Maye Musk, Elon's Mom

This is Maye Musk at 72 ( Elon Musk’s South African mother @mayemusk ).. I’m planning to read her book “A Woman makes a Plan” .. I watched some YouTube interviews and looked at her Instagram.. she quotes from one of her passages in the book about posture .. and how important it is to stand up straight with your shoulders back ( this weeks theme on my Instagram). 

pc: NYT

  It’s the beauty secret of being a super model at 72. And looking young and elegant at any age. She has immaculate posture. And was trained from childhood by a father who was a doctor who was very conscious of it .. he held awards for posture in his garden once a year and invited all his patients to the ceremony. I recently checked in with a brilliant physiotherapist to see how I was going.. Pilates and aqua aerobics help so much with posture because good posture comes from a strong core. I was advised to do neck exercises ( vital!) and stretch my shoulders back so they don’t curve forwards x and walk tall. Getting older is a full time job !! -- SC

pc: wikipedia

Serena C is someone I follow on IG.  She has a way of making a variety of topics interesting - thus, I like many (but not all) of her posts. As I get older, I notice posts on older women/seniors so as to have them as an example of health and attitude.  Good posture is something we can all achieve at any age.  Other than that, the Musk family members have their own character issues (the Dad of Elon & sibs, ewwww!).  The fruit does not fall far from the tree.

But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. (Psalm 3:3)

Maye Musk

The Importance of Posture

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Wow! Glamorous Instagram Grandmas

"Old" is Not What It Used to Be

- By Ruth La Ferla, New York Times

Lyn Slater, 64 by Calvin Lom

“I’m not 20. I don’t want to be 20, but I’m really freaking cool. That’s what I think about when I’m posting a photo.”

Photographed with a hip thrust forward to show off her Margiela apron dress and modishly frayed jeans, Lyn Slater projects a kind of swagger pretty rare among her peers. A professor at the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham University, with hyper-chic side gigs as a model and blogger, she is known to a wider public as an Instagram idol.

Sure, she’s 64, a time when some women her age are feeling pressed to close up shop. But if you are Ms. Slater, that’s not going to happen.

On Accidental Icon,  her influential Instagram account, she tends to vamp in an eye-catching mash-up of Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and consignment store finds. Her following, hundreds of thousands strong, skews young, she said, and is responsive to her sass.

“I flaunt it,” she said. “I’m not 20. I don’t want to be 20, but I’m really freaking cool. That’s what I think about when I’m posting a photo.”

Her brash voice is one in a chorus of like-minded contemporaries and women in their 70s and 80s, who are taking on matters of aging with an audacity — and riveting style — their mothers might have envied.

Married or single, working or not, and most often grandmothers, they are asserting their presence on Instagram, intent, in the process, on subverting shopworn notions of what “old” looks and feels like. They are, to hear some tell it, “100 percent slaying.”

That observation is echoed in the Elastic Generation, a 2018 J. Walter Thomson survey of 55- to 72-year-old women in England. “Our collective understanding of what later life looks like remains woefully outdated,” Marie Stafford, the European director of the JWT Innovation Group, wrote in her introduction. “Age no longer dictates the way we live. Physical capacity, financial circumstances and mind-set arguably have far greater influence.”

pc: Diane Keaton, wikipedia

“These women are ambassadors of age,” said Ari Seth Cohen, the creator of  Advanced Style , a popular street style blog, two books and a film documenting, in his words, the “fashion and wisdom of the senior set.” His subjects, he noted, are simultaneously reflecting and contributing to a gradual shift in the common perception of aging.

“The idea of what these older women look like has changed,” Mr. Cohen said. “If they were stylish in their youth, they will still be stylish now. They continue to be who they were.”

pc: Iris Apfel, wikipedia

That observation is echoed in the Elastic Generation, a 2018 J. Walter Thomson survey of 55- to 72-year-old women in England. “Our collective understanding of what later life looks like remains woefully outdated,” Marie Stafford, the European director of the JWT Innovation Group, wrote in her introduction. “Age no longer dictates the way we live. Physical capacity, financial circumstances and mind-set arguably have far greater influence.”


A woman in her 50s, then, “might be a grandmother or a new mother,” the study goes on to say. “She might be an entrepreneur, a wild motorcyclist or a multi-marathon runner. Her lifestyle is not governed by her age but by her values and the things she cares about.” Some of these women and their counterparts abroad are still subscribing to the counterculture values and maverick stance they adopted in the 1960s and ’70s.

“We are not going to be little old ladies sitting in a nursing home with blue-rinsed hair,” said Jenny Kee, @Jennykeeoz, a 71-year-old Australian artist and knitwear designer. “Or if we are going to be in a nursing home, we’ll be there with our marijuana, our health foods and our great sense of style.”

Jenny Kee, 71, @jennykeeozCredit by Georges Antoni

“We aren’t going to be little old ladies with blue hair sitting in a nursing home.”

Ms. Slater echoed that sentiment. “When I was young, we were burning our bras and promoting free love,” she said. “We were getting high. Why would we accept the aging image of our mothers?”

In their wardrobes, unfettered self-expression is the rule. Dorrie Jacobson, an 83-year-old former Playboy bunny, piqued interest last year when she began modeling lacy black lingerie on her Senior Style Bible Instagram account. In an interview, as on her feed, she urges followers to ditch cobwebby notions of how a woman her age should dress. “Wear what you like,” she said. “Age-appropriate has nothing to do with it.”

That brand of feistiness likely owes a debt to a few playfully cantankerous online role models, women who call themselves “Insta-grans,” who have made brazenness a virtue. Making waves, and a little cash on the side, are pop sensations like Baddie Winkle (89-year-old Helen Ruth Elam Van Winkle), whose posts are conceived to flip convention on its head.

Snapped in shrilly colorful knits, skimpy swimwear and, in one instance, a pink message T-shirt that reads, “Be a slut, do whatever you want,” Ms. Van Winkle has transcended cult status. She has millions of followers and is paid to tout brands like Got2B hair products and Smirnoff on her account, and has made personal appearances at Sephora.

There is 69-year-old Lili Hayes, whose posts tend to send up stereotyped images of Jewish mom-ness. Ms. Hayes, who, as her online bio makes clear, is always a little ticked off, underscores her peevishness with a street-wear-inflected style. Her fashion signature: an ever-expanding collection of Supreme caps.

Emiko Mori, 94, @1000wave by CreditChinami Mori

“I receive a lot of happy messages saying: ‘Please live longer. I want to get older like you.”

Chalk up their influence to a palpable shift in the wind. Their advent coincides with the stepped-up visibility, and clout, of political outliers like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose weathered features loom large these days on theater screens, to say nothing of a voluble coterie of older women in Congress.

Entertainment legends like Cher, the redoubtably glamorous grandma in “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” which arrives in theaters next month, do their utmost as well to spruce up the image of aging.

In an apparently more hospitable climate, designers and advertisers have begun to acknowledge a more mature market, pushing a concept of inclusion to extend not just to race and ethnicity but also to age. Maye Musk, 70, models for Concept Korea and is featured in Harper’s Bazaar; Yasmin Le Bon, in her 50s, strikes poses for Armani; and at 65, Isabella Rossellini has returned as a face of Lancôme, the beauty brand that dropped her 20 years earlier.

Even so, those campaigns can carry a whiff of tokenism. According to the Elastic Generation study, women over 50 are still greatly underrepresented in proportion to their spending power.

Also overlooked is their social media savvy. Eschewing stereotypes, 73 percent of participants “hate the way their generation is patronized when it comes to technology,” the report says. Six out of 10 say they find tech “fascinating,” according to the report, and many of those may actually be more competent using tech than their younger counterparts.

What’s more, they have a demonstrable earning capacity, many working well into their 60s and 70s, others reinventing themselves to embrace new forms of entrepreneurship.

Ms. Slater, for one, was quick to monetize her account. The Spanish retailer Mango hired her for a 2017 campaign, “A Story of Uniqueness.” She recently appeared in a commercial for CVS Pharmacy, a company she admires for its use of unretouched models of varying ages. She is featured in a music video with Charlotte Gainsbourg and has been approached by several literary agents to turn her posts into a book, she said.

On her Instagram account, Ms. Kee has joined forces with Romance Was Born, a label led by a team of designers in their early 30s. “I am their guru and mentor,” she said. Together they will present a collection during the couture shows in Paris in July.

Jan Correll, 60, @silver_isthenewblondeCredit by Mr. Silver

“I decided to use social media as my platform, my little piece of real estate, my outlet for talking about this point in my life where I can do what I want.”

And on her account, Silver Is the New Blonde, Jan Correll, 60, a consultant in technology sales, has attracted an assortment of labels, including J. Jill and Soma Intimates, a lingerie line. “Marketers know that women my age have the money to spend,” she said.

While they court and may relish a surge in attention, some prominent influencers balk at being profiled. “It’s colonizing to be put out there exclusively with women your age,” Ms. Slater said. “Every woman should be able to open a magazine and see herself there as part of a mix.”

Sarah-Jane Adams, 63, who turned to Instagram to show off the jewelry she sells, makes no references in her posts to her gray hair. “I don’t feel as if I’m trying to play the old card,” she said. She would rather be judged on the particulars.

“I was a punk,” she said, “and before that I was a hippie. Now I’ve merged the two cultures. I’m part of the Germaine Greer generation. But in the world of social media, I’m simply lumped with all the over-60s.”

Privacy is a concern as well. “Men reach out all the time,” said Ms. Correll, who has been married for 43 years and is a grandmother of four. “Sometimes it scares me. I’m constantly deleting their posts.”

Still, the outcome is more often positive. Posting on Instagram reinforces a sense of solidarity that may have been missing elsewhere in their lives. As Mr. Cohen of Advanced Style noted: “Some of these women don’t live in big cities. For them, Instagram can lead to long-distance friendships, real-life encounters, dinner parties and other events that combat isolation and foster a sense of community.”

That online community encompasses a surprisingly youthful contingent. On Instagram, many of Ms. Slater’s followers range in age from 25 to 35. “Young people don’t seem to have the same bias that older people do,” she said. “They don’t like categories — they deconstruct all these historical groupings like gender. That’s why some of them identify with my posts. The people who support me, follow me, hire me — they’re all young.”

Ms. Kee ascribes the enthusiasm of girls in their teens and women in their early 20s to a wish-I’d-been-there mentality. Among her special champions, she said, is her 13-year-old granddaughter, an ardent fan of ’60s rock, especially the Beatles. “We lived in extraordinary times,” Ms. Kee said of the period when she came of age.

“These girls know that, they know what we lived through. They envy us.”

Read the New York Times article H E R E

Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:32)

60+ Years is Not Old

The Elastic Generation

Diane Keaton on IG

Iris Apfel





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Retirement in the USA: Best Places to Retire Within Your State

It seems like that the average monthly living expenses for a couple on retirement in the U.S.A.  is $4,000 a month. Meanwhile, the average Social Security retirement benefits is $1461/month.  So for a couple, this means about $2900 .... about $1000 short every month.   -- W P
( Read the article below.   Many of us may soon need to relocate, eeek!  --- RRE)

BEST PLACES TO RETIRE IN EACH STATE- Forbes Magazine , By William P. Barrett, edited by Janet Novack 

Most folks who move in retirement chose to stay within the same state. In recognition of that fact, Forbes has created its first list of the Best Places To Retire In Each State. We’ve picked a best and a runner-up for each and every state—even those we have avoided in our annual nationwide Best Places To Retire list due to their high costs and state taxes. Still, three-quarters of the 100 places we identify have median home prices below the national average of $269,600. In every place write-up, we’ve included information on taxes, just in case you’re looking to make an interstate move.

True, some of the 100 places on our list, including Athens, GA; Colorado Springs, CO; Fargo, ND; and Pittsburgh, PA, are among our perennial retirement places favorites. But a good number, including Columbus, IN; Homer, AK; and Northampton, MA, haven’t appeared on any other Forbes retirement list.

Old Woman Dozing by Nicolaes Maes (1656)

We compiled our list of the Best Places To Retire In Each State by comparing data on more than 650 places across all 50 states. Generally, we looked for relatively affordable places (as measured by median home price and cost of living) with high quality of retirement living and populations of 10,000 or more (except for our top Alaska pick, Homer, population 6,000). The key word when it comes to affordable is “relatively”. Some states, especially in the Northeast and along the West Coast, are just a lot more expensive than others. 

When it came to judging quality of life, we looked at a range of factors. Among them: doctor availability, the serious crimes rate, ranking on the Milken Institute list of best cities for successful aging, air quality and walkability and bikeability. Since this is a retirement list, we ignored data on local school districts. But the presence of colleges was considered a plus, as that tends to expand cultural and other amenities for senior citizens.

The L I S T

Read the full article H E R E

The Lord will supply!

Forbes: List for Each US State

senior lady: picture credit

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Baby Boomers and Remodelling Goals

The Baby Boomer generation is looking ahead!  As of the date that I read the Houzz remodeling article below, there were some good ideas in the comment section.  One lady shared  thru pictures a couple of things she recently got done in her kitchen.  I had also wanted clear-glass pendants (but chose  T H I S  bouquet-light instead). I would like my microwave to be located under the counter; and Yes to LED strip lights over the counter tops.

Most important goals for our upcoming kitchen renovation (may the Lord God cause them to come to pass and provide in many ways):

- open concept
- more counter space
- more cabinet storage
- better lighting via can-lights and skylight

pc: houzz

pc:  Houzz

By Erin Carlyle

Baby Boomers Address Aging Needs in Kitchen Remodels

Renovating for Future Aging Needs

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Healthy Monday: Sunshine Vitamin D is da bomb!

We take extra Vitamin D, especially during flu season.

Vitamin D deficiency – who is at risk?

What makes your bones and teeth stronger, wards off infections and diseases, and keeps you cheerful? It’s Vitamin D, quite rightly called the “Sunshine Vitamin.” This fat-soluble vitamin is known to ward off cancers, autoimmunity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. It is estimated that around 50 percent of the human population, all around the world is deficient in Vitamin D and the reasons could range from low exposure to sunlight to faulty lifestyle choices. Find out if you belong to any of these vitamin-deficient groups.

Infants: In babies, Vitamin D deficiency is seen in infants who are the only breast fed. Vitamin D requirements cannot be met by human milk alone especially if the mother is low on the vitamin herself. So she has to fortify her Vitamin D intake so that her child also gets enough through her breast milk. [1]

Senior citizens: Seniors over the age of 50 are at risk for Vitamin D deficiency because of their ageing skin. When the skin ages, it stops being as efficient as it used to be before and does a poor job of absorbing sunlight and producing Vitamin D. Older people also tend to spend a lot of time indoors, which increases their risk for deficiency. This is probably why seniors face bone fragility issues. [2]

People who stay indoors: This one’s a no-brainer, but limited sun exposure can make one Vitamin D deficient. If you are used to wearing long robes due to religious reasons, or if your job demands you to suit up completely or work in the shade, you could be vitamin deficient. Also, reaching for the sunscreen every time you step out may not be a smart thing to do. [3]

People with darker skin tones: Darker skin means more melanin in the epidermal layers. And this means reduced ability to produce Vitamin D from sunlight. This can be fixed by eating a Vitamin D-rich diet or having supplements to match up to the RDA levels. [2]

Obese or people who have undergone gastric bypass: Having a Body Mass Index of more than 30 is associated with low Vitamin D levels. More the amount of fat in the body, more the chances of the fat trapping the vitamin and restricting its release into the blood. In people who have undergone gastric surgery for weight loss, the upper small intestine where Vitamin D is absorbed is bypassed. [4]

People who have trouble absorbing fat: Since Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin. So unless there is some fat in your gut, you won’t be able to absorb dietary Vitamin D. So, some people who fat absorption problems associated with liver diseases, cystic fibrosis and Crohn’s disease may end up being Vitamin D deficient. [5]

Link: Vitamin D Deficiency

References:
1. Wagner, C. L., & Greer, F. R. (2008). Prevention of rickets and vitamin D deficiency in infants, children, and adolescents. Pediatrics, 122(5), 1142-1152.
2. Del Valle, H. B., Yaktine, A. L., Taylor, C. L., & Ross, A. C. (Eds.). (2011). Dietary reference intakes for calcium and vitamin D. National Academies Press.
3. Webb, A. R., Kline, L., & Holick, M. F. (1988). Influence of season and latitude on the cutaneous synthesis of vitamin D3: exposure to winter sunlight in Boston and Edmonton will not promote vitamin D3 synthesis in human skin. The journal of clinical endocrinology & metabolism, 67(2), 373-378.
4.  Nair, R., & Maseeh, A. (2012). Vitamin D: The” sunshine” vitamin. Journal of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapeutics, 3(2), 118.
5.  Malone, M. (2008). Recommended nutritional supplements for bariatric surgery patients. Annals of Pharmacotherapy, 42(12), 1851-1858.

http://www.thehealthsite.com/diseases-conditions/vitamin-d-deficiency-who-is-at-risk-k0617/