Author Archives: Editor (Retired)

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About Editor (Retired)

Newsman, blogger, editor, writer (and no longer young).

Stupid Bachelor Tricks: Potatoes

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51LAFD7YepL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_Why have I wasted my life eating French fries at restaurants? Why have I limited my home cooking to nuking frozen food?

I should have known better. I read “Potatoes Not Prozac!  by Kathleen DesMaisons PhD.  I read the book 15 years ago!

I told my sister, Rosemary, about the book. She read “Potatoes Not Prozac.”  I ignored it, and she took its message to heart.

A few days ago, Rosemary told me how she boils Yukon Gold potatoes. She said it was OK to put butter on them! That was the magic word. “Butter.” Or maybe, “Boil.”  

“Boil a potato, that doesn’t sound too difficult. I can do that!”

Tonight, motivated by the desire for a more frugal lifestyle, I boiled a potato. I knew to use water, but I wasn’t sure how long to boil the potato. I washed it first, left the skin on, and cut it in quarters like Rosemary said. I used the “stick a fork in it” method to decide when it was done.

I smashed the quartered potato a little and added a liberal amount of butter. I topped it off with a sprinkle of that brand-name “seasoned salt” (no MSG). The potato was great! Why didn’t I think of this before?

I don’t know if Kathleen DesMaisons Ph.D. would approve of the butter and the seasoned salt. She’s the one who wrote “Potatoes Not Prozac!” Ms. DesMaisons also has a nifty Web site, “Radiant Recovery,” where her disciples gather to meditate on the virtues of a life without sugar.

Wait a minute! No sugar? I don’t think I’m ready for that. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.

— John Hayden

Recession Vegetable Soup

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Now that I’m unemployed again, I’m planning to create a Recession Vegetable Soup. The predominant vegetables will be potatoes and onions, seasoned with salt and pepper. Long on vegetables but not much protein. Why do I have the sinking feeling that this adventure will turn out to be neither simple nor frugal?

Step One: Buy a pot large enough to make soup or stew. And I have an aversion to those non-stick coatings on most new pots and pans (what chemicals do they make that stuff with?)  Note that whenever I embark on a project, I always discover that I don’t have the necessary tools. This is why I gave up trying to fix my own car.

I’ve come to consider Walmart as my supplier of first resort, based on their claim that they “sell for less.”  However, I found what I needed at one of the big-box specialty stores — a shiny eight-quart stainless steel stockpot with a glass cover — for $20. Six quarts would have been adequate, but  the eight-quart size is what they had. So it goes.

The $20 price at the big-box store was less than anything comparable at Walmart, demonstrating once again that it pays to shop around. So I guess the purchase qualifies as frugal. It was also simple, since it didn’t need to be delivered or installed, and there’s no assembly required!

How many soups and stews am I going to have to make this winter to justify spending $20 to buy the pot?

Watch this space for the recipe and a progress report.

How Many Blogs Is Too Many?

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Blogging can take over your life, if you’re not careful. I know I’ve been ignoring Life After 60, Simplified, lately, but I haven’t forgotten it. I’ve simply been focusing my blogging energy on my main blog, Maryland On My Mind.

Some bloggers are so proficient! They can juggle multiple blogs. And then there’s me. I feel like I’m not doing all I could be doing with MOMM, but I don’t want to abandon Life after 60, either.

Obviously, it would simplify my life to have only one blog. But I’m already trying to cover Maryland politics and life in Ocean City, plus frequent side trips into national politics and economic change, in MOMM. They  say a blog is best if focused like a laser on one subject. So I want draw some boundaries for MOMM. Two of my major interests (life after 60, and simplicity) simply don’t fit there. What to do?

I’m pondering three courses of action. You can help me decide. Please vote.

When Is It OK to Admit That You Might Not Be Young Anymore?

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Am I getting old?  Or am I just getting lazy?

Sixty-something is one of those awkward stages in life. Like middle-school. Or kindergarten. Life is changing, and I’m not sure if I’m ready for change. Sometimes a kid feels like he can’t wait for kindergarten or middle school.  Other times, the same kid wants everything to stay the same. Maybe we could put off kindergarten or middle school until next year? Probably not. Ready or not, change comes on its own schedule.

I think this particular awkward stage starts at around age 51. Am I middle-aged, or am I beginning to feel old? Is it my imagination, or is it really harder to land a job when you’re past 50?

The awkward stage gets discombobulating between 61 and 65. Those commercials on TV for miracle prescription drugs — are those commercials talking to me?

After you hit the big six-oh, it’s not so easy to pretend that you’re middle-aged. Lots of folks over 60 claim they don’t feel any different than they did in their 30s and 40s. (Let’s do a three-mile fun run. Let’s start a new business. Let’s visit China.) Are these folks in denial? Or do they just have younger genes than me?

At 61, I definitely don’t feel middle-aged anymore, and it’s definitely not easy to get a new job, or buy health insurance. But I won’t qualify full Social Security until age 66, and I don’t qualify for Medicare. I’m in between. It’s an awkward stage.

I still have responsibilities, work to do, but my short-term memory isn’t so reliable. I keep a list so I won’t forget anything important.

After breakfast, first thing I feel like is taking a nap. Is that a sign that I’m getting old? Or am I just getting lazy? Was I always this lazy? Maybe it’s depression? Or Seasonal Affective Disorder? Do they have a pill that will make me feel ready to take on the world?

I have to stop blogging now. Looking at the computer screen makes my eyes feel dry and scratchy. Yes, those commercials for soothing eye drops are talking to me.

Here’s my plan: One soothing drop in each eye. Look at the list to make sure there’s nothing that can’t be put off. Take a nap.

I’ll think about getting old tomorrow.

Mary Travers, 72 — Her Folk Songs Forever Blowin’ In The Wind

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Peter, Paul and Mary's first record album, 1961, Warner Bros. High Fidelity Monophonic. Album cover photograph at The Bitter End, NYC.

Peter, Paul and Mary's first record album, 1961, Warner Bros. High Fidelity Monophonic. Album cover photograph at The Bitter End, NYC.

Folk singer Mary Travers passed away Wednesday. She was 72 and had suffered from leukemia.

Mary Travers, Peter Yarrow, and Noel “Paul” Stookey — Peter, Paul and Mary — came together in 1961 in Greenwich Village, and were advocates for peace, justice and equality for nearly half a century.

m-mary3m-mary2m-mary4

Mary once said, “We may have marched with Martin Luther King and sung “Blowin’ In The Wind” on the 1963 march on Washington — but we also sang it with Archbishop Tutu and in a political prison in El Salvador. We sang it over the grave of Andrew Goodman, one of the civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964 — and we sang it when an 8-year-old boy was killed by the Contras in Nicaragua.”

Noel "Paul" Stookey (left), Mary Travers, and Peter Yarrow.

Noel "Paul" Stookey (left), Mary Travers, and Peter Yarrow.

For more about Mary Travers’ life, and statements by Peter Yarrow and Noel “Paul” Stookey, click on www.peterpaulandmary.com.

Noel and Peter will carry on the work and the music, I believe.

Those of us who can remember the peace movement and the civil rights movement of the 1960s will have to put away the notion that we’re forever young, but Puff (The Mighty Dragon) will continue to roar.

Best Places To Retire, According To Money Magazine

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Bangor, Maine, Is Among Top 25

Geography of Frugality? Some of the Top 25, But Not All.

A little bit of Main Street in downtown Bangor, Maine.

A little bit of Main Street in downtown Bangor, Maine.

It’s a good thing my niece and her husband, along with my sister, have a signed contract to buy a wonderful 100-year-old house in Brewer, Maine. Money Magazine has named Brewer’s neighbor, Bangor, Maine, as one of the 25 best places to retire in the U.S. Do you think house prices might go up?

Money mentions Bangor’s “four-season” climate as one of the area’s attractions. But I’m thinking retirees will not stampede to enjoy the frosty, northern climate. More likely, retirees will consider some of the magazine’s Sun Belt recommendations. Bangor and it’s twin city, Brewer, just across the Penobscot River, will remain unspoiled by fame, is my prediction.

Some, but not all, of the cities recommended by Money could qualify for my “geography of frugality” concept. Here are the top five on the list of 25:

  1. Port Charlotte, Fla., home prices down a whopping 63 percent; price of an average, three-bedroom house, $170,000.
  2. Palm Springs, Calif., home prices down 44 percent; average three-bedroom house, $$250,000.
  3. Traverse City, Mich., home prices down 20 percent; average three-bedroom house, $250,000.
  4. Pinehurst, N.C., home prices down 27 percent; average three-bedroom house, $300,000.
  5. Surprise, Ariz., home prices down 48 percent; average three-bedroom house, $150,000.

Hmm, Port Charlotte and Surprise sound like good places to hunt for bargain-priced  housing, if you’re interested in the Sun Belt. But Pinehurst, where an average three-bedroom house is $300,000, doesn’t sound so frugal. Money Magazine provided the average price for three-bedroom houses for all 25 cities listed. Unfortunately, it  gave the percentage price decline only for the first five.

In Bangor, number 23 on Money’s list, the average price of a three-bedroom house is $165,000. My relatives snapped up their bargain house for less than $150,000. Bangor also has an international airport, a great bus system (I have this fantasy of saving money by living without a car), cultural attractions, and major regional medical facilities.

Then there’s the city of Philadelphia, at Number 10 on Money Magazine’s list. With an average three-bedroom house costing $375,000, Philly is way too pricey, in my opinion. I think I’ll investigate Surprise, Ariz., where prices are down a whopping 48 percent.

Health Care Coverage in Parallel Universes

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The American cable news channels are in full parallel-universe mode today, Saturday.

MSNBC had President Barack Obama, campaigning for health care reform in Minnesota. MSNBC televised the president’s speech in its entirety to a crowd of thousands. MSNBC’s cameras showed wide-angle views of the packed arena, people cheering wildly.

When the president explained the problems facing health care in America, someone in the audience shouted, “We’ve got to do something!” Mr. Obama agreed,  “We’ve got to do something.” It was a long way from Washington, where a congressman shouted at the president this week, “You lie.”

President Obama said he’s not going to waste any more time with cynical politicians who are clearly committed to defeating health care and destroying his presidency.

The crowd in Minnesota was “Fired up!” and “Ready to go!”

Meanwhile, over at FOX News, they were covering an anti-health care rally on the Mall back in Washington. The FOX News camera focused in tightly on a knot of demonstrators (two dozen? a hundred?) and one unknown speaker ranting about the First Amendment and “uniform taxation.” One thing you have to give the health-care opponents, they’re not a single-interest group. No indeed, they’ve got a gunny sack full  of gripes. (Correction: Later in the day I learned that there were a lot more than a hundred demonstrators in Washington. There were thousands and thousands. See note from Lizzi in Comments below.)

FOX was in Texas, too, providing air time to some Texan who was complaining about health care for everyone. What an un-American concept! Health care for all, even the unemployed, even the poor, even people with pre-existing conditions.

The Texan said the government ought to stay out of health care, because the government has no experience running such a program. Umm . . . What about Medicare? Senior citizens seem quite fond of Medicare. Who do you think runs Medicare?  What about Social Security, which has one-percent administrative costs? Who do you think runs Social Security?

And so it goes. MSNBC and FOX News, two professional cable news channels, reporting live from  parallel universes.

Paradox of Personal Wants and Needs Writ Large in Politics

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When it comes to government and bureaucracy, most of us simply want to be left alone and allowed to live as we please. Don’t we have enough demanding voices telling us what to do in our families, our personal relationships, our religion, our jobs?  Enough! We don’t need any more demands from government! All we want is some freedom, some independence, some space. And while we’re at it, some respect. “Is that too much to ask?” We shake our fist at big-brother government: “What part of that don’t you understand?”

Paradoxically, we want our needs to be taken care of. We’d like to be protected from the vagaries of life, please. (Vagary comes from the Latin, “to wander.”) We wander through a world of troubles — failures and successes — broken relationships, financial hardships, illnesses. The fears are not so clear when we are young and invincible; it all becomes more obvious as we get older. We want to be protected at least from the most fundamental brutalities, i.e., hunger, pain, violence, and failing health. At rock bottom, we’d really like to be protected from death.

Once in a while, democracy lays bare the paradox, confronting an issue that speaks to our innermost needs to be left alone and at the same time to be taken care of. A life-and-death issue, you might say. No wonder we are angry, divided, frightened and perplexed about health care.

President Obama Declares Support for ‘Public Option’ in a Health Insurance Exchange

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Surfing back and forth between the cable news channels, FOX News and MSNBC, before President Barack Obama’s address to Congress on health care reform, a visitor from Mars would likely conclude that the Fox pundits and the MSNBC pundits reside in parallel universes, or perhaps on different planets. 

No surprise if it sometimes seems that people are brain-washed by either the conservative pundits at FOX or the liberals at MSNBC.

The president attempted Wednesday evening to speak over the heads of FOX and MSNBC, to speak directly to the American people. 

President Obama made his intentions and his resolve clear from the start of his address: “I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.” 

The president refused to parrot the pundits on either political extreme. He attempted to position himself squarely in the center, saying he prefers “to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch.”

Congress has been pecking at health care for months, in the unlikely hope of achieving a bipartisan agreement. Wednesday, the president finally made clear his own proposal.

President Obama proposed a “new insurance exchange” from which citizens could select  and pay for the health insurance plan of their choice. He proposed that the insurance exchange “take effect in four years, which will give us time to get it right.”

Ending weeks of speculation, the president came down solidly for a “not-for-profit public option” to be available along with private health insurance choices in the insurance exchange.

To those who fear losing their present health insurance, the president said: “Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have,” and he declared, “I will protect Medicare.”

And to those who urged him to fight for health care reform, President Obama said, “I will not back down on the basic principle that if Americans cannot find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice.”

He declared that the principles of social justice and the character of America are at stake in the health care decision.

Let’s not let cable news channels trivialize the issues.

— John Hayden

Divide And Conquer — Medicare Vs. Universal Health Care

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All the good intentions of those two dreamers — President Barack Obama and Sen. Ted Kennedy — and their hopes that health care might be available to ALL Americans, have run into a wall of mindless self-interest.

It turns out that Medicare-eligible senior citizens are the new privileged class. People over 65 are the haves; people under 65 are the have-nots.

The virtue of generosity once again is no match for the power of fear and selfishness.

Senior citizens to America: “We’ve got our Medicare; the rest of you can go to hell.”

I never believed the prediction that American democracy would disintegrate into inter-generational warfare over Social Security and Medicare. I was under the naive delusion that America’s  elders would teach wisdom and generosity.

Never mind.  It turns out that as a group, senior citizens appear to be as callow as a gang of teenagers; as greedy as a roomfull of CEOs; as indifferent to the poor as a convention of Wall Street bankers.

If President Barack Obama’s goal of health care reform fails, it will fail because complacent senior citizens decide to make their children and grandchildren America’s health care have-nots.