Serendipity or luck?

As you might expect - because of my self-imposed walkabout – my visitor stats have steadily declined and plateaued out. This morning, I saw the weekly Sitemeter report that's been sitting in my inbox since Sunday and, for no particular reason, clicked on through to the live (current) stats. I was shocked. I had more than double the number of visitors in one day than I'd had for an entire week!

I needed to get to the bottom of this aberration, so looked at the visitor details. Well, to my surprise, most of the visits were coming from Times Goes By, Ronni Bennet's site. So, I clicked onto TGB and found that Ronni has started something called "Featured Elderblogs" - a special sidebar area with links to five blogs from her blogroll, each group of five posted and featured for one week.

I have no idea how Ronni is choosing the weekly group of blogs, but guess what? My blog is in the first group of five for the week of June 29, 2009.

I don't know if it's serendipity or pure blind luck, but there it is. It comes at a time that I've been questioning my priorities about blogging versus other things in my life -- hence, the walkabout.

Ever since I started blogging, Time Goes By and Ronni have been an inspiration to me. I'm sure she doesn't remember, but she helped me in my early days with blogrolls and other small, but significant things, just as I'm sure she's helped countless others in the same, kind way. Though likely unintentional, by including my blog in her featured links this week, she's put a boot to my derriere and made me make some choices.

Sometimes I waffle between being the type of person who thinks everything in life is connected and happens for a reason to one who is pragmatic and thinks that things happen – period. Today, I'm leaning toward the former.

I guess it also means I've finished my walkabout.

Just how old are you?

I get asked this question quite a lot. It often arises out of online conversations where the other party can't see what I look like. Not right away, of course, because that would be rude -- but usually after we've gotten to know each other in that uniquely cyberspace online disjointed read-discuss-comment sort of way. If I'm in a playful mood, I might answer, "Old enough to be your mother (or grandmother)". Most often, I'll just state my age (which is 58 years at this writing).

I've never understood the need to be coy about my age. I didn't mind turning thirty, forty or fifty; I know I won't mind turning sixty. I've harped on this before, but we are the age we are - no amount of lying or denial will change it.

Pretending we're not aging or old, only plays into the ageism already rampant in our youth-obsessed culture.

On the one hand, I am quite perplexed, if not downright annoyed, by people who won't divulge their age, but on the other hand I can understand why they won't.

It comes down to our youth-centric culture and the barrage of images telling us that everyone beautiful and worthwhile is, or looks, under thirty and that the other alternative is to be old and seen as elderly, senile, stupid and dependent. There seems to be this huge chasm between the young and vital and the old and doddering.

Youth-obsessed media wants us to believe the population looks like this:

The Young
(hip, beautiful, trendy and vital)

-----> The Invisible <-----
(most people)

The Elderly
(dependent, needy and useless)

We need to remind ourselves and others that this is not reality. We need to be happy at whatever age we're at - including not being afraid to state what that age is - and stop being invisible.


Here's something from a favourite blogger (elder or otherwise):
Ronni Bennett who was interviewed on Brian Lehrer Live - April 2, 2008.

Choice between writing and a million dollar site

I have an unexpected "work at home day" today, so I've been trying to make the most of it by taking forays into the blogosphere in between my real (making money for vacations) work.

Along the way, I came across some interesting sites.

The first one came via the Sunday Scribblings prompt this week and smtwngrl's post on her blog,

- Writing: My Life
- that led me to a post on her sidebar about Daylight Savings Time
- that came from a writing prompt on

*First 50 Words*
Somehow, today's prompt of "Arrogance" was irresistible and I had to jump right in with my own response.

Ever in need of creative inspiration, I have duly bookmarked the site.

The second site that I've bookmarked (but I'm not sure will be a keeper) came via a post on The Boomer Chronicles about a new site called wowOwow.

WowOwow launched this past weekend on International Women's Day. According to a New York Times article, it's supposed to be a site by and for women "of a certain age" (meaning over forty). The five founding members (Liz Smith, Lesley Stahl, Mary Wells, Joni Evans, Peggy Noonan) have recruited other high-profile media and showbiz names, including Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg, Marlo Thomas and Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners) to be regular contributors.

According to Ms Evans, in her welcome article,

WowOwow is a party — disguised as a website — where we meet for coffee (in our robes) and for cocktails (without any makeup) and even in the middle of the night (someone’s always up!). Here, we can talk to our readers, invite the most interesting guests, share experiences, tell tales out of school, exchange gossip and news — and make some of our own.

You can read the entire piece here.

From looking around the site, I'm not exactly sure how it relates to me. Nothing in the first batch of articles said anything new, revealing or all that interesting to me as an older woman.

Maybe, as Ms Evans said, it is just "a party disguised as a website" -- not something I'd be terribly interested in reading on a regular basis.

If I want celebrity gossip, I can find that elsewhere. Likewise, fashion opinions by the rich and famous and/or coverage of American politics.

By the way, the NY Times article states the founders put one million dollars into the startup of the site. I hope they get beyond the party image. Better yet, leave it for frat boys and sorority houses.

For now, I've bookmarked wowOwow and will be checking in to see how it evolves. But for my money, I haven't found anything to beat Ronni Bennett's, Time Goes By as an intelligent voice for older women (and men).

My Blog - Top Ten + 1

Sorry to those on feeds for so many edits. :(

I've recently been going through my old blog posts and trying to update their tags and labels. It's been a rather onerous task.

When I started blogging in November 2005, I had no idea what or how tags and labels worked, so I didn't label anything. Big mistake. I ended up with a long list of post titles, some of which were less than enlightening (what the heck did I talk about in Odds 'n Sods on a Sunday?). Thus, in order to gain some semblance of order to my posts, I decided that it's worth the effort to label them properly. This has meant going back and actually re-reading what I've written over the last two years.

It's been a bit of an eye-opener. I barely remember some of the posts, yet others are as fresh in my memory as if I wrote them yesterday. I'm not done yet, but a few posts jumped out at me more than others. I've come to realize that the totality of all my posts really does capture who I am as a person.

Naturally, I like some posts better than others and some are near and dear to me for personal reasons. I've decided to list my top ten blog posts (at least for now). I think it also shows my evolution as a blogger. When I get a chance, I think I'll add them to my sidebar. They'll probably tell you much more about me than any "About" page.

So, in chronological order, the top ten about who I am:

• To blog or not blog - November 2005
  - My opening post.


• What's wrong with a bit of idealism? - November 2005
  - Wherein Ell ponders philosophical questions.


• One of These Days - February 2006
  - Just because . . .


• Sunday Breakfast - February 2006
  - A rant about cellphones, parents and family.


• Elderblogger - March 2006
  - Wherein Ell comes to terms with the word 'elders'.


• Father's Hands - April 2006
  - Prompted by an old photo.


• An homage to favourite bloggers - May 2006
  - My inspirations. Some have disappeared into the ether that is the blogosphere, but others have taken their place.


• Home Alone - March 2007
  - Random thoughts about blogging and bloggers.


• Of Trophy Wives and Silicone - July 2007
  - This is a reprint of something I wrote in 2001 (unrevised), but which I think still applies.


• Guest Blogging - August 2007
  - Here's the direct link to my guest blog at Time Goes By.


• Sunday Scribblings: A Rome Walk - November 2007
  - Because I love traveling, photos and writing.

I couldn't resist sneaking in an extra post. Guess which one. :-)

Odds 'n Sods on a Frosty Friday Morning

She's back!!
Wooohooo! I just had to say it. Ronni Bennett is back today at Time Goes By.

This morning, I clicked on TGB to read more comments about her departure. The last few mornings on TGB, there has been only a brief post about the latest story at the Elder Story Telling Place. Today, there was an actual TGB post. At first, I thought it might be a guest blogger. But no, the first few lines sounded like Ronni. I quickly scrolled down to the by-line and there it was, "posted by Ronni Bennett". She's written a lovely, heartfelt post about her feelings and decisions over the last few days.

I was always hopeful she'd be back in some form or other, but wasn't sure when or where. I'm so very glad she's back now. We can never have too many voices speaking out about injustices and the important human issues we face today. The comments on her blog this week, show just how far-reaching one voice can be.

Christmas Shopping
Well, I've put off thinking about it for as long as I can. The calendar tells me that I have just over two weeks to get ready for Christmas.

Since it's my day off and I have access to wheels today, I'm heading out for my first round of shopping. If all goes well, I'll get most of it done today. Experience has taught me that I'll either whiz through and accomplish a lot, or I'll come home tired and defeated. I may need to make the the liquor store my last stop of the day. Come to think of it, wine works as both celebration and remedy, doesn't it?

College Newsletter
My annual nursing class newsletter arrived by email yesterday and I'm glad I made the time to submit something this year (I talked about it in a previous post). I've only skimmed it, so far. I look forward to sitting down with a glass of wine and reading it at leisure. This year, twenty-seven have submitted updates. Not bad for a class of only thirty-odd.

Ronni: In appreciation . . .

It's been a couple of days now and I'm slowly coming to terms with Ronni Bennett's decision to shut down her blog, Time Goes By. It was a shock to me and many of her devoted readers. The last time I looked, there were over 100 comments to her "resignation" post.

And 'shock' is the right word. I couldn't believe it. Even as I read Ronni's entire post explaining her reasons, I couldn't quite wrap my brain around the idea that she wouldn't be posting at TGB anymore. I guess I had come to expect that she would always be there, expressing my precise thoughts and feelings about aging, health care and other important societal issues much more coherently than I ever could.

When I started blogging two years ago, her site and voice was one of the first that made me sit up and shout, "Yes!!" Finally, here was someone willing to write about a segment of the population that society wants to ignore.

She taught me a lot. I thought I was pretty unbiased and unprejudiced in my view of aging. Yet in reading TGB, I found I was as guilty as the next person in the use of lazy language to describe elders. Ronni showed how our use of language can and does perpetuate stereotypes of old people and I'm doing my best to break old habits. She's written about practically every aspect of aging, from health care to housing to finances; and railed against society's fixation and obsession with youth.

She wrote with conviction, clarity and passion with just the right touch of humour and the occasional caustic bite.

On a personal note - and she probably won't even remember this - she helped a novice blogger learn the hows and whys of blogrolls and atom feeds.

I began writing this post with the title "Say It Isn't So", somehow thinking that it was all a bad dream and Ronni didn't really shut down TGB. Now that I've had some time to think about it more rationally, I realize that she has more than enough reasons to retire her blog now, and that it's only selfishness on my part to expect her to continue. I really do understand why she feels like closing the doors.

So this post has become "In Appreciation . . ." for Ronni's four plus years of blogging, her dedication to causes and issues that need addressing, her mentorship of countless fledging bloggers, and her brilliant writing.

I'll miss Time Goes By, but I think we'll still hear from Ronni Bennett. She'll be fighting the good fight somewhere else, hopefully back in the blogosphere where we'll read her again.

Why This Youth Obsession?

Crabby Old lady (aka Ronni Bennett) recently posted an article on TGB where she takes Oprah Winfrey to task for the implicit promotion of youth-obsession and age-denial on her eponymous show.

Crabby says,

“That Oprah incessantly harps on youth and beauty is even more unforgivable in light of her enormous cultural clout. Imagine how elders’ lives could be changed, how age discrimination could be reduced or even eliminated, how elders would gain in respect of society if Oprah would get over her obsession with youth and accept aging as the normal and remarkable stage of life it is.”

I’m so glad Crabby wrote this because it’s bothered me for years that Oprah’s vision of women has so much to do with their outward appearance. It’s been niggling away at my brain ever since I saw one of Oprah’s "makeover" shows.

She arranged makeovers of a number of women, including older women (older meaning fifty-ish, so not very old) by colouring their hair (gotta get rid of those pesky grey strands) and dressing them “younger” and “thinner”. There was also some feel-good talk about wanting the women's inner beauty reflected in their outward appearance and that they deserved and owed it to themselves to look better.

Yeah, yeah, I get the whole thing about self-esteem. If you don't feel good about yourself, then you won't have confidence, and if you don't have confidence, then you can't fulfill your potential of all that you can be, . . . . yada, yada, yada. That's not the part I disliked.

It was the insidious and unrelenting message that looking younger equals looking better that really bugged me. The oohs and aahs after the makeovers were invariably about how much younger and/or thinner the women looked. Rather superficial of Oprah for someone who allegedly has loftier ideals.

I have no problem with helping people update wardrobes, improving makeup application and looking their best. Everyone wants to feel attractive. But does looking attractive always mean looking younger? Give me a break! What about a white-haired octogenarian with deep wrinkles and weathered skin? It shows a life fully lived and far more attractive – to me – than a fifty year old with paralyzed face muscles and skin so tight that it looks like a mask. Our definition of beauty has become so skewed and narrow that it would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.

We are the age we are. To borrow from the military, just be the best you can be whatever your age. My grandmother died at ninety-seven and I thought she looked fabulous – just not young.

People need to get over their continuous obsessing about looking and being younger. It drives perfectly sane women into doing insane things to their bodies. Women are injecting, scraping, peeling, lifting, sucking and enhancing at a younger and younger age. It’s not unusual for women in their twenties to start botox injections. If it continues at this rate, women will spend the last fifty years of their lives trying futilely to run backwards on the treadmill that is time.

I’m curious to see what the current crop of botoxing, nip-tuckers will look like in twenty years. If Joan Rivers is any indication, they’ll be caricatures of their twenty to thirty-something selves – but with oh, so smooth, skin. Is this to be the norm?

It’s like the scenario of a science-fiction movie. There is no such thing as growing old: You’re born. You start preservation and rejuvenation treatments. You die when the silicone and plastic won’t hold together anymore.

I’m an aging boomer who has no illusions about lasting forever or looking twenty or thirty again. Nor, for that matter, do I want to. I like the spirit behind the Diane Keaton ad where she says she wants to age “authentically”. Me too. No nip-tucks or botox for this gal.

As for Oprah’s part in all this youth-obsession, I tend to agree with one of the comments on Ronni’s blog. Oprah is as much a victim of our youth and beauty-obsessed culture as anyone else. No more, no less. But I echo Cranky Old Lady’s sentiment, it would be nice if she grew up and got over it.

Thoughts on Aging

I've been catching up on various blogs and, as usual, left Ronni Bennett's to the end because I know she'll have lots for me to think about. She didn't disappoint.

Her recent blogs titled When the Future is Shorter Than the Past and On Fear of Aging and Death made me stop and question my own feelings about aging. Please bear with me as I let these thoughts rumble around.

Ronni talks about observing a certain "disengagement" in older people as they approach death; and about her coming to terms with not being able to do everything she had thought was important in her younger years.

She says,

"But halfway through my seventh decade, I can already detect a less urgent desire to know these things. Not much yet, but noticeable particularly as that impossible to-do list for my elder years recedes in importance."

Hmmm. Disengagement. Ronni is one of the last people in the world that I'd consider disengaged. Yet if she notices it within herself, then it must be so. Perhaps it's a matter of degree and perspective. For who can really know what we feel except ourselves.

I've never been particularly afraid of aging or death. Or so I thought. The fact that my grandparents, aunts and uncles lived into their late eighties and nineties was always comforting. However, I've recently come to realize that this has been selective remembrance on my part.

In fact, only the paternal side of my family has been blessed with longevity. My mother's family has a history of all kinds of chronic ailments and early death (including my own mother at thirty-something, and my maternal grandmother at sixty-something). In a few years, I will have outlived them both. I suppose I can be forgiven this lapse of memory given that I've had little contact with my mother's family and don't think about them very often.

Nonetheless, there is no denying that I pushed this little tidbit of my family history from consciousness. Maybe I'm not as accepting of death and aging as I thought.

The title "When the Future is Shorter Than the Past" gave me a bit of a jolt. It occurred to me that perhaps I take after the maternal side of my family and not my father's side at all. Maybe the end – barring accidents and catastrophic world events -- is not in another twenty or thirty years, but only ten or fifteen?

Am I okay with that? Not really. I still have too many things I'd like to see and do; too many things to learn. That's why I'm trying to stay as fit and healthy as I can for as long as I can. I'm not ready for disengagement.

Maybe disengagement is a gradual process. I know I don't get bothered by the same things as in my youth. But I've always thought of it as re-prioritizing. Then again, maybe I'll feel differently in my seventies and eighties.

This all needs further cogitation.

. . .

(This has been quite a ramble.)

Guest blogging

When I first ventured into the blogosphere, almost two years ago, one of the first blogs that really captured my attention was Ronni Bennett's, Time Goes By. I've been an avid reader ever since.

Recently, she invited me (along with others) to write a guest blog while she was on vacation, I was thrilled and very flattered.

My contribution is on her blog today and you can find it here.

If you're not familiar with Ronni's site, please take a look around and have a good read. You'll be glad you did.

I've been inspired by yet another Time Goes By article, Elder Fashion – An Oxymoron. Ronni's article contends that it's next to impossible to find clothing for 50+ women that is both stylish and that fits properly. This struck a chord with me and I'm sure many of her readers.

No matter what you do – exercise, eat properly, etc. – your body shape changes with age. There may or may not be extra pounds, but the distribution of those pounds change. The waist thickens, the butt and breasts drop, extra padding appears on the hips. You may still look fabulous, but it's not the same fabulous of your twenties, thirties and forties. Shopping for clothing becomes a frustrating chore.

Over the years, like many women, I found a few brands of clothing that meshed good fit with my particular style. However, even within these brands, it's more and more difficult to find what I want. The fit isn't what it used to be: If the waist fits, the hips and butt are too big; if the shoulders fit, the front sags; and I'm really not into "flirty", bias-cut floral skirts anymore. I'm heavier than my old prime of 108 at age 40, but by no means obese. So what's a gal to do? Mostly, I avoid shopping until it's absolutely necessary.

Anyways, having read Ronni's article, I sallied forth to find more information about fashion for older women (or euphemistically called "the mature woman"). The first article I came across was titled "Designers research fitting clothing for older women". What a great start! Just as the title states it was from the Cornell Chronicle about a study done to design clothes that fit older women.

Then I realized the article is from 1996 - eleven years ago. So where are these clothes that are designed for older women? I searched further. More references to the same study, but no actual clothing being made using the information from the study. How typical.

Many pages of searching later, I came across this seniorjournal.com article in August 2005, announcing the opening of The Gap's new retail stores named "Forth & Towne" - stores specifically aimed at catering to fashion for older women ('older' being women over 35). This, I thought, seems like a small step in the right direction even if I'm not the biggest fan of The Gap's business practices.

About two more articles further along in my search, I came across the headline, "RIP Forth & Towne". Uh oh, this didn't sound good. Sure enough, only eighteen months after the launch of Forth & Towne, The Gap was announcing the closing of all the retail outlets by the end of June 2007.

If you'd like to see a sample of the fashions they were offering at Forth & Towne, take a look at this article with slide show by Julia Turner on Slate: Go Forth and Go Out of Business.

Turner's article points out some of the flaws of their (The Gap's) misdirected efforts, namely: thinking older women want to wear twenty year-olds' clothing, only cut larger; or that we want large-sized no-style, elastic-waisted (as in velour track suits) clothing.

The Gap went into the venture only thinking of the bottom line and the "untapped market" and didn't do enough research about the needs and wants of their target market. I wonder how many real life 50+ women they actually interviewed and had try on their darn clothing before they launched the stores. Too bad for them. The market is still virtually untapped, awaiting someone smart enough to do the job right. I think it needs a woman, preferably over 40.

Pro Age

Several weeks ago I read Ronni Bennet's article, N*ked Older Women, about the Dove Pro Age ads on TV. I wanted to comment, but was pressed for time, so filed it away in the dumpster known as my memory, to be responded to or blogged about later.

Shortly afterwards, I saw the aforementioned ads on TV. I was impressed. They were beautiful and tastefully done. And yes, the women were naked. "Well", I thought, "At last advertisers are getting the fact that women aren't all twenty-something, anorexic, smooth-skinned, flawless models. They're showing what real older women of different shapes, sizes and colours look like. They're celebrating it in fact. Hallelujah!"

I wanted to give props to Dove, despite the fact that it still is an advertising campaign, after all, and meant to sell product. A few weeks passed.

Fast forward to today. I finally decided to put some of my thoughts about Dove's pro-age ads in my blog. I did a little Googling to refresh my memory and to my utter dismay and absolute disgust, I found out that these tasteful ads have been banned from US television because of the nudity.

What gives? It's okay to show sexually explicit music videos, simulated sex scenes, violence and gore on primetime TV, but it's deemed offensive to show an advertisement celebrating women's bodies. I don't get it. They are very modest (no frontal nudity, you don't even see breasts except from the side).

It's still being shown here in Canada and, I assume, other countries. But not in the US. Apparently, various groups objected to the nudity, some even proposing a boycott of Dove. It's enough to make me want to go out and buy the entire line of products.

Judge for yourself. You can watch the ad on Dove's website. There's even a discussion forum to add comments.

Here it is: Pro-Age Dove

Elderblogger

I found Ronni Bennett's blog, Time Goes By, shortly after I started my own blogging journey. I was immediately captivated by both the clarity of her writing and by the depth of her posts. She is insightful and humorous, and more often than not, leaves me with a jump-up-with-fist-in-the-air, "YES!" feeling.

She writes about what it's like being older in our (western) society and examines the biases and issues surrounding aging.

From her blog site bio, she states:
In my private hours now – age 63 at this writing – I am excited about exploring what getting older is really like. There is precious little information available in popular writing that is not negatively focused on disease, debility and decline. But I don’t believe getting older could possibly be as bad as our culture makes it out to be.

Lest you think it's a whiny blog about issues only related to aging, let me say that she looks at the broad spectrum of society from politics, to healthcare to almost anything that touches us as human beings.

I've occasionally left comments on her blog and was flattered when she added my site to her blogroll of Elderbloggers (you'll see us listed on the lower left sidebar). However, it's taken me some time to embrace the term elderblogger. In my mind, I always equated elder with OLD – and I don't feel old. Yet, as I've let this term settle into my consciousness, I realize that it's not so much about age, as it is about a way of looking at the world from a different perspective - an elder's perspective.

As I further examined my feelings about this, my attitude towards the word changed. I've known for some time now, that the way I view the world and how I deal with things in my life is completely different than how I dealt with things in my twenties, thirties, even forties.

There was a time when I had to win every argument and respond to every annoyance. And if I wasn't confrontational about it, I made my family miserable with my griping and complaining. I wasted a lot of time and energy on things that, ultimately, didn't matter. People who know me probably don't recognize the above self-description, but that's because I was always very "nice" in my disagreements and arguments. In truth, it was the underlying turmoil that was most counterproductive.

So how have I changed in the last few decades?

I'm not so quick to judge, for one, and no longer think that a jerk will always be a jerk – that people are capable of changing for the better if they're motivated, encouraged and nurtured. Instead of feeling helpless because the problems of the world are too vast, I believe in doing things within the realm of my smaller world to affect change – I believe in the ripple effect; one good action setting off a chain of other good actions. I don't feel the need to prove myself, my competency or my intelligence anymore. Instead, I'm content with a quieter introspection and the realization that others will judge me however and in whatever way they choose – whether I like it or not. I no longer think it's necessary to respond to every little challenge or argument anymore – as if it's some red badge of courage. Instead, I stand up for what's truly important to me and don't waste my energy on petty issues.

The passage of time, experience and maturity have all brought me to this state of elderblogger-ness. The more I think about it, the more I appreciate where I am in my life.

So now, I've come to embrace the term Elderblogger and thank Ronni for including me as one of them.