This Week in Elder News: 31 May 2008
Saturday, 31 May 2008
In this regular weekend feature you will find links to news items from the preceding week related to elders and aging, along with whatever else catches my fancy that I think you might like to know. Suggestions are welcome with, however, no promises of publication.
Mark down this guy’s name: Joel Stein. He’s a columnist for The Los Angeles Times and yesterday’s column had me laughing out loud.
It begins, “Dear old people” and after reporting that only 36 percent of old folks support same-sex marriage, Joel makes a charming plea for elders to change their minds and vote for gay marriage in California. Even if you take issue with some of his characterizations of old people, he is so funny about it and does it with such affection that you have to forgive him.
According to the Urban Institute, if you are 65 or older and are working in the U.S., you are most likely to be employed in retail, on a farm or in janitorial services - in that order. Not exactly the kind of entrepreneurial endeavor touted in magazines, as one interviewee put it. Read more. (Hat tip to Cynthia Friedlob of The Thoughtful Consumer.)
Most elders want to live independently for as long as possible and technology is playing a big part these days in making that possible – all the more important as numbers of elders increase and the availability of space in retirement communities, assisted living and nursing homes shrinks. Here is a good overview of how aging in place is going high tech. (Hat tip to amba of ambivablog)
No matter what your personal beliefs are in regard to legalization of drugs, smuggling them is no laughing matter, especially if you get caught. Still, it amused me to read that elders are apparently being used to tote drugs across the Mexican border into the U.S. Read about it here.
As if there were not already enough reasons to wish Senator Joe Lieberman would leave the political scene (he chairs the Senate homeland security committee where the “thought crime bill", S.1959, is currently sitting), he now he wants to censor the internet. Lieberman has demanded that YouTube remove Islamic videos. “…it is profoundly disturbing that an influential senator would even consider telling a media company to shut down constitutionally protected speech,” noted a New York Times editorial last week. Right on, as we used to say.
In the five years the American military has been Iraq, we’ve pretty much bombed that country back to Ur, destroying most of its infrastructure. Water and electricity (outside the Green Zone) hardly work at all. Now, one of my state’s senators, Susan Collins, has introduced a bill that would transfer all reconstruction costs to Iraq. Senator Collins is up for re-election this year, and I won’t forget this come November.
There are federal and state mandates for ombudsmen to inspect nursing homes, but they are underfunded and understaffed. Here’s a story from north Florida that explains how they ought to work: "There are so many people who do not have advocates," said one Florida ombudsman about nursing home residents. (Hat tip to Susan Fisher of Suzzwords)
Hah! Crabby Old Lady knew all along it was true: grumpy = intelligent.
“In the cognitively superior older group, who outperformed both the cognitively comparable older adults and the younger adults on every ability tested, ‘agreeableness was found to have a contrary relationship with general knowledge suggesting that a disagreeable nature may go hand in hand with better vocabulary and knowledge retention in older age,’ said Baker.“This result supports previous research that suggests that those who are highly intelligent may be more aloof and independent.”
“Harrumph,” says Crabby Old Lady. (Hat tip to Pete Sampson of As I Was Saying…)