Turning 80.

 Unbelievably, I made it to age 80!

It's been a hell of a journey filled with some sorrow but also great triumphs. 

My greatest sorrow was of course the murder of my son Thor, but the birth of his son Shadrach, six weeks before his untimely death, and the love of friends and family made it easier to endure. 

Yes, the road has been somewhat rocky but now I am good.

 Thanks to my loving family, Michele, Maddy, Shadrach and Bernie, my extended faily and all my friends who helped, encouraged and assisted me along the way.

On to the next milestone.😉

Link: LOOKING BACK......... Audiobook by Joan Williams

Reflections on biology!

 I have often opined that if you dont learn something new each day, you are dead.

Guess I will live forever then, for am I sure learning a whole lot of  biology as I age.

That was a subject I hated at school and even now, I can still remember the image of that poor little frog in the lab with his heart pulsating, as he suffered from the long slit down the entire front of his little body.

 He had been dissected while still being alive.😭

I don't recall how old I was when I saw that, but remember clearly  vowing that I would never pursue that subject.

 No sah. Not me.

 As you age and different organs start deteriorating however, you have no choice but to learn as much as you can about how the body operates.

I had first heard the word arrhythmia about 40 years ago, when my doctor mentioned that I signs of it. After asking my educated brother (a doctor) about it, he mentioned that I would probably have to get a pacemaker when I got older.

From that day though, my heart never bothered me and I never thought about it until April 2025 when I blacked out and was rushed to an ER by four young, handsome  men from the fire department.  

The diagnosis was then Afib and SVT, all heart rhythm related problems. 

Now, before that, I thought your heart only raced when you saw a sexy man and had dreams of a wonderful liaison, but thats not how it works with old people.

Since asking questions of the cardiologist, his nurse and google, I  have learned everything there is to know about the heart, its chambers and how they all interact in that crowded space.

And no, thankfully I don't need a pacemaker as science has progressed wonderfully. Instead they will be doing a minor procedure called an ablation to get my rhythms back in sync.

The good news though is that despite hating biology and a skipping every class when I was young, I am now an expert in how the darn heart works.👍

Wonder which internal organ I will be studying next?

These lessons come naturally with old age, so there is no need to crowd your brain when u are young by studying them and experimenting on poor, harmless, little creatures 😊.

College? Not for me

 A few years ago, speaking to a young American, I was shocked when he declared that he was sorry he had gone to college. When I asked him why, he explained that he had wasted four years of his life getting a degree, cum laude too, only to find that the job market for graduates was no good. He told me that all around he heard of the thousands of young people who did not graduate with anything but were making huge sums of money on things like gaming and You Tube.

Interestingly, he did not mention criminal activity though.

I was a bit puzzled as where I come from, Jamaica, higher education had long been considered the route to upward mobility, including financial success.

I guess I am out of step though for I am only realizing that the type of youth that I knew who hungered for higher education, now seem obsolete, especially among young men.

It came home starkly when I was advised recently that two well-advertised scholarships valued at $2.4 million, to our own University of the West Indies, was commanding little interest.

These scholarships were being sponsored by Violet Edwards, a Jamaican, who is one of five people in the world that got a university degree while in their 90’s. (Joan, my views: Reflections on aging (joan-myviews.blogspot.com)

Even then I didn’t want to believe there was a serious trend until a friend sent me this recent news item from TVJ. (https://youtu.be/Y9WiSxpcc7I.)

 In the news clip, you see and hear Minister of Agriculture Pernell Charles Jr, bemoaning the fact that there are dozens of scholarships available for which there are no takers.

And to think that for years I have been living under the illusion that just enough scholarships are available for poor students! 😞                                                                    I really shouldn’t be surprised you know but I am genuinely dismayed.

I say I shouldn’t be surprised, for I have known for years that Jamaica is a country where crime definitely pays. 

So if you can get rich quickly and easily through crime, why study?

Even when our criminals are as high profile as Dudus was, the law does not touch them as our security force is super corrupt.

One of the homes alledgedly owned by Dudus

And, there are so many easy ways to make money and openly enjoy the flashy lifestyle in Jamaica without ever being deterred (unless the Americans step in), that those who don’t choose that route could be considered either cowardly or stupid!

Among the easy ways the youth see people making lots of money and living large without studying are; scamming, extortion, drugs, religion and politics.

On the other hand, most who choose the long tedious route involving years of study, after graduation, they end up in jobs which don’t even give them the ability to pay rent in relatively safe neighborhoods, if they don’t get the opportunity to migrate.

Of course, there are exceptions to this general trend, but clearly not enough to give most young people the impetus to pursue the straight and narrow.

Till we tackle this drift, college and higher education will continue to be unattractive to many in the younger generation.