What are you supposed to do you do when you’re not raising kids anymore, anyway? The easy answers to that question aren't always very satisfying, as I was reminded today listening to a Wisconsin Public Radio call-in show.

The topic was having children late in life. Author Elizabeth George had only positive things to say about the experience. The women she interviewed for her book, Why Women are Embracing the New Later Motherhood, didn't seem to be encountering any downsides, either. 

One gentleman asked about children becoming caregivers to their parents at a younger age. Not a problem, George replied. We're all in the sandwich generation. Besides, older people are healthier now. And they have better financial plans.

Well. Maybe. Let's hope.

Then caller Molly from Baraboo threw both George and host Joy Cardin off balance with a question about the developmental tasks of aging. The conversation, which I’m recreating loosely from memory, went something like this:

“I had my child at age 39 and then had an early menopause. We thought about having another child but by that time, I found I wasn’t really all that interested in children. I’d heard that you change after menopause, that you are ready start to begin a new life, and I felt like that was happening to me. I was ready to do that, but I couldn’t because I had a three year old. Do other people have that experience?”

You could hear the author frowning. “What do you mean about differences after menopause and being older? Do you mean retirement?”

Host Cardin jumped in and offered some other suggestions for what women do in that “next stage” of life: traveling around the world and self-improving. Lots and lots of self-improving. (Apparently she's not old enough yet to discover that sometimes that's an exercise in futility, not to mention boredom.)

“But with only one child, you can travel around the world easily enough anyway,” said George. The awkward conversation ended with an uneasy dismissal suggesting that Molly’s case might be interesting but didn’t really apply to others: “Early menopause is an anomaly,” George concluded.

Actually, it’s not. But besides that, I was stunned by the lack of vision of what it might mean to be in the world after menopause, after children.

As an older mom, I knew exactly what Molly was talking about. My friend Kathleen, also an older mom, used to say, “I’d be standing at the refrigerator, my mind drifting off on lofty and spiritual thoughts, thinking about God and peace and ways to save the world, and when that little hand tugged my shirt and asked where the juice was, it took me a few seconds to come back to earth.”

There’s a lot more out there than recreation and holding the line against a widening waistline. Apparently George and Cardin have never heard of the Grandmother Hypothesis. This intriguing idea says that post-menopausal grandmothers (and older men, too) created culture, if not the human race, by helping younger people nurture their children. This not only meant more calories in the family pot, which meant more children surviving, but it meant that everyone had more time to do interesting things like carve spoon handles, compose songs, and create political intrigue.

Time spent lingering in the sun at a table in Turino sounds lovely. But now that my babies are heading for college, I need to add calories in the form of money to both their pot and my own retirement one.

That, and save civilization as we know it. I’m also looking forward to writing books, getting a promotion, and saving some little corner of the world.  Maybe even a little light romance.

There’s so much to do, and almost all of it interesting. Even necessary. Who has time to waste on self-improvement?

A version of this blog also appeared in Aging Maven 

Americans don't much like to talk about death. Which is odd, because it is both huge and universal. So I will write once more about my mother's dying. 

I went  to Oshkosh the morning of April 1st because my sister and I weren’t sure whether Mom, who had pneumonia, was getting any better. She’d also been having frequent episodes of cardiac arrhythmia that caused her implanted defibrillator to go off, shocking her, something she hated.

We’d asked her to give the powerful heart medication she also hated a month, and if she still wanted to, then she could stop it all.

When I arrived at the assisted living community where she lived, Mom was in her chair, very vacant. She’d fallen in the night, bruising her hip and elbow. She knew I was there and who I was but registered no emotion. Then her defibrillator went off (the second time that morning).

Her cardiologist had told her to call 911 next time it happened. We did, and I beat the ambulance, which wasn’t in a hurry, to the emergency department where my sister, Karen, was working.

The doctor asked what we were there for.

“We want you to turn off her defibrillator, stop her amioderone, and order home hospice for her.”

 I guess he thought I was a little direct, perhaps the merest bit bossy even. He checked with Mom, who was dozing.

 “What year is it?”

“Oh 8.”

“Who’s the president?”

Pause. Then, with a touch of distaste, the lifelong Republican said, “Bush.”

“Do you know what will happen if we turn off the defibrillator?”

“I will die.”

Karen called her son, Casey, to bring the new baby, William, so great-grandma Doris could meet him. Niece Molly came too, and Heather, Casey’s wife. Mom brightened with the baby, who’s named after my dad, the love of her life.

Karen and I sang some of the goofy songs mom used to sing when we were kids, Arthur Godfrey songs like Lonely Little Petunia and the Thousand Islands song. Mom smiled, while the kids listened in astonishment. I may be being a little generous in interpreting their reactions here.

The chaplain came, read some psalms and said the Lord’s prayer, which she repeated with him. “Thanks,” she said. I really needed that.” Then she asked, “What religion are you?”

“Catholic.”

“That’s okay. We won’t hold that against you.” Her last joke. You’ll just have to take my word for it that it wasn’t mean-spirited, and the chaplain laughed too.

There were many I love yous and kisses. When some who needed to leave left, we all pretended that the goodbyes were temporary.

The cardiac tech arrived and turned off the defibrillator. We took Mom back to her home, where hospice would be set up the next day. That was okay: I was staying overnight, and the assisted living aides would check in on her every hour.

Mom ate a little and seemed to enjoy it, especially the cream of tomato soup. Her brother called and they spoke a bit; so did my daughter Annie in Colorado.

Mom perked up some and was smiling, talking a little. We watched American Idol together. “I don’t like that Jason Castro,” she said.

 “He’s a weak singer, but he sure is pretty,” I said.

About ten to 8 she said, “I’m tired now.”

“Should I call the aide or can you wait until 8 when she’s planning on coming?”

“I can wait.”

The aides came, walked her to the bathroom, cleaned her up. She was smiling. Walked her to her bed. I put her favorite pajamas on her and was just laying her down to sleep when her heart went into ventricular fibrillation. The aide came in to help. I called Karen and told her to get over fast.

I was saying the Lord’s Prayer again, King James style,  when I heard Karen’s voice join in behind me: “Thy will be done. . .”  We finished, and moments later, around 8:30, Mom softened and took her last breath.

It was as good an end as you can hope for, I think.

Then the same paramedics who took her to the hospital earlier came—a legal thing. Their arms were loaded with equipment. I told them if they tried to resuscitate her I would jump them and wrestle them to the ground. They assured me they weren’t going to do any such thing. A young woman police officer arrived and ended up staying the rest of the evening, in a companionable way. Then the coroner showed up—a friend of my sister’s. He stuck around, too. The facility administrator came. The funeral home guy.

Everything that needed doing was done by 10:00.

I went to Karen’s house to toss and turn. I couldn’t stop wondering where all that love Mom had for us went. Then I realized it hadn’t disappeared: it was in me, in all of us, just getting bigger. Then I could sleep.

This is the second snowiest winter in Milwaukee's history, according to this morning's Journal Sentinel.

I'm not surprised, having lived through six of the top ten snowy winters. And if that doesn't make a person feel old, I don't know what does.

Snowy winter #4 was 1959-60. I was a little girl, and I remember jumping off the roof into snowbanks. Children were hardier then. I also remember my parents digging a tunnel from the house to the garage. (That summer, my dad built an attached garage and sold off the lot where the old one had stood. He figured it was less work than digging tunnels.)

A huge storm came the night before my birthday party. We figured no one would come, but as the time neared, cars started showing up in front of the house. Back then, parents were eager to discharge their kids for awhile, and we all agreed to turn it into a slumber party. We had pink cake and sloppy joes, a fire in the fireplace, and a rollicking good time digging more tunnels in the snow. To us, that was fun. And child safety hadn't been invented yet. 

Now I will don my blue rubber boots and once again remove the wall of snow deposited in front of my driveway. This is the second time in 24 hours the plows have turned the plowfull of snow directly into my driveway apron. That has never happened before. I figure it's punishment for complaining ever so sweetly about their doing it last night.

After that, I'll really feel old. Or my back will.

"So how'd it go," I asked Mom.

"It was wonderful. We had so much in common! We just talked and talked and talked. I think we closed the place down."

The "place" was not a restaurant but the dining room at Gabriel's Villa, the assisted living community where Mom now lives.

Some of you know that she had recently been in a nursing home. It was touch and go, and for a while we thought we were going to lose her. But remarkable woman that she is, she rallied. And now she's doing better than she has done in three or four years. She navigates her small but attractive apartment without a walker and is managing a complicated drug regimen. If it weren't for the swollen ankles, she'd feel as good as you can at 87 with a bad heart and arthritis.

One reason for Mom's new zest for life is Inez. The same age as Mom, she also moved into the building a week ago. She's bright, cares about her appearance. Both are widows, still in love with their husbands. Both have two daughters, one near and one far, and nearly enough grandchildren for all the love they have to lavish on them.

Between them was that instant spark that leaps between two people now and then, if you are lucky, that happens with soul mates. Not only the one who is destined to become your partner: a friend. Someone you met at school or in the sandbox before that. At work or on a picket line. Even, it seems, in a "nursing home."

I just got off the phone with one of mine. We met by chance when our daughters spied worthy adversaries and raced across the Sunday school room to wrestle each other to the ground.

Mom's a great adapter. She's adjusted to everything that's come her way with great heart and good attitude. Her last deep friend died 20 years ago. So many other friendships, solid but not quite the same, have been made and then lost to death.

It's so wonderful that she has this chance once more for a friend of the heart.

In life, that makes all the difference.
 

 

Seniors have a reputation for being, well, peaceful. Maybe not Uncle Buster, but most. That's one reason aging communities like Wauwatosa are eager to develop housing for seniors—especially the kind of seniors who not only don’t have axes to grind but have lots of home equity to reinvest.

But there's a much bigger political and social context behind the value of aging societies, an upside that most of us haven’t much thought about. According to information from The Gerontological Society of America published January 25 in ScienceDaily, as a society ages, it loses the taste--and the opportunity--for political violence. (World's Aging Population to Defuse War on Terrorism)

If you look at the Mideast, Iraq, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, you’ll see what happens with “youth bulges” in which there are proportionately more young people than usual. The youth bulge creates lots of people with “strong grievances against current political conditions and little stake in society.”

I’m guessing that inner cities with high proportions of young and impoverished no-stakes people suffer from the same kind of increases in violence. Milwaukee is a case in point.

Population age cycles. In about 20 years, an aging, invested population creates political stability and economic development. Think about the US during—and 20 years after—the Vietnam war. You get the picture.

When the population continues to age and stops working, the period of economic development can slow or stop. Then a developed country will likely have to choose between accepting a high level of poverty among the old—or diverting money from military spending to avoid that poverty.

I will leave you to draw your own inferences. But I for one prefer the second option.

Author Mark Haas of Duquesne University says that the aging trend is starting to affect all the most powerful nations. By 2050, Russia’s working age population will shrink by 34%, and China’s median age will be almost 45. Will they choose impoverished old people or reduced military spending?

Apparently, the US will be less affected than China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, and Japan. “In 2050, this country’s median age will be the lowest of any of the great powers,” ScienceDaily reports. At the same time, “the working age population in the US is expected to increase by 31%.”

While the article doesn’t mention it, I bet that the “youthing” of the US depends partly on immigration.

Makes you look at politics, the future, the economy, and aging a little differently.

A slightly different version of this blog appears at Aging Maven.

As I leave the house to make my now weekly pilgrimage to Oshkosh, I spot one of the kids’ iPods on the kitchen floor. It looks a little odd, and then I see that all that high technology is now held together with electric tape.

The surface appeal is gone, but still it manages to work somehow.

It’s a little like that with Mom. A $90,000 chunk of technology about the size of a cigarette pack is implanted under her skin, about where a breast pocket would be. It paces her heart and, when the rhythm goes all kaplooey, it shocks it back in line. Disconcerting, that.

But now, despite the nifty gizmo and all sorts of expensive pharmaceuticals, her giant heart, filling three quarters of her chest cavity, is failing in its job. As a result, her body is filling up with fluid.

In the past two weeks, she’s gained 20 pounds. It’s in her arms and legs, which the physical therapists wrap with elastic bandages, and in odd bulges around her midriff, which they can’t wrap. Because she’s had two radical mastectomies, in some of the places the fluid would normally go, there aren’t places anymore.

Aside from the discomfort (doctor word), pain (patient word), and fear it causes, congestive heart failure is hell on personal vanity.

I call my friends Sabina, a physician, and Susan, a nurse, to get a pre-trip briefing. So I am prepared for the worst.

Still, heading up Highway 41, the sky is so blue, and there are red barns in fields of oat stubble and snow: beauty all around me. I turn off the radio to make a place that’s quiet enough to let in wisdom greater than my own.

I enter the nursing home, a place of old people and middle-aged daughters. Mom is sleeping: I nudge her awake. She rises, in some pain, but manages to get going.

After she stands for a bit, a pocket of fluid forms beneath her buttock. She makes me feel it, and I am suitably horrified. All the people she has made feel her butt today, including her nurse, a man, have been horrified, she says. We laugh about that.

We walk the halls to a waiting room with nursing-home-mauve-and-blue wing-back chairs and an enormous freight elevator. Odd décor even for a nursing home, I suggest. Mom climbs on: 117 pounds.

That’s three less than yesterday. The diuretics are starting to work at last. The many bathroom trips last night begin to feel less onerous.

And today becomes an up-day on the rollercoaster. 

It's not the end of the world, just the end of the year. Still, while I hadn't planned to put on stilettos and silks to dance the year away, neither had I planned to spend the evening in flannel jammies, ice on my ankle instead of in a toasting drink.

It has been one of those days.

I awoke with a wicked cold, hoarse and coughing. Exhausted by 4 pm, I left work early to discover that I'd left my car lights on. The battery was dead. Mary Jane thought she had jumper cables. We went back to the car to check. On the way, I fell off the curb for no particular reason and sprained my ankle.

Triple A came to the car's rescue in blessedly short order, and I finally made it home in time to feel sorry for myself as the kids prepared to celebrate the New Year. I asked George to get Chinese food from Happy Wok on 124th near North--the restaurant that never closes--before he left.

It was closed.

Even so, today was better than the ones before it.

I'd gone to Oshkosh to help my mother move from independent apartments to assisted living. The new place, across the street from the old, is more beautiful, and she knows people there. For a gregarious woman, that's an important "amenity." But each day, she grew more fretful and agitated. It's change, we told her and each other. All the commotion and packing. People regress a little and then adjust. It will be better: you'll see.

She didn't, so she sent me to Walgreens for small cans of peaches. For reasons that will remain a mystery, a can of cold peaches in the back of the refrigerator makes Mom feel safe. 

By Sunday morning, Mom was completely disoriented and then lethargic. She began to hallucinate.

We took her to the Mercy Hospital emergency room just before the start of the Packer game rush. You'd think people would stay home until the game is over, but my sister, who happens to work in that very ER, says the opposite is true. We slipped into the ortho room, the only one open, just before the man with the bad tooth, the pregnant woman with trouble breathing, and the prisoner in irons showed up.

If you are looking for a hospital horror story, you won't find it here. Everyone from the admitting clerk to the med techs and the hospitalist was superb. And as quickly as such things can happen, we found that Mom had an occult infection (location and cause still unknown) and electrolytes and medicine levels out of whack. Throw in a touch of congestive heart failure and you have the recipe for delerium.

Once she was admitted and in good hands, I headed home to see my kids. How beautiful it is here! The flocked trees we have in Tosa don't extend much north of Mequon.

Today was back to work and the welcome relief of small and solvable problems. A large dark coffee from Bruegger's Bagels kept me awake enough for that.

The news from Oshkosh today was more good than bad. While the hallucinations continued, most were of a rather pleasing variety. Nice music, a room with 15 antique chairs, and her great-grandchildren playing hide and seek under her hospital bed. The boat ride with the chairs was scary, though, and so was the knowledge that what Mom saw and heard wasn't really there.

Thanks to intravenous fluids, she is enough herself to make jokes and understand what is happening. This evening, she began nagging my sister for rollers: she can't be seen in public with her hair so flat. And her face, still unlined at 86, is serene again, not twisted tight in fear, Karen assures me. She's sharing cookies with the great-grandbabies, who really are there.

"They gave me fruit salad," she told me of her dinner, "and it was delicious. Marshmallows in it, and peaches!" 

We don't know what all this means yet. But we are grateful for the blessing of this small miracle and what moments we have right now, this year and as long as they will go into the next.

I'm going to renew the ice bag and go to bed. After all, it's nearly 9.

May the lessons of love from the old year carry over into the new. To be ready for the hard days, you might want to keep a can of peaches chilling in back of the fridge. Even if you don't want to eat them, in a pinch you can use the can to reduce swelling. . .


 

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh asked, “Does our looks-obsessed culture want to stare at an aging woman?” The woman in question was Hillary Clinton, of course.

“It's like almost an addiction that some people have to what I call the perfection that Hollywood presents of successful, beautiful, fun-loving people. So the question is this: Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”

He illustrated his point with an exceptionally unflattering photo of the Democratic party presidential candidate next to an exceptionally presidential photo of Mitt Romney and concluded that the Republican is much prettier and therefore more electable. In other words, a better presidential candidate.

The same day, 24-year-old Amanda Hinsperger asked: “What is it about anti-aging?. . .Women in particular carry the anti-aging burden, since most anti-aging ads are marketed to women. Are we afraid of aging? Does the natural course of life disturb us? Nobody likes to admit their body is failing. With all the stress this worrying brings on, and with the aging impacts of stress, maybe we'd be doing ourselves a favour by embracing age.”

Offensive as Limbaugh’s screed is, his observations about our culture’s fear, even hatred, of aging, are sound.

I don’t know how to change that, but Gene D. Cohen, MD, PhD, Director of the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities at The George Washington University, believes the negative attitudes about aging get their start in childhood. Think of the fairy tales we read to our impressionable toddlers: they’re full of wicked witches, stepmothers who are ugly inside and out, old women who live in shoes and abuse their too-large broods.

The Center has compiled a list of stories for children of all ages that show older adults as kind, active, humorous, wise, creative, brave—all the rest of the admirable qualities we aspire to at any age.

That is, if we aren't aspiring only to looking good.

Seems we need to start at the beginning. Give a child you know a good book—and some real-life experiences with women (and men) who are older, but not worse for it.

This entry also is posted at Aging Maven.

3:30 pm: A reader wanted me to make clear that the photos came first (the Drudge Report) and Limbaugh's comments came in response to them. He also objected to my use of the word "screed," claiming Limbaugh's point was about society and not Clinton. I think everything that man says is screed, and I'm sticking to it. That doesn't mean that the observation of American attitudes about aging (especially aging women) isn't accurate: it is. At the same time, it's a Hillary slam.

Fifty two years ago today, Rosa Parks stayed seated on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and the world changed.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. And it wasn’t a random act. Parks, a seamstress, was active in the voter registration movement for who were then called Negroes. She’d attended a desegregation workshop as a representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

“(There) I found out for the first time in my adult life that this could be a unified society…I gained there the strength to persevere in my work for freedom not just for blacks, but for all oppressed people."

The bus event wasn’t planned, but you might say Parks was primed. Still, it was a signal moment in a struggle for human equality that goes on today.

I remember learning in school about this tired and dignified little old lady who had “spoken” truth to power against the wrong of segregation. Somehow, that image made her arrest more worthy of indignation. Nobody likes the idea of big scary police putting their hands on tiny little old ladies.

But today, I am reminded that Rosa Parks was 42 at the time. Martin Luther King Jr. was 26.

In 1955, 42-year-olds were not old but certainly were considered mature. And that was a good thing. There was work to do: families to raise, mortgages to pay off, business to be done, freedom to be won.

Parks went on to co-found with her husband the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development to help young people pursue education, register to vote and work toward racial peace.

In searching the Net for news about  women around Parks’ age at the time, I found Sarah Jessica Parker and Teri Hatcher. Google links led to “Older women having babies,” “Hottest women over 40,” “Fashion don’ts for women over 40,” “Older women and younger men.”

Pages and pages of diet, exercise, and skin care. Articles about women’s desire to be thinner, sleeker, hotter.

Nothing much about being grown up and taking responsibility for the world.

I don’t know what’s wrong with this picture.

Maybe we need more buses.

Nearly everyone "frames" what they report, putting it in a particular context of belief that favors their own viewpoint.

For example, a tax that only affects the very rich sounds like a good idea for the rest of us when it's called "the estate tax." Call it the "death tax," however, and we're all against it because, well, it sounds like those taxes are going to hit the rest of us just like death will.

The big buzz around a new health science report published Nov. 7 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that suggests that Vitamin D may slow aging and prevent aging related diseases is a case study in framing.

“These results are exciting because they demonstrate for the first time that people who have higher levels of vitamin D may age more slowly than people with lower levels of vitamin D,” says team leader Brent Richards, an endocrinologist. “This could help explain how vitamin D has a protective effect on many age-related diseases, such as heart disease and cancer. What's interesting is that there's a huge body of evidence that shows sunshine ages your skin—but it also increases your vitamin D levels. So, like many times in medicine, we find there's a trade-off.”

Dozens of sources reported the study this weekend, and nearly all reports clearly come from the same original source, probably a wire service, and included the paragraph above. But however similar the words may be, the headlines make us see different meanings and implications.

The most neutral headline from a Google search came from France, where Food Navigator.com (Europe)  proclaimed:
Live longer with vitamin D, study says

Most reports from the US and England jumped on a weird take best exemplified by Fox News:
Women Who Spend Time in the Sun May Age More Slowly, Study Says. (No mention that the researchers are talking about 10-15 minutes only of direct sun exposure.)

The American FoodConsumer.org missed a bet when they delivered this pitch:
Wanna live longer? Take vitamin D pills

Fortunately, the Times of India got the Wisconsin frame right:
Milk may provide aging benefits

Now you know why so many scientists hate the news media: they just can't avoid the sexy frame that distorts the facts.

However, I'm sure the Times of India, my new source for all information, is the absolutely objective and just plain. . .right. Here's another health story they report, this time from the Universities of Pittsburgh and California:

Curvy women are cleverer, too: study

Curvy women have been admired for their sensual figures. But, a new study has found that ladies with large hips and small waists are cleverer too, than those with apple-shaped bodies. In fact, according to international researchers, women with an hourglass figure are not only intelligent, they also give birth to brighter children, The Sunday Times reported in London on Sunday.

"The fat around fuller hips and thighs holds higher levels of omega3 fatty acids which are essential for the growth of the brain during pregnancy," the researchers were quoted as saying.

Sometimes, they just get it right!

Have I got your attention?

The State of Wisconsin Board on Aging and Long Term Care certainly got mine in today's press release titled "What? Sex in a Nursing Home???

A press release from the state with four question marks in the title is a rarity. Normally, state officials try to project an air of gravity and utter certainty. But you'd be crazy not to have a few questions here.

If Grandma and widower Emil down the hall decide to become lovers and don't bother the other residents, why not? Is it immoral? Illegal? Or does it depend?

There will be no jokes about Depends, please.

According to author James Richardson, the briefing reports, a person who isn't able to consent to major surgery because of impaired decision-making may well be able to make other decisions--like what flavor ice cream she may want. And "the ability to consent to sexual activity could be considered  to lie closer to the decision about ice cream than to the decision about major surgery."

If memory holds, I'm much more likely to consider sex as related to ice cream than to consider sex as related to major surgery. So I'm sold on the idea that I, and not my children or the night nurse, should get to decide who visits me and how I'll entertain them.

Kudos to the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program in supporting policies that give residents the right to seek sexual expression in a safe and appropriate manner.

Still, I can't help but think of an old joke.

Otto, the only male resident of HappyVale Senior Residence, has read about some little blue pills that will return some of his youthful functions. He sends off to Canada for a supply, tries one, and is delighted by the results.

He rushes into the dining hall shouting words he'd read on the advertising circular: "Super Sex! Super Sex? Who wants super sex?"

Mable and Inga turn to each other, reflect for a moment, and turn back.

"We'll take the soup," they reply in unison.

 

One of the Google Alerts I get daily on the subject “aging” offered this tasty tidbit: “The Art of Aging.” Who could resist? I clicked the link.

The article was about cheese. But might there be some lessons in aging cheese for aging people? After looking at The Nibble and Whey to Go! On The Art of Aging (Gracefully), I’m ready to say yes.

Author Stephanie Zonis writes:

“When I mentioned to a friend that I was writing an article on aged cheeses, she shuddered, adding that she couldn’t stand 'strong, stinky, old cheeses.' Hold on, there! There are some very strong, sharp, er, particularly aromatic aged cheeses, but they’re not all like that, not by any means. . .”

“Cheeses are either fresh or aged. Fresh cheeses are generally mild and soft in texture. . . creamy and somewhat bland. . .Aged cheeses are. . . multi-textured. One of the great things about (them) is their range in flavors. . . some are sweeter. . . beautifully complex.”

“The aging process is also known as ripening, maturing, or affinage.” (That’s French for “refining.”)

Here’s a point I can identify with:

“Without a good rind, a cheese will lose too much moisture during refining.” I don’t know about you, but my own refinement has involved a distinct loss of moisture.

The cheesemaker’s solution? Wash the exterior periodically with brine, oil, brand, whey, beer, cider, or wine. While the article didn't mention it, I've had some good cheeses that applied the wine internally as well.

The paths of people and cheese diverge when it comes to ripening, though. Cheeses do best in dark caves: people don’t.

One last lesson: You just can't judge a cheese by its appearance. Its beauty lies in its deeper essence.

A version of this entry appeared in my other blog, Aging Maven, as well.

In this week’s Newsweek Periscope, writer Sharon Begley has found something good in the shrinking of the aging brain’s frontal lobes: you get to say what you’ve always been thinking.

Conventional wisdom is that you just stop the “social niceties” at some point: "I'm 91. What the hell do I care?"

The dark side is that you might cringe when your mom (okay, that would be my mom) turns to the grocery store clerk, a dwarf, and says “My, you’re a short one.”

And then there’s the race issue.

Whether it's a grandpa in the 1993 movie "Grumpy Old Men" calling someone "you dumb friggin' Swede" or your elderly neighbor referring to a black nurse as "a colored girl," the stereotype of un-P.C. old folks is borne out by research: studies show that seniors tend to be more racist than younger Americans.

But it’s not because older people are just more prejudiced as a result of growing up in times when prejudice was, well, okay to talk about.

It’s because those frontal lobes give us “verbal inhibitions.” Control. The study showed that younger folks might be thinking the same politically incorrect thoughts. They just refrain from saying them.

Fortunately for us, a few writers have lost control through early shrinkage. Nicole Hollander, creator of the rascally character Sylvia and author of the new book Tales of Graceful Aging from Planet Denial, is one.

Hollander has her funny way with some of the sacred beliefs we all hold about “golden years” aging—aging with no aches or creases. Aging like the couples in the AARP ads, who all have great skin and hair, great stock portfolios, and an ample supply of little blue pills.

Here’s an excerpt:

The next day Sally calls with a question. “What happens when we are like ninety and no longer in our ‘creative years’…?” she whispers. “What happens when we are truly old?” I haven’t the heart to tell her about assisted–living facilities. I tell her we will arrange to have her eaten by tigers.

It hurts less when you laugh.

I spent Sunday going through my mother’s closets, helping her decide what goes and what stays. She’s always been a clothes horse, and I say that in the nicest possible way. So this was a big job.

We filled five large garbage bags to be given to some charity or other that moves clothes from one person to another. I sometimes wonder if my Goodwill-shopping daughters will end up buying Mom’s clothes back some day without knowing it.

Even so, 20 pair of pants and two entire closets full of blouses remain. Do not ask me about the shoes.

We made most of our inroads in the skirts, seldom worn. A woman with beautiful legs most of her life notices when her ankles swell and doesn’t want to show it.

Of course it wasn’t easy. Some things just have too much history to part with. There’s the sweater with the leopard collar, just as hot now as it was in the late 50s when the collar (and matching hat) were legal.

And there’s the good Pendleton trenchcoat with zip-out lining. “Daddy and I always wore these to church,” she said. I don’t know if it’s in style or not, but that coat went home with me.

The other “keep it” factor is Depression era training. “Oh, that’s a nice suit. I wonder if (insert grandma generation name here) might want it,” Mom said more than once.

“Ma. She’s probably trying to clean out her closets too. You’ll never get the job done if you keep passing your old stuff back and forth like that.” Most of the clothing recycled this way doesn’t get worn but gets put into someone else's closet, too good to toss.

There's no net gain of space until a middle-aged daughter shows up and is invited to be bossy.

At 86, Mom lives in senior apartments in Oshkosh. Although the place is not as posh as some of the Tosa senior communities now coming under the “where can we find tax revenue” search light, it’s the same sort of place.

The ladies there aren’t rich, but they all have enough to go shopping. And they do, bless them.

Never too old for one more great cut white silk blouse, especially now that there's room in the closet.

How—and where—seniors will live is a lively discussion topic for communities with aging populations. And that would be almost all of them, including Wauwatosa.

“Housing for elderly sparks protest” was a front page headline in the August 27 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as one Mequon neighborhood digs in to oppose an 8-person assisted living group home among their half-million dollar homes.

Just a day earlier, we read “Condos find niche in Grafton: new projects helping attract seniors to walkable downtown.” The article profiles a Mequon couple who wanted to avoid the traffic congestion in their neighborhood, so they moved into Grafton’s “rural-urban downtown, where you can walk to get some coffee or walk to the river or walk to a restaurant. You don’t always need your car anymore.”

What’s going on here?

On one hand, we see smart developers going after the affluent “young” senior population. On the other hand, we see communities objecting to assisted living "homes" in suburban neighborhoods.

Wauwatosa has been pretty forward thinking about community-based residential facilities (CBRFs) like the one proposed for Mequon. Still, each time one is proposed, debates go on about property values, school age populations, and “the fabric of the neighborhood.”

One alderman, not young himself, suggested that elderly people should use “facilities like Luther Manor and San Camillo instead of taking up single family residences,” according to the minutes from a Plan Commission meeting last year.

Of course, not everyone wants to go to or can afford those fine places.

It looks like the idea of moving seniors “out” of where they now live is strong, whether it’s to chic and pricey housing in revitalized downtown areas or to larger community-based residential facilities in more commercial parts of town.

Move them, but don’t put ‘em in my back yard is the message in Mequon. “I think it’s a great thing. I just don’t think they should be in the middle of a neighborhood with 30 kids around,” a woman said.

You’d think we were talking about sex offenders.

Of course the story’s more complicated than that. It seems that the Mequon CBRF owner neglected to talk to the neighbors about her plans, and that’s always a huge mistake. The first principle of creating a great community place is “the community is the expert,” the place you start.

Still, it seems there's a huge disconnect between what people in the aging field and those in the rest of the community are thinking. Staying in your home or at least your community and non-institutional group living is the direction we're headed. But the trends don't seem to have filtered into the way the community at large sees aging.

For many seniors, the best place to live is home, or a place like home. And some of those places should be in the neighborhoods in which people raised their families.

No better place to explore the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” rule.

There's an old joke: what letter do all pirate words start with?

"Arrrggghhh!"

Or maybe that should be "grrrrrrr" for greed.

Are you a pirate seizing bounty you haven't earned? Are you greedy?

Imagine this: your old coworker tells you that she just got her pension increased by 25% because of a clause in the agreement that says, well, she can. It’s legal, and you’re eligible, too.

Do you say “Oh, sorry. I can’t do that! It wouldn’t be good for the people of the County. That money belongs to them”?

Or do you say “Oh man. That will really help out with the medical bills and my kid’s tuition!”?

I don’t know about you, but I know what I’d do. I’d take the money with gratitude and relief. I wouldn't see myself as a pirate.

Of course, I wouldn’t be eligible for the kind of “bonus” top officials would get, for some a matter of $30,000 a year. That’s on top of what they were getting before. Interestingly, the ones with the most to gain are those who were responsible for setting up, buying into, and administering the system.

Are they pirates--or entrepreneurs in the great American tradition of cutting your own best deal?

Have we ever asked business management to forgo the old golden parachutes and extravagant bonus/stock option features for the good the company, the employees, or most important, the investors?

Arrrrgggghhhh! Not that I can recall.

Milwaukee County government needs to clean up its pension trainwreck now. Scott Walker’s been talking about doing that for a long time. But the County needs to take care of the rest of its business, too. It’s awfully tempting to concentrate on this and forget the other serious business in health, human services, and infrastructure facing the County in its budget considerations.

It’s time to talk about taxes—not money seized but the dues we pay to live as citizens in a free society that provides individuals and businesses with some of the services they need to succeed. Roads (and safe bridges) to transport goods and people. Public transportation so people can travel economically. Affordable, accessible healthcare for the old, the poor, and the rest of us.

And for that, as well as the temporary legal fees to clean up its current mess, the County needs a raise. (I'm steering clear of the question of the supervisors' salaries--that's another topic!) It’s not a matter of greed, it’s a matter of a little more now or a lot more later.

There's a third alternative, I suppose. Further deterioration and putting more of the costs on those who can least afford them.

Are we greedy or are we willing to pay our way? Pirates or citizens?

Time will tell whether we exhale the ggrrrrr of greed --or exasperation with the ongoing mess--or the aahhhhh of relief in solving a problem that won't go away by yelling about it.

In response to the previous entry about Monday's legislative breakfast, a reader wrote: “It appears the people on the other side of the fence were off working to pay the taxes for all the new programs and tax hikes being proposed rather than being at the meeting.”

Actually, there was little talk about new programs. Most was about preserving and adequately funding the ones that work. But that's another story.

The reader was challenging me on presenting only one point of view while calling this blog Both Sides of the Fence.

I certainly don’t mean to be misleading. Take the name as being sometimes on one side, other times on the other, and looking at the grass on both sides from wherever I happen to be perched. That doesn’t mean straddling the fence all the time: if you’ve ever tried it, it’s mighty uncomfortable what with those sharp pickets and all.

But looking at politics is never comfortable.

Take Senator Kohl’s recent coup in getting a two-year extension for SeniorCare, Wisconsin’s exemplary prescription drug program. Attempts to extend the program had failed despite bipartisan support, despite overwhelming evidence that the program is cheaper and better than the Federal plans. What finally saved the plan was tucking the extension language into the emergency war spending package Congress passed yesterday.

There’s no question about the value of SeniorCare to seniors and taxpayers. I’m thrilled that it’s been rescued. I can’t wait to help my mother shift into it: it will save her money and heartache.

But while the fiscal cost of the program is low, the ethical cost of the method of rescue is high. Programs should win or lose on their merits, not on the close-minded decision making of the Federal government or on the craftiness of legislators in getting around it.

As Representative Paul Ryan said, “It was wrong when Republicans porked up emergency spending bills, and it’s wrong when the Democrats do it.”

The only way to change bad practices is to stop engaging in them. Decent insurance for seniors shouldn’t ride on the lives of young people in Iraq.