retirement – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Tango Boxing a New Hybrid Sport?

Here’s how I got off on a tangent about Tango Boxing, which honestly did sound like a hybrid sport combining dancing the Tango and boxing, you know, like chess boxing, in a ring with gloves and sustaining head injuries and dancing the Tango. I was amazed when I at first misread something in an article in Medical News Today about how to live to be 100 after age 80.

In the article some fitness person actually said: “From tango to boxing and everything in between….” I read it too quickly and thought she said “From tango boxing and everything in between.” You’re not going to give me a hard time about misreading that are you? It could happen to anybody, no matter how old you are.

Anyway, it set me down the rabbit hole and I even managed to confuse the AI assistant Gemini (give me a break, I never ask for this joker to help me; it just pokes its nose into all my internet searches) yet here’s what it said on one of my searches for Tango Boxing (my question was “is tango boxing about a combination of boxing and dancing the tango?”):

“Yes, “tango boxing” is a form of fitness class or exercise that combines elements from both tango dancing and boxing techniques.

It is not a traditional martial art or a specific, established combat sport. Instead, it is a workout designed to provide a low-impact, full-body fitness experience, leveraging the unique aspects of each discipline for exercise and well-being.

Key Aspects of Tango Boxing

Combination Workout: It blends the core elements of boxing (punches, jabs, crosses, hooks) with basic tango dance movements (box steps, pivots, coordination drills).
Focus on Fitness: The primary goals are to improve physical fitness, including cardiovascular endurance, strength, flexibility, balance, and coordination.
Rhythm and Timing: Both boxing and tango require a strong sense of rhythm and timing, and the workout emphasizes developing these skills for effective movement and body control.
Mind-Body Connection: The class format is designed to engage both the body and mind, as learning the routines and movements requires focus and quick thinking.
Improvisation and Expression: Much like traditional tango and individual boxing styles, the fitness class allows for personal expression and improvisation within a structured format.

This type of class, sometimes marketed as “Tango Fitness,” is a creative way to stay active and healthy, offering a unique alternative to standard gym routines.”

That’s the danger of AI and it could not be clearer why it’s answers should not be appearing at the top of any web search result. And you can’t turn it off.

Here all I was doing was chasing down my mistake and you see how easily AI gets misled. Some would call this an example of an AI “hallucination” although I prefer to think of it as confabulation.

I found out later that the Tango involves doing something called a “box step.” Those of you who know the Tango know what I’m talking about, even if I and AI don’t. Actually, let me correct that; AI could describe the Tango box step, which involves a dance pattern that forms a square on the floor.

So far am I OK? There’s no such hybrid sport as Tango Boxing? On the other hand, who can forget Muhammad Ali dancing around his opponents in the ring? He actually did sort of dance.

When all is said and done, the main point is how to live to be 100 years old and still be cool, strong, graceful, and joyful.

A Few Thoughts on Calvinball Cribbage

OK, so Sena and I have been experimenting with a few cribbage variants in the last few days and I ran into this Calvinball comment on a Reddit cribbage thread about 10-card cribbage. Yes, people play that! I’m afraid to look on the web for 11-card cribbage although Sena asked about it.

Briefly, 10-card cribbage is usually a two-player game. Deal 10 cards each; 2 cards from each player go to the dealer’s crib; each player divides the remaining 8 cards into 2 four card hands, one for pegging and either one or both for the show.

As an aside, the Reddit thread person who started the thread about 10 card cribbage asked if anyone else ever played it. One commenter facetiously replied “Yes, there have been many many posts of Calvinball crib.”

You have to know where that term “Calvinball” comes from. I’m pretty sure it’s from another social media forum which plays a game called Calvinball—which is a whimsical, forever evolving game which has nothing to do with playing cards, is based on the comic Calvin & Hobbes and has no real rules whatsoever. Participants make it up as they go along. So, I think what the commenter might have meant was that 10-card cribbage is yet another of the many proliferating variants (some better than others) of the more well-established game, usually identified as 6-card cribbage.

Anyway, we found out later that there are two sets of rules for 10-card cribbage. The intent is to make the game play faster and yield higher scores.

Given that context, we played it both ways to 121. In the one set according to AI, you deal each player 10 cards and both throw 2 cards to the dealer’s crib. Each player divides the remaining cards into hands of 4 cards each. You play one hand only during the pegging phase and the other for the show (scoring the hand). It was pretty slow and didn’t yield high scores, partly because we used only the four card hand for the show.

And then there’s a Wikipedia article which says you peg with one hand and score both for the show. We got higher scores all around, the game was faster, and we both enjoyed it much more.

As a reminder follow up to the post about the 9-card and 8-card cribbage games, Sena still likes the 9-card variant but doesn’t care for the 8-card (neither do I) because it seems clunkier, probably because you need to bury cards under the deck. The 9-card variant has an on-line scorer which didn’t work consistently. We seemed to fare pretty well without it for the most part. The suggestion to play to 323 (up, back, and there again on a 121-hole board) seems like overkill. I’m retired but not that retired.

Thoughts on Retirement, MIB Style

Sena alerted me to an article about the 28^th anniversary of when the first Men in Black movie hit the theaters in 1997. The author praises it and says it’s still pretty good.

I can’t remember the first time I saw it, but it was probably not in 1997. I was in my second year of being an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics (now called University of Iowa Health Care). I was too busy to do much of anything except run around the hospital responding to requests for psychiatry consultations from medicine and surgery. I did that a long time.

I’ve been blogging since 2010. I cancelled my first blog which was called The Practical Psychosomaticist. I then restarted blogging, calling it Go Retire Psychiatrist. One blog that pays homage to my career and to the Men in Black films is “The Last White Coat I’ll Ever Wear.”

It’s part reminiscence and part comedy in the style of Men in Black dialogue and jokes. Since I retired, I have not been back to the hospital except for scheduled appointments in the eye and dentistry clinics. I don’t know if I’ve ever reconciled myself to being retired. If someone were to tell me “We have a situation and we need your help” (think Men in Black II), I would probably say something like “There is a free mental health clinic on the corner of Lilac and East Valley.”

I Made a New YouTube Channel Trailer!

I made a new YouTube Channel trailer today since it’s been a couple of years since I made the previous one. Thanks for watching!

James Amos, MD (who prefers to be called Jim but his YouTube handle is @JamesAmosMD) is a retired psychiatrist who graduated from the University of Iowa College of Medicine, did his residency, practiced and taught at University of Iowa Health Care (UIHC) in Iowa City, Iowa for about 24 years. Since retirement in 2020, he’s enjoyed bird-watching, taught himself to juggle, and plays cribbage. He co-edited and published a book with former UIHC psychiatry chair Bob Robinson, “Psychosomatic Medicine: An Introduction to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry” in 2010 which is still available for purchase. Bob passed away in 2024 and all who knew and learned from him remember him fondly. Jim and his wife have made Iowa City their home for over 3 decades. Jim’s been blogging since about 2011 and you can read his current blog at Go Retire Psychiatrist. He’s mainly a humorist and has a certificate from Dad-joke University of Humour (DUH), even though he’s never been a dad and doesn’t really tell jokes per se.

Rambling About the Clear Creek Trail

I put 2.5 miles on the step counter today walking on the Clear Creek Trail, so my feet are complaining a bit more.

Sena didn’t come with me on the walk today because of some gardening she had to do. She deals with foot issues and has been trying shoe inserts lately. Trimming them is an inexact science, but she got it right. The thing was, her feet hurt even worse with the inserts.

That’s because they were upside down. There are raised gel contours around the bottom for extra support, which have to face downwards in the shoe. They were a lot more comfortable for her once they were in right side up.

I didn’t get any shoe inserts because my new shoes fit pretty well. I walked a little further than usual, moving east on the part of the trail which has a fair number of ups and downs. It feels more like a nature walk (which is on the Make It OK Calendar for May Mental Health Awareness Month).

The trail is paved, but the trees and other vegetation are thick and tend to crowd around both sides. The trees sometime bend in archways across the path.

It was tempting to park my butt on the bench, but just sitting might have invited more flying bugs to buzz around my ears—despite applying enough OFF to defend me and a few other people.

We’ve walked this trail many times, but I saw something a little unusual today. There’s a big old dead tree that looks like a tuning fork.

I set a goal to reach a familiar place that’s high enough and cleared of foliage to see the creek from high above. That’s where I saw the 3 ducksateers: mallards in a line swimming up and down the stream in a sort of aimless way, yet determined to make good time.

After I returned to the trailhead, I heard the camera-shy gray catbird I always hear in a tall shrub right next to the trail. I sat in a bench close by with my camera out. It made the typical catbird noises, which sounds like a collection of whistles, creaks, and meows. But it hid in the leaves and when it burst onto the paved trail, it moved too quickly for me to get a shot.

I think the catbird hides in the trees right next to other birds, like robins, just to misdirect you. And that fooled me today–again. I thought I got a video clip of the catbird—but it turned out to be a robin, hamming it up for the camera like robins always do.

So, I included an old picture of a real catbird I took about a year and half ago.

Writing is Dope

I learned a new slang word from Houston White, the guy who makes that specialty coffee in Minneapolis I blogged about yesterday: Brown Sugar Banana (I’m not a fan, but I admire him just the same). The word is “dope.” That used to be an insult or an illicit drug when I was growing up. Now it means “very good.”

I guess writing, at least for me, is dope.

The further I get in time away from the day I retired from practicing consultation psychiatry, the more I reflect about how I became a psychiatrist. I’m a first-generation doctor in my family, so what follows is one way to write about it.

What has helped me get through life was this writing habit along with a sense of humor. When I was little, I wrote short stories for my mother. I was the “number one son” in the words of my father, which meant only that I was the first born. My younger brother came second only in order of birth. He was the track star. I was the paperboy. Our parents separated early on. Sena and I have been married for 47 years.

I have been writing my whole life. I used a very old typewriter. I wrote poetry for a while, eons ago. Like many aspiring writers, I tried to sell them to publishers. The only publisher I remember ever responding sent me a hand-scrawled note on a small sheet of paper. He told this really short, nearly incoherent story about his son, who had apparently died shortly before. His son had a “tough road.” It wasn’t clear exactly how he died, but I remember wondering whether it was suicide. It was very sad.

In the 1970s, while I was a student at one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Huston-Tillotson College, now a university) in Austin, Texas, I submitted a poem to the school’s annual contest and for entry into the college’s collection, called Habari Gabani (which means “what’s going on” in Swahili). It was rejected. Years later, I finally was able to track down a digital copy of Habari Gani.

Habari Gani from Huston-Tillotson College

Eventually, thank goodness for everyone’s sake, I gave up writing poetry. It was as bad as Vogon poetry. You’ll have to read Douglas Adam’s book “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” for background on that. The Vogons were extraterrestrials who destroyed Earth in order to build an intergalactic bypass for a hyperspace expressway. Vogon poetry is frightfully bad; it’s the waterboarding torture of literature.

I wrote a short Halloween story for my hometown newspaper contest once. It got honorable mention, but I can’t recall what it was about, thank goodness.

I wrote a feature story in a journalism class taught by a nice old guy who made a long speech to the class about the unfortunate tendency for young writers to use flowery, polysyllabic words in their prose. He made it clear that journalists shouldn’t write like that. Although I didn’t consciously do the opposite to annoy him, I did it anyway. I even tossed the word “Brobdingnagian” in it, which might have referred to some high bluffs somewhere in Iowa. Despite being infested with Vogonisms, my teacher tolerated it, sparing my feelings. I must have passed the course although how I did it remains a mystery.

I wrote and co-edited a book with the chairman of the University of Iowa Healthcare Dept of Psychiatry, Dr. Robert G. Robinson, MD. It was “Psychosomatic Medicine: An Introduction to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry”. There were several contributors. Many of them were my colleagues. It was published in 2010, and prior to that, I’d written an unpublished manual that I wrote for the residents.

There wasn’t any humor in either book, because they were supposed to be evidence of scholarly productivity from a clinical track academic psychiatrist. But I used humor and non-scientific verbiage in my lectures, albeit sparingly. I remember one visiting scientist remarked after one of my Grand Rounds presentations, “You are so—poetic” and I detected a faint disparaging note in his tone…probably a reaction to a latent Vogonism. It’s not impossible to monkey-wrench those into a PowerPoint slide or two.

I used to write a former blog called The Practical Psychosomaticist, later changed to The Practical CL Psychiatrist when The Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine changed their name back to The Academy of Consult-Liaison Psychiatry back in 2017. I wrote The Practical CL Psychiatrist for a little over 7 years. I stopped, but then missed blogging so much I went back to it in 2019 after only 8 months. I guess I was in withdrawal from writing.

That’s because writing is dope.

Hearing an Old Song

I have to admit that I’ve been mis-hearing some of the lyrics of one of my favorite songs, “Lean on Me” for the past fifty-odd years since Bill Withers wrote it. It stayed on the top of the charts for more than 3 weeks back in 1972. That was a special time in my life; and not an easy one.

Back then, you couldn’t just look up song lyrics or anything else for that matter on the world wide web. It didn’t exist yet. I’ve always been prone to mondegreens and I finally found out that I was hearing something different in the verse:

“Please swallow your pride

if I have things (faith?) you need to borrow

For no one can fill

those of your needs

That you won’t let show”

Just to let you know, I found lyrics in one YouTube that substituted the word “faith” for “things”. Think about that one. I don’t know how to settle it, so if anybody knows which word is right, please comment. Anyway, it’s a little embarrassing and revelatory that I heard “…if I have pain…” instead of “…if I have things (or faith)…” And I never really heard “…That you won’t let show.”

Yet I lived it.

Years later, after I’d finished college, medical school, residency in psychiatry, and had taught residents and medical students at the University of Iowa for a number of years, one of my colleagues, Scott, a brilliant psychologist and writer, stopped by my office one day. This was years ago.

His name is Scott and he suggested that it would be nice to get together sometime soon to catch up. I deferred and I remembered he replied while looking off down the hallway, “I’m 70.” I wonder if he meant he didn’t know how much more time he had left.

Scott and I had taken similar paths in the middle of our careers at Iowa. I wanted to try private practice and left for Madison, Wisconsin. Scott got the same idea and left for a position in Hershey, Pennsylvania. We both regretted it and soon after returned to Iowa. I swallowed my pride and came back because I loved teaching. I think he returned for the same reason. We were both grateful that the UIHC Psychiatry Dept. Chair, Bob Robinson, welcomed both us of back.

I touched base with Scott a little while ago. We’re both retired. I was trying to find out how to contact Bob about messages I was getting from the publisher of our consult psychiatry handbook. Neither Scott or I could find out what was going on with Bob, who retired several years ago and moved back East. It turned out he had died. Sometimes we all have sorrow.

Scott is my friend, and I leaned on him a long time ago. I’m unsure if I let it show. I’m 70 and I’m grateful to him.

On that note, I’m finding out that I can’t walk all the way to the mall and back anymore. On the other hand, I can walk about half that distance. It’s about a mile and a half out to the Clear Creek Trail and back. There’s a lot of uphill and downhill stretches along the way. I can manage that.

And Sena bought me a couple of pairs of new shoes that I’m breaking in that will probably be easier on my feet and my calves. They’re Skecher slip-ons, not to be confused with the no hands slip-ins. I’m used to slip-ons. I tried one pair out today, in fact. Before I left, I took a few pictures of Sena’s new garden. As usual, she’s planting new flowers. The dogwood tree looks great. She’s even excited about the wild phlox. I can’t keep track of everything else out there. She makes the beauty out there.

And I lean on her for that.

Coping with Old Farthood By Teaching Patience to Others

I get notices from the Iowa legislators about how great it is that I’m getting to be an old fart. An Iowa senator even reminded me: “Check your driver’s license to see if it’s time to renew!”

That’s one of the few things I’m up to “speed” on—see what I did there?

Other things remind me that I’m getting older. I walk slower. I can make several miles by walking out to the mall, walking up and down inside, and walking back. I made 5 miles yesterday.

Here’s the thing; I don’t powerwalk and, for the first time, I made a couple of stops along the way to rest. I’ve never done that before. Part of the reason is that, early this spring I had a bout of painful shin splints and calf cramps which took me a week to recover from. I wrote a very long blog post about that.

This time, before I set out for home, I was sitting inside and watching people outside. The bench I sat on faces the parking lot and a street runs along just outside of it. There’s a crosswalk visible from my bench.

As I gazed out at the parking lot, I saw one blue SUV with the two doors on the driver’s side wide open, making it impossible for anyone to park in the lane next to it. One elderly gentleman wearing a cap sat shotgun and appeared to be napping. A few minutes later, a woman with an unsteady gait made her way out to the car. She moved slowly and a few times I though she might topple over. She didn’t look very old, and she might have been younger than me, but not by much. She got in the back seat behind the napping man. The two side doors remained open.

A few minutes later, an old man with a wheeled walker came out of the mall and started to cross the street. He would push the walker forward a couple of inches at a time and then sort of drag his legs a couple of steps forward. He pushed the walker forward a couple of inches, and shuffled a couple of steps behind it; that’s the way he went. As I watched him, I wondered if I was going to have to hurry out there to help because I thought he might fall any second.

I actually took my eyes off him for a few minutes and when I looked back, I couldn’t see him in the crosswalk anymore. I figured he made it across, but then I noticed that the SUV was still sitting there and both driver’s side doors were still open. I peered around the crosswalk—and he was still scraping along, inching forward a few inches at a time. Drivers would have to either wait or back up and find another route.

He just kept creeping along. I think it took him all of 15 minutes just to get to the SUV, a distance that could have been measured linearly as not much more than 20 yards or so.

I remember wondering where and who the driver was. There were two seats left and I thought “No way is he the driver!” The driver must have still been in the mall somewhere.

As I sat there, the old man inched over to the SUV and finally made it. I almost could have taken a nap during the whole journey, but I’m not quite that old yet.

Then he opened the driver’s side back side door—and shoved his walker in the back seat! There was now only the driver’s seat open, and still no driver in sight.

And finally—the old guy got in the driver’s seat! He pulled up his trousers, started the SUV, backed carefully out of the parking lane and cruised smoothly out of the parking lot and away to who knows where, maybe a dance hall.

After I recovered from incredulity, I walked back home. I sat down to rest once before trying to across the street where, a month ago I had a sudden attack of calf cramps which nearly stopped me in the middle of the crossing. At that time, I had to hobble over to a bench and massage the cramps before heading the rest of the way home.

This time, as cars waited for me to get across, I could feel the cramps starting again but I slowed down instead of trying to trot across. I thought, “They’ll just have to wait.” No cramps this time.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons the state legislators send out cards and certificates to seniors. We help teach patience to others. You’re welcome.

Certification of Old Fart Status by Iowa House of Representatives

Well, thank you very much, State Representative Adam Zabner, for recognizing me as an old fart as you prefer to call it, which is fine with me.

I received a similar honor several years ago, from State Representative Dave Jacoby, who was much more prolix in his remarks on my certificate.

A long time ago, I kept a blog when I was a consulting psychiatrist in the University of Iowa Health Care Dept of Psychiatry. I used to mention occasionally that someday those who recognized my greatness would raise a statue of playdoh to me in the Quad.

Funny thing is I don’t know if the Quad even exists anymore. I supposed the statue could be raised (and perhaps later razed when people finally catch on) somewhere else, in a place much more prominent given my eminence, possibly at the state house in Des Moines or outside Pagliai’s Pizza here in Iowa City at least.

I’ll admit frankly, age does bring with it some of the usual markers: deepening wrinkles, receding hairline, fading memory and the like. There are some advantages, such as the tendency to joke and tell little stories of the distant past (chariot races and so on). This helps to bore younger persons enough for them to move out of line at the ice cream shop so that I can move up.

And I still exercise vigorously, lifting the salt and pepper shakers, crossing and uncrossing my legs on the ottoman, walking back and forth between the chair and the fridge, and power napping.

Seriously, I’m still juggling, which I took up about two and a half years ago. I exercise but not too much. A while ago I had an issue with my quads getting so big they were flopping over my knees so I had to cut back a little.

I don’t know that I’ll get many more certificates of senility from the Iowa House of Representatives. That makes it even more important for somebody to get to work with all possible speed on my playdoh statue.

The Zamboni Effect

I was walking around the mall today doing ordinary old guy things: watching the Zamboni machine resurface the ice rink, which I’ve never seen before, by the way. The surface was pretty dull before the Zamboni team started. There were two kids in the seat, one young lady driving and the other young man pointing out spots she missed. They went around and around getting the thin layer of water on the whole rink while eager skaters waited to get out there. They rejuvenated the rink, got it shining like crystal and skaters spun, twirled, and had a great time. It was the Zamboni Effect.

After that, I got up and did my usual thing, looked at books in Barnes & Noble, got a bite to eat, wondered why the mall security guy was walking by the bench so often where I was sitting. After his third pass, I got up and did my best to look like a solid citizen who is aware that loitering might look sinister to some mall security guys.

And when I wandered back to the tables next to the ice rink, I sat down again because the mall security guy was nowhere in sight. While I was just zoning out watching people pass by, one of them stopped and made a funny face at me. For a half-second, he didn’t register in my memory and then he called me by name. I suddenly recognized him as a former resident in the Medical-Psychiatry training program at University of Iowa Health Care (UIHC). It was Ravneet, one of the best trainees I have ever had the pleasure to work with.

It was kind of a shock. He had left for a great position with a health care organization out in Arizona many years ago and is very successful. He and his wife and daughter were on vacation and were walking through the mall. His son is also a high-level performer in science but he was not with them today. Ravneet takes time out every so often to travel like that. I’m sure it helps rejuvenate him—kind of like how the Zamboni machine rejuvenates the ice rink–the Zamboni Effect.

We exchanged pleasantries, he took a selfie with me, and I forgot to ask him to send me a copy, probably because I was so flabbergasted at running into him at the mall. It really brightened my day. Again—the Zamboni Effect. I really felt rejuvenated.

Every now and then, we all need the Zamboni Effect. Maybe it could even help the mall security guy.