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Jim Klobuchar - A Senior Shopper Collides with the Digital Age

It seemed harmless enough, this pre-Christmas proposition I made to my wife. “Give me clues,” I said. “I want to choose a present for you that will make sense and which you heartily deserve. I need enough options to give me cover so I can create some suspense for you when we unwrap our toys.” My wife adopted a stance of sweet coyness, which I could have predicted. At all costs, she said, I shouldn’t be throwing money away and it was the gesture, the love after all, that counted most. “But how sweet of you,” she said. “Any good book would do, or maybe a lighter weight shovel for me on days when you’re waiting for the snowplows.” My wife plays this game better than I do. I guessed that what she really needed was an upgrade in her electronic gadgetry. Compared with my own ploddings in the digital age, my wife practically swims in gygabytes. And I happen to know that as part of some organizational work she’s doing to uplift women in the poor countries, she could probably use one of the latest in iPads. I know this because now and then I’d find copies of trade magazines lying on the kitchen table practically falling into my chair and open to a page advertising a certain iPad 2, Wi-Fi 16GB. It’s a cinch you know somebody who understands this 21st Century alphabet better than I do. But I headed for the appropriate outlet in one of the city’s shopping centers. There were going to be crowds. I have to tell you that I always feel alien walking into one of these sanctuaries of digital America. Mainly it’s the language barrier. I can’t talk digital talk. So I worked out a strategy. I was not going to be intimidated. Because shopping time was getting short and the crowds were multiplying. I was going to walk right in, show the sales person a picture of the magical iPad2, pull out my credit card, bag the iPad and walk out of there a freed man. I got to the shop a few minutes before the sales opening. Cleverly I lined up at the entrance to beat the crowds. It was open and teeming with red-shirted sales people. It turned out they were not yet open for sales and were taking applications for temporary employees to handle the holiday crush. “Are you applying?” one of the red shirts asked. “No,” I said, “I’m just a customer. I can wait.” I congratulated myself on this deft jab of irony, and explained. “I’m looking for an iPad. I have all of the specifications here, provided by my wife. I know the model she wants and with time getting short I almost have to pick it up today.” “Great choice,” she said. “But you can’t get it here today. We don’t have any in stock. You can probably find one at our shop ten miles from here. I’m sure they’ll be happy to take care of you.” The first pangs of panic stirred in my throat. It was now becoming a Process. In these conditions I always like to go on the attack with Plan B. I would call the company’s customer services and place an order to pick up at the other shop. I walked down the corridor to a nearby women’s shop and searched my pockets for my cell phone. Strike one. I’d left my cell phone at home. I asked a woman in the perfume department if they had a Minneapolis area telephone book. She rummaged around and smiled apologetically. “Try handbags,” she said. They didn’t have a phone book in handbags or lingerie, either. So I drove home without a whole lot of enthusiasm for making a call from there because I hate battling robots in customer services. I end up arguing with them because I always feel I’m going to be subjected to some kind of endless electronic filibuster. But I called. A voice answered and I dug in my heels. Do you remember one of the all-time films of decades ago, called “2001: A Space Odyssey”? It was the forerunner to all of the space epics to follow. It began with the immense chords of Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” and featured the comforting but faintly lunar voice of H.A.L., or Hal, who was a kind of invisible host in space. I introduced myself and explained why I was calling. I need to tell you this robot was different. “I am an automated system,” he said. “I can handle complete sentences. So tell me how I can help you today.” That’s what he said. I gave him my name and described my problem. I needed a particular iPad and this was going to be my last gasp in the shopping mall wilderness. I told the robot: “I understand the iPad I need is sitting there, at the company’s outlet in the last mall available. I had been told the product would be available for certain, today, at his company’s outlet in a shopping mall in a southern suburb.” I waited, sweating, because that was more than one sentence. At the very least it was a compound sentence. Hal offered no argument. Smoothly he absorbed all of my dangling participles. He asked one question about color –definitely black, I said. I told Hal that if it wasn’t black I might be facing divorce court. I can’t tell you if Hal has a sense of humor. He was calm and reassuring. I could almost hear Strauss’ opening music. “It will be available at the store, just as you requested,” he said. “Have a good day.” I drove to the mall, sweating. And there it was. If Hal had a business card, I’d send it to you. About Jim Klobuchar: In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, including Minnesota's senior U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.

by origineight

Top 10 Lessons for Living from America's Most Experienced and Wisest Citizens

Karl Pillemer, Ph.D., is a gerontologist and professor of human development at Cornell University.  He's author of "30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans."  Over the past six years, as part Cornell's Legacy Project, he's conducted a research project designed to tap the practical wisdom of older Americans. Using several different social science methods, he's collected responses from over 1,200 seniors to the question:

"Over the course of your life, what are the most important lessons you would like to pass on to younger people?" He

He then combed through the responses, and the result was a set of lessons for living from the people he calls "the wisest Americans."  Below are what he pinpointed as the Top 10 Lessons:  You can also read lessons from Ecumen's customers and staff members - 50 Tips for Aging Gracefully - quite a few parallels - and a lot of wisdom.  Thanks, all, for sharing. 

1. Choose a career for the intrinsic rewards, not the financial ones. Although many grew up in poverty, the elders believe that the biggest career mistake people make is selecting a profession based only on potential earnings. A sense of purpose and passion for one's work beats a bigger paycheck any day.

2. Act now like you will need your body for a hundred years: Stop using "I don't care how long I live" as an excuse for bad health habits. Behaviors like smoking, poor eating habits and inactivity are less likely to kill you than to sentence you to years or decades of chronic disease. The elders have seen the devastation that a bad lifestyle causes in the last decades of life -- act now to prevent it.

3. Say "Yes" to opportunities: When offered a new opportunity or challenge, you are much less likely to regret saying yes and more likely to regret turning it down. They suggest you take a risk and a leap of faith when opportunity knocks.

4. Choose a mate with extreme care: The key is not to rush the decision, taking all the time needed to get to know the prospective partner and to determine your compatibility with them. Said one respondent: "Don't rush in without knowing each other deeply. That's very dangerous, but people do it all the time."

5. Travel more: Travel while you can, sacrificing other things if necessary to do so. Most people look back on their travel adventures (big and small) as highlights of their lives and regret not having traveled more. As one elder told me, "If you have to make a decision whether you want to remodel your kitchen or take a trip -- well, I say, choose the trip!"

6. Say it now: People wind up saying the sad words "it might have been" by failing to express themselves before it's too late. The only time you can share your deepest feelings is while people are still alive. According to an elder we spoke with: "If you have a grudge against someone, why not make it right, now? Make it right because there may not be another opportunity, who knows? So do what you can do now."

7. Time is of the essence: Live as though life is short -- because it is. The point is not to be depressed by this knowledge but to act on it, making sure to do important things now. The older the respondent, the more likely they were to say that life goes by astonishingly quickly. Said one elder: "I wish I'd learned that in my thirties instead of in my sixties!"

8. Happiness is a choice, not a condition: Happiness isn't a condition that occurs when circumstances are perfect or nearly so. Sooner or later you need to make a deliberate choice to be happy in spite of challenges and difficulties. One elder echoed almost all the others when she said: "My single best piece of advice is to take responsibility for your own happiness throughout your life."

9. Time spent worrying is time wasted: Stop worrying. Or at least cut down. It's a colossal waste of your precious lifetime. Indeed, one of the major regrets expressed by the elders was time wasted worrying about things that never happened.

10. Think small: When it comes to making the most of your life, think small. Attune yourself to simple daily pleasures and learn to savor them now.

by origineight

Jim Klobuchar - Our Last Mountain

He sat in his wheel chair, my old Swiss climbing guide, grumbling in a predictable show of annoyance as his wife eased him into their apartment on the fourth floor of a home for the aging. They live in the village of Zermatt beneath the Matterhorn, which he had climbed hundreds of times, five of them with me.

He is a man with that Teutonic stoicism that seemed genetically planted in his generation of Swiss mountain guides. A recent head injury in a fall affected his sense of balance. But his mind seemed clear and his fondness undiminished for the local Fendant white I brought for the family wine bins. I offered a hug and he extended an arm and a smile before attempting one more apology for the wheel chair. I shrugged it off. I told him the only superman I ever met was in the movies and couldn’t pass up a telephone booth. Which was not exactly a revelation to him. He had suffered fractures, been caught in avalanches, rescued dozens of stranded climbers as a volunteer and led me on the Matterhorn one day when the visibility in the clouds fell to zero and the mountain was otherwise deserted.

I told him I was in Switzerland as the escort for a tour group from Minnesota. This was in October, still more than a month away from the jammed ski slopes and raclette parties in the Zermatt bistros and hotel cellars. Which meant ceding the hiking slopes and the cable trollies to the prairie and lake dwellers from the American north.

I also wanted to tell Gottlieb how much he had mattered in my life and expanded it, not so much with thrills but as a tutor in exploring the high country in its mysteries and its magic, and doing it sensibly. He had also done it with safety, demanding that you abided some of its homeliest rules and axioms—that pride truly does come before a fall, that there are old climbers and bold climbers, but not many old and bold climbers.

“Do you still climb?” he asked.

“No,” I said.” I’m in that age group we call octogenarian, and I don’t know many of that type who are strong enough or loopy enough to go high as a climber. But I love the mountains still, hike in them, camp in them, and remember the sensations and the discovery, and guys like you who opened that world to people like me.

“What do you remember?,” he asked. He spoke with a warmth I had not felt in our 30 years together on the rope.

“ I remember the day we reached the top of the Matterhorn at the very moment the rays of the sun reached the Monte Rosa to the east and then the Michabel massif and the west wind was stirring, and at that moment there was no one else on the mountain. I sucked in the air and looked across to the Italian side of the summit ridge, the cross on it and I swear I could hear the pealing of the church bells two miles below us in Zermatt.”

So what had the mountains, and therefore Gottlieb, brought into my life?

They have been mountains of a kind to reward our dreams. We had been with them long enough to understand the illogic of imparting personal qualities to inanimate stone and ice, personal qualities dear to the poet: Mountains could be rash or vindictive.

We know that rock, snow and ice cannot be emperically kind or restless, punitive or rewarding. So it is said. The scientists and the meteorologists know this. But we also know that sometimes, especially on a windless morning when the sun leaps above the ridges and spills its flaming orange over the snowfields, the poets were right and the scientists, at least once, were wrong.

And so have the mountain years been rewarding, in the effort and search they demand, the bonding and the overcoming of a natural fear.

Oh my, yes. They have, and for those drawn to physically engage them, this becomes the most profound gift of the mountain world: The humility and gratitude it imparts to those who find themselves in the presence of a nature so mighty and beautiful, and in those most intimate times, so full of grace.

About Jim Klobuchar:

In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, including Minnesota's senior U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.

by origineight

Three Pieces of Holiday Advice from Larry Minnix

For some good stories and great advice, check out the following column by LeadingAge leader Larry Minnix: Three Pieces of Holiday Advice.

by origineight