Spanish Peaks Living

A curious new skill!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

I have written here before about how a traumatic brain injury can shake up our brain to the extend that we may discovery a skill we either never had before or never recognized. For example, I wrote back in 2016 about Melody Gardot’s transformation following her serious brain injury. She’s an American woman who only discovered her unique ability to create and sing music after suffering a serious head and spinal injuries.

Well, just recently I have discovered I have an uncanny ability to recognize the voices of well-known people when they, for example, narrate a program on TV or provide voices for animated movies. I don’t remember ever being so sensitive to voice tones or accents, but I now immediately key into who is behind the voice. It reminds me a bit of that voice and noise recognition software you see on crime shows. Once I hear a voice I feel like I need to keep searching to find out if my hunch is correct. I also notice how similar some voice tones are, for example the voice of Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) is quite similar to Barack Obama.

Would you like to learn more about this strange phenomena? Check out an article on this topic:
https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-02/when-brain-damage-unlocks-genius-within

“Mary Poppins Returns” made my week!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

I had such low expectations about watching “Mary Poppins Returns” I almost skipped it. Please don’t! This delightful mix of grim reality and pure, positive fantasy is a not-to-be missed escape into the world of magical musical surprises. The superior performances by Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, plus so many great guest performances by Meryl Streep, Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth and you-know-who, from the first Mary Poppins movie, makes this an elevating experience for those of any age.

With so many delightful new songs, this movie takes off when Mary Poppins magically appears and begins to sing “Can you imagine that?” in the bath tub scene. She certainly convinced me: “Nonsense can be fun!” Then there was the “A cover is not the book, so open it up and take a look!” song, which simultaneously reminded me of my twenty-five years working in libraries, and also my dating service experience. Such great dating advice!

A few words from “Where the lost things go”

There is also a dream sequence called “Where the lost things go” to soothe the children who have lost their mother recently. Although not an easy theme to take on with children, Mary makes the loss a tiny bit less painful because “Nothing’s lost forever only out of place…”

Truth be told, I’ve always loved a good musical, but I wasn’t too enamored with the first Mary Poppins movie from 1964. I guess I had to grow up to finally appreciate a world where the women and children sweep in and save the day for the miserable adults who take life far too seriously. Oh those adults, who “think a great deal too much, of that I am certain.”

Now I see we all do think too much and in that way miss the opportunity to enjoy so many happy coincidences and surprises life can offer us. Don’t we all need a Mary Poppins to sweep down into our lives when things are looking grim and show us the bright side while we somehow solve the adult problems of life?

TODAY OR NEVER!

This fun film supports our favorite childhood fantasy of effortlessly flying away when things get tough, elevating our minds to new levels, while accenting every daily positive. And BTW, this film is wonderful with a little help from my little friend THC, along the same lines as Disney’s Fantasia!

Earth Day 2019: What is the “State of the Air” Where You Breathe?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

Although we may rarely think about the “state of the air” where we live, what we breathe in and out everyday does have a gigantic impact on our long-term health. And as the annual “State of the Air Report” comes out from the American Lung Association, let’s focus on your oxygen for just a few minutes.

Unfortunately, this is when most of us tune out. We say to ourselves, “I don’t smoke so I’ll be fine.” WRONG. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, refers to a group of diseases that cause airflow blockage and breathing-related problems. COPD makes breathing difficult for the 16 million Americans who have this disease. Millions more people suffer from COPD, but have not been diagnosed and are not being treated. Go check your state for deaths from COPD:

There are times when I’m certain those around me hear my severe coughing and think, “Geez, why doesn’t she quit smoking?” I have never smoked cigarettes and yet now, at age 64, COPD dominates my life. And incidentally, 20% of Americans with COPD never smoked. Sometimes when others ask me if I smoked, I am tempted to respond with, “No, but I did breathe…”

I have had reoccurring bouts of bronchitis for decades, don’t know why except that I have lived in some very polluted cities like Seattle, Salt Lake City and Boulder, not to mention Bangkok, Taipei and various places in China. I can no longer tolerate much air pollution at all. I just cough, permanently .

Go check out your county for air pollution levels!

When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters!


What makes us who we are today?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

I was struck the other day by this quote from Dr. Phillip McGraw. In my opinion, “Dr. Phil” is a wise man disguised as a TV personality.

“What I’m doing now is a culmination of everything I’ve ever done”

I have been in the midst of a “career” change for the past few years, since moving out into the Colorado countryside. I know, how can you change careers when you are already retired? But in some ways this change is more important to me than anything I did back when I was struggling to make a living.

That quote from Dr. Phil made me start thinking about the lifetime of influences that have brought me to this exact moment in time. I never gave much thought to the major influence my father has had on my interests until now. He has been an influential botanist, president of the National Association of Biology Teachers at one time, and author of some important books like “Trees and Shrubs of Colorado.” So, is that why I love living in nature and gardening at 7,000 feet with native plants now?

My Mom became a master of plant photography and Photoshop to assist my Dad in his book production. They together created “Common Southwestern Native Plants,” a lovely identification guide. Oh, maybe that is why I have recently decided to focus my future energies on photography.

The West Peak from the La Veta Public Library, 4/18/19

I believe we sometimes try to make our lives more complex than they really are. Look around you? What is influencing your world view right now? What is so close you almost don’t see it? Is that what you should turn your attention to right now, while you still can?

After a lifetime of living in cities, how has country life changed me and my interests?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments
The winter view from our south-facing windows

The changes are so gradual that at first you don’t notice them. After we completed our passive solar home in 2015, it took months for us to truly relax. While it was being built it felt more like the workmen owned it instead of us! Then, after we moved in, it felt like an expensive foothills retreat. I kept waiting for the manager to arrive and kick us out. But it did finally get finished, and then we rested.

Construction in mid-winter 2014-15

I would say it took at least a year to totally accept that this was our new home. It didn’t feel like anywhere I had ever lived before. The lack of neighbors and the absolute silence took my breathe away. When we first started building I felt like we lived so far out in the country, but after a year or so, it all felt so normal to not be around others.

The Final Product!

How did this new lifestyle change me over the next few years? I slowly learned what true relaxation is all about. I noticed that I stopped feeling so fearful all the time, a feeling I hadn’t even noticed before. The calm and quiet made me realize that our bodies feel the need to be ever vigilant in cities. All of that traffic, noise, over-crowding, and just being around other people constantly, causes us to be ever attentive to who knows what might happen next. Yes, we do still watch the news, which I’m not sure is good for us, but it feels millions of miles away!

I would say retiring to the countryside is particularly pleasant because we don’t need to worry about getting to work and all the stresses of being at work. Certainly, no one is go to fire us. Then the “problem” becomes:

How will I fill my time in a way that satisfies me?

Mike has been a master at solving this problem. He has been waiting his whole life to have the time to pursue various motorcycle and art projects. I have had to learn the fine art of doing nothing, after a lifetime of forced “productiveness.” Now I’m ready to pursue a few new avocations more seriously, like gardening and photography.

My commute to town

One of the best parts of our life now? After a lifetime of moving from place to place constantly, I now know that we will never move again. This is the end of the road for us. and what a lovely end it is!

If you would like to learn more about this challenging transition from my perspective, please consider purchasing my book: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado.

BIRTHDAY JOY and how to get some!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Some might say celebrating turning 64 is crazy. What can be great about being 64? Number one, I made it this far without losing too many parts or major skills. There’s something to celebrate! Second, my Mom (who is 85!) is thrilled. And finally, we already have social security and Medicare is coming soon, hopefully before Trump kills off our Obamacare.

But in my case I have found a number of other things to celebrate. For one, the guy who has been making everybody miserable around here has finally sold his house and moved away! YES! And it’s almost springtime in the Rockies too! My tiny perennials are showing signs of new life after a cold, windy winter.

In the meantime, I feel complete gratitude for the sun coming back our way for another spring and summer. It doesn’t take much to make me happy, especially when I live in a solar home!

“What’s it like to move to the Colorado countryside to build solar?”

A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado by Laura Lee Carter, M.A. Librarianship, History and Transpersonal Counseling, is a book that attempts to answer that question…

In June 2014 we packed up or got rid of most of our worldly goods, sold our nice house in suburbia (Fort Collins) and took off to stay in an old miner’s cabin, while we built a direct-gain passive solar home with spectacular views of the Sangre de Cristos, west of Walsenburg, Colorado…