aging
June 2014 Marin Death Cafe – Date to be announced soon
Dear Marin Death Cafe followers,
Another Marin Death Cafe is being planned for the first or second week in June.
It will be held at Book Passages in Corte Madera at 51 Tamal Vista Blvd in the lovely Writers Room Gallery. Book Passages has a great little cafe so you can arrive early in time to get your cake and tea 🙂 and then walk over to the next building to the Death Cafe!
The time will again be from 6-8PM.
We’ll post the exact date here as soon as we have confirmed it.
Looking forward to seeing you!
– Nancy Rhine
P.S. Some of the participants from the April Death Cafe reported that most enjoyable aspects of the evening for them were:
- “Meeting interesting people with open minds and intelligent things to offer”
- “Talking with others about their experiences”
- “Meeting a variety of new people and sharing in such a heartfelt and genuine way”
- “Just being with others who were brave enough to share their feelings about death”
- “The opportunity to talk with complete strangers and discover ideas in common as well as differences.
- “Nice to be in two groups, not just one”
- “Coming out of denial about “Death” – since we’re going to die… why not really honestly communicate with others and encourage others and ourselves!!”
- “The authenticity of the event, away from trivialities”
Whistlestop – 60 Years and Getting Even Better!
Whistlestop is Marin County’s largest and oldest senior service agency. 2014 marks Whistlestop’s 60th anniversary. In 1954, a grass roots community group decided to band together to make sure their elders were not forgotten. This was before the time of senior centers, considerations for people with disabilities, or specialized transportation. They 
started the Marin Senior Coordinating Council (aka Whistlestop), a non-profit agency dedicated to providing creative programming, helpful advice and administrative services to other organizations serving seniors. Over time, Whistlestop has grown to become the primary local provider of:
- paratransit and subsidized transportation services for older and/or disabled citizens in Marin (60 vehicles, 500 trips a day plus subsidized taxi vouchers)
- Meals on Wheels (to over 250 homebound adults each week)
- a rapidly expanding range of classes, support groups and events in the Active Aging Center
- the hoppin’ Jackson Cafe – a collaboration with Homeward Bound of Marin’s Fresh Starts Culinary Academy. Delicious meals are prepared by culinary students and served by our awesome Whistlestop volunteers.
Whistlestop is where I served one of my Counseling Psychology internships while in graduate school. I was blessed to be able to help facilitate the long-running and popular Seniors Circle Wednesday drop-in support group which brought me to Whistlestop every week. Once that began, I saw firsthand what a tremendous resource Whistlestop is for Marin seniors and also what potential it has to do more. 
Now Whistlestop is about to undertake an expansion campaign called Whistlestop 2.0 to provide even more rides, meals and services, plus some affordable apartments in a state of the art, beautiful living center. With Whistlestop’s prime location near shops, cafes, theaters and even the soon to be completed Smart Train, and with Marin being the fastest aging county in California, the timing of this project couldn’t be better!
I am proud to serve as an Executive on Whistlestop’s Board of Directors. See announcement in the newsletter below. Whistlestop Express March 2014. To kick-off our fundraising campaign and to celebrate our 60th Anniversary we are holding a huge party at Rancho Nicasio on September 28th, 2014. Join us! 
Hogewey “Dementia Village” in Holland
With more and more individuals (and their loved ones) suffering from dementia in our rapidly aging population, it behooves us to come up with some creative and compassionate living alternatives that embrace them with respect, value, safety and opportunities to have fun.
The Dutch have created one such alternative pharmacom. What will we come up with here in the United States? And what will be affordable for the hordes of aging baby boomers who not only are getting old but also developing dementia? Time will tell! Meanwhile we can learn from other countries and cultures.
“The baby-boom is over and the ageing shock awaits’’: populist media shapes this image
‘‘The baby-boom is over and the ageing shock
awaits’’: populist media imagery in news-press
representations of population ageing”
from the International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 2011 6(2): 3971.
By ANNA SOFIA LUNDGREN & KARIN LJUSLINDER
From the authors:
“We work from the supposition that media is one of the most important sources of information (cf. Curran 2002; McLuhan 1967; McQuail 2005; Schudson 2003), especially regarding phenomena that the audience does not have any direct personal experience of. On the basis of previous research we also presuppose that media content has an impact on people regarding approaches to other persons and on the way society’s resource allocation is legitimised.”
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Conclusions of the Swedish Study
The studied newspapers showed some minor differences in the way they represented population ageing. Such differences have been described as inherent in different newspaper types tabloids and newspapers and the former should not be criticised because it is unlike the latter (Connell 1998). Our main point is, however, that all the studied representations, taken together or studied separately, supported some central and partly collective features.
They unambiguously displayed population ageing as a threat, they appointed politicians and academics as experts rather than ‘‘ordinary people’’, ‘‘wage-earners’’ or ‘‘older people’’, and they seldom defined the concept of population ageing explicitly.
These features were built up and legitimised by a range of recurring patterns: the creation of
seriousness; the use of dichotomisation; and the use of emotion. While discourse theory has otherwise been said to be a blunt and abstract tool for analysing how language is used in interaction, it proved helpful for the aim of this article: to tease out and visualise the concrete articulations that constituted the aforementioned features and patterns.
The theorisation of populism by writers influenced by discourse theory further showed valuable in providing an explanation of the potential
political implications of the kinds of equivalences found in the material. Looking at the material from a perspective of populism, there were some complexities concerning the chain of equivalence constituting the ones
threatened by population ageing.
It consisted of two main positions: wageearners and older people. However, while wage-earners were exclusively positioned as threatened, the news-press did not offer any such unambiguous positions of identification for older people. Older people were rather positioned as floating signifiers sometimes conceptualised as the one most affected, even victimised, by the threat of population ageing, and at other times described as actually being guilty of population ageing.
This floating character made it somewhat more difficult to link the positions within the chain of equivalence together, and to raise general demands in its name (cf. Griggs & Howarth 2008: 125). If the logic of populism in the news-press representations were to be truly populist in the theoretical sense of the word and thus able to attract broader coalitions of people outside the news-press discourse, urging them to identify as a united collective raising collective demands as to what needs to be done in order to deal with population ageing it would need a more unequivocal scheme of the process and its involved identities: a more palatable fantasy. Such a uniting logic is inherent in many democratic struggles and is what constitutes the strength of populist reason.
However, and importantly, such a move towards an all-embracing populist logic would risk blinding us to the nuances of the political processes of population ageing (cf. Zˇ izˇek 2006). Analysing the Swedish news-press, such an absence of a multifaceted representation of population ageing is a discernible fact. With the help of populist discourse, including a sometimes powerful and hard-hitting visual imagery comprising illustrations as well as choices of words, the news-press representationsoffer dualistic rather than a plurality of positions. However, one of our key findings is that this was not accomplished solely by the articles that were ‘‘apocalyptic’’ in character.
Furthermore, articles that seemed quite different, and written from a seemingly ‘‘neutral’’ point of view, contributed to, rather than contradicted, the populist features. Taken together, the implicit choice posed to the audience (the ‘‘we’’, ‘‘us’’ or ‘‘society’’) stood between doing nothing and awaiting disaster, or following the suggested measures with the effect that a demographic situation is made to naturalise certain political ideas, making them appear administrative, rather than political in character. This is a choice that is not really a choice.
In this article, we have stayed within the frames of the news-press discourse, and we have argued that its visual imagery displays populist tendencies that work ideologically to de-politicise the issue of population ageing. These tendencies, although not devout of some ambiguity, offer certain positions for the audience. They do not say, however, how the audience will react. It has been noted that people’s responses to populist and post-political tendencies displaying ineligible choices are themselves often populist people will either protest or ignore them. One topic for further research would be to investigate how people respond to the images of population ageing that are presented by the news-press, among Media representations of population ageing others, and how such images are made comprehensible within the frames of everyday life.
Medical Foster Homes – An Emerging Supportive Housing Choice for Older Veterans
Medical Foster Homes – An Emerging Supportive Housing Choice for Older Veterans
Housing Choices in Later Life
As our population ages, more and more living scenarios are surfacing for how to live out our lives safely with dignity, comfort and with as much control as we can maintain. Increasing numbers of older people remain in their own homes as long as they can in order to preserve their independence. The number of people living out their whole lifespans in the comfort of their homes has increased by 50% over the last two decades.
When living alone is no longer an option, elders often opt to move closer to adult children who can provide assistance and advocacy. Often, additional hourly home caregivers are brought in; at times, live-in roommates exchange services for rent. Full-time, live-in caregivers are another, albeit expensive, option.
“Aging in place” member-driven, non-profit, community-based organizations such as Marin Villages strive to provide the kinds of support that older people are looking for in order to continue to live in their own homes, apartments or condo’s.
Independent living retirement communities serve as well-known housing alternatives for older adults. Assisted living and skilled nursing facilities come into the picture as health declines and care needs increase.
Smaller “board and care” homes are another alternative – with usually 2-6 residents. Board and care homes can be comfortable and safe environments, particularly for those older adults who do not need the full medical services available in assisted and skilled nursing facilities.
A Special Alternative for Veterans
Recently I found out about an interesting project that the Veteran’s Administration has been spearheading for several years called “Medical Foster Homes”. These homes provide an alternative to nursing homes for veterans who are unable to live safely and independently at home or lack a strong family caregiver. The homes are open to vets of all ages but the average age is 70.
Initiated by VA social workers in Little Rock, Arkansas, the program currently serves about 600 veterans and has cared for 1,500 since it began. The program has grown to operation in 36 states and is scheduled to expand to 10 more states soon. Program administrators have reported that 30 percent of veterans who would qualify for VA-paid nursing homes choose instead to live in – and to pay out of pocket for – medical foster homes. This is evidence, they state, that the vets prefer a home setting.
Living in a medical foster home is paid for by veterans from their VA and social security benefits – the monthly costs range from about $1400 to $2500 depending on the applicant’s income and the level of care he/she needs. It should be noted that the VA rigorously screens and monitors the Medical Foster Care homes – only about 1 in 10-15 applicants is accepted.
For more information, read the full New York Times article For Veterans, an Alternative to the Nursing Home or go to the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Foster Home website. You can also call the Marin County Veterans Service Office at (415)473-6193 and speak with Marin County Veterans Service Officer Sean Stephens. Sean’s email address is veterans@marincounty.org.
Won’t it be interesting if the VA’s valuable knowledge obtained as they continue to grow this popular housing solution can be translated for the general, non-veteran population of older adults? Stay tuned!
Volunteering as Older Adults – Why Is It a Good Idea and Where Can I Help?
Volunteering is good for our health.
Regular reports in local newspapers and publications extol the great contributions of Marin’s many individuals who generously volunteer their time and leadership skills to help local organizations.
A report published by the Marin Community Foundation entitled “Volunteering by Older Adults in Marin County: the Impact on Volunteers and the Organizations They Serve”, read:
“Older adult volunteers represent a significant resource that nonprofits can leverage during a time ofdecreased funding and increased demandfor services. Marin County’s growing population of older adults is rising to meet this increase in demand for volunteers.”
What may be less known, however, is how beneficial the practice of volunteerism is to the health and wellbeing of the volunteers themselves.
According to the MCF report, the following are some of the major benefits to older adults of serving as volunteers in their communities:
1. Enhanced sense of purpose and self-worth. Contributing wisdom and know-how based on past careers, special interests, experience and life lessons leaves volunteers with a sense of satisfaction and of being valued.
2. Improved mental and physical health. Over half of older adult volunteers report that volunteering contributes moderately or significantly to their physical health, helps them feel significantly better emotionally and “keeps their minds sharp.”
3. Increased confidence in one’s ability to make a difference in the community. Older adult volunteers emphasize how fulfilling it is to use their time, skills and experience to make differences in their communities.
4. Greater social support and community involvement. Volunteering helps most people feel more connected to their communities.
5. Exposure to new experiences and perspectives. Meeting new people, sharing skills, and hearing life stories leads to changing perspectives about community groups and issues.
6. Increased connection to younger generation. Older volunteers emphasize how energizing and valuable it is to spend time helping out younger people and feel that they are making a positive difference in these young folks’ lives.
Where Can I Go To Volunteer My Help?
This is easy to find out in Marin. We are fortunate to have Volunteer Marin, a program of Marin’s Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership. Founded in 1965 as the Volunteer Bureau, the Center has been building the capacity of volunteers and nonprofits for over 40 years.
If you are Internet savvy, it is simple to log in to a very cool tool: www.VolunteerMarin.org. Once on their home page, click on “Opportunities”. You will see a calendar of all kinds of opportunities, organizations, locations, dates and times that way.
You can also do wonderfully fruitful, customized searches by specifying your specifics and preferences, such as:
- your location, and how far you might be willing to travel
- your weekly schedule; what dates you are and are not available
- what kinds of things you would like to do, for instance:
-
- work with a particular organization
- address a specific issue area, like arts, education, health, hunger, environment, or justice.
- apply your special skills such as administrative, counseling, animal services, education, or construction.
- specify what kinds of people you’d like to serve, such as age, gender, ethnic group, LGBT, veterans, families, or visitors.
- select types of activity
- choose upcoming events that need volunteers
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I tried out the Volunteer Search Tool and entered a stipulation that volunteer opportunities be within 10 miles of my home in Mill Valley. Up came 120 different interesting opportunities for volunteering at great organizations, including:
- The Redwoods
- The Audubon Center & Sanctuary
- The Marine Mammal Center
- Project Coyote
- Hospice By The Bay
- Marin History Museum
- Fair Housing
- Marin Art & Garden Center
- Marin School Garden Network
- The Bay Model
- The Civic Center
- and more
Doing things like…
- tutoring kids
- serving as a tour guide or docent
- taking care of injured animals
- coordinating cultural and entertainment events
- visiting the dying
- serving hot meals to the homeless
- designing web site and marketing materials
- doing historical research
- reading stories to children
- managing a website
- leading arts groups
- working with autistic children
- and so much more
For those of you who are unable to access Volunteer Marin online, you can contact them on the telephone through their parent organization, the Center for Nonprofit and Volunteer Leadership at415-479-5710.
In this time of decreasing funding for excellent causes, and increased need by our fellow citizens, consider helping out and doing yourselves a favor, too. Try becoming a volunteer.
Loneliness Leads to Serious Health Risks for Seniors
In findings published recently from a UCSF study, researchers were surprised to find that even people who don’t live alone can be very lonely.
Many of us who provide counseling for residents in retirement homes find this to be true. Individuals can be living surrounded by many other co-residents and still feel massively lonely.
This loneliness, the UCSF study found, can result in a significant 59 percent greater risk of physical decline. Even worse, the hazard risk for severe loneliness was found to lead to a 45 percent greater risk of death.
This points to the need for support for older adults in terms of understanding, empathy, attention, and genuine caring and engagement. Buddy systems for new residents of retirement communities is something often found to help introduce the new resident to potential new friends in their new homes.
Most importantly now, though, is for health professionals and caring communities to first realize the severe impact of loneliness on the physical, cognitive and emotional health of their beloved elders.
For more information, click here to read the entire article on the UCSF study:
Loneliness linked to serious health problems, death among elderly
Neighbors Helping Neighbors: Online Community for “Tweeniors” and Older Adults in Marin
Neighbors Helping Neighbors: Building an Online Information/Community Hub in Marin
Prior to my career as a Marriage & Family Therapist, and gerontologist, I was involved in starting and growing several online communities. I have seen the tremendous benefits to individuals of a well-organized online information hub focused on the needs and interests of a particular demographic or special interest group.
This type of Online Information Resource Center assembles links, reviews and articles in an easily searchable, Central Hub to provide ease-of-use and convenience to the target population. I think we need such a Hub in Marin.
A vibrant, free, online information hub focused on older adults, adult children of older parents, baby boomers, “tweeniors”, and sandwich generation-ers – focused on life in Marin – would link Marinites up to the rich range of excellent resources, services, service providers, products, agencies and activities we have right here in our own backyards.
Plus, we would be able to share with each other how we have solved the wide variety of challenges and successes that come with growing older in general and in our local communities. We participants could serve as a kind of living encyclopedia of help and answers and ideas. Which leads me to the topic of…
Social Media (Online Community) Building Friendships
What we now call social media and used to call online community is a central part of such a community and demographic-focused web site. Members will come, attracted to the information resources, and stay, becoming participants, because of the supportive and interesting community of others with similar concerns and interests. Support and bonds and connections and friendships grow.
There are many examples of successful online communities which offer wonderful stories of mutual support. Some of you may remember The WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) which started in Sausalito in the 1980’s as a pioneering and legendary online community affiliated with the Whole Earth Review magazine. The WELL is still thriving and some of its members have been friends online now for 25 years. Dupont Circle Village offers a thriving senior online community as part of its Village membership in the DC area.
Older Population Thriving & Online Too
We are the fastest aging county in California. The fastest growing part of our population is the 85+ age group. Older people are turning to social media tools in droves. Something like 18,000,000 U.S. Facebook users are 55 and older.
For those older people who are not online, some simple and gentle classes and instruction would introduce them to the potential benefits of learning how to access resources and friends/family. I believe it would be empowering for them to at least have the opportunity to make an informed choice about whether the tools are for them or not.
Help! How Do We Find Answers?
The main complaint I hear from older people and their adult children or other loved ones is that they have an extremely difficult time finding answers and help for the dilemmas they are facing. They don’t know where to turn and when they do find phone numbers, they encounter what feels like a land of endless voice mail.
Many older people end up going to the ER’s with problems that would have been easily preventable if they had had help, knowledge, answers and support earlier on.
Isolation is a Major Health Issue
In addition, isolation becomes a tremendous issue for our older people as they experience vision impairment or physical conditions that prevent them from driving. Their worlds start to shrink.
We are blessed to have Whistlestop Wheels in Marin but it is important to note that Whistlestop is ADA paratransit – thus it is not senior transit – it is disabled transit with a rigorous screening process.
Isolation affects so many quality of life issues for seniors – it can lead to loneliness and depression, decline in cognitive capability and even lead to poor nutrition if the individual has no easy access to groceries and little inspiration to eat well-balanced meals.
An Invaluable Tool in Communication Toolkits
Vibrant online communities can provide a bridge between homebound people, give answers to those who are looking for ideas and shared personal experiences, referrals and tips for places to go for help, and friendly connections that can grow into friendships.
Experienced managers train volunteer moderators in conversation and group facilitation and various writing and administration tools. Online policies are crafted, posted and enforced to prevent scam artists from taking hold. Webinars and a host of free online classes can be offered.
Neighbors Helping Neighbors: An Online Information/Community Hub
As our federal, state and county budgets decrease, and at the same time our population is aging (“the Silver Tsunami” we’ve all heard about), what will be our plans for taking care of ourselves as we grow older? Will we choose to “age in place” or, as its being referred to now, “age in community”?
Will we need to look after each other along the lines of what our parents and grandparents did in smaller towns and closer-knit neighborhoods across the country?
Many people think so. There is a growing Village movement across the US and a growing NORC movement (NORC = Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities). These movements represent efforts by thousands of people in hundreds of communities to come up with ways to support each other as we get older.
We in Marin can also look out for each other as we grow older. We only need a will to do so. As I wrote last week for the Patch, the Mill Valley Village will join the group of 4 other Marin Villages (Ross Valley, Homestead Valley, Tiburon/Belvedere and Sausalito) later this year.
As we come up with a variety of ways to help each other out, we will benefit from a full use of a variety of communication tools to help us connect and collaboratively develop answers and support:
- face to face events to facilitate information exchange and relationships
- telephone help lines staffed by live operators
- an up-to-date central online information resource hub on aging in Marin
- vibrant and thriving grassroots online communities that offer us the ability to connect, form and maintain strong and caring relationships
Anybody else interested in exploring these possibilities? I’d love to hear from you!
When We Walk to the Edge of all the Light We Have
When We Walk to the Edge of all the Light We Have
“When we walk to the edge of all the light we have
And take that step into the darkness of the unknown,
We must believe that one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid for us to stand on,
or we will be taught how to fly.”
How Music Improves the Memory of Dementia Patients
A new, beautiful film called “Alive Inside” has premiered in New York City this month. The film features the story of a 92 year old gentleman with dementia named Henry Dryer who basically was almost noncommunicative until music came back into his life. He had loved music when he was young and now that he listens to music regularly, he sings songs, carries on brief conversations, can recall some memories and even dance. He has “come alive”.
The film tracks the lives of seven patients with dementia, including Henry, who have benefitted through the work of a nonprofit called Music & Memory which donates iPods and personalized music to people with dementia. “Music imprints itself on the brain deeper than any other human experience. Music evokes emotion, and emotion can bring with it memory… it brings back the feeling of life when nothing else can,” says renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks who appears in the film.
To read more, click here