As "sharp" as many of our minds are, especially those of us in our 70s, 80s and 90s...and possibly 100s...we realize the "sharpness" is sometimes dulled by occurrences we find it frustrating to experience or explain. The simplest explanation for some is "It's part of the aging process." For others, including yours truly, sometimes we stubbornly don't like that explanation and are determined to not admit to any mental performance inadequacies. The latter scenario is easier said than done, more of the time than we'd wish.
 
In regard to misplacing things, those who are experts in dealing with forgetfulness say it's "normal" at almost any age. Having been fortunate enough to have been exposed the past couple years to some studies about dementia (and Alzheimer’s), I learned if one forgets, for instance, where one has placed one's keys, it's not even close to being dementia. What IS close to identifying dementia is forgetting one even HAS keys. That, indeed, would be a red flag, to say the least and definitely worthy of expert professional help.
 
In regard to paranoia, it's a very disheartening, sad and very debilitating part of the human condition. It's also a close cousin to dementia's progression. When one becomes paranoid, the fears are almost always unfounded in reality, but our minds sometimes play very bad tricks with otherwise rational thinking. Many of us have had "mind games" develop. Those "games" may have sometimes led to suspicions about the actions of others, be they friends, acquaintances or just people in general. Those perceptions have most often no basis in reality and could, of course, lead to irrational and possibly dangerous reactive behavior. Once again, when one feels paranoia has overtaken rational thinking and behavior, it's common sense to want to seek professional help. 
 
Regarding dementia, we hear about it almost daily, but sometimes confuse it with Alzheimer’s disease. Two of my family members passed away from Alzheimer’s disease, which is the most common form of dementia (60 to 80 percent of cases, according to AARP’s Kathleen Fifield). In simplest terms, dementia is a non-reversible decline in mental function. Areas included in dementia are disorientation, disorganization, language impairment and memory loss, while Alzheimer’s (again, a form of dementia) slowly and irreversibly destroys memory and thinking skills.

or much more information about this subject, I respectfully defer to Ebenezer's Marysue Moses, MA, an expert specialist regarding the subject of dementia, its identification and treatment. Ms. Moses is Ebenezer's Dimensions Program Coordinator. You can read her helpful memory care blogs right here, or email her at mmoses1@fairview.org. Contacting and possibly visiting with Marysue would be, in my opinion, one of the most important contacts and visits one could ever make in regard to learning more about dementia and using that education to help better deal with the lives of those affected.
 
Thank you for reading, as always.

How to enjoy the company of friends, keep active and socialize with those around you. 
 I hope you're having a happy summer. I hope every season is happy for you, but summer, of course, is the time we're most prone to be connected with others because the warmer weather makes our sojourns and visits more comfortably "do-able." Even those of us lucky enough to be in "the public eye" are sometimes hopeful we'll be able to just visit and chat about anything as pedestrian as the weather. Wait a minute! What am I writing here? Just teasing, of course, about the weather, one of my favorite subjects that's propelled me to the honor and privilege of communicating weekly via these blogs. But, seriously, we know human beings are all social creatures. In my opinion, we truly need to communicate with others, having even a modicum of interaction in order to feel relevant individually and collectively.
 
Regardless of one's "position" on the social or status "ladder", even those on the highest rungs have the need to need and interact with one another. One of the most powerful examples of that need, in my opinion, focuses on the late President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Raised in Patrician privilege and wealth, President Roosevelt nonetheless also had special needs after he contracted polio. Regardless of one's politics, seeing him in newsreels and photos bound to a wheelchair during this country's (and world's) most crucial times, he nonetheless showed us inner strength that catapulted him to being elected four times. During his final days, housed at the "winter White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia, again regardless of his power and independent wealth, it's been chronicled (more than once) he would often literally cry and cry-out, because of his loneliness. Indeed, even though incapacitated, he did have the requested company of his most sought-after friend, Lucy Mercer, during his final days, including the day he passed away, April 12, 1945. 
 
Did President Roosevelt's omnipotent stature, in every realm, replace his need for interaction and companionship? No, of course not, as illustrated during his final days of life. It, to me, illustrates no matter how "important" or "powerful" we are, we still all need each other and unless one has been so turned off by society and become a hermit, interacting socially with others is among the most important parts of being a human being. In my opinion, we should treasure all the times we're blessed with the opportunity to share stories, play games, take walks, watch favorite television shows and movies, with at least one other person. I've had many "alone times" in my life and they definitely were not the best times.
 
In my opinion, we should cherish the socialization available to us in our later years. Ebenezer's communities, now approaching 100 in number, provide that ongoing socialization opportunity and everyday catalyst for social interaction. Enjoy the summer. Enjoy the company of others. That company will definitely enrich your later years with more happiness and even, possibly, keep your mind in the learning lane. We should never stop learning and socializing with others will keep us in that "lane". 
 
Thanks for reading, as always.

What the news used to be and how it's evolved today
 
The news and the news business itself have always been a major part of my life. I was, to a degree, born into the broadcast news business, thanks to my second cousin, Cecil Brown, who was a significant part of what news used to be.
 
Cousin Cecil was one of Edward R. Murrow's "boys" as a war correspondent in London during World War Two, hired by Murrow shortly after a British ship, the HMS Repulse, was torpedoed in the South China Sea, aboard which Cecil was reporting for radio and newspapers during the torpedo attack, ten days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Murrow heard about cousin Cecil's near life-ending experience and offered him the London-based job with Murrow's CBS News operation there. Among the other "boys" with whom Cecil worked were Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid.
 
When I was a teenager in the 1950s in New York, Cecil, his wife Martha, my mother (raised with Cecil in Pittsburgh) and I would spend many private times together discussing the news and also listening to Cecil's commentaries on the ABC radio network. He was also ABC-TV’s first anchorman, in 1953. Cecil, now long-deceased, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

​He concluded his professional years as Professor of Communication Arts at Cal Poly Pomona in southern California. In sum, he was a consummate and highly respected professional in the news business. I was blessed to have his tutelage, which would serve me well when I anchored news on both radio and television as part of my broadcast career.
 
News reported in the earliest days of radio and television was spoken and “delivered” with dignity, quality and importance by the newscasters and reporters, but also not sounding “holier than thou”. When they spoke, people listened. They were an inspiration to me and many others who became full-time news broadcasters. That was then, this is, sadly, now.
 
I write "sadly" because, in the late 1940s and early-to-mid 1950s, when CBS started its evening television newscasts with Douglas Edwards and NBC had John Cameron Swayze anchoring each program for 15 minutes, the entire nation stopped to watch and listen. It's not only because television was relatively new (debuting in 1948, nationally), but also because, once again, they were reporting the stories with importance and dignity in their voices. They were followed in the 1960s, through even the 1990s, by similar quality news people who included, in addition to the aforementioned Cronkite and Sevareid, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Frank Reynolds, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel and Sam Donaldson. I was honored to have the late Huntley’s and Jennings’ personal friendships, in addition to the still living Koppel’s and Donaldson’s, with whom I still keep in touch. Today, in my opinion, more television newscasts, including network and cable, don’t seem to reflect that dignity nor evidence the newscasters do their "homework" deeply enough, nor seem to care how they deliver the information. The mispronunciation of words and place-names, plus poorly constructed sentences and disregard for dignity is rampant. Again in my opinion, audiences deserve much more quality to return to news presentations.
 
How did news reporting evolve from dignified to appearing unimportant, why has it been allowed to happen and should it matter? In my opinion, the primary answer to the question includes hiring many anchors/reporters with insufficient life and public communication experience by those currently leading the newsrooms of television and radio. Those leaders and reporters/anchors weren't part of  "the greatest generation" who were raised on news delivered importantly by those who knew how to do so. Again, all the preceding are only my opinions, but I think valid. Do any television anchors currently come close to matching the quality of yesteryear's news reporting? In my opinion, NBC-TV's Lester Holt is the only one of whom I can think. There's still hope!  
 
Thank you, as always, for reading.