Put out to grass: When animals are allowed to grow old

Isa Leshko’s portraits of ageing animals are a tribute to creatures too often dismissed as mere livestock – and a poignant reminder of our own mortality

When I began this project, my galleries weren’t sure people would want to buy the prints, because the pictures were too sad,” says the American photographer Isa Leshko. “So I put a film about the work online. Immediately I was flooded by emails with stories about ageing parents or pets, and when I showed the pictures at some exhibitions, visitors would come up to me in tears. I wasn’t prepared for that at all,” she says, “but I think it’s difficult to talk about the people and animals that we love growing old and dying, and the portraits give people a licence to express grief for someone.”

Leshko’s photographs, collected in her book Allowed To Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries, are of old and often rather weather-beaten farm animals. You need a bit of a nudge before you see what’s unusual about them – ie they are old, whereas most farm animals are dispatched to the abattoir in their youth (and in many cases in their infancy).

Forest, aged 16, was rescued from planned extermination along with her herd on Santa Cruz island off the Californian coast. Photograph: © Isa Leshko

The subjects have mostly been rescued from slaughterhouses or farms after the authorities have intervened in cases of cruelty, and taken to live on one of the animal sanctuaries scattered across the US. A few, like the 28-year-old Appaloosa horse Buddy, have been donated when owners became unable to care for them – in Buddy’s case, painful iritis meant he had to have his eyes removed, and he needed expert care to help him get used to his blindness.

Having grown up in an urban, working-class Italian-American family, Leshko began her project in 2008 after encountering a brother-in-law’s old horse, Petey, in her native New Jersey. She was a professional photographer by then, and felt drawn to photograph the horse without knowing why. Later, she came to think that it was a way of making herself confront her own fears of getting old and dying, prompted by her mother becoming seriously ill.

This could've been as dry as a rooster’s dust bath, but she describes their personalities like a post-pastoral EB White

An unnamed rooster, age unknown, rescued from a factory farm. Photograph: © Isa Leshko

As she visited more sanctuaries, however, Leshko developed her campaigning edge. Already a vegetarian, she became vegan after meeting Valentino, a 19-year-old bull who, as a calf, had been rescued from a dairy farm which would most likely have sold him for veal or beef. “As I met more animals,” she says, speaking on the phone from her home in New England, “it became important to me that I advocated on behalf of the ones that were not lucky enough to have been rescued. Animal products may be ubiquitous, but farm animals themselves are fairly invisible, and I’m hoping people who read the book might stop to consider these animals’ lives and recognise that they’re individuals, not commodities; that they are sentient, and have unique personalities and emotions.”

Of course, for non-vegetarians who are not unduly fussed about the plight of modern livestock, this could all have been worthily depressing and as dry as a rooster’s dust bath. It isn’t, though, because Leshko puts herself into the book, and describes the animals’ personalities like a sort of grownup, post-pastoral EB White.

This is partly the story of a woman who starts out not knowing how to open and close a farm gate, and ends up learning how to put animals at ease so she can photograph them in close-up (approach them at eye level; lie in the hay with them for as long as it takes; don’t take your bag into the pen, because they’ll eat it).

Abe, a 21-year-old Alpine goat, was given to a sanctuary after his guardian entered an assisted living facility. Photograph: © Isa Leshko

It’s also about characters like friendly Melvin the Angora goat, and Babs the impossibly stoic, shaggy donkey, who are described in the text with an empathy at times reminiscent of Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk.

Making the text personal makes the book feel warm and open rather than preachy, which seems the right way to go if you really want to “start a conversation”, as Leshko does.

I grew up on a little farm that had cows, chickens and pigs, and I always felt that neither vegetarians nor hardcore carnivores understood the reality of our relationship with animals. It is perfectly true that livestock farmers can routinely send hundreds of young creatures to their deaths without much sense of them as individual living creatures. But it’s also true that many of them recognise, appreciate and enjoy the characters of the breeding stock, who are around for years.

My mum and dad usually had three or four old pigs they kept back as pets, though they never referred to them as that. Leshko’s picture of Teresa the pig, rescued from a truck in Washington DC in 1998, reminds me of our old boar, Champion, who died a natural death after being allowed to retire into a strawy corner. My dad used to go to scratch his back and talk to him after finishing work some nights.

Of course, keeping back a few pigs didn’t make us “humane” – certainly not from the point of view of the ones who didn’t get a reprieve – but it did mean our capacity for compassion was selective rather than nonexistent.

Buddy, an Appaloosa horse aged 28, went to a sanctuary after losing his sight. He suffered from panic attacks which took months of training to overcome. His eyes were eventually removed to resolve painful iritis. Photograph: © Isa Leshko

This is what a lot of farm folk mean when they say animal advocates “don’t understand” farming (“How can they call us heartless… look at how I sat up all night with Daisy!”). Leshko and I have a chat about it – I don’t know if it gets us anywhere, really (“But to me, it sounds like me saying to one of my cats, ‘You’re off to the slaughterhouse’ and to the other one ‘You can stay’!”), but she does make me think of so many farm stories, like Babe or Charlotte’s Web, that feature wily old animals and escapees as the heroes.

Leshko is beginning a new project in which she’ll document the moment of animals’ birth. It will be more challenging than the last one, because “it means being on call so I can be there at the moment it happens”, but she’s an old hand now, with a penchant for having turkeys and chickens sit in her lap.

Violet, a pot-bellied pig aged 12, was born with partially paralysed hind legs. She was given to a sanctuary to care for her special needs. Photograph: © Isa Leshko

Most of the animals in Allowed to Grow Old are dead now – some died a few days after she photographed them, which she found hard. She talks about her friendships with them in exactly the same way as she talks about her human relationships, and looks back on these animals as “some of the lucky ones”, living on in portraits that, she says, remind her “that old age is a blessing, not a curse.”

Allowed to Grow Old: Portraits of Elderly Animals from Farm Sanctuaries by Isa Leshko is published by University of Chicago Press on 5 April (£30).

(Source: The Guardian)

In Vrindavan, a home for widows prepares to protect its elderly from COVID-19

When Usha Dasi, 72, found out about the coronavirus outbreak in the second week of March 2020, she stopped attending puja ceremonies at the Radha Raman temple, 1.5 km from her room at the Maa Sharda Ashram in Uttar Pradesh’s Vrindavan. Breaking with her routine of 15 years, she said she now prays in her room. 

“We have been told that taking precautions, like washing our hands frequently with soap and keeping our faces covered, will keep this disease away,” Usha Dasi told IndiaSpend. The home where she lives has 100 elderly residents. 

Scores of shelter homes dot Vrindavan in Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh, where, for decades, indigent widows have congregated to live and pray--away from families and society that have turned them out, or to seek spiritual solace. There are more than 10,000 such widows in Vrindavan, as per a 2019 report by the NGO Sulabh International, a significantly higher estimate than the previous one of more than 3,000 in 2005, as per a 2009-10 study by the National Commission for Women (NCW). 

Women at the Maa Sharda Ashram put on masks to protect against COVID-19, in Vrindavan, Mathura, on March 22, 2020. Gradually, social distancing norms have also been enforced and adopted. The elderly are more likely to fall seriously ill if they contract the disease. 

Most of these women are elderly--the population most at risk of developing a serious illness from COVID-19. COVID-19 would be particularly dangerous if it spreads in an enclosed space where people live in close proximity, such as prisons and orphanages, the World Health Organization has warned. 

The pandemic has claimed 62 lives and infected at least 2547 in India (as of April 3, 2020 5:30 p.m.). 

Maa Sharda Ashram is prepared for this situation, said its caretaker, Rajvir Singh. They have a team of 15, including doctors on-call, a 24-hour ambulance, regular medical check-ups and sessions to make the women aware of the need to frequently wash their hands with soap and wear masks.

Maa Sharda Ashram is maintained by Sulabh International. Vrindavan also has six state-run homes for widows, with about 650 residents, said Santosh Mishra, who is in-charge of these homes. 

Widows living here get 20 kg of wheat and 15 kg rice every month, said Mishra. The government’s Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme provides a pension of Rs 300 per month to below-poverty-line widowed women aged above 40. Those 80 years and older receive Rs 500 a month. The government, in its financial package to alleviate the economic distress caused by the lockdown and to curtail the spread of the disease, has said it would provide Rs 1,000 over a period of three months to widowed women. 

All ashrams have stock in abundance and there will be no problem in providing cereal, soap, sanitiser, medicine and masks, Mishra added. 

The elderly need special care

It is important to keep Vridavan’s elderly widows in isolation or home quarantine and make sure they eat nutritious food, said Ved Prakash, a senior doctor with King George Medical University in Lucknow. 

“Precautions are especially necessary in Vrindavan, as it is a hotspot for tourists, and people from abroad flock the temple city, especially in summers,” he said. 

Before the countrywide lockdown that began March 25, 2020, the district administration and government hospitals had formed several teams that conducted health check-ups and held awareness camps in hotels, hospitals, temples and other places where groups gather, Mathura’s chief medical officer, Sher Singh, and the district magistrate, Sarvagyaram Mishra, told IndiaSpend. Streets were sanitised, and people were asked to wear masks.  

Inside the homes, they watch the news on TV and keep themselves updated on the dangers of the disease, Mishra, the district magistrate said. There are weekly check-ups and the residents have been provided with soap and sanitiser, and entry of people from outside is banned, he added. 

When this reporter visited on March 22, 2020, before the countrywide lockdown, he was asked to first wash his hands with soap, then provided a sanitiser and asked to wear a mask at all times and communicate with the residents from a distance. 

No temple visits, 24-hour ambulance service

The numerous temples at Vrindavan, holy to Vaishnavite Hindus, are usually teeming with tourists and local worshippers. All religious places are now closed for the public until at least April 15, 2020. 

“We have even asked religious leaders, seers and saints of the city to make an appeal to the public that they do not come to temples or gather in groups,” Singh, the medical officer, told IndiaSpend.

The women at Maa Sharda Ashram and the state-run homes have been asked to not go to the temple or even gather at the home to pray. “Instead they have been asked to pray in their rooms,” said Mishra, who is in-charge of the government homes. 

At Maa Sharda Ashram, there is an ambulance round-the-clock. No one has fallen sick so far, said Govind Gupta, a doctor who conducted medical checks at the home. “We have told them [the residents] about the symptoms of this disease and have asked them to report immediately to the hospital if they experience any.” 

A resident of Maa Sharda Ashram shows another how to wear a mask properly in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, on March 22, 2020.

Unhygienic, dangerous conditions

The World Health Organization has emphasised social distancing and hygiene among the protective measures against COVID19. But Vrindivan’s shelter homes are overcrowded and lack basic infrastructure, as multiple studies have pointed out.

These include the NCW’s 2009-10 study cited above, based on interviews with 216 women living in shelter homes run by the government or NGOs and in rented accommodation. The study had highlighted a lack of adequate physical infrastructure, “mainly running water in bathrooms and toilets” and the unhygienic condition of the toilets in the homes. 

Further, overcrowding in the rooms and dormitories was “leading to unhealthy and unhygienic living conditions”, the study said. At Maa Sharda Ashram, each room housed two or three women, we found.

Despite the spirit being “altruistic”, the condition of these homes is “miserable”, a November 2017 review of multiple studies on widows in Vrindavan by the NCW said.

In 2008, the Environment and Consumer Protection Foundation, a charity, filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court to help the widows of Vrindavan “live with dignity”, by requiring the central and Uttar Pradesh governments “to take all steps to rehabilitate them”.

The COVID19 crisis could provide the fillip for such a move in the longer term. 

(Source: IndiaSpend)

I’m almost 50 and full of regret it’s too late to have children

It sounds like a midlife crisis so visit your GP and focus on what you’ve achieved – not what you haven’t, says Mariella Frostrup

The dilemma I’m a 49-year-old woman. I work hard, own a home and live a fairly good life. My problem is that I can’t help but feel regretful that I never had children. I can’t quite believe this is how my life turned out. When I was younger I ached for my own child.

I have a partner currently. We don’t live together, he’s younger than I am and quite possibly the loveliest man I’ve been in a relationship with. It’s too late for me to conceive now and IVF isn’t an option as we don’t have the money. He says he doesn’t care, but he dotes on friends’ children and I fear that when he’s older he’ll feel regretful, too.

In previous relationships I’ve had two abortions and two miscarriages and I’m not sure I ever recovered emotionally. I somehow got my life back on track, though I suffered another miscarriage along the way. Those losses left me feeling numb and I pretend to others who ask that I made positive choices. I feel ashamed, guilty and cowardly.

I want to know how to get through these next few years unscathed. I’m too serious, anxious about money, the environment, everything. I suppose I am a typical spinster cat-woman. I fear the emotional wrecking ball of the menopause and want to move on and to not think about what could have been – but it’s getting worse, not better.

‘I fear the emotional wrecking ball of the menopause and want to move on.’ Photograph: Getty Images

Mariella replies Don’t panic! It sounds like you are living through a full-blown midlife crisis. No one wants to think they are just a number, but sometimes it’s easier to navigate life’s difficulties when you know you’ve got company – and companions with similar concerns are one thing you won’t be short of as you hit 50, brimful of anxiety, regrets and melancholy. There’s no shame in seeking help and the best place to start is with your local GP, provided they have menopause experience, so they can sort hormonal bedlam from mental wear and tear.

You’ve reached the first age of reckoning and you’d be one in a million if there weren’t plenty of choices you’d love to rethink with the benefit of hindsight. I’m afraid that has to stop. There is no gain and a lot to lose in looking over your shoulder instead of keeping your gaze firmly forward-facing. The past is a place to mine for happy memories, not dwell on for those that are less so. It’s easier said than done, but it’s definitely possible. Dwelling on the many things I could have done better, some major, some minor, would definitely flatten me.

Write a list of amazing things you can do and start to tick them off

I’ve front-loaded on the negativity because, quite honestly, the future is far brighter than you envisage. I understand your regrets about not having children and agree the likelihood of getting pregnant now is extremely slim. You can sit around and mourn or consider the surfeit of opportunities offered by not being responsible for anyone but yourself. Whether it’s relocation or re-education, your bucket list is far more achievable than if you were a parent saddled with the cost of an umbilical connection you can’t shake off.

A close friend, like you, wanted children, but didn’t have them. Quite honestly, it’s her unfettered lifestyle I envy most when my teenagers make Harry Enfield’s best caricature of adolescent angst seem normal! Instead of rueing your misfortune, write a list of all the amazing things you can do now you’re mature and solvent, grab your younger man and start ticking them off.

What’s predictably human is that despite the much longer list of achievements you have to celebrate – a good job, trophy boyfriend, decent lifestyle, own home – you’ve zoomed in on the one ambition you have not succeeded with. They are not minor details to be shunted aside, but amount to the very things that most kids hope one day to achieve.

If, despite all my encouragement to count your blessings, you still feel your life requires a child, then there are around 6,000 children a year desperate for a secure home, and nearly 50% of them are school-age siblings, which means in adopting them you’d have a ready-made family. Bearing your own biological baby may be a natural impulse, but the enormous gift you can give a child who needs parenting is well worth considering, and not as a second choice. It sounds to me like you tick all the boxes for an acceptable adoption prospect so a life with children to rear and rage at you is in reach (contact gov.uk/child-adoption).

Whatever you choose, the life lesson remains the same. From now on it’s imperative to be grateful for what you’ve got, not preoccupied by what you haven’t. And finally, the menopause… well that’s a whole other conversation, but a good place to begin is on BBC iPlayer with my documentary The Truth About the Menopause. Reaching midlife is a time for contemplation, but also for positive action. With half your life left to live there are options aplenty and inspiring ways to move forward. You just need to review your perspective.

(Source: The Guardian)

World's oldest person celebrates her 117th with party at Fukuoka nursing home

Kane Tanaka has extended her record as the world’s oldest person by celebrating her 117th birthday at a nursing home in the city of Fukuoka.

Tanaka marked her birthday, on Jan. 2, with a party Sunday together with staff and friends at the nursing home, television footage from local broadcaster TVQ Kyushu Broadcasting Co. showed.

Kane Tanaka, the world's oldest person, who turned 117 on Thursday, is the center of attention at a party to mark the event held Sunday at the nursing home where she lives in Fukuoka. | KYODO

“Tasty,” she said with a smile as she took a bite from a slice of a big birthday cake. “I want some more.”

Last year Tanaka was confirmed as the oldest living person, at 116 years and 66 days old as of March 9, according to Guinness World Records.

She was born prematurely in 1903 and married Hideo Tanaka in 1922, the organization said. The couple had four children and adopted a fifth.

Tanaka’s record age is seen as symbolic of Japan’s fast-aging population, which, coupled with its falling birthrate, is raising concerns about labor shortages and prospects for future economic growth.

The number of babies born in Japan fell an estimated 5.9 percent last year to fewer than 900,000 for the first time since the government started compiling data in 1899, according to the welfare ministry.

(Source: JT)

The TV repeats and old songs that help people with dementia

TV repeats and familiar festive songs can help people with dementia by stimulating memories and keeping the brain active.

Christmas can be an unsettling time for those with dementia.

But experts say singing along to songs like White Christmas can stimulate "emotional memories".

And while people with dementia might not remember the exact details of It's A Wonderful Life, they may recall how they felt at the end of the film.

NHS England's national clinical director for dementia, Prof Alistair Burns, says Christmas can sometimes be strange or confusing for those living with dementia.

Old films like It's A Wonderful Life can stimulate memories and feelings

Lots of social engagements and a steady stream of house guests coming through the door have the potential to be unsettling.

But he says watching familiar films or singing along to favourite songs can help make the festive season easier to navigate.

"People with dementia might find it hard to follow convoluted conversations amid the chaos and noise of Christmas and can end up feeling excluded.

"Gathering the family round to watch a much-loved classic film, thumb through an old photo album, play a family game or even sing along to a favourite carol can bring people together and help everybody feel part of the fun."

Experts say it is the emotional details of a favourite film or song that remain lodged in our minds.

Rekindling them improves a feeling of connectedness with other people which is important for both people with dementia and their friends and families.

Prof Burns is also urging people to look out for signs of dementia among older family members and friends over Christmas.

These might include emotional changes and forgetfulness which can sometimes be the first indication that someone has dementia.

The familiarity of Christmas specials on TV can be reassuring

Kathryn Smith, chief operating officer at the Alzheimer's Society, says Christmas can pose difficulties for the 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK, but there are strategies that can help.

"Whether it's an old song they used to enjoy or a classic Christmas film, reminiscing can be beneficial to someone with dementia - it can help to maintain their self-esteem, confidence and sense of self, as well as improve social interactions with others.

"However, every person with dementia is different, so it's important to listen and accommodate your loved one's unique needs and wishes."

NHS England has this advice on how to make Christmas easier to cope with for someone with dementia.

• Put decorations up gradually so it doesn't come as too much of a change
• Help people who are frail or living with dementia feel included by getting them to assist with hanging a bauble or other simple tasks
• Spread out family visits to keep things low key and familiar
• Don't overload on food - a full plate can be difficult to tackle for somebody with dementia who might have eating difficulties
• Be flexible with planning - be prepared to change plans if something isn't working

(Source: BBC)

“She comes, they are happy”: How communal grandparents are helping raise Finnish children

It’s Wednesday morning, so toddlers in the Tammi nursery in Helsinki, Finland, are excited—their communal grandparent, or “kylämummi,” is here.

This classroom’s “kylämummi” is Marjatta Ahonen,  a 71-year old retired psychotherapist. She volunteers for the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare (MLL), Finland’s largest organization dedicated to child and family welfare. From 2006, MLL has run a program encouraging older people to volunteer as communal grandparents. They meet their communal “grandchildren” in schools, libraries, and other family-friendly spaces. The idea is to give lonely pensioners a purpose, and to give children who may live far away from their own grandparents a chance to forge a meaningful bond with an older person. There are 830 communal grandparents across Finland.

Communal grandmother Marjatta Ahonen reads a book to children at the Tammi nursery in Helsinki, Finland.

For Ahonen, it’s a source of joy to visit the Tammi nursery once a week, something she has done every week for the past eight years. She plays with the children, helps teachers manage lunch and nap time, and generally serves as a constant, loving presence for the 18 toddlers aged between two and five. A petite woman with curly blond hair and a reserved demeanor, Ahonen has a ready smile for anyone under three feet tall. She has two children of her own and no grandchildren, though you wouldn’t know it from watching her read a book to seven restless toddlers, all of whom are vying for the coveted spot on her lap. “It gives me a lot of joy to be here,” she says. “I feel that I’m needed and…I will continue to do it as long as I am able.”

“When she comes, the kids are like ‘wow,’” says Maileena Nieminen, the lead teacher at Tammi. “She comes, they are happy.”

Finland’s communal grandparent program is part of a growing movement whose goal is to forge meaningful relationships across generational divides. But there is little evidence  so far to show  that these programs are successfully recreating family-like relationships, or that they are feasible and scalable answers to two of the thorniest challenges that rich countries face today: Aging societies and loneliness.

Marjatta serves lunch with lead teacher Maileena Nieminen. Today, the kids got to choose their meal, and they wanted fish sticks.

In the name of progress, Western societies have segregated the generations. Where extended families once lived and worked together, economic expansion after the industrial revolution (paywall) and the modern-day welfare system now keeps them apart. Children move to big cities in search of jobs and opportunity, leaving parents and grandparents behind—or in nursing homes. A recent survey of 2,000 adults in the US conducted by the online genealogy company Ancestry.com showed that a third of Americans can’t even name all of their grandparents. “I think it’s a terrible loss in our culture,” says Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and an expert in child development.

Research shows that young and old people need each other to thrive. “The needs and the assets of the generations fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,” explains Marc Freedman, CEO and founder of Encore, a nonprofit that matches retiring adults with companies in need of talent. “The old, as they move into the latter phases of life, are driven by a deep desire to be needed by the next generation and to nurture it; the young have a need to be nurtured,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal (paywall).

Urie Bronfenbrenner, co-founder of the Head Start program in the US, which provides early childhood education, health, nutrition services to poor children under age five and their families, reportedly had a simple way of putting it: “Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her.”

“Biology flows downhill”
In the 1950s, a team of mental health workers, pediatricians, public health nurses, and social workers in Hawaii followed a group of 698 children from birth through age 40, in an attempt to understand what makes some children resilient in the face of adversity and others not. The Kauai Longitudinal Study (pdf) found that “children who succeeded against the odds had the opportunity to establish, early on, a close bond with at least one competent, emotionally stable person who was sensitive to their needs.” More often than not, this person was a grandparent, older sibling, aunt, or uncle.

Marjatta reads the kids a book before their nap time. But these children are too excited to sleep, having fought a bitter battle to decide who would get to sit on her lap.

Evolutionary theory posits that grandparents pass human culture onto the next generation. Communal grandmother Marjatta Ahonen was born in 1948 in Ylistaro, in the Finnish countryside. Kids at the Tammi nursery in Helsinki are often curious about her childhood. They ask her what Christmas was like when she was growing up, and she tells them about how her family used to melt the ice off the Christmas trees they chopped down in the forest. She also tells them how as a kid, she used to go through the garden with her friends, looking for eggs that their chickens had laid the day before.

Sure, they could read about all of this in a book; but it’s not the same as hearing it from someone who lived it. “I share my life experience and help with those stories,” says Ahonen.

According to research by anthropologist Kristen Hawkes of the University of Utah, the human race survived this long because grandmothers were around to feed and care for children, thus freeing up their daughters to have more babies, and pass on their “longevity-promoting genes,” as Lindsay Abrams put it in The Atlantic. The “grandmother hypothesis” helps explain why women survive past menopause, when they can no longer help perpetuate the species: Their grandchildren need them during their first few years of life, a period that is crucial to their development.

“If young people need adults who are irrationally crazy about them, as older people, we need to be irrationally crazy about the next generation.”
When children are very young, they need continuous back-and-forth interactions with loving adults around them to thrive. What some scientists call an “environment of relationships” helps kids develop the skills they need to be confident and happy, to do well in school, to get along with others and resolve conflicts, and to learn the difference between right and wrong.

While grandparents are good for kids, it’s also true that kids are good for grandparents. In the 1930s, the Harvard Study of Adult Development showed that the quality of people’s relationships can determine their physical and mental health. George Vaillant, one of the leaders of the study, wrote in his book, Aging well, that adults who invest in nurturing the next generation are more likely to be happy than those who do not. “Biology flows downhill,” Vaillant wrote.

Freedman, of Encore, the nonprofit that matches retirees with companies, says that intergenerational connections are key. “If young people need adults who are irrationally crazy about them, as older people, we need to be irrationally crazy about the next generation. It’s a central part of the human makeup, and one that we have, in many ways, abandoned in the modern world.”

“Clearing the market for love”
There’s no exact formula for the communal grandparent program, and that’s what makes it special: MLL knows that you can’t teach or fake love. Volunteers undergo a one-time, three-to-four hour training session. It introduces them to MLL’s values and principles, helps them plan out activities to do with the children, and explains why intergenerational relationships are important and why play matters to children’s development.

“Marjatta is here only for the children.”
Volunteers spend a set amount of time, usually a morning or an afternoon, with children every week, playing with them, reading to them, or doing activities with them, such as baking cookies or walking in the snow. At Tammi, Marjatta Ahonen accompanies the kids to an indoor gymnasium every second Wednesday. While the older kids play on gym mats, she keeps the younger and shyer ones company. “Everyone likes her, but maybe the little ones are more with her, because they need more help,” says the teacher Maileena Nieminen. “She knows—she sees who needs her.”

Unlike teachers and assistants, communal grandparents have time and undivided attention to give, which is exactly what curious toddlers need. They want nothing more than to ask how the bird they just saw hit a window got back up and flew away. They want to read the same book for the dozenth time and ask why the story ended the way it did. “She can sit down and be there and read the book from the beginning to the end,” says Nieminen about Ahonen. “I don’t like to stop something that I’m doing with the children, but we need to do it. Marjatta is here only for the children.”

“This program felt like it was clearing the market for love,” says Freedman. “At one level, this contact is developmentally stimulating: Hearing words and stories and music from adults is so important for the healthy development of young children. But I think at a deeper level, these children pick up a more secure sense of attachment and grow up feeling loved by being around a portfolio of adults who are investing in them, who are caring about them, who are being irrationally crazy about them.”

“All of us need at least one person to play that role, as Bronfenbrenner suggests, but I think we’re better off if we have a multitude.”

The evidence
There are no large-scale studies measuring the effect of communal grandparents. But assessments of other, similar programs that regularly bring old and young people together (pdf) have consistently shown benefits for the volunteers and the children. The older people feel a sense of purpose and don’t have to spend as much time alone; and the kids have one more adult around them who is invested in their success.

“I hope that he sees every day that he’s truly helping and making a difference.”
One of the things that sets us apart from our closest primate relatives is that the care of young children isn’t just left to family members; it’s also done by neighbors, friends, and even volunteers like the communal grandparents. These “alloparents,” a term popularized by anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy in her book Mother Nature, may have been crucial to the survival of the human race, and they’ve been proven to improve children’s health, socio-emotional, and behavioral outcomes.

Emma Herlin, a kindergarten teacher in Finland who studied communal grandparents for her PhD, says that whether this intergenerational program benefits kids and grandparents alike depends on the participants’ willingness to engage. She observed a communal grandfather, whom she called “tapsa-vaari,” or grandpa tapsa, in a daycare in southern Finland and interviewed seven of the children in his group, all between four and five years old. Herlin asked the children to draw pictures of grandpa tapsa and then reconstructed meaning from the drawings using a narrative method.

His visits, Herlin noticed, meant different things to different children. For some, they were an unremarkable part of the weekly schedule. For others, they were exciting and an opportunity to spend some time with a supportive adult. “It’s about the individuals,” she says. “So, a different place or a different volunteer, it might have a completely different story.”

Overall though, she said the communal grandfather was “truly helping and making a difference.”

Communal grandmother Marjukka Hartikainen draws with a group of children at the International Family Café in Espoo.

Research shows that intergenerational programs are successful when they foster secure, respectful, equitable, and reciprocal relationships between the participants, and when they approach “learning” as a long-term process, not just a weekly benchmark. That means kids will learn best if their communal grandparent plays a game or reads a book with them, and does activities that are culturally relevant.

Recreating the village
Nearly a third of the 18 children who attend Tammi nursery live too far away from their grandparents to see them often. For them, Marjatta Ahonen may be the only older adult with whom they have a relationship. And for Ahonen, her time at the nursery may be the only regular time she spends with young children. They are not as close as family, she admits, “but very close. And it’s wonderful.”

Loneliness for older people is an increasingly common problem in Finland, partly because people now live much longer than before. The proportion of Finland’s population made up of people over the age of 65 will grow from 22.7% today to 27.2% by 2040. By 2070, it’s projected to be 33.1%. Older people are especially likely to report feeling lonely (a subjective feeling) or socially isolated (an objective metric). In Europe, more than 75 million adults (pdf) meet with family or friends once a month at most, and about 30 million adults report frequently feeling lonely.

“The old ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ that’s not just a political slogan, that’s what all the science tells you.”
Chronic loneliness and social isolation can be deadly: It increases adults’ risk of heart attack and stroke, depression, dementia, and premature mortality. But old people aren’t the only ones who report often feeling lonely. Surveys point to the fact that, in many rich countries, the two loneliest groups are the young and the old.

“Our institutions are very age-segregated,” says Gopnik of the University of California, and this can harm children too. “The old ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ that’s not just a political slogan, that’s what all the science tells you.” To raise a happy, healthy, and thriving human child, there needs to be a multitude of people around (paywall) to invest time and resources in their well-being. That sense of communal investment in child-rearing has “fallen by the wayside” in a post-Industrial world, she says, ceding way to “the default assumption that…the way caregiving should be done is one mother, sitting in a house in the suburbs somewhere, taking care of one or two children. And that’s not a good model for caregiving.”

There are hundreds of programs around the world bringing the young and the old together in the hopes that it may cure at least a little of what ails them both. Singapore is building eldercare and childcare facilities in the same spaces to “provide opportunities for intergenerational bonding.” The European Union runs a multi-country program called Together Old and Young (TOY), which promotes intergenerational learning. Last year, British prime minister Theresa May appointed a minister for loneliness, with a focus on creating opportunities to bring people of all ages together so that “nobody should feel alone or be left with no one to turn to.”

In the US in the 1960s, Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr., a reformer, presidential candidate, and brother-in-law to John F. Kennedy, created the Foster Grandparent program. It was meant to match older volunteers with children in need in their communities. Before Shriver died in 2011, Freedman of Encore was able to ask him if he thought the program worked. The answer was encouraging. “He said he was convinced that it did, and it worked for two reasons: It was simple, it was one-on-one, and it was human. It was all about relationships.”

“That is really, in a way, the essence of these efforts,” says Freedman. “They’re simple, they’re human, and they’re reproducing a fundamental part of the human experience, which is the grandparent-grandchild relationship.”

These programs may appear to be simple, but recreating something as fundamentally complex as the grandparent-grandchild relationship is hard. That’s one of the pitfalls of Finland’s communal grandparent programs, and any other program like it. It’s easy to just drop an elderly person into a kid-friendly space and leave it at that. But you’re not going to recreate “family-like” relationships by “just sort of parachuting in,” says Gopnik. For that, you need time, consistency, and effort.

“I’m convinced that the grandparent-grandchild relationship is one of the most important bonds in society and human history,” says Freedman, “and it can be reproduced in people who are not blood relatives in the traditional sense.”

The scene at the International Family Café in Espoo, a sprawling city that is part of greater Helsinki, shows just how difficult this can be. The family café is another program run by MLL to bring together new parents. A communal grandmother, Marjukka Hartikainen, volunteers there, but she mostly stays quiet, interacting with the seven energetic kids in the room once in a while to bring them a pen and paper to draw with, or to pick up a baby that has crawled too far away. The kids get bored quickly, and there is very little apparent depth to the exchange. It doesn’t help that different kids and parents come to the café every week, making it difficult to create lasting relationships.

“The only true cure for social isolation is a real relationship,” says Freedman. “Just having contact, as opposed to connexion, is probably not that valuable, significant, or enduring.”

Not a silver bullet
Finland is committed to reducing social isolation and loneliness among vulnerable populations. The municipality provides the space for many of MLL’s initiatives, from the family cafes to peer support groups, and through the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, develops and commissions research on social welfare programs. But there is still some way to go. “I wish we had more contacts with grandparents generally, more visits in the grandparents’ homes, or with lonely people who are old,” says Maileena Nieminen, the lead teacher at Tammi.

About a month ago, Finns celebrated National Grandparents’ Day. Nieminen invited all of the children’s grandparents to come to the nursery for coffee and a singalong. Then, she took them to visit her father, who lives close by and is often lonely. Until a few years ago, these kinds of visits were a more regular occurrence. One morning every month, Nieminen would take the kids to  a retirement home next to the nursery to sing and play with people there. Then the retirement home closed down.

One of MLL’s biggest challenges is finding enough funding and volunteers to keep these types of programs going. Last year, it shut down a two-year initiative called “terhokerho,” which had older and younger people meeting and playing games together. Most of MLL’s yearly budget of €9 million ($9.9 million) is allocated by a government agency through the national lottery fund, or “veikkaus.” But there isn’t enough money to expand nationwide.

The communal grandparent experiment shows that it is possible to reimagine relationships between the old and the young, in a society that will soon have more over-65s than under-14s.  And in the meantime, hundreds of communal grandparents continue their labor of love across Finland.

(Source: Quartz)

Indian woman, 73, gives birth to twin girls

A 73-year-old woman in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has given birth to twin girls.

Doctors delivered the twins, who were born following IVF treatment, on Thursday.

"The mother and the babies are doing well," Dr Uma Sankar, the woman's doctor, told BBC Telugu.

Mangayamma Yaramati said she and her husband, who is 82 years old, have always wanted children but had been unable to conceive until now.

"We are incredibly happy," her husband Sitarama Rajarao told BBC Telugu on Thursday, hours after the babies were born.

Mangayamma Yaramati is 73 years old

But just a day later, Mr Rajarao suffered a sudden stroke and is currently being treated in hospital.

"Nothing is in our hands. Whatever should happen will happen. It is all in the hands of God," Mr Rajarao had said when asked who would care for the children in case anything were to happen to the couple due to their advanced age.

Having children was important to the couple, who also said that they felt stigmatised in their village.

"They would call me a childless lady," Ms Yaramati said.

"We tried many times and saw numerous doctors," she added, "so this is the happiest time of my life."

The twin girls were delivered by Caesarean section, which is the usual method in such rare cases.

In 2016, another Indian woman in her 70s, Daljinder Kaur, gave birth to a boy.

(Source: BBC)

UK elderly suffer worst poverty rate in western Europe

Britain’s low basic pension, combined with means-tested supplements, puts thousands of older people at risk

The proportion of elderly people living in severe poverty in the UK is five times what it was in 1986, the largest increase among western European countries, according to a new study.

The rise, from 0.9% of the elderly population to around 5%, is attributable to Britain’s state pension system and its “low basic payments and means-tested supplements”, says the author of the report, Pension Reforms and Old Age Inequalities in Europe.

Professor Bernhard Ebbinghaus, of the University of Oxford, will tell a European Sociological Association conference this week that the UK is one of five countries out of 16 that he has studied where there has been an increase in people aged 65 and over who are living in “severe poverty”, which is defined as having an income of 40% or less of the median average.

 Around 5% of older people struggle to meet basic needs. Photograph: EM Welch/Rex

“The United Kingdom is a good example of the Beveridge-lite systems that have historically failed to combat old-age poverty,” Ebbinghaus said. “These have rather ungenerous basic pensions with means-tested supplements, and this reproduces relatively high severe poverty rates among the elderly. British basic pensions are particularly low, 16% of average earnings, and require a long contribution period. Income-tested or means-tested targeted benefits are needed to supplement basic pensions and to lift them out of severe poverty – every sixth British pensioner receives such additional benefits.”

Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, which spans several decades, Ebbinghaus found that:

In the mid-1980s about 1% of those aged 65 and over in the UK were living in severe poverty, putting it equal-lowest in poverty rates of 16 western European countries. In France it was 12% and in Germany 6%.

• By 2008, the proportion had risen to 6%, making the UK fourth-equal highest. Only Switzerland, Ireland and Spain were higher.

• Over the following eight years, the proportion dipped slightly but remained at just under 5%.

Ebbinghaus said the UK compared unfavourably with many other countries: “The lowest poverty rates among older people are found in the relatively generous Dutch basic pensions and Nordic welfare states, while the UK, but also Ireland and Switzerland, with basic old-age security, had the highest poverty rates.”

Even when private pensions were taken into account, the UK continued to fare poorly, Ebbinghaus said: “The public-private mix puts many elderly at risk as they lack sufficient supplementary earnings-related pensions.”

He contrasted the UK system, with its flat-rate basic pension, with the “Bismarckian” system used in Germany and several other European countries, where mandatory pension contributions are based on earnings. “A comparative analysis of poverty rates in old age reveals that Beveridge basic security is not always capable of effectively reducing poverty despite the explicit purpose of doing so, while some contributory Bismarckian systems are better suited to reducing poverty, despite focusing on status maintenance,” he said.

Ebbinghaus also studied those aged 65 and over who can be classed as “better off”, meaning that they have an income of 60% or more of the median average. Around 20% of the UK’s elderly met this criterion, closer to the average for western Europe.

The research found that, overall, those European countries that had made private pensions an important source of income for the elderly had seen a rise in financial inequality. “The comparison shows that the shift toward increasing privatisation amplifies the already existing level of social inequality,” Ebbinghaus said.

“As welfare states have been challenged by the financial and economic crises of the 2000s, individuals relying on funded pensions have also faced volatile financial risks,” he said. “The adequacy of retirement income has often been neglected from current debate, partly because poverty in old age seemed no pressing concern in advanced welfare states – until recently.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Alzheimer’s blood test could predict onset up to 20 years in advance

US scientists say their blood test can be 94% effective in spotting those at risk of the illness

A blood test that can detect signs of Alzheimer’s as much as 20 years before the disease begins to have a debilitating effect has been developed by researchers in the US.

Scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis in Missouri believe the test can identify changes in the brain suggestive of Alzheimer’s with 94% accuracy, while being much cheaper and simpler than a PET brain scan.

The results of the study, which was published in the journal Neurology on Thursday, represent a potential breakthrough in the fight against the disease.

“Right now we screen people for clinical trials with brain scans, which is time-consuming and expensive, and enrolling participants takes years,” said the senior author, Randall Bateman, a leading professor of neurology.

“But with a blood test, we could potentially screen thousands of people a month. That means we can more efficiently enrol participants in clinical trials, which will help us find treatments faster, and could have an enormous impact on the cost of the disease as well as the human suffering that goes with it.”

 PET scan results that formed part of earlier research into Alzheimer’s disease. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

The researchers said they had found a way to measure levels of the protein amyloid beta, a key indicator of Alzheimer’s, in the blood. They can then use such levels to predict whether the protein has accumulated in the brain.

That analysis could then be combined with two other major Alzheimer’s risk factors – age and the presence of the genetic variant APOE4 – to accurately identify the relevant changes in the brain.

The researchers said the clumps of protein begin to form in the brain up to two decades before the onset of the characteristic memory loss, suggesting the tests could be used to predict Alzheimer’s years in advance.

However, the benefits of such testing would not be seen to their fullest extent until treatments to halt the disease are developed.

In January 2018, a team of scientists revealed their work on a test that used mass spectrometry techniques to identify patients with a rogue peptide in their blood plasma, indicating a buildup of beta-amyloid in the brain.

The latest study looked at 158 people aged older than 50. All but 10 of the participants in the new study were cognitively normal and each provided at least one blood sample and underwent one PET brain scan.

The researchers found that the blood tests gave the same results as the PET scans 88% of the time, which was not satisfactory. In order to improve the accuracy, the scientists began incorporating the other risk factors, increasing the accuracy to more than 90%.

(Source: The Guardian)

France is building an “Alzheimer’s village” for patients to live in freely

In southwestern France, a revolutionary project is underway to build a facility that allows Alzheimer’s patients to live comfortably. The Village Landais Alzheimer in Dax will be a space where those with Alzheimer’s will live freely, without medication, in an enclosed enclave designed to mirror the freedom they enjoyed while maintaining safety.

The project was inspired by a similar site in the Netherlands, which spurred then-local MP Henri Emmanuelli to take up the cause. Known as “Alzheimer’s Village,” the facility not only has different housing areas with residences built to suit different tastes, but also has a supermarket, hairdresser, library, and gym among other facilities. The idea is that an increase in freedom will also increase happiness, and bring down the need for medication. Residents will not be able to leave the site, and will be cared for by plain-clothed medical staff.

Neurologist Jean-François Dartigues says that by maintaining a typical lifestyle, patients will continue their normal social routines and exercise their brains. “They will find a form of integrity, social, human. They will do their shopping, go to the hairdresser, the bistro, the restaurant, the theater,” he shares. “They will have fun. What constitutes a form of extraordinary therapy.”

To ease the transition, Champagnat & Grègoire Architects and NORD Architects designed a village that adheres to the traditional architecture of the region. Built to resemble a medieval fortress town typical of the Landes area, houses are grouped in blocks of four around a courtyard, with each area having a distinct identity. Walkways draped with nature connect the areas, with the paths providing sensory stimulation and a way for the patients to interact with nature.

In addition to medical staff, researchers and volunteers who organize activities will become a part of village life. The Alzheimer’s Village is currently under construction, with an aim of opening by the end of 2019.

(Source: My Modern Met)

50 shades of greying: Ladies, time to retire the compliment “you don’t look your age!”

We are socially conditioned to equate youth with beauty, and beauty as an accomplishment. But why not think of your crows’ feet and greys as sieves that filter out assholes who think women serve only one purpose – to be someone’s eye-candy? Let’s start by retiring “you don’t look your age!” as a compliment.

Dear all, especially women,

I regret to inform you, looking your age is now a cognisable offense. If you are blessed with a fountain-of-youth genetic makeup, you can go back to giggling at cute cat videos. The rest of you gather up so that I can feel sorry for you.

Sorry I forgot, you are used to disappointing the world for having the audacity to look your age or perhaps even older. You get so much free advice on skin care, hair care, and exercise regimens that’ll make you look like your own daughter, you are now thinking of stringing them up and using them as festoons for your neighbourhood.

Your visits to salons are so tragic, you can actually hear sad strains of the violin play in the background. The facial lady claims your face has as many fine lines as the terms of conditions of an app she’s just signed up for. She further insists the only way you can seek redemption is by letting her peel off your face to reveal baby-soft bleeding skin. You comply because you don’t want to hurt her feelings. You lower your eyes in shame when your hairstylist picks up strands of your greys from your scalp like he’s picking up dirty underwear from the floor. He shakes his head from side to side in disgust and then suggests a hair colour that’ll change your life.

Your life does change because now you have a bank balance that’s considerably lower. Of late your bank balance had been rather busy taking care of others’ feelings. Just the other day you were introduced to the wonders of “self-doubt soaked in rare oils mined from Chechnya and then ground to fine paste with tiger testicles” facial rejuvenation drops by the plucky girl at the skincare counter at the swanky store. When she was finally done with milking your udders of gullibility, you left with a cargo ship full of lotions and potions that’ll work 24×7 to restore your upper eye, middle of under eye, top half of your cheeks, and a part of your face you’ve never even heard of, back to their lost glory. It’s only much later you realise you were supposed to pick up nightwear from the store.

A few hours later when you try eating the dartboard that you mistook for a pizza, you text your friend to ask if the miracle diet of two-and-a-half carrots with three spoons of rice a day she recommended is messing you up instead of taking a decade off your birth certificate.

We are socially conditioned to equating youth with beauty and beauty as an accomplishment.

See, it’s not your fault that you want to hold on to youth in a world where “you don’t look your age” refuses to retire as a compliment. We are socially conditioned to equating youth with beauty and beauty as an accomplishment. We end up as victims of the beauty industry that loves thrusting a twenty-something gorgeous woman in our faces, whose sole purpose in life is to stand in front of a mirror and look for dark spots and fine lines. After frowning for a few seconds, she proceeds to find her saviour in a jar of patchouli infused with a million herbs.

At least the beauty industry is clear about its objective of exploiting our insecurities that they helped create in the first place. The media, meanwhile, loves bombarding us with toxic messages that are disguised as empowering. How is a woman supposed to feel when her favourite “feminist” magazine can’t make up its mind whether to make their reader feel confident about her size 18 and her newly acquired frown lines, or direct her to a step-by-step guide to “How to puncture holes in your body and squeeze out the icky fat without dying”. The subliminal message is: If you are fat or wrinkly or unfortunate enough to be both, you are a badass… who doesn’t take care of herself.

Even women who genuinely couldn’t care less must be subjected to this walk of shame. Remember Helena Rubinstein who once famously said, “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones!”

It doesn’t help when you hear much older women complain about how they are treated as invisible, especially by men – the feeling that you are no longer vital or important or noticeable to others. It hits you in areas where you feel most vulnerable – your physical appearance.

But you know what will feel better? Kicking these outdated notions of beauty firmly in the arse.

Why not think of your crow’s feet and greys as sieves that filter out assholes who think women serve only one purpose – to be someone’s eye-candy. It’s way more satisfying to be a woman whose beauty is defined by her charisma, awareness, and her achievements than a skin-care regimen that reads longer than the Mahabharata. Isn’t it every woman’s wet dream to be noticed for who she is and not the way she looks?

“There are no ugly women, only lazy ones!”

So puhleeez, can we stop feeling sorry for something as natural as ageing? Freed from the gaze, many of us start looking inwards, work on our character, experience our own agency, and start thinking of ways we can impact others through our words and actions. Working on “how you see yourself” than “what you see in the mirror” teaches you to love yourself, and understand and value your unique body and look after it accordingly.

In fact, this is where we can draw inspiration from our men. No matter how big their paunch, how roomy the bags under their eyes, they always see a drop-dead gorgeous man staring back at them from the mirror. They never let themselves forget that they are god’s gift to womankind and expect women to dissolve in gratitude when they are at the receiving end of their advances. Maybe we can start by retiring “you don’t look your age!” as a compliment.

(Source: Arre)