Remembering or Failing To

 New Yorker has an article on memory, partially geared to the idea that forgetting is part of having a healthy memory. 

I think I have had a good memory, certainly one for facts, because I like to be the "know-it-all".  There's discussion in the article of people who remember lots of events in their lives (supposedly the average person can list only 10 events per year). If I dug and worked at it, I could perhaps get up to the 10 per year for my early years.  Many of my memories are detached from years, and have sort of melted into an amorphous mess.

For example, I remember one year of lots of snow, people who lived on some of the back roads were cut off for days. I think it was the first year, maybe the only year, when snowplows used snow blowers as well because they simply could shove the snow far enough off the back roads with high banks.  But I've no idea of when that was.

Recently my memory is getting faulty--perhaps just old age.  I'm starting to rely on Google Assistant to prompt me on things. Now the question:  will I forget how to use Google assistant?

Testing Trump--Modest Proposal

In his physical yesterday, President Trump took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and passed with 30 out of 30.  Can't access the database so I can't see how I'd do on it.  I have enrolled in the brain health registry, which is researching the subject.  Took all the tests over a few days, and did a little better than I expected (mom had Alzheimers, although developing in her 80's, and dad seemed slower before his fatal strokes at 73 so I'm hyperconscious of anything which might indicate I'm following the same path).  One thing they do not do is give feedback, so I don't know whether I'm below average, above average, or average for men of my age and background.  

But President Trump might take a half-hour a day in the morning to, instead of watching Fox and Friends, participate in the registry.  Be good for him, as lacking as he is in self-confidence.

Keillor and I

Garrison Keillor and I are of an age; he's a year and a half younger.  He's got a column here
which touches on the panic old geezers feel when they lose track of something--it's a sure sign of approaching dimentia.  (I just had an MRI because of such concerns--results negative (there's an old Yogi Berra joke with that punchline). Actually it showed only age-related changes--didn't have the guts to ask my doctor exactly what that means.  I'm pretty sure it means I won't be joining the super-centenarians featured in a recent piece (maybe the Times science section) where researchers were collecting and analzying genomes to see if there is a magic bullet to account for living to 110.  Given the apparent health of the people mentioned, I wouldn't mind living that long, although the fear is that you outlive your mind. We'll see.

He also mentions the old crank phone of his youth, as a counterpoint to his new iPhone. He says you had the operator connect you--not ours.  We had a local line of 6 or 7 households, each with their own code: one long, two shorts (rings), and so forth.  Except for me it was difficult to crank it properly--trying for a long could result in two shorts, as the crank made its rotation I'd lose speed and break the ring.  Such were the challenges and thrills of youth, long since vanished except in the memories of geezers.

Trouble with Homophone: Significant?

I'm noticing more and more I've trouble with homophones (i.e, for those who have forgotten high school English, words with the same pronunciation but different spelling and meaning, like "its" and "it's", "knew" and "new") and with completing words correctly (i.e., by writing "ful" at the end of "meaning" rather than the "less" I intended, or, as just now, typing "the" when I meant "than").

A quick google brings up this research but doesn't confirm my layman's belief that such a decline in functioning is significant, at least of old age if not of dementia.  But whatever.

I bring this up because our illustrious President has caught some flak over a tweet in which he spelled "heal" as "heel".  I don't know whether he can't spell, whether he's getting old, or showing early signs of dementia.  None of the alternatives are correctable at this point.

You're Getting Old When...

The star of  a movie  is playing a role in which she fears she has Alzheimer's and you remember when her mother left her husband to begin the affair with her father which resulted in her birth.

It was a great scandal then, wouldn't be one now.

Most Discouraging Headline of the Day

Headline

Alzheimer's drugs double death risk in elderly

The details are a bit better. The drugs in question are anti-psychotic ones, those used to control outbursts, not those which show any promise of slowing the development of Alzheimers. Bottom line--if I'm raging against my fate, and making life miserable for others I don't mind a shorter lifespan.

Unfair Attacks

My wife and I went to the Kennedy center last night for the last ballet of our subscription. Although we've had hot weather already this year, the humidity wasn't bad so it was pleasant. We were on the terrace, overlooking the Potomac. (Isn't that where Captain John Smith sailed 400 years ago?) Discussed the father of a friend, who may have Alzheimer's (or micro-strokes), who was described as getting upset and irritable when things were going on that he didn't understand.

Since I'm paranoid about Alzheimers, I tried making the joke that the same description could readily apply to me. My everloving wife replied: for you, it's a character trait, not an indication of Alzheimers. :-(

Dr. Watson's DNA

On June 1 the Times reported that the complete genome for Dr. James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of DNA, was released to the public. There's many reasons to ponder this event, but the one that struck me is embodied here:

Amy McGuire, an assistant professor of medicine with Baylor's Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, said integrating human genomes into medical diagnoses raises various ethical questions. Those include what to do when they reveal personal information about a patient's relatives and whether someone's genetic code could result in discrimination from insurance companies or employers.

''I think we'll have a healthier and more compassionate world 50 years from now because of the technological advances we are celebrating today,'' Watson said.

While Watson said that he would review the map further, there was at least one part he would avoid. He planned to skip the section of the map that would tell him if he was at risk for Alzheimer's disease, which his grandmother died from.

My mother had Alzheimers. And I'm paranoid about having it. But I think I would want to know. After all, I already know my genome contains the genes for death.

But I'm not going to spend money to find out my mind might die sooner than my body.