GBO NEWS: Covering COVID Shots Travails; “Conservative Policies Shortening US Lives”; NPR’s “Founding Mothers” at 50; PLUS Disability Justice; Climate Change; Dychtwald’s “Radical Curiosity” Memoir; Media Access to On Aging 2021 Conference with Comedian Seth Rogan’s non-Hilarity on Alzheimer’s; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Our 28th Year.
February 24, 2021 — Volume 28, Number 2
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: Conspiracy in Plain Sight: 500,000 Dead, 10 Million Lost Jobs & Closed Businesses; Capitol Mob Violence—Who Did That, Again?
1. LEADS FROM LIZ: “Getting Shots: Covering Those Elusive COVID Appointments” by Liz Seegert
2. THE STORYBOARD
*** “’It Doesn’t Happen by Fairy Dust’: Vaccine Shortage Due to Rapid Expansion, Experts Say,” by Carla K, Johnson and colleagues, Associated Press;
*** “Are Conservative Policies Shortening American Lives?” by Lola Butcher, Undark (Feb. 1, 2021), Plus “Why Are Republican Presidents So Bad for the Economy?” by David Leonhardt with graphics by Yaryna Serkez, New York Times;
*** “Climate Change Endangers Many Older Adults,” by Mary Jacobs, Silver Century Foundation;
*** “Contra-Vax: Diary of a Pandemic,” by Jenny Manrique, Palabra/National Hispanic Journalists Association;
*** “Artist Lucas Samaras Opens New Virtual Exhibit At Manhattan’s Pace Gallery,” by Karen Michel, NPR News (Feb. 21, 2021), the most recent of three profiles of older artists by Karen Michel for NPR News.
*** “Age Justice Requires Disability Justice—and Vice Versa,” by Ashton Applewhite, Silver Century Foundationblog.
3. THE BOOKMOBILE: *** Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli Plus NPR and the Gen Beat’s Other Mother, Connie Goldman Turns 90; *** James Ridgeway, Great Investigative Journalist, Dies at 84; *** When Your Aging Parent Needs Help by journalist Paula Spencer Scott and Leslie Kernisan, MD, MPH; *** Radical Curiosity: One Man’s Search for Cosmic Magic and a Purposeful Life, by Ken Dychtwald, PhD.
4. GOOD SOURCES: Press Access to American Society on Aging’s “On Aging 2021” Online Meeting, April 6, 2021.
1. LEADS FROM LIZ
“Getting Shots: Covering Those Elusive COVID Appointments”
By Liz Seegert
Like many journalists, I’ve been reporting almost non-stop on COVID-19 for the past year. From nursing home outbreaks to lack of direct care workers to the social isolation and loneliness of homebound elders, there’s been no lack of story ideas.
At this point, signing up for a vaccination is challenging for anyone because of the shortage of doses. Two colleagues over age 75 in California and New Jersey report that getting an appointment was “impossible” as of last week, even, said one, “when you repeatedly return to register.” Both find that despite being registered at multiple sites to be emailed when openings come available, they don’t or indicate availability in a distant location in their region. In fact, I just did a story on this for Next Avenue, “Pointers on Booking a COVID-19 Vaccination.”
Still, as vaccines become more available for those over 65 (and in some states now, those younger than 65 with pre-existing health conditions), there’s a new angle to pursue: a digital divide that’s preventing many older people from actually obtaining those appointments.
A University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging found that 45% of adults aged 65 to 80, and 42% of all adults aged 50 to 80, said they had not set up an account with their health provider’s portal system. That means many are unable to schedule a vaccine appointment online, since many major health systems use this method—and this method only—for their patients. Black and Hispanic elders, those with less education or low income, or those living in rural areas, were even less likely to go online for appointment scheduling.
I recently wrote about this dilemma for my regular Covering Health column, at the Association of Health Care Journalists. (As an aside, I highly recommend joining the organization, which can help both health and non-health journalists cover the pandemic and age-related issues). It’s not just an inability to get online with their health providers, either. Many cities, counties, or states will only schedule COVID-19 vaccinations through online systems, whether it’s the city health department or the local Walgreen’s. This Gothamist article looked at how the digital divide affects older New Yorkers. And, it’s happening throughout the U.S., from Chicago to the Sun Belt to Kansas City.
Reaching out to family and friends for help is one work-around. However, it’s not always possible. It’s good to see others stepping in to fill the need, such as churches, and local nonprofits. The pandemic has not only highlighted many of the inequities in our health system, but also in issues like access to, and comfort with, technology.
As you consider story ideas, think about the digital divide among older adults, especially when it comes to factors like race/ethnicity, income, rural/urban, and education. How are communities addressing these concerns? Let older people (and those who care about them) know about the local solutions — whether it’s calling a “senior-specific” hotline, or a community agency willing to step in to wade through multiple screens of information to grab that elusive appointment.
“Leads From Liz” columnist Liz Seegert is program coordinator for GBONews.org’s parent, the Journalists Network on Generations and in that capacity serves as Co-Director of the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program. A Connecticut-based freelance journalist, she is also editor of the Association of Health Care Journalists’ Core Topic section on Aging.
2. THE STORYBOARD
*** “’It Doesn’t Happen by Fairy Dust’: Vaccine Shortage Due to Rapid Expansion, Experts Say,” by Carla K, Johnson, Brian Melley & Karen Matthews, Chicago Tribune/AP (Jan 21, 2021): Other media ran different headers for the same article, such as this one in the Times of Israel, “Health Experts Blame Trump Administration Failures for US Vaccine Shortages.”
Here’s the lead: “Public health experts Thursday blamed COVID-19 vaccine shortages around the U.S. in part on the Trump administration’s push to get states to vastly expand their vaccination drives to reach the nation’s estimated 54 million people age 65 and over.”
The piece continues, “The vaccine rollout so far has been ‘a major disappointment,’ said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. Problems started with the Trump administration’s ‘fatal mistake’ of not ordering enough vaccine, which was then snapped up by other countries, Topol said. Then, opening the line to senior citizens set people up for disappointment because there wasn’t enough vaccine, he said. The Trump administration also left crucial planning to the states and didn’t provide the necessary funding. ‘It doesn’t happen by fairy dust,’ Topol said. ‘You need to put funds into that.’”
Almost a month later, GBO’s editor, at 75 and in San Francisco, still gets messages from local health systems saying vaccination appointment reservations are unavailable. Subsequent coverage dove into the minutia of how different states have tried juggling limited availability sometimes holding back vaccine doses to ensure that second vaccinations would be available for those with appointments—only to face public pressure to release them to replace first-shot shortages.
Journalism needs to be clear that blame for the Trump administration is not partisan – it’s functional. This is what happened. Lies supplemented with dissembling—all verifiable on the record. For instance, only days after the AP story ran, the previous Secretary of Health and Human Services lied to governors and media in saying that the Trump administration would release a national reserve of vaccines – that proved not to exist. When confronted, he didn’t plead that he was misinformed by underlings, but he did fabricate the story that doses existed by had already been deployed.
Again, it is not partisan to observe that even rapid action by the new administration to correct the prior’s calculated and cynical incompetence will still take time to fix the deadly problems that were set in place. Reporters also need to dig back into the Trump strategy of foisting responsibility for the pandemic on to the states. How many billions of taxpayer dollars were wasted as states and U.S. territories were thrust into competition against each other—and against federal agencies—driving up vaccine prices, when a national response would have centralized negotiations for the country and stabilized expectations and supply? Who out there is following that money? As the good doctor said, “It doesn’t happen by fairy dust.”
*** “Are Conservative Policies Shortening American Lives?” by Lola Butcher, Undark(Feb. 1, 2021): Butcher writes in this long-form analysis, “In 2013, a research team comprised of some of the nation’s top epidemiologists and demographers compared the health of Americans with the health of people in other high-income nations. They summarized their findings in the report’s title: ‘U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health.’
“Compared to 16 other nations, the U.S. ranked dead last in life expectancy for males and second-to-last for females. Beyond that, the nation ranked at or near the bottom in nine broad areas. . . . Lung disease was both more common and more deadly in the U.S. than in most of the comparison countries, while older adults were more likely to have arthritis than people in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Japan. The U.S. surpassed all other nations in its rate of infant death. It had the highest rate of new AIDS cases. . . . A ‘catalog of horrors,’ as a writer at the Council on Foreign Relations summed up the report. Newspaper coverage included words like ‘stunned’ and “surprised.’ ‘It is now shockingly clear that poor health is a much broader and deeper problem than past studies have suggested,’ read an editorial in the New York Times.
“Since the report’s publication, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Health Organization, and others have continued to document the ongoing slide in U.S. health compared to other countries. ‘As bad as things were then, they’ve only gotten worse’” said Steven Woolf, a physician and public health researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University who chaired the panel of experts behind the Shorter Lives study. Indeed, as of 2019, the U.S. ranked 36th in the world in terms of life expectancy at birth, behind Slovenia and Costa Rica, not to mention Canada, Japan, and all the rich countries in Europe.”
Butcher reported that according to the Shorter Lives study, “Baby boys born in the U.S. on average could be expected to live 3.7 fewer years than if they had been born in Switzerland. For baby girls born in the U.S., life expectancy was 5.2 fewer years than those born in Japan.” Woolf presented the findings to congressional committees, she reported, “he found that they did not always resonate with lawmakers” besides Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who were not “ particularly influential in 2013.
She wrote, “The troubling portrait of America’s health did not spur action to paint a better one. Two presidential administrations have ignored it, as has Congress. . . Still, some social scientists have not stopped asking: What’s causing the U.S. health disadvantage? Recent work points to a surprising culprit: conservative policies.”
Beyond international comparisons, the story continues, “Life expectancy rates between states have increasingly diverged since the early 1980s, shortly after the federal government began transferring policymaking authority to the states, giving them more influence over programs like Medicaid and welfare. More recently, state-level power has grown via preemption laws, in which states curtail local authority over smoke-free ordinances, nutrition labeling in restaurants, and other issues. In 2000, only two states prohibited local jurisdictions from raising the minimum wage; today, 25 states do so.”
Further, Butcher cites new research focusing on individual states, “which has found that states with more liberal policies have longer life expectancy rates than those with more conservative policies. If all states adopted policies similar to those of Hawaii, for example — including on labor, tobacco, and the environment — U.S. life expectancy would increase to such an extent that it would be on par with other high-income countries.”
Butcher wrote, “As states have gravitated to more liberal or conservative sets of policies, their life expectancy rates have taken different trajectories. For example, Connecticut and Oklahoma had the same life expectancy in 1959, but by 2017, Connecticut had gained 9.6 years while the more conservative Oklahoma had gained just 4.7 years. Policies on tobacco, labor, immigration, civil rights, and the environment appear to be particularly influential for life expectancy.”
The story adds, “’We know states that we can look to: What is Connecticut doing? What did New York state do?’ [said Jennifer Karas Montez, a sociologist at Syracuse University] and lead author of the new research. “We can also look to the states that are declining and say, ‘What did they do wrong?’”
* Critical of both Republicans and Democrats as this editor has been since giant redwoods were saplings, I’ll add this bit of Keynsian economic data to the historical record, thanks to the NY Times (Feb. 2, 2021/Feb. 7 print editions): “Why Are Republican Presidents So Bad for the Economy?” by David Leonhardt with graphics by Yaryna Serkez.Subhead: “G.D.P., jobs and other indicators have all risen faster under Democrats for nearly the past century.”
*** “Climate Change Endangers Many Older Adults,” by Mary Jacobs, Silver Century Foundation media site (Feb. 3, 2021): Subhead: “Yet it’s seniors who worry the least about climate-related disasters.” The piece tells of how in 2007, Larry Howe, 64, a retiree and lifelong conservative Republican, saw the documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, which denied the threat of climate change. “Convinced, he put the issue out of his mind. But that changed a few years later when Howe’s first grandchild was born.” An engineer, he dug into the science, which turned him 180-degrees. Jacobs writes, “Now he’s active with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby and talks to local groups, like the Rotary Club and Kiwanis, in Plano, TX, where he lives.” He’s often met with skepticism—especially among people in his own age group.”
Jacobs continues, “If anybody should be concerned about the issue, it would seem to be older people, who stand to suffer more from climate-change-related problems—from weather disasters to air pollution. . . . Yet many older adults remain unprepared for disasters in their own homes and communities, and studies suggest elders are less concerned about climate change than their younger counterparts.”
She interviewed the respected gerontologist Michael “Mick” Smyer, professor emeritus of psychology at Bucknell University and the founder and CEO of Growing Greener, an organization that promotes education related to climate change. He cited research from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication: “When asked, ‘How worried are you about global warming?,’ 72 percent of younger people (ages 18-39) reported they were ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ worried. By contrast, only 61 percent of baby boomers (ages 56-74) and 56 percent of those 75 or older reported the same levels of concern. Smyer attributes the disconnect between awareness and action to what he calls society’s ‘climate silence habit.’ Natural disasters make the news, but the bigger and longer-term cause—climate change—tends to fall to the background.”
The story adds, “Politics is a big part of what informs attitudes toward climate change, Smyer said, and older adults are more likely to lean conservative; that may serve to reinforce their skepticism. . . . Howe . . . hopes science, not politics, can inform older adults’ views on the issue.”
*** “Contra-Vax: Diary of a Pandemic,” by Jenny Manrique, Palabra/National Hispanic Journalists Association (Feb. 10, 2021): Subhead: “Science moved at unprecedented speed to develop vaccines against the new coronavirus. It was too fast for some Latinos—especially those egged on my myth and misinformation.” (Read in Spanish.)
Manrique profiles Gabriela Navarrete, 69, who was raised in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, where “she learned early on that the land could provide what she needed to cure her ills. Mesquite bark, olive oil, corn vinegar and baking soda were useful for treating everything from joint pains to throat infections. In case of indigestion, the medicine was a good old stomach rub.” To fend off COVID-19, she “stocked up on Vitamin C, infusions of ginger, chamomile and peppermint, and linden tea for sleeping. And while this arsenal failed to defend her against the coronavirus last year, she remains resolute.”
Navarrete told Manrique, “Getting the vaccine is going to be very bad for me because I think they are made from the virus itself,” Navarrete said. The story reports that recent data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) on Latino attitudes and experiences with vaccinations show that “among those who have decided that they will get vaccinated, 43% said they want to wait and see how the inoculations affect other Latinos.”
Also, says Manrique, a 2021 Journalists in Aging Fellow, “According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Latinos are nearly twice as likely to be infected by COVID-19 as non-Latino whites. . . . This is due, partly, to the large number of Latinos working in essential jobs that expose them to co-workers and the public. Other factors, like access to health care, also play a role.”
*** “Why Understanding the Impact of the Pandemic in Detroit’s Bangladeshi Community Is More Complicated Than You Think,” by Nargis Hakim Rahman, Tostada Magazine (Feb. 1, 2021): She writes that the coronavirus pandemic has reminded her of growing up in her Bangladeshi family in Hamtramck, Mich., when the community was so closely knit, “I could literally hear someone turn on the shower next door.”
She explains, “An inability to social distance — either because of economic hardship or because of cultural norms — a lack of access to reliable information in languages other than English, and a dearth of data available about how specific ethnic populations are hurt by the virus all illustrate the many vulnerabilities that immigrant communities face during this crisis. Older Bangladeshi women, in particular, are among the most vulnerable to being infected and are also far more likely to be exposed to misinformation because of this reliance on younger generations conveying information, often unverified, to assist with daily life.”
Rahman, also a current Journalists in Aging Fellow, writes that because Bangla residents are lumped in with Asian American Pacific Islanders it is “difficult to track how specific ethnicities or nationalities are impacted by the virus. Similarly, while a large portion of Hamtramck’s population is of Arab backgrounds, that number is not reflected in Census data. . . Bangladeshis make up nearly 30 percent of the city’s population and are also the third-largest concentration of Bengali immigrants in the United States. About half of Hamtramck is estimated to live below the poverty line and about two-thirds of adults in the city speak a language other than English. The population is constantly fluctuating as many people move out of town as they move up economically and relocate to more affluent suburbs.”
*** “Artist Lucas Samaras Opens New Virtual Exhibit At Manhattan’s Pace Gallery,” by Karen Michel, NPR News (Feb. 21, 2021), is the independent audio producer’s third recent profile of older artists, this one about a “faboo and mighty strange visual artist,” Michel quipped in an email. In the piece’s intro, host Lulu Garcia-Navarro says, “Lucas Samaras helped transform instant Polaroids into fine art. After escaping the Greek Civil War as a child, he became part of the New York art world inner circle. Samaras has a new virtual show at Manhattan’s Pace Gallery.”
Michel, a former Journalists in Aging Fellow, opens with, “Nearly all of the 70 or so pieces in Lucas Samaras’ last solo show in Manhattan included the artist – frequently, naked.” Samaras tells her, “Now, at the age of 88, I said, what the hell am I hiding?” (Michel corrected in e-mail that he’s actually 86.) That show, “Me, Myself and I,” was pre-pandemic live only a year ago. The new Pace Gallery virtual exhibition, titled “Lucas Samaras: Gestures and Constructions,” runs through Feb. 28.
Her other recent NPR artist profiles were: “John Luther Adams, on the Arctic Sounds That Shaped His Works,” about the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, age 68, and “Dawoud Bey: An American Project; For Decades Photographer Has Chronicled Black Life,” about the stunning exhibition by the 68-year-old MacArthur “genius” photographer.
*** “Age Justice Requires Disability Justice—and Vice Versa,” by Ashton Applewhite, Silver Century Foundation media site (Feb. 5, 2021): Applewhite, author of the book and blog This Chair Rocks, is a regular blogger for the foundation’s informative website. In this piece, she notes that the “terrific special section of the New York Times [July 2020] was devoted to the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act.” However, she states, “There is no mention of age or ageism.”
Applewhite allows, “It would be convenient to attribute that omission to the fact that most older people are not disabled (true but complicated). But you sure wouldn’t know it from the way the media and public health advisories turn the vast and varied 60-plus population into ‘the elderly.’ And it’s not the real reason. The real reason is that we act as though people with disabilities don’t grow old. . . . That has to change. Aging and disability are not the same. But they overlap in ethically and tactically important ways.” She concludes, “Ignoring the overlap between ageism and ableism leaves stigma unchallenged and rules out collective activism.”
3. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** NPR’s Four “Founding Mothers” Plus 1: Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by LA-based journalist and author Lisa Napoli is due out in April, and reporters in the GBONews fold can request review copies now from Abrams Books. The hardcover release will celebrate the 50th anniversary of National Public Radio News with Napoli’s group bio of the quartet of women who formed the core of the then nonprofit news enterprise in the days when most women reporters were still relegated to the “Woman’s Page.” The book profiles journalism greats Susan Stamberg, Cokie Roberts, Linda Wertheimer and Nina Totenberg. (Journalists can request review copies and press information from Gabby Fisher at gfisher@abramsbooks.com .)
Not mentioned in the book but much admired, Napoli told GBONews, is independent radio documentary producer and mother of the generations beat, Connie Goldman. She was one of the first weekend anchors for All Things Considered – until her mother asking Connie to join her in California, where she would also learn firsthand about family caregiving. Goldman went on to a distinguished career as audio producer and author on the many sides of aging. She turned 90 at the end of January at her home just outside of her native Minneapolis.
This editor hasn’t read Napoli’s new volume, but I’m eager to see how she braids together these four very different newshounds. As the Abrams release recounts, Susan had lived in India with her husband, a State Department official. Linda grew up the daughter of New Mexico shopkeepers and had to fight her way to a scholarship and a spot on-air. (Her husband is Common Cause founder, Fred Wertheimer.) Nina, the network’s legal affairs correspondent, invented a new way to cover the U.S. Supreme Court. And Cokie was born into a Louisiana political dynasty and prowled the halls of Congress from youth when her father and mother served in the House of Representatives. “All Things Considered” went on the air on April 20, 1971.
While the journalism world will be lifting well-deserved toasts to those four in the coming months, Goldman emailed her many well-wishers from around the country “that my depth of gratitude is heartfelt”— then followed with the kind of honest reporting those who know her would expect, this time about herself: “Some days I have more memory loss than others.”
She added, “My next goal, as you know I’m always setting a future goal, and today I’ve set that to be a celebration of my 100th birthday.”
*** GBONews was saddened to learn that the great investigative journalist and author, Jim Ridgeway has died of “unspecified causes,” according to the New York Times. It’s obit, headlined, “James Ridgeway, Hard-Hitting Investigative Journalist, Dies at 84” (Feb. 14, 2021): The obit underscored, “Writing for many publications, he drew attention to neo-Nazis, corporate polluters, preening politicians and the practice of solitary confinement.”
He was the author or editor of at least 20 books, such as The Closed Corporation: American Universities in Crisis, The Politics of Ecology, A Pocket Guide to Environmental Bad Guys (with Jeffrey St. Clair), and Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, the Rise of a New White Culture. Ridgeway also directed documentary films.
Unsurprisingly, this otherwise informative obituary and others about him didn’t mention his past blog on aging, Unsilent Generation — “A site for pissed-off progressive old folks (and future old folks)…because we’re not dead yet”). which he posted for several years starting in 2008.
It was especially gratifying to have had Jim serve as a senior-level Journalists in Aging Fellow, which we cosponsor with the gerontological Society of America, for the program’s second season (2011-12). His stunning report, “The Other Death Sentence: Aging and Dying in America’s Prisons,” ran in Mother Jones(Sept.25, 2012), where Jim was a contributor for years. As NYT and others noted, he and his partner, Jean Casella, devoted most of their energies to exposing unjust incarceration, especially solitary confinement, through their blog, Solitary Watch, and 2016 book, Hell Is a Very Small Place.” It was our privilege to work with one of the great self-described “geezers’ in American journalism.
*** When Your Aging Parent Needs Help: A Geriatrician’s Step-by-Step Guide to Memory Loss, Resistance, Safety Worries, & More by journalist Paula Spencer Scott and geriatrician Leslie Kernisan, MD, MPH, of the University of California, San Francisco, was published this month as an original quality paperback from Kernisan’s respected Better Health While Aging website comes with an impressive roster of endorsements from the likes of Bill Thomas, MD, founder of Changing Aging and The Eden Alternative; Harvard geriatrician and author, Muriel R. Gillick, MD; and Forbes columnist Howard Gleckman, and author of the 2009 title, Caring for Our Parents. He blurbed, “This book is GPS for the children of older adults.”
*** Radical Curiosity: One Man’s Search for Cosmic Magic and a Purposeful Life is the new book by Ken Dychtwald, PhD. The aging-enterprise maven, age 71, emailed GBONews that the volume is “unlike anything I’ve written before.” Dychtwald, a psychologist, wrote this first-time personal reflection to trace his path from launching his company, Age Wave, to “coming to terms with his own aging process.”
Along with the motivational tips and celebrity-strewn tales of his journey from the Sixties and into gerontology, Dychtwald’s introduction promises a more interior narration.
Poignantly, Dychtwald admits, “Even for a guy who’s spent a vast majority of his waking hours helping others imagine the best way to age, there’s a lot that scares me about getting old. I’m frightened of something happening to my wife, Maddy, or to my children, my brother, or my close friends. And I’m frightened of something happening to me. I’m particularly scared of suffering.”
He goes on, “The idea of losing a part of me, or not being functional, or losing my mind terrifies me. I watched my dad go blind from macular degeneration a decade before he died at 93. I watched my dear mom be decimated by Alzheimer’s disease over the course of 12 increasingly agonizing years. I’ve seen people put into institutions and treated in horrible, demeaning, degrading ways. I’m also scared of being tossed to the sidelines or being a burden on my family. As you get older, you can’t help but confront these things, and I’ve begun to realize—as a guy who likes to stride through life with a certain amount of boldness— that I’m actually frightened of being frightened.”
We look forward to read the full book and ride along on Dychtwald’s path. The which opens with a great quote from early-20th century humorist, Will Rogers: “Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.”
The official release date for Radical Curiosity is April 6. Generation beat writers can request an advance ebook or copy from chris@unnamedpress.com or olivia@unnamedpress.com.
4. GOOD SOURCES
*** Press Access: American Society on Aging’s “On Aging 2021” Meeting, April 6, 2021: ASA’s Annual Meeting, to offer more than 150 online sessions, has opened the way for reporters to apply for complimentary media access. Information on how to apply is a bit hard to find, but it may be well worth doing so. First, go to the conference landing page and look over the conference brochure to see whether applying is right for you. Then scroll down further to the FAQ section. Toward the bottom you can click on, “Do you offer press passes for On Aging 2021?” for that information. Take look at their guidelines. To request a media access pass, email info@asaging.org.
There will be in five tracks, with a COVID-19 focus throughout: Equity & Justice, Health & Well-being, Innovation & Social Impact, Economic Security and Ageism & Culture. opening session on April 6 will be on the “Future of Aging and Aging Services” with Ai-Jen Poo, head of Caring Across Generations and the leading advocate for direct care workers on issues like the fight for a $15 minimum wage; UCLA’s Fernando Torres-Gil and Kathy Greenlee, both heads of the U.S. Administration on Aging, and Ken Dychtwald, speaking on the release date of his new memoir, Radical Curiosity (see item in “The Bookmobile” section above.)
The keynote session on April 12, on “Building Alzheimer’s Resistant Brains,” will feature Seth and Laura Miller Rogan, who in 2012 founded HFC, “a national non-profit organization whose mission is to care for families facing this disease, educate young people about living a brain-healthy life, and activate the next generation of Alzheimer’s advocates.”
And, yes, it is that Seth Rogan and his wife. Near as I can tell from their HFC website, the acronym originally stood for Hilarity for Charity. According to the site, they initially hosted their Brain Health Dinner Series, “nine star-studded variety shows and one comedian-filled carnival, and have a comedy special currently streaming on Netflix. In 2020, we hosted our first-ever virtual game show: Hilarity for Charity’s Head to Head.” To date they’ve raised over $13 million dollars and awarded over 300,000 hours of in-home care relief to Alzheimer’s family caregivers through our North American Caregiver Respite Grant Program.”
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 2021 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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