FootprintsintheWind.com

I don’t want a nursing home to keep people alive: for goodness’ sake, don’t keep people safe: rather keep people lively.

:- Doug.

Play makes grow a child—and an elder.

:- Doug.

If eldering will endure it will because it is complex, varied, and full of contradictions.

:- Doug.

For us to invent the blooms of longevity we will need to work on unfolding meaning. This is the large field of gifts of the generations.

:- Doug.

Do children yet gather to play ball? Do they still pitch underhand to the little ones, shorten the distances, have the goalie stand on her knees? Are allowances made like they were in my day? A lesson for how we might get the contributions of the aging held out to us.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1815

I am cumulus
a dot
Often stratus
a painted closing in ceiling
Or cirrus
some careless brush strokes
Ever moving morphing
hiding glowering present absent
Like poetry, reader, you make me change me lose me

Please pass it on.

© c 2018, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

The challenge is to find conversations with the 300 year grandchildren-elders, for when we engage with them, when we stir each others’ imaginations, the world shifts.

:- Doug.

List the tragedies, mistakes, and disappointments of your life: what were the meanings of them then; what are the meanings now? Here find clues to profound stories For the Grandchildren.

:- Doug.

The challenge is to write the family story in a scattered and mobile society. May the word ought to be “for:” “for a scattered and mobile society.” If you’re not with the grandchildren you love, love the grandchildren you’re with. Tell them the stories. What stories? Make up some? Did you know there is a National Storytellers Network?

:- Doug.

Eldering is not difficult; it is familiar; it is what you want to do.

:- Doug.

The value of elderhood is in danger of being found.

:- Doug.

Elders can provide design specs for technologies to empower eldering.

:- Doug.

The 70s are the flowering of old age
Further on we go to seed
What will you seed?

:- Doug.

Reminiscing makes larger sense of a life.

:- Doug.

For the Grandchildren: a different eldering.

:- Doug.

Look to the old ways
not because they are old
because they give a wider view

:- Doug.

Raise up elders from among the grandchildren.

:- Doug.

One reason we have nursing homes is that mere adults see old people as being of no further use. They no longer produce children nor money. Therefore they hold us back, keep us from these activities of adult years. We seek storage bins as more humane than execution; storage bins which tout “care” to ease our consciences. We can do better. It requires giving of our lives.

:- Doug.

This history tour is incomplete, not showing us the places where the things to be and the people who will have done them will be.

:- Doug.

This card, seemingly blank, is an invitation…to glimpse…to inkle…to perceive. Keep it available.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1814

I do not need to explain
I merely need to ask you
Your story
Here, we meet

Please pass it on.

© c 2018, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1812

Sooner or later your particles
all go back to random
pieces of all there is
ready to reassemble into something else
O the possibilities of you!

Please pass it on.

© c 2018, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Elder, what are the wounds, those that have healed, those that are still healing…your life? What are the profoundest injuries that now are part of your essence? What depths do they help you bring to the world?

:- Doug.