USA: 100 Years of Staying Put

NEW YORK, NY / The New York Times / New York Region / April 29, 2012

Damon Winter/The New York Times

CONSTANCY Lillian Jacobs, now 102, moved to East 84th Street at 2. Her parents ran a candy store, right, in the building where they lived. Bottom, Ms. Jacobs's signature on a library ledger from 1916

By Benjamin Weiser and Noah Rosenberg

WHEN Lillian Jacobs was 2, in 1911 or ’12, her family moved from the Lower East Side into a tenement building on East 84th Street, just off York Avenue, then known as Avenue A. Her parents ran a candy store on the building’s ground floor, catering to the newly arrived immigrants from Germany, Hungary, Austria and Ireland.

People came and went over the years; apartment houses were built and tradesmen’s shops disappeared, along with the family candy store. But the character of the area, and specifically this part of East 84th Street, has largely remained the same. The brownstones, built at the turn of the 20th century and flanked by trees planted in more recent years, have stayed true to the block.

So has Ms. Jacobs.

Since arriving on East 84th Street, Ms. Jacobs, who is now 102, has moved to four different addresses, but always stayed on the street; her five homes have all been within 1,200 feet of one another.

“I don’t know why,” she said last fall in her sunlit apartment on the 17th floor of a building near First Avenue, where she and her husband, George, moved two decades ago. “But it seemed to be destined that I stay on East 84th.”

Ms. Jacobs is already a demographic rarity: she was one of 2,126 city residents 100 and over recorded in the 2010 census. But even though very few New Yorkers can claim a century spent in essentially one place, the notion of maintaining roots on a street is not entirely uncommon, said Andrew A. Beveridge, a Queens College sociologist.

A decade ago, Professor Beveridge recalled, one of his students interviewed a man of about 100 who had lived his entire life in the same house in Richmond Hill, Queens.

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© 2012 The New York Times Company
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Credit: Reports and photographs are property of owners of intellectual rights. 
Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

USA: Active Aging fair provides seniors with plenty of healthy information

DECATUR, Illinois / Herald-Review.com / Life/ April 18, 2012

Office manager Ann Rohde of Renew Total Body Wellness Center aligns a teeth whitening device to Maxine Koenig at the business’s table during the Active Aging Fair in the Imboden Creek Gardens assisted living facility

By ALLISON COPENBARGER - H&R Staff Writer

Barbara Young, 79, of Decatur closed her eyes and tried to recall a good memory, a time when she felt relaxed and accomplished.

She took a deep breath and tried to conjure up the sights, smells and emotions of the memory so she could recreate that good feeling.

She was participating in a hypnotic exercise instructed by Julie Lauper-Cook of Bright Skies Hypnotherapy at the first Active Aging Fair held at Imboden Creek Gardens on Tuesday. The fair, free and open to the public, included several services and presentations for elderly health.

Young said she has suffered from depression since she was in her 20s and wandered into the hypnotherapy presentation, intrigued by the alternative approach.

“I think it’s important to come to events like this to keep up to date,” she said.

The hypnotherapy exercises all aimed to connect the mind to the body and to replace negative experiences with positive emotions. The 30-minute presentation was intended to alleviate chronic physical or emotional pain through mind exercises.

“Hypnotherapy is not a mystery, it’s just relaxing.” Lauper-Cook said. “It’s not meant to replace a doctor’s opinion, but to supplement it.”

There were also other presentations on zumba, holistic health, estate planning and prescription medication. Vendors were available to give free massages, blood pressure tests and other services.

Jennifer Born, Imboden Creek Gardens director, said they had the vision to do something different from other health fairs, something more active.

“It’s too early to say if we’ll do it every year, but I think even if we only touch one person it will be a success in my book. It has brought people into our facility, and we’ve made community connections.”

acopenbarger@herald-review.com|

© Copyright 2012, Herald-Review.com
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TIBET: The Old Man Who Wanted To Speak Before Dying

PARIS, France / Courrier International / Asia / March 9, 2012

Thakgyam is a Tibetan 77 years. He recounts the terror that struck in 1958 on his community, even before the exile of the Dalai Lama to India. Here are the stories of atrocities carried out by the Chinese People's Liberation Army against the Tibetan resistance. * A unique testimony.


Interview by Frank Renaud


I am an old man witness to the true story of abuse and torture suffered by infinite people close and innocent. I myself have experienced such misfortunes and I truly experienced pain unimaginable to the human mind. So I feel like a survivor of history for the Tibetans in exile, Tibetans, especially people of my region, and more particularly, of all people of Amdo [t one of the three regions of historical Tibet, with the U-Tsang and Kham].

[...]When the Chinese soldiers came to our community in the summer of 1958, I was 23. I remember telling the locals that they had arrived overnight crossing the Machu [Yellow River]. All people of our community were divided into three battalions to prevent the advance of soldiers. [...] Our leader told us: "Today, we will fight for the good of Tibet, the Snow Country."

[...]We all entered the fray. But within minutes, 98 men and horses in our village were killed.

[...]Those who had been captured were sent to TSO Sertri Nangchen [residence of a great lama, confiscated and turned into a prison]. Chinese soldiers have inquired: "How do you kill the Chinese?" while torturing and slaughtering prisoners, as if it were merely toys, without distinguishing between the guilty and the innocent [those who had participated in combat or not]. It was unbearable to see me and it is still difficult to talk about.For example, members of the prisoners were tied with rope and threw the soldiers on the ground again and again. Many had liver exploded, his head exploded, etc.. Countless are those who died on the field or remained disabled.

It was then winter. Certainly, numerous Tibetan prisoners were killed after being beaten, but even more died of starvation. We who occupied the same cell, we were discussing the evening and the next morning, on waking, it was discovered that many were dead. But we could not bury the bodies of prisoners because they were stuck to the frozen ground. Just for my community, 40 people died.

[...]Then we were taken, we prisoners, the District of Mating Xian. We tried to escape us as we worked on a railroad track. But we were captured by soldiers. So each of us was hit by three soldiers in a way that I can not describe.

For example, when they forced me to wrap my arms to the iron pipe of a stove. They fanned the fire and left burn until my clothes burn. My sweat ran down to the ground and my chest became very dark red. And yet another time, they have been soaked in water a rope and tied my hands behind my back and squeezing my arm shot up until they touch the back of my head.

It is from this time that I have not been able to move my arms. I had to eat like a dog. I had to pull on my clothes with his teeth to pull. But I was still put to forced labor. People like us were singled out, we were accused to be relentless class enemies, protruding rocks on the road, bad people need to purify completely.

[...] In 1959, we were released from prison.

[...]In general, the "old world" [before the "liberation" by the Chinese army], my family did not belong at all to a high social class and wealthy. I had never committed any crimes like killing other people. That did not stop to stop, hit me without restraint to the false pretext of crimes that I did not commit. Subsequently, when they listed my "crimes", they said that I had fought in 1958, I had been arrested, I had escaped from prison, I had been imprisoned again and I had yet escaped.

Then, we were convicted and imprisoned us.

[...]Much time has passed to the court determines that, because I escaped and I had been arrested several times.The verdict: eighteen years in prison. I've done my sentence. I had committed no crime, yet they told me: "You do not like the Communist Party". They therefore considered a crime against my opinion the Communist Party.

[...]In summary, I and many people of my native country have been falsely accused. We have been accused of misconduct that we had not committed, we were massacred, jailed, beaten in a manner inconceivable. The Communists made us suffer and tortured without restraint, we were terrified.

Not only men on our side of Machu have all disappeared, but women and children who did not die naturally are also legion. For example, driven by fire from soldiers to Machu, many have jumped. Many women, two or three of their children in their arms, threw themselves into the waves. Once a woman has concealed her child by the river at the foot of a tree, before jumping into the water. Since there has been no one to care for him, some time later, they found the remains of small child.

It was also told my mother she was a family who did not like communism and underwent sessions of public accusation.

[...]The gist of what the humble man I am, has to ask: can the dead who lost their lives to Buddhism and to Tibet reborn on earth conversion Pakchok Tchakna Pema [land under protection of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the Dalai Lama is an emanation, understand "reborn in Tibet"]. May they quickly get the eighteen conditions to be reborn as human beings who have access to the Dharma ["lifestyle"] and may they get the incomparable perfect enlightenment. May we, by the story of unspeakable suffering, living and dead have suffered, purify negative karma footprints of all Tibetans. These stories can be beneficial to the doctrine of the Buddha and happiness of our country. And above all, may the Supreme winner, wish-fulfilling jewel [the Dalai Lama], What happens to live long and happy times faster when Tibetans in exile and Tibet will be reunited.

Note: * The family of Thakgyam, who communicated his testimony written in Tibetan Courrier international , wanted his name to be quoted: "We live in a critical period for Tibet. We are not at a time when we must hide things. " This story was first offered by Thakgyam the Dalai Lama.


© Courrier international
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Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

CHINA: Charm pervades nooks, crannies in memory lanes off beaten track

SHANGHAI, China / The Shanghai Daily / Feature / February 25, 2012

AFTER exhausting all the well-known scenic spots in Minhang, some people develop aesthetic fatigue and complain there's nothing of interest left to explore.

That's not necessarily true. As the French sculptor Rodin once noted: "Beauty is everywhere. It is not that she is lacking to our eye, but that our eye fails to perceive her."

So let's open our eyes to the hidden beauty just around the corner and continue our tour of interesting old streets off the beaten track.

Our meandering along cobblestone paths and beside carved stone bridges took us last month to Duhang, Zhudi, Jiwang, Hexiangqiao and Maqiao streets. This time, our journey continues on to Chenhang, Zhuanqiao and Caohang streets, which also have plenty of old tales to whisper in our ears.

Zhuanqiao Street, faded past

The name Zhuanqiao originated from an eponymous stone arch bridge (qiao means bridge in Chinese) dating back to ancient times. The bridge, once the center of Zhuanqiao, was dismantled in 1969, but its memory remains in an area filled with interesting nooks and crannies. 

The street is not easy to find, which adds to its charm. There are a number of branch roads on Zhuanjian Road, and the north and south sections of Zhuanqiao Old Street are among them. They are filled with small grocery stores, a post office, street vendors and residences.

The best guide to the street are the old grey roof tiles still seen on buildings dating back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Nobody is quite sure anymore who once lived in the buildings.

The north section and south section of the street are divided by Zhuanjian Road, but there are signs at the entrance of the street to help you find your way.

It is a narrow street. Local residents are few and close-knit.

A visitor with a camera is immediately spotted as an "outsider" and may arouse a bit of curiosity. This area is off the tourist route, but strollers will find the local people warm-hearted and eager to serve as guides to their neighborhood.

The north section of the street is very short. You can see its end while standing on one side. Zhuanqiao Shuchang (a place for people to enjoy storytelling) is a two-story building.

It looks a bit worse for wear, though it's been renovated several times. The building was constructed during the Qing Dynasty.

Zhuanqiao Shuchang, founded in 1979, and was once a bustling place. It has seating for 240 and played host to huju operas and pingtan musical storytelling performances in its heyday.

Its owner, who declined to be identified, said sadly that the site was closed last year because of difficulty making ends meet.

"A performer of shuoshu (storytelling) charges 100 yuan (US$15) a day, and we can no longer afford it," he said. Admission to a two-hour performance usually costs about 2 yuan or less.

Shuoshu is a traditional one-man artistic form of storytelling - a great favorite of older people.

Now, the banister bearing woodcarving patterns is crumbling, the corridor is littered with rubble and old furniture lies randomly around. The owner said they will be burned as firewood.

The building is divided into several single rooms and rented out.

There is a teahouse near Zhuanqiao Shuchang. For local people, it's a place where the past survives. For decades, from dawn to dusk, people would congregate there to sip tea and talk.

Zhao Genyu, 78, a retired farmer, has been patronizing the teahouse for more than 50 years.

"I can sit here for hours and chat with others," he said. "It's my favorite pastime."

His house is 15 minutes away by foot.

"I like taking a stroll on the street everyday," he said as he sipped green tea. His distinctive Minhang dialect seemed smartly at home in the mottled old building.

In the past, there were shuoshu performances in the teahouse. Zhao said he used to enjoy them very much because they swelled on historical themes.

Read more...

* Caohang Street, fine food and hip clothing shops

* Chenhang: three families

* Old streets bear silent witness to yesteryear 

Copyright © 2001-2012 Shanghai Daily Publishing House

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Credit: Reports and photographs are property of owners of intellectual rights. 
Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

USA: This waitress has tips for active aging

BALTIMORE, Maryland / The Baltimore Guide / Features / February 8, 2012

By Mary Helen Sprecher

The waitress takes advantage of the after-breakfast/pre-lunch lull to check the restaurant’s soft drink dispenser. Satisfied, she scans the dining room for customers who look like they might want a refill, then makes tracks for the kitchen. 

Delores Cook, 84, shares a laugh with her 26-year-old
manager at Panera, Dominic Frank. “She runs circles
around everyone,” says Frank.
Photo by Jacqueline Watts

Around her, other servers are working as well. But they don’t have the advantage of her experience.

Delores Cook is 84 years old (she’ll be 85 in May, she say proudly), and is thoroughly enjoying her second wind as a waitress. The Greektown resident is actually a veteran of the trade, having worked at it for decades.

“I was a waitress at Howard Johnson’s for years,” she says proudly. “I was voted the Central Pennsylvania Waitress of the Year in 1982.”

Cook lived in Pennsylvania and worked at HoJo’s until she was widowed more than 20 years ago. After that, working as well as keeping up her house and yard became too much for her.

And at the same time, fate was taking a hand. In Greektown, her son, Harry Cook, was readjusting to the single life after a divorce, and during a phone conversation a possible solution occurred to both of them.

“Harry said, ‘Mom, you could use help, and I could use help, so why don’t you try coming down and try living here?’ I said, ‘Oh, I don’t think so — how am I going to go from living in a ranch home in Pennsylvania to living in a three-story house in the city? It just won’t work.’ He told me to just come down on a trial basis, and well, I’ve been here 21 years.”

Cook loves her job, and she’ll be the first to say so. But she also says she gets as much out of it as she puts into it.

“I’m a big believer that if you keep working and you keep active, it’ll keep you sharp,” she says. “I don’t want to sit around.”

Click here to continue reading

Copyright © 2012 Genesis Framework

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Credit: Reports and photographs are property of owners of intellectual rights. 
Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

FRANCE: A Bibliophile in Paris

LONDON, England / The Economist / Culture / December 27, 2011

Books, Art & Culture 
PROSPERO


George Whitman
A bibliophile in Paris 

INDIFFERENT as he was to modern amenities, George Whitman took some convincing to snuff out the candles for good and install electric lights in his Paris bookshop in 1959. His ramshackle labyrinth of dusty nooks and sagging bookshelves, some secured with twisted coat-hangers, was more a commune than a shop. Over the 60 years since he bought the place from an Arab grocer, using inherited money, an estimated 40,000 travellers have slept among the books, on makeshift beds or the floor, in his “socialist Utopia that masquerades as a bookstore”.

Mr Whitman expected guests to recite or write (choosing “cannonball” words, preferably), or at least help with chores. Most stayed a week or so; several settled in for half a decade. Le Mistral bookshop, renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964, was a fitting endeavour for a self-described communist. He liked to say that all humanity was his teacher.

Over the years he bought more bits of the 16th-century building at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, just opposite Notre Dame on the Left Bank. He otherwise spent little. Vacation, he said, was moving from the book-lined third-floor flat that filled up for weekly breakfasts and afternoon tea parties, to the first-floor “writer’s room”. Usually reserved for favoured guests, it held prized first editions (including James Joyce’s “Ulysses”) and books signed by guests including Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, and the Beat Generation icons William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg.

Although increasingly wealthy, Mr Whitman lived as though he were poor. His few part-time employees were paid modestly. Travellers in his “Tumbleweed Hotel” helped out for nothing. He even put shoppers to work. Occasionally pretty young female shoppers would be asked to watch the till for a few minutes. He sometimes returned hours later.

Rather than fuss with cleaning products, guests were told to scrub the floor with water and newspaper. The carpet could be glued down just fine with pancake batter and a hot iron. Mr Whitman encouraged shoppers to donate old shopping bags. Perfectly good food could be scavenged from rubbish bins.

Security, too, was lax. Mr Whitman couldn’t be bothered with alarm systems. Unwilling to buy a safe or make daily bank runs, he stored large wads of cash in books displayed for sale behind the cashier’s desk and even elsewhere in the shop and reading rooms. More than once, incredulous shoppers handed over cash-stuffed books to the guests manning the till.

Priority for the roughly 15 sleeping spots was given to travellers writing poems or a book. He gave hopefuls a yes or no within seconds. Some who were let in later surmised that he wanted to teach them a lesson. Mr Whitman once pulled off a sock and handed it to a guest who gave himself airs. He was to mop up the shop-cat’s mess and return the sock clean. Seeing him recoil, Mr Whitman announced that he had failed “a test of character, man.”

Poetry and smoke

At 12 he had spent a year in China, where his father, Walter, taught physics at Nanking University. After a Salem and Boston education he began, from 1935, to travel, often on foot, through Mexico and Central America and, after finding work on a sugar freighter, in Hawaii. Military service took him to Europe in 1941. After the war he opened a “book lounge” in Taunton, Massachusetts, and then settled in Paris in 1948. Rather than travel any more, he brought the world to himself.

Famous guests included James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury, Lawrence Durrell, Langston Hughes, Jacques Prévert and Richard Wright. “I’m ready for some fun!” he would say, before plunking down in a squeaky chair behind the cashbox to make small-talk and wisecracks, and to offer shoppers tea, wine or invitations to the next poetry reading or communal dinner. His generosity was sometimes misunderstood. Once, after telling three young female backpackers that he had a bed for them, the reply was, “I bet you have, you dirty old bastard!”

In 2000 the daughter he fathered at 69, Sylvia Beach Whitman, returned to live in Paris. Her mother had whisked her to England when she was six, breaking her father’s heart. Now he seemed to grow younger and less crotchety. He officially retired in 2006, but continued to live upstairs and roam the shop his daughter owned and ran. Shakespeare and Company now has a real cash register, a phone, a website, wireless internet, proper heating and fewer bugs. The beds are still free.

On a September evening ten years ago Mr Whitman lit a candle again, held it to his head, burned away clumps of gray hairs and patted out the flames, as he had done for decades, to the delight and feigned horror of two teenage girls. In the smoky writers room, he then recited a love poem penned in his youth. It ended thus:

"Each dream, each midnight and each dawn
Are garments, thoughts of her put on
Each beam of light from the empyrean blue
With her enfolds the good, the beautiful, the true"

Perhaps no man has ever given as much to travelling strangers, lest, as an inscription on a shop wall reads, “they be angels in disguise”.

Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2011
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Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

USA: Appealing to Nostalgia for the Old Country

NEW YORK, NY / The New York Times / NY Region / December 18, 2011

At Varrelmann's Bake Shop in Rutherford, N.J., Michael Fencik bakes German stollen. 

He and a partner have owned the bakery since 1991 . Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

By Tammy La Gorce


RUTHERFORD, New Jersey

A SIGN outside Varrelmann’s Bake Shop on Park Avenue in Rutherford reads: “Try our German apple cake.”

At this time of year, though, chances are that customers visiting the 109-year-old shop are looking for something else in addition to, or even instead of, that cake. Like a handful of other New Jersey bakeries with deep European roots, it caters to the nostalgic — in Varrelmann’s case, German transplants, and their children and grandchildren, whose Christmas sweet teeth can be sated only by authentic German stollen. That specialty is a dense, buttery sweet bread full of fruit and sprinkled with vanilla sugar ($16.95 for a one-pound loaf; $32 for a two-pound).

“We have people move away from the area, and they’ll come back this time of year and say, ‘Oh, thank God you’re still here,’ ” said Michael Fencik, 57, the co-owner with Katherine Young, 53. He is of Slovak descent, she of Austrian. The partners, who both live in Lyndhurst, bought the bakery in 1991 and obtained the recipe from Ms. Young’s former employers at a German bakery in Union City, which has since closed.

For practical reasons, Mr. Fencik is in charge of perfecting the several hundred stollen the shop sells during the holidays. “You have to be able to pull 50 pounds of dough out of the mixer,” he said. Experience is also crucial: “The sponge has to be just right — you can’t overmix it. And while it’s baking, it has to come out of the oven three times to be washed with butter.”

Varrelmann’s sells other Old World specialties, like German spritz cookies ($13.95 a pound) and strudels (several flavors; $11.50 for an eight-inch), but stollen is the runaway holiday favorite. Which is unfortunate for Mr. Fencik. “It’s a difficult item to produce,” he said. “Nobody wants to work that hard anymore. But people love it.”

Ania Bednarczyk at Banas Bakery in Wallington. Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times 

The story, with a different accent, is similar at DiPaolo Bros. Bakery in Newark, where fanciful gingerbread houses top a long strip of bakery cases.

“Business is grueling at Christmas. You’re working 16-hour days. But we look forward to it,” said the owner, Frank DiPaolo of East Hanover. Mr. DiPaolo’s grandmother opened the shop in 1961, and his father, Francesco DiPaolo, who died last year, took it over in 1972 after immigrating from Italy.

“It’s been a tradition to make everything they had in Italy for Christmas — struffoli, panettone, Yule logs filled with Italian cannoli filling,” Mr. DiPaolo said.

DiPaolo’s is open even on Christmas Day, Mr. DiPaolo, 39, said. The weeks leading up to it can be a study in customers’ degrees of separation from the old country.

“People come in asking for the honey balls,” Mr. DiPaolo said. “That’s the new generation. The older people know it’s struffoli” — a plate of small, stuck-together balls of dough that have been fried (or baked) and coated in honey and nonpareils ($10 for a small plate; $15 for a large). The shop sells roughly 1,000 during an average December, Mr. DiPaolo said.

DiPaolo’s best-selling holiday item, though, is the Italian cookie tray. “We’ll go through a couple thousand of those,” he said. (They are priced from $9 to $40 for one to five pounds of butter cookies; higher-priced anise cookies, biscotti, pizelle, pignoli and other varieties average $13 a pound.)

Not included in the typical DiPaolo’s tray, because they are large and relatively exotic, are mostaccioli cookies — diamond-shaped, cakelike almond spice cookies dipped in rich chocolate — and rococo rings, donut-shaped almond spice cookies (both $8 a pound). “Those are real authentic for the holidays. It’s kind of an old-school thing,” Mr. DiPaolo said.

Equally devoted to old-world holiday specialties, but Swiss ones, is John Cioffi, owner of the Swiss Pastry Shoppe in Scotch Plains. Mr. Cioffi, 74, of Cresskill, is originally from northern Italy but apprenticed under a Swiss chef before taking ownership of the bakery in 1987; the shop, which is 57 years old, is certified kosher.

Mr. Cioffi bakes two holiday stollen: the Dresden, or German, version has almonds and sometimes marzipan, and the Swiss uses walnuts ($14 for one pound; $23 for two).

“I sell probably 800 stollen every year, mostly for older people looking to carry on their traditions,” he said.

Click to continue the NYT festive delights

© 2011 The New York Times Company
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Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

KENYA: Wangari Muta Maathai Has Died at 71 - The Trees Will Mourn

LAKE OSWEGO, Oregon / The Elder Storytelling Place / TimeGoesBy.net / November 29, 2011

Wangari Maathai in 2005 in South Africa's Newlands Forest. Nic Bothma/European Pressphoto

Courtesy: The New York Times

Wangari Muta Maathai Has Died at 71 and the Trees Will Mourn

By Jacqueline Herships of The Little Old Lady Stays Put

For various reasons which I am finally beginning to understand, I’ve been more of a hider than a doer in life. But during the last 10 years I’ve been coming out of my shell - poking around to see what’s going on - and I have become a sort of explorer. Amazing people are everywhere and it is becoming my great joy to meet them and to write about them.

And so, several years ago when I learned about environmental leader, Wangari Maathai, from an environmentalist friend, I went to hear her speak at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.

I never actually met her, but seeing her and hearing her discuss her life and ideas was more than enough to make a huge impression on me.

Wangari was born in 1940, in Nyeri, Kenya, one month less than a year before I was born here in the USA.

Her home was near a stream and a wood lot. As a girl, she would go to the stream to get water for her mother for cooking and drinking. The wood lot provided fuel for cooking and heat.

I grew up in the U.S. in what was referred to as the comfortable middle class. We lived in a solidly built house with running water and piped in gas, big enough to shelter a large extended African family but not regarded as particularly large in my town.

During this period, tremendous changes were occurring worldwide. In the U.S., small farms and woods were being swallowed up by subdivisions, urban sprawl and agri-businesses. Wangari’s wood lot disappeared into a coffee plantation. The stream from which they drank was first poisoned and then went dry.

While women in Kenya were increasingly struggling to find water fit to drink and chopping down the last bits of wood that remained to cook their increasingly meager meals, foods from around the world appeared in ever-greater variety in our supermarkets. Chefs drizzled their creations with obscure ingredients which would have tantalized Nero in another age.

Wangari was not the first to notice the connection between the disappearance of trees and the disappearance of clean water but she was the first to introduce that insight to the disempowered Kenyan women whom she knew and the first to urge them to respond by planting new trees.

For her efforts, she was reviled, beaten, jailed but ultimately honored throughout the world as a Nobel Peace laureate because she focused the attention of the humblest to the most powerful on the connection between trees, food, water and war.

We humans have tended to view history as a description of war and conquest, or at least that was how I experienced it in school. Histories were tedious lists of battles won and lost – the humans involved seemed secondary at best – the significance of cultures was not yet appreciated at all. Only recently have we noticed the causes of war which transcend battle strategies and the lust for power, such as the need for natural resources, food and water.

What does this have to do with Little Old Ladies? Just this: Society cannot be expected to support its weak and aged if it cannot feed itself. In the current atmosphere of senior citizen as dim wit, many of us who are strong and capable have abdicated our roles as wise and experienced teachers and leaders. I think we are afraid that if we speak up, others will notice that we are old and we will be dismissed, maybe even thrown overboard.

But there is much to do and it is up to everyone to do it – even old people, even senior citizens, even us. Africa and the third world are not so far away anymore. The problems they deal with on a daily basis have come to us now, too, in the form of pollution, deforestation, encroaching desertification, growing climate change.

I began blogging at the age of 70 because I thought it would help me in my struggle to figure out what’s next for me as I get old. At the time, I was thinking about income, health care, Medicare, housing - things like that. But I am already half way to 71 and although those subjects are still on the list, so far I find myself more drawn to people and places – among them special people who have crossed my path and who are using (or have used) their lives in ways that are worthwhile and wonderful to me. People like Wangari. I believe I am looking for teachers.

Wangari Maathai was a charming speaker. She told us that every person needs about 22 trees to get the oxygen they require and reminded us that we had better know where our trees are. I could see everyone mentally counting up the trees in their yards. But personally, I had no idea where my trees were. Are they here or are they in the rain forest? It’s a worry.

Wangari died on the 25 September 2011, and I am sad that she is gone before I had a chance to be in her presence again.

© 2011 Ronni Bennett
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Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

CHINA: She's Searching For Man Who Aided Her Family 65 Years Ago

SHANGHAI, China / The Shanghai Daily / Culture & History / November 25, 2011

Woman's search for 'Mr Chu'

By Xu Chi

Vera Sasson, a 73-year-old Jewish woman who took shelter in Shanghai as a refugee during World War II, is appealing for help to find a local man who aided her family more than 65 years ago.

With her only clue an old, black and white picture of the man in his thirties or forties she calls Mr Chu, Sasson came to Shanghai in June to search for him or his relatives so that she could express her gratitude for his help in her family's hardest and darkest days.

She recalled that Chu helped her, then a 6-year-old schoolgirl, by ordering rickshaws to take her to school every morning and pick her up in the afternoon for at least two years. She said he treated her to desserts almost every day after school and his kindly gestures left her with an abiding and cherished memory.

Chen Jian, curator of Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, joined her in the search.

"We found out that she was looking for something in the city desperately. Then she showed us the picture of her kind neighbor and told us the story," Chen said.

Sasson was sent to Shanghai from Vienna with her family during the war when she was only eight months old.

She was among some 30,000 Jewish refugees who fled to the city from their homelands from 1933 to 1941.

About 18,000 Jewish refugees settled down in the "designated area for stateless refugees" in the city's Tilanqiao area in Hongkou District to live with local residents, said Chen.

Sasson told museum staff that she lived in Tilanqiao from 1939 to 1949 and grew up with local children and neighbors. She learned to speak fluent Shanghai dialect.

When she was old enough to go to school, Sasson said she was surprised to find a rickshaw parked outside her home every morning. The rickshaw driver would refuse to take other business from pedestrians while he took her to school and back home again.

She later discovered that it was Mr Chu, her Shanghai-native neighbor, who ordered the rickshaw service for her as he was afraid the little girl would not be able to find one during rush hour.

Sasson recalled that Chu's home was on the route from her home to school and the man would invite her in to share dessert after school.

As she was only six at the time and Shanghai has dramatically changed in the past 66 years, Sasson, now an elderly woman, found it was impossible to remember where the man used to live.

Sasson revisited Changyang Road in Tilanqiao, where she used to live, but found no trace of her neighbor.

The woman, who is now back in the United States, and museum staff are now asking for the public's help to find the man or any surviving relatives.

Anyone who thinks they can help can e-mail Shanghai Daily (editor@shanghaidaily.com) or call the museum on (021) 6512 6669.

Copyright © 2001-2011 Shanghai Daily Publishing House__________________________________________________________
Credit: Reports and photographs are property of owners of intellectual rights. 
Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.

USA: Start saving because Social Security won't be enough, advices 85-year old

MUSKEGON, Michigan / The Muskegon Chronicle / Opinion / November 25, 2011

By Lynn Moore | The Muskegon Chronicle

Betty Mae Gutoski figured she might live to be 70. But 85?  Never.

When she was growing up in the 1930s, people were considered to be getting “pretty old” when they hit 50, she said.

Betty Mae Gutoski, 85, of Egelston Township, was born on Aug. 19, 1926. She worked at various jobs during her life and raised two sons. She is now an active volunteer. "I tell people, if I'm not moving, I'm dead." Chronicle photo by Kendra Stanley-Mills

“You thought if they got to 60, that was the end of them.” So Gutoski, a self-described “spry” octogenarian, is a little surprised she's doing so well.

And grateful.

She's thankful she has relatively good health, and that she had the foresight to make some investments to supplement her fixed income.

“I figured by 85, I wouldn't be here, or else I would be so crippled up and ill that life wouldn't be any fun,” Gutoski said. “I did not visualize myself being 85, so I'm pretty happy for the way I am.”

The good lord willing, Gutoski will become among what the Census Bureau calls “the oldest old”: those who are 90 or older. Their numbers are now pegged at nearly 2 million, and expected to push 9 million in another 40 years, according to first-ever census data highlighting the oldest Americans.

THE OLDEST OLD

U.S. Census Bureau estimates regarding those age 90 and older:

• 14.5 percent live in poverty. Annual median income is $14,760.

• 37.3 percent live alone.

• 25.6 percent live in nursing homes or assisted living arrangements.

• 88.1 percent are white, 7.6 percent are black and 4 percent are Hispanic.

• 61.3 percent have at least a high school diploma.

• 84.7 percent have physical limitations.

Download a copy of the Census Bureau report:  Census report.pdf

Michigan has the eighth highest population of those 90 or older, estimated to be 58,387 people.

Gutoski is well aware of the societal implications their burgeoning numbers pose.

“It's costing more and more to keep us up,” she said.

Witty and talkative, Gutoski lives alone in the Egelston Township home she and her husband, Raymond, paid cash for when they returned to the Muskegon area in 1994 after 34 years in Alaska.

They had made good money — he working as a surveyor for the Alaska Highway Department and she as accounting clerk for the state — and were careful to tuck some away for retirement.

When Raymond died 13 years ago, Gutoski invested the insurance money — investments she lives off of today.

“If I was living on just my Social Security, which I will tell you is $1,053 … it would be a struggle,” she said.

Gutoski knows plenty of other senior citizens who are struggling to live on government assistance. She knows those who, unlike her, suffer because they can't afford health insurance and prescription coverage to supplement Medicare.

“You do meet a lot of people who are letting health issues go because they don't have the money,” she said. “They're the ones who suffer.”

Gutoski is pictured at age 10, far right, in a group photo with her 4-H group at Gustafson School in 1937. After graduating from eighth grade in 1940, she moved in with a dentist and his family in North Muskegon so she could work as a maid and attend North Muskegon High School. She left school in 1942 to work as a teletype operator. Courtesy photo

She survived a bout with colon cancer 28 years ago, and attributes her longevity to good genes — her grandfather lived to 98 — and refraining from smoking and drinking.

Today, her healthy lifestyle is paying off. She is active at the Oakridge senior center and spends her free time volunteering, often using her passion for sewing to make clothes and quilts for the less fortunate. She also works the polls for Egelston Township elections.

“I'm everywhere, girl,” she said. “At the senior center, they call me the Energizer bunny.”

Her thoughts come quick and clear on a variety of topics, including the need for socialized medicine, how much she enjoyed living without TV and radio in Valdez, Alaska, and wanting to educate young people about proper planning for their retirement years.

She also donates what she can, sometimes just $10, to her favorite causes — veterans and the Muskegon Rescue Mission — that she knows can really use the money.

Gutoski said she has little use for people who complain or who don't stay up to date with the news. She loves to research — using the Web to look up a word she doesn't know or a new recipe — and regularly contributes her opinion to Knowledge Networks' online marketing research.

She tries to stay current, but admits to struggling with a new laptop computer. She signed up for a senior citizens computer class, but that's not until January.

Hopefully, her laptop will still be around.

“Sometimes I think if I lived close to the lake, it would be going into the lake,” she said. “This morning I was thinking about putting it in the driveway and driving over it.”

Lynn Moore  E-Mail: lmoore@muskegonchronicle.com

© 2010 Michigan Live LLC.

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Credit: Reports and photographs are property of owners of intellectual rights.
Seniors World Chronicle, a not-for-profit, serves to chronicle and widen their reach.