The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on May 26, 2020, 10:20:49 am ---I think in the past older people remained closer to their families, whether in the same house or the same street or town. If they were physically capable of living on their own, they often did. If not, moving in with their children was often an option.
--- End quote ---
Depending on how past is past, don't forget economics. Before Social Security and such, economic necessity played a role in causing older people to live with their children, or sometimes the other way around. My grandparents raised eight children while living with my great-grandparents in a house that was owned by my great-grandparents.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on May 26, 2020, 01:01:17 pm ---Depending on how past is past, don't forget economics. Before Social Security and such, economic necessity played a role in causing older people to live with their children, or sometimes the other way around.
--- End quote ---
True. Or they'd go to a poor house or a poor farm. I'm not sure there were even nursing homes, but in any case there certainly weren't assisted living or senior housing facilities.
But I think that at least in many cases people liked living in multi-generational homes. Old people wanted to die at home, offspring felt an obligation to care for them just as they'd received care as children.
I have a friend from Georgia the country who was studying for a grad degree in gerontology and through a university program was able to live in a nearby senior complex at a discounted rate in exchange for spending time with the older residents. She loved it and was happy to spend more time than was even required. She grew up in Georgia living close to her grandmother, knowing all her grandmother's friends, etc., and thinks it's weird and sad that in this country different generations aren't as well connected.
Front-Ranger:
The fiction issue has arrived just in the nick of time. Only three works of fiction, though, but one of them by Ernest Hemingway!
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on June 03, 2020, 08:56:00 am ---The fiction issue has arrived just in the nick of time. Only three works of fiction, though, but one of them by Ernest Hemingway!
--- End quote ---
Wow, they got Ernest Hemingway to write a story for their fiction issue? That David Remnick is a genius!
I've noticed that in recent years fiction issues don't have a lot of full short stories, though they might scatter through some little page-long reminiscences by prominent fiction writers like Zadie Smith or Jonathan Franzen.
I'm reading the story in an April issue about the search for a cure for viruses. Finally I at least kind of understand the difference between a bacterial infection and a viral infection and why antibiotics only work on the former. If more people understood that, antibiotics wouldn't be losing their potency as fast because doctors wouldn't over-prescribe them. Of course doctors understand the difference, but what I've heard is that they write the prescriptions to placate patients, causing the bacteria to evolve faster and make the antibiotics ineffectual.
Other factors, as I understand it, are giving farm animals too many antibiotics and -- get this -- overuse of sanitizing gels like Purell! I once had a big bottle of Purell that I threw out long ago after hearing that people were using it unnecessarily and exacerbating the antibiotic problem.
Jeff Wrangler:
I am now three issues behind. I can't recall ever being that far behind.
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