Council
Council for Older Adults www.growingolder.org
COMMUNICATOR Volume 22, Number 2
March/April 2014
Telling It Like It Is It’s Not What It Used to Be Jeff Robinson, Editor Council Communicator
At an event to celebrate National Manufacturing Day last fall, an Ohio career center enlightened students with demonstrations of 3D printing and robotics. The state-of-the-art displays were meant to dispel images that the word “manufacturing” might conjure among teenagers - smokestacks, steel mills, workers with dirty faces and steel lunch pails. The message? Manufacturing isn’t what it used to be. And neither is aging. What thoughts does the word “aging” generate in your mind? A nursing home where a group of residents naps around the television? A hospital bed? Gray hair and thick glasses? At the Council for Older Adults Enrichment Center, aging is defined - in part - as a trip to Italy, pool tournaments and a cardio workout in the fitness center. And it’s defined by some of the center’s staff and frequent visitors as “whatever you make it to be” (see accompanying story). National studies have shown that, even if aging isn’t as good as we think it will be, advances in medicine and more active lifestyles mean that it doesn’t have to be as bad as we may fear. A survey of nearly 3,000 adults conducted by the Pew Research Center found...
AGING continues on page 22... We provide choices for older people so they can live safely in their own homes and stay healthy as they age.
In an effort to learn more about the myths and realities of aging, the Council Communicator sat down with four COA enrichment center regulars of varying ages and asked them to set the record straight about getting older. Sharing their insights were 62-year-old Joe Pusateri, 66-year-old Trudy Poole, 78-year-old Shirley Maggard and 81-year-old Edie Balser. Q. Talk about the myths and realities of aging. How many of those stories about aging have come to be true and how many are not what they are cracked up to be? Trudy - Age is a state of mind and an attitude. You’re as young as you feel...until your body screams something else. Joe - The first thing is, when you get up as you get older, you’re so stiff and you say, ‘Well, how did I get this way?’ If you don’t keep active, everything falls apart. One of the keys to my physical being is I love to work out. If you don’t do some sort of exercise, your body just doesn’t feel well at all. Personally, I do six days a week, and even God took Sunday off. Start out light and build yourself up to where you can do it all the time. Trudy - Keeping in contact with those in the community and continually meeting new people keeps...
TELLING continues on page 23...