G’day Mate

This blog is written by Lee Gale Gruen to help Baby Boomers, seniors, retirees, and those soon to retire find joy, excitement, and purpose in life after retirement. Her public lecture on this subject is titled: “Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement.” Her memoir, Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class, is available by clicking here Amazon.com. Click here for her website: http://AdventuresWithDadTheBook.com

Now, on to my blog:

We all strive to survive and thrive. We depend on others to help us toward that end; we cannot do it alone. So, we too, must help others, and “others” includes the animals of the world.

Many years ago, I read about a penguin named “Pierre” that was part of a living exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, California.  For an unknown reason, Pierre lost all of his feathers.  He was ostracized by the other penguins, and he couldn’t swim because it was too cold for him.  A staff member made Pierre a neoprene suit to protect him, and his feathers eventually grew back.  Pierre may not have weathered that trauma without his human benefactor.

Recently, the continent of Australia has been hit with massive wildfires.  Believed to be exacerbated by climate change, they are destroying everything in their path. This has included an estimated one billion animals, many unique to Australia. I recently heard about the Australia based “Animal Rescue Craft Guild” that is organizing sewers, knitters, crocheters, and other crafters from around the world to help with this tragedy by making mittens for animals with burnt paws and joey pouches for marsupial baby orphans including kangaroos, possums, koalas and wombats that cannot survive outside of their mother’s pouch. These simple, artificial pouches are crafted from material and protect the life of the undeveloped joey, the marsupial baby, enabling it to flourish until it can live on its own.

Here’s a short primer on the kangaroo joey: when born at about 33 days, it is like an embryo: blind, hairless, and a few centimeters long–the size of a jelly bean.  It makes it way from the birth canal to the mother’s pouch by wiggling through her fur.  It remains inside the pouch suckling one of four teats which becomes enlarged to hold the joey in place. In about six months, the baby roo starts to make forays outside for short periods of time.  It leaves Mom’s comfy digs permanently between eight and eleven months.

If you have needlecrafting skills, how exciting and gratifying it might be to spend a little of your time making an item to enhance the welfare of Australia’s distinctive animals which have been injured and rendered homeless by the relentless fires of 2020. This could also be a fun project to do with your grandchildren, or for them to do on their own.  Google “instructions for marsupial pouches” or “instructions for mittens for koalas” to access YouTube videos to teach you how to make these items correctly. When you’re finished, google topics like “how to donate pouches and mittens for fire animal victims in Australia” or go to the Facebook page of “Animal Rescue Craft Guild” for information on where to send them.

If you’re not needlecraft talented yourself, do as I’m doing with this post and pass along the message to those in your sphere who are.  No matter your abilities or lack thereof, you too can be a link in the chain to make this happen

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Please forward my blog to anyone who might be interested and post it on your Facebook, Twitter and other social media. To reprint any material, contact me for permission at:  gowergulch@yahoo.com. If you want to be automatically notified when I post a new blog, click on the “Follow” button in the upper right corner of this page and fill in the information. To read my other blog posts, scroll down on this page or click on “Recent Posts” or “Archives” under the Follow button. To opt out of receiving this blog, contact me at the aforementioned email address, let me know, and I’ll remove you from the list.

Photo 1 credit : Janus Serendipity on Visualhunt / CC BY
Photo 2 credit: Aidan Jones on Visual hunt / CC BY-SA

Noise Pollution

This blog is written by Lee Gale Gruen to help Baby Boomers, seniors, retirees, and those soon to retire find joy, excitement, and purpose in life after retirement. Her public lecture on this subject is titled: “Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement.” Her memoir, Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class, is available by clicking here Amazon.com. Click here for her website: http://AdventuresWithDadTheBook.com

Now, on to my blog:

Is it me, or has the noise level in our environment risen sharply? To my mind, noise has reached pollution levels, like being enveloped in a constant foghorn. I can’t seem to walk into any establishment these days where I’m not hit broadside by the noise level inside.

To add to what might be a normal degree in a building filled with humans, the proprietors of many locations seem to feel that adding to the racket will help their business. So, they pipe in music which just increases the pollution. Then, to add insult to injury, they ramp up said chords to ridiculous decibels.

This first just occurred in restaurants and bars. Today when you frequent them, screaming to your tablemates just to be able to hear each other is now the norm.

This ambiance has segued to places like food markets, clothing stores, and other commercial businesses open to the public. I don’t know about most folks, but when I enter such a place, I’ll usually do a U-turn and exit from whence I came.

I’ve been known to ask employees to turn down the music. My request usually goes something like: “The music is too loud.  My first choice would be for you to turn it off;  my second choice to turn it down.”  This is usually met with strange stares and some form of resistance.  I’m sure that the owners regularly read their “Running a Successful (add any brick and mortar business category)” which tells them that piped in music helps bump up sales. But, putting your customers at the mercy of some radio station playing rap music turned up to assault their eardrums is not what it means, guys.

I don’t know if folks are aware that prolonged exposure to intense noise causes irreversible hearing damage. Those young store clerks and restaurant workers are being harmed permanently! Also, if one goal is to cater to Baby Boomers and seniors (and it should be as we form a huge demographic which spends lots of money), businesspeople ought to be aware that there are more hearing issues and hearing aid use among us, and that the hearing challenged are quite sensitive to intense noise.

We need more quiet in our lives. So, in line with my philosophy that you can’t change other people, you can only change yourself, carry earplugs or earmuffs with you at all times and use them when you are overwhelmed by the ambient clatter.  Picture an influx of seniors in earmuffs.  That should send the message.

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Please forward my blog to anyone who might be interested and post it on your Facebook, Twitter and other social media. To reprint any material, contact me for permission at:  gowergulch@yahoo.com. If you want to be automatically notified when I post a new blog, click on the “Follow” button in the upper right corner of this page and fill in the information. To read my other blog posts, scroll down on this page or click on “Recent Posts” or “Archives” under the Follow button. To opt out of receiving this blog, contact me at the aforementioned email address, let me know, and I’ll remove you from the list.

Photo credit: Citizen 4474 on Visual hunt / CC BY