The Aging Perspective

I recently presented a workshop training for my program Loving Words Again for professional caregivers, at a local home health agency, and the initial response was typical. When I asked how many yays and nays, on poetry, I received the typical 50% for each. You can't effectively teach poetry to individuals with dementia unless you feel inspired yourself, so how do you get there? I remind my participants to recognize the beauty in the words they hear every day. Like the song that comes on the radio and the words spoken over the loudspeaker at a baseball game, " And it's out...out.........out of here!"...

 With the world being what it is today, maybe a big shot of tennis is just what we need. Think about it. Tennis has always exemplified a certain amount of civility in comparison to many other sports. Can you just imagine having every news channel of today, covering all the senior champions of yesteryears: Billy Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi, Bjorn Borg, Pete Sampras, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova and more. Hardly ever a fight, while the crowd keeps their opinion, for the opposing player, respectfully silent during the match. There is no critiquing of a player’s politics as the victor...