7 Ways to Find Love and Friendship Later in Life

Remaining open to connecting with new people can be rewarding
By Wendy Sue Knecht for Next Avenue


Credit: Adobe Stock

There’s no question of the importance of personal interactions and connections with friends as an important source of our well-being. This is especially true as we age, and much has been written about the challenge of making friends and finding love in the later years.

Looking for love, or even just hoping to make a new friend, can seem intimidating when you’re older. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Personally, I didn’t find Mr. Right until late in life, and it definitely took some work on my part to be ready for the right person when he came along.

Here are a few insights that may be helpful in finding love and friendship as we get older:

1. Re-frame old mindsets It’s all how we frame things in our minds that affect our vision. With the right mindset, it is easier to find love and friendship.

Although it is often said that as we get older we get more stuck in our ways, this doesn’t have to be true. We learn more about ourselves as the years go by, and our tastes become more distinct; but that doesn’t necessarily imply that we have to become more rigid. As I’ve experienced, it is possible to become more open-minded as we age.

When I got married for the first (and only) time at age 47, I can’t tell you how many comments I received from well-meaning friends and acquaintances: “Really, wasn’t that difficult?” “Weren’t you used to living alone?” and “Weren’t you set in your ways?”

“No!” I would emphatically answer. Being single for so long made me ready to welcome change. Having more self-knowledge made it easier to feel open to new experiences. I realized that being set in my ways was a choice and served no purpose. I made a conscious decision not to be “stuck” in a rigid mindset.

2. Don’t expect others to be perfect With age comes confidence, and hopefully, the acceptance of our own imperfections. Personally, in my younger days, I had strict standards that everyone had to live up to. My friends used to tell me that I was “too picky” regarding men, which was a nice way of saying “too critical.” Once you come to accept your own faults and imperfections, it is much easier to accept other people for who they are. Not only do I not expect anyone to be perfect, I would hate for anyone to expect that of me.

3. Don’t let others define you When we were younger, many of us chose friends a lot like ourselves. Hence the “cliques” in high school, where everyone was pretty much alike. Back then, we needed to be alike to be accepted.

Once we have the self-assurance of age, it is no longer necessary to find a partner or a friend to define ourselves. You can appreciate others more fully when you realize they are not a reflection of you. Differing opinions and tastes can make things more interesting if you are open to listening without judgment. For example, the famous friendship between Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Anthony Scalia comes to mind.

4. Embrace quirkiness Perfect is boring and quirkiness can be a lot of fun if you have a sense of humor. My husband’s “Obsessive Cleaning Disorder” would have driven me crazy in my 30s, but now I can work around it and even appreciate it. As long I keep my own modicum of neatness, I can reap the benefits of his obsession. I am perfectly happy for him to clean up the dinner dishes and organize the drawers (he does a much better job than I do).

Quirkiness in ourselves and in others can make life more interesting. Don’t fight it, embrace it.

5. Celebrate differences An appreciation and tolerance of differences is a big bonus of getting older.

A recent vacation was a big eye-opener. In my newly acquired travel agent role, I booked a small French river barge and filled it to capacity with 21 people. I recruited half of the passengers, whom I knew, and one of my friends brought along the others. Although mostly everyone knew at least one or two of the others on the trip, it was a fusion of childhood, college and work friends from all walks of life, white to blue collar. Everyone took a leap of faith and I held my breath, feeling responsible for the whole lot.

Our group was smart to ignore the topic of politics — one that is way too divisive these days. But everyone took the time to learn from each other. We shared our love of travel, food and wine, and embraced each other’s differing backgrounds. By the time the seven-day trip ended, we all had made a few new friends.

6. Visualize Remember the self-fulfilling prophecy is just that. If you really can feel in your heart that you are ready to meet a new friend or love interest, you are much more likely to be open to it when the opportunity presents itself. Visualize it happening. I found there is a lot of value in putting good thoughts out to the universe.

7. Keep an Open Mind Keeping an open mind is key to finding new friends and love as you get older. Never say never; love and friendship could be just around the corner.

By Wendy Sue Knecht
Travel expert Wendy Knecht is a former flight attendant, a designer of travel bags and author of Life, Love, and a Hijacking: My Pan Am Memoir. She blogs at WendySueKnecht.

Are You a "Solo Ager"?

By Richard Eisenberg

With her recent book, Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers: A retirement and aging roadmap for single and childless adults, Sara Zeff Geber brought the term “solo agers” into the national vocabulary. By Geber’s definition, a solo ager (sometimes called an “elder orphan”) is a boomer without children and/or grandchildren. Geber, a 2018 Influencer in Aging based in Santa Rosa, Calif., is a retirement coach for boomers, a life planning and retirement transition expert, a professional speaker, a workshop leader and a Forbes contributor. She has a Ph.D. in organizational behavior.

Next Avenue: Your bio says: Sara has been among the first professionals in the field to recognize that the baby boom generation would re-invent the whole notion of retirement in a very exciting way. Tell me about that.

Sara Zeff Geber: In 2010, nobody was talking about this. Boomers were primarily in the workforce. I was looking at the trajectory of the boomer generation and what we’ve changed in society and the likely changes we will enact in our later years. Now, we’re starting to see them bigtime.

Why is there so much interest in solo agers now?

For one thing, there are so many of us. Almost 20 percent of boomers don’t have kids and as I keep being told in my talks, solo aging is not limited to people who don’t have kids. Lots of people are aging alone with kids who live a long way away and a lot of them don’t want to rely on their kids.

Some people refer to older adults without children as ‘elder orphans,’ but you don’t like that term and many others don’t either. Why?

I hate that term. I find it offensive; the word ‘orphans’ has always had a negative connotation. I wanted to use words that are positive or at least neutral. I think I coined the term ‘solo ager’ eight years ago and now I’m pleased others are using it.

What are the challenges and opportunities solo agers face that are different than other people?
Opportunities? You absolutely have a lot more freedom to decide where you’re going to live. You don’t have the tug of kids or grandkids to live in a particular climate you don’t want. And you can go wherever you want.

What do people ask you about solo agers when you give talks about it?

People are very interested in the topic of where they should live. I’m not the biggest fan of aging in place; I like to see people focus on aging in community. It’s so important to build and maintain a social support network. I encourage people to think through to the end of life when we need people around us.

What do solo agers need to do first for their retirement planning?

They should use professionals like financial advisers and estate attorneys and get their paperwork in order — advance directives, wills, trusts, powers of attorney. That forces solo agers to think through: ‘Who will I name on those documents?’ And they have to talk to those people; you can’t just name them and let it go. You need to tell them your values and your vision for your future.

What happens when a solo ager asks someone to be in charge of their end-of-life wishes?

I can’t say people are always very gracious and say: ‘Yes, I’d be happy to do it.’ They’re not always comfortable at first. Help them understand you need people in your corner as a solo ager. If you tell me ‘I asked one person and she declined,’ I say: ‘Move on to the next person.’

I encourage people to start with family: a niece or nephew who lives near them.

What happens is often people go into a crisis after a fall or a medical event and there they are in the hospital and somebody needs to be there as an advocate waving paperwork saying: ‘I am power of attorney.’

What do you want your legacy to be?

I want people to remember me as a person who opened the world’s eyes to the fact that many people in the coming older generation of boomers, and possibly generations to follow, don’t have the safety net of adult children as we get older. And we need to plan in many ways what want to be, who we will be around and how we will avoid isolation and loneliness.
 

Richard Eisenberg is the Senior Web Editor of the Money & Security and Work & Purpose channels of Next Avenue and Managing Editor for the site. He is the author of How to Avoid a Mid-Life Financial Crisis and has been a personal finance editor at Money, Yahoo, Good Housekeeping, and CBS MoneyWatch.@richeis315

Fighting Ageism on a Hiking Trail

At Great Basin National Park, a couple discovers possibilities are as important as goals

Credit: Compliments of Donna Trump

By Donna Trump for Next Avenue

This is a story about me, a woman of a certain age, gray-haired and a little thick through the middle who, a few summers ago, asked a much younger, positively lithe national park guide …well, I asked her a question I didn’t really want answered. At least not the way the guide answered it.

The park was Great Basin National Park in far eastern Nevada, just over the Utah line. I was nearly overwhelmed with the remarkably remote beauty of the region. It is located in a huge geographic basin — spanning from the Wasatch Mountains in Utah to the Sierra Nevada in California, which, according to the National Park Service, is a “200,000 square mile area that drains internally. All precipitation in the region evaporates, sinks underground or flows into lakes (mostly saline). Creeks, streams, or rivers find no outlet to either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean.”

Anyway, the question I asked was this: “Do you think I can do the Wheeler Peak hike?” And the answer I got was, without hesitation, “No.”

“Is it technical? Is that why? Is it very long?” I asked.

“No, it’s not technical or very long, but there’s the altitude. It’s 3,000 feet of elevation gained in four miles — most of the gain at the end,” she said. “No, I just don’t think you could.”

Wheeler Peak summits at something over 13,000 feet. The only reason I even considered it possible ws that my husband and I would drive up to the trailhead at 10,000 feet.

“Did you tell her you bike 50 to 60 miles a week?” my husband asked, firmly in my camp. But by now I was miffed, feeling subject to ageism and determined to prove the guide wrong.

A Scheme for Summiting Success

The next morning, after picking up lunch and driving up to the start of the hike, my husband and I imagined coming back to the ranger station later in the day with tales of summiting the great Wheeler Peak.

The trail started out in a slight descent, which when you think of it is not a good thing: a “minus” in the “elevation gained” column. Then for two miles, it climbed pretty gradually, through alpine meadows and past pristine lakes.

Because my husband is a wonderful man, we followed a scheme for summiting success: 10 minutes hike, five minutes rest, even when the hiking was easy. What couldn’t be accomplished with 10 minutes of walking and five minutes of resting? Although when we rested, flies buzzed about and their drone reminded me we forgot the EpiPen my husband uses for bee stings.

We also forgot the map.

Negotiating a Rocky Trail

As we approached the tree line, we encountered our first patch of rock trail — pretty big stones making up the whole pathway.

“Scree!” I shouted with glee. (I have a thing for certain words, and this one means loose rocks covering a trail.) By contrast, on the way down, when it seemed we’d never return to a trail that was not pure, continuous rock underfoot, we’d navigated yet another switchback corner when my husband, somewhat uncharacteristically, muttered, “More damn rocks.”

In fact, on several occasions on the way up, I considered how this was all going to go coming down. The last time I descended such a steep, rocky trail I’d made good use of some hiking sticks. Which I hadn’t brought along. But we were still going up, right?

At one point, I swore I heard a rattlesnake.

A few hikers passed us, coming down as we ascended — one before the trees disappeared, telling us we had completed just short of half of the hike, and another when the trail had turned entirely to rock and the summit was intermittently visible.

“All you’ve got left is this bunch of rocks here — oh, and the next one too, but then there’s only one more hump to the top,” said the last hiker.

A Kind of Epiphany

We went a couple more feet — in my case, literally on hands and knees, and now resting every five minutes because, good Lord, it was hard to breathe — before I came to a kind of epiphany.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I said.

It absolutely surprised me: at a certain point in time that day, I really thought I could.

“Last 15 minutes kind of rough?” my husband asked, more than kindly. In truth, he was breathing hard, too.

“Try hour,” I said. An hour in which I more or less constantly imagined precipitous falls, sprained ankles and heart attacks. Emergency rescues. Pain. It was actually a variety of pure terror, overall.

“How about lunch?” said the fine man who is my husband. “Good idea,” I said. So we sat, and stared up for a while. But then, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we looked down, and around.

Imagining the Possibilities

It’s not always necessary, is it, to reach the imagined goal? Doesn’t failure, in some respects, increase possibility?

After lunch, I patted the rocks in acquiescent defeat and my husband and I started down. It took nearly as long to descend as ascend. When we got back to the ranch and looked over the map, my husband proclaimed we’d made it to within about a half-mile of the summit — only an eighth of the distance of the whole hike — but a distance in which we’d have to have ascended perhaps a quarter of the mountain’s elevation gain.

And, no, we didn’t go back and tell the park guide she’d been correct. Instead, we had dinner and sat in the hot tub, imagining a next time. A next time we were quite certain would never happen. A next time that, even so, was forever and irrefutably possible.



Donna Trump’s work has been published in december magazine (forthcoming in November 2018), Ploughshares and Mid-American Review, among others. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations. Honors include a Loft Mentorship, mentorship with Benjamin Percy, a MN Emerging Writer grant and the selection of her story “Portage” by judge Anne Tyler for first prize in a 2018 contest sponsored by December.

The Creative Art of Quilting

Quilts by Marijke Vroomen Durning

This art form is good for your health, helps you stay connected and provides purpose


By Marijke Vroomen Durning

If you’re among the 7 to 10 million quilters in the United States, you likely already know how quilting can have a positive impact on your life. Studies have shown crafting can have a healing effect on the mind, but did you know the art of quilting may help restore or maintain your health?

Quilting Offers a Sense of Belonging 

With families and friends spread out across the country, it’s easy to feel disconnected. Unlike many other crafts, quilting can provide the sense of community that has been lost. A few generations ago, women held quilting bees to gather and work on quilts. Today’s equivalent is the quilting guild, where quilters gather to learn about quilting, share creations, work on community projects and reach out to other quilters who need support.

Bonnie Wright, a retired occupational therapy assistant, found this support when quilting helped her adapt to her new home. After moving to Mount Cobb, Pa., following her husband’s death, Wright sought out and joined a guild, so she could meet people. There she met a woman who held smaller meetings in her home. “It’s what I needed,” Wright said. “With this group, I feel like I made the friendships I needed so badly.”

Dana Howell, program director of the occupational therapy department at Eastern Kentucky University, had a similar experience after moving to Seattle and then going through a bad break-up. “I was in a really rough spot, so I started taking a quilting class through a local community college in 1996. To this day, that was one of the most supportive groups of women I have ever been involved with,” she said.

Howell went on to write a paper about the restorative qualities of quilting, which was published in the Journal of Occupational Science in 2000.

Restoring Health

Ricky Tims, a world-renowned quilter, quilt teacher, and designer who lives in La Veta, Colo., underwent quadruple bypass surgery 18 years ago. While he doesn’t credit quilting for his overall recovery, it did play a role. A week after Tims returned home, he was bored, but his activities were limited.



Credit: Compliments of Marijke Vroomen Durning

“I couldn’t lift anything heavier than a 5-pound sack of sugar,” he explained. “I wanted to do what I loved, and that was quilting.” Tims began making a quilt to commemorate his surgery. “I just wanted to get back into the game. It allowed me to stay active and motivated, and that is good mental medicine,” he noted.

Quilting can help patients regain mobility, particularly if they have had a neurological deficit from a stroke or brain injury, said Howell. “There are multiple studies to show that actually performing a task is much better than simulating it,” she added. You can have a patient picking fabric and reaching for it with her or his dominant arm, she explained. “Even if they don’t have the motor control to actually quilt at that moment, we can do lots of things to engage them in the quilting process.”

Tims adds that quilting can help people get through difficult or trying times. For example, when his father was ill, his quilt work helped him get through those days. “Sometimes quilting is a way to manage a crisis situation that may not be one’s own health, but someone close, and this includes the loss of a loved one,” said Tims.

Wright experienced this as well when her husband was undergoing treatment for cancer. “The only way I got through that was with quilting. I would sit with him in the hospital, or when he was having chemotherapy, and I would always have some quilting with me. It would give me something to focus on so I wouldn’t see he was miserable,” she said.

Howell’s paper explains why quilting can have this effect. The personal meaning behind a quilt’s creation, the rituals, the repetitive actions involved in the sewing and the attention the quilt assembly requires all result in a meditative quality, and this can make time pass quickly.

“Each aspect of quilting is unique and novel, and requires efficient attention and other cognitive abilities,” Howell wrote. “This challenge of performing each unique aspect of the project is characterized by focus, intention, and precision, and is praised as restorative by some quilters.”

Improving Mental Health and Decreasing Isolation



Credit: Compliments of Marijke Vroomen

Twelve years ago, Michelle Napoli, an art therapist and mental health counselor in Massachusetts, founded the Survivor Quilt Project. Napoli is a trauma specialist who uses quilting to help incest survivors. Trauma overwhelms the normal processing system, she explained, so survivors may be unable to talk about what happened. However, art therapy can help them identify things when words can’t. “You symbolize how you understand something before you can find the words,” she said.

In projects such as Napoli’s, community quilting projects allow quilters to interact with others while they create. “It’s with the support of other people and when you make the quilt, the conversations can decrease the isolation and confusion you may feel,” she explained.

Wright experienced this in her work, too. “There was one psychiatric facility where the patients and I made several quilts and hung them in the gym,” she said. “It was very satisfying for them to see their work there.” In another program, the women in Wright’s group were tired of the traditional arts and crafts programs, but many wanted to learn how to sew. It was a good problem-solving activity for them as they learned how to pick fabric, decide on the colors, use a sewing machine and work as a group, she said.

“A lot of them had low self-esteem and no hobbies,” Wright said. “Why teach them something in the hospital if they can’t carry it over when they go home?”

Quilting as We Age

Quilting is a physical activity, and as our bodies change, so do our abilities. But crafters are often motivated to stay as healthy as possible so they can continue their art for as long as possible.

“A lot of us have had cataracts removed so we can see and quilt more,” Wright said. “I told my eye doctor, ‘I can’t see the thread and needle, you have to fix this.’ So he said that it was because I had cataracts and I needed new lenses.”

Getting older doesn’t mean quilters can’t learn new tricks. Arthritic fingers can make it hard to hand quilt, but then it’s time to learn how to machine quilt or even to use a long-arm machine, like Wright did.

Learning new skills is a fun way to keep the mind and body sharp. You can take up more complex patterns or different skills as you want or as your body dictates.

“Quilting gives you the opportunity to learn something at your own pace,” Wright said. “It’s not something you have to learn all at once.”


© Next Avenue - 2018. All rights reserved.

 

The Invisibility of Being Old, Disabled or Both

Credit: Adobe Stock 

An 82-year-old woman with post-polio syndrome feels erased from society

By Grace Birnstengel for Next Avenue 

When you’re an older person in a wheelchair or walking with a cane, people treat you differently. Sure, some might be quicker to open doors for you, but most of the behavioral reactions aren’t positive ones. The combination of being old and disabled causes what many refer to as “invisibility.” 

Frank Bruni, an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, explored this idea in a recent column through the lens of 82-year-old Nancy Root, a woman with post-polio syndrome Bruni met while giving a lecture on a cruise. Root taught Bruni how it felt to be seen as invisible because of her age and perceived ability. 

“People looked over her, around her, through her. They withdrew,” Bruni wrote. 

An Intersection of -Isms 

The concept of invisible older people — specifically older women — is not new. Novelist and screenwriter Ayelet Waldman discussed with us the invisibility of turning 50 as a woman. 

“I had no idea that as soon as I got to his age, to be a 50-year-old woman, the sexism gets completely complicated by this idea that not only are you incompetent as a woman, but you’re incompetent because you’ve reached your senescence! Or something,” Waldman told Next Avenue. “I really do feel like they don’t even see you.” 

The intersection of ageism and sexism provides a uniquely taxing form of oppression. Add a layer of ableism to that and you start to see exactly what Root describes experiencing.

Edited Out 

Root had polio as a 2-year-old in the late 1930s; now, post-polio syndrome — which many childhood survivors of the disease develop — degrades her muscles, forcing her to use a cane and a wheelchair. As she’s aged and the condition has worsened, Root has noticed that people no longer look at her the same. Instead, she’s erased. 

“Doctors’ offices are the worst,” she told Bruni, recalling how people won’t address her directly, but rather speak to whoever is pushing her wheelchair. “I’m not acknowledged. ‘Does this lady have an appointment?’ ‘Does this lady have her medical card?’ They don’t allow this lady to have a brain.” 

And it’s not just at doctors’ offices. This extends to nearly every situation — movie theaters, flights, grocery stores, you name it. 

“They make dismissive assumptions about people above a certain age or below a certain level of physical competence,” Bruni’s column said. “Or they simply edit those people out of the frame.” 

Root told Bruni she thinks strangers worry that she’ll need something from them, or perhaps they see their fears about being older manifested in her and can’t bare to face them.

Regardless of the root cause of how we see older, disabled people as “other” or less than, Root’s experience is the reality for countless older, disabled adults. 

Harkening back to 2016 Influencer in Aging E. Percil Stanford’s story advocating for the humanization and value of older people, we as a society must do “everything possible to embrace the inclusion of older people in every aspect of life.” 

Only then will people like Nancy Root start to see change.

© Twin Cities Public Television - 2018. All rights reserved.

###

My New Year’s Un-Resolutions for 2018

Credit: Adobe Stock

Getting out of your own way and finding Zen
By Ken Druck for Next Avenue

I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but I’m changing things up a little this year and making a few New Year’s “un-resolutions.”

Perhaps it’s the campaign for irreverent and audacious aging I’ve been on since the publication of my new book. The oppositional-defiant 68-year-old kid in me is tired of making New Year’s resolutions. Having been hell-bent on self-improvement most of my life, maybe I’m doing this to free myself of the shoulds, coulds and ought to do’s.

Taking a break from making agreements I might not keep; pressuring myself to be better, smarter, thinner, healthier, richer and happier; giving myself a sabbatical from striving, stressing and/or straining to willfully plan or control the future or make deadlines… might be just what the doctor ordered.
2018: A Year to Learn Valuable Life Lessons

The new year, 2018, could be the perfect time for learning valuable life lessons.

The hidden benefits of taking a step back from my driven type-A personality and letting things evolve naturally could add immeasurably to the quality, length and enjoyment of my life. Not to mention my relationships. I ‘ve decided that my word for the new year is going to be “ease.”

And so, with all due respect to procrastination-ending promises, spirited goals, deeply held commitments and news-making fresh starts, I’m opting out of New Year’s resolutions and treating the first of the year as just another precious day.


My Un-Resolution for the Year Ahead

The sun will rise and fall in the absence of anything resembling a resolution. Instead, my un-resolution, to leave all well alone, resist having to resolve anything, and let go and relax will go into effect at midnight on Dec. 31.

This doesn’t mean I’m not open to positive change and self-improvement this coming year. Or that my contrarian inner child has taken over and I’m going to the dark side. Nor does it mean I’m opposed to making things as good as, if not better, than they’ve ever been. I’m actually counting on having one of my best years ever in 2018.
Becoming More ‘Zen Ken’

It just means that I’m going to lighten up, calm my heart, feel grateful for what I already have and become a little more “Zen Ken.”

By lightening up, I’m going to allow myself to move through the moments, hours, days, weeks and months of this new year allowing — rather than pressing — to get things done. Allowing my moods, motivations, energy, dreams, aspirations, habits and patterns to rise and fall with the sun will be a refreshing departure from my task-driven way of life.

How to do this will, of course, be a challenge — I imagine there will be lots of deep breaths, saying “no” and biting my tongue involved. But I’m ready. Taking time off from exerting effort and forcing change will open new doors of discovery. And I’m excited.


Driving Some Family Members Crazy

Resolving not to lose weight, work less, get healthier, save the world, make more money, eat better, learn to play the guitar, grow my business — or even be a more loving father, fiancé, son, brother and uncle is already driving a few of my family members crazy. “How could you be so negative?” one of my positive-think friends asked.

Driven by our ardent willfulness, pressure, adrenaline and “never enough” messages, we fail to allow that which is already unfolding in us, and in the world, to emerge. This year, I’m going to get out of my own way, step aside and trust that the better version of me will awaken if, when and how it’s ready to do so.

I’m ready to see what good things can bubble up without champagne-induced New Year’s Resolutions — and run with them.

Signing off gratefully and wishing you an especially joyous new year,

Zen Ken

© Twin Cities Public Television - 2018. All rights reserved.



###

AGING WELL: Worth the Investment! Your Gift Makes the Difference!

Photo by Jim Fish, Carlsbad By The Sea resident.

Front Porch and its philanthropic partners, FACT Foundation, Pacific Homes Foundation, Sunny View Lutheran Communities and Services and California Lutheran Homes and Community Services, believe our individual journeys, experiences and generosity toward others enhances the opportunity for all of us to age well with meaning and purpose.

Your support helps us to strengthen and enhance the lives of more than 5,000 individuals who are aging across our retirement and affordable housing communities. We believe aging is a gift to be enthusiastically embraced, enjoyed, supported and honored. A monetary gift of any size today makes a difference.

How do we do this?

We do this by honoring the whole person — in mind, body and spirit. Through programs and experiences that encourage engagement and honor individuals as they age, our philanthropic partners support charitable care, celebrate milestones and holidays, enhance memory care, honor those whom we have lost, attend to those who give care, and tailors cutting-edge technology to grow important and meaningful connections throughout the full experience of aging. 

We do this through your gifts, through volunteer-led programs, and programs like Operation Snowflake, a holiday fund that brings holiday cheer to families living in low-income communities managed by Front Porch subsidiary CARING Housing Ministries; Joyful Hearts Chorus, a 40-plus member choir comprised of residents living at Summer House and Villa Gardens and the Villa Gardens Health Center; as well as the Amazon Echo, voice controlled technology that assists residents in the tasks of daily living.

Giving Tuesday (#GivingTuesday), which happens annually on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, is the international day of charitable giving. Each year, Giving Tuesday has had greater and greater impact on both our local communities and our international causes. We believe the best of giving comes from the heart, the central place of gratitude.  

Together, with many others around the world it is a day to support the causes you believe are most important and most meaningful to you and your loved ones. Giving Tuesday is a day of communal giving.  

So, thank you for investing with your gift for those you love today.

Please visit the Front Porch website “Give Now” page and consider supporting one or more of our philanthropic partners or causes.

Why I Call My Dad Even if It's Not Father's Day

My phone calls to him used to be obligatory, but loss has a way of changing things

By Jill Smolowe for Next Avenue

Jill Smolowe with her father

When I was a college undergraduate, I used to call my parents every Thursday night. The calls were mandatory, the price of college tuition, so to speak. Invariably, my mother would answer, then yell, “Dick! Pick up! It’s Jill.”

Nothing of substance was ever said about my coursework. And certainly I wasn’t going to tell them who I was sleeping with or what I was smoking. So, I remember not one thing about these phone calls beyond this: both of my parents were on the line, I was itchy to get off so I could get back to my life and any parental input pretty much came from my mother.

Our No-Obligation Daily Phone Call

On Father’s Day this year, I, like millions of Americans, will call my dad. But there will be nothing dutiful or obligatory about it. These days, I speak with my father daily. Sometimes I dial his speed number; just as often, he dials mine. Often the conversation begins, “Hi, I can’t remember if we talked today.” We laugh. Then we talk, whether we’ve already talked earlier in the day or not. These conversations are never obligatory and most definitely are never a chore.

To the contrary, I can’t imagine a day going by without speaking to my dad. (Well, unless he’s traveling. He and cell phones — fuggedaboutit.) I talk with him not because I feel I have to, but because I want to. At this point, he’s not just my father. He’s my financial adviser. My friend. The one person in the universe, other than my husband, with whom I touch base daily. I know the details of my father’s days; he knows the details of mine. At 60, I find my relationship with my father widening, our intimacy deepening, our love (always solid) developing still new layers.

Some days, we talk about the markets and dividend reinvesting. Other days, we discuss news developments: the Syrian refugee crisis, Putin’s latest maneuvering, the U.S. presidential campaign. The only topic I try to steer wide of is Israel. (Generational differences. It never ends happily.) All days, we discuss the weather, but only briefly.

How Dad Dazzles Me

Some days, he dazzles me. Last November, for instance, I dropped him at the airport at 6 p.m. for a 9:44 p.m. flight. (He has this thing about getting to airports waaay early.) He was heading home after a visit and should have been walking through his front door at 1 a.m. Instead, when I phoned the next day at 11 a.m., he greeted me with, “I just got home.” Plane problems, followed by flight reschedulings the airline didn’t sort out until after midnight, had resulted in my dad spending the night on a couch in a food court. The guy is 85!

Did he tell me about his aches or the airport chaos? No. Instead, the guy who used to run a women’s apparel business said this about his ordeal: “It made me think about the refugees. All that trekking. This was not planned, very disruptive. I wanted to get back home. Think of those people, losing their homes, their countries, then landing in countries that don’t want them. It rocked me.”

My Rock During Tough Times

These days, we also discuss our personal lives — sometimes in intimate detail. My two brothers and I joke, “TMI.” But for me, actually, there is no too-much-information when it comes to the man we all call Big D. That barrier began to crumble in 2007 after my husband, Joe, was diagnosed with leukemia.

At the time, I was spending long days at the hospital, then coming home to a barrage of voicemail messages I was too exhausted to handle. I needed someone who could relay the day’s medical developments to other family members. My father was hardly the obvious choice, given his family standing as the “ostrich,” my mother’s term for his tendency to put his head in the sand when emotional stuff kicked up. But I knew my father to be a succinct and reliable communicator. I could count on him to relay the often-complicated medical details to my mother and three siblings without spin or distortion.

As the weeks, then months, went by, I realized that I’d come to rely on Dad as my sounding board. He never tried to steer my thinking on difficult medical decisions. Rather, he helped guide me back to information I’d given him previously that might help inform whatever decision Joe and I were facing.

After Joe died in June 2009, I haven’t a clue how frequently I spoke with my father. That period, frankly, was too much of a blur. Certainly, there was an uptick in our phone calls come the turn of 2010. My sister was dying from colon cancer up in Vermont; my mother was dying from age-related complications down in North Carolina. It was, to put it mildly, a very bad time. My touching base with my father, him touching base with me, helped steady both of us.

It was after my sister died in August of that year, followed less than three weeks later by my mother, that I began to call my father daily. Initially I called because I was concerned how he was weathering widowerhood. But in short order, self-imposed obligation became habit became a genuine desire to hear his voice and his thoughts each day, every day.

Our Intimate Relationship, After All These Years

By this time, I’d met online the man who would become my second husband. I wanted my father to venture into the cyber-dating world, too. My mother had pounded him with the message that he should look for a new mate quickly. She did not want him to be alone. Neither did I.

And so, our conversations took a more intimate turn as I helped my father sign up on the same two cyber dating sites I’d used. As he began to venture out, meeting not-Mom women for the first time in some 60 years, he could sound like a giddy schoolboy with his (OK, sometimes TMI) stories.

I’ve loved seeing this social being emerge. And I love the intimacy that has evolved between us as a result. At times, I find myself telling him things I haven’t shared with even my closest female friends. It’s so unexpected. So trusting. So lovely.

Next month, my dad turns 86. He exercises daily, eats a healthy diet and has all his faculties. But I am very aware that he is aging. Very aware that he is slowing down. Very aware that there will come a day when he will not be there to receive a Father’s Day call. I am also keenly aware that I am not at all prepared for this. Every time he doesn’t feel well (which isn’t often), a mantra begins in my head: “I’m not ready for him to go.”

How can I be? At this point in my life, this amazing man is not only my father. He is my friend. My adviser. My ear. My shoulder. My witness. For that, I not only love him. I adore him.

Happy Father’s Day, Big D. I am so grateful you’re my dad.
© Twin Cities Public Television - 2017. All rights reserved.

###

The Way It Is

The Bird's Eye View From Ninety

By Jeanne Warnke, resident at Wesley Palms Retirement Community

Since my sky diving adventure, friends and kin have praised me for being courageous. I don't see it that way. Yes, I am of a "certain age" as they say, but every resident at Wesley Palms knows about being "courageous" in so many ways. We all have reached a stage in life where we experience things that require a great deal of strength — struggle daily through pain of body and pain of losses. It takes effort. It takes courage. If you are a senior, you know what I mean. We all are here at a lovely retirement community for some reason or other. Yes, we miss our old life, and our new one requires much of us, which includes situations we never dreamed we'd have, and it isn't always easy. To those much younger who ask about the right life-style to survive to old age, I admit I don't exercise as I should; I love junk food, and don't care if the early bird gets the worm. I give in to pain sometimes and upset family and bore others by giving "blow by blow" accounts of it all!

There is no true answer to the question; everyone has their own way of dealing with the Golden Years even when they are a bit tarnished. Sometimes I find it annoyingly necessary to reach for my cane on what I refer to as "my bad day," but it is needed for balance. I hope for wisdom of my years, and the courage to face whatever life now presents. Whether good or bad, this is the "now" and better if we can call it just another adventure in living. Funny, but high places always scared me. Perhaps, subconsciously, I took a sky jump to prove something to myself and it did give me a good feeling to conquer that fear. I rejuvenated myself. I'm pleased that I just dumped wise advice and gave in to the urge to see beauty from a bird's eye view. It is similar to the urge that recently had me buying paints to learn about putting happy, bright colors on a canvas. I wish I could ride a horse again—my mother and sister did in their eighties—but I couldn't get a leg up no matter how much I feel that urge. There are things I realize I can't do, and fears I haven't conquered like jumping into the deep end of a swimming pool.

The most important thing is to keep trying to squeeze every bit of joy out of life. So...any one ready to start a Wesley Palms Sky Diving Club?

 

Achieving Your Dreams After 60

The authors of 'Senior Wonders' on the 3 P's for Triumphant Aging
By Karen L. Pepkin and Wendell C. Taylor for Next Avenue

Credit: Thinkstock

The media abounds with negative views about the impact of aging on physical, cognitive, and financial well-being. In fact, there are entire industries that have emerged to counteract the effects of aging — nutritional supplements, hormone treatments, surgical improvements, lotions, potions, and the like. They all seem to underscore Bette Davis’ famous quote, “Old age is no place for sissies.”

What if there were another point of view? What if aging brought about, not decline but our greatest accomplishments? What if we looked at aging as Dr. Christiane Northrup does? She tells us that “getting older is inevitable, but aging isn’t.”

Our book, Senior Wonders: People Who Achieved Their Dreams After Age 60 profiles 23 individuals and two groups who not only survived into old age, but achieved their greatest successes. As we wrote our book, we looked for emerging themes. Were there any commonalities among these people? Although their accomplishments were in a variety of fields (arts, sciences, social causes, entertainment, etc.), several themes became apparent. We think of them as the 3 P’s: Passion, Perspective on Life, and Persistence.

Passion, by definition, is any compelling emotion or feeling. These individuals either had a strong belief in what they were doing, or in the case of those with an artistic bent, they couldn’t help creating, whether it was writing, painting, or acting.

Perspective on life emerged as a theme when we noticed that several of our seniors commented that they couldn’t have achieved their success at an earlier age. Having lived a long life enabled them to learn from failures and successes, establish a clear focus, and develop a unique perspective.

Our last P is Persistence. This theme became apparent when we observed that many of our seniors faced daunting obstacles and accomplished their goals by sheer will and determination; they did not give up.

Author Harry Bernstein and humanitarian Clara McBride Hale are two who exemplify these themes.

Bernstein was born in Stockport, England in 1910 and began his education as an architect. But when his teacher discouraged his career choice, he decided to pursue a writing career and moved to New York to accomplish his goal. Although he made a living as a writer, his wife, Ruby, had to work as a school secretary to subsidize the family income. He did have one novel published, but it wasn’t successful. Undaunted, Bernstein continued to write, penning more than 20 novels that were never published.

In 2007, at age 97, he wrote an autobiographical novel, The Invisible Wall, which received critical acclaim. The book poignantly described the “invisible wall” that separated the Jewish and Christian sections of his home town. At age 98, he published, The Dream, which told the story of his family’s move to America. Because these two books were so successful, he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship at age 98 to pursue his writing.

At 99, he published the third book in the series, The Golden Willow: The Story of a Lifetime of Love, about his marriage to Ruby and later years. His novels have been translated into several languages. Bernstein stated: “If I had not lived until I was 90, I would not have been able to write this book…It could not have been done, even when I was 10 years younger. I wasn’t ready. God knows what other potentials lurk in other people, if we could only keep them alive well into their 90s.”

When her husband died, Clara McBride Hale had to support herself and her three small children. Not wanting to leave her children unsupervised for extended periods of time, she opened a day care in her Harlem neighborhood. Many of the children in her care stayed overnight because their parents worked as domestics. She then decided to become a foster parent and raised 40 foster children, all of whom pursued a college education. At 64, after 28 years, she retired from the foster care system. Soon after, her daughter referred a drug-addicted mother and baby to Hale for help. Before long, she was caring for all this mother’s drug-addicted children.

As the word spread throughout New York City, more and more drug-addicted babies were left in Hale’s care. During the first year and a half, her family provided financial and other support to keep her mission going. Then, the Borough of Manhattan president, Percy Sutton, arranged public funding. Also, John Lennon left provisions for support of Hale House in his will.

In 1975, Hale House moved to 122nd Street where it remains today. After successfully reuniting hundreds of families, only 12 children had to be placed for adoption. At age 85, Clara McBride Hale was honored by President Ronald Reagan for her humanitarian work. She stated: “I’m not an American hero, I’m just someone who loves children.”

“Triumphant aging,” as exemplified by Bernstein and Hale, is a counter perspective to the pervasive negative beliefs about aging. Do you, your relatives or friends have untapped potentials or abandoned dreams? If so, consider what George Elliot said: “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

© Twin Cities Public Television - 2017. All rights reserved.



###

Fighting Ageism and Unfair Treatment in Health Care

Among the problems: doctors who view depression and anxiety in older adults as 'normal'
By Terry Fulmer for Next Avenue

(Next Avenue invited all our 2016 Influencers in Aging to write essays about the one thing they would like to change about aging in America. This is one of the essays.)

Credit: Getty Images

Everyone deserves equal treatment — in the broader society and in our health care system. Today, older people are often not treated fairly and do not get the care they deserve, simply because of their age. While one of our great success stories in the 20th century was the stunning gain in human longevity, recent research from The Frameworks Institute, funded by my group, The John A. Hartford Foundation, and others, has found that the majority of us still don’t recognize ageism or its deleterious effects. They call it a “cognitive hole,” a mental blind spot.

As 10,000 of us turn 65 each day, it is critical that we shine a bright light on this insidious prejudice. It is a matter of simple fairness and justice. It is a way to honor the priceless and irreplaceable contributions that older adults make every day to enrich our society and culture. And for those of us at The John A. Hartford Foundation, it is critical to the broader effort to improve care for older people.

The Dangers of Ageism

Research during the last two decades has implicated ageism in the under- and over-treatment of older patients, as too many clinicians mischaracterize organic medical conditions as normal aging. Others ignore pain, anxiety and depression as unavoidable as we get older or unconsciously view older people as less worthy or less important than their younger counterparts.

A classic example is the under detection of elder mistreatment, when, for example, clinicians ascribe bruises to anticoagulants instead of making an effort to ensure there is no family violence. Another — the assumption that all older people become confused and forgetful, when, instead, a brain tumor may be the real problem.

These negative and inaccurate views of older people consistently hamper our ability to recruit nurses, doctors and other health professionals into geriatrics and gerontology. The result: our health care workforce often lacks the knowledge and experience to treat a group of patients who make up 35 percent of all hospital stays and 27 percent of all doctor’s office visits. And though nearly four in 10 older people take five or more medications, clinical trials generally exclude older patients with multiple chronic conditions, so we may misjudge drugs’ efficacy (and even dangers) with this important patient population.

Even our own views of aging can have important influences on health and well-being. Researchers note people with more positive expectations about aging live longer, experience less stress and have a greater willingness to exercise and eat better. Conversely, negative perceptions of aging — inadvertently supported by unhelpful and negative stereotypes in popular culture and the media — can reinforce self-defeating behaviors that make us more vulnerable to disease and disability.

Developing an Age-Friendly Health System

During the last century, our health care system has consistently demonstrated an impressive ability to adapt and to find innovative solutions to challenging problems. Looking ahead, we need an intensive effort to create an age-friendly health system where all older adults and their families feel that the care they receive is the care they want and that they feel respected in the process.

We need health care suffused with aging expertise, devoted to person- and family-centered care, and able to provide coordinated services in the hospital, clinic and the community. This work is neither simple nor easy. Raising awareness about, and addressing, ageism throughout the health care system — and throughout our society — will be critical to delivering the care all of us want and deserve as we get older.

© Twin Cities Public Television - 2017. All rights reserved.



###

Making Communities Friendlier for Those With Dementia

That's the goal for the ambitious Dementia Friendly America initiative
By Beth Baker for Next Avenue

Volunteers pass out laminated bookmarks with the 10 signs of Alzheimer's at the local supermarketCredit: Courtesy of Paynesville (MN) ACT on Alzheimer's

Can a strong community network help ease the challenges faced by people with dementia and their families? That’s the hope of a national volunteer-driven initiative known as Dementia Friendly America (DFA).

“Our goals are to foster dementia-friendly communities that will enable people who are living with dementia and their care partners to thrive and to be independent as long as possible,” says Olivia Mastry, who’s guiding the effort. “The side benefit is that it’s beginning to normalize [Alzheimer’s], to reduce the stigma. It’s created an environment that’s allowed people to talk about this disease.”

Mastry comes to the issues from personal experience. She and her husband cared for her mother-in-law, who had dementia, the last four years of her life. “That’s given me deep context and understanding of what this takes,” she says, “The caregiver role is so big it can be made easier by an entire community coming together.”
A New Initiative

DFA next month will make live a web portal that offers communities a roadmap to create a dementia-friendly environment in many sectors of life, from churches to banks, government agencies and supermarkets.

“From a pure business perspective it makes a lot of sense for us to do this kind of work,” says Frank Fernandez of BlueCross/BlueShield Minnesota (BC/BS Minnesota), which insures many older adults. “Beyond that, the work aligns with our mission, which is to make a healthy difference in people’s lives.”

BC/BS Minnesota, one of 50 organizations on the DFA national council, is offering educational brown bag lunches to its employees and training its customer service representatives to better equip them to talk to people with dementia and their caregivers. It also contributed $750,000 to ACT on Alzheimer’s, a statewide initiative on which DFA is modeled.

Mastry adds that DFA will help communities find local funding to launch such efforts. But even without funding, she stresses, organizing can begin.

“If there is a champion in the community, you can do it,” she says. “Communities can really move this. So we’re trying to encourage them to take that first step.”

Here is a sampling of what communities around the country are doing to become dementia-friendly:

Minnesota’s first dementia-friendly canine

Credit: Courtesy of Paynesville (MN) ACT on Alzheimer's

Rural Challenge: Identify Those Who Need SupportIn 2014, Paynesville, Minn., population 2,400, launched an ambitious multi-pronged effort to reach out to an estimated 200 local people who have dementia. “The most difficult challenge we have is finding the people,” says Linda Musel, co-chair of Paynesville Area ACT on Alzheimer’s.

They began by surveying residents. “We went to every faction we could think of — bankers, lawyers, caretakers, government, teenagers — and we surveyed them,” says Musel. Some 90 people showed up at their first organizing event, a big turnout for a small town. The group decided to focus on educating the public and assisting caregivers.

They offer a class called “Dementia Friends,” which helps people overcome their fears and uncertainty about communicating with folks who have dementia. They also provide classes to emergency medical personnel and firefighters, who requested specialized training.

To reach young people, the group purchases relevant books for school libraries and teaches classes at the high school.

“We were surprised in our survey that the teens said, ‘That’s my grandma. Mom and Dad whisper about this, but they don’t tell us what’s going on.’ They want to help too,” Musel says.

Advocates also faithfully go to the town’s only supermarket on Wednesdays: senior discount day. They assist with shopping to relieve caregivers and pass out literature, including bookmarks with the 10 signs of Alzheimer’s, and let people know how to find support.

For their part, local ministers organized an Alzheimer’s Awareness Sunday. Caregivers often feel their loved one is not welcome at church, Musel says, and part of their educational effort is simply to remind people to smile and be welcoming.

Denver: Entrepreneurs Develop Technology for Connecting

One unusual dementia-friendly initiative is in Denver, Colo., led by Amanda Cavaleri, 27. Denver is one of DFA’s pilot communities, along with Tempe, Ariz.; Santa Clara County, Calif.; Prince George’s County, Md.; Knoxville, Tenn. and the state of West Virginia.

Cavaleri (see her TED Talk), whose expertise is new technology for older adults, has brought together key players who are interested in dementia-friendly efforts: Prime Health, made up of 1,000 health care administrators, physicians, entrepreneurs, investors, technologists and academics; the Colorado Technology Association; Catalyst, a digital health consortium; Jiminy Wicket, which promotes intergenerational croquet for people with dementia and Cavaleri’s nonprofit Connect the Ages, an intergenerational digital storytelling program.

“We wanted to see if there was interest from the entrepreneurial community and there was,” she says, including many who had family experience with dementia. “We chose to focus on the ‘extreme user’ — someone who is home alone, with dementia.”

Such individuals face many challenges, she explains — changes in depth perception, vision and cognition.

“We’re trying to figure out how we can help entrepreneurs so they can partner with home health organizations or communities,” says Cavaleri. “How can they receive funding and help them be successful and lower health care costs and improve quality of life?.”

Cavaleri works to create opportunities for elders, including those with dementia, to tell their stories. “Reminiscing is a really good tool to help people with dementia feel safe emotionally and have more stable behaviors,” she says.

Students meet face to face with people in retirement communities who have dementia, and capture their oral histories. Another pilot project that engages students is the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.

Cavaleri hopes DFA will eventually spark monthly coffee shop gatherings where caregivers, people with dementia and students can go to interact with each other, to participate in storytelling and reminiscing.

“We’re able to pass down these older adults’ knowledge and experience,” she says. “For both older and younger, it’s an avenue to systemically reducing isolation and building purpose — and hopefully attract some young talent for the longevity workforce.”

West Virginia – Statewide Pilot

Of DFA’s initial pilot programs, West Virginia is the only statewide initiative. “As I learned more about the work in Minnesota and the experiences with the medical community, it seemed like a natural fit for West Virginia,” says Helen Matheny, with the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute in Morgantown, who is leading the effort.

The initiative builds on partnerships already in place with AARP, the Alzheimer’s Association and other groups related to senior care and healthy lifestyles, she says. Phase one will be to raise awareness statewide and build capacity for doing dementia-friendly work in many sectors. In 2016, they hope to begin implementing programs in local communities.

“First we’re going to educate our citizens about the prevalence and the economic impact of dementia,” she says. “In addition we’re going to target four specific areas: faith communities, legal and financial services, businesses and emergency response personnel.”

They also will use social media to connect people with local resources.

“The idea is not to reinvent the wheel,” Matheny says. “We have a lot of resources readily available, so we want to be a convener and help facilitate getting residents to the right resources and tools that they need.”



© Twin Cities Public Television - 2017. All rights reserved.



###

How to Become a Boomer Tech Genius

Credit: Thinkstock

Humorous and helpful ideas to get savvy about electronics and apps

By Barbara Crowley for Next Avenue

(Editor’s Note: This article is a reader-submitted essay.)

I believe my generation, the boomers, will change the way the world views aging.

I think we’ll do this by railing against getting old, whereas the generations before us just sat back and accepted it.

Suppliers of cosmetics, plastic surgery, pharmaceuticals and vitamin supplements have voluntarily joined our cause. Actually, these businesses don’t see it so much as a cause, but as a potentially lucrative demographic — now tagged the “grey market.”

For most of these businesses, the focus is “anti-aging.”

I take issue with that term. The dictionary definition of “anti” is “opposed to.” Can you really be opposed to aging? Like you have an option and can cast your vote?

Is There An Aging App?

The technology industry, on the other hand, doesn’t really care if the boomers age. They just want us all to do it with a mobile app.

Tech innovators in the aging and caregiving arena believe that smartphones, smart homes, smart cars and big data will improve the lives of aging adults and their caregivers enormously.

I believe they are right. I just don’t know how to use that stuff very well.

I’m not tech-frightened. I consider myself a tech-curious-eager adopter. I’m excited for the future. I look forward to Rosie the Robot finally coming to live at my house! I will wear newfangled digital devices that track my heart rhythms and space-age socks that can decipher whether I am about to fall down and break a hip, or rat me out if I don’t take my medication. These devices will keep me safe and help me live longer.

Still, technology can be complicated and not always intuitive, especially for those of us who used typewriters and pay phones during our formative years.

My Solution: Adopt-a-Genius

So how can we attain tech savvy and then keep up with upgrades?

One idea: When I go to the Apple Store, a “Genius” helps me with a question about my iAnything and all the words coming out of his/her mouth make perfect sense. Then I go home and forget what I learned. So maybe the solution for both United States economic growth and older adults who struggle to make their technology work is to literally adopt an Apple “Genius.” It’s perfect!

The “Genius” gets free room and board and uses the money saved to pay off student loans. We adoptive boomers benefit by having a live-in IT person who doesn’t roll their eyes when you ask how to post a photo to Instagram like your real kid does.

Finding Tech Instruction

I am pretty sure Apple won’t implement my “Adopt a Genius” program anytime soon (unless they can get us to agree to their Terms and Conditions).

So here are a few practical options to help us navigate the world of technology:
Oasis Connections: They partner with local libraries, job help centers, senior centers and faith-based organizations to help bridge the “digital divide.”
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute: Some of the most popular classes at this wonderful organization provide instruction on computers, smartphones and other mobile devices.
In New York City, try Older Adults Technology Services, which provides hands-on training to improve computer skills and learn how to search for reliable health information, city services. It also encourages social engagement, which is a good thing, too.

© Twin Cities Public Television - 2016. All rights reserved.



###