Getting old is a stepwise function.

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Your faculties drop off one by one. This winter I had some bug or another pretty much from October to now. My exercise bicycle regime halted for a couple of months at a time. I would take a few weeks to try to get back, and then wham, something else happened.

The latest problem has been with my legs. A muscle broke in my left calf. It had happened previously – about 1974. The broken muscle drained into my ankle and foot, which were purple for about a month. This time it happened about a month ago as I was walking to the bathroom in the morning. Intense pain in the same calf, followed by a purple ankle, with the blood eventually producing a mottled effect on my toes. My body is re-absorbing the blood, but there are still twinges of pain in my calf muscle. Will it heal? I don’t know. Will it take time? That I can be sure of. I am hobbling around like an old man, still sniffling a bit.

I identify with the old farts I see around me. Objectively speaking I’m probably older than most I see on the bus. I used to keep my mind busy on the exercise bike by tracking the completed fraction of my total workout. Applying the same fractional thinking to life, I note that as of Sunday I completed 5/6 of a century. Since I met Oksana at 2/3 of a century, it means we have been together for 1/5 of my lifetime.

Completing this many years is no big whoop. About one third of American men get here. However, only about one in 200 will make a full century. A fairly select subset. I hope to get close, at least close enough to see my daughters graduate from high school.

At this stage in life, I have become rather a connoisseur of obituaries. As I have been collecting music by my favorite performers over a lifetime. I note that Frank Sinatra, Glen Campbell and Gordon Lightfoot checked out at 84. Bing Crosby only 74. In fact, the number of musical personalities who are still around in their 90s is limited.

The same seems to apply more broadly. It was big news when Henry Kissenger and Jimmy Carter made it to a century. The few still active in their 90s include Kenneth Cooper, author of Aerobics,Clint Eastwood and Warren Buffett. Guys I knew from work like John Gentzler, Dan Feltham and Bill Doody were already fading fast at 90. The cohorts shrink rapidly; I don’t know any older than that now.

I recently reviewed a book entitled The Enigma of Reason. It builds on, significantly expands on and in fair measure supersedes Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. I wondered what its author had done lately.

I did not expect medical suicide, but that’s the story. At the age of 90 Kahneman still had his wits about him and decided to take control of his life while he still could. He went to Switzerland to undergo euthanasia. He only told a few confidantes what he was up to, and made sure that the news of how he died did not come out until long after the obituaries were published.

I wonder if his decision was prompted in part by the observation that he was being overtaken in his primary field of endeavor, the research of how people think. It is a question that occupies me. I’m trying to formulate a speech on the subject. Hard to do in only seven minutes.

I have to ask myself from time to time what keeps me going. Obviously, my young family is at the core of the answer. But why do I keep writing? Am I becoming ossified in my thinking? So many others that I encounter on the Internet seem to have done so. The TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome people are locked into that worldview. As, to a lesser degree, are the MAGA folks, the split-from-Trump conservatives such as Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly, the anti-Iranian war crowd, the pro-Russia crowd, and other such groups. I read representatives of each group periodically, looking for enlightenment and changes of opinion, but I don’t find too much. If reason worked like Aristotle and Descartes thought, people would change their minds more often.

As I continue to blog, I find that the number of readers has stagnated at something just under 300. Why do I do it at all? I suppose we all have to do something to justify our existence to ourselves. But I note that my pace has slowed down.

I do have something important to do this summer. Both Zoriana and Marianna are tentatively accepted at the Basis school, with final approval to come in August conditioned on what they have learned over the summer.

Marianna has to learn how to read syllables before first grade. That we have almost done. She was on the cusp of reading. The school recommended a standard text, вчимося читати (Learn to read), and she is enthusiastic about going through it with Oksana and me. I have no concern.

Zoriana needs to have completed third grade mathematics as taught by Basis itself to enter the fourth. It involves the standard arithmetic operations, but taught with rigor, and including fundamental mathematical concepts such as set theory.

I bought the six-book set Basis recommended. Zoriana went immediately to the self-test, confident that she knew it all, and got stumped on page 2. The question was written “C={a,Ø,6}. Name the other equivalent sets.”

Of course, not having studied sets, she was flummoxed. She wanted to quit immediately. When she relented, I persuaded her to go through the teaching texts with me to figure out what they were talking about. The equivalent sets are (FYI) {Ø,a,6}, {6,a,Ø} and so on. Same three elements, different order. Oh! Not hard, once you understand what they are talking about.

Anyhow, I think the girls will be ready by August. And I have something to keep me out of trouble this summer while my leg heals.

Graham