Cooking the NYTimes and Other Assorted Retirement Activities

This past weekend, I had the distinct privilege and pleasure of leading a track at the Iowa Episcopal Summer Ministry School and Retreat in Grinnell, IA. My friend, Jeanie, who I've written about repeatedly, is a Deacon with the Episcopal church, serving at St. Timothy's in West Des Moines, IA.  It's a later in life career for her.  She answered the call she had been hearing over the years after working in a number of businesses, the last a home health care organization that specialized in infusion therapies.  And in true Jeanie fashion, she has answered the call loudly, with extraordinary grace, energy, enthusiasm, dedication.  In fact, she and a fellow Deacon were in charge of the event, which is how I came to be a presenter. "I think you should do something with your retirement stuff," she said last fall. "Okay," I replied, thinking, how hard could this be? Fast forward to early June, when I pulled out the schedule for the workshops to get a s...

I haven't written in awhile (again).  Life seems to be getting busier and busier, confirming what I was told repeatedly before I retired: you'll be so busy that you'll wonder how you ever worked. Last night I taught my 'last' class for the 2017-18 school year.  What a terrific ride this has been!  I knew going into it that I would learn more from the people in my classes than they would learn from me, and this, too, has been confirmed.  I'll be revising all my offerings, due in no small part to what participants have shared, the questions they have asked, their reactions to the presentation.  I have been humbled by their bravery in expressing their concerns and heartened by how their fellow classmates confirmed the commonality of the concern, or stepped out of their comfort zone to relay their story and how they found ways to confront the issue, or continue to deal with it.  That's when I personally feel the most successful--when the group turns to each o...