Women 50 and Over | Women Over 50 | Gracefully Aging

Question of the Week: What Was Your First Rock Concert?

June 13th, 2013

Jane

Okay, so this one will really date me! My very first rock concert was the Beatles live in Baltimore on their first American tour, September 13, 1964, at the Civic Center. I wasn’t even supposed to go because my mother thought I was too young to really enjoy it—since I was only in the fifth grade—but then, after reading more about how famous these four guys were becoming, she decided this might turn out to be something historic, so I should go along. (My mother hadn’t liked the Beatles at first, but all that changed after she saw them on the Ed Sullivan Show.) I’d heard the Beatles’ songs for months, since my sisters had been playing them over and over again on our record player in the basement. I was particularly thrilled, I remember, to hear “‘Till There Was You,” the love song from “The Music Man,” done by Paul McCartney. My favorite line was “But I never saw them winging…” because it was so precious how he pronounced it “sawr.”

The Poster for the Show

Here is what I remember about the concert: girls screaming and pulling on their hair; the whole hall being so loud that you could barely hear them sing, but you could hear every word of “She Loves You,” since it was so loud. The crowd went crazy and sang along with the “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.”

Paul and the Gang

Check out the man and his son!

Most of all, I remember falling in love with Paul McCartney. I wasn’t too young for that. I thought he was the cutest boy I had ever seen in my whole life, and when he spoke in interviews on television, I thought I was going to die. I hate to say it, but he still has that effect on me, even now, when he is pretending to be an old man.

Apparently, tickets cost $3.75 each. And the Beatles stayed at the Holiday Inn! I came home from that concert and joined the Beatles Fan Club—I still have my membership button!

Now it’s your turn! Please, share a story of your first rock concert with us.

To post a comment, click on “Comment” below. You have to enter an email address, but, trust me, you won’t get any mail from anybody as a result. And, where it asks for a website address, you can just put, www.Oops50.com.

Thanks!

Jane

Tags: BoomersFirstConcert, Ed Sullivan Show, First American Tour, first rock concert, memories, post50, The Beatles in Baltimore, womenbabyboomers
Posted in Aging, Beautiful Women >50, Entertainment, Getting Older, Home, Music, Question of the Week | 13 Comments »

Sadhvi Sez: Bello Heals with Paradise Music

June 9th, 2013

SADHVI & BELLO

I’ve never wanted children or babies, or dogs or cats. What with the gypsy life we led with no plans to settle down anywhere, it was a good thing that we both felt the same way. We wanted to be in India, near our Guru, and we worked hard to be able to do that for years. We were also so in love with each other that we didn’t want to share our time with someone else, even our own kid.

Then on Christmas Eve about 10 years ago, he called to say that he had a puppy. He sounded so excited and I wished that I was. I told him to put it back on the shelf and walk out the door. No he said, it was a rescue from Madison County and it looked just like the dog that he had when he was taking care of the cows in the Swiss mountains. I told him I was too busy with work, and he was too busy with roasting chestnuts on an open fire. Who would take care of this new pet?

It turns out that “Bello”, our beautiful dog, was the best thing that ever happened to us.

BELLO THE PUPPY

We’ve gone on walks together for over 10 years now, and when “Bello” ran after that skateboarder a few weeks ago, and he was on the type of leash that stops at a certain point, he flipped over and damaged both of his back knees. He has been having a difficult time walking since then and he cannot go on walks until he gets better. It’s hard to see him limping and not his usual frisky self.

I threw out the leash (and suggest that you do the same if you own one) and decided that it just isn’t time for “Bello” to leave us.

I looked online to find some place to buy healing music, since “Bello” has listened to classical music since he was a puppy. He was a biter, chewing up underwear, hand-knit wool socks, toilet paper, etc. After a short time I found out that he mellowed out with music after his morning meal/walk. He seemed to like YoYoMa a lot, especially the Bach CD. He doesn’t like heavy metal music at all, by the way.

I found a site that has this huge selection of great music called Paradise Music. Do you know about it? The selection is pretty amazing (er, I mean, AWESOME!), with music for beauty, for sleep, for healing, and even for dogs. I ordered the Relaxation Music for You and Your Dog, and also the Healing Gold. They cost $12.95 and that even includes shipping, which was fast.

You can sample the CD”s by clicking, a feature that I like.

Paradise Music also has these greeting cards that are so cool, with a CD inside. I got a few of those to send for Birthday’s.

They only cost $5.95 which is a great price since they are beautifully made and include a CD.

“Bello” has been listening to the Paradise Music CD’s for a week now, and I think he is getting better.

I hope to go for a walk with him sometime soon.

xxx

Sadhvi

Tags: babyboomerwomenanddogs, healing music, healingdogs, paradise music for healing, post50women, relaxing music, womenover50dogs
Posted in Main, Pets, Relationships, Sadhvi Sez | 20 Comments »

The River as Life

June 4th, 2013

Barbara Brady

To get us all in the mood for summer, here’s a piece from Barbara Brady about a trip down the Green River last summer that also teaches some good life lessons.

It was a perfect July day: 84 degrees and sunny. The water was high and moving fast as each of us lowered ourselves into the inner tubes that would carry us down the Green River in Saluda, NC over the next 2 ½ hours. After careening over several patches of white water, I felt bliss, connected to the blue sky, trees, dragonflies swooping down on us, the gurgling, rushing sounds of the white water, and our group of friends. I felt awe at the power of the river, but I also started seeing it as a metaphor for life.

When it’s moving fast, you don’t want to buck the current, but you need to trust and go with the flow. On this trip, I noticed that, while I usually let the river take me where it wanted, at times I tried to steer with my hands. A few times I stayed in place, paddling my hands against the current until others caught up. And it got tiring. I wondered how often we use others as our excuse to not go when life is beckoning, and in what other ways we hold ourselves back from letting ourselves completely go with the flow of life. At one point, a friend and I were on the river’s edge, holding on to separate branches, waiting for the others. When it was time to get back in the main flow, she told me to let go and she’d catch me. I tried reaching for her, forgetting I was still holding onto the branch. She reminded me: “Let go of the branch!” I let go, and she easily caught me and pushed me towards the middle of the river. Of course! You can’t let the river take you or someone help you if you’re still holding on to something on the side.

At the end, I floated right past our landing point. And, once out of the tube, I found myself over my head. The tube bobbed downstream. I tried swimming against the current to the other side but made little headway, with sneakers weighing me down and an empty plastic water bottle in one hand. Panicking, I screamed for help, and a woman swam to me and finally got us out. I relearned the necessity of asking, even yelling for help when I’m in over my head, not taking anything that will weigh me down on my journey, and letting go of extraneous stuff (the water bottle) that’s keeping me from living life fully. I also learned the folly of tubing without a life preserver!

So how about you? In what ways are you resisting where life is calling you to next? How often do you try to control your direction rather than allow life to lead and show you the way? What are those things you’re holding onto (attachments, resentment, worry), that are keeping you on life’s edge vs. in the flow of life? How often do you ask for help when you need it?

Check out “Find the River” by R.E.M.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIJGlTu5sEI.

Tags: babyboomerwomen, going with the flow, Green River, life, Oops50women, post50women, river
Posted in Beautiful Women >50, Financial Planning, Journey, Other Voices | 2 Comments »

Folklore: A Literary Influence

June 1st, 2013

Annice and Elsie

To all our reader fans I’d like to say I finished Elsie Augustave’s novel, The Roving Tree, and feel you should all go out and buy it. But, hey, don’t listen to me, see what Essence Magazine told their readers last month. So, while I decided not to write a review, I decided to ask the author (who was at our favorite Asheville bookstore, Malaprop’s) about the use of Folklore in literature. And, being the writer that she is, Elsie wrote a piece for our blog readers entitled, Folklore: A Literary Influence. I’m happy to present this article to you as a supplement to her novel and all other novels that use folklore as a literary influence.

Elsie at Malaprop's

My first literary experience as a young child in Haiti was my exposure to folktales that people told in the evenings when I spent summer vacations in rural Haiti. I would often daydream about the adventures of Bouki and Malice and other characters from the Haitian folktale repertoire, as I waited for people to engage again in the art of story-telling.

What most people perceive as supernatural and magical represent a Haitian perception of life, while it explains a correlation between a collective system of beliefs and cultural attitudes. As I began to spend time among Africans, it became clear to me that folklore also plays a major role in understanding moral values and also reflects their perception of life, spirituality, and mysticism.

Amidst these ethnographic explorations of Haitian identity and folk life, globalization and modernization, I seized the opportunity, within the pages of The Roving Tree, to bring a humane expression of Haitian, American, and African lives.

Elsie Augustave, author of The Roving Tree

* All photos and content are copyrighted material of Oops50

Tags: elsie augustave, post50womenauthors, the roving tree, womenbabyboomer writers, womenwriters
Posted in Beautiful Women >50, Books, Entertainment, Main, Post 50 Women Authors, Spirituality, World | 4 Comments »

Question of the Week: Who Were Some of Your Favorite Childhood Book Characters?

May 30th, 2013

I loved the responses we got on the last ‘question of the week’, so here I go again. This time, I’d like to know who some of your favorite childhood book characters were.

I’d have to start out with Mister Dog, the dog who lived by himself in a little crooked house and cooked up bones for himself in a pot and slept in pajamas. That was one of my favorite Golden Books–and I’ve never gotten over the wonder of those illustrations. I think they were by Garth Williams, the same incredible person who illustrated Charlotte’s Web and the Big and Tall book–I think that’s the name of it.

I would move on from there to Anne of Green Gables. I read all the Anne books, and I understand why people still make pilgrimages to Prince Edward Island. Anne had so much spunk, and she could never make herself do things according to how society wanted her to behave if she didn’t really believe in those things. It didn’t matter that she had no real parents; she could handle anything that came her way. And she got so much pleasure out of life!

My mother read a book called Miss Minerva and William Green Hill out loud to us–and she got all the accents right. (It was based in Tennessee and written in dialogue.) And I loved William. He could not stop himself from getting into mischief, and he had a wonderful sense of humor. When I just looked for this book on Amazon, I was happy to see that the little red version, which is the one Mama read, has been reissued and is still available.

I guess my favorite character in my teenage years was Elizabeth Bennett, since she was so strong and intelligent, and even though he fell for Mr. Darcy eventually, she first had to know that he was smart enough for her and could meet her on equal footing.

In high school, my favorite was Holden Caulfield. Maybe because I spent so much time in a German school, where everything was regimented, and you had to snap to attention around your teachers, and it was hard to know what you really thought or felt about anything, I was thrilled to discover Holden and his unconstrained mind and his absolute contempt for “phonies.” He gave me a model for someone speaking the truth, even if he was supposed to be a little off his rocker.

Then, in college, my favorite character of all time was Joe Gargery in Great Expectations. What a sweet and loving soul he is. I could read the Joe speeches over and over, especially when he comes to visit Pip in London and is shunned by the young fool.

I would love to hear from our readers on this question, since we all grew up around the same time! Please respond to the blog itself, instead of on Facebook!!!

Thanks.

Jane

Tags: Anne of Green Gables, babyboomerchildhoodbooks, Books, Elizabeth Bennett, Holden Caulfield, love of children's books, Miss Minerva and William Green Hill, Mister Dog, Mr. Darcy
Posted in Books, Creativity, Parenting | 6 Comments »