Three random thoughts that I have given a bit of time over the weekend.
HAPPINESS IN OLD AGE
A lot of scientific news about health with its mays, mights and maybes is not, in terms of usefulness, worth the effort to read. Occasionally, however, there is a study , even with those equivocations included, that you just KNOW is right.
”Whereas happiness in younger people is often related to excitement, for older people, contentment was associated with a happy existence, the researchers found.”
In a phone chat over the weekend, elderblogger Marcia Mayo and I both recalled times in our younger years when we bemoaned the fact that nothing exciting was happening, that we had nothing exciting to look forward to but that in recent years that thought doesn't occur to us.
We are both quite happy to have what young people would probably view as boring lives but it suits us now. I'm pretty sure most elders would agree. This study is hardly earth-shaking news and maybe those researchers could move on to something more useful now.
ANOTHER POLITICAL NON-EVENT
Or should be.
A lot of hoo-hah has resulted from Standard and Poor's Friday downgrading of American creditworthiness. This isn't ho-hum stuff that affects only governments; it can increase our taxes and the interest rates you and I pay on mortgages, reverse mortgages, credit cards, etc. for months and years to come.
But the weird thing about the S&P downgrade is that anyone paid or is still paying attention. The real question no one is asking or answering is this:
Why would anyone on planet Earth – any country, any government, political leader, Wall Street master of the universe, institutional investor, small-time investor or even your dog – listen to Standard & Poor's about what TV show to watch let alone the creditworthiness of a country?
S&P is the company that gave triple-A ratings to those toxic mortgages that crashed the world economy in 2008. S&P is the company that gave Lehman Bros. an A rating the week before it filed for bankruptcy.
In those respects, S&P played a gigantic part in creating the great recession we are mired in; the general economic misery of everyone but the top one percent.
And now, last Friday, S&P is the company that made a $2 trillion dollar ADDITION MISTAKE (i.e., a calculation your third-grade grandchild knows how to do) before being corrected by the Treasury Department.
So, apparently, work this poor is standard operating procedure at S&P which leads again to the much bigger and only question that matters about this:
Why would anyone on planet Earth – any country, any government, any political leader, any Wall Street master of the universe, any institutional investor, any small-time investor, any one at all, even your dog – listen to Standard & Poor's about what color shirt to wear let alone the creditworthiness of a country?
For all the blather about S&P for the past three days, no one has explained why Standard & Poor's hasn't been laughed out of business.
IS DYING IN YOUR SLEEP REALLY PEACEFUL?
When asked about dying, almost every old person says he or she wants to die peacefully in their sleep.
TGB reader Mary emailed a link to this story about this phenomenon. After the death, in his sleep, of her 88-year-old father, Virginia-Pilot reporter Elizabeth Simpson set out to answer the question: “What is it you die of when you don't wake up in the morning? And, is it the peaceful death everyone assumes?”
Ms. Simpson first turned to Dr. Leah Bush, the chief medical examiner of Virginia who explained that autopsies are performed only in cases of homicide, suspicious deaths and death of people with no other health problems. Then:
”Bush explained that sometimes you can die in your sleep during a massive stroke or a ruptured aneurysm. But in those cases, a person usually will have complained earlier about symptoms like a headache or other pain.
“A heart attack or pulmonary embolism usually will cause enough pain to lead the person to wake and go to an emergency room.
“But death during sleep with no symptoms at all is likely due to the heartbeat going haywire. In Bush's opinion, it is the way to go.
“Peaceful? She thinks so.
“Sometimes, she said, such a person will be curled up in a sleeping position, the blankets tucked around them, no evidence of thrashing about. Their faces are serene, their eyes closed.
“By contrast, in cases where death comes while not sleeping, there's a 50-50 chance the eyes will be open.”
There is much more to Ms. Simpson's story and well worth a read.
At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Johna Ferguson: Moving Day
HAPPINESS IN OLD AGE
A lot of scientific news about health with its mays, mights and maybes is not, in terms of usefulness, worth the effort to read. Occasionally, however, there is a study , even with those equivocations included, that you just KNOW is right.
In a phone chat over the weekend, elderblogger Marcia Mayo and I both recalled times in our younger years when we bemoaned the fact that nothing exciting was happening, that we had nothing exciting to look forward to but that in recent years that thought doesn't occur to us.
We are both quite happy to have what young people would probably view as boring lives but it suits us now. I'm pretty sure most elders would agree. This study is hardly earth-shaking news and maybe those researchers could move on to something more useful now.
ANOTHER POLITICAL NON-EVENT
Or should be.
A lot of hoo-hah has resulted from Standard and Poor's Friday downgrading of American creditworthiness. This isn't ho-hum stuff that affects only governments; it can increase our taxes and the interest rates you and I pay on mortgages, reverse mortgages, credit cards, etc. for months and years to come.
But the weird thing about the S&P downgrade is that anyone paid or is still paying attention. The real question no one is asking or answering is this:
Why would anyone on planet Earth – any country, any government, political leader, Wall Street master of the universe, institutional investor, small-time investor or even your dog – listen to Standard & Poor's about what TV show to watch let alone the creditworthiness of a country?
S&P is the company that gave triple-A ratings to those toxic mortgages that crashed the world economy in 2008. S&P is the company that gave Lehman Bros. an A rating the week before it filed for bankruptcy.
In those respects, S&P played a gigantic part in creating the great recession we are mired in; the general economic misery of everyone but the top one percent.
And now, last Friday, S&P is the company that made a $2 trillion dollar ADDITION MISTAKE (i.e., a calculation your third-grade grandchild knows how to do) before being corrected by the Treasury Department.
So, apparently, work this poor is standard operating procedure at S&P which leads again to the much bigger and only question that matters about this:
Why would anyone on planet Earth – any country, any government, any political leader, any Wall Street master of the universe, any institutional investor, any small-time investor, any one at all, even your dog – listen to Standard & Poor's about what color shirt to wear let alone the creditworthiness of a country?
For all the blather about S&P for the past three days, no one has explained why Standard & Poor's hasn't been laughed out of business.
IS DYING IN YOUR SLEEP REALLY PEACEFUL?
When asked about dying, almost every old person says he or she wants to die peacefully in their sleep.
TGB reader Mary emailed a link to this story about this phenomenon. After the death, in his sleep, of her 88-year-old father, Virginia-Pilot reporter Elizabeth Simpson set out to answer the question: “What is it you die of when you don't wake up in the morning? And, is it the peaceful death everyone assumes?”
Ms. Simpson first turned to Dr. Leah Bush, the chief medical examiner of Virginia who explained that autopsies are performed only in cases of homicide, suspicious deaths and death of people with no other health problems. Then:
There is much more to Ms. Simpson's story and well worth a read.
At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Johna Ferguson: Moving Day