Learning How To Be Old Rachel McAlpine

Introducing a wise woman who approached her own extreme old age as an ongoing project. Eventually, she saw herself as a sturdy centenarian, even though she was frail. She developed a systematic method for dealing with the ever-increasing age-related changes in her body, mind and life. She was learning how to be old, and she blogged about it every week for 5 years. To her surprise, she found that facing old age honestly and openly was satisfying, even exciting. So today on this podcast I will read from the book-of-the-blog, and riff about it. I will do this again, because I am over-enthusiastic about Doris Carnevali's work.




2m 30s Introducing the sturdy centenarian



7m Birth of a blog



10m 10s Turning 95



13m Learning from these chapters



15m Highly engaged listeners



16m 20s Comments from readers




Contact and links




Comment on my website: scroll down to the Comments section.



Email me: rachel at writing dot co dot nz



Facebook: Rachel McAlpine, Learning How To Be Old



Happy 100th birthday, Doris!






Transcript for Learning from a Centenarian



[Music] Hello, I'm Rachel McAlpine, I'm 84 and I'm learning how to be old. And for some years, one of my most important teachers has been Mrs Doris Carnevali. I've never met her, although we have exchanged quite a lot of emails. Now Doris was an Associate Professor Emeritus at Washington University School of Nursing in Seattle and from the age of 95, she blogged pretty much every week about her personal experience of aging. I learned so much from Mrs Carnevali that I wrote a book based on her blog. She carried on blogging till she was a 100-year-old blogger! is a rarity by which time she perceived herself as frail in some ways and sturdy in other ways. So I called my book The Sturdy Centenarian.
Sometimes I won't have a guest on this podcast and instead I'm going to just read you something from this book, The Sturdy Centenarian. I'm sure I'll interrupt myself sometimes to make my own comments on the book to be realistic. I won't be able to stop myself because, well, Doris always gets me thinking and I know you're out there. So I want to share my thoughts with you. (If only you could share your thoughts back. You could do that on my Facebook page, Rachel McAlpine Learning How to Be Old.)
Anyway, I boiled the blog down to about half and I included about exactly 116 entries. Let's call them chapters. Hey, they might be good bedtime stories. Maybe I should try and read in a low, soporific voice that will send you to sleep. Maybe not. We'll see. OK, off we go.
The Sturdy Centenarian, Aging and Thriving with Doris Carnevali, edited by Rachel McAlpine. This is the introduction.
Meet the Sturdy Centenarian.
When I discovered Doris Carnevali’s blog, I was 78 and she was 96. There I found answers to some massive questions about extreme old age that I had never even thought about. How do you bake cookies when you're a walker? How do you maintain your self-esteem? Is old age really a state of stagnation? How do you build new relationships? How do you establish your credibility? How do you tackle the mounting impact of old age on your daily life? Why is it better to use neutral language when you talk about aging? Or how can a failing brain mitigate the impact of a failing brain? Can you thrive even when you are frail? What are the pleasures of extreme old age, if any?
Doris Carnevali used to be a professor at the Washington University School of Nursing and co-author of a textbook on nursing geriatric patients. Then she herself became an explorer, a resident and a reporter in that mysterious country, old age. Central to her story is a system she has developed for coping with the relentless advance of normal age-related changes. She calls this engaging with aging or EWA. Her system attracted attention from academics and carers but her blog is primarily for those who worry about their own old age and those concerned about elderly relatives.
When I stumbled across the

Today I’m learning how to be old from Jan Bolwell, a 74-year-old dancer and actor. For 25 years she has directed the Crows Feet Dance Collective, an amateur group of women who are dancing as we age. I asked Jan lots of nosy questions. You'll find out:




her grounding in two opposite types of dance



how to direct untrained older dancers



dancing as you age with two hip replacements and a double mastectomy



how audiences respond to older dancers on stage



and the extraordinary story of how Crows Feet began.




Finally, I learned something very special about self-consciousness while talking to Jan. At the end of the interview, it’s a great tip for when you start to notice yourself getting older. And it’s got nothing to do with dancing.





Crows Feet Dance Collective on Facebook

Hi, I'm Rachel McAlpine, I'm 84 and I'm learning how to be old. When vehicles get old, they need a certificate to prove they are safe on the road. Today I’ve got my grandson Hugo with me, he’s 12 years old and he’s going to help me renew my personal Warrant of Fitness. Like most young people, Hugo does know a lot about getting old, and he is very helpful. He is checking whether I can safely continue being out and about on roads and footpaths. Am I well maintained? Will I crash? Am I a danger to traffic? This seems reasonable, because my old body is a vehicle for myself, and I motor around on my legs.



Hugo and I find human equivalents for tyres, lights, bodies, seat belts, suspension, and so forth. We have a contest to see who can keep singing the longest. This is to test my lung capacity. Hugo sees himself as a Nissan GTR and I'm a Baby Austin. Or maybe an old VW Beetle. To pass our personal Warrant of Fitness we old people-cars don't need to be perfect: we just need to be as safe as possible for another 12 months.



Some organisations already offer a proactive medical check that they call a warrant of fitness. Buildings in New Zealand are required to have a Building or Housing Warrant of Fitness. Now I think we need a Warrant of Fitness specifically for old age. Of course it must be optional, not mandatory. One day! In the meantime, this rough-and-ready test will have to do.



This old saying is highly relevant: "A stitch in time saves nine." We heard that all the time in the 1940s, and everything got mended. Cars, socks, shoes, houses and now humans.



Another rare car-related blog post from me

Today — we’re lucky! Listen as oral historian Judith Fyfe shares insights and tips from her experience of recording older voices and stories. She says these recordings are like photographs: they capture a moment in time.



She answers questions such as, why even do it? Why are older people more valuable subjects than teenagers? Best process? Potential problems? And what to do with that precious recording? I also get some personal advice about recording interviews for this podcast.



I hope she'll inspire you to sit down with an older person, maybe a family member, maybe a friend. Establish trust, agree in writing about the purpose, get a good microphone, record in a quiet place, ask questions and above all ... listen. (Because "Tomorrow is too late.")



I’m Rachel McAlpine and I’m 84. Like you, I'm Learning how to be old.




Recording stories for a memoir



What I learned from interviewing nonagenarians



Life Stories Enhance the Quality of Life for our Seniors



Monash University study reveals health benefits of listening to elders' stories




PS If you enjoy this episode, please Subscribe to my podcast and give it some stars. This is all the reward I ask for my work.

Hello, I’m Rachel McAlpine, I’m 84 and I’m learning how to be old. I want to say a few words about this podcast. It was sound asleep for a couple of years. Now I am reviving it, with a new mission!



This podcast is a friendly guide to the pleasures, perils, and possibilities of your future old age.



It seems to be humanly impossible to imagine ourselves much older than we are. In fact, we all tend to think of ourselves as YOUNGER than we are, a lot younger. Our Dad was absolutely typical when he said, in his 80s, No, he didn’t want to go to a retirement home because they were full of old people. He wasn’t one of THEM.



But sooner or later, if you’re lucky, you’re going to become that peculiar creature,
an older person. Even, an old person. You will be one of THEM.



Look, the alternative to being old is being dead. You know that, don’t you? And yes old age is weird. It's not what you signed up for. But you will discover that being old is mostly, most of the time, for most of us, heaps better than being dead.



So why not be really alive? Why not make the most of this great gift?



When you start to suspect that you will be old one day, this podcast will keep you company. We will soften the blow. We will be friendly. We will share tips and tricks and insights.



Just try it, listen to a few episodes. It takes a while to warm up to a new podcast.



Hit the SUBSCRIBE or FOLLOW button now so that you don’t lose track of us, and take it easy. (Don't worry, it's just as easy to opt out.) Some terrific guests are lined up ready to join us. They'll help you to get used to the idea of being old, and to flourish well into the third act — or fourth or fifth act — of your life.



A word of warning: I’m inclined to get a bit earnest. On the other hand, I giggle a lot. You have been warned.



We're all learning how to be old, and knowledge is power. Anyway, that’s the plan. Welcome aboard!




Why I have given new life to my old podcast



53% Of U.S. Adults Don’t Fear Growing Old—Study Finds People Actually Fear Less As They Age (Forbes Health, 10 Jan 2024)



Fear of ageing is really fear of the unknown (The Conversation, 1 Feb 2024, Chao Fang and Alastair Comery)






We're all learning how to be old and old people are walking books of knowledge (Image: public domain, Wikimedia)

Today I’m lucky — you’re lucky!—because Lois Daish is here to talk about some aspects of food and eating in old age. Our food habits necessarily change as we start to get old. In Lois's long life as a food writer and cook, two things have changed radically: our national food culture and her personal food habits.



If you’re a Kiwi, you will be very familiar with the work of today's guest. She is one of New Zealand’s most distinguished and beloved culinary guides, actively involved for darn near 50 years. She has been a restauranteur and a regular writer for the New Zealand Listener. She has always been a splendid cook. Her most recent honour occurred in 2023, when she was installed in the Hall of Fame for Women in Food & Drink, Aotearoa New Zealand. Lois Daish is an essential ingredient of our national memory of food.



From her long experience, Lois has seen many changes in our national food habits. She also talks about the most mundane effects of aging, such as farting as you go up the stairs. Can you guess what the nursery rhyme is today?