How to cope when your parent can't

My mother is 92. She's 2000 miles away. I'm an only child. These are just three of the myriad factors in what's become an increasingly complex equation for me, the daughter of an aging parent. And while I have to deal with my mother virtually on my own, I share the dilemma with millions: the baby-boom generation, uneasily coming to late middle age ourselves, turning into the caretakers of our elders.

The Dialogue Project gives voice to the experiences of queer elders

by Kate Feld (11/30/05).

Brian Davis didn't come out -- he was pushed. He was at college, in the early 1970s, when he received a call from his mother. She was really upset. "I said, "Mom, what's the matter? What's going on?" Davis recalled. She said, "Well, you could have told us another way.

In a UVM study, seniors stay stable through Tai Chi

The lights are off at the Vermont Kung Fu Academy in Essex Junction, creating a womblike darkness. Fierce-looking martial arts weapons rest unused against a wall. Janet Makaris, the soft-spoken Tai Chi instructor, leads her students through a series of relaxation exercises and movements. She invites them to envision their spines as stacks of checkers; to perform "tootsie rolls" with their feet; to imagine a moon floating in the silence of their minds.

Vermont's aging Catholic nuns devoted their lives to caring for the vulnerable -- now who's caring for them?

At first glance, the building at 47 West Spring Street in Winooski looks a lot like any retirement home. On the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, the walls are decorated with construction-paper-cutout turkeys and autumn-colored leaves made by the nurses.

A bingo game has been going since 2 p.

Assessing the cost of Vermont's aging population

Vermont is showing its age. Each year, the number of "old folks" in our ranks gets larger, both in real numbers and as a percentage of the state's total population. Like the rest of the nation, Vermont is on a collision course with the Baby Boomers -- the generation born between 1946 and 1964 -- who are approaching retirement age. Within 20 years, this demographic bubble will strain every facet of our economy, from housing and health care to transportation, labor and industry.