This, then, is a report on one old woman's odyssey in search of hair.

Before I treat you to that narrative, let us be clear: nothing, not anything, zilch, zero, nada regrows hair in women (nor many men).

Unless there is a medical cause, no matter what anyone tells you or what advertisements promise, it's all snakeoil.

That said, two-percent Rogaine (minoxidil) for women is the only FDA-approved hair loss drug in the United States. It comes in liquid or foam and must be applied twice a day producing only minimal regrowth in about 20 percent of women. But you won't know if you are in that minority for about six months of use. If you are, any improvement will be lost if you ever stop using Rogaine.

There has been some small success with the higher-dosage Rogaine but not much. Here is part of what WebMD says about the use of the five-percent version which is available under a physician's supervision:

”Results from clinical studies of mostly white women ages 18 to 45 years with mild to moderate degrees of hair loss report that after using minoxidil for eight months, 19% of users had moderate regrowth and 40% had minimal regrowth.”

There are a few annoying and, sometimes, possibly dangerous side effects so all-in-all, Rogaine is not for me. Remember, aside from these minimally successful treatments, hair loss is permanent.

And if you still believe hair can be regrown, just back up a minute and take a breath: don't you think if there were anything that successfully regrows hair it would be headline news with millions of people standing in line to get it at any price? Of course that's true. It would not be a secret.

There are those colored powders that supposedly fill in and make bald areas less noticeable but they look exactly like what they are and you're in big trouble when caught in the rain. It is not a reasonable solution.

So, other remedies must be found.

My hair has been thinning for at least ten years and all treatable causes have been ruled out. Both my great grandmother and grandmother on my father's side became bald – my great grandmother after childbirth (which may not count), my grandmother in old age.

My mother's hair, by the time she died at age 75, was much thinner than mine is now so you could say I come by my own hair loss honestly.

It's called androgenetic alopecia, sometimes referred to as female pattern baldness which is more diffuse over the head than male pattern baldness. It is usually inherited and although it does occur in young women, it is far more common after menopause affecting at least 30 million women in the U.S.

Here is a photo from Wednesday of my crown:

Now really – would you want to walk around looking like that? I sure don't.

What I have been doing for several years is twisting my long hair in a updo and securing it with a clip to cover the growing empty area. But that is less effective now than in the past and doesn't do anything for the front hairline area that is becoming bald even faster these days than the crown.

Here are some of the solutions I have entertained seriously and not so seriously:

Learn to tie scarves
Buy a lot of hats
See if there is a hair style that will cover it
Shave what's left and go bald
Buy wigs

Hair extensions and weaves are, of course, out of the question as they would cause more strain on the hair and more baldness.

Scarves? I've never been any good at arranging them around my neck so I doubt I can learn the more intricate skill of making them work on my head. They, along with full-time hats, feel like a nuisance that would quickly become a daily irritant.

Going bald is a solution that is attractive for its ease – no work except regular shaving. I'm tempted and may yet wind up there. But the downside is that it would create an identity I don't relish: “Oh, you know who Ronni Bennett is – that old lady with the bald head.”

I don't want that to be the main way people describe me.

So I set off some weeks ago to see if I could find a hair stylist who has experience with balding women's hair and if there are styles that can minimize the pink scalp exposure.

To be continued...

UPDATE: Although as someone below suggests, arthritis is a good topic for us sometime in the future, today's topic is hair loss. Nothing kills an online conversation faster than off-topic comments so as is routine at this blog, arthritis comments have been removed.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Judith Dubin: On Sailing

To keep it short, there was no internet leading to the discovery of a dead router. It took an hour of tinkering and phone calls to deduce that the router was a goner and to revive the laptop internet connection via hard wire.

Since life at Chez Bennett requires several Wi-Fi connections, a couple more hours were lost to researching how to buy a router (it had been seven or eight years since I had last done so), deciding how fancy a router I could or should afford, finding a well-reviewed one at the best price and ordering it.

By then it was past 8AM and I still needed to shower and organize myself for a couple of appointments away from home. But wait.

As I was getting up from the desk, an email popped in from the router vendor saying my credit card had been denied. Huh?

That required another hour on phone calls with the vendor and the card company to learn that overnight, a criminal had been trying to use my card number to buy some free stuff.

Hurray to Chase for catching it and making the remedy easy, but time was bearing down on me and I still had not showered. During those ablutions I idly wondered if, given the amount of electronic disarray, it was wise for me to drive to my appointments.

I did and as you can see, I survived without harm to myself or others.

There's more – it was an infuriating day of one damned thing after another. But you've been there and don't need chapter and verse. For me, this rendition is just a place holder to have a page to put today's Elder Storytelling Place link (below).

Come to think of it, however, maybe from this there is an amusing question for us to fool around with: why, do you suppose, time-consuming nuisance problems come about in clusters that waste entire days? It's not like I have a whole lot of them left, you know.

Personally, I'll stick with blaming the gods who enjoy finding opportunities to remind me that any control over time I believe I have occurs only at their indulgence.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Marcy Belson: 1942

It is also deadlier for old women. Those who are 75 and older die at a much higher rate from breast cancer than younger women. My mother was one of them.

These thoughts came to mind yesterday after reading actor Angelina Jolie's Op-Ed story in The New York Times about her bilateral mastectomy. She chose it as a preventive measure because she carries the BRCA1 gene defect which sharply increases the risk for breast and ovarian cancers:

”My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.”

Ms. Jolie, who acknowledged that BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing costs $3,000 in the United States, says she decided to go public about her surgery and reconstruction because

“...there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer.

"It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options.”

Is it possible she means strong options like the elite Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills where she was treated.

Jolie's cavalier attitude toward cost ($3,000 just for the BRCA screening which is covered by Medicare only under severe restrictions) infuriated me. But I don't have to tell you about that because Ruth Fowler, writing at Counterpunch, has done a fine job of taking on the subject of a rich woman's privilege.

In response to Jolie's stated reason for her Op-Ed, Fowler writes:

”Really, Angelina? You honestly think that the 27 million (20%) of women in the US who don’t have health care, and the 77% who apparently have it, but still have to forego care because they can’t afford it even with insurance — you think that your Op Ed is actually going to do anything for these women except remind them that they don’t have access to the expensive screening tests you seem to think people don’t undertake simply because they haven’t read your article?”

And that's just the clean part of Fowler's rant. She is one pissed off woman – righteously so in my book even is she does put it a bit more profanely than I would - although not by much.

An important fact that Jolie omitted (among others) is that the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations cause only about five to ten percent of breast cancers. Another is that Ashkenazi Jews are more likely than other ethnic groups to carry the gene mutation.

It is hard to discern the point of a 37-year-old privileged woman of wealth writing about her expensive preventive and reconstructive surgery – something hardly any other women in the U.S., let alone the world, could even dream of affording.

I might be impressed if Ms. Jolie used her celebrity to promote more money for breast cancer research so that fewer people would die of it each year. But the media and others around the web I read mostly seem to think she has done something important and many say she is “brave” to write this.

I don't get it. Do you?

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Henry Lowenstern: Day Dream

Stay active
Be social
Serve others
Laugh

Some throw in the phrase “stay in love.” That's how you can tell it is mostly young people who write this stuff. They aren't old enough to have lost a spouse of many decades yet. As to the first four – well, duh. But they speak more to health than grace.

Yes, that overused, well-worn idea that no two people define the same way. What I have come to after nearly 20 years of reading, studying and thinking about age is that a graceful old age cannot happen (whatever the definition) without accepting our age and saying farewell to our youth.

There is the perennial question about when is someone old. Many people – some who have commented on the subject at this blog – think 50 or 55 is still young.

Really? Anyone who hangs on to that belief hasn't had to look for a job at that age. Workplace age discrimination starts at 40 – even 35 in the case of women – and it becomes painfully obvious in job interviews that even people your own age think you're old.

In western culture, 50 to 55 is the beginning of old age. But that's a good thing. Geriatricians and researchers who study aging tell us that on average these days, the diseases of old age don't start to kick in until about age 75.

So if we do not deny that aging is inevitable and do not obsessively try to prolong youth, we have 20 or 25 years before we hit old-old age to discover, move toward and live in a stage of life that is as different and distinct as childhood is from adolescence and adulthood.

Oh, the books and movies and TV shows and 50-plus websites and anti-aging “experts” will incessantly proclaim that we must and can maintain the appearance and behavior of people 20 and 30 years younger by whatever means they are touting – chemical, surgical, pharmaceutical.

They foist examples upon us of “supergrans” and “supergrandads” who climb mountains at age 80 and skydive at 90, strongly implying that we who don't are failing to keep up.

The best thing we can do is ignore them and rejoice in our aliveness for they believe only exteriors matter. If we don't listen to them, we can continue to love ourselves however different our bodies become.

Be honest, now: does having a saggy, old body prevent you from being happy, prevent you from knowing pleasure, however you derive it? Of course, it doesn't.

What makes any- and everyone beautiful in old age is acceptance of their years, of themselves as they are.

After about 60, it is a victory of sorts just to awaken in the morning. We can face each new day with sadness for our lost youth or with joy for our luck at reaching this time of life. It's a personal choice.

We eagerly said farewell to childhood when adolescence beckoned and goodbye to that stage of life when adulthood was upon us. It is a mistake – one of monumental proportions, I believe – to cling to adulthood when age arrives.

Instead, when we accept the losses age imposes on us – youth, physical power, our position in society – say yes to old age, open ourselves to its mysteries and live every day in the present tense with passion and an open heart, we can't help but experience this time as an opportunity for happiness, fulfillment, joy and in time, serenity.

In moving on from adulthood, we allow ourselves to grow into new dimensions of life and we get a chance at completion.

That is, at our own pace over the remaining years, we can review our pasts, learn to forgive our failures and trespasses, face our regrets – those coulda, shoulda, wouldas – find some peace and, maybe, wisdom.

I don't want to waste those wonderful opportunities by pretending I'm not old enough for them.

In no way do I mean to dismiss the debilities and diseases that can shadow old age and make everyday life difficult. But I do mean to say that we can explore distant horizons even as our physical worlds may shrink. All we need to do is ignore the charlatans of anti-aging and most of all:

Adapt as circumstances require
Accept our limits with humor
Find new pleasures to replace the ones we must surrender

In these acts, I believe, we find grace in old age.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Carl Hansen: Famous Folks I Have Known

In fact, before Social Security, the idea of retirement barely existed. It's invention is traditionally attributed to then-Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany in 1865, when he announced a government pension to any non-working German 65 or older thereby inventing in one fell swoop both Social Security and the year at which old age is said to begin.

(There were, of course, political reasons for Bismarck's move. If you're interested, look it up – it doesn't apply to today's post.)

Nowadays, the age for full Social Security benefits in the U.S. is 66 and rising. By 2027 it will have reached the “new normal” of age 67 – one of the oldest in the developed world. Only Germany at 67 and the U.K. at age 68 match or surpass the U.S. although some other countries are beginning to increase retirement age.

Over the weekend, I came across a new study from Merrill Lynch [pdf] about retirement. Of course, because Merrill is an investment firm, it is mostly about financially well-off people – the kind with money to invest which I doubt is a majority. But a couple of their charts caught my attention.

This one, for example, about the percentage of people who retired early, at the age planned or later than scheduled (asked of retirees only):

(The survey was conducted from December 2012 through January 2013 of 6300 people age 45 and older - approximately half with investable assets of between $250,000 and $3 million.)

I was struck by what seems to me to be a huge number who retired earlier than intended – 57 percent. What could be the reason for such a high number leaving the workforce?

At age 63, I retired long before I had any thought of doing so. A year after being laid off, I had not found work, was digging myself into a gigantic debt hole and the only way out was to sell my home. Not an ideal situation.

So I wondered how many others, particularly after the financial collapse, had been forced into a path similar to mine.

Well, there's a Merrill Lynch chart for that giving five reasons:

• Personal health problem
• Sufficient financial resources to retire
• Lost my job
• More time with family
• Had to look after a family member

Here's the chart with the percentages. It's obviously way too tiny to read so click it for a larger view.

Nearly one-quarter, like me, retired because they lost their job. Unfortunately, the survey doesn't give ages at which that 24 percent retired or tell us if they spent a lot of time working their tails off to find work only to be thwarted by age discrimination.

It's true I can't prove that last statement but it's a good indication what's going on when an interviewer who thought you were hot stuff at 4PM yesterday on the telephone informs you in person at 10AM the next day that the job has been filled and oh, my – so sorry someone forgot to phone you.

And although the number of people age 55 and older who are working is up by more than 4 million since 2009, it takes a full year – 51.3 months – for old people to find work. And that's counting only the ones who do find work. Two million more, as of December 2012, were still looking.

As awful as unemployment is for workers of all ages, for older ones there are not the years left to make up the lost wages and savings that (hopefully) the younger ones will have.

So what happens when a person is forced to take early Social Security is that the benefit amount is reduced from about 25 percent (at age 62) to 6.7 percent (at age 65) for the rest of your life.

I was luckier than many people. Although I was laid off at age 63, spent until age 64 looking for work and another year waiting for my home to sell, I was able to squeak by – thanks to a good price for my home – with careful frugality until I reached full Social Security age of 65 and eight months.

The question today is, did you retire early and if so, under what circumstances? If you are not yet retired, what are your plans and will you be able to fulfill them?

As always with personal questions, feel free to post anonymously in the comments.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Deb Cavel-Greant: Sometimes It's Best to Keep Your Mouth Shut

I started writing this the morning after a sleepless night caused by extreme heat. Here in Melbourne the temperature overnight didn’t get down below 30 degrees (that’s 86 of your obsolete American degrees) and for most of the time was way above that.

Naturally, it’s the middle of summer as I write this. It may not be when you read it or it might be your summer so you can sympathise with me if that’s the case.

I did a search for sleepless and came up with one song, many versions, but just the one. It’s going to kick off this column. The rest may involve sleep in some manner or other, however, as it transpires, some of them do involve sleeplessness in some way.

I had the help of Don, the D.A.M. (Deputy Assistant Musicologist), for this one. He suggested some I’d missed.

Okay, here is the song that inspired the column, Sleepless Nights. Now which version of this song to play was a bit of a problem. Gram Parsons had a good one. Emmylou Harris an even better one. However, both of these were based on the one by the EVERLY BROTHERS.

I don't need to tell you about the Everlys, at least not until I finish my column on them. I'll just let their singing and playing inform you.

♫ Everly Brothers - Sleepless Nights

My first wife (well actually, she’s been the only one) used to talk in her sleep (she may still do that but I wouldn’t know). I would lie there amused by what she was saying.

She’d ask me next morning what she said and I’d smile enigmatically and say nothing. At least, I hope it was enigmatic. This had nothing to do with our divorce, I don’t think.

Indeed, she and I used to joke about this next song and its appropriateness. At least I think she was joking. GORDON LIGHTFOOT summed up the situation perfectly in his song, Talking in Your Sleep.

♫ Gordon Lightfoot - Talking in Your Sleep

Talking in your sleep is one thing, walking in your sleep is another. It seems that SANTO & JOHNNY know about that as their biggest hit was called Sleepwalk.

Santo and Johnny Farina’s father learnt to play the pedal steel guitar when he was stationed in Oklahoma during the war (that’s the big one, WWII). He later taught his sons to play the instrument.

However, Johnny decided he preferred playing a regular guitar so the pair has an interesting combination of sound that made this track so memorable. This is probably the best instrumental of the early rock & roll era.

♫ Santo & Johnny - Sleepwalk

While we’re on the subject of sleep walking, we have another song about it by SMILIN’ JOE.

That’s one name by which he’s known. He was also called Pleasant Joe, Cousin Joe, Cos (probably a shortening of Cousin Joe) and quite a few other names.

The CD seems to think his name was Joe Harris however, other sources claim that he was born Joseph Pleasant. He recorded with many other artists throughout his life and helped some of them get the recognition they deserved.

According to the CD notes Joe was a sharp dresser who didn’t need songs to impress women but sang them anyway. Here we have whatever his name was singing Sleep Walking Woman.

♫ Joe Harris - Sleep Walking Woman

From someone who talks in her sleep, and walks in her sleep to crying in her sleep. To tell us about that is the great HANK WILLIAMS.

I have a hell of a lot of Hank's music (I have a hell of a lot of many people's music) but this is one that I didn't know before I performed this search.

That’s the great thing about writing this column – I often come upon music with which I'm unfamiliar even though it's sitting there on my data base or in my CD collection. Sometimes I discover gems.

I don't know if this is a gem, but it's pretty good. It's (Last Night) I Heard You Crying In Your Sleep.

♫ Hank Williams - (Last Night) I Heard You Crying In Your Sleep

T-BONE WALKER is always welcome in my columns.

The line between blues and jazz is blurred in T-Bone's music. Although he's often lumped into the blues category, he more often than not incorporates jazz players into his music. Besides, he was as good a jazz guitarist as he was playing the blues.

This is the case in this song, She's the No Sleepin'est Woman.

♫ T-Bone Walker - She's The No Sleepin'est Woman

I eventually found another sleepless song, but not from its title, so it was a bit difficult to find. But the D.A.M. starting singing it and from that we eventually figured out what it was called. Ah yes, I’ve got that one, I said, You’re the Reason. The singer is BOBBY EDWARDS.

♫ Bobby Edwards - You're The Reason

Now and then I throw in a song by Canadian singer/songwriter WILF CARTER. This is another of those times.

Wilf spent a lot of his musical time in America where he was known as Montana Slim. He really liked a bit of a yodel and this song is no exception. I don't know if that would put you to sleep or wake you up. This is Sleep, Little One, Sleep.

♫ Wilf Carter - Sleep, Little One, Sleep

JODY REYNOLDS’ song Endless Sleep always seems to be included in the “death disks” category. If you listen to the words, it really doesn’t belong there as he saved her in the end.

Jody wrote the song in an afternoon and after its success he did, well, nothing terribly much in the entertainment industry. He released a bunch of songs but they went nowhere. Here is the song that charted.

♫ Jody Reynolds - Endless Sleep

That great songwriter from the first half of last century has the last say today. I'm talking about HOAGY CARMICHAEL who sang a bit as well.

He has a couple of songs in contention but I've decided not to go with the more famous one, Two Sleepy People, and instead use Shh, The Old Man's Sleeping.

♫ Hoagy Carmichael - Shh, The Old Man's Sleeping

I hope you appreciate that I resisted the temptation to play Nessun dorma; that would have been too pretentious in the current circumstances.

OLD PEOPLE DRIVING

Two-and-a-half years ago, I showed you a clip from a 24-minute documentary about three oldest old people – near centenarians – driving. Here it is again:

This week the producer, Shaleece Haas, emailed to tell me one of the featured drivers, Herbert Bauer, died a few days ago at age 103. She sent this photo of the two of them together last year.

In January this year, Shaleece's grandfather Milton, another of the featured drivers in her film, turned 100. Here's a photo of him at his centennial party.

You can find out more about the Old People Driving film here.

SEND YOUR MESSAGE TO MARS

November 18 is the scheduled launch date for an unmanned Mars mission (MAVEN) to study the upper atmosphere of the planet. Here's an artist's animation of what the spacecraft will look like in orbit:

NASA is inviting the public to send their names and messages to be carried via DVD on the spacecraft, particularly messages in the form of a haiku. Every name submitted will be placed on the DVD, but only three of the haiku.

“The deadline for all submissions is July 1. An online public vote to determine the top three messages to be placed on the DVD will begin July 15.”

You can read more about the message program here. The submission page is here.

PASSWORDS ANXIETY

I know just how comedian Don Friesen feels about passwords. They drive me nuts keeping track. The wonderful Darlene Costner sent this video.

DASHCAM SAMARITANS IN RUSSIA

Two weeks ago in this Saturday column, I showed you a video of a good Samaritan stopping his car in traffic to help an old woman cross the street.

Now, I've discovered a compilation of many Russian good Samaritans caught in the act on dashcams. In fact, the one I showed you before is included near the middle of this one – and an amazingly large number of these are protective of elders. It's good to see...

EIGHT YEARS AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED

TGB Reader Cathy Johnson emailed to tell me her husband, Roger, had been laid off suddenly without notice from his job of 20 years. COBRA health coverage costs too much and Roger won't be old enough for Medicare for several months.

That happened to me – a few months without health coverage – and it's so frightening, you don't want to get out of bed for the duration for fear of injury. I wish Roger well.

Meanwhile, he hasn't lost his sense of humor. Cathy sent along this cartoon, by Wiley, her husband had saved from the Bush era in 2005. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

ALAN CUMMING AS LADY MACBETH

If the name is not familiar, perhaps you know Scottish actor, writer, singer, director, producer Alan Cumming as the host of Masterpiece Mysteries on PBS. Or maybe in his brilliantly done turn as the cunning election campaign chairman in the wonderfully written TV series, The Good Wife.

Cumming is currently starring on Broadway in MacBeth. But not just as MacBeth himself; he is playing every significant role in Shakespeare's powerful tragedy making it all but a one-man show.

Here is a short clip of Cumming as Lady MacBeth:

You can find out more about the production in The New York Times review.

”TO FIND BEAUTY AND ART IN DECAY"

My old friend Frank Paynter sent this photo of a sculpture by Charles Sherman.

Sherman explains that this piece, on display at MOCA's Urs Fisher Clay Project, is in a state of gradual decomposition. [emphasis is mine]

”When a sculpture made from clay is not kiln fired it will dry out, lose it's strength, and eventually fall apart,” says Sherman. “Unfired clay work is called green ware and as such may be recycled...

“The decomposition process in the Urs Fischer exhibition raises questions about beauty and decay, art and life.

“As we age, we look at ourselves in the mirror, see wrinkles and make an esthetic choice: Am I beautiful or am I wrinkly and ugly? The lesson in this exhibition is to find beauty and art in decay.”

TWO MONTHS ON AN ANTARCTIC ICE BREAKER

Cassandra Brooks narrates this video of a two-month voyage at the bottom of the world compressed into in less than five minutes. There's a nice little surprise for you at the end.

SEA OTTER'S ABLUTION

Here is another seagoing creature with a much more pampered life at the Lisbon Zoo having a morning scrub.

Interesting Stuff is a weekly listing of short takes and links to web items that have caught my attention; some related to aging and some not, some useful and others just for fun.

You are all encouraged to submit items for inclusion. Just click “Contact” in the upper left corner of any Time Goes By page to send them. I'm sorry that I probably won't have time to acknowledge receipt and there is no guarantee of publication. But when I do include them, you will be credited and I will link to your blog if you have one.

Now, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (which administers Medicare and Medicaid) for the first time ever, has released data showing what nearly 3400 hospitals around the country charge Medicare for 100 of the most common inpatient procedures. (All data is for fiscal year 2011.)

The price disparities among them, even within the same cities, states and regions, are shocking. Some examples from The New York Times story:

”A hospital in Livingston, N.J., charged $70,712 on average to implant a pacemaker, while a hospital in nearby Rahway, N.J., charged $101,945.

“In Saint Augustine, Fla., one hospital typically billed nearly $40,000 to remove a gallbladder using minimally invasive surgery, while one in Orange Park, Fla., charged $91,000.

“In one hospital in Dallas, the average bill for treating simple pneumonia was $14,610, while another there charged over $38,000.”

According to the Times analysis of the HHS data, the wide variations exist even for standardized procedures without complications:

”For a cardiac procedure in which a small tube, or stent, is implanted to open up a clogged blood vessel, the average hospital charge is over four times the average Medicare payment.

“In addition, bills submitted by profit-making hospitals to Medicare are typically higher than those submitted by nonprofit centers, the analysis found.”

This is the first time in Medicare (or any healthcare) history that patients are able to know (average) prices before fainting when the bill arrives. So now, if we are not unconscious and it's a scheduled procedure, we can make choices as we do for other kinds of purchase.

Gerard Anderson, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management, was interviewed for the Times story:

“'If you’re charging 10 percent more or 20 percent more than what it costs to deliver the service, that’s an acceptable profit margin,' Mr. Anderson said. 'Charging 400 percent more than what it costs has no rational basis in it at all.'”

The data is published at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) website. There are a lot of filters to choose from on their dense Excel spreadsheet which prints out, according to Steve Brill, at more than 17,000 pages.

For me, at least, the filters on the spreadsheet make it a steep learning curve. With patience, it can be done, but here is a better idea - not to mention, a good reason to appreciate the work of The New York Times for the extraordinary effort they made in creating an interactive map of the data in a format that is close to stupid proof.

Just enter a city/state name or Zip Code in the box and you'll get a map with colored circles representing local hospitals. Hover over a circle to get a hospital name and click it to see side-by-side comparisons of the average that the hospital billed Medicare with what Medicare pays on average for dozens of procedures.

Some states (California is one) have published this kind of information for several years and of course, price is not necessarily the best (and certainly not the only) gauge that is useful in choosing a hospital. But the new transparency in pricing gives us an important tool to add to the mix.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Dani Ferguson Phillips: A Gentle Man and a Scholar

This gorgeous essay, which closely mirrors my own feelings on the subject, having been published on 1 May in The Globe and Mail of Toronto, was sent to me yesterday by a reader named Barbara LeDucq.

All the paper tells us about the author is that her name is Laurie Lewis and she lives in Kingston, Ontario.

Old age is my territory now. I have sailed past septuagenarian status and landed relatively peacefully in the octogenarian zone.

Here, truly, lies the Age of Invisibility when we disappear – certainly as physical, sexual beings.

“Once you pass 80 they will applaud you just for standing up,” my mother used to say. These days, I get a laugh when I stand up and tell people that.

Becoming an old woman has been a sexually liberating experience for me. It has given me, among other things, a great ability to love generously, since I am not impelled to act out that love.

While it became clear to me some years ago that no one other than my aged, now deceased, spouse was interested in my body, I could feel the passion of my own awareness and a new kind of love of people – enormous love and appreciation of friends of all ages, of their beauty and their ways; of girls and young women; boys and young men; of the vigorous bodies of cyclists and woodsmen; of the open and watchful faces of children, the perfection of their eyes. The warmth and softness of my overweight friend, and the smoothness of her skin. And my skinny buddy with her arthritic thumb, across the table at lunch – the crispness of motion.

I see young women walking down the streets in summer. I love their sexuality, appreciate their bodies both in the totality, the vitality, of the young animal, and the details of curve and line and the glow of skin. This is not desire, but perhaps some chromosomal memory, a generic sexuality, a love for and of the human female.

“They are so lovely,” my mind sighs. I have a hazy memory that says I might also have been lovely a long time ago, had I but known.

There was a young woman at Queen’s University whose bare midriff displayed a plain silver ring in the nest of her navel. What I loved especially was her long and perfect skull, with its shaven stubble of red hair, balanced on the stalk of her neck, and the courage and gaiety and humour with which she spoke and moved.

I feared that she would be cold – winter was, after all, upon us. But she told me her jacket was warm. “You’d be surprised at how warm it is,” she said, opening her coat to show me, radiating her own heat. Of course.

One recent summer, a young man came to rebuild the steps on my back deck. The sun shone on the brown muscles of his arms and the thick, curling, yellow hair at the back of his neck.

For two or three days I sat on the deck and watched him work. I drank iced tea and pretended to read a book. “Giving my hormones a workout,” I called it.

Some memory of sexual desire? Perhaps. But it seemed to me to be the pure adoration of the beauty of a physical being.

Ronni here again. Go read the whole thing at The Globe and Mail. I promise you will be happy you did.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Johna Ferguson: Teeth

I've posted at least some them in the past but that doesn't make them less cogent or inspiring or thoughtful.

“We grow neither better nor worse as we grow old, but more like ourselves.”

- Mary Lamberton Becker

“The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another “I” is beginning and so far, I have not had to complain of her.”

- George Sand

“I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old memories, old books, old wine.”

- Oliver Goldsmith

“There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time when he was an old man to learn music and dancing, and thought it was time well spent.”

- Michel de Montaigne

“Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.”

- Dorothy L. Sayers

“To hold the same views at 40 is 20 stupefied.”

- Robert Louis Stevenson

“The heads of strong old age are beautiful beyond all grace of youth.”

- Robinson Jeffers

Do any of these speak to you?

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Arlene Corwin: Good Yoga

”After raising 2 generations of children for over 40 years, I am very happy to have this time for ME,” wrote Diane. “I...spend much of my time doing whatever I want in the outdoors - walking, swimming, exploring my city and creating art...I feel privileged to have this time for 'wandering.'”

Charlotte Dahl chimed in on this theme more forcefully:

”Now I can do what I want without feeling guilty. Well, maybe a twinge now and then. Life - I'm lovin it! You other guys can go be productive.”

America abhors a productivity vacuum. We are exhorted into hyperactivity – do, do, do - nearly from birth. As Daniel Klein explains in his important little book, Travels with Epicurus, that after childhood, we lose our built-in capacity for aimless play and fooling around:

“...our current dedication to sports as self-improvement, complete with personal trainers and strange garments made of Spandex, has virtually wiped out any lightheartedness remaining in play.

“Even when taking a walk, distance and elapsed time are now often recorded, then measured against previous records as we compete with ourselves for our personal best.

“Play is no longer something we do with our idle time; it is another ambitious activity crammed into our schedules.”

Klein goes on to discuss how the point of play is to lose ourselves and our sense of purpose in it. He quotes 20th century philosopher Bertrand Russell chiding us for not having more fun:

”'The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for it's own sake...'

“Russell got it right,” says Klein, “just having fun for its own sake has been devalued to a waste of time, and as a result we seem to have lost our capacity for one of life's greatest delights, a delight to which we old folk are singularly suited.”

I agree with all of this. Nevertheless, for now, this blog provides a satisfying purpose to my life and to a large degree, it is fun – although not the different kind of joy that results from aimless play.

Charlotte and Diane and Daniel Klein are telling us – me, anyway - something important and I think I can figure out how to make time for both.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Marc Leavitt: On Punctuality

I subscribe to a lot of health and aging newsletters. You don't hear about most of what I read because – as I think I've noted here in the past – they usually contain a lot of conditional words such as “may” and “might” and “could” which isn't much use to us.

Last week, however, there was a definitive announcement in The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology - whew, let's just go with FASEB [emphasis is mine]:

”...the need to cover up one of the classic signs of aging with chemical pigments will be a thing of the past thanks to a team of European researchers.”

The full study is behind a paid firewall but the FASEB press release briefly explains the discovery and the treatment:

”...people who are going gray develop massive oxidative stress via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes our hair to bleach itself from the inside out...

“[M]ost importantly, the report shows that this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a proprietary treatment developed by the researchers described as a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase).”

(As it turns out, there is what I consider is a more important use – the same treatment works for the skin condition, vitiligo, to which Michael Jackson attributed his lightened skin color. You can read more about vitiligo here.)

The press release and abstract cover only the bare bones of the discovery leaving a lot of unanswered questions:

• How is the topical compound applied?

• How long is the treatment required? Is the change permanent or must it be used indefinitely to be effective?

• Is gray hair itself re-pigmented or does hair grow in with new color?

• What color does hair become – one's original color or something else?

• Are there side effects?

And so on.

If I were Clairol or L'Oreal, I'd be working overtime to find out more about this discovery. There is not a single hair color commercial on television that does not prominently state that their product “covers gray completely.”

When I was a kid and through most of my twenties (I'm now 72), women who bleached or dyed their hair were a bit suspect. It was quite risque of me, in that third photo in my banner above, to bleach my hair nearly white when I was 18.

When hair coloring became acceptable, for a good while the idea was to have it look as close to natural as possible. Since at least the 1980s, all kinds of unnatural hair colors have become next to standard in some circles – green, blue, pink and any combination of them.

Nowadays, hair color is a playground of individuality, sometimes among older people as with young.

So until this new discovery is developed for commercial use (I doubt it will take long), we could speculate about how it might affect cultural attitudes toward hair coloring and old people.

Personally, I am much more interested in a cure for baldness than gray hair and even assuming the treatment is relatively easy, inexpensive and can be done at home, I don't think I would bother.

What about you? Is this a breakthrough you've been waiting for?

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, June Calendar – April: Long Beach

Most readers of this column will probably be unfamiliar with the person featured today but Australian readers will know the national musical treasure that is JOE CAMILLERI.

Joe was born in Malta, the third of 10 children, and his family moved to Australia when he was two. He grew up in Port Melbourne. Joe says,

"My father played the tuba, and my brother played the piano accordion – two things I could have done without. Not only did I know every song on the radio, I knew every song my mother had in her record collection.

“My mother would sing; it made her happy. She was a big fan of Ray Charles - she loved to sing and dance to his records.

“It wasn't until the sixties that you could get really good records. It was very difficult to find any blues records. I think Ross Wilson [another Australian musical legend] was one of the first people I knew who had Muddy Waters records and Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry.

“In 1964, I fell into being in a band. We went to see a band and my friends, wanting a bit of a laugh, threw me up on stage. Suddenly, I was in the band as their lead singer.

“The guitarist had a cherry-red guitar. He was a pastry cook. My buddy was the drummer. I played the bass as well as singing. It was just the three of us, but we made an incredible racket.

“I would take the bass in to where I worked and practise when no one was looking. It took me weeks to learn how to play it. It became very apparent I was never going to be a bass player, so we got another guy on bass. Later, I heard Eric Dolphy and decided I wanted to play the saxophone.

“So where did the name Jo Jo Zep come from? Well, my mum always called me Zep, so I was calling myself Jo Zep. Then we came up with Jo Jo Zep. I added The Falcons and it was perfect."

Although he had been in bands before, Joe came to general notice, or mine anyway, as the front man for JO JO ZEP AND THE FALCONS in the mid seventies.

The Falcons were a sort of soul/funk group and had a bunch of fine musicians in the band with Joe playing sax as well as singing. They also had one of this country’s premier sax players, Wilbur Wilde, in the group as well.

In live performances, they would play duets/duels on the sax much as bands who had two great guitarists would. Come to think about it, they had two great guitarists as well. Here they are with the Zeps' (we like to call them by different names) biggest hit, Hit and Run, a song that took the band around the world.

♫ Jo Jo Zep - Hit and Run

After the Falcons (or the Zeps), Joe formed THE BLACK SORROWS, initially to play zydeco music but after a couple of albums, they expanded their repertoire and became one of Australia’s most successful bands.

Here is one of the Sorrows' early songs, Before I Grow Too Old.

♫ Black Sorrows - Before I Grow Too Old

The Sorrows were often augmented with the first-call Melbourne session musicians and despite whatever official band membership configurations existed at any given time, the Sorrows made extensive use of those session musicians for both recordings and live shows throughout their career.

They are still a functioning group but Joe goes off and does other projects as well, as we’ll see later. On one of those early Sorrows' albums, he took the jazz standard What a Difference a Day Makes and played with it in interesting ways. Here it is.

♫ Black Sorrows - What a Difference a Day Makes

They later had huge commercial success when they left their early incarnation and became a premier pop/rock band performing their own material. It was at this time they had their biggest selling record (and one of the biggest in this country's history), Harley and Rose.

♫ Black Sorrows - Harley And Rose

The most successful version of the Sorrows featured sisters VIKA AND LINDA BULL as co-lead singers with Joe. Since leaving the Sorrows, they’ve had a successful career and will no doubt show up somewhere in one of these columns again (they have been included previously in the column on sibling duos).

Here they are featured prominently in Chained to the Wheel.

♫ Black Sorrows - Chained To The Wheel

Joe initially started the Sorrows as a covers band but after a couple of albums he couldn't help himself and he was writing all his own material. So, in the spirit of that early experiment, he formed THE REVELATORS as an R&B/Country covers band.

Of course, again he couldn’t help himself and this group increasingly performed original material. He does really good versions of Bob Dylan songs and also channels Gram Parsons. However, the singer he performs best (besides himself) is Van Morrison.

He was already performing Van's songs in the earliest version of the Sorrows. Joe’s voice is often uncannily similar to Van’s and on a couple of tracks you’d be hard-pressed to tell which was which. I’ll let that thought float away, however, as I won’t feature any of Van’s songs.

Here is Ruler of my Heart, one of Joe's own songs.

♫ Revelators - Ruler of My Heart

Returning to the original inspiration of the Revelators, we have a cover version of the song True Love Travels on a Gravel Road. The song was written by Dallas Frazier and Doodle Owens and although it wasn't the hit version (that was by Elvis) Norma, the Assistant Musicologist, thinks that Percy Sledge recorded the definitive version of the song.

I agree with her. However, Joe and the Revelators did a terrific interpretation (different from those others).

♫ Revelators - True Love Travels on a Gravel Road

As mentioned in The Revelators, Joe likes to have a band where he can play cover versions of songs without the expectation of having to play his hits. The next band he formed to do that was BAKELITE RADIO.

Naturally, as with all the other bands, the idea of performing just covers didn't last long and here is another of Joe's songs, Midnight Rain. Here he sounds like Martin Sexton (or probably vice versa as Joe was around for a couple of decades before Martin).

♫ Bakelite Radio - Midnight Rain

In more recent times, Joe has teamed up with Nicky Bomba in a group called LIMESTONE to play reggae music. It's not really a group; it's just the two of them and whoever happens to be around at the time. Of course, as it's Joe, there are any number of musicians who are happy to play with them.

Here they are with Suzanne Beware of the Devil.

♫ Limestone - Suzanne Beware Of The Devil

Of course, the other bands don’t go away and he can turn up at any time in any of them. Even Jo Jo Zep has been revived now and then, especially recently with their 40th anniversary imminent.

That's the overview, and here is a bonus track, Fool Notion.

♫ Black Sorrows - Fool Notion

56 ACRONYMS FROM MENTAL FLOSS

Mental Floss host John Green runs through the meaning of 56 acronyms. Who knew the Ms in M&Ms actually stand for something? There are plenty more, some you know and some you don't. (Hat tip to Bev Carney)

POETRY MONTH AND CATS

TGB reader Tony Sarmiento sent in this page. May, apparently, is poetry month so NPR and illustrator Francesco Marciuliano teamed up to create a poetic tribute to cats with quotations from well-known poets including, among others, Baudelaire, Edward Lear and T.S.Eliot. Here are two I like:

You can see more cat poetry here.

WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS DINNER

Last weekend the annual White House Correspondents Dinner was held in Washington, D.C. and tradition requires that the standing president of the United States become a stand-up comedian.

Barack Obama's comedy timing is actually quite good and he isn't shy about zinging reporters and Congress members. Here is my favorite moment from his performance.

I know just how he feels.

ARE ELDER TRAILER PARKS THE ANSWER?

As the blurb on a story at Pacific Standard magazine notes at the top:

"A healthy, inexpensive, environmentally friendly solution for housing millions of retiring baby boomers is staring us in the face. We just know it by a dirty name."

With the number of elders increasing daily and the amount of affordable housing at abysmally low levels, reporter Lisa Margonelli explains how trailers parks – bad reputation and all – could be the answer:

In a paper published in the Journal of Housing for the Elderly,” writes Margonelli, “[Professor Andree] Tremoulet speculates that mobile-home parks can, for some seniors, do a better job of meeting needs than more-traditional arrangements in apartment buildings or in the suburbs.

“The design of the community allows seniors to own and modify their homes, have dogs, and putter around with hobbies like gardening in a way they couldn’t in an apartment building.

“Meanwhile, because parks have boundaries and streets, they function a bit like a gated community, where residents feel safe and have an easier time making friends than in either an apartment or a suburb.”

All that may be quite true and it's a compelling thought but what is most interesting about Margonelli's story is the detailed profile of the Pismo Dunes Senior Park (and its colorful residents) on the central coast of California directly across the road from the beach.

Pour a cup of coffee and settle down for a good read. It's well worth your time. (Hat tip to Joe Erlich)

SOME AMAZING, EXCITING SCHOOL KIDS

(And their teachers) Marvin Waldman is a seasoned advertising consultant and friend of Time Goes By. He is also a founder and trustee of the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning in New York City.

This year is the school's 10th anniversary and in celebration, Marvin made this film about it. The teachers are an inspiration and the kids are too making the whole film a joy to watch. Doing so will make you happy.

You can find out more about Marvin here and about the school here.

GOOGLE GLASS FOR ELDERS?

Have you heard of Google Glass? Although it's not on the market yet, supposedly it will revolutionize our lives. Supposedly. Here is a short video explanation:

It sounds like something all the cool kids will want. To me (so far), it seems like one more way to distance ourselves from experiencing life as it is happening and good god, it obviously means, too, a zillion more of the worst kind of YouTube videos.

But Tom Foremski at ZDNet says Google Glass is the killer app for old people:

”Where Google Glass will make its mark, and find a large and loyal customer base is in helping families and communities deal with the ravages of old age.”

Yes, “ravages.” From there, Foremski goes on to characterize old people in one of the most horribly ageist pieces I've read in a long time.

In Foremski's world, elders are defined only by sickness and frailty. If you had just popped in from Mars and read only his story, you would believe all old earthlings are demented, drooling cripples whose only interest is reruns of The Rockford Files.

The funny thing is, however, that Foremski could be on to something important in his overall premise. It may turn out that Google Glass will have many good uses particular to old people that will be both entertaining and helpful.

You can give it a read here and try to get past Foremski's bad attitude to ponder how these glasses might be worthwhile for you and me.

THE WORLD WIDE WEB'S 20TH BIRTHDAY

Last Tuesday, the public World Wide Web celebrated 20 years since it was opened up to the public – 30 April 1993. For the anniversary, CERN (where the web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee) released the world's first web page at its original web address (URL).

Simple by today's standards and what a revolution it has wrought - you and I wouldn't be here today without it.

You can see that page full size online here and you can read about the birth of the World Wide Web here.

SEEING EYE PEOPLE

The funny and fun people at Improv Everywhere, collaborating with Buzzfeed, have been at it again, this time getting their tribe to pose as city workers helping citizens who text while walking. Reader Nikki Lindquist found this video for us.

You can read more about the “mission” here.

SPARTA HAS SIX BABIES

This video is two years old with more that four million views at YouTube so may have seen it. Still, it's worth it again. In a note on the YouTube page, Sparta's family said planned to have her spayed after this litter. Also:

”All these wonderful new little kittens all got adopted into wonderful homes. Sparta lives in London (UK) and the people that were talking in the background was in Lithuanian.”

Interesting Stuff is a weekly listing of short takes and links to web items that have caught my attention; some related to aging and some not, some useful and others just for fun.

You are all encouraged to submit items for inclusion. Just click “Contact” in the upper left corner of any Time Goes By page to send them. I'm sorry that I probably won't have time to acknowledge receipt and there is no guarantee of publication. But when I do include them, you will be credited and I will link to your blog if you have one.

I am so sorry to report that Roy died quietly at home on Wednesday. As Nancy explained in an email to friends:

”Roy passed away this morning a little after 10:00 A.M. He was not responding to either the Hospice nurse or the aide and both came to tell me that.

“I had just been talking to him a few minutes before so I thought they must be mistaken. I said, 'Oh, he will respond to me.' I went to his bedside and gently put my hand on his shoulder and called his name. He sighed one big sigh and passed away.

“The hospice nurse told me that she thought that he was just waiting for me to be at his side before he went away forever.”

As anyone who has read Nancy's stories through the years knows, Nancy and Roy have spent a lifetime – a wonderful, happy, laugh-filled lifetime - in one another's daily company. Nancy's email continues:

“We were together for 67 years. We met in High School when I was 16 and he was 17. That was in 1946. We married 4 years later in 1950. I will always be grateful to have had such a wonderful husband who was also the best Dad in the World to our children.”

There is no doubt about that. Nancy's stories are almost entirely about her family, extended family and their many domestic adventures through the decades. And what any reader quickly learns in reading them is that there would always be a perfect surprise laugh in the last sentence.

I feel - and I'm sure Nancy's other readers do too - that through those stories, I came to know Roy as well as Nancy.

I don't think I'm giving away anything about Nancy's stories to tell you that I once asked via email if the quoted punchlines – from herself or one of the kids or Roy – was maybe, um – embelleshed a little in hindsight? You know, just for effect?

And in response she allowed as how – in that way she has always has of putting a smile into the written word – that yes, that might be true now and then.

I've never met Nancy in person. We've never even spoken on the telephone. But as happens with blogs and comments and online stuff, she is my friend. And my heart breaks for her this week.

If it is that you happen not to have read Nancy's stories, there are, beginning here, links to the more than 50 she has contributed. Take a look. They will delight and entertain you and help you understand what a special life these two terrific people have shared. And you'll laugh a lot too.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Dan Gogerty: Skatin' Along in the Hog Barn