A few weeks ago, I attended the first monthly Commission on Aging meeting I had been able to attend in over a year. The April COA meeting featured Marin County’sArea Agency on Aging’s quadrennial report on life for older adults in Marin called “Live Long, Live Well”, focused on the years 2012-2016.

The report is chocked full of fascinating demographics gathered from public and government statistics alphabolin as well as a local survey answered by 891 Marin citizens. For instance, while the overall population of Marin County is fairly static, the % change in population of persons 60 and over increased by 40% between 2000 and 2010. It is projected to increase another 27% between 2010 and 2020. The number of citizens 60 years and older in 2010 was 61,454.

Marin’s population is the oldest in the Bay Area. The oldest community in Marin is Dillon Beach. 30% of Marin’s 65+ population lives alone.  73% of renters 65+ live alone. More than half of all senior renters living alone in Marin are trying to survive on incomes below the Elder Index. The Elder Index is an adjusted Federal Poverty Level Index that takes into account the actual cost of living in any particular locality.

The slides outline information on many topics in an easy to read and understand format. Topics include overall health and specific medical conditions in our older population, employment and retirement statistics, gender differences in labor force distribution (more older women are working), the race/ethnicity of the 891 survey respondents, nutritional health, top activities, mobility, use of technology, access to caregivers and perceptions of quality of life.

The top three Issues and Concerns expressed by respondents were unemployment (27%), getting services (25%) and Abuse (23%).  The top 5 sources of information when searching for services are Word of Mouth, Marin IJ, Internet, Senior Centers and Whistlestop. 1 out of every 4 respondents are caregivers. The priority areas of concern moving forward are to improve access to services, resources and information; to find local and community-based solutions to address needs; and to improve the effectiveness of the existing services system. The Division of Aging and Adult Services is doing its best to stretch the budget dollars it has to address these issues.

For more information, you can view the slide presentation Area Plan on Aging 2012 – 2016

The Pew Research Center has just published a comprehensive new report called  “Digital Differences – While increased internet adoption and the rise of mobile connectivity have reduced many gaps in technology access over the past decade, for some groups digital disparities still remain.”

Here are some interesting quotes pertaining to use of the Internet by adults 65 and over:

“Yet even groups that have persistently had the lowest access rates have still seen significant increases over the past decade. In 2000, for instance, we found that there existed “a pronounced ‘gray gap’ as young people go online and seniors shun the internet. Adults age 65 and older are still significantly less likely to use the internet than other groups, but now 41% of them use the internet. In 2000, over five times as many adults under 30 used the internet as did adults 65 and older, but as of 2011 young adults’ adoption levels are only a little over twice that of the 65-and-over age group.”

And…

“Though one of the newer online activities the Pew Internet Project studies, as of 2011 social networking sites are used by 65% of all internet users—half of all American adults. Among internet users, we see a very strong correlation in use with age, as some 87% of internet users under 30 use these sites, compared with less than a third (29%) of those 65 and older. However, though their overall numbers are still relatively low, older adults have represented one of the fastest-growing segments of the social networking site-using population. This growth may be driven by several factors, some of which include the ability to reconnect with people from the past, find supporting communities to deal with a chronic disease, and connect with younger generations. “

To read the full report, click here. 

Personal historian and award-winning documentarian Dan Curtis has a very interesting blog. Based on his many years of work recording life stories, he assembled a list of 50 questions to inspire people to start talking about their lives and to share their stories. The top 10 questions are:

1. If you could do one thing over in your life, what would it be?
2. What makes  you happy?
3. Looking back on your life, what do you regret?
4. What do you believe to be true?
5. What is the secret to a happy life?
6. What do you believe happens to us after we die?
7. Who’s had the greatest influence on your life and why?
8. What are the qualities that you admire in your friends?
9. What is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do?
10. How would you describe yourself?

To read the rest of Dan’s list click here. 

THE DAKINI SPEAKS
by Jennifer Welwood

My friends, let’s grow up.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven’t noticed, let’s wake up and notice.

Look: everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple–how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.

Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.

To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion is exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride — let’s give ourselves to it!

Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage:
There isn’t one anyway, and the cost is too high.

We are not children any more.
The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let’s dance the wild dance of no hope!

Many of us know that this is true. However, this article gives some advice for how to present ourselves authentically and proudly to highlight the benefits of hiring someone with experience and wisdom who is current on what is happening in the workplace now as well. From MSNBC: Overcoming Age-related Biases in Your Job Search.

Here’s an interesting article from Fast Company about the boost in oxytocin found in people trusting and enjoying social media interchanges. Interesting! No wonder it can be so much fun and so addictive too.

“While there was overwhelming evidence that oxytocin played an important role in economic [online] transactions, I theorized it would also affect a person engaging on Facebook and Twitter. What is social networking but a social transaction? So Zak took my blood, I got on Twitter for 10 minutes, then he took it again, then compared to the two samples. In those intervening 10 minutes my levels of oxytocin had risen 13.2%–as much as a groom at a wedding. (My wife: “That’s pathetic.”)

Subsequently Zak traveled to Korea and redid my tweeting experiment, this time with three journalists using Facebook. The result: They all demonstrated increased levels of oxytocin. In fact, the oxytocin levels of one of the journalists, who was writing to his girlfriend, shot up nearly 150%. In other words, the brain’s release of oxytocin may correspond with the depth of connection between two people online.”

Check it the complete article.  Fast Company Article