aware of what I know now that I didn't even a decade ago. I'm amazed at how connecting the dots on various systems, issues and solutions is getting easier and easier.

Learning from people who know more than I do is a great pleasure and for the younger folks possibly ways of survival.

I remember my horror at the rush to put old(er) people in separate living quarters e.g. assisted living; nursing homes; dementia units; especially in New York at the beginning of the Covid onslaught. It seemed to me the goal was to erase people with accumulated knowledge that could help people be self sufficient. We can't have that can we.

To me learning by watching someone and working side by side with them is the best way to acquire new skills.

In the last ten years I've become much more aware of how to grow my own food; how systems like dry toilets and permaculture work; how to cook with much more gusto; how older European housing made of rock and permeable mortar work as healthier places to live; how to eat healthier and to create herb and spice remedies as well as more natural substances for healing; and much more.

I hope to sit with a water color artist after the first of the year to learn how to mix paint and make colors. Possibly learn how to sketch as I can't draw. I can use flowers in wonderful palettes of color from spring to late Fall. I paint with plants. Others say they can't, but it is also learned. The artist told me it's never too late to learn new ways.

I am so glad you highlighted one of my favorite subjects.

Oh, last thought: for those of us losing strength and dexterity I think the answer is to live with or in a community of younger people who could use the experience and they can use their more nimble and stamina-filled selves to create the systems that will help with resilient and happier living.

We were running our little pub in St. Pete for about ten years. I met a retired colonel there who was a combat vet (through a mutual veteran friend), in his fifties at the time, who was already retired on a comfortable pension. He was several years older. We had had a somewhat similar military specialty. He had "been there, got the belt buckle," as he loved to say. In comparison, I with lower rank, far less experience and no combat experience, was more the analyst type.

Because he had the time, he was always trying to get me to go on cross country adventures. I consistently declined, because I was responsible for the business, there was no delegating it to someone else. If I had a day off, I told him, I needed to rest. He said "I'll rest when I'm dead."

We used to argue all the time at the pub about geopolitical bs. He was a great conservative. That's why he made colonel. He drank the koolaid as it were. Don't know what happened to him.

I'm too busy or tired to write there much anymore. I have about 500 posts on my blog, which I don't update any more. I take some satisfaction in knowing when tensions in East Asia increase, interest in my old articles increases markedly, like in the past week or so. After I resolve the "housing insecurity" issue we are experiencing with all its pitfalls, which has plagued us since late 2022, hopefully I will be able to...

Sima, will take a look at your links when I have time throughout the day. Thanks for the OT!

Thousand Year Rock by Monk Bohyun

lyrics in English

Don't really understand why the link has been changed with comments removed. Also, the song did not come up on a routine youtube search, but another old version by a different singer extracted by AI apparently was proffered. MBN's youtube recording of this song 마리아 - 천년바위by Maria the US ex-pat in South Korea doesn't do the song justice, much as I like her otherwise.

Everywhere I go there are old people in the way. Waiting room at the doc, full of old geezers, Costco, people barely able to walk around stopping mid aisle with a cart in the way. Driving, I can understand going the speed limit but 15 under? My wife reminds me that I too am one.