Today is Memorial Day in the USA. This is usually a long weekend filled with family and fun. I am at Lake Kiowa in Texas, a retirement community of about thousand homes. My Dad and sister live here. There is a lot of golf, fishing and endless clubs. This is a prototypical retirement community—most people are active. There are flags in front of most of the houses, there is apparently a cottage industry that will put up and take down your flag on special occasions like this weekend, election days
Category Archives: Retirement
Working Longer
According to Professor Yarrow, a history professor at American University, it is unpatriotic to retire while you are still in good health.
"Retiring when you’re still in good health isn’t just wrong, it’s profoundly selfish and unpatriotic…Dropping out of the workforce while still in one’s prime means ending one’s contributions to America’s strength, mortgaging our children’s and grandchildren’s future, and leeching trillions of taxpayer
Elder Co-Housing
Co-housing initiatives began in the 1970s in Denmark. Elder co-housing projects are the latest take on this popular type of housing development. With an emphasis on cooperative living arrangements, these projects allow like-minded people to live in an intentional community of their own creation. The idea is that individuals have their own living areas, but share common facilities like dining rooms and kitchens. Developers often allow residents to help plan and design the common areas. The
When to Retire
I am getting to a point in my life where I am thinking a lot about what I am doing, why am I doing it, and how am I going about doing what I do. For example, if I look at my schedule for the next month, I am in France, Brazil, Mexico, Eastern and Western Canada, the United States and Argentina. I love the work I am doing, and this kind of travel regimen didn’t used to bother me too much. I have my travel routines down pretty well and rarely have problems—although it still takes about 3 extra
Experiencing New Things
I am always a little amazed and delighted when I discover something that I didn’t even know existed. The older I become, the more delighted I seem to be. For example, this week I’ve been having a vacation at home. Basically that means playing the tourist in the city where I live, going to new restaurants and generally wandering around. Someone recommended a new movie called “Across the Universe”—a musical about the 1960s written round the music of the Beatles. I never heard of the director,
Explainers Anonymous™ – II
By Charles E. Smith |Bio
=&0=& is for people who can’t help explaining they are dedicated victims of circumstance.Explaining,
like taking a drink, need not be not a problem. Telling a story to
entertain or teach is wonderful. Sometimes explanations are really
useful (such as in telling the doctor why your hand is bleeding) or
when they warn you of something (such as in looking both ways before
crossing the street because you might get killed). Sometimes they are
useful as long as everyone understands it’s an explanation—and only one
out of a hundred thousand possibilities.
It’s
Elder Employees
I am perplexed by the fact that companies have been laying off older workers for years as part of various downsizing projects. I understand the drive to cut costs. Under normal demographic conditions, laying off older workers would even make some sense from a strictly financial point of view, since they generally command higher salaries than younger workers. The fact is, however, that those same companies are moaning about shortages of qualified people and the difficulties they’re having in
Explainers Anonymous™
By Charles E. Smith
Bio
Explainers Anonymous™
is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to help people addicted
to explaining everything. My name is Charlie. I started it.
It began in 1997 a few months after I retired. I woke one morning and said to myself:
"I
now have no work, no place to go, no future source of earned income,
no people telling other people about me. The phone doesn’t ring and too
many of my e-mails are ads. I diet until 6 o’clock and then
Coming Home
Idleness
Darlene and I have spent a couple of lovely days in Seville. I am learning about Spanish history—which is pretty bloody over all, but also has produced some incredible art and architecture. It is always amazing to me how we require a few days ‘off’ before we begin to unwind, relax and really ‘be’ on vacation. Having the Internet is a bit like cheating, but I am beginning to let go of other commitments for a bit and just take each day in stride.
We were having a conversation this afternoon