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Savvy Senior: Is Long-Term Care Insurance Worth It?
By Jim Miller
Dear Savvy Senior,
My husband and I have been thinking about getting a long-term care insurance policy, but we hate the idea of paying expensive monthly premiums for a policy we may never use. Is long-term care insurance worth it?
Approaching Retirement
Dear Approaching,
There are two key factors you need to consider that can help you determine if purchasing a long-term care (LTC) insurance policy is a smart decision for you and your husband. One factor is your financial situation and second is your health history. Currently, around 7.5 million Americans own a policy.
Who Needs LTC Insurance?
As the cost of LTC – which includes nursing home, assisted living and in-home care – continues to rise, it’s important to know that most people pay for LTC either from personal savings or Medicaid when their savings is depleted, or through a LTC insurance policy.
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‘Pine Melody: A Memoir’ by Stacey Meadows Now Available
I knew when I first started helping Stacey Meadows publish her memoir about her son’s death in a car accident that this was something special. The writing is superb, and the emotions are as raw as they could possibly be. It’s both beautiful and devastating, with the promise of acceptance and healing as Stacey recounts her journey with grief. I’ll be giving this to my workshop participants as an example of an outstanding and well-written memoir.
Swerving to avoid a deer on a dark Wisconsin highway in early summer, 22-year old Gabe lost control of the car. His 29 year- old brother, Jonah, singing along with him as he drove, absorbed the full force of the impact with an oncoming pick-up truck driven by the Chief of a First Nation. The crash left Jonah with severe traumatic brain injury, Gabe with a broken femur, and soil samples, meticulously gathered for Jonah’s graduate research project on agroforestry, strewn across the highway.
As general counsel for a Philadelphia medical center, I was competent enough to interact with my sons’ care teams, but lost all semblance of professionalism when neither my legal expertise, search for a medical miracle, nor tenacity of my love was able to bring benefit to Jonah, who lingered in a coma for three months, before dying in hospice. I was left to find a way to carry on for the sake of Jonah’s brothers while handling my own grief and helplessness.
Immersing myself in Jonah’s journals, and memories of his extraordinary, spirit-filled life, my pillars materialized—meditation, yoga, prayer and sailing. With Jonah as my spirit guide, in the bardo and beyond, I navigated pathways between terror and beauty that Jonah had spent his life seeking. Pine Melody is the result of my journey.
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One Thing Or Another Column: Falling for Autumn
By Mark McNease
What better time to add a few new words of introduction to a column about autumn than the day we turned the heat back on! Those sweltering, sticky days of summer are finally behind us, and the mornings are once again greeted from beneath a blanket or quilt. It’s also that time of year, early October, when one day it was 83 degrees, and the next day 65. That maddening fluctuation seems to be behind us, and I can start insulating the window air conditioners and pulling out the thermal socks. It’s also my favorite month, with witches on their way here right now, and a birthday arriving just before them. Autum has arrived, and I’m still falling for it.
I’LL ADMIT IT, I’M A fall guy. We’ve just endured what I and millions like me believe must have been the hottest, longest, muggiest summer on record. Aren’t they all?
I don’t just dislike summer. I don’t just find it uncomfortable, unsettling and unending. I loathe it. Even knowing it would shorten my life by 25 percent, I would gladly get from birth to death without suffering a single blistering July. The only exception was childhood, when summer was my annual escape from the dullness of compulsory education, sadistic teachers, and the torment of other children.
It’s not the events of summer that get to me. Who doesn’t like long weekends at the beach or visiting friends within driving distance? And there are the barbecues, if you happen to have a grill or you’re friends with someone who does, possibly for that reason only. You’ve got swimming pools, water slides, and near-naked bodies to envy and desire. Summer has everything our overworked, underpaid selves long for and anticipate through the frigid dead of winter. But it also has one thing that makes it the time of year I dread from start to finish: the heat.
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The Twist Podcast #305: Shuddering Shutdown, Survey Results, Emma Talks Bad Bunny, and Rick Interviews Filmmaker Oliver Franklin Anderson
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we weather the Epstein shutdown, review the latest Twist survey results, learn all about Bad Bunny from Emma Zoe Lyons, and enjoy Rick’s interview with Wisconsin filmmaker Oliver Franklin Anderson.
THE RESULTS ARE IN!
What’s your favorite genre or type of book to read?
- Literary fiction 50 percent
- Murder Mysteries 40
- Thrillers 30
- Historical Fiction 30
- Nonfiction 30
- Biographies / Memoirs ZERO!
- What’s a book? Zero
- Other (comments) 50
Poetry, Fantasy, Genealogical Mysteries, Spy Novels, Sci-fi and Gay Stuff (could be the same!
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‘Pine Melody – A Memoir’ by Stacey Meadows Now Available!
I’m very pleased to have had the opportunity to help Stacey Meadows publish her memoir ‘Pine Melody.’ It’s about the death of her son Jonah, and her journey through grief. It’s an extraordinary book, and Stacey is an extraordinary person. The Kindle version is out now, with the paperback and hardback coming soon.
Swerving to avoid a deer on a dark Wisconsin highway in summer, 22-year old Gabe lost control of the car. His 29 year- old brother, Jonah, singing along with him as he drove, absorbed the full force of the impact with an oncoming pick-up truck driven by the Chief of a First Nation. The crash left Jonah with severe traumatic brain injury, Gabe with a broken femur, and soil samples, meticulously gathered for Jonah’s graduate research project on agroforestry, strewn across the highway.
As general counsel for a Philadelphia medical center, I was competent enough to interact with my sons’ care teams, but lost all semblance of professionalism when neither my legal expertise, search for a medical miracle, nor tenacity of my love was able to bring benefit to Jonah, who lingered in a coma for three months, before dying in hospice. I was left to find a way to carry on for the sake of Jonah’s brothers while handling my own grief and helplessness.
Immersing myself in Jonah’s journals, and memories of his extraordinary, spirit-filled life, my pillars materialized—meditation, yoga, prayer and sailing. With Jonah as my spirit guide, in the bardo and beyond, I navigated pathways between terror and beauty that Jonah had spent his life seeking. Pine Melody is the result of my journey.
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Savvy Senior: What Seniors Need to Know About This Fall’s Vaccines
By Jim Miller
Dear Savvy Senior,
With a longtime vaccine critic leading the nation’s health departments, can you give me updated information on which vaccines are recommended for Medicare seniors this fall?
Medicare Mary
Dear Mary,
Even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is undergoing major cultural changes and upheaval, the overall fall vaccine recommendations for “older adults” resembles last year, with exception of the Covid shot. Here’s what you should know.
Flu Shots for Seniors
Just as they normally do, the CDC recommends a seasonal flu shot to everyone 6 months of age and older, but it’s especially important for older adults who have weaker immune defenses and have a greater risk of developing dangerous flu complications compared with younger, healthy adults.
For people age 65 and older, there are three different FDA approved flu vaccines (you only need one) that are recommended over traditional flu shots. These include: the Fluzone High-Dose Quadrivalent, Flublok Quadrivalent (recombinant, egg free vaccine), and Fluad Quadrivalent.
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The Weekly Readlines September 25
BIG CUP: THE WEEK’S STOP STORIES
Or maybe just my favorites …
Jimmy Kimmel Rises from the Dead
Free speech lives to laugh another dayStalled Escalator Causes Global Incident
Because everything’s a conspiracy nowRelease of the Epstein Files Gets Closer
218th vote assured after Democratic winShell Case Engravings Starts a Trend
Race to Fit Old Testament On a Bullet Heats UpLGBTQ
Horror Film Digitally Altered In China To Make Gay Couple Straight – The Guardian
As the LGBTQ Youth Population Doubles, Number of Bills Targeting Them Triples – The 74
Stand Bi Me: Launch of Mind’s Bisexuality & Mental Health Resource – Mad In America
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This Week’s Survey: What’s Your Favorite Type or Genre to Read?
This week’s survey:
What’s your favorite type or genre of book to read? Multiple answers okay. -
One Thing or Another Column: Heaven’s Diner
By Mark McNease
After taking a beloved neighbor out Sunday morning to a church she sometimes attends, we headed for breakfast at a diner not far from there. I was reminded, as I regularly am, how much I enjoy these icons of the American culinary tradition. I remember hanging out at Denny’s when I was a teenager (a quasi-diner if looked at from a certain angle), writing anguished confessional poetry in spiral notebooks (keep reading). The poetry’s long gone but I’ve never lost my attraction for the comfort of a good diner, and I never well.
I READ AN ARTICLE ONCE about New York City’s disappearing diner culture. The writer lamented the loss of a sense of community diners gave the city over many decades, falling victim to technological progress, ever-rising rents and changing tastes.
This was one day after ending a visit to relatives by having breakfast in a Richmond, Virginia, diner. When we walked into the place I immediately looked around at the colors inside. The exterior, in stark black and red, told me I could expect something exceptionally diner-ish. The booths were red and black, the tables yellow. The two waitresses were distinctly post-punk, with tattoos and neon hair. The crowd, as is usually the case in diners, consisted of people who knew each other from years of eating there. Only first names were necessary, if names were needed at all. And each of them—men, women and children—looked as if they’d enjoyed lives filled with grits and hash browns, without a single kale salad from cradle to grave. My kind of people.
That may sound odd coming from an older progressive man who spent years living in Los Angeles and New York before moving to the New Jersey woods, but I was forged as a Hoosier in a northern Indiana town, and there are parts of me that cannot be dislodged by having fled to California at nineteen. I don’t regret having had a solid sense of myself before I was exposed to the L.A. lifestyle. I’m happy to have had a clear identity that allowed me to try on others, discarding those that didn’t fit. Beneath it all I am an Indiana kid who loves a crowded diner and a cup of cheap coffee.
Diners have been my idea of stability and comfort ever since I was a fifteen-year-old poet sitting at a lunch counter, filling spiral notebooks with teenage angst while the waitress kept the .25 cent coffee flowing. I like going to diners in most places I visit. There’s a local one two blocks from where I’ll be once I’ve finished this column. I’ll order my favorite—two eggs, toast and turkey bacon, with tomato juice over ice.
The server will know me. The cashier will smile and tell me to sit anywhere. The cooks will be familiar as they move quickly from grill to kitchen window, slapping the bell, “Order up!” There will be lots of people at the tables, and even though I won’t recognize more than a few of them, they will feel like my friends—because a diner is one of the few places in life where it’s possible to believe we’re all in this together.
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Savvy Senior: How to Get Help with Your Medicare Costs
Narration provided by Wondervox
By Jim Miller
Dear Savvy Senior,
Does Medicare offer any financial assistance for struggling seniors? My mom lives primarily on her Social Security survivor benefit and is having a hard time paying her Medicare costs.
Need Assistance
Dear Need,
There are actually several different financial assistance programs that can help Medicare beneficiaries who are having a difficult time paying their out-of-pocket health care costs. Here’s what’s available, along with the eligibility requirements and how to apply.
Medicare Savings Programs
Let’s start with a program that helps pay premiums and out-of-pocket costs for Medicare Parts A and B. It’s called the “Medicare Savings Program,” and it has several different benefit levels for people based on their income and asset level. At its most generous the program will pay your Part A and B premiums and pretty much all your Medicare deductibles, coinsurance and copayments. At its least generous the program will pay just your Part B premium.
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Twist Podcast #304: Kimmel Calamity, New Fan Photo, Reel Time with Emma, and Rick Talks with Muralist Matthew Yerby
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose for the death of free speech, new survey results, a brand new Reel Time with Emma review, and Rick’s conversation with 50-sate muralist Matthew Yerby.
This week’s survey: Which animal friend would you most like to share your life with or already do? Mulitple answers okay.
THE RESULTS ARE IN!
Dogs 63 percent
Cats 63 percent
Birds 9 percent
Fish 18 percent
I don’t like animals ZERO percent!Other (list below):Which animal not listed would you like to share your life with or already do? One person said ‘gay men.’ -
Hunterdon Library Short Story Competition Entry: God’s Teeth (Excerpt and Full Audio Edition)
I’m entering a short story competition for the first time in many years. It’s being held by the Hunterdon Libary System (LINK HERE), primarly through the main branch where I conduct workshops. I also run an adult writers group at the Clinton, NJ, branch. I don’t think it’s appropriate to share more than an excerpt before the competition (and I’m honstly not invested in winning – this is just me doing something I haven’t done since my 40s or earlier). You CAN listen to the audio version at the link above.
It’s called ‘God’s Teeth,’ and it’s about a woman who’d had a lifelong belief in God, only to see it shaken after the death of her husband. It’s one of my favorite stories, and I hope you’ll enjoy it. Once the contest is over in November I’ll offer the entire piece.
GOD’S TEETH
Miriam had always believed in God. His presence in her life had been a fact since she was a small child barely able to speak. She remembered looking up from her crib—she could not have been more than a year old—and seeing his face shimmering in front of her as he looked down and smiled, showing his magnificent teeth. She’d made the mistake of telling a friend about it once in high school, and the girl had laughed at her, saying it was her dad or her uncle or big brother she’d seen. There could be no other explanation. Miriam said, No, it was God, and her friend asked how she would know the difference when she was only a baby then.
“I just knew,” she said. “I knew my father’s face, and my uncle’s face and my brother’s face, and this was not it. This was bright and . . . what’s the word? . . . luminous, self-luminous, illuminating. It made its own light, his face, and the smile was so big I was part of it, like it covered me, and I reached up —”
“This is pretty detailed for a baby’s dream,” the friend said.