I have become elderly this year. No I am not older than my actual calendar years, Yet society thinks I am now dispensable. The pandemic moved Boomers from the “in” group to oldsters, Actually, to a group to be discarded in nursing homes. With a moral shadow blighting the national conscience. As the virus decimated the…
Category: Aging
Safety Packaging
There is very little that is more aggravating on a day to day basis as the frustration of opening packages of food, bottles of medicine, liquid bottles, and purchased over the counter drugs. Millennials take these inconveniences for granted, never really questioning the origin and implications for older Americans. In 1982, in the Chicago suburb…
Interpretations of Life
It is one of the inevitable processes of living, and it is one we prefer to ignore…we all will die. As blunt as that sounds, it is the preparation for this stage we are obsessed with as it approaches our rear-view mirror. Many find solace in the religious interpretation of what occurs when the body…
COVID Musings on Becoming Elderly
This is the year I came to the belated understanding that I am now elderly, at least in the eyes of others. I don’t feel elderly. The media and the Center for Disease Control continually referred to my age group in a somewhat deprecating and disparaging tone, assuming we had one foot in the grave and therefore…
Working Out: Exercise, before the pandemic and now!
Every morning I used to try to walk to the ocean and back. If we were camping, I walked the dog around the campground. If we were visiting children, a brisk walk around the block was the workout for the day. I threw in chair situps and light weights for the arms. Now, I have…
Keeping Busy During the Pandemic
At certain points during this pandemic, I have wandered around, slightly unnerved by limitations of movement, no favorite restaurant dinners, few safe shopping opportunities, and feel vague and without direction. Oh, I can fill my time, but I have to build my daily schedule as a retiree. I do have a daily list of ToDos,…
Women and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Workforce
The current economy results from many factors, the most significant of which is the impact of the closures in March due to COVID-19. While the economic recovery sputters along, Americans are differentially impacted, with working mothers and Black Americans falling significantly behind. Of the over one million Americans who stopped working or even looking in…
Friendship While Quarantined
These months have passed quite slowly. For the longest time, I kept thinking I had stepped into another plane of the universe, as in the movie Contact. Perhaps if I looked closely enough I could find the wormhole to return to pre-March 14, 2020. What didn’t happened was actually a life-changing happening. The quarantine extended…
Boomers Unite
Up until a week ago, I had not even given much consideration to my age or any societal implications of my health. Being active has been a choice many Boomers made as much for enduring youthful delusion as for a healthy lifestyle choice. Then, boom – the Boomers became the “elderly” and in some countries…
Are You Afraid to Die?
Today while participating informally in the church coffee hour, I was waiting in a short line for the regular coffee (our church attendance was only 44 today as it was pouring rain and windy), two gentlemen were chatting. One of them turned to include me in their conversation and opened with a real conversation stopper.…
