My Published Articles for ViewsHound: February 2019

Saturday, February 16, 2019

Are You Aging Gracefully?

I received this e-mail today. I do not know the author, but has been circulating in the Web. I can identify with the sentiments of this article. If you are retired this is a must read for you. If not passed it on to your older friends and relatives. An encouraging suggestion.....to share. Many people feel unhappy, health-wise and security-wise, after 60 years of age. Or 70! Or 75! Or whatever is your age now! Life can begin now, it is all in your hands! Many people feel unhappy, health-wise and security-wise, owing to the diminishing importance given to them and their opinions. But, it need not be so, if only we understand the basic principles of life and follow them. Here are ten encouraging thoughts to age gracefully and make life after retirement pleasant.

1. Never say I am ‘aged': There are three ages, chronological, biological, and psychological. The first is calculated based on our date of birth; the second is determined by the health conditions; the third is how old we feel we are. While we don't have control over the first, we can take care of our health with good diet, exercise and a cheerful attitude. A positive attitude and optimistic thinking can reverse the third age.

2. Health is wealth: If you really love your kith and kin, taking care of your health should be your priority. Thus, you will not be a burden to them. Have an annual health check-up and take the prescribed medicines regularly. Do take health insurance coverage.

3. Money is important: Money is essential for meeting the basic necessities of life, keeping good health and earning family respect and security. Don't spend beyond your means even for your children. You have lived for them all through. If your children are grateful and they will take care of you, you are blessed. But, never take it for granted.

4. Relaxation and recreation: The most relaxing and recreating forces are a healthy religious attitude, good sleep, music and laughter. Have faith in God, learn to sleep well, love good music and see the funny side of life.

5. Time is precious: It is almost like holding a horses' reins. When they are in your hands, you can control them. Imagine that every day you are born again. Yesterday is a cancelled check. Tomorrow is a promissory note. Today is ready cash - use it profitably. Live this moment; live it fully, now, in the present time.

6. Change is the only permanent thing: We should accept change - it is inevitable. The only way to make sense out of change is to join in the dance. Change has brought about many pleasant things. We should be happy that our children are blessed.

7. Enlightened selfishness: All of us are basically selfish. Whatever we do, we expect something in return. We should definitely be grateful to those who stood by us. But, our focus should be on the internal satisfaction and the happiness we derive by doing good for others, without expecting anything in return. Perform a random act of kindness daily.

8. Forget and forgive: Don't be bothered too much about others' mistakes. We are not spiritual enough to show our other cheek when we are slapped in one. But for the sake of our own health and happiness, let us forgive and forget them. Otherwise, we will be only increasing our blood pressure.

9. Everything has a purpose: Take life as it comes. Accept yourself as you are and also accept others for what they are. Everybody is unique and is right in his own way.

10. Overcome the fear of death: We all know that one day we have to leave this world. Still we are afraid of death. We think that our spouse and children will be unable to withstand our loss. But the truth is that your life on earth is not eternal, earth is not your home perpetually. Your love ones will miss you but the memories live on, you can be an example for them to carry on! Last but most important, you have a God who loves and cares for you! You have a future and a hope in Him....you have a choice...life can begin NOW..... So, are you aging gracefully or miserably?

First Posting: 2012

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

The Perils of Casino Gambling

Just recently I was reading an article on gambling addiction written by Daniel Bortz and published in the US News and World Report. In the article he reported that more and more Americans of both genders are seduced by the casinos due to accessibility. This is indeed true based on our personal experiences. Prior to the construction of Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln , California, my wife and I go to the Casinos may be twice a year since we have to drive more than one hour to the nearest Casino from our residence. With the construction of Thunder Valley and Red Hawk, we go to the casinos every other week. Both Casinos are only about 30 minutes drive from our residence. Besides gambling we patronized all the restaurants inside the Casino. We have a budget that we followed strictly. Besides playing the slots, my wife and I partake the delicious buffet offered by the Casinos at a reasonable price.

I have a relative who was addicted to Poker. His wife divorced him. If you think you are addicted to gambling, call 1-800-555-1212 and asked for the number of Gambler Anonymous (GA). I hope GA can help you.

The report mentioned that about 2 million adults meet the criteria for “pathological gambling or addiction.” and 4 to 6 million are considered “problem gamblers”. This is due to the fact that the number of casinos in the US is growing not including gambling online. Gambling addiction affects both men and women from all socioeconomic classes, according to figures from the National Council on Problem Gambling.

The gap between the number of male and female gambling addicts is closing. As more Indian and local casinos with slot machines are added, the number of female problem gamblers increases throughout the country, says Sam Skolnik, author of "High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America's Gambling Addiction."

However, Skolnik says betting behaviors vary by gender. He says men are more likely to be "action gamblers," meaning they prefer games that involve skill (e.g., poker or blackjack), while women tend to be "escape gamblers," meaning they're more drawn to machines that are based on luck (e.g., slots or bingo) and gamble to distract themselves from problems in their personal life.

Personal Note: My wife and I go to the Casino every other week with a definite budget. We also partake the reasonably price food besides playing the slot machines. I believe we are not addicted yet. We used to go to the movies, Broadway plays/musicals and eat at expensive restaurants as part of our monthly entertainment budget. Again, may I reiterate, if you are a gamboholic, call 1-800-555-1212 and asked for the number of GA.

First Posting:2016

Saturday, February 2, 2019

Music of IL Divo

Time for some of my favorite musical pieces from Il Divo.

Il Divo ("divine male performer" in Italian) is a multinational operatic pop vocal group created by music manager, executive, and reality TV star Simon Cowell. Formed in the United Kingdom, they are also signed to Cowell's record label, Syco Music. Il Divo is a group of four male singers: Spanish baritone Carlos Marín, Swiss tenor Urs Bühler, American tenor David Miller, and French pop singer Sébastien Izambard. To date, they have sold more than 26 million albums worldwide

Guest Article from Susan Creamer Joy

In The Silence, by Susan Creamer Joy.

Today's guest article is from Susan Creamer Joy. Susan is one of my favorite authors in the ViewsHound community. Susan writes, draws, paints and cobbles together art from found objects making a variety of creations from jewelry to religious shrines. She frequently sports burns on her fingers from her soldering iron, paint on her palms and ink under her fingernails, but her hair is usually combed. When she is not losing time in the creative vortex of her studio, she is likely to be putting her knowledge of metaphysics and esoteric principles including Tarot, numerology, astrology and graphology to good use in consultations. Her children are grown, her husband still works and her four dogs believe she needs serious help. The title of her article is "A Matter Of Love And Death". Thank you Susan.

By the time they reached my bedroom door, I was already sitting up – my stomach ratcheted in the tense grip of an unnamed anxiety; my pillow, unburdened of my drowsy head.

To this day I cannot explain how I heard them coming up those stairs in their bare feet or how I knew that my father struggled to hold his composure as my mother unnaturally clutched at the folds of her dressing gown and followed him through the dark just a little too closely.

As the wooden groan of those old stairs tore into my bones that morning like a hacksaw, all I could see between the predawn shadows was the letter I’d written just hours earlier to my boyfriend, Chris, propped against the lamp on my desk across the room awaiting an envelope.

I had not slept well. It was late November and there had been so many changes since the middle of August when he left for the Air Force in Texas to begin basic training and I began my third new school in as many years.

The conspiracy between fate and the last surge of the Vietnam draft had broken apart the every-waking-minutes of our two-year union with unceremonious indifference. All that night my sleep had been infested by difficult dreams and by the illogical fear that truth and reality were merging into a darkness only a martyr could grasp; and at sixteen, martyrdom seemed reasonable only for the nuns among the poor in Bangladesh

I tried to remind myself that he would be home on leave for Thanksgiving in another few days. It was the only tether to calm I could find, but reviewing the facts offered little relief from my baseless fears.

Chris had been girding his pacifist sensibilities preparing to fight in an unpopular war that had not yet slaughtered its last innocent. I was hovering just over the line of inclusion at an exclusive girl’s school – missing him – and finding myself at odds with these young women and their attachment to propriety and with the prep-school veneer that blinded them to the fact that they were no better than anyone else.

Neither one of us was coping well with the worlds into which we were respectively summoned, and although we both knew that the best hope for any future together depended upon our individual successes apart, it was far from comforting most days.

But in spite of our discomfort, we each did our best; and, of course, there were the letters: Thin, plain-paper sheets with row after row after row of inky blue words penned with the intensity and awkward locutions of a love learned too soon. It had come down to just that little, but without them, I would have had nothing.

Chris was learning to fly. I was learning to drive, and both of us were aching to transport our souls to an earlier time through the hallowed intercourse of memories and dreams. Of course, as with all progress, there was the positive element: We were both clean and drug-free for the first time in years.

Now, without pretense, both healthy cognition and sincere motivation surfaced regularly in my psychology and prompted me to care about myself and to arbitrate against all temptation for a better standing in the world, in school and in my own eyes. I even did my homework.

No longer was I escaping today but, instead, living for my day of escape. Lying still in the dark of my room, I listened to the slow, padded footfall of my parents approaching and looked to the floor and to my history book half hidden beneath the nightstand where I’d tossed it the night before. Even in this early morning dark I could make out the swirls and stars in colored marker and the bubble-formed letters that spelled C H R I S in soft, juvenile curves on the torn book cover I’d fashioned out of a brown paper grocery bag.

I vaguely remembered throwing it there somewhat hastily. I had been doing my homework when a sense of urgency struck and I realized I had not written him as I promised I would and glancing at the clock, I noted it was nine-twenty-three. Why that mattered I had no way of knowing in that strange moment, but within hours, it would be one I would never forget; and although I was becoming drowsy and still needed to finish my work, I felt beyond reason that my letter to him could not wait.

So, I wrote. I would always write. I would always be there. He would always be there.“Suzi."It was my name spoken in the smooth and familiar voice of my mother, although weighted and slow, her head bowed to her chest almost as though she were speaking only to herself.

"Suzi.” She said it again, this time with sharp gravity, like a chisel against stone.

As if on cue, I leaned forward, flanked now by my parents who were sitting on either side of my bed.

I had been waiting for them. I don’t know how. I didn’t know why. The lights in my room remained off, but it seemed that the darkness clung more to them than to me, as though they were holding it there – away from me to give me enough light to see through the next moment. They were crying. My father was crying. My father. “Suzi. We have something very, very bad to tell you." Chris has been in a car accident." And he was killed."

If the world moved forward from that moment, I could not know it. f there were air around me worth breathing, I could not take it in. And if there were another sound beyond the leaden bellow of my own raw grief, I could not hear it.

"Who am I going to talk to? Who am I going to love?” I wailed. Who will love me? In that sodden moment violated by the intrusion of a predawn light that had no business rising, everything I ever believed about happiness, hoped for in life, trusted in or held as my own was annihilated.

After that – there was no after that. After that came months of hollow redundancies that would inform my way of being in the world for years to come. A serial commitment to waking up each morning, remembering he was gone and dedicating the remaining hours to forgetting. To that end I would try anything, drink anything, ingest anything, inject anything. It was a slow and arbitrary suicide by indifference.

Many years later, at 25 years-old and in the midst of a pharmaceutical free-fall leaning dangerously close to terminal, I discovered that I was expecting a child, and after a decade of forgetting, I remembered. I named him Griffin after the legendary winged lion, a symbol of the divine because what he inspired and the miracle that he was, were nothing less. I remembered and I loved again, and I went on to marry and to the gift of two beautiful daughters.

Today my son is struggling not to drown in the same well of drug abuse and apathy that almost swallowed me – his great, divine wings clipped by his own hand; and while it is up to him to restore his place in the sky, I will do my best to help provide an open runway.

In the meantime, I will continue soaring for both of us; bequeathed as I have been, with a determination to fly from a boy whose ragged fate precluded that dream.

Death took one young man from me once upon a dark time. If it has any intention of coming for this one, it will have to go through me. And trust me, it will be in for one hell of a fight.

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