I learned the hard way: The greatest and the most predictable danger for older people is falling. Too often, a broken hip can lead to a deep and irreversible decline in one’s health or well-being if you don’t get the best of help quickly. For me, I was laid temporarily low by a mild concussion.

Fortunately, for those of us who are eligible, Medicare and Medicaid have made some advances in fashioning benefits that will keep patients at home to mend instead of keeping them in a hospital which can be dirty, dangerous and expensive, or sending them to a nursing home, where the pampering, diapering and surroundings can be even more debilitating.

I hope this is not too basic, but in case you’re a caregiver or a potential patient and you don’t know, or haven’t read the 2010 “Medicare and You” manual, under the Medicare law, after a hospitalization of at least three days – say, for an accident, a stroke or for a broken or surgically mended hip – a patient is entitled to up to 20 days of rehabilitation and therapy in a skilled nursing facility at no cost. (After 20 days the cost is more than $133 a day). The skilled nursing facility, I should add, is not a nursing home. But nurses and therapists are available to help you bathe and dress until you’re able to do so for yourself.

A very important (and inexpensive) alternative, when leaving the hospital or the nursing facility or if you simply need medical help getting over a wound or illness is home health care, which Medicare covers and will cost you nothing. This is one of the best Medicare benefits, although too few beneficiaries or caregivers know about it.

I learned something about Medicare Home Health Care just a few days ago after I took a serious fall from the steep brick steps leading into my home, which left me with bruises, a minor concussion and further impairment of my right arm and leg, which had been weakened by a stroke six years ago. For those of you who are wondering, even six years into a stroke, therapy can help.

That meant I needed trained professionals to look after my recovery from the concussion and to provide physical therapy to get me back on my feet. All it took to get part-time home health care was a prescription from a savvy emergency room physician who wrote in his Rx that the care was “medically necessary.”

As the manual says, “a doctor must order it and a Medicare-certified home health agency must provide it.” That’s especially important for in past years, Medicare cracked down on fly-by-night agencies who charged but didn’t deliver adequate care.

The hospital may recommend an agency, but you should use one that is recognized. In my area, the best is the Johns Hopkins Home Health group.

The home health services may include medical social services, making sure you have help in the home, and part-time or intermittent home health aide services such as checking on a bandage or an IV, administering drugs or simply keeping track of your vital signs and the healing of a wound or a surgical site. The manual says that “you must be homebound” to receive such services, but that means you can leave home to visit a doctor, go to religious services or even go to adult day care.

In my case, the nurse, Anne Bilderback, came to the house twice a week to check my progress in getting over that concussion which left me weakened and occasionally dizzy. Another fall in the house could have been disastrous. She checked to make sure there were no side effects and lectured me on the need to drink fluids and keep my feet up to minimize swelling. And twice a week a physical therapist came to the house and spent an hour with me helping me to walk, exercise my leg and even get up and down the steps from which I fell.

Medicare will not provide 24-hour nursing care nor will it provide meals or help with bathing and dressing unless these services are necessary for your plan of care. In short, if bathing, dressing and meal taking are the only problems you have, they won’t be covered by Medicare. And if oxygen or a wheelchair or other durable medical equipment is required, Medicare will pay 80 percent of the cost.

One more important thing about home health care. Medicare generally pays for up to nine weeks of visits and as much as 35 hours of care per week, although that may vary depending on the reasons for the care. My problem required much less than nine weeks. But Anne told me that a private, for profit company, for which she worked would urge her to discharge patients too soon in order to save money.

If you have a Medicare Advantage HMO or PPO, it is supposed to offer you the same benefits that original Medicare offers. But some private insurance companies use only those health care agencies with which they have special business relationships - such as getting kickbacks. This, plus the fact that some agencies billed Medicare for patients they did not see, were among of the reasons Medicare cut its support for home health care a few years back.

So be careful about which company you choose; check with a doctor or someone you know. And if you think you’ve been discharged too soon, you have the right to make a quick appeal.

See the Medicare website where you or a care giver may find and compare Medicare certified private (proprietary) and public non-profit home health care agencies. Or if you enter home health care in the search box, you may download or read all 35 pages of the manual on the subject, which may be more than you want or need to know.

After discharge from home health care, you may continue physical or occupational, or speech therapy with a doctor’s prescription. If you go to a private therapist, you may run into a cap on the number of visits which was imposed by Congress a few years ago, although there are exceptions for some conditions.

But there are no caps if the therapy takes place in a hospital. In any case, Medicare pays 80 percent of the cost of therapy; you or your supplemental policy pays the rest.

Finally, most of the benefits I’ve described are provided by Part B of Medicare which, as most of you know, pays most of the cost of outpatient services – doctor visits, labs, x-rays. If you don’t have Part B, it’s open for general enrollment until March 31.

This is one of two pieces on Home Health Care. Next time: Medicare and the blight of Depression.

On the day of President Obama's State of the Union address, Republican Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin introduced a budget proposal that would, according to the Congressional Budget Office [pdf], create a budget surplus of about five percent by the year 2080. The three main changes that Ryan's Roadmap for America's Future would make are:

• Restructure the federal tax code to eliminate all taxes on interest, dividends, capital gains and estates (which mostly benefits the rich)

• Privatize Medicare and Medicaid

• Privatize Social Security

In other words, the proposal would transfer even more wealth from the working and middle classes to the rich while making it more difficult for everyone to get the health care they need and deserve, not to mention jeopardizing everyone's retirement.

As Ezra Klein put in the Washington Post, “Ryan's budget proposes reforms that are nothing short of violent.” The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare agrees: the plan “decimates Social Security and Medicare in the name of deficit reduction.”

Nowhere in Ryan's Roadmap does the word "defense" appear in relation to the military. There are no spending cuts in it except to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and it increases costs to individuals for those programs and private coverage as it simultaneously cuts benefits.

Medicare and Medicaid
People age 55 and older are grandfathered into the current system. Younger people would be issued vouchers pegged to income to purchase private coverage, but the vouchers' growth would be far slower than the projected growth of health care costs. And because private insurers pay providers more than Medicare does and their administrative costs are much higher, beneficiaries would face far higher premiums for coverage similar to Medicare.

The plan also provides for tax-free medical savings accounts. I've never been able to figure out how families who live paycheck to paycheck are expected to afford these. Ezra Klein again:

“This proposal would take Medicare from costing an expected 14.3 percent of GDP in 2080 to less than 4 percent. That's trillions of dollars that's not going to health care for seniors. The audacity is breathtaking.”

Social Security
As with Medicare, people 55 and older are grandfathered into the current Social Security system. Ryan's proposal would gradually raise the age of eligibility for Social Security to 69 and there are a couple of other tweaks. But here is his main objective: workers would be allowed to invest more than a third of their Social Security taxes in private retirement accounts.

Didn't we just kill President Bush's privatization plan a few years ago? Did Representative Ryan sleep through the economic disaster of the past two years? What is he thinking?

I'll tell you what he's thinking: like Bush, he wants to transfer the trillions of dollars in workers' Social Security accounts to Wall Street bankers who would make billions servicing the accounts and then be bailed out when the next financial meltdown occurs. Perhaps the congressman has a stash of refrigerator boxes to sell to elders to live in the next time that happens.

This plan puts every citizen's security in the hands of the Republican-beloved free market and we all know how well that's been working even before the crash.

A reminder: Whatever you hear from slash-and-burn legislators (and more than a few know-nothing journalists) about Social Security being broken, they are wrong (more likely, disingenuous). Just a couple of minor changes that would cause no undue pain to anyone would secure the program for decades to come.

Medicare, however, is a pressing issue. Its financial problems must be addressed which Congress tried to do with health care reform that is now moribund thanks to the Republicans. And the general budget deficit is not as urgent to fix now as Representative Ryan and others in Washington say; it's mostly an anti-Obama political ploy in an election year.* But whether it is addressed now or later, why do certain Congress members think elders should pay for it all.

Representative Ryan's bill, H.R. 4529 [full text here – pdf], was introduced in the House on 27 January. According to TalkingPointsMemo, it is “highly unlikely to ever see the light of day beyond a perfunctory party-line vote as a substitute to the Democrats' budget.”

We can only hope so. But you've got to watch these guys every day and take names. They have failed so far, but they never stop trying to kill Medicare and Social Security, and they become more brazen with every succeeding attempt.

* 5AM UPDATE: I wrote this post yesterday and this morning in The New York Times, economist Paul Krugman agrees with me about the non-threat of the current deficit, headlining today's op-ed, "Fiscal Scare Tactics."

[NOTE: I have left out a lot of detail contained in Ryan's bill and various useful commentary to keep this post from wonking out. You can find all the particulars you might care to know in the links scattered above.]

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Nancy Leitz: The Depression Coat

Oh yeah? But I'm too tired of claims, counterclaims, stalemates, centerfold senators, gridlock in Congress and teapartiers to get into it. I think we all need a break.

A few years ago, I reprinted an internet email about retiring to the Hilton. It was fun and funny. I was reminded of it recently when I received a similar email obviously based on the first one, but this may be an even better idea.

No Nursing Home For Me!
At dinner through the Mediterranean aboard a Princess cruise ship, an elderly lady sat alone along the rail of the grand stairway in the main dining room. The staff, ship's officers, waiters, busboys, etc. all seemed very familiar with her. When a waiter was asked who she was, he said he knew only that she had been on board for the last four cruises, back to back.

Wanting to know more, a fellow passenger asked her one evening if this was true. “Yes,” she replied and without a pause added, “It’s cheaper than a nursing home.”

The average cost for a nursing home, she explained, is $200 a day. With a long-term cruise discount and a senior discount, the price of a Princess Cruise is $135 per day. That leaves $65 a day for:

• Gratuities which will only be $10 per day.


• I will have as many as 10 meals a day if I can waddle to the restaurant, or I can have room service (which means I can have breakfast in bed every day of the week).


• Princess has as many as three swimming pools, a workout room, free washers and dryers, and shows every night.


• There are free toothpaste and razors, and free soap and shampoo.


• They will even treat you like a customer, not a patient. An extra $5 worth of tips will have the entire staff scrambling to help you.


• I get to meet new people every seven or 14 days.


• TV broken? Light bulb need changing? Need to have the mattress replaced? No problem! They fix everything and apologize for your inconvenience.


• Clean sheets and towels every day, and you don’t even have to ask for them.


• If you fall in the nursing home and break a hip you are on Medicare; if you fall and break a hip on the Princess ship they will upgrade you to a suite for the rest of your life.


• And here's the best. If I want to see South America, the Panama Canal, Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand, Asia or you name it, Princess will have a ship ready to go.


• And don’t forget: when you die, they just dump you over the side at no charge.

Anyone want to join me at the dock in New York?

And here's an extra laugh:

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Mary B Summerlin: The Gift

Last Monday la peregrina, who blogs at Santiago Dreaming, made an important health point in a comment on this blog:

“One of the biggest health concerns for older people,” she wrote, “is dehydration. An older relative of my husband was just in the hospital with what was first thought to be a stroke. It turns out she was dehydrated since she only drank coffee and an occasional Diet Dr. Pepper.”

She is absolutely right about it being a health risk for elders. One study found that lab tests revealed 48 percent of elders admitted to hospitals showed indications of dehydration. Another study found that 31 percent of long-term care residents were dehydrated.

Among the reasons elders are more susceptible to dehydration are that as we get older, our bodies are less able to conserve water and less able to respond to changes in temperature. Conditions that make dehydration more likely in elders include hot weather, fever, diarrhea and vomiting. Poorly-controlled diabetes can contribute to dehydration as can kidney disorders and taking diuretics which are sometimes used in the treatment of hypertension.

The most interesting reason for higher risk of dehydration in elders is that as we get older, we often don't realize when we are thirsty.

“Scientists...have warned that elderly people are at risk of becoming dehydrated because their brains underestimate how much water they need to drink to rehydrate...

“Florey researchers...discovered that a region in the brain called the mid cingulate cortex predicts how much water a person needs, but this region malfunctions in older people.”

Medical News Today 28 December 2007

Symptoms of dehydration can include headache, lethargy, confusion, hallucinations, light-headedness and fainting. With mild dehydration, skin and membranes of the eyes and nose become dry. Severe dehydration can lead to such serious effects as falls, dizziness, delirium and drop in blood pressure causing death.

Dehydration is not to be taken lightly.

Caregivers should be aware of these symptoms, be sure there is plenty of water available for those who cannot get around on their own, and they should get their loved ones or patients to a doctor as soon as possible when symptoms appear. Treatment involves replacement of lost fluids orally or via an intravenous tube if necessary.

As it happens, my physician and I discussed elder dehydration just last month during my annual checkup. I tend to not drink enough fluids so la peregrina's comment was a good reminder for me. In most cases, dehydration is easy to prevent: drink more liquids, even if you don't feel thirsty.

Unless dehydration is related to disease needing a physician's attention and if you are otherwise healthy, that's pretty much all there is to it - drink more water. Isn't it a relief to find a simple answer in a modern world where all too often solutions are complicated and cost a fortune.

Most adults should drink about eight glasses of water a day. Physically active people should drink more.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Johna Ferguson: A Good Joke

"Democratic reforms have also been limited, cautious. Obama's no exception. On healthcare, for example, he starts out with a compromise, and when you start out with a compromise, you end with a compromise of a compromise, which is where we are now."

- Howard Zinn
The Nation 13 January 2010

When it’s useful, we pundits are fond of quoting the most famous aphorism of philosopher-poet George Santayana: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It’s chiseled in stone at the Federal Trade Commission. But what if you learn the wrong lesson? Could that be one of President Obama’s problems?

My favorite political scientist, whose work I studied at Harvard, was V. O. Key who observed, among other things, that the genius of the American political system – and often a source of frustration - is that it generally rejects extremism and clings towards the middle, moving from right of center to left and back, as from Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy to Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

But that doesn’t mean the center, where some of Obama’s advisers seem comfortable, is the safest and most politically rewarding place to be. There is no passion or purpose in the center. Key also observed in 1955, in A Theory of Critical Elections, that there were, in American history, transforming, realigning elections “in which the decisive results...reveal a sharp alteration of the pre-existing cleavage within the electorate.”

With those elections, America moved and Americans were moved.

Not to get too esoteric, but such elections included that of:

• Thomas Jefferson in 1800, which produced the two-party system and the Louisiana territory

• Andrew Jackson, in 1828, which built the Democratic Party, established the national bank and gave voice to the new frontier

• Abraham Lincoln in 1860, who founded the Republican Party and grappled with civil conflict and the end of slavery

• And Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932, the “archetypical realigning election,” which established the Democrats as the majority party for more than a generation, breaking through years of conservative, business-oriented Republican rule and responding with unprecedented activist federal government in the New Deal, to relieve the miseries of the Great Depression.

Key had faith in the American voters. “The voters are not fools,” he said. But, he wrote, “if a democracy tends toward indecision, decay and disaster, the responsibility rests [with its political leaders] not in the mass of the people.”

The voters place their faith in leaders and want to be led. “I must go catch up to the people,” someone said, “for I am their leader.”

So how come, after the American people have voted for the center left, several of our most recent presidents – Democrats, I’m sorry to say – forget the lessons of the most successful Democratic realigner, Franklin Roosevelt, and head for the hills on the right? Or, like the current U.S. Senate, they seek the numbing middle.

Jimmy Carter, who ran against the Washington establishment and presided over runaway inflation, blamed the nation’s problems on a crisis of confidence among the American people, called a “malaise” by his pollster. Historian Roger Wilkins observed, echoing Key:

“When your leadership is demonstrably weaker than it should be, you don’t point to the people and say, ‘It’s your problem.’ If you want the people to move, you move them the way Roosevelt moved them. You don’t say, ‘It’s your fault.’”

Carter didn’t find his liberal voice until he left the presidency.

Bill Clinton, who lost the Congress in 1994, responded  with “triangulation,” meaning veering right, by killing welfare for women with dependent children, ending banking and financial regulation which handsomely rewarded his Treasury Secretary, and telling us in the 1996 State of the Union, “The era of big government is over.”

For Wall Street and the big banks, the era of government was over.

Contrast that capitulation, with Franklin Roosevelt’s State of the Union on January 3, 1936. It was a difficult time for his presidency. The New Deal was barely off the ground, unemployment hovered like a plague. Big business called him “traitor.” The virulent right was in full cry featuring Father Charles Coughlin, the racist radio priest, anti-Semite Gerald L .K. Smith, the Liberty League and, until his murder, Huey Long.

Even Roosevelt’s vice president, Texan John Garner had doubts about the New Deal. The conservative Supreme Court was hostile, and 1936 was a crucial election year.

But Roosevelt, in his speech before a joint session of Congress, seemed to relish the new year’s political battles.

“We have witnessed the domination of government by financial and industrial groups, numerically small but politically dominant,” he said. “We have earned the hatred of entrenched greed...They seek the restoration of their selfish power...The principles that they would instill into government if they succeed in seizing power — autocracy toward labor, toward stockholders, toward consumers, toward public sentiment...”

Democrats cheered while the Republicans grimaced. Roosevelt dared his adversaries and critics to repeal the work of the first New Deal: “Shall we say to the unemployed and the aged, ‘Social Security lies not within the province of the federal government; you must seek relief elsewhere.’”

And he dared his big business critics, who hid behind the rabble rousers, to show themselves:

“Let them no longer hide their dissent in a cowardly cloak of generality. Let them define the issue. We have been specific in our affirmative action. Let them be specific in their negative attack.”

There was no doubt what Roosevelt was for. That November, while the new Literary Digest poll predicted that Governor Al Landon of Kansas would win, Roosevelt won the greatest electoral landslide since the beginning of the two party system, carrying all but eight electoral votes and every state (including Kansas) except Maine and Vermont, and installing huge Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress that would last for more than a decade - with one exception, the 80th Congress in 1947-48.

And Democrat Harry Truman, echoing Roosevelt, won in a famous upset in 1948, giving hell to the Republicans and its “Do nothing Congress.” Truman’s election was, in a sense, Roosevelt’s fifth.

When have you heard a modern president take on the opposition like that?

The point, of course, is that Roosevelt’s New Deal could not have been passed and been so successful without his hands-on leadership and risk-taking. And in spite of opposition, he fought for his programs by carrying the fight to the stubborn, recalcitrant opposition. He did not seek to win them over; they were a perfect foil, a tight-faced minority who would turn the clock back.

Roosevelt, as the saying goes, danced with the date he brought. Rather than heading toward the center, where he got few votes, he remained loyal to those who voted for him. And they remained loyal to him. He was not loyal to the people who didn’t vote for him and opposed his program. Yes, he was president of all the people, but Roosevelt believed that his ideas would benefit all Americans, including those who didn’t vote for him.

During his campaign, Barack Obama called on the spirits of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan as his heroes and transformational presidents. But each of them, with a combination of pragmatism and ideology, did not seek the center for comfort. They fought for their principled and sometimes unpopular stands. They led. They made clear what they stood for.

Lincoln risked his presidency in 1864 to save the union and his presidency. And he built the Republican Party, which ruled for most of the years until Roosevelt.

Lyndon Johnson, who was a young congressman during the Roosevelt years, was a consummate politician and pragmatic when he had to be. But when he saved the traditional Democratic majority in the 1964 election, he did not play it safe. He went further than the more conservative John F. Kennedy, and used that majority to pass the most ambitious legislative agenda, the Great Society, since the New Deal – the Civil Rights Acts, Medicare, Medicaid and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, all of which are still law.

Ronald Reagan also did not move to the center after he won in 1980, but he remained loyal to his conservative, anti-communist base and its principles. He remains popular today, partly because he was not a nut, but an honest and genuine conservative who did not try to kill Social Security or Medicare, but who raised taxes when he had to and applied the military and economic pressure that helped bring down Soviet power during the presidency of another pragmatic conservative, George H.W. Bush.

Obama is as articulate as his presidential heroes. He has resurrected an activist, caring federal government. He has brought to Washington an openness, balance and a greater appreciation for public service. Furthermore his accomplishments are many and civilized, if not great.

He has miles to go, but his obsession with bipartisanship is allowing his adversaries to define him. Democrats in Congress need not follow him. No one fears Obama. Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson defined themselves as liberals. And they called their opposition out for what they were. When, if ever, will Obama take the offensive to save his congressional majority?

Obama says he’s not an ideologue. Does that mean he has no ideology? What does he really believe, beyond the brainy rhetoric? We still don’t know what he’s for in the health care debate. He’s neither right or left, said one of his top aides, “he’s for what works.” But what does that mean?

Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith told The New York Times that “the candidate of change became the president of continuity.” So puzzled Democrats, liberals, progressives and independents who brung him to the ball have had to stand aside. They wait and hope for the change they believed in.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Madonna Dries Christensen: A Scrap of Time and Place

Couple the ubiquity of these ads with almost as many touting cosmetic products that promise to make people look ten years younger and it is easy for elders to be defined in the minds of younger people only by ill health leading to covert and overt discrimination that shoves old people to the margins of life.

On the other hand, if you live long enough things go wrong – from ailments as medically unimportant as hair loss (apparently, in old women, hair migrates from the head to the chin and upper lip) to serious conditions such as heart disease, hypertension, stroke and others that are most common to old people.

I like to remind myself and readers that eighty percent of old people arrive at their graves having lived independently until the end. Much of that is due to medicine's increasing ability to control conditions not yet curable or preventable with various therapies that extend independent living. So I keep an eye on medical developments through several email newsletters that collect reports of recently released scientific research results.

Most are small studies that may or may not provide useful information leading to new or better treatment - only time and more research will tell. That's pretty much how science works – success after a lot of trial and error, disappointment and many incremental advances building on one another until a solution is found. There is hardly ever a giant breakthrough all at once.

Okay, all that is about disease. Other research turns up confirming or refuting long-held health beliefs. We've been through hundreds of them in our lifetimes: Caffeine is harmless; no, it will kill you. Lay off eggs; wait, we changed our minds, they're okay now. Orange juice is good for you; oh snap, it will wear the enamel off your teeth. Gingko biloba will improve your memory; never mind, we were wrong. And so on.

Two recent studies caught my attention, one because I would so like it to be true; the other for the consternation it creates.

Bum versus Belly Fat
A group of scientists at Oxford University in England reports that having a fat butt is better for you than a fat stomach.

“More waist or abdominal fat tends to lead to more fatty acids floating around the body where it can get deposited in other organs like the liver and muscle, and cause harm. This is associated with conditions like diabetes, insulin resistance and heart disease.”

This is not new information. However, this study says having a pear shaped body instead of an apple shape “actively protects” a person against heart disease. Don't I wish that were true (there is a reason I don't own a full-length mirror) – but I'm skeptical that a fat butt and thighs are good for me.

Self-Control is Contagious
A new study from the University of Georgia reports that people tend to mimic the behavior of those they associate with so that habits such as cigarette smoking, drug use and obesity spread within social networks as do, conversely, good habits such as regular exercise and healthful eating.

”In a just-published series of studies involving hundreds of volunteers, researchers have found that watching or even thinking about someone with good self-control makes others more likely exert self-control. The researchers found that the opposite holds, too, so that people with bad self-control influence others negatively.

“The effect is so powerful, in fact, that seeing the name of someone with good or bad self-control flashing on a screen for just 10 milliseconds changed the behavior of volunteers.” [emphasis added]

Although the 10 milliseconds is surprising, this strikes me as one of those things we've always known but had not been well-articulated before. Here's how I know:

Years ago, during one of my many attempts to quit smoking, I met a friend after work for a drink at a bar. She was smoking and that's okay. I can't stand holier-than-thou reformed smokers and have refused to become one.

I got through our first drink, then on the second one, I lit one of her cigarettes. One couldn't hurt, I thought, and it's such a pleasure. But on the way home, I bought a pack. On other occasions too numerous to count, I have eaten a dessert I wouldn't otherwise have done because a friend served it after dinner. Everyone else was eating it, I rationalized, how much could it hurt? In my case, ten pounds worth over several dinners a month.

On the other hand, I have an old friend who, about twice a month for decades, has spent the night in an opium den in New York City's Chinatown. Even though he shows no discernible ill-effects and I am curious about what it is like, I have had no inclination to try it. Two other friends are grossly obese and no, it's not their thyroid. Another who is of normal size, hasn't eaten a fruit or vegetable in years as far as I can tell, but he's still alive in his early 70s. None of them affect my (usually) health habits.

In addition, no gym rats I know have had the slightest impact on my dislike of exercise machines.

So although I believe the research is valid in general, I suspect the researchers are a bit more enthusiastic than is called for. I'm certainly not going to ditch friends who smoke, who tipple a bit more than may be good for them or who don't do anything more strenuous than push a cart through the grocery aisles.

The study is useful information, but there seems to be embedded in it somewhat of a new twist on blame-the-victim; in this case, blame the victim's friends. No, I am responsible for my behavior – for better or worse.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Ellen Younkins: A Lost Love

These tracks were chosen by Norma, the A.M. (Assistant Musicologist), with occasional comment from her. “I remember these when I was very young,” says Norma. “Now I’m not so young, but just call me Peter Pan anyway.”

There are people of a certain age (not quite so early baby-boomers) who seem to think that music started with Heartbreak Hotel. The A.M. is not one of those and she’s going to prove that.

There was an obvious way to start today’s music and although I usually eschew the obvious, I couldn’t resist it. To start the ball rolling this is Get Out Those Old Records by Mary Martin and her son Larry.

Mary was a Broadway and film actress, starring mostly in musicals. Larry is Larry Hagman, star of I Dream of Jeannie and that other program.

Although Mary appeared in nine films in her career she was generally passed over for the filmed version of the musical plays in which she starred. She said she didn’t particularly like making films anyway – there was no audience to play to.

So, let’s get out those old records…

Mary Martin - Those Old Records

Originally the A.M. had The Stargazers performing I See the Moon at this point. I asked her if she had played it and she said she hadn’t and was relying on her memory. I played the track for her and she gave it the flick, as I expected she would, and has substituted Harry Belafonte.

Harry’s a lot more to my liking. Perhaps we should throw in The Stargazers at the end to see what you think. No, I wouldn’t be that cruel.

Harry started his career in music as a club singer in New York. The first time he appeared in front of an audience, he was backed by a band that included Charlie Parker, Max Roach and Miles Davis. Talk about starting with the best.

Once he began recording, his first big-selling single was Matilda which pretty much set the style for most of his big hits through the fifties, including this one: Jamaica Farewell.

Harry Belafonte - Jamaica Farewell

There is no way that you can’t sing along to Shrimp Boats. Well, I guess if you’re unfamiliar with it that wouldn’t be true, but I imagine anyone who regularly tunes in to TimeGoesBy would know the song. [Otherwise you’ll get the hang of it by the second chorus.] The singer is Jo Stafford.

Jo’s musical career began in a group with her two sisters imaginatively named The Stafford Sisters. After the other two got married, she joined the Pied Pipers who teamed up with the Tommy Dorsey band. They backed Frank Sinatra on some of his early recordings. Eventually, she went solo (or occasionally duetted with Frankie Laine) and was the first artist to sell 25 million records for Columbia Records.

Their sails are in sight, so let’s get those shrimp boats a’comin’.

Jo Stafford - Shrimp Boats

I bet I just have to mention Frankie Laine (I already have) and you would break into song. Maybe not today’s tune but it wouldn’t matter as he had so many, all of them good.

Frankie was born in Chicago of Italian immigrant parents. His father at one time was Al Capone’s personal barber. Hmmm, better watch the razor.

Frankie’s early singing influences were Enrico Caruso and Bessie Smith (see if you can hear them in this track). He was a lifelong friend of Nat King Cole who recorded some of Frankie’s compositions, and he appeared on Nat’s television show for nothing when it was unable to get a sponsor. He played a significant role in the civil rights movements of the fifties and sixties.

Frankie started out as a jazz singer, but his versatility meant he could perform in a variety of styles – gospel, rock, folk, country, jazz and blues were all covered.

Here he performs Moonlight Gambler.

Frankie Laine - Moonlight Gambler

While there is some dispute about which song of Patti Page’s to include, there is no argument about which one to leave out. Hint: doggie, window (in spite of the A.M.’s father buying the 78 rpm record for her – or possibly for himself?) I doubt if Patti’s too concerned though as I imagine it was a nice little earner for her.

Not just that one either; she sold more than 100 million records in her career, probably the largest number of any female singer. Not many males sell that many either.

I won’t bother mentioning all her hit songs as I’m sure some will be included in future blogs of this kind. The track the A.M. has chosen is Mister and Mississippi, sort of a companion piece to the Frankie Laine track.

Patti Page - Mister and Mississippi

Louis Armstrong needs no introduction from me.

Louis was one of the most important and influential musicians of the twentieth century. He changed the way jazz was played and his singing style is still influencing singers to this day. This is A Kiss to Build a Dream On.

Louis Armstrong - A Kiss To Build A Dream On

Follow this link to 1950s – Pre-Heartbreak Hotel, Part 2.

Another piece of Ted Kennedy’s dream of universal health care may be lost in the compromise meat grinder that has produced a deformed, complicated, top heavy and unpopular pro-insurance company bill – his proposal to begin building, for the first time, a civilized policy for the long term care of millions of elderly and disabled Americans.

First, the apparent loss of a strong public Medicare-like choice among the insurance options, included in Kennedy’s bill, will likely mean that private insurers won’t offer younger workers and aging boomers long term care insurance at an affordable price. Only a few employers, including the federal government, offer such policies.

But more specifically, there is doubt that Kennedy’s measure, called the CLASS Act (for Community Living Assistance Services and Support) will survive in the health reform legislation strong enough to be any good.

The CLASS Act, though far from adequate, would provide for workers to voluntarily contribute to individual accounts that eventually would pay part (perhaps $100 a day) of the cost of their long term care. Some suggest this should be mandatory.

It would be the first, small step towards a public program to eventually provide long term care for every American who needs it. Naturally, it is opposed by long term care insurers and their allies among Republicans, and conservative Democrats who worry more about the bottom line than people’s well-being.

So far, the proposal does not have a high priority among advocates of health care reform, including the White House, for they’re concentrating their efforts on the 47 million middle and working class people, mostly young, who are without basic health coverage.

Yet AARP said years ago that the lack of a long term care policy was the nation’s “greatest unmet health care need.” And little has changed. Just as the young don’t plan for the infirmities of age, it’s easy for policy makers to ignore the needs of elderly American couples facing the terrible time when one or the other needs long term nursing care – at home or in an institutional setting.

It didn’t have to be that way. President Obama, mistakenly, I think, abandoned his own earlier views and refused, from the beginning, to consider the long-standing congressional proposals by the two most senior House members – Michigan Democrats John Dingell (1955) and John Conyers (1965) – to provide Medicare for All. It would have gradually eliminated the costs of health insurance, which, along with payroll taxes would have financed universal health care including long term care. See the text of the bill here

But Obama, who has since retreated on the public option, said the country was not ready for Medicare for All despite advice to the contrary from his own Chicago-area doctors. But I doubt he even read the Dingell or Conyers bills, nor did most interested Americans, for as I’ve written, most of the main stream press blacked out these single-payer proposals for months while the debate was taking shape.

The Washington Post ignored these bills. Even the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund and AARP declined to include the proposals in their discussions on the grounds that they did not have a chance to pass, thus guaranteeing that their self-fulfilling prophecy would be fulfilled.

But I have digressed, for I meant to emphasize that among the biggest gaps in Medicare coverage – which many older Americans don’t realize - is that it does not cover long term nursing care. After a three-day hospital stay, Medicare will cover – with high co-payments to be paid by the beneficiary or his/her supplemental insurance – up to 100 days in a skilled nursing facility for rehabilitation, say for a hip replacement or to recover from an accident. And that’s all.

If your partner, spouse or loved one needs long term care, meaning help with what are called the “activities of daily living,” or ADLs, such as bathing and dressing, Medicare will only help pay for medical needs. I repeat, for nursing care, at home or in an institutional settling, there is no rational, national public program for the long term care of the elderly.

In this, America is alone among most of the countries of Europe; we say we venerate the aged, but our policy doesn’t reflect that.

There is long term care insurance, but the cost for a 65-year-old is hardly affordable at about $3,000 a year – if he or he has no illnesses and can qualify. The long term care insurance industry exhorts workers to buy when they are young and the cost is relatively inexpensive.

But chances are a person will pay the premiums for 25 years and never use the policy; less than one in three need long term care and nursing home stays are relatively short. A long term insurance policy usually has limits, in dollar amounts or the length of stay. And as an investment it sucks for unless you spend considerably more, there is no surrender value. If you don’t use it, you lose the thousands you’ve spent.

In addition, many insurers raise the premiums when the beneficiary is old and can least afford it. Not surprisingly, some drop their policies. Several insurers have changed hands, or they have sought to save money by challenging claims, when the beneficiary is at a disadvantage seeking to appeal. Most of the very old in nursing homes tend to be widows. And despite inflation riders in some policies (which cost more), many do not keep up with the cost of a nursing home, now averaging between $79,000 and $125,000 a year depending on where you live.

The Bush administration and Republican congresses, which rejected any public long term care program, have sought to encourage the purchase of long term care insurance by allowing people to deduct portions of the premiums as part of their medical costs. They’ve even encouraged people to take out reverse mortgages on their homes or sell their life insurance policies to finance long term care policies.

But more important, the last Republican-led congresses have sought to make it more difficult for the middle and working class elderly to use the only public program that has become a vehicle for long term care – Medicaid. It may be demeaning for families and couples to turn to welfare to get long term nursing care for a loved one, but it has been the only alternative for millions of the elderly.

Medicaid, passed around the same time as Medicare, is a federal program, administered by the states, that provides comprehensive medical care, including medicines, for the poor – people whose incomes are beneath or just above the official poverty line. But over the years, with the help of elder lawyers, families have found that with planning, they can “spend down” the savings of a loved one, impoverishing him or her, to get long term nursing care. That’s called “Medicaid planning” and it has become an elder law specialty.

A few years ago, at the behest of the long term care insurance industry, the Republican congress made Medicaid planning a crime, but the “granny goes to jail” attempt was unenforceable and dropped.

Nevertheless, Congress has since made it tougher to take advantage of Medicaid requiring, for example, that a beneficiary wait five years and exhaust his/her savings before becoming eligible for Medicaid in a nursing home.

Thus you are poor, but have worked most of your life, Medicaid long term care is a blessing, but it means spending your last days on welfare. And even those funds are being cut by many states hard-hit by the recession. Nursing homes by law may not discriminate between the paying and Medicaid patients, but they do. And fewer doctors will take Medicaid patients because compensation rates are low.

Among couples or families with modest nest eggs, their problem is how to avoid impoverishing the spouses (most are women) who remain at home when a loved one must be sent to a nursing home.

Under the arcane law, the spouse may keep half the couple’s assets up to around $109,000 (not counting the home, a car and the spouse’s personal IRAs, if any). In addition, the spouse is limited to a monthly allowance of up to $2,739 a month – not a lot to pay for food and other bills, taxes and upkeep on the home while looking after a husband in nursing care.

Some states allow the spouse to refuse to pay any bills for his/her loved one in nursing care and keep all their next egg, if any. That means that a wife must sign an affidavit abandoning financial responsibility for the father of her children. But even then, hard-up states can and do sue to get the Medicaid money back from women whose savings are diminishing.

I’ve gone at length into this thicket to demonstrate that middle-class families, as well as working couples who have been the backbone of American society, are obliged to scheme and, yes, cheat and give up their savings and dignity to get loved ones on welfare to obtain long term nursing care. That is how America treats millions of its older citizens.

A few year ago a woman, a former gym teacher in the New York public schools, told me that she had just put her husband in a nursing home because he was suffering from rapidly advancing Parkinson’s. A lawyer helped her impoverish him to get him on Medicaid. After years of hard work in the garment industry, he was on welfare and she hoped, with her teacher’s pension and their savings, she would have enough to live on for the rest of her days.

“Who knew we would live this long?” she lamented. Little has changed in the years since. And now, with all the talk of health reform, there will be no long term care and few seem to care.

Write saulfriedman@comcast.net

What's not to like about President Obama when he turns on the rhetorical charm. Plus, he shares with Vice President Biden an irresistible smile that makes Crabby Old Lady feel good. Most of all, behind his public face, there is evidence of actual thought which has been an ongoing relief for Crabby after the eight years of the previous administration.

It was a good speech – as far as it went. He touted his modest successes, scolded Congress and both political parties, said some of the right words about middle class hardship and jobs and, the best moment of the speech for Crabby, bit the ankles of the Supreme Court – six of whom were sitting directly in front of him - over their corporate personhood decision. Privately, Crabby gave him a B minus.

So why did she wake up Thursday morning feeling dejected about the state of our union?

. . .

Crabby wrote that sentence at about 10AM yesterday. This one is being written at 4PM. In between, she has wandered around the house doing a few mindless chores while trying to find the answer to that question. (Talk about writing yourself into a corner.)

Six hours later, Crabby may have found it:

None of the proposals in the president's speech are bold enough. Although he seemed to be trying to empathize with the hardships under which the country is struggling, it felt tepid. Crabby did not sense that he understands the rage and anxiety pretty much everyone has been living with every day for nearly two years.

That's the short version.

This is the harshest era of economic difficulty since the Great Depression. We all know unemployment is twice the official number. Millions have lost their homes to foreclosure. Newly minted graduates cannot find their first jobs. No one, including the president, mentions anymore that the collective savings of Americans were decimated by more than ten trillion dollars in the 2008 crash. (On that point, elders have been particularly hard hit because they have no hope of recouping their losses.)

Additionally, salaries have been flat for more than a decade while the cost of essentials has steadily increased. Out of curiosity, Crabby checked some current employment ads for the kind of work she was doing the last few years before she retired; salaries are about half what she was paid.

After nearly a year of work in Congress, health care reform is still not finished and what exists on paper has been so neutered, it can hardly be called reform. Millions of kids in the U.S. go to bed hungry at night. And untold numbers of adult children, having lost their jobs, would be living in the streets if mom and dad hadn't welcomed them home.

Anyone not living in the bubble of the Washington political scene can feel the anxiety in the air. On Wall Street, the numbers crunchers tell us the recession is over; on Main Street, we are waiting for the other shoe to drop, suspecting it will hurt even more than the first one. Is it any wonder seething rage at multi-million dollar bank salaries and bonuses is also everywhere?

Crabby is not telling you anything you don't know. Her concern is whether the president knows - he lives a long way from Main Street.

Or, maybe the problem is that for all his soaring rhetoric, Obama cannot connect, in the style of President Roosevelt's fireside chats, on a visceral level that Crabby, for one, wants to hear. She also believes that if he could make that leap, his proposals and actions would be the bolder, bigger and stronger ones the country needs.

But he can't do that by clinging to the fantasy of bipartisanship. The Republicans have no intention of working with the president; they prove with "no" every day in Congress. As to the Democrats, Obama is the leader of the party and it's time to take charge. It might be useful to read up on Lyndon Johnson.

Even if the president can find the outsized courage for the audacious moves our times call for, it will be years before there is equilibrium again - when there are enough jobs to go around, banks return to reasonable lending practices to keep the economy on an even keel and people can again plan for their futures. Whatever the president does or doesn't do, our patience is called for.

We elders know a lot about that. The oldest TGB readers grew up during the Great Depression. Those of us who are a bit younger heard the stories from our parents who did and we learned how to scrape by in hard times.

Our troubles are every bit as deep as during the Great Depression and need a much greater effort than Crabby Old Lady heard from the president Wednesday evening.

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At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Mary B Summerlin: Quotes

]]> Crabby Old Lady Politics Crabby Old Lady 2010-01-29T05:35:00-05:00 http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2010/01/sotu-the-morning-after-let-down.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TimeGoesBy/~3/gPwf_Ig_kPY/gay-and-gray-traveling-while-gay.html Gay and Gray is a monthly column at Time Goes By written by Jan Adams (bio) in which she thinks out loud for us on issues of aging lesbians and gay men. Jan also writes on many topics at her... Gay and Gray is a monthly column at Time Goes By written by Jan Adams (bio) in which she thinks out loud for us on issues of aging lesbians and gay men. Jan also writes on many topics at her own blog, Happening-Here, and you will find her past Gay and Gray columns here.]

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One of the things I like about aging is that it makes "traveling while gay" more comfortable. What's that mean? Happily, after a certain point in life, the fact that two women might prefer each other's company to that of men they encounter ceases to act as a slightly dangerous affront. Some of us may regret that gray hair can make us apparently invisible to young things, but I'm sure lesbians are not the only women who rather like not receiving unwanted attention.

No, I don't think this works quite the same way for gay men: perhaps more of them might like to be noticed by younger men. Certainly I know older gay men who bemoan their age-acquired invisibility.

In the present United States, it is somewhat unusual for more or less visible LGBT people to encounter trouble when we leave our usual haunts, but this has not always been true. All of us over a certain age instinctively watch our backs in new settings.

Nonetheless we've often wanted to travel; in consequence since the 1960s, there have been many gay travel guides that pointed to bars and other public venues where being gay was okay. In the early 1990s, I remember one aimed at lesbians called Are You Two Together? That title catches the flavor of the mild caution that still goes with traveling.

Since some gay travelers feel safer with their own kind, there is a good-sized market niche for gay travel agents, package tour providers, even a lesbian cruise line. These trips aren't my idea of a good time, but I have known people who loved them.

I've enjoyed some wonderful benefits of "traveling while gay." When you go someplace where being gay is harder, if you do manage to make contact with the local LGBT community, you can find yourself quickly admitted to aspects of the local life you would not have seen otherwise.

Sometimes people don't announce that they also are gay, but they take you under their wings. I've experienced this in South Africa, Lebanon, and Mexico among other places. Sometimes your welcome is very explicit.

In Cuba in 1988, when gays were just beginning to get out from under serious state repression, we spent a lovely afternoon hearing tales from two gay Havanans. Some years later we saw the Cuban film Strawberry and Chocolate and realized the central gay character might well have been modeled on one of our Cuban acquaintances.

Traveling while gay leads to "the bed question." It's pretty normal in U.S. hotels for a single room to include two double beds but most of the world gets by with less excess. Recently in Patagonian Chile, my partner and I were asked, in a rural hosteria, did we want (single) beds or a "cama de matrimonio" (double bed)? The innkeeper didn't blink when we chose the latter.

One feature of traveling while gay that our straight friends might not be aware of is the high proportion of LGBT people who seem to work in the "hospitality industry" all over the world. I don't know why this is - maybe dealing with tourists is considered a little adventurous or perhaps sleazy in traditional societies, just the spot to park a weird uncle or aunt.

Anyway, the result is that occasionally, gay travelers get what we think of as "family" benefits. Last summer I was part of a gay group who enjoyed this kind of special welcome in Anaheim. But my partner and I have also encounter this in places as different from each other as El Calafate, Argentina and Amman, Jordan.

In the latter location, the sprightly young male hotel staff took one look at us, explained they wanted to offer us a choice of two different rooms, and successively showed us a dark one with single beds and a large, well-lighted one with a double bed. They also gave us exceptional service when we later herded a group of Americans around in that unfamiliar place, all with big, knowing smiles.

Historically, one of the more painful features of traveling while gay has been crossing borders. After all, my partner of thirty years and I are just "unrelated adults" when it comes to dealing with immigration and customs authorities. Sometimes, signs at borders advise us that "individuals" and "families" must present themselves separately. This seems to be easing. On a recent trip, we had no trouble approaching authorities together in either Chile or Argentina and were stunned to be told at U.S. Customs: "Same address? -- you only need one form."

This was new to us, and sensible, and the kind of thing that feels huge if you've never had it. I don't know if this is a policy change or just an individual agent's adaptation, but I expect it is policy. Bravo.

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At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Lyn Burnstine: A Priceless Gift

]]> Gay and Gray Ronni Bennett 2010-01-28T05:35:00-05:00 http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2010/01/gay-and-gray-traveling-while-gay.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TimeGoesBy/~3/gGZgq8Y2EG8/dreaming-the-state-of-the-union-address-1.html As you undoubtedly know, President Barack Obama will deliver his state of the union address to Congress and the American people tonight. Crabby Old Lady is trying to ignore it; she may not watch. (She recorded both flavors of NCIS... As you undoubtedly know, President Barack Obama will deliver his state of the union address to Congress and the American people tonight. Crabby Old Lady is trying to ignore it; she may not watch. (She recorded both flavors of NCIS and White Collar last night, so there is plenty of distraction available should she want it.)

And, watching in real time is no longer important. The speech will be online and the punditocracy will be picking it to pieces even before Obama finishes; the same old, same old from the same, tired old crowd. Anyway, Crabby thinks she knows what to expect:

A bit of the president's now-patented, soaring rhetoric; a recital of the progress made attacking our great recession (something noticeable only to the White House and Wall Streeters); and, apparently, announcement of a freeze on discretionary spending (except for the military and related agencies) which no legislator of any political stripe likes even before its official presentation.

And for comic relief that will have the pundits in a tizzy for a week, perhaps some Republican will shout a rude inanity.

Political maven she may be, but as Crabby Old Lady writes this, NCIS and White Collar are looking like a better choice.

Here are a few things the president could say but that Crabby expects to hear only in her dreams:

Jobs
“I know I've harped on the success of the stimulus package in creating jobs. And some jobs were created - just not enough and too many were short-term make-work. So, taking a page from FDR, which I should have done a long time ago, tonight I announce the 2010 New Deal. Beginning immediately, we will create works agencies that will start with fixing the infrastructure of the United States.

"Remember that? A few years ago, there was a big to-do about our bridges, roads, dams, railroads, waterways and more that are crumbling, but except for the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis, no one did anything about it. Now we will fix all that while putting millions back to work – not just in the blue collar jobs for the heavy lifting, but all the necessary related jobs – accountants, attorneys, project managers, technologists, transportation, manufacturing, etc. along with support business that will spring up in local areas around these projects. We will also...”

The end of attempts at bipartisanship with Congress
“God knows I've tried for the past year, but there has been nothing but no from Republicans with not a single, credible alternative. Sometimes we Democrats are our own worst enemies, but I think if we ignore the Republicans, we can recapture the spirit of cooperation we found during the campaign and will be able to move ahead on our own to solve the many problems our country faces. We welcome any Republicans who want to join us, but only if they have something more to offer than a filibuster.”

Bringing home the troops
“No one knows why our forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan, least of all me, and there is not a single person in the United State (or elsewhere) who knows what victory would be. We have spent a treasury of trillions, lost thousands of young lives. It is time to stop and leave those countries to their agonies.”

Bank regulation
“I am ending the doctrine of too-big-to-fail and will work with Congress to bring back Glass-Steagall, among other efforts to ensure that banks no longer risk your money on casino-style, esoteric investments that got us into our economic mess.

"To help that along, I am backing down on my support of Ben Bernanke for another term as head of the Federal Reserve. In addition, I will appoint some new economic advisers who are not dizzy from too many turns through the Wall Street/Washington revolving door, people whose future employment, after my administration, does not depend on keeping Wall Street bankers happy.”

Health care reform
“I can see now that I was wrong to take single-payer off the table at the beginning of the health care initiative. The Senate bill has become so weakened that not even elimination of pre-existing conditions for adults remains. On the other hand, ninety-six percent of our elders like Medicare and are well taken care of under that system. It makes much more sense to extend Medicare to everyone and in expanding the risk pool to the entire population, health care costs will become affordable for all.”

Entitlement Commission
“On Tuesday, the Senate rejected the Conrad/Judd debt commission proposal - also called entitlement commission. Just a couple of days before that, I said I would create such a commission by executive order if Congress did not. However, since then, I have discovered a terrific blog called Time Goes By where a woman who calls herself Crabby Old Lady and a Pulitzer Prize-winning contributor to that blog, Saul Friedman, have written extensively about why this commission is a bad idea.

"They have convinced me that debt reduction should not come out of the hides of our elders. Social Security and Medicare did not cause the meltdown, so tonight, I withdraw my support of the commission and we will find other ways to attack the national debt.”

And so on. Crabby is pretty sure TGB readers can dream an even better State of Union Address than she has.

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At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Johna Ferguson: Gone For Good

]]> Crabby Old Lady Politics Crabby Old Lady 2010-01-27T05:35:00-05:00 http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2010/01/dreaming-the-state-of-the-union-address-1.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TimeGoesBy/~3/OtFAT18G2Ro/elder-geek-the-secrets-of-blog-commenting.html Virginia DeBolt (bio) writes the bi-weekly Elder Geek column for Time Goes By in which she takes the mystery out of techie things all bloggers and internet users need to know to simplify computer use. She has written several books... Virginia DeBolt (bio) writes the bi-weekly Elder Geek column for Time Goes By in which she takes the mystery out of techie things all bloggers and internet users need to know to simplify computer use. She has written several books on technology and keeps two blogs herself, Web Teacher and First 50 Words. You will find links to Virginia's previous Time Goes By Elder Geek columns here.

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Ronni recently posted Attention Email Subscribers - and Others Too here to explain the ins and outs of how to make a comment here. I thought I'd add a bit more to that with a few tips and tricks about commenting in general.

First, I want to emphasize again that the only way to comment on a blog is to actually visit the blog web site. You can't do it by email. You can't do it in an RSS reader. You have to visit the blog on the web.

Let's start by looking at the comment form from Time Goes By.

Under the form field where you type your comment, you see this:

(You may use HTML tags like <b> <i> and <ul> to style your text. URLs automatically linked.)

You often see this on comment forms. It's telling you that you can use a few basic HTML tags in your comment. If you type in a URL it will automatically be clickable. Be warned, however, that most blog platforms flag a post with more than one URL because they think it's spam.

Often, HTML tags that aren't mentioned in a small blurb like this one can be used, too. I know for a fact that Ronni's blog comment form will accept a link written like this: <a href="http://www.somesite.com">Some site</a>.

Since I've left comments on this blog several times, it recognizes me and fills in my information. If I decide I want a different link or email address here, I can edit it before I submit.

Time Goes By gives you a chance to preview your comment before you submit it. Some blogs don't do this.

Here's a different comment form from a Wordpress blog at 1 Woman's Vu.

This form doesn't specifically tell you that you can use some HTML, but often it will work even when the form instructions don't tell you it will. This form has features you can select that will email you when other people contribute to the discussion. Sometimes blogs have this notification feature selected by default so if you don't want to follow the discussion you need to deselect it.

Blogs at blogspot.com are a particular gripe of mine. I don't like the comment form there and generally complain every time I try to comment on a blogspot blog. It's because I have so many blogs. Hopefully it doesn't drive you as crazy as it does me. Here's an example from Advanced Style.

Blogspot is a Google property, so if you have a Google account, the default choice for identifying yourself in the comments is your Google information. For me, this means my comment would be linked to a blog that I created as an example for one of the books and not to any of the blogs I use with regularity. Not what I want.

Blogspot offers several options as to how I can identify myself. If I choose Open ID, I can select a Wordpress blog I do use regularly, but only if I'm logged into the blog at the time. The same is true if I choose the Name/URL option and add a Wordpress blog. I have to be signed in to the Wordpress blog.

The best advice I can give you about commenting on blogspot blogs if you are a Wordpress user is to log in to your Wordpress account before you even get started on the comment. If you don't, your comment disappears into the ether when you try to submit it and you must attempt to recreate it after you go log into Wordpress.

Blogspot lets you comment as Anonymous, not something many other blogs do. Blogspot also has the word verification form, which is an accessibility barrier for many people. While I love me some blogspot blogs, I often get frustrated with the blogspot commenting system.

Some comment forms use CommentLuv. Here's an example.

If you select the box next to the CommentLuv logo, the last post from your blog (as you entered it in the website field of the form) will show up as a link in your comment. This is a nice feature for commentors who are bloggers because it increases the incoming links leading to your blog.

Often, blog comment forms allow you to reply to someone else's comment published comment. Here's an example from BlogHer.

If you click the "Reply" link, you are responding to the comment. You may comment on the entire post, but by using the Reply link, you can comment on what another commentor said. On BlogHer, as on many other large sites, you can also report comments as spam if you think they are simply linkbait. Some sites let you report comments as objectionable for whatever reason.

Another feature of published comments is that they often come with their own URL or permalink. Here's a comment that was published on my blog.

By clicking the permalink link, you find a URL linking directly to a comment. You might want to write a post about something on your own blog, and mention your comment about the topic on another blog, including a link to your comment.

Comments are the life blood of the blogosphere. For a blogger, inviting comments opens up a dialog and a conversation among yourself and your readers, as well as conversations between your readers. As a blog reader, comments allow you to participate and join in the conversation, too. It's a two-way street. Knowing how to travel in both directions on that street is a good Internet skill to have.

Any comments?

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At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Claire Jean: Ain't It Somethin

]]> The TGB Elder Geek Ronni Bennett 2010-01-26T05:35:00-05:00 http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/2010/01/elder-geek-the-secrets-of-blog-commenting.html