Many others – mainly Republican lawmakers and their zillionnaire campaign supporters – have spent decades working toward privatizing, or better yet, eliminating Social Security.

On Monday, the Kaiser Family Foundation released the results of their state-by-state study of poverty among people age 65 and older. Before I get to that, you need to know how poverty is measured by the government. It's a bit complicated, so I'm grateful to Dylan Matthews writing in the Washington Post.

There is the official poverty rate which does not include the value of, for example, food stamps in its counting, and there is also the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), created by the Census Bureau. Mr. Matthews:

”While the SPM takes transfer payments [e.g. food stamps] into account, it does the same with out-of-pocket medical costs. If you’re an unmarried senior with no dependents, make $15,000 a year, and spend $10,000 of it on medical care, under the official poverty measure you’d most likely not count as poor, as $15,000 is above the 2012 poverty threshold for a single senior ($11,011).

“But under the SPM, you’d count as poor as $15,000 – $10,000 = $5,000, which is below the relevant SPM threshold. And despite having Medicare, many seniors struggle with out-of-pocket medical bills.”

Here is a chart from the Kaiser report showing the income differences between the two measurements (click here to see larger images):

Poverty rates differ dramatically among states. Some examples of both measurements from the Kaiser report:

• In DC, about one in four seniors (26%) live in poverty under the supplemental measure, compared to 16 percent under the official measure (see Figure 3 and Figure 4).

• In California, one-fifth of seniors (20%) live in poverty under the supplemental measure, compared to 8 percent under the official measure.

• Nearly one in five seniors live in poverty in another five states, including Hawaii, Louisiana, and Nevada (19%) and Georgia and New York (18%).

There are maps in the Kaiser report showing the disparity between the official poverty rate and the SPM in every state.

In my state, I contribute time to Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, a coalition of business and corporate organizations (including Kaiser), about a dozen local non-profits concerned with hunger, and several state government agencies.

For the sake of brevity, I'll quote the PHFO website about their activities:

”We document the extent of hunger, coordinate and publicize existing services, advocate for programs and policies to eliminate hunger. Our goal is to provide family economic stability and food security so that all Oregonians have sufficient means and ready access to an adequate amount of nutritious, quality food.”

Maybe there is such an organization in your state you can look into.

It is preposterous – not to mention an old-fashioned idea, immoral – that in a country where CEOs are commonly paid in the tens of millions of dollars per year and avoid the taxes on it by stashing their money overseas, anyone at all - from infant to elder – is allowed to go hungry.

Moreso that we are quibbling over which - $15,000 or $11,000 - counts as poverty.

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Arlene Corwin: Round and Zaftig

The Joseph of whom I wrote yesterday, is Joseph Pearce, the owner of Hair Architects, “a full service salon specializing in hair design and custom color," as the website states.

It is located in Portland, Oregon, but only a 15-minute drive from where I live in Lake Oswego so it meets my requirement of being easy to get to.

First, I gave Joseph a long speech and he was quite tolerant about it, checking out my hair as he listened: the gradual hair loss over ten years or so in two locations on my head, my solution of pinning up my long hair that covers one area but not the second balding spot just above my hairline, that both balding spots are becoming larger and more sparse.

I mentioned how much I dislike pixie cuts. I may have mentioned it twice. (Have I explained here that an additional problem with pixie cuts for me is the frequency with with they must be trimmed to look good? I don't have that much money.)

Joseph and I also discussed both wigs and going bald as a style and that either of these might be acceptable to me in the future, if necessary, but for now I want to pursue the possibility of a style that would hide the bald spots enough that I can live with it – at least for now. More drastic measures to be negotiated as required.

Together we (ahem, that would be “I”) ruled out a soft perm although that might be a solution to give the illusion of thicker hair for some people. He also asked if I object to using some hair spray which I don't.

I decided to trust Joseph and he went to work with the scissors, checking to see if I had a problem with him chopping off seven or eight inches of my hair. There was a time, when I was much younger, that whacking off so much would have been emotionally wrenching. These days I don't care.

Here is what I looked like when Joseph was finished: (sorry it's not focused better; my ancient camera was acting up).

Yes, a downside is that to get this look every day, I have to refresh my skills with a hair blower (settings on warm and low) and a large round brush similar to this one - not ideal for a woman who has become impatient with a lengthy morning ritual. But neither is losing my hair ideal although it has happened.

The biggest thing I've learned from my work on this project is that it won't get better without compromise.

And with that word in mind, here are snaps of the crown of my head before and after Joseph's work:

Actually, I don't look as bald as the “after” photo indicates. At home the same day and since then when I've washed and dried it myself, it looks much better.

No one would confuse this with the thick hair I had when I was 20 or 30 or even 40, but it works for me for now.

Getting this result also involves, in addition to the cut itself, a small amount of very light mousse applied only at my crown. As Joseph indicated, my mistake with that product or gels in the past was using a too-heavy version and a too-heavy hand. In that case, it weighs down hair and separates strands thereby showing more scalp.

Following Joseph's instructions for the mousse and the final spray – again, a light touch – keeps my hair pretty much in place. Enough so that as a week has passed now, I am no longer obsessively checking out my crown in the mirror throughout the day.

What about my forehead hairline you might ask – the other balding spot. Joseph explained how to make use of a cowlick I have in that area. (No stylist ever in my entire life mentioned cowlicks to me before.)

For the years I've been pinning up my long hair, I've brushed it straight back from my forehead. Saying, “Don't do that,” Joseph showed me how parting it at the cowlick – but only back an inch or so from my hairline – and brushing to the side camouflages that front balding spot.

Take a look (sorry for the black-and-white; those newfangled florescent light bulbs above my mirror make dreadful colors in photographs):

Pretty neat, huh.

BOTTOM LINE
Some conclusions:

• For women with age-related, hormonal hair loss, nothing regrows hair. Anyone who tries to sell you anything – potions, lotions, pills, treatments, diets, etc. – that regrow hair is a flimflam man (or woman).

•Surgical transplants work for only two to five percent of women. See this WebMD article for an explanation.

•Backcombing to create volume damages hair resulting in weakening and breakage.

•If you dislike the time involved in hair care, bald is the easiest “style” of all and if my hair gets too thin for Joseph's remedy to continue working, I will seriously consider it.

•Wigs and wiglets are an option. These days, synthetic hair looks terrific, is easy to care for and not expensive. In fact, it might be fun to have a whole wardrobe of different styles and different colors too, like the young people who dye their hair Crayola colors.

We could take a page from their book and make a statement that deliberately wearing false-looking hair is fun - even when you're old.

For me, full-time hats, caps and scarves are not an option (now, anyway). But they can work for many people.

THE DISAPPOINTMENT
As I said somewhere earlier in this series, if there were any product or treatment that reliably and efficiently regrows hair, believe me, we would know about it: whoever invented or discovered it would be too eager to make him/herself a zillionaire to keep it a secret.

I accept that I'll never have my own full head of hair again and given the decreasing funding available for medical research these days, I would rather that money be spent on curing debilitating diseases than what is, at bottom, a vanity issue.

What I deplore, however, is that within the hair profession, hardly anyone will talk about thinning hair – not industry associations nor many individual salons - and it makes me wonder if they are loathe to be associated with old women. Is it ageism that prevents them from talking about it?

But I do believe there are individual Joseph Pearces out there - men and women who have developed their skills and enjoy helping clients with a wide variety of hair problems including elder women with our thinning hair.

I wanted to be able to headline a TGB story blaring something like: A FIX FOR THINNING HAIR. I'm disappointed that I cannot. There are those other solutions above but if, like me, it seems simpler to keep working with your own hair for as long as possible, you will need to research your local stylists and salons as I did.

Yesterday's post contains some advice to help you find your own Joseph Pearce. It's not easy – I spent several weeks (not full time) searching online, reading, calling, emailing until I found this man who turned out to be the right one for me.

I am so grateful to Joseph for listening carefully and working so well with a woman whose first move was to give him a set of limitations. When/if my hair becomes too thin to wear this way, it will be Joseph to whom I'll turn to discuss the next option. I hope you can find a similarly talented person.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow – Part 1
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow – Part 2

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Ross Middleton: Continuous Creation

Obviously, that would work as well for people who have little or no hair for reasons other than cancer, but that isn't my problem nor that of most elder women. We still have a good deal of hair, just not enough of it in certain areas of our heads.

Nearly every website repeats the diseases and drugs that can cause hair loss which affects only a tiny minority of elder women. But that's all they know so the rest of their advice is snakeoil.

Nobody knows nothin' except selling expensive creams, lotions, potions, even electronic devices and occasional diets for regrowing hair that are all frauds.

Unwilling to jump directly to bald or wigs and unready to give up on my idea that perhaps somewhere there are hair stylists who have worked successfully with thinning hair, I persevered in other directions.

When I started this project, I expected that with my research skills, I would be able track down such people even if they were well hidden or unsung. I believed this because thinning hair is one of the most common problems of old women – 30 million of us – and it is the American way of business that when there is a need, particularly one that effects a large number of people, there are more than enough entrepreneurs eager to make millionaires of themselves by providing solutions – good, bad or indifferent as they may be.

But no. Here is a brief overview of my search and a few of the results. It is way too tedious to walk you through it all.

Professional Organizations: I contacted via phone and email several professional associations that represent hair stylists and salons. Of the ones I telephoned, all sent me to voice mail. Not one of them – from phone or email contact – ever responded, not even the ones that got both email and a phone call.

Professional Retailers: In a mini-brainstorm, I contacted Tish and Snooky, two sisters I know from New York City who, since 1977, have provided extreme, cutting-edge hair and cosmetic products mostly for young people via their Manic Panic stores and, since the internet came along, online too.

I wasn't looking for a blue or green hair dye (well, who knows - maybe later), but I suspected that they are well plugged in to the professional hair world and I was correct.

We had a nice Skype chat and as it turned out, they were heading for a hair products trade show that weekend and said they would see if anyone there was working on or specializing in thinning hair.

They found nothing except a couple of products that promise to regrow hair. More snakeoil.

Local Stylists: Because this is not an altruistic project - I need a remedy but I'm not willing to travel any farther than I can get to in about 30 minutes - I started calling and emailing hair stylists and salon owners in my immediate geographical area.

First I searched websites, read biographies, lists of services and paid close attention to customer reviews. I looked for stylists with at least 15 years experience and varieties of skills who owned or worked at shops that do not seem to cater to only 20-somethings.

After selecting about a dozen, I began emailing and telephoning. Not a single email was answered. Not one. I did learn that with hair salons – unlike their association representatives - you usually get a real person on the phone rather than a recorded message.

However, it was mostly downhill from there. Everyone said that of course, they could style for thinning hair but when I tried to pin them down, almost all said I should go with a short, layered (pixie) cut.

(Sorry, readers who think this is a wonderful solution. Enjoy it if it pleases you but I despised it in the 1960s (or was it 1950s?) and my opinion hasn't changed. I will go bald before I wear that. It's not who I am.)

As I moved through my list, one of the salon owners seemed to actually hear what I was saying so I made an appointment. Sitting in the chair facing the mirror, I did some show-and-tell with my exposed scalp, asked some questions and – wait for it - got the pixie cut speech.

I left. That cannot possibly be the only solution.

Of all the salon websites I visited, one – just one – had a “consultation” choice in their online appointment scheduler. A plus was no charge for it.

According to the website, the owner met my requirements of long experience with a variety of skills and most of all, I liked what the customers said.

Most online reviews of anything are useless. There is no way to know what “the best I ever had” means and few get beyond that. But in this case, several customers were specific leading me to believe that A: the service was outstanding enough to warrant detail and B: I might have found someone special. Some examples:

”Joseph had done research on styles for me...this was my first appointment with him. He listened to my needs, thoroughly examined my hair and opted to trust my experience with my stubborn mop.”

”He genuinely listens. And he has a great sense of humor.”

From a man:

”Although I don't have alot of hair left to work with (naturally), Joseph always makes me look professional and ready for work...He is a true artist.”

I scheduled a consultation. I'll tell you about it tomorrow with some photos.

I am reporting my odyssey so that if you want to follow my route where you live, you'll have a good idea of what it takes to find what you are looking for.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow – Part 1
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow - Part 3

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Joyce Benedict: 1945

There are quite a few songs about Memphis which is good for me as I don’t have to try too hard to find things worth including. It’s more a matter of which to leave out.

There is no better way to start than with a song simply called Memphis and no one better to perform it than CHUCK BERRY.

The song is rather atypical of Chuck - it doesn’t have his trademark guitar licks that have been stolen by every rock guitarist since. However, it is from his glory years when everything he released pretty much changed the face of rock & roll a bit.

♫ Chuck Berry - Memphis

This one, by contrast, is quintessentially BOB DYLAN - enigmatic, dense, impossible to understand and yet quite clear. Sorry, I seem to be the same (except for that clear bit).

The song is from his album “Blonde on Blonde,” a tour de force from the sixties and one of the finest albums ever. The song is Stuck Inside Of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.

♫ Bob Dylan - Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again

Most of the songs today are rock or country but here’s one to supply a bit of contrast by JULIE LONDON.

Her song is Memphis in June and in it she mentions the oleander blowing perfume in the air. Hmm, I wonder about that as oleander is toxic. I certainly wouldn’t eat it (as a major symptom of doing that is death) and even the sap is problematic.

I suppose the perfume is okay but Norma, the Assistant Musicologist (and a bit of a horticulturist), says that she has never noticed any perfume from the oleander at her place. Oh well, no accounting for taste. Anyway, here’s the song.

♫ Julie London - Memphis in June

If there were any justice in the musical world, and we know that’s not going to happen, JOHN HIATT would be a super star. He’s a great songwriter, an interesting vocalist and a fine guitarist. He also puts on a terrific live performance.

Still, there are those of us who go to his concerts, collect his records and pass the word around about him as I’m doing today. Enough said, here is John with Memphis in the Meantime.

♫ John Hiatt - Memphis in the Meantime

MARC COHN is another one of those artists that you wonder why he isn’t better known. I’ll do my small bit to try to rectify that.

Marc has said that the song today is really about his musical life. He’s always appreciated other musicians, from Al Green to Elvis to Levon Helm to Charlie Christian. They’ve really been a touchstone for me, he said.

Marc’s song is Walking In Memphis where a couple of those mentioned get a nod.

♫ Marc Cohn - Walking In Memphis

I decided, along with advice from the A.M., that I wouldn’t play the original version of Talk Memphis by JESSE WINCHESTER from the album of that same name. We thought that the backing was far too busy and didn’t show Jesse at his best.

Jesse is a real favorite of both of us and we see him whenever we can. One of those times was when he came to the Troubadour Weekend where acoustic musicians are featured here in country Victoria.

His concerts were recorded and parts of them were released the following year at that same event. There are 50 very lucky people who have that CD. You know that I’d be one of them.

Here is Jesse with the song and you can hear the A.M. and me applauding as part of the audience. We were in the front row (where else would we be?)

♫ Jesse Winchester - Talk Memphis

What can I say about JOHNNY CASH except that he has a Memphis song too. It’s called Going to Memphis.

I remember this one from when I was young, perhaps not as a whippersnapper, but certainly more than a year or two ago.

♫ Johnny Cash - Going to Memphis

JOHN FOGERTY was the singer, songwriter and lead guitarist for Creedence Clearwater Revival.

His stamp on that band was such that his subsequent solo albums sound as if they are Creedence albums. Of course, from my point of view, that’s no bad thing although John might be a bit miffed.

After Creedence John refused to play his old songs due to a legal wrangle with his manager who had managed to finagle ownership of John’s songs. This took many years to settle.

One of the albums John recorded in the interim was called “Centerfield” which was a big seller. This had a song on it about his manager who sued him and the album had to be recalled and the song rewritten. Some of us who got in early have the original version. Also on that album is Big Train (From Memphis).

♫ John Fogerty - Big Train (From Memphis)

Another change of pace here with DEAN MARTIN.

Old Dino’s not usually associated with Memphis but he does have a song worth considering. It’s Night Train to Memphis and it doesn’t sound at all like his normal songs.

♫ Dean Martin - Night Train to Memphis2

Memphis was the home of Stax Records so we have to have something from that great establishment. Fortunately, there is a song about Memphis so that’s the one. It’s by RUFUS THOMAS.

Rufus was a disk jockey as well as a soul singer. He was also the father of Carla Thomas with whom he recorded quite often. He wrote and performed Walking the Dog, covered by The Rolling Stones, but the song we’re interested in today is The Memphis Train.

♫ Rufus Thomas - The Memphis Train

DADDY IS SOOOO FUNNY

There is not much that is better in life than a bunch of babies laughing and here are quadruplets who think daddy is the funniest thing ever.

What I want to know is where daddy got that amazing quadruplets table.

KIDS' FIRST TASTE

Nikki Lindquist sent this sweet, little video of some kids' first tastes of grownup food.

TWO-MINUTE SURVEY

The MIT Age Lab has a two-minute survey for old people:

“This is an exploratory survey to understand what concerns people may be thinking about today in anticipation of their life in older age. All responses are anonymous.

You can take the survey here.

NEW YORK CITY CANDY CAB

Monsoor Khalid drives a New York City's only candy cab and his tech savvy has made him an internet celebrity. Take a look:

Here's Mr. Khalid's Facebook page and you can read more about him and his cab here.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PRESENT

Standup comedian Tig Notaro recently stopped by Conan O'Brien's TV show to explain the importance of being present in life. Hilarity ensues. (Hat tip to Larry Beck of Woodgate's View)

ENLISTING JESUS TO SUPPORT YOUR POLITICAL CAMPAIGN

That headline is no typo. Last Tuesday, North Miami held an election for mayor. One candidate, Anna Pierre, used this campaign poster – note the endorsement I've circled in green:

I'm not sure if it's funny or shocking. Either way, it didn't help Ms. Pierre who came in last in a field of seven with only 56 votes. You can see full results here.

SPACE ODDITY

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I included a video of International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield doing a show-and-tell about how astronauts brush their teeth?

Well, Hadfield's current tour of duty there came to an end last week but not before recording a new video of himself singing a revised version of David Bowie's 1969 hit, Space Oddity (“Ground control to Major Tom”).

This is no funky, home-style basement tape; it is a full-blown, beautifully produced music video. It's been seen already by more than 13 million people so it's probably not new to some of you. But that's okay – it's still worth it. (Hat tip to Nancy Hutto)

SAVOUR EVERY MOMENT

That the title of a new short film by Keith Hopkin that was an instant hit when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on 27 April. From the notes on the YouTube site:

”Dogs and cats seem to possess some inner secret to enjoying life. They're able to savour every single moment of the day; all the fun moments, and the goofy ones. The playful moments, the loving moments.

“If our pets could talk, they might tell us: 'When you're happy, don't forget to tell your face. Napping is beauty sleep for the soul. Eat like nobody's watching.'"

You'll find Keith Hopkin's Facebook page here.

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.

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.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow - Part 2
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow - Part 3

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