Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Enhance Friendships


The program is called Enhance Fitness. I've been enrolled since August of 2010, just a month after I retired from Symetra Financial (formerly known as Safeco Life Insurance Company). Offered through the Northshore Senior Center (a nationwide model for senior centers all over the country), Enhance Fitness was billed as a class offering seniors specific aerobic, strength, and stretch exercises. Interestingly, the program was developed locally by Group Health Cooperative and University of Washington Medical School. Now it is a nationwide program that keeps seniors on their toes (and heels) in fifty states.

Not very flattering
but it's how it is
When I enrolled in the class, which was held in Kenmore, a neighboring suburb of Lake Forest Park where we then lived, the class was a modest size, maybe twelve people total (if everyone was present). We worked in a circle setup in a church basement. The classes were (and are) offered three times a week, year-round. Every four months participants are tested in three simple exercises to measure if they're getting stronger or, at least, holding their own.

It was through this class that I formed several deep and lasting friendships, and I've become acquainted with wonderful people, all of whom opened doors and windows into my satisfying life. As the years have gone by, instructors replaced instructors and word of mouth caused participants to join up (sometimes as many as twenty-five exercisers on a given day). And, yes, people do stop coming for myriad reasons, too, some of them forever--you get my drift.

After Jay and I moved from Lake Forest Park to Bothell, the commute to Kenmore in morning rush hour traffic became more and more challenging, so several years ago I transferred my enrollment to an Enhance Fitness class (same curriculum) closer to my home at the Northshore YMCA. So all these years later, I still attend EF. The different locale has allowed me to meet even more wonderful people--men and women--and the quality of instruction has endeared the YMCA to me. I just hit my twelfth anniversary as an Enhance Fitness participant!  I'd like to say I'm still going strong, but . . .

Without the permission of participants, I won't publish picture in which
individuals are recognizable--but you get the drift: Music, movement, sweat!
Recently I was tested--the same three measurements as always.  When I received my results this time, the test results for the entire twelve years were included!  Not too surprisingly,  I did get stronger on the tests the first ten years, but now . . . gulp. Yup, you guessed it: I'm beginning to show a decline. That's the difference between ages 65 and 77, like it or not.

I am determined to keep at it, however. I can only imagine how decrepit I would be without this class! And I would have never met the dozens upon dozens of wonderful people I exercise with.  I deeply appreciate all the benefits that Enhance Fitness has provided me over the years.


Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Ecclesiastes' Words of Wisdom


The stump sculpture in its youth
As a result of recently walking to the deteriorating stump-sculpture (also known in our family as the "Jay tree") near downtown Bothell, I revisited one of my favorite, and (in my opinion) profound passages from Hebrew Scriptures. 

I fell in love with the Book of Ecclesiastes when I took a summer graduate class in Wisdom Literature at Marquette University in the late 1970s. The old professor (he was pushing seventy) took great pains explaining the metaphors of Qoheleth's poetry to his students. (In my late thirties, I was the oldest in the class.) We learned that almond trees become white when they blossom, grinding women represent the attrition of our teeth with age, lattices refer to cataracts, etc. Each line has metaphorical meaning that now I don't need to have anyone explain.

 As a person in my late seventies, I more fully appreciate the professor's passionate approach to this particular section. I also realize how timeless it is, as so many of my peer group enjoy reminding anyone who'll listen how they "find no pleasure" in their myriad exposure to life's current culture and experiences. This translation is by R.B.Y. Scott and published by Doubleday & Company in 1965. 

Ecclesiastes  XII 1-8

[1]  In the days of your youth, remember your grave,
We loved it when
Jay posed for photos by it--
similar eyes and mustache!
When days of trouble have not come yet,
Nor have the years approached when you will say,
"I find no pleasure in them";

[2]  Before the sunshine turns to darkness,
The light fails from moon and stars
And the clouds return, bringing rains.

[3]  When that day comes, the palace guardians will tremble 
And the powerful men will stoop,
The grinding women will case work because they are few,
And they will find it dark who look out from the lattices.

[4]  The doors to the street will be shut
As the sound of the mill becomes low,
The voice of the birds will be silenced,
And all who sing songs will be hushed.

[5]  Then will men grow afraid of a height,
And terrors will lurk on the road;

The almond tree will blossom, the locust be weighted down,
And the caper berry be impotent.
For a man is on the way to his long-lasting home
And the mourners gather in the street, [waiting]--

[6]  Until the silver cord be cut, and the golden bowl be broken,
The pitcher shattered at the spring
And the water wheel broken at the cistern.

[7]  So dust will return to the earth where it was before,
And the breath of life will return to God who gave it.

[8]  Breath of a breath! says Qoheleth--All is a breath!

Today the sculpture is clearly in the throes
of returning to earth. It is still magnificent.


Saturday, September 2, 2017

Fidget Sketcher


The rage (maybe it's dying back a little, by now) is Fidget Spinners, the little gizmos that can be twirled to amuse and assuage the perpetual fidgeter. I bought one, but couldn't make it work very well--so I passed it along to my eleven-year-old granddaughter.  

Besides, it didn't take the place of my favorite fidget-management tool, the tiny sketchbook that's always tucked inside my purse.

Even reading the spell-binding novel brought along from home doesn't do it for me when I'm waiting for something--whether it's a doctor's appointment, a plane trip, or a play or concert. I can't focus on a book when there's something 'about to happen,' something I'm waiting for. 


That's where my sketchbook comes in handy. All I have to do is look around, pick someone, and start to draw. Most people change their position within two or three minutes, so my drawings are all what might be called "time studies." 


None lasts longer than just a few minutes, like a classic life-drawing class where the teacher calls for warm-up exercises by timing models for one-, three-, five-minute poses at the beginning of class.    
Even feet fidget.
I'll just get started drawing
 them,and they move!
I commuted to downtown Seattle by bus (1986 - 1997) and my sketchbook was a great sanity provider then (pre-cellphone), although the commute was plenty long enough to get engrossed in a book. However, sometimes I didn't have a good book, so I began drawing my fellow commuters as they slept for the entire trip. It was a perfect set-up: my subjects didn't know I was drawing them (when a subject does know, I always stop--pretending that I'm making a grocery list) and a sleeping subject is an artist's dream-model: physically static. 


These are a few very fast sketches from my current purse sketchbook (4"x 6"), now almost full and ready to be stashed in a shoe box with all the others. Not great art, but considering none is more than five minutes (most are considerably less), it's a fun (and challenging) way for me to fidget while I wait.