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Keeping the Fourth of July a family holiday
Posted on July 3, 2009 by sscheible
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The Fourth of July has always been a big family holiday for me and until this summer, I usually spent it with first, my parents and cousins, and then, with my Dad after my mother passed away in 1990. We had such good times. I’d make a special meal and when he was in his 80s, we’d often go over to the Barge Canal Lock #32 in Pittsford, N.Y. for a picnic. We could watch the variety of boats come through the locks and he’d reminisce about how as a boy, he swam in the muddy canal waters. Sometimes we’d hit the very nice county parks they have there in the Rochester area, at Mendon Ponds or Powder Mill Park. We had fun with our memories and his lively conversation and watching other families. At night, we could watch the fireworks over at Oak Hill Country Club nearby right out of his kitchen and bedroom windows. After he got older and went to bed earlier, he’d wake up for the fireworks finale and get up to look.
This year, I don’t have him here any longer to celebrate the nation’s independence with and it is very poignant, because last year at this time, he was really struggling to hold onto his own independence in the apartment he had lived in since 1983. He passed away this past March at age 96, but a year ago, I was driving back and forth to Rochester from Boston all summer like a bit of a mad woman, trying to figure out what to do to balance his needs and life with mine.
The best thing I have this year is all the memories and in particular, our very last July 4, in 2008, that we spent together. I drove there few days before to take him to the doctor and then I worked hard to make July 4 a good day, even though he was still getting over a bout of pneumonia and was really quite weak.
I have the daily journal book he kept and looked up the entry he made last July 4. In somewhat shaky hand, he wrote, “Holiday. Sue here. N.B. 18th, appointment with blood specialist. Sue leaves for Boston in a.m. Great visit.” Then, at bottom, he wrote, “At 95, is my blood turning bad?” It was. He had just gotten a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow.
It is very important to me this weekend to be with him in spirit, with the memories and also with my cousins. So if all goes well, after work today, I’ll drive over to Rochester tomorrow and on Sunday have a festive family party with my cousins on Canandaigua Lake.
Family and the Fourth still seem to go together.
Hearing from more forgotten Cadet Corps nurses
Posted on July 2, 2009 by sscheible
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Elizabeth Beecher of Weymouth picked up her Patriot Ledger newspaper Tuesday and saw an illustration of a military-style uniform on the front page. “That uniform looks familiar,” she said to her husband.
She turned inside to the Good Age column and read about Shirley Harrow’s nine-year campaign to have the surviving members of the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps recognized and honored for their service during WWII.
“I was a cadet nurse!” Beecher said. Now 85, she was one of some 124,000 young women who entered the training program for student nurses between 1943 and 1945 and went on to graduate. “I haven’t talked to anyone about the cadet nurses for a long time,” Beecher said. “I regret that I never saved my uniform. I never had my picture taken in it.”
Beecher was a high school graduate who went on to nursing school at Mass. Memorial Hospital in Boston, now part of Boston University Medical Center. She joined the Cadet Nurse Corps, which paid for her education and was part of the Public health Service. She was sent o work in a hospital on Staten Island.
To read the column, Click Here
Shirley Harrow also heard directly from another Weymouth woman, Blanche Hanson Clark, who graduated from Quincy City Hospital School of Nursing in 1947 and served in the corps. The thought occurs that Weymouth has a lot of WWII veterans, men and women.
One other anecdote: I called another of the former cadet nurses who lives in Quincy. She told me she knew all about Shirley’s work and supported it, but she couldn’t speak with me because she is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. This nurse, shown above in the photo around 1947, is in her 80s and illustrates why we need to move quickly to air this issue. Pending legislation should receive full consideration this year, before more of the cadet nurses slip away.
Naomi Shelton: a soul singer for all ages
Posted on July 1, 2009 by sscheible
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As soon as I caught the low, rich voice of gospel and soul singer Naomi Shelton on WBUR Tuesday, I wanted to know more about her and hear her music. When I found out she waited for 60 years for her big break, I was even more intrigued.
Shelton was interviewed by guest host Jane Clayson on Tom Ashbrook’s “On Point” program. She is 66 years old, comes from Alabama, has been singing since she was six and now has her first CD out on Daptone Records.
Some describe Naomi Shelton’s voice as “muscular” but it is in a soulful way. She started out making the circuit of Alabama churches at the age of six and “eventually was heating up Manhattan soul clubs in her 60s.” The Washington Post’s Express calls her “a national treasure.” In six decades singing gospel, she says she never gave up. If people comment on her age, she says, “I’m glad because it motivates me to say ‘Thank you, God, I’ve got another day. I’m still around.”
She’s the lead singer of “Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens.” Her debut album, on Daptone Records, is “What Have You Done, My Brother?” One of her songs, “Change is going to come,” speaks right to the times and to aging.
Shelton’s songs are all about love and helping people accept themselves. “I love being able to touch people and relate to what they are going through and maybe my music can help them get over it.” Her audiences on the New York soul club circuit have many younger people, 20-somethings.
“Is there still room for older musicians who have come up the hard way?” Clayson asked. Give a listen on WBUR. Click Here
For the Daptone web site, Click Here
Definitely worth the wait!
Retire to a condo that moves
Posted on June 29, 2009 by sscheible
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Oceanic Retirement Communities of America (ORCA) has started taking reservations for a program that will allow seniors to own a condo on a private residential cruise ship that also provides both independent and assisted living accommodations typically found in land-based facilities.
“People retire to Florida for three things mainly … warm sunshine, golf, and the water,” states Mel Medina, President of ORCA. “This is a unique package that provides for all that plus a wellness capability.”
The ORCA Lifestyle Cruising Program will provide the healthcare aspects of traditional retirement facilities on private resident-owned cruise ships to be home ported in various coastal Florida cities.
Seniors would enter the program just as they would a typical Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC) with a nominal entrance fee and subsequent monthly Residents’ Care fees, but would live aboard the cruise ship until eventually health issues would necessitate their moving into a skilled nursing facility ashore.
Unlike a CCRC, on an ORCA ship, senuiors would own their residence like a condo. Upon passing, it would revert to their estate. The heirs can sell the stateroom or keep it for their own use by renting it out until they are 55 and ready to retire and move aboard themselves.
The first ship will enter service sometime late Summer or early Fall and will take frequent cruises to the Bahamas and Central America.
Enrollment pricing in the ORCA Lifestyle Cruising Program varies from $259-499,000 for 2 people.
For more info, Click Here
Armchair vacations with Eons
Posted on June 28, 2009 by sscheible
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If you join Eons, the web site and online social network for boomers, you can travel all over. Here’s their pitch:
“If you’re pinching pennies this summer, why not take an armchair vacation with your friends on Eons? You can read about places you’d love to go and enjoy the adventures of other members. It’s almost like being there! Okay, not really, but it’s interesting, and you’ll find lots of members that love to tell their stories of experiences in other lands.”
A visit to the web site found a video of ringing church bells in Rome. Fun to see, worth checking out.
For more information about Eons, Click Here.
There is no cost to join.
Michael Jackson and the age question
Posted on June 27, 2009 by sscheible
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All the talk about the untimely death of Michael Jackson got me thinking about how much his age, aging, and the stages of life kept coming up in the discussions. One caller to WBUR’s On point program suggested it was fortunate that Jackson died at age 50 because he had already had such a terrible middle age and surely would have aged poorly. His later life might have become pathetic, another caller said. “Hey, let’s give the guy a chance,” responded someone else.
I heard many comments about his Peter Pan syndrome, the 50-year-old man who really seemed more like a 14 year old. A TV news clip showed him as a teenager, when Jackson said he felt out of place with people unless he was performing on the stage. There were comments that people loved him because he kept the kid in everyone alive. A grandmother called to say she was grieving because her teenage grandson had loved Michael Jackson’s music and it had been something she and the 13-year-old boy had been able to share and feel closer about.
A man pointed out that it seemed strange to think that President Obama is three years younger than Michael Jackson was.
My thoughts as I listened and watched the clips were that it was a relief to see Michael Jackson looking so spontaneous and exuberant as a youth when he performed, because as an adult, he always looked so constrained, self conscious, painfully defensive and sad. It may been charming to see him dress and act the way he did as a boy and teenager, but as a middle-age man, he ended up coming to court in pajama bottoms and looked like a walking advertisement for plastic surgery gone wrong.
To every time, there is a season. Michael Jackson never had his season as a child — protected and loved by adults for himself, not for his talent and his practical value. Maybe that is why he became an adult who was still a child, misguided, pushed over the edge perhaps by fame and adulation. What kind of later life or old age might he have had? Callers suggested he was already discovering one of the painful truths about aging as he prepared for his final big tour: that you can’t always do the things you did as a young person, or not at the same intensity. Questions about painkillers pushing him through the rehearsals have come up. Would he have looked pathetic on stage, as some callers suggested? Hard to imagine.
To hear an NPR interview with Motown’s Berry Gordy Jr., who discovered Jackson and was like a father to him, Click Here
Retiring smart: the new way
Posted on June 26, 2009 by sscheible
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The new Aging Smart podcast by host attorney Harry Margolis and his guest Lita Epstein at ElderLawAnswers.com is on “Retiring Smart: the cost of aging.”
Financial writer Lita Epstein has some good advice about the growing reality: retiring at 62 isn’t really advisable for many people any more. In fact, she suggests working not only to your full retirement age of 66, but even longer if you want to ensure a more comfortable retirement.
By age 70, she says, definitely retire.
In the podcast “When to Start Drawing Your Social Security,” she says that “there are big benefits to waiting as long as possible before claiming Social Security. Learn how to do the math so your money will last through your old age.”
Epstein is a seasoned financial writer who develops books and courses on investing, finance and living in retirement. Her books include the “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Social Security and Medicare” and the “Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Investing in Mutual Funds.”
To hear the interview, Click Here
90-year-old woman, 25-year-old car are video hit
Posted on June 25, 2009 by sscheible
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The video shows a 90-year-old woman with a 25-year-old car that she bought brand new about 600,000 miles ago. She purchased lifetime warranties on everything and is now on her 17th free battery. She’s frugal, independent, patriotic, and packs a pistol because she believes in her right to protect herself.
This video, hosted only on GrowingBolder.com, has generated more than 1.2 million views in just over a week, according to the website, which says it is “smashing every preconceived stereotype about what makes a viral video and who watches online videos.
“This is a true grassroots phenomenon,” says Growing Bolder founder Marc Middleton. “It’s not a jackass falling off a roof. It’s a positive story that has resonated with viewers of all ages. It proves that a viral video doesn’t have to start on network TV and doesn’t have to be on one of the big video portals to be found.”
To see the video, Click Here
Jackie Kennedy’s celebrated Paris suit is on display
Posted on June 23, 2009 by sscheible
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The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum announced that the pale yellow suit worn by Jacqueline Kennedy during her celebrated trip to Paris with President Kennedy is now on display in the First Lady Exhibit in the Museum at the Kennedy Presidential Library.
Designed by Oleg Cassini, the silk-and-wool Alaskine suit was a favorite of Mrs. Kennedy’s. She wore it, along with a matching yellow hat by Halston, to a luncheon with President and Mme Charles de Gaulle at the Élysée Palace in Paris on May 31, 1961. The extraordinary warm welcome afforded to the French-speaking Mrs. Kennedy during this visit prompted President Kennedy’s now famous remark, “I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself…I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.”
Mrs. Kennedy wore the suit again on June 28, 1962 when she accepted the first copy of the newly published White House guidebook, which she commissioned and oversaw as part of her White House restoration project. Now in its 22nd edition, The White House: An Historic Guide, is available at the Kennedy Library’s Museum Store and on-line at the Museum’s eStore for $10.00. Proceeds continue to support White House preservation.
Seniors targeted by stimulus check scam
Posted on June 23, 2009 by sscheible
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The scam artists are as busy as ever and they’re after your stimulus checks from the government.
HESSCO Elder Services in Sharon has issued this warning.
“It’s scam time across America, because in May the federal government sent out $250 economic recovery payments to more than 50 million people who receive Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Railroad Retirement (RRB) or Veterans Administration (VA) disability benefits. No action on your part was required to get the payment, which was sent separately from your regular monthly payment. But all that money has attracted scam artists on the internet.
To be mailed a payment, you must have received a Social Security, SSI, RRB or VA benefit during the months of November 2008, December 2008, or January 2009. You should not contact the Social Security Administration (SSA) unless a payment is not received by June 4th.
Anytime millions of people are waiting for checks, scam artists are waiting to take advantage of them. In one scam, an email was sent out bearing a picture of President Barack Obama, promising a “free stimulus check” of varying amounts, from $613.27 to several thousand dollars. Recipients of the email were directed to another website, where they have to “participate in the program” in order to get a check. Participation requires that they complete several “reward offers,” such as magazine subscriptions the consumer has to buy, or getting a credit card that’s only activated with a purchase.”
The important thing to remember is that the Treasury Department, the IRS, your bank, and your credit card company—-none of them—will call you up or email you for private account information—because they already have it. If you get an email or a phone call asking for bank account numbers, credit card numbers, or offering you economic stimulus money—report them.
For more information, Click Here
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