More Seniors are Smoking Marijauna
Photo: Associated Press
The Associated Press has put Matt Sendensky on the aging beat. The fact that AP sees aging as an important beat is one sign of Changing Aging in America and here's another one courtesy of Sedensky on how marijuana use is increasing among U.S. seniors.
In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana.
The number of people aged 50 and older reporting marijuana use in the prior year went up from 1.9 percent to 2.9 percent from 2002 to 2008, according to surveys from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
The rise was most dramatic among 55- to 59-year-olds, whose reported marijuana use more than tripled from 1.6 percent in 2002 to 5.1 percent.
Observers expect further increases as 78 million boomers born between 1945 and 1964 age. For many boomers, the drug never held the stigma it did for previous generations, and they tried it decades ago.
Some have used it ever since, while others are revisiting the habit in retirement, either for recreation or as a way to cope with the aches and pains of aging.
Siegel walks with a cane and has arthritis in her back and legs. She finds marijuana has helped her sleep better than pills ever did. And she can't figure out why everyone her age isn't sharing a joint, too.
"They're missing a lot of fun and a lot of relief," she said.
Why We Gain Weight As We Age
One of the most popular events at Ecumen communities is exercise class. A story this morning on National Public radio - Why We Gain Weight as We Age - illustrates how important exercise is to wellness as we age.
Rock On, Dick Clark: Vance Opperman's Letter to the Wall Street Journal
Vance Opperman, publisher of Twin Cities Business Magazine, sent an extremely good letter to Wall Street Journal Editor- in-Chief Robert Thomson. Click here for full text. It's the subject of his "Open Letter" column in his Twin Cities Business Magazine. Vance says, "People who keep working in their golden years should be celebrated, not denigrated." Couldn't agree more. In fact, states that figure out how to tap the skills of older workers are going to find themselves better positioned economically and competitively.
Future of Aging Services Conference - Social Media Workshop
If you're going to be at the AAHSA Future of Aging Services Conference and Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., this Wednesday, please join Ecumen at the 12:30 to 2 p.m. session on social media. I'll be joining Larry Zook, CEO of Landis Homes in Pennsylvania; Ted Goins, president of Lutheran Services for the Aging, in North Carolina and Craig Collins-Young, who leads internet content for AAHSA, in a panel discussion called "Using Social Media to Tell Your Story." Will be a lot of fun. What's interesting is that just 5 years ago, we wouldn't have such a discussion. As Bob Dylan sang, "The Times, They are a Changing."
Changing Aging in Bayfield, Wisconsin, Through CORE
Why should Arizona or Florida be the meccas for enjoying one's senior years?
We have incredibly beautiful areas in the Upper Midwest that people don't want to leave . . . One such place is Bayfield, Wisconsin, a picturesque village on the North Shore of Wisconsin overlooking the Chequamegon Bay and The Apostle Islands. As you can see from the picture above, it's right out of Norman Rockwell's studio.
A very cool group of neighbors sees Bayfield as a destination for a lifetime. They have formed CORE Community Resources, which is empowering seniors in the Bayfield area to remain independent and involved in their community.
CORE has a definite "changing aging" vision:
To create a community that becomes a national example of how neighbors can help seniors
live and thrive and benefit their community.
CORE is an example of a new movement where people are joining together to shape their future and "age in community." Another local example is Mill City Commons, which Ecumen helped spawn in Minneapolis.
CORE volunteers provide transportation; a wide array of educational and speaker series; a store called ENCORE, wellness programs, home repair, navigation and links to health care services, and more.
The Upper Midwest has some of the most beautiful places to age, but it's going to take groups of people to make them aging friendly. Kudos to CORE for seeing the possibilities in aging and what they could mean for the future vitality of a community.
Innovation and PERS (Personal Emergency Response System)
Lori Orlov at Aging in Place Technology Watch has an interesting post on the lack of "innovation" in PERS devices or Personal Emergency Response Systems (known by many as the terrible "I've fallen and can't get up" commercials). This device is going to totally evolve, especially as technology companies and senior services pros work closer together. We recently met with a major global company that wants to serve the senior market, but they said they don't know anything about seniors and senior services. Well we don't know anythnig about manufacturing the products they develop. Collaboration: the key to living better.
Ecumen and Alzheimer's Association CLASS Act Op-ed
An op-ed in today's Saint Paul Pioneer Press by Kathryn Roberts, president and CEO of Ecumen, and Mary Birchard, executive director of the Minnesota/North Dakota chapter of the Alzheimer's Association follows:
Americans Need a New Way to Pay for Long-Term Services and Support
Congress last considered transforming the inadequate way we pay for long-term care 20 years ago when the bi-partisan Pepper Commission created its Call for Action for health reform. Nothing happened.
Fast forward to last fall: Authorities filed charges against a Minnesota farmer whose alleged crime was keeping his wife at home with him. She sat in the easy chair, he on the davenport and, when she wandered, as many people with Alzheimer's do, a wiggling chain attached to her called him to her aid. Authorities faulted his ingenuity, arrested him and made his wife go to a nursing home before finally dropping charges. She returned home.
At least he had a plan. Most of us don't. So let's have a televised congressional health care summit and include a good idea - the CLASS Act (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports). In both Senate and House health bills, it would increase personal responsibility; empower more people with affordable services; and slow growth to Medicaid, America's de facto long-term services insurer.
Someone develops Alzheimer's every 70 seconds. Nearly 800,000 people nationally had strokes last year - the largest cause of adult disability. We don't know what's next. We do know that the overwhelming majority of Americans are uninsured for Alzheimer's care or other supportive services, leaving most of us vulnerable to a cycle of personal stress and fiscal loss. It's unacceptable.
People - often in crisis - frequently scramble to find supportive services only to learn they're not Medicare-covered. After spending into poverty and qualifying for Medicaid, they learn their only choice for shelter and care is most often an institutional government-funded nursing home.
Seventy-three percent of family caregivers work outside the home. Two-thirds have missed work to provide care - a $34 billion business productivity hit. Employee health suffers. A new study of the National Alliance of Caregiving at the University of Pittsburgh shows employee caregivers cost businesses an average of 8 percent in increased health costs or $13 billion annually. Many caregivers stop personal savings. Examples abound of caregiving families, including those of newly returned veterans, impoverishing themselves.
These families are giving us a lot. For example, family care for Alzheimer's in Minnesota is valued at nearly $2 billion. And every 1 percent decline in family caregiving costs state government $30 million.
The CLASS Act would provide coverage where most have none. Through voluntary payroll deduction, Americans 18-plus would pay premiums - set by the Secretary of Health - building a national risk pool minus pre-existing condition penalties. Upon five years of vesting, someone needing help with daily activities, such as dressing, would receive a cash benefit to self-direct.
This national benefit would be self-funded by premiums and earned interest, not tax dollars. Some have concerns about its solvency; however, legislation mandates solvency for 75 years, and Congressional Budget Office modeling shows it meets this requirement.
Some are concerned the CLASS Act would threaten private insurance. It won't. Few have private long-term care insurance. A new approach will elevate the need for service and care planning and spur new products, such as supplemental insurance plans - similar to those for Medicare - extending the national benefit. We'll also see state innovation wrapping around the benefit, slowing growth to Medicaid and strengthening it for those unable to escape poverty.
An average $75 daily benefit for enrollees sounds small. But it would be more than $27,000 annually a person could self-direct. A husband could get respite, paying for a half day of in-home services for his wife with Alzheimer's. It could provide someone with multiple sclerosis morning assistance to dress and continue working.
People moving into their 70s have more disabilities than our previous generation. Most young people have no insurance for a long-term disability. Policymakers didn't see this when Medicare and Medicaid were formed in 1965. The CLASS Act does.
Jim Klobuchar - The Rebellion of Women Reaches His House
Football season has ended: Perfect timing for this story from Ecumen blogger Jim Klobuchar:
I want to be the first to announce the arrival of an exciting shift in the vocabulary of professional football, direct from the lips of an original woman.
My wife Susan glows with the auras of the emancipated American woman. She is Harvard-educated with an intercontinental range in taste and action. She adores books written by Nobel-prize winning authors from Egypt and Latin America, and cooks with an easy sophistication that rolls the eyes of gourmets. Further, she regrets the absence of women from the lineups of big league baseball because as a star of her fourth grade team in Washingon D.C. she envisioned a career as a right-handed pitcher in the American League, having perfected a wicked slider.
I tell you these things to explain my wife’s bizarre behavior a few Sundays ago when the professional football regular season, defying all odds, actually approached its end.
I settled in my basement study, working the TV control to adjust the sound. The game had just begun, surviving the usual five-minute agony of the national anthem as it is mauled in the stadiums of America today. My wife walked in and plopped a hammer and a heavy screw driver on the cabinet top next to my desk.
After studying this scene uneasily for a few moments, I said, “welcome. That was a fine lunch. What are your intentions with these violent instruments?”
Her response: “You’ve been telling me for years that football when it’s watched at home is a communal game, where families can gather and cheer or groan together. So when I come downstairs to join you, the game starts and the conversation ends. For the next three hours you’re the transplanted Sphinx. I like to be near the action so I’m going to re-hang some pictures in the family room.”
The family room is next door to my office. The game was on and a hellish hacking and hammering soon broke out from the adjacent walls. It didn’t take long to decode my wife’s strategy. “Won’t you join me,” I said sweetly. “Feel free to ask any questions to get caught up with the game.” She said, “I remember your telling me that you used to teach a football clinic for women.”
“Right. We held class every other Tuesday. More than 200 women would gather to decomplicate the mysteries of football. It was a landmark in the field of higher education.”
“Did you ever talk about tight ends?
“Right. Bad jokes aside, the tight end is one of the bigger pass receivers. He is big enough to double as a blocker so he lines up close, or tight, to the linemen.”
“All right, “ my wife said, “if there are tight ends, who are the loose ends?
“The what...?
And then the light flashed, boldly and inescapably. My wife had scored. She had cut through the football gobbledygook about wideouts and flankers who spread out near the sidelines. The female instinct for common sense and clarity had done it again. My wife had cut to the bone. If there are tight ends, there have to be loose ends. I’m going to petition the football arbiters to change the gobbledygook. No more wideouts. From now on they are tight ends and loose ends.
And in at least one one household, it’s better than sorry ends. I may ask you to sign the petition.
10 Lessons in Innovation From 3M
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Participants in Velocity, which is an intensive yearlong leadership development program for 20 Ecumen employees, recently spent the day at 3M. The focus of the visit was innovation. Among the many highlights was time spent with Alex Cirillo. To say Alex has a diverse background would be an understatement. In his career, among other things, he's been a monk, elementary school teacher, prison guard, scientist, CEO of 3M Canada and now head of 3M's foundation. He also was actually at Woodstock (Yes, the Woodstock.) Here are 10 Lessons Velocity participants picked up from Alex and 3M regarding innovation:
1. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. (3M has the capability to make a couch come out of a Swiss Army knife. So what?)
2. Resign yourself to the fact that there is no such thing as a LTQF (long-term quick fix).
3. Be "multilingual" – this means be able to speak with other areas of your company/world, share knowledge, build collaboration.
4. Be clear about the context in which you're working. (Fish swimming in a fishbowl might think they're in the Atlantic Ocean and the biggest fish in the world. They're not. They're missing the context.)
5. Keep your perspective.
6. Know when to think in Black and White and when to think in Color. (Oftentimes simple is the very best.)
7. The thing you should work hardest at is to build confidence in your people. Innovation is a "contact sport," people have to be confident in collaborating and working with others.
8. Be a teacher.
9. Be personally committed to making yourself and those around you excited about innovating.
10. Be positive, open to change and hungry to learn.
There Has to be a Better Way to Provide Veterans' Long-Term Care
Here's another egregious example of why America needs to transform how we pay for long-term care. NOW on PBS recently had a show that looked at the question: "Who's helping our wounded vets?" Much of that help is coming from family members working to exhaustion and financial ruin to provide long-term care for their loved ones who have returned from the Middle East with life altering injuries. It's brutally sad, and it makes inaction in Washington D.C. among members of Congress all the more infuriating.
Above is a photo of American heros Anthony Thompson and his wife Ivonne Thompson. Ivonne has a blog chronicling the progress of her husband who suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Amid this difficulty, check out Sunday's Saint Paul Pioneer Press story on an innovative Veterans Affairs initiative that is working.