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Timothy Lavelle

Mike,

You seem to be able to learn from the mistakes (or otherwise) of others. Surprisingly uncommon.

If you do not seriously dislike what you do...

If you are not wanting to shoot several people you work with or for...

If you do not yearn for long hours when you try to figure out what to do next...

Keep enjoying that ability to teach and filling your time with worth.

Retirement is a wonderful, wonderful thing but you better have some things you love to fill in the voids.

Dave, Just when I wanted to break with tradition and agree with you, you take the tack that intervention in a soveriegn country is just what the doctor ordered. We Americans helped win WWII...that did not make us the arbitors of all that is right in the universe. Maybe you have forgotten how well we performed in "fixing" Viet Nam? Or maybe not.

Tim

David Mitchell

Tim,

My opinion about the Cartels is just that - an opinion.

But somebody is going to have get tougher with them than anything previous. I just dont accept that building wall - a bigger wall - a more expensive wall - that still does nothing to stop them from wanting to come, solves this. Funny how extreme poverty and heavily armed gangs seems to make people want to find a better place to live. Picky picky picky!

My idea is only linked to a suggestion that we work with the new Mexican President to "incentivize" pressure on the Cartels. Sooner or later, it's going to take force - and healthier economies in their own back yard. 

And as for that little country in SE Asia - between Robert McNamara and a bunch of "Yes Men" generals I don't think we could have made a much greater mess of things than we did. I personally know 5 names on that wall who didn't need to be there.

Backing those corrupt Diem brothers turned out to be a fools task. Even the older brother     ( Ngo Dinh Thuc ) who was the Catholic Archbishop of Hue (and twice excomunicated by Rome) was involved in the political corruption from the early 1950's.

p.s. I am old and fragile, please don't shock my system by finding agreement with me at this late stage.  LOL

Michael McLeod

Tim: thanks.

Joe: you too

yes, I was wondering if I should continue teaching at my (our) age.

but this morning, in the afterglow of a good class last night, I do relate to and appreciate your rhetorical response.

i'm a little concerned, though, because it is harder, the older I get, to stay on track and remember what i said last night and where we are in the class, though.

if this keeps up pretty soon I'll be hobbling in on a walker.

Michael McLeod

oh and congrats to the first felon.

trump is the first person in the nation's history with a felony on his record to become president. 

it's not something you'd put on your resume but a unique distinction one way or the other. from the jailhouse to the whitehouse.

Bill Reid

Michael, your question about whether to continue to work deserves a serious answer. But I'm going to answer it anyway. The best retirement advice I ever received was when I was 23 years old and fresh into my job at Eli Lilly and Company. We were at someone's retirement party, and I was having a beer with my boss. He told me, "You shouldn't retire FROM. You should retire TO. If you retire from, you'll spend the rest of your life living in boredom. If you retire to, you'll have something to go towards and it will keep you alive." I thought that was terrific advice and I followed it years later when I decided to retire from Lilly. My retire "to" has been to become a Deacon in the Church, and it has completely filled me with fulfillment and goals to be met, every day. I think God prepared me for this by letting me have all the life experiences I had up until my retirement and entry into diaconate formation. So my advice to you would be the same as my wise boss gave me: Find something to retire TO, and then go for it! I'm also aware of the old saying "If you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life." I perceive that you truly love teaching. maybe that's where God wants you to be?  Finally, I want it noted that I checked the spelling of your name three times to be sure I had it right. Old age presents lots of opportunities for mistakes that we'd never make while we were young! Be at peace.  Bikl Reid

Michael McLeod

Hey Dave one of my cartel buddies asked me where to find you. 

And Joe/Bill, et al: I'm not serious about having trouble teaching, if that's what you are referring to. 

It's just a thought that comes and goes. The words of advice you have shared are well taken.

In the end I just love teaching what I love. It's an evening class, largely consisting of young & middle age adults, and I can tell -- again with the love, I do love my profession, and it's a joy to talk about it with them.

Meanwhile It's still raining like crazy down here.

And I am sorry to be jaberring today but I am wondering if anyone else is struggling with memory issues and if so does anyone have remedies to offer. My issues have to do with staying abreast of my role as a teacher; just teaching one class per term.....writing class....

David Mitchell

Mike,

I'll be the guy hiding under my pillow.

Joseph D. McCarthy

Mr. Teacher Mike.

Remember the saying "WHEN WRITING THE STORY OF YOUR LIFE, Don't Let Anyone Else Hold The Pen."

On the other hand The advice I received was to have a good hobby before you retire.  

Michael McLeod

Thanks all who responded to my request for guidance and suggestions below, and Joe - as in Joe Gentilini, and I am sorry if I mispelled that last name but not so sorry that I would take the time to scan down a little bit here to find a post from you and double check -  anyway, Joe, I'm grading your reply to my request as a C-. See me after class.

Anne Devaney (Wilcheck)

MM and Jim maybe we finally get rid of Obama with this win.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Anne,

Somehow he and Michelle will try to stay relevant. However, I suspect his audience will not be as energetic as in the past.

Good to hear from you on this Forum! Hope all is well with you and yours.

Jim

Michael McLeod

well it is a gorgeous sunny morning in central florida so I feel guilty for giving in just a bit to the blues.

just miss ohio sometimes. and the fall being my favorite season - the crisp autumn up north, and the scent of fallen leaves and the excitement of osu football in the air - that dna-level memory in me means I'm especially softened and succeptible at the moment, so easily swept along I am, like the leaves on the lawn I remember raking into piles. Dad had a set of weathered army tarps we'd use to bundle them up to be taken away.

plus it's been a long long time since i visited my daughter and grandkids in dayton and my sister katie in clintonville. 

this mood will pass I know. 

but just connecting with you all in this small way seems like something I should do.

you'd mock me for my moodiness if you could be here and walk out the back door with me and look out from the open porch to the swimming pool just a few steps away and the trees and the long row of brilliant bougainvilla bushes across the back of the yard, their pink and red blossoms so vivid in the sun, and here I am getting mopey and nostalgic for the scent of fallen leaves and feeling a little guilty for whining about living smack in the middle of the so-called vacation paradise here in orlando.

but home is home no matter how sunny the weather and how long i've been gone. so says my heart, which is inclined to catch my attention and boss me around, softly but surely, in matters such as this.

(ps I had to laugh at what I just did. coincidentally. following up this sentimental reverie (is there any other kind?) I went out to the freezer and got out a couple of white castles, and no they do not taste as good as when you get them fresh. heavens no. nor do you get the benefit of the anticapatory scent of them if it was a cold winter night and you were in the back of the packard and your mom got in the car with a bag of them and you smelled them all the way home instead of, snapping back here into the present, heating up in the microwave even as we speak. I'm not complaining. I'm just greatful they sell them out of the frozen food sections of the grocery stores down here. )

oops that should be "grateful" not "greatful". Leaving it there because it's a funny and easy to make mistake. 

David Mitchell

Movie review;

Bored out of my mind, so I went to see a movie - yes, in a theater on a big screen - for the first time in several years. (wow there is a lot of junk these days at the movies)

Saw The CONCLAVE - a story about the background inner workings of a new Papal election. Very good cast - Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rosselini plus others - so I had high hopes.

You might find it intrugeing, but oh my word - painfully, laboriously sloooooow!

With a shocker at the end.

I think you could find a more fullfilling way to spend a couple of hours.

Michael McLeod

Joe: You're way better off - and will waste a helluva lot less time and effort - with the hobby. 

and I do appreciate the responses I got to my question as to whether I should continue teaching. 

Joseph D. McCarthy

Here is something Just to make you feel better about living in Florida Mike.  And me living in California.  Did hear about that massive eaarthquake in Southern OHIO.  I think it was 2.5 on the Richter scale.  Out here that might feel like a truck rumbling down the road.

David Mitchell

I meant to put a P.s. on my movie review above.

Be forewarned. If this is any indicator, I was the only person in the theater for a 7:00 pm show. 

Michael McLeod

Joe: I wouldn't rub it in . That's a geological underachiever, that right there. There's a time of year down her when we have bone-rattling, bed-wetting, old-testament thunderstorms on a regular basis that shake things up better than that. 

Michael McLeod

Image

Michael McLeod

Joe: I like your mindset about retirement as a chance to indulge yourself with an lifelong hobby/fixation.

guess mine is indoor/outdoor: gardening, which is a pleasantly year round affair given my backyard swimming pool surroundings, and still teaching and practicing a liifelong love - writing - as my own indulgent boss

ps I posted a happy nytimes article below; given our shared background.

ppss: my heart is both happy and sad today, a condition i refer to as "sappy."

miss home. even though my daughter in dayton just told me via phone that it's pouring up there

Michael McLeod

you'll thank me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC2dRkm8ATU

Mark Schweickart

Dave-- I had a similar experience at the movies recently, when I too was the single audience member when I went to see Francis Ford Coppola's new film Megalopolis.  As a fan of most of his work, I unfortunately came away shaking my head, thinking, "What the hell was that wildly-ambitious, stunning-to-look-at, but way-over-the-top fever dream of a movie supposed to be saying to us?" Poor Francis... who spent decades, and something like 120 million dollars of his own money getting this made, and for what? Certainly he was hoping for more than the befuddled non-enjoyment of a single lonely viewer sitting in a cavernous auditorium. Yikes! 
 

David Mitchell

No Mark.

I think I read somewhere that F.F.C. made that film specifically with you in mind. I just thank God I am not so cursed as to have a spare $120 million rattling around in my pocket. 

Michael McLeod

bill in case i didn't say this already thanks for the response.

as a writer there is something additionally grating about the thought of writing something that nobody reads though i do write diary type stuff but very very infrequently.

teaching a personal essay writing class, nervous but excited and curious about what they'll come up with this week.

Michael McLeod

I just had a moment to be grateful for and had to share it.

On an impulse I called to speak to a fabulous therapist who worked with me individually years ago, helping me to thread by way through my wackadoodle personality challenges. And I just thanked her, profusely. And I told her I Ioved her and  she told me she loved me. And no there was nothing romantic about it, then or now. But as I hung up I thought: if that isn't a brand of true love I don't know what is. 

If you have ever struggled and been assisted through it by a compassionate and well trained and absolutely dedicated and heartfelt professional you'll know what I mean.

Michael McLeod

damn.looking down I feel like I am hogging this place but then hmmm. oh yeah. I'm a writer.