Retire In Style Blog Too

My son-in-law tells me I have a slangy way of talking...I sound like I am from a very small town. I just don't know how I sound. I do know that Alexa and Siri don't know what the heck I am talking about even after all these years. So he may be right. from thackara.com I've been thinking lately about the way we talk from region to region here in the USA. While we sound very reasonable and educated to ourselves, others have a hard time knowing we are all about. Are we hicks, bigots or even worse. How is one to know? That is where the fish monger and his wife come into play. I have never known a fish monger as such so when I speak of that person it is as though I am talking about dragons. Yet, when I was growing up, if a woman was loud and obnoxious, people would say she sounded "like a fish monger's wife". Is that bigotry? I am almost certain if I were in the market or on the water front people would take exception to the phrase and might indeed be wound...

Note: A reader said that she did not get the point of this. So here is what I am getting at. We all can benefit from education however we get it. But when we listen to and are influenced by the news media and politicians, we need to be careful about who we follow. I am such a pusher when it comes to education it is a problem sometimes. Being educated changes a person in so many ways I think.... But why? Does it earmark people as very smart and give them status? Maybe so. However, even an average person can excel in college and I think, many even come out with a more meaningful degree of knowledge and understanding. Studying does that.  Some of the best informed people are not educated formally. But they are well read and  well rounded  people. In the end education can come in many forms. Letting ones self be challenged in their beliefs is what counts.  But in service of our country as a Congressional Member, one expects an expanded knowledge that comes...

Here in Arizona where the sun shines and the climate is perfect for someone living without a home, the homeless are invisible. In 2018 there were almost 10,000 people without homes in the state. Yet there is no sign of them here in Tucson. What is Arizona doing that is different? Where are those people?  We all know about that time between sleep and awake...that extra few minutes of sleep that we all seem to crave. That is the time when I solve all of the troubles in this world. This morning it was homelessness that came to my mind. I suppose that every citizen of Oregon has that same dream/nightmare. We are not afraid of being homeless. We are afraid that our state will become unlivable because the homeless are actually becoming more and more a visible problem. They live on the city streets, in the parks and even on the space between the freeway and private property. They are the visible homeless living in unsanitary awful conditions. Many are mentally ill. Human feces c...

When the little red hen warned that the sky was falling we all knew she was just plain wrong. The sky is not going to fall! Right? Or at least that is what I thought until the sky fell. It was a very hot summer day and something was in the air that I cannot describe...heavy, foreboding and very dark skies approached. Then it hailed...golf ball sized stones fell from the sky and the roar inside our home was deafening. from Wikipedia Now we don't live in tornado country so you really have to excuse my feint heart. Normally we don't run for cover because of the weather. It was something very new for me. But, it wasn't until we began to repair the roof on our house the it began to sink in on me that things do fall out of the sky...very scary and dangerous thing. It is simple. What goes up does come down. And so it was that we found a slug from a 38 handgun lodged in the roof of our house. I could only think "ouch"! Wouldn't that really hurt if it h...

See the deal is I am 78 years old...I say that a lot because wrapping my mind around the reality of being a little bit old is just not happening. There you have it. My husband was talking about a study he had read about on how people react to their age. It was a long study of a small group of people that are all dead now. Everyone of those people were content to let go but worried about their children being sad..all but one. That one man that  I could relate to was not ready to die at 95 because he had stuff to do! He was a creative person that still had not lost the desire and will to create. I liked that a lot. I suppose living a very long life can be boring in some ways. How many times do you get up in the morning and repeat the same routine day after day and finally think ENOUGH! I understand. Still, if there is anything we can do to get us over the hump, I am very interested...not just for myself but for you too. That is where Kathy Gottberg comes in. She and her husba...