Not long ago I was in the waiting room of a doctor’s office and seated across from me was a woman, probably in her eighties, who had her social security card displayed in a small, clear plastic pocket on the front of the tote bag she was carrying. She had no idea that this was not a good idea. Click here for all you’ll need to know about how important it is to protect your social security number to avoid identity theft and what to do if the information is stolen.
Tune in to Experience Talks, our “Radio Magazine for the Experienced Listener.” Saturdays 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 98.7 FM Santa Barbara, 99.5 China Lake, 93.7 N. San Diego, streaming live online and now syndicated on up to 100 Pacifica Network stations! You can also enjoy hearing all of our previous shows on the Listen Page of our Experience Talks website.
This week: Adult Education for Seniors
Host Cynthia Friedlob talks with Burbank Adult School Principal Joseph Stark, art instructor Randall Williams, and writer/artist Suzanne Knode
JOSEPH STARK (at left with students) is the Principal of Burbank Adult School. The mission of Burbank Adult School is to meet the diverse educational needs of the community by empowering lifelong learners to reach their professional, personal, and family goals. The adult education program includes course offerings in basic and secondary education, including GED test preparation; career and technical education; English as a Second Language; parent education; and community interest classes including a variety of creative arts classes such as painting, memoir and short story writing, screenplay writing, dance, and acting. Click here to see the Fall 2012 schedule.
RANDALL WILLIAMS knew that he wanted to be an artist ever since he attended weekly art classes in first grade in Jacksonville, Illinois. He went on to earn a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Fine Arts from Western Illinois University, then moved to Southern California in 1980 to pursue his art career. He landed a job at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, then worked as a stain-glass artist, an Art Director at two of L.A.’s largest photography labs, and a design consultant for a framing company. He’s now the owner of a gallery and studio in Burbank where he sells his original work and offers art-related services including portraits, murals, framing, photo retouching and restoration. Randall teaches classes in drawing, painting, sculpture, and Photoshop. He participates in art events within the local community and actively promotes art in the schools. He is a member of the Burbank Chamber of Commerce, Burbank Noon Kiwanis, the Burbank Arts Federation, Burbank Art Association, Sunland-Tujunga Art Association, and President of the Burbank Boulevard Merchants Association. Learn more at Randall’s website.
SUZANNE KNODE spent most of her life working to raise her kids as a single mom. A few years back, retired now, she moved to the Burbank Senior Artists Colony. Suzanne thought she’d like to try her hand at writing, so she attended an EngAGE writing class at the Artists Colony. She wrote a screenplay as a class assignment and her project, Bandida, was made into a short film by EngAGE. The making of her film, and her story of reinvention, was profiled on national television on the show This American Life on Showtime. She watched the premiere of her film along with an audience of hundreds on the big screen at the El Portal Theater in the NoHo Arts District as part of the Valley Film Festival. Suzanne is now working on several new film and stage projects and has taken up painting and mentoring at-risk teens. In 2010, Knode was selected as one of 11 subjects for a nationwide campaign and photo exhibit to help raise awareness of how people can keep their minds beautiful. The campaign, Beautiful Minds: Finding Your Lifelong Potential, is co-sponsored by the National Center for Creative Aging and Martek Biosciences, a company committed to Brain Health.
Korea: “Deuk Yong Jang, 58, shown in the photo is among Koreans in the U.S. who have ‘reverse immigrated’ back home to avoid becoming isolated here in old age and suffering a ‘lone death.'” Read more here.
Indonesia: “Indonesian transgender activist Yulianus Rettoblaut is planning a home for elderly waria (transgenders) in Depok, West Java, Indonesia.” Read more here.
Japan: “As the nation’s population ages, the increase in elderly people who have difficulty cooking or shopping for themselves has led to a flourishing service sector for home-delivered meals, with diverse menus that cater to different health and lifestyle needs.” Read more here.
“Getting older doesn’t just mean a risk for physical ailments like heart disease and bum knees: A new report finds as many as 1 in 5 seniors has a mental health or substance abuse problem. And as the population rapidly ages over the next two decades, millions of baby boomers may have a hard time finding care and services for mental health problems such as depression – because the nation is woefully lacking in doctors, nurses and other health workers trained for their special needs, the Institute of Medicine said Tuesday.” Read more here.
American Apparel is a company noted for provocative advertising, but they’ve done something unexpected with their latest campaign in which they’ve cast an older model. Click here to read more about Jacky, the face of their Advanced Basics line. [Thanks to friend of EngAGE, Michelle Debbaudt, for this link.]
Many of this blog’s readers will remember the advent of the shopping mall, and many other readers will have grown up shopping there. But they’re no longer a favored design. “At the mall’s peak popularity, in 1990, America opened 19 of them. But we haven’t cut the ribbon on a new one since 2006, for reasons that go beyond the recession…We still love to flock to dense agglomerations of Body Shops and Cinnabuns and Brookstones. But now those places look increasingly like open-air ‘lifestyle centers,’ with condos above or offices next door. Some of these places are just the old mall in a new Main Street disguise. But when you add residences, and cut [the space that, in the past, would have housed a shopping mall] into what actually looks like a downtown street grid, that begins to change things.” Click here to read more.
“Worth Repeating” is a new weekly feature on the EngAGE Blog that will bring you previous posts that we think are still timely, interesting, or just plain fun!
From 7/17/11:
What do you do with your protagonist if you’re writing a popular series of books that lasts over a period of decades? Do you let him/her grow older? Michael Connelly’s Detective Harry Bosch has aged in real time and will be sixty in the new book due out this fall. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone is aging more slowly, roughly one year for every 2½ books. But aging hasn’t always been embraced. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe remained steadfastly in mid-life; James Bond hasn’t aged a day. Read more about a successful author’s dilemma in an article by Alexandra Alter for the Wall Street Journal.
