2019-09-10 – One for the road – New York woman on three-year car trip doc­u­ment­ing ran­dom acts of kind­ness

Montreal Gazette, Canada Jul 9, 2019 C2 CATHY FREE SARAH HENRY Mary Latham with Old Blue, the Subaru once owned by her mother that she’s driv­ing across the U.S. look­ing for the good­ness in peo­ple. Al­most three years later, she has only seven states left to visit.

Af­ter Mary Latham’s mother died in 2013, the New York wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher spent sev­eral years feel­ing adrift, won­der­ing how long her emo­tions would feel so raw. Her mind would rou­tinely go back to some­thing her mom, Pa­tri­cia Latham, had told her af­ter the 2012 Sandy Hook mass school shoot­ing in New­town, Conn.

“I’d been feel­ing ter­ri­bly sad about it, and she said, ‘Mary, there are al­ways go­ing to be tragedies in the world, but there will al­ways be more good — you just have to look for it,’” Latham, 32, re­called.

To hon­our her mom’s legacy of look­ing for good­ness, she came up with a plan: She would pack a suit­case with sev­eral changes of clothes and hit the road in her mom’s blue Subaru Out­back to visit all 50 states in search of sim­ple acts of kind­ness.

Latham de­cided to call her road trip pro­ject “More Good” and doc­u­ment all of her stops on a web­site, with the goal of pub­lish­ing a book to do­nate to hospi­tal wait­ing rooms coast-to-coast.

On Oct. 29, 2016, she set out in “Old Blue” from Long Is­land, tak­ing along dozens of “More Good” T-shirts to hand out to peo­ple who fol­lowed her jour­ney on­line and agreed to host her for two or three nights.

Al­most three years later, other than oc­ca­sional week­end flights home to Long Is­land to pho­to­graph wed­dings and re­plen­ish her funds and her en­ergy, Latham is still at it, with only seven more states to go on her road trip, in­clud­ing Alaska and Hawaii.

“My mom would be im­pressed,” said Latham, who has thus far stayed with about 140 dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies, mainly in small towns along Amer­ica’s back roads. Peo­ple who fol­low her jour­ney on her web­site in­vite her to stay in their guest rooms and re­fer her to peo­ple to in­ter­view in their com­mu­ni­ties who brighten others’ lives.

“I spend a lot of time alone in my car and it can get lonely,” said Latham. “So to stay with peo­ple and have a home-cooked meal and hear their sto­ries of kind­ness pro­vides a big boost. I haven’t had a sin­gle bad ex­pe­ri­ence with any of them.”

In Rhode Is­land, a bank teller told her about the time she’d had a bad day at work and a cus­tomer asked if she was OK, said Latham. When the teller said she’d be fine if she ate some M & Ms af­ter work, the cus­tomer bought a bag of the can­dies and re­turned to slip them un­der the teller’s bank win­dow.

In In­di­ana, she met a woman who was mo­lested as a child and now takes in dozens of fos­ter chil­dren with spe­cial needs.

“She hopes to pro­vide them with the hap­pi­ness she never ex­pe­ri­enced,” said Latham.

Among her most mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ences, she said, was a stay in Cape El­iz­a­beth, Maine (mi­nus a bliz­zard) at a 100-year-old farm­house.

“This woman reached out to me on Face­book, and when I looked at her photo I thought, ‘This could be the nicest woman in the world or a se­rial killer,’” Latham re­called with a laugh. “The photo showed her rid­ing her bike with a puppy in the bas­ket.”

Latham was de­lighted (and re­lieved) when she ar­rived to smell the aroma of freshly baked blue­berry muffins drift­ing through the front screen door.

“I pushed the door open and was in­stantly smacked with this warmth,” she said. “There was a wood stove burn­ing and the puppy from that bas­ket ran out to greet me. And then the woman host­ing me gave me a big hug. Although we were strangers, we sat and talked like old friends.”

She had sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences with a fam­ily in In­di­ana who fixed her flat tire and then put her up for three nights, and a man who re­cently had a dou­ble-lung trans­plant who left a $20 bill in her back­pack.

Some of her hosts are now her friends, like Wal­ter and Ava Butzu, teach­ers from Ann Ar­bor, Mich. In June they in­tro­duced her to three dif­fer­ent peo­ple she in­ter­viewed for her book: a French Holo­caust sur­vivor, a col­lege grad­u­ate who worked his way from poverty to med­i­cal school, and a for­mer Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan band di­rec­tor who spoke elo­quently about his decades of teach­ing. She now has hun­dreds of hours of in­ter­views to tran­scribe for her book.

“We were thrilled to open up our home to Mary and con­nect over meals, walks and yoga,” Ava Butzu, 49, said. “When she left, my hus­band, who can be a bit jaded at times, said, ‘I miss Mary,’ and talked about how Mary sees the world as a place of hope and op­ti­mism.”

Latham’s long jour­ney has at times been hard on her emo­tion­ally, added Butzu, who spent an evening talk­ing to her about the chal­lenges she’s faced on the road.

“She’s stay­ing with peo­ple she’s never met, of­fer­ing her­self up to hear peo­ple tell their sto­ries of loss, tragedy and hard­ships,” said Butzu. “She knows it’s tak­ing a toll on her body, but she re­mains dogged that she will com­plete her goal.”

Latham said she never dis­cusses pol­i­tics with the peo­ple she stays with or in­ter­views.

“I’ve been in Trump homes, Hil­lary homes, Bernie homes, athe­ist homes, Chris­tian homes and Jewish homes,” she said. “… For me, there is re­ally only one un­der­ly­ing com­mon fac­tor: They’re good peo­ple who want to be a part of some­thing good.”

2019-07-09 – The seven A’s of active ag­ing: tips for se­niors’ fit­ness

These tips will help se­niors to stay fit, feel bet­ter and live longer, hap­pier lives

Montreal Gazette, Canada Jul 8, 2019 A7

CH­ERYL BROWNE

It’s no se­cret that ac­tiv­ity ben­e­fits se­niors in any num­ber of ways, and the re­sponses to a new ques­tion­naire point to seven tips that can help ag­ing Cana­di­ans get mov­ing.

With fit­ness ex­perts lament­ing the large num­ber of in­ac­tive se­niors, Jor­dan De­neau, a grad­u­ate stu­dent from the fac­ulty of ki­ne­si­ol­ogy at the Univer­sity of Wind­sor, asked 19 active and in­ac­tive Cana­dian men 75 years of age and older what it takes to get them and their peers mov­ing.

Ex­er­cise for older adults can mean fewer med­i­cal in­ter­ven­tions and more in­de­pen­dence as the decades add up.

Stud­ies sug­gest that fit se­niors are more men­tally acute, suf­fer fewer falls, are less so­cially iso­lated, less prone to de­pres­sion and demon­strate a slower rate of bi­o­log­i­cal ag­ing.

The re­sponses to De­neau’s ques­tions fell into seven dis­tinct cat­e­gories, which he pack­aged into the 7 As of Active Ag­ing.

AF­FORD­ABLE

Given that re­tire­ment brings with it a fixed in­come, a gym mem­ber­ship can seem in­dul­gent.

And de­spite low cost and ef­fec­tive ex­er­cise op­tions like walk­ing, cy­cling and swim­ming, there’s a per­cep­tion that join­ing a gym is a pre­req­ui­site to get­ting fit.

Fit­ness classes and mem­ber­ships at lo­cal mu­nic­i­pal re­cre­ation cen­tres tend to be less ex­pen­sive than a fit­ness club. And some clubs have se­niors’ dis­counts or non-prime-time mem­ber­ships that can re­sult in sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings.

AVAIL­ABLE

While many mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties of­fer fit­ness classes de­signed for se­niors, not ev­ery­one who could ben­e­fit from the classes is aware of what’s avail­able. Com­mu­ni­ties need to reach out to older ci­ti­zens with a cam­paign de­signed specif­i­cally to cap­ture their in­ter­est and mo­ti­vate them to ex­er­cise.

Many small cities and towns don’t have mu­nic­i­pal re­cre­ation cen­tres, which makes it harder for se­niors to find out what’s avail­able lo­cally.

They can check for lo­cal mall walk­ing groups or con­tact city hall for a list of recre­ational ac­tiv­i­ties sup­ported by the town(s) in the area.

AC­CES­SI­BLE

Se­niors with mo­bil­ity is­sues or with­out the use of a car ap­pre­ci­ate ex­er­cise op­por­tu­ni­ties that are easy to get to.

This is es­pe­cially im­por­tant dur­ing the win­ter months when ice and snow make get­ting around dif­fi­cult.

Prox­im­ity to a bus stop, op­por­tu­ni­ties to car­pool, build­ings with­out a lot of stairs and ex­tra at­ten­tion paid to clear­ing the en­trance dur­ing the win­ter months make it eas­ier for older adults to use the fa­cil­i­ties.

Also im­por­tant is the ac­ces­si­bil­ity of the classes and sched­ule, with op­tions avail­able for novice and ex­pe­ri­enced ex­er­cis­ers, as well as plenty of choices in the work­outs of­fered, in­clud­ing sports such as pick­le­ball and ac­tiv­i­ties like dance, tai chi and chair aer­o­bics, among other ac­tiv­i­ties.

ADAPT­ABLE

The 55-plus crowd is di­verse, not just in its in­ter­ests but also in the range of health and mo­bil­ity is­sues they face.

So not only do work­outs and ex­er­cise rou­tines need to be tar­geted to cer­tain groups (arthri­tis friendly and heart healthy, for ex­am­ple), it’s im­por­tant to have in­struc­tors who are knowl­edge­able about how to adapt ex­er­cises and ex­er­cise rou­tines for in­di­vid­u­als with spe­cial needs.

Ac­cess to a per­sonal trainer can also help older in­di­vid­u­als set achiev­able goals, prac­tise good tech­nique and progress at a rate ap­pro­pri­ate for their level of fit­ness and phys­i­cal tol­er­ance.

AL­TER­NA­TIVE

Pro­mot­ing ex­er­cise pri­mar­ily as a way to re­duce the risk of chronic dis­ease is short-sighted. Older adults are most in­ter­ested in im­prov­ing or main­tain­ing their qual­ity of life, which means also sell­ing some of the phys­i­cal and so­cial ben­e­fits of reg­u­lar ex­er­cise in­clud­ing bet­ter sleep, more en­ergy, greater strength and en­durance, im­proved flex­i­bil­ity and greater range of mo­tion.

AC­COM­PA­NIED

Ex­er­cise is al­ways bet­ter with a friend sweat­ing right along­side — no mat­ter the age.

Fit­ness bud­dies also help keep each other hon­est, knock­ing on the door on those days when curl­ing up in front of the tele­vi­sion holds more al­lure than a workout. Trou­ble is, find­ing an ex­er­cise buddy isn’t al­ways easy.

Fit­ness clubs and mu­nic­i­pal re­cre­ation cen­tres should fa­cil­i­tate buddy sys­tems for se­niors so they can find a workout part­ner who shares their in­ter­est in get­ting fit.

AWARE­NESS

It’s im­por­tant to ed­u­cate older ex­er­cis­ers about how much ex­er­cise they need and the myr­iad ways in which they can in­cor­po­rate more move­ment and ex­er­cise into their days. Older men are less aware than their fe­male peers of Canada’s phys­i­cal ac­tiv­ity guide­lines, which call for 150 min­utes of mod­er­ate in­ten­sity ac­tiv­ity per week in bouts of 10 min­utes or more.

It also rec­om­mends per­form­ing ex­er­cises that build mus­cu­lar strength, bone health and im­prove bal­ance.

It’s never too late to reap the phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of mov­ing more ev­ery day, which is a phi­los­o­phy that should be em­braced by se­niors and pro­moted by fit­ness in­struc­tors, train­ers and com­mu­nity re­cre­ation pro­gram­mers. A study out of the U.K. re­cently re­ported “keep­ing phys­i­cally active or be­com­ing more active dur­ing mid­dle and older age is as­so­ci­ated with a lower risk of death, re­gard­less of past ac­tiv­ity lev­els or ex­ist­ing health con­di­tions,” which should be rea­son enough to fol­low the 7 As of Active Ag­ing.