Etc.

A bit of a downer of a week, not sure why. I feel a little burned out as I did much walking on Sunday through necessity and the body takes ages to recover, physically and mentally.

I feel I've lost a lot of my creative juices though I am "socking" away which keeps my fingers limber.

A friend did this lovely thing last night for her small circle of friends on Facebook and sang us this wonderful old Quaker song. Just herself and her guitar and I was transported. I sang harmony to her beautiful rendition. Here it is sung by Audrey Assad but I have to confess my friend's older voice and her guitar had a profound effect on me.


I'm in the unusual position of having no "paying" work. My in-basket got cleared out. I'm not overly worried, financially, as there are some doings in the pipeline.

One of my friends had to pull the plug on her TV as she could no longer afford cable and her back and neck got shot out when she was lifting her patient into a car for a visit to the doctor. My friend is a home-care worker and 74 and is now terrified financially that she can no longer work and may have to sacrifice her car. Senior poverty is a global issue but I have written enough on that and will update once we hit the floor of parliament in early December.

Here is a picture from here in St. John's, taken by a local photographer to give you an idea of the beauty the liners and other ships see when they cruise into the harbour. Houses on cliffs always fascinate me.

Back on the Boards

My attention here will be sporadic as I have two performances coming up. Yay! - we sold out the first show but the toll on this old body will be what it is.

Along with that there is a Lughnasadh party on Friday which will be attended by my local coven including Daughter. Co-incidentally it's on my birthday, which will mark 76 turns around the sun completed.

On top of that we have the ongoing preparation for our Seniors' Activism Group and then the grand media announcement/press release, with a number of demands on government to ease the plight of so very many senior women living well below the poverty line. That is all geared towards August 29th. It was supposed to be at City Hall but hey, no parking, no access for disabilities and unbelievable liability insurance for a 2 hour gathering, no assistance with put up and tear down of tables, chairs and mikes. Our tax dollars at work. We were furious but will expose all that at a later date. For the moment we concentrate on rallying senior anarchists. We are now looking towards hosting this at a kindly nearby church.

Plans are afoot for September, a trip out here by a couple of dear friends, we should be able to spend 4 days together before they tour the rest of the province, a weekend away on a knitting retreat on Bell Island with my niece - another avid knitter - and then a week away in Cape Breton Island with another friend whom I stayed with last year. I'm beginning to haunt her, I'll have to watch that.

So all in all some lovely plans. I am learning to pace myself. I turned down a studio TV interview tomorrow morning as I knew I would be zapped for the rest of the day and my performance would suffer.

I'm senioring quite responsibly these days.

Sunday Smatterings (2)

I am grateful for the pieces of work that come my way and supplement my meager pension.I am also grateful for my newly subsidized rent, geared to my total under-the-poverty-line income, but shocked on the application that one of the questions demands of applicants to state the "amount donated as gifts by family members and friends in subsidy." Seriously. I read it three times. Surely this is private?
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My very favourite aunt (I had 8 blood aunts and 2 aunts by marriage) in her heyday. This picture is circa 1940. Her name was Daisy and she was beautiful, vibrant, talented and artistic and married well. I wrote about her descent into alcoholism in two parts here.

Here's another photo, taken around the same time:

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The fog is rolling in again, it's been three days now. Can't tell you how much I love it and the sound of the foghorn warning the ships. This is a picture I took at my old house to give you an idea of how softly it drapes everything.

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Random. I love this photo I took one November sunset with the tracery of the trees and the sleeping boat and the lackadaisical water of winter. This was well before the madness and destruction took place next door and hundreds of trees were felled.

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Feel free to join me in Sunday Smatterings. No rules, just whatever takes your fancy in photos, song, memories, surroundings and link to your blog in comments.

Aging Women Seniors - Thoughts Assemblage.

I'm sorting out my thoughts here for a few reasons.

We are putting together an advisory board and seeking (a) funding and (b) forming a charitable entity if successful and (c) then lobbying the governments, both federally and provincially to supplement the meager financial support afforded this marginalized segment of the population.

Our mission - and by "our" I mean another senior woman and myself - is to remove the stigma from senior women and to restore them to a dignity of living and self-respect. Far too many senior women live in poverty and we have many seniors in Newfoundland, a number which increases every year. In 2017 it numbered 108,182 in a population of 500,000. Well over 25%. Of these approximately 65% are women: 70,300. It is difficult to get an estimate of how many of these are living below the poverty level (Category 2) and how many are retired (Category 1) from government, teaching and nursing which affords them a reasonable pension.

Total number of food bank users number 28,063 and of these 23.4% are seniors-6566 and applying the same percentage of women that would be 4,268 elderly women resorting to food banks.

And an aside: To give you an idea of how normalized a foodbank is here in Newfoundland our premier, Dwight Ball, presented the keys to a new one to the head of the foodbank when the old one burned down, grinning like a fool when he should have been covered in shame. The disconnect of the privileged wealthy politicians from abysmal poverty is rampant everywhere.

We live in a country of universal health care, thank heavens, but I'll tell you what's not covered for us Category 2 seniors (but usually covered by decent private supplemental healthcare policies for Category 1).

Dental Services of any kind
Eye examinations
Spectacles
Walkers
Canes
Expensive batteries of health devices like meters
Podiatry for diabetics
Hearing aids

And of course it takes no rocket scientist to calculate that the lack of funds for such standard items contributes to injuries (poor sight, falls) feet infections (diabetic amputations) absence of teeth (nutritional deficiencies) costing the health care system far more with hospitalizations. And of course addiction to drugs and alcohol as a mechanism of coping with these stresses is fairly rampant as well if my own observations bear me out.

The elderly have been further stigmatized by society and treated as charity cases when they complain about their impoverished and deprived existence. Living on approximately $19,200 annually, rent in many cases is 30-40% (at 35% $6,720) of this and often higher leaving very little for power and heat, insurance, clothing and self-care, essential communication and entertainment services which are exorbitant here, food, eating out once a week, little gifts for family, etc. Having transportation of any kind (car payment, insurance, maintenance, gas)squeezes 50% out of the remaining $1000 per month which leaves $500 for EVERYTHING else including food. And if I hear one more time "give up the car!" in a province with no public transit system outside of the city I will scream loud and long. Every penny is counted and many of us are forced to work in our seventies, often in ill-health ourselves. Just to barely make ends meet. I know greeters at Walmart and baristas at Tim Horton's and home care workers well into their seventies, being cheerful and pretending it's not about poverty.

Measuring senior poverty by standard poverty levels is not using the proper criteria in that many are disabled and can no longer self-care and have no desire to be warehoused in nightmare institutions and need additional income to support the barest modicum of dignified living.

And of course, many of us are too exhausted and disillusioned and and dispirited to even think of engaging in any kind of activism to change the status quo.

And I am grateful, so grateful, I met a kindred spirit who joins me in this protest. And it's not about us two, but for all senior women penalized for raising children with no monetary value placed on this in their earning years, and if they did work, it was often at 66% of what men earned thus accruing far less in the pension funds, if there was such a benefit in those days - most of my positions had no pension. And every cent of my pay cheque was spoken for as a single mother with two kids. So please, don't talk about "savings."

I am very interested in your thoughts on this.