Welcome to Bud’s Blog

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes – Marcel Proust

Sometimes Older Eyes work, too – Bud

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Necessary Definitions

Sage – a wise man; a man of gravity and wisdom; especially, a man venerable for years, and of sound judgment and prudence.

Curmudgeon – an ill-tempered old person full of stubborn ideas or opinions.

Fool – A person with poor judgment or little intelligence; a jester, a person whose role was to entertain a sovereign and the court, often with foolishness.
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I’ve been wondering lately what it would be like to be able to relive my life knowing what I know now. Or if I was able to give my grown children a view of the world through my Older Eyes, would it change their lives? Here’s a provocative proposition: If I could get every twenty-year old to look at the world through sixty-four year old eyes for just a few minutes, it would either change them for the better or kill them. Provocative but probably not true. I doubt there are many young men making bucket lists as a result of watching Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

With a do-over unlikely and getting my children to listen to my archaic opinions only slightly less so, I’ll record the view through my Older Eyes here in Bud’s Blog.   As you read each post, you decide … Sage, Curmudgeon, or Fool … we can agree to disagree on which is which. Your comments are welcome, whatever your age.   If what you read changes you for the better, I’d especially like to know.   Hopefully there will be no casualties.   If you are new here and want a taste of my Older Perspective before diving in, The Best of Feeling Older offers a few of my favorite posts on aging.  Finally, if my work inspires you to try blogging … or even if you think, Jeez, I can do this better than Older Eyes – there are a series of posts on doing just that on my page, Starting a WordPress Blog.

Help (Not) Wanted

For a while now, every time I use my electronic devices, little so-called helpers appear. First it was a little bubble in the Microsoft Edge address bar offering me the opportunity to search with AI or Chat with GPT-4. Then, without my asking, a sidebar would pop up and begin composing a summary for my search, suggesting Ask Me Anything. I asked How can I make you go away, and my AI Assistant dutifully told me how, along with instructions on how to bring it back if I changed my mind. I followed the instructions, and it indeed went away, only to come back even though I hadn’t changed my mind. The Microsoft Start Page offers a multicolored widget in the search bar to open Copilot, which, if I accidentally click it, opens a new window for Your Everyday AI Companion. I’m looking for an AI Companion even less than I’m looking for an AI Assistant. My phone and many of my phone apps offer me help with their AI assistant. Even WordPress, my blogging platform, offers me an assistant that will, among other things, change the tone of my post to Humorous, Optimistic or Skeptical **.

A Monday in May

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words – Goethe

What the World Needs Now written by Burt Bacharach performed by Rumer

On A Night of Snow by On A Night of Snow

Woman with a Parasol Turned to the Left by Claude Monet

Cat, if you go outdoors, you must walk in the snow.
You will come back with little white shoes on your feet,
little white shoes of snow that have heels of sleet.
Stay by the fire, my Cat.  Lie still, do not go.
See how the flames are leaping and hissing low,
I will bring you a saucer of milk like a marguerite,
so white and so smooth, so spherical and so sweet –
stay with me, Cat. Outdoors the wild winds blow.

Outdoors the wild winds blow, Mistress, and dark is the night,
strange voices cry in the trees, intoning strange lore,
and more than cats move, lit by our eyes green light,
on silent feet where the meadow grasses hang hoar –
Mistress, there are portents abroad of magic and might,
and things that are yet to be done.  Open the door!

Monday surprise: We are having a May flurry today, the spring flowers I planted Saturday dusted with snow. I hope they survive.

Bizarro World

Reading the news, lately, I keep thinking: What has become of us? Things I used to take for granted, like love of country and concern for all our citizens seem to have vanished. It’s like Bizarro World, I keep thinking, remembering vaguely a fictional place where everything is ass-backwards. I went to my favorite writing resource, Wikipedia, and looked it up. According to Wikipedia, Bizarro World is an opposite fictional planet appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Introduced in the early 1960s, it is a cube-shaped planet, home to Bizarro and companions, all of whom were opposite versions of Superman, Lois Lane and their children and Batzarro, the World’s Worst Detective. In the Bizarro World, society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!

Wistful

Wistful Kitty by
Carole Marine

Old age is many things. No, I hate to tell you, Younger Eyes, it’s not just a number. The description I hear most often for those experiencing it is, It’s not for the faint of heart. Even if you are having a relatively easy senior-hood (as I am), it can be a challenge. For one, your body never misses an opportunity you you’re old. Body parts that used to serve you well hurt, malfunction, or just stop working, Some can be fixed surgically, some through medication, and some, you just tolerate as part of being old. You watch contemporaries age before your eyes, get sick and die. The celebrities who the internet insists on telling you about when they pass away are mostly younger than you are. It can be difficult to maintain a positive attitude.

Cats and Birds

I love cats. We have had cats in our home for most of our married life and at the moment, our cat is Tyson, a tuxedo. If you asked him (and if he could answer), he’d probably say, I’m not a cat, I’m the baby. He is exactly the kind of feline that makes me love cats … he is loyal, affectionate and independent. Tyson, in particular, is spoiled. I volunteer every week at Best Friends Animal Society taking care of cats until they are adopted. I also love birds. Isn’t it remarkable that they can fly, an art that mankind took thousands of years to accomplish? Aren’t they amazing in their variety of shapes and color? We have always had birdfeeders to bring these amazing creatures near to our home and I have, for many years, contributed to the Audobon Society. Which brings me to the subject of this post.

Sometimes

Early in the life of this blog, I used to post about spirituality on Sundays. It has been a long time since I did that and it feels, well, awkward to do so again. I am one of those people who check the spiritual not religious box on the hospital check-in form. I grew up religious, left the church (that choice of words probably gives you a hint as to my childhood religion) and the road back to spirituality has been long. It hasn’t led to the kind of God consciousness that those of you who are religious believe in but it helps me navigate life with a sense of being guided. Sometimes. So, here goes.

A Prank Gone Wrong

If you read my April Fool’s Day post yesterday, you may or may not have discovered that my retirement from blogging was just a prank. Clicking on read more should have sent you to the following. The best I can tell, if you were not logged into WordPress, it worked. If you were logged into WordPress, it apparently didn’t. Some readers got an error message, some were sent back to their own blog. So, this is where you’d have been sent yesterday if it worked correctly:

If you made it to this page, you’ve been pranked.  Just another April Fool’s Day post.

Sitting down to do my morning pages this morning, I wrote the date at the top of the page. April 2, 2024. Damn, I thought, I missed April Fool’s Day. But of course, I’d only fooled myself. Checking the date on my tablet, it was THE DAY. Is there an odder almost-holiday than April Fool’s Day? OK, the masses celebrating an Irish saint, who may or may not be real, by drinking green beer all day is pretty odd, too. April origins are virtually unknown, although The Associated Press once published an origin story spun by a Boston historian that was, in fact, an April Fool’s prank. While historians are unsure of the exact source of the tradition, they do know the custom goes back centuries, at least back to Renaissance Europe and possibly back to Roman times.

Signing Off

Last night, I sat down to write a post about April Fool’s Day. It included what I think is the grossest April Fool’s Day prank ever. It happened my freshman year in the dorms of Stevens Institute of Technology. I must have been very tired, because I thought it was funny. At about midnight, I pushed the Schedule Button and went to bed. This morning, I found my post had not been published and I had an email from WordPress telling me that my post violated WordPress standards and that they were closing down Oldereyes as of midnight tonight. In the light of day, I realize that my post was in very poor taste and I am taking this opportunity to say goodbye. Though there aren’t many of you these days, I’d like to say

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Adagios

In the late 1960s, I joined The Beatles in taking up with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation (TM). I had been dealing with anxiety at work and decided it might be worth a try. I paid my tuition and found myself in a room with a dozen or so future meditators and two blissfully grinning teachers. We got a short talk on the benefits of TM, our own secret mantra and a week of practicing meditation together. Yes, I remember my secret mantra. No, I’m not going to tell you. I liked TM. It did seem to relax me and it felt spiritual, something I was lacking in my life at the time. I did it regularly twice a day for a while, then sporadically, then not at all. I knew it was good for me but my overthinking, hyperactive mind just hated doing nothing for 40 minutes a day.

Art for Art’s Sake

I was a very fortunate child, although I know I took it for granted. I had a right-brained father who encouraged me toward science and math and a career as an electrical engineer. And I had a left-brained Mom who encouraged me to appreciate music, art and the beauty of nature … as well as teaching me to oil paint. Throw in a cadre of high school teachers who taught me to write and I was ready for a productive life as an adult. Given the times, the message I heard from teachers was, Be an engineer. Engineers are in demand and paid well. I listened and had a 50 year career in engineering. But I continued to write and draw and paint as hobbies, always wondering if I could have been an artist or a writer. The, I found a book out of place in Barnes and Noble, a book titled The Artist’s Way, a twelve-week program to recover your inner artist. While it never led to becoming a professional artist or writer, it made me realize I’d always been both an artist and a writer. It led to a certificate program in creative writing, a published short story, and this blog (which now has over 2000 posts.)