Publisher's Message - Reflections on Courage and Robin Lloyd

Robin Lloyd, age 67, was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut on April 11, 2006. Lloyd was arrested for “crossing the line” while protesting at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia where Central American military officers receive training by the United States military in methods of torture and abuse in order to maintain, induce, and promote U.S. hegemony in this hemisphere. Robin was horrified by Abu Ghraib and the Bush Administration’s refusal to be held accountable. This was the tipping point which motivated her to take this extreme action.

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VA-VA BOOM! - Shaking Up Old Concepts on Aging

Happy Birthday, Boomers! This year, the first of the country’s 77 million-plus baby boomers will celebrate their 60th birthday. The generation that brought us sexual freedom, civil rights, and rock-and-roll will not grow old quietly. But if they’ve redefined how Generations X and Y are supposed to look, live and love, what will their lessons be on aging?

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Jazz Great Marian McPartland Grooving in Her Twilight World

Her voice, deep and deceptively formal with a lingering trace of her British origins, could trick the uninitiated flipping through the radio dial into assuming they’ve landed on a program about Shakespeare or opera. But no. If it’s Friday evening, this is Marian McPartland, empress of jazz piano; any talk of dukes will be about Ellington and the featured guest of the show could be anyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Willie Nelson, Ramsey Lewis to Elvis Costello, Arturo Sandoval to Norah Jones. McPartland has hosted NPR’s award-winning Piano Jazz  program since its premiere in 1978.

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Gale Golden: A Life of Sexuality

Vermont Woman recently enjoyed a delightful visit with Gale Golden, LICSW, BCD, a clinical social worker and clinical sexologist, author, expert witness, consultant, and pioneer in the field of sexuality and mental health. At age 66 she is also Clinical Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. She maintains a private practice and is currently writing a book, In the Grip of Desire. She is an on-line advisor for SexualHealth.com.

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Dr. Trixie – Changes

My friend’s son – a baseball player – broke his left arm. He’s a lefty; it’s his pitching, batting, throwing arm. It was immobilized for surgery, but he still went out to the driveway to teach himself to shoot baskets 'righty,' even before his fracture had healed. He is fifteen years old.Changing from a left-handed to a right-handed way of life is a such a huge shift in thinking that it alters brain circuits – it makes the brain redesign itself to accommodate a new way of life, a new skill set, a different spatial approach to the world. My friend's son did this in less time than it takes to read the Sunday paper.

That made me think about the culture of change.

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