Aging Lifestyles from Creators Syndicate

Adapting to a New Environment for 11/07/2008

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

I'm turning this week's column over to my wife, Kate, to give her version of how to adapt when you find yourself transplanted to a new environment:

Six years ago when Joe and I moved to Frederick in the foothills of western Maryland, near Camp David, we arrived with quite different expectations.

Ebullient Joe was fired up with the chance to meet new people, embrace a new way of li ...

Updated: Fri Nov 07, 2008

Honoring Our Fallen Soldiers for 11/14/2008

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

When they fell before the musket and cannon fire at sleepy places named Bull Run and Shiloh, the young Civil War soldiers were buried in fields and churchyards. At Antietam in the Maryland countryside, just a few miles north of Washington D.C., 5,000 were slaughtered in one day of fighting. Some were left where they fell in cornfields.

Abraham Lincoln thought the war dead deserved a bett ...

Updated: Fri Nov 14, 2008

Sharing Time Together: Vacation with Grandchildren for 11/21/2008

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Taking three grandchildren — and their parents — along for a tour of the Grand Canyon can cause some unexpected moments.

WE LOST GRANDMA

Oh, she didn't fall into the 5,000-foot canyon, nothing so dramatic, but she did disappear while I was hiking along a trail on the rim of the canyon with my 12-year-old granddaughter. We were walking along at a vigorous pace. ...

Updated: Fri Nov 21, 2008

Goodbye for 11/28/2008

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The call came from an editor at my syndicate, Creators Syndicate, the other day.

She said simply, "I know that this is the first time we have talked and I am sorry to bring bad news. But we are no longer going to be using your column."

Copley News Service of San Diego had sold its syndicate to Creators last summer. I had been one of the columns in the deal.

After ...

Updated: Fri Nov 28, 2008

Return of a Retiree for 12/12/2008

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

It seems like only yesterday when I announced in this space that I was retiring — forced out of work after almost half a century in the news business.

An editor at my syndicate, Creators, had called me a couple of weeks ago and said "we are no longer going to be using your column."

Creators had columns that overlapped mine, particularly in the elderly health field. ...

Updated: Fri Dec 12, 2008

A Dangerous Game for 12/19/2008

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

A legion of athletes, particularly professional football players, loses their health on the gridiron. Long after the cheering has stopped, these heroes limp through life in chronic pain.

Maybe, it's time that us seniors — whether former pros or just average high or college players — remind our grandchildren of just what they are getting into for the long run. It may not do an ...

Updated: Fri Dec 19, 2008

Seniors Can Keep up With the Kids, Too for 12/26/2008

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

There comes a time — many times, as a matter of fact — when an athlete realizes he no longer has the skills to, as the sports broadcasters love to say, "get the job done." Energy, agility and, finally, strength have vanished with the years.

There are enough stories, particularly this time of year, of athletes who are retiring. This, instead, is a tale of some of us ...

Updated: Fri Dec 26, 2008

Inheritances Make Mischief for 01/02/2009

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

What is it about money and inheritances that bring out the worst in us?

We discovered firsthand how it works from Mary Ann. A relative had asked her to be her power of attorney for both health and financial affairs and the executor of her will.

In addition, the relative wanted to draw up her will — and leave the bulk of her considerable estate to Mary Ann. Mary Ann set up an ...

Updated: Fri Jan 02, 2009

Passing the Torch for 01/09/2009

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

If we are not careful, we members of the local Torch Club in Frederick, Md., are going to fail to pass the torch onto a new generation of Americans.

We are getting older. Most of the members are over 60, many in their 70s and 80s. Our feeble efforts to recruit younger members have not been awesome at all. They have failed miserably.

Torch Club is a nonpartisan international associ ...

Updated: Fri Jan 09, 2009

Paring the Budget for 01/16/2009

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

For the first time in our married lives, we are following a budget. Yes, friends, in all of those flush years of prosperity we hardly even balanced our checkbooks. So, you might wonder why we should be offering you frugal folks any fiscal advice?

Well, we guess that a number of you have taken the same tangled course through the current financial jungle. Times are currently changing, and ...

Updated: Fri Jan 16, 2009

Newark Revisited for 01/23/2009

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

It has been 40 years since Newark erupted in a massive six-day racial riot, which took 26 lives. Many more were injured and much of the downtown, not only the shops of the white proprietors but the slum housing of the blacks, burned to the ground.

I was a young reporter for the now-defunct Newark News covering the area.

As I read the reams of copy these days about how race relatio ...

Updated: Fri Jan 23, 2009

Remembering Edgar Allan Poe for 01/30/2009

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, the famed author of the macabre, and we hope to take our teenage grandchildren to Baltimore to visit the various sites dedicated to him.

What better way to get grandchildren, so fascinated with horror topics these days, interested in learning about the past? Poe was a master at scaring the wits out of us long before T ...

Updated: Fri Jan 30, 2009

Teaching Kids about Money for 02/13/2009

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Like many of our friends, we took care that our children were not in the room where we discussed family finances, just as our parents and grandparents had before us. Money was a taboo subject.

Now, though, given the financial circumstances today, we need to get rid of that outmoded idea and include children in discussions about finances. Children of all ages know when their family faces ...

Updated: Fri Feb 13, 2009

The Big Count for 02/20/2009

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

It has been 10 years since I was assigned to help count a tiny bit of America for the Census Bureau. It was an intriguing and, I must confess, bizarre experience.

And now it is time for the Census again — that massive federal undertaking that takes place every 10 years. It is an effort to count everyone in the country.

I will be sitting on the sidelines this time, but it is ...

Updated: Fri Feb 20, 2009

Riding the Rails Once More for 02/27/2009

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Once there was a time when the best way to travel was by train. As the late great poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, put it, "There isn't a train I wouldn't take."

But the war, with its technological advances, changed so many things, including the way we traveled in peacetime. The airplane, which could get you there much faster, took a lot of business away from the railroads. And P ...

Updated: Fri Feb 27, 2009

Army Life Looks Good Again for 03/06/2009

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Back in the 1930s, Army life looked pretty good to a lot of young Americans mired in a Depression with unemployment at 25 percent. They used to have the saying: At least you got "three hots and a cot."

Now, with unemployment heading toward 10 percent, the economic advantages of Army life are looking beneficial. It is definitely not the Army this GI Joe remembers. Forty-five yea ...

Updated: Fri Mar 06, 2009

Seniors Show Resistance to Recession for 03/13/2009

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Let us start off with that popular myth that we seniors are worst off in economic hard times compared to our children and grandchildren. That's nonsense. Let's look, instead, at how recession-proof we are.

For one thing, our Social Security checks are not affected. And we still receive Medicare — chances are we receive defined benefit pension rather than those shaky 401 (k) plans t ...

Updated: Fri Mar 13, 2009

Life after Retirement for 03/20/2009

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

It has been almost a decade since I retired as an editor for the American Psychological Association magazine, the Monitor. I had a lot of ideas that day in 2000 when a reporter from the New York Times tracked me around town. I made many predictions about my future life in the golden years; most of them turned out to be inaccurate.

So, today, I thought for the benefit of those contemplati ...

Updated: Fri Mar 20, 2009

The Graying of Older Americans for 03/27/2009

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Just about everything that happens to our boomer president, Barack Obama — even the revelation that his hair is starting to turn gray — makes the news.

Of course, friends, the graying of America is not exactly news to us septuagenarians. Many of us men have almost snow-white hair, while our spouses often come and go to the hairdresser so that they can pretend to be blondes, b ...

Updated: Fri Mar 27, 2009

Where is Hope Today? for 04/03/2009

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Many of us worry about surviving the current recession that is costing jobs, homes, college tuition for our kids and retirement security. But we can profit by looking back at how relatives survived during even worse crises.

The critical virtue that motivated them over and over again was hope — hope that they would survive and that the future would be better than the past. Many were ...

Updated: Fri Apr 03, 2009