Adventures in Aging — Part 321 When I was finishing high school, the powers that be had us all take an aptitude test. It did not measure achievement, or knowledge, or intelligence. It ferreted out what fields the test-taker was temperamentally suited to work in. …

The old detective show, Dragnet, always contained a scene in which the humorless just-the-facts-ma’am Joe Friday would become irritated by some clueless civilian and give a speech of such power and force that it reduced the poor guy to a quivering tower of Spam aspic. …

I need an electrical outlet installed in our bathroom. No, that’s a lie. My wife needs an electrical outlet installed in our bathroom. She wants a bidet and that requires a new electrical outlet. In our house, new electrical outlets fall on a Venn diagram of household duties within the…

To retain a smidgen of self-esteem, I have for a long time refrained from writing about writing. That self-discipline, along with my remaining self-respect, ends today. I am going to write about writing. I write. I am a writer. Here’s how I do it. I get up early. Early morning…

It’s the latest shiny object in my quest for fitness. I was lounging on the beach in the Dominican Republic with a couple of my old-guy friends and the conversation turned to the ailments that kept us there on the beach, rather than out in the ocean surfing, or snorkeling…

When I was working, every year I attended the annual symposium put on by the one hospital in my community that had a geriatric psychiatric unit. The presenters advised people in the elder-care professions about the progress or, more often, lack of progress in treating Alzheimer’s disease. One doctor told…

ChatGPT is too good to live. ChatGPT is a chat bot invented by a company called OpenAI. It talks with you and, more importantly, answers questions. I love ChatGPT. To put ChatGPT in context, allow me to review my current system of finding answers to questions on the internet. A…

I suffer a mild form of seasonal affective disorder, aptly shortened to SAD. When the Oregon winter rain has been falling for three straight weeks and I no longer remember what the sun looks like, I ingest chemicals to lift my mood. Thirty years ago I would have dropped in…

When I was in gerontology school, they taught that when a family needs someone to do elder care, the oldest daughter gets the job. This is true around the planet. It is a human thing, not a cultural one. Of course, in some families, there is no daughter, or the…