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MEDIA KIT
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Ten Million ‘Zoomers’ Want Respect! |
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 Yesterday the new issue of CARP magazine arrived in the mail. I was interested to see that they were doing an article on ‘Zoomers’. Of course, all readers of the Seniors CHOICE are already familiar with that term. We know that ‘Zoomers’, retired or otherwise, have the body of a 65 year old, the brain of a 45 year old and the heart of a teenager. The Okanagan area is filled with just such people, who are busy reinventing what it means to be older and changing the face of retirement completely.
CARP (Canadian Association of Retired Persons) is worth joining as they publish six good issues a year and have a website full of useful information, although their website is not as entertaining as ours!
Tucked away in their articles on health and investing was the simple statement that there are now more than 10 million Canadians aged 50 and older. We not only widely outnumber all the other age groups we have more than 70 percent of all savings and account for more than half of all consumer spending. So, we may well ask, why are we not being taken more seriously?
With all those dollars floating around you would expect that businesses would be falling over themselves to cater to our tastes and comfort – well, you would be wrong! They seem to be catering to the 10-25 age group instead, which is odd as this group has no money! Take TV programs, for example. If you can name more than six current shows that actually attract viewers in the Zoomer category, then I’m coming over to see what you’re watching! To be honest I’m really not sure just who the TV producers are targeting with all these reality shows and endless variations on Crime Scenes. How many more shows dealing with forensic science can the mind absorb? Is there to be no end to the talent hunts and dancing celebrities? Just who decided that watching Donald Trump (who does his hair, anyway?) insult and humiliate people constituted entertainment?
So, go to the movies or rent a DVD you say. Don’t get out much, do you? Out of curiosity I did a brief and not very scientific survey of the titles available in my local movie rental outlet and I invite anyone to try this and test my results. I found that over 60% of the movies available came with a warning about violence, graphic language and/or explicit sex scenes. Speaking for myself, I have seen all the car chases I ever want to see and if I never watch another building explode or see another body blown to bits I can live with that.
Where are the movies that involve good writing? Films where plot actually matters and characters are real? They are out there, as we know from reading the offerings of the film festivals. Thoughtful and provocative films are being produced that deal with important issues but you won’t find any of these at your local movie rental. Do the managers of these stores never wonder why older people don’t use their memberships? I have spent hours of my life searching the shelves for a movie to rent, only to leave empty handed time and again. The entertainment industry does not seem to realize that Zoomers are part of the generation that still reads books. We have certain standards and we expect shows to have a point. Watching the fish swim around the aquarium provides more real entertainment than most of what is on TV today.
Fortunately there is a plus side to this entertainment wasteland. People are taking up bridge, whist, curling, bowling, painting, etc in great numbers. Senior centres are busy places and night school classes are more full than ever before. I see a correlation here! The other plus, of course, is that bookstores in Canada, with the exception of Calgary, are doing a brisk business.
You’ll be pleased to know that book prices are coming down as well, but the Okanagan area is blessed with several very good used book stores that seem to have titles almost as current as Chapters, so no one needs to spend a fortune to get hours of good entertainment. These are also great places to pick up bags of books to have on hand for times when the grandchildren are visiting. You can buy stacks of children’s books, see which ones are successful, then return the others and exchange them for more – all for a very reasonable price.
Now that you have stocked up on reading material you’ll be ready for a nice meal and some quiet conversation with friends and family – well, good luck! Once again the restaurants, like the movies, seem to think only people between 10-25 need to be catered to – but, they are not paying the bill! Zoomers do not want to be served enough food to feed three people. Plates piled high with cheap carbs buried in tomato sauce – no thanks. Normally the restaurants that offer a ‘senior special’ think we want fish and chips today, tomorrow and forever! We’ve been eating pizza and burgers with fries for over 30 years – we’re ready for something fresh and we want something healthy as well as delicious. It would be a nice bonus if the awful background music was kept low and the seats were comfortable – but we’ll attack this reformation one step at a time.
We’ve done the work, we’ve earned the money – now we want the respect!
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Sarah Chayes in Afghanistan |
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 Sarah Chayes is a caring, unstoppable American woman who has lately devoted her life to Afghanistan, and its people. Chayes had been a war correspondent in Afghanistan, but had returned to her home in the United States after the war supposedly “ended.” She says her decision to quit a respected job with NPR and become involved in the reconstruction was in answer to a simple question by a friend, who happened to be the Uncle of Afghanistan’s president Karzai, “Wouldn’t you come back and help us?” She would, and she did.
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Spring Cleanup Pruning and other gardening tips |
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Dormant Oil spraying should be done on fruit trees and roses before the leaf buds open.
Now is a really great time to prepare your tomato bed for planting, calcium is slow release and by digging it in to your tomato bed now the soil has time to assimilate the calcium for release when the plants need it. I recommend also applying some Epsom salts at this time.This way your tomatoes will be free of end rot [the calcium] and extremely sweet [the Epsom salts].
Now is also the time when many of us are pruning back trees shrubs and perennials.Flowering shrubs that bloom before the first of July should be pruned in the fall rather than the spring or you will loose this years flowers.
A good rule for pruning roses is to prune when the forsythia is in bloom. You need to prune while your roses are still dormant but after the danger of hard frost that will damage the newly pruned rose canes. Look for dead or damaged canes and cut back to live wood. Also remove all weak and willowy stems.
Lavender should be lightly pruned to remove last year’s blossoms, but not drastically into woody stems.
Grasses should have old dead foliage removed by shearing fairly close to the ground before new growth starts.
Coppicing or pruning back heavily will stimulate growth of new shoots on shrubs. This is done to produce bigger bolder foliage and force more flowers or fruit, and too keep plant in bounds. This is usually done in early spring, before new growth emerges. Smoke bush, Butterfly bush, Trumpet vine, Blue mist shrub, Pee Gee Hydrangea, Firethorn, Pussy Willow and Tamarix all benefit from heavy pruning.
Prune to the outside of a trees branch collar for fast healing and good tree health. This is the swelling located at the base of the branch where it arises from another limb or the trunk. It houses protective chemicals that help keep disease from invading the parent limb. The branch collar will shut out any passing pathogens.
Slant pruning cuts away from the bud to encourage water to run off. This will help keep the bud healthy so it can grow and prosper.
Lindi Karmason
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Good Exercise for Dem Bones |
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 Pat Gay wouldn’t miss her weekly Osteofit class at the Halina Center in Vernon for the world. “It keeps me mobile,” said Gay, who has been diagnosed with osteoarthritis and osteoporosis and has had several surgeries. “I’ve been coming for six years.”
“I sat and watched at first,” said Terri Pollard. “I needed to work on my bones. I had cracked a bone in my back by lifting a 50-pound weight when I didn’t know I had it (osteoporosis). Most of my pain has gone now because of the class.” |
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I HAVEN’T LOST MY MIND — I TEMPORARILY MISPLACED IT |
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She had occupied that fast-food booth for quite awhile before I arrived. Restless and hungry, she eyed everyone’s food tray, and I presumed a tardy companion delayed her own order. However, when I finished my meal and dumped my trash, she rose with a sigh of frustration and asked the cashier: “Did I already eat my burger or did I forget to order it?”
The poor woman had misplaced her mind. Most of us seniors can relate. As a matter of fact, while I snickered about that lady’s confusion, and tottered home with burger breath to crash on my sofa and catch a little CNN, I was supposed to be feasting on gourmet fare at Tanya’s. This much-anticipated happening had entirely skipped my mind until my telephone jolted me from my pickle, lettuce and tomato doze and Tanya wailed, “Did you forget to come to my dinner party or did I forget to invite you?”
When I’m tired, distracted or pulled in many directions, I sometimes function on autopilot, without conscious thought, and whatever passes through my mind or hands at such times may go missing for awhile. However, I have learned that both mind and matter eventually turn up. They aren’t really lost — they’re temporarily misplaced.
For instance, after a restless night of worry about my overwhelming “To Do” list, I arose yesterday, determined to plough through most tasks. I dressed quickly and when I reached for my shoes, the left one had vanished. Nearly an hour was wasted as I crawled around on hands and knees in search of that shoe. Someone had stolen it! When I settled for Plan B shoes, I next discovered that my “To Do” list had also been poached. It seemed saner to go back to bed than to call the cops about the night burglary of my shoe and job list.
Laissez-faire seems the best way for me to keep track of my belongings and my mind. It also stabilizes my blood pressure. Patience and faith are my tools. When the worrying stops, items generally turn up of their own accord or my mind calms enough to remember where I put them. Although my best pillowcases have been missing for two years, I trust they will be back when I quit looking for them, when I least expect to find them — or, almost assuredly, when I purchase replacements.
Frantic searches actually delay discovery. I fussed for six months about a lost amethyst bracelet, yet last week it turned up in my jewelry box. In panic, I must have overlooked it there 500 times.
Yet I do keep a “Missing” list to record items which I might otherwise forget that I have lost, and nearly everyday I cross something from that list. While I searched for that left shoe yesterday morning, I came across binoculars which were AWOL all winter. Today the shoe itself turned up atop my piano where I had used it as a paperweight. Tomorrow I hope to recover my mind.
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