EXPLORING COMMUNITY AND GOVERNMENT

Hi friends and readers!     Ideally, government should build on community and common values, not vice versa.

If you look back over the posts available to you for free on this site, I think you’d classify the site as somebody's kind of exploring. The site isn’t political rant, nor family news and not recipes and cooking. Nope. It’s “one 'old guy'" doing his best to make sense out of the human situation, and he’s writing from an open-minded ethics perspective. That's my thing.

Just now, I (the “one 'old guy'”) will try to make sense out of three events I experienced during the week.

First event: I attended my first-ever presentation on memory care. The speaker, a middle-aged clinician and researcher, had a lot to say. In brief, he said that  mental activity and memory loss begins in one’s forties and continues from there. (The ages of the current American president and some other government leaders help one understand the “Quack Quack” sounds tweeted not only from from Washington D.C. but other capitals too.)

I’m aged about forty x 2, so where does that leave me? 

Well, I’m lucky. Yes, I'll admit I’m having some trouble.:  

“What day of the week is it?” 

“What is your phone number?” 

“Draw the face of a clock?”) 

I’ve been presented with such questions and tasks by my doctor annually for several years and I can answer them! Muy Bueno? Si. Muy Bueno!)

But I do less well on names of places, people and things. Also, I flunk on trying to remember what I said on a particular topic two days or more ago.

But, the presenter said that mental aging isn’t uniform. Older people actually do better on general wisdom about choices and on language and languages. Like the meaning of the word “Hallelujah.” Bet you don’t know what it means. You’re too young. But I do know what it means. If I’m right, that’s the old age dividend at work.

So, I will apply my supposedly mature general wisdom attribute to reflect on a couple of other events from the week past.

Pacific Convergence Plastics Trap

In the public domain by NOAA via Wikimedia

Second Event and one great thing! The “Oregonian” newspaper printed (yes, I’m old and I do read the print edition)  an Associated Press article by O. Rodriguez. She reported on a massive boom designed to corral plastic trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch of the Pacific Ocean. A 24-year-old Dutch innovator invented this cleanup device and the Ocean Cleanup group raised U.S. $35 million to fund the project. The goal: 60 free-floating barriers will be floating in the Pacific Ocean by 2020, acting like beaches to capture the plastic.

Is that fantastic, or what? Thank God for youthful innovators like Slat.

Now to the other end of the age spectrum. Third event: I attended a gathering of persons in my retirement community. Two or three people informed us on recycling. Questions like what should we put into the recycling can? What must go into trash? 

They surprised me with the judgment skills that are required of the householder who wants properly to get rid of trash. You might want to discuss this matter with your community, whatever it may be, and try to get commitment. 

Come on twenty-somethings and septuagenarians as well! Let’s resist our aging politicians’ palavers and join hands to hold the world together.  We can do it together! Government grows best out of community.

Thanks so much for reading. Share the post. And come back next week for a unique combination expressed as Growing Green Two Ways: environmental and financial.