Musings on Risk at a Certain Age

Today, during lunch with a group of former colleagues, one of them made an observation about risk that resonated with me.  As someone who skis, hikes, bikes, drives, flies and loves to travel, risk has not been high on my list of worries. Or, subconsciously, has it?

"As I get older," he said, "the risks seem riskier." That put into perspective feelings of anxiety I've been having.   I recently told my Montreal relatives that it was unlikely we'd drive up from Philadelphia for the holidays, a tradition of several years. Last year, on our way home, we skidded off the road. I don't relish tempting slick highways again. I nag at my husband to drive more slowly. (He, in return, accuses me of driving "like an old lady.")

Are our growing concerns about risk because we realize that there is so much more to lose? For one,  our bodies are less able to bounce back from injury. For another, if we're lucky and now have grandchildren, we'd like to see them grow up.

My friend tied his thoughts about risk to his increasing unwillingness to move out of his large, longtime house in order to downsize.  Why, he said, should he take the risk of moving from a community he has nurtured for the last 36 years to one where he would have to start all over? "The longer I'm here, the harder it is to move,"  he said.

Hmm... We've been in our house 40 years, the last decade of which we have thought about moving.

At the same time that cocooning seems to be working to envelope me, I know I must keep fighting to break free and take  risks that bring excitement, diversion, and adventure. Risks that keep me engaged, indeed, young. 

Perhaps that's why we've begun to thread the risk/reward needle. 
For one, we don't travel independently as often as we once did, driving on unfamiliar roads in unfamiliar countries where people speak unfamiliar languages. Instead, we go with organized groups and let a guide and driver  lead our explorations 
We caved after many decades of skiing in knitted hats and invested in helmets, though we told ourselves it was to set an example for the grandkids.
And last year I bought Yaktraks to clip on our boots so we don't slip in winter -- though we have yet to put them on.
Over Thanksgiving, with 10 grandkids and grand nieces and nephews in the house, I was careful to watch for toys underfoot. (A close friend recently broke her wrist in multiple places after stepping on a toy truck while kissing her grandson goodnight.)

But there is reward in confronting  such risk in our big old house:  having the place and space to bring a large and loving family together. I would risk everything for that.

F.I.R.E. ; Very Very Early Retirement

This trend reminds me a bit of the 1960s and ‘70s when my generation, then young, sought to move to Vermont and raise our own food, cut our own firewood and live independently off the grid.
This time, though, it’s Millennials burned out at jobs they hate, calculating with advanced math skills, that if they had $1 million and lived really really frugally, and prayed that the stock market kept going up, they could move out of their expensive urban apartments, move to an inexpensive community and enjoy their lives.
The trend is called FIRE – financial independence, retire early. I learned all this from a story in the New York Times. Read it here.
But all this is too late for me. Besides, I loved my job and felt that I was  helping others lead better lives as a result of the explanatory journalism I was doing. I wouldn’t have traded that in for retirement at 35. And like those people we met who had gone to Vermont to be self-sufficient, we saw them burn out after they realized how hard it is.
I wonder if these folks embracing FIRE will find it too boring. Or maybe just not meaningful enough

To Philly Seniors: A Chance to Volunteer

Penn's Village is a Center City Philadelphia  non-profit that offers interesting educational programs while also providing, via member volunteers, services to others in the community.

It's a dynamic group. Upcoming talks include a session on how to organize your personal information, , a lecture on the history of North Korea by a University of Penn professor, and an afternoon with poet and author  George Economou. (Sorry, you missed my talk on Boathouse Row some time back!)

The group also offers, via member volunteers, support to others in the downtown Philly community.

Here's their recent announcement seeking administrative volunteers :

Hello members, volunteers and friends, Penn's Village is looking for a couple of administrative volunteers to assist with daily operations of the village.  This is not your usual office volunteer opportunity!   It is a chance to facilitate volunteer-delivered services in the community, to help with registration for workshops, outings and social events and to respond to inquiries about the organization.   Administrative volunteers work from their own homes to provide office "coverage" via our information management system and remote access to our phone.  We have a dedicated group of such volunteers who each "cover" their specific day(s), but we need to expand the group.  We will train you and support you all the way! If you are interested in learning more, please respond to this email or call the office at 215-925-7333.  You will be contacted either by one of the current administrative volunteers or by me. Thank you for considering this request! Jane Eleey Executive Director 215-925-7333 www.pennsvillage.org

Requiem to a Retiring Museum

George Washington by Gilbert Stuart

Despite several years prowling through Philadelphia's great repositories of history to research my book Boathouse Row,  I had never visited the Philadelphia History Museum, formerly known as the Atwater Kent. But hearing that the museum was immediately closing after the failure of a  possible merger with Temple University, I ran out today to check it out.
The collection is odd: a little of this and a little of that. There's a gallery of oil paintings of famous and not so famous Philadelphians, highlighted by a portrait of William Penn by an unknown artist and one of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart.

William Penn

There's a room of Norman Rockwell covers for the Saturday Evening Post, published in Philadelphia. One, from 1960, asks the question "Is there a Woman's Vote?"  Fifty-eight years later, we're still wondering

An entire room was dedicated to Octavius Catto, a noted African American educator of the 19th century whose story was brought to light by my former Inquirer colleagues Murray Dubin and Dan Biddle in their book, Tasting Freedom. Since its publication in 2010,  Philadelphia has celebrated Catto with numerous events, readings, and most recently a statue, the first memorial to an African American in the city.

To my disappointment, there was little to amplify my knowledge of Boathouse Row but for a James Peale portrait of Frederick Graff, the engineer who in 1821 built the Water Works, which used a hydraulic system to pump water to the city. Another result was that its dam, which flattened a turbulent river, allowed rowing to emerge as a great Philadelphia sport. Also, there were a few photographs by Frederick Gutekunst, a noted photographer of the mid to late 19th century who, I discovered, was also a rower.

Photo by Frederick Gutekunst

A few other items resonated with me. I loved seeing an old Bulletin newspaper "honor box" as it was called, because once you put in your  quarter, you could lift out as many newspapers as you wanted. I've got one in my house, which we obtained after the paper folded in 1982!

Other quirky things: George Washington's pocket watch, William Penn's shaving bowl and snuff box and a shell and leather wampum belt, dating from about 1682 . It's supposedly the one given by a Lenape chief to William Penn in a gesture of good will.
There was also a gorgeous silver and gold "presentation sword"  inlaid with diamonds and amethysts given by "grateful Philadelphians" to General George C. Meade for his victory at Gettysburg.

Let this brief report be a requiem to the Philadelphia History Museum. May it reopen some day,  hopefully with more stuff in it!

Sword given to Gen. George C. Meade 

An Encounter with a Mobster's Son

As a reporter back in the late 1970s, I had written about the Mafia and its corrupt financial ties to a Philadelphia city union. The exposé had even prompted an anonymous phone call: “You will end up like Jimmy Hoffa,” the voice said, implying we might end up encased in cement somewhere.

But now I was in Sicily, retired and vacationing, when a talk arranged by our tour group, Overseas Adventure Travel, brought me face to face with two middle-aged men whose lives had been touched by the Mafia in ways I had never imagined.

The two were both born in Corleone, the traditional hometown of capos of the Sicilian Mafia (and, of course, the raison d’etre for the name of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather.” )

Angelo Provenzano, son of the notorious Sicilian chief, Bernardo (Binnie the Tractor) Provenzano, was one of the speakers. The other, Gino Felicetti, had fled Italy as a youngster with his family after a relative was murdered by the Mafia.

Gino, who has long lectured about the Mafia in Sicily, acted as the historian of the program, showing slide after slide of gruesome killings presumably orchestrated by Angelo’s father and the capo under which he worked. The visuals included blood-drenched scenes of the 1992 murders of two Italian magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, who had tried to prosecute the Sicilian mob.

Magistrate Giovanni Falcone's 1992 death scene

For his part, Angelo revealed what it was like growing up in hiding with his mother, father and younger brother. He was home schooled, he said, moving often and had no friends. He had no clue as a youngster what his father did for a living. But he felt loved by him.

Angelo Provenzano, a son tries to build a life 

In 1992, Bernardo reinstated his wife, 16-year-old Angelo, and Angelo’s nine-year-old brother back to Corleone, in an effort to allow them to be educated and lead honest lives, Angelo said.  Living openly for the first time, he learned his father’s true occupation.

Meanwhile, his father continued to hide out, even as he became Sicily’s capo di tutti capi (boss of bosses) in 1993 upon the arrest of his superior,Toto Riina.

From the mountains, communicating only by pieces of paper, Bernardo ran the organization while police hunted him as a suspect responsible for orchestrating 15 murders. Some news reports say he tried to steer the mob away “from the attacks on high-profile figures that were hardening public opinion against the Mafia and provoking police to respond.” 

In 2006, police finally cornered him; he died in prison 10 years later, at age 82 having spent 43 of those years in hiding.

Angelo’s life struggle has been trying to reconcile the love he still holds for his father with the mobster’s heinous deeds. Not to mention that neither he nor his brother, tainted by the sins of their father, has been able to land good jobs or create sustainable businesses. Even a laundry that Angelo tried to run with his mother in Corleone failed.

Bernardo Provenzano, arrested 2006

“He might have been wrong. He might have made choices that I don’t understand that I don’t know about,” Angelo has said. “That’s basically his business, his choices. To me, he’ll always be my father.”

In his talk to us, Angelo said he experienced his father as a loving, protective figure.  “I think of him as a father, not as a man.”

The evening with Gino and Angelo is now a routine part of the Overseas Adventure Travel tour of Sicily, though in its first year, 2015, it caused an uproar as Italians protested the platform being given to Angelo to say kind words about his father and by extension the Mafia.

But it has quietly continued, with Angelo earning money for his participation.

Responding to the Italian media criticisms, he said this was an opportunity to work in an important sector, tourism. “Do I have the right to a normal life or not?”

On International Women’s Day, there was Good news about getting older, especially for some of us of a certain gender and a certain age