Lifestyle & Home
We’re Here. We’re Queer. We’re Retiring.
As America’s gay population ages, LGBT seniors are opting to retire among their own.
The last place lesbians and gays want to go when they retire is back into the closet. Just like the larger population, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) seniors want to settle into comfortable, low-maintenance homes in welcoming and affordable communities. “There are estimated to be up to 6 million LGBT baby boomers, and 1 [million] to 3 million over the age of 65,” says Jan Cullinane, coauthor with Cathy Fitzgerald of The New Retirement: The Ultimate Guide to the Rest of Your Life.
To meet the demands of America’s aging gay population, developers are targeting the LGBT market with everything from Read more...
Talking About Dying
By Sara Davidson
“What should you do if your parent is drawing close to dying but doesn’t want to talk about it?” I asked.
I was sitting in Boulder, Colo., with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, 85. Reb Zalman, as he’s called, founded the Jewish Renewal movement and wrote “From Age-ing to Sage-ing,” a classic book on how to age consciously and well.
I’d recently moved my 94-year-old mother to a care home for people with Alzheimer’s. She’d made funeral arrangements years before, but she never spoke about the elephant in the room Read more...
How the iPad Can Be a Senior SaverBy Philip Moeller
I wasn't the first kid on my block to have an iPad. I was the oldest kid. And it's not been easy. I've had to struggle with admiring onlookers who profess jealousy that I have such a neat toy. And at times, it has been hard to find more than five or six hours of enjoyable daily activities to do on my iPad. But I've persevered and while I've just scratched the surface, it is clear that the iPad can be an invaluable tool for older users. As the first mass-market tablet computer, it will be followed in short order by competing tablets from many providers, mostly in the PC (as opposed to Apple) world. This will lower prices and increase features.
[See 5 Ways to Join the Personal Technology Party.]
I do not own Apple stock and am not recommending the company. I am recommending its approach to providing easy access to online information. And I'm recommending that older consumers take a serious look at this tool. You may think the computer age Read more…
Find Your Inner Genius
Late-blooming artists reveal how they tapped their creative talents—and how you can, too.
By Jamie Katz, from: AARP The Magazine
Great musicians tend to start out young. But 65-year-old Memphis bluesman Mack Orr—Daddy Mack, to his many friends and fans—did not begin playing guitar until he was 45.
"I was listening to the radio in my auto-repair shop," Orr says. "They were playing an Albert King song—'Walkin' the Back Streets and Cryin'—and it sounded real good." The down-home groove spurred Daddy Mack to fulfill a long-deferred dream: "I went down to the pawnshop, got me a guitar and amp," he says. "And I carried that guitar everywhere I went. If I went to work, I carried it with me. If I went fishing, I carried it. I stayed on it day and night."
It seemed like a mighty challenge for a middle-aged man. But Read More...