Theodore Roszak’s genius in The Making of a Counter Culture is certain once again to revolutionize our understanding in his new book, The Making of an Elder Culture.

His latest insightful treat offers one of the more salutary visions of what may be possible as the “saging” demographic continues to swell in numbers. As he says in his foreword, “Every institution in our society will be transformed as its population drifts further and further from competitive individualism, military–industrial bravado, and the careerist rat race. It is as if the freeways of the world will one day soon begin to close down, starting with the fast lane and finally turning into pastures and meadows.”

The link below will take you to an excerpt and the opportunity to purchase the book. I plan on reading it and am certain you will want to do so as well!

http://www.secondjourney.org/itin/09_Spr/Roszak_09Spr.htm

Smoke Alarms for the Hearing Impaired

Some smoke alarms have strobes or vibrate, which can be useful for the hard of hearing. The First Alert SA100B ($140, 800-323-9005) has an 85-decibel alarm and a strobe. It can be connected to other units; if one sounds, they all do. Plus you have all the other delightful advantages of a small device that vibrates. Hook the Kidde Interconnectable Strobe Light ($77, 800-880-6788) to another Kidde, and it emits a steady light for smoke and flashes for carbon monoxide.

Shower Heads That Prevent Burns

The HotStop Shower Head ($25, 877-531-7470) and Antiscald ScaldShield Shower Device ($35, 718-268-7126) prevent scalding by slowing the shower flow once the water temperature gets too hot. The flow restarts when water gets cooler. While the HotStop replaces a regular showerhead, the ScaldShield is placed between the showerhead and the pipe (not the one being smoked).

Avoid Burns in the Kitchen

The Lamson & Goodnow HotSpot Honeycomb Silicone Pot Holder ($7, 800-872-6564) is a good alternative to a standard pot holder that’s made of cotton, which could ignite if left near a lit stove. Institute testers were able to hold a hot pan or lit roach for more than a minute with these very flexible holders. And the elderly consumers gave the pot holder high marks, too.

Manage Medications

The E-pill Cadex 12 Alarm Medication Reminder Watch and Medical ID ($80, 800-549-0095) was easy to program, and its alarm reminds users to take medications available at far cheaper prices in Canada up to 12 times a day. The face even notes the name of each pill to take. The watch stores medical information like allergies, blood type, and phone numbers for health insurance and doctors.

Medication Storage

The Borin-Halbich Home Care Pill Box ($3.94 per strip, 800-441-9779) is a seven-day pill dispenser with snap-down lids and labeled compartments for each day. In the Institute’s evaluations inside the lab and with older users at the senior center, this pillbox was a breeze to open and close. The large, raised lettering is a plus for those who are sight-impaired or who have forgotten the days of the week.

Avoid Falls

Moen SecureMount Anchors ($37.50, 800-882-0116) let you install grab bars anywhere in the house — they can even be used in between the studs in bathroom walls or to thwack that annoying partner of yours. The bar attaches to an anchor inserted into the wall, so the device securely supports weight, giving seniors the extra support they need.

Reach High-Up Items

The Ettore Grip ’n Grab ($26.15, 800-438-8673) extends a person’s reach, so your folks won’t have to use a stool to get things that are high in their home. This grabber has a pivoting rubberized head, the latter of which can provide a fine alternative to the pleasures of your vibrating smoke alarm if its battery runs out or it can nab something on the floor if bending down is difficult.

You may not need these devices yet, but you probably know someone who does!

Government’s “rabbit” waste is a gripe for many a disgruntled citizen, but it’s reassuring to know that our taxes are often put to good use. The website below is a great example of such a benefit.  It provides a comprehensive listing of all the Senior Citizens’ Resources available on both the federal and state levels. Everything from housing to health, from taxes to travel, from consumer protection to caregivers, has its own separate link.

www.seniors.gov

We’ve earned these benefits; let’s use them.  As the French would say, it’s a “bonne idée.”

(You did catch that, didn’t you?   Bunny Day? Which is what I recall my tenth grade French teacher saying was also French for Easter.  He was quite a card, that fellow.  Wish I could remember his name.)

There isn’t a season gone by that I haven’t grumbled at the prospect of hauling my gravity- challenged tusch out for yet another round of the unrelenting cycle of property maintenance. The suburban Sisyphean burden. I often console myself that there will come a time when, probably owing to inevitable decrepitude of some sort, I can either 1) move to a maintenance-free yard, or 2) justify paying someone else to labor mindlessly.  In the meantime I’m mostly healthy and financially-mindful enough (not to say strapped) to insist that I do my own yard work.  Though I gripe, and gripe mightily.

Until today, that is.

I headed out mid-morning to do the raking and  weeding, mowing and towing, hauling and seeding  that, oddly enough, appeared to be needed since last  summer.  But today, just for a moment I paused as I  pulled the deep red stems and delicate spoke-like roots  of what I’ve been calling Wild Coriander, taking in its  improbably exotic scent.  Like most weeds, it is defiantly persistent and obnoxiously resilient, virtues in themselves, I suppose, and ones I hope to increasingly press into service as the years wend on.

It suddenly occurred to me that I wanted to share this plant with my daughter, who happens to be home this week.  I wanted her to see what a work of both visual and odiferous art this weed is in its own right, what with its tiny pink flowers and spicy, pungent fragrance.  She’s never had a garden herself, but I was suddenly eager to tell her that even though weeding itself is hardly a treat, there truly are sweet weed pleasures.

Pleasure?  Weeds? Sweet?  Did I say that? And that’s when I remembered.  There really are many beauties in the world of weeds. Paula’s House of Toast, for instance, (one of my favorite blogs) is truly the ultimate paean to weeds. And simply to look at a full bloom dandelion blossom, or even its blossom gone by, is to see brilliant and bold beauty in its most taken-for-granted state. I smiled, remembering the countless, scraggly bouquets of startlingly yellow dandelions my children used to proudly bring me.  Dandelions weren’t weeds to them; they were a gift.

And that’s when I put it all together.  What if my yard work wasn’t a chore, but was… a relationship. The lawn, the trees, the shrubs, the hapless annuals and patient perennials, the fallen leaves and scattered twigs and branches, even the insistent and sometimes ornery weeds were all part of this relationship.  And like all relationships, they require effort, attention, and constancy.  Just as with raising children, there are moments of transcendent beauty, now and then, and whole lot of hassle in between.  And, now that I think about it, all the “mindlessness” of weeding I gripe about – isn’t that precisely the consciousness I actively seek at other moments of the day, a virtue of its own reward?

Well, it turns out that what I thought was Wild Coriander is, in fact, Geranium robertium. And that “improbably exotic scent”?  It seems that to noses other than mine it has the “fragrance” of, ahem… burning tires. I quote Wikipedia, here. Evidently in more decorous regions it is called Herb Robert, though in the Pacific Northwest, where I live, it’s called (affectionately, I wager) Stinky Bob, and is listed as one of Washington state’s official “noxious weeds.”

Curious to know more? Well, I was too.  And one of the gifts of living in the twentieth century (or thereabouts) is having access to the Universe of Knowledge that is Google.  It’s where I discovered Neltje Blanchan, who wrote about Herb Robert in 1917 in Wild Flowers Worth Knowing:

Who was the Robert for whom this his “holy herb” was named? Many suppose that he was St. Robert, a Benedictine monk, to whom the twenty-ninth of April – the day the plant comes into flower in Europe – is dedicated.  Others assert that Robert Duke of Normandy, for whom the “Ortus Sanitatis,” a standard medical guide for some hundred of years, was written, is the man honored; and since there is now no way of deciding the mooted question, we may take our choice.

At any time the herb gives forth a disagreeable odor, but especially when its leaves and stem have been crushed until they emit a resinous secretion once an alleged cure for the plague.

Hmmph. So,  Stinky Bob it is, then?  And what does that say about my olfactory capacities? There I had thought it was an exotic spice. Or maybe it’s quite like what our biases about so much of life are.  We see what we project.  Wild Coriander, or Stinky Bob?  Old age, or old sage?

I’m kind of partial to the latter notion.  In the meantime, if the bubonic plague comes around again promise to ring me up.  I’ve got enough Stinky Bob to cure you and all your kin.