Uncategorized

This year, Mr. Peanut, that smiling peanut-shaped humanoid decorating food packages that contain Planters Peanuts, turns 100 years old. To you, he might be a...

Several years ago I bought a kitchen stove during the “sales tax holiday” in Massachusetts. Most years I ignore the “holiday” on sales tax. But the kitchen stove was a purchase I needed to make, so I waited for the tax free weekend. In my case, the retailer who sold me the stove did not benefit from the “holiday”---because I was going to buy it anyway, and all I did was time my purchase to avoid taxes. It was only the taxpayers who got the short end.

A few days ago, as I was leaving my doctor’s office, I saw an older woman sitting just outside the front glass doors of the medical center, holding her cane in front of her. She looked like she was waiting for a ride. It was a hot day, and she appeared to have been sitting there for a while. “Are you ok?” I asked her. “Is someone coming to pick you up?” She looked up at me. “Are you going to the [name of assisted living facility]?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “It’s a little off my drive home, but can I give you a lift?” I introduced myself, we shook hands. She told me her name was Susan.

I’m no visionary, but in one way I’ve been way ahead of my time. In the vanguard. One of the first. An innovator. That is in the realm of reusable shopping bags. Thirty or thirty-five years ago, the Vermont Country Store, one of my favorite catalog companies, sold canvas shopping bags. I was tired of accumulating all those paper grocery bags and I bought two VCS bags.

According to the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), as we age, muscles lose their elasticity unless used regularly, leading to stiffness and soreness. Stretching is the best way to regain and improve flexibility, helping seniors remain active and independent. By incorporating some simple stretching exercises into your routine, you can greatly improve your flexibility, as well as enhance your balance, posture and circulation, relieve pain and stress, and prevent injuries.

Ordinarily, this woman does not believe that household tasks are sex-specific. A person does not need upper-body strength to balance a checkbook. The ability to bear children does not uniquely qualify someone to slip a role of toilet paper into a holder. So when routine household chores don’t require superior brawn, she and her husband share them, each doing what he or she likes best or dislikes least.

I have been a registered lobbyist on Beacon Hill for 30 years. I have only represented one client over all that time: Mass Home Care, a private, nonprofit network whose mission is to help elderly and disabled individuals live independently at home. I am in the middle of my 30th state budget cycle. The House version of the budget has just been approved. The Senate is up next. There were 1,307 amendments filed in the House, which means that the average state representative filed eight budget amendments.

By G, Gregory Tooker, CPCU The debate about national health care rolls on and on. The fact remains, however, that nearly every first world nation on the face of the planet considers access to affordable health care a basic right. The United States has been wrestling with this enormous challenge for years. Unfortunately, we are home to some of the most unfit people on earth. Poor diet and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle are mostly to blame. Nearly one person in 10 suffers from some form of diabetes. Many cases are of the type two variety, potentially reversible through improved diet and moderate exercise, but often patients opt for the easier but far more expensive pharmaceutical approach.

Ordinarily, this woman does not believe that household tasks are sex-specific. A person does not need upper-body strength to balance a checkbook. The ability to bear children does not uniquely qualify someone to slip a role of toilet paper into a holder. So when routine household chores don’t require superior brawn, she and her husband share them, each doing what he or she likes best or dislikes least.

In his New York Times bestselling book, “Being Mortal,” surgeon Atul Gawande explains the rise of nursing homes in America starting in the 1950s. “Hospitals couldn’t solve the debilities of chronic illness and advancing age,” he wrote, “and they began to fill up with people who had nowhere to go.” The hospitals lobbied Congress for funding “to enable them to build separate custodial units for patients needing an extended period of “recovery.”