Category Archives: La Terza Eta

The Third Age, observations from this vantage point.

Septuagenarian Surprise

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Hiking through the desert in the morning after an overnight photo session.

“Can I still do it?” and “Will I still enjoy it?”

I find myself asking these two questions about various activities I undertake.  Now maybe you are thinking I am making oblique references to sex, but so far, that hasn’t been in the category of activities I am questioning. 

I noticed that, after turning 70, my superpowers appeared to be diminishing.  This was a surprise to me because so far, at every decade mark, I had felt little difference from the previous one.  There were a few things I suppose– certainly my appearance has changed as I have grayed, but for the most part, my capabilities have held.  

Until now.  I am starting to notice that my flexibility is less; I am stiff in the morning; my strength and stamina are diminished.  Something has happened to the sinew and grit that powered my younger self.  The analogy I entertain is:  “the rubber bands are drying out”.  

My limitations became apparent in a recent outing to take pictures of the night sky, an activity I have enjoyed for decades.  One of my life highlights was recording pictures of the night sky on Racetrack Playa in Death Valley a few years ago.  Currently, it is a similar trip with a hike to a collection of geologic features in the badlands of New Mexico.  I treated it like many others I had undertaken, but this time, things felt different.

During my “Nightscape Odyssey” in 2001, I would survey a candidate night sky site during the day, making notes of how to get there, what compositions were promising, and generally getting familiar with the area.  I would then return to the site later, as twilight approached, or sometimes even in the dark, and set up my telescopes and cameras.  It made for a long day, and a long night, and I was usually exhausted the next morning.  Nevertheless, after a morning nap, I would start the process all over again for the next night’s session.

This time, I was prematurely worn down after the initial reconnaissance and had to postpone the nighttime excursion until the next day.  I didn’t expect that.  Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was the elevation, but those were factors before, and back then I still had the energy to carry on.

The lure of an image in your mind’s eye is a strong motivation, and I was very excited to see if I could capture the Milky Way behind the Alien Throne, my target for this outing.  I described the overall experience previously, but I will now describe some of my other reactions as I undertook it.

I mentioned that my backpack was heavier than I expected.  Yes, it had an excess of camera gear, but that was the payload.  The rest was support: water, snacks, and protection against the desert night.  The total came close to forty pounds, a typical number for a much longer trip.  It was well within the range of packs I had carried before, and tonight I only had to go 1-1/2 miles over relatively flat terrain.  I put it on, cinched the hip belt, and felt the familiar shift of my center of gravity as I took the first steps down the trail.  It felt good to be doing this again.

As I continued, I noticed that I could feel the load in my legs.  This was not a daypack.  I could also sense some strain on my knees.  This reminded me of an incident that happened a previous time I had carried this pack.

It was fifteen years ago.  I had been on a weeklong backpacking trip, and on the last day, while climbing a ridge along the Lake Superior Hiking Trail, I experienced a sudden collapse of my right knee.  It was truly a surprise; I fell to the ground.  It wasn’t painful, my leg was just uselessly limp.  My hiking buddies helped me back to my feet, but I couldn’t sustain the weight of the pack and collapsed again. Fortunately, it was only a short distance to our destination, and by distributing most of my load to the others, we were able to get there.

But here I was, hiking solo in a wilderness area as night approached.  If the same thing happened, what would I do?  I was a mile from my car, but to get there, I would have to abandon my load:  $5000 of camera gear.  Well, I guess I should factor that into my choice to embark on these excursions!

I carried on.  And I carried the hiking poles that Poldi had lent me.  I had always considered them a nuisance, getting in the way of my path and interfering with handling a camera, but I was now starting to appreciate them.  They bore my weight and guided my traverse across the ruts and ridges in this rugged landscape.  What was once an annoyance has now become a dependence.

I made it to the Valley of Dreams, following the route I had traveled the previous day, but the Alien Throne was another half mile through uncharted ridges and eroded gullies.  I could see the destination on my GPS, but the terrain was not adequately shown.  I found myself blocked by box canyons and cliffs.  My strength was waning, the sun was setting, and I wondered how many more of these obstacles I could clamber over.  If I became stuck, I would just make the best of things, taking pictures of whatever features were around me, even if they weren’t my prime target.  It could still be a wonderful evening.

I was getting close, but a sudden drop-off was in the way.  It was too high to scramble down, especially bearing my pack.  So I removed the pack, lowered it over the edge, and then eased myself over and dropped down onto it.  This was the last obstacle.  I rounded the corner and found the Alien Throne!  But it was not lost on me that this was an obstacle that in earlier days would not have presented a challenge.  Further, had I not had a semi-graceful landing on my pack, what injuries would I have sustained?

It was a small barrier, but I was stranded on the shelf 5-feet above the valley floor I needed to get to.  I dropped the pack and eased myself over the edge onto it.

I filed those thoughts away as I looked over the theater containing the Alien Throne.  I needed some time to recover my breath after the stress and strain of navigating these eroded features, but I was aware that the light was rapidly changing.  I needed to get my cameras set up.

This is a very pleasurable part of the adventure.  I am finally at the site and can look for the compositions I have imagined.  It is a mix of guidance and guesswork.  I have some tools to help with orientation and timing, but it really takes placing an eye to the eyepiece to see how the landscape fits the sky.  There are technical issues to resolve as well: exposure times, lens apertures, focus, and shutter intervals.  These keep me narrowly focused on my goals and shut out any other concerns (I’m oblivious of the need to worry about scorpions).

But as I placed each camera and tripod in its place, I could not help but notice each difficult position, and each awkward angle I had to assume in doing so.  Yes, the terrain is uneven, and the viewpoint requires the right height and angle, whatever it needs to be for the composition, but I don’t remember it being such a physical strain to achieve it.  

Kneeling is a particular motion, required for just about any adjustment.  I find that it is hard to get back up.  And when I drop something, it becomes a major project to recover it.  The aches and pains of drying rubber bands were making themselves known in this otherwise pleasurable setting.

But when the cameras are each in place and running, I heave a sigh and settle in for a night of watching the heavens flow across the sky.  It will be an hour or more before the cameras need attention.  This is another pleasant part of the nightscape adventure.  I record the photographic details of my experiments in a notebook and contemplate what the outcomes might be, and what subsequent exposure tests I should undertake.  When I am with Poldi, we find spiritual and intimate activities to fill the time under the stars, but on this night I am alone, at least for a while.  Soon after my cameras were set up, another night sky photographer arrives.  We share our stories while the stars move above us.

We eventually retreat to our refuge against the cold desert night.  I am in a sleeping bag tucked into a recess in the rocks.  I relax here, watching the sky above and listening.  There is a cricket chirping.  I am astounded at how loud it is, and then I remember, I now have “bionic ears,” recently acquired hearing aids, another indicator of crossing the seven-decade threshold.  They have been tuned to amplify the high frequencies that I was previously missing.  This helps me to understand the speech of women and children, but it really helps me to notice the frequency of cricket chirps, which are slowing as the temperature drops.  The chirps keep me awake.

But eventually they stop, or maybe I drift off.  When my alarm goes off for the next exposure event, I climb out of the sleeping bag and stumble toward the camera that needs attention.  The moon has set, and it is now purely starlight that guides me.  Plus my flashlight, because starlight is just not enough, at least on this uneven terrain.  As I navigate over the rocks toward the camera, I recognize the precariousness of my path.  At home, at night, in the dark, I must sometimes navigate to the bathroom.  It is much easier with a nightlight– so we have installed them.  Here, in the certified dark sky wilderness of New Mexico, I am on my own.  I am aware and notice the uncertainty of my steps on the sandstone terrain.  Loose gravel and vegetation contribute to the hazard.  Once again, I recognized that if I fell and was injured on one of these camera servicing missions, I would no longer be enjoying the night.

But the cameras, with their new exposure settings and refreshed batteries, continue their nighttime schedule.  I return to my nook to marvel at the Milky Way, now high in the sky.  The cricket reminded me that I have bionic ears, but the sky reminds me that I also have enhanced eyesight.  

The miracles of modern optics can correct for obscure vision conditions, including astigmatism and other aberrations.  I put on my progressive prescription glasses so that I could appreciate the full glory of the night sky, beyond my now compromised seventy-year-old built-in lenses.  It was a bust.  For whatever reason, my glasses made the view worse, not better.  I will be investigating this failure, but in the meantime, I enjoyed the night sky without optical assistance.

The pleasures of the night continued; the cameras were serviced despite the risks, and eventually the sky began to lighten.  Dawn was approaching.  

The exposure schedule ended as the sun rose, and I gathered my equipment, preparing for the hike back. The night before, I had reached my destination just before my strength ran out.  Now, after a night to recover, I expected an easy hike.  I knew the way.  And it started that way, but soon became hard.

It was not a difficult trail, mostly level.  And the sun was still low, the temperature moderate.  The path was easy, but on encountering the slight banks in and out of a dry creek wash, I was annoyed that I could not just scramble them; I had to take carefully placed steps.

Only a mile and a half back to my car.  Yet, I found my feet becoming “heavy”, without the lift to rise ever slightly for the next step.  And they were sloppily planted in that next step.  It was the closest thing to a stagger, and I realized it.

So I paused for a rest, dropping my pack for a while.  Sitting on a rock and taking some water, one of my hiking poles fell to the ground.  I cursed.  Now I would have to bend over to get it.  When did just stooping down become such a pain?  I have never enjoyed getting under the desk to plug in computer or power cables, but just bending over to pick up something I dropped?  That’s new.

Reaching the point of involuntarily dragging my feet was a new experience, a physical regime I was unfamiliar with.  It made me appreciate the limits that people sometimes overcome, not just for recreation, but for survival.

And it added to my list of items to balance against the pleasures of my remote outings.  I really enjoyed the hours in the desert monitoring cameras and watching the galaxy cross the sky.  But I have become aware of the risks I am taking on, some of which seem to have increased over my years.

I was halfway back.  I was aware of the remaining distance, which was more than the physical distance.  It included the depletion of my energy reserves.  I may have been staggering, but I was not to the point of stopping.  I hoisted the pack and continued back to the car.

I can now declare that “I can still do it”, and I will also declare that “I still enjoy it”, but I must temper this last statement by acknowledging that the enjoyment is diminished by the increased risks I take on.

Life is filled with tradeoffs.

It may seem that I am complaining about getting old, and I guess I am, but I am also thrilled that I am still around to do so.

My motivation, an image in my mind’s eye becomes real (click for full resolution).
If I look back a little, I might be able to extrapolate how this next decade will go.  So far so good.  I hope I can be as spry as Dick Van Dyke when I get there!

A Tradition Resumes

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Sausage pressing in 1992. The kids take turns at the crank.  An older cousin is handling the sausage as it is extruded from the press.

It has been discouraging to see the social disruption around us, the breakdown of norms, maybe a result of covid, but probably other forces as well.  These ebbs and flows of how humans manage themselves are part of a longer-term story.  Our individual experiences are part of a much smaller one, usually within a family with children, parents, and grandparents.

Some years ago, my dad sent me an article titled “The Stories That Bind Us.”  It was interesting, but I took away only part of the message, which was that those children who had an awareness of their family history, by way of family stories, did better when they were released into the wild, er, I mean, into the world.  The ups and downs, the achievements and setbacks, the triumphs and failures of older family members, became part of a narrative that demonstrated the arbitrariness of life events, and the pluck, resolve, and dedication of those family members to overcome such setbacks.

It’s a fascinating article, but I had forgotten some of the recommendations it made.  I am always wary of correlations between some behavior and some outcome, say “people who do X, live longer than those who don’t”, where X can be anything, like “read a novel every week” or “be an amateur radio operator”.  Somehow, I just don’t buy that if I read more fiction, or took up ham radio as a hobby, I would live longer as a result.

But in this case, there was an assessment tool, twenty questions, and there was a suggestion that family traditions contribute to the resilience we seek for our children.  Traditions, even hokey ones, seem to instill a sense of stability and foundation in our kids.

So I was extremely pleased to host a “sausage-making party” shortly after Thanksgiving with Poldi’s and my combined families, this year including grandchildren!  The last time we made sausage was seven years ago.  Then Covid and other factors interfered.

This is a tradition that goes back many years in my family.  My Swedish grandmother would anticipate the upcoming Christmas dinner she prepared every year, and make sure that she had a supply of Swedish sausage at hand.  After all, her father would expect it to be on the plate right next to the lutefisk!

So she organized a sausage-making event every year, inviting her children and their families to participate, luring them with a delicious meal when the work was done.  The sausage-making work itself required a coordination of tasks:  the sausage casings (pig or cow intestines) needed to be rinsed and cleaned of their salt packing; the spices that provided the flavor, however minuscule, had to be measured and blended; the filler ingredients, potatoes, celery, and onions, had to be peeled, sliced, and chopped.  And it all had to be blended into a mix of ground meat, usually pork and beef.  There was a lot of labor involved in this project.

The climax of the event was when the ground meat, spices, and vegetables, mixed by the hands of grandchildren willing to get them messy, was placed in the sausage press, a large cast-iron cylinder with a giant crank and mechanical gears that drove a piston plate.

At this point, some finesse was involved.  The casings were carefully applied and mounted onto the nozzle of the machine.  And then the piston was cranked down into the press cylinder to force the meat through the nozzle into the casing.  Two people were required for this task.  A delicate balance of piston pressure and casing management was needed to make a proper sausage!

Most children don’t particularly care about the intestine casings (which involves touching them), but they all seem to enjoy turning the crank.  So it is a frequent scene where the kids are taking turns at the crank, while a few adults are preparing the casings and pulling the sausages as the press squeezes the meat into them.

And this year, as we resumed this tradition, was no different.  Kids being squeamish about guts, but curious about meat, is just exactly the thing that might make a mark in their memories.  

I look forward to future sausage-making parties and the involvement of my grandchildren.  Maybe it will contribute to their sense of family, that we are all part of their team, and give them confidence as they navigate their world.  If so, I am happy to provide the hokey tradition that does it.

Dads and uncles supervise the sausage pressing as the next generation is introduced to this long-standing family tradition.
 
My grandmother’s notes after making sausage in 1981. This is about as close as I expect to get to an authentic recipe for traditional Swedish sausage. It includes the quantities we used, how much we made, and the price per pound of our output. It does not include the full attendee list– a departure from her usual style– but does indicate how much sausage went to my uncle Bob, and to me. The remainder went to “we”, the hosts of the party, Ted and Grace Olson, my Scandinavian grandparents.

A New Host for Thor’s Life Notes

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I started this blog when I retired in 2019, just before COVID.  It was an activity that occupied me during those months of quarantine and allowed me to share my interests and projects.  I was, and still am, ignorant of blogging technology.  Yes, I have, in my career, written code for the world of web pages and browser-based applications, but every time I did so, I wondered, “How could this ever work?”  It struck me as a house of cards, with fragile links and unreliable and inconsistent page renderings.  

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Eyewitness to Climate Change

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A hiking group finds its way across Grinnell Glacier in 1970.

Most people now acknowledge that the climate has changed, even if they don’t agree on the reasons for it.  Some of us are old enough to have seen the change firsthand.

As a teenager in 1970, I went on a hike with my family in Glacier National Park, a six-mile and 2000 foot climb to Grinnell Glacier.  It was a thrilling experience to be hiking in the mountains, and then to actually walk out onto a real glacier!  Both mountains and glaciers were things I had read about, but never personally experienced. 

It was a ranger-led hike, and I learned a lot from the ranger’s descriptions of the geology, the plant and animal life, and the nature of glaciers, for which this park was named.  I remember him telling us that the glaciers were shrinking.  Nobody knew why, but it was possible that in a century they would all be gone.  The park would still be called “Glacier”, but for the characteristic and beautiful glacier-cut valleys, not for the presence of glaciers themselves.

I have since had the opportunity to visit a few other glaciers including Sperry Glacier, also in Glacier Park, and the Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Ice Fields of Banff National Park in Alberta Canada.  Of course, whenever I have made these excursions, I have taken pictures, which have remained sequestered away in old photo albums or shoeboxes.

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Field Trip: Harvard Biology Labs

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A panorama of Harvard’s Biology Laboratories building, distorted by the wide angle view (click to enlarge, then click again to see animal frieze details).

I wrote earlier about the unique entrance to Harvard’s Biological Laboratories building, which today is home to the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.  My grandfather, who studied in the then state-of-the-art laboratories shortly after being built in 1931, had taken a photograph in the entry of the building.  I found it to be a beautiful image that captured the novel decorations on the doors and their shadows cast onto the marble floor.  I wanted to see and experience this space.

The opportunity presented itself when Poldi’s “Italian sister” Rossella decided to visit while Poldi was in New York– she also expressed interest in seeing Boston, a few hours away.  I invited myself to join their mini-fall tour of New England and they humored me by helping locate the Biology Labs building on the Harvard campus.  It was as distinctive as I had imagined.

The exterior of the building is adorned with animal friezes designed by Katherine Lane Weems, pneumatically carved into the crest of the brick façade.  It is a large building and the animals overhead command your attention until you notice the life-sized rhinoceroses at ground level, also created by the young artist, and which have become mascots (“Victoria” and “Bessie”) for the Harvard biology community. 

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One Cup of Coffee

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I recall visiting my grandmother and noticing a large coffee cup that stood apart from the rest. I learned that this was a cup that was reserved for use by her father (my great-grandfather) when he came by to visit each week. She would make coffee and they would update each other on family news.

My great-grandfather was an immigrant from Sweden with a strong work ethic and a clear set of moral principles. Among them was that one shouldn’t live to excess, so he allowed himself only a single cup of coffee. With this restriction, a normal cup of coffee wouldn’t last long enough to be done visiting his daughter. She solved this by obtaining a very large cup for him to use whenever he stopped by.

Evidently, this story was so good that Poldi remembered me telling it to her years ago when I inherited that heirloom. When she encountered a similarly sized cup with my sunflower “totem”, she acquired it and presented it to me as a birthday gift. Well, I don’t have the same restriction for coffee consumption, but I will now be able to say that I had only one cup of coffee in the morning.

Late Life Love– continued

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Inside the Wirth Picnic Pavilion with friends and family

Six months ago I posted an item that described my transformation from being a marriage skeptic to being a proponent, while my partner had experienced the reverse conversion.

Regardless of any marriage decision, we made plans to host an anniversary party. Ten years had passed since our “(happily ever) After Party” and our commitment ceremony, and we thought it would be fun to have everyone back to celebrate life, love, and a decade of wonderful experiences, with our family and friends.

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Trivia du Annuel

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A sample question at a New Year’s party trivia station

In an earlier life I hosted an annual New Year’s Eve party.  It had the usual party elements: holiday decorations, elaborate food, and refreshing beverages.  It also featured a trivia game, something that started as a simple mixer to help our eclectic set of friends from the different avenues of our life to meet and engage, with the intent of adding to the good will and good cheer of the evening.

We created a series of “stations” throughout the house, each with a set of questions.  Our guests were organized in teams of two and they would do their best to answer them.  The questions were selected and designed to fall in the category of “common knowledge” and “things everyone should know”. It was surprising how many we don’t, and the newly formed duos would try their best to compete for the “fabulous prizes” (usually a trophy coffee mug) presented to the team that got the most right.

The annual trivia game was often described as a frustrating or humbling experience, but as embarrassing as it might have been to our guests when they could not answer our simple questions, they kept coming back each year.  Perhaps they thought that next year they would be partnered with someone who would actually know the figures featured on each bill of US currency, or the numbering convention behind the interstate highway system, or the counties that make up the metropolitan mosquito control district.  I eventually learned that everyone wanted to partner with my friend Rich, who may not be up on the latest trends, but seemed to know the other questions on topics we all learned in grade school but somehow forgot.

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16mm Home Movies from Mid-20th Century

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As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I inherited a collection of 16mm movies made by my two grandfathers, each an enthusiastic amateur and early adopter of photo technology.  I have been struggling with their fate, as they consume a not-inconsiderable amount of space in my archives.  Space that could be used to store other useless artifacts.

They have now been (mostly) digitized. And one can find them summarized at this page.

I have great difficulty getting rid of things.  As someone who respects the historical path that brought us to our current time, place, and relations, it is hard to discard mementos, especially (for me) photographs that captured moments along that path.  As a scientist, I am loathe to delete “data”, that might someday be valuable.

I have to acknowledge the slim likelihood of such artifacts becoming valuable.  I hold no conceit that some biographer will ever be looking for scraps and clues identifying the influences on my own childhood.  I like to think that my contributions to society have been positive, but probably not worth much more than an oblique reference in an obituary (“he was a curious man”).  But maybe there were things in those movies that would be of interest to someone else. I didn’t know how to find that audience.

So the movies, spooled on metal reels of various sizes, lay dormant for years.  When I wondered about their ultimate fate, I realized that eventually, they would have NO meaning to anyone, even if it were possible to view them.  If there was any value to be extracted, it would have to be now, by me. 

I described that initial effort in the previous post on this topic.  Here is what has happened since.

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