After Grau busted through the glass ceiling at the LA Times, rising from classified sales to outside sales and then into management, she left the weight of her career behind in retirement. Not one to atrophy in retirement, Grau embraced weight training. And it shows. This 76-year-old woman is fit and has those kind of arms that flatter sleeveless shirts.
Category: Aging
2017 — Part 2. The Cancer Within
Through these 12 months, a medical cancer did strike my friends and colleagues. It was as if a deluge of rogue cells from what I call cancer-world rained on many people I know. And at the same time it never dawned on me that, I, a breast cancer survivor, should have kept my umbrella at hand.
Music Lessons Are Good for Aging Adults
Like a 15-second jingle, I pretty much forgot everything that I ever learned about Bartolomeo Cristofori’s grand creation, the piano. My upright piano where I expressed every emotion that played through me at the time transitioned from my secret love to a forlorn and neglected, out of tune, collector of dust.
The Naked Truth About Desert Trip
The near-full moon hovered above three massive outdoor screens. Thousands of people looked at the screens with anticipation. At strobe speed, each screen flashed drum skins, guitar frets, backlit Joshua trees and saguaros, and the faces of older men. Heart-pumping rhythm pounded through acres of speakers and shattered the desert air. Like LSD-fueled geysers, fireworks blasted millions of rainbow sparks into the dry, windless sky.
Health and Service — Volunteer Trail Docent
A faux heart attack — that moment when the ER doctor said that it was time to lighten the loads that I lift and to get… Read more “Health and Service — Volunteer Trail Docent”
Crash Landing to Wisdom
For the now, I’m harvesting my experiences and knowledge. I’m loading my cargo hold with the wisdom from life-learned. It’s my mission as a writer, a communicator, and as an elder-in-training to share what I understand.
No Knee Ski, But Great Times
…a few days before this Christmas when I spent a night in my daughter and her husband’s Taos Ski Valley condo. It’s near the first chairlift. Looking out the patio door I recalled taking both my daughters, who were about 11 and 13 at the time, for a day skiing there.
The Diary of Campground No-Sense
Within the hour I will become a camper, something I haven’t done since I was 23. Um, that was 43 years ago—not counting my stays at Motel 6 here and there along Interstate 40.
Besides a campout with my camp-virgin spouse, the diabetic cat, Mouser, comes with too.
Highway One–Life’s Signposts
Like pathways, roads fascinate me. It might be the natural metaphor that roads imbue. Or it’s a simple how we leave and how we arrive and all… Read more “Highway One–Life’s Signposts”
Hard Hearts Beat on Earth Day
Oh I do care and am concerned about the health of our oceans. But I’m not marching in the streets, writing letters to the editor, or shouting on talk radio shows. What I do is edit and write a blog called Neptune 911 that reports, from solid and reliable sources, news about the oceans. My concern doesn’t come from Google-U. It comes from direct experience and seeing the issues with plastics in the ocean, university sponsored workshops led by leading oceanographers, marine biologists, etc.; and webinars sponsored by same universities and the National Science Foundation