Elbowing its way through the global recession and onto the front page today is a New York Times story about what professionals call “elderspeak – the sweetly belittling form of address that has always rankled older people.”  

In Slate’s geezer-centric issue, Daniel Engber takes a lucid look at sexual activity — or, more likely, its prohibition — in an article titled "Naughty Nursing Homes."  Engber cites an August 2007 article in the New England Journal of Medicine  about sexual activity among older people. Some predictable findings: people who described themselves as healthy were more likely to be sexually active, women were less so then men, and sexual activity declines with age. But not so fast!

Nestled among accounts of local marijuana raids is a profile of Lillian Brown Vogel in the Ukiah (CA) Daily Journal. It’s her 99th birthday.  Vogel is at work on a memoir about the secret of her longevity, but readily parts with some of the factors at work in her case:

Jim Lizzio lives right around the corner from where he was born in 1916, in lower Manhattan’s Little Italy. Housing projects and the encroachment of Chinatown have changed it a lot since hung out at Mulberry and Bayard. Now he’s more likely to be spotted at Senior Center over in Knickerbocker Village, but he keeps his visits short. “You sit down, you talk, you play bingo.  I’m not that type,” he told me over coffee in his cozy pink living room.  “Those people are too old for me.  And I’m 93.”

Slate Magazine has commissioned a series of articles investigating what it’s actually like to be old — “to walk a mile in their Rockports,” as they put it. Commendable, though I could do without the coating of condescension. Rockports? Not to mention the title of the issue: Geezers.

There’s tons of good stuff in here, though, especially “80 over 80,” Slate’s list of America’s most powerful octogenarians. Ten are women, and (duh) none is retired.

Helen Gressett described herself as “a very strong adherent of social justice,  even before we really knew what that was,” and “a feminist, even before I heard the word.” At 62, after a career as a social worker, she helped establish Monterey County’s first child abuse prevention unit. It was uphill work because doctors and teachers didn’t want to admit the abuse was taking place. “I chose it because it was so unpopular,” she admitted with a smile.

At 102, Ivy Bean has become the world’s oldest person on the social networking site. The New York Post’s “Weird but True” column published the news item, snarkily citing it as further proof “that Facebook has grown utterly uncool.” Gee, thousands of Facebook members disagree.

How much longer is a Connecticut resident likely to be around than someone who lives in Mississippi? Three full decades. That’s not the scariest statistic in the new Human Development Index report on well-being in the United States. The life expectancy gap between Asian-American males and black Americans in those states is a staggering 50 years.

The latest census data is out, and regional papers are picking up on it. In Baltimore County, the 85+ population is growing fast: up 40% between 2000 and 2007, and up 16.5% in the city itself. They’re paving the way for boomers (ages 55 to 64), whose numbers in the area rose by a third over the same period, July 2000 to July 2007. Among the old old, demographers credit overall longevity and better health care.