“Older Americans have unique knowledge and a breadth of insights that are
tremendous assets to our country -- and our seniors are eager to impart the
wisdom learned from their experiences….Aging affects us all, and I am dedicated
to empowering more of today's seniors and future seniors.”
– Barack Obama, Presidential Proclamation of Older Americans Month (OAM)
2016
This year’s OAM theme: “Blaze a Trail
emphasizes the ways older adults are reinventing
themselves through new work and new passions, engaging their communities, and
blazing a trail of positive impact on the lives of people of all ages.” The OAM
website included tip sheets for Civic Engagement, Reinvention, Securing Your Finances, and Wellness.
Civic Engagement: Getting Involved
Leaders
from California Alliance of Retired Americans (CARA) and Community Living
Campaign (CLC) volunteer their unique experiences to make a difference in the
community by presenting a 2-hour Empowered Elder Workshop at this month’s Older Women’s League
(OWL) meeting.
Hene
Kelly, retired public school teacher and former CPR instructor whose nephew is
an EMT, presented on Vial of Life: a kit to store medication information
for access by emergency personnel.
Sandra
Mack, another retired teacher, presented 4 key lessons on Hospital Stay: 1) use personal support network, including patient
advocate and someone who can care for your responsibilities like pets, 2) money
– know insurance coverage, 3) arrange for visitors and/or bring pictures of
family/friends – humanize yourself to receive better treatment from hospital
staff, and 4) engage with discharge planner – exercise your right to a safe discharge,
including appeal an early discharge by calling 1–877–588-1123 if necessary. To get full benefits of Medicare after
hospitalization, make sure to ask each day if you’re inpatient (formally
admitted to hospital) versus outpatient (observation status).
Gray
Panthers advocate Michael Lyon presented on Advance Health Care Directives for durable power of attorney and health care.
He reminded us that these forms can be amended when our definition of an
“acceptable quality of life” changes with medical expectations and situations.
Legacy Film Festival on Aging Director Sheila Malkind with Pia. Sheila’s 6th annual Festival on
September 16-18, 2016 is an opportunity to further civic engagement with each film
screening followed by Q&A forum to discuss aging issues.
Reinvention: Follow Your Passion, Use Your Skills
AARP
“Real Possibilities” hosted a 3-hour LifeReimagined Checkup:
a personal guidance system to help people navigate life transitions and pursue
new opportunities in work, well-being and relationships.
- Ice breaker question: If you
had an opportunity to travel to a different time and place, when and where
would it be? My answer: Back to
the time of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden J!
- Purposeful Life = Gifts (what you’re good at) + Passions (what you love) + Impacts (who you want to benefit) + Values (what motivates you) + Possibilities (what you want to be, feel & have)
- Reflect: present
situation is opportunityà take inventory of where you
are, people you care about, your work & purpose
- Connect: don’t have to go it aloneà engage people to mentor,
support & listen to you
- Explore: approach future with openness & curiosityà discover & bring new
possibilities into your life
- Choose: commit to making a changeàweigh options & decide on
your new direction
- Repack: accept necessary tradeoffsàdecide what you need to reach
your goal, what you can do without
- Act: you can do ità take 1st step &
adapt as you go
As
an island girl inspired to be a do-gooder from weekly Bible study and seeking opportunities to leave the rock, I thought becoming a traveling missionary
would be my life’s purpose. However, as
a child of Chinese immigrants, I could choose from 5 acceptable career fields:
medicine, engineering, finance, law and academia. Been there, done that! Now I suppose it’s surprising that I chose an
encore career in social services since I am more an introverted ideas (ITNJ personality)
than extroverted touchy-feely, social butterfly type of person. But organizations need employees who reflect
the diversity of their clients, including those near the end-of-life (i.e., older adults) – always an
opportunity for more introversion/introspection and appreciation.
Throughout
my life, my passion for reading,
mostly nonfiction, has been constant and so engrossing that I sometimes forget
about eating (another lifelong passion).
As
a bookworm, I had a blast indulging at Oakland
Mary Roach on her latest
book, Grunt: The Curious Science of
Humans at War, about how science is trying to make soldiers immune to
panic, exhaustion and trauma. If I am to
make a living pursuing my passion for books, including exploring topics that
pique my curiosity, I will need to be more disciplined to find time …
My
passion for social justice led to me attend “Justice for the Young” panel: Elaine Brown talked about
the Black Panthers starting their own Liberation School because they were
against desegregation, which they perceived as inferior mis-education at the
time because teachers had no relationship based on life experience shared with
black students. I continue to have mixed
feelings about segregation based on race, gender, age, etc. to counter –isms,
especially since I loved to sing-along to USA for Africa’s “We Are the World” during my formative years:
(Tina Turner) We are all a part of God's great big family …
(Michael Jackson) We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving …
(Cyndi Lauper) Let us realize that a change can only come
(Kim Carnes) When we stand together as one …
“The Uncanniness of Altruism” panel
gave me more food for thought about my own career choices, including my latest desire
to advocate for older adults’ right to live independently in their homes for as long as
safely possible. San Francisco Magazine
editor Gary Kamiya moderated this thought-provoking discussion based on Larissa MacFarquhar’s Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism,
Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help (2015). I identified with social worker Julia Wise,
one subject of extreme altruism profiled in this book. Julia’s
utilitarian dilemma: is the greater good
served by taking a higher-paying (corporate) job to make monetary contributions,
or taking a lower-paying (non-profit) job to make direct labor contributions,
for worthy causes? While working in the
corporate sector, I attempted to do both—maximizing tax-deductible
contributions by making donations to non-governmental organizations (e.g.,
Foundation for Sustainable Development and Global Service Corps)
to personally volunteer overseas using paid time-off from work.
“Undervalued,
Invisible: Domestic & Emotional Labor” featured panel of Bay Area women: Katie Quan, UC Berkeley labor specialist;
Ruth Rosen,
author of The World Split Open: How the
Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (2006); Arlie Hochschild, author of
The Second Shift: Working Families and
the Revolution at Home (2012); and
moderator Deidre English, former editor of Mother Jones magazine. This discussion focused on childcare (last
month, San Francisco passed Paid Parental Leave for Bonding with New Child Ordinance), rather than eldercare, which needs
more attention like San Francisco
Supervisor Eric Mar’s Support at Home
to subsidize home care for seniors and persons with disabilities (PWD) who do
not qualify for IHSS yet do not have enough income to pay for private home
care. Eric also introduced Dignity Fund, a proposal to amend the City Charter to authorize setting aside 2% of future
property taxes to stabilize funding services for seniors and PWD.
At AgeSong’s University campus, passionate Julia Wolfson presented From the Inside Out: Changing
the Culture of Care about the shift from the medical model (fix problem
patient) to an empowerment model (learn what’s important to the person). She
said using the power of love-based curiosity, we find out what makes one come
alive from inside out, even from someone who does not use words to communicate.
Securing Your Finances: Plan Wisely,
Watch Closely
At
Chinatown Night Out, I drew more Blaze a Trail inspiration from 41 Ross Alley’s
3650 exhibit featuring Mr. Zhao, who immigrated 10 years ago from China at age 66 with
his American Dream to “make a decent living” in San Francisco, which
necessitated hard work including his steadfast determination to acquire English
fluency.
Instead
of learning the phonetic English alphabet, Mr. Zhao denoted the pronunciations
of English words with Chinese characters in his hometown dialect—transcribing
over 2,000 words on cardboards plastered on the walls and ceilings of his
Chinatown SRO. He studied ESL at City College ,
earned his driver’s license, found work in a white-owned store, became a U.S. China
Wellness: Be Wise, Be Well
OAM tip
sheet for Blaze a Trail to Wellness reminds us: “Activity is important, but
nutrition is equally vital.” Krab cake
in dill sauce with herbed rice and country veggies, courtesy of Meals on Wheels
of San Francisco!
What Do You Want to Be?
ReplyDeleteLife Reimagined helps you chart a fulfilling course for the future
by Jo Ann Jenkins, AARP CEO, AARP Bulletin, June 2016
…Millions of us reach a point, usually somewhere between our mid-40s and early 70s, when we begin to question the meaning of our lives and whether our success has brought us happiness. This is a time when many of us reassess our achievements in terms of our dreams. We go through a period of reevaluation and reflection. Have we realized our goals? If not, what do we have to do to reach them? If we have achieved them, has that success given us the happiness and fulfillment we expected?
If so, what's next in our lives? If not, what do we need to do to find happiness and fulfillment? How we answer these questions often leads us to make significant changes in our careers, work-life balance, marriages, relationships, finances and health.
This is also a time of significant transition — when our children leave home or they move back, we become caregivers for our parents, we become grandparents, we change jobs or careers, our appearance and physical health change, and we find ourselves free for perhaps the first time in our adult lives to pursue lifelong dreams.
How we answer these questions also causes us to face our fears — fear of the unknown, of outliving our money, of losing our independence, of failing health, of becoming a burden on our families, or simply fear of boredom.
These are big things to work through all on our own. And most of us could use some guidance. That's where Life Reimagined comes in. Developed by AARP and some of the world's leading experts in life coaching, counseling and guidance, it helps people discover new possibilities and prepare for the changes they want to make, and it supports them to make it happen. It's a map to help you plan the next part of your life.
Maya Angelou observed that at 50, you become the person you always wanted to be. As we live longer lives, in generally better health, with endless possibilities, we have more opportunity than any generation before us to contemplate our life's purpose and chart our own course to be the person we always wanted to be. Too many people resist the transitions that come with age and never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. I urge you to embrace it and be fearless. Once you do, you will be liberated to bring all of your prior experience and wisdom to design the life you want to live.
…To learn more, go to lifereimagined.aarp.org.
http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-2016/your-next-phase-life-reimagined-jenkins.html
Aging, but Still Working, in Singapore
ReplyDeleteBy TASH AW JUNE 7, 2016
SINGAPORE —…in Singapore…cleaners…are frequently of, or even beyond, retirement age.
…reasons for wanting to keep working in jobs that others might consider demeaning. Some do so because they see it as a way to continue to contribute to society, and they’re reluctant to become a burden on their families. Others among them wish to escape the loneliness of an increasingly sedentary retirement. Many need the extra income that even such modest work provides (typically less than the equivalent in Singapore dollars of about $1,100 a month).
Dealing with an aging population is one of the major challenges that the city-state faces as it cements its status as an advanced cosmopolitan nation. Just 50 years after it gained its independence from Malaysia, Singapore has one of the highest per capita rates of gross domestic product in the world, and it boasts world-class systems of education, social housing and health care.
Yet such rapid progress has led to a divergence in lifestyles between the younger generation, brought up in an age of relative security and material comfort, and their grandparents, people of the so-called Pioneer Generation (as the government designates citizens born before 1949).
…In just four years, more than a third of the population will be over 50, and by 2050, the median age will be 54.
This demographic shift has already created a large number of families in which two working adults are not only bringing up children but also supporting their retired parents. In Singapore’s fast-paced, modern economy, such demands place a huge strain on the family unit.
To counter this growing trend, the government has unveiled a raft of measures…minimum age of retirement is 62, with an automatic option of continuing in employment for a further three years until the age of 65. This threshold will now be raised to 67 by 2017.
…age limit of cabdrivers was raised, in 2012, to 75 from 73.
… 2013 government white paper that suggested Singapore could add an additional 25 percent to its population, or one million people…focus…on extending work force participation by the city-state’s aging citizenry.
At the heart of the debate is the idea of the Southeast Asian family. Across the three main ethnic groups in Singapore — Chinese, Malay and Indian — one major similarity is the expectation of three generations living under the same roof. Grandparents traditionally live with their children and grandchildren once they have retired. They are expected to contribute to housework and the supervision of the youngest members of the family. In return, they enjoy the emotional and financial support of their families.
“Looking after your parents,” in this still strongly Confucian-influenced society, is a concept most Singaporeans have grown up with. So the notion of parents’ going out to work in a job past the retirement age, particularly in physically demanding, low-paid jobs like the food-hall cleaners’ work, sits uneasily with traditional ideas of filial duty.
At the same time, providing for and looking after elderly parents within the family is becoming ever more challenging in a country renowned for its high-pressure work environment. Singapore’s high standard of living comes at a price: It has the longest working hours of any country in the world, and for a third consecutive year was ranked recently as the world’s most expensive city to live in.
Acknowledging these pressures, the government’s Pioneer Generation Package has pledged $6.6 billion in health care and other benefits to the 450,000 or so citizens eligible for such aid. State-of-the-art retirement homes and “elder-friendly” supermarkets are just some of the measures intended to help the older generation gain a measure of independence in this changing society…
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/opinion/aging-but-still-working-in-singapore.html
Nonprofit Work After Retirement? Maybe You Can Make It Pay
ReplyDeleteBy CHRISTOPHER FARRELL JUNE 24, 2016
…Encore!Hartford, a four-month training program for corporate professionals over age 50 looking for a career in the nonprofit sector, public agencies and government.
“The stuff you volunteer for, you care about, you do for free, and then one day you realize you can get paid to do something you care about,” he said. “How cool is that!”
Baby boomers closing in on the traditional retirement years often seek purpose and a paycheck in a second career, also known as an encore experience, next chapter or unretirement. Whatever the term, nonprofit work — focused on addressing society’s pressing needs and promoting arts and culture — has a particular allure for many in this group.
“People want to give back; they want that social impact in the next phase of their life,” said Kate Schaefers, a career and leadership coach in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. “They also turn the three-legged retirement stool — Social Security, personal savings and retirement savings — into a four-legged stool by adding paid work.”
The timing is auspicious. The nonprofit sector has been vibrant in recent years. From 2007 to 2012, nonprofit employment increased every year, from 10.5 million jobs to 11.4 million jobs, for a gain of about 8.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By contrast, total private sector employment dropped by 3 percent in that period.
This year, 57 percent of nonprofit groups surveyed said they expected to create new positions, an increase of 7 percentage points from last year, according to the 2016 Nonprofit Employment Practices Survey by Nonprofit HR, a the human resources firm. By comparison, the firm notes that only 36 percent of private companies surveyed said they intended to increase staff size, the same percentage as in 2015.
…In 2008, Ms. Foley, known as Rusty, took advantage of an early retirement opportunity. In the middle of the worst recession in decades, the timing was “scary,” she said. But she knew that “there were other things I wanted to do with my life.”
…“It’s an opportunity to use the professional skills I had accumulated over the years for something I had a personal passion for,” she said. “It’s energizing.”
The transition for experienced baby boomers from corporate America to nonprofit America is probably easier than ever. …nonprofit boards and donors had come to realize that good management was critical to fulfilling their mission.
…That said, the transition remains personally challenging. Fund-raising, writing grants and dealing with donors are unfamiliar tasks to those who forged their careers in profit-making companies. Those who worked for big corporations are used to much more support…pay is almost always lower, with more modest benefit packages.
“If it isn’t a mission personal to you, you will not get through the tough times,” said Nora Hannah, executive director of Experience Matters in Phoenix, an organization that works with private sector workers who want to shift into community-based nonprofit groups.
The transition from a corporate environment to a nonprofit is largely a Do-It-Yourself effort. But programs like Encore!Hartford, Experience Matters, Social Venture Partners and Encore Fellowships offer valuable educational and matchmaking services for those seeking a second-act career.
…Marc Freedman, founder and chief executive of Encore.org, which is based in San Francisco and promotes second careers for social good. “…The techniques that work well in any job search apply here. Think about your passions. Understand the underlying skills accumulated over a lifetime of work rather than job titles. Network, network and network.
…informational interviews …invaluable for figuring out what she wanted to do next.
…volunteering…like dating, a way of figuring out whether an organization is a good match without making a long-term commitment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/your-money/nonprofit-work-after-retirement-maybe-you-can-make-it-pay.html
A new way to turn 70: Don’t kick back and relax
ReplyDeleteBy Gina Glantz
August 15
When I turned 70 in 2013, I figured it was time to decide “What next?”
Shout at the news from my comfy armchair while wielding my TV remote? No.
Retire to a warmer climate? No.
Read Modern Library’s 100 Best Books? No.
Start an online community of activists dedicated to ensuring that women are always part of the public dialogue? Definitely yes.
As an inveterate organizer thoroughly unhappy about the paucity of female representation all around me — at conferences, on “top” lists, among media covering politics, and so much more — I could not resist doing something. And so by the time I turned 71, I had named my community-to-be — GenderAvenger — created a website and begun organizing.
…advantages of leading an advocacy start-up in my dotage:
You have an outlet for disappointment about things that still haven’t gotten done. ..
You know the sun comes up every day, so you fear mistakes less and are less consumed by criticism. As Esther Dyson says: “Always make new mistakes.” And about that criticism: So what? I have come to realize that it most often vanished from the mind of the critic far more quickly than it did from me.
You are not inhibited by ambition. You can do whatever you feel like, and the consequences be damned. There is no need to be careful about who might be offended. Not that I was all that careful in decades past. But, to be honest, there were times along my political career path when I veered away from what my gut told me to do and toward what I thought would be accepted by the — yes, male — decision-makers around me. All too often, women especially fear hearing “there she goes again” as an indictment rather than having their point of view considered legitimate. Concern about being pigeonholed can silence important voices in critical positions. (Think the White House, the boardroom, etc.) I have discovered that this problem doesn’t exist when you reach a certain age.
Corny as it sounds, you do want to leave the world a better place for your grandchildren/godchildren/all children.
Your children can simply shrug off your latest passion translated into action.
Your Rolodex (a 20th-century contact list) is big enough
You know from sad experience that the job won’t get done in your lifetime but there will be others to carry on. That’s why you know you need and want to get younger folks involved.
Bonus reason: Numerous studies show that using your brain helps maintain your brain. Believe me, starting an online organization today definitely creates opportunities for mental stimulation. I’ve learned how to use new social media platforms. I have brainstormed about and tried new methods to engage folks in action. I have discussed issues with activists 40+ years my junior whose vocabulary and outlook are often brand-new to me.
Simply being online daily helps. A recently released study of nearly 2,000 men and women age 70 and older found that those who used the computer at least once a week — for email, Facebook, even paying bills — were 42 percent less likely to have memory and cognitive problems than those who rarely logged on.
…At 73, I am celebrating everything age brings ... except some of those irksome aches and pains.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-way-to-turn-70-dont-kick-back-and-relax/2016/08/15/8ca615d8-2f22-11e6-9b37-42985f6a265c_story.html
Caring for Elderly Parents
ReplyDeleteBy Dr. Demetra Smith Nightingale and Dr. Christina Yancey on August 18, 2016
Nearly 25 million American workers provide informal care for an elderly family member or friend who needs help with basic personal needs and daily activities. This number will probably grow as the post-World War II baby boomers – all 76 million of them – continue to age…
Three states – California, New Jersey and Rhode Island – have paid family leave programs for workers who are temporarily disabled, or bonding with new children (sometimes called parental leave), and for workers caring for elderly parents and other family members. New York will join them in 2018. These are important policies: workers receive more financial security, and employers could benefit from, lower staff turnover or other business factors.
The Department of Labor has released two research briefs from ongoing commissioned studies examining these programs and how they are working, especially for workers caring for elderly parents.
One brief reports that more than 230,000 workers a year receive paid leave benefits in these three states under the programs. The researchers also explain that family leave benefits for eldercare comprise a small share of overall family leave.
For example, in California, 90 percent or more of those receiving state paid family leave benefits do so for bonding with a new child, and less than 10 percent are caring for a family member. This is surprising given the number of working Americans who report caring for an elderly parent, and an issue on which additional research is needed.
The surprisingly low take-up may be related to a general lack of awareness. A second brief, based on discussions with working caregivers in several communities in California, New Jersey and Rhode Island, explains there is low awareness of paid family leave programs, and confusion about the benefits provided and how they interact with other kinds of leave.
For example, many workers in the discussion groups didn’t understand the differences between an employer’s leave benefits, the state paid leave programs, and the federal program Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides for unpaid, but job-protected, leave.
These findings confirm those from earlier research, which found that over 50 percent of California workers did not know about the program two years after it started. And a nationwide survey in 2011 found that while about two-thirds of U.S. workers had heard of the FMLA, many were not sure about eligibility and benefits.
While program awareness and understanding seems relatively low, when caregivers in the discussion groups heard about what the programs offered, nearly all said the benefits would be valuable to them and their families.
One person quoted in the brief said, “It’s hard enough to know you have to take care of someone, and now you won’t have to have the worry of losing your job or losing money.” Several workers in the group who were caring for an elderly parent also mentioned their reluctance to tell employers they were taking time off to provide eldercare, let alone apply for paid family leave benefits, because they worried about repercussions at work.
The experiences in states that have made paid family leave a reality provide an important policy lesson: The number of workers using the benefits is growing, but the programs may be underused in part because many workers don’t know about them. Getting the word out more broadly could have short and long-term benefits for both workers and employers.
For more information on the latest research on worker leave from the department’s Chief Evaluation Office, see www.dol.gov/asp/evaluation/WorkerLeaveStudy.
https://blog.dol.gov/2016/08/18/caring-for-elderly-parents/
More jobs for seniors, but not quite "golden
ReplyDeleteBy ED LEEFELDT MONEYWATCH
August 17, 2016, 5:31 AM
For 30 years Keith Verbosky was a tool and die maker for General Motors (GM), earning $100,000 a year when he retired. These days he drives a school bus ... for a quarter of that salary. Verbosky is the classic case of someone with an “old person job.”
But the good news for Americans of a certain age -- 50 and above -- is that the job outlook is “less bleak” for people like him, according to a study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. So what’s the bad news? These jobs usually pay much less…
Verbosky is typical of the way the senior workforce is evolving. During the last century, workers 55 and older who were let go from their jobs could find only a relatively few “old person” occupations alongside other gray-haired employees.
“Now, more and more workers don’t have to give up,” said Matthew Rutledge, one of the Boston College study’s three authors. “That means you should delay taking Social Security for as long as you can, because you’ll never get a better annuity than Social Security!”
But the outlook isn’t all sunny for seniors, or even junior seniors -- those still in their 50s. Those who find it necessary to switch jobs in later life may earn less and find less challenge in their new job.
On the bright side: The older person’s new job is probably going to be less taxing, although the hours may be equally long, such as night watchman or retail clerk (see below for a list of jobs for seniors).
“Many may be looking for a “bridge job,” said Rutledge, “a part-time job to see them into retirement -- but without the stress.”
Others may not be so fortunate and could find themselves stressed out by whether they’ll have enough money to get through retirement. “It is possible that American seniors enjoy working more than their counterparts in Europe and Canada,” said a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). But it’s equally possible that they’re working because they have to.
The U.S. has a “high senior poverty rate,” and the pensions that workers once had are being replaced by “inadequate 401k’s,” said the EPI. And even many of those vanished somewhat during the last recession. That may be why 30 percent of this country’s 65- to 69-year-olds are still at the daily grind, compared with only 20 percent in other developed nations.
For those who still need to work, the fact that pensions have all but disappeared -- with the exception of public employees -- has one good effect when an older person is seeking a job. “The shift away from defined benefit pensions has eliminated one barrier to hiring older workers, because employers no longer face the burden of backloaded benefit(s),” said the study.
Another plus is that many older people are still working in management positions and so don’t have an aversion -- or may even see an advantage -- to hiring someone with a proven track record who shows up on time. Better-educated women are actually finding more opportunities, the study showed.
One last caveat: By its very nature, the study examined only people who got jobs, not those who were unable to. Therefore, it may provide a rosier picture of labor market prospects for older workers than really exists, which the study admitted…
Occupations for older people:
Bus drivers
Crossing guards and bridge tenders
Dressmakers and seamstresses
Farmers (owners and tenants)
Guards, watchmen, doorkeepers
Messengers
Protective services
Retail sales clerks
Sales demonstrators, promoters and models
Taxi cab drivers and chauffeurs
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-jobs-for-seniors-but-not-quite-golden-years/
Time for New Thinking for the Age of Longevity
ReplyDeleteThe bleak narrative about aging is bogus, this author says
October 6, 2016
By Richard Eisenberg Money & Work Editor
Rosalind Barnett, co-author of the new book The Age of Longevity, has a bone to pick — with pretty much all of us.
She writes that “the bleak mainstream narrative about aging, centering on decay, decline, burden and costs, is becoming increasingly less true” but “it has not yet been replaced by a story that reflects present reality.”
Barnett is hoping her new book (and articles like this one) will help correct the record about people in what she calls “late adulthood” — age 55 to 80. …
Since Barnett — a senior scientist at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University — is a leading researcher on workplace issues and family life, we talked a lot about the implications of today’s longer lives for employers and for workers in their 50s and 60s.
Highlights of our conversation:
Next Avenue: How do you think we should be reimagining tomorrow for our new long lives?
Rosalind Barnett: The idea that you live a productive life and at 65 you stop and retire — that’s built into the DNA of our culture. But it’s not accurate anymore and that hasn’t really sunk in.
Many people hear the phrase: ‘Are you still working?’ That puts older people on the defensive about why they’re working. But late adulthood is a very productive period of time.
In fact, you say that more and more of the big scientific discoveries will be made by people who’ve been around for awhile, not young geniuses. Why?
One reason is that these days it takes a lot longer to get up to speed. Years ago, if you were going into a field, you’d have to master what had gone before you, but there was less to master than there is now.
Plenty of people are making incredible scientific breakthroughs into their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. If you have a contribution to make, age should be no barrier and it isn’t for a lot of people.
…But there are also campaigns to encourage older workers to retire. Why is that not in anyone’s best long-term interest?
I have a real issue with that. What will older workers do if they can’t find jobs and drain our society for the long run? Who saves money that way? Many older workers are quite able to be productive; some are not.
You say it’s a myth that older workers are less productive and less engaged than younger workers, right?
Right. It’s not factually true. Studies have shown the highest level of engagement is with older workers.
Older workers also have strategies to handle problems that come out of experience, so they’re less thrown by a crisis or a snag than younger people who haven’t had the experience to draw on.
…I think adolescence is fraught with anxiety. When you’re older, you have a lot of life experience and you’re not afraid of failing as much. You know you’ve failed before and you got up.
So there’s less anxiety about what if you make a wrong decision. That’s a benefit that makes it exciting.
http://www.nextavenue.org/time-new-thinking-age-longevity/
Bob Dylan, Titan Of American Music, Wins 2016 Nobel Prize In Literature
ReplyDeleteOctober 13, 20167:08 AM ET
COLIN DWYER
Bob Dylan has won the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature. The prolific musician is the first Nobel winner to have forged a career primarily as a singer-songwriter. What's more, he's also the first American to have won the prize in more than two decades. Not since novelist Toni Morrison won in 1993 has an American claimed the prize.
Dylan earned the prize "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," according to the citation by the Swedish Academy, the committee that annually decides the recipient of the Nobel Prize. The academy's permanent secretary, Sara Danius, announced the news Thursday.
The win comes as something of a shock. As usual, the Swedish Academy did not announce a shortlist of nominees, leaving the betting markets to their best guesses. And while Dylan has enjoyed perennial favor as an outside shot for the award, the prospect that the musician would be the one to break the Americans' long dry spell was regarded as far-fetched — not least because he made his career foremost on the stage, not the printed page.
Yet few would argue Dylan has been anything but influential, both in the U.S. and beyond its borders. The prolific singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has produced dozens of albums, including The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited and Blood on the Tracks. His track "Like a Rolling Stone" has taken on mythic standing in the decades since its release; many, including Dylan himself, have pointed to it as emblematic of a sea change in American music.
"Tin Pan Alley is gone," Dylan proclaimed in 1985, referring the dominant conventions established by music publishers of the early 20th century. "I put an end to it. People can record their own songs now."
Dylan, who was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, "has the status of an icon," the Swedish Academy wrote in a biographical note. "His influence on contemporary music is profound, and he is the object of a steady stream of secondary literature."
In an interview following the announcement, Danius elaborated on the Swedish Academy's decision: "He is a great poet in the English-speaking tradition, and he is a wonderful sampler — a very original sampler," Danius explained. "For 54 years now he has been at it and reinventing himself, constantly creating a new identity."
And for his work, he has been amply recognized by critical community. Dylan has won Grammys, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S. Now, to that trove of honors Dylan has added a Nobel.
The Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded since 1901 to writers who have produced "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction." In that time, 109 prizes have been distributed to 113 writers. This year, the prize carries with it a purse of approximately $900,000 and, as usual, inclusion on literature's most illustrious list — the pantheon of Nobel winners.
The 75-year-old artist will receive his award in Stockholm on Dec. 10.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/13/497780610/bob-dylan-titan-of-american-music-wins-the-2016-nobel-prize-in-literature
The new low-wage reality for older Americans
ReplyDeleteBy AIMEE PICCHI MONEYWATCH November 8, 2016, 8:37 AM
Thanks to economic instability and an eroding pension system, Americans are working longer than ever. But it turns out there’s a twist in how they’re working: New research shows workers older than 55 increasingly hold low-wage jobs.
...In September, slightly more than 27 percent of full-time workers over 55 years old held low-wage jobs, compared with 19 percent of younger workers, according to Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economics at The New School for Social Research.
Low-wage jobs, defined as those that pay less than two-thirds of the median wage, deliver about $539 per week in income, or annual earnings of about $28,000. The trend may build as baby boomers continue to hit their golden years without the resources to manage a comfortable retirement, Ghilarducci said.
In some cases, older workers are forced out of the middle-income jobs they’ve held. Then, unable to find work in their prior careers, they accept lower-paying work such as in retail, home health care or housecleaning.
…Ghilarducci said. “Older workers are being squeezed out of their career jobs. Men are going into low-wage, nonunion jobs, and women are going into care work. It’s not really voluntary. It’s really about being forced to work because your pension income isn’t enough.”
…decade-long trend of older Americans continuing to work past the unofficial retirement age of 65. More than 9 million people over that age are working today, up from about 5 million a decade ago. That means about 20 percent of Americans over 65 are still in the workforce.
“As we have waves and waves of boomers hitting 65, they’re coming into retirement with less and less security, especially with the middle class,” Ghilarducci said. “The top third seem to have enough assets to not force them into the labor market. The middle class is really seeing their fortunes change a lot.”
Baby boomers by and large aren’t ready for retirement…Boomers closest to the retirement age -- those between 55 to 65 years old -- have an average of only $136,200 socked away for their golden years, which would provide slightly more than $9,000 of income per year. Though it doesn’t include Social Security benefits,…
…Ghilarducci pointed out that it’s often the least healthy older workers who are pushed back into the labor market. “To think that people working longer is the price of progress, it’s a way to make ourselves feel better about it,” she said. “It’s the healthier ones that go into old age with choice.”
... A top cause of taking retirement sooner than planned is poor health, and low-income Americans are more likely to suffer from illness or disability than the wealthy.
Then there’s the gender issue. Ghilarducci finds women make up the majority of employees in seven of the top-10 low-wage jobs for older workers. In four of those jobs, women make up more than three-quarters of all workers, even though they’re a minority of older workers overall.
Older women may be more likely to get pushed into lower-paying jobs because of a financial double-whammy: They have lower lifelong earnings than their male counterparts, and they’re more likely to take time off from work to care for elderly relatives or children.
Ghilarducci said her recommendation for women is to take care of themselves first. “Tell your adult children that you love them, but they’re on their own,” she said. “Get good advice from fee-only advisers. Stay in the labor force as long as you can, and keep yourself healthy.”
Last, delay collecting Social Security benefits for as long as possible. Waiting until age 70 to do so boosts one’s benefits by about one-third compared with claiming at 62.
“We’ll see older women taking care of even older women if we don’t do something about pension security,” she said. “We’ll see older baristas and older people wiping our tables.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-new-low-wage-reality-for-older-americans/
HOW MANY BOOKS WILL YOU READ
ReplyDeleteBEFORE YOU DIE?
SPOILER: IT DEPENDS ON HOW OLD YOU ARE RIGHT NOW
March 22, 2017 By Emily Temple
There are millions of books in the world (and almost definitely hundreds of millions—last they checked, Google had the count at 129,864,880, and that was seven years ago). The rabid and/or competitive readers among you will now be asking yourselves: yes, yes, now how will I read them all?
Well, you won’t.
Okay, so we all accept that mortality is bearing down on us—though it should be said that one of the mental tricks that makes it possible for us to exist as mortal beings without going completely insane is that we actually experience time as infinite, even though we know it isn’t. That is, barring an execution date or a known terminal illness, we wake up every morning assuming we’ll also wake up the next morning, until one morning we don’t—and on that morning, we don’t know it. Because we’re dead. So if we accept that the world we live in is a subjective construct made up of our perceptions, we’re actually all immortal—we live forever within the context of reality we’ve created for ourselves, because when we die, so does that reality. Doesn’t that make all this a little better?
No, it does not. My to-read list is tantalizingly endless, and I often find myself thinking about the fact that my reading time/life is finite when I’m trying to get through a book that I know I should like but is boring (or annoying) me. As Hari Kunzru put it recently in the New York Times Book Review: “I used to force myself to finish everything I started, which I think is quite good discipline when you’re young, but once you’ve established your taste, and the penny drops that there are only a certain number of books you’ll get to read before you die, reading bad ones becomes almost nauseating.”
Consider this a dropping of the penny, for any of you who were still clutching it.
But how many more books will you get to read? It depends, of course, on how you’re counting, but for our purposes here, it’s down to two primary factors.
The first factor is obvious: how long will you live? To estimate the date of all of our deaths, I used the Social Security Life Expectancy Calculator, despite the fact that this is essentially an online quiz where at the end the government tells you when you’re going to die. Fun! NB: I have rounded the data up or down where appropriate. Don’t worry—you probably wouldn’t even have noticed those extra months of life anyway.
The second factor is: how quickly do you read? Or perhaps more accurately, how many books do you get through per year? According to the Pew Research Center, the average American reads 12 books per year—but knowing, as I do, the approximate makeup of the people who are likely to be looking at this space right now, I’ve made “Average” the low end of the range below. “Voracious” here indicates 50 books read per year, or a little less than one per week (“voracious” readers have been known to undertake projects likeInfinite Jest or similar), and “super” indicates 80. Super-super readers like Sarah Weinman will just have to make their own calculations.
So with these two factors in mind, you can now amplify your nausea—and honestly, the more you read, the more nauseated your number is likely to make you—by checking the table below and finding out exactly how many books you’ll (probably) read before you (probably) die. Now… isn’t this a fun game?
http://lithub.com/how-many-books-will-you-read-before-you-die/
MoMA Upends
ReplyDeleteIts Collection to
Celebrate Late Careers
The Museum of Modern Art proves that creativity is not just a young person’s
game, stocking its fourth-floor galleries with works made by artists 45 and older.
By ROBERTA SMITH
DEC. 28, 2017
What good is an art collection if a museum doesn’t shake it up once in a while? The Museum of Modern Art has increasingly been acting on this principle. Its latest upending is “The Long Run,” a yearlong installation that is utterly engaging if slightly mild: around 130 works of art spread throughout the galleries and hallways of its fourth floor. With a couple of exceptions, these works have been made since 1970 by, as the title implies, artists with careers of some length.
The presentation forsakes the myth of Modernism that the Modern is identified with — of art as ceaseless progress fomented almost entirely by the innovations of ambitious young (white) men. Instead, it focuses on artists, some famous, some not so famous — Lari Pittman, Ernie Gehr, Joan Jonas — who have just kept on making art, regardless of attention or affirmation, sometimes saving the best for last. The focus here is on art as an older person’s game, a pursuit less of innovation than of authenticity and a deepening personal vision.
The show’s 15 galleries swing energetically between what are essentially small solo exhibitions of works by artists the Modern collects in depth — Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, Gego and David Hammons, who looks great here as both sculptor and painter — and thematic groupings of artists usually represented in the collection by far fewer works, sometimes only one or two. Whatever the category, everything here was made by an artist who was at least 45 — and usually quite a bit older. The oldest is Georgia O’Keeffe, whose seeming abstraction of a white plane receding into blue, titled “From a Day With Juan II,” was made in 1977, when she was 90, and is inspired by the Washington Monument. The painting appears in “The City,” one of the early thematic galleries, among works by Kerry James Marshall, Romare Bearden and Mr. Gehr. A sidebar space is devoted to 11 photographs of New York City street scenes from 1971-81 by the great Helen Levitt (1913-2009), whose gritty poetry hovers ineluctably between color and black and white.
Attention is paid to “late styles,” those unexpected bursts of fresh creativity that some artists summon toward the very ends of their lives, typically in their 70s or 80s. In fact, the show opens with two celebrated examples. In the first gallery stands “Articulated Lair” (1986), a disturbing environment by Louise Bourgeois, who didn’t really begin her mature work until she was past 60. Black on the outside, this folded-screen circle, made of old doors, is mostly blue and white inside. It’s like stepping into a beautiful mind, but dark thoughts intrude in the form of hanging black shapes that conjure sausages, clubs and sides of beef.
The next gallery features Philip Guston’s late style, surrounding us with the brazenly cartoonish, exuberantly tormented figurative works that this apostatic Abstract Expressionist took up in the late 1960s — to the almost universal consternation of the art world — and pursued until his death in 1980. Enormous cherry still lifes and loony faces, macabre chorus lines of legs, hapless-looking Ku Klux Klan figures: These paintings deliver a sardonic commentary on art, art-making, politics and life that never goes out of style….
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/arts/design/the-long-run-exhibition-review-museum-of-modern-art.html
Many want nothing to do with the ‘R’ word
ReplyDeleteBy Claudia Dreifus
Saturday, December 23, 2017
…Jack Weinstein is 96 — decades past the age when most Americans choose to stop working.
“Retire? I’ve never thought of retiring,” he declares. Weinstein was appointed to the bench more than 50 years ago and is still in the thick of hot-button issues in the criminal courts. “I’m a better judge, in some respects, than when I was younger. I don’t remember names. But I listen more. And I’m more compassionate. I see things from more angles. If you are doing interesting work, you want to continue.”
Weinstein is one of the more than 1.5 million Americans older than 75 who are still in the paid workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Though the study does not list their specific jobs, many work at occupations in which skill and brainpower count more than brawn and endurance. Some are self-employed and aren’t subject to mandatory retirement rules. Others are stars in their fields — no one has ever suggested that Warren Buffett, 87, quit investing. And there are others, a growing cohort, who remain at their posts because of financial necessity.
“The crash of 2008, debt burdens, decreasing income replacement rates and the demise of employer pensions are a few of the trends” that have pushed the number of non-retirees to record levels, said Susan Weinstock, vice president for financial resilience at AARP.
Weinstock said she expects this trend to continue into the next decade. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the labor force participation rate for those 75 and older rose from 6.4 percent in 2006 to 8.4 percent in 2016 and is likely to reach 10.8 percent by 2026.
For Adolfo Calovini, 82, a New York City high school teacher, …
Occasionally, one of Calovini’s younger colleagues will ask if he’s ready to retire.
He shakes his head: “To me, teaching is about life. This is what I do. I can’t see a time when I wouldn’t.”
Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel agrees — he works for the sheer joy of it.
At 88, Kandel heads his own research laboratory at Columbia University.
“I like what I do,” he said. “Keeping engaged keeps you intellectually alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if it enhanced longevity.”…
Kandel, a trained psychiatrist, offers this advice to other non-retirees: “If you are healthy and enjoy your work, continue. At the very least, it gives you additional income. Even if you don’t need it, the money can be for your kids and grandchildren.”
Dr. Laura Popper, 71, a Manhattan pediatrician, works because her profession is central to her identity.
“I wanted to be a doctor since I was 4 — why would I give that up?” she said. “If you’re a surgeon and you reach a certain age, you have to stop. With pediatricians, as long as you have your marbles, there’s no reason to.”
In fact, there’s something about Popper’s specialization — tending to the health of children — that invigorates her.
“The wonderful thing about pediatrics,” she said, “is that it’s always about renewal and the future. I hang out with babies, toddlers, young parents and they are always looking forward. Getting old is about a shrinking future, but I don’t spend my days thinking about that because I’m in a different place.”
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Many-want-nothing-to-do-with-the-R-word-12451187.php