the great melting pot

American has long been known as a melting pot, and nothing brought that home more than the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony.

Early in the show, Indina Menzel and Aurora sang “Into the Unknown”, the theme song from “Frozen 2”. On stage were 9 other singers, who sang the song in 9 other languages, including Danish, Russian, German, Thai, and Spanish.

In the days when Bob Hope was the master of ceremonies, virtually all of the people on the stage looked pretty much the same – mostly white and male. Although Noah Cullen was nominated for an award in 1958, Sidney Poitier broke the color barrier in 1963, when he was awarded the Oscar for his performance in Lilies of the Field. Subsequently, Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, and Forest Whitaker also were awarded the statue for their Best Actor performances. The only black female to win an Oscar was Halie Berry, in 2001.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_Academy_Award_winners_and_nominees#Best_Actress_in_a_Leading_Role

Overshadowed by the musical performances and great speeches was the fact that a former president ALSO won an Oscar. Netflix's “American Factory,” produced by Michelle and Barack Obama, took home the award for best documentary at the 92nd Oscars. It's the first Academy Award for the Obamas' production company, Higher Ground. The former president and first lady weren't able to attend Sunday's ceremony in Hollywood. (If you are a student of history, you may remember that Michelle Obama first said, “when they go low, we go high” during the 2016 midterms elections – hence the name for their production company.)

Worldwide, Korean is not a popular language. Only 75 million people in the world speak Korean.48 million of them are in South Korean, and 24 million are in North Korea. However, that did not prevent “Gangnam Style to become the first video to reach 1 billion views on YouTube in December of 2012.

   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1XGdu-hzQ

There ARE people in our society who think that should all speak English, and they decry the fact that English is NOT our official language. However, their perception of reality is more than a little skewed, since there are more than 220 languages spoken in California, and 44% of the residents speak a language other English at home. Seven million Californians also say they cannot speak English well, which is nothing to be ashamed of.

Neither can the commander-in-chief.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-court-interpreter-20170905-story.html

Incidentally, if you feel like you would learn how to speak (or understand) Korean, the paragraphs below show you how it looks in the Korean language – and Google Translate can put it in a form that you can actually pronounce.

위대한 녹는 냄비

미국인은 오랫동안 용광로로 알려져 왔으며 2020 아카데미 시상식 이상으로 그 집을 가져 오는 것은 없습니다.

쇼 초반에 Indina Menzel과 Aurora는“Frozen 2”의 주제가 인“Into the Unknown”을 불렀습니다. 무대에는 덴마크어, 러시아어, 독일어, 태국어 및 스페인어를 포함한 9 개의 다른 언어로 노래를 부르는 9 명의 다른 가수들이있었습니다.

밥 호프 (Bob Hope)가 의식의 달인이었던 날, 무대 위의 거의 모든 사람들은 거의 백인과 남성으로 거의 같았습니다. 1958 년 Noah Cullen이 수상 후보로 지명되었지만 Sidney Poitier는 1963 년 Lilies of the Field에서 오스카상을 수상하면서 컬러 장벽을 무너 뜨 렸습니다. 이후 Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx 및 Forest Whitaker도 최고의 배우 공연 동상을 수상했습니다. 오스카상을 수상한 유일한 흑인 여성은 2001 년에 Halie Berry였습니다.

https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black_Academy_Award_winners_and_nominees#Best_Actress_in_a_Leading_Role

뮤지컬 공연과 훌륭한 연설에 그림자가 있지만 전 대통령 ALSO가 오스카상을 수상했다는 사실이 사실이었습니다. Michelle과 Barack Obama가 제작 한 Netflix의 "American Factory"는 92 번째 Oscars에서 최고의 다큐멘터리 상을 수상했습니다. 오바마 제작사 Higher Ground에서 최초로 아카데미 상을 수상했습니다. 전 대통령과 영부인은 할리우드에서 열린 일요일 행사에 참석할 수 없었습니다. (역사 학생이라면, 미셸 오바마가 2016 년 중간 선거 기간에 처음으로“낮게 갈 때 우리는 높아진다”고 말한 것을 기억할 것입니다. 따라서 생산 회사의 이름입니다.)

전 세계적으로 한국어는 인기있는 언어가 아닙니다. 전 세계에서 7 천 5 백만 명이 한국어를 사용하며, 4 천 7 백만 명이 한국에, 2 천 2 백만 명이 북한에 있습니다. 그러나“강남 스타일은 2012 년 12 월 YouTube에서 10 억 회 시청 한 최초의 동영상이되었습니다.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1XGdu-hzQ

우리 사회에는 모두 영어를해야한다고 생각하는 사람들이 있으며 영어가 우리의 공식 언어가 아니라는 사실을 밝힙니다. 그러나 캘리포니아 주에는 220 개가 넘는 언어가 사용되며 거주자의 44 %가 집에서 다른 영어를 사용하기 때문에 현실에 대한 인식이 약간 왜곡되었습니다. 7 백만 명의 캘리포니아 주민들도 영어를 잘 못한다고 말하는데 부끄러운 일이 아닙니다.

사령관도 마찬가지입니다.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-court-interpreter-20170905-story.html

또한 한국어를 구사하는 법을 배우고 싶다고 느끼면 아래 단락이 도움이 될 것입니다.

spit it out!

One of the rooms I was in today had a can of Zyn nicotine patches on the desk, which got me wondering. Who invented snuff?

Technically speaking the stuff on the desk was chewing tobacco, not snuff, and there IS a difference.

Snuff is made from tobacco leaves that have been ground into a fine powder. Pre-Columbian American inhabitants were the first known snuffers. It's been used in Europe since the 1500s, mostly among the aristocracy, both for enjoyment and for its perceived medicinal properties. Use has declined sharply over the last hundred years, but the stuff is still around.

Typically, it is placed between the thumb and the forefinger and inhaled. Modern snuff comes in a variety of flavors. It is sniffed quickly into the nostrils, where it produces a stimulating burn — and a heady nicotine buzz — without the tobacco smoke that's been banned from many public locations.

The U.S. Surgeon General will not recommend dry snuff as a safe alternative to other tobacco products, and tins sold in this country bear the same warning stickers as oral snuff and other forms of smokeless tobacco.

Snuff is much cheaper than cigarettes. While a pack of 20 smokes can set you back $7, dry snuff costs between $2 and $5 for a pocket-size container of about 7 grams. One such tin can last a regular user several weeks

https://www.wired.com/2009/06/snuff/

Chewing tobacco, on the other hand, is typically placed between the gum and the jaw line, or placed in the mouth and chewed. Unlike dipping tobacco, it is not ground and must be manually crushed with the teeth to release flavor and nicotine. Unwanted juices are then expectorated (spat) – which is why many offices in the early part of the 20^th century had cuspidors.

Chewing is one of the oldest methods of consuming tobacco. Indigenous peoples of the Americas in both North and South America chewed the leaves of the plant long before the arrival of Europeans, frequently mixed with the mineral lime, in the same way as coca leaves.

The southern United States was distinctive for its production of tobacco, which earned premium prices from around the world. Most farmers grew a little for their own use, or traded with neighbors who grew it. Commercial sales became important in the late 19th century as major tobacco companies rose in the South, becoming one of the largest employers in cities like Winston-Salem, NC, Durham, NC, and Richmond, VA. Southerners dominated the tobacco industry in the United States; even a concern as large as the Helme Tobacco Company, headquartered in New Jersey, was headed by former Confederate officer George Washington Helme. In 1938 R.J. Reynolds marketed eighty-four brands of chewing tobacco, twelve brands of smoking tobacco, and the top-selling Camel brand of cigarettes. Reynolds sold large quantities of chewing tobacco, though that market peaked about 1910.

There are four main types of chewing tobacco – loose leaf, plug, twist, and chew bags, all of which are further defined in the article below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_tobacco

In the early days of baseball, it became popular because it kept the players’ mouths and gloves moist on the dusty fields they played on. Chewing tobacco, however, had a nasty side affect – oral cancer.

Bill Tuttle was a Major League player who made a big name for himself both through baseball and his anti-chewing-tobacco efforts. Tuttle was an outfielder for the Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Athletics, and the Minnesota Twins. He was an avid tobacco chewer; even his baseball cards pictured him with a bulge in his cheek from the tobacco. Nearly forty years after he began using smokeless tobacco, Tuttle developed a tumor in his mouth so severe it protruded through his skin. A few years before he died, Tuttle had many of his teeth, his jawbone, his gums, and his right cheekbone removed. He also had his taste buds removed. Tuttle dedicated the last years of his life to speaking with Major League teams about not using chewing tobacco where television cameras could see the players so that children could not witness and be influenced by it. He also dedicated time to the National Spit Tobacco Education Program, which was being run by friend and former Major League player, Joe Garagiola. Tuttle died July 27, 1998, after a five-year battle with cancer.^]

Babe Ruth, perhaps the most famous player of all time, also died of throat cancer. In the mid-1940s, Ruth was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (cancer of the upper throat). The top two causes of this disease are alcohol and tobacco; Ruth was a heavy user of both.

In 1965, 42% of the American population smoked cigarettes. The number has decreased ever since, and today is 14% - and is even less for teenagers. As a result, lung cancer rates have also decreased dramatically as well.

Smokeless tobacco products, like Juul, have recently become more popular. However, due to the health issues related to the product, they are now banned for use by anyone under the age of 21.

https://www.lung.org/our-initiatives/research/monitoring-trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco-trend-brief/overall-tobacco-trends.html

I’ve long enjoyed a good cigar, and used to smoke about one a week on a Saturday afternoon when I was washing the cars or cutting the grass. Today, it’s usually a maximum of 3 a year – Father’s day, on my birthday, and one other day when the mood strikes me.

I’m pretty sure that I tried chewing tobacco at some point in my life, but it literally has been decades since I’ve done so. If you’ve got a hankering for chewing tobacco, here’s my advice:

Spit it out.

suicide is painless - part 3

This morning’s Arizona Republic had an uncomfortable article about a topic none of us likes to discuss – suicide.

I’ve written about this topic a couple of times before (see below) , but this morning’s article (which I have paraphrased below the other two links) adds a couple of additional facts.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2013/12/suicide-is-painless.html

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/06/suicide-is-painless.html

America’s suicide rate won’t stop rising.                          

Numbers released Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 48,344 people died by suicide in 2018, up from 47,173 the year before. While the increase was small, just two-tenths of a percent, the rise in deaths over time has been steady. Since 1999, the suicide rate has climbed 35%.

Death rates in 2018 increased for only two of the 10 leading causes of death: suicide and influenza/pneumonia.

Suicide is the nation’s 10th-leading cause of death, with 14.2 deaths per 100,000 people, though that rate alone belies the scope of the problem. While thousands of people die by suicide each year, millions think about it. In 2017, 10.6 million American adults seriously thought about suicide, 3.2 million made a plan, and 1.4 million attempted it, according to the CDC.

The complete list of the leading causes of death is listed below.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

Since 1899, there have only been 8 years when more than 48,344 people died from car accidents. In the most recent year (2018) the number of motor vehicle deaths was 35,560. The drop in motor vehicles deaths is due to (1) safer vehicles and (2) stricter drunk driving laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year

The drop in motor vehicle deaths, however, has been offset by the INCREASE in the number of overdose deaths. In the most recent year available  (2017) 70,237 people died from drug overdoses, far more than the number of people who died from suicide. Since drug overdoses are not listed in the “top ten” list of the CDC, it’s safe to assume that the vast majority fall into the “accidental” category.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

Far too often, many people assume that if a well-known celebrity dies of a drug overdose, it is sure to be a suicide, which was the assumption when Tom Petty died a couple of years ago. The truth, though, can be found at the link below:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/02/runnin-down-dream.html

Michael Jackson suffered many of the same ailments as Tom Petty. In his case, his personal physician (Conrad Murray) simply gave him too many drugs,  and ultimately was charged with a homicide. 7 years after his death, his estate earned  his estate earned $825 million, the highest yearly amount for a celebrity ever recorded by Forbes.

Some suspect a lack of funding is to blame. Money to research and combat suicide continues to lag behind other leading killers. The National Institutes of Health, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, spent $103 million on suicide and suicide prevention in 2017. It spent $689 million that year studying breast cancer, which killed only a few thousand more people. In 2018, spending on suicide increased to $147 million.

Some experts say reducing the suicide rate won’t occur without examining the environments people live in or larger societal ills, such as economic insecurity and discrimination that may drive people to despair. Survivors agree.

For example, a study published last month in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that increasing the minimum wage by $1 could reduce the suicide rate among workers with a high school degree or less, especially when unemployment rates are higher. Being unemployed or living in poverty can increase the risk of suicide, according to the CDC.

This month, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention announced it had moved into “Phase II of Project 2025,” which aims to reduce the suicide rate by 20% over 10 years. The plan is focused on four areas: firearms, health care systems, emergency departments and corrections systems.

It's always a shock to learn of the death of a friend or relative (as my wife and I did just two weeks ago), but it is especially tragic when the death is caused by suicide. The vast majority of us will never lose someone we know to suicide – but I have. The story of Dan’s death is detailed in the article listed above that I published in June of 2018.

Although 70,000 suicides a year sounds high, it’s actually a bit surprising that the number of suicides is not higher.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year.

It's not uncommon for someone with an anxiety disorder to also suffer from depression or vice versa. Nearly one-half of those diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

Even people who seem to be happy can actually be depressed, and Robin Williams is the most recent example of that phenomenon.

https://adaa.org/about-adaa/press-room/facts-statistics

If you, or someone you know, is suffering from anxiety and depression, my closing comment is this:

Relax. Tomorrow is another day, and you’ll be fine.

How to avoid “fake news”

Today, when REAL news is called “fake news”, and “fake news” is called “real news”, how can you tell which is which, especially if Rudy Giuliani has said that “truth isn’t truth”?

If you are familiar with the 14 defining characteristics of fascism (and you should be) , #6 directly applies to FOX “news” today:

“Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.”

https://rense.com/general37/fascism.htm

I’ve always maintained that it is important to consider the source when attempting to evaluate a particular news article. As a general rule, I have found that conservative sources are less reliable than liberal sources, but there definitely are exceptions to the rule.

I’ve seen several lists that analyze the veracity of news sources, but the vast majority feel that British sources, as well as public television/radio are the most reliable.

You’ll notice that the Wall Street Journal, a conservative publication, is ranked fairly high, and Occupy Democrats, a liberal publication, is ranked very low. However, ALL of the “main stream media” sources (MSNBC, NBC, CNN, and CBS) are rated higher than FOX,

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-are-the-most-and-the-least-trusted-news-sources-in-the-us-2017-08-03

If you are looking to do a quick fact check, then Wikipedia is a good place to start. If you are planning to do a research paper, Wikipedia is NOT a good source, for the following reasons:

1)    Contributors to the site are usually anonymous

2)   The administrators for the site are responsible for managing an average of 32,000 pages

3)   Sometimes, the information is not accurate

4)   Information on the site can be easily manipulated.

Generally speaking, articles that have been published by encyclopedias, academic journals, magazines, newspapers and books, should be fairly reliable because they have been fact checked before they were published. However, if you are writing a college term paper, or need more accurate information, then you need to use some databases. Database companies (and there are many) analyze a variety of news articles, and do FURTHER fact checking. Once completed, the updates stories are sold to institutions of higher learning, government organizations, or other interested parties.

Interestingly enough, the best source that I have seen so far about databases was found on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines

Although a number of data bases are free (Google books is one example) the majority require affiliation with another entity. For example, the state of Arizona has paid a company called Gale to do further research. As long as you are a resident of Arizona, access to the digital Arizona library is available to any resident of the state for free.

https://azlibrary.gov/dazl

If you aren’t a college student, you don’t need to worry about the format of the article you are writing. However, if you ARE a student, a good source to use to determine how your paper should look can be found at The Purdue Writing Lab.

https://owl.purdue.edu/

Even the most reliable news sources often have a “slant”. A quick guide to use in evaluating news sources is Media Bias/ Fact Check.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

For example, Infowars – Alex Jones gets this rating:

“CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence.”

The New York Times has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other newspaper. This is their rating:

“LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias.  They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words.”

If you are looking for accuracy in a newspaper, it’s hard to beat The Des Moines Register.

“LEAST BIASED These sources have minimal bias and use very few loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes.”).

Even the best newspapers make mistakes, and the most famous example of that is the November 3, 1948 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, which proudly proclaimed that Thomas Dewey had beaten Harry Truman.

Besides the New York Times, the Arizona Republic, the Tucson Daily Star, and Al Jazeera, the other newspaper that I read every day is The Washington Post, which does a very good job of fact checking individual stories. If a story’s accuracy is very much in doubt, it gets a “4 Pinocchio rating”. The paper has also kept a running tally of the “fibs” uttered by a well know politician. As of today, the total is 15,413 utterances are either false of misleading.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/

Now that you know how to analyze news sources, all I can add is this:

“Be careful out there”.

Why we need more immigrants

I’ve written extensively about immigrants previously (10 articles, to be exact) but an article in the local Tucson newspaper from April of this year illustrates why we REALLY need immigrants, especially in our schools.

Math teacher Arneil Aro arrived from the Philippines about a month ago. He begins his classes with his students at TUSD’s Magee Middle School lined up for their personalized handshake, one of his new classroom traditions since arriving in the U.S. with 26 years of teaching experience.

Aro was one of six teachers who came from the Philippines to teach at Magee this year — three math teachers and three special-education teachers. Although there are differences between classrooms in the U.S. and overseas, Aro’s experience with students crosses cultures.

This is the second year that several Pima County school districts have hired teachers internationally to lower high vacancy rates, a problem across Arizona due to low teacher salaries.

Despite the raises that Arizona teachers got last year, the state is ranked 49th in teacher pay in elementary schools and 48th in secondary schools, according to Expect More Arizona, a nonpartisan education advocacy group.

Tucson Unified School District hired 14 teachers from India last year, who have all renewed their contracts for a second year, according to Director of Human Resources Renée Heusser. The district hired 17 teachers this year from the Philippines, and TUSD is still looking at international applicants to continue filling vacancies.

The international teachers are coming to the U.S through the Exchange Visitor Program, or J-1 visa. Across the state, schools hired 187 international teachers last year through the program. It is meant to promote “the interchange of persons, knowledge, and skills, in the fields of education, arts, and science,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The visa participant typically covers any costs, with no cost to schools or districts. Teachers with the program have a minimum of two years’ professional experience and at least the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor’s degree, 

Aro and two other newly arrived math teachers, Christen Hoyo-a and May Italia, say their sponsor, through the State Department, gave them a handbook and not much more support.

The teachers only had some clothes they brought with them, so their new principal helped put together an online sign-up to collect household supplies and furniture. It was shared with Magee employees and local churches. Lindsay also took the teachers shopping for groceries while they waited for their first paychecks.

With close to three decades as an educator, Aro’s salary is the same as any experienced teacher new to the district, and he receives a $5,000 one-time hiring incentive for hard-to-fill positions. TUSD teachers with 15 or more years of experience start at $46,700, and if they have a master’s degree, which Aro does, they receive an additional $2,000 annually.

In the Philippines, Aro says he was paid about $400 a month. He plans to send most of salary home to his wife, four grown children and two grandchildren.

Although a lot of the old white folks don’t like to admit it, our country is changing rapidly, and white Caucasians will be in the minority in less than 20 years.

If you examine the demographics of the six local high schools that I have taught at, you are not going to find a lot of Caucasian students. Catalina has the highest percentage, at 24%, but it drops off quickly after that. Pueblo is 97% minority, and Cholla is close behind, at 92%. The majority of the minority students are Hispanic, but there are a handful of African-American and Asian students in the mix as well.

https://tucson.com/news/local/tucson-schools-continue-to-look-overseas-to-help-fill-teacher/article_48856151-6e43-5278-8ade-2de63c265b36.html

Across America, we are facing numerous problems besides teacher shortages in Arizona due to a lack of an adequate number of immigrants. It’s also true that there is a shortage of farm workers in Florida, California, and Texas for the same reason.

The medical profession still has a high percentage of doctors who are Caucasians, but the best brain surgeon in the country works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and he came here as an illegal immigrant from Mexico, who survived his early years here picking crops in California.

Due largely due to the efforts of the Nazi in the White House, Stephen Miller, we are definitely headed in the wrong direction with respect to immigration. Even if you aren’t Catholic, the best advice about immigration comes from Pope Francis, who said, “build bridges, not walls”.

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/03/31/pope-francis-build-bridges-not-wallsosaid,

The fountain of youth

The other day at the grocery store, a lime green Challenger, much like the one pictured below (but with a huge hood scoop) parked in a handicapped parking place next to me. You would normally expect to see a car like this being driven by a young guy in his 20’s, but when the driver got out of the car, I was a little surprised that he was a guy in his early 70’s. The car DID have a handicapped license plate, as well as an American flag on the plate itself, which told me that it belongs to a disabled veteran.

Likely for most of human history, we have tried to hold onto our youth as long as we could. The Fountain of Youth is a spring that supposedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands of years, appearing in writings by Herodotus (5th century BC), the Alexander romance (3rd century AD), and the stories of Prester John (early Crusades, 11th/12th centuries AD). Stories of similar waters were also evidently prominent among the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean during the Age of Exploration (early 16th century), who spoke of the restorative powers of the water in the mythical land of Bimini and others. Based on these many legends, explorers and adventurers have long looked for the elusive Fountain of Youth or, at least, some remedy to aging, which was most often associated with magic waters. These waters were not necessarily a fountain but might have been a river, a spring, or any other water source that was said to reverse the aging process and cure sickness when drank or bathed in.

The legend became particularly prominent in the 16th century, when it was attached to the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, first Governor of Puerto Rico. According to an apocryphal combination of New World and Eurasian elements, Ponce de León was searching for the Fountain of Youth when he traveled to what is now Florida in 1513. The legend says that Ponce de León was told by Native Americans that the Fountain of Youth was in Bimini and it could restore youth to anyone.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_of_Youth 

If you visit St. Augustine, Florida today, you will have an opportunity to visit the Fountain of Youth Archeological Park, which contains the remains of the first Spanish settlement in the year 1513.

An old guy today doesn’t have to travel to Florida to regain a sense of being a young man again, due to the magic of modern day chemistry.

In 1998, Pfizer developed a new blood pressure treatment with the chemical name of sildenafil. Although it WAS a successful treatment for high blood pressure, it also had an interesting side effect, since it temporarily cured erectile dysfunction. The FDA approved the drug (now known as Viagara) and sales skyrocketed. By 2008, sales were close to $2 billion a year. Despite competition from other products (Cialis and Levitra) it was still bringing in $1.6 billion a year in 2016.

https://fortune.com/2018/03/27/viagra-anniversary-pfizer/

Regaining your youth can be taken to extremes, though, and the best example of that is Hugh Hefner, who married 26 year old Crystal Harris in 2012, when he was 86 years old.

Women also want to stay young and attractive as long as they can. Jane Fonda turned 82 on December 21, and she is still a very attractive woman.

Nancy Pelosi turned 79 in March, and she is still not afraid to “speak truth to power”. 2020 is DEFINITELY going to be an interesting year for a lady who is now serving in her 17^th term as a congresswomen.

At some point in the last decade, I came to the realization that I could no longer list “brown” as my hair color on my driver’s license, so today it reads “white”. I’m at the age where a number of people that I know are having cataract surgery, or getting hip and/or knee replacements, so we certainly can’t be called “those young kids” anymore.

None of us know how long we’ll be walking the planet, but we ARE living much longer than most of our ancestors. Life expectancy in the United States in 1935, the year the Social Security Act was put into law, was 60 for men and 64 for women. In 2017, the life expectancy of males is 77 and 82 for females. Both of my parents live to be in their mid-80’s, and I have two relatives who lived to be 95.

Today is the first day of a brand new year, and it’s been a number of years since I made any New Year’s resolutions. Having said that, though, I DO plan think of myself as a young man for as long as I can, and that (to me) is the best way to approach life.