Senior Community

Steve Hochstadt: I have found it hard to grasp what it means that I no longer have to accomplish work every day. Behavior that meant laziness and avoidance, like sleeping late or taking a nap, now mean something else, because there is much less pressure to accomplish something.

Steve Hochstadt: Retirement means getting up in the morning without a day full of activities that must be done today. I’ll have much more spontaneous control over what I do.

Walter Moss: Reading We Are Not Ourselves, I experienced some of the same feelings I have when seeing or reading one of Chekhov’s great works, like his plays Uncle Vanya and The Seagull.

Michael T. Hertz: One night instead of having the movie night in the apartment, you have it in the lounge. Have you broken any rules? Yes, apparently.

Pandora Young: Retirement insecurity is a nationwide problem, but the issue is compounded in California due to the high cost of living.

Janet Phelan: If President Obama is truly serious about routing out the systemic abusers, one might want to give him this tip: His Attorney General has been the recipient of hundreds of reports about guardians abusing their wards, as has the FBI.

Joe Mathews: At almost 100 years old, this strong-minded Californian knows that life (and death) isn't so simple.

Charles Hayes: Because of our aging population, we are facing an economic and human needs train wreck of epic proportions.

Kelly Candaele: The ceaseless political attacks on defined benefit pensions, which guarantee workers a monthly income based on a percentage of their salaries during their working years, mean that more and more employees are forced to fend for themselves.

Walter Moss: If good Alzheimer's caregiving necessitates empathy, and plenty of it, love stretches it to its uttermost boundary.

Charles Hayes: Death is a subject that most of us avoid for understandable reasons, but if you’ve ever been with someone who had to put the necessary pieces together after a family member has died unexpectedly, or if you’ve had this experience yourself, you know how hard it is to answer questions when there is no one left alive who can answer them.

Joe Mathews: While an aging generation has more and more run, young Californians are stuck on a treadmill of work and responsibility.

Charles Hayes: To be truly free one has to have the ability to see through illusions, to defy the herd’s desperate need to conform, and to enjoy the privilege of using one’s time as one chooses.

RJ Eskow: One of the bitter ironies of the bipartisan austerity craze has been the fact that, while there has been an assault on government jobs, there has been an equal or greater push to transfer government revenues to the private sector using lucrative, cost-inflating "privatization" contracts.

Walter Moss: We are not doing anyone—ourselves or members of younger generations—any good by equating old with bad and young with good. Every age has its plusses and minuses and should be embraced with all the joy and aliveness we can muster.

War on Elderly -- How do self-interested executives, politicians, and pundits convince an entire society to turn against its elders?

Julie Gutman Dickinson: A state once synonymous with the American Dream of economic opportunity and security is on a path to become a purgatory for millions of seniors.