Is Grandma coming to visit for Mother's Day or upcoming graduations? Will you see your elderly dad this Father's Day? Taking a few steps to implement precautionary measures now could make a big difference in your older relatives' year.

I remember a time when I was a teenager and...

What's the best gift for your elderly Mom this Mother's Day? Consider past options offered by new technology. Ten or even fifteen years ago, the best gift may have been a cell phone so Mom could call you from anywhere. Five years ago, a digital camera was a great gift...

When his marriage ended and he retired from two decades of running a wholesale company in Zurich, Switzerland, 50-something-year-old Sandro Sorentino briefly moved back to his native Italy before resolving to live a care-free life fishing in the Florida Keys and Caribbean. Having had a vacation home in Key West,...

Innovative, entrepreneurial, and high tech aging is trending now and will define our future.

November is that time of year when I get the long distance phone calls from my parents and in-laws asking: "What would the kids like for Christmas?" Sometimes, the parent on the other end of...

In speaking at the Red Cross Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, President Obama urged concerned Americans living in the wake of Hurricane Sandy's path to look out for their neighbors, especially older people. Major weather events -- including hurricanes and flooding -- and other extreme weather, such...

Is the big box store in your neighborhood already putting out its Christmas wares? I love decorating for and celebrating the winter holiday season, but living in Southern California, I get quite annoyed on 100-degree October days when I walk into a local store and find fake snow and the...

Sept. 22 is National Falls Prevention Awareness Day -- a day to highlight steps we all need to take in reducing public costs as well as older adults' fall-related pain, injury, and deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expect that within eight years, Medicare's...

I love Clint Eastwood's movies. As a director and actor, he has made intriguing and influential films, especially in the last two decades. Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Gran Torino, Invictus, Hereafter, J. Edgar -- Eastwood's works are ripe with sincere portrayals of...

Political campaign seasons are opportune times for Republicans and Democrats to bicker over whether it takes only a family or an entire village to raise a child. Since Hillary Rodham Clinton's 1996 speech to the Democratic Convention and the publication of her book, It Takes A Village, that same year,...

Recently, I sat down with three esteemed gentlemen to discuss the notion of an ideal place to grow old: Dr. James Birren, 94-year old psychologist and pillar in the field of aging; Dr. Dan Lang, octogenarian retired physician and expert in health care administration and quality control; and...

Hearing news reports about the Jerry Sandusky trial makes me wonder if there indeed is a special place in hell for child molesters. As a mother and a social worker, I doubt whether life in prison is adequate punishment. If Dante Alighieri's medieval Italian poetry was divinely inspired, sexual abusers...

The House of Representatives voted last month to eliminate the American Community Survey. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has jumped on the bandwagon to push the cuts through the Senate. The ACS is a yearly version of the U.S. Census which gathers housing and...

Cambodia feels like a magical, exotic and tragic destination to the Western traveler. The Angkor Wat temples around Siem Riep, accessorized with elephant rides and vermillion-clad monks are indeed majestic and surreal. On the road from Siem Riep to Phnom Penh, tourist attractions offer those with hearty palates the opportunity...

March 9, 2012 Shanghai, China

Although the common sentiment on Wall Street is that Shanghai streets are paved in gold for American companies, walking along the sidewalk in this bustling Chinese city does not necessarily make Americans feel at ease. Shanghainese cultural norms that include pushing, shoving, spitting, staring, pointing...

As most of you already know, baby boomers, by definition, were born between 1946 and 1964. Their presumed rosy childhoods in the 50s and early 60s, prickly coming of age in the 60s and 70s, and glorified success in the yuppie workforce in 80s -- along with their diverse musical...

I recently flew from Los Angeles to Seoul and then on to Hanoi, Vietnam. On the first plane, I watched five movies. I don't recommend watching Contagion while on a packed trans-Pacific flight and when your final destination is a crowded developing world city, but I did it anyway because...

I get a little annoyed when I sit through awards ceremonies at my kids' schools each spring. In June, the Perfect Attendance award seems like a straightforward recognition of a job well done. Indeed, in high school, where teenagers take attendance into their own hands, rewarding the responsible ones is...

How old were you when Jessie's Girl hit the top of the charts and won a Grammy? Do you remember that Rick Springfield first appeared as Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital during that same year--1981? In An Affair of the Heart,...

While waiting out a second day of prolonged rain at the US Open Tennis Championships in Flushing, NY, Martina Navratilova took some time to reflect on life after 50. Navratilova, who turns 55 on October 18, won 59 Grand Slam titles in her long, celebrated career....

As a college student in 2007, Mike Masten spoke to his peers at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. In a week-long series of events, Masten, an International Relations major, described women their same ages being sold into sex slavery in unlikely places across Southern California and around the...