Will You Miss My Bitcoins When I’m Gone?

Digital security has never been so important or perhaps so easy. You can unlock your phone with your fingerprint or your face. You can use a password manager to store all your login credentials behind a single master password. And you can secure many o… Continue reading

The Negative Effects of Elderspeak

Faye Kirtley doesn’t appreciate it when store clerks talk down to her and act as if “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “It’s embarrassing, and I don’t know why they think it’s okay to treat an older person like that,” added the 88-year old reside… Continue reading

You’re Never Too Old, Busy or Rusty to Make Music

Do you ever wish you knew how to play a musical instrument? If so, you are not alone. Yet a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts survey found that just 12 percent of U.S. adults were playing musical instruments. This gap between aspiration and actualit… Continue reading

Embrace Being a ‘Gym Rat’

A former bodybuilder, now a ballroom dancer, builds stamina at the gym. A tax preparer fends off the fear of a sedentary life with two fitness classes. A cycling instructor confesses that teaching motivates him to “show up regularly.” And a retiree wit… Continue reading

Listen: StoryCorps Conversations With Artists and Students 55+

(Part of the VITALITY ARTS SPECIAL REPORT) For Roni Trulson, stepping onto the dance floor again offered both a sweet moment of nostalgia and an opportunity, as she says, “to feed my soul in a different way” at this time in her life. In an audio conver… Continue reading

Scenes From a 63-Year Marriage

I went to lunch with my parents last week. I sat in the back seat, where I was 12  all over again, while my mother drove home from the restaurant and my dad “corrected her mistakes.” He really is the worst backseat driver. Until Dad’s macular degenerat… Continue reading

Self-Care in Middle Age: When It’s Okay to Say No

Saying no might be one of the healthiest decisions you can make in your fifties and sixties. That’s because your physical and mental health is directly correlated to the activities and tasks you sign up for. All of us are given 24 hours in a day and we… Continue reading

Tattoos: It’s Never Too Late for Body Art

Tattooing is such an ancient art that some tattoo tools found in Europe are estimated to be 12,000 years old. But it’s only in the past few decades that tattooing has started to lose its stigma. It was actually illegal in Oklahoma until 2006 and banned… Continue reading

‘Papa’ Provides Millennial Grandkids On-Demand

Barbara Carroll-Marks knew she needed a change in her life. After developing Parkinson’s disease, she had been through a particularly  rough stretch. The condition worsened to the point where she needed 24-hour home nursing care, an experience she reme… Continue reading

Loss and Grief in an Increasingly Secular World

Elaine Pagels, 75, has lived through the best and the worst of times. She is the highly acclaimed author of a long list of scholarly, yet accessible, bestselling books, most notably The Gnostic Gospels; a renowned professor of religious history at Prin… Continue reading