old tree

OLD TREE

this old tree is in my friend from medical schools yard

(the one who helped me wheel the other student down the hall
in our ob rotation when she was asleep on a stretcher on our
way to the delivery room.      she woke up screaming
glad it was in the middle of the night)(also the one who went
on the infamous deliverance river trip at the end of our junior
year.    he was a bad influence)

this was taken on a cold day earlier this month when the
north wind was blowing and it was beginning to snow

i looked at this picture and decided it was a picture of what
it is like to get old or to get isolated

you are out there sometimes by yourself
you have developed a lot of physical changes as the tree has
with its gnarley (like that word) old broken limbs and the loss
of pine needles over the top (well some people retain their hair
as they get older and some dont)

if you are lucky you have relatives and friends close by to visit
you and communicate with you

since have been doing this blog and using email more and facebook
and twitter and now a blackberry crackberry cell phone have
realized that all this technology has been grasped by a lot of elderly
people or isolated people (confined caregivers, widows, widowers,
divorces, laid off workers, housewives, househusbands, etc)

this technology may be the thing that is bridging this isolation gap in
this group of people

this old tree represents these people
dont let some one you know let this happen to them
put them in a forest
communicate with them frequently personally with visits or with the
use of this new technology

TRASH
here is how long it takes things to decompose
paper-2-10 weeks
plastic bags-10-500 years
tin cans-50-100 years
disposable diapers-75-450 years
styrofoam-never

the organicgreen doctor