News, media and writing
A home gym: worth considering, to help maintain a healthy body and mind during periods of self-isolation
Who knew that we’d be moving into a third year with waves of super-caution being advocated during ever-evolving forms of the virus? And with increasing numbers of booster shots whose efficacy could be waning as they increased in number? What all of that adds up to is the possibility of recurring times when we are more or less confined to quarters, with reports over the past two years on the negative impact that this has been having on the physical and mental health of some older people. What can help to counter that is keeping up – or starting – an exercise regimen that continues to benefit our wellbeing as effectively as possible within our own homes.
Four years and counting for the EveryAGE Counts Campaign and me
How time flies when you’re having fun as you grow older. That can be said for both the EveryAGE Counts Campaign and me, as well as for our relationship over the past four years. Excitingly, I first heard about the Campaign before it was born, after its conception in the Benevolent Society, which publicly announced its imminent arrival on the basis of a bank of solid research that demonstrated the need for it as well as guiding the development of its key features.
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It’s time for older people to take their rightful place in the media
With so many major problems confronting us these days, should I be getting stirred up by the invisibility of older women in catalogues of clothes for which older women are a substantial part of their market? Ordinarily, probably not. But my reminder of their absence (through finally succumbing to the temptations of online shopping in this latest lockdown) came, coincidentally, with the publication of a much-needed set of guidelines for the media, “for portraying people who are older”.
I remember last century’s great reforms for cosmetic surgery (the ones never implemented)
In the late 1990s, the business end of Australian medical practice was – finally – given the same rights as other businesses, to advertise. And almost instantly, some cosmetic surgery practitioners were using all the manipulative and misleading tricks of their cousins in the beauty industry – from photoshopped models to artificially enhanced before-and-after photographs – to “show” what cosmetic surgery could “do” for those who were encouraged to be unhappy with how they looked.
We can all be pro-ageing and anti-ageist media monitors
I keep a watchful eye out for the ways in which old age and issues about ageing are portrayed in the variety of media that I have access to. When I see a portrayal that is praiseworthily positive or realistic, I send a letter to congratulate them. This is something that the legendary Val French and OPSO (Older People Speak Out) did successfully for many years on a national scale through their Media Awards. And it is also something that we can do as individuals.
Positive Ageing Month Launch - In conversation with Anne Ring
Join Mayor Cr Libby Stapleton and CEO Robyn Seymour to launch Positive Ageing Month, a series of events held throughout October.
Featuring Mayor Cr Libby Stapleton, CEO Robyn Seymour and keynote speaker Anne Ring, a 79-year-old health sociologist who will focus on the need to destigmatize the word “old” and the recent WHO finding that it’s those who hold positive views about their own ageing who live longer.
The evergreen and deciduous varieties of friendship
How many of us take our friends for granted? In a good way, I mean. That they are there for us and with us in so many ways, with many of those heightened in these pandemic times, when we are asking about each other’s welfare, entertaining each other with items that make us laugh, or think, or both, staying connected through phone calls, Facetime or Zoom, and then – eventually – being able, if we live close enough, to get together in real rather than reel time.
Appreciating instead of depreciating the old in older people
In a beautiful article in which a daughter has written lovingly about her parents, what is wrong with these touching and family-minded sentences (from the 23 July Big Issue)?
Dad’s nudging 80 and shouldn’t be pushing around a lawnmower..… Not that he’ll accept help. It’s one step closer to admitting he’s getting old.
Let me count the ways. Read More →
Owning your age and rejecting the idea that 'younger is better'
Radio interview on ABC WA Afternoons with Christine Layton, 9 Aug 2021
"I don't take for granted the fact that I'm lucky enough to be old... and I'm certainly not going to whitewash that by saying 'hey, I feel really young!'"
I’m old and happy about it, so don’t dare call me young for my age
Reading about a remarkable woman who had recently died, I came across a description of her in old age as “a most youthful elderly person”. I am putting my obituary writers on notice: please do not use any such term to describe me.
Lockdown for those old folk at home
So, here we are, back in what is looking like an indefinite lockdown: an old retired couple basically confined to our apartment barring a daily walk, and taking every precaution, from masking up to keeping safe distance as we wait for our next AstraZeneca jab.
Putting perspective into our experience of the pandemic
As we face at least another four weeks of lockdown the phrase “worse things happen at sea” springs to mind. And it is particularly relevant now, I think, to Australians in the intermittent grip of waves of variants of COVID-19 and accompanying lockdowns.
Back to Square One for older people in lockdown
Last year – remember last year? – when we were all in lockdown, I wrote a handbook for older people, on how to manage the range of challenges that presented in our lives.
By the time I’d finished writing it, so had lockdown, and it had – I thought – become irrelevant.
Buried treasure of storied lives
I love reading obituaries. But please don’t think that that means that I’m a morbid ghoul. Rather, it’s because I’m fascinated by people’s stories, in any form.
Reversing the curve (of the back): A tale of two physiotherapists
Just over two months ago, I wrote in Part One about my decision to get professional help to reverse the curve in my back. At that time I had a scheduled appointment, to follow three weeks of doing the recommended exercises, for my second visit to a local posture physiotherapist…
Vale Val French: inspiring activist, founder of Older People Speak Out, and cherished friend
On March 12 of this year, just before the world as we knew it was swept away by COVID-19, the redoubtable Val French AM, who had worked tirelessly on behalf of older people, and on many other social issues throughout her life, died peacefully, surrounded by her family, at the age of 92.
Isn’t it time we wore our ageing bodies with pride?
Published on Grey Matters, 22 March 2019
Just as younger people are hit with a barrage of negativity in the media about bodies that don’t fit the thin paradigm, we older people are also constantly bombarded with an onslaught of advertising urging us to do whatever we can to look younger than we actually are, regardless of our age.
Meet Anne Ring, crusader for ageing!
Published for Every Age Counts, 3 December 2018
Out of the mouths of 30-somethings have come views such as that of 32-year-old Benjamin Law, as expressed in a Sydney Morning Herald article: “Sure, we’re all gonna die. But getting ‘old’? That’s a privilege, baby.”
Old Bird’s Eye View of the World – On the retirement blues. Or, gold, gold, gold?
Published in OPSO’s Life Times, 16 October 2015
One of the great popular divides between people is to establish whether they see the glass as half full or half empty: are they optimists or pessimists?
Old Bird’s Eye View of the World – Mortality and the chance of a happy ending
“To be or not to be” is perhaps the most famous soliloquy about death, and – while its ruminations on whatever might lie beyond it and the linked pros and cons of suicide are from a young person’s perspective – it has some relevance to some of the big social questions facing older people in our times.