I received the invitation to my high school class’ 50^th reunion last week. How can this be?! It seems like only yesterday I was sitting in our school’s gymnasium, listening to some forgettable speeches, and awaiting my chance to walk the stage.

But, to be sure, it wasn’t yesterday. That event took place in 1965. How time flies.

Aging is the topic on my mind at the moment. And, of course, I’ve been thinking about this for quite awhile now. I attended my first reunion in 1985, having waited a full twenty years before finally getting together with the classmates of my youth. Upon entering that gathering, I remember looking around and saying to myself, “who are all these old people?”

It was at this point that the aging process really grabbed my attention.

So now, here it is 2015, and there are many more signs pointing to the fact that I’m not as young as I once was. I suspect that the things I’m noticing are many of the same ones my contemporaries are dealing with.

Here, in no particular order, are just a few of the markers of time that have caught my attention.

Housing. When I moved to Eugene last summer, I decided to rent a unit in a quiet, peaceful apartment complex that only caters to codgers (male and female) over the age of 55. There are no noisy kids around. And no out-of-control parties. There is a significant population of white-haired folks who use canes, walkers and oxygen tanks, however.

Mail. When I was 49 years old, my junk mail began to have a “retirement” theme – as this is age that AARP identifies you as a mark. And trips to the mailbox only get worse as time goes on. These days, I have lots of information flowing my way about the wide array of Medicare plans and burial options.

Diet. The older I get, the more my diet reminds me of medicine. I take numerous dietary supplements, so my daily pill count is way up. And a couple of years ago I bought a NutriBullet machine, so now, as has been the case for 25 consecutive months, I begin my day with a smoothie made of organic, raw fruits and vegetables. But, believe me, it’s not because I’m particularly enamored with the taste of the concoctions I come up with.

Skin. I have these benign brown splotches (I think one term for them is “age spots”) on my body, mostly trunk and scalp. Every so often I have a dermatologist reassure me that they’re not dangerous. I think these things are rather unsightly, but I see them on others my age. There seems to be nothing I can do.

Glasses. I was in the library at Indiana University, reading, in the early 1990s, when the realization hit me: I need bifocals! I made an appointment with the eye doctor, and sure enough, it was my time. Ever since, my eyeglass situation has become more complicated. For over twenty years now, I have worn progressive-lens bifocals for normal use, plus additional pairs for computer-only and reading-only.

Lifestyle. I live what I call a “rehab” lifestyle. No, I don’t mean working the twelve steps; it’s more a physical therapy kind of existence. Given that my life is, more-or-less, dominated by multiple aches and pains, there is very little time during any given day when that fact is not on my mind. To manage it the best I can, I have sought out practitioners of various therapies for years. You name an approach, conventional or alternative, and it’s likely that I’ve tried it. I’ve had three cortisone injections in my spine in the past three months. In January, I started seeing a local teacher of the “MELT Method” – which has resulted in spending a considerable portion of every morning and evening doing prescribed routines. I walk three or more miles a day. I wear a Thermacare heatwrap around my mid-section almost all the time, and I take a Epsom-salt, hot bath every evening. Every morning I wake up, groan, do my MELT routines before anything else, and start the whole cycle all over again.

Reading list. It’s probably no surprise, given the above observations, that the book I’ve most recently read is Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. This work very elegantly explores the inadequacy of America’s health system when it comes to end-of-life care.

Well I suspect that’s enough of a list from me for now. I’m sure you have your own.

So, yes, I’m old. But I realize that I should be very grateful. I am living a long, full and interesting life. I got to be a college student in the 1960s. I’ve earned multiple degrees and had the opportunity to work on college campuses most of my life. I don’t rely on narcotics (or illicit substances) for pain management, and have escaped, so far, the trials and tribulations associated with baldness, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. I don’t need to take cholesterol or blood-pressure meds. And, I’ve avoided most mention of tumors. [In 1998, though, during one very long night in an ER, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Thankfully, that particular medical opinion, validated at the time by two doctors, turned out to be wrong. (I had a kidney stone.)]

It’s a little over three months until my 50^th reunion. The celebration will take place in rural Northern Wisconsin, about two thousand miles from where I now live. I hope the stars are aligned appropriately so that I can make the trip.

Soundtrack Suggestion

No, no, no, no, I don’t do it no more
I’m tired of waking up on the floor
No, thank you, please, it only makes me sneeze
And then it makes it hard to find the door.

[“No No Song” – Ringo Starr]

Before being nudged, not-so-gently, into retirement, Dr. Teller had spent the last ten years of his academic career as a community-college dean. The final position lasted for seven, interminably-long and difficult years at a junior college in California’s Bay Area.

Teller had come to believe that the life of an academic dean was: Just. Plain. Fucking. Nuts. The most frequent question that coursed through his brain was “why am I here?” Surely this wasn’t an existence that any truly healthy person would take on – other than from a sense of desperation.

The fact was, though: Teller had been desperate. The offer that ultimately came his way emerged after three-plus years of interim positions and a lifestyle of never-ending job-search. When he lost his state-level higher-education post in Oregon, he had been forced to seek out something else to do with his life. When the opportunity arose to be a college dean, he thought, “why not?” And after two temporary gigs in his home state, the California job seemed to provide him some sense of direction, resolution and permanency.

But while he was quite experienced with, and even amazingly skillful at, managing the highly-political nature of academia, the navigation of community-college campus-level politics turned out to be somewhat akin to living in the “Twilight Zone.” It was as if Rod Serling had come back to provide the script and narration for Teller’s time on this planet.

Of the 112 community colleges in the California community-college system, Teller ended up working at one of the smaller ones. And as it turned out, it had a quite-specific statewide reputation. Not that he knew anything about that when he moved there, of course.

But the reputation was discoverable and, in the end, indisputable: the place was batshit crazy.

To wit:

• The collective-bargaining agreement between the faculty and the institution was an absurdly-long and complicated document. It was poorly-written, internally-contradictory, maddeningly-prescriptive, and reflected decades worth of administrative concessions. It served as the college’s Bible. It was, indisputably, batshit crazy.
• The Board of Trustees was a self-absorbed, totally-dysfunctional body, prone to micromanagement, lack of boundaries, role confusion, internal strife, senseless speech-making, and meetings that lasted until midnight. Individually, and collectively, they were the very essence of batshit crazy.
• The collection of department chairs, a gang that convened monthly, consistently and vigorously attacked anyone unlucky enough to have the title of vice president. They truly believed that the world revolved around them. The group was distinguished by its inability to move any agenda along and famous for its failure to acknowledge (what the rest of the world might call) “reality.” Individually, and collectively, an easy call: batshit crazy.
• Overt and covert conflicts between faculty members and administrators were frequent, mean-spirited, and embarrassing for any innocent bystander to witness. The dynamic was full-on batshit crazy.
• The door to the vice president’s office was a revolving one, hosting seven different occupants during Teller’s time there. Some were laughably inept. At least two were verbally and/or emotionally abusive. One was middle-twentieth-century sexist. One was certifiably batshit crazy.
• Stories of bad behavior by faculty members were legendary, provided a mystical aura to the institution, and wove the fabric of the college’s culture. The campus employed several who had been there for decades and had long ago given up pretending to care about students. Teller believed that a certain percentage of them had substance-abuse or mental-health issues, and assessed this faction to be, unquestionably, batshit crazy.

Still, despite all the evidence in support of its reputation, Teller had not planned on leaving the college when he did. His departure, ultimately, came as a big surprise to him. The interim vice president, who had once been among Teller’s most-trusted allies on campus, had apparently drunk the Kool-Aid too many times. Acting as an agent of the president, she was the one who informed Teller that his time on campus was over.

He was devastated by the betrayal.

When all was said and done, Teller probably should have seen it coming. But he didn’t.

The evidence is there to support the notion that Dr. Teller, himself, had gone native.

In other words: batshit crazy.

Soundtrack Suggestion

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I’d done
And I don’t wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know…

[“Somebody That I Used To Know” – Gotye]

As I make an attempt to revive my activity here at Musings, after an extended hiatus, I reproduce below an edited version of a Facebook post I wrote in July of 2014.

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I should officially announce to y’all that I have made a major transition in my life. After nineteen consecutive years as a higher education administrator (the last ten as a community college dean), I have moved on.

I am retired and have physically relocated from Larkspur, California, to Eugene, Oregon … the place on earth that feels most like “home.” I arrived back here on July 1 (2014).

In the spirit of full disclosure, this whole retirement gig was not exactly my idea. (What? Me retire?) It was the path I chose to pursue when my position (Dean of Math & Sciences) at the College of Marin was no longer available to me. The official act dealt with the “non-renewal of my annual contract” … an avenue the president went down with three senior administrators this year. So, I signed up for an early-retirement plan, packed up my shit, and blew that pop stand.

As some of you are aware, I found my role as a community college dean a challenging one. When I left the Oregon University System Chancellor’s Office in 2004 (after a totally politically-motivated reorganization that left many of us devastated), I was warned about the hazards of a dean’s job on a community-college campus. As it turns out, the information I had been provided was frighteningly accurate. At three different community colleges, in two states, over ten years, the storyline was a lot the same: petty campus politics; huge amounts of conflict; rampant dysfunction; and an above-average percentage of mean people. These environments had the effect of deflating my spirit and led me to question the decisions I had made along the way to remain an educator. It all seemed so totally contradictory to the life I thought I had signed up for and, over time, I became increastingly jaded.

However, I survived then, and I’m surviving now. The future is looking brighter and brighter every day, even though I’m still viewing the job-loss experience through the lenses of rejection and betrayal.

Have you watched, at all, the Netflix original series, “Orange is the New Black”? In the middle of the second season, one of the female correctional officers (Fisher) is fired. When she discloses this to one of the prisoners (Nichols), the response is, “You’re a decent human being. Getting canned from this soul-sucking pit is the best thing that ever happened to you. Go home, take a hot bath …”

OK. Right now, I’m officially in the “hot bath” stage.

Soundtrack Suggestion 

Somewhere, somehow somebody
Must have kicked you around some
Tell me why you wanna lay there
And revel in your abandon
Listen it don’t make no difference to me baby
Everybody’s had to fight to be free
You see you don’t have to live like a refugee
Now baby you don’t have to live like a refugee

[“Refugee” – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers]