Category: Memory

Looking Back at My First 10 Years of Retirement

by James Wallace Harris, 10/15/23

Friday was my 10th anniversary of retiring. I started work at Memphis State University in 1977 and retired from The University of Memphis in 2013. I hadn’t moved, they changed the name. Those 36 years represents half of my 72 years. The second largest chunk of time in my life was K-12 schooling. It’s interesting to see retirement has become the third largest segment of this pie chart.

These ten years of retirement were the same number of years as third grade through twelfth, but they certainly didn’t feel the same. For some reason, 1963-1969 were the longest seven years of my life, way longer than the last ten years of retirement. Isn’t that weird? Why have they sped by so fast?

When I look back, I can see a lot has happened. Three presidents. A pandemic. Several wars. Quite a bit of economic ups and downs. In the past ten years we’ve all seen society transformed by smartphones. The worst political polarization of my lifetime has happened in this last decade. There were lots of marriages and babies in our family, and several deaths. I entered my socialist years with social security and Medicare. I’ve had several surgeries and lots of MRIs, CT scans, a couple ER visits, and endless medical tests. Yet, I’m basically healthy.

I have lived in the same house since I retired. Those seven years I mentioned, I lived in nine different houses in three different states. Maybe that’s why those were the longest years of my life. These past ten years have been the most stable of my entire lifetime, and I’m not bored.

I thought when I retired I would do so much with all the free time I would have, but that hasn’t happened. The past ten years has been a slow decline into inactivity. I guess that’s what getting old means. And I accept that decline.

When I first retired, I didn’t watch TV until about eight o’clock at night. I tried to stay active all day. Susan worked out of town, and I spent a lot of time socializing.

Now my daily routine starts with an hour of YouTube videos after I do my physical therapy exercises. Then I putter around doing chores, eating lunch (breakfast since I’m intermittent fasting), writing blogs, listening to music. Then another hour of TV with Jeopardy and NBC Nightly News at 5:30 with Susan. After dinner I wash dishes and try to watch TV by myself while Susan watches her shows. I usually fail and switch to blogging, reading, or listening to music. I finish the evening at nine with two hours of TV watching with Susan, shows we both like.

In 2013 I probably watched 1-2 hours of TV a day, and not every day. Susan was working out of town, and I’d only watch TV when I had friends over in the evening. Now, I’m logging 4-5 hours a day. Television has become an addiction in retirement. I’ve been thinking about breaking it, but I’m not sure I can be more active anymore.

In 2013 I would go out several times a week with friends. I’d go to the movies once or twice a week, eat out several times, and I’d go to museums, parks, shopping, or just walks. Now I go out once a week to the used bookstore, and every other week to the grocery store. Susan and I take turns grocery shopping since we both hate doing it. The pandemic really changed my habits, but also my spinal stenosis limits my walking. However, staying home more does not bother me at all. In fact, I love it. My mother was that way when she got old too. A lot of people do that as they age. Like most of the old people I’ve known, I want to die at home, in this house.

What I’ve really gotten into these past ten years is reading. I read about fifty books a year, so I’d guess I’ve read about five hundred books since I’ve retired.

And several years ago, I joined with a guy from Britain and another from South Africa on Facebook to moderate a science fiction short story reading group. We discuss one story a day, and I’ve slowly developed several online friends from this activity. I’ve been focusing on reading short stories for the last five years and I’d guess I’ve read at least two thousand since then.

I also write essays for two different personal blogs. For a few years I wrote for three web sites, Book Riot, SF Signal, and Worlds Without End. I’d guess in my ten years of retirement I’ve written at least 1,500 essays.

I don’t keep records, but I’d guess I’ve watched a hundred TV series in my retirement. When Susan worked out of town, I’d watch them with my friend Janis. And since Susan retired, I watch them with her. I don’t really like watching TV by myself, so I tend to watch what other people like. My favorite series with Janis was Breaking Bad. My favorite series with Susan was Call the Midwife. Lately, my friend Annie has been coming over and we’re going through the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Ann and Tony come over to watch various shows, we’re currently finishing Ted Lasso. Our friends Mike and Betsy used to come over for TV or movies but since the pandemic that’s stopped. Watching TV series and movies with other people has been a major social activity for me during my retirement years.

Another recent activity is having people over for games and cards.

Our cats Nick and Nora died during the early years of my retirement, and now we have Ozzy and Lily. They are a big part of our retirement life since Susan and I have no children.

We bought this house; the one Susan grew up in when her parents died. That was 2007, I think. We had Susan’s brothers, wives, and their children over for Thanksgiving and Christmas for several years to continue the tradition of her parents. But by the time I retired, the nephews and nieces were grown up and had families of their own, and we stopped hosting the holidays. In terms of family life, the past ten years have been noticeably quiet. My mother, aunts, and uncles all died off before I retired. Since then, about half my first cousins have died. Our generation is fading away.

My retirement years have been mostly about maintaining friendships. I spend a lot of time on the phone keeping up with people. Some of my friends still come over to the house, but that’s slowing down too. Many of our friends no longer travel or drive at night. My sister still visits. And a few old friends that have moved away come to Memphis now and then. Getting old is weird that way.

Retirement goes hand in hand with aging. I didn’t foresee that before I retired. I thought I wouldn’t feel old for many years, and my first decade of retirement would be more active. When I first retired, I fantasized about moving to New York City for a year. Later, I thought about moving to The Villages in Florida. But NYC was impractical, and the pandemic and health problems killed off Florida. I no longer think about traveling, and the only way I imagine moving is if we need to move into a retirement community or assisted living.

My goals have become less ambitious. I’m reading self-help books about developing good habits. I want to do more reading and writing but be more organized and focused. I’m researching ways to take notes and remember what I read because I’m starting to forget more.

I think the next ten years of retirement will be more streamlined. I want to get rid of stuff and focus on accomplishing small quiet creative projects. I know I’m physically running down. I feel wiser than ever, but I’m losing mental horsepower. I need to become more efficient in my use of mental and physical energy.

These ten years of retirement have been nothing I planned. But then, long ago, even when I was still young, I had learned the future is everything we never imagined. My friend Linda and I are studying Stoicism. I think it’s the perfect time for that philosophy, both in our lives, and in this moment of civilization.

JWH

Discovering New Music From the 1980s – Prefab Sprout

by James Wallace Harris, 10/6/23

I get very few hits when I write about music, but I’m hoping to find a few old music addicts like me who didn’t discover Prefab Sprout back in the 1980s. Over the decades, I occasionally discover a band I’ll play obsessively for weeks. Well, I discovered Prefab Sprout on John Darko’s YouTube channel a few weeks ago and I’ve been playing them ever since. I started playing them on Spotify and Apple Music, but I loved them so much I’ve been ordering the CDs. I have a feeling I won’t get tired of this band for several more weeks.

It’s hard to put a love of music into words, so just listen below. At first, only a few songs grabbed me, especially the first two on Jordan the Comeback. But as I continued to play the albums more songs became great. This is why streaming music is so great. I can keep trawling the past until I find another band that pushes all my buttons.

JWH

Remembering the Sixties in Two Bad Movies

by James Wallace Harris, 10/4/23

I’m always shocked by how much American society has changed since the 1960s when watching movies and television shows from that decade. I graduated high school in 1969.

I’m curious how people born after the 1960s picture it in their mind’s eye. I grew up in the 1960s and remember two versions of that decade. I mostly recall the pop culture 1960s that everyone learns about in history and from the media, but if I think about it, I remember another 1960s, one far more mundane, and quieter. The difference you might say between The Beach Boys in 1963, and The Beatles in 1969.

Over the last two nights, Susan and I watched two movies from the 1960s that reminded me of the less famous version of that decade: Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number (1966) and Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding (1967). Neither film was particularly good, but I found them both to be fascinating time capsules of that other 1960s.

Someone growing up in the 21st century would probably find both films stupid and even offensive. They would probably wonder where the smartphones, tablets, computers, and social media were, and why no one used certain now universal four-letter words routinely as adjectives, adverbs, and nouns. I’m sure they would think the acting stilted and why people fit into roles, especially gender roles. Those thinking a little deeper would wonder why all the famous 1960s pop culture was missing. But I think the thing that would standout the most, was the attitude both movies presented regarding sex. You’d think people living in the 1960s were Victorians.

Both Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number and Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding were about sex, but neither showed actual nudity or anyone having sex. Doctor is about Sandra Dee getting pregnant and three boyfriends wanting to marry her. None of the three had had sex with her. And the only reason we know Sandra Dee had sex with her boss, George Hamilton, was because the movie showed fireworks.

Boy is about Bob Hope, a late middle-aged real estate agent getting accidently involved with sexy movie star Elke Sommer, but not really. Elke Sommer plays a French actress famous for making movies where she takes bubble baths. She really wants to do dramatic roles and free herself from tub casting. Ironically, we see her taking several foamed covered baths in this film. 1966 is before they started having nudity in films, but it tries hard to show as much of Elke Sommer as possible. Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number advocates good old fashion puritanical values while promoting itself with the allusion of sex.

I thought both films were accurate with the clothes, houses, furniture, and cars. The look of the other sixties does come across in these films. Even the lame jokes and goofy dialog gave off the right vibes for the times.

Both films were aimed at the silent majority but tried to appeal to the emerging youth culture. It’s strange how we see counterculture slowly take over Hollywood by watching old movies and television shows from the late 1960s and 1970s. Very few movies in the middle 1960s showed what was happening in the rock world, or counterculture. If they had rock music, it was generic instrumental shit. Hollywood lagged for several years recognizing the social impact of rock.

I remember seeing The Graduate in late 1967 and thinking how radical it was. The soundtrack used Simon and Garfunkel. That was tremendously exciting at the time because it felt like my generation was finally being recognized. However, seeing it recently was another shock. It wasn’t that radical at all, not how I remembered feeling it in December 1967. The Graduate was still much closer to that quiet version of the sixties than the infamous loud sixties. I see it now as a transitional film.

It wasn’t until 1969, with Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider, that we began to see that notorious version of the 1960s. I remember how shocking both films were when I saw them at the theater. But by then, my personal sixties were closer to those films. But in 1966 and 1967, my life was still like the Bob Hope and Sandra Dee flicks.

Another way to look at it was Hollywood was censored for showing real life for many decades, and finally in the late 1960s changes in the laws allowed it to portray a more real America.

I’m not sure any film captures the times in which they were made. They all create a mythic view. But I need to think about that. Are there any films from the 1960s that come close to how I lived in that decade? Do you have a film, from any decade, that you feel represents something close to how you grew up? I was too young, but I do remember people like the characters in America Graffiti. Actually, I remember people like the Bob Hope and Sandra Dee characters too. Maybe it’s the characters and settings that feel more historical than plots.

JWH

On Rereading

by James Wallace Harris, 10/2/23

This week I started rereading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, a novel first published in 1961. I was shocked by how much I disliked it. In my memory it was a terrific book. Back in 1970 I went to see Catch-22 the movie when it came out. I was so impressed I went to a bookstore, bought the book, went home, read it, and then went back to see the film again. For over fifty years I’ve thought of Catch-22 as a classic.

This week I listened to two hours of the novel before giving up. I can’t believe I ever loved that book. It’s sort of like how I feel when I catch Gilligan’s Island on TV, I can’t believe that in the eighth grade it was my favorite television show. Whenever I see a clip of Gilligan’s Island now, I assume I must have been brain damaged as a kid. I wondered the same thing when listening to Catch-22.

Maybe I’ve just lost my sense of humor. I loved Saturday Night Live when it came out back in 1975, but I’ve found it painful to watch for decades now. I’ve come to realize that I truly dislike lame satire. Heller appeared to take one absurdist point-of-view and stretched it out over a 21-hour audiobook. It felt like hearing a Who’s on First routine that never ended.

I came to the book expecting to find philosophical insight into WWII, and it just wasn’t there. Catch-22 is considered an anti-war classic, but I didn’t feel that in 2023. The film version of M.A.S.H. also came out in 1970. That was the height of the Vietnam War. Both stories felt like anti-war brilliance in 1970, but insane in 2023. Fifty-three years later, and after many other wars, such silliness no longer seems appropriate.

Obviously, I’ve changed over the decades, but I think there’s something else that’s changed. Postmodernism has crashed and burned. Postmodernism took us down a wrong path, and it’s time to retrace our steps.

I still reread my childhood favorite book, Have Space Suit-Will Travel which came out in 1958. It continues to work. It seems to be a genuine touchstone to my past. I find great insight into who I was as a kid and who I wanted to be when I grew up. To me, it was a science fiction version of Great Expectations — including the cynicism I give it in retrospect.

I also read an abridged version of Great Expectations in high school and have reread the full novel since. It seems to grow in maturity, especially as I read more about Charles Dickens. As a teenage boy I identified with Pip and his frustration with Estella. But as an old man, I figure Pip was a stand-in for the older 1858 Dickens, and Estella and Miss Havisham were stand-ins for Ellen Turan and her mother. The depth of Great Expectations grows with every rereading.

This morning I watched a video about rereading books by Anthony Vicino called “You Should Read These 12 Books Every Year.” Vicino is one of those people who want to get ahead in life quickly by reading self-help books. Because he wanted to succeed quickly, and many successful CEOs read fifty-two books a year, Vicino decided to read one hundred books in a year and get ahead twice as fast. What Vicino learned was to read fewer books. And rereading was the secret to success.

I’ve been thinking I need to do more rereading. This video made me wonder what twelve books I would reread every year. Would they be fiction or nonfiction? And would they be modern or postmodern? I’m starting to think we all took a wrong turn around 1960, at least in fiction. The trouble is since 1960 nonfiction has been overwhelming us with expanding knowledge that we need. Art and philosophy couldn’t handle that explosion of information and we got postmodernism.

I need to do a lot of rereading, and rethinking. What books will be ruined by my maturity and what books will reveal their own deeper maturity?

JWH

Hitting a Cognitive Barrier

by James W. Harris, 9/24/23

I crashed into a cognitive barrier trying to write my reactions to The Trouble with Harry and To Catch a Thief, two Alfred Hitchcock movies from 1955. After two drafts I realized I wasn’t getting where I wanted to go. I know I don’t want to write movie reviews — the perfect place to find them is Rotten Tomatoes. Nor did I want to describe a film — just go to Wikipedia or IMDB. I wanted to write an essay that captured what I got out of watching those films at age 71.

Time is running out, so I need to make the most of every experience. That involves understanding myself at a deeper cognitive level. One I’m finding harder to reach as I age. On the other hand, aging is giving me more wisdom. The cognitive barrier is being able to express what I’m learning by getting older. But aging is also wearing down my brain. What one hand giveth, another takes away.

Writing is thinking outside of the head. Thoughts are generated inside the head from emotional reactions. Thoughts are fleeting. Thoughts are like cream stirred into coffee, creating little patterns that quickly dissipate. Writing is about capturing that initial pattern and making sense of it by showing how it relates to the memories of millions of past patterns.

Very few people can describe exactly how they feel, and few of those people can explain why they feel the way they do. There are rare individuals that can compose their thoughts inside their heads and eloquently convey the results in speech. Most of us need to think outside our minds via writing and editing.

Even when we feel our written words are clear, readers seldom find clarity. Communicating with words is difficult at best and often impossible. What we think we’re expressing can often take a different path to each reader like those spaghetti strings we see in hurricane reports. I might believe I’m writing about Jacksonville, while some readers think I’m writing about Bermuda while others Miami and Charleston.

I enjoyed The Trouble with Harry better than all the other Hitchcock films we’ve watched this month, including Rebecca, Notorious, To Catch a Thief, and Strangers on a Train, films most critics admire a great deal more. However, I thought The Trouble with Harry had many flaws, but then Hitchcock is a flawed filmmaker.

How can I admire a movie that doesn’t measure well against the best movies I’ve seen over a lifetime? This gets into complexity and even multiplexity. I need to relate several reactions that contradict each other. The three films I admired and enjoyed the most this month have been The Trouble with Harry, Twelve O’Clock High, and Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell. All three were feel-good movies to me, but they each made me feel good in a unique way. Is the word “feel-good” even useful? Many moviegoers might interpret the term “feel-good” so differently that these three movies would not fit their definition.

Should I even use the term? Shouldn’t I just describe exactly what I felt? Will that be clearer?

In my second draft I had a breakthrough. I realized to understand how I react to films I’d need to understand what I expected from them. But my expectations have changed widely over the years. And will my readers have the same expectations? It was then I realized that what I’m expecting from movies at 71 is different from my younger self. Even describing my own emotional experiences is a moving target. But explaining why that’s so hits another cognitive barrier.

I need to think about that.

Putting everything into words precisely is so difficult. Should I even try? I believe most people don’t because all they value is personal experience. Why tell anyone about our perceptions when they have their own?

Do you see why writing that essay became such a black hole?

JWH