Memory lane

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education tipped me off about some new research on the middle-aged mind.  The article is a review of Barbara Strauch's book The secret life of the grown-up brain: the surprising talents of the middle-aged mind. (As an aside, the Strauch book apparently defines middle age as stretching from 40 to 68. Are we now expected to live to 136??)

The Chron noted that "The mild forgetfulness associated with middle-age...is real, an artifact of distraction, a surfeit of things worth remembering." So that's it: I just have too many things to remember! No wonder some of them are dropping out of my ears onto the floor.

Apparently, learning new things helps. But, I find this a double-edged sword. Here's why: as regular readers of this blog know, I am now working with a marksmanship coach. She's assigned me some homework this week. It's the memorization kind. Um, actually, I'm noticing that I really rusty in this department.

I've gotten so used to referring to things stored in electronic form on one device or another that I really don't make myself remember much of anything anymore. I do remember things, but this is a happenstance rather than a plan.

It turns out that all my "referring to things" is actually more of a problem than I thought. Recent research conducted at UCSF is showing that excessive uptime is having a detrimental effect on memory: "when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience." Further research, this time at the University of Michigan, found that "people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment."

In other words, we're suffering from overwhelm. At least I am. I used to be one of those people with a fairly deep "general fund" of knowledge, the kind of gal you wanted for a teammate if you were playing Trivial Pursuit. I now know a heck of a lot less than I used to know. At least it sure feels like it.

Maybe it's a good thing I'm doing some memorization tasks, stretching my neurons. Then again, maybe I should just go for a walk up in Tilden.

All Natural

Today I pollinated my pumpkin patch. It's something I've never had to do before. I don't know why, but this year the birds and the bees have fallen down on the job.

It could be the new variety of pumpkin I'm growing.
It could be the weird extra-foggy weather we've been having.
It could be a bad year for bird and bee whoopy.

In desperation, I searched for and found instructions for pollinating pumpkins.

Girl pumpkin flower: see her shapely figure?

It turns out there are boy pumpkin flowers and girl pumpkin flowers. I've only ever noticed the girls. (Is that such a surprise?) Other years, there have always been a few early "lost opportunities." That is to say, a number of those small baby pre-pumpkins just die and fall off. But, by July, I get pumpkins taking hold and growing.

Boy pumpkin flower: a manly profile

This year, here we are at mid-August, and I still don't have any pumpkins growing! This makes me alarmed, because these are baking pumpkins, and I count on having a home-grown pumpkin for my Thanksgiving pie. The clock is ticking.

To intervene on behalf of future pie, I took the boy pumpkin flower and exposed the stamen by peeling off the flower. Then, I rubbed this on the stigma of the girl flower. I did this for as many of the girls as were available--about four or five today.

So what's natural about this? My answer is: what's not? I'm part of nature, after all.

I have a particular horse in this race, which I will now disclose. I belong to what has, since August 4, 2010, been described as a suspect class. (This is a beneficial distinction, it turns out.) For the longest time, what and who I am, including how I managed to become the mother of my best beloved son, has been considered by some (including many voters in my adopted home state of California) to be unnatural. Even though Judge Walker's wonderfully deep and detailed ruling is currently on hold for what feels like forever to me, his words are still on record.

For instance:
"The evidence did not show any historical purpose for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to procreate in order to marry. Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed."

I remember having a big argument with my father in about 1978 on this same point. My father believed homosexuality is a choice--really, an act of perverse willfulness. That's why, even though he was an ACLU member who defended the civil rights of others, on this issue, he wouldn't bend. He's been gone for more than 20 years now, so his time has passed too.

It's my time now, and I say that doing things differently doesn't make them unnatural. It's all natural, because we are all part of the whole.

Coach

Friends, for the first time in my life, I have a coach!

When I last practiced shooting, I realized that my next step would be to move on to the public range at Chabot, which requires owning a gun. But when I looked at the range, I could see that it was the kind of thing I'd prefer to do with someone else. Also, I'm not ready to buy a gun, for the simple reason that I'm not sure which one to buy. And, I know for certain that I need more instruction.

In short, I felt strongly that I wanted a coach, a guide, preferably someone who could improve my shooting and then also teach me hunting. Ultimately, I also want to learn about dressing the carcass.

Back in April, when I visited The Old West Gun Room, I had gotten the business card of a trainer named Denise King. I had written her, but she was unavailable then due to personal issues. I decided to recontact her and see if things had resolved themselves.

Lucky for me, they have, and Denise has agreed to take me on. In fact, she has an entire training regime laid out, starting with more work on the .22. As she says, "Our first goals will be to safely learn how to safely handle, clean, sight in and understand the basic shooting principles for the light rifle." We're going to be working together at the San Leandro Rifle & Pistol Range, and then later on, we will move out to her ranch (!) in Sunol. Out at the ranch, we'll work on "moving targets, longer yardage shots, non-standard shooting positions, the use of shooting sticks, inclination and delineation shots, etc."

I'm going to be taking the NRA Basic Rifle course. Think of it! According to Denise, this covers "the rules of safety, nomenclature, cleaning, sighting in (including how to use a bore sighter), and the fundamentals of shooting; i.e. stance, grip, breath control, sight alignment, and trigger press.  We cover the basic shooting positions of benchrest, standing, kneeling, and sitting.  You get a nice textbook reference with the course."

She's letting me practice with her guns so that I find out what kind of rifle is a good fit for me before I buy one. Apparently (and not surprisingly), only some rifles can be made to fit women's physiques. Because I have been to the Old West Gun Room, and I mentioned that I'd probably buy my gun from Bob there, Denise is giving me a 50% discount on her fee. I guess she really likes Bob.

All this starts on the 22nd of August. I am really excited. Now I know for sure I am on the path toward hunting a boar!

Personal sustainability

A little over three months ago, I had my annual check up. I've been seeing my doctor, Polly Young,  for over twenty years, so she is someone I really trust. I told Polly that one of things bugging me this year was that I'd get aches and pains if I did anything slightly heavier than usual around the house or garden. This didn't used to happen, and it was bumming me out.

Polly immediately recommended this book: Strong Women Stay Young. My first thought was that I couldn't possibly fit weight lifting into my schedule. I already get up at 5:00 am in order to do aerobic exercise (brisk walking) 4 to 5 days a week, also at Polly's suggestion. There was no way I was getting up any earlier!

But Polly said the program described in this book took only 30 minutes, twice a week. I said I would consider it. By the time I got home, I had decided to buy the book.

I started at the beginning, a very good place to start. The opening argument is truly compelling: basically once we women hit the age of 35, we are on a steep slope downhill from the perspective of bone loss, up to 1 % per year. After menopause, it goes up another 1 to 2 % per year. That is a lot of bone loss! Photographs show scary blown sugar candy-like structures that are actually some poor woman's bones.

The good news: lifting weights actually reverses the loss. You can build it back up. This is the first age-related downward spiral I've run into that actually has a reverse lever. I was convinced. Iris bought into the logic as well.

We went shopping for hand-held dumbbells and ankle weights, following the guidance in the book. Starting three months ago, on Sundays and Wednesdays, for about 30 minutes, we go through the 8-exercise routine outlined in the book. After about 1 month, I began to feel results: my weekend aches and pains were gone! Now, after 3 months, I have some muscle definition too, which wasn't my goal, but it's kind of a kick in the pants.

I'm calling this post "personal sustainability," and I know that label can cover a lot of territory, but surely skeletal structure is part of the picture. Given that I used to come in from my heavier garden work all beat up and sore, and now I don't, for me there's actually a direct link between weight-lifting and run-of-the-mill sustainability. So, here's to a bunch of dumbbells! They're smarter than you'd think.

Plant disease

When I first started dating Iris she told me about a softball team she once battled named Plant Disease. Great name, really.

She was a college student in those days (it was a UC Berkeley intramural team), so maybe it didn't strike terror into her heart the way it might of, had she been a gardener.

I am a gardener, as you may have gathered. And I have a diseased plant on my hands. Or, rather, I should say, I used to have a diseased plant on my hands. I had to perform euthanasia. Honestly, I can't swear it was a "good death" for the tomato plant in question, and, in fact, I fear it may have been a bad one.

I did a Google search (what else?) on "plant disease" and found a wealth of agricultural extension pages with photographic resources. I was able to identify the culprit: Phytophthora infestans.

It turns out that this evil mold is the very same one that caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840's. It gives me pause to think my dear little garden plants are in an life and death struggle with such a fearsome foe.

Here's the story: "The fungus develops during periods of cool wet weather...[especially] if the crop is being grown near large areas of tomato relatives (Solanaceous weeds, potatoes)." Just so! We've had days and days of chilly, foggy mornings, and the affected plant had been near my front potato bed.

I took a chance this year with heirloom tomato plants instead of getting the hybrids from Berkeley Hort that are especially tuned to our foggy Berkeley summers. Every gray morning, I look out with worry on my two remaining tomato plants. One is the same variety as the ill-fated plant, and all I can think about when I look at it are dire warnings against monoculture. The Cautionary Tale of the Lumper Potato.

So far, my potato crop has remained untouched by this blight. The potatoes are battling their own Berkeley challenge, in form of snails and slugs.

I should clarify that I did not tempt fate by planting the infamous lumpers. The handsome pile to the left are my Purple Vikings.

Needless to say, I am not a subsistence gardener. In fact, I can walk three blocks and be at Monterey Market, one of the Bay Area's best produce markets.

And, Iris and I are both still gainfully employed, despite the condition our State's condition is in. So, with any luck, our garden will not be ground zero for the Berkeley Tomato (or Potato) Famine of 2010.

On doing something new

One of the most striking things about learning to shoot a gun is the sheer newness of this experience. When I was driving to Chabot Gun Club the first time two weeks ago, I was taken by how I was about to do something completely different from anything I'd ever done before. I'd be meeting people I'd never met before, and it was likely that there would be more than several degrees of separation between me and these folks. I'd be rubbing elbows with members of the NRA, and, in fact, I would be allowing one of these these people to be my teacher for the morning.

These places where I go to shoot guns feel miles away from Berkeley. In some ways, they are.

I can feel myself stretching.

Last weekend, I had an unexpected realization. Iris and I went to the movies on Saturday--we saw Inception--and all of a sudden I realized that scenes with guns have changed for me. Gun scenes used to be entirely fantasy scenes for me. I didn't have any kind of connection to them at all. But now I have shot a pistol, and I have shot a rifle. I know what that feels like. When I saw the characters in the movie shooting, I could imagine what they felt like. It has changed my appreciation, or maybe it's my apprehension, just a little bit.

I don't have a big conclusion to this, just a kind of awe that I can be this open to such a wild new thing.

Report from Chabot Gun Club

On Saturday, the 10th, I spent my morning at Chabot Gun Club for the Junior Light Rifle training. This is an open class, with a pre-announced limit of seventeen. On Saturday, they actually took twenty of us. It costs only $7.00, plus $3.00 for eye protection if you don't bring your own. This is much cheaper than any other training or course anywhere else around here, and it's one of the two places where you can get instruction and practice if you don't own your own gun (the other being Target Master, where I went in March).

The Club is located inside Chabot Regional Park, which is part of the East Bay Regional Park system. To get to it, I wound my way back into the park, 6 miles past Skyline Boulevard on Redwood Road. I felt like I was pretty much out in the country by the time I saw the turn off.

What I liked immediately was the mix of people. There were women, men, kids, and teenagers, and people had come from all over the East Bay. I asked the woman who was shooting next to me why she had come, or what her interest was, and she said she was there because she was afraid of guns. She thought the training would help her overcome her fear.

The class started with all us of getting our equipment: a rug to lay on (we would be shooting prone, or laying down), sand bags, our rifles, and ammunition. Then, we put targets on the target stands, which were set up at 25 yards for the first half of the session. Later, we could move them to 50 yards if we wanted to. Here's a photo of what the targets look like on the range.

Then we had a safety briefing. Our guide through all of this was a fellow named Dwight, from El Cerrito. Dwight told us how to hold the rifle safely when walking around, how and where to stand at various times, and so forth. I realized I would need to hear these things several more times before I had them memorized. I just don't memorize things as easily as I used to.

Then we started shooting "rounds." A round is one shot. My first shot missed the target entirely. I pointed this out to Dwight, and he asked me if I had used all 3 of the sights on the gun. I thought there were only 2! Once I learned there was a third, suddenly I was doing pretty well. I began to get all my shots on the targets, closer and closer together.

We were shooting 22s, just like I shot at Target Master, only this time I had a bolt-action rifle. Before I had used a semi-automatic. What this meant was that I had to load my gun each time I wanted to shoot. And, my gun never jammed. (The semi-automatic rifle I used in Milpitas jammed over and over.) I liked this gun much better than the semi-automatic.

Dwight told me to count to 3 before removing my finger from the trigger, and also to try not to close my eyes after I pull the trigger. This is not easy to do, because of the BANG! But when I tried his approach, I saw some improvement. I hit my first bulls-eye. By the way, I found out the black circle is called a "bull."

After a shot, you smell the same smell that fireworks make: gunpowder. I've liked that smell since I was a little girl watching the Fourth of July displays over Lake Ellyn, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

So, I like it. Dwight asked me to come again and I think I will.