OLLI Resumes

It's been a good summer off.  Made it to downstate destinations, made it across to the America's opposite coast, welcomed a new Rabbi who has made Saturday morning a more desirable destination for me.  Some of my anticipated mental activity did not fare as well, and the lazy hazy days of summer did not generate a very good work ethic.  But the fall transition begins soon, delayed a week by my long anticipated trip to Europe. 

Fall has always been my favorite season, a transition from amusement to achievement, though not to the total obliteration of amusement.  We have the Holy Days.  College Football begins this weekend.  School now resumes before Labor Day in many places, with the Back to School ads largely gone as retailers look ahead to Halloween.  And travel gets a little less spontaneous.  It's hard to be my Best Me in the hot summer.  Fall seems more conducive to effort.  And a week or so in France may be just the right inflection point.

While I am overseas, the Osher Institute's Fall semester resumes.  Three of the teachers have sent me their syllabus or introduction for four of the five classes in which I have enrolled.  Three of the four will follow a video series, either a Great Courses program with discussion or independent weekly DVDs related to the topic.  The other seems more a lecture format.  The fifth, a lecture series on the New Testament will remain a surprise until my first class.  Four of the five are on site at the OLLI Campus which immerses me with people after something of a summer lapse, only partially compensated by my renewed and honestly unanticipated affinity for my weekly synagogue attendance.

School restores a focus on work as a primary activity.  My mind engages during the class presentations, but it also engages in conversation, looking at the artwork that they hang on the walls, walking on the campus grounds wondering about the plants.  I will sometimes bring my laptop, particularly if I have two classes separated by a lunch break, or my writing portfolio if I don't.  Leaving the house to get there, about a twenty-minute drive each way, reinforces that this is a destination, one not easily duplicated at home.

So some time in France to conclude the summer, then the sometimes serious business of being an active senior.

Recording Shows

As soon as I retired I set into motion a few significant projects.  A cruise on the Adriatic took place within months. Creation of My Space took longer.  But now I have half a previously unusable room, kept fully functional for two years.  It has a stereo, large desk with midspace for my laptop and perimeter for all else based largely on usage. Planning materials and notebook in front.  Lights directed to illuminate my central work spaces, full coffee cup to my right, empty coffee cups to my left.  There is a recycling bag, not yet entirely full within reach.  I captured a functional but worn recliner, investing in a new navy textured cover for it.  And the largest purchase, a 55 inch flat screen TV with advanced cable.  I used to watch it all the time, now much less.

Despite a plethora of channels, I watch mostly three.  It took a while to figure out how to isolate Create TV, Science Channel, and Jewish Broadcasting Service as my Favorites, but now I can just navigate to the favorites bar.  After supper each evening, I scroll through each, capturing the schedule from 7PM to 6AM the following morning, setting the record option for what I want to see over the next few days.  Most shows repeat a few times, so I preferentially record overnight, leaving me some time to scroll through channels 1471 to 1480 to see what's on at the time, as I tend to like the nature shows or some of the history options, or maybe some travel programs.  But over time, I watch mostly what captured my attention a day or two before.

Having done this a few months, I get a better sense of what interests me.  Create TV's schedule seems dominated by food preparation shows which rarely get tapped for recording even though time in the kitchen has provided me considerable pleasure in retirement.  I much prefer to scan my cookbooks or surf the internet for recipes I might like to try myself.  Travel shows capture me more.  I haven't been to that many places but would have liked to visit more.  And when I do travel, the destinations tend to be either purposeful like a professional conference or destination like vacation, neither affording me the same opportunity to poke around that the hosts of the travel shows have.  I don't much like the local people dressing up in costume to perform for tourists; it just seems too contrived.  But there was a time when I would walk through neighborhoods, or more recently drive through them, in the towns where I lived and enjoy seeing the hosts do something similar in the places they visit.

Jewish TV seems more problematic in the selections.  I have gotten reacquainted with the Talmud half-hours, though I record more than I watch.  Same for discussions, some outstanding, some contrived with people of prominence pitching their ideological hardballs. I record more than I watch, but rarely delete one prematurely.  If recording capacity were more crammed I would.

If a theme emerges, perhaps I am attracted more to external to me more than part of me.  Cooking is participatory, travel to places remote is more the spectator me.  Jewish thought captures me more than Jewish identity.  I support Israel as a Jewish homeland more in the way I supported Refuseniks.  I have an obligation to peoplehood but as I see from JBS, Israel is for Israelis to exercise their sovereignty while I watch.  My head will nod sometimes, shake sometimes but the passion in either direction doesn't materialize.  Yet I remain interested enough to select some for viewing, though not to interrupt what I am doing instead to watch these things at the time of broadcast.  Maybe how I choose what I do when or save something I want for later makes one of the more reliable disclosures of the inner me.

Donating Platelets

Retired people become less useful.  Invitations to offer an opinion on new treatments still come my  way but clicking the Retired Box results in an automatic exclusion.  What I have been able to do more, something highly valuable to anonymous recipients in great need, has been to share my CMV negative platelets to assist some of the chemotherapy patients who often develop thrombocytopenia.  While we now have Granulocyte Colony Stimulating Factor for low leukocyte counts and Epogen to restore red cells, a means of stimulating platelet restoration chemically has been elusive.  Selective transfusion remains a core intervention for recovery. 

While I had been a periodic whole blood donor for many years, prompted mainly by the transfusion insurance a single blood donation once a year would offer my family, once notified that my CMV negative platelets had special value, I made a point of donating four times a year, receiving a 50 donation pin within the past year.  It meant scheduling  this first thing Saturday morning each quarter, for which I would then reward myself with a ride to Lancaster or some other mini-afternoon journey an hour or so away.  This past year, the blood bank expanded to Sunday hours, and with retirement I could go any day.  Rules limit donations to biweekly but so far I've just gone to monthly for the first time. 

Technology has changed.  Traditionally they made the donor into a temporary quadriplegic, tethering me to a recliner with metallic IV's in both antecubial fossae.  I once asked the hematologist in charge, who I knew from my practice, why they needed both arms and metallic access.  Eventually it became a single site for both extraction and return, though the failure rate was much higher and my left hand was a lot more sore that way.  It also seemed to take longer, so after three misadventures I returned to one access to take the blood and the other to return the red cells.  This has worked well.

Incentives have come and gone.  The emergence of Mad Cow Disease and AIDS excluded many potential donors who had potential exposures from living in England to using animal derived insulin for their diabetes.  More people are anticoagulated these days and people take cruises that innocently allow them to stop at a port where the inhabitants might have malaria or Chagas disease.  We also have more people with cancer surviving longer but at the price of toxic treatments.  Thus more need for blood products as the donor pool contracts.  But as long as it is safe for people to get what they need from me, I'm on the list.

They used to offer to screen donors for diabetes with a random glucose taken from the donor plasma or serum.  Rules require eating within three hours so a random glucose in the intermediate range is of limited utility.  RBC collection would allow a hemoglobin A1c which can be drawn randomly but the test is a lot more expensive.  The program stopped a few months back.  For a while my house started to look a little like a Blood Bank Museum with some t-shirt, tote bag, umbrella, or baseball cap either following the donation or by redeeming accumulated points.  That program comes to an end soon.  More disruptive to the blood bank than it's value in enticing donors who usually have a better justification for participating than receiving some kewpie doll with blood bank logo. 

I'm sore, being recently comforted by naproxen once or twice a day for lumbar pain.  In order to donate, this needs to be set aside for three days, and to be sure I usually stop five days in advance.  But the recipient would be in jeopardy without the platelet supply so I can use some icy hot lotion or stretch for a few days.  There's naproxen in the car, first pill resumed on the way home.  And I got my outing and perhaps a small recurrent mitzvah, though it would be unthinkable not to provide this to somebody in need.