Elderhood - not a disease!

From FB page "The Book Therapist"

Elderhood - Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life, by Louise Aronson

A 92-year-old man sits in a paper gown while a physician half his age frowns at a lab report. His cholesterol is “concerning.”

This is a man who survived the Great Depression. Who buried a wife he loved for sixty years. Who still plays chess on Thursdays and wins often enough to keep his grandson humble. His hands shake a little when he buttons his shirt, but they have held babies, built shelves, signed mortgages, and written condolence notes.

And here we are, talking about numbers. About whether shaving a few points off a lab value might add six months to a life already heavy with ninety-two years. Six months.

That tension is the heartbeat of Elderhood. Louise Aronson writes like someone who has sat at the bedside and felt the absurdity of it all. As a geriatrician at UCSF, she moves between hospital rooms, research studies, and the slow unraveling of her own father’s aging body. What she uncovers is uncomfortable: we have built a medical system and a culture that treats aging as a problem to solve rather than a stage of life to inhabit.

We don’t have a language for elderhood. We have pediatrics for children. We have adulthood for everyone in between. And then, somehow, we pretend the last thirty years are just a malfunction. Aronson refuses that lie.

1. An 80-Year-Old Isn’t a Broken 40-Year-Old

One of the most radical ideas in the book is also the simplest: old bodies are not defective young ones. They are different bodies, with different rhythms and priorities. We don’t call childhood “pre-adulthood failure.” We recognize it as its own season.

Why can’t we do the same for the last act? An elder body isn’t failing at youth. It’s succeeding at longevity. That shift in perspective changes everything. Instead of asking how to drag an 85-year-old back toward 45, we might ask: what does thriving look like at 85? What matters now? What feels meaningful?

2. We Keep Intervening Because We Can

Some of the hardest pages to read are the ones set in ICU rooms. A 94-year-old woman is intubated. Restrained. Cut open. “Stabilized.” She had already said she was tired. Ready. But her words dissolve under fluorescent lights and beeping monitors. No one can hear her over the machinery of hope.

Don't forget that Aronson isn’t anti-medicine. She’s a doctor. She believes in intervention when it serves a person’s life. What she questions is our inability to let go. We escalate treatment not always because it helps, but because stopping feels like surrender.

The tragedy isn’t death. The tragedy is forcing people to endure suffering in the name of longevity when what they want is dignity. Sometimes the most compassionate act is not to add days to life, but to add life to days.

3. The Happiness Curve No One Talks About

This truth unsettled me: older adults, on average, report higher life satisfaction than middle-aged ones. Despite arthritis. Despite loss. Despite thinner skin and slower steps. There’s something that happens when you’ve lived long enough to see cycles repeat. The urgency softens. The need to prove yourself thins out. Perspective expands. Many elders describe a freedom I rarely hear in forty-year-olds.

But we don’t see this because we’ve decided aging is only about decline. We frame it as erosion. And when you expect nothing but loss, you stop building spaces for joy. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Meanwhile, elders keep telling us they’re okay. Sometimes even better than okay. And we keep not believing them.

It’s tempting to read Elderhood as a book about “them.” About nursing homes and Medicare and gray hair. It’s not.

If you are lucky, you will age. This is not a warning, it’s a promise. You will wake up one day and realize you are no longer the center of the cultural story. Your joints will creak. Technology will outpace you. People will speak over you as if you’ve already begun to fade.

The world we’re building for elders now is the world we are walking toward. That 92-year-old man with the “problematic” cholesterol isn’t broken. We are. He’s reached a stage of life we barely understand and rarely honor.

The problem is our refusal to see that the last third of life is not a decline from relevance. It’s a different kind of becoming. And unless we change how we think about it, we are all designing a future that will one day discard us.

The question isn’t how to avoid aging. The question is whether we’re brave enough to imagine it differently.

BOOK: https://amzn.to/4u0J12G

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From FB page "Books."

 We read Louise Aronson's "Elderhood" while sitting beside my grandmother's hospital bed, watching her try to explain to yet another young doctor that she wasn't confused, just tired of being treated like her eight decades of living had taught her nothing. Aronson's words felt like having an advocate in the room, someone who understood that aging isn't a disease to be cured but a profound human experience we've somehow decided to deny and dread.

As a geriatrician and writer, Aronson doesn't just observe elderhood from the outside; she inhabits it with both clinical expertise and startling vulnerability. Her book became a mirror we didn't know we needed, showing us how our culture's obsession with youth has blinded us to the wisdom, complexity, and yes, beauty of growing older:

1. We're All Practicing for Elderhood

Aronson's most unsettling insight is how our youth-obsessed culture teaches us to fear our future selves. Every anti-aging cream, every joke about senior moments, every assumption that older means lesser, we're essentially training ourselves to hate who we're becoming. She shows how this self-directed ageism doesn't just hurt older people; it wounds us all by making us afraid of our own inevitable journey through time.

2. Medicine Has Abandoned Its Elders

The clinical stories Aronson shares broke my heart and opened my eyes. She reveals how medical training focuses almost exclusively on fixing and curing, leaving doctors unprepared for the nuanced care that elderhood requires. When she describes watching colleagues dismiss elderly patients' concerns or over-medicate normal aging processes, you feel the profound loneliness of being misunderstood by the very people meant to help you heal.

3. Elderhood Has Its Own Seasons

Perhaps the most beautiful revelation is how Aronson maps the landscape of later life, showing it's not one long decline but a series of seasons, each with its own gifts and challenges. She writes about the wisdom that comes from having lived through multiple cycles of joy and loss, the freedom that can emerge when you stop caring what others think, the deep relationships possible when pretense falls away. Her elderhood isn't about diminishment; it's about distillation.

4. The Stories We Tell Matter

Aronson challenges every narrative we've absorbed about aging. She shows how our language around elderhood is soaked in decline and deficit, how we describe older people as "still" doing things, as if their continued existence is surprising. Her reframing is revolutionary: what if we saw aging not as falling apart but as becoming more fully ourselves? What if we honored the courage it takes to keep growing when your body is slowing down?

5. Community Becomes Everything

The most touching parts of the book explore how relationships deepen and shift in elderhood. Aronson shows how older adults often become masters of what truly matters, shedding superficial connections to focus on love that sustains. She writes about friendships forged in waiting rooms, families redefined by caregiving, and the profound intimacy possible when people stop performing and start simply being present with each other.

Most importantly, this book reminded me that we're all aging from the moment we're born, and every day we get to choose whether we'll approach that process with fear or with grace. Aronson chose grace, and in reading her words, I found the courage to do the same.

GET BOOK: https://amzn.to/4aVQ83S

You can also get the Audio book for FREE using the same link. Use the link to register for the Audio book on Audible and start enjoying it.

Just saying...I'm going to check it out!

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by Fine Art Photograph Mathilde Oscar

If you restore balance in your own self, you will be contributing immensely to the healing of the world.

DEEPAK CHOPRA ———————————— I’Ve been waking early and reading blogs -then returning to sleep a few more hours…so glad to see what’s been posted in the wee hours!

Orbital and space

 

Ed White out for his spacewalk June 1965

Remembering the loss of 97 year old astronaut  last week...Jim Lovell flew to the Moon twice, first on Apollo 8 in 1968 and then on Apollo 13 in 1970. He is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and co-authored the book Lost Moon.

Dragon Grace on its maiden voyage to the International Space Station.

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I just read/listened to the audio of the book "Orbital" by Samantha Harvey, winner of the Booker Prize. I had checked it out from our library's system Libby, and listened to it over a couple of weeks. I was warned it was due back in 3 days...so I would spend a bit more time each day listening to it. Sunday when it was due, it still played, and I had 7- 1/2 minutes left, when it stopped.

I could place it on hold and wait again,  but of course won't. So I don't know the ending. But it was like it was a beginning to ending kind of book.

Read by a nice English woman (meaning with that accent rather than American). Is that the author? I can't find details anymore since it's been turned in.

The whole short book (5 hours) is about 6 astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). Their thoughts as well as activities are throughout, and how they feel. What a wonderful glimpse into how different nationalities approach science and being away from their loved ones.

And  of course they form their own community, a family if you will. 

Wikipedia says this:

The novel, told over the course of 24 hours, follows six astronauts and cosmonauts from Japan, the United States, Britain, Italy, and Russia, four men and two women, aboard the International Space Station as they orbit Earth. In addition to detailing the official duties and tasks of the astronauts aboard the spacecraft, the novel also features their reflections about humanity and subjects including the existence or nature of God, the meaning of life, and existential threats such as climate change. Each chapter of the novel covers a single 90-minute orbit around Earth, with 16 orbits in the 24 hours.

Orbital draws upon the work and research of Carl Sagan and incorporates the use of the Cosmic Calendar, a concept developed by Sagan in his 1977 book The Dragons of Eden and on his 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.

It was published in 2023, and she wrote much of the book during COVID. It's fiction, but she gives enough details that I didn't know, it sounds as if she's familiar with the lives of the astronauts.

I highly  recommend "Orbital."

Today's quote:

For us to transform as a society, we have to allow ourselves to be transformed as individuals. And for us to be transformed as individuals, we have to allow for the incompleteness of any of our truths and a real forgiveness for the complexity of human beings.

ANGEL KYODO WILLIAMS

An old photo:

Me and Sundance. I knew next to nothing about raising or training a dog. And I lived with a bunch of other people in a big house in Tallahassee at the time, who didn't like that I'd leave Sundance tied up when I went away sometimes. He barked a lot apparently. Oops. Here I'm visiting near the Sopchoppy River. My tee-shirt says "Penny Pincher" which was a little neighborhood kind of newspaper with ads as well as a few classifieds. I helped with doing layout, which was real 'cut and paste' back in the mid 70s.

Great book by a man who stood up and said what he needed to

     I'm talking about Anthony Fauci, who wrote his own biography and I enjoyed listening to him read it in the audio version (from our Libby library on line).

He does spend a lot of time talking about his life, which had made it over 80 years by the time it was written (2024).  So for lots of details, I listened to the first third when he finally dealt with the Aids epidemic and his work in public health helped provide treatments. But then I got a notice from the library that I only had 3 more days to listen to 12 more hours. So I admit I fast forwarded through a lot of his life, because I was particularly interested in his work during the COVID pandemic.

And it was quite interesting...because I found out all the other people that had tried to hamper the efforts to wear masks, to get vaccinated, and to have boosters (including Robert Kennedy, Jr. who wrote the book against vaccinations and has now been appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services for Trump's 2025 cabinet.)  I finally listened intently to the last hour of the book, to find out what was learned by scientists from the mistakes made, and the efforts that might have changed the outcomes and saved many lives.

He said at minute  18:11:29 (my underline)

Instead of concentrating all our efforts against a common enemy, the country was divided about masking, and during the first year the messages from the top were  quite confusing. Political leaders differed on social restrictions of masks and on vaccines, interventions that were clearly shown to save millions of lives. 

Unfortunately, the acceptance of public health measures such as vaccinations was highly politicized as exemplified by the fact that there were fewer vaccinations and more hospitalizations and deaths in states that are predominantly Republican vs. states that are predominantly Democratic. Furthermore, our overall uptick of vaccines was less than most developed countries, and even less than some low and middle income countries. That should never have happened, and likely would not have happened had the right tone been set by the highest levels of government for the promotion of proper health principles and practices right from the start of the outbreak. 

All these weaknesses in our public health response to COVID were profoundly compounded by one of the true enemies of public health, the spread of egregious misinformation and dis-information, enabled by the internet and social media, that unfortunately remains with us today.

OK, I'm off to listen to the last hour of the book. I only had to wait to read it for 5 months in our library system after putting a hold on it (and the audios usually come through faster than the written e-books.)

But I do remember going through the pandemic, and have blogged about it, as probably many other have. So far I haven't caught COVID, and I still wear a mask when in crowds, as well as get boosters when available. My fragile lungs would probably not make it through a bad case, so I am doing all I can to stay somewhat healthy.

And, I not only believe in science...I know it's true. It has a system in place such that one or two anecdotal stories are not considered truth. The hypothesis/theory testing method is definitely a good way to approach things. Then publications which are peer reviewed...so anyone can't just claim that their thoughts are true, another step to assure me that I'm not being given someone's dreams as truth. Finding a source that publicizes actual scientific documents is my own choice, and I seldom stray into the la-la-land of conjectures.

I am grateful to science, especially medicine. It keeps me alive while this particular disease is still lurking around, and I'll continue to do what the doctors recommend.

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Today's quote (more inspirational):

If time is my measure, then let me fill it to the brim, pouring out my best, sharing my heart, loving all I can, giving all I have. Let no day be wasted, no chance taken for granted, no moment passed by unseen for the blessing it reveals.

STEVEN CHARLESTON

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Today's art:

"Spring Light" by Philip Huckin 

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My family album for today:

Daughter-in-law, Barbara, and oldest son, Marty.  St. Petersburg, FL, holding a pitcher I gave them for Christmas, 2023

Clarification of eco terms and a book review to help scientists communicate

 A great amount of information...I'll just give a link in case you are interested TREEHUGGER 

Eco Terms A-Z

From aeroponics to zero waste, Treehugger's comprehensive glossary of environmental words is your guide to sustainability lingo.

This page gives great links to other Treehugger articles that might also be of interest to environmental people  Guide to Sustainable Certificates. 

Beginners guide to plastic free living. and remember the list I posted recently of products using less plastic in their manufacture and shipping. Ethical Products list.

Here's a sample of the A-Z terms...on the site of course they are links.

A

• Acid Mine Drainage
• Aeroponics
• Afforestation
• Agent Orange
• Agrivoltaics
• Air Pollution
• Alternative Energy
• Alternative Fuels
• Aluminium
• Ambassador Animal
• Animal Abuse
• Animal Cruelty
• Animal Extinction
• Animal Rights
• Anthropocentrism
• Aquaponics
• Arctic Amplification
• Arctic Fires
• Atmospheric River

I include this link to another blog, Travels with Birds, about a very interesting sounding book.

Book Review - Science Communication in a Crisis: An Insider's Guide - Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group)

What struck me most was this paragraph...

Christopher Reddy has been in the public eye through several significant environmental crises and has learned from painful experience that inadequate or inefficient communication, and the denial of truth and vicious personal attacks, can exact a very heavy toll on a scientist. In this book he has offered ten themes that should be considered as part of an effective response to an environmental crisis, bearing in mind that the message needs to be tailored to the audience - not diluted or diminished, mind you, but appropriate to the people receiving it. A presentation to a homeowners' association, for example, should not be heavy on scientific jargon, accompanied by graphs and statistics. It is important for scientists to recognize that all people do not have the same levels of higher education, or education in the same field, yet they are no less part of the community with an equal stake in the outcome. No one should ever be talked down to. A scientist is also a citizen, no more, no less than a philosopher, a school teacher or a plumber. Successful outcomes benefit all equally.

Another Patti Callahan book!

 My latest read...

An enjoyable audio book, which focused on two time periods intertwined throughout the book, the 1830s and the 2000s. The early dates were about a sinking of a ship going from Savannah to Baltimore, off the coast of North Carolina. The later dates were when a museum in Savannah held an exhibit of the artifacts and how that exhibit was researched by three of the main characters.

I always enjoy historic novels...and this one did not disappoint. Callahan is an author I recently discovered in her two works about C. S. Lewis and his family. I wondered how she would work with this very different subject matter.

I have no way to critique the historic aspects of the story, which all seem quite realistic for the period, while slavery was still alive in the south, but soon to be outlawed. The extreme wealth as a result of slave labor that wasn't paid was obvious in the artifacts which were found from the recent discovery of the wreck of the ship in 100 feet of water off North Carolina's coast.

Calahan had already started to research the wreck and the families of Savannah when that discovery of the wreck occurred. In her author's notes following the narrative, she mentioned how that was an extra incentive factor. Much of the book is a discussion by the various characters, modern and ancient, in the questions of fate, luck, and major life changes that happen by catastrophic events.

The question of surviving the survival was a new one to me...that not just returning to one's old life happened, but that each person had major changes, including one young man who went from being a heroic caring person to becoming a slave trader known as the Red Devil.

Today's quote:

Sometimes you can't see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others. -Ellen DeGeneres, comedian, TV host, actor, and writer (b. 26 Jan 1958)

Reading these books

 

I was glad to learn of author Patti Callahan. My first book of hers that I read was 

"Once Upon a Wardrobe" was about a young woman who interviewed C. S. Lewis to find out how he thought up Narnia, as published in "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe." Though it was fiction, it related many things that Lewis probably said. I listened to the audio recording of the book, and enjoyed it immensely.

So I was glad to get the second book from the library next, also audio. 

"Becoming Mrs. Lewis" was a longer book, and at times I got a bit bored with the supposed romance happening, but the ending did make up for those many hours of waiting. Again it was fiction, but Callahan had real people to work with, and pointed out how a talented author who became the wife of a famous author was (like many wives of famous men) not given much mention for herself in her husband's history. The boring part for me was the thoughts of spiritual meanings of love between the characters, which seemed to be hashed over and over...with the Greek four kinds of love being set as the definition that was to be used in their lives. I wonder if that was Callahan talking, or if she had any basis for their continued discussions on those definitions...as well as the many Christian teachings and faith questions. Apparently this book came about after finding some writings of the real Joy Davidman, who became Mrs. Lewis.

Our library system just has two more of Callahan's books, and I'm waiting to check them out whenever  available.

Today's quote:

Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end. 

-Joseph Conrad, novelist (3 Dec 1857-1924)

A good read or 3

I read about these 3 books, though I had never heard of the author before. An interesting review by a fellow blogger, so I looked up the series in our Buncombe County Library system. There was the first one as a hard cover volume, which I put a hold on, then went to the Black Mountain library to check it out.

What had caught my attention in the review on the third book, another Rosie title which I can't bring to mind right now, was that these characters are dealing with Autism. The author is writing in Australia, though the characters spend some time in New York, NY.

I found lots of things that were laughable, and might have chuckled out loud a few times. As my internet was down for 5 days, I was glad to have a paper book (or 8) to read.

And once the internet was working again, I found an e-book on line that I could read on my mini-iPad.

The last book is excellent, and kind of wraps up some of the concerns I had about the first two. I am not sure it can stand alone, but there are frequent explanations of various "episodes" which are in the past of the characters' lives.

Now I've read all three, and am trolling for a few other interesting reads. Of course I read several of Vicki Lane's books during my grueling no-wi-fi days. And I did go around different places finding their wi-fi's to use so I could see what my blog's comments were. I didn't have time to read all my friend blogs however, nor made comments on them. So I missed almost a whole week. I hope our blog-friendships can be repaired!

So last Sunday was International Cat's Day, apparently. I miss my various cats so much.

And another note, this person is becoming more forgetful every day. I love reading blogs, but this life that is real means I should remember to take various meds, and the other day I commented in the la la land of blogs and completely forgot what needed to be part of my own life. Ah, the fantasy life!

Today's quote: ​We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.

SIMONE WEIL-

 

Franklin and his sister's letters.

Yesterday, January 17, was the birthday of Benjamin Franklin in Boston, Massachusetts (1706). He was a printer, a scientist, an inventor, a writer, the founder of America's first lending library, and one of the Founding Fathers of America itself. He recalled in his Autobiography (1794) that writing well became "of great Use to me in the Course of my Life, and was a principal Means of my Advancement."

I finished a most enjoyable book about him and his sister, Jane, a few weeks ago. 

Book of Ages, The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore.

Now I see photos of my mini-iPad aren't very clear, nor do they copy and paste from the digital app.  But I like the library's summary of the digital version of the book.  I'll retype it if you have trouble reading the photo...

From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister and a history of history itself.  Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Unlike him, she was a mother of twelve.

Benjamin Franklin, who wrote more letters to his sister than he wrote to anyone else, was the original American Self-made man; his sister spent her life caring for her children. They left very different traces behind. Making use of an amazing cache of little-studied material, including documents, objects, and portraits only just discovered, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one woman but an entire world -- a world usually lost to history. Lepore's life of Jane Frankllin, with its strikingly original vantage on her remarkable brother, is at once a wholly different account of the founding of the United States and one of the great untold stories of American history and letters: a life unknown.

 I not only enjoyed the information about these very different individuals the way Lepore brought them to life, I enjoyed the appendix where there was more information about the way the letters had been brought together. Unfortunately, with my library's app, Libby, there was no way to go to the end of the book to read footnotes as I went through the book. That is cumbersome, and I would probably have enjoyed the information that footnotes provide.

Another aside is that it's very likely that Ben Franklin was a nudist among his other interests. (It wasn't mentioned in this book.)

I'm now reading another Lepore book, These Truths, a history of the United States of America. It is a bit more difficult for me to get through, but perhaps because it covers so much of history in succinct chapters, and each paragraph seems to jump into a completely new subject. I do enjoy her viewpoint though.

Not for the guys...

...unless you want to learn more about women's lives.
I've recently re-read a beautiful book that was written in 1997, kind of the second, or third-wave of women's rights movement.
Actually we probably need a continuous one.

But the book is The Red Tent.
There's a movie somewhere or another.
And there are groups of women that meet calling themselves Red Tent groups.

This is a novel about a woman.  Dinah was a Bibical woman, daughter of Jacob and Leah.  Her story is parallel to those from the Bible, only it's her life story, and that of the women around her.  And it also has meaning for everyone in how lives of a tribal culture intertwined, on an individual basis.  Then it takes us into the times and how one culture, the nomadic tribes who raised sheep clashed with those who lived in a town.  And then there are completely different nations with different languages.

So it's not so different from today.

Of course the stories of birth and mid-wives are such that continued throughout all times.  Use of herbs and techniques and how women helped each other.  And what is the Red Tent itself?  The place where women put aside their work and gathered to share stories, jokes and their histories for three days each month as they bled. 

When women live by natural light of sun and moon, they usually share their menstrual cycles.  So this was a time when they could go away from the daily chores of feeding and carrying water for a tent community.  They would have prepared meals for the men ahead of time, that would last for these three days.  And when did this monthly Red Tent happen?  I'll leave it to reading the book for you.

Inanna

A great book came my way a few years ago, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer.  It was a translation of poetry and hymns from ancient times.  They had been written in clay, and re-written, and those original texts were found with enough repetition and they were obviously intact enough to be accurately  translated into modern languages.

When I learned originally about cuneiform tablets, (in the 50s or 60s) I was told they all were just inventory of goods, so many skeins of wool, or bottles of oil.  Weren't you also?  Well, many apparently were written about something much more important to people.  The things that they believed in, and worshiped.

So rather than say these are stories that are myths...let's give respect to the people who wrote them, who lived with them, and who worshiped a goddesses named Inanna.  When you look at an entire civilization you must consider that the spiritual life of these people has as much credence as the one that we now live with, and we must not erase the inherent validity of it as the religion of that civilization.

It existed 2000 years before the Christian era, and many hundreds of years before the Judaic stories were compiled into a text that a lot of people follow in their religion today. And the religion of Inanna was written in clay by those who worshiped her, 4000 years ago.

This translation, and interpretation by a story teller, was published by Harper & Row in 1983.  Samuel Kramer is a Sumerian scholar who had a long history of working with texts and finding correct English translations. Diane Wolkstein met him in her search for a easily told story about a goddess in 1979, and they decided to work together producing this text of stories that are understandable in English.  They also added some great art from actual Sumerian cylinder seals and terracotta sculptures.

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth

See the queen's wings, and her bare feet resting on 2 rams, her hairstyle and perhaps even earrings.  On the cover of the book are many more symbols that belonged to Inanna.

There are extensive notes following the actual text...as well as photographs of some of the original tablets from which the translations were taken.  Of course international politics played a hand in the production of the book, which hampered the work of the authors.   This all is documented in the section following the actual text of the hymns and stories.

But the wonder of stories show best as a queen's life, from how she achieved power, how she chose her mate, and how she dealt with death.  These stories are a foundation for many other events with goddesses; for instance going into the underworld and dealing with her sister is a direct antecedent of the Greek story of Persephone and Demeter many centuries later.  The poetry is amazingly beautiful, having rhythm that has lived through its repetition and simplicity.  Agricultural images are timeless in telling how people and animals and plants live together.

I recently had to bring out this book when reading (for the first time) Merlin Stone's Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, A Treasury of Goddess and Heroine Lore from Around the World.  That's because Stone left Inanna pretty much out of her book, published in 1979.  She mentions that Ishtar may have similar roots to Inanna, but it is Ishtar's story that Stone includes in her book, published those 4 years earlier.  I enjoy that Stone is giving a thumbnail description of so many goddesses, and am learning many things.  I hope they are still somewhat accurate.

And this brings me to the very active goddess studies that are happening these days, in 2012.  Scholars are updating the histories all the time.  I admit I'm not a scholar, but I make some efforts to learn.  If you know better than what I'm writing here, just let me know!