Senior man and woman having coffee at table seen through window

Ecumen Poll: Do You Think the Age Wave Could Be an Age of Peace?

Dear Changing Aging readers, we have a quick poll for you. Before you answer, below is information that provides more context:[poll id=8']Sex Day in UlyanovskIn 2007, Sergei Morozov, the governor of the Ulyanovsk region of Central Russia offered prizes to couples who agreed to take advantage of a 'family contact day' and wound up producing babies nine months later, on June 12, Russia’s national day. It was the third year running that Ulyanovsk had declared a 'sex day' and offered prizes for babies born. The grand prize was a sports utility vehicle … The world is growing old …Mark Haas, a political scientist at Duquesne University, writes in his article Pax Americana Geriatrica that global aging will lead to a more peaceful world and a continuation of American dominance. He says that aging populations are likely to result in the slowdown of states' economic growth at the same time that governments face pressures to pay for massive new expenditures for senior care. This double economic dilemma will create such an austere fiscal environment that the other great powers of the world will lack the resources necessary to overtake the United States' huge power lead.Haas opines that America also seems likely to face fewer threats from terrorism based in Islamic countries. If current demographic trends continue, many Islamic states - now in the throes of 'youth bulges' - will be aging as societies in coming decades. As active and disaffected young people have aged in other parts of the world, they have become a source of political stability and economic development. Haas says there is reason to believe this pattern will hold in Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim states as their youth slip into middle age. Read the full Pax Americana Geriatrica article here.


Senior man and woman having coffee at table seen through window

Jim Klobuchar: Suddenly, A World With a Pulse

Happy New Year from Changing Aging!!!Would like to start off this year with a post about rejuvenation from our guest blogger Jim Klobuchar, adventure traveler and legendary newspaper columnist.

Suddenly, A World with a Pulse

My friend emerged from the self-inflicted doldrums of retirement a few days ago to announce that he had been rescued, and he is now aflame with the gifts of a restored passion.He identified his rescuer as the late Ludwig von Beethoven. After I read the account of my friend’s deliverance, I added an asterisk to include a departed little lady as one of his anonymous angels.My friend taught economics for years at a prominent eastern university. Since his retirement he and his wife have traveled often and experienced scenes and sensations that were rewarding. By his own confession, though, he has lived a life-both on campus and in later-- with head 'buried in texts, ordered by logic and hard evidence, with few opportunities to develop an openness to the higher ranges of emotions...'This is a serious admission, friends. But the condition didn’t vanish when he retired, and it didn’t seem particularly reversible.Yet how much do we really know about the odd linkages in our lives that can suddenly unleash a core identity in us, a thrill we never expected no matter our age or our resistance to something suspiciously new.I have to introduce my mother here. Convinced that I was going to be the next Rachmaninoff of the keyboard, she insisted that I should take piano lessons despite the evidence coming out of our old upright when I played Mozart. After four years she ended the unequal battle and I went back to football. But the seed she planted was stubborn and in later years I came to love serious music and to play it. A few months ago my friend and his wife visited and I invited them into my music room to hear and see a DVD of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, conducted by Claudio Abbado. With today’s technology one can create a whole library of the masters, and now on a spread screen you can immerse yourself, almost physically, in glorious music here and now, at hand.My friend wrote a few days ago. They have retooled their TV and expanded the sound. They have fled their formal dining room and become unapologetic snackers, taking their meals surrounded by Beethoven, Schubert, Shostakovich and Puccini. I’d told them that the adagio movement of Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto was so serene and wistful and so touched with longing it would bring them to tears.'It’s an absolute joy,' he wrote. 'experiencing pure beauty so close, with such intimacy.'I thought, 'This one is for you, mom. But don’t remind me of Beethoven’s 'Fuer Elise. Too many notes!' I still can’t play in right.

You can read last month’s post from Jim here.