March 25, 2023
Reframing
I was out in the garden yesterday, checking to see if it was ready for me to help it wake up. I’m ready to go but looking at next week’s weather I see nothing ahead but snow and rain. Nevertheless, short of a downpour I will begin the season next Saturday, starting as I always do with the gardens in the front of the house. Staying close to the house helps me make the transition from indoor person to outdoor person and somehow assuages my fear that I won’t know how to garden anymore.
I used to have that fear with writing. I could never believe when I finished a day of writing that I would ever be able to do it again. Each day I had to re-create myself as a writer, rebuild the universe in which such a thing was possible. Hemingway was reputed to have addressed this stress – will I still be a writer tomorrow? – by ending his writing day in the middle of a sentence, thereby ensuring that he would have an accessible re-entry to his work. Once I morph into outdoor gardener, I will need my project to be something I can leave in the equivalent of the middle of a sentence, something I can work on again without having to recreate the universe which makes me into a writer.
I have until next week to make this happen, then ready or not I am out in the garden again. The 2023 season will have begun in earnest and I will be sending you nature’s news as well as my own.
I will, however, be sending it to you on a different platform — Substack instead of MailChimp. You will see little if any difference in format, but the move is a challenge to my limited knowledge of how all this works. I am actually quite impressed that I know how to use the word “platform.”
Meanwhile, I have some thoughts to share on another subject. I recently attended a workshop on healthy aging. One of the most interesting presentations was given by the executive director of the Reframing Aging Project.
I have long tried to practice reframing in my personal and public life. It is part and parcel of my Quaker culture where we often talk about reframing an issue in such a way as to allow for non-violent exploration and settlement. And of course framing is one of the first principles of garden design. In the garden I am constantly framing and re-framing. I had not, however, thought much about how we might engage this process in our talking about aging.
But consider, for example, the difference between referring to a “silver tsunami” or the “tidal wave” of aging baby boomers, phrases that elicit fear and have the effect of distancing the speaker from the predicted horror, and instead talking affirmatively about changing demographics: “As Americans live longer lives, we want to look at ways to keep ourselves healthy and active.”
Or, instead of using the terms that “other” older people and reinforce stereotypes, terms such as “Seniors,” “the elderly,” “aging dependents,” try using more neutral (“older people/Americans”) and inclusive (“we” and “us”) terms. As in the slogan on their button: “Aging – so cool. Everyone is doing it!”
Perhaps most interesting to me was reframing issues of aging from a problem of individual choice to a concern for social contexts. Consider, for example, the difference between using language that implies that individuals alone are the determinant of aging outcomes, terms such as “choice,” or “planning” or “control,” phrases often found in discussions of problems older people face –you should have saved more or eaten better or lived in a less polluted neighborhood — and using terms that emphasize the social context in which aging occurs, as in “let’s find creative solutions to food deserts or to the presence of toxins in our air and water to make sure we can all thrive as we age.” Such reframing requires us to stop blaming the victim and look for larger solutions.
Among the speakers was also an expert on issues of dementia – its prevalence, its symptoms, and those behaviors that seem to function as delayers of onset or even preventers.
We know the obvious factors connected to possible delay or prevention of dementia– quit smoking, eat a healthy diet, get good sleep, avoid stress, take a walk. Of course, these recommendations did not take into account the social factors that might have made it difficult for individuals to accomplish these goals. I duly noted this, as his talk followed the one on re-framing. My attention, however, was quickly diverted to another asserted factor, tucked in amongst all these familiars: the quality of one’s education, but particularly that of primary school.
On reflection, I suppose it is not so strange a connection, if indeed it be true. Early stimulation of brain activity might very well carry over into heightened quality of brain activity in later life. Regardless of the science, however, his comment flooded me once again with gratitude for my own good luck in receiving such a high quality education in my first years of school. To Whitney School and its teachers, I credit my joy in learning, my love of words, my pleasure in music and art, my fascination with history. Though 1 in 3 people over the age of 84, according to this speaker, will experience some form of dementia, I at least am not there yet. Perhaps it is thanks to Miss Hibbs in second grade, Miss Dove in fourth grade, and Miss MacLeod, in fifth grade. Ironically, I cannot remember the name of my third grade teacher though it was for her that I wrote my first story, and it was she who did not say, “You should become a writer,” but rather said, “You are a writer.”
In this context, I can only lament the loss to the children of Florida of the harsh regime of repression sweeping over the state’s educational system, the banning of books, the refusal to talk of gay identity, the prohibition of conversation about systemic racism. Despite denials, it seems likely that the principal of a charter school was forced out of office over showing in class a photo of the statue of Michelangelo’s ‘David.” One can only wonder if the same furor would have arisen had the teacher shared a photo showing a naked or partly clothed woman. I suspect not, for after all, a considerable portion of Western art depends upon pleasuring the male gaze with images of women as sexual objects to be enjoyed vicariously via art. And the essence of this harsh regime is a reinstallation of the primacy of the male gaze, the objectification of women, and a pleasuring of the male in all ways imaginable. Perhaps the patriarchs think that keeping their parts private will help to ensure their identification with god.
A dark time is here. I am going out to the garden even if it is snowing.