GBO News: Guns vs. Elders (Beyond Mass Shootings); Legacy Film Festival on Aging; Journalism Fellowship Deadlines; Celebrating N.C. Black Musicians; Jewish Elders’ Mental Health TV Docu; Seniors’ Trauma; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Celebrating 26 Years.
August 14, 2019 — Volume 26, Number 10
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), 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. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: Back to School Specials.
1. GUNS vs. ELDERS: Reporting Sources on Shootings, Suicides
2. LEGACY FILM FESTIVAL ON AGING: *** 9th Legacy Film Festival on Aging, San Francisco, Sept. 20-22, a Source of Indies Beyond “Bucket-List” Hollywood
3. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** 2020 AHCJ Reporting Fellowships on Health Care Performance Deadline Oct. 21; * PLUS AHCJ Journalism Workshop on Aging & Health Program @ USC, Oct. 16-17; *** Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship Deadline, Oct. 1.
4. THE STORYBOARD
*** “How to Make a Living as an Older Entrepreneur,” by Mark Miller, Retirement Revised blog spotlights Kerry Hannon’s new book, Never too Old to Get Rich – The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting a Business Mid-life, the skewers Democratic candidate Rep. John Delaney for his false attack on “Medicare for All”;
*** “Aging Southern Musical Artists Celebrate 25 Years Of Music Maker,” by Leoneda Inge, WUNC Public Radio:
*** “Mental Health in Older Jewish Americans,” by Brad Pomerance, Jewish Life Television (JLTV) Special documentary;
*** “What is Trauma-Informed Care for Older Adults,” by Larry Beresford, Stria News;
*** “The Tough Calls on ‘Medicare for All’”: A panel of health policy experts weighs in on what’s desirable—and what’s politically feasible—along five key dimensions of reform,” by Austin Frakt and Aaron E. Carroll, New York Times.
1. GUNS vs. ELDERS
Reporting Sources on Shootings, Suicides
The classic “Guns vs. Butter” debate in economics is over the budgetary tug-of-peace between defense and social spending. In today’s furious conflict over fast and mass killing machines, though, it’s important not to lose sight of related and even more deadly ongoing firearm tragedies crying out for related legislative remedies, including better-sighted social spending. Here are links to some general and generational sources journalists may find handy. If you’re reporting on gun violence at all, GBONews would appreciate having a link to your stories, as well as to useful sources you’d suggest for other reporters.
While the national media watch on mass shooting in America continues and counts not whether but when the number for this year surpass 250 tragedies, 250 deaths and 1,000 woundings before Sen. Mitch McConnell and his filibuster-proofed supermajority get back from vacation, it might be a good time to look a little more broadly at intergenerational sources on gun violence in the U.S. On mass shootings alone, the ongoing record posted on Wikipedia showed that as of Aug. 11, there were 248 events with 246 dead and 979 wounded.
Yet, while big media concentrates on the messy aftermath and social-media’s role as flame accelerant, we’d like to suggest a few underlying angles and sources that writers on the generations beat keep from getting overshadowed by gunfire and mistargeted “red flag” laws that focus punitively on troubled teenagers.
What’s aging got to do with it? Multiple sources have exposed how Adverse Childhood Experience (Google the ACE studies) churn through later life often hastening chronic illness from diabetes to dementia. In the case of adolescents, remember the charming cast of miscreants in John Hughes’ 1985 film, The Breakfast Club.Image a poorly constituted red-flag law turning their Saturday morning “detention” class into incarceration in a mental health ward. That might be an exaggeration, but how far off could that be?
In a Los Angeles Times op-ed Aug. 4, 2019, the directors of run the Violence Project wrote, “Proactive violence prevention starts with schools, colleges, churches and employers initiating conversations about mental health and establishing systems for identifying individuals in crisis, reporting concerns and reaching out — not with punitive measures but with resources and long-term intervention . . . . Proactivity needs to extend also to the traumas in early life that are common to so many mass shooters. Those early exposures to violence need addressing when they happen with ready access to social services and high-quality, affordable mental health treatment in the community. School counselors and social workers, employee wellness programs, projects that teach resilience and social emotional learning, and policies and practices that decrease the stigma around mental illness will not just help prevent mass shootings, but will also help promote the social and emotional success of all Americans.”
The op-ed’s authors, Jillian Peterson, a psychologist at Hamline University, and James Densley, a sociologist at Metropolitan State University, both in the Twin Cities, has studied every mass shooting in the data since 1966.
The entire focus on pre-spotting domestic terrorists to treat reeks of A Clockwork Orange. Meanwhile, education continues to be cut, including school counselors, and worse. The conversation needs to shift to helping, healing and engaging with all young people, with quietly prescribed special assistance to the teens–and their families (under stress from under-employment to opioids)– as called for. The NRA dolts that the politicians loaded in their magazines continue to win, and may again when Congress returns in Sept. But in the meanwhile, the Dems aren’t helping much by falling into line to wave their Red Flag laws onto the books. Let’s relieve our first responders by first enabling compassion responders.
Another great source we featured last year is Nadine Burke Harris, MD, MPH, who has since then need name the first California Surgeon General. In her book, The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity (Simon & Schuster, 2018), she wrote, “Twenty years of medical research has shown that childhood adversity literally gets under our skin, changing people in ways that can endure in their bodies for decades. It can help tip a child’s developmental trajectory and affect physiology. It can trigger chronic inflammation and hormonal changes that can last a lifetime. It can alter the way DNA is read and how cells replicate, and it can dramatically increase the risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer diabetes—and Alzheimer’s.”
Suicide remains at among the highest levels for men age 65-plus, especially white males. The New York Times’ Paula Span reported in her May 25 “New Old Age” column, headlines “In Elderly Hands, Firearms Can Be Even Deadlier” that “more than 8,200 older adults committed suicide in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among men, those over age 65 are the likeliest to take their lives, and three-quarters of them use a gun.”
The National Institute of Mental Health reports that in 2017, “Among males, the suicide rate was highest for those aged 65 and older (31.0 per 100,000).” For all ages that year, there were 47,000 suicides, almost 24,000 by firearm.
This editor, in the mid 2000s, was appalled to learn in preparing a story package on elder suicide that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was legally prohibited from citing data on firearms. So I was pleased to hear NPR News’ Nell Greenfieldboyce report a story on Aug. 8, “How The CDC’s Reluctance To Use The ‘F-Word’ — Firearms — Hinders Suicide Prevention.” CDCdocuments revealed that the agency relies on vague language and messages about suicide downplaying and obscuring gun risks, even though “guns in the United States kill more people through suicide than homicide.” That’s due to constraints placed on the agency by the 1996 Dickey Amendment, legislation barring CDC from any spending that might “advocate or promote gun control.” In 2015, former Rep. Jay Dickey of Arkansas told NPR and others that he regretted having written the language restricted funding for research into gun violence and its effects on public health.
Further, reporter Francie Diep of the nonprofit news site Pacific Standard published her article “When Older Americans with Depression and Dementia Have Access to Firearms” (April 15, 2019).
Diep wrote, “When it comes to gun violence in America, one solution politicians and citizens often talk about is better mental-health screenings. But a new study [in Annals of Internal Medicine] suggests there’s little being done to mitigate the risks of gun ownership and unsafe gun storage among older Americans who have guns at home and might be especially prone to hurting themselves or others. She notes, “The Alzheimer’s Association recommends guns be removed entirely from the homes of people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Folks with dementias often eventually lose their ability to recognize people and to make sound decisions, and experience depression.”
2. LEGACY FILM FESTIVAL ON AGING
***9th Legacy Film Festival on Aging in San Francisco, Sept. 20-22: If this film fest weren’t so good, I’d feel embarrassed to be promoting a personal project here. For the last couple of years GBO’s editor has been volunteering on the board of the only three-day film event on aging in the country, helping to review theatrical and documentary movies, both features and short subjects. This is no pack of “bucket-list” Hollywood flicks, such as AARP’s self-aggrandizing Oscar fete of earlier this year. Indie rules! Even if you won’t be in the Bay Area that weekend to see any of them (and press passes will be available for those who’ll be in town) the line-up of titles reveals an impressive spectrum of topics and are listed with links to the trailers. Many of the films can be found online. It will be held at the nifty New People Cinemain San Francisco’s Japantown.
A total of 21 dramas and documentaries this year – with sound tracks from opera to the blues – will immerse viewers in life-long perspectives on topics ranging from overcoming loneliness and rediscovering one’s sexuality to creative renewal and spiritual revival in the face of illness. Films/videos confront racism across the years and stand up to ageism. The Festival is international, with footage hailing from Switzerland, Italy, Australia and Mexico, as well as across the U.S., and represent multiple cultures–Armenian, Latino, Chinese, African American and others.
The one Hollywood feature scheduled is a gem titled What They Had, starring and exec-produced by double Oscar winner Hilary Swank and directed by Elizabeth Chomko. The three-generation saga movingly unfolds as a Chicago family struggles to cope with the advancing Alzheimer’s disease of the aging mother, played by Emmy and Tony winner Blythe Danner. (You can get it via the usual online suspects.) I love this film, and it got an 87 rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but there was hardly a whisper of a release last October. The writing, directing and acting are first rate, with standout performances also by Michael Shannon and Robert Forester.
The hourlong documentary Phil’s Camino: So Far, So Good, directed by Annie O’Neil, follows the real-life path of Phil Volker, who responds to his stage-four cancer diagnosis by fulfilling his dream of walking the 500-mile spiritual pilgrimage known as the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Initially, Phil merely built a “camino” (path) in the forest behind his house on Vashon Island, Wash., and started daily walks, charting the sights he’d have seen with books and a map of the Spanish pilgrimage. Eventually, though, he improved enough to attempt the real journey on Spanish soil. Every filmmaker planning a “bucket list” movie clone should see Phil’s genuine transformation on his honest spiritual quest. The film is also a tonic for healing the macho white male image.
When I first saw América, the film’s storytelling was so fresh, I thought it was a drama. In fact, it is a surprisingly tender documentary about three Mexican brothers caring for their grandmother, América, age 93, who has dementia. The film follows the brothers, particularly the loving Diego, as they grapple with the realities of maintaining her care while also earning a living in the impoverished village of Colima, near Puerto Vallarta. Filmed in Spanish with English subtitles, it was directed over three years by two Ohio-based documentary filmmakers, Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside.
The festival’s finale will be a showing of a new documentary, shot over 30 years, on blues legend Sterling “Mister Satan” Magee, and his remarkable partnership with younger, white harmonica virtuoso Adam Gussow. The film follows the roller-coaster life of Mr. Satan’s ups, downs and, unexpectedly thanks to an assisted-living gerontologist, up on stage again. The after-film Q&A will feature Tom Mazzolini, host of KPFA’s Blues By the Bay and founder of the San Francisco Blues Festival, who will talk about the life of the blues.
Among the many short films will be the whimsical video, Age Without Ageism, by Bay Area humorist and performer Josh Kornbluth. The video is among the programs and performances he’s created as an Atlantic Fellow of the Global Brain Health Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco’s Memory and Aging Center.
Festival Founder and Executive Director Sheila Malkind, nearing 81, says she plunged into the aging field at age 25 as director of Elder Artisans, a special program of the Chicago Mayor’s Office of Senior Citizens and Handicapped. Before moving to San Francisco in 2003, Malkind, a geriatric psychologist, directed Chicago’s Silver Images Film Festival. She laughs over having once been told to drop the presumably off-putting word “aging” from the festival’s name. She stresses, “Our aging society needs to learn more about how years of experience changes our perspective on life.” This editor can’t think of a better media-enabled way than the Legacy Film Festival to become immersed in the aging experience of some many lives.
For more information visit the Legacy Film Festival on Aging website: www.legacyfilmfestivalonaging.org, or contact info@legacyfilmfestivalonaging.org. Reporters can request a press pass from GBONews Editor Paul Kleyman, pfkleyman@gmail.com.
3. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** 2020 AHCJ Reporting Fellowships on Health Care Performance Deadline Oct. 21: This Association of Health Care Journalists program, now in year 10, “aims to give experienced print, broadcast and online reporters an opportunity to pursue concentrate on the performance of health care systems — or significant parts of those systems — locally, regionally or nationally. The fellows are able to examine policies, practices and outcomes, as well as the roles of various stakeholders.” Past projects have examined a state mental health care system, state attempts at Medicaid expansion, maternal mortality, how states handle opioid addiction and treatment, what leads some rural hospitals to fail while others survive and more. The fellowship is supported by the Commonwealth Fund.
*** Deadline for the Alicia Patterson Foundation (APF) Journalism Fellowships is Oct. 1: Awards grants of $40,000 for 12 months or $20,000 for 6 months will go to working journalists to pursue independent projects of significant interest and to write articles based on their investigations for The APF Reporter. The fellowships “are open only to U.S. citizens who are full-time print journalists, or to non-U.S. citizens who work full-time for U.S. print publications, either in the U.S. or abroad. That includes reporters, writers, editors and photographers. Applicants must have at least five years of professional print experience, not necessarily consecutive. Full-time free-lancers are welcome. Also, an additional fellow specializing in either science or environmental journalism will be added as the Cissy Patterson fellow. (No special application is needed.) Science and environmental topics will continue to be awarded Alicia Patterson fellowships.
* Also, AHCJ is Holding a Journalism Workshop on Aging & Health Program at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, Oct. 16-17. The opener will be “New Approaches to Caring for an Aging Population,” including panelists Jarett Hughes, program director, Colorado Strategic Planning Group on Aging, and Paul Irving, chairman, Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Moderating will be Liz Seegert, AHCJ’s core topic leader on aging, independent journalist and the Journalists Network on Generations’ (GBONews.org’s parent) new program coordinator for the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program. Among other sessions will be “Data to find stories about aging and health”; “The latest advances in palliative care”; “Designing for an age-friendly future”; and “Trends in building a workforce in elder care.” Check out the full schedule.
4. THE STORYBOARD
*** “How to Make a Living as an Older Entrepreneur,” by Mark Miller, RetirementRevised (Aug. 2, 2019): Miller’s blog and recorded interview first spotlights Kerry Hannon and her latest book, Never too Old to Get Rich – The entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting a Business Mid-life. Miller allows, “The notion of getting rich might be a bit of an overstatement, but entrepreneurial opportunity is out there, and it is very possible to earn a good living this way. Kerry’s book is packed with useful advice on how to start a business, who should do it and who shouldn’t.” He says what’s “most impressive” are her profiles of 20 entrepreneurial success stories, and her interviews each entrepreneur about the lessons they learned along the way.”
In a separate segment of the blog, Miller skewers Democratic candidate Rep. John Delaney for his fallacious attack on Medicare for All, which “twisted the history of Social Security and pensions.” Delaney stated during the second debate, “Can you imagine if we tried to start Social Security now but said private pensions are illegal? That’s the equivalent of what Senator Sanders and Senator Warren are proposing with health care.”
Delaney argued that in ending private health insurance, Medicare for all would violate a presumed public-private approach to old age security by Social Security. Miller states, “I hear all the time . . . that [Social Security] always was meant to work in concert with private solutions, and never was intended to be a complete retirement income solution.”
Miller quotes Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, in her book on Social Security myths, The Truth about Social Security: “In fact, the history belies this widespread belief.” Social Security was designed, she wrote, “to require employers to match, dollar-for-dollar, their employees’ Social Security premiums. There is no evidence whatsoever that the [program’s] founders expected employers to do more. There is no evidence that Roosevelt and his colleagues intentionally designed Social Security simply to be part of what is needed, with the expectation that individual employers would make up the difference through their own individual plans. Not only does the legislative history of the Social Security Act of 1935 offer no evidence for that widespread belief, there is substantial legislative history that indicate the exact opposite was true. At the time Social Security was enacted, private pensions were rare and unreliable.” Hey, Congressman Delany, she wrote the damn book!(and two others on Social Security).
*** “Aging Southern Musical Artists Celebrate 25 Years Of Music Maker,” by Leoneda Inge, race and southern culture reporter WUNC North Carolina Public Radio (Aug. 6, 2019): Lead in — “Leoneda Inge reports on the Music Maker Relief Foundation, which has helped improve the lives of more than 400 artists for the past 25 years.” She reported, “Many of these artists are African American and well over regular retirement age. One of them is Freeman Vines, who lives in eastern North Carolina, between Greenville and Farmville.” Vines, 77, “mostly played shot houses and front porches in the 1960s. He also fixed cars. That’s how he made a living. But he loves the guitar,” which he designs and builds from discarded parts.
Tim Duffy, founder and president of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, based in Hillsborough, N.C., said, “Most notably, some of Vines’ guitars are made from what they call ‘hanging tree’ wood, wood from a nearby tree where it was said that a black man was lynched many years ago.” His foundation aims to ensure that musicians voices “will not be silenced by poverty or time.” Their grants “include everything from re-releasing songs and going on tour to buying diabetes medicine.” A new book called Blue Muse – Timothy Duffy’s Southern Photographs (UNC Press, features photographs of blues, jazz and folk artists. Also, Vines’ guitars will be in a 2020 exhibit at the U.K.’s Turner Contemporary gallery.
*** “Mental Health in Older Jewish Americans,” produced by Brad Pomerance, Jewish Life Television (41 min.): Telecast as an hourlong special on JLTV, it premiered July 30, 2019, with nationwide cable TV broadcasts scheduled through the end of 2020. The program explores the mental health of the Jewish population generally and with special emphasis on the mental health of Older Jews living the United States and other Western societies. Pomerance interviewed experts in the United States and Israel about the scientific, religious and cultural ramifications of 4,000 years of Jewish history and persecution and how that has impacted the mental condition of Jews transmitted across generations. The program especially examines the extent to which older Jews in Americans and elsewhere, including Holocaust survivors and their children have been more severely impacted by the traumatic effects. Even for those less directly affected, the persistent transmission of angst and anxiety into modern times has manifested in ways that have manifested in cultural stereotypes from the ugly caricature of Shylock to the comedic neurosis of Seinfeld.
Experts such as Allen Glickmanof the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging, Ella Schwartz of the Israel Gerontological Data Center in Jerusalem, and Israel, Rabbi Karen Fox of Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles discuss the internalized effects of discrimination and cultural trauma across social, psychological, neurological dimensions. From the entertainment community, Bryan Behar, executive producer of Fuller House, speaks candidly about Hollywood’s role in perpetuating the neurotic stereotype of Jews. While specific to Jewish culture, Amit Shrira of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University relates implications for other battered cultures, such as victims of the Rwandan and Armenian genocides. (Although not specifically mentioned, the African American experience may be very much in minds for many viewers.)
“Mental Health in Older Jewish Americans” is available for viewing online at Or check the JLTV schedule at www.jltv.tv/schedule for exact times and local listings. Upcoming cablecasts are set for Sat., August 17, (Sat.), 3 p.m. ET; Fri., Sept. 6, 2019, 8 p.m. ET/PT; Sun., Nov. 3, 4 p.m. ET; and Fri., Jan. 24, 2020, 9 p.m. ET. Other dates run throughout 2020. You can find whether JLTV is offered by cable system and its channel position in local markets at www.jltv.tv/channels.
*** “What is Trauma-Informed Care for Older Adults,” by Larry Beresford, Stria News (July 15, 2019): “Past trauma plays a role in today’s healthy aging. As many as a third of older adults served by our health care system have a back story of severe trauma that might be contributing to their medical problems—especially those with multiple chronic conditions, seeking mental health services or frequent flyers in emergency departments.”
He adds, “Trauma-informed care is a concept from psychiatry—with growing applications in health care more broadly—asserting that past experiences of trauma can have all sorts of impacts on current health. Childhood abuse and neglect, intimate partner violence, witnessing acts of violence or war—even living through natural disasters—all can lead to distressing post-traumatic stress reactions. While trauma-informed care provides a framework for assessments and interventions, healthcare providers aren’t expected to treat their patients’ past trauma. But if medical interventions are ‘informed’ by an understanding of that trauma . . . , it may increase their chances of success.”
The article cites work by Joan Gillece, PhD, director of the Center for Innovation in Behavioral Health Policy and Practice at the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors in Alexandria, Va. in long-term care. She says that instead of medicating or restraining patients who act out, it’s better to offer them comfort and try to see their behaviors as adaptive.
*** “The Tough Calls on ‘Medicare for All’”: A panel of health policy experts weighs in on what’s desirable—and what’s politically feasible—along five key dimensions of reform,” by Austin Frakt and Aaron E. Carroll, New York Times (Aug. 13, 2019): The Times moderated a panel of 11 health policy experts representing the range of Democratic debate from left to centrist, to spar over five politically volatile questions: whether to eliminate cost sharing, dispense with premiums, end private health insurance, enroll everyone universally and replace individual private coverage, such as Medicare Advantage plans. (As of this GBONews posting deadline, the paper had not yet posted a link online.) Although the nearly two-page spread fails to raise the enormous issue of covering long-term care, which is generally absent from discussion in this presidential pre-season, the feature may be useful to reporters in summarizing the range of discussion around the Rorschach term “Medicare for All.”
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2019 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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