Senior citizens are shaping the way neighbourhoods evolve and grow, all in the name of maintaining deeper connections to their communities as they age, according to one Western researcher's work inside a pair of London neighbourhoods.
"We were looking at how the built-in social environment in London either supports or holds barriers to seniors being socially engaged and participating in activities," said School of Occupational Therapy professor Carri Hand, whose work looked at Westmount and Old South neighbourhoods in London. "We focused on social connections and activities, seeing how they interacted."
Through interviews with seniors, and the use of GPS tracking to follow their movements, Hand found older adults are creating our communities through casual social interactions, helping others and taking community action. From those three areas, Hand has revealed some common truths about these particular neighbourhoods.
Seniors expressed deep connections to physical places in neighbourhoods – restaurants, cafes, parks, libraries. Everyday neighbourhood activities, such as shopping or walking, appeared key to maintaining a sense of connection to the neighbourhood and in developing informal social ties.
It turns out old people are not worthless.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @11:00PM (7 children)
Old people are not useless. They can post stories just as well as ever; it just takes a few hours longer.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Friday September 15 2017, @11:08PM
Yup. We editors pooched it. We went 10 hours with nothing in the queue.
Our apologies for the delay.
Please return to your regularly scheduled trolling.
I'd love to hear from a few volunteers to help spread the workload...
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @11:12PM (1 child)
Soylent editors might have onions on their belts instead of phones up their noses or whatever the popular youth trend is these days but old soylent editors can queue stories just as well as (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:18AM
Well, it was the style at the time. [youtube.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday September 16 2017, @12:23AM (1 child)
And you could log in and do it yourself AC.
Gets a little tiresome submitting stories for ACs to vent their nerd rage at while hiding behind their AC label.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Saturday September 16 2017, @12:34AM
frojack - unfortunately, this was not a lack of material, just a lack of time to get it on the front page. There were 30ish subs in the queue. Just a buncha tired ass editors.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 16 2017, @12:43AM (1 child)
I love going to old people bars, except that the stereotype about them being set in their ways tends to be true.
A buddy and I once went to one of those places, where the regs spend their retirement and VA checks drinking beer all day every day. Well, my buddy and I went in and had some friendly chats with the folks, and then things went South when we put our dicks in the mashed potatoes and turned the topic of conversation to the exact circumstances of Hitler's death.
We emptied out the place faster than a fat kid empties out a bag of cheetoes.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 16 2017, @02:07PM
Old folks, hell. Dead people shaped the town I live in. You can't find any of the city founders anywhere - they're all dead!! No imagination, at all. They found a crossroads, with one major highway going north and south, and a minor highway going east and west. Build a school, a bank, a grocery, and call it a town. At it's height, the town had a blinking red light at the crossroads. That light has come down though - turns out that it costs money to keep it lit. Dead people. I doubt that you'd get any response from any of them if you put your dick in their mashed potatoes, or anywhere else for that matter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @11:21PM (1 child)
In fact, they are quite tasty when properly stewed and seasoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:19AM
What an interesting thought; the post above yours mentions:
then you chime in with:
Kielbasa Sausage! Probably worn out by now and tough as old boiled owl.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @11:33PM
But all I found was Curry and Kababs
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @11:35PM
Those cities when they where 30
as for the greening things I might be willing,, I guess I'd have to open an account though mmm lemme think about it
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday September 16 2017, @12:40AM (12 children)
I go out for a long walk and all I see are geezers (like me) walking around. Some rather far from home - several miles. Geezers stop, yak, compare notes on house paint and dogs, and which restaurants have the best coffee.
Then you see young people out for a run. They can only squeeze in 35 minutes, so they are never far from home and don't stop to talk to anyone.
(I have to admit I spend enough time out there to know generally where most of these people live).
Spoze when the Alzheimer's sets in I'll have to be geo-fenced as well.
This is what counts as research these days. Because nobody has any time to do field research.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 16 2017, @12:48AM (10 children)
Well, they also spend most of their lives living in times where social skills were valued, when you could strike up random conversations with other adults without coming off as a weirdo or striking up conversations with kids without coming off as a pedo. They had fashion sense, eloquent vocabularies, and generally were much more "normal" than the autistic retards you see dancing and twirling down the streets with their earbuds and clutching their phones on the busses to avoid contact with others. They watched and played sports, wore bras and didn't look like whores, had real tits and real curves, and heapin' healpins of patience.
The ones who served in the military are really cool because, although they may not agree with younguns, they have seen much degeneracy and are amused by it.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:00AM (9 children)
They had fashion sense
That's probably a pile of crap, depending on exactly which generation you're talking about. If you mean people in the 50s, the fashions then were positively horrible, both for men and women. If you want to see old-people fashion that really is pretty stylish, you need to go back to the 1920s-30s. There was really good fashion in the 60s too. The 40s were boring, the 50s were awful, and the 70s were generally lousy and trashy.
They watched and played sports
While playing sports can be fun and good exercise if it's not baseball, there's nothing commendable about watching sports. Sitting on your ass and watching other people do physical activity does nothing for your body and is just a waste of time.
had real tits and real curves
Yeah, and then they got fat after they passed the age of 30 or so. These days in the US, there seem to be two types of women instead: ones who are rail-thin and look great their whole lives (as long as you're not one of those people who thinks fatness is attractive), and ones who get fat in their teenage years and by their 30s are downright obese. I'll take the rail-thin ones. Something you're missing about the older generations is that they generally didn't do a lot of intense physical activity, thanks to the proliferation of the automobile and the rise of suburbia.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:14AM (3 children)
One of the things i like about "the day the earth stood still" (1950's) is the people coming down to breakfast fully dressed in suits/dresses ready for their day.
Today, you barely have time to eat on work days. On the weekend it's bacon in PJ's at best.
Here's wishing for those 3 martini lunch days: take your time.
Anyone here seen "How to succeed in business without really trying"? Love that movie too. The good old days when you could dance and sing at work and nobody looked sideways at you and ran.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:41AM (2 children)
That is the first Sci-Fi book I ever read, in the sixth-grade, and still one of my favorites to this day. Sure beat the hell out of that boring-ass The Hobbit.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:55AM (1 child)
I gotta agree:
The hobbit and the ring series don't do anything for me, but i'll probably read the Game of Thrones series again (read once, waiting to see if more books will come out. Kind of doubting it now).
I fell asleep during the hobbit movie, too. Just.not.that.good.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:20AM
I gather from reading around that the author is still toiling away on the second to last book. It's just that the skein gets more tangled with each new book and those multiplying points of view. I fear only wholesale slaughter will save the series.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:22AM (3 children)
Hugo Boss would like a word with you.
Maybe in that "my mom dressed me for school" sense but at least they were neat
Now here I agree. That whole decade was dreary.
Hmm, I seem to have lost you with the whole "social" emphasis of my post...
I think most would agree that people were generally more healthy back then in terms of diet and exercise.
Yes, rail-thin coke-whores with fake tits, tacky nails, artificially girly voices. Or the ones who were fat girls and stayed fat when they got older.
Doubtful. With no internet and phones, those who wanted to get the fuck out of the house had to do some legwork even if they were willing and able to drive somewhere. When I was a kid in grade-school, we had something called "recess." You know, pent-up energy to be released with physical activity. The pussies sat around or climbed the jungle-gym. The real men like me played kickball, dodgeball, bombardo, and smear-the-queer (with one of those cute Nerf footballs that had the corkscrew texture). We got bloody noses, skinned knees, head lumps, and still showed up back to class like we didn't give a fuck. But the most alpha as fuck males, of which I was not, were the ones who could make it all the way across the monkey-bars without touching the ground.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Saturday September 16 2017, @02:00AM (1 child)
I think that's why all these kids are on Ritalin etc: today, they're not allowed to play ball games except with a big bouncy ball. They can't climb the monkey bars, etc: they might fall and break an arm (here comes helicopter mom).
They don't seem to be allowed to do anything for fear of the school being sued by Huey UH-1 Mom and Dad.
Kids aren't allowed to be kids anymore: their porcelain dolls on drugs.
Football probably kept me off the streets and doing harm. Let kids get hurt: they'll learn from it and get their cast signed.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:31AM
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
attributed to Socrates by Plato
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @06:12AM
I agree. That whole decade was dreary
What most think of as The '60s ended around 1975 (Nixon quit).
When I think of the '70s, I think of people dressing up again[1] and touching each other when they danced.[2]
Saturday Night Fever was documenting a thing that had been going on a while.
(They started filming that in March of 1977 and it was released in December.)
[1] OK, so there was a lot of polyester involved.
[2] ...and I don't mean just clinching and swaying on slow tunes.
I mean real dances with each partner having a defined role in the lead-and-follow thing.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:29AM
Their fashions were their fashions. Your opinion of their fashions is as pointless as their opinions of your fashions.
At the time it had much more originality than an artificially distressed pair of jeans.
We get it. You hate your parents.
Run along now go play with your iPhone. Grown Ups are talking here.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday September 16 2017, @07:57AM
Yup Frojack... that is one thing I really like about the old city I live in now. I am not the only thing old around here. Damn near everything is old. Mostly still the same way things were when I was a kid.
Including socializing at the local eatery.
Or chatting as we walk our dogs past each other's house.
You know, the one thing I learned to despise in my previous neighborhood was the automatic garage door opener. Those things allowed people to hole up in their house, slipping in and out, and never be seen. I lived in one of those neighborhoods for five years once, and never met my neighbor. All sorts of hell could break loose and no-one knew what was going on.
Where I am now, even an unrecognized car on the street raises questions. If someone comes through we don't recognize, we will watch them until they leave. And we mostly don't mind sharing ( as in, my neighbor across the street's son came visiting in his camper, however I have the street parking slot long enough for him to fit his house trailer in... so I run electrical extension cord out to his trailer so he can have light, TV, and internet while he's visiting. He won't use enough electricity to make a dent anyway, and running the cord across the street is not wise.)
By now, we all know each other's kids and dogs as well. One gets lost and we see to it that it finds its way back home. Try driving a car through here too fast and you will rile the whole neighborhood.
Sometimes we have "block parties", cordon our street off for the day, and everyone kick back and have a big social. Those of us with wheeled barbeques put them in the front and light 'em off.. others bring things to put on it. We'll get a keg or two and spend a day just kicking back.
The neighbor down the street has an older Chevy with a really nice sound system in it, and he puts on 50's and 60's music collections, and parks it out front. Gee, it doesn't get any better than this. The whole thing brings all of us back to our childhood when the very same things were first happening.
I love my neighbors here... and hate to see any of 'em leave, yet I am reaching the age where I see way too many of my neighbors leaving for their maker.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2017, @05:56AM
...at MIT [soylentnews.org]