In March of 1996, Highland Park’s Justin Fishbein set out to organize a long overdue family reunion. He began by using search engines to research family reunions over the Internet. Then he contacted family members on-line. Fishbein went on to assemble a list of some 40 on-line relatives, and with their assistance he ultimately located more than 200 relatives–eight times the number he started with.
Not only was the August 1997 reunion a huge success, but Fishbein now is corresponding by e-mail with many more relatives than before. “Our family ties are stronger,” he said.
During the same period, Northfield’s Bob Brotman and his wife decided to take a lengthy vacation in Paris, and Brotman launched a search on the Internet for “Paris apartments.”
Through a Web site, he located a Parisian woman who rents two Paris apartments. “It was wonderful,” he recalled of the vacation and the “very inexpensive” apartment he rented. “We went there for four weeks in September and October. (The apartment) was very well located, near transportation and restaurants, and a great base for our Paris sightseeing.”
On the surface, these stories seem just two more examples of the time, labor and money savings the Internet’s World Wide Web can offer. But consider that Fishbein and Brotman are 70 and 71, respectively, and the anecdotes do more than point up the potential of cyberspace. They also demonstrate that when it comes to the Internet, surfing knows no age limit.
As Fishbein, Brotman and thousands of other retirees have discovered, a wealth of information awaits older people on the Net. Some of the sites are expressly devoted to topics such as health care, Social Security and other traditional concerns of seniors, while others probe interests of a wide range of people, both young and old.
Many of these sites offer conveniences older folks may be more inclined to appreciate, observed Fishbein, a retired writer from Highland Park.
“As you get older, you don’t want to drive as much,” he said. “That you can do so much from a room in your home is incredible to me. You really speed up your research into anything you want by going onto the Internet. If you have any interest, you can assemble sites pertaining to that interest, and do research you might never have thought possible before. It’s extraordinary the variety of information you can get.”
Fishbein and Brotman are among a number of volunteer instructors who share their Web interests at the SeniorNet Learning Center at North Shore Senior Center in Northfield.
According to the NSSC’s director of communications, Junia Hedberg, SeniorNet is an 11-year-old, not-for-profit organization that encourages older people to use computers and be part of the computer society. The San Francisco-based organization provides funding and offers curriculum support for senior computer classes at its 125 sites across the country, including eight in the Chicago area.
“All classes are taught by seniors who are volunteers,” said Hedberg. “That’s important because people who have not used computers before tend to be afraid, and they feel much more comfortable being taught by peers.”
While teaching at NSSC’s SeniorNet Learning Center, Fishbein, Brotman and fellow teachers Gerson Meyers, 62, and Mary Lou Mainzer, 71, have had the opportunity to share with students some of their favorite Web sites. Those sites cover areas from health care to travel, weather, personal growth, art and golf. Here are a few of their favorites:
– Senior interests. Hedberg, Fishbein, Brotman, Meyers and Mainzer all tout both the SeniorNet site (www.seniornet.org) and Third Age (www.thirdage.com), a for-profit site established by SeniorNet founder Mary Furlong.
The sites offer a wide variety of information for and about seniors, including volunteer opportunities, book clubs, senior discounts, travel information and profiles of new products for older people, as well as chat rooms and newsgroups.
“I look at Third Age a lot,” said Mainzer, a retired secretary from Morton Grove. “There are a lot of good women’s topics, women’s health in particular, and profiles of women.”
Meyers, a retired patent attorney who lives in Glenview, frequents a page called Town Square on the Seniorcom (www.senior.com) site. “It takes you to a variety of places,” he reported. “I’ve found a lot of links to health and Social Security topics there.”
– Health care. Health A to Z (www.healthatoz.com), a search engine for health and medical sites, is a Web address frequently visited by SeniorNet instructors. Their other favorite health-care addresses include Ask The Doctors (www.tripod.com/ healthsports/askdocs/), Healthfinder (www. healthfinder.gov), The Arthritis Connection (www.arthritis connection.com) and Medscape (www.medscape.com), which offers a medical dictionary and health-care news.
Also recommended is Extended Care Information Network (www.extendedcare.com), a national directory of more than 33,000 acute rehabilitation providers, retirement communities and home health-care agencies.
– Travel. This is a particularly fertile area of information on the Web, and active seniors are understandably attracted to travel sites designed to appeal to all ages. Among Fishbein’s picks are Arthur Frommer’s site (www.frommers.com), and Epicurious Travel (www.epicurious.com).
Brotman, a retired accountant from Northfield, likes Fodor’s Travel Service (www.fodors.com). “It’s not just for seniors, but they’ll clue you into some good travel bargains,” he noted.
Popular, too, are mapping sites. “I really use the maps a lot,” said Fishbein. “Our son and daughter-in-law moved to a new home in Chesterfield, Mo,. and I didn’t have any idea how to get there. I went to Mapquest (www.mapquest.com), keyed in our son’s address and got a beautiful color map. It’s a lot easier than taking directions over the phone.”
Other mapping sites popular with the SeniorNet instructors include MapBlast (www.mapblast.com), AutoPilot Highway Trip Planning System (www.freetrip.com) and Street Maps of the Real World (www.lycos. com/roadmap.html).
Fishbein includes sites devoted to local travel among his favorite Web addresses. One is the Chicagoland Expressway Congestion Map (www.ai.eecs. uic.edu/GCM/Congestion Map.html). “It’s for the entire area, running from Gary to Milwaukee,” he noted. “It’s been very helpful for my wife and me in choosing a route around the area, and on trips.”
He also has used Metra Information (www.metrarail.com) and CTA (www.transit chicago.com) sites to obtain Metra and CTA schedules. Meyers finds the Flyte Trax Query System (www.weatherconcepts. com/FlyteTrax) particularly useful.
“You can go in there, input a flight number and destination, and it’ll tell you where the flight is in the air and the estimated time it’ll arrive at its destination,” he reported, adding that the site had saved him time waiting for arrivals at O’Hare and Midway.
– Weather. Fishbein uses short- and long-term forecasts from Intellicast (www.intellicast.com) and Weather Channel (www.weather.com) when on long trips by car.
“With cable TV weather forecasts, you have to hope they bring up a certain city (along your route),” he said. “But with this, you can key in on a specific city, and find out if it will be snowy, foggy or icy.”
– Golf. An avid golfer, Fishbein also likes golf sites, among them GolfTracker (www.golftracker.com) and Golf.Com (www.golf.com). “Both provide information about golf–tournaments, events and even acquiring equipment,” he noted.
– Education. Last winter, Mainzer created her own Web site–a children’s page devoted to Raggedy Ann dolls (www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/8010 /raggedy. html).
She learned how to establish her own site by “going to school” on the Web through Virtual University (www. vu.org) and ZD Net University (www.zdu.com). “I learned Web graphics and design and the writing of HTML,” said Mainzer, referring to HyperText Markup Language, the computer language used to create Web pages. She added that her page took third place in a national SeniorNet contest last spring.
– Museums. If you’re no longer up for a full day’s tour of a museum, Fishbein suggests visiting museums on the Internet. Museum sites he’s toured include the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (www.moma.org), the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. (www.si.edu) and the Louvre in Paris (mistral.culture.fr/louvre).
– Starting out. If you’re a retiree to whom this all sounds a little overwhelming, rest assured that like most other concerns, yours is addressed on the Web. Meyers recommends A Tour List of the Web (world.std.com/stair/webtour.html). “It’s a list of sites by subject matter that’ll take you all over the place,” he said. “It’s kind of a beginner’s guide.”
Other Chicago-area SeniorNet sites are in Flossmoor, Cicero, Northbrook, Palatine, Skokie and on both the North and South Sides of Chicago. Call SeniorNet at 415-352-1210 for exact locations.
