welcome to seniors that play today we're joined by maybe a schwartz a retired computer analyst maybe and welcome to the show thank you so tell me you were computer analysts for what company well i'd rather not say the names because they kept decades in the computer business i did virtually everything starting as a programmer what i was doing towards the end was working with customers and sales teams figuring out what a customer needs would be and recommending configurations for them helping them get things up and running finding software for them finding hardware for them just always on the technical side of the business but what the end it was more working with customers than anything else ok and you said many decades how long were you in that and i started in the computer industry in  c so it really was at the beginning of the industry and i had you know being a woman who was a math major and looks a little weird in school because you know that wasn't what girls did and i was hopeful that this was an industry that was going to be more welcoming to women and at first it was the problem is as it matures it became just like everything else and it became overwhelming the male it was not unusual for me to walk into a meeting and they'd be six men and me wow that was you know that was most of my career was like that but yeah it was from the inception the true computer people out there who are old enough will be impressed that i enjoy most of my career i really enjoyed the issue was towards the end i had always worked in big companies really corporate america and the nature of corporate america had changed significantly  it was a time when what your customer's needs were and how you would how you addressed customers was the primary motivation right towards the end it was what's the bottom line for this quarter so that our stock prices are good and our there won't be a revolution out there and throw us out of our jobs became about yet so it became it became very different i was just as happy to leave  out package and i somehow managed not to find another job in corporate america was yeah that was it took a little doing but right up because i had a long list of things i wanted to do some years before when i was i had to do what is ok we were at dinner one night and i said gee i'd love to stop working in this environment missile what would you do with yourself and i started listing things that i wanted to do with myself i said of the things which has worked out really well is i wanted to do something at the museum of natural history in new york the american museum of natural history i was going there from the time i could walk into i brought my eighty six year old mother there to see the christmas tree you know so it was it was a constant in my life it made me interested in science it maybe interested in the world it made me interested in ecology you know it for us did so many wonderful things for me and my family and my brothers and someone that has worked out really well i can go into that in more detail i was hoping to look to spend more time actually managing our finances i tried that for the first year and decided i was no good at it ok and my interest was not that high and so i didn't do that all but you are american major computers and i did that with over the years with several different volunteer organizations i did do that i'm not doing that currently but that's because i grandchildren now when they take up a lot of talk right but i make i make go back to that after a while but there are a couple of organizations that do really good work like that with people with seniors in then after nine eleven one of the organizations in the town i lived in teaneck new jersey and the cam where i lived got a grant to retrain people who were displaced by what had happened there and they actually paid me to i set up their computer room and several of us taught classes to interest in the museum and what you did with it after you retired ok i went there and i said here i am what can i do and they sent me to a group called teaching volunteers  and i worked with them for eighteen years until i said that's enough and it do what i was doing other things too they work with school kids when they come in the morning the school trip for a couple of hours work in a particular hole where you become an expert or you know you know what they do and when kids come in with their work sheets or whatever you help them with the work she knows her well you tell them stories about things in the whole that if you  conversations at lunch or breakfast or whatever where normal people if they heard this a why these strange i think talking about you know black holes in the gravitational w you know and this is what we do they're ok with each other because writing actually it's three things the next thing is i love to talk to the people who are visiting and in several of the jobs that i do they're our on the floor accosting visiting so to speak just walking up to people and talking to them about what they're looking at and as i said again not just reading them label copy and not just telling them technical things but telling them back around stories and people love they love that you're absolutely and you know i have amusing badge they're getting attention from an official museum resident who's telling them these great stories and it's wonderful i met some buddhist monks who decided that i'm really a buddhist ok because i told them the only thing you can be sure of in life is that there will be change oh absolutely and so apparently you learn new material of a scientific nature ok i have i am they have they don't they don't have go since at this museum they give you  particular jobs and i've been an explainer i'm an earth and space explainer which means i can work in the whole of the universe the whole planet earth the media rights and gems and minerals which is closed right now and of stuff but i have also worked in i can't count how many special exhibits and i have learned material that i didn't even know i want  a presentation i have my water presentation i have my genomic revolution i have my i don't know whole bunch i have a whole call is hold them about so long  and it's fun right talk to people they ask questions they learn something i'm sharing with them right what i've learned right now i'm working on the census the new exhibit it just open i mean we're talking just before thanksgiving and it's opening this weekend ok so i've been working on that and i've worked with the curator on that from several of these things so you're going to kind of be like  expert well i want to i will be an explainer in the exhibit are going people come to visit the exhibit i will be in there and i will you know as i said i won't i won't just read text with them but i'll i'll share stories with them all share with them that you know they go into the color room with a talking about colored vision and i'll share with them you know it says you know there's a gene that does this i can give them more information about the gene is on the x chromosome in this their i work full time while they were growing up and we had someone who looked after them a wonderful woman who then when my children were grown my parents moved in with us and she took actually as i said i lived in new jersey for thirty plus years and one day i woke up and i said why am i living in this house there were brooms that i hadn't walked into in that house in months because you know it was just my husband name raised and you know eileen would come in and straighten up and do well wondering but you know that that was not it was i think i felt that because there wasn't enough for her to do right to think you're i think you know that's the definition of success absolutely you know they they are leading relatively happy lives fulfilling their to themselves and whatnot and hey you  know when we started looking for has i we decided the choice was we were going to move into manhattan or move closer to our children so we started looking for places down here which would have the distance to both of them right so you know that was that was the you know so yeah and i did babysit very various kids until until the last two which are twins my daughters mostly stays home with them i would take care of each of these kids one day a week ok i would go and i would be with them all and they and their parents would go to work and do whatever so i still go out and i see the twins now one day a week but the that's that's not even that's that's a given right but daniel who's in bucks county when he was eleven this summer i sichuan to go see a broadway show because he performs in various washington d c once and you seem it's a given when adam who's now nine and a half was eight and he was doing a project on the solar system and his mother that kind of thing so yeah so yeah so one of my questions is usually how do you fill your time that you don't longer work but you say it sounds like you know how do you find time for other things like your other have you do you have any other hobbies are there other things that you still want to do before you know they can do it and you know i do student ok and i recently pulled a patent off the internet that i love to make for myself  and i just haven't gotten around to buying your ok i mean that's because you're so busy that silly i when we when we first moved down here i used to run a computer club in our community and i since have backed off that but i still make presentations to the computer clubs on various subjects right they called me to talk about this in february i talking to a community about my experiences musing they want to know more about the museum so i'm going to talk to them about what my experience is there are and the things i like to do and  participants pick the topic for the next meeting i do some research i present them some material and then we talk about it we ask questions we share knowledge and we talk about science stuff and it ranges farm why i also belong to two book clubs you're not really what i'm going to say be more than i do when i'm nowhere near retirement the truth is i really i really think that i have one of the most successful retirements strawberries and peaches and stuff like that now and i a sound like you are slowing down any time soon sounds like you're still every day pretty active moving around working as i you know i talk a lot of seniors and you know a lot of words i'm just looking forward to my downtime and i don't feel like you what what if any i've got to figure out how to travel more ok this past summer we went to see the child with clips oh well oh where did you go down to  had you well you know really really weird kinds of stuff so we might be doing that they just don't have enough people to make up the trip we're hoping they do if they do we'll go there so i 'd like to travel get my act together to travel more a couple of years ago i went on a trip with music from them you seem with a very famous anthropologist where we saw the