GBO NEWS: Press Meet-Up at GSA; Geoffrey Holder’s Last Dance; Being Mortal
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations
October 14, 2014 — Volume 14, Number 14
Editor’s Note: GBO News, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generation publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. If you receive the table of contents as e-mail, just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org.
IN THIS ISSUE: Best Halloween Groan? Pirates.ARG.
1. CONFERENCE BEAT: ***MUST REASINGGen Beat Reporters to Meet-Up at GSA in D.C., Nov. 5-9; *** “A List” of Journalists (Kristof, Pauley and others) Slated for “Encore Nation” Conference in Arizona, Oct. 28-30.
2. MORTAL COIL: ***Leo Holder’s Luminous Account of His Father, Dancer Geoffrey Holder’s, Final “Impromptu Dance” at 84; *** “What Happens When We All Live to 100?” by Gregg Easterbrook, in The Atlantic; *** “More Chinese American Elders Stating Their End-of-Life Wishes,” by Stephanie Wu.
3. THE BOOKMOBILE: *** Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, MD; *** Dr. Lani’s No-Nonsense Bone Health Guide, by Lani Simpson with Mary Claire Blakeman
4. GEN BEATLES NEWS: ***Arizona’s “Connect 60+” Website Give Forum to Trudy Schuett among six blogging “Champions”; ***Tips From Robert Finn in Two Good Sources-Multiple Sclerosis Discovery Forum and Alzforum.
1. CONFERENCE BEAT
*** Gen Beat Reporters Will Meet-Up in Washington, D.C., Nov. 5-9, for the Gerontological Society of America (GSA). Journalists can apply for complimentary press registration at the conference Media website. GSA’s 67th Annual Scientific Meeting, will be one-stop shopping for reporters able to get there with over 400 plenaries, presentations and paper on pretty much every topic under the aging sun. About 4,000 experts will be there. Although the “A” in GSA is for “American,” gerontologists attend from all over the world, making the story shopping more akin to a trip to Trader Joe’s—interesting, sometimes surprising, mostly accessible.
Plenty of press events are lined up, including daily media lunch presentations and meet-up reception in the Press Room on Friday, Nov. 7, 5:30-7 p.m. There we can kick back with some nibbles and a relaxing beverage. GBONews will be on hand, a supporter of the journalists in aging program with GSA and New America Media. We’ll take the opportunity to swing around the room for brief intros, so everyone can find out who else is there and get a wide-angle view of what people are covering. For those wishing to hang together for the evening, we will have, as always, a “no-host” restaurant reservation nearby at a convivial and moderately priced place.
*** Press lunch briefings at the conference will start on Thurs., Nov. 6, with a session on new findings being presented at the conference on elder abuse and an update on the effort to get Congress to reauthorize (lingo for continuing the program) the Elder Justice Act. The briefing Fri., Nov. 7, will be on the boom in new technology for senior living. Experts and entrepreneurs will be there, such as Stephen Johnston, co-founder of the venture capital group, Aging 2.0, to discuss new gizmos and services, as well as issues of privacy and the digital divide. The Sat., Nov. 8 session will highlight a mix of new research at the conference on developments in such areas a senior nutrition, mild cognitive impairment and pain management.
For questions contact GSA’s Todd Kluss at tkluss@geron.org; (202) 587-2839.
Reporters can search the online conference program according to topic, speakers, location and so on by going to. You can bypass the first box asking you to create an itinerary simply by clicking “Continue as Guest.”
*** An “A” List of Journalists Is Slated for the Encore Nation Conference being held in Tempe, Ariz., from October 28-30. Generations beat reporters can apply for press registrations, if you expect to be in the neighborhood. (Tempe, site of Arizona State University, is in the Metro Phoenix area.)
We reported a couple of issues back that the program keynoter will be New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. He and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, are coauthored the new book, A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity (Random House). The book aims to document people who are making the world a better place and to provide a guide for readers to do the same. Kristof states that if more people pursue late- life “encore careers rather than just fussing over their golf game, then baby boomers could . . . have consequences for society as profound as we did in our youth.” (Why not both? This editor isn’t much for golf, but my brother Rick, 74, not only plays avidly, but also continues teaching at a community college and coaching track and cross country.) Kristof and WuDunn were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and previously co-authored the #1 New York Times bestseller, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.
But wait—there are more. Also on the program are journalists Farai Chideya, Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute; New York Times “Fixes” blogger and author David Bornstein; Chris Farrell, author of the new book, Unretirement: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community and the Good Life (Bloomsbury Press); former San Francisco reporter and news anchor, Ysabel Duron, founder and executive director of Latinas Contra Cancer, and 2013 winner of a Purpose Prize; and former NBC journalist Jane Pauley, author of Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life (Simon & Schuster.
Mucky-mucks and hoopla aside, invited participants to the conference are remarkable social-change activists, many of who have won Encore.org’s Purpose Prize (the “Genius Awards” of aging), and are among the most fascinating people (and stories) you’ll ever find in one place. The conference will also include presentation of the 2014 Purpose Prize winners. They are social innovators over 60 who are addressing tough social challenges. This year, two winners will receive $100,000 each and four additional winners will receive individual awards of $25,000. Many others are also tapped as Purpose Prize Fellows.
Attending journalists will be invited to a Media Mixer, Oct. 28, 3 pm, to meet with 2014 winners, fellows and prior honorees. To register and learn more about the conference, visit the Encore website. Reporters with questions can contact Marci Alboher or Aanchal Dhar.
2. MORTAL COIL
Thanks to GBONews.org readers for all the great feedback on “Ageist Provocateur Zeke Emanuel’s Jovial Death Wish at 75,” in last week’s GBONews.org. Among them, documentary producer Dale Bell directed us to the most remarkably inspiring and joyous essay GBO’s editor has ever read about, of all things, someone’s death.
For anyone on the generations beat, Leo Holder’s deeply moving and surprisingly elevating essay about his father’s passing will provide you the perfect antidote to Dr. Emanuel’s palliative fantasies and all of the verbal sparring he’s provoked (including by me). At age 84, the great dancer-choreographer-polymath Geoffrey Holder , his son shows, almost literally danced from his deathbed to his final breath and perhaps beyond. Many will only remember Holder, who died at the beginning of this month, from his “Uncola” 7-up commercials decades ago. More importantly, he and his wife of six decades, the equally accomplished performer Carmen de Lavallade, were royalty on the American stage.
Leo’s remembrance, “This Impromptu Dance”, describes scenes of his father’s final choreography that should answer every ugly little doubt Zeke Emanuel might harbor about the inevitable waning he predicts of one’s creative powers after age 75. A mere outlier, as Emanuel would contend? No, sir. Geoffrey Holder’s last pavane, far from an isolated exception, is like the end of so many bright spirits in guiding the rest of us toward the possibility of embracing who we are in our terminal instant. Sadness, yes, but affirmation is possible, too. Link to it and read this ennobling and richly satisfying account.
*** Thanks also to Lynette Evans for noting that same issue of The Atlantic Magazine with Emanuel’s essay includes an extensive article on the science of aging, “What Happens When We All Live to 100?” by Gregg Easterbrook.
Easterbrook writes, “Should large numbers of people enjoy longer lives in decent health, the overall well-being of the human family may rise substantially. In “As You Like It,” Jaques declares, ‘Man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.’ The first five embody promise and power—infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, and success. The late phases are entirely negative—pantaloon, a period as the butt of jokes for looking old and becoming impotent; then second childishness, a descent into senile dependency. As life expectancy and health span increase, the seven ages may demand revision, with the late phases of life seen as a positive experience of culmination and contentment.
*** “More Chinese American Elders Stating Their End-of-Life Wishes,” by Stephanie Wu, Chinese Daily News-World Journal/New America Media (Oct 09) cites a California Health Care Foundation survey showing that although two-thirds of Asians would rather die at home, only one-third don’t die in institutions. Wu also addresses misperceptions among people who think they want everything done to keep them alive in hope of a medical revival. Each of four common emergency measures for reviving people risks severe health injuries and slow, painful recovery—if at all. Unlike TV, her sources explain, CPR often comes with broken bones. Also, feeding and hydration tubes can lead to infections or painful, potentially dangerous internal swelling (edema). New America Media’s English translation by Summer Chiang also links to Wu’s original in Chinese.
***Correction: The “Ageist Provocateur” article by this editor, which appeared in the last issue of GBONew.org, erroneously reported that Ezekiel Emanuel referred to USC researcher Eileen Crimmins as “a colleague.” This was due to a misreading of the sentence in which he identified Crimmins, then added “and a colleague” before citing her findings. GBONews apologizes for this error. The revised version of the article posted in our archive does retain Crimmins’ essential comment, “As I said to the ‘fact checker’ from the magazine, I feel used. That was the sum total of my exchange with the lot of them.”
3. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** For His New Book Being Mortal, Atul Gawande, MD, says he interviewed more than 200 patients and family members about their experiences with aging and serious illness. He told the PBS “News Hour’s” Jeffrey Brown (Oct. 9), “I tracked geriatricians, palliative care specialists, nursing home workers. And my dad along the way got a diagnosis of a brain tumor in his brain stem and his spinal cord. And I realized the stakes of this was, how could we make it so that he is not — that he gets every chance he has, but then that we’re also not making him suffer right through the end and taking away things that are really important to him? What I found is that it’s pretty simple. Priorities really matter for patients. The most reliable way to know people’s priorities is to ask about them.”
Fully titled Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, (Metropolitan Books/Macmillan) it challenges the medicalization of death in America. GBONews readers can request a press review copy from Carolyn O’Keefe, 646-307-5240; carolyn.okeefe@hholt.com.
Gawande is currently touring. To see if he’s coming to a book reading near you, here’s a link to events. He’ll be appearing in this Thursday (Oct. 16) in Boston at the JFK Museum and Library; Oct. 19, in Wichita, Kans., at Watermark books; Oct. 20, in Seattle at Town Hall; Oct. 21 in Beaverton, Ore, at Powell’s Books (Cedar Hills Crossing); Oct. 22, San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, and that evening across the Golden Gate Bridge to Dominican University/Book Passage in San Rafael; Oct. 23, University of Chicago; Oct. 24, Madison, Wis., Central Library—and on to London, Edinburgh and Delhi. Check the list for updates.
*** Dr. Lani’s No-Nonsense Bone Health Guide (Hunter House) by chiropractic doctor and bone density specialist Lani Simpson, written with veteran journalist Mary Claire Blakeman, may prompt health care journalists to questions worth asking about things like the medical and drug industry’s exploitation of early bone density diagnoses. How many GBONews readers have wondered about the value of intervention as they or their friends became widely diagnosed and prescribed with essential pre-illness treatments or supplements.
Just out in paperback, the book purports to be “part whistle-blower book, part bone health bible.” Unlike most health care how-tos lining bookstore shelves, this one promises to expose “lax regulations and poor training for lab techs lead to significant errors in bone density testing results. According to the well regarded Dr. Lani, that means patients can get the wrong diagnosis and unnecessary medications for treating osteoporosis. These problems are impacting thousands of Baby Boomer women who turn 65 each day – since that’s the age when the government recommends bone density testing for females.”
Misdiagnosis is only half the problem. Blakeman noted in an e-mail, “Osteoporosis is under-recognized and under-treated in African American women. And they are more likely than white women to die following a hip fracture. In addition, she said, “The incidence of hip fractures among some Hispanic women appears to be on the rise.”
Journalists can request press kits and a review copy from Lorna Garano, (510) 280-5397; e-mail: lornagarano@gmail.com. Check out Simpson’s website, and Blakeman is available at 510-814-8397; cell: 510-499-4516; e-mail: MCBlakeman@writingandpublishing.com.
4. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** 60+ to Yuma could be Trudy Schuett’s theme as the only one of six blogging “Champions” from outside the Phoenix area on the “Connect 60+” website started by the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) and nonprofit partners in the Regional Age-Friendly Network. (In September the Governor’s Advisory Council on Aging formally endorsed Connect 60+.
Schuett, e-mailed that she is producing a video documentary “on the disconnected elders of Western Arizona.’ The production, Alone at the End of the Road, explores the lives of lower-income retirees, “who come to Arizona in their RVs, leaving children and extended families behind in other states.” She shot part one in La Paz County last winter, with Part Two is in progress in Yuma County. She hopes to lens Part Three – Mohave County – “before it gets cold!”
Grandmother to third and fourth graders Carley and Tori, the busy Schuett also is on the Board of Directors of Arizona Humanities. In addition, she chairs the Regional Council on Aging for Western Arizona, Region IV, which includes Quartzsite in La Paz County, with a 65+ population of 32 percent, and Bullhead City in Mohave County with 25 percent. GBONews.org likes reporting this because, first, it’s fun to tell you there’s a place called Bullhead City, and mainly because those figures remind us that rural America is the future of aging America.
*** The Multiple Sclerosis Discovery Forum (MSDF), says it’s Executive Editor Robert Finn, is based on the venerable Alzforum, which he strongly commends to Gen Beat reporters on science and related health issues. (For more than a decade, he notes, alzforum.org has been where Alzheimer’s researchers interact and discuss current research.)
Finn’s worthy MSDF is an online resource, says the website, “that aims to accelerate progress toward cures for multiple sclerosis and related disorders by sparking new ideas and catalyzing unforeseen connections. The site focuses attention on what is known and not yet known about the causes of these conditions, their pathological mechanisms and potential ways to intervene.” Check it out at http://msdiscovery.org/about.
Those with questions can contact Finn at (925) 685-6993; rfinn@acceleratedcure.org.
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