Lab Notebook – September 9, 2012

Martin Baybe: "The truth is, in the facility I am in, the administration [is] by and large wonderful people — wonderful people — but in many facilities they are not, and they have a top-down management system, which starts obviously with the owners, or stockholders, whichever the case may be, and they try and make you as compliant as possible, as quickly as possible. They don’t need any revolutions. They want to put on a good face for the public. I was driving with someone else about a mile away from where I live and I saw an ad, a large ad, for my facility and there was a couple dancing [in it]. And I said to myself, ‘If I stood outside my room for five years, I would never see a couple dancing in my facility.’ "

Martin Bayne’s article @Health_Affairs: After entering an assisted living facility at age fifty-three because of young-onset Parkinson’s, an observer-advocate contemplates the dire need for long-term care reform.

Martin Bayne: "The Feathered Flounder offers original literary writing by authors who are 60 or older. Each quarterly issue contains short fiction, essays, interviews, and video by writers with original voices. Sometimes serious, silly, irreverent, and wild; sometimes heartbreaking, educative, inspiring—The Feathered Flounder aims to inspire, incite, and surprise.

Additionally, it strives to illuminate the universal path of aging … and beyond. Part fish and part bird, The Feathered Flounder is born in the imagination of those with the benefit of having accepted the unexpectedness of aging. This fish with feathers swims to our deepest depths and soars through the…"

[MW: Intrigued by concept of "cumulative cultural adaptation" & its implications for cultures of #disability]
Human beings have a unique evolutionary history. We are at the mercy of neither biology nor luck. We survive by learning from each other. Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tells us humans are successful because we are "wired for culture." | Wired For Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind by Mark Pagel is published by Norton.