The lives of transplanted elders are largely untracked, unknown outside their ethnic or religious communities. “They never win spelling bees,” said Judith Treas, a sociology professor and demographer at the University of California, Irvine. “They do not join criminal gangs. And nobody worries about Americans losing jobs to Korean grandmothers.”

Older Immigrants, Invisible and With ‘Nobody to Talk To’ in the New York Times. Elderly immigrants, the US's fastest growing immigrant population [pdf], have been hit hard by the rough economic climate. Changes in welfare law in the mid-90s made it harder for immigrants to receive benefits. Long resisting the trend towards nursing homes, elderly immigrants have enrolled in greater numbers in recent years.
posted by Kattullus on Aug 31, 2009 - 8 comments

She was 82. He was 95. They had dementia. They fell in love. And then they started having sex.
posted by Four-Eyed Girl on Jun 11, 2008 - 94 comments

Young@Heart. What started as a 2006 British television documentary and became an audience favorite at the Los Angeles and Sundance film festivals in 2007 and 2008 opens across the United States this weekand will soon open in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Japan and Australia. The opening sequence showing Eileen Hall , then 92 , singing the 1982 hit from punk-rock group The Clash provided the inspiration for director Stephen Walker when he first saw the group on stage in London in 2005. Besides giving new meaning to lyrics from popular hits, the film is comedic and poignant as it explores friendship, old age and death.
posted by mrducts on Apr 13, 2008 - 24 comments

"There's a place that sells these motorhomes on the road to Newton Abbot, and one day we were going past and James said: 'Let's buy one of those. Then we can go wherever we like, whenever we like, and no one will be able to stop us.' "

Britain's oldest honeymooners (combined age 178) hit the road - with a love story that'll warm your heart.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Feb 8, 2008 - 11 comments

"We all leave something behind, but it looked like Olive had left nothing." Olive Archer passed away after five years in a care home, five years that passed without a visitor. Concerned that Olive was an Eleanor Rigby the minister prepared for her service by making an appeal to the public to find if anyone remembered Olive. Friends were found. Sadly, she is not alone. Maybe she needed SagaZone.
posted by geekyguy on Jan 10, 2008 - 45 comments

Almost 100 audio segments of David Greenberger's The Duplex Planet are available on PRX (site requires registration -- Bugmenot). More about The Duplex Planet and a lengthy audio clip are available here. Interviews with David Greenberger here (transcript only), here (second one down, click the headphones) and here (~10 MB mp3 file, 45 minutes long). The infrequently updated Duplex Planet blog is here. Previous Metafilter post on Duplex Planet here.
posted by cog_nate on Nov 14, 2007 - 6 comments

This series of photographs, Iconic Moments of the 20th Century, was enacted by pensioners in a home for the elderly in Glasgow. Aged volunteers pose in their everyday outfits and in the vicinity of their Home to re-create scenes from well-known historic photographs
posted by growabrain on Oct 27, 2007 - 40 comments

Salvador and Mabel Mangano, the owners of St. Rita’s nursing home in St. Bernard Parish, where 35 patients drowned in Hurricane Katrina’s flood waters, were found not guilty of negligent homicide and cruelty to the infirm charges tonight by a six-member jury. Read their story and decide for yourself if they're guilty.
posted by ColdChef on Sep 7, 2007 - 34 comments

The elderly are staying sexually active [WaPo], and this is a good thing. Although there is a sex-education gap among America's seniors. Play it safe, old folks!
posted by Avenger on Aug 23, 2007 - 55 comments

It's All Because. Have you ever had those days where you're wondering just why everything about your life is feeling like it's going down the toilet bowl? Oded Gross knows, and he will tell you all about it. In a song.
posted by brownpau on Jul 26, 2007 - 17 comments

More companion robots! Another in a series (see PARO, previously) of healing toys for Japan's rapidly greying population, Yumel the Healing Partner from Tomy. Like some kind of unholy cross between a Cabbage Patch Kid and Teddy Ruxpin, you can see a promotional clip of the doll here, or read a list of translated stock phrases (thank you Harper's). Also, an interesting article from the Economist about WHY the Japanese love robots so. (Hint: it's Shinto)
posted by ikahime on Apr 3, 2007 - 3 comments

There are about 250,000 centenarians alive today, including several hundred "supercentarians" aged 110+ years. Jerry Friedman, founder of Earth's Elders Foundation, has spent the past four years on a landmark project to introduce the world to the oldest people on earth. And in a similar endeavor, photographer Mark Story has been capturing portraits and stories of people from around the globe who are Living in Three Centuries.
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 4, 2006 - 16 comments

Seventy-one-year-old enemy combatant released.
posted by EarBucket on Aug 30, 2006 - 147 comments

Old lady versus bobcat. Old lady wins. Don't mess with Maine's rural elderly-- Mildred's a badass.
posted by Mayor Curley on Apr 19, 2005 - 22 comments

I saw Assisted Living and asked, what if it was my grandmother on screen? It's funny, but troubling. Old people think they are talking to heaven on the telephone, and then there's the monkey scene. The director says, "if I made a porn movie and inserted images from the Alzheimer's ward into the film, it would be morally terrible." Some critics liked it, some didn't. Maybe bodily decrepitude isn't wisdom.
posted by oldleada on Mar 4, 2005 - 10 comments

An Octogenarian's Journal Here's what we have to look forward to, if we're lucky.
posted by Photar on Nov 29, 2004 - 9 comments

World's most stubborn man dies. Fell in yard, insisted he was fine.
posted by squirrel on Feb 26, 2004 - 44 comments

Would you like fries with that? Saturday's Washington Post has a touching story about a 58-year-old grandmother who thought she'd be retired by now, but instead finds herself popping four different prescription medications at 4 in the morning while beginning her shift at Hardee's. As a journalist, I found this incredibly detailed story an example of newspaper writing at its rare best.
posted by GaelFC on Oct 6, 2003 - 44 comments

California senior driver pressed the accelerator instead of the brakes ? For 2nd time in 2 months a 85-something driver hits accelerator instead of breaks, this time there where no deaths only 4 serious injuries ? What can be done about this ? Are you scared to walk down the street, afraid a senior driver might kill you ?
posted by bureaustyle on Sep 1, 2003 - 47 comments

Lock 'im up. For a long time. That's what I say you do with anyone who commits multiple counts of vehicular manslaughter (in this case, ten). But will this driver even be charged, or will we just let him be? After all, he's 86. We, as a society, can't make this nice old man spend the rest of his days in prison, if convicted? Sure, the public discussion regarding his age in this horrible tragedy centers around the right of older people to continue driving without testing their ability and senses, but I want to focus on this: What's the unwritten age limit on convicting and sentencing someone like Russell Weller?
posted by msacheson on Jul 21, 2003 - 102 comments

yeah, I've done alot in my retirement. Habib a spritely young whip of a lad has been drawing his pension since 1938, remarkable.
posted by johnnyboy on May 22, 2003 - 12 comments

A vietnamese man, 95, sprouts new set of teeth. Are our bodies starting to adjust to longer life spans by replacing lost bits? Maybe we are developing redundant systems, like Klingons.
posted by o2b on Sep 10, 2001 - 27 comments

91-year-old bouncer The triumph of guilt over brawn: OSLO, Norway (AP) - "What the new bouncer at a Norwegian pub lacks in brawn, she more than makes up in experience: She's a 91-year-old great-grandmother. "
posted by christina on Jun 12, 2001 - 4 comments

"States' Rights" hit the UK? First abolishing tuition fees, now providing long-term care for the elderly: the Scottish Executive is making life, um, "interesting" for its progenitor in Westminster. The downside of an unwritten constitution?
posted by holgate on Jan 25, 2001 - 7 comments

Protecting England's elderly from encyclopedia salesmen.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jan 6, 2001 - 0 comments

My grandma likes to cook, sew, and smoke a lot of crack. This tiny article intrigues me, not for the cocaine information, but rather the cliffhanger of an ending sentence... Apparantly that part wasn't as newsworthy.
posted by Hankins on Oct 13, 2000 - 6 comments