Two sides of the coin in 2025

 This year, the ups and downs of life hit very close to home.  On one side, we had some wonderful experiences with family, especially with the grandchildren, one as a newly minted teenager and the young one at nine years of age.  In May, we traveled with them to visit several National Parks in Arizona, Utah, and California.  It was wonderful to experience the parks with them.  Then, from September to November, B and I traveled to 10 countries on my first round-the-world trip.  The travel with the boys was planned to the last minute as I did not want to leave anything to chance, but the second one was completely haphazard, just the way I like them.  Left home on a one-way ticket to Tokyo, Japan, and from there on it was up to us where and for how long we would travel.  One highlight for me was studying how cultures make sense of the unknown and what happens after death.

And as we were enjoying ourselves, friends back home were taking their last few breaths and facing the big unknown of life on Earth.

The first was Joyce Boucheron.  After a year and a half since I hadn’t seen Joyce, I finally picked up the phone last summer to give Joyce a call.  We had been co-workers at Glaxo for maybe 15 years, 8 of which we worked side-by-side on diabetes projects.  After Glaxo, we would visit with Joyce and Bill in Durham at least once per year.  In the phone call, Joyce announced that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a few months before.  We both knew what that meant, but focused on the fact that she had been asymptomatic and doing relatively well, all things considered.  A few weeks after the phone call, we visited Durham to see Paul Feldman, a friend and former colleague of B, who had been diagnosed with A.L.S. just a few weeks earlier.   Paul didn’t look good.  He was already having a hard time breathing, and I told B that I thought this might be the last time we saw him alive.  Sadly, I was right.  That week, I also called Joyce a little hesitant, but was surprised to hear that she was happy to hear from me and willing to meet for lunch.  Bill, Joyce, and I had a wonderful lunch in Guglhupf on 15-501.  Her hair was regrowing after chemo sessions, and she seemed fine.  Much better than I expected to see a Stage-4 pancreatic cancer patient.  We said our goodbyes and promised to come back to Durham to see her again soon.  I texted Joyce before our trip to Japan, and she answered and wished me a fun trip.  The next text I received was from Bill, just a few weeks later.  Joyce had passed away.  Apparently, she had taken a bad turn and died a few weeks later.

My other big loss was Rafael Leonard.  Rafa was a childhood friend who completed the trio of Nando, Rafa, and me.  The three of us were inseparable in High School in Costa Rica, and as adults, we communicated and visited as often as possible.  Rafael built a successful backup power-supply company in Panama serving the international airport and many international and local banks.  After the passing of Nando in November 2007, Rafa and I had made a point of visiting each other either in Miami or in Panama.  The last time in Panama was in February 2023, when our visit was cut short by the death of B’s brother, Isaac, and we had to fly to Puerto Rico for that.  At that time, we shared COVID-19 stories and an incident that Rafa went through with an electrified fence which put him in Code Blue for about 10 minutes before coming back to life.  The last text that we exchanged was in May of this year when he told me about another heart procedure and problems with his pacemaker.  We concluded with promises of taking the grandchildren to Panama soon.  My texts before and during the long trip went unanswered.   Later, I found out from Berta his wife, that he had been in the hospital for more than two months intubated under the effects of COVID.   B and I returned home after two months traveling on the 14^th of November and on the 15^th, Raul, Rafa’s younger son, called me with the sad news that he had passed away the day before.  I didn’t suspect anything at all.  Checking my messages later I realized that Berta had been trying to keep me informed at several times during the two months but those WhatsApp messages had gone directly to archive so I never saw them during the trip.  There is little anyone could have done during his last months alive as patients with COVID are typically isolated and removed from loved ones and society in general.  So closing this year with mixed feelings and understanding that our days on this Earth are counted and brief.

Even after learning about all the ways the people of this world explain and handle death, nothing is clear.  I hope Rafa is now meeting Nando and recounting their life stories, but we will never know.  Rest in Peace my friends. 

A year of change, some of it good

2024 was an evolving year for our family and for the country.  Early in the year we took advantage of the season to meet friends in Southern Italy.  It was a perfect combination of socializing part of the time and then an equal time by ourselves after making it to the beautiful town of Antibes, France.  Shortly after returning home to face the decision of continuing to improve our 1,700 sqft home in Athens, Georgia, or give up on it and go through the process of selling and moving.

After seeing a few houses available we decided that the only way to do it would be to move into the county and leave the urban setting behind.  It was a tough decision but now looking back, it was the best decision.  The bulk of the Spring, Summer and Fall was focused on selling, buying, fixing, improving, moving and enjoying our accomplishments for the year.  Instead of celebrating in the new home, we celebrated in SE Europe visiting a few new countries ensuring we would arrive here in time for the 2024 election.  As it turned out, we should have stayed a few extra weeks in Europe as our vote turned out to be not that necessary.

And here we are, facing 2025 just days ahead.  Will this be a repeat of the COVID years or a big improvement after learning how to run a country for 4 previous years.  We remain with our fingers crossed and hoping that the nation survives what we have ahead.

After visiting that part of Europe one comes with the feeling that is not only the USA that is veering to the right.  One fellow we met in Brasov, Romania was telling.  He had lived in the USA for a few years but never really freed himself from the chains of not securing a permanent resident status.  He met a Romanian woman and married her.   A few years later they already had two daughters in Florida with one of them ready for elementary school.  Early in the school year the parents learnt that the school teacher, a woman, was married to another woman, and that this is legal and almost promoted, according to them.  That was the needle that broke the camel’s back as it made them decide to travel back to Romania to raise their daughters in a more conservative environment.  America could have been the land of opportunity, but it came with a cost too steep for them.

That was just one personal experience but when you look at the global map, it seems that people are getting more concerned about differences and changes.  Are we getting to a point of maximum capacity in the world?  There seems to be less interest in helping strangers or even former friends that now differ from your views?  There seem to be more interest in religious beliefs, although that seems contrary to the notion of helping others in need, unless they are from your own clan.  I don’t know. It’s confusing.  I just know that I still rather be living in 2025 than in 1925 or even 1725.  Let’s not go too far back as we may encounter that most of us will not be in the smaller privileged groups of the past.  Good luck with that.

In 2025 I just wish we could all get along.

The two sides of the divide

 It is the end of 2023 in a year that we were expected to be as far away from political discourse as would be expected in a country with 4 years between presidential elections.  However, given the presence of Trump in the media ecosystem, you’d think that he was still president even though he was voted out three years ago.  As we face 2024, an election year, Americans would do good in engaging our seat belts for a possible roller-coaster of emotions keeping up with the political news in the country.

To help me cope with the politics, in the last few weeks I have been reading about the construction of the Panama Canal between 1870 and 1914.  I lived in Panama for 5 years when I was between 5 and 10 years of age and have visited Panama often as an adult.  So, I would categorize myself as having more than average knowledge about Panama and its interoceanic canal.  However, reading David McCullough’s “The Path Between the Seas” has been an eye opener.   I remember as a child visiting the Culebra’s Cut with my parents almost weekly.  It was often hosting a foreign visitor to Panama to show them the Canal from then vantage point of the observation deck at Culebra.  The parking lot was mostly covered with gravel as I remember it.  It was a fun activity to toss pebbles and stones back into the canyon as far as we could.  Of course, it would never reach the canal waters but now I think how disrespectful we were at trying to reverse what cost so many lives to make.

The book tells the story from the perspective of the Americans.  As it should.  The Panamanians really only benefited from having been selected by the French to be the most suitable place for a canal, but is not as if they had much to say or even contributed much to the cause.  The Americans finally decided on Panama instead of Nicaragua, because they got a good deal by picking up where the French had failed.  Panama as a country didn’t even exist and only with the support of Theodore Roosvelt, did the few Colombian rebels in the province of Panama, were able to launch a bloodless revolution that concluded in the creation of the independent country we now know as Panama.

In the early 1960s when my family lived in Panama, my father, Rafael, worked for a religious institution based in the Canal Zone.  Entrance to the Zone was monitored and controlled by the Americans and the Panamanians resented that control as an abuse to the sovereignty of their land.  At my tender age, I had no idea of the political and territorial divisions but I do remember the level of organization within the Zone.  There were no potholes.  The traffic lights were large and clearly visible.  The buildings uniformed and perfectly landscaped.  Mowers were a constant sight in the Zone.  The grass always trimmed and not a piece of paper floating about or a bare patch of dirt visible.  The commissaries where the Zonians purchased their goods were like huge department stores selling clothes, fresh and canned foods and toys.  What a heavenly place!  Returning to Panama City where we lived was like going to another world where car horns, potholes and traffic jams were the norm whereas the Zone was the exception. 

For years my perception of what the USA looked like was based on what the Zone was.  Little did I know that the Zone was not a real place.  It was a made-up bubble, like a Disneyland -with armed soldiers within and the hired help living outside.  No wonder all the Zonians I have met, dream of the wonderful like the had during their occupation.   Those Zonians could truly wear the Make America Great Again hats with pride knowing exactly where they would like to go back to.  The MAGA chant is also very clear here in the mainland but no many like to specify how far back in time do they want to go to.  The heavens, or hells, of our youth need to stay where they were.  Let’s move forward in 2024.  Let’s survive the attacks on democracy.  And let’s have a future that we will all be proud of.

Moving to small town America

 

The year 2022 was a year of transition.  Transition from the COVID to the post-COVID Era.  At least I’m hopeful that there is not a rebound for having made the move prematurely.  In our family it was also a transition to retirement life or at least one of less engagement into income-producing activities.   Motivated by our grandchildren, we moved from a big(er) USA city to small(er) town in another state.  The last part of the year it was officially as Georgia residents in the town of Athens.

The change to the smaller city is not as if it has been huge.  Our social life in Miami was limited to family and a few friends.   Most of the family moved during the year to different parts and only a few remain in Miami.  Most of the social interactions in Miami had to do with vendors or service people to our properties, here we have a few family members and again, service people that tend to our house maintenance needs.  To change that we joined a group of over-50 that make up a Life-Long Learning organization associated with the University of Georgia (UGA), but for one reason or another we have only participated in just few classes and social events. 

Athens has significantly fewer cars on the road than Miami but being the roads much narrower than in Miami, traffic continues to be a factor, at least during rush-hour moments.  Distances to the essential places, tend to be closer in a way, at least closer if you are already driving.  Back in Miami I used to do a lot of the day-to-day activities such as supermarket, bank and a few doctors appointments by walking or using the metro.  Here walking is just for exercise since most other things require driving, even if for a short distance.

We have also taken advantage of the free time and the proximity to the UGA to expand our learning opportunities.  All the history that I failed to learn in my college days, I’m now devouring as if it had just happened.   I’m fascinated to connect seemingly unrelated items by learning what else could have been happening elsewhere in the world, and also the level of understanding or ignorance on ancillary topics such as medicine and science available at the time.  It’s exciting to have been granted the opportunity of some longevity combined with some level of intelligence to continue learning at least for a few more months.

As the year comes to a close, I’m reminded of the many that were not granted the privilege of living past 2022.  Lives cut short by COVID or Opioids accounted this year for another decrease in the average lifespan of Americans.  At a time when we could be harvesting the rewards of years of scientific research, we are afflicted by misinformation and despair which in combination have poisoned the trajectory we were in before the days of social media and alternate truths.  I wish the Make America Great Again chant become more like Let America Trust Science Again, and that our future be guided by people smarter than me who built on knowledge generated by generations of immigrants and natives that founded this country.  Maybe too much to wish.

Rethinking our next chapter

 

The thought its finally hitting home that I am entering a new phase of life.  Next year I’ll be sixty-five and will officially enter old age.  Lucky for me, I live in the Twenty First century and not the Twelve century when my lifespan would have been over at least fourteen years ago.  This extra time has been good for my psychic and for our finances since that would have been 2007 when so many things happened to us that we are thankful to have survived and could I say, thrived in the ensuing years.  So what happens next? And do we have a say on how the remaining years unfold? 

 

Physical health is probably high on the list of important things to have at this stage.  It’s not guaranteed nor is it automatic.  Part is the debt you have from your lifestyle of the last 60 years, another part on your genes and probably a good part is your luck or lack thereof.  A mixture of those three factors and you end up with a life expectancy and most importantly a certain quality of life to carry you for your remaining years. 

 

Then there is your financial health which could also be a factor of three similar factors: how well you managed your finances in the last 40 years, how much you may have received from others, including your company or the government, and how lucky have you been in your investments or risks you may have taken with your finances.  Mixing those up you end up comfortable in your retirement or bagging groceries, not for fun, but to make ends meet.

 

In essence, it seems that, not putting too much weight on the “luck factor”, how you have carried your life during your productive years has a lot to do with how you’d spend the last phase of your life.

 

If you’re fortunate enough to have those two factors on your side, you get to decide what to do the rest of your life.  If one or both of those factors are spoken for, then your choices will be limited, at least part of the time.

One of the big decisions for that next phase of life is where to do the whole thing.  If you planned it right, and you enjoy where you are, you can just stay in place for the duration, but if you have a multi-story house or a house that is too big or you are far from family and friends or even if you need to go to a cheaper area where your funds would go a longer way, then you have that other question to ponder at.

Another decision is how you will use the bulk of you time.  You may be able to sit to watch Netflix all day long, but you could also introduce new activities to your life.  Things that you always thought you’d enjoy but didn’t have the time or hobbies that you have always entertained but could not do them full time before. 

A Year Later, Still Dealing with the Virus

The world, especially the USA, had the beast under the net, but somehow we allowed it to get free. A year and a half after the beginning of the pandemic, we are now officially living with the virus.

I don’t know if we as a country were always this way or whether Trump just released all our demons, but the government is now more polarized than ever.  Maybe the whole thing started with the election of former President Obama.  Many in the country saw that as a slap in the face.  Even Mitch McConnel, the majority leader of the US Senate, vowed to block everything President Obama proposed to make him a “one-term president.”  He did get elected twice, but the country took a giant political swing. We ended up with the polar opposite, Donald Trump.  The arrival of social media unleashed the ability of everyone to express their opinion and often under the disguise of a pseudonym.  Emotions reached a culmination on  January six of this year when many Trump supporters stormed the Capitol.  They were looking for anyone in power. They were mainly looking for VP Pence as he was affirming the results of the November 2020 election.  A sad period in our history and a reminder that we are just like the rest of the world and not an inch above anyone else.

Another casualty of the times has been the disregard for science and knowledge.  Trump airing the concept of “alternate truths” instigated the idea that whatever you want to believe in, it is okay because that’s what you believe.  No need for data or knowing how to interpret data.  Anyone’s ideas are just as good as gospel, and as long as you can verbalize them, that makes them sound.  Being a scientist since my earlier days, this lack of regard for knowledge and the process of acquiring this knowledge makes me sick and intolerant when I hear folks promoting ill-acquired information and when some put more weight on superstition and their beliefs than what comes out of the peer-reviewed medical journals and spokespersons.

I am moving on.  I also have my views and ways of looking at the world.  I believe in science and am happy to trust fellow scientists when they bring their ideas forth.  I don’t expect the ultimate truth.  In science, we know that scientific discoveries are only good as long as they reflect the latest understanding of the scientific community.  Two months or two decades later, that same concept is passed and replaced with the newest information from competing scientific teams.  That’s the nature of learning.  That’s the way science grows in understanding and knowledge.  I don’t get upset that one day someone says the virus is transmitted by touching contaminated surfaces. The next minute someone finds that only two percent of the infections are because of touching contaminated surfaces.  The first was a good guess of how it could happen; the second comes about after reviewing the data and further investigation.  It’s okay; the truth is not written in stone to never be erased; the truth is only as good as the data that supports it. 

We have learned a whole lot about this virus.  We now can go about our lives, thanks to vaccines and thanks to the experience we just went through.  It would make sense.  But not to everyone.  A large segment of our society questions everything that does not agree with what they have built as their truth.  I don’t know where this is going to take us, but I am terrified

I'm being robbed (of life)

But don’t call 9-1-1, call the Centers for Disease Control or whomever is responsible for this virus thing.  I am officially sick, gladly not with the virus but of the virus.  COVID-19 is openly stealing from my life.  It’s been more than two months that we have been “sheltering in place”, staying socially distant, wearing masks outside, and the biggest sacrifice yet, staying put.

And it’s not getting better yet.  We thought we were “flattening the curve” as the national news  promised, but instead Florida’s infected cases keep going up and as of this week we have earned the horrid title of being the epicenter of the disease in the USA.    Globally of course, we’re looking at 9 million infected with almost half a million deaths.  Not quite the numbers from the 1918 pandemic that ended up killing 50 million, but when you’re in the middle of it, and in the epicenter, it may actually feel worse.

This situation has already stolen from us about half of a year.  Twenty-twenty sounded good early on but as soon as it arrived, it has become a nightmare.   I started the year at the ripe age of 62.  It’s a great age to retire, to slow down to smell the flowers.  But not 2020, it started with a vengeance.  My father’s passing and my first Father’s Day without a father.   The excitement of researching and starting the process of getting a residence in La Condesa,  Mexico City as a big city hangout to visit a few times a year.  Lining up our ducks to start a life of freedom and enjoyment.  And then everything stopped.

Now, I have more time for writing, Uh hu!  I have more time to dream about travel. I have more time to look at maps, while I’m dreaming about travel.   Did I say I missed traveling?  What else is there?  Don't even want to think about it as I would dig myself even deeper into this COVID canyon.  In the meantime, we’ll wait for better times and do the best I can while we wait for the fog to lift off.  I hope it’s soon.