A Little Culture is Good for Your Mental Health

Eve Hammond, 76, a retired scientist in the Bay Area, has a steady diet of museum and gallery shows, plays and/or concerts each month. She has also taken craft classes, from jewelry-making and pottery to mosaics, and is a member of a local museum. “Sin… Continue reading

What’s on TV? New Shows About Second Acts

Remember when NBC billed its Thursday nights shows as Must See TV? This fall, NBC and CBS have three new Thursday night half-hour comedies that might be called Second Act TV, featuring popular stars launching new careers, romantic lives or both. Carol’… Continue reading

How to Read Newspapers on A Budget

When my husband retired last fall, we discovered that our new reduced income left us unable to afford newspaper subscriptions. Bad timing. With the upcoming elections, we wanted to remain as deeply informed as possible on national news and politics, wh… Continue reading

The Music of an Unforgettable Trip

Christmas Day 2018 was one of the worst days of my life. Just over a month before, my husband of 32 years, Dale, died two days before Thanksgiving of a sudden massive heart attack. He was only 57 and we had been together since we were teenagers. To say… Continue reading

Making Social Gatherings More Meaningful

The food was great, the wine was flowing and your friends gave you great gifts for your birthday. You were expecting a wonderful evening. But at the end of the night, you felt let down. And the sad part is — this isn’t the first time it’s happened. You… Continue reading

A Good Movie Cry Is Just a Memory

As a teenager, I saw the Barbra Streisand/Robert Redford movie The Way We Were and cried. As the theater lights went up, my mother looked at my tear-streaked face and commented dryly, “You really don’t know true sadness yet, do you?” In that moment, I … Continue reading

The Poignant New Song About Age Discrimination by Employers

You probably wouldn’t think the topic of age discrimination by employers would make much of a song. Well, sit back, relax and watch the poignant video of “Dear Sir/Madam” from Australian singer/songwriter Kelea. Get some tissues first. I was tipped off… Continue reading

Cindy Gallop: Disrupting Ageism in Advertising

Cindy Gallop loves to tell people how old she is. She says it’s a special number because it’s a subtotal of your learnings, life experiences and everything you’ve been through to date. “I’m fifty-nine and shout it from the rooftops,” she says. Gallop, … Continue reading

My Second Act: Starting a Newsletter

It’s 7 a.m., and, like clockwork, the Nonpolitical News digital newsletter lands in my email inbox. I’m a subscriber. After slogging through my daily morning news reading — mostly from national media outlets and my Twitter feed — this free newsletter i… Continue reading

How to Survive Empty Nest Weekends

Paula Durlofsky may be a psychologist, but that hardly made her immune last fall to the emotional wallop of her second daughter heading off to college, leaving Durlofsky and her husband Larry, of Bryn Mawr, Pa., living in what felt like an extremely em… Continue reading