Happy 11th Blogoversary

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via Creative Commons

Happy 11th Blogoversary to The Generation Above Me. 

Over the last decade plus, this blog has been the host to 459 posts and 2,795 comments. 

These posts have gleaned over a million views (1,355,636).  

In 2014, this blog hosted 114 posts, the most productive year. 

In 2022, this blog hosted 9 posts.  

I am still thinking about aging. I just need write about it. 

Part of the issue is that my children have six living grandparents ranging in ages from 80 to 88. (My in-laws, my mother and her husband, and my father and his wife.) All six of them are experiencing some growth and development, and they are making some great contributions to their churches, neighborhoods, their friendship networks, and their families near and far. However, they are also facing notable challenges. However, I want to afford them privacy, so I am not detailing those challenges here. 

The posts with the all-time views has not moved very much in the last few years, so you might want to visit this 2016 post that lists (with links) the 20 posts with the most views over the life of this blog. 

The most viewed post written in 2022 was this conference preview. 

2022 Mid-American Institute on Aging and Wellness - Concurrent Sessions

The most viewed post over the last twelve months was this 2013 post, which I update now and then: 

Movies Set in Nursing Homes (and other venues for senior housing). 

If you are only going to read one post, I would recommend this one: 

Ten Books: An Essential Library on Aging. 

All my best to you and yours for a 2023 that is filled with opportunities to promote wellness in mind, body, and spirit. 

Related:

Happy 10th Blogoversary

Happy 9th Blogoversary

Happy 8th Blogoversary

Happy 7th Blogoversary

2022 Top Posts, but not really

Image by Leo Reynolds
by Creative Commons

Today marks the last day of 2022. 

I am looking back over the posts published on this aging blog over the last year and seeing that I have not been sharing a lot of my insights on aging.  I only completed nine posts--counting this one. Consequently, compiling a list of Top 10 posts is a little disingenuous.  

Here are the three posts written in 2022 with the most views: 

Gym Rat at Sixty

Critical Age Theory: Book Review

2022 MAIA Concurrent Sessions

I am still teaching gerontology classes as an adjunct at both the University of Evansville and at the University of Southern Indiana (USI).  

In previous years, I frequently wrote posts about films that I have viewed and books that I have read on topics related to aging.  In 2022, I only read one book about aging.  Lately, I have been spending more time at the gym and less time reading and watching films.  

Gym Rat at Sixty

Karen outside of the
Dunigan YMCA
in October 2022.

I admit to going to the YMCA a lot.   

Because I teach biology of aging for the sociology department at the University of Evansville, I am well versed (in a generalist sort of way) on the benefits of regular, varied exercise.

This means that when I am sitting around, reading about the benefits of exercise, I will often put my book down and drive over to one of the two YMCA locations in the Evansville area: 

Dunigan on Oak Grove is just a ten-minute drive for me, but I also drive downtown to the Ascension St. Vincent's YMCA, which is only a twenty-minute drive. 

By exercising regularly, I am improving my muscle tone, heart health, balance, bone density, flexibility, circulation, posture, digestion, cognitive function, and mood. 

However, I have several reasons for attending exercise classes frequently: 

Critical Age Theory: Book Review

Published 29 May 2022.

I have been reading widely about aging since 2010.  

A few books take a comprehensive view of the aging process, titles that I often recommend to people who are not gerontologists so that they can get The Big Picture. 

Ten Books: An Essential Library on Aging

I have found another title to add to my list of must reads about aging. 

Mario D. Garrett, PhD has written a jeremiad of sorts about the many institutions that prey on older adults, capitalizing on the vulnerability many face in late life. 

To create a context, I suggest readers first watch the 2020 film, I Care A Lot, directed by J. Blakeson and starring Rosamund Pike. I watched the film the year it was released and found it interesting as an exaggeration, a dramatization of the state of eldercare in the 21st Century. 

Two years after viewing that film, Garrett's book has me rethinking I Care a Lot as being less a niche genre black satirical comedy thriller and more from the genre "based on true events."  I had already planned on mentioning this film in my review before I saw that Garrett references I Care A Lot (2020) himself.   

Watch the film, but if you going to choose one, read Garrett's book.  

Critical Age Theory: Profiteering From the Final Stages of Life (2022) describes the ways for-profit companies and even the government and non-profits fail older adults when they are the most frail of mind, body, and finances. 

I teach college courses on aging (gerontology), and this book would work well to alert my students to the unethical practices that are inherent in the system and challenging for individuals to change at their level. 

The chapters are as follows (with a staccato summary/response for each chapter). 

(Here is my Goodreads review, which I wrote chapter-by-chapter as I read. It's grittier than my blog review.) 

Introduction: This sets the tone with Garrett as the lone voice in the wilderness, asking people to look at the larger systems controlling aging and to spend less time blaming elders and their family caregivers and less time wagging fingers at those paid to offer support directly to older adults.  The problem goes higher up, and it goes deep into the structures of 21st century power structures.  Here is one example that gestures to system rather than the individual as the root problem:

"We make it easy for . . . commercial practices to continue as we tend to see only individuals that commit fraud or harm. As with elder abuse, we personalize the interaction. however, in most cases, the institutional make up--what we euphemistically refer to as their business model, or business culture--determines how individual workers behave within an agency. Since the business model dictates workers' hours, duties, and responsibilities, it is logical to examine the business model being used" (9). 

(I do not remember Garrett using the word "hegemony," but academics use this--and other words--to study the network of power that is pervasive and difficult to combat.)

1. Drugs: Drugs are often improperly prescribed and almost always overpriced.  

*Each chapter ends with a "Playbook" that unearths the game plan that seems to drive decisions based on profitability over patient-centered / customer-centered / client-centered service. One of the items from the "Playbook" on the chapter "Drugs" is this: "Price medications on the basis of what people can afford rather than what they cost to develop and manufacture" (37).