Hi again. Off to a swell start – skipping week 2. Deal is – I’m a working old bat & that summer holiday buzzed right on by, as they have a tendency to do. I did manage to finish several projects & would like to recommend one, especially if you are also beyond 60. Memorize something.

Come again? Memorize something? Like in 10^th grade?  Seriously – one of the best things we can do for our aging brains is to tease our memory to remember. This is easier now, what with Prof. Google to find the last verse of that song you smooched to in high school or the missing word in that clever saying by … oh dang, who was it now? Better check that out too. Yep – do it! Don’t know if it will directly stave off senility, but certainly can’t hurt. If you’re a reader, you would probably enjoy Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why. He recommends memorizing poetry both as an exercise & a rhythmic delight. Agreed. He starts with little but mighty – Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Eagle. Even poetry haters can feel a thrill with that one. I’ll end this entry with it.

I went a lot further this summer & memorized all 3 pages, 18 verses, 110 lines of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven – triggered by seeing the borderline silly but very suspenseful film of the same name in April. Bet Poe would love to see himself presented in the decorative – not to mention tall – person of John Cusack. John gets to read 1½ verse to a ladies’ book group near the end. Poe was big with ladies’ book groups. Doubtless the producers felt more than that would put the target audience straight to sleep & they would miss the end. That would be a shame, given that Poe’s life was seemingly just as boring as his stories are not. (That seems to be true of a lot of writers of scary stuff – for example Stephen King & a couple of Swedes I can think of. Their dark sides come out in their fiction.) My husband was game to listen to the whole recital. When I say ‘better half’ I am not joshing. I sent a grateful thought to Sister Ann Elizabeth, who made us memorize a poem every other week back in high school. I have that kind of memory & thought it was fun. Those who didn’t thought it was hell. Standing in front of a classroom & sounding like a dolt week after week – even though you aren’t one – is trauma. I experienced it when asked to figure a math problem out loud & am not harking back to the bad old days where school kids had to learn by rote but understanding what they parroted back was no big deal. Young people now don’t learn to remember anything exactly because it’s all right there on their smart phones, ipads, etc. How will they do as old bats & fogeys? Maybe just fine because other skills take over. I almost said ‘we’ll see’, but the beyond 60s won’t be around, so we won’t see. So – keep remembering anything that surfaces.

A teaser: The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.