Home is a Verb: Designing around the lifeworld of elders

My latest blog is found at the newsletter of the American Architectural Foundation: http://www.archfoundation.org/

If you live near Bloomington, come to our spring workshop: Places with a Purpose: Communities for a Lifetime, with Jan Hively, Kim Irwin, Scott Ball and Zach Benedict.

Flyer found here: http://lifetimecommunities.org/

and see what else we are up to at the Center on Aging and Community: http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/index.php?pageId=31

Apologies for double postings. The subscription list is growing and someday I won’t have to bother you with yet another email.

Happy spring!

Phil

Small Town/Home Base

from The Art of Aging: A Celebration of Old Age in Western Art, 1987, McKee, P.L. and Kauppinen, H. New York: Insight Books

(Note: Scroll to the end for information about an upcoming national conference call on Communities for a Lifetime)

My town of Bloomington likes to claim John Mellencamp as one of its most famous citizens, but Mr. Mellencamp was actually born and raised in Seymour, Indiana, down Highway 65 about 50 miles. So when he sings about “small town”, he’s not talking about Bloomington. Relative to Seymour, Bloomington was the big city when John decided to bring his band to the Bluebird cafe. I think he was known as Johnny Cougar back in those days. As a new graduate student in anthropology at Indiana University, I remember Johnny Cougar flyers on telephone posts but can’t say I made the clubs in those years (or now for that matter).

Seymour’s loss was Bloomington’s gain. But it’s an old story, as creative young people have always seen “getting out of town” as the first step to success in life. When the small town doesn’t provide opportunities for young people, you either leave or you feel trapped.

And there’s another thread to this story. The old people? They remain behind.

So what makes this old story different now?

The scale of the issue: small towns provide fewer and fewer opportunities for young people and there are more and more and more older people. This is the central point of Kimon Koulet’s wise comment to my last blog. Kimon is a planning professional in a New Hampshire region with a median age of 45.2, older than the state of Maine, the oldest state in the country. Kimon echoes comments I have heard from many small town Mayors and public officials. They are searching for new economic strategies that can deter the forces that stretch and snap the geographic ties between youth and age.

I am aware of but a few isolated attempts to turn the perceived burden of an aging population into an economic engine. But I believe the conversation has started.

One approach emphasizes the older person as consumer. This is central to “retiree retention and attraction” strategies, characteristically but not entirely, practiced by tourism promoters in southern states. Knowing that prior touristic behavior is a strong predictor of relocation and resettlement, several of these programs receive direct support from state departments of tourism (Mississippi and Louisiana, for example). More recently, towns in the New West have positioned themselves as retirement destinations, often beating out the traditional “sunny climes” model of the previous generation of retirees. Truly, entire regions in the New West have been transformed from extractive to service-based economies, organized around the needs and portfolios of a retired population.

A second approach emphasizes the older person as a patient. I am stretching the point, but, in my experience, I see public officials eagerly competing to receive the economic benefits of the latest institutional response to the health care needs of the elderly – assisted living, long term nursing facilities, and shiny new hospitals.

All well and good, but narrowly focused and missing the real opportunities to organize local economies not around the passive needs of older adults but around their productive potential. This is the town I am looking for and I urge readers to help me find the model…

It’s a town that actively cultivates and supports “elderpreneurs”, through development of work/live environments on newly enriched downtown main streets. It provides start-up consultancies (has an active SCORE chapter). At the same time, it supports elders in the creative class to mentor and hire young people into their professions and businesses. It creates a vibrant downtown culture that integrates, rather than segregates elders from hip young professionals.  It doesn’t support a rave venue and it doesn’t create a downtown senior center that is off-putting to young people. One of the hippest places I ever enjoyed is the Center for Southern Folklore in the heart of downtown Memphis. Talk about integrating old and young! 

It’s a town that attracts new industries that derive particular benefit from a mature work force interested in part-time and/or seasonal employment, with flexible benefits and a socially enticing climate.

It’s a town that makes it easier to get by on a lower level of attachment to the mass market. Because it’s compact, walkable and bikeable, one can seriously consider abandoning that costly auto. Because it celebrates and cultivates creativity at all ages, it is a town that is beautiful, exciting, unpredictable, and stimulating. Because so many new workers in the digital age (young and old) can work from “anywhere”, this town is totally wired – local and global at the same time.

I am guessing there are elements of this town in many areas of the country. What I am looking for is the town that has put all of this together, intentionally and comprehensively, and has accumulated evidence that it works – that it creates a local economy that keeps and attracts creative and productive citizens and future citizens, both young and old. If you find one, call me!!!

Shameless Plug: Join me and others in an interesting discussion of these topics in the next Community Matters phone call, Dec. 8, 2011: http://www.communitymatters.org/communities-all-ages

Making Aging Sexy

by impure_with_memory, Lublin, Poland

It’s a very exciting time to be involved with the field of aging studies, but then I’ve been fascinated with the subject for over 35 years. When I started this work, people would often express curiosity or find it humorous, even depressing, that anyone would be interested in such things. I am amused, at times, when aging celebrity authors “discover” the topic, as if they were the first to encounter the experience and, by virtue of personal reflection, have some premium on knowledge of the subject. That’s ok. After all, aging is certainly a personal learning experience, a process of discovery no doubt, as is life in general, no?

What I find particularly exciting, however, is that we are finally reconsidering aging beyond the narrow confines of its definition as a personal, individual journey. Moreover, we are expanding our definition of aging beyond its focus on the body alone, despite the commodification of aging through every imaginable product that Madison Avenue can hype. Finally, we are giving serious attention to the notion that aging and disability find their manifestation not in the body but in the relationship between the body and its surrounding environment. Necessarily, this politicizes the issues of aging and disability and transforms aging from a personal challenge to a community responsibility.

Through the lens of community, we can now re-envision the study of aging as a “place-based” endeavor. Aging activists (and disability advocates) can now align with the environmental movement in the new emphasis on livability and sustainable communities. A focus on supportive environments now joins the traditional aging-network emphasis on supportive services. Perhaps this new theoretical base for the discipline will attract the youthful attention that the field has always lacked. Yet, some clever marketing of our own might be in order, as our field continues to occupy the dark corners of academia.

Throughout the country, an aging-in-community movement is taking shape. Often, I observe, the impetus is provided by groups of women approaching late life, sharing concerns about their future, and sometimes driven by harsh realities of caregiving for elderly parents within a less than adequate system of care and support. Planning models are emerging and aging activists are indeed becoming educated about municipal planning, zoning, and the critical relationships among mobility, housing and land use decision making.

The AdvantAge Initiative (AI) planning model, including a new, online version of the AI community survey is being tested in three diverse settings: very rural Sonora, California; Georgetown, Texas, a rapidly growing retirement destination; and Clinton/Chelsea/Hell’s Kitchen neighborhoods in the thick of the Manhattan performing arts districts. Despite significant differences in the character of these communities, I am amazed at the degree of enthusiasm that people have for getting to the urgent work of planning community futures. Similarly, here in Indiana, my recent workshop on Livable Communities for Aging in Place filled the 35 participant slots within about a week of its advertisement. Something is clearly going on here. There is a pent-up demand for communities to face the future and a growing realization that change may occur at the local level long before the contentious federal debate about Social Security is ever resolved.

“Old people everywhere.”

This little op-ed appeared in the Bloomington, IN Herald-Times on Saturday, March 5, 2011.

Planning policy: ‘Old people everywhere’

Special to the H-T
March 5, 2011

This guest column is by Phil Stafford, director of the Center on Aging and Community, Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University.

Architect and planner Christopher Alexander is an inspired thinker who has greatly influenced the way we think about the world we are building. He and his colleagues have created a compendium of “design principles” which manifest the timeless way of building.

“There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.” (The Timeless Way of Building, 1979)

“Old people everywhere” is a seminal design principle that describes communities that, alas, are often only remembered. Yet, one need only go back to pre-1950 suburban tract communities to find places where people of all ages lived, worked, schooled and played together. Some of these features still describe certain core neighborhoods in Bloomington and, let me tell you, these neighborhoods are treasured by their residents.

Yet, many of the actions which can be taken to create livable neighborhoods for all ages are, to put it bluntly, illegal in many areas of the city. Mixing retail, medical services and housing; mixing house types; accessory dwellings; shared housing; reduced parking requirements — are a few among the many tools that progressive communities can use to promote livable neighborhoods for all ages — neighborhoods that support productivity, walkability, accessibility and sociability across the lifespan. Instead, as has happened throughout the U.S., we have made these actions illegal and, as a consequence, have produced homogeneous “Peter Pan” communities that separate the generations and make it virtually impossible to age in place when one no longer drives.

One current proposal pending before the Bloomington Plan Commission would attempt to reverse the trend of marginalizing elders through a strategy of infill development (Renwick/Cardon) and create a continuum of support in the context of a mixed-use, new urban community. A good thing. On the other hand, I do wish this project had considered this from the beginning and involved all potential residents in developing a vision for such a model, accompanied by public policy incentives that would make such a project feasible for the developer. This project would look much different and better balanced, I suspect. I would like to live in a community where this is not a naive position.

Old people, and I count myself as one who looks forward to old age, offer much to the neighborhoods they inhabit. They increase the security of a neighborhood for they are often around during the day and aware of what’s going on, contribute to the beauty of neighborhoods by keeping things up, want to be around persons of all ages, are more likely to shop locally, and have more loyalty to local restaurants and businesses, bring richness of experience and storied lives to a place.

As the Kung San of the Kalahari desert say “Old people give you life.”

As a 7-year-old who had the privilege of visiting with an ancient Mrs. Culbertson on her porch swing across my street, I have to ask what parent in the world would not want his or her child to have the opportunity to develop a meaningful relationship with an old person. When old people are everywhere, we all benefit.

Communities for a Lifetime

Indiana’s Communities for a Lifetime bill is advancing through the General Assembly. With unanimous approval from the Senate Local Government Committtee, the bill passed to the Senate floor, passed there and has passed first House reading. One can visit the Indiana General Assembly website to view the legislation (Senate Bill 023) and follow its progress. I had the privilege of providing testimony at the Local Government committee on Feb. 11.

In a related editorial to the Indianapolis Star, I argue that we can wait no longer to being planning communities that work across the lifespan…

Is Indiana “Aging-ready?”

… we can wait no longer to begin serious planning to meet the needs and aspirations of the baby boom generation. The boom has sounded. Every day sees the entry of 10,000 individuals to the ranks of 65+ in the United States.

Doubtless, many are already tired of the explosion of articles, reports, and books on the baby boom and what it means for the nation. Some would argue, with economist Peter Peterson, that the demographic changes threaten the very fabric of our society, bringing about a bleak “Gray Dawn.” Others, such as author Marc Freedman, see the growing population of older adults as a vast, untapped treasure of talent and human capital, a golden opportunity, if we act wisely. None would argue, however, that the changes will have no impact on the status quo. Rather than wait to see what happens, why not plan for both the challenges and the opportunities ahead of us?

As for challenges, the reality is… we age. Our physical reserve capacity diminishes, our risk for disability increases. Large numbers of us will develop Alzheimer’s.  Many of us will develop age-related hearing and vision losses. Of course, many boomers hold out hope they can stave off disability and “square the curve” – avoid a long decline and stay robust till a “quick ending.” More power to them. Indeed, the fitness and nutrition craze, along with remarkable new medicines to control blood pressure and lower cholesterol, will enable many to enjoy more years of health than previous generations. Ironically, this puts a greater number of people at risk for Alzheimer’s and, combined with the sheer absolute numbers of those who don’t maintain health, will still challenge the systems of health and supportive services. Moreover, adults with developmental disabilities are, happily, living longer than ever before. As much of the public cost associated with health care for the elderly is directed towards institutions (both hospitals and long term care facilities), we must bend the arc of support in Indiana towards home and community based care. This is to say that aging is not simply a personal challenge, nor a medical problem to be solved by experts, but a community challenge.

Many communities throughout Indiana have begun to think creatively and collectively about what makes a good place to grow up and grow old. When describing their vision of a “community for a lifetime”, residents talk about walkable environments and mixed-use zoning. They envision new forms of housing such as shared housing, accessory units, downtown senior housing, and elder-cottages. They are innovating forms of association such as cooperatives providing supportive services through volunteer time-banks built upon inter-generational relationships. Municipal leaders seek local economies that don’t spin out young people and families, losing both the privileges and benefits of reciprocal exchanges between the elders of the family and community.

 There will never be a pill for old age. The destiny of both the young and the old will be determined by our ability to create sustainable, livable cities and towns. Current thinking, reflected in the new federal partnership established between HUD, the Dept. of Transportation, and the EPA, suggests that planning for sustainable communities will cut across the traditional lines we’ve drawn when making housing, transportation and land- use decisions. Moreover, to meet the need for creative solutions, planning must become more participative. To understand and sustain the heart and soul of Hoosier cities and towns residents of all ages and abilities must be engaged in the process. Yes, Indiana’s future may be gray. And gray is good.

 By Philip B. Stafford, Ph.D.

Director, Center on Aging and Community, Indiana Institute on Disability and Community

Indiana University

Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Anthropology and author of Elderburbia: Aging with a Sense of Place in America (Praeger, 2009)

Redefining Prosperity

 

Vulcan salute

If I were to fulfill Mr. Spock’s blessing to “live long and prosper”, I guess I would die a rich old man.

Somehow, however, that dream feels a little hollow. Yet, it’s at the core of the American economy, right? We are told that we depend on people getting rich to create the jobs that fuel increased consumption and continued economic growth. And staying young forever is, of course, the desired state of every baby boomer consumer, according to Madison Avenue.

I have a growing suspicion that the prospects for every American to enjoy riches are as dim as the prospect that we can all live to 120. Acknowledging the reality of one’s own mortality is the first step to understanding what it means to age well. Acknowledging the reality of our economic limits can be the first step to a new definition of prosperity.

As this year’s fabulous Community Matters ’10 conference was held in Denver, I had an opportunity to meet planners, government officials, and resident activists from multiple small towns in the Mountain West and High Plains. Many of these communities are struggling economically, often due to the decline of traditional  industries (mining, logging, ranching and farming) in the face of worldwide competition. One common consequence of this trend is the departure of young people from their home communities and the subsequent increase in older age-density, creating what Dace Kramer has referred to as “naturally occurring retirement regions” (NORR’s). This has been accompanied by an influx of new retirees seeking amenities not typically provided by sunbelt retirement communities – incredible natural beauty, skiing, hiking, recreational ranching, etc. As one might guess, local economies are shifting to a “service” base as the population ages, due to both aging in place and in-migration.

While recognizing aging is a major driver of population and economic change in the New West, I have come to realize that, with respect to local economy, it’s impossible, better said, impractical, to discuss aging without reference to youth, and vice versa. If people are to age well in the New West, they need robust youth to provide services of all kinds. If communities are to provide opportunities for youth that enable them to stay put, they need the monetary investment of elders.

Seems like a simple dollars and cents issue. But it goes deeper. In the practical sense, attachment to place requires dollars and cents. For a young person, it equates to a job. For an elder, it often equates to cost of living. The converse applies to both. In a deeper sense, attachment to place is not a monetary issue. We are attached to a place because we feel we belong there. We know the place and it knows us. We nurture the place and it nurtures us.

When we reach the right place, we don’t need more because we have enough. We have loving relationships. We have the sense of fulfillment that comes from the beauty of the quiet order around us balanced by the sense of delight that comes from the unpredictable and creative spirit of nature and of youth. To appreciate what we have means we must regularly view our place from the outside, which can simply involve embracing those strangers who are our future neighbors, friends and family.

When we reach the right place, we are prosperous. Yet, we may very well be spending less, not more, which in the current scheme is anathema to our American economy. We are told that, without wealth-creation, America will become a “second-class economy.” The “new normal” means a lower standard of living. If that’s true, is this bad? These days, both young people and elders are the new pioneers in the so-called lower standard of living. Should we not notice that they are discovering the difference between standard of living and quality of life? Should we not be listening to elders who can teach us how they survived hard times and to youth who can teach us how to live more lightly on the planet?

Addendum:

Through the generous support of the Orton Family Foundation, and others, the participants in the Community Matters ’10 conference came together to explore and develop a new “heart and soul” approach to community planning. This approach is based on the belief that a slavish adherence to growth in every direction threatens the heart and soul of our communities – the things that, in the end, attach us to place and define who we are. Economic growth and quality of life are not necessarily antithetical. But a corporation is not a person (despite the Supreme Court decision) and capital is, too often, not attached to place. Planning that reveals and promotes the heart and soul of a place is essential and, indeed, many local companies are loyal to their communities and help define heart and soul. Storytelling and story sharing are critical tools for “heart and soul” practitioners. For a wealth of connections to this growing and exciting area of community planning and activism, visit the Orton website at: http://www.orton.org

Spend some time with the site and be sure to look for the Heart and Soul Community Planning Principles.

The Deep Meaning of Home

Attention to the deep meaning of home takes us to a kind of figurative commons, where we can have a serious discussion of the ubiquitous phrase “aging in place.”

For many practitioners and elders as well, aging in place has traditionally been equated with aging in one’s current residence – be it house or apartment. In fact, this is precisely the meaning taken in the AdvantAge Initiative survey in Indiana, which asked 5,000 older Hoosiers whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement “What I’d really like to do is stay in my current residence for as long as possible.” Moreover, 94% of Hoosiers 60+ agreed with that statement! Clearly, staying put is the preferred choice for the vast majority of older adults in Indiana, and elsewhere. Our ethnographic research on the meaning of home in Bloomington offers some clues as to why people feel so strongly about the issue.

Home is a deep concept, far more significant than “house.” In the Bloomington research we encountered individuals who have lived in the same house for over 75 years! Imagine the sediments of memory that have been laid down over such a period of time. It requires a virtual archaeology of memory to peel back the deep meaning of a life in such a place. These memories, good and bad, are codified in the physical contents of the place. As she walks through the house, the owner walks, again, through life. Photos, furniture stains, knick knacks, postcards, window vistas, even dents in the woodwork signify and embody important events, episodes, and individuals in one’s life. How could one be expected to easily leave behind the door jamb marked by pencil with the advancing height of one’s children?

Home is a physical support. Over time, home and body coalesce, a hand in glove. We can walk through our home with our eyes closed because we maintain its physical representation within our body. This is very comforting. Managing the home (sometimes trivialized as homemaking) anchors daily life, provides markers for our temporal experience, and provides cues and incentives to keep our body and mind active.

Home is a financial cushion. For older homeowners (87% of older Hoosiers), the home is often THE primary financial asset. According to Michael Hurd of the RAND Corporation, home values during the current financial crisis dropped somewhere between 10% and 33% (according to different surveys). One can understand why, these days, older persons might be reluctant to tap their equity through the sale of their home.

Home is an aesthetic. You design its appearance for self-satisfaction and display to others. The aesthetic reflects your own sense of self just as importantly as does your clothing and your car.

Home is a social base. When you are home, it’s your territory, your turf. You control who enters. When you are home you are at the node of a social network of friends, neighbors and family. Home is a launching pad for connections with the immediate neighborhood and the wider community. This is why it’s so important to get out on the front porch and make it to the mailbox. (More on that later.)

With all these things in play, the home becomes a mirror for the self. It represents you to yourself and, as such, provides a constant reminder of your uniqueness and contributions to your family, your neighborhood, your community. Is it any wonder why someone would want to stay put?

What practitioners, family members, friends and neighbors know, however, is that staying put is not always the best solution if it results in social isolation, depression or unmanageable risks to health and wellbeing, notwithstanding the desires of an elder; and particularly so when the elder’s judgment is clouded by dementia.

Practically speaking, this “tension” between staying put or moving on often results in conversations and negotiations around “acceptable risks.” In fact, dichotomizing the choices as one or the other can be non-productive. Better to openly discuss the adaptations necessary to accomplish either goal. Staying put, indeed, does not mean “not adapting”. There are many adaptations we all likely need to make just to stay put. It’s not black and white – change or no change.

Acknowledging the complexity and difficulty of staying put, in light of the deep attachment to place, was one secret to the success of a home modification initiative created by residents, leaders, and providers for a NORC (naturally occurring retirement community) neighborhood in the little town of Linton, Indiana, population 5,000, in the spring of 2009. Having received a grant to spend 18 months assessing needs and building relationships with and among seniors in the neighborhood, the NORC leadership determined that improving mobility, broadly defined, should be a priority. The group wisely inferred that mobility in the home itself should be a starting point for any effort to assist elders to connect in the community.

Knowing that a foundation of trust was essential, a well-known and beloved community member (Crystal Woods) was hired to introduce the concept of home modification and repair to neighborhood seniors.  Senior members of the NORC advisory group began talking about the project with their neighbors. A few older residents consented to a “home safety” check by Crystal. This provided Crystal an opportunity to initiate conversations about possible things that could be done in the home to make it more comfortable or safe. Additional visits were provided by nurses from the only home care agency in the community. Local, trusted contractors were then introduced into the home by and with Crystal to begin estimating jobs. Budgets were developed for each project, without assuming that every recommendation would be either necessary or approved by the elder and their adult children (who would only be invited into the conversation at the request of the elder). When a handful of projects were ready to propose, the neighborhood seniors on the advisory committee were empowered to select what could be offered to each homeowner, given the overall project budget available ($45,000). Soon, contractor work began and it was revealing to see the contractors themselves developing close relationships with their customers, often doing more than the job required -all closely shepherded by Crystal, from beginning to end. Once a few seniors were “hooked” they told their friends and, within a period of four months, 19 homes were modified or repaired, several with significant improvements such as new bathroom floors and fixtures, new assistive features, ramps, and handrails!

This is what I call a “down home” solution to a major community challenge. And I use the word home in the best sense of the term.

Note: I hope you enjoy reading my blog. Your thoughts and additions to the conversation thread are most welcome. You can reply publicly right here on the blog. For additional reading on the meaning of home I suggest checking out: Graham Rowles, Claire Cooper Marcus, Wendell Berry, Scott Russell Sanders, Gaston Bachelard, and others. These authors are acknowledged and the ideas explored in more depth in the chapter entitled Being and Dwelling in Old Age, in my book Elderburbia: Aging with a Sense of Place in America (Praeger 2009). For a discussion on the sense of home and place in long term care facilities, see my chapter entitled Homebodies: Voices of Place in a North American Community, in my edited volume Gray Areas: Ethnographic Encounters with Nursing Home Culture (SAR Press 2003).

In Indiana, we are working towards some state legislation called Hoosier Communities for a Lifetime. At the end of November, I am presenting a two day workshop on communication and dementia. For info about these things and more, just click back to the website at www.agingindiana.org

In October, I enjoyed the opportunity to participate in an amazing conference – Community Matters ’10. When I get a chance, I’ll blog a bit about the growing movement towards “heart and soul” planning.

Till then,

Phil

Questioning Received Truths

Recently, I had the privilege of sitting in with a group of Kansas City elders as they discussed their concerns with the declining attendance at their respective senior centers. These wise folks are the advisors to the staff and leaders among their peers. They felt they offered decent programs, though admitted the luncheon fare was pretty uninspired. One old guy, only partly in jest, suggested, “We have a few dollars to work with. Why don’t we pay a few people to come in and play cards?”

I asked what brought them to their centers. To a person, their involvement was centered on creating a good program for those other old people. They didn’t come to get something for themselves, but to give to other people. I offered the modest suggestion that perhaps that’s a motivation that might drive others there. I suggested, “Why not think of a senior center as a place where elders come to give, not to take?”

A few weeks later I was pleased to hear that, following the discussion, one of the center directors organized a volunteer food bank event at her center and was thrilled at the participation.

Sometimes, turning something on its head produces surprisingly useful results. I believe this is a learned skill and that our organizations need to cultivate this practice. Actually, it may not be a learned skill as much as a process of unlearning – of deliberately abandoning our preconceptions in order to see things through a different lens. I remember the apocryphal tale of the moving truck that got stuck under the railroad overpass, stopping traffic for blocks and creating a minor crisis. Firefighters, traffic cops and engineers stood around trying to figure out how to extricate the truck from the bridge. “Concrete saws?” one asked. “No, levers and jacks”, another suggested. A shy little boy on his bike hovered around the margin of the crowd. Finally he stepped forward and asked, “Why don’t you let the air out of the tires?”

What can an organization do to incorporate this practice into the routine, to question received truths on a regular basis?

Listen deeply.

Observe closely.

Employ culture brokers (people who love to cross boundaries).

Exploit diversity (fight against monoculture).

Embrace the opposite.

Explore the absurd.

Play with words.

Wear your ideas inside out.

Humor yourself.

Develop kaleidoscopic vision.

Act the fool.

Play “what if…?”

In our field of aging studies and practice, a few examples come to mind:

“What if we saw not age but good food as a fundamental glue bringing people together?

               Mather’s Café  http://www.matherlifeways.com/iyc_mathersmorethanacafe.asp

“What if we saw Alzheimer’s not as a disease but as a disrupted relationship?”

               The Memory Bridge http://www.memorybridge.org/

“What if we stopped talking about transportation and started talking about mobility?”

               Walkable, livable communities

“What if we stopped talking about disabled people and started talking about disabling environments?”

               Universal design

Got any of your own?

Third Person Problems, First Person Solutions: An Apology to Gilliam Joe

 

 As Native Alaskan Gilliam Joe has land along the Copper River near Chistochina, he is entitled to keep a fishwheel along the bank to scoop up the salmon moving up the gritty river to spawn in nearby creeks. Due to several days of high water recently, his fishwheel was jammed with small logs and debris floating down the river. As I was on a site visit to the village, I had the opportunity to respond to Mr. Joe’s need for assistance with my host George Drinkwater, head of operations for the Mt. Sanford Tribal Consortium. What we anticipated as a simple lift of the wheel turned into a muddy struggle to free logs in the cold, cold water under the paddles. Mr. Joe advised and snapped photos as we worked.

Phil and George unclogging Gilliam Joe’s fishwheel on the Copper River, AK

Back on shore, I felt a real sense of accomplishment and manliness. George explained that, as a request from an elder, it was important for us to respond quickly to Mr. Joe’s need. He noted that Mr. Joe was 59 years old and couldn’t have managed the job alone. My reaction, soon regretted, was to say to George, “Gosh, I’m older than  Gilliam Joe and out here helping him.” Thank goodness I did not say that to Mr. Joe. In fact, Gilliam Joe runs his fishwheel nearly daily, crossing small, wet boulders to reach the slippery platform, risking a fall into the river, where grit can quickly fill your pockets and pull you under. After all that, Gilliam Joe gives away a good portion of his catch to neighbors, fulfilling a tradition that dates back hundreds if not thousands of years. Moreover, I found out later that Joe has a prosthetic leg.

Gilliam Joe is younger than I, but he’s the elder, not I. And he’s more of a man too.

I approach these site visits I am doing for the Administration on Aging as an applied ethnographer. There is a fair amount of preparation and a close reading of the projects being proposed in the funded communities. In teams of two or three, we also conduct individual and group interviews. We usually have a chance to engage in some “participant observation” as well and, not surprising to the anthropologist in me, learning about the “other” often teaches me mostly about myself. Such was certainly the case with Gilliam Joe.

Too often, we talk about what elders need, and typically  in the third person… “He should have taken better care of himself.”  “Why won’t they come to the senior center?” “Why does she insist on continuing to drive?”

In Gilliam Joe’s case, I came to realize that his so-called problem needed a first-person solution – an honest assessment of my own role in creating a definition of the situation. It is precisely this interpretive shift that is at the heart of good ethnography; the ethnographer’s stone, if you will, which I had not sharpened very well.

How does this apply to the manner in which we, as professionals and as activists, think about “what people need?” Firstly, and fundamentally, it speaks to the importance of taking people at their word, at face value. There is a subtle but important difference in listening to what people say and listening to what we think people are saying. We want to hear, but we start with listening, a distinction I attribute to writer Daniel Kemmis. I would say “back to the words themselves!”, in a variation on Husserl’s admonition. For Gilliam Joe, as George Drinkwater knew so well, “Can you help me with my wheel?” did not mean “Can I make an appointment with you to get your help?” It did not mean “Can I get a case manager to help me?” It simply meant “Can you help me with my wheel (now)?”

This issue, the interpretation of need, is far bigger than what this little vignette might suggest. Entire systems of service, of  health care, of housing, are designed through the third person lens. And we wonder why, often, we set things up and “nobody comes.” In the case of Mt. Sanford Tribal Coalition, perhaps it might be worthwhile to recapture some of the original language used to describe what it means to be an elder, to help another, to share with the group. I suspect that the phrase “case manager” might be difficult to translate into Athabaskan. I also suspect there is an Athabaskan word for “one who helps” and that it might be worthwhile to start there and work forward rather than start with English and work backward.  When I brought up the idea of getting elders together in one place, a kind of mini-senior center, I was, once again, brought to my senses. “Our elders don’t want a senior center,” staff member Elaine explained to me… “we just want to get together to pick berries.”  And as George explained to me when I brought up the idea of turning native sled-making skills into a cottage industry…”Elders don’t sell their crafts. They only give them away.”

Will I ever learn?

I’ll stop punishing myself here to offer a quick plug… check out wwwagingindiana.org for some neat upcoming events. August 18, 3 pm, will see a webinar on family caregiving and the workplace. And for a comprehensive and intensive look at how to create livable communities for older adults, check out the two day workshop being sponsored by the Indiana Association for Community Economic Development on Sept. 13 and 14, 2010 in Indianapolis. Registration is limited. Announcement will be posted soon at http://www.iaced.org.

It’s not a vision. It’s a memory.

I had the privilege this week of observing a planning forum for Fifth Ward seniors, held at the JW Peavey Senior Center in central Houston. Programming for the predominantly African-American neighborhood is provided by the venerable Neighborhood Centers, Inc., an outstanding non-profit serving Houston for over 100 years.

Using the facilitation method known as Appreciative Inquiry, over 100 elders spent three hours reflecting on the strengths, not the weaknesses of the neighborhood. From small table workgroups they produced creative and powerful images of the kind of neighborhood that would enable individuals to remain in place as they age, typically focusing on an infrastructure that would enable people to move about with safety and security, accessing vital services and relationships with friends and family.

Though produced as a vision for the future, my friend Jane Bavineau wisely observed that the group was merely wanting to get back to the way it was, before drugs, prostitution, crime and disinvestment changed their stable, strong neighborhood.

So it’s not a vision. It’s a memory.

While it’s common, and usually a good thing, we “facilitators” of the world often engage groups in envisioning exercises to help create a template for actions that can lead to a better future. Perhaps we need to spend more time with memory. Unlike a dream, memory is based in a reality, albeit sometimes rose-colored by nostalgia. Being reality-based, moreover, the examination of memory can lead us to consider the real forces, political and economic, that led to negative (and positive) change… that led us away from home, so to speak. Asking how we arrived at this point is a worthwhile premise for discussing how we move forward. For how can we move forward without targeting the fundamental forces and power structures that keep us where we are?

This group at JW Peavey is indeed politically aware. They vote. They call their elected officials, en masse. They see that their efforts to create a good place to grow old means that everyone, all ages, will benefit.

Children have dreams. Elders have memories. How interesting that they produce a common image. How powerful  it would be to mobilize the energy of children’s dreams and the wisdom of elders’ memory to transform our communities “back to the future”.

Don’t leave yet… speaking of community planning, I want to draw your attention to several new tools recently published to our www.agingindiana.org website. With support from the Daniels Fund of Denver, Colorado, we engaged several national experts to produce tools organized around the Indiana state planning process we are coming to call Communities for a Lifetime. As access to mental health services emerged as a key issue in the Indiana AdvantAge Initiative survey, we have produced a community guidebook to enable citizens groups to learn the basics and mobilize around evidence-based solutions to improve the mental health of elders in their communities. Likewise, as many communities in Indiana are addressing home modification needs, we have produced “How to Develop a Home Modification Coalition.”  In addition, as communities begin to formulate social marketing campaigns to raise awareness about key issues, they can now take advantage of a Communications Guidebook, organized specifically around the AdvantAge Initiative’s 33 indicators of an elder-friendly community.

You might also find interesting, in the research reports, a new table illustrating similarities and differences in our survey results across urban to rural areas. And to top it off, this growing and rich resource of data for Indiana now includes GIS-producted visual images of variation across Indiana planning and service areas around some very interesting indicators – obesity, diabetes, awareness of services, etc. Check it out!

While you’re at it, visit our “founding” home page at the Center on Aging and Community, Indiana Institute on Disability and Community, Indiana University, to join the Facebook group, follow tweets, and link to other Center projects and websites. See http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/index.php?pageId=31.