Why can’t life begin after 40 for a writer?
Fiona Gartland, a journalist with The Irish Times for 13 years and newly published novelist, addresses the issue of ageism in publishing. Most publishers, she says, expect writers to have published a book by about the age of 40.
English author Joanna Walsh, who runs @Read_Women, has argued that ageism in publishing silences minorities and women in particular because women are more likely to be the ones who spend part of their lives caring for children, which makes finding time to write more difficult. She says “older women are already told every day in ways ranging from the subtle to the blatant, that they are irrelevant and should shut up”. Placing age barriers, for example for writing awards, is arbitrary and “a particularly cruel irony” for those unable to write in their youth, she says.
But “Not everyone finds a voice in their youth,” Gartland argues, and that “doesn’t mean what they have to say is any less valuable or any less worthy of hearing.”
When ICU Delirium Leads To Symptoms Of Dementia After Discharge
NPR reports on a medical problem that physicians are just beginning to study:
post-ICU syndrome — a cluster of cognitive symptoms that can include anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as delirium — affects 30 to 50 percent of all patients who are rushed to the ICU because of a medical emergency. That’s including younger patients who had no prior mental challenges. And in some of those patients, dementia soon follows.
The Vanderbilt ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group of Vanderbilt Medical Center is working to develop a network of clinics across the U.S. to work with patients after discharge from an ICU.
Cataract surgery, hearing aid may boost the aging brain
Researchers in the U.K. have found that both hearing aids and cataract surgery can help prevent cognitive decline in older adults.
“It’s not really certain why hearing and visual problems have an impact on cognitive [memory and thinking skill] decline, but I’d guess that isolation, stigma and the resultant lack of physical activity that are linked to hearing and vision problems might have something to do with it,” said [Piers] Dawes [of the University of Manchester in England], a lecturer in audiology and deafness.
Researchers suggest that both better screening of older people and reduction of the perceived stigma of using hearing aids may help slow down the onset of dementia.
How the Finnish Survive without Small Talk
I found this article about the Finnish aversion to small talk fascinating.
Finnish people often forgo the conversational niceties that are hard-baked into other cultures, and typically don’t see the need to meet foreign colleagues, tourists and friends in the middle. As Tiina Latvala, a former English instructor in Sodankylä, Lapland, explained, part of her job was to introduce her young students to the concept of small talk.
It sounds refreshing not to have to feel obligated to engage in vacuous but socially expected small talk. It’s also interesting to note different ways in which different cultures develop their societal norms. What might seem rude to a visitor to Finland is, for the Finnish, just business as usual.
© 2018 by Mary Daniels Brown
Retreading for Retirement 