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Record listing of Kenny G's former waterfront estate

The sprawling Washington estate formerly belonging to saxophonist Kenny G has <a href="https://www.mansionglobal.com/listings/5774061-42122-re-undisclosed-98004?mod=chiclet&pos=5&page=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hit the market</a> for an eye-watering $US 85 million ($AU 121 or $NZ 134 million) - claiming the title of most expensive listing in the greater Seattle area. Sitting on four acres, the 1100-square metre mansion was designed by celebrity architect Richard Landry and features a “very European feel to the exterior” of sandstone and glass, according to listing agent Anna Riley. “It’s the premier address we have in Washington,” Ms Riley said. “Most properties in Hunts Point are 1 acre. This one is 4.3 acres on Lake Washington, a beautiful fresh-water lake. It’s a really rare, world-class property.” The property also boasts plenty of celebrity-worthy amenities, including a pool, a tennis court, a four-bedroom staff house, a pool cabana with changing rooms and showers, and a dock big enough to house a 150-foot yacht, a seaplane and jet skis. “It has an unrivalled dock. It’s almost like having your own marina,” Ms Riley said. Inside the home, you’ll find high ceilings with custom mouldings, a wood-panelled office, and a two-storey formal dining room that features 24-carat gold leaf ceiling details painted by hand and a hand-carved fireplace mantle. The home also features a saltwater fish tank and wet bar in the recreation room, and a marble fireplace and private balcony in the upstairs primary suite. As for views and water access, the home has nearly 100 metres of waterfront and access to a sandy beach, with views extending beyond the gardens and water features to the mountains and lake. “One of the coolest things about the property is that it has an outdoor stage and two really grand lawns,” Ms. Riley said. “You could do epic entertaining here.” “It’s an amazing property for doing charitable events and large-scale entertaining,” she added. The Careless Whisper crooner reportedly sold the home to Bruce and Jolene McCraw in 1999, four years after it was built. Images: @kennyg (Instagram) / Mansion Global

Real Estate

To scooter, or not to scooter?

<img width="117" height="100" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/41006/julie-g-aka-barbara-bindland_117x100.jpg" alt="Julie G Aka Barbara Bindland (5)" style="float: left;"/>Barbara Binland is the pen name of a senior, Julie Grenness, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is a poet, writer, and part-time English and Maths tutor, with over 40 years of experience. Her many books are available on Amazon and Kindle. So, as a senior citizen, you have finally hung up your car keys, for whatever reason. That is part of our ageing journey, one day no longer being able to drive a motor car again. What’s next? Well, the senior citizen, over-60, golden oldie, can decide to purchase an electric mobility scooter. These provide both transportation and independence to anyone with limited mobility. Scooters are a great invention, assisting their owners in performing everyday tasks, such as shopping, or running errands. Electric mobility scooters are the safest way of travelling currently in Australia, even safer than walking on a footpath! There is a variety of styles of scooters available, at a variety of prices. In Australia, the costs range from $1,400 to $8,000, depending on style, number of wheels, length of battery life, and manoeuvrability, as well as number of wheels. They have a warranty, you can have a home demonstration for a test drive, and can even have lessons! Here are some questions to consider before purchasing: <ol> <li>What and how far do you intend to travel?</li> <li>Are you only planning to use your scooter locally, or do you wish to use it on trips?</li> <li>Are there tight corners where you wish to travel?</li> <li>Where will you store your scooter?</li> <li>Do you wish to carry luggage or bags with you?</li> <li>Have you considered the cost of insurance for your scooter?</li> <li>Is your vision okay at normal walking speed?</li> </ol> Overall, electric mobility scooters are easy to operate, travel at a modest speed, and are a safe and stable mode of transport, as they are designed low to the ground. If you have a disability, or issues with walking, a power scooter helps you get around and provides you with independence. With a variety of styles available, you can find one that suits your needs, and looks good too. Finally, here is a little verse about greys on scooters to lighten your day… FREEWHEELING! What a lovely day, Look, here come the greys! Freewheeling today, On their scooters again… Skateboarding teens, yah! Look out, kids, you’re in the way! Greys toot and wave, Freewheeling today, There go the greys! Have a fun grey day! Cheers from one of the greys! Do you use a scooter? How do you find it? Let us know in the comments below.

Caring

A dystopian or utopian future? Claire G. Coleman’s new novel Enclave imagines both

I was reading Noongar author Claire G. Coleman’s third novel, <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/claire-g-coleman/enclave" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Enclave</a>, a few days after the US Supreme Court <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade-but-for-abortion-opponents-this-is-just-the-beginning-185768" target="_blank" rel="noopener">overturned</a> the Roe v Wade judgement, a political victory for a conservative project many years in the making. As Michael Bradley argues in <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/06/27/trumps-activist-supreme-court-abortion-us-christian-theocracy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his recent article in Crikey</a>, those driving this project “want to live in the America of their small imaginations: white, straight, patriarchal, Christian and mean”. Such small imaginations also inhabit the world of Enclave. Divided into two parts, the novel opens in a dystopian society just enough like our own to be disconcerting. The third-person narrative is told from the perspective of Christine, who is soon to turn 21. She has recently completed her undergraduate degree and is about to enrol in a Masters of Pure Mathematics. She has grown up in a walled town ruled by a Chairman and controlled by an Agency full of identity-less men in charcoal suits, backed up by security forces. People are led to believe that the widespread <a href="https://theconversation.com/big-brother-is-watching-how-new-technologies-are-changing-police-surveillance-115841" target="_blank" rel="noopener">camera surveillance</a> and armies of <a href="https://theconversation.com/eyes-on-the-world-drones-change-our-point-of-view-and-our-truths-143838" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drones</a> keep them safe. The world is hotter than our own, so everyone lives indoors in temperature-controlled environments. Opening a window in your own home is enough to alert the security forces. Light does not illuminate – it sneaks up, heats up, blinds and glares. It is violent and ugly bright, not unlike the “blank and pitiless” gaze from W.B. Yeats’ poem <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Second Coming</a>. Christine lives a life of seemingly immense privilege. Servants are bussed in from outside the wall each day to serve her every whim. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/algorithms-can-decide-your-marks-your-work-prospects-and-your-financial-security-how-do-you-know-theyre-fair-171590" target="_blank" rel="noopener">algorithms</a> of the Enclave’s social network anticipate and manufacture desires that are met before Christine is even aware she has them. The Safetynet’s news service feeds residents a constant stream of images of the terror, violence and chaos outside the wall, from which the Agency is protecting them. The people of the Enclave live in uncannily similar homes that all seem new – even the faux old buildings of the University. They present perfectly manicured and curated lives on Safetynet socials. The town is nominally Christian, but no one goes to church. Christine is just starting to wake up to the reality of her situation. Her family is cold and loveless. Her father is a callous and unfeeling patriarch who works for the Fund, which controls the finances of the town. He wants Christine to do the same, at least until she gets married. Her mother drinks herself numb during endless long lunches with empty women who all share the same cosmetic surgeon. She exhorts her daughter to do the same, which is both menacing and hangover-inducing. Christine’s brother Brandon, a clone of her father, is a business student preparing to work for the Fund. He is, as she suggests, a real dick. Christine is also mourning the mysterious disappearance of her best friend Jack who, in a dig at the handful of controversially well-funded programs in the Australian university system, studied in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/western-civilisation-history-teaching-has-moved-on-and-so-should-those-who-champion-it-97697" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Western Civilisation Studies</a> department. She is awaiting a message from him through a secret channel. It never arrives. <h2>Becoming illegal</h2> Life in the Enclave is deeply oppressive, not to mention boring. Questioning the status quo is not tolerated. The lonely, loveless and listless descriptions of Christine’s world are enervating. Although she is meant to be rather smart, Christine has a remarkable lack of curiosity – an effect, one supposes, of the world in which she is raised. But for the first time in her life, she is starting to notice that all of her servants are brown-skinned or darker. Though they move around her home silently, catering to her every need, she doesn’t know any of their names. Things come to a head when she sees for the first time that one female servant in particular is breathtakingly beautiful. She feels desires that she wasn’t aware were even possible, and kisses her. They are caught on one of the many surveillance cameras. Her family is appalled, not only because Christine is attracted to a woman, but to a dark-skinned woman. According to her father, this makes her a “dyke, race traitor, bitch”. (I was more concerned about the power dynamics between master and servant.) Christine is cut off from everything – money, accommodation, communication – and taken into custody. She thus learns that Safetown, the name of her walled Enclave, is actually a private facility, so being without support is trespass. She is, in effect, illegal. Safetown, it transpires, is one of several organisations that established walled enclaves made possible by earlier government policies and laws. It is an economic and socio-political enclave started by extremely wealthy people, to produce and sustain a homogenous society. Christine is cast into the world outside Safetown: a hellish liminal zone where sunburned white exiles, dressed in rags and living off soup kitchens, slowly go mad. In this violent and dangerous place, people survive by trapping rats and pigeons with discarded wire. This wasteland is littered with corpses, evidence of prior occupation of the land on which Safetown was built. <h2>Utopian and dystopian</h2> Coleman’s vision is both utopian and dystopian. The world of the Enclave is a dystopia created in an attempt to realise an exclusive utopian vision: a homogenous world of straight white people served by a coloured underclass. In Safetown, everyone believes themselves to be protected from the chaos and violence outside the wall. Part two reveals Safetown as the walled dystopia the reader already knows it to be. And it offers a revised postcolonial and queer utopia – a place of radical inclusivity, in the form of a more technologically advanced version of Melbourne. Buildings are covered in plants to combat climate change. Trains are free to keep cars off the road. There is a universal income. Education is free and world-class. There is no surveillance or drones. Food is multicultural and always delicious; the coffee uniformly good (in that sense, not too different from Melbourne today): <blockquote> It was like a fever dream of a civic heaven, all light and beauty and people in connection with the natural world, which appeared to be invited into all human spaces […] And everywhere there were people, men, women, people she could not determine either way, every spectrum of skin colour from darker than Sienna to lighter than her. </blockquote> Like all literary utopias, Coleman’s idealised city reminds us that change is possible if we can imagine an alternative vision that makes change worth fighting and hoping for. But the novel also falls prey to the dangers of all utopias with its ideological certainty, its lack of nuance, the totality of its vision, and its dehumanisation of those who don’t share it. Surely, I’m not the only reader who is suspicious of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-our-utopia-careful-what-you-wish-for-165314" target="_blank" rel="noopener">utopia</a> in which everyone is beautiful. And a place where everyone is happy all the time has its own sinister and coercive feel, flying in the face of the human condition as it does. Having said that, Enclave is a novel that inclines towards hope. It touches on many of the issues of our own world – the ecological crisis, the scourge of racism, Australia’s treatment of refugees, greed and the manufacture of algorithm-driven desires, our acceptance of widespread digital surveillance and stolen attention, and the refusal to adequately acknowledge prior occupation and dispossession. It also reminds us of the dangers of the othering politics of fear. Enclave’s epigraph and some of its section titles are taken from Yeats’ The Second Coming, which describes a strange alternative to the prophesised return of Jesus. The poem opens in a world spiralling into chaos where <blockquote> The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. </blockquote> The Second Coming proposes a catastrophic and apocalyptic vision for a world on the brink of self-destruction that seems all too apt for the present moment. Coleman’s novel offers us an alternative: a world in which people, in meeting the demands of the present with curiosity, courage and conviction, can bring about a more just and inclusive future. This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dystopian-or-utopian-future-claire-g-colemans-new-novel-enclave-imagines-both-182859" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. Images: Goodreads

Books

Is ageism affecting you?

Barbara Binland is the pen name of a senior, Julie Grenness, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is a poet, writer, and part-time English and Maths tutor, with over 40 years of experience. Her many books are available on Amazon and Kindle. Yah, we made it! We got old! Now we are ageing in the millennial world, which we have played a part in creating. Is ageism affecting you? Ageism is simply discrimination against older people in the workforce, in the media, in advertising, and in the social scene. One of the major areas where ageism is evident, is in the employment of older workers. Older workers can provide years of experience, life skills, and be great mentors to younger workers. But nearly a third of the officially unemployed workers are aged 45-65 years old. If someone loses their job at this age, they may never gain more than a casual, part-time position. These are the vital years pre-retirement, when employees build up savings and superannuation for their golden years. Basically, many employers do discriminate against hiring older workers from their candidates. Some unemployed older worker can retrain, but may battle an overlooked prejudice, the ageism of the potential employer. These retrained workers may never gain employment. If they do, they may have only 5-10 years of working life remaining. Many employers prefer to hire someone younger. Ageism is also evident in the media. For instance, no weather girl on the television is an old, grey, fat woman. Weather girls are anorexic, beautiful, blonde bimbos who can barely read an autocue. Maybe old, fat, grey women don’t want to be weather girls. That’s okay. Maybe they do, and the employers in television land hire young, attractive babes. That is ageism. On the other hand, ageism can factor in a reverse situation. An older, more experienced nurse, doctor, allied health professional, or a teacher, can still attract job opportunities. Society regards their experience as both valid and valuable. In my personal experience, as a teacher/tutor for 42 years, I receive part-time job offers as a tutor, several times per week. Nice to be asked. Moreover, seniors have discounts on travel fares, a senior’s card discount on purchases, and some concessions with their pensions. But is the level of the senior’s pension, a sign of ageism itself? Most household budgets are eroded by the cost of food and bills. What are your experiences? Is ageism affecting you?

Retirement Life

How I fell head over heels in love with my pet

Barbara Binland is the pen name of a senior, Julie Grenness, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is a poet, writer, and part-time English and Maths tutor, with over 40 years of experience. Her many books are available on Amazon and Kindle. So, you want a fur friend for your retirement! Domestic animals. For example, a dog. This is food for thought: who is these days domesticating whom? Exactly who invented emotional blackmail? Why, our pets. This is a little tale for you. Say you buy a puppy. Ooh, a cute fluffy puppy, like a Shi-Tsu. Ahh, cute and fluffy. You buy it a bed, a flash set of doggy bowls for food and water. You have to purchase it a leash, a collar, a coat, toys, flea and worming treatments. Plus your new owner, the puppy, shall need regular clippings. Ahh, a cute and fluffy puppy. Ahh, so cute. You place your puppy in the middle of the lounge room. Ahh, a little puddle. You promptly clean the carpet. Now you need to buy carpet cleaners and deodorants. Ahh, a cute and fluffy Shi-Tsu. So adorable. You buy a brush and puppy pen, and tenderly place your Shi-Tsu puppy in it. Ahhh, it does not like its puppy pen. It chews its way into the family room. You love this little fur friend already. So cute and fluffy. What’s next? Ahhhh, look the Shi-Tsu’s found your only pair of slippers. Ahhh, well, they were your slippers. Never mind. Ahhh, look, it’s time for a cute little puppy’s dinner. You kindly place appropriate puppy nibbles in its shiny brand new bowl. The cute and fluffy puppy does not want to eat the food! Ahhh! What is it going to eat? Looking in the fridge, you find some steak. Ahh, now you are cooking. Your cute and fluffy. Shi-Tsu thinks you are full of it, but basically lovable so long as you cook steak. Ahh, your puppy loves you. Ahhh, unconditional love. It has already acquired effective communication and emotional blackmail capability. Ahhh, little Shi-Tsu, so cute and fluffy, and funny. Look, now it is chewing the skirting board in the family room. Ahh, you love your puppy. Then, it is bedtime. Ahhh, you place your cute and fluffy Shi-Tsu in its bed, also cute and fluffy, with its brand new toys. You head off to bed after cleaning a couple more puddles. Ahhhh, exhausted, you sink into and turn off the bedside lamp. Wrong! A persistent whining and howling emanates from the family room. Ahhh, cute and fluffy Shi-Tsu is lonely. Ahhh, you pet your puppy. Ahhh, don’t wriggle in bed, your puppy might not like that. Ahhhh, your puppy snores! Delightfully cute. Ahhh, so cute and fluffy. Never mind, you can buy earplugs. See, you have acquired a canine who does not speak English, but it has already mastered effective communication. Never mind, “Tomorrow is a new day!” Your new cute and fluffy owner can sleep on your bed all day, while you drive off to the supermarket in the rain to buy it more steak. Don’t forget the earplugs! Never mind. You have been domesticated in symbiosis by emotional blackmail. Unconditional love? So, you wanted a companion fur friend in retirement. Yes, your dog shall make your world a better place…

Family & Pets

A humorous poem about “man flu”

Body

Can you tell which letter is written correctly?

Despite seeing the lowercase ‘looptail G’ plenty of times, many adults are unable to pick out the correct variation. This style of G can be used in novels, newspapers and email messages, but a new study shows that still many people cannot identify what it looks like. According to researchers, this happens because we don’t learn to write the looptail G at school, so many don’t bother committing it to memory. Cognitive scientist and study lead author Professor Michael McCloskey said, “We think that if we look at something enough, especially if we have to pay attention to its shape as we do during reading, then we would know what it looks like, but our results suggest that's not always the case. “What we think may be happening here is that we learn the shapes of most letters in part because we have to write them in school. ‘Looptail G’ is something we're never taught to write, so we may not learn its shape as well.” In the study, only seven out of 25 people were able to pick the correct looptail G. Study coauthor Gali Ellenblum said, “They don't entirely know what this letter looks like, even though they can read it. This is not true of letters in general.” Can you pick the correct letter? <img width="499" height="625" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7817106/1_499x625.jpg" alt="1 (108)"/> Scroll through the gallery above to reveal the answer. Did you choose the correct letter G? Let us know in the comments below.

Mind

How to find the right housing option for you

<img width="149" height="127" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/45412/julie-g-aka-barbara-bindland_149x127.jpg" alt="Julie G Aka Barbara Bindland (9)" style="float: left;"/>Barbara Binland is the pen name of a senior, Julie Grenness, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is a poet, writer, and part-time English and Maths tutor, with over 40 years of experience. Her many books are available on Amazon and Kindle. It is retirement! Accommodation can be a focus. Do you need to downsize the family home? A unit, perhaps, with a smaller or little garden space, can be easier to maintain. The purchase price can be prohibitive. You can lease a unit, to free up any capital. There is available, subsidised housing for people on benefits, such as the senior’s pension. But, waiting lists apply. As we age, there are available, as necessary, subsidised cleaning and maintenance services from local councils, at a reduced fee. These can include home cleaning, window washing, cleaning of spoutings, and home delivery of a range of meals. You may need to engage the services of a gardener, as funds permit. If you have little family support, aging packages are available, in order to maintain seniors in their own home. It is all dependent on your financial capacity. Then there are retirement villages. These provide a new community of friends and acquaintances, and can offer facilities and services in one location. The residents can dwell in their own units, and socialise, or not. Some retirement villages provide bus transport for shopping and leisure trips, meals in a communal dining area, recreational activities and interest groups, as well as on-call nursing supervision for any medical emergency. Furthermore, some retirement villages maintain their own nursing home attachment, but there are waiting lists. In summary, life in a retirement village is what you make it. You can decide where your best interests lie. Finally, there are nursing homes. These days, most nursing homes are managed by private organisations, although some are government funded. Again, waiting lists apply. Nursing homes can be our ‘forever homes’, as our faculties and mobility decline. Most nursing homes are well maintained, staffed and cleaned appropriately, with well-cooked meals. They provide appropriate age-related activities, and on-call specialist geriatric nurses, with access to other medical professional support. Some single senior people have been known to apply to nursing homes, but often placement is a family decision. Costs and waiting lists can be factors in this area. Do not worry about such matters until it happens. Let the future take care of itself. You woke up, anyway, cheers! We can all aim to be happy campers, dear!

Caring

Remembering childhood TV

<img width="152" height="130" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/44874/julie-g-aka-barbara-bindland_152x130.jpg" alt="Julie G Aka Barbara Bindland (8)" style="float: left;"/>Barbara Binland is the pen name of a senior, Julie Grenness, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is a poet, writer, and part-time English and Maths tutor, with over 40 years of experience. Her many books are available on Amazon and Kindle. Baby boomers, those born between 1940 and 1961. Now we are all over 60, bald or grey. What did shape us along the way? Well, most of us can recall that one of our influences was a free standing black and white television, which appeared, like a seductive stranger, in the corner of the lounge room. Our homes were in sprawling suburbs, three or four bedroomed weatherboards, or brick veneers, hot in summer and cold in winter. Our early evenings were devoted to gaping at our new possession, the television. Someone had to walk the expanse of the lounge room to turn the switches for transmission, and change the channels. If we were allowed to stay up ‘late’, the television played the national anthem, the set was turned off, and we were ‘allowed’ to go to bed. The family gathered to be life-coached by American sit-coms, of variable standard and humour. We all lapped it up devotedly. Walt Disney was a large influence. Disneyland was like a fairy tale, we all wanted to wear black Mickey Mouse ears, without asking why. Even stranger, all our issues and family relations could be solved, by tuning in to Leave it to Beaver, or Father Knows Best. Or did he? Then, our mothers tried to look like Lucille Ball, a poodle in a gingham flouncy skirt and steel rollers in her hair, 24/7. Weird. Weirder still – our greatest mentor as young Australians was Lassie! Who was Lassie? Lassie was, in reality, a male dog acting as a female – in fact, all the Lassies were males, and their sons). Lassie would never say a word in English, or any other language. She/he only spoke dog language. Yes, a mute collie dog waving her paw through a small black and white screen, in shades of grey. This shaped our generation in Australia, the baby boomers – these days, the over-60s. But we are still a product of our life and times, a childhood life coached by Lassie. Worth a giggle. A little verse for you. LASSIE LOVERS TODAY! It’s time for the Lassie show again, Switched on in world of black, white and grey, Let’s all give Lassie a wave, As Lassie appears today, But Lassie does not have much to say, Yes, we’ve learnt our family values today, Half an hour of Lassie again… Now we’re old, bald or grey, In a Lassie-lovers kind of way, Let’s all have a kick butt day!

An ode for baby boomers today

<img width="117" height="100" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/44623/julie-g-aka-barbara-bindland_117x100.jpg" alt="Julie G Aka Barbara Bindland (7)" style="float: left;"/> Barbara Binland is the pen name of a senior, Julie Grenness, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She is a poet, writer, and part-time English and Maths tutor, with over 40 years of experience. Her many books are available on Amazon and Kindle. OUR GOLDEN AGE! An ode for baby boomers today, These are our golden days, Over-sixties in our third age, We’re sixty shades of senile and grey, Either old, and fat, and grey, Or men looking like Sinead, Gravity has won along the way, But, we’re the optimists, let’s say, Our folks had no T.V, and no pill, That’s why we’re here, no dills, Did we really stop a war? Or was it media driven for all? But, hey, we do it our way, Let’s all kick butt today, In this, our third age, Over-sixties in our golden age!

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