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Dave Hughes: Senior Housing Needs to Increase Its Diversity Competency
Dave Hughes of RetireFabulous.com Senior Housing Needs to Increase Its Diversity Competency
Changing Workforce Demographics Signal a Change in Retiree DemographicsBy Dave Hughes
During their working years, the Baby Boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) experienced a dramatic environmental shift in workplace demographics and culture. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, employers have become more attuned to the need to provide workplaces that are more welcoming of career-oriented women and diverse people of all sorts. Corporate America and academia, in particular, implemented policies and training programs which foster inclusion for employees of various races, nationalities, religions, and physical abilities, as well as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people who want to be able to live and work more openly.
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The Twist Podcast #59: Spaceships Galore, Trigger Tweets, and Stormy with a Chance of Lawsuit
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we talk about the news, spaceships in the neighborhood, Stormy Daniels porn spectacular, indigenous food trends, and revenge tweeting.Enjoy The Twist on Libsyn, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and right here at The Twist Podcast page.
Copyright 2018 MadeMark Publishing
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The Return of LGBTSr (If not Now, When?)
Mark McNease, EditorLife is not linear. Love is eternal. Strength is essential.
An excellent grief counselor once told me grief is not linear—it does not build, crescendo, then recede and leave us to move on with our lives. It comes and goes, sometimes for many years.
I look at life that way. It’s not, and need not be lived, as a linear experience: young, older, old. Here, there, gone. Life can be made of cycles and phases, and letting go of something doesn’t mean we won’t do it, or hold it, or be it again.
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The Savvy Senior: How to Get Cash For Your Life Insurance Policy
By Jim MillerDear Savvy Senior,
I have a life insurance policy that I’ve been paying on for years that I really don’t need any longer. I’ve been thinking about letting it lapse, but I’ve heard that I can actually sell it for a nice payout. What can you tell me about this?
Interested In Selling
Dear Interested,
Selling a life insurance policy, even a term life policy that you don’t want or need any longer – a transaction known as a “life settlement” – has become a popular option among retirees in recent years that could use some extra cash. Here’s how it works.
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Gay Travelers Magazine: Vinales Valley, Cuba – Touring the UNESCO World Heritage Site
This article first appeared at Gay Travelers Magazine, reprinted with PermissionBy Steven Skelley and Thomas Routzong
On our second trip to explore Cuba, we decided to venture outside Havana to the amazing Vinales Valley. We booked an 11 hour tour called “The Vinales Valley – A UNESCO World Heritage Site” and we discovered a Cuban treasure.
The Vinales National Park is a Cuban National Monument. More than 90 percent of the property is in the hands of private owners. Thirty percent is owned by individual farmers and another 62 percent is owned by the National Association of Small Farmers. If you want to see the real Cuba, this is the place.
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Stephanie Mott: The Kansas Republican Party
Stephanie Mott By Stephanie Mott
And ultimately, an ideology that says you can determine my gender identity is broken and is causing a lot of pain, and that’s why it’s important to bring us back to what we know to be true and good.
The Kansas Republican Party has lost its mind, and its heart, and its soul. Not that this is news in Kansas right now, rather more of a status quo, but if any doubt still remained, the recently approved resolution on “sexuality” removed any remnants of even the most basic humanity.
In case you missed it, KRP approved, by voice vote, this resolution completely inaccurate and horribly destructive to transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) Kansans, and then turned around and absurdly proposed it was the product of love.
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Rod Hensel: It’s Time for New York State to Step Up for LGBT Seniors
Rod Hensel By Rod Hensel
The Gayging AdvocateOur LGBT seniors who are still out and about and active need to be willing show they know how to post on Facebook and use a phone when election time draws near. We’re not even asking for money, just the right to live with dignity and pride.
On the west coast, California gets it. Washington state gets it. It’s time for New York State to take a leadership role on the east coast and show they “get it” too.
The “it” is legislation requiring professional caregivers — especially those in nursing homes and senior housing facilities — to take a course on the special needs of LGBT seniors so their charges can be out, open and comfortable in their senior years.
You can call it “cultural competency” or “sensitivity training” or whatever you wish, but the fact is LGBT people of my generation are scared to just be themselves and are going back into the closet in their autumn years.
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: The Six-Foot Table Solution
Photo by Sue Hardesty By Lee Lynch
The Amazon TrailYes, we can solve all our problems with six-foot tables, even world peace.
I’m surprised no one thought of it before. It was my fairy goddaughter (FGD) who opened my eyes to the concept. She, also a writer, was the one who designated me her fairy godmother, in my opinion a great honor.
She was in the process of moving into her new house and a little bit overwhelmed. Or perhaps scared silly at the gargantuan task ahead. All her possessions were in a jumble. Like most of us landing in a new home, she didn’t know where to start.
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6 Questions for Author Paula Martinac
Paula Martinac By Mark McNease
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing author Paula Martinac. Her latest novel, The Ada Decades, tells the story of Ada Shook, a librarian who begins the book as a child discovering a shocking postcard image in her father’s possession, and ends seven decades later as a reluctant witness to history. Told in eleven interconnected stories, the novel examines issues of race, class, and the slow climb toward LGBT equality in a pre-Stonewall world.
See Paula’s in-depth answers to ‘6 Questions’ below, and mark your calendars: I’ll be chatting with Paula on a podcast sometime in the next month or two. I’m excited to continue our conversation. For now …
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Book Review: The Toronto Book of the Dead, by Adam Bunch
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm“The Toronto Book of the Dead” by Adam Bunch
c.2017, Dundurn $16.99
U.S. and Canada 423 pagesWatch your step!
Be careful where you tread; you don’t want to disturb anything important beneath the soil. Watch your feet; be mindful of where you put them. As you’ll see in “The Toronto Book of the Dead” by Adam Bunch, you’re not the first to walk on hallowed grounds.
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One Thing or Another: The Kids Are Not All Right
It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.By Mark McNease
Imagine the despair young people feel today. Imagine the frustration at being governed by the old who ignore their fears, anxieties, terrors, hopes, dreams and concerns …
Not long ago I was among those crusty older people who bemoaned and occasionally belittled younger generations for effectively forgetting I’d existed. As a sixty-year-old man (I tend to round up), I was embittered to know so many people even a decade younger did not share my memories of the devastation of AIDS, of my government’s indifference to that plague, of Madonna’s performance in a wedding dress at the Grammys, or of the celebration in the streets of West Hollywood following Bill Clinton’s election. It was, I insisted, a matter of preserving history, without admitting it was as much my personal history I wanted preserved as that of my country or tribe.
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6 Questions for Author Michael Nava
Michael Nava By Mark McNease
As a mystery writer myself, it shouldn’t be surprising I jumped at the chance to interview Michael Nava, an icon in the genre. His seminal Henry Rios series was heralded as the gold standard when the books came out, beginning with The Little Death in 1986.
In communicating with Michael for this interview, I discovered we were both in Los Angeles during the same time period, and both considered queer bookstore A Different Light (Silver Lake location) central to our writing and reading lives. This December we’ll see the release of Lay Your Sleeping Head, from Kórima Press (now available for pre-order), a reimagined and substantially rewritten version of that first book. I had the great pleasure of reading an advance copy, and was struck on the first page by its literary strength, its meticulous, rich detail and the aching humanity of its characters, as well as its finely crafted plot. Nava, as was declared of him in the New York Times, was, and is, “one of the best.” I’m delighted to share his answers to ‘6 Questions’. (And for all you audiobook fans, check out his Henry Rios series on Audible.)