Your bucket list

1) Shark Dive, no cages, but with the armor.
2) Have my own business that we run as a family or in old age work/live for a monastery that has interaction with the public through a business (Only if I outlive my wife of course which is not likely.)
3) Learn to draw well enough to do my own comic.
4) Finish my master's degree in bioethics.
5) Visit at least 4 of the following countries-Israel, Japan, New Zealand, India, Iceland, Ireland, Turkey, Italy.
6) Live in one of the above for a year. Or summer over in Antarctica at McMurdo.
7) Write a book. Probably essays and not a novel.
8) Build my own dream house with all the cool stuff you read about in Mother Earth. Wants-library, interior courtyard, secret passage.
9) Know that I helped someone find Christ.
10) Become the holiest person my children know. I know we are supposed to keep it realistic, but I can hope.

1. Get properly fluent in the languages that I can get by in - French, Spanish and Welsh, and maybe in those that I have a smattering of - German and Italian (I'm only really fluent in Japanese).

2. Spend time in real wilderness - Canada, Siberia or Australia, say

3. Do a really long-distance walk - the Appalachian Trail perhaps, or from the Atlantic to the Urals

4. Take the Trans-Siberian Railway on a visit to Japan

5. Learn to sail or surf

6. Family stuff - live to see my grandchildren, etc.

7. Learn a practical skill properly - plumbing, bricklaying, car mechanic, etc.

(1)move to a new home leaving all unnecessary things in the old, including piano.
(2) marry a religious hardliner with beard like devil knows who(like Karl Marx perhaps), so that frightened neighbours run over our house in radius of kilometre. Just a dream. If not, goto (4)
(3) Move to live in a small town like Sergiev-Posad or Pereslavl-Zalessky
(not ruling out occasional raids to mother in moscow)
(4) Become someones funny aunt.
(very unlikely, considering younger brothers way of life)
(5 )Visit Europe, America, Australia, Africa and south Asia
(5) Swim in Jordan and Lake Geneva
(7) Befriend Neil Tennant. Make him show his skills in playing piano (cello) and listen how he talks about history of Imperial Russia
(8) Learn History of Balkan countries, drawing, Greek and French.
(9) Do something for the common good
(10) Find meaning of life, etc.

# 1 on your list should be winning the lotto so you can pay for most of your list.
If I were really kicking the bucket, I think I would only want more of the ordinary of everyday life.

William F. Buckley began learning the harpsichord at age 50, if what I've heard is correct. He became quite proficient. So don't throw in the towel so quickly.

I was actually at a speech once where the speaker asked us to do this list...

1.) Take my family to Rome.
2.) Ride a real roller coaster.
3.) See one of my grandchildren. (Our kids are 3 & 1).
4.) Go fishing.
5.) Write a book.
6.) Give $1 million to charity.
7.) Fly a plane.
8.) Learn piano.
9.) Learn German.
10.) Attend a game at each MLB stadium.

OK, I'm a bit tongue-in-cheek here, but I'm a bit surprised at how sort of metrosexual - effete, European and un-crunchy - you Americans seem to be. I was expecting interests in outdoors, self-sufficiency, environment, that sort of thing, and maybe a bit of renovating derelict Orthodox churches in the Caucasus, say. Even the European countries in which you're interested - France and Italy - are surely the most effete? I could see an interest in Spain (bull-fighting, men are men and women are women), Scandinavia (cold, wild, honest-to-God social democracy), Russia (really cold and wild, violent, Orthodox), Scotland (coldish, kilts, Braveheart) or the Balkans (mountains, front line against Islam). You all seem to prefer wine to beer as well, for heaven's sake!

The Camino can be done by bicycle (midway between the traditional walk and the tour bus). A friend did it in his late 40s or early 50s.

I was interested by how many people want to learn a language. I study every language mentioned on these posts except Welsh, although I had a neighbor in Berkeley who was studying it and wanted me to learn it along with him. I study many more languages than the ones mentioned. I want to encourage everyone on this blog to make a start. There are many excellent books now available that can help an individual learner acquire a language. You can make quite a bit of progress spending as little as 15 minutes a day. Also, if you want to study sacred texts like The Torah, The Koran, or The Christian Gospels, even learning a few hundred words and some basic syntax will immeasurably increase your appreciation of these texts. I am not particularly good at languages, but I do have patience and more time for this than most people. For example, if you want to study New Testament Greek, I use the book An Introductory New Testament Greek Course by Francis T. Gignac which is superb. For Arabic, I use Wheeler Thackston's An Introduction To Koranic And Classical Arabic. I currently use it and and a few other books to translate the Koran, an enterprise I may never in fact finish. I have also played a little guitar and piano over the years and am about to begin that again. I am 50, and while I will never be a great player, even fiddling around a bit with an instrument is very enjoyable. I am also about to study Math by attending courses at my local community college. I intend to continue with these studies at my local university someday. Again, I have the time to do this because I live my life in such a way as to give myself time, and I understand others don't. But please give these languages or instruments a try, because all I really have is patience and the knowledge that knowing 50 characters in Classical Chinese actually does give me a sense of how Mencius writes. I am also about to take up Aikido again, a martial art that people of any age can enjoy. Sometimes I will go a few months without studying a particular language, but I find that when I get back to it I pick up where I left off very quickly. I'm impressed with the activities people want to begin on these lists, please understand that even making an attempt with them will enrich your lives.

I have no Bucket List of my own of Ten Misty-Eyed Projects I Must Attempt Before I Die. I do, though, have a list of ten long-ago aspirations or assets I have abandoned one by one, or plan to; I call it my -

Phuket List

1. US citizenship. My Scandinavan ancestors of the 1880s left the poverty and authoritarianism in the lands of their birth for a better life abroad. Their spirit lives on when I do likewise in turning full circle back again in Nordic re-patriation.

2. Making a fortune in the financial markets. Turns out finance bores me, and my entire outlays run $10k per annum. Not attracting unwanted female and male attention caused by great wealth: priceless.

3. Becoming a noted writer. The thought of seeing my name in lights turned out to nauseate, so after publishing two lit pieces in NR two decades ago to prove I could, I turned to retail.

4. Going on Jeopardy! Passing the contestant exam three years running, in LA and Boston, failing to land me a taping, I drove to Boston for a fourth attempt - and turned for home halfway there when the nausea of unwanted publicity (i.e., any publicity) so entailed hit me.

5. Slimming to "ideal" weight. Turns out that love of my 4-C food groups - cheese, chocolate, chicken, and chips - far "outweighs" my desire to live to 100. So I drop dead at 50, smiling, ending a life long enough already: score! Bonus: no unwanted attention from females or males entailed by excess attractiveness.

6. All-round athletic fitness. Like Robert Maynard Hutchins, when afflicted with a desire to exercise, I find comfort in lying down till it passes.

7. Eating at the world's great restaurants. No chef could exceed the nutrient counts I get from meals at home that cost me a dollar a dinner, and in spending $75 on food monthly, I avoid the need to work in an office, with people.

8. Telling loved ones - and family too - my deepest feelings. What I really think of others is my business alone, and I hope to die amid plaints of, "We never really knew or understood him": that was the plan...

9. Owning property, and tons of stuff. By renting and limiting my stuff to what fits in my Camry, I can up and leave at 3am, never to return. Which I do annually or so, tied down by nothing.

10. Gun ownership. Though I contribute daily to a gun-rights email list, it turns out that on the home front, I'm happy with a $20 pellet pistol, and a $5 pocket knife. Should that shorten my life in extremis, I can live with that. As it were.

If my Dropped Ten list above should inspire even one young person among us toward a better, more cold-eyed future, I can set off to spread hope abandoned elsewhere over my few hours remaining. Attitude is everything!

Not necessarily in this order:

1. Learn Greek--already working on this one, by reading the Septuagint a few paragraphs at a time every night.
2. Hike the Appalachian Trial--not all at once, just piecemeal
3. Get a book published
4. Finish my divinity degree
5. Weed out my book collection
6. Clear out the clutter in our house
7. Win the lottery so my husband can get decent medical care for a condition barely acknowledged by the doctors medicare and the hmo assign to him.
8. Move to someplace near my brother (in Atlanta) or my husband's brother (who is himself in the process of deciding where to move)
9. Crew on a Greenpeace vessel
10. Start getting hits in the 3-digits per day on my blog

I'm kinda surprised at the ratio of places mentioned in Europe to anywhere else. Is it that people have already been everywhere in the US that interests them or just that visiting somewhere in your own country doesn't really make it to a bucket list?

Peter,

As I mentioned in my own post, I love my country. Its just that going and doing in Europe is harder and more expensive esp. the way I would like to see it. As far as the culture there, art, food, wine, bldgs, there is no other place besides the US that I want to see more. Europe is the cradle of the world as we know it. Hence, since it is currently out of my reach for so many reasons, its on my bucket list.

The U.S. is, thankfully, not out of my reach and my intention throughout what I hope is a long active life is to see as much of it as I can.

#1 on the list is to eat my way through NO :-) My family background is Ukrainian. I grew up loving to eat (our joking family motto is "Always ready to eat"), and was accustomed to eating non-American types of food from before I can remember. So I not only love to eat, I am an adventurous eater. Many of my fantasy vacations involve eating. There is hardly a better place in the nation to eat than good ol NOLA.

I won't consider myself to have truly lived if I die before eating my way across America. Haha. But that is a given.

For as much as I'd like to visit Yellowstone, I'd leap at the chance to go to Rome. They aren't even comparable.

1) Go on a BBQ pilgrimage. Start somewhere in North Carolina and stop when we hit Memphis. I'm not diss'ing Texas BBQ, but I've lived in Texas and want to try some other areas of the country. I went to college two years in West TN, but didn't really appreciate BBQ'd pig at the time.

2) Finish my STM.

3) Achieve 3.5 USTA status.

Erin, calculus? Isn't it a fine enough feat to spell calculus?

No, I'm pretty much ready to go now if that's what God wants.

Your list comes down to "be wealthy" doesn't it?

Peter - I hear you. There's more interesting places outside of Europe. Especially the "classical" parts. Stuffy, effete, and arrogant. Waste of time. My , if it could be called a bucket list, would include:

1. get my novel published and refuse to ever option the rights for a film adaptation (though I would option off the priviledge of making it the way I say it gets made, down to the last detail).

2. visit the area where described in Kawabata's "Snow Country" and other places in Japan (forget europe).

3. see Angkor Wat before and after it falls into a sinkhole caused by growth in the surrounding area and the drawdown of the water table.

4. possibly the most critical, live for a year in what remains of the wilderness near Stanley Lake in Idaho (or that area). Do so without any outside contact or help, living on the land.

5. get a PhD in religioius studies from Todai (Tokyo University).

6. learn the blacksmith's trade in Japan to learn how to craft swords that will never be used in combat. Just for the irony of it all, and because I have a natural affinity for fine craftsmanship.

7. build a dome home and cover the entire outside with solar panels.

8. become the second (?) buddhist chaplain in the US army. There is some interesting debate about that one...

9. become a monk (if I outlive the wife, of course)

10. eat cherry cake and watch the frozen fog envelop the trees in St. Petersburg. I saw it once, and cannot adequately describe it.

Take that for what you will.

1. Learn to cook
2. Re-learn French
3. Learn the art of bookbinding
4. Spend a few months in a monastery
5. Discover answers to particular genealogical questions
6. Spend a few weeks every year in Turkey and/or Republic of Georgia
7. Completely organize journals, photos and family memorabilia
8. Build a church (by this I mean, help in building program)
9. Live long enough to see my (future)grandchildren graduate college
10. Be able to swim whenever I wanted to

Looking over the list, I would say that learning to cook would be the most far-fetched.

We have an online phonics ministry (the phonics page), I have a page titled "future goals," I get one or two searches a month along the lines of "what are my goals for the future?" My first thought was a sarcastic "get your own goals," however, it is interesting and useful to look over other people's goals for the future in this post. It is easy to get caught up in everyday problems and focus on the immediate instead of the important.

My non-phonics goals include learning Greek and Latin and updating my piano skills. The military has already sent us everyplace we want to see and more, although we wouldn't mind living in Germany again.

When I checked my online list of phonics goals, I was happy to see I had actually accomplished one of the medium term goals!

Long term phonics goals:

1. Make these online phonics lessons available for sale at cost, or free to those who cannot afford them, on 2-3 CDs in full size quicktime format and also on DVD, possibly through an established metachurch organization.

2. Start teaching phonics to the 70% of prisoners who read at the lowest 2 literacy levels, in person to some degree (limited to a few lessons a year until our children are older) and perhaps through a teach the teacher program or through DVDs or full size quicktime movies of the lessons

3. Have churches use these phonics lessons to teach everyone in their community how to read.