GBO NEWS: Labor Day & Older Workers; ‘Ending Ageism’; WaPo Profiles 5 Surviving Beat Writers; & More
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations — Our 24th Year.
August 24, 2017 — Volume 17, Number 9
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. You can subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge simply by sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. You’ll receive the table of contents as e-mail, just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org.
In This Issue: Real news by good people.
1. THE STORYBOARD: LABOR DAY EDITION:
*** “Shown the Door, Older Workers Find Bias Hard to Prove,” by Elizabeth Olson, New York Times;
*** “COACHELLA RISING: Aging Farmworkers, Unions, Organic Mangos & the Salton Sea,” by David Bacon, Capital & Main / American Prospect / New America Media;
*** “Working Past Retirement Can Keep You Healthy,” by Ruxandra Guidi, USC Center for Health Journalism Member Blog;
*** “Surviving as an Old in the Tech World,” by Karen Wickre, Wired;
*** “Educational Difference in Employment at Older Ages,” study by Richard W. Johnson, Urban Institute.
2. AGING BEATNIKS NEWS: *** “Driving the Beat Road,” by Jeff Weiss, video by Erin Patrick O’Connor, Washington Post: Profiles of five surviving writers of the Beat Generation– Lawrence Ferlinghetti (now 98), Michael McClure (84), Gary Snyder (87), and Diane di Prima (82), as well as “Beat-adjacent” novelist/memoirist Herbert Gold (93).
3. THE BOOKMOBILE: *** “Hard-Won Advice in Books on Aging and Elder Care,” by Ron Lieber, New York Times; *** Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People by Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Rutgers University Press; *** Fierce with Reality: Literature on Aging, Revised Edition, edited by Margaret Cruikshank, Hamilton/Roman & Littlefield.
4. GOOD RESOURCES: ***Schedule Posted: 7th Annual Legacy Film Festival on Aging in San Francisco, Sept. 15-17; ***New Alzheimer’s Association Caregivers Survey; ***The 6th Annual 2017 Retirement Empowerment Summit, Latinos for a Secure Retirement (LSR) Coalition, Washington, D.C., October 2.
1. THE STORYBOARD: LABOR DAY EDITION
*** “Shown the Door, Older Workers Find Bias Hard to Prove,” by Elizabeth Olson, New York Times (Aug. 7): “Even as the work force has a large number of older employees, one of the principal tools to fight . . . discrimination, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act — which Congress passed a half-century ago — may not be up to the task, said Laurie A. McCann, a lawyer with AARP Foundation Litigation …. “Ageism unfortunately remains pervasive in the American work force,” she said. Only 86 of workplace discrimination cases litigated in court last year charged age bias, AARP found, largely because such complaints are complicated and expensive.
On factor discouraging more cases is a 2009 Supreme Court ruling, which placed the onus of proof of age prejudice on the worker, not the employer. Olson explained, “Without action by Congress to shore up the 1967 law, employers seem likely to continue to have an edge. In February, a group of senators, including Robert P. Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, introduced the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act. But past efforts to strengthen older worker rights have foundered on opposition from business groups, and the current bill is given little chance of passage”
Under the law, Olson went on, “Comments that perpetuate stereotypes — like ‘older workers are deadwood’ — do not carry a stigma equal to that of similar remarks on race or sex. While such demeaning remarks are not seen as conclusive proof of bias, they can help persuade a fact-finder, mediator or court that some wrongdoing has occurred in a workplace.”
*** “COACHELLA RISING: Aging Farmworkers, Unions, Organic Mangos & the Salton Sea,” Capital & Main by David Bacon (Aug 9) and copublished by American Prospect. Bacon wrote/produced this article and photo essay on aging in California’s fields supported by a Journalists in Aging Fellowship through New America Media (NAM) and the Gerontological Society of America via a grant from the Silver Century Foundation. NAM also cross-posted the story in two parts. See Part 1 , and Part 2. Bacon is the author-photographer of the new English/Spanish-language book, In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte (University of California Press, 2017).
*** “Working Past Retirement Can Keep You Healthy,” by Ruxandra Guidi, USC Center for Health Journalism Member Blog (Aug. 11): There’s “a growing number of people in the U.S. over age 65 who either don’t want to or can’t afford to stop working. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an estimated 18.8 percent of Americans ages 65 and older (almost 9 million people) reported being employed full- or part-time last year, continuing an increase that began in the year 2000.”
On one side are people like Guidi’s African American friend, Jeffrey, who recently had heart surgery and who soon had to return to work for financial reasons despite his wish to retire. On the other hand,she learned of another side of later-life work when she attended Columbia University’s annual Age Boom Academy, workshop for journalists on covering the generations beat.
Workplace age discrimination, said one expert, calls for closer scrutiny of employers’ roles in blocking older workers wishing or willing to be on the job. Axel Börsch-Supan, of Germany’s Munich Center for the Economics of Aging at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy challenged the perception that older workers make mistakes and are less productive. “In fact, his research found that older workers can be more reliable and productive than their younger colleagues,” Guidi wrote.
Also at the Age Boom program, the Brooking Institution’s Gary Burtless added, “The people who choose to remain employed at older ages typically have greater levels of education and good health.” Meanwhile, he said, those with poorer health status drop out of the workforce: “My research shows that earlier investments in education mean an investment in a better old age and in health.”
*** “Surviving as an Old in the Tech World,” By Karen Wickre, Wired (Aug. 2): Wickre, a management veteran for Google, Twitter and other tech firms, writes in her latest “Backchannel” column for Wired, “There’s a lot of attention in the business world today on what’s called diversity and inclusion … But there’s one bias that doesn’t get addressed much: age. The very people who might be affected by age discrimination often don’t want to bring it up—especially in Silicon Valley. Let’s face it: Few of us over 40 want to be considered ‘old’ or label ourselves as outsiders. If workers do come forward, age discrimination is very hard to prove, since it’s often hidden by internal reorganizations, budget cuts, and employee “at-will” agreements. The subject of ‘older workers’ can be a legal minefield for companies—to even acknowledge it is to open a Pandora’s box of issues.”
Wickre states, “There has to be a systems overhaul before the members of the over-40 crowd can quit worrying about hair dyeing or giving themselves a crash course in pop culture. Almost everyone I know over 40 tends to omit their graduation year from their résumés and eliminate or streamline their past experiences.” But she notes that, at age 66, unlike so many of her older colleagues, “I don’t dye my hair or hide my age. But this confidence comes in part from working in tech businesses for many years, among—and increasingly for—people 10, 20, and even 30 years younger than me.”
She offers tips on eight areas “where the olds might get a little more TLC.
*** “Educational Difference in Employment at Older Ages,” study by Richard W. Johnson, Urban Institute (July 2017): “Working longer can significantly benefit older adults, improving their financial security and possibly their physical and emotional health. Older adults have been working more over the past two decades, but employment gains after age 65 have been concentrated among college graduates. Early retirement will likely create growing financial challenges for less-educated older adults, who risk falling further behind their better-educated peers. This chartbook shows how trends in various outcomes, including labor force participation, full-time employment, self-employment, and earnings, differ by education, age, and sex for older adults.”
2. AGING BEATNIKS NEWS
*** “Driving the Beat Road,” by Jeff Weiss, Video by Erin Patrick O’Connor, Washington Post: The five profiles of surviving writers of the Beat Generation appeared as weekly broadsheet spreads with photos, many historical, in June and July. The above link nicely stitches together Weiss’ lengthy interview with poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti (now 98), Michael McClure (84), Gary Snyder (87), and Diane di Prima (82), as well as “Beat-adjacent” novelist and memoirist Herbert Gold (93).
Weiss remarks in his introduction, “When I told people about my plan, the most common response was, ‘They’re still alive?’” The series provides a welcome second wind to these five breaths of their iconic era. GBO’s editor was especially pleased to see Wapo’s recognition of my friend Herbert Gold, whom the article notes, “would be the first to tell you that’s he’s not a Beat, but his legacy and historical context remain inextricable from his more well-branded peers.” Gold is the author of 30-plus novels, nonfiction tomes and short-story collections. (After he published his most recent novel two years ago, When a Psychopath Falls in Love, I asked whether it was number 33 or 34, and he replied tartly, “I’m not a mathematician.”)
Weiss records that Gold’s work has been “celebrated by the greatest authors,” such as Vladimir Nobokov, whom he succeeded in the 1950s as a professor at the literary tower of Cornell University. (He still gets a call from Cornell colleague Thomas Pynchon every few years.) The article comments, as well, that Gold will leave behind “an indelible but overlooked body of work.” Among his books, incompletely listed on Wikipedia, is his 1967 bestseller, Fathers, his memoir-as-novel about growing up in Cleveland, and his sparkling 1991 book, Haiti: Best Nightmare on Earth, reissued in 2001, Gold’s account of his decades-long love affair with that bright and tragic paradise.
Each of the five profiles also links to an audio recording of them reading one of their poems. That includes Gold, who actually started as a poet. In fact, he told me last week that he plans to publish a small collection of poems soon. The Washington Post online presentation includes him reading his poem, “Melissa: 1943-1991,” a haunting remembrance of the great love of his life and mother of three of his five children. Well after their divorce, she’d planned to remarry rock entrepreneur Bill Graham only to die with him in a helicopter crash as they left a concert venue on a stormy night. Gold told me that the terrible news came only days before he’d been scheduled to take them both out for brunch to celebrate their immanent marriage. The poem, however, far from being morose, is a warm evocation of her spirit.
So, at 93, Gold, I can tell you was in fine fettle as we met a week ago for one of our occasional dinners at his favorite cheap sushi place on Polk Street, just a short walk or bus ride down from his perch atop San Francisco’s Russian Hill. It was our first outing together since he’d endured an energy-sapping illness this spring, and his astute observations of the present and memories of the past were as crisp as keys tapping on his black Royal manual typewriter. At one point he rendered a spot-on impression of Henry Kissinger, whom he met when both taught at Harvard in the early 1960s, at a reception. Gold chided Kissinger for supporting then-Senator Barry Goldwater, of Arizona, who would become the Republican Party’s most controversial candidate, until 2016, especially when he stated, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”
Gold also recalled his friendship with Diane Sawyer — when she was a press aide to President Richard Nixon. She helped Gold get access to Nixon’s Western White House in San Clemente, Calif., for a piece he wrote for Esquire. (Weiss’s profile doesn’t go into his extensive journalism for major national media.) Sawyer didn’t talk to him after the piece appeared.
3. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** “Hard-Won Advice in Books on Aging and Elder Care,” by Ron Lieber, New York Times, (Aug. 18): If you haven’t been following the long-time NYT writer’s “Your Money” columns of late, know that he’s unleashed a string of screeds that might well be headed, “Your Rotten Eldercare.” Lieber has written five recent columns ripping into the deep and damaging U.S. dysfunctional anti-system of long-term care. The columns have invited hundreds of comments by people recounting their own struggles with the quality and cost of continuing care for themselves or for an older relative.
In this most recent column, Lieber highlights four books that commenters mentioned repeatedly. GBO could well gin up other fine titles, but these offer a good start. Lieber lists:
- Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande (McMillan/Picador edition, 2017) Lieber writes, “I started here, with this book by a New Yorker writer and physician who aims to help readers avoid what he calls a “warehoused oblivion,” even if none of us will win the ultimate battle.
- The 36-Hour Day, by Nancy L. Mace and Peter V. Rabins (Hachette). This is one of the all-time classic books on eldercare, now in its 5th revised edition since it was first published in the early1980s. Lieber writes, “The title is a sympathetic nod to what it feels like to care for someone with Alzheimer’s, other dementias or memory loss, and it could take nearly that long to read this book and absorb. Still, its value is in its encyclopedic nature, including detours into necessary but often uncomfortable topics like adult diapering and masturbation. These authors have clearly heard and seen it all.”
- A Bittersweet Season, by Jane Gross (Penguin/Random House, 2012): Gross, the former New York Times reporter who started the “New Old Age” blog and column, “takes us on a no-holds-barred tour through the years that she and her brother spent caring for their late mother. The author . . . is unafraid to admit all the mistakes she made out of sheer ignorance and how often even the most high-functioning adult children simply do not know what they do not know.”
- Being My Mom’s Mom, by Loretta Anne Woodward Veney, (Infinity Publishing, 2013): Says, Lieber, “There is no sugarcoating the number of physical and emotional challenges that come with aging, so it’s clear why Ms. Veney’s upbeat memoir of the years she has spent caring for her mother, Doris Woodward, who has dementia, is so appealing. Ms. Veney’s steadfast focus on her own mental health is something others will want to mimic. Her aim is tranquility and patience, with an emphasis on reprogramming her reactions, like her frustration with being late.” It’s also good to see a self-published book get such a strong national recommendation. Increasingly, self publishing is gaining more respect, and some authors say they come out better financially they might with a traditional publisher with the help of some media exposure.
*** Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People by Margaret Morganroth Gullette (Rutgers University Press): In her review of Ending Ageism for Boston public radio’s WBUR, Erin Trahan said the Gullette “peppers early pages with stats about how ‘old people’ are legion in number, more likely to be rurally isolated and shoulder the brunt of age-based biases in employment, health care and social status. That should be enough for a groundswell reaction, a global social movement against ageism, she asserts.’”
GBO’s editor has admired Gullette’s efforts of many years, such in her 2011 book, Agewise (University of Chicago Press) to confront the ageist undertow in American culture. For the new book, I was pleased to chip in my 2 cents with a blurb stating, in part, “Ending Ageism penetrates far more deeply than the stock tropes about the affronts of age bias.”
Gullette recounts verbal and sometimes physical affronts—against her or others she quotes, such as those incurred from “careless bullies on streets, on bikes, even on college campuses, [which] make walking while old, as I call it, dangerous . . . One 80-year-old man I know, a retired CEO, was shoved down a subway stairs and endured a knee operation, opioids, rehab, and a cascade of problems thereafter.”
As for social media, Gullette writes, “The Internet empowers hysterical young men to publish hate speech against elders, as in, ‘God forbid these miserable once-were-people not [sic] survive as long as possible to burden the rest of us.’ This fantasy wish—that a large and easily identifiable group, ‘miserable once-were-people’ should die prematurely for the convenience of youngers—can be matched by many other Web slurs.”
Her research uncovered innumerable reports of older men shooting their sick wives “and calling it mercy killing. Sometimes they kill themselves too, but if they don’t, the law is lenient to an old white man with a gun.”
In a piece Gullette wrote about what sparked her to write the book, she describes how the “many enemies of later life are never reproached. Their nasty or lethal work is scarcely noticed. Congressional neoliberals, for instance. I watch the constant attacks on the safety nets translated into scapegoating old people for budget deficits that come from their lowering taxes on the rich.” Especially raw, she notes, was the recent GOP attempt to slash the federal budget for Meals on Wheels.
Ageism is pervasive in health care, says Gullette, for example, a woman age 65 or older diagnosed with breast cancer is seven times less likely than a woman under 50 to have her surgeon recommend her for chemotherapy. She adds that in the business world, age discrimination deprives midlife workers through outsourcing and downsizing – “not just in the Rust Belt or on farms, but across the professions–of employment and decent jobs.” And she details other examples in media, law and other sectors.
WBUR’s Trahan explains that Ending Ageism imagines putting ageism on trial through chapters posed as arguments before a jury. Gullette concludes the book with a declaration of grievances echoing the “Declaration of Independence” and the” Declaration of Rights and Sentiments” (drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at Seneca Falls). Trahan observes, “They are bold comparisons but Gullette has done her homework and a lot of heavy lifting to get to this point.”
Journalists can request a review copy and media information from Brice Hammack at Phone: 848-445-7765; e-mail: bhammack@press.rutgers.edu. Margaret’s interviews are listed in the events calendar on our homepage: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/. Gullette, a women’s studies scholar at Brandeis University, can be reached at mgullett@brandeis.edu.
*** Fierce with Reality: Literature on Aging, Revised Edition, edited by Margaret Cruikshank, (Hamilton/Roman & Littlefield, 2017) anthologizes a spectrum of stories, folktales and poems on the aging experience more extensive than the usual purple garb and red hats. This culturally diverse collection, revised from its initial edition of two decades ago, opens with a coda from Florida Scott-Maxwell’s The Measure of My Days: “When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.”
Entries include some familiar names, such as Alice Walker, William Carlos Williams and Mary Oliver, who complains, as if to the 24/7 news cycle, “Wherever I am. The world comes after me. / It offers me its busyness. / It does not believe /that I do not want it …”
Then, there are the Buddha’s “Five Remembrances,” which might be told today in a series of tweets back to Washington, hence, “My actions are my only true belongings./ I cannot escape the consequence of my actions./ My actions are the ground on which I stand.”
Cruikshank divided the 173-page volume into 13 thematic chapters, some of them straightforward (“Strength and Wisdom,” “Loss,” “Defiance and Self-Determination”) and some more fanciful (“Homage to Grandmothers,” “Aging is Not for Sissies”). The range of entries includes examples of fiction, philosophical essays, personal essays, humor, analyses of ageism, and folktales from Asians to Iraqis to Native Americans.
In one essay, Danh Ho writes, “The difference between Western culture and Vietnamese culture regarding old age is the way we think about it. Here, old age is the ending stage of life while in Vietnamese culture, old age is not thought of as the beginning of the end, but rather as a separate stage of life. During this time, life is not measured by physical strength or physical activity, but in terms of the wisdom one is rewarded in growing old. A very popular saying from Vietnamese literature is ‘hua tan, qua dom,’ which can be translated into English as, ‘when a flower withers, a bud is forming.’”
Welcome as this reissue is, the book’s cursory typographic production, with entries printed consecutively in chapters with titles lacking even the benefit of bold facing, belies its fiercely owlish cover. Most irritating is the eye-straining presentation of poems in a tiny type-size reminiscent of a prescription bottle. This flaw is particularly ironic given a line in the poem on page 9 by the 9th century Chinese poet Po Chu-I, about “what is age like?” Among the eye-rubbing lines – “One cannot read small-letter books.”
That said, Fierce with Reality, is a richly engaging and often humorous look at old age from the inside out of one’s advancing years. In her introduction, Cruikshank quotes André Gide, “A fine old age can never be taken for granted. It represents perpetual victories and perpetual recoveries from defeat.”
Journalists can request a media review copy by e-mailing: reviews@rowman.com. For interviews, contact Cruikshank at pc26@twc.com.
4. GOOD RESOURCES
*** Schedule Posted: 7th Annual Legacy Film Festival on Aging in San Francisco, Sept. 15-17: Since GBONews highlighted this upcoming event in our last issue, they’ve posted the complete festival schedule. As noted previously, GBO’s editor was among the screeners and plans to share some impressions of the wide range of entries, both accepted and rejected, in a later issue. For now, though, even if you won’t be in Bay Area, you may well find the range of about 25 films – feature-length and short documentaries and dramatic fare, worth scanning over. The scheduled films are also posted with links to their trailers to give viewers a better notion of the multifaceted experience of aging that these movies depict.
For those who will be in the Bay Area area, the festival will be held in San Francisco’s Japantown at the New People’s Theater. For more information and to request press tickets or interviews (several filmmakers will be on hand), contact the festival’s irrepressible director, Sheila Malkind, at info@legacyfilmfestivalonaging.org; 415-861-2159.
***New Alzheimer’s Association Caregivers Survey found, “Although 91 percent of current and previous caregivers agreed that different people should be responsible for different tasks, 64 percent felt isolated or alone in their situation, while 84 percent said they would have welcomed more help from family members.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, there are 15 million people in the United States providing care for someone with Alzheimer’s disease of another dementia. Three-quarters of those interviewed, though, said they hadn’t pitched in to help with caregiving because they thought another family member had already taken on the responsibility, while 62 Percent said they live in another area.
Primary caregivers, they said their relationships were especially strained because they felt their efforts were undervalued by family members (43 percent) or by the person being cared for (41 percent).
Also, even though six in 10 (59 percent) of survey participants (both with and without caregiving experience) admitted they fear being diagnosed with dementia, and 70 percent fear not being able to care for or support themselves if so diagnosed, only one in four (24 percent) had planned financially for their families’ future caregiving needs, and only one in five had discussed their wishes with their spouse or family members.
Check out the press release for a summary and media contacts.
***The 6th Annual 2017 Retirement Empowerment Summit will be held by the Latinos for a Secure Retirement (LSR) Coalition in Washington, D.C., Monday, October 2, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. LSR is the largest coalition of Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organizations focused on retirement security issues in the United States. They won’t announce speakers until Sept. 5, but key panels will be on the health care debate and “Building Latino Wealth.” According to the program’s preliminary agenda, “Reports show that 72 percent of Millennial workers have already begun saving, with a median starting age of 22. We will discuss strategies for young Latino professionals to attain the financial education they need, access the resources to safe financial products and to maximize their youth to build wealth.”
Press can sign up for complimentary registrations at LSR’s Eventbrite page. Their media contact is Abigail Zapote.
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