GBO NEWS: Oy Vey, Boomer–Ageism’s Not OK; NYT Earns “A” on Death, “F” on Gun Suicide; The Bookmobile Gets Its Irish Up; Don’t Forget Rural Elders; Paul Theroux Finds Escapes U.S,. Ageism in Old Mexico; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Starting Our 27th Year.
January 8, 2020 — Volume 27, Number 1
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 GBONews 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: Who Turns 55 in 2020? Gen Xers Are Coming of Age!
1. THE STORYBOARD: *** “It Was the Year of ‘OK Boomer,’ and the Generations Were at Each Other’s Throats,” by Karen Heller, Washington Post; *** “The News Media & Aging: Reports from the Field,” by Jeanette Leardi, Stria News
2. NYT EARNS “A” ON DEATH, “F” ON SUICIDE: *** “She Is 96 and Does Not Fear Her Death. But Do Her Children?” by John Leland; *** “Sweethearts Forever: Then Came Alzheimer’s, Murder and Suicide,” by Corina Knoll
3. LEADS FROM LIZ: “Don’t Forget Rural Elders,” Reporting Tips by Liz Seegert
4. GOOD SOURCES
*** “Medicare Beneficiaries with Serious Illnesses Report Problems Paying Bills,” by Harvard University researchers, Health Affairs (November 2019);
*** “The Double Whammy for Older, Low-Wage Workers With Chronic Conditions,” by Richard Eisenberg, Managing Editor, PBS Next Avenue (Jan. 7, 2020)
5. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** “Giving Life Experience Its Due,” by Peter McDermott, The Irish Echo, on the Irish novelists;
*** “Feeling Old and Shunned, Legendary Writer Paul Theroux Leaves the U.S. and Journeys to a Country That Reveres the Elderly,” BBC (Dec. 4, 2019).
1. THE STORYBOARD
*** “It Was the Year of ‘OK Boomer,’ and the Generations Were at Each Other’s Throats,” by Karen Heller, Washington Post (Dec. 24, 2019): Nice work by Heller for her extensive call-out of the latest round of generational cat fighting.
Heller quoted key experts, among them New York University’s Michael North, who studies ageism in the workplace: “Age-based prejudice is the last acceptable form of prejudice. People are making age-based generalizations and stereotypes that you wouldn’t be able to get away with about race or background. Insert some sort of racial or ethnic group, or ‘OK Woman,’ and it wouldn’t go over too well.”
She writes, “This year it became ‘OK’ to be ageist. It became acceptable to digitally flick off your elders or young’uns on social media, to respond ‘OK boomer’ or ‘OK millennial,’ when, in truth, the people being addressed were often far from okay. While many people — though certainly not all — try to be more sensitive about race, orientation and heritage, ageist tropes ran rampant.”
Heller goes on, “This year, the baby boom was blamed for almost everything: the fate of the planet, Congress, college debt, plastic straws, the ending of ‘Game of Thrones.’ An entire generation was perceived to be operating as a giant monolith. . . . Never mind that old people were once young, struggling, loaded with debt, facing a lousy job market, expensive housing, inflation. . . . ‘It obscures the complexity of generational difference,’ says Jay Sokolovsky, a cultural anthropologist at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. ‘We need to go beyond the simplistic. It’s a form of blaming a generation for the problems we’re having in society.’”
She continues with North saying, “Age is the only universal social category. Unlike race, gender, socioeconomic status, age has this inevitability, assuming you live long enough. It’s this paradox, given that we’re all in this together, that I’m going to be there one day, and we’re making these comments.”
*** “The News Media & Aging: Reports from the Field,” by Jeanette Leardi, Stria News (Dec. 2, 2019): Subhead: “How well does the media cover longevity issues—and how can it improve?” Leardi writes, “Pro-aging advocates might give the media less-than-stellar reviews on how it covers aging issues. From the numerous ageist (and sexist) ‘granny’ headlines in stories about older women that have nothing to do with grandparenting, to the use of wrinkled-hands stock photos, to the recent coverage of candidate age in the 2020 Presidential election—the news media has shown it is susceptible to many of the same ageist mistakes we see in other areas of culture. In 2009, the report “Media Takes: On Aging” found that ‘newspapers only cover issues of interest to older adults when such topics are in the spotlight in Congress or during election campaigns. . . ’
She quotes independent health journalist and GBONews contributor Liz Seegert, “I’m seeing more stories about aging issues in a wider array of media, as well as some efforts to devote more resources to aging-specific columns/sections.” Seegert particularly notes how investigative reporting has advanced coverage of elder abuse, senior fraud and related issues.
Furthermore, said New York Times “New Old Age” columnist Paula Span, “Reporters are taking a broader view of what ‘aging issues’ are—not just financial/retirement matters but work, health, caregiving, ageism, sex, friendship, purpose. . . I also see an openness to the idea that this last quarter of life can be meaningful, a time of exploration and reward, not just something to dread or attempt to defy.”
Despite improvements, those Leardi interviewed stressed the need for more progress—especially when it comes to ageist myths and stereotypes. She adds, “According to Seegert, some reporters’ ‘language, tone, assumptions. . . only reinforce negative stereotypes, to the point where older adults believe these negative things about themselves, despite strong evidence to the contrary.’”
Rich Eisenberg, managing editor of PBS Next Avenue, cited improvements in coverage because “some reporters who’ve been writing about aging issues are getting better at it through more experience and developing sources.”GBONews would also note, because of a few more freelance markets, such as PBS Next Avenue and Stria News, as well as several generations-beat reporting fellowships in recent years.
2. NYT EARNS “A” ON DEATH, “F” ON GUN SUICIDE
*** “She Is 96 and Does Not Fear Her Death. But Do Her Children?” by John Leland, New York Times (Jan. 5, 2020): Subhead: “The oldest old may be ready to say goodbye. Not everyone is ready for this conversation.” Veteran NYT Metro reporter Leland interviewed the last surviving member of the six very old elders from his 2015 year-long series, “85 and Up.” The piece focuses on Ruth Willig, 96, who “learned that she was the only one left. ‘Ohhhh,’ she said, taking it in. ‘What happened? Am I the only one? I’m going to cry.’”
Leland reports, “Death had been a regular part of our conversations over the past five years, as it had been with the others. Ruth had been consistent: She did not worry much about death, but she did think about how she would go. Would it be painful or drawn out? Would she become a burden to her children? . . . For the eldersand their families in the Times series, the deaths were all different, the emotional preparations even more so. None were what anyone had hoped. As predictable as death in old age has become, families still have little guidance for the last stretch of life.”
Leland’s update article continues, “It is one of the most vexing chapters of old age: how to navigate not just the inevitable ending, but the days and months immediately before it. As the bonds of support and dependency change, how do we tell our children that it is OK to say goodbye? And how do we tell our parents that it is OK to go?”
The series and subsequent bestselling book, Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons From a Year Among the Oldest Old (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG), is one of the best and more wide-ranging published accounts examining the lived experience of very old age.
Two of the elders in the series had died previously and three more succumbed in 2019. Leland’s sensitive account of each accords with the very best reporting on aging by several NYT writers, especially “New Old Age” columnist Paula Span.
However, 2019 brought unfortunate lapses in judgment by the paper’s editors. Most egregiously, the op-ed editors provided an outsized platform for “Out With the Old, In With the Young” by Gen X author Astra Taylor. The spread covered almost three page of the Oct. 20, 2019 “Sunday Review” section. Taylor actually stated, “Our democracy is dominated by the old, and young people are getting a bad deal.” As GBONews reported, Taylor later refused the challenge to a debate by anti-ageism advocate, Ashton Applewhite, author-blogger of This Chair Rocks.
*** “Sweethearts Forever: Then Came Alzheimer’s, Murder and Suicide,” by Corina Knoll, NYT (Dec. 29, 2019): Major media can usually count on getting wide-ranging reactions to most any article, but on deeply sensitive topics, no reporter wants to see Tweets such as, “uhh, anyone else read this article as romanticizing a murder-suicide?” or “I do not think that this NYT story should have been framed as a ‘love story.’” Another, more sharply, accused the paper of having “legitimized . . . the murder of disabled people out of ‘love.’” One doesn’t want the smattering of social media knuckle-raps to ring so true to a story’s failings.
The heart-throbbing narrative may have gotten the piece on page 1A, but its lack of context might have done more harm than good in its failure to illuminate common underlying factors critical to public understanding. Although the individual tragedy reported here, the distressing case of Richard and Alma Shaver, may well have been unavoidable, the story might have noted solutions that have helped many others, such as elder-specific mental health interventions addressing caregiver depression.
Perhaps, for instance, the article could have acknowledged an often-female dementia patient’s right to live out her life, not to die violently. When it comes to domestic violence, even purportedly for love and mercy, shouldn’t there be a “me-too” message for people (mainly men) with guns? For years, researchers have found that double deaths similar to the Shavers’ fatalities may be avoided by interventions in cases of preventable depression. Model programs are well established, such as by the San Francisco Institute of Aging’s Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention.
The Shavers’ family members said it’s a mystery to them how their father obtained the gun he used to put a bullet in the head of the love of his life before turning it on himself. The article describes his stoicism, so common among older men locked into the American myth of self-reliance.
Add to that Richard’s understandable reluctance even to mention his own cancer diagnosis to his children, and the reporter might have invited comment by a knowledgeable, not merely sympathetic, expert to encourage readers that opening up to professional help often relieves the emotional pressure and can lead to better, if not always brighter, days.
3. LEADS FROM LIZ
Don’t Forget Rural Elders
By Liz Seegert
Reporters write a lot about health disparities among older adults, whether caused by race, economics, education, neighborhood, or other reasons. Much of the coverage is framed through an urban lens. However, the reality is that those living in rural populations are older than residents in other parts of the country, and the more rural the location, the older the folks living there.
“The proportion of elderly living in poverty is more than half again as great in rural areas as in cities. And, paradoxically, while the rural elderly require more hospitalization and medical care, they have become concentrated in many rural areas poorly equipped to serve their special medical and other needs.” These words by prominent population scholars, written in 1985, are just as prescient 30 years later.
Like younger rural residents, older adults have difficulty accessing regular primary care and hospitals; many community facilities are shuttered, forcing a 50-mile-or-more drive to another city for care. Older rural adults may have issues with transportation if they can no longer drive; availability of home and community based care may be very limited or non-existent.
A study published in the December 2019 issue of Health Affairs, says a lack of access to specialist care is yet another reason the rural Medicare population has worse outcomes than their non-rural counterparts.
Rural elders on Medicare with chronic conditions, such as heart failure or diabetes, have higher death and hospitalization rates than their urban peers, according to lead author Kenton Johnston, PhD, assistant professor of health management and policy at St. Louis University.
Some stats to ponder: Older residents of rural areas had 40% higher rates of preventable hospitalizations and 23% higher mortality rates than older metropolitan adults. Patients who saw a specialist at least once in addition to a primary care provider compared to those who saw only a primary care provider were 15.9% less likely to be hospitalized for a preventable cause and 16.6% less likely to die, according to the study.
Many specialists, though, don’t want to work in rural areas. Money (or lack thereof), of course, is a top reason recruitment and retention is such an issue. So is professional isolation, fewer opportunities for continuing education, and a relatively heavier workload, say health workforce experts.
Solutions could include expanding telehealth to specialists like cardiologists or endocrinologists for ongoing disease management, incentivizing physicians to practice in rural communities through programs like loan forgiveness or pay differential, or enacting some kind of urban/rural partnership with health systems. Another possibility is expanding scope of practice among nurse-practitioners, but that’s up to each state.
It’s a health care challenge that’s only going to worsen as younger people migrate to cities and leave the rural life to their parents or grandparents. It’s also an aging story that is worth a closer look.
“Leads From Liz” columnist Liz Seegert is program coordinator for GBONews.org’s parent, the Journalists Network on Generations. A New York-based freelance journalist, she is also editor of the Association of Health Care Journalists’ Core Topic section on Aging.
4. GOOD SOURCES
*** “Medicare Beneficiaries with Serious Illnesses Report Problems Paying Bills,” by Michael Anne Kyle, Robert J. Blendon, both of Harvard University, and colleagues, Health Affairs (November 2019): According to the study, “Medicare beneficiaries report greater feelings of satisfaction with their health care than people with other kinds of health care coverage. However, traditional Medicare has notable gaps in its financial protections, including no cap on out-of-pocket spending. Because of this, 90 percent of beneficiaries buy supplemental insurance; join Medicare Advantage plans, which limit out-of-pocket spending; or are dually covered by Medicaid. Seriously ill Medicare beneficiaries can face particularly onerous financial hardships stemming from health care expenses.”
The researchers based their analysis of how the costs of care affect beneficiaries, their family and friends on 2018 data from the Health Care in America Survey, which is sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the New York Times.
The Study Found:
- More than half (53%) of Medicare beneficiaries with serious illnesses reported problems paying a medical bill. Posing the greatest hardships were: prescription drugs (30%), hospital charges (25%), ambulance and emergency department bills (20%).
- More than one-third (36%) of beneficiaries said they had used up all or most of their savings to pay for health care. Around a quarter said they had been contacted by a collections agency (27%) or had been unable to pay for necessities like food, heat, or housing (23%).
- Fully 25 percent said medical costs were a major burden on their family, and 30 percent said they were a minor burden.
- Strain on family members and friends resulted in financial problems, reduced income, and lost jobs. While 60% of beneficiaries said family members and friends helped them a lot, 25 percent said they helped a little, and 14 percent said they provided no help.
- Less than half of those seriously ill (46%) felt adequately informed by their health care providers about what their insurance would cover.
*** “The Double Whammy for Older, Low-Wage Workers With Chronic Conditions,” by Richard Eisenberg, Managing Editor, PBS Next Avenue and Forbes (Jan. 7, 2020): Subhead: “Sixty percent of Americans have at least one chronic disease, such as heart disease or diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chronic diseases are even more common among older, low-income adults and minorities. But when Kendra Jason, a sociology professor at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, studied workplace supports for older, low-income black workers with chronic conditions, she found some serious problems.”
Jason, he continued, interviewed “10 female and five male black workers at an urban university in the Southeast who were 50 and older, had two or more chronic conditions and earned $25,000 to $45,000 annually. Most had three chronic conditions — typically high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol. They had jobs such as a housekeeping position and a dining room cashier. Jason’s study of workplace supports for low-wage older workers with chronic conditions, albeit small, was unusual in its focus on workers who researchers often ignore.”
5. THE BOOKMOBILE
She presented her research at the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) conference in Austin, Texas in November. Also speaking there, Jacqueline James, director of the Sloan Research network on Aging & Work at Boston College, commented, “Employers — and employees — need to get used to the idea that people want to, and need to, work longer. Employers’ awareness about the need to work longer is getting keener. The problem is they are not changing in ways to help meet older workers’ needs.”
*** “Giving Life Experience Its Due,” by Peter McDermott, The Irish Echo (Nov. 21, 2019): Echoing the wistful Celtic lilt of years, McDermott, deputy editor of the New York-based Irish Echo, thumbed through a stack of novels reflecting the experience of old age, some by authors he’s interviewed for his paper, whose site declares it’s “the largest-circulation Irish weekly in the United States.”
McDermott prefaces his piece by quoting University of California, San Francisco, geriatrician Louise Aronson on how our culture fades us beyond gray to invisibility. In her nonfiction bestseller, Elderhood: Redesigning Aging, Transforming Medicine, Redefining Life (Bloomsbury, 2019), says McDermott, Aronson notes the rueful observation of the New Yorker’s Roger Angell, “When I mention the phenomenon to people around my age, I get back nods and smiles. Yes, we’re invisible. Honored, respected, even loved, but not quite worth listening to anymore.” Aronson remarks, “In old age, even the brilliant, famous, and fairly unimpaired are ignored.”
With that, McDermott goes on to say that recently It’s been “interesting to see quite a few middle-aged or younger Irish writers of literary fiction putting the voices of sympathetic older characters front and center in new work. One can point, for example, to The Heart’s Invisible Furies (Hogarth, 2017) by John Boyne, and Niall Williams’s This is Happiness, published this month by Bloomsbury.
While worthy authors, McDermott’s article continues with less well-established novelists. He asks, “How can we account for those who have the desire and confidence to do the same at or near the beginning of their careers?” One younger writer he interviewed was Anne Griffin, about her debut novel, When All Is Said (Thomas Dunne Books, 2019). Of the book, whose central character is Maurice Hannigan, an octogenarian farmer in Ireland’s County Meath,People Magazine said, ”Griffin’s stunning debut, brimming with irresistible Irish-isms, is an elegy to love, loss and the complexity of life.”
McDermott asked whether the native Dubliner who lives in County Westmeath, whether she approached her subject with trepidation? Griffin told him, “None at all, I had a very clear image of Maurice in my head. I knew his voice from the off. I knew his life and his motivators and I knew almost instantly how he’d react in any given situation. Having a father of 84 years of age at the time helped immeasurably. It gave me insights into concerns that might not have occurred to me given I was 44 and a woman.”
In replying to the same question, Dan Mooney, whose second novel, The Great Unexpected (Park Row, 2019) tells the story of Joel Monroe, “a former mechanic and successful garage-owner in his late 70s and living in the Hilltop Nursing Home; there, he makes an unlikely alliance and friendship with new resident Frank Adams, a former TV soap actor.” McDermott adds, “Both Griffin’s Maurice and Mooney’s Joel are grieving for a deceased spouse.”
Trepidation? “Mooney, 35, said, ‘I didn’t feel any trepidation really, but I think that’s because the book was written almost as a response to the infantilization and trivialization of older people — so I knew I wouldn’t be writing a story that denigrated them, or trespassed too boldly on someone else’s patch.’”
Mooney went on, “I believe that writers have to place themselves into shoes they may not otherwise fit in to write, but should be wary of where they walk in those shoes.” He added that doing so may force writers “past lazy stereotypes and making them, challenging them, to observe their characters and plots from angles they may not have considered before.”
In writing The Great Unexpected, he said, “I thought a lot about both of my grandfathers, who the book was dedicated to, and tried to imagine their reactions to indignities . . . . I would hate to have written a book that makes light of the real issues older people have with autonomy and independence.”
In another interview with McDermott, Caoilinn Hughes, 34, reflected on her depiction of old age in her debut, Orchid & the Wasp (Hogarth, 2018). The author said, “In my case, I haven’t written the life of an older person. I’ve featured older characters in my fiction, but they’ve never been the central character.” The Galway-born writer, who won a 2019 O. Henry Award here in the U.S., conceded, “Perhaps it’s telling that the one time I tried to write a short story from the perspective of an older — 70-year-old – man, I simply couldn’t do it. I don’t expect I’ll attempt it again for another decade.”
One pivotal person figure in Orchid & the Wasp, McDermott singles out, is “Wally, an extremely wealthy American in his 80s,” whom the young protagonist, Gael, meets in first-class on a transatlantic flight.”
Hughes recommended that writers ask themselves three questions posed by American author, Alexander Chee: “1. Why do you want to write from this character’s point of view? 2. Do you read writers from this community currently? 3. Why do you want to tell this story?”
*** “Feeling Old and Shunned, Legendary Writer Paul Theroux Leaves the U.S. and Journeys to a Country That Reveres the Elderly,” by Paul Theroux, BBC (Dec. 4, 2019): In the realm of creative nonfiction, The Irish Echo’s Peter McDermott also sent along this link to an essay by the great travel writer. Theroux:
“I was that old gringo. I was driving south in my own car in Mexican sunshine along the straight sloping road through the thinly populated valleys of the Sierra Madre Oriental – the whole craggy spine of Mexico is mountainous. Valleys, spacious and austere, were forested with thousands of single yucca trees, the so-called dragon yucca (Yucca filifera) that Mexicans call palma china. I pulled off the road to look closely at them and wrote in my notebook: I cannot explain why, on the empty miles of these roads, I feel young.
“I also think, It’s been a hard summer. Unregarded, shunned, snubbed, overlooked, taken for granted, belittled, mocked, faintly laughable, stereotypical, no longer interesting, parasitical, invisible to the young – the old person in the United States, and the man and writer I am, is much like the yucca, much like the Mexican. We have all that in common, the accusation of senescence and superfluity.
“I think of myself in the Mexican way, not as an old man but as most Mexicans regard a senior, an hombre de juicio, a man of judgment; not ruco, worn out, beneath notice, someone to be patronised, but owed the respect traditionally accorded to an elder, someone (in the Mexican euphemism) of La Tercera Edad, the Third Age, who might be called Don Pablo or tío (uncle) in deference. Mexican youths are required by custom to surrender their seat to anyone older. They know the saying: Más sabe el diablo por viejo, que por diablo – The devil is wise because he’s old, not because he’s the devil. But “Stand aside, old man, and make way for the young” is the American way.”
The BBC adapted this story from his latest tome, On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019).
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 2020 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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