The Greatest Generation continues to impress

           Yesterday my grandma turned 98.  

It’s been a rough year for the elderly. She ended up in a nursing home just before the Great Pandemic (remember that?) If not for slipping on some ice, she'd likely still be living independently in her condo, not necessarily a better circumstance given the travails of 2020. 

It’s her mobility that gets her into trouble. No cane. No walker. Her legs are almost too healthy, while her sense of balance is... at times suspect. A number of slips and falls over the last ten years have caused more broken bones than I’d want to endure in a lifetime. Incredibly, her body has healed itself – and still, no walker!    

It makes me think of football players who complain about slower recovery times when they’re in their 30s. I wonder how they’ll do in their 90s.  

It’s incredible, when you think of it, how many people are now living independent, productive lives in their 80s and 90s. Such is the golden age we live in (no pun intended). 

My co-worker's in-laws are in their 90s, still happily married (I actually don't know how happy, but they've learned to co-exist for almost 70 years), living in the same home they raised their family. Two of the most productive people I know on earth (and yes, I know a lot of people on earth) are both nearing the age of 90. They make me tired just thinking about how many activities they’re involved in. Perhaps I’ll have more energy as I age... 

My mom had a similar thought when she reflected on the life of her late father. The number of organizations and activities he was involved in throughout his life was surreal. 

This may be an overgeneralization, but younger generations are not quite as involved. Or as willing to sacrifice for a cause. My grandpa voluntarily joined the army during World War II. Who would do that today? Back then, thousands of young people did.

The Queen of England is turning 95 this April and I don’t think she has any intention of slowing down. Like the Energizer Bunny, she just keeps going and going... which is quite a feat given the amount of ridicule and scandal she’s had to endure throughout her reign. Watching The Crown gave me a new appreciation of how difficult the job is. (This is somewhat unrelated, but as she is approaching that centennial milestone, will the Queen send a congratulatory greeting to herself when she turns 100?)

This generation, the most at risk of dying from covid-19, has been called the Greatest Generation. There’s something to be said for that. 

Maybe it’s because they lived in a different time, when things weren’t so convenient. Even my mom, as I’ve recently learned, went to a one-room school house by horse and buggy for her first year of school. But then they got school buses and she got soft, like the rest of us. (Just kidding, she still has that farm girl grit.) 

I would imagine living a life absent any modern conveniences toughens you up. Most people who grew up in the 1930s became who they are because of the hardships they endured. 

As I work at a computer from the comfort of my home (yes, in my pajama pants), I can only speculate. 

 

 

Pandemic hair loss more noticeable

             With more time on my hands, I’ve taken time to self-reflect. Literally, as in looking in the mirror. 

Perhaps I've been looking too hard, but I have noticed a couple stray hairs since the pandemic began. Either I’ve grown some new ones below my hairline or they’ve become stranded. I clipped one of them – shaved it right off to see what would happen. 

I’m not sure if this is just me over-analyzing things. I tend to do that. My wife says I’ve always had a high hairline.... since my youth. But this high? 

There’s a battle of genetics going on here. I learned a long time ago that hair loss is passed down through your mother. So basically you get your maternal grandfather’s hair. In that case, I’m in trouble. Or maybe it’s your maternal grandmother's father’s hair? I have no idea. 

My grandma is 97 and her hair is lustrous. I would die for her hair in my 90s. My dad’s is just as thick, and he’s in his 70s. Hasn’t lost a single hair to Father Time. 

So I thought maybe I would escape the fate so many of my uncles have succumbed to. The nightmares I used to have in my 20s of going bald (no joke) went away in my 30s. But now, in my early 40s, the reality is downright scary. 

I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode where George, a balding man himself, diagnoses another man whose hair is thinning. With the tone of an oncologist delivering bad news, George tells him he's got “14 months. Maybe 10.” When asked if there’s anything he can do, George replies: “Live, dammit. Live! Every precious moment as if this was the last year of your life. Because in many ways...it is.” 

Once all hope dies, I suppose it’s easy enough to take a razor to your scalp. The style these days is to shave it smooth as a baby's bottom. Then grow a beard.  

But I worry about the transition phase, when one has to find new and interesting ways to comb what’s left of your hair. I've been monitoring a political commentator on TV who's been finding interesting ways to keep some strands alive on top. They've become fewer and fewer, and I keep wondering when they’ll finally blow away.

The combover isn’t in vogue anymore (thank goodness), but there are other options for balding men. There’s the comb back which can last for a while. I once had a prof whose comb back ended in a nice pony tail. This distracted attention from the lessening of hair on top. 

There’s the island piece, where a patch gets stranded in front. That isolated chunk can survive for a while, depending on its size and thickness. 

The legendary bald spot is probably the least of my worries because it is so common. You only see it when a picture is taken of you facing the wrong way. At least I won’t see it. 

But there’s also the Friar Tuck look, where you lose the hair on top, but keep it nice and bushy on the sides and possibly even in the front. This is wrong on so many levels. 

Some people (with hair) might be tempted to say that balding isn’t a big a deal because so many men experience it. But then I think about male politicians... Can you really make it to the upper echelons of political power as a bald man? In a democracy??

Joe Biden comes to mind, but his hair loss at nearly 80 years of age is understandable. He makes the comb back look pretty good. The American public also knows how he used to look as vice-president. Most relevant of all, he just replaced a lunatic with loads of so-called hair. 

I worry more for burgeoning politicians like Erin O’Toole. Not that I really worry for the guy – I just sympathize with the state of his head. Now I know Conservatives never thought much about this when they voted for him as leader, and they shouldn’t have. 

But I still wonder... How many women (and possibly men) are going to subconsciously vote in the next election for the long, luscious mane of hair that has become the hallmark of Justin Trudeau as opposed to the shinier top of O’Toole? 

One image speaks to youth and vitality – the other, a reflection of our greatest fears. That we will one day grow old and lose some of our youth. 

Not to be too superficial, but none of us want to lose features of our physical prime. Not even the individual hair I clipped a year ago.  

By the way, it never came back. 

Barbie may limit your career

When I asked whether my nephews would take some pink hangers among the white ones, I was surprised at the response. They don’t do pink. At the tender ages of four and six, they understood: Pink is for girls.  

They like toys that go fast. They like to build things with real tools. When he was three, my youngest nephew wanted to sleep with a hammer. Not a play hammer, either – his dad’s actual hammer. 

I didn’t share the same obsession with construction tools like my nephew, but I had an endless supply of Lego, space ships, and cars. And I was betting on the Saskatchewan Roughriders by grade four (no real money at stake, just my prepubescent pride). 

Having raised a daughter, I understand that her interests will never quite be the same as mine. I can’t get her to watch football for longer than five minutes and her interest in vehicles is limited to the car we own, not the car I dream of owning (a Porsche, of course). Granted, she shares my disinterest in farming and construction and my interest in science fiction (live long and prosper).

Not all interests fit into a neat gender box, but there are some that we come to expect in younger children. And when a child bucks the trend, it grabs our attention. A couple years ago, my dad was pleasantly surprised to see one of my nieces playing with some toy tractors at their house. It went on for a few minutes as normal, but then the vehicles started talking to one another. She gave them personalities and they began to form relationships. It’s just the way girls are, we assumed. Or is it? 

In her book, Gender and Our Brains, Gina Rippon suggests children are more aware of social signals than we give them credit for. “Gender signaling is in place even before our little humans arrive and their very earliest experiences will be of color-coded signposts,” she writes. 

The association of pink with girls is the most obvious social construct of a colour that “belongs” to a particular gender. Pink is no more feminine than blue is masculine (at a certain age, boys lose the baby blue).

And kids are particularly sensitive to social cues from parents, grandparents, and society in general. As a family, we talked a lot about my nephew sleeping with a hammer, but I doubt we would have been quite as vocal if he slept with a doll or (gulp) a Barbie. Not that there’s anything wrong with that... We just might keep it on the lowdown. Call it a stage, if you will. 

Interestingly, playing with Barbie might actually be more damaging than we think. Not for boys, necessarily, but for girls. Those deeply embedded stereotypes (even though some of the liberated Barbies now design washing machines) can actually limit the careers of young women. One study showed that women who had played with Barbie Fashion Dolls were less likely to choose male-dominated careers than those who had played with gender-neutral toys. 

Rippon demonstrates through solid research how society’s expectations steer us through childhood and beyond, into our career. For women, it often leads to the “soft” sciences, administration and communications. For men, it’s the “hard” sciences, politics, and basically, whatever they want to do. 

Men don’t face the same hurdles as women, particularly within the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math). The research Rippon unearths on this topic is revealing. To offer one example, an experiment was conducted where the same application for a laboratory manager, one with a man’s name and one with a woman’s, was sent to evaluators at high-ranking universities throughout the U.S. The same application got a different reaction from evaluators (both women and men), depending on whether it was “John” or “Jennifer” applying. Jennifer was more likely described as “likeable” and “pleasant,” while John was described as “competent” and “more hirable.” Guess who tended to get offered the job? Same application, different results.

The evidence is clear that women, in their ability to do any kind of science, math or engineering, are on equal grounds with men. It’s the social constructs, much like with systemic racism, that limits them.

Back in the 1800s, some (allegedly) intelligent men suggested women were inferior, similar to “children and savages” in their mental faculties, in large part because their brains were physically smaller then those of men. We find this offensive now, but in another fifty years we may look back at today’s gender bias with similar disgust. 

So let your children (and grandchildren) play with the toys they want, and encourage them to try ones they don’t – whether pink, blue or rainbow coloured. But if it all possible – boy or girl – try to stay away from the Barbies.

 

Climate cliff is steep

            I’ve gone full circle on the whole climate change issue. 

In my early twenties, I was convinced we only had a few good years of life left on this planet. I’m not sure why, but as a university student it was easier to say Earth was going to hell in a hand basket. 

Then I grew older, got married, and realized things weren’t that bad. I started to believe in the inescapability of climate change and that we had merely to adapt. The likes of Bjorn Lomborg, the self-proclaimed skeptical environmentalist, appealed to me. A warming world meant fewer deaths from the cold, he reassured me. 

It’s true, the environmental movement is full of alarmists, many of whom didn’t account for the vast improvement in human living conditions worldwide. Genetically modified crops and inorganic food continue to feed the world. Life expectancies are increasing. Poverty has been alleviated significantly through economic development, most of which would not have been possible without fossil fuels. 

As David Attenborough reveals in his latest documentary, we have lived in a golden age. Since the 1950s, global air travel allowed Attenborough to visit the most remote and pristine parts of the Earth, where he documented unseen worlds to an audience getting its first glimpse of our planet’s bounty. 

But as so often happens, our technological growth has come at nature’s expense.  

As Attenborough walks us through the years of his own life, he shows how biodiversity and wilderness areas have declined. Rainforests have been destroyed, oceans have been over-harvested and species have been lost forever. This alone should raise alarm, particularly as our global population has yet to peak. Two billion more humans in 40 years will require that much more of Earth’s resources. 

But even then, if that were all we had to deal with, we could probably manage. We could find ways to protect species and habitat, to reduce growth in strategic ways, and to simply survive with less of nature’s bounty. Not ideal by any means, but there would be a path forward. 

Climate change throws a wrench into things. It compounds all the issues into something far bigger than humanity has ever confronted. It’s one of those wicked issues that cannot be solved with a simple flick of a switch – in this case, a switch that could turn everything off. 

This past year we’ve seen the impact of shutting things down, with the poorest and vulnerable being hit the hardest. A gradual transition to renewable energy would be best, but that should have started decades ago. As we near the point of no return when it comes to climatic positive feedback loops, we may not have another choice but to make a hard stop. Like with the pandemic, hardship today could save so many lives in the future. 

As Attenborough stresses, this is not just about saving nature, although we could make the argument that this is reason enough. This is really about saving humanity. The impacts on economies, societies and human life will be severe. 

We’re already seeing the effects of a one degree change in temperature, never mind the three degrees projected by 2100. The momentous wildfires of 2020, like those in Australia, Siberia and California, are the most visible harbingers of what’s to come.  

But for the most part, changes in Earth’s systems are invisible to us. The acidification of oceans, loss of coral reefs, and melting of northern permafrost are out of sight, out of mind. Like with covid, we might think it’s safe to continue with life as we know it because we aren't personally affected.

Or put our faith in technology. Perhaps safer nuclear power holds promise alongside vast investments in renewable energy, but I’m far more skeptical of schemes like pumping sulfur dioxide into the sky to reflect the sun’s heat back into space. This solution, which is seriously being considered, would be like setting off a supervolcano to permanently taint the sky. 

As we cruise towards the climate cliff, it sometimes feels like we’re building a home-made parachute with little knowledge of whether it can hold us, rather than actually trying to slow down. Perhaps we should try decelerating first, because that cliff is looking pretty steep. 

After seeing the global impact of a tiny rogue virus this past year, I no longer think I’m being alarmist. 

Our curious obsession with Alexander Hamilton

After starting to watch the Broadway musical Hamilton, we wondered if we should continue. It was recommended by our daughter’s teacher, so we thought this would be something educational. And it is. 

But it’s also a lot to take in when you’re used to watching tame Disney sensations like Frozen or Moana (whom the writer of Hamilton, by the way, also contributed to). But if you’re willing to sign up for Disney Plus for $8.99 a month, you’ll get to watch all of them, Hamilton included (this is not an advertisement). 

Alexander Hamilton was no slouch, I now understand. He was lesser-known Founding Father of America, but he had influence. This nerdy 18th century immigrant served as a military leader, ran the U.S. Treasury, co-authored the Federalist Papers in support of the American Constitution, and also (apparently) knew how to rap and sing. If anything, the music kept us watching. 

The cast’s diversity is also a plus. As much as the writers tried to keep the content historically accurate, we know most of the founding fathers were not in fact Black. Many owned enslaved Blacks, of which the story doesn’t much touch upon. 

Because this is a story about Hamilton. Which will, by the way, be drilled into your head, over and over again, given the number of times his name is repeated throughout the show. It’s even spelled out: “A-L-E-X-A-N-D-E-R...”  

 At certain points I wondered why we had to know so much about this man. Do we really need to know that his wife missed him when he was writing the Federalist Papers? Did it really require a full musical number? (To her credit, she did have a better voice.)

What I failed to grasp initially is that this is an in-depth biography. Writing it entirely to music must have been excruciating, especially when trying to stay true to historical fact (or American myth, if you’re the cynical type. There were convenient omissions, like Hamilton’s insistence that the U.S. president be elected for life).  

But for the most part, this musical rendition succeeds rather marvelously, and meticulously – to the point of even addressing the grammatical significance of a comma in one song, which, I admit, had to be explained to me by my daughter. 

 It’s like picking up the book on Hamilton, doctored up with a healthy dose of pizazz – where Thomas Jefferson acts like a Las Vegas showman and Hamilton’s wife beatboxes while their son raps about turning nine. And King George III acts like an emasculated buffoon because, well, Americans love to envision him this way. But he’s also extremely funny. His musical number is what kept us, as a family, watching and then listening. Our obsession involved playing his song ad nauseam until our daughter knew it word for word. 

But we didn't stop there. We overplayed one Hamilton song after another until we’d listened to the musical at least 30 times in different formats and cycles. It just kept growing on us. 

And at some point it finally dawned on me why Hamilton, of all people, was chosen as the main character. It's because this is a story about the much mythologized American Dream: How a man who was “a bastard, orphan, son of a whore” made it into the history books; how a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps made it onto Broadway, two centuries later. 

For this reason we could never have a serious Canadian musical dedicated to one of our founding fathers. We don’t have much for Canadian Myths or Dreams. Only Canadian comedy. 

The first lines of Macdonald (John A.) might instead go like this: “How does a crook, drunk, son of a...” It may not even make it as a school play, let alone on Broadway (maybe CBC), but I guarantee it would be hilarious. 

Unlike Americans, we’re much better at laughing at ourselves.