By Lois Requist I continue to learn from my friend Judie Donaldson, as I did with her column last week about attitude adjustment and what older people prefer to be called. Because there has been so much negativity around growing older, it may be that a phrase everyone likes hasn’t been invented yet. Village Movement […]
Voice of the Village: Have you ever made an attitude adjustment?
By Judie Donaldson How many times, if ever, have you made a significant change in your life? Have you gotten rid of a seriously bad habit? Have you transformed your attitude toward someone from negative to positive? Have you eliminated a bias? When I was young, I thought that you could just decide to change––and […]
Voice of the Village: What kind of a traveler are you?
By Lois Requist Picture this: Germany. October, 1989. My husband and I are on the Autobahn. We have a system. He drives. I navigate and decide where we are staying that night. By four in the afternoon, I’m checking the guidebooks for hotels in our vicinity. (No GPS, cellphones, or Booking.com back then). Traffic snarls […]
Voice of the Village: She acts like she’s 25, not 85!
By Judie Donaldson She’s 85 and looks like she couldn’t weigh more than 90 pounds. She works out every day with a personal trainer, and can do more pushups that most men in their 40s and 50s. It’s not unusual for her to be working at her desk until four in the morning. “Saturday Night […]
Voice of the Village: A weekend in the village, virtual and otherwise
By Lois Requist Occasionally, someone still asks me where the village is. I explain that it’s a virtual village, not a place where all participants live, but it occurs to me that is also a very real place. We live in our own homes, but things happen in the real world, so don’t get the […]
Voice of the Village: It’s not too late for life planning
By Judie Donaldson Until a few years ago, I never really thought about planning my life in order to be happy. Did you? I thought about things like the importance of being a good person and living a good life, creating opportunities for my children, having work that was meaningful, making a contribution to the […]
Voice of the Village: The good old days were…when?
By Lois Requist A high school graduate, speaking to his classmates about their school years, said, “You will look back on these as the good old days.” I listened to his comments from a bleacher seat as my twin grandchildren graduated from high school in Steamboat Springs, Colo. Smiling to myself, I thought of the […]
Voice of the Village: I thought I’d heard of everything
By Judie Donaldson I did. I thought I’d heard of everything. What a foolish assumption, and it hit home today when I was wading through a recent issue of the New Yorker. Let me explain what prompted me to do a double take. It was a simple story about a man, a Tokyo salesman in […]
Voice of the Village: What is aging better? How do you do it?
By Lois Requist Recently, I attended the Northern California launch of Village Movement California. It was exciting to see and hear what is going on statewide. If you’ve followed the Village Movement, you may know that it started in Boston in 2001 and has spread across the country since. There are over 200 “virtual” villages […]
Voice of the Village: The complexities of changing a lightbulb
By Judie Donaldson Are you among the many who suffer from the “I-can–do –it–myself” disease? I am, and I am so ridiculously tenacious about it that I make a fool out of myself. Just ask my friends and family members. Carquinez Village has learned all about this behavior pattern during our first year of service. […]