Bill in the Kootenays

One of the pitfalls of getting older is social and intellectual isolation. Often it happens after retirement when we lose our work connections. Sometimes the death of a spouse is the cause. Or, if we get physically or mentally frailer, we don’t have the confidence or the patience we once had, so we stay home.

Photo by Marcin Kempski

Click here to listen to Keep Learning, Keep Connecting, episode 10 of Old Growth, my radio series about life after 65. (Scroll down to episode 10)

Learning about everything

The 100 members of the Learning in Retirement Group in Nelson set learning tasks for the group– learn about geology, photography, healthy aging, aquatic fitness, writing and publishing– and they go out and find someone to learn it from. They take field trips, making sure they go on a bus rather than in cars because it’s more fun that way.

Pursuing social connection

Social connection is part of the point. The four members of the group I interviewed for this show– Judy Biggin, Marilyn Pollard, Roger Oliver, and Phyllis Dale– all talked about how they had made so many new friends. They are clear that social connectedness is a social determinant of health, and they are enthusiastically pursuing connection.

Activism and excitement

They are activists too. They discuss their attempts to get more seniors programs at the pool in Nelson and to get better sidewalk maintenance in the winter.

There is a real sense of excitement in this group, and I hope this episode of the show conveys that.

Tune in

Click here to listen to the podcast of this episode of Old Growth (scroll down to Episode 10).

For a complete list and descriptions of all Old Growth shows, click here.

I produced the eleven episodes of Old Growth for Kootenay Co-op Radio on a New Horizons for Seniors grant in the fall of 2011.

Tags: aging, healthy aging, Kootenay Co-op Radio, Learning in Retirement, Nelson BC, Old Growth radio, social determinants of health

Colin Stetson

He uses a couple of dozen microphones placed around the room and on his body and on his instrument and he walks around among them while playing. I don’t know what else he does, but whatever it is, it’s unbelievable that he can do it live– there is no overdubbing or layering.

Colin Stetson…

The two pieces in this podcast of Giant Steps are fairly tame compared to some on his CD New History Warfare Vol 2. I am talking about the startlingly original saxophonist Colin Stetson, who has collaborated with Bon Iver, Broken Social Scene, and Arcade Fire. And he has a solo career playing music that is quite radical (despite some roots in Evan Parker.)

…with Bon Iver 

On this edition of Giant Steps (new jazz and its relatives) I played two Stetson pieces alternating with two tracks from Bon Iver’s latest CD. Stetson plays on that Bon Iver CD so I thought it might be an interesting mix. I think it works. The show airs Mondays at 3 pm and Wednesdays at 5:30 am.

Miles from India

The show starts out with the sound of a lonely solo Indian violin. Kala Ramnath. She’s one of a bunch of Indian musicians collected a few years ago by producer Bob Belden to collaborate with a group of Miles Davis alumni to create Miles from India– Miles’ music through an Indian filter. It’s a fascinating concept and it works. One of the best things about it is that Belden does not ignore Miles’ funk period. The piece that Kala Ramnath introduces is Ife from Big Fun.

Kala Ramnath

A rich cast of Miles alumni

The only surviving member of the band that made Kind of Blue– drummer Jimmy Cobb– is on the record along with an unlikely cross-generational mix of others: Michael Henderson, Dave Liebman, John McLaughlin, and many more. It’s a double CD full of riches. Trumpeter Wallace Roney has been criticized throughout his career for sounding (too much, say some people)  like Miles Davis. On this album his job is to sound like Miles, and he pulls it off in fine style.

Vijay Iyer

Also on the show another take on India with the pianist Vijay Iyer and his piano/guitar/tabla trio from the CD Tirtha, which one critic has described as “not Indian jazz, and not not Indian jazz.”

Tags: Bon Iver, Colin Stetson, Giant Steps radio, Kootenay Co-op Radio, Miles from India, Vijay Iyer

I have decided to post this experimental video I made recently, experimental in the sense that I am new to making videos.

There is some background to it. When my daughter Rosie was about 13, she and I spent a weekend at the Yasodhara Ashram on Kootenay Lake. It introduced her to some new things because we temporarily joined a group of people living a spiritual retreat life, eating silent meals together, participating in a devotional practice, and working on the grounds and buildings and fields for the sake of the community.  She is a very thoughtful person and this alternative lifestyle gave her lots to ponder.

One of the reasons it made an impression on her was that so many of the people living there were young: they were in their teens, twenties, thirties. There was some gray hair too of course but it was mostly a youthful presence.  We worked a couple of half-days– that was part of the weekend stay there.  Our job was slicing apples and canning tomatoes in the summer kitchen. This was food they’d grown there at the Ashram and were preserving.

Rosie really loved working in the summer kitchen.

Here is the video, taken in the fall of 2011. The “attitude” shown by Rosie in a couple of places is just because I didn’t warn her I was going to video her and she was a bit uncomfortable about that– actually she still really likes it at the Ashram.

Tags: Kootenay Lake, Rosalie Metcalfe, Yasodhara Ashram

Last summer my friends Lynn Shervill and Sheila Peters were in Kelowna so I visited them for a couple of days.

Say the Names brings stories from the people who live in the towns and travel the rivers and lakes situated along the proposed route of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project in British Columbia.

Sheila Peters (Photo by Pat Moss)

Lynn and Sheila lived in Smithers when I did in the 70/80s, and they still do. Sheila has a blog about the Enbridge pipeline called Say the Names. The quotes here are from there.

Al Purdy wrote a wonderful poem called “Say the names say the names” which celebrates the names of Canadian rivers – Tulameen, Kleena Kleene, Similkameen, Nahanni, Kluane and on and on in a celebratory song.

The visit in Kelowna was the first time we had seen each other in about maybe 10 years. We were friends in the Bulkley Valley when their two boys, Daniel and Michael who are men now, and mine, Patrick who is now 27, were born.

Enbridge is planning to build a dual pipeline that will carry bitumen and condensate across hundreds of waterways between Edmonton and Kitimat. Some of these waterways are rivers like the Parsnip (or what’s left of it), the Nechako, the Morice and others are smaller creeks whose names are often known only to the folks who live along their banks or who fish in their shadows or who bend to wash or drink as they cross paths.

We were young parents of young children together. Looking back, and looking now on the street at young parents hanging out with each other and their young children, that’s an activity shared that is even more precious than I realized at the time, or than the young parents now realize perhaps.

Bill Metcalfe and Lynn Shervill 2011 (Photo by Sheila Peters)

I want to collect the names of these rivers and creeks, to collect your stories, your poems, your songs so we can collectively give voice to the land living under the line Enbridge plans to draw.

We lived those years in the territory that Enbridge will be crossing. My son was born and lived his first couple of years a stone’s throw from Driftwood Creek just above its mouth on the Bulkley River.

You can read what others have written, check out the pipeline’s route via the link to the pipeline map, post your own comments, or email me (sheilapeters900@gmail.com) your own stories and I’ll post them for you. The copyright remains with you.

Lynn and Sheila lived beside Driftwood Creek too, a few miles upstream, and still do, by the fossil beds, on the road to the Babine Mountains where we hiked and they still do. They  publish non-fiction, fiction, poetry, photography, and painting from the Northwest at Creekstone Press.

You’re invited to say something to them or me or Enbridge below. No login required, just start writing.

Tags: Bill Metcalfe, Bulkley Valley, Creekstone Press, Enbridge pipeline, Lynn Shervill, Say the Names, Sheila Peters, Smithers BC

Ed Natyshak at the Fat Tire Festival 2009, Nelson, B.C.

“Don’t stop moving, just because you think you’re tired!”

That’s Ed Natyshak yelling at the people in his fitness class. It’s his first line in my 5-minute documentary about his classes that aired on CBC radio recently.  Click here to hear a podcast.

Ed’s are the most insanely tough fitness classes anywhere, taught from his wheelchair.

Gruelling and inspiring

I first heard about Ed’s Sasquatch Performance Training classes a while back when my friend Julia had just come out of her first one moments before, and she wasn’t looking so good. She managed to mumble something about hell.  Just been there and back, something like that. But Julia is young, strong, and fit, so I wasn’t worried. Then I kept hearing, from Julia and others, about how gruelling and inspiring Ed’s classes were.

Paralyzed by a bike accident

So I phoned Ed and proposed this radio piece. I have known him since before he became a quadriplegic in a mountain bike accident in 2005. I used to go to the Summit Gym, which Ed co-owned back then. He was a biker, rafter, skier, you name it.  I knew him as a big, brash, outgoing, stoked, physically strong, energetic, community-oriented, positive guy. And guess what. He still is. After getting paralyzed from the chest down and going through years of rehab and facing the rest of his life in a wheelchair, his personality has basically not changed. Ed said a big loud yes to the idea of the radio piece.

Non-stop and action-packed

Then I pitched it to Radio West, the new CBC weekday afternoon show out of Kelowna. Producer Kathryn Marlow said yes, but she put a time constraint on me: max five minutes. So I had to make the piece as fast and action-packed as one of Ed’s classes.

Shouting them on

The first one I attended (not as a participant!), a men’s class, really scared me, I’m not kidding. Part way through the half-hour class I was worried. How will these guys survive this? Has Ed gone completely crazy? Maybe I was imagining myself trying to survive it. It was non-stop, stopwatch-timed, and unforgivingly relentless, with Ed shouting them on, driven by very loud rock music.

Don’t stop, don’t wait, don’t ask questions, don’t think about the past, just drive forward. That’s his approach, with an underpinning of planned exercise routines he says are based on solid science.

Kootenay girls go to the top

The second class I attended, a women’s class, was the same way but it didn’t freak me out as much. I’d become acclimatized to the intensity. After it was over I interviewed the group of strong, exhilarated women about their view of Ed’s uncompromising style. I guess they are the girls Ed was shouting about during the class. “Kootenay girls go to the top of the mountain! They go right to the top! They don’t let up! Not for a second!”

You’ll enjoy hearing them talk about how they think Ed is the greatest and that they don’t think of him as paralyzed. They tell is that if a guy in a wheelchair who used to be a world-class athlete is urging you to do more, why wouldn’t you push harder than you thought was possible?

Please comment below on this post or the podcast. You don’t have to log in or anything, just start writing.

Tags: CBC Radio west, Ed Natyshak, fitness classes Nelson BC, Nelson BC, quadriplegia and fitness, Sasquatch Performance Training, spinal cord injury

“When that car was gone I used to look out in that empty space every day. That hurt, really. I was afraid I wouldn’t pass the test and  I don’t think I could have taken that. That would’ve been really devastating.”

That’s one of the voices from this week’s edition of Old Growth. Click here to listen to the podcast.

It will happen to all of us

How will you feel when your doctor and/or the government tells you that you are not allowed to drive any more because your reflexes are too slow, your hearing too poor, your mind too confused?

Source: thebig249, creative commons, Flickr

Unless this is happening to us, or to a loved one, we don’t think about it much. That aging uncle that you’ve been getting scared to ride with—are you prepared to tell him he shouldn’t be driving? You want to break his heart? It’s about independence and a sense of power.

Mike Chapman’s interviews

Five years ago Mike Chapman produced a full hour of Nelson Before Nine (a public affairs show that aired on Kootenay Co-op Radio for eight years until recently) about aging drivers. For this edition of Old Growth I invited Mike into the studio and we played some highlights from his interview back then and he commented on them.

Mike Chapman

Why and how it’s decided

One of Mike’s guests was the now-retired Nelson physician Paul Walker, who explains the process doctors go through to help the provincial government decide if a person should still be allowed to drive.

Women should be the drivers

Dr. Walker has some interesting observations about the division of gender roles in the generation now facing these issues—people in their 80s. In that generation, many women didn’t drive, and many of them are giving up their licences in their old age. But Dr. Walker, in his plainspoken way, says “it’s the women who should be doin’ the damn drivin’” because women’s life expectancy is longer and their health fails later in life.

But the men insist

This view is echoed by an woman in her eighties who notices that among her married friends, the men insist on driving while the women know it is not safe.

Independence and power

Another guest is an elderly man quoted in the opening paragraph above. He speaks eloquently about the car as a symbol of independence and power.

 Tune in

Click here to listen to the podcast of this episode of Old Growth (scroll down to Episode 8).

For a complete list and descriptions of all Old Growth shows, click here.

I produced the eleven episodes of Old Growth for Kootenay Co-op Radio on a New Horizons for Seniors grant in the fall of 2011.

Tags: aging, Kootenay Co-op Radio, Mike Chapman, Old Growth radio, seniors and driving, too old to drive

Most artists on any weekly edition of my Giant Steps radio show (new jazz and its relatives on Kootenay Co-op Radio) are still “Alive. Alive and living” as my daughter Laura said in a poem to indicate not just alive but also dealing in the world of the present and future tense. Sometimes doing a music show you put together a set that just works, a little suite of songs that travel between each other so well, and on this show (live at 3pm December 19) the first three here are the perfect set, but first, click here to listen to a podcast of this show.

Tom Waits: Spare Parts from Nighthawks at the Diner

This album has a deliciously live feel to it with lots of audience interaction, regardless of the fact that the live-ness was manufactured—the producer hired some jazz musicians and a room, invited his friends and bought them beer. In 1979. Tom created a real-or-pretend late-50s beat jazz club feel. And this brilliant, poetic, relaxed record is the result.

J.D. Allen: Mr. Sleepy from Victory

And rolling in already at full tilt from the applause at the end of the Waits piece, Greg August (bass) and Rudy Royston (killer drummer) at a good clip, ready for Mr. J.D. Allen and his tenor saxophone, a short but dug-in piece of work, exhilarating.

tUnE-yArDs: Bizness from whokill 

Merrell Garbus

And out all the windows of the deep city J.D.’s bass and drums have built right now in our friend 2011, bright electronic rhythm and then Merrill Garbus. What a hardcore woman, creative shouting force in this turning and twisting band consisting otherwise of a bass player and two saxophones. I like the way she programs the drum loops on her snare before each song, just matter-of-factly, nothing mysterious about it (see video below). OK that’s the end of this memorable set.

Francois Houle and Benoit Delgecq: Binoculars from Because She Hoped

Francois Houle, from Vancouver, classically trained and working the fields of improvised music, new composed music, world music, for the past couple of decades. I used to be a clarinet player and I know what good tone sounds like. With the refined Benoit Delbecq, piano, from France. Just the two of them in 2011.

Ballake Sissoko and Vincent Segal: Future from Chamber Music 

Kora from Mali, cello from France, lovely, recorded this year, setting up a friendly string landscape for more strings, but this time more spiky, namely the basses in

Ornette Coleman: Sleep Talking from Sound Grammar 

This is from 2006, Ornette’s group with two basses, Greg Cohen plucked and Tony Falanga bowed, and Ornette’s son Denardo with his personal rattley sound on drums. The basses take us into some sort of string thicket, then when Ornette plays the first phrase of this aching song, it’s everything Ornette ever played and it’s naked.

Ornette Coleman

Philip Glass Koyaanisqatsi and Organic from Koyaanisqatsi 

Low, low male voice choral chant. The deserts in Hopi country maybe, pre-history. The dawn of something. Conducted by Michael Reisman.

Jason Moran: Crepuscule with Nellie and Study #6 from Ten 

I first got interested in Jason Moran some time ago when I learned that he was a student and sometime emulator of the great Jaki Byard. Both can move across several centuries of jazz piano in a single song.

Crepuscule, which means twilight, the song named by Monk for his wife Nellie who travelled with him and looked after him (paid the musicians, helped him get dressed….) in his last few years. Maybe we owe Monk’s last few records to her.

Jason Moran’s cover of Monk (the most-covered jazz composer ever maybe except Ellington?) is like eating a hearty thick soup. Here is the tUnE-yArDs video.

Tags: Benoit Delbecq, Francois Houle, Giant Steps radio, J.D. Allen Trio, Jason Moran, Kootenay Co-op Radio, Merrell Garbus, Philip Glass, Tom Waits, Tune-yards

“I am reducing my needs in my life, but my life is getting bigger. I feel happy with this choice and I will go for it as long as I can. But I can see that it is not for everybody. You can do a lot in your own community. People say, why do you go to Haiti? I say, why not? The planet is big and we are not confined to a place.”

Source: newbeatphoto, Creative Commons, Flickr

Living in the Street, Helping Out

That’s Marie-Paul Brisson (63) of Nelson.  She and her partner Sebastien DeMarre (60) were in Haiti in 2009 when the earthquake struck. But they didn’t come home. They stayed, living on the street, Marie-Paul helping sick and injured people, Sebastien working to provide fresh water. This edition of Old Growth is their story, and also that of Cynthia Quinn-Young of Nelson who volunteers with Grans to Grans, an international organization of grandmothers working for grandmothers in Africa caring for their grandchildren whose parents have died of AIDS.

Click here to listen to the podcast of this episode of Old Growth (scroll down to Episode 7).

The Call

I was struck by Marie-Paul’s comment about life getting bigger, because it is all too common for the lives of older people to get smaller. “Yes,” said Sebastien, “and we can see this when we come back here to Canada, how we get enclosed. And we are a bit afraid of this now, so we say, let’s go again.”

Source: newbeatphoto, Creative Commons, Flickr

And they did. A few months after the earthquake they came back to Nelson, but not for long. They went back, with very little money, because there is a call, they say. “It’s a call to be close to the children,” says Marie-Paul, “and to work with women who have to struggle…I like the feeling of being part of this struggle, and being with people who have to survive. It’s a feeling that that is where I belong.” Sebastien agrees. In their 35 years as a couple, he says, they have always been completely in accord on such things.

The Old and the Young

In the interview they talk about their work in Haiti and they tell us about a 3-year-old girl they are caring for there. They discuss how their advancing age affects how they do this work, and the place of older people in the societies of Haiti and Canada.

Tune In

Click here to listen to the podcast of this episode of Old Growth (scroll down to Episode 7).

For a complete list and descriptions of all Old Growth shows, click here.

I produced the eleven episodes of Old Growth for Kootenay Co-op Radio on a New Horizons for Seniors grant in the fall of 2011.

Tags: aging, aging and activism, Cynthia Quinn-Young, Grans to Grans, Haiti earthquake, Haiti humanitarian aid, Kootenay Co-op Radio, Marie-Paul Brisson, Old Growth radio, Pure Water for the World, Sebastien DeMarre

I’m entitled to that money. When Mom and Dad die, I’ll get it anyway, so I’m going to take that money out and buy the car that I need. And I’m going to borrow some of that money for my son’s education.

Source: WARD, Creative Commons, Flickr

Gail Russell gives that example of the sense of entitlement that sometimes leads to the financial abuse of seniors by their family members. It doesn’t start out as fraud,  but it can gradually get that way.

Betrayal of trust

Gail Russell and Christie Heuston are my guests on this week’s edition of Kootenay Co-op Radio’s Old Growth, a radio series about life after 65. This episode is entitled Betrayal of Trust: Elder Abuse in our Community. Gail and Christie work with the Elder Abuse Prevention Program at the Seniors Coordinating Society in Nelson.

Click here to listen to a podcast of this episode.

Burnout  and a feeling of entitlement

The feeling of entitlement, Gail and Christie explain, often comes from care-giver burnout: I’m doing all this, I’m exhausted by it every day, I have put my life on hold for this, so why shouldn’t I have some benefit?

Source: tienen, Creative Commons, Flickr

“And especially when there is more than one child involved,” says Christie. “And then it’s, well I am here doing it all and my sister is in Vancouver and she’s not doing any of it, so why should she get the same amount that’s left over in the will when Dad or Mom dies.”

Yelling, pushing, restraining

Gail and Christie also talk about physical abuse, which most often is by family care-givers. “Sometimes it’s yelling, pushing them or shaking them or forcing them to stay in a room,” says Christie.

“Tying them in a chair,” adds Gail, “using restraints to keep them in a bed. You think it might be about safety but there is that emotional shift that’s happened, where it’s about control.”

Sexual and emotional abuse

There is also sexual abuse, where a husband still wants a sexual relationship with a spouse no longer able to reciprocate.

And it’s not all about frustration, burnout, and a sense of entitlement. Gail says sometimes the parent may have been an abuser in the past, and now the child has grown up, and is venting decades of anger.

Source: pedrosimoes7, Creative Commons, Flickr

Intervene early

The point is to intervene early, and the Elder Abuse Prevention Program can help people do this. They can help us decide whether what is happening is actually abuse, and can refer people to the appropriate agency or resource.

“I have seen situations where if there had been an earlier intervention,” says Gail.  If people had had more clarity about who to turn to if they had a question, I think a lot of pain could have been avoided and the senior would have been supported better in their later years.”

It happens a lot

“It’s overwhelming,” says Gail. “Whether it’s a group of retired government employees or a group of student nurses that we have talked to, all groups always have an awareness of abuse situations that are close to their home or their work.”

Source: pedrosimoes7, Creative Commons, Flicker

Contact info and resources

If you live in the Nelson areas and if this radio broadcast, or this article, has triggered some questions about someone you know, or about your own situation, you can talk to Gail or Christie confidentially. They can be reached at (250) 352-6008.

Click here to visit their website.

Click here to read their excellent Resource Manual online.

Click here to listen to a podcast of this episode of Old Growth.

Tags: Christie Heuston, elder abuse, Elder Abuse Prevention Program Nelson BC, elder financial abuse, elder mental health, elder physical abuse, Gail Russell, Kootenay Co-op Radio, Seniors Coordinating Society Nelson BC

A 79-year old triathlete.  An 81-year-old competitive swimmer. A 71-year-old runner. A 63-year-old runner and cyclist.

92-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian track star Olga Kotelko (Source: Ukrainian-Canadian Embassy website)

In other words, Michael Pratt, Wilma Turner, Barb Saunders, and Lex Baas. They all live in Nelson and three of them competed in the B.C. Senior Games held recently in the West Kootenay.

Athletes at the Mic

A few weeks ago they sat around the microphones in the Kootenay Co-op Radio studio for a chat about being a senior athlete, and the result is Keeping It Moving, Episode 5 of my radio series Old Growth.

Click here to listen to a podcast of this episode of Old Growth.

Mother and Son

During the 2011 B.C. Senior Games  I went down to the dragon-boat races at Lakeside Park to interview some participants. My favourite interview was with a mother (age 79) and her son (age 59) from Port Alberni, both competing on the same dragon boat team.  You will hear them on the show as well.

Stoked

One word to describe the atmosphere in the park that day? Stoked.

It was a parkful of happy people. The same atmosphere pervaded the radio studio the day I interviewed Michael, Barb, Wilma, and Lex for Old Growth. It was uplifting.

Mind Frees Body

They told me that as an older athlete their mind doesn’t get in the way as much as when they were young. So they can really go for it, really push the limits, because their brain isn’t limiting them.

It’s known that athletes in their seventies can outperform  sedentary people decades younger.

 Tune in

Old Growth is a series of ten radio shows about life after 65, funded by a New Horizons for Seniors grant. I have the contract to produce the shows for Kootenay Co-op Radio. Several previous posts on this blog have been about other episodes.

The weekly series is running now, and you can see a complete list with broadcast dates here.  All episodes will be podcast as well, in case you miss the on-air broadcast.

Click here to listen to a podcast of this episode of Old Growth.

Tags: aging and exercise, B.C. Senior Games, Bill Metcalfe radio, Keeping it Moving, Kootenay Co-op Radio, New Horizons Seniors Grant, Old Growth radio, seniors and health, seniors games, successful aging