70 today. Yeah, hard to believe. When I was 17 (1969) I found it difficult to imagine being 48, which was the age I’d be when we ushered in a new millennium. Moon colonies? Sure! We’d come so far so fast. How could we not? Having experienced the much-remarked phenomenon of time going by faster the older you get, I remember thinking back in 2000 or so that I would be 70 before I knew it.
Now I know it.
I have only one complaint: I won’t be around to see what great things happen over the next fifty years. I’ve said several times that the best thing about being 12 is that you’re not 13 yet, and the really great thing about being 14 is that you’ve already been 13. 13 was not my favorite year. The good thing about being 70 is that everything from 13 up until today has allowed me to put 13 in perspective, which I did while I was getting dressed this morning. And now, having put it into perspective, I intend to quietly forget about it.
In my view, the best birthday present is…the present. Sure, I could do without social networking and people whose highest aspiration is to be outraged about something new every day before lunch. And I have gripes about Amazon, but Amazon has allowed me to get a lot of books into print at a reasonable cost, something that simply couldn’t be done before 2005 or so–and never as easily as now. Smartphones are so good that we chose not to have a landline when we moved back to Phoenix in 2015. I continue to boggle at the sorts of things one can look up on a smartphone, from local weather radar to where traffic is congested between where I am and where I want to go.
No matter how bad the politics is (and it’s pretty bad) I’ve been able to keep myself from giving it power over me. I don’t do tribalism. The closest I come to a tribe is my circle of friends, now broader and more diverse than it ever was back in the creaky old 20th Century. We survived Woodrow Wilson, easily the most evil President evah. We will survive the one we have now, and whoever comes after. Politics is not worth the ulcers and heart attacks that are its foremost products. I simply do not partake. If I look younger than I am, that’s certainly a contributing factor.
I live in a benign climate (ok, it was 107 today; let’s call it mostly benign) in a quirky but comfortable house, with the woman I have loved now for 52 years. I have 75 feet of wire and an engineered ground, plus a low-band rig I’ve been using since 1995. I have a biggish swimming pool, which helps take the edge off the mostly benign days that occur pretty regularly this time of year. (I don’t have to shovel heat. So there.) I’m hard-pressed to name five things I want and don’t (yet) have.
The days are passing quickly. That’s nothing new. The real challenge is to summon the personal energy to accomplish things with the days that I have left. L-methyl folate wasn’t the solution, alas. I’m still looking. I’m reasonably healthy, trim, get my sleep, and am deeply loved. If I can’t consistently write a thousand words a day, well, I’ll write what I can and call it a win.
I look back across my 70 years, and remind myself that I know who I am and what I’m good at. All else will unfold as time and genetics permit.
Thanks to all of you for being my friends, and for the birthday wishes I haven’t entirely caught up on yet. As birthdays go, 70 is a good round number. 71 won’t be nearly as round, but every bit as welcome. Good luck to all and keep in touch!
Happy birthday Jeff!
Happy Birthday!
73, Tom WB9YTG
Happy birthday, Jeff. Yes, being in your 70s isn’t nearly as hard as I, too, thought it would be when I was in high school. I feel much happier and content now than I was then. A good woman who loves you will do that!
happy birthday, best wishes.
Happy Birthday! I missed the mark yesterday, but better late, I hope.
Hey, it’s ok. We’re both still here, which is what matters. As happens to most of us, I suspect, an appalling number of my friends have already died. Weirdly, although the menfolk are catching up, for years the bulk of my deceased friends were women. One of them was murdered. One of them may have been a suicide. (In truth, I don’t want to know for sure.) Most died of cancer.
My prayer list is getting long, sigh.
We are, and you will always be younger than I, so take consolation there.
Huzzah! I also turned 70 on my last birthday. But I tell people I am 46.
That’s 0x46 to you young kids.
And I’m only 31 in base 23!
You were born on my birthday!
Thanks! I believe you’re only the fourth or fifth person I know with a birthday on June 29. Given the number of people in my circles, I would have guessed a few more than that. (And only one was born on June 29, 1952.)
A VERY wise man (my Father) once told me that it was better to keep having birthdays than not to. Many happy returns of the anniversary of your nativity Jeff!
Happy Birthday. I miss living in the Sonoran Desert, so I envy you. Wishing you many more healthy and happy years.
We’re not living in the desert so much as we did when we lived in dirt-road country here in the ’90s. We’re in a residential neighborhood in the NE quadrant of Phoenix, and most of the Sonoran desert that we see are the saguaro cacti some people have. Of course, when it’s 107 in the wild desert, it’s probably 110 here. We’re not dealing with wildlife to the same extent.
Belated congratulations on your birthday.
I had my 80th back in March and have followed your writings for decades. I admire your cogent, friendly and informative writing style in your technical writings and your excellent character and plot development in your fiction. I hope you keep doing it.
My curiosity on your last post is about your critique of Woodrow Wilson as the most evil president ever. I thought I was a fairly good historian on US politics, but I only considered Wilson as a rather inept, fumbling do-gooder trying to re-struct post WW1 Europe in his social-ethnic image vision of utopia. Fortunately, Lloyd George and Clemenceau outmaneuvered him on this and then he became ill and his young wife ran the country during his convalescence. I missed out on the evil part. I don’t know if his vision of the League of Nations would have worked had the US Congress even allowed the US to join.
We have had several ineffective (at best) presidents in our history. Fortunately, our constitution and three-part government – fractious as it is, has sustained weak links in the executive branch. I can only hope that saves us from our current chief executive.
Doing a whole entry on Wilson has been on my list for a long time. He was a totalitarian at heart, despised the Constitution, and he envisioned the League of Nations as a world government–with him governing the world. Inept, yes. Also vindictive, idealistic, and absolutely certain of his own rightness. I’ll have to hunt up some of the details, but I do have to add that this is not a judgment unique to me. There is some coverage in Barry’s The Great Influenza, if you happen to have that book on your shelves.
My aversion to idealism is well-known, and has gotten me into a certain amount of trouble. Idealism is deadly, and since Wilson was an idealist, I’ll have to explain my own position in more detail when I discuss him. These days, we use “idealism” to mean “having high aspirations.” But that’s not its meaning at all. More on this when I find the time and energy.
Happy 80th; I hope to do as well come 2032. And thanks for being with me all these years!
Happy Birthday Jeff. I am so glad you came into my life. It’s been a pleasure knowing you. As we Marines say, “Semper Fi”.
Likewise. I’ve known several Marines, including one of my cousins, and what they all had in common (apart from the fact that nobody messed with them!) is high integrity. That’s one reason (among others) that I like Marines.