Live data from Hacker News

Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

theguardian.com

21–30 of 69 posts

Re: Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

#21
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the fall. It’s the enforced idleness afterwards.

I sometimes wonder if VR is ever successful, perhaps in the 2050s, some of the idleness will be less of an issue. The lack of movement rather than rich stimulation might remain the issuem I look forward to a study if there hasn't been one yet.

Muscles atrophy without consistent activity. VR can't replace that for someone with a broken hip / leg / spine. The whole cardiopulmonary system weakens with age, as does the immune system and healing takes longer, so an injury from a fall is much harder on the body than an equivalent injury to a younger person.

Re: Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

#22
post #6
post #2

It always seems it's a fall that ends it, I wonder if she could have made 100 years on the water if she hadn't fell. What an inspiring life!

It’s not the fall. It’s the enforced idleness afterwards.

Old family wisdom - "People fall at every age. But getting back up gets harder every year, and the time comes when you can't."

Re: Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

#24

I wonder if there is a lobster that survived her. Lobsters are long-lived, they don't age (in the sense of slowly losing their fitness - senescence) and they only die when they grow too big and suffocate during moulting, or possibly catch some infection, or get killed by other animals/people. A 105 y.o. lobster is plausible.

Early reports by European colonists in New England suggest some of the lobsters back then were far bigger than today.

Re: Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

#25

It says she died at 105 and spent almost a century fishing for lobsters. I doubt she was catching many at the age of five.

* Fishing's not catching,

* I just pulled up a family video of several kids, mine, my siblings, friends, making commercial marbles for sale pulling glass from a furnace and rolling them on a bench, using optic moulds, canes for decoration, etc .. at the age of five.

Sure, we weren't running them like chimney sweeps or coal mine donkeys 24/7 - that's what they wanted to do for pocket money - make their own, how ever many, and sell them.

Re: Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

#26
post #25

It says she died at 105 and spent almost a century fishing for lobsters. I doubt she was catching many at the age of five.

* Fishing's not catching, * I just pulled up a family video of several kids, mine, my siblings, friends, making commercial marbles for sale pulling glass from a furnace and rolling them on a bench, using optic moulds, canes for decoration, etc .. at the age of five. Sure, we weren't running them like chimney sweeps or coal mine donkeys 24/7 - that's what they wanted to do for pocket money - make their own, how ever m…

I doubt she was doing much in this direction until at least the age of eleven and even then...

Re: Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

#27
post #25

It says she died at 105 and spent almost a century fishing for lobsters. I doubt she was catching many at the age of five.

* Fishing's not catching, * I just pulled up a family video of several kids, mine, my siblings, friends, making commercial marbles for sale pulling glass from a furnace and rolling them on a bench, using optic moulds, canes for decoration, etc .. at the age of five. Sure, we weren't running them like chimney sweeps or coal mine donkeys 24/7 - that's what they wanted to do for pocket money - make their own, how ever m…

> Fishing's not catching

Sounds like something from an MLM seminar. "Telling's not selling!"

Re: Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

#28
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Fishing's not catching, * I just pulled up a family video of several kids, mine, my siblings, friends, making commercial marbles for sale pulling glass from a furnace and rolling them on a bench, using optic moulds, canes for decoration, etc .. at the age of five. Sure, we weren't running them like chimney sweeps or coal mine donkeys 24/7 - that's what they wanted to do for pocket money - make their own, how ever m…

I doubt she was doing much in this direction until at least the age of eleven and even then...

I can't say either way, having never met her.

I can say that Sandy over the road (now deceased, made it to 94) was hitching bullocks to sled a water tank to a spring and back every morning setting out at 4am from the age of five or so - both his parents died of influenza just a few years later.

My own father, (still alive, born 1935) was shooting and trapping rabbits at that age to feed the family.

Re: Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ who fished for nearly a century dies aged 105

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people lived through amazing change. My grandmother was born in the late 1890s in rural Wales, and died at 95. She remembered electricity coming to her village and the visit of the first motor car, the arrival of radio and telephones. She saw men land on the moon and towards the end of her life went to the USA on a 747. Yet when she was a girl she lived with older farm workers who had never been more than ten mi…

When my family moved to Somerset from London in the 1970s our elderly next-door neighbour, after hearing we'd moved from London, said "I went to Bristol [25 miles away] once. Didn't like it much." Apart from that he'd stayed in the town we'd moved to. I think about that a lot and sometimes envy his contentment in staying where he was - he had everything he needed.

I grew up watching movies where it was common for the character to be living as adults in the town they were born in, and sometimes even in the very house they were born.

As an immigrant, I thought this was a missed opportunity. In my head this is what it means to be a local.

My wife on the other hand has been migrating for so long that she has no ties to any land. Not of her forefathers which she has never been to. Not of her grandfather which she also has never been to. Nor of her fathers given that he hates the place. still has longing for the land of her childhood but she is not allowed to go back to. And now she is here, too detached to continue to live in the same place as us.

Post reply on HN