Women after 50: Laying awake at night

I have a student loan. It's a big one, which I refer to as my mortgage. Until I went back to school for the big degree, I was pretty much debt-free, except for my car, which I paid off early - twice.

For most of my life I cleared all of my debts at one point during the year. Sometimes it was in September. Sometimes in June. I always celebrated.

When I went back to school, I was tight-fisted with a buck - careful about spending money that wasn't really mine. One day I was talking with my program advisor about the cost of books. He said, "Give yourself permission to read. Reading and buying books and keeping up with the conversations and writing your response to them develops your thinking. You have to decide if you want to give yourself permission to read."

I've always been a reader - just not the kind that schools cultivate. I like to read trash and mysteries and the mystical books mentioned in Dan Brown's latest novel, "The Lost Symbol," which I'm reading now. My advisor was a good guy, so I bit on his advice. I started briefing myself more broadly than ever, and keeping up with the latest intellectual conversations about journalism, listening, writing, editing and life in general (the most fun stuff). That bit of wonder put me in deep credit card dept.

I've finally paid that off. It took years, in part because this bit of wonder led to international travel: Japan, Prague, islands in the South China Sea. It also stimulated my curiousity. Today I more easily take an interest in just about anything except violence. I'm much more sensitive to violent communication now.

Today's Huffington Post offers an article by Barbara Hannah Grufferman about what women fear the most after 50. Read it here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-hannah-grufferman/life-after-50-womens-wors_b_861659.html?ncid=wsc-huffpost-cards-image

She's right: Her survey is more revealing than observations found in many scholarly studies. When I went back to school, it was something long-dreamed of - a purely intellectual desire fulfilled - a selfish act of self-cultivation. I thought I'd teach, and tried that, but doing that in the United States put lines in my face and gave me indigestion. It was just sickening. Overseas, I was appreciated and treated with high regard and respect. I've heard the same from other university professors.

Grufferman's article says after 50 women lay awake at night wondering how they will support themselves when they are old. Many wonder if they will be homeless seniors. It seems plausible.

She cites compelling statistics and comments from women responding on Facebook and Twitter. Personally, I am in dept to my professors at the University of Maryland in College Park, National-Louis University formerly in Evanston, Illinois, and at Roosevelt University in Chicago. I lay awake wondering how I'm going to pay back my student loan - which is my mortgage.

And I think fondly on President Barack Obama, who created relief for women like me who bet on themselves with a pile of cash and hope and the faith that they would make good on their student loans. After 30 years, my loan will be forgiven even if the total has not been met.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't gone back to school, hadn't amassed so much debt. Sometimes. The debt pushes me into a new adventure, one I wouldn't pursue otherwise. That, too, is a gift.

Where would you be if it weren't for ???? I'm curious to know.

Should We Preserve the First Draft of History?

Interesting article:
Preserving news in the digital environment: Mapping the newspaper industry in transition

http://www.crl.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/pages/LCreport_final.pdf

Personally, I would be willing to pay taxes to help the Library of Congress archive regional and national newspapers. Students in elementary school on up through life-long learners tap the stories for their value in revealing who we are as a people as well as how something started and why - which helps people be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

A while back I was researching the case brought by Louise Cobell against the U.S. government on behalf of the Blackfeet Nation and other Native American Nations. It focused on land-grabs by the U.S. government of property given to Native Americans. It was a swindle, something later proven in court and a considerable sum of taxpayer dollars went to compensate for the corruption revealed.

I was able to see how something like that could happen by digging into the Library of Congress' microfilm archive of newspapers between the 1860s on up to the present. The records represented thoughts from one end of the country to the other and everything in between.

That kind of archive helps us be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Allocating taxes for this noble purpose serves more than money can buy. It's not like paying taxes to provide four security guards, two cars and a chauffeur for outgoing Mayor Ritchie Daley in Chicago for the rest of his life.

Fun and Interesting Science Journalism and Global Warming Discussion

FABULOUS!!!

On LinkedIn today and for the past 10 days, the Science & Technology Media Professionals have been discussing this question: Has Global Warming Propaganda Killed Science Journalism?

There are some laugh-out-loud moments for their truth and irony, along with fun serious humor. A must for all reporters, editors and writers seeking to put humor in their writing about science and the environment.

Read it at:
http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&srchtype=discussedNews&gid=74415&item=52438422&type=member&trk=eml-anet_dig-b_pd-ttl-cn

Capturing New Markets by Stephen Wunker

There's a reason why some ideas catch on quickly, take the market by storm, and others take an eternity to get noticed. Stephen Wunker offers eight factors causing an idea to catch on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1NkUJRqLT8&feature=channel_video_title

Recovering journalist off the wagon

Like the sharks in Finding Nemo, I have been a recovering journalist for three years. That said, I'm having a press release for lunch today!

I'll be back on the wagon for dinner, coaching how to write a compelling book review and use humor to engage readers. After that, deep diving into Mental Health and current treatments for it, for an upcoming reference encyclopedia published by ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press. I'll be writing entries, and may be editing, too, down the road.

National Park in Japan, 2009



Some of the subjects are new to me, though one feeds an idea I've long wanted to bring to life. The treatment approach is called "ecopsychology." The idea I've wanted to bring to life is to create a place where people and the land cultivate each other. It's a kind of a school.

I need help developing the idea, finding the right "board of directors," and creating an action plan. This place, which I've always envisioned on a foothill, is a solution to problems of mental health, violence, prevalent negative feelings and cynicism about self and others, and more.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, offers a case study, cited in the back of author Richard Louv's book, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder." In the section, Notes from the Field, Louv tells of Riverside Park, which runs along the Milwaukee River through deep urban everything.

He writes, "when this park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of American landscape architecture, and established in the late 19ths century, it was a tree-lined valley with a waterfall, a hill for sledding, and places for skating and swimming, fishing and boating. But in the 1970s, topography was flattened to create sports fields. Pollution made the river unfit for human contact, park maintenance declined, families fled, violent crime and drug dealing moved in. Riverside Park became associated with blight, not beauty. Then, in the 1990s, a remarkable chain of events occurred. A dam on the river was removed, a natural water flow flushed out contaminants. A retired biophysicist started a small outdoor-education program which evolved into the nonprofit Urban Ecology Center, annually hosting more than 18,000 student visits from 23 area schools. ...In Riverside Park, nature was not the problem; it was the solution."

I'd like to carry on that work, and make it grow. If you'd like to get together with me on this, please write to me at DashonDeadline@aol.com.

Theft and Mutilation at the National Archives

Once upon a time Sandy Berger returned some documents he lifted from the National Archives and Records Administration while the United States National Security Advisor under President Bill Clinton.

He handed them to an archivist hired later by the Center for Information Policy at the University of Maryland in College Park, where I was director of research. The archivist became the star researcher on our NARA project focusing on ways to prevent document theft.

More recently, a noted historian corrupted a vital piece of history in NARA's holdings. He confessed to changing the date on a letter pardoning a Union soldier in the Civil War to make it look like one of President Abraham Lincoln's last official actions on the day he was assassinated, wrote David Ferriero, currently the 10th archivist of the United States, in the March/April 2011 issue of Archival Outlook, published by the Society of American Archivists. Doing so gained fame for the document and the now-disgraced historian.

If you see a priceless document you believe was lost by or stolen from the National Archives, please report it. To contact NARA, write to: MissingDocuments@nara.gov, or call 301-837-3500 or 1-800-786-2551. You also may write to: Missing Documents, Office of the Inspector General, National Archives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, Maryland   20740.

Many thanks. Ferriero recently tightened security at NARA.

Coming Soon

Some things of beauty to inspire and delight:

Guest blog by Danell D. Miles: What can be done to stop youth gang violence?

Guest blog by Manuel Mijocevic: The Big Game

also by Manuel Mijocevic: It's not the critic who counts: Literary analysis of "To Kill a Mockingbird"