Meeting Misty Copeland, My ‘Shero’

One day during the first week of March 2017, I noticed on my Facebook newsfeed that ballet dancer Misty Copeland was going to be appearing at the Union Square Barnes & Noble bookstore in New York City on March 21 to discuss her recently published b… Continue reading

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

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

Following Your Second Act Dreams When the World Says Don’t

Second-act entrepreneurship is a certifiable trend, with 55-to-64-year-olds now accounting for 26% of new entrepreneurs, according to the Kauffman Foundation. But some of these entrepreneurs launch despite naysayers saying: Don’t do it! Here’s the stor… 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

Mary Pipher: The Cultural Anthropologist Navigating New Currents

In 1994, Mary Pipher wrote Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, a groundbreaking, bestselling book examining the complicated lives of teenage girls. It was the result of her work as a clinical psychologist with this age group. And i… Continue reading

How We Chose the 2019 Influencers in Aging

We take the process of selecting our annual Influencers in Aging very seriously because we know our list is an important one. Our goal is to name a dozen groundbreakers who, in the past year, have helped transform attitudes about aging, presented innov… Continue reading

Living Through a Lonely Spell

For one long semester in 1974, my heart was a tomb. I didn’t know a soul on the campus of George Mason University — then, strictly a commuter college in Fairfax, Va. Despite 5,000 students milling around me, I felt like the only person on Earth. Howeve… Continue reading

Say ‘Hello’ to Friendly Phone Programs

Editor’s Note: This is a part of our Loneliness + Isolation series brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular. It’s 9 a.m. on a Wednesday, and Kathleen, the moderator for today’s morning Gratitude Group on Well Connected, is taking a friendly roll cal… Continue reading

Student Loans: The Financial and Emotional Toll on Families

You’ve seen the frightening student loan statistics, such as the $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt they now represent. And if you’re a parent of a teenager or twentysomething, you’ve probably lived them. (A recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek report said som… Continue reading