What Are the Best Books on Aging?
This week I received a guestblog submission from a wonderful ChangingAging reader who is writing a book on graceful aging and submitted a post listing her Top 15 Books on
Better Late Than Never Oprah, I Guess
Oprah is trying to change her tune on aging but she’s a day late and an apology short. In a much-touted video on Huffington Post Oprah extols the “blessings” of aging, but if you listen and look carefully her monologue is laced with anti-aging bias.
Texas Comes Together for Change
On Friday September 28th, over 200 culture change advocates convened in San Marcos, Texas, for the 2nd annual Texas Culture Change Coalition Symposium. It is was a day full of presentations and demonstrations from various culture change experts, including former Deputy Division Director for the Nursing Homes Division at CMS, Karen Schoeneman, who discussed transforming [...]
Columbus Stockade Blues
by Jason D. Johnson On the wall of my recording studio at home there is an inscription in chalk. It’s a line from Guy Clark’s
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Men Are From Mars?
by Jason D. Johnson I don’t want to flood this article with statistics, but consider a few if you will: 29% of people in the
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Acting 82
by Jason D. Johnson One thing that I’ve always loved about the theatre and film business is that age can really work in your favor.
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Yur Doin’ it Wrong
Here at ChangingAging we are all about the power of the social media. It helps us reach people of like mind and tell them our story.
Yeah!!
But sometimes we wind up on lists that really aren’t right for us. Consider this note from a very nice lady who, it appears, does not know a thing bout PRO-Aging. She works for GCI Health, a major NYC Pharma and health care PR firm.
The Immortal Life? An Evening With Aubrey de Grey
The fountain of youth. The holy grail. The philosopher’s stone. The strategies for engineered negligible senescence (SENS). Uh, say what? Made up by noted anti-aging guru Aubrey de Grey, SENS purports to outline a “possibly comprehensive plan” (de Grey’s words) to cure, or at least dramatically slow down, human aging. De Grey is perhaps the anti-aging movement’s most vocal and… Read more →
The Caregiver Boom
An interesting piece of news arrives telling me that the number of caregivers in California is set to double. One of the problems associated with this boom it that many of these soon-to-be caregivers are themselves facing the prospect of an “unhealthy future due to higher rates of poor health behaviors, compared with both non-caregivers in the same age range and older caregivers.”
Changes in Music and Writing
The art of weaving a great story or composing a great song has changed very little over the past five thousand years. Indeed, my son Caleb and I love reading Greek myths that were already ancient when Homer was alive. The act of creation remains what it has always been; a human being alone, or as part of a group,… Read more →
Another Great TEDx Talk
I was thrilled to give a talk at TEDx and here is another talk, this one by Tim Carpenter, he is GREAT. Tim is founder of EngAGE and host of Experience Talks radio show. EngAGE is a nonprofit that “transforms aging and the way people think about aging.” EngAGE is also an active member of the ChangingAging Blogstream.
Dr. Bill Thomas: Introducing Eldertopia
What we need is a radical reinterpretation of longevity that makes elders (and their needs) central to our collective pursuit of happiness and well-being. We have no word that describes the value of intergenerational interdependence, of living in a multigenerational society, of protective social structures and rituals. Because such a word would be useful, I [...]
Before and After Medicare
Recently ran across a a vignette that described the hospital care that was available to older people in the pre-Medicare years. The writer recalls visiting a hospital and seeing wards full of frail old people… My…Paternal Grandmother died in one of those wards. My last memory of her was seeing her in a urine soaked hospital bed in one of… Read more →
Behind these Doors… The Elders LIVE.
Some people hear the name “Green House” and they automatically picture a ranch-style house and a picket fence. Sometimes Green Houses do look exactly like that; but there are Green Houses in cities too. The nation’s first urban Green Houses are in Chelsea, Mass., at the Leonard Florence Center for Living and I recently dropped by for my first visit…. Read more →
Squeeze the Bad Stuff
NYT Columnist David Brooks goes a long way around the mulberry bush to express a simple idea. He writes… Years ago, people hoped that science could delay the onset of [sickness]. We would live longer, healthier lives and then die quickly. This is not happening. Most of us will still suffer from chronic diseases for years near the end of… Read more →
Home is Where the Heart Is
The press leads with this… Beeping call bells, medication carts, rigid meal times and other elements of traditional nursing homes have been scrapped on the 13th floor of The Cunningham nursing home in Syracuse. The changes are all part of a $1 million makeover by Loretto, the home’s operator, to make the floor and the way it provides care less… Read more →
Living in the 90′s
A remarkable blog post just popped up on my reader. Rhoda P. Curtis is the author of “Rhoda: Her First Ninety Years,” a candid memoir of a first-generation American woman who was willing to change the direction of her life every twelve years, and “After Ninety: What.”
Rhoda writes…
This is How it is Supposed to Work
I was hanging out at caregiver.com and ran across the following impassioned plea… I’m a caregiver to a woman who has MS. This woman was once my wife and I was once her husband but I have now reached the point where I no longer think of myself as a husband and I no longer consider her my wife. It… Read more →
Getting Connected
Large media outlets are, unfortunately, like large long-term care institutions. They prosper by standardizing their product and that standardization is lethal to voices and viewpoints outside of the accepted bounds of discourse.
Here is an example of what I mean.
An Antidote to Ageism
I seem to be running in to quite a few anti-agers who are not, to put it mildly, on board with my ideas about valuing age and aging. They, mainly, object that: Life is so AWESOME I just want more its gooey goodness!
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