Friday's Odds and Ends

Here we are at day 3 of the Arctic Blast that is affecting much of the United States. The way the media is going crazy with reports you would think we never had winter before. Granted, winter does not usually come this early. I can't remember freezing temperatures before December here in Texas, but then my memory is not what it used to be.

I was worried about that - my memory not the snow - until my sister sent the following to me:

Brains of older people are slow because they know so much.  People do not decline mentally with age, it just takes them longer to recall facts because they have more information stored in their brains, scientists believe. 

Researchers say this slowing down is not the same as cognitive decline.  The human brain works slower in old age, said Dr.Michael Ramscar, but only because we have stored more information over time.The brains of older people do not get weak. On the contrary, they simply know more, but just may not be able to access the information.

Also, older people often go to another room to get something and when they get there, they stand there wondering what they came for.  It is NOT a memory problem, it is nature's way of making older people do more exercise.  SO THERE!!

Whew! I feel so much better now.

Did you know that Medicare fraud adds as much as 10% to health care costs? Peggy Sposato is a data analyst for the Justice Department, and she pioneered a program that uses Medicare billing data to target suspected fraud. It is estimated that she has saved the taxpayers billions of dollars since the mid 1990s when she assumed her current position. As much as $20 billion a year is lost to Medicare fraud, and AARP has some helpful links that you can use to help spot and report fraud.  

An interesting commentary by Ruben Navarrette carried this headline: Life isn't far and never will be, so get over it.

Ruben went on to say that Americans need to stop listening to populist rhetoric and accept the many injustices of our system. He then quotes JFK, "There is always inequity in life...It's very hard...to assure complete equality. Life is unfair."

One point that Ruben made in his commentary is that sometimes dealing with the unfairness in life is what makes us stronger

He also seemed to be saying that instead of jumping on every claim of "unfairness" we should work on just accepting the reality and figuring out how to live within that reality.

One of the most absurd news items I read this past week was about Arnold Abbot, a 90-year-old man who was arrested in Fort Lauderdale for violating an ordinance that restricts public feeding of the homeless. 

Really? The police couldn't just tell him to pack up the food and go away?

Now I'll leave you with a bit of humor from One Big Happy by Rick Detorie. Ruthie is sitting at the table with her father, Frank, who is helping her with her math homework. He says, "You have 22 carrot sticks on you plate. If your friend Sam takes six sticks and your Friend Tessa takes four sticks... But Tessa returns two sticks... How many carrot sticks are on your plate?"

Ruthie thinks for a few moments and her father asks, "Shouldn't you be writing down some numbers, Ruthie?"

"First of all... I don't know who these people are. Secondly, if I did know them, I would never eat with them. Thirdly, it's a stupid question. Who wants to steal carrots?

"Now, if they were French fries? Maybe."

Brother Joe pipes up with, "She makes a good point, Dad."

I knew there was a reason I relate so much to Ruthie. I hated those word problems in school, too. What about you?

Have a great weekend everyone.
 

Don't Mess With Old People

Please help me welcome Mags as today's Wednesday's Guest. She is the central character in Nancy Lynn Jarvis's novel, Mags & The AARP Gang. I reviewed the book on Sunday, so you can check that out if you want to. While Mags is entertaining us here, I am over at The Blood Red Pencil with a post about working as a script doctor. So hop on over if you have a moment and see the trailer for one of the films I worked on with director, Stephen Marro. But do visit with Mags first.

 Mags does love her coffee, so let's grab a cup and see what she has to say...

My name is Margaret Sybil Broadly Benson, née Spencer, but you can call me Mags. I told my biographer, Nancy Lynn Jarvis, that I was going to be on Maryann’s blog today and asked if she would write something for me to say, but did she? No, she did not. I’d like to think it’s because she’s involved getting publicity for the cozy mystery writers’ cookbook she edited recently, but the truth is, I think she’s forgotten about me. I’m not complaining, though. In my eighty-three years I’ve learned there are advantages to being overlooked.

Sometimes people make assumptions about the elderly; imagine they know how we think, what we’re capable of, and more importantly what we aren’t capable of. Take me and the AARP Gang, for example. Our mobile home park was about to be foreclosed and we were about to be kicked out of our homes, all political and underhanded what was going on…oh, don’t get me started. Bottom line is it was assumed that at our ages we wouldn’t have any fight left; that we’d just be nice little old ladies and gents and go off quietly to live with family.

What people didn’t realize is we were already a family, and that after a lifetime of living and reaching our eighties, none of us were quitters. No wonder we decided to rob the bank that held our note and pay off our mortgage with the proceeds. We liked the irony of that, besides, the bank was within walking distance, which was handy because most of us no longer drive.

We devised a masterful plan that made the most of our assets. My cohorts disguised themselves as old people (yes, I know we are all already old people, but they still needed disguises) making the most of the unobtrusiveness of age, while I used my rather formidable-if-never-used-on-stage acting talents to become our distraction, keeping people’s eyes busy so they wouldn’t see what was going on behind their backs.

I was doing my award-worthy impression of a dear old lady who had lost her wallet and pleading with the people in the bank to help me find it when Melvin, who managed to bring along a rifle that none of us knew he had, got upset with a teller, brandished it, lost his balance, and fired the weapon, accidentally shooting one of the overhead fire sprinklers. That happenstance caused all the other sprinklers to spurt in sympathy and automatically call the fire department. Oh my! So much for our carefully rehearsed plan.

Did we get away with it, you ask? Well, I am writing from home instead of from a jail cell, but it took quite a bit of complicated maneuvering, a whole novel’s worth in fact, to get from being soggy in the bank to where I am today. Melvin—oh, he’s a hard man to control—in drag didn’t help my case much, not to mention all the trouble Batty Betty with her early onset Alzheimer’s caused what with remembering exactly what she should have forgotten. You can read all about what happened in Mags and the AARP Gang.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nancy Lynn Jarvis was a Santa Cruz, California, Realtor® for more than twenty years and is still licensed but she’s enjoying writing so much, she may never sell another house. After earning a BA in behavioral science from San Jose State University, she worked in the advertising department of the San Jose Mercury News. A move to Santa Cruz meant a new job as a librarian and later a stint as the business manager for Shakespeare Santa Cruz at UCSC. Nancy’s work history reflects her philosophy: people should try something radically different every few years. 
Mags and the AARP Gang represents a new direction in her writing adventure. After four Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries, Nancy put her characters, Regan, Tom, and Dave, on hiatus so she could let Mags and her gang, characters who had been forming in her mind for the past year, tell you their story. 

Book Review - Mags And The AARP Gang by Nancy Lynn Jarvis

Mags And The AARP Gang
Nancy Lynn Jarvis
File Size: 2368 KB
Print Length: 266 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0983589127
Publisher: Good Read Publishers; 1 edition (November 14, 2013)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00A946G3C

Margaret Sybil Broadly Benson, known to her friends as Mags, is 83 years old, and she has a nice routine to her senior-style life. She visits with her friends, has lunch every day with Harvey, a special friend since the passing of her husband, and is content with her rather ordinary life until Harvey comes up with an idea to help the owner of the trailer park where Mags and her friends live.

Raymond owes the bank $170,000 and has received a foreclosure notice. This means everyone will ose their homes, which doesn't set well with Harvey or Mags. So Harvey suggests a plan he's devised to rob the very bank that holds the mortgage and give the money to Raymond. They enlist the help of a few other friends, go over and over the plan, and even practice what they will do, so they are confident that all will go well.

I won't give anything away, but the simple life Mags has enjoyed up to this point takes an abrupt about face. Nothing goes according to the plan, either before or during the heist and this motley crew of elder people must use every wit they have left to get through it all.

While a bit overwritten and too "cutesy" in places, this is a fun story, and who couldn't love an 83-year old woman who is clever, funny, and able to pull off a bank robbery.

One of the things I particularly liked about the book is how it celebrates aging in such a positive way. We are so far past the "rocking on the front porch" stereotype of people over 70, and that is a good thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nancy Lynn Jarvis was a Santa Cruz, California, Realtor® for more than twenty years and is still licensed but she’s enjoying writing so much, she may never sell another house. After earning a BA in behavioral science from San Jose State University, she worked in the advertising department of the San Jose Mercury News. A move to Santa Cruz meant a new job as a librarian and later a stint as the business manager for Shakespeare Santa Cruz at UCSC. Nancy’s work history reflects her philosophy: people should try something radically different every few years. “Mags and the AARP Gang” represents a new direction in her writing adventure. After four Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries, Nancy put her characters, Regan, Tom, and Dave, on hiatus so she could let Mags and her gang, characters who had been forming in her mind for the past year, tell you their story.

Mags will be my guest this coming Wednesday, so I hope you can stop by to meet her. She is quite a lady.

Friday's Odds and Ends

When my sister told me she had to pay $4,000 for a pill to help her body deal with the effects of chemo she was receiving for breast cancer, I thought we had a bad phone connection. Surely it didn't cost $4,000 for one little pill. To my dismay, I found out it really does. Not only that, a lot of cancer treatments are costing much more than they were even a few years ago.

According to a recent article by Donald W. Light, a network fellow at Harvard University's E. J. Safra Center for Ethics and a professor at Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine, and Hagop Kantarjian, chair of the Department of Leukemia at MD Anderson Cancer Center, drug companies believe the higher prices are necessary. Pharmaceutical companies say that the new drugs are improved, but oncologists disagree. The doctors say there are few clinical advantages of the new medicine over existing drugs.

The other justification for higher prices of all kinds of medicine is the cost of research and development. In the article Light and Kantarjian wrote for the AARP Bulletin, they dispelled this justification as well.

Overall, investment in basic research by pharmaceutical companies to discover new drugs is quite small - about one-sixth of overall company research costs and about 1.3 percent of revenues after deducting for taxpayer subsidies.

Research for cancer drugs specifically is paid for by the National Cancer Institute and various foundations, yet the price of cancer drugs has doubled in the past decade. 

The authors conclude the article with a call to congress to hold hearings on the rising costs of specialty drugs and allow Medicare to negotiate discount drug prices. They believe bringing down the cost of drugs and treatments could cut health care costs.

Now for some funny papers fun from Mallard Fillmore. A news news anchor says, "Good evening… The F.C.C. will be observing, but in no way interfering with tonights newscast….

An officious guy with a huge smile next to him says, "He actually meant to say, "The friendly, helpful F.C.C., didn't you, Roger?"

This next one is from One Big Happy. Grandma and grandpa are out for a walk and meet a neighbor who says, "I'm looking to lower my taxes. Do you all give money to charities?"

Grandma says, "Yes, Roy. We donate to our church."

"Aw, I can't do that, I'm an atheist."

Grandpa says, "No problem, Roy. Atheism is a non-prophet group."

Roy scratches his chin. "It is?"

As grandma and grandma walk off she says to him "You're so bad."

Closing With a Literary Lesson: This is from Laura Lippman's novel, Life Sentences when a character is reflecting on how a white friend thought about the weekend that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, "She hadn't known, couldn't know what had gone on in the living rooms and kitchens of black folks' homes that horrible weekend, the fear and grief and terror of it all. As Donna said, she meant no harm. But Tisha knew that people who meant no harm were often the most dangerous people of all, the real tar babies from which one might never disentangle."

Divorce Rate Surging for Boomers

When I first got the idea to write my woman's novel, Play it Again, Sam, the divorce rate for people age 50 and older was just starting a slow climb. Most couples who were married for 20 years or more, usually stayed married and worked through the challenges of growing older, facing an empty nest, and some form of mid-life crisis. That is what made a story like Sam's a bit unusual.

I first developed the story for a line that Kensington was publishing, "To Love Again" and I had a contract for my book. The plot was based on a true story that a friend gave me permission to use, and I thought it was serendipitous that I had that story when Kensington was taking submissions for the new line. Shortly before my book was due to come out, however, the publisher dropped that line. Part of the reasoning, according to the editor, was that there just wasn't enough interest in stories like this. Not that many older women are facing the same situation.

Sally Abrahms

Now, the numbers of Baby Boomers getting divorced are surging, and there is even a term for it, Gray Divorce. In an article, Life After Divorce, that appeared in the June AARP Bulletin, Sally Abrahms quotes Jay Lebow, a psychologist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University who says, "If late-life divorce were a disease, it would be an epidemic."

It is estimated that one out of three boomers will be divorced as they face their later years. For women, like my fictional character Sam, who have not worked outside the home, this future can be difficult financially. It is not easy to find a job when one is 50 or older, so these women either go back to school for further training, or find some other way to make ends meet.

Sam made the choice to go back to school and get a degree in graphic art. She also temporarily moved in with a friend, Margaret, to keep expenses down.

Women sharing living spaces and expenses is something that is happening in real life, too. In her article, Abrahms mentioned one woman who moved in with her mother and became her caregiver after the older woman fell and broke her hip. Not only was it fortuitous that the daughter was there, after a short time she realized it was a blessing to have a closer relationship with her mother. "I went from being embarrassed that I was living with my mother to feeling so lucky we're close and that I can do this."

Other women are renting rooms in their homes or condos, as well as finding other ways to earn money. Edith Heyck gives art lessons and operates a decluttering business.

In Play it Again, Sam, the heroine meets someone who will probably be there to take care of her in her old age, but that doesn't always happen in real life. Even if one remarries after the divorce, will that person be there when the need might arise? Will stepchildren step in to be caregivers?

Of course the future is uncertain for all of us, but these women and men who divorce late in life have more uncertainties.

Are you in a long-term relationship? Plan to stay there? What would be your toughest challenge should you lose your mate through divorce or death?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Play it Again, Sam was eventually published in paper by a very small press and had very small sales. More recently it was published by Uncial Press as an e-book, and then indie published in paper this year.