Twenty five days away and the preparations will all be made, the gifts wrapped, the shopping completed, the guests will be on their way or will have arrived. Sounds all so easy. But the rush and rumble of the holidays is seldom that. Getting ready is more than half of what makes the holidays holidays.
Tips for Making Holidays Special

Some suggestions, in passing, for making it what it is best meant to be:

Keep stress at a minimum. Don’t allow the demands of others to interfere with your choice to enable a tranquil holiday for you and your guests.

Most come to this time of the year prepared to spend time with family, creating and recreating memories and traditions. Not a bad purpose for a holiday. Part of the bond of the holidays is what we come to honor in our interrelationships, mostly with family, occasionally with friends, always with those who mean much to us.

It is like the blood flowing through our veins. Our memories help keep alive the joy of being together, telling stories, sharing sentiments, embracing and celebrating our common lives. It is timely because, in many cases, it has been a long time since being together. Life’s episodes have been frequent and attention to other details constant. So, now comes the time for reunion, for affirmation, for pumping oneself up to spend time with those whom we love.

It is not just that we have to do this or must do this, it is that our inner person requires it. Being together brings

If you follow the daily accounting of weather patterns, the picture shows that for most of the nation, temperatures of recent date have been above normal, while rainfall has been below normal. What this suggests, I am not meteorologist enough to know. It presents, however, a picture of lessening water supplies, days with more sun, and drought in those areas where drought has consequences that affect us all.

By now, for everyone except the non thinkers, there is ample scientific evidence that climate change is real. It is supported by more than just daily trends of temperature and moisture. It is complex enough that many simply turn their backs on any consideration of it at all. This, in itself, is a phenomenon that seems endemic to some and epidemic to others. There is something going on and while weather scientists struggle to explain the goings on, for most of us, trying to understand it, is a struggle of our own.

Working out an agreement with everyday opportunity is like making a major purchase. Everyday offers a new bargain, a chance to live it or dread it, an occasion to invest ourselves in whatever comes. Unless your disposition works against you, the day ahead is like a bank account full of money. You may spend it as you wish. You can’t invest it, because tomorrow it will be gone. You can’t give it to someone else, they have their own. You can’t horde it, time is fleeting and slips by suddenly and without warning.

So today, now is enough. It offers time to do whatever we feel like doing. It lends to us the very essence of what life is all about. And, do not doubt it, it is a loan. For there is nothing we can do with it that will preserve it beyond the contributions we make by spending it lavishly and well on doing and being and caring and living out a life of purpose and fulfillment now.

A visit to my Oncologist this week will reveal that cancer surgery for the removal of my prostate is successful with no indication of any return after five full years. That is good news. The down side is that there have been several side affects that have contributed to life’s not being quite the same. They are incontinence, sexual dysfunction, and loss of stamina.

Some would argue that that isn’t much of a trade off. And, indeed there are days I would agree. I am now nearing 74 and the limitations are unsettling and just that, limiting. The trade off is that I am alive. And that, of course, is a good thing. But, beware, those who have been diagnosed, there is no perfect cure or solution. There is a cost associated with choosing almost any treatment.

National Family and Caregiver Month It’s National Family and Caregiver month.  Over 65 million people in the United States provide care for elderly or chronically ill loved ones. Most, but certainly not all, are women. This Senior Editor is having her first full-fledged experience as a caregiver.  We chose to bring my mother-in-law with us […]

How to Tailor Assisted Living to Your Needs Making the move to an assisted living facility can feel like a huge jump for many men and women, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to be uncomfortable, scary or even that much different than living in your home. In fact, if you’re careful about your […]

You, dear Reader, are never taken for granted. While you may have spent half the night in lines awaiting Black Friday bargains, while you may have gorged yourself into a state of euphoria on Thanksgiving Day, while you may have an agenda a foot long for today’s demands, and while you may have little or no time to drop by, we don’t take you for granted.

You are what makes us go. You are the motivation that keeps SCJ alive and vital and current. You are the one who inspires us to get up and be about it. You are the fulfillment of our goals. You are the initiative that spurs us to be here for you day after day… thanks to you, you are the reason we exist.

During these holidays you may visit us less frequently, you nevertheless are in our thoughts. Someone out here is

As the year closes, with Thanksgiving and Christmas and the other significant holidays that call to mind the rapid passing of the year, we are met with the interrogatory, What Could I Have Done?

Daily urgings and reminders suggest there is a whole variety of possible positive expressions of caring that can be exercised. It feels as if there are more and more people who recognize that giving stretches beyond one’s nuclear family and out into the universe of where we live and all those who need care and attention.

It appears that we are aware that having much doesn’t quite cover the demand upon us for giving much. Our need is to be sensitive to those whose lives have been wrecked on the shores of a very dangerous time. Jobs are lacking.

Sitting in a parking lot, awaiting my spouse running an errand, I am aware of the variety and number of older persons scurrying in and out, doing whatever it is they have to do today. Longevity has made a dramatic impact on our society. Its influence is everywhere. Both in numbers and in the wide spectrum of persons who have learned the nuances of managing aging, the show is quite intriguing.

Science and medicine and diet and exercise and opportunity have enabled our living longer, doing more, coping better, challenging infirmity. We are more capable of dealing with the typical onslaught of growing older. We have learned how to be and do more than previous generations ever thought they might or could. And doing so has introduced us to longer life, more plentiful and fulfilling in all kinds of ways.

But, there still seems to be something missing for many retirees. Men seem to adjust