Cait & Marty do not hunt, unless you count their scavenging forays at estate sales. Cait’s Baby Boomer friend, Steve, does hunt and knows what he’s talking about when it comes to protecting his hearing. Steve owns Best Days a A field, a fine Wisconsin hunting lodge, and sent us this post about a hearing Gimpliment he uses in the field:

I have been using hearing protection for 40 or more years for shooting, and operating noisy equipment. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to use electronic hearing protectors, one of my favorites is the Howard Leight Impact™ Sport Earmuff with a jack to plug in an iPod.

I love listening to books-on-tape and use my iPod for the treadmill at the gym, for driving, and for the deer stand. If you get engaged in a good story you will probably last longer on the treadmill, and it’s always more pleasant. The iPod also makes driving more pleasant, keeping me awake and alert on longer drives as it does in the deer stand.

I jack the iPod cable into the earmuffs to listen to books-on-tape for lawn mowing and sedentary hunting like sitting on deer stand, or waiting for a turkey. Turn the iPod off and turn the earmuff volume up and you can hear game sneaking around.

A friend missed a nice deer years ago using headphones to listen to a big sports game. The headphones did not have an external microphone, like my Leight earmuffs do, so he didn’t hear the deer sneak up. When he moved slightly, not knowing the deer was practicaly in his lap, he spooked it and the deer bolted.

Eds. Note: Cait thinks bird watchers would find these useful, too.

Marion Roach Smith, of The Sister Project, has written this lovely post about the “Sisterhood of Aging Well.” In it, she challenges us to “learn not only to age, but to age well - in body, mind and spirit. ”

Marion is a writing teacher, radio columnist and author. Her sister, Margaret Roach, is the former editorial director of Martha Stewart Living and now blogs on A Way To Garden — called by The New York Times one of the best garden blogs “ever seen.”

Marion and Margaret don’t look, act or talk alike, but it’s clear when you read them that they share the same eloquent DNA. If you aren’t familiar with their work, take time and treat yourself — their writing is a combination spa and sabbath for the brain.

Eds. Note from Marty: I still owe Marion and her husband, Rex, for helping rescue me years ago when a broken-down U-Haul filled with my life had to be unloaded into another U-Haul in South Portland, Maine. Rex and Marion were en route to visit Elizabeth Edwardsen, who had just spent a very long, hot and sticky day helping me pack the U-Haul that then broke down. I swear I heard trumpets sound when Rex and Marion arrived on the scene.

Singer Alanis Morissette says she was horrified by the abusive wheelchair handlers she encountered at airports when a sore heel forced her off her feet for two months.

“I have a memory in Italy where this one gentleman… was pushing me really quickly towards this post and he was on his cellphone, so I screamed at him,” Morissette told ShowBizSpy.com.

“And then this other woman in another country was pushing me into the elevator, just ramming me in and I just had this huge empathy with elderly people and all these people who are pushed in wheelchairs at airports - it’s not what you think, they’re being abused.”

We don’t know if this is being sold in North America, but in Britain they have a ceiling-mounted dryer that purportedly eliminates the need for towels.

Using a remote control, you adjust the heat and power and then “simply stand and enjoy the warm air” flowing around you from the Triton Body Dryer.

The Triton would benefit people with limited mobility, especially those who have trouble bending, balancing or need help in toweling off.

Featured below is a demo of the dryer on YouTube. But since the video features a nude young woman caressing her lithe glistening body, you may be asked to sign in to YouTube and promise that you are over age 18.

Eds. Note: Writing about the nude in the Triton video made us remember the scene in the movie “Knocked Up,” where the testosterone-driven characters seek to create a Web site listing the exact times to the second when naked nubile nymphs take to the screen in popular movies.

Our site, however, is different. Purists, we disdain popular movies and document nudity found only in home health products.

This photo was taken by Christopher Walker (aka SoylentGreen23) in the old Jewish district of Kazimierz in Krakow, Poland. The photo is so magnificent and the woman’s expression so joyfully serene that we wanted to put them in the Outstanding People category.

Of the photograph, Walker wrote, “I was wandering quite aimlessly … when I noticed someone taking photographs of the side of a building. As often happens I looked up to see what the subject was that had so captivated so many happy-snappers.

“The old woman looked so happy feeding the pigeons (despite the fact that they’re horrid creatures), and had such a wonderful expression. She saw us photographing her from below, and still she seemed kind and natural and not at all annoyed, which is a real rarity I think.

“So this is dedicated to her, to the mystery woman, for giving to me such a magnificent scene to shoot. I only hope I’ve done her justice.”

(via flickr.com)

check out this 9-month-old baby’s 4-hour play time smooshed into two minutes of video.

Whether you are a Baby Boomer, disabled or just plain lazy, these are bleak times for gardeners here in Zone 5. (Tonight, it’s minus 6 degrees fahrenheit with a predicted wind chill of around minus 20)

For inspiration and reminders that winter WILL end, we’ve been turning to Carol, a Zone 5 gardener from Indiana who writes May Dreams Gardens, a Web site for people who dream of “the days in May when the sun is warm, the skies are blue, the grass is green and the garden is all new again.”

Carol, who just made application to the Society of Gardeners Age 50 and Over, is the founder, president and secretary of the Society for the Preservation and Propagation of Old-Time Gardening Wisdom, Lore, and Superstition (SPPOTGWLS or “the Society”).

The Gimpy Girls follow Carol on Twitter where she is known as Indy Gardener. And if you need some bucking up from winter, Carol can do it for you.

In this post, Carol gives us the four phases of making it to Spring: “Putting Away, Settling In, Chilling Out and Surviving It” - the phase we are in right now! And here, she reminds us sweetly, yet powerfully, of what is just two months down the road.

She knows a “wicked lot” about gardening inside and out, and if you are having trouble hanging on to May dreams, bookmark her or stick her in your Google Reader as we have. She’ll get your gardening dreams into shape and back on track.

These old girls know what friendship is all about!

(via Dooce)

Our friend Tom Lowy of Philadelphia maintains there’s only one way to store T-shirts - carefully roll each one up and stack them together in a drawer.

It’s quick, space efficient and, surprisingly, they come out fairly wrinkle free. And if you exercise as much as Tom, and go through T-shirts as quickly as Tom, it’s definitely the way to go.

If, however, you like taking better care of your shirts than Tom, here’s three other ways to fold them by buying something, making something or just using your pinkies.

The Flip-Fold comes in several sizes, is sturdy and would be easy to use if you have limited coordination and strength.

If you’re crafty, here’s a do-it-yourself flip fold made from cardboard, and if you’re fingers are nimble, here’s the way to fold it yourself using just your pinkies.

Andrew Wyeth has died at his home in Chadds Ford, Pa., at the age of 91.

Our friend Mindy Shrum Alexander was influenced by Wyeth and his Christina’s World when she wrote this post for us about Gimpy Garden Pillows.

While Mindy and millions of others saw Christina’s World as a iconic portrait, it turns out Wyeth said he thought of it as a “complete flat tire” when he originally sent it off to the Macbeth Gallery in Manhattan in 1948. The Museum of Modern Art bought it for $1,800.

In Wyeth’s obituary, The New York Times had this to say about Christina’s World.

“Wyeth had seen Christina Olson dragging herself across a Maine field. To him she was a model of dignity who preferred to live in squalor rather than be beholden to anyone. It was dignity of a particularly dour, hardened, misanthropic sort, to which Wyeth throughout his career seemed to gravitate.

“Oftentimes people will like a picture I paint because it’s maybe the sun hitting on the side of a window and they can enjoy it purely for itself,” Wyeth once said. “It reminds them of some afternoon.

“But for me, behind that picture could be a night of moonlight when I’ve been in some house in Maine, a night of some terrible tension, or I had this strange mood. Maybe it was Halloween. It’s all there, hiding behind the realistic side.”