 Engage. Don't just age and be a victim of your aging but engage as an elder who has plans for the future and a meaningful contribution to making that elder hood stage of life. I am Larry Grimm and I am a coach for people who are seeking to be engaged in their early in their later years in life and when I find somebody who is living in an extraordinary elder hood that I can help do that with I want to bring them to you as an example of what a remarkable possibility you have before you as well. That is the topic of today along with his main focus of his elder hood. This is by his I mean I mean Joseph Umstead and Joseph Umstead and I are talking today with you about the environment. Can elders save our planet and elders save the planet? So Joseph Umstead welcome to my program. This is particularly wonderful for me because I've known Joseph for 40 years and when we first started our relationship it was very meaningful between our two families as well as us individually collaborating as we did in ministry. Joseph how's it going Joseph? Well it's it's almost spring here in Newport News Virginia. Yes can you hear me? Yeah spring is crashing through that's great that's great. Well Joseph yes it is it is crashing through. You heard my introduction but really what I want to do is ask you to make your own introduction now and to share whatever you would like to say is as as by way of introduction to our viewers and then we'll get into some of the topics that are of importance to you is that okay? Yes yeah thank you Larry. So I'm going to say in 1970 I when I was 13 years old I participated at my school in Allentown Pennsylvania in the first day that focused really on the environment and I believe on that day we planted a tree. I think it was a maple tree. I have no idea I don't remember where we planted it but it could still be there. Hopefully it is and it's doing well but that sort of began my awareness around caring for the planet and my responsibility as an individual and then also how was I over time going to do that in partnership with many many other people around the globe. So I have spent the last 25 years focused on our climate concerns and sustainability issues as I've been a music teacher and up until my retirement a couple years ago I taught elementary school music sometimes middle middle school music every once in a while I coach basketball and I even sometimes soccer depending on the school's needs. I enjoyed all of it and I certainly do miss the classroom but now in my early elderhood I'm enjoying composing for the orchestra and a small ensemble on choirs along with my continued involvement and creating a more sustainable planet for all of us particularly for my grand nieces and nephews who are under the age of seven. I do not have any grandchildren although I have two beautiful children Ben and Erin who also care deeply about our world and making it as sustainable as possible. I've also been in partnership with Diane who I met in college back in the 70s for the our 42nd wedding anniversary coming up this July so we've enjoyed our lives together and we're happily enjoying important news for Jen. That's terrific. I certainly know part of that story and I'm interested in exploring a little bit more about the climate change issues that you've involved yourself in but before we jump into that I'd like to ask you would you share a little bit more about your personal journey over the past two years I know it's it's a pretty intricate but part of what I want to want to highlight for people is how extraordinary elders really do create this extraordinary elderhood not feel as though they're just victimized by their aging. Can you describe for the viewers what you've gone through? Sure. Sure so Diane and I moved to the Newport News Virginia area and at the end of July I have to think about this 2018 and we came here to be closer to her aging parents but also she had a job opportunity in the field of early childhood education and health here in Newport News and Hampton, Virginia. I came not knowing what I was going to do but very quickly was able to secure a job teaching orchestra and band to a number of schools in in our area. What I didn't know is that my mitre valve was going to fail a couple months later and so it required a 21-day stay in two different hospitals. Norfolk Heart was the second hospital that did the mitre valve replacement and the next day they figured out I needed a pacemaker because my heart didn't want to go any faster than 30 beats a minute which is not sustainable. I was fortunate that I did not die in the middle part of October but was successfully repaired a couple weeks later and I'm very, very grateful for that opportunity. The recovery wasn't easy but I did have a lot of help from a good team and there's some other issues that came up. Memory issues are present in different ways but I have a good medical team that I work with and music, music, music, music does wonders for healing and since I've been a lifetime musician as a trumpet player and singer part-time conductor at times it's been good for me and so while that event was very traumatic for me and it could have shifted me in a negative way it did not and I'm grateful that I'm alive and well and hoping to live well until I don't. Yeah Joseph, what was it that you did that kept you kept it from making you debilitated kept it from dragging you down? Am I clear about it? Oh yes, yes, yes you are. So I have a whole bunch of letters that my mother wrote to her mother several thousand over about 40 years and one of the earlier letters, yes and one of the earlier letters she talks about me being her little mountain climber so I really never lost that energy during my recovery. Yeah and just the support of my family and many friends including you Larry and others just around the country and other places helped me get and then doing everything I needed to do the cardiac rehab dealing with the fact that my lungs were partially collapsed for a year I meant I couldn't play and couldn't sing easily but I tried and pushed myself and learned what balance was and then of course meditation is very very important so just spending time being quiet breathing just simply breathing which for me was really important all those things kept me in a positive place and yes there were times when I felt discouraged felt like things were going fast enough or the fact that I had to give up teaching full time that was discouraging for a time but you know I just because of my own sort of constitution kept kept going because that's how I go that's thank you Joseph thank you for sharing that personal really a personal witness to the power and strength of your own energy your encouragement of love from others I'm curious also about the the role that purposefulness has played in your healing by purposefulness I mean I know you you've mentioned already having been a conductor and and a player you're also a composer of music and you're also in the devoted to the cause of of climate of a sustainable I'm going to say a sustainable earth a sustainable ecosystem now have those played into your ongoing well-being and healing oh they're they're they're part of my everyday practice so I spend every day coming up with a new piece of music and sometimes I share it with my arranger Becky and and it gets turned into something but more often than not I'm just recording improvisational thoughts musical thoughts that come to mind and anything I do I do in one take so there are no read-dos on things that I send to my arranger Becky to continue you know sort of expanding I'm I'm always spending time every day on reading about the climate or participating in some way whether it's contacting local representatives or my congressional senators or representatives with COVID of course it's very difficult to participate in public events but I I keep abreast on what's happening I'm also very aware that we have a new administration that put us back into the Paris climate agreement which is you know one of the best steps in the right direction the world has taken the last several years thanks may we have Joseph's email address up on the screen as well please and Joseph you sent in a little clip of a song that I believe you composed can we play that as well it's true and this is a recent composition right Joseph yes it um it's the third movement yeah it's it's the uh this is the third movement it's called sounds of love of a piece called oh to breath and I wrote it several days after George Floyd was killed but it really um is a piece that I tries to capture 402 years of ongoing oppression here in the United States just six miles seven miles where I live is where the first enslaved people came to the United States in Hampton Virginia which is what is now known as Fort Monroe and the Army base um it's more of a historical site now but this is what this piece came out of thank you there's Joseph's email address he welcomes your contact that's beautiful Joseph thank you thank you Eric thank you again the the impress impressiveness of that from here is that it embraces your cause of love and loving the climate loving the earth loving all people and then also it's a it's a part of that healing process that you've gone through since it's very debilitating and could have been a live debilitating experiences so so tell us some more about how your inner life affects your outer life wow that's always a great question actually um yesterday um I just started an eight-week course with uh John Cabot Zen who has been uh teaching and practicing mindfulness um for many many years over 50 years actually um he's uh comes out of Harvard University but I was able to um get into that course so I'm hoping to learn some new things but um I have a lot to learn about mindfulness about stealing my own mind which can be very active um but um every day when I arise it's something that I do for a few minutes um quietly and then I usually get dressed and go for a walk and uh try to pay attention to what I'm seeing and hearing so today for instance I saw the moon before it disappeared from our western horizon and snapped a picture of it and then I noticed that there are many many birds that have come back into our neighborhoods we have cardinals robins hummingbirds woodpeckers I heard a word woodpecker today which is a good thing because as some of you may know we've been trying to get some cheap oil out of the ground up in Canada and run it through the Keystone pipeline but that's defunt that's not going to happen the Biden administration um as the Obama administration did said no and so um I I heard the prime minister from Canada on Meet the Press the other day basically said that's that's over it's done it's back they're not going to push it anymore and he doesn't think they should either but that that um dig that great dig that was going up I believe in Alberta Canada had the potential to wipe out our song song population here in the United States um and it's not not known well known but I think I'm remembering that correctly a fact from several years ago and that's very alarming all of us would miss our birds and so we don't need to dig for cheap oil which you know in the end is going to hurt hurt the environment how can we as elders save the planet Joseph ah not by ourselves that's for sure not by ourselves and in fact um you know I'm a little younger than you Larry but uh the elders that I know have not done a very good job we've done a great job of harvesting fossil fuels which is not the only contributor to the climate crisis that we're in but certainly one of the main contributors so we need to look at this movement thoughts around sustainability as a partnership um I know Larry and I've talked about the the sort of two models that we have in the world one is the is the dominator model which has been in play worldwide for a long time and the other is the partnership model and we we practice both in this country to some degree um but I would like us to see more move more fully um in the years that I have left towards the partnership model or a collaboration model you see schools are moving and starting to move in this direction um I think churches are you see um the Biden administration has put in one of the most diverse groups of folks to work um you know in the White House um and the cabinet et cetera um people have been elected to the Congress who are talking more in terms of uh partnership it's just not Bernie Sanders but it's other folks as well so I think we're heading into a direction that we need to go to uh to live in a more sustainable way um and how much how much how much hope do you have Joseph that's one question that came in from uh from a uh you were how much well wow well that's an important question because um there are a lot of challenges right now of course you know I can I'll just name a few um we have fossil aquifers in the midwest and in texas that have dried up or close to drying up and they have fed our crops of course we had a big crop failure in texas because of the uh the weather which you know some will say was part part of the climate change issue um through a feedback loop which I can explain later somewhat um we we have you know flooding issues all over the world we have storms that are getting stronger because we have too much water vapor in the atmosphere and so it drives um bigger hurricanes stronger hurricanes in terms of wind uh speed what about we dodged um a big one here well yeah I'm almost gonna get there so um we have a lot of issues which can overwhelm us and I think uh even cause depression and we have a limited time about 10 years many scientists say before we could get to what's called a runaway climate meaning where even if we do x y and z the feedback loop is so strong that the temperature is going to rise to whatever point it rises to which will make it difficult so the hope lies in all of us really treating the climate uh climate stress that we're in issue that we're in like we did in world war two we have to really rally everyone globally and and cut emissions move as fast as we can towards driving hybrid cars electric cars and I know that doesn't solve everything you know putting I have solar on my house so there's stuff we can do but the window is getting shorter if we're to leave the scientists around that which I do um so um there is hope that we can shift but we need to act thank you very much and you've been inspired by several people that you've noted would you like to share their names that have been inspiring to you in this field sure um there there are a number of people um there are many climate scientists all over the club but therefore I'm going to highlight uh one is Dr. James Hansen he still um is working at Columbia University you know he's retired as NASA's lead climate scientist he's the person who coined the phrase global warming and he's done lots and lots of research through Columbia University and NASA on climate so google him you'll find all kinds of places you can go so and Hansen is spelled H-A-N-S-E-N um also there's Jason Box Jason was at Ohio State for another years but now worked for the government of Denmark and he's he's also a professor but he helps monitor the Greenland ice sheet that is an important piece of land to pay attention to because that ice sheet is the melting on that ice sheet's going to determine the ocean sea level rise and we don't want that to melt totally not at all another person of course is Mark Jacobson and Mark Jacobson is out at Stanford University he has put together a plan um for us to reach 100 percent renewable energy use by 2050 um 139 countries um so check him out you again google there's all kinds of information the last person she's less known to me but she's important her name is Catherine Hayhoe and she she takes climate data and um analyzes it um and so google her she'll be very helpful as well um but there are climate people on you know climate scientists all over the world so thank you very much those are great endorsements and people can can certainly pursue those on this on the internet last question i have is quicky uh what what role does personal coaching in life and faith play in your life right now well um um you you and i have spent what three sessions now um just sort of talking about what otherhood means to me and and and of course we've known each other for 40 years and we've we've been through a lot together but it's fun to have you and and experience you and it's sort of a new role for yourself and and new sort of age for me um and i found that our conversations have been very helpful to me and and have encouraged me too in in my own my own faith practice great thanks jessa for this half hour it's very enlightening to hear you talk to feel your strong energy and to uh have hope ourselves about how elders can contribute to uh to this resolution my own website is at www personal coaching for life and faith a global community for your extraordinary elderhood you have to be old enough to join so not everybody is can can find a place there but if you have elders in your life people who are uh in need of of your support you also can have help from my book newly engaged newly uh published book called don't just age engage thank you so much for being a part of this uh don't just age engage and i'll see you in two weeks where we'll look at letting go thank you very much and aloha to you all