This Week in Elder News – 27 June 2009

In this regular weekend feature you will find links to news items from the preceding week related to elders and aging, along with whatever else catches my fancy that I think you might like to know. Suggestions are welcome with, however, no promises of publication.

Last weekend Pete Sampson, who lives here in Portland, Maine, and blogs at As I was Saying, sang the national anthem at Fenway Park in Boston with his group, the Grateful Dads.

“Although the expressions on our faces suggest we were standing in boiling oil (the wind was blowing rain straight at us)”, writes Pete in an email, “we had a great time. As with every Red Sox game, the stands were full despite the rain. Being cheered by 35,000+ people is an experience I won’t soon forget!”

lilalia of Yum Yum Cafe emailed this week with a link to an extensive section at the Guardian UK titled Aging Britain. It's filled with stories ranging from dating tips for the 60-plus crowd to writing a will. Take a look here.

I want to mention too that lilalia and her 14-year-old daughter have launched a charming new blog, Short Short Stories (which reminds me a bit of Virginia DeBolt's First 50 Words ). Here's a sample from a contributor named Kim:

how come when i paint my toe nails i feel:

• girlie
• dressed up
• more stylish
• shiny and bright
• happier
• sexier

how come i only paint my toe nails in the summer then?
how come it took me 52 years to start painting my toe nails?

I liked Advanced Style – a blog about fashionable elders caught in street photos – when it launched last year and it has only gotten better since then. And, the bloggers have expanded from New York to other locales including Seattle and Milan. Here are two women in giant, matching eyewear.

Here is another reason Congress should be writing a single-payer health care reform bill: in a poll from Thomson Reuters measuring the effect of the recession on people's health care spending, the silent generation – those older than the boomers - are least likely age group to postpone health care needs because they have their own single-payer system, Medicare. Congress, please take note.

This video of 89-year-old Rachel Veitch and her 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente from the Growing Bolder website is all the rage this week. About a dozen readers forwarded it. [3:48 minutes]

I've been a fan of The Beatles since they emerged in the 1960s – enough so that I replaced all their albums as technology changed going from from LPs to eight-track and then cassette. But I never caught up with replacing those with CDs and I'm lacking a lot of mp3s.

Now, along comes a new Beatles websitesite with links to videos of all the original songs from every album, including lyrics. You can find the album list here or, try this page where every Beatles song link is listed alphabetically.

As a sample, When I'm 64 seems appropriate for this blog. [2:37 minutes]

Some good health news: elders may be immune to the H1N1 flu virus. In a previous flu outbreak during the 1970s, few people older than 26 were affected in the U.S. and, speculates an infectious disease specialist, the current flu virus may be similar enough to the 1970s version to protect old people. Read more here.

For the finale today, a French television commercial for a European brand of rubber cement. Don't sneer. It is sweet and funny and delightful, and you would never be allowed to see it on American television.

The embed code doesn't work properly and I'm not smart enough to fix it, so I can't include the video on the page. Go here instead - and enjoy. You're gonna love it. ( Hat tip to Marion Dent of And the Beat Goes On.