Speed puzzling competition series launches in Orange County

• April 2, 2023

Decisions have to be made fast: What’s the plan for sorting? By color? By texture? Pull out all the edges?

This is speed puzzling, and teams have to decide quickly what is their best bet for turning the 500 tiny pieces they just dumped out of a box into the picture on the cover — in minutes, not hours.

On Saturday, the relatively new Orange County Speed Puzzlers hosted its third competition. The winning time was 34 minutes 57 seconds, completed by Trisha Siedlecki of Roland Heights and Allyson Longo of Anaheim.

When the coronavirus arrived three years ago and people suddenly found themselves at home with a lot of time on their hands, many dusted off puzzle boxes that had been stashed away.

And when it got hard because of the shutdowns to buy more puzzles, they started trading with others to refresh their supply.

“There is a really great puzzle swap community in Orange County,” said William Shandling of Anaheim, who is a co-founder of Orange County Speed Puzzlers with Lisa Moskowitz.

Several from the local swap community attended the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association’s speed puzzling nationals in San Diego in October, Shandling said, and were interested in a regular competition closer to home.

So Moskowitz and Shandling teamed up and the first was held in February.

For Saturday’s competition, they got sponsorship from Ravensburger, a German toy company that has numerous puzzle lines.

But the company didn’t just pull 30 boxes of the same puzzle off a warehouse shelf, Shandling said. It surprised the organizers by offering to design a new puzzle for the competition, he said.

“It’s a really important step in the process, picking the puzzle for the competition,” he said. Along with being something that can be finished within time, it has to be fun for the puzzlers.

“We don’t want any diabolical puzzles where people are going to be frustrated,” Shandling said.

The organizers decided on a graphic arts motif, with a little April Fool’s twist here and there, he said, in honor of the competition’s date. The image included all the trappings of a puzzle competition, including name tags, a tiny version of the puzzle and a first place certificate.

Saturday’s competition drew 30 teams of two to GameCraft Brewing in Laguna Hills. Each played at their own table with spectators watching from an outside perimeter.

Competitions start with a lot of frenetic energy. Teams quickly sort the pieces into piles based on how they most likely will come together — maybe all the pieces that look like they would fit a building in the background or a grassy area.

Then they get to piecing things together.

“Our top puzzle pros, they won’t say more than 10 sentences to each other the entire game,” Shandling said.

Sometimes if a teammate gets stuck on a part of the scene they are working on, the pair might swap chairs or push piles around, Shandling said. “Just to give ourselves a fresh perspective.”

The winning team Saturday received two newly released 1,000-piece puzzles from Ravensburger. Second place received 700 piece puzzles and third place 550 piece puzzles.

June 4 will be the group’s next competition at GameCraft. Find them at Instagram.com/orange_county_speed_puzzlers or search on Facebook.

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​ Orange County Register 

2 injured, 1 arrested after fight at pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach

• April 2, 2023

At least two people were injured and one was arrested after skateboarders fought with crowds gathered at the Huntington Beach Pier in support of former president Donald Trump.

The clash was reported about 12:30 p.m. Saturday said Huntington Beach police spokeswoman Jessica Cuchilla.

She said one person with “minor injuries” was transported to the hospital, and a man was arrested in connection with the fight.

Trump supporter Nick Taurus, injured at the rally, posted on Instagram that after “taking a skateboard in the head for President Trump … I’m still alive, I’m still kicking, it didn’t knock me out.” At one point, he removed a bloody bandage from his forehead to show the wound.

About 50 people attended the rally, “and for the majority, it was peaceful,” Cuchilla said.

The demonstrators carried U.S. and “Make America Great Again” flags, chanted “God bless Trump!” and proclaimed Huntington Beach to be “MAGA Country.”

The rally came two days after a grand jury in New York voted to indict the ex-president, who is accused of paying off porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential bid to keep information about an alleged affair out of the campaign. His then-attorney, Michael Cohen, served prison time for the crime.

Trump and his attorneys have denied any wrongdoing in the case. He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in New York.

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​ Orange County Register 

Susan Shelley: The persecution of Donald J. Trump

• April 2, 2023

Arrested for corruption or corruptly arrested?

As of this writing, the former president of the United States and frontrunning GOP candidate for president in 2024, Donald J. Trump of Florida, has been indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan on charges that are still under seal as of this writing. According to some news reports, Trump will be in New York City on Tuesday to be formally charged, arrested and booked.

There’s obviously a lot of interest in the booking photo. You can expect to see it on shirts, hats, coffee cups, tote bags, posters, flags and murals on the sides of trucks. Trump supporters are ready to run with Notorious DJT.

Two days before the indictment was announced, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on MSNBC telling host Joy Reid that “we spend too much time talking about him….We cannot keep giving him all the press he wants.”

Right, good luck with that.

Pelosi seemed to think Trump was fabricating the story when he announced on his Truth Social account that he was going to be arrested. “This whole thing about his indictment coming out when he didn’t even really know if he was going to be indicted, I don’t think,” she said. “And for a week and a half, all we hear is about him. And that’s exactly what he wanted.”

The former House speaker obviously noticed Trump’s rising popularity. Last week, a Fox News poll found that the man Pelosi sniped at as “a former, ex, impeached, twice, president, and defeated, president of the United States” had expanded his lead in the GOP primary race and was at 54%, leading Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by 30 points. In February, Trump led DeSantis 43% to 28%.

Fox News’ pollster stated that “the rumor that Trump is going to be indicted by the district attorney in Manhattan has helped him quite a bit among Republican primary voters.”

But Pelosi’s comments are cause to wonder if the rumor was also helping Trump among independents and perhaps even some Democrats.

By Thursday evening, the Trump campaign had sent out a fundraising email that featured the New York Times headline, “Grand Jury votes to indict Donald Trump in New York.” It referred to the indictment as “a disgusting witch hunt” and slammed the DA, Alvin Bragg, as a “Soros-funded District Attorney” who had “relied on the testimony of a convicted felon and a disbarred liar.”

That’s a reference to Michael Cohen, a now disbarred attorney who reportedly worked as a “fixer” for Trump, and who went to prison for lying to Congress six times. Cohen also pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, which may be relevant. Reporters and legal experts have speculated that Bragg has taken a New York state misdemeanor related to maintaining accurate business records and enhanced it to a felony by claiming that it was tied to a federal crime, specifically a campaign finance law violation.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume the speculation has hit the nail on the head, and let’s also assume that Trump did exactly what he’s accused of doing. What is he accused of doing?

He’s accused of using his own money to pay his own lawyer to prevent public embarrassments threatened by an adult film actress and a former Playboy model. He’s accused of writing it down in the business records as “legal” expenses. And he’s accused of doing this so close to the 2016 election that it must be considered a donation to his own campaign, which should have been reported as such and wasn’t.

Even assuming this is all true, it’s questionable whether campaign finance law required these payments to be reported as donations to the Trump presidential campaign. There are many reasons why a married businessman, whose business is built on licensing his own name, would seek to prevent splashy headlines about alleged affairs with the women in question. Don’t forget that at the time, the whole known universe expected Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election. Experts in politics and polling thought Donald Trump was on his way back up the escalator to shoot promos for “The Apprentice.”

But even assuming that the payments had to be reported as donations from the candidate to the campaign and were not, is that a crime for a grand jury to spend months investigating? Calling witnesses? Issuing indictments?

Hardly. Campaigns might be fined for a reporting violation. But federal prosecutors didn’t bring any charges against Trump for campaign finance violations or anything else.

Interestingly, a federal prosecutor was working in the Manhattan district attorney’s office for a while. And this is a very strange story.

Mark Pomerantz, according to his biography on the website of Simon & Schuster, publisher of his “fascinating inside account of the attempt to prosecute Donald Trump” (list price $29.99), “was a retired lawyer living a calm suburban life when he accepted an unexpected offer to join the staff of the district attorney of New York County in February 2021 to work on the investigation of former president Donald Trump.” Oddly, this job offer came with no salary. This former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York worked in the county district attorney’s office on the Trump case “pro bono” from February 2021 to February 2022.

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He resigned in a huff after newly elected District Attorney Bragg, who replaced Cyrus Vance, Jr., reportedly expressed hesitancy about the evidence that supposedly justified an indictment of Trump.

And that’s when Pomerantz wrote his book, “People vs. Donald Trump.” In it, the publisher informs us, he tells “why he believes Donald Trump should be prosecuted.” The book was published two months ago.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan told Fox Business News that Bragg only decided to pursue charges against Trump after the former president announced his candidacy for 2024. “He’s leading in every single poll,” Jordan said, “so I think that’s what changed his mind.”

The Judiciary Committee is now investigating Alvin Bragg for election interference.  However, with the way Republicans are raising money on this indictment, that could turn out to be a victimless crime.

Write [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley

​ Orange County Register 

Volunteers hop to delivering Basket of Miracles to children battling illness

• April 2, 2023

The Easter Bunny is getting a little help from Miracles for Kids with brightening the day for children with life-threatening illnesses.

The Irvine-based organization will deliver 316 Easter baskets and care packages to the children and their families through its Spring Basket of Miracles program.

More than 125 volunteers have been collecting donations and filling the baskets since the start of the year. Each basket contains candy and egg decorating kits, games and puzzles, and cleaning products and hygiene items for the family.

“It’s important, especially during these uncertain economic times, to make sure that the low-income families that we serve are able to concentrate on their critically ill child and not have to worry about expenses,” said Autumn Strier, co-founder and CEO of Miracles for Kids.

Miracles for Kids also provides financial support, housing and access to counseling for families who are supporting an ill child. The nonprofit was founded in 2002.

More information can be found here.

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​ Orange County Register 

Proposition 22 should remain law in California so gig drivers can retain flexible schedules

• April 2, 2023

In 2020, I was proud to be one of the nearly 10 million California voters who cast their ballots in support of Proposition 22. As a long time app-based driver, I worked  hard to help educate my friends and families about the importance of being an independent worker, something that provides the flexibility I really need as a working mom. The measure gained the support of almost 60 percent of voters and protected my right to remain an independent contractor while gaining meaningful income as an app-based driver. Not only did Prop. 22 ensure that I can choose my own hours and maintain flexibility that works for me, but it also assured that I get new benefits, a healthcare stipend and guaranteed earnings.

Despite overwhelming voter support, special interests who opposed the initiative back in 2020 immediately took the measure to court, attempting to overturn the law with blatant disregard for millions of Californians and for drivers like me who want to remain independent.

Thankfully, an appellate court saw through this special interest effort and ruled to uphold the core principles of Prop. 22. I won’t be surprised if opponents try to find other avenues to overturn our independent status, but I’m hopeful those efforts are swiftly stopped in their tracks. The voters have spoken, drivers have spoken and the court has spoken. Enough is enough.

As an app-based driver, the recent decision from the California Court of Appeal was a huge relief.

App-based work has been an invaluable resource helping me make ends and provide for my family while I pursue my passions. As a film producer and director, my projects can be irregular and I often have unpredictable days that wouldn’t allow me to have a traditional job while being able to build my own business. When projects are slowing down, I have the comfort of knowing I can work extra hours driving to help bring in needed income. And when my plate is full at work, I know I can take a few hours driving here and there without any pressure. An added bonus is that as a working mom, I have the flexibility to care for a two-year-old, helping to save on what would otherwise be costly childcare.

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With rising costs of living, economic uncertainty on the horizon and lingering impacts that COVID had on my industry, independent driver status is more important to me than ever. Plus, Prop. 22 ensures guaranteed earnings and important other benefits like access to a health insurance stipend that we didn’t have before the law was passed.

Those against Prop. 22 aren’t representing what’s best for hundreds of thousands of drivers like me. In fact, eighty-eight percent of drivers surveyed in 2021 said that Prop. 22 has been good for them. They, like me, love being their own boss by working when they want and how they want —with Prop. 22 benefits that help my family. Eighty-seven percent of drivers also believe Prop. 22 “should be protected by the courts.”

I’ve met countless drivers in my efforts to uphold Prop. 22 who feel just like I do and who are committed to ensuring Prop. 22 stays the law of the land. I hope that our elected officials, courts and most importantly – the people – understand that any attempt to undo independent contract status for app-based drivers is a direct affront to voters, drivers, and the very democracy that we live in.

Alexsyia Flora is a Lyft driver in Los Angeles.

​ Orange County Register 

How law schools can restore free speech and why they must

• April 2, 2023

Freedom of speech has long been considered the sine qua non of the American experiment. But the First Amendment is worth little more than the parchment it’s written on without the support of lawyers. That’s what makes the latest episode at Stanford Law so concerning, and why law schools across the country must be vigilant in defending First Amendment values.

Last month, a group of boisterous law students at Stanford disrupted a school-sponsored event in which Judge Kyle Duncan of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was invited to give remarks. Upset at his supposed denial of the existence of transgender women, the student protesters “jeered at every third word” in “a staged public shaming.” When Judge Duncan asked whether any administrators were present to tame the situation, Tirien Steinbach — Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — joined the fray, asking whether “the juice was worth the squeeze” and shaming the judge for “tearing the fabric of this community.”

But it isn’t Ms. Steinbach’s intolerance that’s most troubling. It’s the rank hostility towards free speech demonstrated by Stanford Law’s student body, whose outburst is reflective of a broader trend among law students. Indeed, from San Francisco to New Haven, similar episodes have transpired. Certainly, the First Amendment remains strong in a legal or doctrinal sense; today’s judges by and large remain committed to free speech. But that does not guarantee tomorrow’s will be similarly dedicated, and if these incidents are any indication, there are rough days ahead for the First Amendment.

Constitutional rights aren’t worth anything when the legal profession loses the will to defend them. Legal scholar John Langbein once observed that “our guarantee of routine jury trial is a fraud” — its enshrinement in the Sixth Amendment notwithstanding — “because legal professionals … preferred the convenience of doing [plea] deals to the rigor of trying cases.” And sure enough, despite our Founders’ promise to the contrary, only 2% of federal criminal defendants even demand juries anymore. The fear is that a similar fate awaits the First Amendment’s freedom of speech, but law schools have the tools at their disposal to stop it.

First, law schools must forcefully discipline students found to have infringed the free speech or associational rights of their classmates. Law students will be far less likely to materially disrupt events if they have reason to expect adverse consequences, whether that be loss of privileges (e.g., participation in law journals or clinics) or suspension and even expulsion in extreme instances of misconduct.

Second, law schools should add First Amendment law to their first-year curriculum or otherwise make it required. Basic classes in constitutional law do little more than pay lip service to freedom of speech, leaving students tragically uninformed of one of their (and their classmate’s) most valuable constitutional rights. Thus, after the Stanford episode, some student disrupters ironically attempted to justify their behavior as itself an exercise of free speech. Of course, the First Amendment does notprotect hecklers’ vetoes, the Supreme Court having held that hostile mobs are no excuse for the government to shut down speakers. A little knowledge of First Amendment law could go a long way in taming the passions of students, like Stanford’s, who think they are constitutionally entitled to deprive their classmates of free speech. Ignorance may sometimes be bliss, but ignorance of the law serves merely to inflame.

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Third and finally, law school faculty must actively encourage counter-speech while discouraging disruption. Last year at my university, the George Washington University Law School, an LGBTQ+ student group strenuously believed that guest speakers invited by our chapter of the Federalist Society were hateful, discriminatory, and belonged nowhere on campus. Even so, the event proceeded without any substantial disruption of the sort witnessed at Stanford, and faculty intervention likely had something to do with it. As the event approached, two professors of mine expressly discouraged students from disrupting the event, emphasizing the importance of free speech. Critically, one of these professors, herself an expert in First Amendment law, gave the LGBTQ+ student group a platform to advertise their counter-speech event, which was to take place simultaneously alongside the Federalist Society event somewhere else on campus. In so doing, she vindicated the old adage of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: for “falsehoods and fallacies, … the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Today’s law students are tomorrow’s judges and advocates — the very people upon whose respect and understanding the continuing vitality of free speech depends. Law schools must restore a culture that embraces the First Amendment. Otherwise, freedom of speech awaits the same fate as the right to jury trial contemplated by our Founders: death by neglectful legal profession.

Charles Brandt is a J.D. candidate at the George Washington University Law School and a writer and commentator for Young Voices.

​ Orange County Register 

Could the aging boom change our prejudice against ‘old?’

• April 2, 2023

Barry Rashap, 79, felt it at the bank, where a woman stepped in front of him because he was a step too slow to get in line.

“I actually said something, but she didn’t respond,” Rashap said. “But when she was done and I got up to the teller, he sort of said, ‘Good for you.’ He saw that she was rude to me because of my age.”

For Barbara Sloate, 86, the feeling has come as she’s aged into what she calls “an also.”

“At a certain point, you aren’t considered normal,” Sloate said. “It’s like, ‘Also, Mom will be there.’ You’re an also, an afterthought, even in your own life.”

And Darrielle Wilson, 89, said simply that it’s why she’s wary about disclosing her true age.

“If I tell you I’m almost 90, then that’s it; I’m out. No invites to parties or anything. But if I can still look closer to 70, then I’m still considered part of life.

“I’m not talking about vanity,” she added. “I’m talking about being considered still truly alive, or not, because of your age. And that feeling, right there, that’s ageism. That’s pretty obvious.”

Two other things also are obvious.

Barbara Sloate. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

First, Rashap, Sloate and Wilson are part of America’s fastest-growing demographic cohort – older people.

Since 2010, census data shows that the population of people age 65 and older has jumped by about 38%, compared with 2% growth for people younger than 65. By 2032, the American population is projected to be home to more older people (65 and up) than kids (ages 18 and under). And by 2050, nearly 1 in 4 Americans will be 65 or older, up from today’s ratio of about 1 in 6. What’s more, the oldest of all the age cohorts – Americans 85 and up – is the fastest growing subgroup, expected to double between now and 2040, according to the Administration on Aging.

By any measure, the pattern is clear: American demography is skewing older in ways that could reshape, among other things, how we feel about the idea of “old.”

The second thing that’s obvious is this: For now, Americans don’t particularly like “old.”

Though our culture idealizes respect for age and wisdom and experience (the federal government says May is “Older Americans Month”), real life suggests ageism is rampant and rank. And while it’s a two-way street (younger people are sometimes dissed, often by their elders, as “entitled” or “self-obsessed” or “soft,” among other things) ageism against older people is more common, and often comes with little pushback.

“Frail,” “forgetful,” “diminished,” “greedy,” “needy,” “racist,” “too-stupid-to-understand tech,” “smelly;” all are literal descriptions or inferences applied to older people in everything from TV commercials to movies to birthday cards.

And it’s not just words. Though age-related bias in the workplace has been illegal since the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (and mandatory retirement has been outlawed since 1986), the practice remains so entrenched that the Equal Opportunity Commission described it as “a significant and costly problem for workers, their families and our economy.” And a study by Yale professor and ageism author Becca Levy (“Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Well & How Long You Live”), found that in 2018 age-related stigmas and bias resulted in about $63 billion of wasted health spending.

Or, just consider this: Which word would you rather have applied to you, “youthful” or “elderly?”

It’s unclear how, or if, the aging boom will change that answer.

Old views

Yale professor Levy has written about what she describes as a coming “age-stereotype paradox.” Essentially, it means that while logic suggests the rising numbers of old people in America should tone down ageism, serious research on the subject shows that ageism is actually becoming more common.

“Two contradictory elements comprise this paradox: the increase in age-stereotype negativity versus an increase in age-stereotype positivity that a number of factors suggest should be occurring,” she wrote.

Ed Romero, 96, a long-time leader at the Oasis Senior Center, helped organize the Freedom Shrine. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Or, as Ed Romero, 96, puts it:

“I’m not sure what ageism is, exactly, but I’m guessing it could go either way, right? It could get better; it could get worse.”

Romero, a retired educator and union leader from Newport Beach, said he’s only recently felt the pangs of advanced age. He sometimes forgets a word. He walks a bit slower than he used to. His hearing isn’t spectacular. Still, despite that, in most other ways Romero remains the same guy he’s always been: smart, interested in people, curious, happy.

He’s also an example.

Today, Romero, by remaining capable and energetic into his mid-90s, defies stereotypes about people his age. Soon, by their sheer numbers, millions of active older people might redefine those stereotypes, maybe even obliterate them.

In theory, a fast-growing world of active, healthy, independent older people could blunt ageism, or at least make the bias less likely to gain traction.

In a 2019 article published by the Gerontological Society of America, Levy wrote about the notion that a lot of young people seeing a lot of Romero-type older people in action could reduce the name-calling. “More contact between members of a stigmatized group and a non-stigmatized group will lead to more positive views of the stigmatized group.”

Alas, Levy noted in the same article, such contact is rare.

“There has been an increase” in age segregation in ways that, Levy later noted, “would be considered harmful” if applied to, say, racial or religious groups.

Instead, in America, age segregation remains a booming industry.

Entire communities – places like Laguna Woods Village and Leisure World in Southern California, The Villages in Florida and Sun City, Arizona – are sold to people age 55 and older who don’t want to live near younger people. And it’s not just housing. Vacations often are sold based on age. Same for education, financial advice, restaurants, fitness, entertainment; American companies sell the idea that older people and younger don’t want to mingle, and Americans buy it.

But it wasn’t always so.

A study of historical census data shows that in 1850 7 in 10 older people lived with their adult children, while about one in ten (11%) lived alone or with a spouse. Multi-generational living was the norm.

By 1990, it wasn’t. The census from that year shows a near reverse from the numbers of 1850, with 7 in 10 older Americans living alone or with a spouse, and the remainder either living with adult children or in adult-care facilities.

That, too, might change. The aging boom figures to add to the nation’s housing shortage, and a fast-rising solution – gaining traction in Southern California, New York and other higher-priced real estate markets – is multi-generational living. In 2021, Pew Research found that multi-generational households, nationally, had quadrupled since the 1970s, and that about 17% of older people now share a dwelling with adult children.

But even if a lot more older people and younger people start living together, it’s unclear if that will soften, or amplify, friction between the generations.

Another hallmark of the coming aging boom is that more Americans soon will be accepting Social Security and Medicare and fewer will be paying in. Though government spending is complex, and people collecting Social Security do so after contributing into it for decades, that older bubble in the population could put pressures on younger taxpayers that weren’t faced by future retirees. That, in turn, could lead to a world in which older people are viewed as what Utah Sen. Mitt Romney once described as “takers.”

It’s possible that dynamic is already upon us.

Darielle Wilson, 89, teaches a literature class at the Oasis Senior Center in Newport Beach. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

“Civility is gone,” said Wilson, a retired community college professor who still teaches literature – in English, French and Spanish – to people 50 and older at the Oasis Senior Center in Newport Beach.

“There’s a lot of competition, I think, between the generations,” she added. “And it could get worse. I hope it doesn’t, but it could.”

Why not old?

In colonial America, public seating arrangements put older people – regardless of their economic rank – in prime positions. Even some clothing, as recently as the late 1800s, was designed to make the wearer look older, not younger.

All of that reversed in the 20th century. From about 1900 through the late 1960s, aging was increasingly denigrated and older people were viewed as non-essential, at least in popular culture. Youth was revered; age was smeared. Studies of words used in media and literature found words like “geezer” and other negative age descriptions became increasingly common. Levy wrote that depictions of age and older people became “increasingly negative” over a 200-year window.

But, for a while now, older people have been fighting against that.

Old age should not be viewed “as a disastrous disease” but, instead, should be seen as a time of “strength.”

Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers – a group that pushes for civil rights for all ages and against ageism – said that in 1978.

By 2023, America’s new demography is leading to a similar message, at least in the marketplace.

“Age boldly” is the tagline for NextTribe, a company that provides journalism and adventure travel for women ages 45 and older. It’s one of thousands of companies catering to a fast-growing world of consumers who essentially want to live in ways that reflect their health, energy and brains, not their chronological age.

“I’m trying to make it so you don’t have to be scared to get older,” said Jeannie Ralston, the founder of NextTribe.

“It’s not a marketing thing. The population is changing; what we’re doing just reflects it.

“Age isn’t a winding down time, it’s a ramping up,” Ralston added. “I certainly don’t think the women who read our magazine, or travel with us, feel sorry for themselves.”

So, will “old” ever be a compliment?

“Hopefully, but I don’t know about that one,” said Ralston, laughing.

Some people who qualify say it already is.

“My mother was a power, a force to be reckoned with,” said Sloate, who, before retiring some years ago, ran a travel agency while raising four children. “She was never ‘old’ in any sense, positive or negative.

“I’d like to think I’ve inherited that.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Instead of dreading your 80th birthday, here’s what to do instead

• April 2, 2023

Q. I am about to turn 80 years old and cannot stop focusing on my birthday. In fact, I am dreading it. Any tips on managing 80 for a woman moving into this new decade? I am grateful yet apprehensive. Many thanks. T.F.

Gratitude is appropriate. If you were born in 1900, you may have lived only 47 years, which was life expectancy at that time. Fortunately, for most, there is predictable life ahead. Today, the average life expectancy for an 80-year-old woman in the U.S. is 90.1 years.

Not-so-good news: Unfortunately, age is a risk factor for illness and particularly for chronic conditions. We know that 80 percent of adults 65 and older have at least one chronic condition; 68 percent have two or more. Then there is Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias that increase with age. The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association reports three percent of people aged 65-74, 17 percent of those aged 75-84 and 32 percent of those 85 or older have Alzheimer’s dementia. Loss of mobility is a concern. The CDC reports mobility problems are prevalent among 35 percent of those age 70 and the majority of those over age 85. 

Add to that our ageist environment that suggests older women should never look their age and do everything possible to look younger. This message is conveyed by magazines, newspapers, the entertainment industry and social media. How often have we heard, She looks great for her age? Industries remind us to dodge aging with Botox, Restylane, lotions, potions and more. 

Some good news: These risk factors can serve us well by motivating us to embrace a healthy lifestyle that can slow the aging process and mitigate risks that accompany aging. For example, strength training can increase muscle mass which means you can get stronger helping to prevent mobility problems. Learning anything new can create new neural pathways in our brain-enhancing cognitive functioning.  Having friends and acquaintances can also mitigate risks of cognitive decline. Living with a sense of purpose can lead to greater longevity. 

More good news: Most people are happier in their 80s than in their younger years according to the research of psychologist Katherine Etsy. Based on the results of interviewing 128 octogenarians over three years, she told CNBC, “The stereotypes that people have in their minds about old age are just completely wrong,” she says. “The array of what people are doing in their 80s is stunning. Many people are pain-free and living full lives and traveling.” She found three reasons why this is so: People in their 80s have a sense of purpose; they experience less stress, worry and anger than in their younger years and they live in the moment. 

The recent Academy Awards winners have given us some positive messages about older women. In the movie “80 for Brady” starring Rita Moreno, Sally Field, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, we see women in starring roles from ages 77 to 91 years. Best actress award winner Michelle Yeoh, aged 60, said, “Ladies, don’t let anyone tell you (that you) are ever past your prime.” “Never give up.” These women are not 80 years old; however, they are adding to a slowly changing mindset about older women. 

On the lighter side, here are some benefits of reaching 80 years that may allay some of your concerns and make you smile as quoted in “The Bulletin.”  

You will never have to experience adolescence again.
80 years have made you wiser. 
Napping is allowed.
You don’t have to do something unless you want to.
Means lots of birthday cards.
You not only know history; you have lived it. 
It’s an awesome number just as you are an awesome person.
You’ve learned a deeper appreciation of most everything dear in your life.

We need to be aware of the risks that accompany aging and commit to a lifestyle that mitigates those risks. We also need to ignore messages from society that tell us women at the age of age 80 are less than – in terms of beauty, capability, creativity, caring, contribution and experiencing joy and wonder. We need to take this awareness and translate it into healthy behaviors and positive self-concepts to the extent possible. That can help begin to change our feelings about our own older birthdays.

So happy birthday, T.N. and thank you for your good question. Enjoy that special day with best wishes for many wonderful years ahead. On that day and every day, be kind to yourself and others.

Helen Dennis is a nationally recognized leader on issues of aging and the new retirement with academic, corporate and nonprofit experience. Contact Helen with your questions and comments at [email protected]. Visit Helen at HelenMdennis.com and follow her on facebook.com/SuccessfulAgingCommunity

​ Orange County Register