FootprintsintheWind.com

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.

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.

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.

Tell me grandchild, what have you learned? It may be, it may be.

:- Doug.

Might we design an alternative “economy” where elders who are already segregated are also “harvested” for “wealth” for the community? Attend the words: “household allotment;” “a festive time of gathering, ripeness and fullness;” and “happiness, well-being, whole, sound.” What is in this For the Grandchildren?

:- Doug.

Dotage, decrepancy, and dementia
are not meant for most

:- Doug.

Sex is the secret adults keep from children
What is the secret elders keep from adults
Something invisible to those still unripe?

:- Doug.

Sex brought death; gardens brought old people.

:- Doug.