Senescence, the Last Half of LifeHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Senescence, the Last Half of Life
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Geriatrics
To the writer, the name of the club seems unfortunate in assuming the
Biblical limitation of life at three-score-and-ten, as if we were
incurring indebtedness and living on by the special indulgence of
Father Time if we surpass that age. Why are we debtors after more than
before this age, when the fact is we are living on capital accumulated
or inherited and in no sense on credit? The religious features that
seem to characterize every program are well and no one could have
anything but commendation for the interest displayed in sick members
or in the annual tributes to the dead. But the thanatic outlook from
the “west window” should not predominate and the discussion of current
events and interest in vital problems should be kept most lively to
offset the attitude of patheticism to which the old are only too prone.
The Sunset Club, at present largely composed of women over sixty, has
little organization although it has many branches in various parts of
the country. Its purpose is not only to have old people help and be
helped by others to useful occupations but to supply reading matter,
chaperones, etc. Anyone can start a club anywhere, intellectuals can
get together, the rich can help those in need, those with unoccupied
time can help those who need sympathy and companionship, those with
happy homes may occasionally open them to the homeless, or they can
simply form good cheer circles. There are no dues but volunteer funds
have sufficed for this “silver-haired sisterhood,” which has often
provided friends for the friendless and employment for the unoccupied.
Many women of the more or less leisured class have thus found spheres
of usefulness which they preferred to bridge, gossip, “kettledrum or
kaffee-klatsch.” Some branches of the club have an exchange where
members can send things that they make for sale. Young couples,
especially brides, are often aided in starting homes.
In Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland, is a beautiful public park with an
avenue of old trees under which the old men of the district who were
come to the resting time of life used to foregather “for a crack and
a smoke.” Then a kind man, remembering the frequent rainy days there
were, presented them with an old railway carriage as a shelter where
this group could meet in shower or shine. Later the park was extended
and a public-spirited man erected a pretty little dwelling for the
club, red tiled, with a veranda all around. Here are games and books
and here the club meets at will. Provision has also been made for a
yearly summer holiday for the members.
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, boasts an octogenarian society, the last
annual meeting of which on September 29, 1921, witnessed a gathering of
twenty-one members.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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