Coping with staying indoors with no exceptions

Many are the items that I have accumulated and long are the lists of things I want to do in my old age.  In moving from our home in Dardanelle to here at the Wildflower, I am again reminded of such.  I have several dozens of shoe boxes filled with the accumulation of bits and pieces that go to make nice scrapbooks, and I haven't made a one. 

My friend, Bessie Jo Meers, a fellow-Dardanellean and now a fellow-resident of the Wildflower, began making scrapbooks years ago and has already presented her six grandchildren with them.  She made a master copy, then had each page photocopied for as many books as needed.  And she is now in the process of making one based on her own life.  Commendable?  I think so because such is good family history.

Last week, my helper and I sorted through approximately 150 video tapes that I had used and kept or taped and never viewed. I have determined that Les and I shall look at one or two each day.  Last week in over 3 or 4 days we looked at a 6-hour documentary prepared by Robert McNeill and Jim Lehrer in 1993 entitled China.  The two looked quite young and handsome, and considering that China has the oldest known history of the world's civilizations (4,000 years), it was hardly dated.

Having travelled there twice in the late eighties, I knew a lot about the country; nevertheless, I learned a lot.  I enjoyed seeing the places I had been through the eyes of their cameras, the standard touristy things like the Great Wall, the Sacred Palace at Beijing, the Buried Army at Tian.

I do believe that I would have to live to be 150 years old to do all the things I have prepared for.  Sometime in the eighties, the Arkansas Tech library decided to give away all their magazines (having microfilmed the contents) and offered them to faculty.  I chose a stack of New Yorkers, and I know it will be fun to look at them.  They are bundled with twine just as I got them.

I still take the New Yorker; I have to skim through them, but they still give me pleasure. My latest New Yorker magazine was interesting.  A profile of an artist, John Currin, considered a genuine modern artist whose paintings are valued in high figures, is one I want to investigate.  The ones shown in the magazine are fascinating.

A long book review of God's Crucible by David Levering Lewis gives a seemingly thorough account of the contents of the work.  It asks the question "What if the Muslim armies hadn't been stopped at the French Border?"  It contains an account of the Muslim empire and its culture around the city of Cordoba and gives credit to Muslim Spain for our no longer having to deal with Roman numerals; they imported paper-making techniques from China and created a library of 4,000 volumes.  Most important were the contribution of scholars whose translation and elaboration of ancient Greek and Roman texts contributed to a body of knowledge we cannot imagine being without.

 The Cordoban philosophers, Averroes and Maimonides, took on the task of proving the existence of God through their interpretation of Aristotle. When I was taking the subject. History of Philosophy, those two were studied briefly, and put on my list of philosophers I wanted to go back to.  That medieval culture has always fascinated me.

And books!  How many have I given away new because time has rendered them irrelevant?  And how many of the few hundred of them I still have that I will not get around to reading?

There is no question in my mind that I have nurtured an over-abundant appetite for knowledge and an over-blown notion of how much I could make use of.  I feel as if it stood me in good stead in teaching the interdisciplinary studies, the Humanities, at Tech; however, I feel sure I should have tempered my appetite, certainly now that I am truly living in my old age.  But I can't live my life over; so I shouldn't fret about it.

But I can be thankful that I still have a zest for living and learning.
There is one thing for sure I would do if I had my life to live over.  I would establish a winter home near the equator and therefore learn the Spanish language.  It would be useful to me now, particularly since so many Hispanic people are coming to live here.

But all I can do now is stay indoors and look forward to spring.