Writers Go After IMDb to Get Ages Removed - Get Hip to the Age Wave Hollywood
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is a great information source on movies. Apparently too much information is being shared in some film industry members' eyes. Fearing backlash from ageism in Hollywood, the Writers Guild of America is seeking removal of birthdates from the site.
In a country where people have much to contribute for much longer than ever before, we're competitively shooting ourselves in the foot with an ageist society.
LinkedIn for Senior Services and Aging
It would be beneficial for LinkedIn to add senior services and aging to its profession field. Thousands of people work in the U.S. senior services profession or the field of aging, but there's no category for it on LinkedIn. Find the age wave, LinkedIn. Please add senior services and aging as a "profession" category.
Try the Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator
This calculator doesn't take too long (5 to 10 minutes) and is kind of fun. It asks you 40 health history type questions and then gives you a calculation about the age destination you're currently on . . . Curious if you think it's any good.
Where is the Good Looking Commode and Other Durable Medical Equipment?
Why is so much medical equipment that more and more consumers are purchasing for their homes - not for an institution - look so cold and blah? Check out McKesson's web site for example. YUCK. . . . couldn't they dress up their shower chairs and commodes a bit (like the one above)? Maybe some color . . . .tell me why this is the best commode . . . Could we have a little bit of creativity folks . . . just a little.
Famed designer Michael Graves, who also is paralyzed, said this in an interview at Caring.com in response to why this is such a neglected area of design:
. . . . there hasn't been any competition. The makers just want to get it out on the market, even if it's only half right. But you can't act that way. I remember one of the design magazines had a competition for product of the year, and the only one in this area was a wheelchair. They gave it first place because there was nothing else. And it was just awful. The judges didn't know and the designer didn't know.
Someone is going to get this design stuff right, and people are going to buy their products. Note to McKesson and other durable medical product provides . . . you're creating a consumer product . . . more people want to live at home . . . Give us some new options.
New Study Says People Get Happier With Age
A happy customer at an Ecumen senior housing community
A new study says that people get happier with age. I totally believe that most people do. If you want a drug-free upper, visit a senior housing community. In the best communities you'll find people laughing, taking time to take time, and enjoying the moment. It's a stimulant.
More on the new study from the Scientific American blog:
General well-being (characterized by how people currently felt about their life) fell sharply through the age of 25 and tapered more gradually overall until the ages of 50 to 53. And by the early 70s, that wellbeing was back up to late-teen levels.
"As people age, they are less troubled by stress and anger," the researchers noted in their study, which was led by Arthur Stone, of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook University, and published online May 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "And although worry persists, without increasing, until middle age, " they continued, "it too fades after the age of 50."
The data come from a 2008 phone survey performed by the Gallup Organization of 340,847 randomly selected adults aged 18 to 85. The respondents represented a fairly average slice of the U.S. population, with about 29 percent holding a college degree and a median monthly average household income between $3,000 and $3,999. During the call, participants were asked to rate how they currently felt their life stood on a scale of 0 ("the worst possible life for you") to 10 ("the best possible life for you"). They were then asked if they had felt different affective states (happiness, enjoyment, stress, sadness, anger and worry) "a lot of the day yesterday." Keeping questions to relatively current periods in time by asking about yesterday as opposed to the previous week, month or year helped the researchers avoid some of the retrospective bias that might have played a role in similar past studies.
Thank You to Randy Wanek and Jennifer Kohl
Life is short. It's a cliche, but such a fact, even when you live past the century mark.
Yesterday several hundred people packed a Fergus Falls church to honor Randy Wanek (pictured above), an Ecumen leader in Pelican Rapids, Minn. Randy died on Friday of cardiac arrest. He was only 55-years old. Last month we lost another colleague - Jennifer Kohl - who worked with us in White Bear Lake, Minn.
Life is short. And even though we all know it, and we all know we are going to die one day, it doesn't dull the loss people feel when the life of a person they care about ends.
Thank you to Randy and Jennifer for choosing to spend time with us during their precious time on this earth.
Jim Klobuchar - A Biking Hardhead Reforms
Photo: Jim Klobuchar and Ecumen CEO Kathryn Roberts at the recent Ecumen Leadership Conference
A lot of people will be biking this weekend; a Memorial Weekend treat follows from Ecumen blogger Jim Klobuchar. Have a great weekend!
I was raised to practice the creeds of confession and reasonable remorse as the safest way to deal with my fallibilities; also to reduce our incarceration time in purgatory. In later years I found this to be not only a modest code of conduct but a pre-emptive strategy to deal with the wails and catcalls of the more than 200 men and women who ride in the week-long bicycle tour that I organize.
It will be our 36th in June, begun in the mid 1970s when most of America was unaware of the joys of romping through the countryside on a multi-geared bicycle. It was so long ago that riders showed up in Oskosh b’Gosh pants, baseball caps and rubber tennis shoes. Everyone biked with a full load of gear in paniers hanging from the rear racks. There were no biking trails. We rode on dirt roads when the pavement ran out. One year the highway department scheduled a detour on the highway near Sauk Rapids, MN and we walked our bikes four miles through a cornfield.
One stubby little guy, who later became part of the lore of the ride, arrived with a beanie on his head topped by a little spinning propeller and wearing black street shoes.. The practical jokers of the ride were totally merciless. It was not unknown for one of our folks to check out his saddle bags after riding 35 miles to lunch-- and finding two 10-pound dumbbells neatly packed in his rainjacket.
Eventually we graduated into Tour ‘d France biking shirts and foot clips, 32-speed bicycles, lightweight helmets, GPS direction finders and heartbeat monitors. The ride became more than a ride. It is a now an open-ended reunion of people who have been doing it for years, who know all of the secrets of their road pals and are loosely united in the same way the survivors of the rack were united in the Middle Ages.
Most of them are still strong distance riders, many of them past the age of 50, 60, 70 and more.But they do remember the early years when we went 100 miles a day, or then 90 and later 75. They sent focus groups to negotiate with me, appealing for humane distances.
The turning point came 15 years ago when we began in a hot wind out of Monticello in central Minnesota heading for the town of Osakis, 87 miles away. The wind was coming straight out of the northwest, at least 25 miles an hour. Coincidentally it was exactly the direction we were going.
We lunched in the basement of a little church en route. People slept on the floor for more than an hour. By midafternoon a cloudburst struck and by 9 p.m. most of us, drenched, reached park where we camped. At 10 p.m.somebody rattled my tent and asked if I was the leader of this biking group.
“Why do you want to know?”
“There’s a guy on the phone at the police station who needs to talk to you,” he said.
It turned out to be one of my riders, wanting to know if his wife had called, worried about him.
“Why are you phoning? We’re here in the park in Osakis. Where are you?
“I’m in Grantsburg, Wisconsin.”
“What are you doing in Wisconsin?”
“When I started out in that wind, and we stopped for lunch at the little church in Rice, and then you all went back into the headwind—it nearly blew my off the bike. I said ‘these people are crazy.’ So I turned around and headed strait east for Wisconsin. It was a 25-mile an hour tailwind. All the way. It was glorious. I was totally happy. I’m still happy. I’m halfway through a T-bone steak. If my wife calls—“
I told the cop if his wife called, tell her to try all the motels in Grantsburg. The cop thought that was nice and chivalrous.
But I did conduct an examination of conscience the next year. You will be delighted to learn that the average distance of our six days in the bluff country of southeastern Minnesota will be 42 miles a day, and my popularity has suddenly soared.
About Jim Klobuchar, Ecumen "Changing Aging" contributor: In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, including Minnesota's senior U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.
Alzheimer's Disease, A $20 Trillion Cost
Without an effective treatment, the cumulative costs of caring for patients with Alzheimer's disease in the United States could top $20 trillion over the next 40 years, according to a new report from the Alzheimer's Association, called "Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer's Disease: A National Imperative
- By the year 2050, the number of people with Alzheimer's disease will climb from roughly 5.1 million today to an estimated 13.5 million.
- If that happens, annual costs would also rise—from $172 billion to more than $1 trillion.
- Costs to Medicare will jump by more than 600% to $627 billion per year. That compares to $88 billion today. Meanwhile, Medicaid costs will soar to $178 billion, up from the current $34 billion, according to the report.
Hardy Rickbeil - A Lifelong Learner, A Lifelong Teacher
Photo: Hardy Rickbeil at age 100 doing his daily workout.
On Sunday May 16, the opening of new senior housing was celebrated by Ecumen in Worthington, Minnesota. On the same day, Worthington community leader and Ecumen customer Hardy Rickbeil died at age 101, having surpassed his goal of living a century. Hardy was all about building community and moving forward, so he would have loved the standing-room only crowd at the grand opening celebration. And he would have been humbled by the following headline that appeared above an article about his life in the Worthington Daily Globe newspaper:
Remarkable. Mentor. Generous. Promoter. Considerate. Coach. Volunteer. Honest. Friend.
More excerpts from the Daily Globe on Hardy, a remarkable person . . .
Early Life
Born June 21, 1908, in North Dakota, Hardy moved at age 12 with his family to Worthington, where his father became the proprietor of the local hardware store. He grew up helping in the family business, but went away to college with a dream of becoming a basketball coach. That dream was cut short, however, when his father suffered some setbacks and health issues, and Hardy returned home to help out, eventually taking over the business.
“I was not happy about that,” admitted Hardy about leaving college in a Daily Globe article marking his 100th birthday in June 2008, “but it was a real opportunity. I had the opportunity to dig right into the community as a businessman with the Chamber of Commerce — back then it was called the Commercial Club — and I became a Mason and a member of Kiwanis.”
Hardy’s relationship with longtime friend Bethel Knapp blossomed into a romance, and they were married in 1931. The Rickbeils had two children, Richard “Dick” Rickbeil and Dianne Rickbeil Frerichs, and their family later grew to include 11 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. Bethel died in 2003.
Entrepreneur, Learner and Teacher
Under Hardy’s ownership, the Rickbeil’s hardware enterprise grew to encompass appliances, furniture, marine, repair shop and warehouse and delivery services in 40,000 square feet of display and storage space in downtown Worthington. Hardy incorporated the business and made several of his employees officers of the company. He also became involved in state and national associations such as the Minnesota Retail Federation and National Retail Hardware Association.
Although he never had a career as a sports coach, he became a coach to his employees and was always a “straight shooter,” according to George Habeck, who worked in the appliance store for 26 years.
“Hardy was the one who really interviewed me, and he said, ‘Remember this, try to follow this (priority) in your life: God, your country, your family and then your job. Try to keep that in perspective. Don’t ever put your job in front of those other things.’ That really impressed me right from the start.”
But Habeck was also a bit perplexed when Hardy gave him “homework” along with the job.
“He said, ‘Here’s a book. I want you to read this and give me a report,’” Habeck remembered. “The book was ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ I asked some of the other (salesman), Frank Schuster and Mike Christensen, about it, and they said, ‘Yeah, we had to do that, too.’”
Hardy did his own homework, studying trade journals and merchandise materials and underlining as he went, keeping abreast of all the latest information. He stressed exercising both mind and body throughout his lifetime.
“From my desk, I could see Hardy’s desk upstairs” in the appliance store, Habeck said. “I could see him on the phone talking, then all of a sudden he’d be gone, then I’d see him again. He was doing deep knee bends while he was on the phone. He was multitasking. And this was when he was in his 80s. Up to the very end, he had a very sharp mind and was always up on everything, stayed on top of everything. He kept a file on every individual who worked there, and when I retired, he presented me with the file folder.
“He took a personal interest in you, too,” added Habeck. “He knew I had high blood pressure, so every once in a while he’d leave me an article that he’d read about high blood pressure. Besides losing a former employer, I also lost a friend.”
Heaven on Earth
All of Hardy’s family, colleagues and friends recall that he lived his life by the Golden Rule — do unto others as you would have them do unto you — but he utilized and created many other slogans in his business dealings.
“Rickbeil’s had a slogan, ‘We serve to serve again,’” recalled fellow downtown businessman Russ Rickers, whose photography studio shared an alley with several of the Rickbeil’s stores. “‘We sell the best and service the rest,’ he’d always say about the repair department. Hardy would always talk about competition, that competition is good, something like ‘Competition makes you better if you have what it takes.’” . . . .
Later in life, Hardy became an active member of Ecumen's Meadows of Worthington senior living community, and his was a familiar figure inside and outside The Meadows.
In the 2008 article, Hardy said the grounds patrol provided him with exercise and relaxation. He loved to be outdoors and once was an avid big game hunter, although now his hunts were for trash.
“These cumulus clouds are fantastic,” Hardy said about being in the outdoors. “It’s almost heaven on earth, so why be in a hurry to die?”
Hardy Rickbiel, a man in motion, making a difference. Thank you, Hardy. Enjoy the real heaven.
Jim Klobuchar - The Hazards of Finding Direction in our Lives
Jim Klobuchar, Ecumen "Changing Aging" contributor: In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, including Minnesota's senior U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.
The Hazards of Finding Direction in Our Lives
Since the Neanderthals found their way around by tracking the sun, the make-life-easier industries have been tying to rescue us from simplicity.
We have graduated into a frenzy of automated route-finding symbolized by the GPS, sitting imperiously on millions of dashboards. It is the electronic successor to St. Christopher, who for decades was the patron saint of travelers until being downgraded from sainthood 30 years ago by the Vatican’s well-intended but somewhat rash housecleaning of border-line saints. My miseries of a week ago in southern Minnesota made me yearn for the now-mothballed services of.Christopher, who is sadly functioning now in the minor leagues of sainthood.
You know about the speed-of-light advances in direction finding since the compass and road map. The pioneers before the compass were craftier folk like Eskimoes and Scandinavians. They found that if you drew an imaginary line between the two outlying stars of the Big Dipper, and multiplied that distance by five, you would find your way infallibly to the North Star. This came to be called True North. That was an illusion, because there is another force of nature called magnetic deviation, which can be caused by the presence of mineral deposits on the earth, and can land you in the middle of a lake if you fly light planes and don’t know about deviation..
Later the on-line masterminds created interactive road maps that could take you from your doorstep to your favorite casino in the Mojavi Desert and, allowing for a pizza stop in Wichita, come within inches of measuring the precise distance and elapsed time. Like many, I relied on this flawless system until I found myself at night in the middle of a country bridge that literally led nowhere, abandoned two years before.
Nonetheless I bought my highly intelligent wife a $300 GPS for her birthday three years ago, knowing her fondness for the latest miracle devices but aware of her short attention span for gadgets. She uses it twice a year and we can now happily follow the GPS to the nearest Walgreen’s, a half mile and one left turn from our house.
So a week ago I was scoping out the route of a bike ride I organize annually, with a friend who enjoys these missions. Although we rode in my car, he brought along his personal GPS, realizing my high-tech limitations I told him I’d grown up in northern Minnesota where inventive iron miners developed makeshift devices to serve as compasses. One of theirs had run into another hunter from the cities. The city hunter noticed the local hunter staring into the reflectorized bottom of a snuff can. “Does that tell you directions?” the visitor asked. “No,” the local replied glumly, “but it does tell you who’s lost.”
As he drove toward a town in southeastern Minnesota I advised my friend to head for Highway 16. I dozed off but awoke to voices. It turned out there was a state AND a county 16, heading in different directions. And the authoritative female voice coming from the GPS was telling us to take Highway 16. But there were two voices, I swear. “The voice on the GPS is a robot,” I said to my friend, “why are you yelling at a robot? She can’t hear.”
He denied yelling at the invisible robot. I was conciliatory. “Probably mistaken,” I said. “Which route are you taking?”
“Highway 16,” he said cryptically. After considering a coin flip, somebody got out a road map. It worked.
You could almost hear St. Christopher applauding.