Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

-- Melodie Beattie

Hot Topics at the 2008 Gerontological Society of America (GSA) National Conference

This year’s GSA conference featured research presentations by scholars from across the U.S. and beyond. The program featured four packed days of paper presentations, posters, and lectures that covered a wide range of topics. Based on my participation and attendance I have come up with two “Top 5 lists.”

Top 5 topics Presented at GSA (based on # of presentations on this topic)

1. Caregiving! (In every way, shape and form imaginable!)
2. Dementia
3. Chronic disease management
4. Minority aging research (recruitment, retention, findings)
5. Older adults and driving


Most Interesting Topics Presented (According to Jackie)

1. The lived experience of dementia
2. Translating intervention research to social service agencies
3. Incarcerated older adults
4. Community-based health interventions
5. The changing face of the aging workforce

Visit the GSA website to search for presentations on these and other topics.




Jackie Frank, PhD
CAC Associate Professor

To learn more about Jackie's GSA presentation, Coping and Grief Differences between Spouse and Adult Child Alzheimer's Caregivers, click here.

Helping Elders Make the DTV Transition

You've probably seen the commercials -- "Digital TV is coming. Are you ready?"

Some of us are. But some -- nearly 10 million households in the U.S. according the Nielsen folks -- are not. And in the "not ready" category are plenty of older adults. 6.4% of all households headed up by someone 55 or older, according to Nielsen figures.

For many seniors, particularly those with low incomes or those in poor health, the television is a critical connection to the outside world. Isolated by economy or health, these older adults rely on the television not only for entertainment, but as for important information including news and weather updates.

Without taking the necessary steps to prepare themselves for the federally-mandated digital TV conversion (which include installing a converter box on their analog TVs, subscribing to cable or satellite or purchasing a television with a built-in digital tuner), these folks will wake up on February 17, 2009, to nothing but snow on their TVs.

To help congregations and community organizations reach some of those older adults and offer assistance with the conversion, the University of Indianapolis Center for Aging & Community (CAC), in partnership with Noobie, Inc., recently launched the Digital TV Connection Project (DTCP).

What is DTCP?
DTCP is a project that offers a free, downloadable toolkit to help faith-based and community organizations implement a short-term volunteer effort to help keep their senior members connected by providing information about the conversion and assistance with acquiring a converter box coupon, as well as with converter box installation.

The toolkit is currently available for download in English on the CAC website. A Spanish language toolkit will be available before Thanksgiving.

By using this ready-to-go program, faith-based and community organizations can help their senior members stay connected to the world via television and avoid becoming the target of unscrupulous people who might try to sell them services or products they don’t need -- such as cable, satellite or a new television.

We hope you'll bring this easy-to-implement, short-term project to your congregation or organization. If you do, let us know how it works out by e-mailing amagan@uindy.edu.

Amy Magan
CAC Communications Manager

What we all want -- Successful aging

This past Friday I attended an educational event about successful aging on the UIndy campus The event was hosted by the Delta Mu Chapter of the Sigma Phi Omega, the national honor and professional society for gerontology. A panel of presenters brought forth an array of information from studies, experiences and observations to enhance our understanding of what differentiates outcomes of aging based upon heredity vs. lifestyle.

• Heidi Rauch provided excellent guidance on healthy habits.
• Tamiko MaGee Rodgers shared poignant examples from her work with elders in geripsychology.
• Anita Siccardi shared fascinating findings from a study with older adults on concerns of health that related back to spirituality and a sense of meaning in life.

The take-away message from the event was that we all want to age successfully and it requires more than good genes and good choices to make it happen – we need to believe that we are connected to something more important than just ourselves.

For some people the relationship with their family or friends provides them with a sense of purpose and meaning. Others extend their interactions with the greater community in volunteerism or within their faith community. On a day-to-day basis we may not have occasion to do monumental activities of great import or significance. However each of us has the opportunity to nurture existing connections, to re-connect with people we have lost track of, or to pursue new connections and build our network of social support.

Communities do not happen, they are built, one person at a time. And, for all of us to get what we want -- to age successfully -- we need to be an active part of the whole. But don’t take my word for it, check out Outliers: The Story of Success, a new book by Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell describes the findings from a study of the Rosetans of Pennsylvania who defied the understanding of medical experts with their healthy longevity. Despite tendency toward obesity from poor eating habits, high rates of smoking, and hard working conditions, these immigrants from Southern Italy were experiencing less heart disease and outliving the majority of Americans.

When all other variables were accounted for, the only explanation was the community itself, a place of belonging, a place of meaning where each person was a link in the connection to the others. The beauty of helping ourselves by connecting to others and building our community network is that through this process we help everyone else we connect with enjoy the benefits of successful aging as well.

That’s because aging isn’t about old people, it’s about all people.


Tamara Wolske, MS
Academic Program Director

Old Lesson in a New Time

I was dusting my bookshelves when I spotted a book I had not read for awhile. It is titled Two Old Women, An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis. The lessons from the author and the book are important for different reasons. Wallis shares with the reader stories told by her mother and other elders. As the author tells us “stories are gifts given by an elder to a younger person.” I began to think about the many stories my grandparents and parents had told me over the years. How many had I passed on to my child? Does he realize that he is following in his great-grandfather’s and grandfather’s steps by being politically active and working to change the world?

As I think ahead to the holidays and his birthday, maybe the greatest gift I could give him would be knowledge of his heritage. How about you?

Getting back to the book, “Two Old Women”...this is a story about a band of Athabascan people who migrated through the Alaska arctic region following caribou and other roaming animals. With them are two old women who do nothing but complain about their aches and pains and are taken care of by younger tribe members. Finally the decision is made to leave the old women behind, one 75 years old and the other 80 years old, so the tribe can make better use of their resources and travel faster.

The women have a choice: sit still and die or stop complaining and use their skills from younger days to survive. The process of surviving involves moving beyond the hurts of the past; bonding with each other and nature; rebuilding their skills; and, ultimately, thriving -- not just surviving. In the end the two old women rescue the younger tribe members who have failed in their search for shelter and food.

The last step in the growing process for the two old women is to forgive those who left them to die, to trust the tribe to let them in their camp, and to share their bounty with the younger tribe members.

The two old women have learned to make each day one worth living and growing. They learn to see themselves as assets. The younger tribe members wanted to help the old ones in any way they could, but the women would not allow it as they enjoyed their newly found independence. The younger tribe members recognized the older members as assets based on actively engaging the older members in the work, asking their advice and learning from their years of experience.

A lesson learned many years ago but often played out in today’s society over again and again.



Helen Dillon
Senior Fellow

Farewell Granny Bunhead

A former colleague of mine, Pat Pickett, sent me this link to an article that recently appeared on the websites of Business Week, the Chicago Tribune and some other smaller publications. The article is about her mother, who passed away last month at the age of 84, and how the family worked to give her a dignified send-off on a very small budget.

"Dealing with the high cost of dying is especially difficult when many people are just scraping by," the article reads.

"But, in the end, what would have been important to her mother, Pickett says, were the people who were there: her grandchildren, first great-grandchild Charlie and other family; old friends and new ones she'd made while attending cardiac rehabilitation; the family doctor who still made house calls in her final months and gave Pickett his cell phone number, telling her to call any time.

'I think we get caught up in the luxury of this and that. But this is how most of America does this,' Pickett says of the service for her mother. 'This is how real America lives.'

And this, too, is how many of us die."

The article touched me for certain because I had met Pat's mother, Jean, a few times and I remember the hairstyle that gave her the nickname "Granny Bunhead." But it also gave me insight into a world so many move in on a daily basis. A world of caring for an aging parent; of making meager Social Security dollars stretch to cover medication and insurance, utilities and rent; of seeking the dignity that we all deserve as we age -- and as we die.

I hope you'll read the article. I think the impact of its circulation across the Web might be as much a fitting send-off for Jean as was the simple service her family gave her in Noblesville, Indiana last month.

Amy Magan
Communications Manager

Include creativity in your retirement plans

Last Thursday, I attended “Art is Long; Life is Short,” a Spirit & Place Festival event co-sponsored by the UIndy Center for Aging & Community, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Art Center and WFYI . Held at the Art Center, the event included discussion, tours and demonstrations designed to remind attendees that imagination does not diminish with age.

My favorite part was spending some time with woodworking instructor Lee Ellis (photo above), a tall, slender, 70-something retiree who was eager to not only show us his one-of-a-kind wooden creations, but have us feel and examine the wood, and imagine the tree from which the bowl or ornament had come. I found myself fascinated with his work and also with his story—a retired Lilly PhD with a background in molecular biology, who had spent most of his 30+ year career looking through an electron microscope. He described how during his working years, in addition to a having a career and raising a family, he fed his creativity through woodworking, and how he knew just exactly what he wanted to do when he retired.

I could imagine him at work in his laboratory as he meticulously fashioned an intricate tree ornament from a hunk of wood. As he worked last week at the Art Center, I found myself drifting off into one of my favorite daydreams about the things that I want to do when I retire and I wondered about the path that took him from scientist to artist.

As I was leaving, Ellis was bringing some things in from the parking lot and I stopped to tell him how much I enjoyed the afternoon. As I turned to walk toward my car, I added that I couldn’t wait to retire to do some things like taking a class at the Art Center. I was surprised by the urgency of his answer: Don’t wait! Do it NOW! Don’t wait until you retire—know what you want to spend your time doing--take a Saturday class to experiment with things.

As I thought about the experience on the drive home, the inadequacy of how most of us plan for retirement struck me yet again. Retirement planning is so much more than our finances—although finances are a means to an end. But so is our health, so is our engagement, so are our social connections, so is our creativity.

So my assignment---and yours should you choose to accept it—is to do some creativity planning for my future. What are those creative outlets that I enjoy, that I look forward to, that I should nurture and embrace? What are yours?

Thanks, Dr. Ellis, for giving this teacher a lesson I’ll never forget.



Ellen W. Miller, PhD
Executive Director

Red or blue states: We're all in an aging state.

The ink is barely dry on the newspapers declaring Barack Obama as President-elect of the United States of America. Already, I can feel the tension between the "red" voters and the "blue" voters dissipating. We are, once again, simply Americans. But red or blue, one thing is true of every person in this country -- and in the world -- we are all aging.

I had to face my own aging process earlier this week when I bought my first pair of "readers." I was tired of having to set the "view" on my computer screen to 150%. But, as we all can, I chose to age on my own terms and bought a snazzy purple pair of specs adorned with rhinestones.

That's what this blog is all about. Aging and all the joys and challenges that come with it. Entries will be posted by members of the faculty and staff of the University of Indianapolis Center for Aging & Community. We want to inform, enlighten, engage and occasionally entertain you and others interested in all things aging.

We hope you'll visit us often. For now. . .we wish you happy aging!

Amy Magan
Communications Manager