INTERESTING STUFF – 2 June 2012

THE SMELL OF OLD AGE
No matter what jokes young comedians make, old people smell just fine. That's according to a new study from Monell Chemical Sense Center as reported in ScienceDaily:

“...humans can identify the age of other humans based on differences in body odor.

“Much of this ability is based on the capacity to identify odors of elderly individuals, and contrary to popular supposition, the so-called 'old-person smell' is rated as less intense and less unpleasant than body odors of middle-aged and young individuals.”

A theory is that humans use this ability to identify age from aroma to choose age-appropriate mates, and the scientists say that a unique “old person smell” is recognized across cultures – so much so that in Japan there is even a special word for it: kareishu.

The full study report can be found at PlosOne.

VIRAL VIDEO MARRIAGE PROPOSAL
Thanks to doctafil, Cathy Johnson and a whole lot more of you, I've got the winner of this week's viral video for the three people in the world who haven't seen it.

An actor based in Portland, Oregon, and 60 of his friends choreographed a marriage proposal for his girlfriend, Amy Frankel. His brother sat her in the back of an open car and gave her some headphones to wear for a song and dance routine, set to the tune of Marry You by Bruno Mars.

THE 1 TO 100 PROJECT
According to the website where I found this story, Belgian photographer Edouard Janssens

”...photographed 100 women and 100 men at each age between 1 and 100. His goal was to show the aging process in a positive manner and to provide an interesting visualization of the link between generations.”

He separated the project by sex. Here are the 100 women age 1 through 100.

And here is a video slideshow of the men 1 through 100. Janssens himself appears at number 50:

Visit the website to view the slideshow of women and/or the image of the men.

OLD LADY WHACKS HONKING CAR
Reader Cathy Johnson sent this. It's been around the internet for many years and I've posted it in the past, but my appreciation for this old woman just grows and grows.

SPEAKING OF HONKING CARS...
Don't honk at this dog, as the YouTube page headline states. In fact, don't even look at him.

DANCING COUPLE IN LOVE
It's been a couple of months since TGB reader Tarzana sent this video. It seems a bit odd at first, but stick with the dance. It's from a Brussels-based dance/theater company called Peeping Tom co-directed by Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chariet.

Their work, says the homepage, “explores the idiosyncratic behaviour experienced in close relationships.”

BLOGGERS' NIGHTMARE
From Peter Tibbles comes this cartoon expression of what all us dedicated bloggers are up against all too frequently.

ALMOST MORE CUTE THAN YOU CAN STAND

The otter and her baby are just one of more than enough baby animal cuteness to send you into sugar shock at the cuteandtiny website.

---

Interesting Stuff is a weekly listing of short takes and links to web items that have caught my attention; some related to aging and some not, some useful and others just for fun.

You are all encouraged to submit items for inclusion. Just click “Contact” in the upper left corner of any Time Goes By page to send them. I'm sorry that I probably won't have time to acknowledge receipt and there is no guarantee of publication. But when I do include them, you will be credited and I will link to your blog if you have one.

Hospital at Home

It is not irrational that one of my biggest fears is being in the hospital. People die there.

I don't mean that as a too-obvious black joke. I mean, people die there all the time of things they are not in the hospital for: MSRA infections, Clostridium difficile, novoviruses, SARS – things that antibiotics increasingly cannot treat.

So far, I'm healthy enough that a hospital stay is not in my immediate future. But that can change for anyone in a heartbeat (literal and figurative) and the older we get the more likely it becomes.

Which is why I was fascinated to read a story from Kaiser Health News about “hospital at home” which provides exactly what it says: hospital-quality care at home for patients with serious medical conditions that has proven, in many cases, to be superior to hospital care:

“In a study of three experimental hospital at home programs published in 2005 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, [Dr. Bruce] Leff [the director of geriatric health services research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore who pioneered the concept] demonstrated that patient outcomes were similar or better, satisfaction was higher and costs were 32 percent less than for traditional hospitalizations.”

Hospital at home is still in its infancy but the trend is growing and more results are being collected and evaluated.

Presbyterian Home Health Care, an eight-hospital system in Albuquerque, New Mexico, manages the largest hospital at home program in the U.S. based on the original concept developed by Dr. Leff. Reports Hospitals and Health Networks magazine:

”Patient satisfaction scores are high and in the first six months of 2011, only one of the 100 patients treated at home was readmitted within 30 days...

“But the best news for those worried about high health care costs is this: 'After three years of providing actual hospital-level care at home for the diagnoses included in this program, the cost per episode is $1,000 to $2,000 cheaper than if that care were delivered in the hospital,' says Lesley Cryer, R.N., executive director of Presbyterian Home Healthcare.”

Currently, Presbyterian offers home care for patients being treated for chronic heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), cellulitis, complex urinary tract infection (UTI), dehydration, nausea and vomiting, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), and stable pulmonary embolism (PE).

”Excluded are patients who are medically unstable or who cannot be cared for adequately at home,” reports Kaiser Health News.

“'The patient, the family, the nurse, the doctor and the referring physician all need to feel if it's safe,' said Dr. Scott Mader, clinical director of rehabilitation and long-term care at the Portland VA Medical Center, which recently treated its 1,000th hospital at home patient.”

“If patients take a turn for the worse, for instance developing chest pain, an ambulance is summoned to take them to the hospital.”

The hospital at home idea is already being adopted in Australia, England, Israel and Canada. In the U.S., the Veterans Administration is leading the way with hospital at home programs existent or planned to open soon in Portland and Bend, Oregon, Boise, Honolulu, New Orleans and Philadelphia.

Even so, development of more hospital at home programs is slow. One of the main obstacles is Medicare's reluctance to pay for this kind of service which frustrates administrators who are seeing successful medical outcomes, patient satisfaction and lower costs across the board.

“Traditional fee-for-service Medicare does not pay for hospital at home services, although individual private Medicare Advantage plans may do so,” says Kaiser Health News.

“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 'appears convinced it's going to add to overall costs' and fearful that providers will admit patients inappropriately, said Erin Denholm, chief executive of Centura Health at Home, a division of Colorado’s Centura Health.”

However, Presbyterian has applied for a Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation challenge grant for hospital at home trials in Illinois, Rhode Island, New York, Florida and Minnesota. Some other health care systems are planning programs in other communities.

"'It's a very successful model and in five years, I think it's going to be very common. But we're still in the early adoption phase,' said Mark McClelland, an assistant professor at the Center for Health Care Quality at George Washington University.”

Medicare won't adopt this too soon for me.

There is an well-written study on hospital at home projects published last summer by The Commonwealth Fund here.

---

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Mochael Gorodezky: The Hall (Any coincidence with my post today is just that, coincidence. - RB)

ELDER POETRY INTERLUDE: Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

By Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

This is one of Thomas's last poems – an elegy to his dying father. I have never agreed with it – at least, not for me as a prescription for old age. I want to die in my time at peace with doing so. When it comes up for discussion, I am usually alone in this feeling.

Thomas didn't make it to old age. Born in Wales in 1914, he died at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York City in 1953 at age 39. It is said that his last words, spoken at the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village were, "I've had 18 straight whiskies. I think that's the record."

Here is Dylan Thomas himself reading Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.

---

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Jacklynn Winmill-Lee: My Mom was NOT Old

Older Than My Old Man Now

EDITORIAL NOTES: If anyone has been waiting for me to answer an email for more than three or four days, it is probably to do with spam filters at your end.

I have been getting a lot of returns of sent mail lately and my email provider tells me they are not blocking it. Sorry, but I've spent all the time I possibly can on this problem now.

It's been awhile since I last received a submission for Where Elders Blog, but there is now a new one from Karen Zaun Kennedy which you can see here. And here are instructions for submitting your own blogging/computer space.

---

Peter Tibbles usually handles the music around this blog on Sundays, but I'm taking on this new album from Loudon Wainwright III, Older Than My Old Man Now, because it is entirely concerned with getting old.

The album interests me not so much for the music - although that's part of it, of course – but for my curiosity about how an artist who is a contemporary of mine, approaches “my” subject.

The answer is, with a lot of melancholy, mixed feelings and woe for everything that has gone wrong in his 65 years. It is deeply – and often literally - autobiographical, these 16 songs, wherein Wainwright covers family, marriage, divorce, kids, health, sex, regret, guilt, mortality, death and just plain getting old.

And he does it all with some sadness, a good deal of humor and an occasional bit of wisdom. The title tune, Older Than My Old Man Now, begins with a reading of words about his own life written by Wainwright's father, a respected columnist and editor at Life magazine.

♫ Loudon Wainwright III - Older Than My Old Man Now

There is a second recital of Loudon Wainwright, Jr.'s writing on his own a aging as the introduction to The Days That We Die.

Among the singers who accompany Wainwright on various tunes are all four of his kids, a current and a former wife and Ramblin' Jack Elliott who takes opposing verses on a lovely song, Double Lifetime.

Not all is serious and melancholy. My Meds is what you would expect – a humorous litany of the long list of prescription drugs some people our age are stuck with keeping track of.

And I Remember Sex is a duet with Dame Edna Everage (Barry Humphries) that is labeled “explicit.” Actually, the lyrics are both true and funny. Here's a sample:

I remember sex. That thing we used to do
Where you'd lay down and usually I'd lie on top of you
Sometimes you'd lie on top of me. We tried that out a bit
But it didn't work as well, I guess something just didn't fit

I remember sex. We had it at night
A few times in the morning and then after we would fight
And on special occasions when we'd had too much to drink
Once in a Morris Minor, a convertible, I think

Although no one would call me a fan of Loudon Wainwright III, I've enjoyed him from time to time over the years and I think he's done a nice a job here with a large number of the kinds of things we ruminate on as we reach the upper decades of life.

He has a darker view of his life and old age than I do but then, he's been writing autobiographical songs for nearly half a century so undoubtedly has better reminders of past events than I can dredge up.

The album is available in all the usual places. At Amazon, the CD costs (currently) about US$13. You can download it as MP3s for only US$8.99 (or 99 cents per song) and with that you'll get an extra that is not on the disc, No Tomorrow.

I don't know for how long it will last, but as of yesterday afternoon, you can stream the entire album at the New Yorker website.

---

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Lyn Burnstine: The Blue Schwinn Bicycle

What to Do With Your Ashes

If you would rather be buried in a casket, this post probably is not for you. But after Saturday's Interesting Stuff item about James Doohan's ashes being carried into space last week, I wondered about the ways people deal with ashes of loved ones.

Some urns, like my father's, are buried in cemeteries or mausoleums. Burial at sea or, at least, on water, is not uncommon these days. My mother was a member of the Neptune Society and we scattered her ashes off Marin County just under the Golden Gate Bridge.

My stepbrother Joe's sailing club friends took his ashes 30 miles out into the ocean from San Francisco near the Farallon Islands. In Joe's case, he loved the sea above most everything else. My mother (I suspect, but cannot be certain) was just being practical and she loved the San Francisco area.

Of course, ashes can be scattered on land too. If it's your property, no problem. If not, you need to check local regulations and get permissions.

Many years ago, a friend rented an apartment in Greenwich Village in which a box of human ashes sat on the fireplace mantle. I have forgotten the details, but a woman whose name was Charlotte had been murdered there many decades before and by deed, her ashes were required to remain with the house. (I don't know if that's true, but it's my general recollection.)

Remember last year when I told you about a book by Gail Rubin, A Good Goodbye, with lots of excellent information on planning funerals? In checking out information for this post, I ran across a recent article Gail wrote about the top ten things people can do with ashes (Oops. I think I'm supposed to say “cremated remains” but I draw the line at “cremains.”) Here is the abbreviated list:

1. Scatter on land
2. Scatter on sea
3. Scatter by air
4. Bury in a cemetery
5. Bury at home
6. Keep an urn at home
7. Place in a columbarium
8. Share with family
9. Create a reef
10. Build a monument

Of the last idea, Gail writes,

“Pros: Speaking of mixing cremated remains in concrete, why not make a monument? You can set it up on your property, or even make it a centerpiece at family reunions!

“Cons: Some family members may not be amused.”

No kidding. You can read what Gail has to say about all ten options here.

A trip around the web led to hundreds, if not thousands, of styles of urns including this one that left me speechless:

“Now we can create a custom cremation urn for ashes in the image of your loved one or favorite celebrity or hero, even President Obama!

“...Personal urns can have hair added digitaly [sic] for short haired people, as in the sample of President Obama.”

Do you think the president knows about this? Like I said, I'm speechless.

There is, apparently, a growing trend toward wearing dead relatives as diamonds made from their ashes. The diamonds can be quite pricey ranging from about $4,000 to $25,000 depending on color and size.

As to the purpose, as one company explains, diamond pendants or other jewelry are “a way to embrace your loved one's memory day by day.”

Uh-huh. I can hear it now: “Why, Jane, what lovely earrings. Are they new?”

“Yes, they're my late husband, George.”

“Oh, what a lovely gift.”

“No, they ARE George.”

Even if your loved one prefers burial to cremation, you can still wear him or her as jewelry. At least one ashes-to-diamonds company will make a gem from a lock of a loved one's hair.

I have definitely opted for cremation and have long made arrangements with a young friend to scatter my ashes in what I consider my real home, New York City - specifically along Bleecker Street between 6th and 7th Avenues saving a little to leave in front of my long-time home on nearby Bedford Street.

What about you?

---

At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Mary B Summerlin: Best Laid Plans

Welcome to Summer

Well, for friends in Australia, New Zealand and other places in the southern hemisphere, it's the beginning of winter. Nevertheless, where I live, today – Memorial Day – is the unofficial beginning of the summer season.

It's a three-day weekend in the United States and with all the family gatherings, backyard barbecues, beer and all, I wonder if sometimes we don't pay enough attention to what this holiday is for.

On Friday, Vice President Joe Biden spoke to a group of Gold Star Families - those who have lost a loved one in war. Poor ol' Joe is often chastised for speaking out of turn, of putting his foot in his mouth, of being a reliable gaffe machine. But not on this day.

Biden's extraordinary speech, in the words of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, was "raw and emotional" and, I would add, personal and wrenching and true and good.

As far as I can find online on Saturday (when I am writing this), Maddow's show is the only place where Biden's speech was broadcast in full, if at all. Please watch. It's only about five minutes and you will be glad you did.

This video is also posted at The Elder Storytelling Place. The publication of daily stories from contributors will return there tomorrow.

ELDER MUSIC: Telemann

This Sunday Elder Music column was launched in December of 2008. By May of the following year, one commenter, Peter Tibbles, had added so much knowledge and value to my poor attempts at musical presentations that I asked him to take over the column. He's been here each week ever since delighting us with his astonishing grasp of just about everything musical, his humor and sense of fun. You can read Peter's bio here and find links to all his columns here.

---

GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN would have been the most famous composer of his era except for a certain Mr Handel who was hanging around at the time. This didn't worry Georg as they were really good friends, and besides he was raking in the money as well.

Also around then was Johann Sebastian Bach. He was also a friend of Georg's. So much so that Georg was godfather to at least one of Johann's sons. Indeed, at the time he has considered a superior composer to Bach. Time has put paid to that notion but he's still pretty good.

Georg was a self-taught musician, teaching himself to play the violin, flute, zither and various keyboards by the age of 10. You don't hear the zither much these days, not since Anton Karas left the scene.

Georg later taught himself flute, oboe, chalumeau (no, I didn't know what it was either; it's a forerunner of the clarinet), viola da gamba, double bass, and bass trombone.

Hmm, no mention of the bagpipes or the kazoo. Perhaps his friends suggested he eschew those instruments.

His family didn't approve of this music caper and insisted he enroll at university to study science and languages. While there, he formed the student Collegium Musicum and they gave many public concerts to great acclaim.

The family finally caved in to the inevitable. After graduating, he soon left town (Leipzig) as the music bigwigs disapproved of him because he was too good and showed them up. Besides he had used students in his concerts thus usurping the places of established musicians.

He got a job as Kapellmeister to Count Erdmann II in Sorau (now Zary, in Poland) but that didn't last long as the Swedish army invaded the place. The Swedes! They’ve changed a bit.

He eventually ended up in Hamburg where he remained for the rest of his life (apart from visits to Paris and Rome and elsewhere). The years spent in Hamburg were the most productive period of his life and boy, was he productive. It wasn't all plain sailing as the church condemned some of his operas for "inciting lasciviousness.” Nothing has changed.

He was offered the position of Thomaskantor (whatever that is) back in Leipzig but turned it down. The next person in line couldn't take it due to an existing contract so they had to make do with the third best candidate, J.S. Bach. You have to wonder about the folks selecting these positions.

The orchestral suite was Telemann's forte. Georg once claimed that he had written 600 of them. About a quarter of that number have survived that we know about, so maybe he wasn't fibbing.

Here is part of one of those, the second movement of his Suite for Viola Da Gamba in D Major.

♫ Telemann - Suite for Viola Da Gamba in D Maj (2)

Here is a cantata about a cat killing and eating a canary. Old Georg knew how to take on the serious topics of the day. The person who commissioned this work is long forgotten but I presume he was a pet lover. The pet being a cat rather than a canary, I imagine.

The baritone is the great Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the cello player is Irmgard Poppen, Dietrich's wife who died in childbirth in 1963. This is the Canary Cantata. I would have thought that he’d call it the Cat Cantata but what do I know?

♫Telemann - Canary Cantata

For a complete change of pace, here is a piece for a single instrument, the violin. It’s the Fantasia No 10 for Solo Violin.

♫ Telemann - Fantasia No 10 for Solo Violin

Georg’s personal life was a bit troubled to say the least. His first wife died only a few months after their marriage.

He married his second wife, Maria Textor, to gain citizenship so he could work for the Prince of Bayreuth. This marriage didn't work very well as she had a bunch of extramarital affairs and ran up a large gambling debt before leaving him. It can't have been all bad because they had nine kids.

Telemann's friends organized a collection to pay off her debts and keep him from bankruptcy. Maria outlived him and ended up in a convent in Frankfurt. Hmm.

Georg died at the age of 87 of some sort of a chest ailment and his position was filled by his godson C.P.E. Bach. Georg was one of the most prolific composers of all time with more than 3000 compositions that we know about.

He was a major link between the late baroque and early classical periods. Of importance too was that he published his own works, setting a precedent for regarding music as the intellectual property of the composer.

I’ll continue the violin music with the second movement of the Concerto for 3 Violins in F Major.

♫ Telemann - Concerto for 3 violins (2)

While in Paris, Georg wrote a number of quartets that these days are collectively called the Paris Quartets. Let’s play the first movement of Quartet No. 4 in B Minor, probably the most famous of them.

♫ Telemann - Quartet No. 4 (1)

Georg was quite fond of the overture; he wrote a bunch of them. To me, an overture suggests the beginning of something or other. He treated this form as another extended piece of music with several movements. Perhaps the overture concept changed over the years.

This one has eight movements which really wouldn’t leave room for anything to follow it. Here is the first movement from the Overture La Changeant. It was pretty radical at the time as each of its movements was in a different key. You won’t hear that though, as I’m only playing one of them.

♫ Telemann - Overture La Changeant (1)

And now another cantata. Like most composers around that time, Georg wrote a bunch of them. This is the first movement from Seele, lerne dich erkennen, a cantata for soprano, recorder, and basso continuo.  The soprano is Monika Mauch.

♫ Telemann - Cantata TWV1-1258 (1)

Georg also seemed to like the trumpet somewhat as he wrote quite a bit for this instrument but then, he wrote quite a bit for every instrument. I’ll finish with the third movement of the Sonata for Trumpet in D Major. It’s not a sonata as we know it today, it sounds more like a trumpet concerto to me.

♫ Telemann - Sonata for Trumpet (3)