Ageism and 8 strategies

Almost 50 years ago Dr. Robert Butler, a gerontologist, coined the word "ageism." I was in my 20s then and probably laughed at the jokes and ridicule about the old that was so common in those days in the movies and on TV. Befuddled, confused, hair askew, thick glasses, sloppy, drooping socks that didn't match--it was standard fare, and probably the last group comedians could ridicule publicly with impunity. Except on social media (although now those sites have added hatred for white men to their list to demean and put down). I've logged out of those groups that called me an ugly old hag because of my faith or politics. Well, they'll learn. It was the boomers who were the writers and actors in those silly shows 30-50 years ago. And now look where they are--joking about the grandchildren showing them how to use their smart phones and forgetting the names of their neighbors of 20 years.

Butler died in 2010 and his final book, "The Longevity Prescription" listed 8 strategies, each a chapter in the book, for a healthy old age: maintain mental vitality; nurture your relationships; seek essential sleep; set stress aside; connect with your community; live the active life; eat your way to heath; and practice prevention. Good advice, even for millennials and gen-x. Genetics are only responsible for 25 percent of our length of life. The rest is lifestyle and environment.

And I'd add a 9th key--nurture your relationship with God.

 

And what do you talk about with your friends, Donna?

Donna Butts is executive director of Generations United which according to her letter to President Obama in 2008 has 4 priority areas: "maximizing tax dollars through intergenerational shared sites and resources; supporting intergenerational caregiving and family structures; engaging children, youth and older adults as resources to communities and families; providing access to quality health care coverage for all people in the U.S." Just off the top of my head after 5 minutes research, I'd say GU is one of thousands of non-profits which exist to get grants from the government and other non-profits (foundations, churches, etc.) to provide a living for their staff. (Most churches have provided for this since the beginning of the first century A.D.) And although they might not be living with their parents or children, I know very few boomers who aren't pitching in to either help their parents or their adult children and grandchildren.

However, I just want to draw attention to a quote of Donna Butts which appeared in papers today in heralding the Pew Research report about multigenerational households on the increase (they are no where near as common as 1940, but up a little between 2007 and 2009).

"All they (older people) do is talk about who died, what hurts, and what medication they're on." It's not that she's incorrect. I'm 70, and I've learned a lot about recovering from mastectomies, stroke, laproscopic robotic surgery, bronchitis, and pulled muscles just from listening to people over 45. And I've regaled a few with my story of sleeping on airport floors sicker than I've ever been in 2009. But I've also heard about apps for my I-Touch, volunteer opportunities, Twitter and Facebook, free concerts, 9-12 political events, the best travel deals and new restaurants to try.

And Donna--have you ever stood in line behind a group of teen-age girls and overheard the fascinating topics they discuss? 1) boys, 2) texting, 3) boys, 4) clothes, 5) boys. Or how about that group of millennials who were at the next table where we ate last week, meeting after work to unwind? 1) Unintelligible screeching, 2) Ear splitting howls, 3)Oh. My. God. 4) Dirty joke, 5) Workplace gossip. Or a Jane Austen fan club? Or BMW owners? Or generation 2 point 0 anything?

People talk about what they know and experience--at any time in life. If you're not into motorcycle cross country trips or saving dolphins, you'll probably be bored. Donna may talk about generation research to anyone who will listen, regardless of age.

The double whammy of aging

I've blogged about the verbs for death and dying used in obituaries, but I hadn't really thought about the photos. Most announcements don't carry photos, and usually I can tell from the eye glasses and hair styles (of women) the age of the photograph. And I'm not surprised when the subject or his children select a military photo--which sends several visual messages--youth, vigor, patriotism, camaraderie, history. This research at OSU on "ageism" and bias, did surprise me, however, I suppose in the conclusion. The last "formal" portrait I have of my parents is from a 1991 church directory when they were in their late 70s. They died in 2000 and 2002. It's a nice portrait, and informal photographs I have of them later are nice, but it's that one I keep displayed. Glancing around my office, I think that one may even be better of my father than the one taken in 1984 for their 50th--the year he was recovering from heart surgery and he was very gaunt and thin. And we have a family portrait of my father-in-law with his four children taken on his 90th birthday which is quite nice. My mother-in-law was in such poor health the last 25 years of her life I would probably select a nice Valentine photo of 1963 with her husband if it didn't have other negative memories (death of our oldest son same week).

"Results of the study showed that age-inaccurate photos increased steadily each decade: from 17 percent (1967) to 27 percent (1977) to 30 percent (1987) and finally to 36 percent (1997). The researchers found that each additional year in age at time of death increased the odds of having an age-inaccurate obituary photo."

The author of the research, Keith Anderson, Assistant Professor of Social Work at Ohio State University, says it's a double whammy for women--ageism and sexism. It may also be cultural--how often do you have a formal portrait taken after, say, the grandchild's wedding, or the 50th anniversary? And who's to say that person in the mirror at age 85 is more you than the one who used to be there 25 years ago?

What do you think? Do you have a photo in mind?

The Emmys

Primetime Emmy Awards “inexplicably attracted the franchise's smallest audience in its history. A mere 12.2 million viewers watched an . . . “orgy of trophy dispensing and politically charged speechifying.” (WaPo, Sept. 23)

Yes, ageism and sexism was in full flower--racism of course, has been entirely eliminated from their scripts. The entertainment industry mined that vein dry years ago. For that you have to read the recent polls of the Democratic party which show some ordinary working folk are tired of being called names and constantly insulted by the rich know-it-alls in their party. They're just not sure they want to pull the lever (punch the button, mark the ballot) for Obama.

It’s been years since I’ve seen an awards show. 12 million people with nothing to do--sounds like a lot of dumbed down couch potatoes to me. But I’ve seen snippets of this one. Oh, that prune political joke was almost as amusing as the SNL joke on incest, which is also going around and continues to insult women who make a difference and run for political office. Yes, the American entertainment industry deserves an award all right. You begin to understand better the view of the radical Muslims on the worth of pop culture. But hey, I share the blame. I have a TV in every room (except the dining room), and went to three or four movies this summer.

Stephen Colbert, eating from a bag of dried plums, told co-presenter Jon Stewart: "Right now, America needs a prune. It may not be a young, sexy plum. Granted, it is shriveled and at times hard to swallow. But this dried-up old fruit has the experience we need."

It's OK to hit back if he's old

Paris Hilton has a very clever comeback and is using her pretty face and McCain's celebrity ad about Obama to strike back. She has proven she can read text as well as Obama and that it's still OK to ridicule old people (anyone over 30 to her). However, you can't call Obama anything if you are describing his physical appearance, his education, his speech, his family, or his values. It's all a racist sub-text according to the lefties. On the other hand, he's allowed to grab onto conservative ideas to fool the voters and hide his Marxism, because that seems to be the elephant no one, not even McCain, wants to talk about. But this is OK

"He is the oldest celebrity in the world, like super old. Old enough to remember that dancing was a sin and the beer was served in a bucket, but Is He Ready To Lead?" and the images show John McCain.

John McCain may never be blond, may never be President. But Paris will never be known for anything but her family name, and will definitely be old some day. She should thank McCain for showcasing her flailing career. Let's hope the AARP and the VFW goes after her on behalf of the millions of men and women, black, white and brown, skinny and fat, she has insulted.

I'm betting Britney wishes her handlers had thought of this. Her career needs some help too.

Knocking down a straw man

Straw man n (ca. 1900) a weak or imaginery opposition (as an argument or adversary) set up only to be easily confuted.

I saw this flat out lie in an annoucement about a program being offered Thursday for students at Ohio State.

"Racism, sexism and ageism have all been at the forefront of the 2008 Election."

The forefront? Who are they kidding? Naive students who don't know any better, never read the newspaper or unplog their I-pod, that's who. The rest of us know better. The whole nation has been tippy toeing around these three issues (even though I did see a comedy show on cable ridiculing John McCain's age and you can find outrageous slander on the Daily Kos, all written by the left about their own).

I'm 68. I believe Obama, a mixed race American (white mother, African father, raised by white grandparents), is a marxist keeping company with strange and evil cronies, many Communists; I believe Hillary Clinton, a white woman age 60, a former first lady of the nation (God bless her for her service), a New York carpetbagger, is a Socialist; and I believe John McCain, a white man age 72, who left his wife for a younger, richer woman, is a RINO who has sucked up to the main stream media and independents and is now about to get stabbed in the back by the people he tried to placate. Does that mean I'm a racist, a sexist, or an ageist?

You can tell liberals set up this OSU discussion program. I don't plan to attend, but I think I know what will happen. It will turn into an Obama rally. Conservatives don't talk that way. They don't like to mush people together in little groups and then turn them against each other.

Conservatives believe that if a black candidate talks about raising our taxes until our investments are destroyed, regulating what car we can drive, wants judges who will make the constitution their personal playground of their own values and beliefs and waffles on what he said about concessions to militant Moslems who want to destroy our ally Israel, that he's not a good guy to put in the White House. We have a lot of history books (at least those published before the early 90s) that tell about what happens with appeasement--either pre-WWII with the Germans or post-WWII with the Soviets, or with North Korea to close out the Korean War, or even the worse course which was to run off whimpering the way we did in Vietnam. Millions died from our "talks and concessions."

And if a white woman is trying to sneak her husband in for a third term on her petticoat tails and wants to destroy the health care system, she's not going to be my choice for the first woman to lead the country. We only have to go north of the border or watch the rich rulers from socialist countries fly in on their private jets for complex and swift medical care to know we don't want her.

If the decorated 72 year old Vietnam veteran who bravely served his country even as a POW can't figure out how to secure our own borders, or that the global warmists are hucksters bent on destroying our economy, God Bless him for his bravery 35 years ago, but he's not my man regardless of what he says about Iraq.

3431 More on early retirement

Seems I was the only one who thought Sheryl McCarthy in the Forum section of USA Today was expecting too much protectionism for her older worker status yesterday. The comments following her Opinion forum tell some mighty sad stories of well-qualified, highly educated and superior employees put out to pasture much too early.

So was I just being an old meany, or did I have a little personal experience? Let me offer three examples, as the spouse of an unemployed worker, the superviser doing the hiring, and the government employment trainer.

My husband lost his job in 1976 while he was still in his 30s. It's terribly traumatic when you've got two little kids to feed and clothe and a mortgage, car payment, etc. but no job. We were not a two income family, we had a tiny savings for emergencies, and the paycheck stretched to about the 29th of the month. You've heard of the Great Depression? 1977-79 was the era of The Great Inflation (Carter was president and I think we had a Democratic congress). In the building trades, we were dead in the water a few years before the worst recession since the 1930s (1981-82, until Reagan got his tax cuts in place and turned things around). Big firms were gobbling up jobs they would have sneered at even two years earlier, leaving nothing for the smaller firms. My husband was only out of work three weeks, but emotionally it took years for him to recover. He was griped by fear and lost a lot of weight dropping below 130 lbs. Although he was hired by a good firm and eventually became a partner and owner, the personal dynamics were awful (and he's a very easy guy to get along with), but the earlier scare kept him there until 1994 when he left to start his own firm as sole practitioner.

In 1978 I took a wonderful contract, part-time position in the OSU agriculture library working in the agricultural credit field and there was enough money in the grant (Dept. of State) for me to hire a clerical assistant to do the typing, binding of documents, and filing. One of the candidates I interviewed was 10 years older than me and taking post graduate work to get a PhD in economics (my background was languages, not business). She was desperate for a job--any job. She was so incredibly over qualified it wasn't funny, and she hoped she'd left clerical work in her past. I hired a work-study undergrad. I simply didn't feel comfortable supervising a woman better educated and older than me--but I also believe it was not a job for a PhD candidate. The 19 year old loved it, did a terrific job because she had had many similar jobs (and I was a great boss), graduated and moved on.

In 1983, just as the economy was starting to pick up, I took a JTPA (formerly CETA) funded contract, part-time position with the Ohio Department of Aging helping agencies and organizations who would retrain older people to find new jobs. Many businesses hadn't made it through those bad years of the late 70s early 80s and older workers had trouble even preparing resumes. I learned two critical things about older workers: First, we can learn new skills and methods, but after age 25 it's like teaching a child with learning disabilities--it takes longer and needs to be approached from a variety of angles; Second, if you're unemployed and going to look for work, you need to put in 40 hours a week looking--your new job is to get a job. The way you submit resumes is different today, but you still need to get down to business immediately and not let up on the search.

Because I had so many part-time and temporary jobs, I've also learned over the years that when you're gone, it's over. Don't expect office or professional friendships to last unless there is something besides work holding it together, like church or hobbies. They'll all be trying to hang on to their jobs too, needing current professional contacts that can assist them. You'll have fewer hurt feelings and remorse if you just let it go.

3424 Too young to retire?

Sheryl McCarthy in the Forum section of USA Today (1-31-07) writes about the woes of being a pushed-out, down-sized journalist living on income from part-time jobs and free lancing who wants a "real job." She writes,

". . . we're being prematurely marginalized, even though we have skills that are useful to the economy" and she wants "U.S. companies to stop discriminating against willing and qualified older workers for the jobs that are available."

No, Sheryl, your journalism skills, your network of contacts, your technological know-how, and your cultural mind-set are no longer useful to U.S. newspapers, magazines, and the publishing industry in general. Even some of the facts you supply for your article, don't support your argument, such as there are more people over 55 working full time today than a decade ago, and that the search time to find a job for 50+ is only 15 days longer than younger workers. And lack of mobility could have a lot to do with that.

You mention in your article that before age 58 you worked 17 years for the same newspaper, watching others being shown the door, then it happened to you. You've known this was coming for almost two decades, and what did you do? How long did you think the party would go on before the bar closed? You are a baby boomer. From the time you entered kindergarten, every public service, agency and church in the country from your public school, to the college and universities, to the county and state agencies to the federal government have been looking out for you, opening doors for you with new rules and regulations and adjusting projections and benefits.

When you were 35, how many younger workers, the new grads, did you mentor? How many older workers were you including in your lunch get-togethers or focus groups? Were you adding your older co-workers to task groups you chaired, or helping them in workshops, or stepping aside so they could get the career advancement at your expense? I doubt it.

Step into the shoes for 5 minutes of the HR person (whose job is also on the line daily). MPOW employs 20 people in the writing and communications department, and one person retired whose salary and benefits cost the firm $75,000. The HR reviews 3 candidates, all with strong resumes.

• 1) New college grad (2006), salary range begins about $35,000 + benefits, has huge college loans to pay, still young enough to want to pursue other goals and locales if the opportunity were to come up--maybe Mumbai or LA.
• 2) Recent college grad (ca. 2001) with four solid years of work experience, some post-graduate courses, no unexplained absenses in the work record with former employer (which could indicate health problems or lack of commitment to the career); glowing references including names known to HR person (similar age), and some web and software design experience; salary range begins at about $43,000.
• 3) 58 year old who graduated from Columbia in the early 1970s, very strong resume with reputable journals and newspaper all in the metropolitan Northeastern U.S., now all defunct; can use a laptop and PC but has few other computer skills; no recent course work or foreign assignments; wants $60,000 to even start talking, because "I'm worth it" attitude.

Well, I'd choose #2--she's not green or showing up for work still in party mode, but has useful work experience with a solid network and HR hopes she'll stick around and help the company grow. There's enough money in the piggy bank to hire her with some left over for a part-timer or free lancer who won't require benefits--maybe that #3 candidate who also applied for the job. HR gets a bonus for hiring smart.

older workers
employment discrimination
ageism