It’s springtime and that means “God’s Gym” is open for business!

God’s Gym is the best outdoor fitness center offering adults 55 and older a variety of low-impact to moderate-impact exercises to keep you in shape and give you the opportunity to get some much-needed fresh air and vitamin D-rich sunshine after months of hibernating.

God’s Gym is the place where “bodies are strengthened through gardening. Minds are refreshed through gardening’s therapeutic benefit of connecting with nature. Spirits are renewed through the quiet sanctuary of the garden.”…

For many years I wondered why there was so much hype about the arrival of spring. I grew up in the tropics, where there is one season but four variations on it—stifling hot, very hot, hot, not so hot. Then I left my home to attend college in North America. I arrived at a time the residents called autumn, and before I was able to adapt to that season, along came the one they called winter. By March of the following year, I, too, was hyped, watching, praying, preparing for this season they called spring. For they promised me that in spring nature would get back all her hues…

I didn’t pay much attention when I heard that Nelson Mandela  and then George H W Bush were being treated for it, for they were in their 90s and, well, old. But, recently, when Whoopi Goldberg, at age 63, announced that she had just survived a harrowing bout of pneumonia and had almost died, I took note. By any account, Whoopi is not an old person—isn’t 63 the new 43?—and nor were Jim Henson at age 53 and Kim Porter at  age 47 when they died from pneumonia. What happened?

Not knowing about pneumonia could mean not knowing what is happening to you, until it is t…

Truly, it should be on the list of words that do not translate between generations. Mention joint to a young person and his face might light up; his grandparent, on the other hand, likely would grimace in pain and grab his knee or shoulder. For the young generation, joint suggests pleasure, but for older adults it too often means pain. Does it have to be this way?

Perhaps you’ve heard the joke about the man who walks into his doctor’s office. The doctor asks, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s my left knee,” the patient answers. “It hurts when I walk.”

“We…

“I sing because I’m happy! I sing because I’m free!”

These are two lines from the song I love to sing in the shower, and I sing them at the top of my voice. Why do you sing? Singing is a wonderful activity which has all sorts of benefits—physical, psychological and emotional, and social. It’s like that health drink that promises to treat every malady under the sun on a cloudy day, except that singing truly does. There is a yet another benefit of singing that I don’t hear people talk much about and I wonder why. I don’t think it’s because we’re not awa…