Bucket Lists

One of my favorite TV shows is the NBC series “The Blacklist.” It stars James Spader as rouge FBI agent Raymond “Red” Reddington who was on the lam for more than twenty years before turning himself in. In exchange for his continued freedom, he agrees to help the FBI agents in a special, covert unit capture or eliminate international criminals with whom Reddington had associated over the years. In one episode, Reddington and FBI agent, Donald Ressler, are under heavy fire from some bad guys and the situation looks pretty grim. Reddington and Ressler talk:

Donald Ressler: We are not going to live through this.

Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington: I think we will.

Ressler: How?

Reddington: Have you ever sailed across an ocean, Donald…

Ressler: No.

Reddington: …on a sailboat, surrounded by sea with no land in sight, without even the possibility of sighting land for days to come? To stand at the helm of your destiny. I want that, one more time. I want to be in the Piazza del Campo in Siena. To feel the surge as 10 racehorses go thundering by. I want another meal in Paris, at L’Ambroisie, at the Place des Vosges. I want another bottle of wine. And then another. I want the warmth of a woman and a cool set of sheets. One more night of jazz at the Vanguard. I want to stand on the summits and smoke Cubans and feel the sun on my face for as long as I can. Walk on the Wall again. Climb the Tower. Ride the River. Stare at the Frescos. I want to sit in the garden and read one more good book. Most of all I want to sleep. I want to sleep like I slept when I was a boy. Give me that, just one time. That’s why I won’t allow that punk out there to get the best of me, let alone the last of me.

Reddington’s speech sounds like what most of us would call a bucket list—things to do before you die. Another famous illustration of a bucket list was the 2007 feature film of the same name starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Nicholson and Freeman meet in a cancer ward and the prognosis for both was not good. So, they make a run for it and spend most of the movie checking off items on the bucket list and fending off family and friends who want them to return to the hospital.

But, a bucket list doesn’t have to be things done before impending death. It could be what a bride or groom does before getting married, what a recent college graduate does before starting a career, or what a newly-married couple does before starting to raise a family.

How Do You Make Up a Bucket List?

Before we go on, a matter of disclosure. I am not facing impending death nor any of the other situations listed above. I retired from full-time work a while ago and, given the amount of free time I have available, I often think about what I could do.

So, I started looking at some web sites and doing research on how one approaches writing a bucket list. One site called bucketlist.org was full of ideas and self-evaluation tools to help you get started. It listed number of categories such as travel, life experiences, entertainment, sports, education and so on.

Most of the sources suggested taking a self-inventory of likes, skills, experiences and so on before starting your list. But this sounds a lot like pursuing a career choice. Maybe I could write a book, “What Color is Your Bucket List?”

Actually, I have thought of writing a book, but I don’t have a topic in mind that will hold my attention long enough. Maybe some day…

Many experts suggest just thinking and writing down ideas, the classic brainstorming technique. Maybe there was something you started earlier in life but couldn’t finish—an art class, flying lessons, becoming proficient in a foreign language or a sport. But, advancing age and poor health will limit some of the options. Five years ago, my wife and I visited Ireland and climbed the 130+ steps through narrow stone towers to reach the top of Blarney Castle. In another story in this blog, I wrote about my issues with asthma and allergies and advancing age. That climb would be difficult for me now.

As an aside, we chose to not kiss the Blarney Stone—having been warned before that young Irish men consider it a great prank and right of passage to get drunk, climb to the top of the castle and relieve themselves on the famous stone. Thought you might like to know.

My Bucket List

So, you may ask if I have a bucket list and the answer is “sort of.” I’ve drafted a couple of them, including one right before writing this. My list is heavy on travel and attending famous events. But, it is not final and I find myself constantly thinking, “that would be a cool thing to do.” But, finances and other factors—my wife wants to continue working for a while—also limit some of my choices, especially travel.

So I consider myself fortunate that I don’t have to write a final bucket list yet. But, being aged in the upper 60s, I realize I don’t have forever. So it’s time to get going.

"Excuse me, could you repeat that?"

It happens at a movie or play, or maybe while we’re watching TV.  I lean over to my wife and whisper: “What did she say?”   I may have to wait for the laughter to subside or for a quiet moment before I ask.

I’m one of the nearly 10 percent of Americans with hearing loss, although mine is fairly moderate and has little effect on my job performance or everyday living.  I started wearing a hearing aid in the late 90s that was provided by a previous employer’s health insurance plan.  Since then, I have replaced my hearing aids twice (they have an average life expectancy of about 5 years) at a cost of thousands.

My audiologist says I have adult hearing loss (also known as presbycusis) and tinnitus, a nearly constant ringing and occasional clicking in my ears.  The cause: a combination of age (I’m 67), heredity and environment (meaning those countless hours spent at rock concerts and college bars). The heredity part of the condition came from my dad. When I was a teenager, I began to notice he said “huh” quite often during conversations. Later in life, he did get hearing aids and I think they really helped him. In fact, he told me he really liked the volume controls, especially if my mom was upset about something he did or didn’t do.

The Problem with Hearing Loss

There is no cure for the damaged nerve endings in my middle ear that fail to accurately convert the vibration of the eardrum from words and sounds into the electronic energy that my brain can recognize.

The maximum optimal frequency range of human hearing is from 20 to 20,000 cycles per second or kilohertz (kHz).  My audiologist says my hearing is normal up to about 1,000 kHz, and then falls below normal.  Unfortunately, most human speech occurs in the 1,000 to 4,000 kHz range.

In one-on-one conversation or in small groups, I can function just fine although I may have to ask that something be repeated on occasion.  But, add a little background noise, at a party or in a crowded restaurant for example, and I have more difficulty.

In the comic strip “Crankshaft,” Crankshaft’s best friend and fellow senior citizen Ralph, a former big band-era musician, bemoans his hearing loss because he no longer hears the voices of women and children.  Crankshaft replies: “What’s so bad about that?”

Social Effects of Hearing Loss

What’s so bad about that is that others may feel I’m uninterested in them because I don’t respond to everything they’ve said and I may feel I’ve already used up my self-imposed limit of asking them to repeat themselves.  When our neighbors’ four-year old son and I would talk years ago, I bet I didn’t understand half of the words he was saying. Now that he’s 13, I understand him just fine.

I’ve taught at a local university for many years and I didn’t have a problem hearing most of my students most of the time. But, there were instances where I couldn’t understand a specific student or comment, even if repeated.

In order to avoid frustration, I find my tastes in movies and TV have changed, as my hearing gets progressively worse.   When we pick out a video to watch, any British accent “chick flicks” that my wife enjoys are off limits unless I can turn on the closed captions.  I find myself using the captioning feature on my TV most of the time for dramas and comedy—to “hear” someone I’m having difficulty understanding.

I also have declined to go to plays or programs or meetings where I think I might have a problem understand what’s being said.  And that’s the issue.  I hear the voices but I can’t understand every word, even with my hearing aids.  I would rather not go through the frustration and fatigue of not understanding than having to keep asking for something to be repeated.

Hearing Loss and Aging

Many researchers, including the National Academy on an Aging Society have observed that older people with hearing disorders tend to volunteer less, be less healthy and are more depressed and less satisfied with their lives. Many are concerned about the stigma, effectiveness and mostly the cost of a hearing aid. While you can purchase an economy model that simply amplifies all sounds for a couple of hundred dollars, more effective models with adjustable frequency response control that can be customized for an individual’s specific hearing disorder can cost up to several thousand dollars for a pair.

As more Baby Boomers move into senior status, the number of Americans with impaired hearing will increase.  I just hope we aren’t stereotyped like the old geezer with the horn held to his ear or that aid for the hearing impaired doesn’t consist of someone shouting at us—ala Garrett Morris’s news for the hearing-impaired on “Saturday Night Live” many years ago.

But, there are a few simple things you can do to help me and others like me hear you more clearly.  Make sure we can see your face clearly and don’t try to speak to us from another room or across a large room.  You don’t have to speak a lot louder, but make sure you speak clearly.   Try to reduce background noise by turning down the TV or making sure we converse in a quieter section of a public place like a restaurant.  But, most of all, show some understanding without being patronizing. 

After all, odds are some day when you are older you’ll be asking someone to repeat something they just said to you too.

Contrails

On a perfectly clear afternoon during the spring and summer, I usually see several bright, white streaks crisscrossing the sky—more often in the late afternoon. These lines are called contrails, the exhaust from commercial jet airliners flying at 30,000 feet or more. Contrail is a condensation of the term “condensation trail” (pun intended.)

If a plane is nearly overhead, I often see the reflection of the sun off the silver-colored wings and fuselage, even if the plane is more than five miles above me.

Courtesy: fastcodesign.com

Contrails are formed when the super-heated exhaust from a jet engine hits the extremely cold air (minus-35 degrees F) and forms a collection of frozen particles that form a white trail behind the airplane. Under certain conditions, contrails can also be formed by the wings or tail of an aircraft. Depending on the temperature, humidity and wind currents, this line may be several miles long or dissipate very quickly.

I find these trails fascinating to observe, to see how long they last and I wonder what the destination of the flight could be based on the alignment of the flight path revealed by the contrail.

Contrails and Jets

Transcontinental commercial jet air service dates to 1958 when Boeing introduced the 707. This plane could carry over 150 passengers from New York to Los Angeles in a little over five hours. Now commercial jet flights are routine for many Americans. And, while everyone complains about ticket prices, I think it’s a pretty good bargain to be able to fly from Northeast Ohio to the West Coast and back for about $400 or less.

International jet flights are making the world smaller, allowing Americans to get to Western Europe in six or seven hours from the East Coast. My son spent one college semester in Thailand and he flew from Chicago to Bangkok (with a stop in Tokyo) in about 19 hours—11 time zones and nearly 9,000 miles. That’s pretty amazing.

I remember in 1958 when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to LA and the New York Giants moved to San Francisco. The emergence of non-stop, reasonably fast air transportation made this more palatable to the owners of major league baseball teams, who were concerned about the length of trips for visiting teams and the three-hour time zone difference.

The economic and social impact of relatively cheap world travel has a profound effect on all of us. Along with communication satellites and the Internet, the world really is getting smaller in a figurative sense and I think that is a good thing.

Contrails,"Chemtrails" and the Environment

But, whenever a new technology takes hold, there are usually naysayers. Some environmentalists complain that commercial jets contribute significantly to climate change.  It is true that commercial jet exhaust contains very small amounts of particulate matter, the material is widely dispersed and doesn’t make it to the ground six miles below.  

The exhaust is super hot when it leaves the rear of the engine, but it is cooled rapidly and contrails are formed. For three days immediately after the 911 attacks, the Federal Government grounded all commercial air traffic in the country. Some enterprising scientists took measurements of air temperature during this time and then again after commercial flights resumed.  There was a very slight increase once the flights resumed, but most of these scientists felt it was insignificant.

Also attacking jet air transportation are the conspiracy theorists who have renamed contrails as “chemtrails.” They maintain that the exhaust of commercial airliners contains chemical and/or biological agents being spread over an unsuspecting populace for sinister purposes. These rumors took root in the mid-90s when the U.S. Air Force Air College drafted a strategy paper that discussed how jet aircraft could be used to create some climate change by the year 2025. Most experts agree that releasing any other substances from that altitude would be ineffective because the material would dissipate and not reach the ground.

So, later this spring and summer, when I sit on my deck with a cold drink and gaze at the “blue suburban sky” (Thank you, Paul McCartney!), I’ll notice the contrails. I’ll wonder about the origin and destination of each flight.  Are the flights heading to the northeast taking the polar route to Europe? Are the westerly flights heading for LA or San Francisco? And I’ll still marvel that 15O or more people could be going thousands of miles to visit family, close a business deal or visit a faraway land and experience its culture. And they will get there in a few hours.

Depending where the plane is heading, I’d like to be going with them