Campaign issues
As the presidential election contest has progressed, I had expected candidates to stress ideas and plans that would best address the current problems facing the nation. For example, I expected they would speak about boosting economic growth by increasing competitiveness via cutting unemployment, spending and debt, and by creating new jobs; fighting terrorism and strengthening our national defense; securing our borders; improving health care for about 30 million uninsured citizens; solving the real estate mortgage mess; and preserving constitutionally protected freedoms.
Boy was I wrong.
Based upon the actions and pronouncements of the Obama campaign, I know now that the future of our nation depends upon the following.
1. Assuring that same-sex marriage is available to all.
2. Being sensitive to criminals — illegal immigrants — by letting them remain in the U.S. where they can take jobs from legal residents and have free access to education.
3. Not asking anyone to verify his or her identify upon entering a polling place (that would be rude and discriminatory).
4. Making sure that religious organizations (those groups with the quirky values) fund abortions and birth control for all employees.
5. Getting rid of those ominous military bases and those nasty guns, tanks, planes and missiles.
6. Cutting the nation’s egotistical “achievers” down to size. They didn’t really create anything anyway.
7. Keeping housing deadbeats in their homes.
8. Turning the health care arrangements of 280 million citizens upside-down to create a “fix” for the 30 million mentioned above.
9. Putting an end to all of that silly talk about too much spending, too many deficits and too big of a government being a problem.
10. Getting rid of that pesky Second Amendment.
— Charles F. Falk, Schaumburg
Abandoning country
Edward Everett Hale’s compelling short story, “The Man Without A Country,” had an impact on me in my youth with its dreadful consequence of someone abandoning America over a political issue.
Today, it made me think of those with offshore banking accounts abandoning America for “greener” pastures outside our country — in effect denouncing a financial obligation to our nation as well, a sort-of “looking over one’s shoulder of patriotism.”
The same hollow feeling grips my conscience over such tactics when I think of all those high earners, slipping money into those bank accounts.
While Americans go begging for jobs, the job creators sock away their capital gains on foreign soil, as if patriotism is a bank account in exile.
It is left there to grow into boundless opportunity so far from our shores, compounding interest, with bankers to guide these Americans and brokers to buy and sell for them.
Average Americans are left to foot the bills, pay down the deficit, bank at local banks, live in just one home — and all the time they are told they are hurting America because of their large slice of entitlement.
The others play beach-party bingo, shorting America’s prowess like men without a country.
— Vincent Kamin, Chicago
Never lonely
I grew up at a time when young men and women remained in their parental homes until they married. As times changed, many young adults, seeking better job opportunities in larger cities, struck out on their own. Some of them shared expenses by renting an apartment with a friend.
When I left home, I chose to live alone because, then as now, I enjoyed my solitude and traded off some of the things I might otherwise have been able to afford.
Marriage changed that, and I lived with my husband for 52 happy years.
In our senior years, some of us now live alone due to the loss of a spouse. I chose to move to a retirement center where I am with people in similar circumstances.
We do not share our living quarters but dine together and attend social events here with one another.
Friends “on the outside” and I get together frequently to attend plays, have lunch and other outings.
I do not mind coming home to an empty apartment. As I said, I enjoy my solitude, a most precious commodity.
Even though I love being alone, I enjoy the company of other people as I am a gregarious person and like sharing different outings and views with my friends.
But if you live alone:
* You won’t disturb your live-in partner if you want to get up in the middle of the night, have a snack, read or watch TV.
* You can come and go as it suits you.
* If you put something down, it stays there until you pick it up again yourself.
* No one turns on the TV or radio when you want peace and quiet.
* You don’t have to close the bathroom door.
Do I sound like I like I don’t miss my spouse? Wrong. I do miss him very much every minute, every hour, every day and night. I am just trying to put a positive spin on what my life is like now.
A friend of mine whose husband suffers from Alzheimer’s once told me that a recently widowed friend of hers whined, “You don’t know what it’s like looking at an empty chair beside you.”
My friend told her, “You don’t know what it’s like looking at an empty chair, and someone’s sitting in it.”
I am never lonely, because I am not alone; I have many precious memories to sustain me.
— Mil Misic, DeKalb
More old folks
All through human history, there have always been old folks.
However, never so damn many of us!
What’s going on here?
There are a lot of explanations, but in a way, they all come down to this basic irony: Young people have been making more old people, and now aren’t quite sure what to do with us. Our bright young medical scientists are prolonging lives. Great.
I’m 81. A hundred years ago, I would probably have been dead at last 30 years.
What’s happened is not only a population explosion but, simultaneously, a health explosion, at least in most of the nations north of the equator.
As a result, government officials are in a budget quandary.
Hallmark Cards is in a selling bonanza. Grandchildren have more grandparents in their lives than ever before in history.
While everyone sorts out these consequences (both good and bad), one pattern has emerged loud and clear: With elders like us hanging around longer, our children have found a way to avoid the old tribal custom of “housing the folks in the back room” once we’re too feeble to go it alone.
Behold the multibillion-dollar senior home industry.
While the experts slice and dice this new development, the really big issue remains unanswered:
What is the best role for those of us living longer but still in decent health?
In ancient cultures (and many non-Western ones still today), the elders have traditionally been seen as the “wise ones,” “the voices of experience,” “the prophets.”
Do today’s elders retain that status? Deserve that status?
Something for a young culture like ours to think about the next time its members drive over to Sunset Manor to visit us . . .
— Jack Spatafora, Park Ridge
Older Chicagoans
This is in response to “Chicago middling in quality of life for seniors; Milken Institute study rates it at 64 of 100 with mid-size Illinois cities doing better” (Business, July 31).
Chicago is a vibrant city, attracting thousands of young professionals who want to have successful careers and happy, stable lives.
That’s great.
But authorities seem to have left older adults behind. According to a recent Tribune story, our city is only 64th in the nation among large metropolitan areas regarding quality of life for seniors.
The story quotes a Milken Institute report listing the Top 20 metro areas for successful aging. The report looks at a series of factors — health care, employment, income distribution, public safety, even alcoholism and weather — and Chicago flunked every single category.
There’s nothing we can do about Chicago weather.
But the city, the mayor and the City Council can and should do a lot more to improve critical quality-of-life factors for older residents, and to start a dialogue with nonprofits, community organizations, advocates and other stakeholders so that aging issues have a place at the decision-making table.
As Illinois’ largest membership organization (we have 1.7 million members statewide, and nearly 500,000 in Chicago), AARP urges Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the City Council to look at the issues of concern for older individuals (crime rate, income, unemployment, access to health care, mass transit), and work with us and other groups to develop public policies that can improve their lives and leverage their contributions.
Older Chicagoans want to be healthy, active and engaged citizens contributing to the vibrancy and success of their city and neighborhoods.
Chicago has a unique challenge but also a unique opportunity to harness the contributions of older residents for the benefit of all.
— Bob Gallo, AARP Illinois state director, Chicago
