue.

One of the big changes is the availability of places for pursing fitness. I was spoiled for the last 15 years by living in cities that had a local YMCA equipped not only with cardio machines but with dozens of weekly classes. 

Snow College Fitness Center & Ephraim Canyon

Since arriving in late December of 2023, I have been surveying the available options: 

Happy 20th Yoga-Versary!

Image by cheeseslave
via Creative Commons

I had a big anniversary hit in February, but I did not recognize it in any way because my husband was battling pneumonia that month. I'm ready to recognize it now. 

February marked my 20th Yogaversary! 

I started practicing yoga in February of 2004, and I have been attending classes or practicing at home fairly consistently for the past twenty years. 

Many of you know the benefits of yoga, but let me list the ones that I experience. I experience improvement in these areas of my mind-body: 

Outlive: Book Review

 

Published 28 March 2023

Peter Attia writes a book that is a little too technical (statistics and biochemistry) for the lay reader, but I highly recommend it anyway. 

Why? 

He promotes the idea that people can work on longevity much earlier in their lives by adopting healthy lifestyle choices decades before one becomes an older adult.  Many people wait until they have symptoms of chronic diseases before they make changes. 

Attia implores people to start decades early so that they can not just have a long life span but a long health span. 

Longevity runs in my family, but I do not want to spend the last 20 years of my life on the couch. 

The Book of Charlie: Book Review

Published 23 May 2023

While visiting my little rural library, I saw The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David von Drehle, so I picked it up. 

von Drehle does not just chronicle the life of a centenarian; he spends about a third of his efforts contextualizing the events of Charlie White's life that spanned from 1905 to 2014.  While reading about Charlie's adventures, character, and achievements, von Drehle discusses national trends as well as those that were more regional (to the Midwest primarily) and some that were city specific (to St. Louis and Kansas City, for example). Because I lived for 8 years in Kansas and 7.5 years in SW Indiana (2 plus hours east of St. Louis), I was particularly interested in Charlie's years in those cities. 

We get to observe life on the frontier in the 1910s and 1920s, life during the Depression, war time service for WW1 and WW2, and the development of medical techniques that transformed medicine dramatically during Charlie's practice from the family doctor with the black bag making home visits with limited ability to intervene to Charlie performing state-of-the-art techniques for aesthesia. 

I liked von Drehle's technique of switching from the particular to the universal and back again.  Yes, Charlie participated in some trends and was influence by the Zeitgeist of several eras; however, he also was adventurous and innovative--having adventures (such as riding the rails and being an entrepreneur by being a doctor to an apartment building as well as plunging patients into newly purchased horse feeding troughs as a way to make open heart surgery possible).  

If you want a guided tour through 100 plus years of American history (with some overseas adventures here and there), ride along with Charlie as von Drehl narrates.

Related: 

Books on Aging

Breathing Aids: BIPAP, CPAP, and More

 

Michael in the ICU
February 2024

If you read the previous post, you know that my spouse was hospitalized for two weeks in early February of 2024 with a severe case of pneumonia.  He spent eight of those days in the intensive care unit at Utah Valley Regional Medical Hospital. He was attached to a variety of machines at the time: some of them were monitoring his vitals (heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation rate); some of them were giving him oxygen or fluids. 

While in the hospital, he received supplemental oxygen via three devices: 

• a BIPAP machine
• a CPAP machine
• a nasal cannula attached to an oxygen supply, such as a tank

Thankfully, he was never put on a ventilator. It is harder to wean a patient of a ventilator, and it interferes with eating, drinking, and talking. 

When Pneumonia Hijacked My Spouse

Michael in the ICU
on a BIPAP Machine

Even though my husband Michael has never* had any respiratory problems, he was hospitalized for 14 days this month because he had a severe case of community-acquired [bacterial] pneumonia.  

*Yes, he had pneumonia before--but he was only 9, and he was not hospitalized for it.

From Sunday 03 February to Saturday 17 February, my husband spent eight days in the intensive care unit and six days in a regular hospital room. These were two hospital stays because he was discharged on Saturday 10 February and spent about 30 hours at home (Saturday 10 February 12:30 pm to Sunday 11 February 4:30 pm) before requiring readmittance. 

I was initially calm, but when he returned the second time, it was a bit more unsettling. 

Note: This post does not convey medical advice. Its purpose is to raise awareness. If you have any questions about your respiratory system, please see a licensed medical professional. 

Word of the Year for 2024: Community

 

Hiking in Ephraim Canyon
24 January 2024

I've done it again. I moved. 

After 7.5 years in Newburgh, Indiana, my husband and I moved to Ephraim, Utah.  This is a return trip to the state of Utah. However, I formerly lived in Utah County (9 years) and Salt Lake County (1 year). I am new to Sanpete County, population 28,437. I did visit the Manti Pageant in 1976 and the Manti Temple in 1991; otherwise, I am very naive about all things Sanpete.   

Happy 12th Blogoversary

Photo by Whitney
via Creative Commons

Over the last 12 years, I have managed to create 475 posts on aging. These posts explore how we can better manage our own wellness while offering support to the generation above us. 

In reviewing the "All Time Most Viewed" statistics, I can see that the Top 10 posts for this blog have remained about the same. 

If you want to see what blog readers most enjoy reading, you can go to THIS LINK for the 6th Blogoversary celebration (01 Jan 2018) to find links to the Top 20 most viewed posts. 

The most notable change in the Top 20 is that the 2013 post about Robert C. Peck's Tasks for Older Adults is slowly moving up in the rankings. You can find that post at THIS LINK.