Just recently, I read an article about a new trend among aging single women.  Four or five ban together à la Golden Girls in a group house.  More than any previous generation, boomers are single, either because they never married, they are divorced, they are part of the LGBT grouping, or they are widowed.  A larger number of aging people are women (57 percent make up the grouping 65 and older and 67 percent make up the group of 85 and older).

I know several women who share a home.  It is not always as easy as it may seem.  My friends told me that when they first moved in together, they all went about their own business.  They did not even sit down to dinner together.  But then one of the women needed to take care of her father and the household opted to allow him to move in with her.  This decision made their house become a home, as they all found themselves pitching in to help.  Although the father has since passed away, the pattern of doing things together within the household has remained.  And the women are very happy about this.

One structure that makes a marriage a marriage and a family a family is sharing meals.  Another structure is that everyone in the household pitches in to maintain the home.  Having and/or developing mutual interests also makes up a structure of a family.  These factors would seem important in the formation of a group home.

I like the idea.  I sit here in a house that has become too large for me — too empty.  I like the socialization that comes with sitting around a dinner table.  I always enjoyed doing things with my husband.  Presently, upkeep of home keeps me fairly busy.  It would be nice to share those tasks with someone else. Although I keep busy with many different projects and have an active social life,  coming home to someone has a very different feel.

Of course, one does have to consider that illness may settle on one or two or maybe even three of the housemates and then what happens?  Another thing to reflect on is that different people have different approaches to or definitions of cleanliness.  When in college, one’s sense of cleanliness may have been a little less stringent.  One might be a little more impatient with someone else’s habits when in their ’50′s or ’60′s than they were at eighteen or twenty-one.

However,  I do like the creative way that boomers are looking at the question of housing and how they want to spend their older years and I look forward to reading more about these innovative approaches towards aging.

© Yvonne Behrens, M.Ed  2013

Ironically,

….baby boomers are the wealthiest generation in U.S. history, both earning and consuming more than any other age group.12• Baby boomers have amassed $3.7 trillion in total earnings, as compared to the $1.6 trillion generated by the preceding generation.

How can that be?  Weren’t we the ones who recognized that materialism could not give us the true nourishment of spiritual and emotional needs?  Yet, our generation has been the most workaholic generation ever.  We have seen more wars fought during our existence than there ever have been fought before.  We have watched as the use of automobiles and the means by which they operate, fossil fuels, have increased to an amount unimaginable forty years ago.  It has been during our lifetime that the concept of time has narrowed into practical non-existence.  And, although our energy levels seem higher than those of previous generations, our health may not necessarily be better.  In the end, it has been during our lifetime that materialism has become so ensconced that we take for granted running to a store to purchase something we need, two or three times a day, having electricity at the click of a switch, and pretty much anything we want secured through paper money or a plastic card.

Now I am not advocating that our childish approach to rejecting the previous generation’s world was to be commended.  But there were some good things that did come out of “the movement.”  And since there are always two sides to a coin, let’s look at those.  The advancements that have occurred in this period of time have catapulted us into a world our great-grandparents would not be able to recognize.  Social sensitivities and environmental sensitivities increased.  Discrimination decreased.  But again because there are two sides to the coin of life, it seems as though the tolls that our advancements have taken on the environment are unprecedented.  Communication abilities are at a level we could not have imagined twenty years ago and our ties around the world make cultures that once were considered foreign, our neighbors.  Advancements in Science continue apace.  We are re-defining the aging process, or at least pushing it back by a good dozen years.  And hopefully, we will come up with a way to maintain our earth and all her gifts to us before we destroy her and thereby ourselves.

But with regard to consumerism, I still don’t understand how we ended up taking a left turn instead of the right turn we thought we were taking…..

Thus, the parent entered the medical system.  She was to do chemotherapy for five months and then be scheduled to have surgery.  Fortunately, side effects to the chemo were not so intense that she could not continue to maintain her day to day activities.  She did loose her hair.

Somewhere along the way, those she was relying on for medical care, decided they would not try to do surgery, yet.  Instead, they suggested that she add a new drug, Abraxane ™,  to the chemo regimen.  This is a new drug that claims to improve the chances of survival for a person with Pancreatic Cancer.

According to an article in MNT (Medical News Today):

Results from the study revealed that 35% people on the combination of Abraxane™ and chemotherapy were alive at the end of the first year compared to only 22% who just underwent chemotherapy. This translates into a 59% increase in one-year survival as well as double the rate of survival in two years for the patients on Abraxane™ versus those who only received the chemotherapy. Those were solely on chemotherapy survived for only 6.7 months compared to a median of 8.5 months among those who also took Abraxane™.

Breaking this paragraph down, I see a claim that somehow the percentage of people who were alive at the end of the first year who were taking a combination of Abraxane™ and chemotherapy was 35% as compared to only 22% of people who were alive after a year of taking just chemotherapy.  Those percentages are not very high.  But somehow, this 13% differential “translates into a 59% increase in one-year survival”  Hunh?  Not only that, but if we take these numbers, as the researchers have done (there is no indication that there were any tests done to actually prove this to be fact), this doubles the survival rate in two years.  Again, hunh?

The last line in the paragraph totally contradicts the claims above it by stating that (without qualifiers) those using only chemotherapy “only survived 6.7 months” and those who did chemo in combination with Abraxane™ survived “a median of 8.5 months.”  Hard to imagine all those individuals who had Pancreatic Cancer and were only doing chemotherapy keeling over at 6.7 months from start of chemo regimen.  Even if this were the case, the claims that adding Abraxane™ to the chemotherapy increases survival rates by an amount that is exciting seem a bit exaggerated if the median survival rate with this addition is only 8.5 months.

I would not be so offended by all of this if it in fact reflected an industry desperately wanting to find a cure for cancer and dedicating all their waking hours to that end.  BUT, unfortunately, the facts do not demonstrate this.  What the facts demonstrate is that this new drug,  a bit short on its healing claims, is doing incredibly well in the area of generating income.  From the same article:

Abraxane™ made sales of close to $386 million in 2011 for it’s use as breast cancer treatment. It is expected to generate close to $2.1 billion as a treatment for pancreatic cancer. Abraxis BioScience was the original company to develop the drug, they were bought out by Celegene in 2010 for $2.9 billion. Celegene can expect to see good sales of the drug [emphasis by author], although it might see strong competition from the drug Folfirinox™ which was found to similarly improve survival among pancreatic cancer patients.

In the meanwhile, debilitating side effects have increased quite a bit in our 89 year old patient since the incorporation of Abraxane™ into her chemotherapy regimen.

© Yvonne Behrens, M.Ed  2013

I was told by a successful blogger that what I need to do every few months is write six or eight blogs over one weekend and then time them to be inserted according to whatever timeline I wish to use.  I may be in a position to try this at the end of next winter, but for now…..my blog suffers.

On a larger scale, I am in a life transition.  It has been slightly over a year since my husband died.  It certainly takes at least a year to get back on one’s feet and, in my case, several other occurrences clearly demonstrated the turning of a page into a new chapter.  A part of me feels that I am being disloyal to my husband by thinking in this way.  A new chapter that does not include him?  He was such a wonderful addition to my life and I can’t imagine creating a life with somebody else.  I suppose many widows and widowers go through the same dilemma.

But I do need to make decisions and move into a direction that creates a clear path in front of me.  This is something I have never, ever been good at, ever!  And here I am, of a certain age.  It is not as if the years rolling out in front of me will be nearly as long as the years that have rolled up behind me.  And I do have to confront the realities of diminished stamina and physical strength as I begin to move into my elder years.

My sister keeps reminding me that I have to make decisions.  Actually, everyone is gently suggesting that I make some decisions.  Everyone seems to be saying that I need to move out of the home I shared with my husband.  Instead, I end up planting another vegetable garden.  And this house was only supposed to be a weekend getaway and/or temporary until we built our “dream” house.  Instead, we ended up making this our dream house or as close as a temporary home can be to being one’s dream house.  I suppose at some point, though, I will need to face moving out of it to something more my size

Yet my life feels very full and satisfying to me.  I am the sort of person who is always busy.  Even if I wake up without a fixed schedule, I will immediately find things to fill the day.  Take today for example.  I had a one hour commitment facing me.  That was all.  But I got up and meditated.  I ate breakfast and went to the gardens.  Cleaned a vegetable bed.  called a friend.  We went walking.  Made sugar water for my newly formed bee hives.  Cooked a meal for five people.  Planted peppers, basil, and tomatoes in my newly cleaned vegetable bed.  kept my hour commitment.  Visited the mother of a friend.  Cleaned up some flowers at the house of worship.  Came home and cleaned up my kitchen.  Read my e-mails and looked at Facebook.  Washed the kitchen floor (greatly overdue!).  Took out the compost.  Got everything prepped to feed the bees when it stops raining.  And now I am writing this blog.  I was hoping to get some exercise in, but I may have run out of time, what with the fact that it is already 7:30 p.m.  At least I got a little walk in.

But I still have to make some decisions about my tomorrows.  Watching Spring unfold, as it always does, each year a little bit differently, but always clearly waking up to a new tomorrow that moves it ever forward into the cycle that is its nature.  The question that I have to contemplate is whether nature is the example I need to reflect on and recognize as the example to follow or whether because we have been given consciousness, it is contingent on me to take active responsibility and seek a direction?  I have a whole world in front of me.  I sure hope, whatever unfolds, that I do not waste this precious opportunity.

© Yvonne Behrens, M.Ed  2013

Charles, a man “who has it all,” including heart disease, has a very supportive wife and because of this, the whole family has changed their eating habits.  Charles speaks about how as an Italian, whose grandfather owned a meat shop, large meals with lots of meat were a big part of life’s enjoyment.  Yet he and his family have made the adjustment, to the point of bringing their own food when they take trips.  (May Charles live to watch his grandchildren grow up and may he and his wife grow old together).

Two other individuals who are also working at changing their diets were interviewed.  One interviewee lamented that he missed his Kentucky Fried Chicken™  The other spoke about how difficult it was to maintain a more plant-based diet when the rest of her family was not.

And yet the medical profession does not focus on nutrition and diet when interacting with patients, but rather pills and surgery.  Dr. Esselstyn, a former heart surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic and one of the interviewees in both Forks Over Knives and Chow Down, learned through his practice that there was a direct relationship between diet and heart disease.  He says that surgery does not prevent the disease.  He states that the medical industry is “… selling sickness right now.  We are selling sickness as a profession.  You don’t get health out of a bottle of pills.  You don’t get health out of a bunch of operative procedures.  I know that as a former surgeon.”

Another interviewee in Chow Down, Neal Barnard, MD, shares that ” the most popular pill on the market today is Lipitor ™ ….a pill created to curb the effects of dietary excess.”

According to the www.chowdownmovie.com home page,

…. three factors …. fatally impact our country’s health: the medical community’s allegiance to the status quo, the government’s allegiance to the food industry, and Americans’ allegiance to cheap, convenient food.

Grayner and Johnson, through very tight interviews with key players in the medical industry, the food industry, and the government demonstrate how, at least at this stage in time, we, as consumers, are controlled by the relationship between the food industries, the government and the medical community.

Dr. Barnard points out that the USDA has two mandates.  One is to promote health and the other is to promote American agricultural products.  This could certainly become a potential conflict of interest, particularly since the Federal Government participates in creating generic advertising for certain products (Got Milk? for example) from a fund that they administer but which is provided by the food industry.  In fact, the federal government even has worked with the fast food industry to help them advertise foods that include cheese, not because the foods are healthier but to promote the dairy industry.

Even the food pyramid, which has undergone many changes in recent years, is influenced by the needs of the Agro-business.  One outcome is that we have come to believe that certain foods are more important than others, ie, meat rather than lentils, both sources of protein.  Yet studies have shown that a primarily meat based diet can be harmful to one’s health.  [Whether it is the meat itself or whether it is all the additives that farmers put into their livestock is a topic for further research and another article].

At one point in the documentary, Grayer and Johnson interview Louise Light, a nutritionist who was hired by the USDA in the late ’70′s to come up with a food pyramid.  She and a team of experts had concluded that fruits and vegetables were the most important foods to eat, but when their pyramid came back from the Secretary’s office, it had been revised, emphasizing grains as the most important food.  Apparently, when the meat industry heard about this, they put the pressure on for meats to be better represented. [Recently the food pyramid has undergone a further transformation to MyPlate].

During her tenure at the USDA, Ms. Light had created a nutrition course for the Red Cross.  In the course, she cited several foods that had direct links to cancer.  She states that she was approached by a representative from one of those food industries who offered her $60,000 to drop the word cancer from her coursework.

I applaud Ms. Grayner and Ms. Johnson’s superb documentary.  As more and more information comes out about how our eating habits greatly influence our health, we might just be able to change the course that the food industry has taken in our country.

(As I was “going to press” I came across this link, which I think reflects how the movement for eating right is starting to take off http://www.upworthy.com/i-m-sick-of-rich-people-telling-me-how-to-spend-my-money-but-i-think-this-guy-is?c=ufb1

© Yvonne Behrens, M.Ed  2013

** Following my write up on the documentary Forks Over Knives, I received an e-mail from Julia Grayer, a filmmaker, who along with Gage Johnston, wrote, directed, and produced Chow Down.

…. a smattering of data from around the world suggests the behaviors associated with bulimia and anorexia may be more common in mid-life than previously believed.

The most recent evidence comes from a survey of 1,849 women age 50 and up, the results of which were published last week in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

With our society’s focus on Thin being In, it may not be surprising that anorexia and bulimia would be found across the spectrum of age.  But according to these studies, stress is a key contributor.

Experts say that major transitions in the lives of middle-aged women across America – including failed marriages, job loss, children and financial difficulties – can rekindle eating disorders that begun years before or even bring them on for the first time, though this is a rarity.

Douglas Bunnell, vice president and director of out-patient clinical services at The Renfrew Center, told MSNBC: ‘It’s rare that an eating disorder shows up completely out of the blue in mid-life. The more common scenario is the resurgence of a life-long problem’

As to how prevalent eating disorders are among older women, that is a hard question to gauge because it is not a topic easily admitted by those caught in the cycle of eating and purging or starving themselves.

Despite the growing attention, experts say the problem is likely underreported, partly because adult women disguise behaviors such as purging, and partly because eating disorders typically aren’t on the radar screen of doctors who care for this age group.

“Eating disorders are still in the closet to a large extent, especially for adult women,” says Margo Maine, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in private practice in West Hartford, Connecticut, who specializes in treating the disorders. “Adult women have such shame about admitting it.”

Body image looms large in most women’s lives.  It may not be surprising that with the onset of menopause and the weight gain that is associated with that period of time, women start to feel less secure about how they project to the larger society.

According to Cynthia Bulik, Ph.D, Director of the eating disorder program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,

The changes associated with menopause are perfectly natural, but they aren’t always easy to reconcile with catchphrases like “30 is the new 50″ or the day-to-day demands of modern life.

Many middle-aged women are juggling child rearing and work responsibilities, or caring for aging parents. That can leave little time for planning healthy meals or exercising, at a stage of life when the amount of exercise needed to maintain one’s weight — let alone drop a few pounds — goes up.

“As a culture, we live in a very, very stressful time, and for women this is even more so, because our roles have changed so dramatically,” says Maine, coauthor of “The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to be Perfect.

This is also a period of time when a divorce can be devastating and a woman in her ’50′s may not feel as good about the way she looks as she did in her ’20′s.  Her belief in finding a new mate may be eroded merely by her age.  Or the stress of losing her partner to death may undermine her sense of her place in life and, in turn, her sense of self-esteem.  It may be that the woman was never satisfied with the way she looked and wants to and always has wanted to just disappear.  Whatever may be the cause, eating disorders are still a problem.

The standard treatment for disordered eating typically includes psychotherapy, as well as counseling about nutrition and eating habits. Women need to be proactive about seeking care, Maine says, since doctors — and especially primary care physicians — often overlook problematic eating behaviors in older women.

And although it was totally acceptable among the wealthy class of Ancient Rome to purge one’s food after a major food binge,  we are not Ancient Rome and our lifestyles are nothing like that of Ancient Rome.  Maybe these are the warning signs to re-think how we choose to spend our time and what is acceptable as a lifestyle.

© Yvonne Behrens, M.Ed  2013

Although Ms.Bennett had some issues with Mr. Brill, she states:

Nevertheless, “Bitter Pill” is the best damned report about the sorry state of the U.S. Health care industry I’ve ever seen (and I read a LOT about health care).

What makes it so good is its clarity. It is filled with case and interview details, comparisons among costs, charges and profits, and written not for lawyers, doctors or policy wonks with the intention to obfuscate, but for you and me, the average reader.

Plus, it reads like a good novel in the sense that you can’t wait to get to the next paragraph, the next page. By the end, Brill shows what we old folks already know – that in health care delivery and in cost control, Medicare beats private coverage every time.

Brill’s conclusions about what to do to rein in health care costs appear to me to be weak but I want to spend more time considering them. What’s important, however, is that he gives us plenty of information to use as a basis for an honest, public conversation about how to change American health care.

Not that I’m holding my breath given the power of the medical industry lobby.

from the article, Ms. Bennett shares some interesting statistics.  According to Mr. Brill:

we spend more on health care than the next 10 biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia.

We may be shocked at the $60 billion price tag for cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy. We spent almost that much last week on health care.

Medicare pays $11.02 for a CBC [complete blood count] in Connecticut. Hospital finance people argue vehemently that Medicare doesn’t pay enough and that they lose as much as 10% on an average Medicare patient…..But even if the Medicare price should be, say, 10% higher, it’s a long way from $11.02 plus 10% to $157.61.” [which the hospital charges for the same test.]

In 2008, Gregory Demske, an assistant inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, told a Senate committee that ‘physicians routinely receive substantial compensation from medical-device companies through stock options, royalty agreements, consulting agreements, research grants and fellowships.’”

MD Anderson’s charge of $7 each for “ALCOHOL PREP PAD.” This is a little square of cotton used to apply alcohol to an injection. A box of 200 can be bought online for $1.91.”

”More than $280 billion will be spent this year on prescription drugs in the U.S. If we paid what other countries did for the same products, we would save about $94 billion a year.”

Ms. Bennett concludes:

Brill’s report reinforces more vividly what others before him have shown many times over – that what is wrong with our health care system is not Medicare, it’s the private sector.

When I googled Steve Brill’s article, there were pages and pages of respondents from around the United States.  Most seemed to support the contents of Mr. Brill’s article.  Although I have as yet to read it myself, I do look forward to it.   I quote Ms. Bennett’s response to the article because in reading her reflections on Mr. Brill’s article, they  reflected my concerns about our healthcare system.

© Yvonne Behrens, M.Ed  2013

Female death rates before age 75 actually rose in 43% of U.S. counties – including a forested swath of west-central and northern Wisconsin – between 1992 and 2006, according to a UW-Madison Population Health Institute study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs.

Apparently

Which part of the country you live in may matter, too. For women, living in counties in the South and West was associated with a 6% higher mortality rate than living in the Northeast, according to the study.

The article continues:

Meanwhile, death rates among men declined in every Wisconsin county, and throughout much of the country

However, Yesterday, I read another article that is claiming that life expectancy is going up at least in certain socio-economic circles.  It turns out that

those gains have accrued overwhelmingly to society’s higher socioeconomic status individuals. Working class life expectancy has largely stagnated

According to the article, access to good healthcare, which can be expensive, becomes inaccessible for individuals who don’t make a certain amount of money.  Another reason for the disparity between life expectancy among the rich and the poor is that the poorer citizen may be exposed to “negative environmental health risks” in far greater numbers than their richer counterparts.  Where they might find housing they can afford may expose them to more pollutants, for example.  Also, the food one eats certainly has an influence and fast foods or foods in the grocery stores that are cheap do not have the same nutritional values than, let’s say, an organic vegetable from Whole Foods which costs $5 a pound.

So now we have two articles. The first says that women’s health is causing an increase in mortality.  The second says that socio economic levels influence mortality.  Then today I saw an AARPBulletin article that claimed that

“Americans are in poorer health and are dying sooner than the rest of the industrialized world….A 2011 study of 17 industrialized countries…found that American men, whose life expectancy is 75.6 years, ranked last, and U.S. women, at 80.7 years, ranked 16th.”

These findings were based on a study ordered by the National Institute of Health which clearly showed

what they called “a pervasive pattern of shorter lives and poor health” crossing all (author’s emphasis) socioeconomic lines.

In the meanwhile, those folks on Capitol Hill continue to insist that the baby boomers are going to live longer and deplete the Medicare/Social Security bank.  So rather than raise taxes, we should cut back on these two “entitlements”   Hunh?  The logic these “lawmakers” spew makes less and less sense as each day goes by.  Oops I guess I am getting off track here.

And there was in fact an article in the Washington Post, albeit last year, that stated that findings from reviews of death certificates in the 50 states and the District of Columbia found that death rates were down and life expectancy was up.  It was probably this article that our “lawmakers” saw and, to be fair, there is a real possibility, given the numbers that make up the baby boomers, that mortality and/or chronic health issues are more likely to be on the increase.

According to a study done for the Gerontological Society of America

It is surprising that, given the socioeconomic, medical, and public health advantages of Baby Boomers throughout their lives, they are not doing considerably better on all counts.

And, one would have to concur with this logical conclusion:

A recent report by the Institute of Medicine on the future of disability in America (Field & Jette, 2007) suggests that despite these improvements, the numbers of adults with disabilities will likely swell in the coming years as the large Baby Boom generation—those born during the years 1946–1964—reaches the ages associated with the highest rates of morbidity and disability. Undoubtedly, such a trend would have important implications for the provision of medical and social services, for the ability of future older adults to participate fully in society, including the workplace, and more generally for their quality of life. However, although the number of adults reaching older ages and thus experiencing elevated risks for debilitating conditions will certainly grow, there is debate about whether the Baby Boom cohort will enter later life with better or worse age-specific rates of morbidity and disability than earlier cohorts.

And, if one googles health and the baby boomer, pages of studies come up citing that baby boomers are less healthy than their parents or grandparents were.

In the end, there seem to be as many studies and opinions about mortality among the aging in the U.S. as there are publications willing to write about the topic.  As for me, well, I live by the belief system that “Until my time comes, nothing can harm me.  When my time comes, nothing can protect me.”

© Yvonne Behrens, M.Ed  2013

I guess I have become quite cynical in my old age because it finally dawned on me that this past weekend, there had been a large gathering of people in Washington to protest any further drilling for oil on our lands.  According to a friend of mine who attended, there were around 40,000 people who braved very frigid weather  to protest the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to U.S. And so  I concluded that the oil companies were raising the prices at the gas stations so that people would “buy into” the idea that drilling on our own lands would provide cheaper gasoline.  What better way to make the point than in people’s wallets.

According to U.S. News and World Report:

There’s no business on the planet that gushes forth more profit than selling oil — nothing even close.

In 2007, Exxon beat its own one-year old record of the biggest corporate profits ever by 3 percent.  If Exxon were a country, it would exceed the gross domestic product of nearly two thirds of the 183 nations in the World Bank’s economic rankings.

The article further asserts that at that time, Exxon’s profits were 80% higher than General Electric, once considered one of the most successful companies in the United States.

The most recent quarterly earnings (ie December 2012) for ExxonMobil shows a revenue of $449.89 billion with a profit margin of 9.98% or $41 billion in profits.  Astoundingly enough, even with these kinds of numbers, Exxon gets tax breaks.  Not only that, but they have the arrogance to gripe about the fact that President Obama is making noises of taking those tax breaks away.

In an article written by Katarzyna Klimasinska and Jim Snyder for Bloomberg News,

Chief Executive Officer Rex. W. Tillerson and four counterparts defended the $21 billion in U.S. tax breaks that Democrats are seeking to recapture to reduce the federal deficit.

The Democrats’ proposal would raise about $13 billion by blocking the five largest oil and gas companies from receiving a domestic-manufacturing deduction for exploration and extraction in the U.S……[and] generate $6.5 billion by curtailing the oil companies’ ability to claim tax credits for royalty payments made to foreign governments.

Unfortunately, and this is probably for another article, much of the drilling that goes on by these huge corporations are in impoverished parts of the world like Angola or Nigeria.  We, on the most part, are ignorant of what goes on over there.
Because there are no stringent regulations in place with regard to environmental soundness, ecological areas are destroyed by the drilling that these companies do.   It is not our backyard and we are so busy interacting in our own environment, we don’t have the time or take the time to look at what “we” are doing in other people’s backyards.

People in these parts of the world are displaced from their homes if their homes happen to be sitting on a site that may produce crude oil.  Some people are even killed and the villages destroyed.  These are terrible realities.

And last, what we have done to our environment in order to have access to this oil and the luxury of mobility is no minor topic.  Whether we are talking oil spills on our coasts or acid rain destroying forests, the introduction of this “black gold” has done more to destroy than to create.  I will be called an extremist for making such a statement, but it is true and we are becoming more and more cognizant of this fact every day.  Unfortunately, I think it may be too late to reverse the damage done.

© Yvonne Behrens, M.Ed  2013

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHAcy4SNVbo

I am placing this in the boomer blog because clearly, Social Security is the next big thing facing boomers.

© Yvonne Behrens, M.Ed  2013