The 3rd National Positive Aging Conference will be held December 7th to 9th at Eckerd College in St. Petersberg, Florida. The event focuses on life transitions, creativity, wellness and community. Keynote speaker Bill Thomas is founder of the Eden Alternative. Other speakers include Richard Leider, Meg Newhouse, Susan Perlstein and Peter Whitehouse. A pre-conference event sponsored by the Life Planning Network, including many sessions on life coaching, will run December 6th and 7th.
All posts by Jim Selman
Aging through a Physician’s Lens
For the past 20 years, Dr. Jeffrey Levine has photographed elders in his medical practice and across the U.S. His photos have been published in many medical journals and textbooks. This Thursday, he will be giving a lecture at the opening of his photography exhibition, Aging Through a Physician’s Lens, in New York at the NY Academy of Medicine (1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street). The exhibit will be open for viewing from 5 to 7 pm and his one-hour lecture begins at 7.
The exhibit, which
Changing the World
By Jim Selman | Bio
In a recent New York Times op-ed column, Bob Herbert challenged all of us to get down out of the bleachers and take on at least one of today’s intractable problems. He pointed to the courage of many Civil Rights activists in the ’60s and ’70s, including Andrew Goodman who was murdered by the KKK and of course Rosa Parks. We remember these individuals and many like them because, like revolutionaries everywhere, they put their lives on the line for something worth dying for. They stood ‘in front of the tanks’ in Tiananmen Square; they faced British soldiers in India; they campaigned for unions when children were dying in sweatshops in America; they managed ‘underground railroads’ during the US Civil War, World War II and the ‘dirty wars’ of South America in the 1970s and 1980s; they are fighting today for the environment against oligarchs and big corporations; and they are the last line of defense against wholesale corruption and greed in many parts of the world. Collectively, we call them ‘activists’ because they operate within the rule of law, but without relinquishing their commitment to change.“Activism” is the penultimate resort to bringing about change when people lack the power to make policy—a form of non-violent war to change a system from within the system. One activist strategy might be some form of insurgency where the only goal is to destroy the status quo without any real vision for change and very little possibility for success. Another is to physically stand between the oppressors and the oppressed. The real power of activism, however, lies not in
Elders and the Environment – Part 2
By Shae Hadden
According to Dr. David Suzuki, “it is not progress to use up the rightful legacy of our children and grandchildren.” He opened the first Elders and the Environment Forum on Monday in Vancouver, Canada with a keynote address that focused on the role of elders in the environmental movement and how we can make a difference:
- Tell it like it is, find our voice and speak out
- Tell us all what is possible and keep us fixed on creating the future
- Remind younger generations that true wealth
Wolf’s Theorem: Show Up, Work Hard, Let Go
By Stuart J. Whitley | Bio
I’ve been writing about the ethic of aging, which is an internal imperative obligating the transmission of values, ethics and wisdom from one generation to another. Usually, this is a phenomenon that occurs unconsciously, in a way nearly invisible against the tapestry of quotidian life. But now and then, it’s rendered explicit, often in surprisingly casual ways.An old friend Wolf and I were in a hunting camp one brilliant fall day this September, each of us with our new son-in-law. It was a spot of extraordinary beauty, near the confluence of the Stewart and Yukon Rivers. It was about as close to nowhere as one can get without a GPS fix. It had been a glorious full day, and sitting on the high riverbank at sunset, scotch in hand, it was hard not to think that when God decided to put His hand to world-building and started to
A Futuristic Look at Food
New perspectives on what might be possible in terms of local, homegrown food production. This 10-minute video takes a provocative, unconventional look at the implications of genetic modification, land use, and organic produce to come up with designs for diagnostic kitchens, food creation, and home farming.
Elders and the Environment
By Shae Hadden
I attended the David Suzuki Foundation’s first Elders for the Environment Forum today in Vancouver, Canada. The event drew 200+ people, including Elder representatives from several First Nations and concerned ‘older’ citizens from Canada and the U.S. Following are some of the highlights from an inspiring talk given by Miles Richardson, former Grand Chief of the Haida Nation and a member of the board of directors of the David Suzuki Foundation.
- "We are all in the same canoe, and we have to begin paddling together in the same direction."
- "An Elder is very importantly and universally recognized as a knowledge-keeper. But we look to them for more than that. We depend on them for wisdom, the distillation of that knowledge gained from living and experieneces, and we depend on them to pass that on from generation to generation. We look to them for guidance when we face the huge challenges that life puts in front of us. We look to them for validation when we are doing what we believe is right when others can’t understand or cannot see what we see."
- "Being an Elder is not about age. You don’t become an Elder because you’ve grown old. An Elder is someone whose integrity I trust and whose wisdom I respect. That must be earned and real."
- "Talk is good. Actions are stronger."
- Overheard at the 4th World Wilderness Congress: "Economic growth is an interpretation. The environment is a matter of survival."
- Wisdom from an Elder given to Miles when he was complaining about the loss of his native culture: "Before you take another step forward, take a step back and listen."
Check back later this
The Future Habit
By Jim Selman | Bio
It is almost impossible to turn on the television or read a newspaper or a magazine without encountering one pundit, expert or “man on the street” either talking about the future or trying to blame someone for something. Our media commentary is rarely about what is happening now: mostly it’s about what happened in the past or what someone thinks is going to happen in the future. Combine the establishment media with all of the blogging and chatting going on, and it is incredible
Giving Up ‘Giving Up’
By Jim Selman | Bio
My partner and I were recently enjoying one of those lazy weekend mornings just chatting about life in general when we got onto the subject of getting older and how we feel about it all. I made the point that my passion and The Eldering Institute® is about transforming our culture’s view of aging and teaching people that we can change how we relate to the future—and, as a consequence, we can have more choices, more possibility and more ‘aliveness’
Ageism 2009
By Jim Selman | Bio
There is nothing new about ageism, other than the fact that there are increasing numbers of people growing older (which means increasing numbers of examples of age discrimination against older people). The latest statistics from AARP show formal anti-discrimination complaints are up roughly 30% in the workplace. I had some fun with this in my recent blog, proposing we create the National Organization of Pissed-Off Elders (N.O.P.E.). However, it isn’t a laughing matter when we see a potentially tragic problem growing in our society that can be prevented.I say tragic because ageism, whether institutionalized, culturally embedded or motivated by fear or greed, is a wedge being driven between parents and children and between grandparents and grandchildren. If we don’t address ageism, we will all continue this ‘circumstantial drift’ toward making age a political constituency that has older people competing with younger people over scarce resources (or whatever the coin of the realm might be on a given topic). At a time when