Everybody's got a 3rd Act.
What are you
doing in yours?
Who We Are
■ We put far greater faith in rear view mirrors than we used to.
■ We may laugh about “senior moments,” but every little memory lapse scares us.
■ We are a lot more worried about small children stepping on our feet than we used to be.
■ We are burying our parents in ever-increasing numbers, and realizing too late how much we are going to miss them.
■ We place high value on formerly inconsequential things, like a good pair of tweezers.
■ We either love to mess around in the garden, or we hate it. No middle ground there.
■ We have gladly forsaken pantyhose for eternity.
■ Regardless of how we feel about his movies, we have a lot of admiration for Clint Eastwood.
■ We aren’t tormented by the necessity of finding a “soul mate,” either because we’ve already found that person or we no longer care that we haven’t. If it happens it happens.
■ We know there’s nothing wrong with being young, and nothing wrong with not being young, either.
Greg Palmer is a writer-television producer with dozens of PBS credits, a collection of Emmys, and a Peabody Award in his trophy case.
Rosemary Garner is an independent TV producer who's created programs for PBS and a feature film on religion.
Profile: David Quammen,
60,
Mid-Career Journalist
David Quammen turned 60 recently, though he could easily be mistaken for 45, a fact that might be attributable to his work: following field biologists through some of the roughest country left on the planet.
Two years ago, he joined renowned scientist Michael Fay, who was then 50, on a trek through largely uninhabited rain forest in the Congo basin, a hike that tested Quammen’s mettle.
“Like most field biologists I’ve met,” he says, “Michael Fay is both physically and intellectually tough. It wasn’t easy keeping up with him.”
One way Quammen managed to meet the challenge was by ditching his long pants and hiking boots. He switched to those sandals known as Teva, and proceeded through the thick brush in short pants.
“It may seem counterintuitive to choose to go barelegged in places where flora can sting and fauna can bite,” he says, “but it’s easier to keep your skin dry and free of infection in the open air. I made it through that trek with the aid of those Tevas, lots of iodine, and duct tape.”
Quammen is a writer for National Geographic, among other publications, which explains why he makes those African sojourns in the first place. But his broad range of writing on natural history subjects has taken him to every one of the world’s continents, from high places to low, from savannahs to mountain peaks.
“It’s vital to my work that I’m fit,” he says, and so he minds his diet and his exercise regimen when he’s back at home in Bozeman, Montana.
In addition to the writing he’s done for such periodicals as Rolling Stone, Harper’s, and Outside, he’s also produced some eight books of non-fiction and a half dozen works of fiction. In other words, he keeps busy.
The subject currently engaging his most intense interest is the subject of zoonotics, which is the study of how diseases manage to transfer themselves from one species to another. Most of those new or recently-emerging zoonotic diseases—West Nile, Ebola, Nipah, Hendra, or AIDS—are originating in Africa, which accounts for the amount of time he’s spent on that continent in recent years.
“The matter of zoonotic diseases is very serious,” Quammen says, and his tone conveys that seriousness. “People tend to think of these emerging diseases as things that are happening to us, but they are things we are doing. We are destroying habitat, we are moving people into tropical forests, and more and more of us are traveling more and more quickly. All of those things are causing the diseases like AIDS and SARS to emerge, or to emerge in new places. We now have West Nile virus through Montana, Wyoming, California.”
He pauses, then continues with the cataloguing of recently emerging scourges: “We have avian flu, Hendra, Ebola, and the Nipah virus, and they all are reflections of human disruption that has shaken loose the pathogenic microbes that live in places that once saw little human presence.” He sighs. “Then, add to that the fact of connectivity, the ease with which people can pick up these once obscure viruses, incubate them, and carry them around the globe in a matter of hours or days, and you’ve got a big problem.”
“The smaller the organism,” he says, “the faster the adaptation. Darwin’s ideas are plainly at work at the microscopic level.”
The zoonotics story is still unfolding. David Quammen is intent on following that story wherever it should lead, a fact that is certain to take him back into the jungles of Africa for further treks through terrain that would be forbidding to people of any age, let alone those who have recently arrived at a time when more sedentary pursuits are likely to beckon. Quammen, however, has neither intent nor reason to slow down anytime soon.
“I love my work,” he says, “and I love the field biologists I get to hang out with. They’re some amazing people, and I learn something every day I spend with them out in the field.”
David Quammen’s most recent book is The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution (Great Discoveries), Jul 31, 2006, W. W. Norton.
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Jaime O’Neill, another mid-career author-journalist, |
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Senior Discounts;
Are We Still Entitled?
There’s an essay circulating the Internet the past couple of years that starts, “Don’t Blame Us,” and then lists a batch of grievances for which the current older generation supposedly is being tagged. It’s part of what passes for Internet humor and maybe some of it’s borderline funny, but mostly it’s just crankiness. The premise is that a faceless “They,” out there somewhere, are blaming our generation for the mess the economy’s in, and it’s not fair.
Cut it out. We get by with a helluva lot. We ride the bus for a quarter, to a movie house that sells us a cut-rate ticket. Then to a restaurant to eat at a senior discount. We can see any doctors we want, and the rest of society pays a large part of the doctor bill. And our government puts cash in our bank accounts every month, whether we need it or not.
What did we do to deserve any of this? We got old, that’s what we did. I take the goodies happily and wonder: Where did this come from, this idea that by simply hanging around, we’ve earned special treatment? Even when there are great numbers of young people who are much worse off, who are raising kids and trying to give the kids a shot at a meaningful life, and they get no such breaks?
Nancy Hooyman, Dean Emeritus of the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, has spent years studying this cultural/political phenomenon. She edited a textbook on the subject: “Social Gerontology, a Multidisciplinary Perspective.”
She notes that older people have continued to be stereotyped as the most needy, even though it’s no longer true. It’s a cultural hangover from the 1930s, when the industrial chaos of the Great Depression split families, blew away the traditional ethic of sticking close to home in order to take care of parents, aunts and uncles. Young people had to move to find work and those who couldn’t find work just moved. Old people were left behind. They were indeed the nation’s poorest, and many lived in pathetic, inhuman conditions. They were heavy on the public conscience and in 1935, in the most dramatic leftward shift in American history, Franklin D. Roosevelt moved public policy to rescue the elderly prisoners of poverty.
For the first time, the condition of old people became the problem of all the people. Social Security started providing subsistence income, with money taken from younger generations. In the 1960s there were add-ons: senior centers, Meals on Wheels, home health services, adult cay care. And Medicare, by far the most expensive age-related entitlement, ever. All based on the consensus that the old folks needed help. And they do, many of them. Social Security wasn’t meant to be the main source of income for anyone, but it is for about 66 percent of those who receive it. For about twenty percent, it’s the only source.
But here’s the trick: as an age group, older people have not been the most needy for about thirty years. By the 1970s old people were better off than young children. Today we’re also better off than the working-age group that supports us, adults 18 to 64 years. And that can be trouble. Never have so many lived so long, with so relatively few to support them.
No surprise, a new stereotype—misleading and damaging, like all stereotypes—has developed in the past twenty or so years. That’s the perception of “greedy geezers” working the system.
Look out. Do you think they’re on to us?
What do you think? Email me.
Bob Simmons is a television and print journalist who observes life from the shady hillsides of Bellingham, Washington.
Money-shy
and Retiring
If you’re over 50 and paying attention, you know the financial world has trained its bloodshot eye on you. Retirement calculators are cropping up everywhere on the Web — gadgets that suck your numbers in and spit out how many years you can live comfortably without working — such as the Retirement Security Index from Wells Fargo. They can tell you, to the day, when your bank account will run out. The programs ask questions designed to induce panic:
How much money do you need per month?
How the hell do I know?
When are you going to retire?
What do you mean, retire?
How many years do you expect to spend in retirement?
I think this is code for “When am I planning to die?”
As you surf the the retirement calculators, one number will start sounding as familiar as a drum beat: 70 to 80 percent of your current income, as the standard for your future lifestyle. This is the most common framework used by financial planners. But, some beg to disagree. Economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff of Boston University argues in the Washington Post: “Those who listen to [financial] industry advice may end up either unnecessarily lowering their present standard of living to accumulate wealth for retirement, or abandoning all saving in despair because the amount they are told they need is so large.”
Kotlikoff calls the 70 to 80 percent replacement rule “blindingly stupid” because it assumes spending remains the same “right through age 90.” In fact, he says, retirees generally spend less as they get older, so the traditional approach yields a retirement savings goal “four to five times too high.” He’s created the ESPlanner, which calculates the amount of spending you can do and still maintain a constant standard of living. Of course, Mr. Kotlikoff is also tending his own nest egg: using his Web gadget will cost you about $150.
SPENDING AND SAVING
It’s the boring truth—this is where the real money has been, is, and ever shall be. More so after 50. Like it or not, you must start here.
Like so many other come-to-Jesus moments, this one begins with a look into the mirror. Go ahead and grab the paunch of your spending habits and give yourselves a couple of moments together. Examine carefully. Learning how you and your money co-habit today will teach you everything you need to know about what you'll be doing together for the rest of your life.
Here’s a suggested procedure from Christopher Dowsing, an accountant with Seattle’s Morrow, Kessler and Dowsing. His clients run the gamut: one person he cites spends an average of $1000 a day, another well under $50. Both are leading the lives they want, which explains why he offers no cookie-cutter answers.
Step 1: Chris Dowsing says most of us have no idea where our money goes. Yet, spending patterns are like sclerosis; once set, they tend to harden and define your lifestyle. So the first step is to review three months of all your spending--credit cards, checking accounts and cash.
Step 2: Next, divide that spending into categories. Amazement guaranteed, possibly under the heading lattes. Dowsing diagnosed one case of financial flailing by adding up a falling-short family’s collection of empty pizza boxes. Call it the pepperoni pattern; it revealed a gaping hole in their family budget. The lesson: treat spending the way you hunt for gas prices. Look at the pennies; they add up.
Step 3: While you’re in this frame of mind, act your age and look for over-50 discounts. You can find a lot among your organizations. AAA, for example, offers dozens of discounts for goods and services (including, yes, lattes). The very meal during which Dowsing dispensed his wisdom to me was paid for with a Passport discount dining card.
Step 4: The best source of money for the future is saving. Your personal income is likely to outpace any investment you can find, so squirrel some of it away every month. Dowsing adds, for good measure, that if your company offers a matching 401(k) plan and you're not taking it, “you're an idiot.” It’s free money.
MORE EXCITEMENT, PLEASE
OK, then, get into the stock market. Now? Yes, if you have the appetite for risk. Money sage Ben Stein was quoted recently as saying “If there's a recession, that's when I'd buy stocks. That's when you make money: when markets are spooked. In fact, I'm buying now.” What's Stein buying? “Index funds. Exchange-traded funds, all based on broad domestic and foreign stock indexes. Trying to pick individual stocks is a trap. I can't do it. Warren Buffett can, but hardly anyone else can beat the indexes over a long period of time.”
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, risk can be a strategy for financial security. According to some financial advisors, if you’re heading into your later years without an adequate nest egg, greater risk versus reward scenarios should be considered. As long as you can tolerate risk, a 20% chance on a home-run return is acceptable. A grow-slow mentality is fine for the guy who’s been saving since he was twelve. Most of us need to pick up the pace.
BUT DON’T BET ON THE HOUSE
Accountant Christopher Dowsing also advises against thinking of your own home as a nest egg. “Most people think of it as an investment, but it's not. You're going to need somewhere to live.” Downsizing, in theory, should work, but in most cases it turns out to be a horizontal move. The costs of a single family home get translated into condo dues and assessments. The relative cost of living in the same city—services, grocery prices, energy—doesn't change. Unless, of course, you move to an area with lower home prices.
WANT DIFFERENT RESULTS. DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
The British statesman David Lloyd George said, “With me a change of trouble is as good as a vacation.” The opportunity to reinvent yourself may be the greatest of all gifts our spoiled generation has received. We’re recognizing that we’re fit and able to grow and produce past 60, and more of us are seizing that opportunity every day. The future isn't written, said Lawrence of Arabia, a man without a 401(k). There are hundreds of paths to your fortune. Think about it. A change could do you good. And well.
Lucy Mohl is a Seattle writer, editor and Web entrepreneur.
Spread Your Wings: Get a Grant
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At this moment a person is being paid $20,000 to count the bats in abandoned mines in Idaho. Somebody else is getting $40,000 to monitor Flat Tailed Horned Lizards. In Madagascar some people are using $25 million to improve the health of the Malagasy people through “social marketing.”
All these folks have little in common except an interest in their subject. What they do share is that they’re being paid directly or indirectly by the United States government. And they knew about the opportunity and how to ask for and get the job.
You’ve probably read about those controversial “earmarks”—special interest projects attached by legislators to bills in Congress. Well, the earmark one Senator condemns as wasteful is another Senator’s Flat Tailed Lizard project. And a lot of the money goes to regular people, not just to the Senator’s nephew.
You could be one of those grant-getters, tapping into the billons of dollars your government spends on an immense range of projects—so immense, in fact, that if you’ve spent thirty years of your life doing practically anything, the chances are extremely good a government project will come along soon that could use your training, experience and expertise. And many of the projects make the world a better, safer, smarter, more prosperous place; they’re the kind of work you’d be proud to do.
Finding out about the government projects is the easiest part. The website www.grants.gov lists a dozen new opportunities daily—including each project's goal, budget, eligibility requirements and funding agency, like the Bureau of Land Management, the National Institutes of Health, or even Homeland Security. Grants.gov probably has everything you need to make an initial decision about whether to pursue the opportunity offered.
Although hundreds of opportunities are available to individuals, the majority are restricted to institutions of higher learning, state or local governments, and/or Indian tribes. But that doesn’t preclude you establishing a relationship with your local government, college or tribe and proposing a joint venture. For instance, million-dollar grants were recently listed seeking people to help “bring back the oyster.” If you’d spent your working life in some aspect of the seafood industry and walked into the local college with a plan to pursue a million dollars, would you be turned away? Not necessarily. Colleges and local governments are always looking for ways to get Federal money.
This is the U.S. government, of course, so the application procedure is lengthy and complex. That may be frustrating, but as a taxpayer it’s reassuring to know our government doesn’t just hand money out to anybody with a decent letterhead. Keep telling yourself that, as you leap through yet another bureaucratic hoop.
But do try the leap. Using the experience you’ve gathered in your life in new and interesting ways that benefit your country and the world’s peoples and you personally is an exciting possibility. Just think of that person who, either as a vocation or avocation, had a lot of dealings with bats or mines during the past few decades. Right now, that person is in Bat Heaven, and getting paid for it!
To get an idea of the range of U.S. Government projects, here is a very brief, abbreviated group of recent grants.gov listings:
National Institute of Justice: The W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship Program seeks to advance knowledge regarding the confluence of crime, justice, and culture in various societal contexts, with particular emphasis on crime, violence, and the administration of justice in diverse cultural contexts.
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants (NEH, up to $50,000, individuals eligible): …encouraging library/museum workers, scholars, scientists, etc., to propose digital initiatives in any area of the humanities, including research that brings new approaches in the study of the digital humanities...
Value Added Producer Grant ($18.4 million, top grant $300k, available to individuals): Helping independent producers of agricultural products, farmer/rancher cooperatives and other related groups create strategies for business development. They’re probably looking for something a little more developed than “Spinach has something for every body.”
Translational Research on the Relationship of Anxiety and Depression ($750,000 total, $250,000 per grant)
Empowering Older People to Take More Control of Their Health through Evidence-Based Prevention Programs (National Institutes of Health, $10. million available, $300,000 per grant)
Department of Homeland Security Institute for Discrete Sciences University Affiliate Centers ($10.2 billion): Proposals for research areas in the discrete sciences, to include areas of information management and knowledge discovery, discrete simulation, and discrete mathematical foundations.
Laura Bush 21st Century Librarians Program, top grant $1 million. Chances are very good this one expires in November.
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Public TV producer-writer Greg Palmer lives in Seattle. |
The Anger Tonic
A few years ago, in my late fifties, I realized I was walking around ticked off a lot. I’d always been a cheery person—creative, productive, cooperative, a real people-pleaser. Now I was always in a fighting mood. One day, a company consultant took me aside after a management meeting and gently asked, “What the hell’s the matter with you?” I wasn’t aware it was so obvious, my pique, and I took off at a gallop on a round of apologies, to bosses and co-workers alike. Get back on your meds, my boss said.
The year before I had been treated for depression after a public tongue-lashing by a corporate boss on a convention floor. I’d become anxious and fearful, given to bouts of spontaneous morning weeping. The antidepressant made all that magically disappear, and I felt fine for a while. But now I was angry, and people were angry at me.
I went back on my meds. I tried to avoid arguments and contrariness. I felt better and safer back on the antidepressant, but I was still mad most of the time. And when I reflected on how quickly I had caved, madder. My relationship with bosses continued to deteriorate.
Of course I see now my behavior was stupid and prickly. They should have fired me. I should have quit. But I was determined not to act impulsively, and my past work was respected. I was permitted to ease myself out. I even helped choose my successor. Still, I flatly refused the perfunctory after-work beer party on my last Friday.
Was it wacky brain chemistry or was my anger justified? Or was I just getting old? Modern medicine and our unenlightened attitudes about mental health make figuring out situations like this difficult, and I’m working with the same brain that got me in hot water, but I’ll give it a try.
Depression is defined two ways — chemically: a shortage of serotonin in the brain; and psychologically: you guessed it, suppressed anger—anger turned against the self. My non-psychological internist treated my depression symptoms with a drug. I didn’t go into psychotherapy to work out the emotional content. The medication relieved my symptoms and I went about my business. On my own, I had learned not to suppress my anger, which is good, and I became a pariah at work, not good.
Anger is the no-no emotion. It’s natural, and often justified, but it’s socially and professionally unacceptable. Beyond fifty, we face an even greater paradox: anger among older people is predictable, and forbidden. Go public with it, even if it’s righteous, and you’re either in a fight or ostracized. Suppress it and you risk internal injuries.
Letting it out can be lethal, too. A 2001 Harvard study reported that angry old men have a three-times-higher risk of heart disease than happy-go-lucky guys.
“….Scientists speculate that anger releases stress hormones into the bloodstream, increases oxygen demand by heart muscle cells, and increases stickiness of blood platelets, leading to blood clots that initiate heart attacks.”
On the other hand, in Betty Friedan’s monumental, highly readable, and widely ignored 1993 book, The Fountain of Age — a work that’s guaranteed to elevate the aging heartbeat, if not make your platelets sticky — Friedan found plenty of evidence of, and justification for, anger among people fifty and beyond. And she discovered a life-giving upside. She tells about an elder AIDS patient under the care of Dr. George Solomon, one of the founders of the science of psycho-neuro-immunology:
“…after being diagnosed, (he) developed a very severe, rapidly advancing lymphoma and was given a week or two to live. He was treated with chemotherapy; two years later, with no signs of lymphoma in his body, he returned to his work as a college professor. In the meantime, he had twice recovered from pneumonia, and had no evidence of the organic brain disease often associated with AIDS. What was happening? ‘He is feisty as hell,’ Solomon speculated. ‘He seeks out treatments. He takes charge of his own care. He doesn’t put up with anything. He has the fiercest determination to live….He has projects, he is involved. He has a marvelous support system…and his T-cell count is 28.’ (the normal count is between 500 and 1500).”
Anger: life-threatener or life-saver? Take your pick.
Betty Friedan deduced that old people must be toting around a lot of unvented rage. (And we needed a feminist to tell us this?) Yet, most of that rage gets vented as mere grumpiness. Have you heard of any ageism protest marches lately?
The writer Paddy Chayefsky produced his most memorable work after he got mad. Great movies like The Hospital and Network told uncomfortable truths about medicine, television, and America—clearly, powerfully and, yes, angrily. Chayefsky defined frustration in Peter Finch’s signature Network scene: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Click on the arrow button in the middle of the YouTube screen above to watch it.
Age and experience lead to attitude problems. You’re no longer willing to shut up and drink the Kool-Aid. You tend to write indignant letters to editors, harrass telemarketers, and send bad restaurant food back to the kitchen (my wife hates it when I do that). You don’t suffer fools gladly, and when people start talking to you in that way they talk to old people—you know how I mean—you tend not to laugh it off, and so confirm the stereotype. At work, if you haven’t risen to General Manager, from whom overt anger is accepted—even expected—you’re just a disgruntled, perhaps under-medicated, over-the-hill employee. We’ve had years to bottle up anger. Now that we’ve reached the age of independence we’re considered nuts if we let it out.
What, then, must we do?
I say put it to work. Use your experience to redirect your anger; use its energy to make something wonderful. Anger has caused broken bones, murders, terrorism and war, but it has also jump-started religions, countries, companies and weight loss.
This year, in a year of unprecedented frustration, our redirected anger is cleansing this country’s political process. Look how well Americans are handling their pent-up rage. They’re voting with it. No water cannons necessary.
It may be socially unacceptable, and it makes us all uncomfortable, but anger is as natural as a fart and as American as apple crisp. Embrace your temper. Change your world.
Who We Are II
■ We no longer automatically take our doctor’s word for granted.
■ We don’t buy a Toyota after 20 years buying Fords, just because it looks great in a Superbowl commercial. For this reason, advertisers aren’t particularly interested in us. We can deal with that.
■ Those of us who have spent our lives as conservatives are becoming a little more liberal as we get older. And vice versa.
■ We read the obits.We recognize a lot of “new” ideas as ideas somebody else had a long time ago, redressed and shined up for people who should know better.
■ Increasingly we pick clothing that is comfortable, whether it’s stylish or not.
■ We’d like to meet Sophia Loren. And Paul Newman.
■ The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. means a lot to us, even if we’ve never seen it in person. And especially if we have.
■ Our houses are full of stuff we’ve been talking about getting rid of for more than two decades.
■ We realize that certain beloved items of clothing, like those jeans, will never fit again. But we hang onto them anyway.
■ We wish people would just ignore our birthdays, but deep in our hearts we want a huge party attended by every friend we’ve ever had. We don’t want them to bring presents. We just want them to show up.
■ After all these years, we still haven’t forgiven Yoko Ono for What She Did.
Double-Take: The Young At Heart Chorus, Its Documentary Movie, and My Mixed Emotions
by Dave Newton
4/25/08
The other day I posted the first version of this article on a new film, Young at Heart, that earned a 2007 Oscar nomination. It documents the career of a group of extra mature Massachusetts singers--average age, 82--who belt out today’s hits, like Sonic Youth’s Schizophrenia and Cold Play’s Fix You. Watch them sing by clicking these YouTube screens. Today I’ve rewritten the article, because I’ve had some afterthoughts.
The Young at Heart Chorus has been around for a while -- in more ways than one -- the group was formed 26 years ago by Bob Cilman, then a young retirement home worker. Because of Cilman’s professional approach to the singing, the chorus went far beyond senior recreation therapy, to a worldwide, if low-key, concert career.
But now there’s hoopla. And it took the interest of British documentary producer Stephen Walker to produce this explosion of fame. In 2005 Walker convinced Cilman and the group to let him film Young At Heart, which subsequently ran on the UK’s innovative public TV station, Channel Four. Now, Fox Searchlight, which picked up U.S. distribution rights last summer, has opened the movie in American theatres, accompanied by the usual spate of media coverage.
How come it took a British producer and TV station to see the potential for inspiration and entertainment in the Young At Heart Chorus? Would this idea get you in the door at CBS, ABC, NBC? Or even PBS? Did the producers even knock?
When US TV is rigidly targeted 18-49, how likely were we to see this show produced for broadcast TV in America? Maybe it’ll be on, after its success is certified by worldwide buzz, a decent domestic theatre box office take, and enough DVD sales to pay Fox back its year-late investment.
But let’s get personal, here. How comfortable are you, seeing 70- and 80-plus folks singing rock songs, or anything, in front of a camera or an audience? CBS’s David Edelstein said Bob Cilman’s toughness with the choristers made him twitchy. Does the Young at Heart Chorus make you smile, laugh, cry, or squirm?
I’d never rain on this long-overdue parade. It’s a great thing. Still, I think we need to take a new look at the way we think about getting old. This film, and the kind of coverage it’s drawn, present us with a good opportunity. Consider yourself poked.
What do you think? While we’re getting our comment system built, you can talk back to us at YoungAtHeart@3rdActs.com. I’ll publish your comments.
the editor's blog
July 7, 2008
Well, we extended our Fourth of July weekend into the middle of this week. But I've been "working," too. You can do that when you're a 3rd Actor.
I've been writing about the creation of this site's mission in this column, and I've come on fairly strong about wiping out the old style of retirement. Then I had second thoughts; I caught myself starting to sound like a crusader and decided that the practice of journalism -- just plain reporting on people doing things after 50, 60, 70, and so forth -- would reveal what 3rdActs.com should be talking and inventing about.
This week I've been soaking up life around me. You know, research. We dragged our trailer into one of our favorite campgrounds, Thousand Trails at La Conner, Washington, to find people like us. Of course, we found more.
Young families, retired couples, and lone rangers. A mainly white bunch, but I've met Asians, African-Americans, Hispanics and more. Middle class, mostly, but all incomes are represented, judging by the range of vehicles: multi-axle rock star buses towing Saturns and Jeeps, various sizes of motorhomes and vans, trailers, from monster fifth-wheels to pop-ups, and even folks sleeping on air mattresses in dome tents.
As a result of living with this crowd, I'm developing a different attitude about "retirement." I'll write more about it this week, and probably get properly quasi-philosophical about it.
For now, just take a look around. I snapped the pictures you see here this morning, to create envy among those who don't have the freedom to decide to stay three more days on the spur of the moment. I advocate starting some new purpose-driven work in your 3rd Act. For me, though, it's got to fit into my living and play time. Oh, and no stress, O.K.?
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
July 1, 2008
I'm off for the holiday. Enjoy the Fourth, thinking of all we've overcome in the past, and how we'll do it again.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 30, 2008
The good news. You’ll live a long life. The bad news. America is going to hell in a handbasket, and you’ll live to see it.
Tom Friedman called it in yesterday’s New York Times. NBC trotted out Jim Cramer to second the motion on this morning’s Today . It’s really the economy this time, stupid.
This is no time to be shy and, ahem, retiring.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 30, 2008
Open email to Ann Lamott.
I’ve just finished reading Blue Shoe. You made a beautiful thing. It moved several previously motionless parts of my brain, to different locations. I have a sense of what writing it cost you, and gave you.
Thanks.
Dave
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 27, 2008
Bill Gates says, "You get smarter as you get older..."
...in his interview with Tom Brokaw tonight on NBC.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 26, 2008
Random thoughts from an email to a friend:
I think the people of the new "age" should shed the "retirement" imperative. There's too much to do, and it's too healthy and life-extending to do it, if you're joyful about it. Independence is the word for being over 60. At some advanced age you must decide to belong to yourself. I'm working on that.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 24, 2008
How to act young without being stupid about it.
* Never say "Great!" Say "Cool." Not gushily. Calmly. Don't say "Kewl."
* Never say "Dude." No way you'll get it right.
* Never say "No way." Or, "Way."
* Never wear a Greek fisherman's cap. Go hatless first.
* Don't buy a Sidekick. Buy an iPhone.
* If you're a guy, don't dye your hair. It doesn't work.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 23, 2008
Every life has a 3rd Act. This Website is part of mine. This blog is my place to work on the site in public, in plain sight.
Here’s the way my friends and I have been explaining 3rdActs.com to ourselves. Because we came from the field, we tend to see things in marketing-advertising terms.
America doesn’t celebrate age. All but a sliver of advertising is designed to talk to people between 18 and 49. Get the message? In America, after 50, you no longer exist.
Even now, when that marvelous mob of Boomers they’ve made so much money on is wrinkling up, American marketers are conflicted about how to talk to us. The best they can do is offer products to help deny or mask aging. Most media coverage is either icky or scares us to death about Alzheimer’s.
But hey, marketers are only acting out our national affliction—age denial. Face it. We’ve all been taught that getting old is only about terminal deterioration.
All this, when the best science—plus our own eyes—tells us we can keep learning and growing all our lives, and most of us continue to live productive, healthy lives after 50, 60, and 70. Or could, if we believed we can.
So, we’ve decided that a Website that tells the new truth about age is long overdue.
This isn’t easy. We’re struggling against our own conditioning—but we’re also following our intuition. We think we can handle the truth. We just want to hear the positive stuff, too.
3rdActs.com is starting from scratch, following no formulas. We need a lot of help and encouragement. Just as you do. Jump in anytime.
We’re trying to not think like marketers. Even though we ought to be trying to sell ads, we’re not, right now, because we don’t want to buy into the national aging-market dysfunction. There are hard facts to talk candidly about, and no advertiser we can imagine wants to be seen next to squirmy subjects.
We think there’s a better life ahead for all of us, based on the truth. 3rdActs.com will rise or fall telling it.
To be continued.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 19, 2008
My wife and I gave blood today. Big deal, you say. The high point of the retired person's day.
Just in case you are afflicted by such an attitude -- and a lot of us, of all ages, are -- wipe the smirk off, please. A few facts:
- Voluntary blood donation is not a growth industry.
- 38 percent of blood transfusions go to people over 65.
- There's no upper age limit on giving blood.
What are you waiting for?
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 17, 2008
Sex after dementia? Sorry. I can't not give you this link.
June 17, 2008
Guest blogger. My kid. So sue me. DN
Father’s Day is back. Every greeting card holiday that rolls around reminds me of the power of marketing. I have come to loathe them. Melodramatic sentiment wrapped in a 30% off holiday price tag. If the greeting card companies did not invent them, they certainly perfected them.
This year, probably because my own kids have left the nest, I noticed an onslaught of commercials designed to evoke an emotional response. And they do. Fathers helping their sons fix their bikes, playing catch on their beautifully manicured suburban lawn or building a tree house in the giant oak in the backyard. I am not a hunter or fisher, soccer coach or craftsman.
Wow, I sucked as a father. I do not recall doing many of those activities with my kids. I am still waiting for the user’s manual to arrive. I am pretty sure it did not come with them. And my own father never offered me his copy. I am beginning to suspect he did not get one either.
My father did not fit the stereotype. He was definitely not very handy around the house. Sorry Dad, but you’re not. Nor a great athlete or sports buff. We attended the occasional football/baseball/basketball game, usually because we got some freebee tickets. He never took me hunting or fishing. We never built stuff with our hands in a vast workshop with an amazing variety of tools. And you know what? He was the best father in the world.
My father has given, and is still giving me so much. As a kid, he took me to work with him. He was the manager of a radio station and I got to hang out with him. How cool is that? I was the boss’s kid so everyone had to be nice to me. I met radio people. I still know more about the radio business than all of my friends.
There were countless trips with my sister to the San Diego Zoo and Balboa Park to ride the “horsy” swings on Saturday mornings so that my mother, who worked nights, could sleep in peace.
He suffered through Indian Guides (whatever that was), Cub Scouts, Webelos and Boy Scouts until I lost interest. There were the many hiking and camping trips, but he usually had to deal with the other “dude-stereotype” fathers along the way.
He took me to movies, plays, the symphony and museums. These were, I suspect, also on freebee tickets: one of the benefits of the radio business.
Through his example he has taught me the important things. Integrity. Honesty. Loyalty. Love. Tolerance. Equality. Education. Culture, without being pretentious. Hard work. Dreams. And above all, be happy and celebrate life. He nurtured my creativity and showed me the power of language.
Because of that, I did not buy him a father’s day card. Someone else’s words could never fit my father. I would not be who I am today without his presence. If I did half the job with my kids that he and my mother did with us, everything’s going to be all right.
Maybe he does have a copy of the manual after all.
— Geoff Newton, Paramedic, Photojournalist, Whidbey Island, Washington
June 16, 2008
How did you feel when you heard about Tim Russert? Sad, sick, depressed, bereft? I felt all that, too. But my main emotion is anger. I admit I was mad first at Tim Russert, for taking such lousy care of himself that he died of a heart attack at 58. In an age when we know so much about heart disease, and diet, and exercise, and workaholism, there’s just no excuse.
Enough of his medical history has trickled out to relieve me of a little of this. Tim had coronary heart disease, and high cholesterol, and was taking medications. They said it was controlled. They say he passed a stress test in April. But, from what I’ve read, they hadn’t diagnosed his enlarged heart.
I’m finding it hard to forgive health professionals for whatever kept them from getting on top of Tim Russert’s heart conditon before it killed him.
This is the age when life is lengthening every day. 58 is too damn young. Tim Russert has been properly appreciated, praised, eulogized. Maybe I’ll be able to appreciate all that soon. Right now, I’m just pissed off.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 13, 2008
A year ago we moved out of Seattle, to Yakima, about 150 miles east -- a busy, but smaller, city of about 80,000. We’ve come back often.
This week I put together my own business conference-seminar in Seattle with friends, partners, collaborators, to work on 3rdActs.com.
Yesterday, on our way to breakfast with friends, my wife and I started talking about the effects of being back in the city. Traffic, noise, crowds. I’ve been much more tired, and I haven’t stuffed my schedule that much. Seattle just demands more energy.
My long-held theory: all those radio stations, TV stations, cars, planes, cellphones, and brains, all transmitting. Much more buzz here, electromagnetic radiation. It’s tiring.
That’s why it seems so quiet at three in the morning. Most brains are asleep.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 12, 2008
It’ll take years for a hybrid car to pay off. That’s the media story-line. All of a sudden, all reporters are thinking like mortgage bankers.
Such nonsense.
If you drive a lot, and you can reduce your gasoline spending by as much as half right away, why would you worry about ultimate return on investment?
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 11, 2008
Retirement ain’t what it used to be. More of us can’t afford to quit working. More of us don’t want to downsize. And the U.S. economy needs us more than ever. So, start something new. Couple of links:
In the Washington Post, Yanik Silver suggests some basic ways to start a part-time Web business. They’re not revolutionary ideas, and he’s actually hawking his how-to book, but it’ll get you thinking. Here’s the link.
A new Website just popped up. They’re always doing that. Glassdoor.com deals in inside information on big-salary jobs and companies. Take a look. You may have some info to trade -- experienced people have the edge. Read about it first here.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 10, 2008
I’m trying to forget demographics. I’m also trying to behave less like a businessman.
3rdActs.com is an experiment. I’m trying to forget everything I’ve been conditioned to do as a marketing-advertising guy. Among other things, the marketing business divides all people into age groups.
The most important age group to advertisers is 18-to-49. All people over 50 get disappeared by the marketers. Even the new old-people Websites are “targeting” younger old people. Because advertisers don’t really want “old people:” they want Baby Boomers. Who aren’t, of course, getting old.
At 3rdActs.com, we’re struggling with how to build a Website that helps people build a better life after 50. I don’t like what thinking like an ad-based media when preparing the content for 3rdActs.com. So, I’m trying not to.
As a result, I’m thinking less like a businessman, too. I don’t think the ad business is going to want anything to do with 3rdActs.com. So, we’re going to have to find some way to pay the bills without selling ads.
And, first, we have to figure out whether you even want to hear about, or talk about, getting and being old.
I’m meeting with my friends and advisers this week to talk about all this. All we know is, we don’t want to produce a Website that talks about, and to, aging people the old way. We think that way is depressing, frightening, and crushing to the human spirit. There’s gotta be a better way.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 9, 2008
I’m about to make a policy pronouncement. Ready?
3rdActs.com will not be referring to anybody as a “retired” or “former” anything.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 6, 2008
I used to be a snob. I used to see old people in RVs as rubes, or worse. I thought I was above all that, an intellectual, an elite, or worse. My wife has never been, and will never be, a snob. She has no scorn for what other people do, unless it’s illegal or immoral. She doesn’t care what other people think about what she does. No malice there. She’s just herself, immune to peer pressure.
When we were in our early forties, she actually liked the idea of responding to those mailers that offer you a TV set or a barbecue for driving out to their campground to be hammered for a couple of hours to buy a membership. To her, it was free stuff, a fun excursion, and no guilt for not buying. Because I love her, I went along with this, pretending I was doing a writer’s research, and cringing all the way.
Then, one weekend, in a job-fatigued, weakened condition, on one of these excursions, the idea of a selection of campgrounds, all within a couple of hours drive of our home, sounded strangely good to me. We bought in. I cringed later, but I didn’t complain. The payments were low.
We didn’t run out and buy an RV. We didn’t visit one of the campgrounds for at least fifteen years. We didn’t even use the little barbecue we got. We were too busy working, and our snobby teenage kids loathed the whole idea.
When we finally started using our membership, it involved weekend stays in the campground’s rental trailers. Essentially two nights in a trailer park with trees. Some of the campgrounds were pleasant, though, in idyllic spots.
Last fall we bought our first, small trailer. Had to buy a used Ford Explorer to tow it; since neither our minivan nor our VW Golf had the power. An SUV. Another of my pledges abrogated. We told ourselves we would only drive the thing to tow the trailer, salving our consciences, a half-pledge we haven’t lived up to.
This year we’re visiting all our membership campgrounds in our state, and I’ve already learned that people with RVs and trailers are mostly good people, with careers, histories, families, personalities, and, of course, snobberies of their own.
Deep down, I’m probably still a snob, but it isn’t keeping me from enjoying new old friends at the campgrounds, or our RV.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 5, 2008
News-surfing the Web the other day, I caught the words “Gates” and “legacy” in a headlne. Turns out it was the infectuous topic of the day, raging through the many techie Websites. Bill Gates will soon “leave” Microsoft to spend full time at the Gates Foundation. The tech and business media are churning out stories on Bill’s “legacy.”
Jeez Louise. The guy’s only 52 and he’s getting marched out of the way with full media honors. It’s like reading your professional obituary while still in your prime.
Legacy, for God’s sake.
The famously tousled geek may be a legend, but he’s out of the Great American Demographics, and he gets no special treatment. Extra accolades, maybe, but when the echoes die out, the tech world will have, like, disappeared him.
I hope he gets over his dismissal with honors quickly. I hope he’s already over it. Legacy schmegacy. Time to go save the world, Bill. Welcome to your 3rd Act.
June 3, 2008
Hugh Downs is spending his 3rd Act doing infomercials. I feel silly for feeling shocked when I saw him on one for the first time. Hugh may have been a journalist once, but mostly he’s played one on TV.
Some TV anchors are journalists and some aren’t. Hugh looked like one, but I don’t remember seeing him crawling through a Viet Nam bog or facing down some dissembling politician. Still, Hugh was a good anchor; he looked like the news.
Realizing that, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him playing the part of a news-type interviewer on a thirty-minute infomercial. But I was.
Uh-oh, I thought, poor guy. He blew his fortune on cactus farming. Now he has to spend his golden years, and his reputation, enabling organic snake oil salesmen. Good thing he’s so good at keeping a straight face on camera, because that other dude couldn’t sell me an umbrella in Seattle in October.
But, conditioning works. For a few minutes there, because it was Hugh Downs, I listened to the pitchman tell me what the big drug companies, whom I already distrust, don’t want me to know, like how his books reveal the magic of treating ailments with cheap stuff, like celery seed extract.
This fleeting suspension of skepticism is what the book guy’s counting on. He thinks he’s a genius, getting Hugh Downs to ask him leading questions on TV time he bought. His target customer, old people, know Hugh Downs. And it must be working, because they show up all the time on the tube.
The best thing you can say about Hugh Downs and his reputation -- he never did anything stupid. He could be relied upon to look good, keep his nose clean, and read exactly what you typed on the TelePrompTer. He earned two big careers on TV: Today on NBC and 20/20 on ABC.
So this is how Hugh Downs spends his national goodwill. Do you care? Think carefully before you answer. You’re defining American values.
Blog back. dnewton@3rdActs.com
June 2, 2008
I want this Website to help people create a terrific 3rd Act. The last third of your life ought to be a triumph -- lived fully, confidently, on your own terms. To get there in American society, some things have to change.
We have to change our attitude about old people. Did you wince when your read “old people” in that last sentence? Take your feelings as a measure of how much we need that change. Euphemisms muffle life. We need to dump them. Everybody’s getting old. You don’t have to like it. You do have to do it.
Silly talk doesn’t help. Is 60 the new 30 or the new 40? Nonsense like this is just another form of denial.
Are Boomers embracing age and marveling over it, as they have life’s other normal passages? “I can’t believe the difference having a child made!”
I’m 60! It’s a revelation!” Haven’t heard this one. Have you?
We have to learn to think differently about getting old. Or maybe just learn to actually think about it at all.
Getting old sucks. But, I’d rather be doing it than not. If we’re living longer, we ought to be looking for ways to live deeper, more honestly, as we get old.
Talk to me. Email DNewton@3rdActs.com.
May 22, 2008
I want to talk about why 3rdActs.com is here
In 1889, Count von Bismarck, the German Chancellor, settled on 70 as the age government old age benefits his country had been debating should begin, and so invented the first national social security.
Back then, life expectancy was about 45. If you made it to 70, the Germans figured, you deserved a government pension. They later settled on 65. The U.S. concluded the same in 1935, when actuarial tables actually seemed to confirm the fairness of this number.
In the 100-or-so years since then, our lives have lengthened 30 years for men and 40 for women. Yet 65 is still our official and customary outa-here age. Your life may be only about 60 percent over, but as you approach 65 you’re expected--trained--to head for the sunset.
You’re also supposed to have saved plenty to live on for the rest of your much longer modern life because no matter what they’re saying about greater respect for experience, American business isn’t rushing out looking for people over 50.
You’ve been diagnosed with a terminal condition called “age,” and it is assumed your time will now be devoted to managing your decline, preferably out of sight.
Ridiculous, right? Most of us quietly refuse to think like this, but we mostly comply with the custom. We don’t erupt in rage, because who wants to live whatever time you have left angry full-time?
3rdActs.com is here to work on the future... to help you create the best of your life. We’re not here to create a safe place for advertising. We’re not building 3rdActs to sell to CBS. We don’t know yet how we’re going to pay the bills when our money runs out. We’re working on how to make 3rdActs self-perpetuating and return our angel’s original investment, and help people keep growing after 50, and we’re open to ideas.
We’re just getting started, but we’re confident we’ll invent our 3rd Act. We’re here to help you create yours.
Talk to us. Email DNewton@3rdActs.com.
May 15, 2008
Alarums & Excursions
Last night 6:30: I fold myself into my 40-something daughter’s Crossfire for a sortie to Seattle to hear her old boyfriend—when they were 20-somethings—play lead guitar in a Country Rock band from L.A.
We race west into the Cascades, me snapping away through the passenger window. Herewith, a couple of shots—to taunt you with Snoqualmie Pass scenery.
Just past nine we road-wobble into the Comet, that cruddy, classic tav on Capitol Hill, ninety years old and still unmopped. I’ve spent many a late evening there after plays at the Empty Space, when it was right across Pike Street. I swear, it’s got urinal graffiti from 1976.
Leslie and the Badgers describe their style as “Folk Rock/Americana/Country,” but for me their music renders standard descriptors pathetic, and all artist comparisons unjust. They’re retro in a non-ironic yet contemporary way—Valentino-era laments, fiddle licks and guitar riffs that evoke Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Duane Eddy.
From their first, precision made chord, they overcome the Comet’s garage-band sound system, which is optimized for otio-demolition, and capture the crowd. You can go sample the songs at the band’s MySpace page or on their blog.
Leslie Stevens is a sweet soprano belter with long hair and a Marian the Librarian vibe. She’s written herself a clever clutch of songs that can veer from yearning to yee-haw on a dime. She’s got a way with words that’s affecting and, frequently, head-snapping:
“...the torture, the torture, the fortune, the fortune…”
“...why can’t you please me all the time? Tha’d be fine. Tha’d be fine.”
I love stuff like that.
We leave the Comet at midnight, grab four hours of sleep, and hit the road at 5:00AM, playing the Badgers CD all the way to Yakima. Lisa had to work and I had an 8:30 doctor’s appointment for a physical, complete with a digital prostate exam, and I don’t mean electronic.
What a trip. A shock to the system. I recommend it.
May 1, 2008
Let’s Get Real:
What Retirement?
What’s all this retirement nonsense? Most Americans who haven’t retired, don’t plan to. Which is gentle-speak for “can’t afford to.” PBS’s Frontline covered this well, recently. Read about it here.
And what about all those media stories about Boomers planning to retire and do “volunteer work.” Come on. It’s O.K. to volunteer, but show me the money.
Back when I figured most people were still planning a traditional gone-fishing retirement, I wanted to write a money article called “Zero to 65 in Two Years.” I called Tresa Leftenant, a financial adviser I know, and asked her if there’s a fast track that people with no savings can jump on to catch up and retire. Her short answer: nope. Investments need more than a couple of years to grow—and time to ride out down markets, like the one we’re sliding into right now.
The slightly longer answer: it takes money to make money. I saw an ad for a financial company’s free “guide” to retirement the other day. It’s for people with $500,000 investment portfolios. Others need not apply. Tresa Leftenant says some financial companies take on clients with considerably smaller nest eggs. But not those with nothing. Bottom line: there’s no such thing as a shortcut. This is not news to you, I’m sure, though I’m betting that you, like I, have wondered.
So, though a lot of people are enjoying work-free retirement, it’s a vanishing phenomenon. Get over it. And what’s wrong with working on past 65? Love and work are what make our lives worth something. The idea is to find work you love.
Besides, we’ve got no business going to pasture when our country and the planet need so many things fixed. Who better to find answers and make them work than the people with education, experience and perspective.
Whether you’ve saved a bundle or not, with thirty or forty years of life ahead of you, why would you want to “retire” the old way? Wouldn’t independence be a better goal? Now, how do you organize your finances for that?
That’s what Lucy Mohl’s cover story, over there on your left, is about—doing the numbers for your 3rd Act. Things are different today for people over 50. There’s a new kind of “retirement,” and it’s reinventing us.
What do you think? Click here to email me.
— Dave Newton