Blog Posts - November 2015

Addicted to Tech

November 24, 2015 By Pepper Evans
My teens are considered “digital natives,” because they grew up with computers and other tech marvels. I, on the other hand, am considered a “digital immigrant,” because computing is a foreign language to me and people in my age bracket. I will say, though, that just to stay relevant, I took up computers as a second language, and I'm connected almost all the time with my smartphone, tablet, laptop and home desktop. I'm not “fluent” like my younger friends, but I'm not in the dark either. I know folks who never turn off their tech. I'm not one of them, but I followed along with a radio quiz about tech habits, conducted by a therapist, to determine if I am “addicted” to tech. I take lots of quizzes. Maybe I should see if I am addicted to quizzes.  Read more...

How do I get old faster?

November 23, 2015 By Ashton Applewhite
That’s a question that Dr. Laura Carstensen regularly fields after explaining why older people are happier than younger ones—the basis of the ubiquitous Happiness U-curve. I didn’t really believe the curve existed until I understood why. Carstensen, a psychologist and the founding director of the Stanford Longevity Center, explains it beautifully.  Read more...

The Dance of Experience and Time

November 17, 2015 By Alix Kates Shulman
Before Scott, my beloved husband, fell from a sleeping loft, sustaining the devastating traumatic brain injury that transformed our lives, I divided experience into two distinct kinds, both of which any satisfying life depends upon. The first consists of those pleasurable, transitory experiences, often sensual—like eating, sex, art—that quickly vanish. The second is the kind of stable, future-oriented experience you build upon—work accomplished, knowledge accumulated, habit inculcated, skills expanded, resources conserved.  Read more...

I Shopped, I Dropped

November 15, 2015 By Pepper Evans
Not too long ago my daughter needed some retail therapy. She works part time, had just gotten paid, and she could hear the stores calling her. The mall was the last place I wanted to be on the weekend, but I was a teenage girl once, and I knew exactly how she felt. In the absence of any BFFs, I was her default shopping partner. Now it was me, not the teenager, with the big sighs and eye rolls.  Read more...

Do I Smell Old?

November 10, 2015 By Flora Davis
When I was a teenager, I worried sometimes about whether I had bad breath or BO (body odor). Advertising campaigns regularly demonized these and other normal, human smells, and that sold a lot of toothpaste, mouthwash and deodorant.  Read more...

What’s Missing from Marc Freedman’s Plan to Make the Most of Longer Lives?

November 08, 2015 By Ashton Applewhite
Growing old isn’t new. What’s new is how many people routinely do it. The institutions around us were created when lives were shorter, and the culture hasn’t had time to catch up. The way we respond to this demographic shift has critical social implications.  Read more...

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

November 07, 2015 By Bob Bostock
While enduring the long and miserable winter of 2014-2015, my thoughts increasingly turned to getting out of New Jersey for someplace warm. A brief visit to Charleston, SC, in March—where I had to go out to buy some short-sleeved shirts—made me ask the question The Clash posed in 1982, “Should I stay or should I go?”  Read more...