SUSAN JACOBY 'S NEVER SAY DIE TELLS THE TRUTH ABOUT BEING OLD ALONE BROKE and ILL : NEVER MARRIED NO KIDS BOOK REVIEW

SUSAN JACOBY 'S  NEVER SAY DIE TELLS THE TRUTH ABOUT BEING OLD ALONE BROKE and ILL

Linking to a YouTube video  (sorry but the video expired so I took it down Nov 2 2023) in which author Susan Jacoby explains her viewpoint. Will our old age be so different than that of our parents or grandparents? New Agism has taken over. Just read a devastating book, written by a secular humanist Susan Jacoby, who looks at the facts not the spin on old age. NEVER SAY DIE, THE MYTH AND MARKETING of THE NEW OLD AGE, put out by Pantheon Books this year, looks at issues like Baby Boomer finances (especially severe for old women), Alzheimer's, and other issues that the people promoting 80 as the new 50 don't want you to try on. While reading this book I was thinking of the recession we're in and the fact that many women never have the kind of employers who provide retirements. So many are already hurting, already working hard and unable to save. I was thinking that fear of being alone and broke in old age IS STILL NOT A GOOD ENOUGH REASON TO HAVE CHILDREN TO TAKE CARE OF YOU IN OLD AGE . In visiting seniors living in retirement homes, board and cares, and nursing homes, I already know that many of those who had children - and grandchildren - still do not get the visits they need. I notice those ads that have vital active and young looking grey haired seniors enjoying their retirement years. They rarely seem to show real residents, people with walkers and wheel chairs. This book is not light summer reading, but it is reading that will make you think and activate. '

Sister

(First published  August 30, 2011)

C 2011 - 2023 Never Married No Kids - BlogSpot 

SUSAN JACOBY 'S NEVER SAY DIE TELLS THE TRUTH ABOUT BEING OLD ALONE BROKE and ILL

SUSAN JACOBY 'S  NEVER SAY DIE TELLS THE TRUTH ABOUT BEING OLD ALONE BROKE and ILL

VIDEO EXPIRED taken down Nov 2023

Linking to a YouTube video in which author Susan Jacoby explains her viewpoint. Will our old age be so different than that of our parents or grandparents? New Agism has taken over. Just read a devastating book, written by a secular humanist Susan Jacoby, who looks at the facts not the spin on old age. NEVER SAY DIE, THE MYTH AND MARKETING of THE NEW OLD AGE, put out by Pantheon Books this year, looks at issues like Baby Boomer finances (especially severe for old women), Alzheimer's, and other issues that the people promoting 80 as the new 50 don't want you to try on. While reading this book I was thinking of the recession we're in and the fact that many women never have the kind of employers who provide retirements. So many are already hurting, already working hard and unable to save. I was thinking that fear of being alone and broke in old age IS STILL NOT A GOOD ENOUGH REASON TO HAVE CHILDREN TO TAKE CARE OF YOU IN OLD AGE . In visiting seniors living in retirement homes, board and cares, and nursing homes, I already know that many of those who had children - and grandchildren - still do not get the visits they need. I notice those ads that have vital active and young looking grey haired seniors enjoying their retirement years. They rarely seem to show real residents, people with walkers and wheel chairs. This book is not light summer reading, but it is reading that will make you think and activate.

Sister

(First published  August 30, 2011)

GOING SOLO BY ERIC KLINENBERG : NEVER MARRIED NO KIDS BOOK REVIEW

C 2012 Eric Klinenberg The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone Published by Penguin Press 

This is the best book I've read about being single and living alone that has come out in a long time. The approach the author, Eric Klinenberg takes, is to look at singles in society and he did a lot of interviewing to get his information. Going Solo includes chapters on aging alone, and the poor who are living alone in Single Room Occupancy type apartments who don't socialize with their neighbors, hoping to protect themselves. It is that chapter that I found most impressive. (Pages 111 -112) ...

"Some of the affluent and middle-class people we interviewed acknowledged that they'd sought out a place of their own to avoid toxic relationships, or to escape from a community that took more than it gave. The disadvantaged men we interviewed were even more likely to report motivations like this. For them, living alone can easily lead to a dangerous extremes, resulting not only in domestic autonomy but also in reclusiveness, hoarding, and other antisocial behaviors that turn one's safe house into a tomb. Even more judicious forms of social withdrawal may lead to a kind of miserable security, as in the case of many of the ex-convicts, substance abusers, and the unemployed men who take refuge in single-room-occupancy hotels and cheap efficiency apartments to avoid friends and family whose company brings more trouble that it's worth. Living alone is a way to protect the self, yet it also risks imperiling it, and it;'s no surprise that people in good physical, emotional, and financial health, are better able to find the right balance than those who are sick or poor. For those with financial security, a busy schedule, and a dense social network, living alone can be productive because it offers access to privacy, restoration, and personal development. But for the vulnerable it more often leads to what Berkeley sociologist Sandra Smith calls "defensive individualism," a dangerous state that fosters distrust toward other people and institutions, and ultimately toward the self as well." As the author points out early in the book (Page 3) 

"During the past half century , our species has embarked on a remarkable social experiment. For the first time in human history, great numbers of people - at all ages, in all places, of every political persuasion - have begun settling down as singletons." (Page 5) 

"Today more than 50 percent of American adults are single, and 31 million - roughly one out of eery seven adults - live alone. (This figure excludes the 8 million Americans who live in voluntary and non-voluntary group quarters, such as assisted living facilities, nursing homes, and prisons.) People who live alone make up 28% of all U.S. households, which means that they are not tied with childless couples as the most prominent residential type - more common than the nuclear family, the multi-generational family, and the roommate or group home. Surprisingly, living alone is also one of the most stable household arrangements... Contemporary solo dwellers are primarily women; about 17 million, compared to 14 million men... This one is worth your spare time to read! 

Sister / Never Married No Kids C 2012 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

(First published on September 24, 2012)

IT'S ONLY ROCK "N" ROLL - 30 YEARS MARRIED TO A ROLLING STONE by JO WOOD : NMNK BOOK REVIEW

It's Only Rock "N" Roll
30 Years Married To A Rolling Stone
by Jo Wood (wife of Ron Wood)  C 2013
!t books - an imprint of HarperCollingsPublishers

Book Review By Sister at NEVER MARRIED NO KIDS - AN INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY

It's not easy to write a memoir and write it so every chapter advances your story.  Jo Wood did that, and she had a hell of a lot of life to select scenes from.  No doubt I was attracted to this book because Jo Wood is not just an ordinary woman in a hellish, dysfunctional marriage, but because women like her keep men like Rolling Stone guitarist Ron Wood happy for a long long time, that is until a life long alcoholic and drug user who has NEVER GROWN UP, decides he has to womanize before he dies, and dumps his no longer co-dependent wife!

I used to study at a coffee house that was owned by members of AA and frequented by members of AA (and other 12 step groups attempting to resist addiction.)  Several times I met men who were flirtatious and generally attractive to me but they never seemed to follow through.  Perplexed, I brought this subject up to others there, and I learned well one thing:

A person who lives their life for years on substances, be that drugs or alcohol, who basically AVOIDS life by being high, partying a lot, etc, DOES NOT GROW, DOES NOT MATURE, and so, when they finally join a 12 Step Program and get off their substance, they are the age they were when they started avoiding life... Jo was a hard partier and addict herself, which was attractive to Ron, but it was she who had to be a bit more sensible because she was the one having children, raising them, and keeping some sanity in her own and their lives.

Therefor, when they met he was about her age (20) as a human and 30 years later, she had matured to be maybe 30 something, while he was still 20 something and having affairs with 20 year olds.  That's my explanation.

Now, if Ron Wood were NOT a Rolling Stone, if there were not drugs, travel, excitement, fame, money (to be earned and invested unwisely and lost), would Jo have stuck in there and had three children with him?  My guess is that there are a lot of more ordinary people who are in these hellish marriages, with and without children, in which people met as partiers or drug addicts and remained so.

Jo portrays Ron as selfish, self-centered,  capable of verbal abuse and unable to imagine how he hurts others, and clearly she made a lot of excuses for him and did a lot of compensating.  Nearing 50 she dared to move her organic lifestyle into a product line, and she used the book to promote that a bit.

She stays clear of what their financial settlement was, though I'm sure most readers would like to know what she got (earned) after 30 years of loyalty and faithfulness.

**************

Speaking of drug and alcohol use and abuse,  there are people who can use without becoming addicts. There are people who can keep it to 2 drinks or 20, people who can keep it to weekends, people who never drive themselves when they are using.  Still, when you choose to be out of control regularly, even if scheduled, or at home, you may be self treating for a emotional or mental issue.

People are often wondering so I will tell you that I'm all for MEDICAL MJ and have been for years, ever since a professor at my college talked about how it would have saved her father's eyesight, and since I've met ovarian cancer survivors who used it and ate and didn't waste away.  I think alcohol may be worse than MJ.  However, I don't use MJ or any other illegal drug and drink very little and then usually with a meal, like dinner out, or a special occasion like a birthday.  So it is really hard for me to relate to drug addicts.