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Archive for the ‘Seychelles’ Category

A Seychelles Christmas Tradition …

Posted in Children, Family, Island life, Seychelles, tagged , , , , , on December 23, 2011| 5 Comments »

Cj decorates ...

Christmas gifts being rather a big deal for 9-& 6-year olds, a top priority in the run-up to the holiday is getting some … gifts, that is. Wandering the maze that is Victoria’s huddled shops in search of anything that is age-appropriate and not complete crap that will fall apart on first use is one method employed.

Mail order from abroad is another, but unless one pulls this off sometime around August, the chance of much getting here before a new year dawns is slim, so I try to do my Christmas ordering … well … about August.

Family and friends living in the real world tend to put off their shopping until the 4th quarter of the year, often until even November or early December, thinking it worth the extra shit load of dosh they pay FedEx to make bloody sure the gifts arrive in time to make it under the tree. This year I know of at least five parcels sent at least two weeks ago, all dosed with the added cost of “priority” shipping, all with the naive hope that the Ex in FedEx doesn’t stand for EXcuse-us-for-being-total-incompetents.

Which brings me to a Seychelles Christmas tradition I “celebrated” today. It goes like this …

Yesterday a FedEx delivery guy had something with Sam’s name on it, but decided driving down my road was too much trouble, so he “delivered” to another Benoiton, asking them to pass it along to me. The passing happened this morning … the 23rd of December … which some may think is the end of the tale.

HA!

What was put into my hands was not Sam’s Christmas gift from his uncle, but rather a wad of papers saying Sam’s Christmas gift from his uncle had arrived in Seychelles, that the paperwork had been processed and that I was to take said wad of papers, drive to the airport cargo terminal and clear it through Customs — Customs having announced that they would close today at 11am … it being the Friday before Christmas and all.

Knowing that gifts from uncles are cool and that Sam would be pleased to find one under the tree on Christmas, I made the drive, then did the dance, the steps to which I know only too well after so many years here. It goes like this:

Step one: Find a place to park.
Step two: Stand in line at counter for 20 minutes.
Step three: Hand paperwork to woman behind glass (Probably bullet-proof.)
Step four: Have woman look at paper, then point to another line.
Step five: Stand in new line.
Step six: Wait 20 minutes.
Step seven: Hand paperwork to woman behind glass.
Step eight: Wait while woman eats from a takeaway box, looks at paper, rifles around other papers, chats with other people, does a calculation, fills out another paper, hands back the now-one-sheet-thicker stack of papers, then points to the line you had been in before.
Step nine: Stand in line for 20 minutes.
Step 10: Hand paper to woman behind glass, then pay 334 Seychelles Rupees (about $30 US) in import duty.
Step 11: Get receipt attached to pile of papers.
Step 12: Woman points to the line you just came from.
Step 13: Stand in line you’d just come from.
Step 14: Wait 20 minutes.
Step 15: Hand paper to woman behind glass.
Step 16: Wait while woman drinks a Coke, chats with other people, checks receipt that shows you’ve paid the import duty.
Step 17: Follow woman to cage where goods are stored.
Step 18: Wait 20 minutes while she rummages around every bloody parcel that’s arrived in the country over the past month while asking what yours looks like … and since it’s a gift you’ve never seen, you have no idea.
Step 19: Be handed a box.
Step 20: Take box, then follow woman back to counter where she goes back behind glass.
Step 21: Wait 20 minutes.
Step 22: Woman produces book you are to sign.
Step 23: Wait 20 minutes while woman looks through book for place where you are supposed to sign.
Step 25: Get the FUCK outta there with your parcel.

Piece of cake, heh?

So … Sam’s gift from his uncle is here. Cj’s, unfortunately, is not. It’s probably sitting in a huge pile of FedEx boxes that have come in over the past two weeks that have not been processed because those whose job it is to process them have been overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs doing, so have slowed the process to an imperceptible crawl.

The kids should have the rest of their gifts from abroad sometime in January, at which time I’ll get to do this all over again …

Merry Christmas!

(And people wonder why I’m not posting much these days … )

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A Tribute to Steve Jobs

Posted in Celebrities, History, Island life, Loss, My Chinese Checkered Past, News, Seychelles, tagged , , on October 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

In February of 1985 I got married. It was a lovely wedding, a nice day, the day after which my new husband, Scott, and I took off for some post-ceremony together time in San Luis Obispo … one of our favorite places on the planet.

We had been together for about five years by that point and had developed a reputation for being a bit of an odd couple … not in the Oscar/Felix sense, but somewhat outside the norm … a fact underlined and much commented upon by the fact that we took a computer with us on our honeymoon.

Sure, today no one would think of heading off for two weeks without at least a phone to keep them connected, with a laptop or an iPad considered little more extraneous than sexy lingerie and a toothbrush as not Tweeting events and updating Facebook status would be dereliction of duty, but in 1985?

Way back in those dinosaur days our cell phone was the size of a phone BOOK and a call cost as much as a bottle of decent champaign … and I’d always opt for the champaign. Postcards were about all anyone would expect from a newly married couple off debauching their way into the troth recently plighted

For us, though? Well, we had Mac, and we weren’t about to go anywhere without him … which is just about as close as I can get to saying I did a honeymoon with Steve Jobs.

I’d actually forgotten about having the Mac with us until today’s news reached me and all my personal Mac-related history flooded back.

My first Mac had 512K, having let Scott do the groundbreaking with his 128, and I’ve never looked back.

Of course, the shift from IBM Selectric typewriter to Macintosh was like the first breath after emerging from a smoke-filled room into clean mountain air, and with a small mountain of diskettes I soon learned now much easier it was to think and produce with MacWrite, even to MacDraw and MacPaint. I set my dot matrix printer flying into clackety hyperdrive cutting and pasting with no need of scissors or paste.

When bored, I’d get Mac to talk to me, putting words in his mouth I wanted to hear, with no idea I’d someday link the cadence to Stephen Hawking.

Over the years Mac taught me how to grow with him, to expand my boundaries to touch on the fringes of his as he taunted me with possibilities beyond my direct need and willingness to wrap my head around what he could get done for me.

That little box of smiling face greeted me daily for years, then was followed by a series of astounding innovations in various shapes, sizes and colors with welcomes I could choose and vary and tweak to my heart’s delight.

Many years later, a different husband moved me to a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean and Mac and I grew even closer. He became not only my workmate, but my lifeline to the rest of the world.

Yes, the rest is history, and a part of that history died yesterday. As one friend put it, he was the Thomas Edison of our time.

RIP Steve Jobs.

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“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” ~ Winston Churchill

Posted in Cambodia, Elections USA, England, History, News, Seychelles, The United Nations, The USA from the outside in, World politics, tagged , , , , on September 22, 2011| 8 Comments »

Ah, the subtle swaying of simple minds ...

Election furor in the US.

Some of that here, too, with the National Assembly vote very soon.

Palestine’s bid for membership in the UN will be vetoed.

An execution in Georgia took place.

Austerity measures are protested in Greece.

Facebook makes changes.

Just a few of the topics swirling this morning that bring to mind a recent discussion on democracy, what it means, what it is, and what’s do be done with it, spawned partly from last week’s declared International Day of Democracy marked on the 15th.

So, what exactly did that occasion celebrate?

democracy
diˈmäkrəsē
noun ( pl. -cies)

a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives : capitalism and democracy are ascendant in the third world.

• a state governed in such a way : a multiparty democracy.

• control of an organization or group by the majority of its members : the intended extension of industrial democracy.

• the practice or principles of social equality : demands for greater democracy.

ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from French démocratie, via late Latin from Greek dēmokratia, from dēmos ‘the people’ + -kratia ‘power, rule.’

As a quick read through the democratically organized Wiki shows, democracy comes in many different flavors.

You’ve got your Representative Democracy, your Consensus Democracy, your Deliberative Democracy, Cosmopolitan Democracy, democracy Representative, Parliamentary, Presidential (and Semi-Presidential), direct, inclusive,
participatory, Socialist, Sortition, Supranational and the Anarchists … any of which can be liberal … or not … characterized by Majority Rule, but, as mentioned, ” … it is also possible for a minority to be oppressed by a “tyranny of the majority”.

While there is no universally accepted definition of ‘democracy’, equality and freedom have both been identified as important characteristics of democracy since ancient times.These principles are reflected in all citizens being equal before the law and having equal access to legislative processes.

Nice idea, heh?

Those of us who were around during the time the US was busy wrestling dominos in the course of “saving the world for democracy” might be forgiven for thinking democracy a new-ish, western-ish concept since not a lot of talk about Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and India, cultures that adhered to democratic practices before the Greeks came up with the word, entered debates over whether or not dropping cluster bombs over Cambodia was a good plan.

Democracy went from being a Greek word to a Buzz word once … dum de dum dum … communism gave it something to bounce off of and resonate, and as is the nature of such things it became undemocratic to question the righteousness rightness of democracy.

It doesn’t take a deep investigation into history to see how that worked out. Do the term McCarthyism ring a bell?

During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person’s real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment.

As Thomas Jefferson so aptly put it: A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

So, is democracy a red herring, a set of shiny, jangling keys designed to take our eyes off the prize of true freedom and call it healthy compromise?

American history is rife with praise for the democratic way of doing government, starting as it did from roots dug from monarch trees that had held the mountaintop for centuries, but perhaps the motivation was best summed up years later by that very British brain, Winston Churchill, when he said, ” … democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

Unless the world ends in 2012, there is much more to come in the way of evolving systems of governing bits of our increasingly crowded planet. Power will shift, economies will weaken and strengthen in little relation to rightness or wrongness, wars will happen and winners will be touted as those holding the true path to glory. People will even adjust to Facebook altering the way feeds work.

“Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either [aristocracy or monarchy]. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
~ John Adams

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Bright Ideas

Posted in Friends, Island life, Nature, Seychelles, tagged , on September 1, 2011| 10 Comments »

I’ve not had the energy to post much lately.

Yes, feeling a bit the dim bulb these days as I look for a light at the end of the tunnel, unlike a dear friend who is an energy-making machine!

Aside from her inborn facility to generate no end of sunshine exuding ion after ion of positivity, she is not only a powerhouse … she is now a power plant.

Between a collection of photovoltaic panels, a new wind turbine and a battery of batteries, she’s almost completely off-grid now, producing enough power to run her house on her own power 22 out of 24 hours on cloudy days. She also collects rainwater in a series 5,000 liter tanks, so her needs for water are satisfied by what falls from the sky.

She is, of course, careful, conserving rather than wasting, with low energy bulbs she flicks off when she leaves a room, not allowing water to run freely down the sink without reason and such as we all should be. (The bright idea that illuminated us for years is now being replaced … as should others.)

Unlike almost everyone else on this tropical island with its 12 hours of daylight year round, frequent rains and almost constant breezes, this friend is harvesting all, and so very happily.

On hot, sunny days, she’s over the moon. Blustery days are a breath of energy-laden fresh air to her. When it’s pissing down rain and the tourists are groaning, she is happy as a clam.

No matter what the weather, she has it covered.

Granted, none of the setup came cheaply. The original outlay was substantial, installation was … well … drawn out and riddled with frustration. But …. what’s done is done and it’s done. She now faces low maintenance, free power and water and … well, power and water.

When the electricity goes out, as it does, her lights are on.

When “weather gets into the pipes” and water doesn’t flow, her toilets flush.

When ever-growing bills come, they don’t come to her in any size other than extra small.

Seychelles, so far, is not an petroleum producing nation, yet our electricity comes from diesel-powered generators with fuel coming to us on ships that also require huge amounts of diesel to get it here. Our water catchment systems can sometimes not meet demand and during times of little rain need supplementing by desalination plants that run on … you guessed it … diesel.

Does this sound just plain silly to anyone else?

How much would it take to require new construction … and some of this involves huge projects that cover many acres … to include the technology my friend has voluntarily installed?

Sure it would add some cost to construction, but putting more pressure on already stressed systems is expensive, too, and in more ways than financial.

If individuals were also encouraged to invest in retrofitting homes with energy producing equipment and water collection systems, and helped with those investments, the country could move closer to self-sustainability, save a fortune on importing fuel, reduce pollution and increase the ‘green’ factor by a huge margin.

Our tiny island nation could set the bar by which other countries would have to compare their own commitment to sustainability, the environment and forward thinking, just has my friend has in her small, yet significant way.

It’s only old fossils who insist we continue to rely on old fossils … we can be reNEWable!

Gee. Seems just writing about energy has given me some ….

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Too many fish in the sea?

Posted in Health, Island life, Nature, News, science, Seychelles, The United Nations, tagged , , , , , on August 23, 2011| 23 Comments »

Wiki imageFor those of us living on islands surrounded by miles and miles of water, as these clearly are, the tragic shark attacks of the past weeks convey a resonance that goes deeper than the horror of the deaths.

With the Indian Ocean on our doorstep we’re used to seeing the sea almost every hour of every day, but we’re looking at it a bit differently for now, contemplating what lies beneath the barrier between air and water, and from many angles.

For sure, sharks are scary and we’re keeping our kids to the shallows, but many are also considering what the seas may still promise when these children are adults. With part of the reaction to the recent shark attacks amounting to a virtual war, a petition is circulating advising caution.

In response to a government statement by Mr St Ange, director of Seychelles Toursim (sic) Board who said “We need to find the beast and get it out of our waters,”

We would like to highlight the following misconceptions implied within this statement1. Sharks are not beasts they are ancient fish highly specialized and adapted to hunting in aquatic environments.2.Sharks have for centuries lived, reproduced and hunted in the oceans travelling (sic) thousands of miles each year, therefore, the notion of a land based species i’ll adapted to the aquatic environment owning the seas is a little ridiculous. 3. By “get it out” do you mean remove humanly to another location or as some reports have stated begin a shark hunt?
As we are sure you understand culls of species without knowledge of their impact can destroy ecosystems and be tragically detrimental to other species reliant upon them.

Tourism relies on the ocean and any widespread shark culling will have a widespread negative effect on the reefs and the reasons people travel to your beautiful islands.

With an estimated 100 million sharks killed by humans every year, shark populations are crashing in oceans all over the world, some species depleted by over 90%, so the idea of a massive cull does not sit well with everyone.

Many governments and the UN have acknowledged the need for shark fisheries management, but little progress has been made due to their low economic value, the small volumes of products produced and sharks’ poor public image.

That “poor public image” thing hasn’t been helped by the deaths of two young men calmly taking to our beautiful waters. Seychelles depends on two industries for financial security: tourism and fishing. With the world’s second largest tuna processing plant here fish are a very big deal.

Located in the Seychelles International Trade Zone, IOT is the second largest tuna processing and canning plant in the world. In the year ending 31 March 2009, IOT processed almost 66,000 metric tonnes of tuna and sold 4.6 million statistical cases of tuna cans, mostly to the UK, French and Italian markets.

That’s a whole lotta dead fish, folks, and doesn’t even begin to take into account the bycatch that never makes it as far as the factory.

This article published in Australia this morning illustrates many of the issues surrounding the tuna industry.

It will come as a surprise to some that eating fish is bad for the environment. In the past, fish was seen as a healthy and sustainable food option with few ethical implications.

But we know now that fishing fleets are completely dependent on fossil fuels, and have to travel longer and longer distances to find fish in commercial quantities. We also know seafood stocks are crashing at an alarming rate.

The methods we use to improve catch rates harm habitats and kill other species we never meant to eat in the first place.

Unfortunately, farming fish does not solve these problems.

The best solution to this growing problem is to eat only those fish you know to be harvested sustainably.

The issues, of course, are not only local, not limited to the local economy, happy tourists or putting tuna in tins.

Nope.

The issue is a global human population at close to seven billion and growing daily which puts paid to any idea of sustainability over the long haul.

Shark-free seas and cupboards full of tinned tuna may actually sound okay to some, but when the oceans die we’ll go with them.

There is, however, the option put on film way back in 1973:

In the year 2022, the population has grown to forty million people in New York City alone. Most housing is dilapidated and overcrowded, and the homeless fill the streets and line the fire escapes and stairways of buildings. Food as we know it in present times is a rare and expensive commodity. Most of the world’s population survives on processed rations produced by the massive Soylent Corporation, including Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, which are advertised as “high-energy vegetable concentrates.” The newest product is Soylent Green, a small green wafer which is advertised as being produced from “high-energy plankton.” It is much more nutritious and palatable than the red and yellow varieties, but, like most other food, it is in short supply, which often leads to food riots.

For any who may not know where this goes, we’ll skip to the last line of “Soylent Green” …

“Soylent Green is PEOPLE!”

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“Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.” ~ Ogden Nash

Posted in Island life, Nature, News, Poetry, Seychelles, Writers, tagged , , on August 21, 2011| 4 Comments »

Anse Lazio

Having nothing fun to say for myself this morning, it seems a good day to post the words of another, and who better than Ogden Nash with a take that is especially apt right now?

Pretty Halcyon Days
by Ogden Nash

How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!
No letters to answer,
No bills to be burned,
No work to be shirked,
No cash to be earned,
It is pleasant to sit on the beach
With nothing at all to be done!
How pleasant to look at the ocean,
Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;
It fills me with noble emotion
To think I am able to swim in it.
To lave in the wave,
Majestic and chilly,
Tomorrow I crave;
But today it is silly.
It is pleasant to look at the ocean;
Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.

How pleasant to gaze at the sailors.
As their sailboats they manfully sail
With the vigor of vikings and whalers
In the days of the vikings and whale.
They sport on the brink
Of the shad and the shark;
If its windy they sink;
If it isn’t, they park.
It is pleasant to gaze at the sailors,
To gaze without having to sail.

How pleasant the salt anesthetic
Of the air and the sand and the sun;
Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventure upon.
But the sun and the sand
No contractor can copy;
We lie in the land
Of the lotus and poppy;
We vegetate, calm and aesthetic,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.

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Tunnel blather …

Posted in I wanna, Island life, Loss, Men, My Chinese Checkered Past, On getting older, Seychelles, tagged , on August 20, 2011| 21 Comments »

There are times when I truly can’t figure out whether I’m losing my battle with depression or life really does suck, not that it matters, since I can’t do much about either and both piss me off.

The down-and-outness of being down-and-out for so long makes it difficult to rise above the ever-mounting shit and even I am bored with my pathetic attempts to climb. I hate this wimpy, beaten me, but my hands are so shredded from grasping at straws, pulling at bootstraps and clinging to hope that it’s hard to concoct oomph from ack, yikes and not again.

I’m not unfamiliar with the layout of this tunnel, but the repeated encounters where light at the end of it turned out to be nothing but a rapidly approaching train have have set me to cowering along the moldy walls, and with retreat not an option, advancing unlikely and standing still dangerous it doesn’t help much that I know where the exits are since they are locked tight.

Recent flickers of brightness were mere tricks of the eye that proved to be annoyingly less than nothing and only served to emphasize the darkness, but that’s actually okay; I’m not afraid of the dark, just of what lurks in it. You’d think by now I’d have stopped paying attention to to gleams cast by fool’s gold, yet I I still tend to stumble in their direction, knowing all along that I’m bound to fall on my face … again.

I know the old adage that says, “Sometimes the only thing one can change is attitude”, and I can wear that for a while. It’s easy enough to count my blessings, revel in the good fortune that brought me my children, my friends, the creative outlet I have, the beauty around me … and be grateful.

In so many ways I am a very lucky woman. I’m not starving in Sudan or in danger of freezing on the streets of St. Petersburg. I have a house and a view and a car and a fridge, shoes and shirts and shorts, books … even an iPad, FFS. Three out of four of my kids are alive … wonderful, smart and healthy … blessings every one. I have great friends, interesting conversation, and laugh often.

So what’s my problem?

See?

I can see the glass as half full while at the same time knowing how close to empty it is. It just takes effort.

I have problems. I suffer from depression, impetuosity, rotten taste, generosity, hope, pride, a wide range of faults, fear. I live on a small island, am a 60-year-old single-parent with limited prospects and energy, few resources and am running out of ideas. People expect a lot from me, and I rarely let them down. Demands mount daily while nothing presents that might allow me to meet them.

I need help, don’t know where to look for it and would be reluctant to ask if I did.

Consider this post blather. I’ll get over it.

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Keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle …

Posted in Island life, Nature, News, Seychelles, tagged , , , , on August 18, 2011| 8 Comments »

Anyone who has not yet heard of the tragic deaths from shark attacks in Seychelles just isn’t paying attention, as the story went global very fast after a British honeymooner became the second victim in a fortnight.

Following on the heels of the future King of England’s own honeymoon here, the story quickly became fodder the world’s media could really sink their teeth into and requests for info, photos, gory details … whatever … have already come in to me from reporters hoping for a local angle competing publications may have missed.

Here is my response to an email from The Daily Mirror:

I’m on a different island, the main island of Mahé, not Praslin where the attacks occurred, so have none of the info you’ve asked for.

As a service, however, you might remind readers that the sea is full of fish and some of them are dangerous and that not all holiday destinations are Disneyland. I am hoping these tragic events don’t lead to a massive shark kill, as it is their soup we enter when we decide to go for dips outside the confines of swimming pools.

As happened in Norway recently, man met beast on beast’s turf and shit happened. Not nice. Not pretty. Very sad. That bear, by the way, was in bad shape …

While examining the 39 stone male that was shot and killed after attacking the campsite of 13 people, Norway’s veterinary institute discovered that several of the bear’s teeth were “very damaged” before the attack.

“Under two of the canines and many of the incisors, the nerves were exposed. This causes serious pain and changes the behaviour of bears,” Bjoernar Ytrehus, the veterinarian who examined the bear’s head, said in a statement.
…

“This could be a factor that contributed to the attack,” he said.

“Starving and suffering, a bear is more unpredictable and aggressive than normal,” he said.

Well, yeah. So am I. And uninvited guests would not be welcome here, either, under those circumstances.

The Indian Ocean is much bigger than a Norwegian island, however, and sharing the water is usually quite okay. Any casual snorkel reveals the vast variety of life under the surface where animals swim, crawl, burrow, float, sleep, breed, eat and get on with the business of living. There is an obvious food chain that ranges from small to big to bigger to huge with each creature filling a function. That’s what’s often called “Nature”.

Shark is a popular menu item in Seychelles, so obviously man-bites-fish is common enough, but contrary to some lines of thought, humans are also a link in the food chain. Sure, we’re top predators and kill more of our fellow Earth inhabitants than any other species, but that doesn’t mean we’re not beyond being considered snacks.

There is no malice in a shark attack, no Gee, that guy just got married and looks so happy on his honeymoon, so let’s put paid to that involved. A big, hungry fish has no motive for mayhem other than lunch and notes no difference in packaging.

We can thank Stephen Spielberg for imbuing us with accusatory dread over sharks … and I have … and the lurking fear and accompanying music that comes unbidden in mirky water, but the fact is we give up our role as top predator when we enter the water and might as well change our name to Frank Furter.

Being on holiday does not convey safety and no amount of stars in a destination’s designation encases a visitor in an unbreakable bubble of protection. The world’s most beautiful beach isn’t a ride at Universal and there’s no keeping your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times option for those who chose to think it’s safe to get in the water.

Sharks are ancient, complex and fascinating creatures that have been around in one form or another for more than 420 million years.

Since that time, sharks have diversified into 440 species, ranging in size from the small dwarf lanternshark, Etmopterus perryi, a deep sea species of only 17 centimetres (6.7 in) in length, to the whale shark, Rhincodon typus, the largest fish, which reaches approximately 12 metres (39 ft 4 in) and which feeds only on plankton, squid, and small fish by filter feeding. Sharks are found in all seas and are common down to depths of 2,000 metres (6,600 ft). They generally do not live in freshwater, with a few exceptions such as the bull shark and the river shark which can live both in seawater and freshwater. They breathe through five to seven gill slits. Sharks have a covering of dermal denticles that protects their skin from damage and parasites, and improves their fluid dynamics so the shark can move faster. They have several sets of replaceable teeth.

Well-known species such as the great white shark, tiger shark, blue shark, mako shark, and the hammerhead are apex predators, at the top of the underwater food chain. Their extraordinary skills as predators fascinate and frighten humans, even as their survival is under serious threat from fishing and other human activities.

That serious threat amounts to an estimated 100 MILLION sharks killed every year by people, many just for their fins.

That, too, is tragic.

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None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. ~Henry David Thoreau

Posted in Health, I wanna, Island life, My Chinese Checkered Past, Older women, On getting older, Sex on August 2, 2011| 28 Comments »

17 to 60

The question of the week seems to be:

How does it feel to be 60?

After a flash of “Ya talkin’ to me?” that clears fairly quickly since I can only be delusional in short spurts, the answer so far comes in some version of: Well, it sure feels weird to say it.

For much of the time, I can go with Erma Bombeck’s take:

As a graduate of the Zsa Zsa Gabor School of Creative mathematics, I honestly do not know how old I am. ~Erma Bombeck

That gets harder to swallow when birthdays present, and decade-flipping ones make it close to impossible even though most of the time I have no idea what bloody month it might be and how notoriously crap I am with numbers.

All-in-all, I don’t feel different. I’m less-than-chuffed about how I look, but I felt the same at seventeen so nothing odd about that. The list of places I want to go, things I want to do, people I want to see has grown no shorter. I still wonder what I’ll be when I grow up and which paths I may discover will lead me there. I like loud music, raucous laughter, rolling around on the floor with kids, occasionally drinking myself stupid and wild sex when I can get it. I make more decisions with my heart than my head, gamble outrageously with my health and safety and take comfort from hope no matter how often that has proven fruitless. I have all my own teeth, can read without glasses or 5-foot-long arms, don’t color my hair or inject toxins into my face. I avoid doctors, ignore aches and pains and spend a lot of time in the sun.

I’m as intolerant as ever of the cautious old who set life behind them and choose recollection over participation, dependability over experience, sagacity over enthusiasm, no matter how many years they may have chalked up. On the same hand, I’m still far too lenient when it comes to devil-may-care brilliance, too easily dazzled and can highly enjoy hours spent in conversations on topics I’ve not had before from angles new to me. I dream of happy-ever-after.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
~Samuel Ullman

So … 60 years …

Okay … it’s now my mother’s hands sprouting from the end of my arms, I’m slower up a hill, I allow myself a certain rudeness I’d been uncomfortable with when younger (especially with “authority figures”, since many are whippersnappers). My epidermis grows thinner no matter how thick-skinned I become. I don’t pop up as fast after a knockdown. My rose-colored glassed sport a cynical filter. I need more, trust less and spend a lot of time pondering the meaning of it all.

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
~Victor Hugo

Maybe I do do delusional … maybe I’m living it … but, for now anyway, I’m going with the thought that I’m a teenoldager.

Here’s a birthday gift from my beautiful eldest that illustrates some of the steps between past and present …

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“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” ~Madeleine L’Engle

Posted in Friends, Hopeful thoughts, I wanna, Loss, love, Music I like, My Chinese Checkered Past, On getting older, Seychelles, tagged , , , , on July 30, 2011| 28 Comments »

Photo credit: Wiki imagesA long-tailed tropic bird lifts and turns and swoops over my valley, sculpting shapes from the morning breeze while brandishing a glint of the rising sun on white wings.

It’s going to be a hot one today; clear, yet steamy with the infusion of last night’s rain upping the humidity ante considerably — not a bad thing, being good for the skin and all.

And so begins the last day of my decade that starts with a five.

In reading over words others have written on approaching senectitude I find myself nodding in agreement with some, railing against others, and taking some comfort in the idea I’m far from alone in my ponderings and in interesting company.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. ~Oscar Wilde

I’m sixty tomorrow (Did I just write that?), still too young to use the word “spry” when self-identifying, so figure Judith Regan’s line can be useful: The key to successful aging is to pay as little attention to it as possible.

I can do that. Most of the time.

Anniversaries of my birth, however, have long been cause for itchy, scratchy contemplation, and the round numbers ever more so.

There is still no cure for the common birthday.
~John Glenn

As I write, the kids are off with Gay plotting something for the occasion, their enthusiasm bubbling over, excitement erupting in giggles from Cj and admonishments from Sam to keep the bubbles as thoughts so as not to spoil surprises.

Cute and wonderful as it is, the numbers stick in my throat as Cj’s six years get multiplied by ten in my mirror and I check out my reflection for its giggle factor. Single-parenting at 60 was not in the draft of any plan I recall making, but for the life of me I can’t imagine what I’d be doing now if I didn’t have these two marvels keeping my giggle factory up and running.

It’s funny how life loops around, where a wonky trajectory leads, and how stacking decades fashions unexpected architecture that manages to weather storms, deflect shit asteroids and remain standing even with foundations set in jello.

When I indulge myself and send up birthday wish-shaped smoke signals they look like more conventional structures with security struts, corridors that lead somewhere predictable, doors that open and stay that way, closed doors with working locks, storerooms stocked with other than anxiety. But after 59 years of sending such into the cosmos I’m not expecting much more than an ash blowback.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
~H.L. Mencken

Have I lived 59 years and 364 days unwisely? I can hear the “You betcha! You’ve done some really stupid shit!” from here, yet regrets, I have a few, but, then again, too few to mention. Rather a waste of time and energy at this point in the journey.

When looking at it all backwards it’s hard to feel remorse when what could be considered mistakes in judgement manifested in some wonderful ways. None of my children are acts of contrition and some of the dumbest things I’ve done have wrangled themselves into experiences it would not have been good to miss.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

Seems turning toward 60 I’m still gathering material … commentary to follow if there’s ever the time … and although it’s with neither enthusiasm nor delight I hit this wall — more trepidation and its accompanying angst — I have always been a fan of irony.

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