Welcome to Casa des Flores, Where My Newsletter is my Blog Today

I just finished my April Sage's Play newsletter which spotlights playfulness and healing and gives an update on what's going on with A New Wrinkle. I hope you will take a look at it. It is a creative adventure to put together each month. You can subscribe to the monthly news at www.sagesplay.com

It's Monday morning and I am waking from a collection of vivid dreams--I was sharing a photo album of many journeys with someone and the pictures sometimes came alive. There were images of a beautiful white horse running during a journey to mystical temples --and in another dream sequence, several of us were preparing to go to a play and in order to do so, a lot of climbing up venerable old buildings and in through high windows seemed to be required--illogical and puzzling, but it seemed it had to be done to get to the theater for the show. Sometimes dreams are an awful lot of work and we don't always know what work it is when we wake up. At least not right away.

I have an ACN (Artist Conference Network) coaching session in a couple of hours. I told you that I recently re-joined ACN, didn't I? My current ACN vision is I AM THE VOICE OF THE OLD ONES. The vision and goals one creates --and also the stands one takes in each weekly coaching session are helpful tools for moving forward with confidence and inspiration.

My 3 month goal is to write and produce a 5 minute fundraising video for A New Wrinkle and post it on IndieGoGo. My year goal is to produce a fully staged version of A New Wrinkle.

ACN is a community that helps artists develop breakthroughs in creative focus and momentum. It is also very tender to share each other's artistic life in a supportive, nonjudgemental way. Tomorrow afternoon our ACN group meets at my casa. That will be fun. There are chapters of ACN in various parts of the country. More information available on the website.

I was interviewed the other day by Rebecca Black from the National Center for Creative Aging and her article will appear on their blog and website. I'll post the link when it is available. I used to do a lot of interviewing myself when I was a journalist in NYC and the SF Bay area, and it was enjoyable to experience being the interviewee this time.

I'm having dinner with my dear friend Frannie tonight. She went back to school to get a Master's. She had already been a hospice nurse for 20 years. Now she's teaching nursing at Southern Oregon University and finishing her Master's at the same time. It's rare that she has time for dinner, and I'm looking forward to it.

I have another friend who dropped a successful career as a clothing distributor to become a successful energy worker. I'll write more about Melani and her work sometime soon. Both of these women are great examples of following one's bliss. Hope you and your bliss are having a nice dance together. This time of life gives us the freedom for new explorations and deeper understanding.

The Artist's Life: Gardens and Creative Expression

"Garden writing is often very tame, a real waste when you think how opinionated, inquisitive, irreverent and lascivious gardeners themselves tend to be. Nobody talks much about the muscular limbs, dark, swollen buds, strip-tease trees and unholy beauty that have made us all slaves of the Goddess Flora." ~Ketzel Levine's talkingplants.com


"I cultivate my garden, and my garden cultivates me." ~Robert Brault

This is my first spring in my new home. I found these Japanese quince flowering at the west side of the house yesterday and had to cut two branches to bring inside. The painting is by my daughter Sophia.

In the front garden, the roses and honeysuckle have begun sending their leaves out and the daffodils, hyacinths and tulips are in bloom. A few days ago, I had 3 yards of dark fragrant compost delivered and unloaded by a handsome, cheerful young man named Jesus. All in all, it seemed a good way to greet the spring.





The beautiful blue violet of these grape hyacinths is my favorite flower color. It's so ethereal.

I spent the winter months wrestling with masses of ivy roots and branches. That's still not completely over (perhaps it will never be done, like so many things in this life) but I did make a significant change in the garden beds there.



My daughter planted three fruit trees in the back gardens--a Gravenstein apple, a Tilton apricot and a Hungarian cherry.



Come along with me as I change the subject a little. I love this photograph I found of an old building surrounded by and crowned with green. It has the patina of oldness. Oldness is reassuring, especially in the example of old gardens, forests and cities, even ruins.

When I was younger, gardens were simply not of any interest. It was not until I began to study healing and Buddhism in my early 30s that the ecstatic beauty of gardens dawned on me.

I was writing articles then for the New Age Journal. The opportunity popped up to write a feature on master gardener Alan Chadwick by visiting his gardens in Round Valley, California.

Chadwick was a marvelous human being--dramatic, original, passionate and very attuned to the energies of nature and the garden. He was 72 when I met him. He was elegant--tall, lean and suntanned, full of energy-- with a personality that was both mesmerizing and cantankerous.

It was good to see someone that old--40 years older than me at the time--living so vividly. I still hold him as a powerful model of positive aging. Here's a photo of Chadwick when he was in his 60s.





What I remember most about my approach to those gardens Chadwick created was the palpable resonance of their energies. It was as if everything was singing, trembling and shimmering together--the flowers, vegetables and herbs, the trees and vines were an intricate composition of color, form and voices.


Hmm, I mused to myself, this is what a great garden is like-- uplifting and healing, a display of the innate holiness of nature.


If you are at all interested in either gardening or elders who are making a difference, I recommend the book Growing, Older by Joan Dye Gussow. Gussow also wrote This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader. At 81, she is considered the pioneer of the locovore movement. Her writing is humorous and inspiring. She's a terrific example of how life-enhancing it is to have a great passion.

"Hope is the lesson Nature keeps teaching me. She keeps producing. She recovers. She creates beauty out of loss. She forgives us our impatience and frustration and insistence that things turn out the way we planned. They don't. They turn out the way she planned. We need to be willing to sacrifice control to learn adaptation."

Joan Gussow, from Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables

Well, I have to return to working on developing a video script and setting shots for a film clip on A New Wrinkle, our musical revue on aging. It's always astounding how much work it takes to create a well-crafted, brief piece of writing. Another form of weeding, pruning and transplanting. And it looks as if the sun is coming out and giving us a respite here between rainstorms.

It Feels Good to Be Old at Heart

Last year a company called Circle K began an ad campaign for Geezerade in Canada. Geezerade was its usual icy slush under another name, in this case a catchy ageist name. The Geezerade campaign was so obviously ageist that it aroused a popular outcry on Facebook, where many irate older adults posted about their reaction to the ads.

As one person noted, “It’s discrimination. If there was a public ad that called young people punks and dimwits, no one would stand for it,” commented one poster. Another said, "I wrote to Circle K to express my disgust at this derogatory ad campaign. If they were to advocate any other ethnic or demographically defined group as a name for their awful product, the outrage would be biblical in proportion. But, denigrate seniors? Who will stand up and protest? I did."

And this is what is going to change pervasive ageist ads--people saying they will not stand for it and doing something about it, whether that something is picketing, writing a letter or organizing a collective protest.

Advertisers continue to use images and taglines that ridicule the appearance and qualities of older people. It's deeply ingrained in our culture. Often older women are the target. But it can change. It depends on each of us taking responsibility. Not numbing out but instead taking part in changing things by complaining, waxing eloquent, demonstrating--using the methods that have already been used and continue to be used to counter other toxic prejudices.




In a wonderful essay in Audacious Aging (a book I highly recommend), philosopher/teacher Ram Dass discusses how difficult aging is in our culture, especially for women, whose attempts to continue to pass for young "... often masks a profound despair." Ram Dass continues, " It is as if we are urged to fight, over and over again, a losing battle against time, pitting ourselves against natural laws."

Oh my dear. Pitting oneself against natural laws is such an awful lot of work. It's stressful-- and of course ineffective. I stopped coloring my hair years ago. My silver hair dates me, and I am okay about that. I even advertise my vintage. I am glad I've lived this long and I enjoy finding positive ways to embrace aging as a natural part of life. It feels more real and certainly more relaxed.

I've spent quite a bit of time musing about the fear of aging and the shame accompanies being old for many people. It's been a regular preoccupation of mine, especially over the past 2 years as I've developed the lyrics for A New Wrinkle. I wrote the song Passing for Young as a way of looking at the insistent belief that we have to appear youthful in order to be a viable, worthy human being.


I wrote Hip Hop Elder's Rant to give voice to other forms of prejudice about aging, in order to raise awareness and catalyze perceptual changes. Sex after 60 debunks the stereotype that older people are sexless. Scintillating Secrets of the Older Brain debunks the stereotype that older adults are senile. All the songs in A New Wrinkle debunk ageist stereotypes and present a pro-aging view.

I am always surprised when even in the relatively sophisticated town of Ashland, Oregon I encounter older adults who are in denial of their aging or ashamed and apologetic about being older. But why should any place be immune from that, even if its residents do have a high level of education? Ageism is pervasive and largely unchallenged. Most of us do not investigate it or look at the ways it affects our self-image or our lives. As Ronni Bennett commented recently in her blog Time Goes By, we've been so brainwashed by ageist language and images since childhood that we become "complicit in our own stereotyping."

According to a study that appeared in The Gerontologist (Vol. 41, No. 5):

In a survey of 84 people ages 60 and older, nearly 80 percent of respondents reported experiencing ageism–such as other people assuming they had memory or physical impairments due to their age. The 2001 survey by Duke University’s Erdman Palmore, PhD, also revealed that the most frequent type of ageism–reported by 58 percent of respondents–was being told a joke that pokes fun at older people. Thirty-one percent reported being ignored or not taken seriously because of their age.

Negative stereotypes hurt older people and may even shorten their lives according to psychologist Becca Levy, PhD, assistant professor of public health at Yale University. In Levy’s longitudinal study of 660 people 50 years and older, those with more positive self-perceptions of aging lived 7.5 years longer than those with negative self-perceptions of aging. The study appeared in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 83, No. 2).

Don't belittle aging or being old. Don't cave into pervasive cultural stereotypes and shuffle around apologizing for being over the hill and ready for the scrap heap. Move into the authority and expertise and wisdom of your years.

Relax into being old at heart.








On that happy note, I was glad to find this wonderful statement of values by Oregon elder attorney Orrin Onkin at Ronni Bennett's Time Goes By blog recently. Brilliant! Right on! Let's create a society where our elders view aging in these ways.

• We will not be judged by the values of youth.

• We will not be expelled from work or play.

• We will not equate aging with illness.

• We will not be a subject matter for experts.

• We will not be the objects of condescension or ridicule.

• We will not be a social or economic problem.

• We will not be trivialized.

• We will not be docile.

• We will not be interned.

• We will treat our later decades as a unique stage of human development.

• We will grow and learn.

• We will integrate our social, our psychological and our spiritual lives.

• We will take care of our own.

• We will cooperate across generations to create a better world.

• We will nurture and guide the young.

• We will contribute according to our abilities.

Orrin Onkin wrote and published this Older American's Pledge.

P.S. Do you read my monthly newsletter? You can subscribe to it at www.sagesplay.com

A Cultural Obsession with Senior Moments

Senior moments--if you're over 50, you have had at least a few of them. And don't forget it.

In case you do, there are many reminders in many forms.

Like the T shirt from Cafe Press that shows a person searching for something, with the caption, "I know it's here somewhere."

You can play the Senior Moments game, "a memory game for those who might need the practice" or get a book on senior moments, either a humorous one like "1,000 Unforgettable Senior Moments: Of Which We Could Remember Only 246" or one that focuses on memory workouts.

And of course there is a persistent attention to senior moments in cartoons, jokes and everyday conversation. "Are you having a senior moment?" (pretty soon you will be a doddering idiot, just wait and see.)

I attended a senior forum sponsored by the local chapter of AAUW a few weeks ago. One of the presenters make a self-deprecating mention of her senior moment as a way of gaining rapport with the audience. Many people grinned or laughed out loud, but I groaned inwardly.

Why? As those who know me are quite aware, I am very fond of having a good laugh. Senior moments just don't do much for me as laugh material. Instead I usually get grumpy.

Sometimes I wax philosophical. I muse, "If we lived in a culture that was more friendly towards the process of aging, I imagine I would find senior moments funnier."

As a society we view aging as a time of vulnerability and decline. You lose your teeth, you lose your mobility, you lose your social cachet, you lose your mind. Of course this is quite hilarious on some level--hilarious, highly charged and discomfiting-- and yes, we often deal with difficult things through humor.

No one wants to lose it. For most of us, this applies especially to our minds. And prevalent portrayals of aging make us very anxious about the prospect of losing our minds. The current focus on debility makes it seem that Alzheimer's or another form of dementia is inevitable. Here's the story--from the age of 65-80, 5-7% of older adults become ill with Alzheimer's. That means 95-93% of older adults do not have dementia.

After 80, the risk increases to 50%. None of us want to be afflicted with dementia. I think our obsession with senior moments is related to that fear.

I was thinking the other day about how it's okay for black comedian Chris Rock to make jokes about black people, but it's racist for (boring) white entertainer Billy Crystal to try to do the same thing.

I'm of that mind about senior moments. If you and I are talking and you mention your experience of senior moments, I can empathize or laugh. But if I am getting bombarded via popular culture with the senior moment phenomenon and its implications --"you are losing it, you are losing it, be afraid, be very afraid!" I am not in a friendly mood.

Of course, I have senior moments. I also have aches and pains sometimes. (I had aches and pains earlier in life, too. Didn't you?) I move more slowly and tire more easily than I did 20 years ago when I was in my youthful 50s.

But I am not interested in defining myself by my deficits. I am interested in illuminating my potential, strengthening positive character traits, healing old wounds, taking risks, and enjoying the freedom and fulfillment that's possible in this stage of life.

I love this photo of an old woman in Indonesia performing an offering dance. I prefer to engage this way, as an old woman performing an offering dance. There is no time when one is too old to create a sacred gesture. In fact, old age lends itself to engagement with life from a sacred perspective.

I wrote the song "Scintillating Secrets of the Older Brain," as a counterpoint to our cultural obsession with senior moments. It's one of the 12 songs in A New Wrinkle, a musical revue on aging.

Why focus on what's wrong? Why not focus on what's right? It feels a lot better and is much more fun overall.

As some of the song lyrics for Scintillating Secrets of the Older Brain tell us:

"New research shows cognition peaks midlife or older—
midlife or older! Cognition peaks midlife or older.

Farewell, outdated theories of the human brain!

Thinking and creating all those years
Means you’ve got dendrite density my dears
forest of dendrites in your brain—branches that shimmer
the woodlands in the younger brain are so much thinner
youth needs more time to grow a wiser mind.

Memories, insights, lifelong skills and great imagination
Brings a capacity for complex cogitation
Now everything you know is an architecture
ready to be orchestrated with a flare
that only you can muster!

And why use one hemisphere when you can use two?
Though few folks know it—that’s exactly what older people do.
Bi-lateral brain activity –a proclivity that grows with age
the stage when you gain access to life’s whole archive
holistically—synergistically—and on dual drive.

Though the subject has not made headlines yet
Don’t let that stop you from enjoying it!

Scintillating secrets of the older brain!
Let’s not forget the almond-shaped amygdala—
With time, torrential storms of feeling
that earlier sent us reeling no longer blow through town.
That’s right! Old people mellow into greater wisdom
and partly that is due to the amygdala and limbic system.
Farewell outdated theories of the human brain!

In other words,
Be erudite or recondite
be smart, be wise, embody equipoise
be an authority or a magician
be prone to flights of great imagination
raise your expectations
set aside your reservations
engage big neural fireworks
& join the celebration!"

You can read more about the fascinating new research on the expanded capacities of the older brain in Dr. Gene Cohen's wonderful book The Mature Mind. You can read more song lyrics from A New Wrinkle at the Sage's Play website.

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
---- Epictetus

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.

---Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Artist's Life: Blessings of Creativity

I often go to bed early, so waking before dawn is not so unusual for me. This morning I got up at 4am with a head full of ideas. Starting the day early is normal, but waking with a flood of ideas does not happen every morning. Should I be thankful for that? Probably so. And I'm thankful too for the ongoing exhuberance of my creativity.

Many creative ideas are brief visitors. They just pass through on their trajectory as they seek some artist who has an affinity with them. Some of them do stick around though in order to be womanifested.

This morning I met with a gaggle of ideas for creating T-shirts, baseball caps and mugs with positive aging slogans on them. I was thinking of them as perks for donors who contribute to the fundraising campaign that we'll be mounting at IndieGoGo soon.

I already developed one T-shirt that says YOUTH IS A GIFT OF NATURE BUT AGE IS A WORK OF ART...Perhaps I should do more of those, I thought. How about a t-shirt that says AUDACIOUS AGING or BE BOLD! The B in bold should be a different color in order to bring the idea that one has the choice be bold in aging. I really like the idea of creating objects with positive aging remarks on them. Should we also develop a little book with photos and lyrics from A New Wrinkle, as Frannie suggested? Hmmmm....

And so I made my way to the kitchen to brew the morning coffee.


My daughter's puppy Samo stayed overnight. Now my house looks the way a place looks when there's an active toddler around--toys and a half chewed up cardboard box are strewn all over the floor. Samo's resting on the couch at the moment. When it warms up we'll go out into the garden and play out there for awhile. It is delicious to have an animal friend in my life again after more than a decade without any pets. I enjoy her visits-- though so far I have no urge to get a dog of my own.


A NEW WRINKLE'S CREATIVE MOMENTUM

During the last month I engineered three photo shoots of tango dancers, Death and Baba Yaga, to be used for publicity for A New Wrinkle. I really enjoyed getting dolled up as Death and Baba Yaga. Stepping into various personas and archetypes is a great deal of fun. What about doing it on a regular basis? a voice within me is saying. Hmmm....

I've returned to do considerable work on the script for A New Wrinkle, after a great session with my old friend playwright Carolyn Myers. I changed the order of the songs and have done major rewriting on the connective between-song skits. I'm far more satisfied with the script now-- but I'm sure it's still in the development phase.

I have to laugh when I recall starting in on the revue in January 2008 and saying perkily to Carolyn that I was sure it would be ready for production by June. She arched her eyebrows ever so slightly, looked at me straight on and said, "I don't think that's very likely." Of course, she was right. I was naive, overly optimistic and just plain unaware of what it would take to work in a completely new medium, or what a sizeable project I had undertaken.

Thankfully, in spite of an old habit of impatience, I have been enjoying the learning curve, the people I've been meeting and working with and the experience of the revue's organic development.

The garden is another creative endeavor that I find rejuvenating and satisfying. Over the winter months, I've done pruning, digging up ivy roots, enriching the soil and I've even moved plants and planted a few new ones.

I have a red wheelbarrow. When I used it this morning it reminded me of the famous poem that William Carlos Williams wrote about a red wheelbarrow.

---

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams was a renowned poet and he was also a doctor in Paterson, New Jersey --in fact he was my doctor when I was a baby. When I began writing poetry myself at the age of 11, my father used to joke that he thought Dr. Williams had thrown some poetry dust on me when I was a baby. Maybe he did. Poetry has been an essential part of my life and imagination from early on.

Here's Blackwater Woods, a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver


P.S. I have posted some of my writing on the Sage's Play website, and you are invited to take a look at it if you wish. Selections include several poems from Carrying a Torch for the Old Flame, the introduction for Songs of the Inner Life and some articles I've written on aging. Lyrics for the songs in A New Wrinkle are also on the site, as well as 4 mp3s of songs from the revue.

Baba Yaga and the Archetype of the Wild, Wise Old Woman

"There's a saying in our family: Be careful calling forth the great personages of stories; they have keen hearing and are likely to suddenly appear when you least expect them..."

---Clarissa Pinkola Estes

This certainly applies to Baba Yaga. One must have a healthy respect and be prepared for surprises, challenges and strange gifts. Baba Yaga is a figure from Slavic folklore, a dark goddesss, fierce like Kali or Hecate, a wise, wild crone, a demanding figure who may set you off on a heroic task to test your mettle. That's on a good day. When she sees your potential and likes what she sees, she can extend her magic, which she is doing here with the fortunate lad Ivan.

Baba Yaga is an archetype--- which Carl Jung describes as "ancient archaic images that derive from the collective unconscious."

In The Structure of the Psyche, Jung wrote, "The collective unconscious - so far as we can say anything about it at all - appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious..." Jung said.

Archetypes have sweep and magnitude. They bring us out of linear time into the realm of myth and magic.

Which explains something about the fact that Baba Yaga lives deep in a forest in a twirling house that stands on chicken legs.

Naturally I had to write about that when I created lyrics for Baba Yaga's Raga, one of the 12 songs in the musical revue A New Wrinkle.

My house stands up on chicken legs/ it twirls and never sleeps/it makes a fearful frightening sound/that gives the people creeps/ and that's alright, yes that's alright with me."

One of my longtime friends is an archetype known as Coyote Woman. I am attracted to quixotic, mischievous, magical and powerful agents of the imagination, so I suppose it's not that surprising that I invited Baba Yaga to enter my world. Some days though it seems that she appeared before I was aware that I was inviting her. Then it was obvious that I had to write her into A New Wrinkle, my musical revue on aging, as an important character. Not that Baba Yaga could ever be an unimportant character.

So far so good as far as my relationship with Baba Yaga goes. Healthy respect and good motivation help. Clarissa Pinola Estes describes Baba Yaga as, "...a representation of a great woman who sees clearly, is decisive and knows the patterns of the universe." "Confronting and integrating her lessons make the heroines stronger and wiser. In confronting her, the heroines have to listen to their intuition.
Baba Yaga is also unconfined by convention and unafraid to be herself.

In A New Wrinkle she tells us, "You found your inner child years ago, and now it's time to find your inner Baba Yaga!"


I made myself a Baba Yaga headdress months ago-- long gray dreadlocks with silver threads and feathers. I love wearing it.


Last week, a wonderful nose that I ordered arrived in the mail. Baba Yaga has a big nose and I needed one to get into character.



Here are a few of the photos that Helga Motley took in our Baba Yaga session the other day.

the heroinesT

This one is one of my favorites.




What does it say to you?

I'm interested in knowing your reaction to this image and the others here.


















Baba Yaga had a very tiny tea cup that day.

These humans, they can't even remember to bring along a proper tea cup.














Bust those nice little old lady stereotypes with a powerful wise woman archetype!



I invite you to listen to the mp3 of Baba Yaga's Raga at our website www.sagesplay.com, where you can also look at the lyrics for the other song that Baba Yaga sings in A New Wrinkle, a funny song about drugs and medications.

Saturday Shenanigans with Helga

I spent two Saturdays recently with Helga Motley, a photographer I've worked with over the years on many projects.

This time we were focused on some images for A New Wrinkle.

These are a few of the photos she took at our second photo date, when I got dolled up as Death.


One of the songs in A New Wrinkle is titled Death is Right around the Corner. Actually it is a series of songs -- one of which is sung by Death himself. Death says:

Death! it’s a hard job but somebody’s got to do it.

No one knows just when it’ll come and nobody’s gonna live through it.

Imagine if you will what life is like

For me, for Mr. Death.

Folks look at me with anguished eyes

When it comes to their last breath.

They flee from me, they will not play

Not a friend on Earth, no kids at home

I’ve got no one, I’m all alone

No wonder I’m not very gay.

I like some of the images we captured. What do you think of them?


The first time we met, we focused on tango photos. Our models were Clay Nelson and Ann Berry. There is a song titled Sex after Sixty in A New Wrinkle and it debunks the myth that older adults are uninterested in sex and intimacy. What's sexier than tango? Not much.

And even though the song Sex after Sixty actually has a Carribean feel to it in the revue, the lyrics do mention the tango---

doing the tango and fandango
from here to Durango
with your well-seasoned mango!

You can take a listen to an mp3 of the song at our website, www.sagesplay.com. Lyrics are available there, too.


This coming Friday Helga and I are getting together again to get some pictures of Baba Yaga, the archetypal magic hag who provides some of the medicine and humor in A New Wrinkle. You can hear a nice recording of Baba Yaga's Raga on our website, too.

And if you don't already subscribe to our monthly newsletter, please sign up at the website while you're there in order to receive more news and updates, fun graphics and links.

Here's an item from the National Center for Creative Aging January Newsletter....I am not in this league, contenting myself with exercising at the Y, taking some walks in nature and dancing. But more power to Mr. Finch and all older athletes. Here's the news item.

Greenville Centenarian Wants to be the Fastest Man Alive

Bill Finch turned 100 last week, but he still runs a mile twice a week and plays badminton. Finch does not have a secret for his longevity, but has been active his whole life. When he worked, he ran at least one mile a day before breakfast and has continued to pursue an active lifestyle. He set the national record for the 1500 at the age of 96 and plans on running in the National Senior Games in Cleveland by which time he will be 101. “I hope I keep living as long as I’m in good health” said Finch.

January 17, 2012, Wnct.com

Meanwhile, violets are blooming in this unseasonably warm and dry winter. Hoping we get more rain soon.