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Age beat writer gives us his most important columns in 2023 – Herb Weiss
By Herb Weiss, contributing writer on aging issues
Over the years, like many of the nation’s news organizations, The Pawtucket Times, created an ‘Age Beat’ column in 2002 that allowed this writer for several years to cover a myriad of aging issues, including Social Security and Medicare, ethics, long-term care, consumer issues, spirituality, pop culture, health care and economics. Ultimately, I would return in July, 2012 to resume writing, also picking up other weekly commentaries.
As an ‘age beat’ journalist for over 44 years, I have penned more than 930 stories covering aging, health care and medical issues. These authored and coauthored pieces have appeared in national, state and trade publications.
In 2023, my articles appeared weekly in 52 issues of the Pawtucket Times and Woonsocket Call (now combined in one newspaper called the Blackstone Valley Call & Times), and RINewsToday.com, a statewide digital news publication.
As we celebrate the New Year and look forward to 2024, looking back, here are my top five favorite articles published in 2023:
“In the coming years, generations of older Veterans will be leaving us,” – RINewsToday, Nov. 13, 2023
This commentary published before Veterans Day, had the Department of Veteran Affairs estimate that there will be a couple of hundred World War II veterans, over 1,600 Korean and 14,000 Vietnam veterans still alive in Rhode Island. In the coming years, frailty and health issues will keep these elderly veterans’ from attending Veteran Day celebrations and even at their reunions.
As a generation of Civil War and World War I veterans vanish in 1956 and 2011, this writer urged readers to cherish the surviving older veterans. In the next thirty years, it was stressed that new generations of veterans who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam will pass away and these veterans were urged to share their personal stories and oral histories for the sake of America’s future generations. “They have so much to say, and America’s younger generations have much to learn from them,” noted the commentary.
This commentary was dedicated to the writer’s father, Second Lt. Frank M. Weiss, who died in December 2003, in Dallas, Texas at 89 years old.
“Passages – Life and Times of Morris Nathanson,” RINewsToday, Oct. 7, 2023
Over two decades, this writer would visit Morris Nathanson on Saturday afternoons sitting in his living room drinking cups of freshly brewed coffee. We would talk about Pawtucket, world events, and he would reminiscence about his amazing life’s journey from his childhood in Pawtucket, to the international world he lived in later in his life.
My friend, 95-year-old Morris Nathanson, a painter, illustrator and restaurant/hospitality designer died last September. My commentary was written to recognize and honor Morris’s incredible life, detailing his World War II experiences, fighting for civil rights, and his impact on the art and design scene.
Growing up poor during the depression in Pawtucket’s Pleasant View neighborhood, Morris, a spitting image of Mark Twine, or maybe Albert Einstein to me, would ultimately have a major impact on Rhode Island’s art and restaurant design scene.
Morris brought the strategy of adaptive re-use of underutilized and vacant mills to city and state officials, a concept that he picked up from his years of working in New York City, watching the development and transformation of the industrial mills in SOHO.
Witnessing firsthand man’s biases and prejudices motivated him throughout seventy-five years of his long life to fight for the equal rights of all. Morris participated in the Freedom Rides of 1961, Dr. Martin Luther King’s campaigns in Selma and Birmingham, Alabama, and the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
At age 24, Morris, head of the design team at Paramount, developed and designed the first franchise in American history, Dunkin Donuts. While working with Friedman he also designed restaurants in the pavilions of the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York.
When Morris left Paramount Restaurant Supply Co, his most notable design projects locally include Hemenway’s, Ruth Chris Steak House, 22 Bowen, restaurants and bars for the Inn at Castle Hill, Capital Grill, Pizzeria Uno, Joe’s American Bar & Grill, Mills Tavern, Waterman Grill, Red Stripe and for those who still remember, the beloved Ming Garden and McGarry’s Restaurant in downtown Providence. He also had clients all over the world.
It would take pages to detail all of Morris’s professional accomplishments while serving on state, city and nonprofit organizations throughout his long-life. Hopefully I whetted your appetite to learn more about his life by reading this commentary.
“Will Magaziner fulfill call to reestablish House Aging Committee,” RINewsToday, Oct. 9, 2023.
As reported, with Congressman David Cicilline retiring from Congress, no House lawmaker has yet stepped up to reintroduce, H.R. 583, the Rhode Island lawmaker’s resolution to reestablish the House Select Committee on Aging (HSCoA). Without receiving a vote in the House Rules Committee at the end of the 117th Congress, the resolution was considered “dead.” On his way out Cicilline was not successful in passing the legislative baton and finding a new original sponsor. The Rhode Island Congressman had introduced this resolution in four Congressional sessions.
The HSCoA was a permanent select committee of the U.S. House of representatives between 1974 to 1992. The committee was initially created with the intent of not crafting legislative proposals, but of conducting investigations and holding hearings to put the Congressional spotlight on aging issues. Its purpose was to push for legislation and other actions, working with standing committees, through regular committee channels.
This writer asks who will ultimately pick up the legislative baton from Cicilline to become Rhode Island’s fiery aging advocate? Will it be Congressman Seth Magaziner, or the newly elected Congressman Gabe Amo, from Rhode Island’s Congressional District 1 to step to the plate?
The article asks why shouldn’t a Rhode Island Congressman follow in the footsteps of former Rhode Island Congressman John E. Fogarty (dec.) and be the original sponsor of legislation that will have a major impact on national aging policy. The lawmaker would become a hero to America’s seniors.
“Unique partnership creates Senior Fellows pilot program,” RINewsToday, Dec. 11, 2023
This commentary announced that the success of a pilot Senior Fellows Program, created by Leadership Rhode Island (LRI) and Age-Friendly Rhode Island (AFRI), the organizations are seeking funding to offer another session in the summer of 2024.
The unique initiative prepared 25 Senior Fellows to advocate for improvements that address age-related challenges in Rhode Island. The initial eight-week program was tuition-free. The first crop of Senior Fellows, residents of 13 different cities and towns in Rhode Island, ranged in age from 62 to 83. Nearly half were retired.
The idea to develop a senior advocates program came from Marianne Raimondo, a graduate of LRI’s Core Program, who made the connection between Leadership Rhode Island and James Burke Connell. Connell is the executive director of Age-Friendly Rhode Island, an initiative at Rhode Island College that represents a coalition of public and private agencies, organizations and individuals committed to healthy aging.
Connell proposed the pilot program because, he says, empowering seniors to become advocates, activists and champions of age-friendly thinking and practices “will result in a Rhode Island where older adults thrive and live their best lives.” He was inspired by similar programs in Maine and New Hampshire.
Age-Friendly RI raised the funds for the pilot program, and relied on LRI’s “talented team” to handle recruiting, participant selection, curriculum planning, and guiding participants in the development of individual community commitments, Connell says.
Most session days were divided into two parts, with half focused on knowledge-building around relevant issues, such as housing, food insecurity, transportation needs, and health care. The other half focused on skill-building, such as writing persuasively, public speaking and network building, to enable the Fellows to develop and eventually execute their own Civic Commitments.
The Fellows took turns describing their Civic Commitments during their final session, held at the RI State House. The presentations, which included several “poignant and pin-drop moments,” were well received.
“Increased funding must be tied to nursing home mandated minimum staffing“, RINewsToday, September 25, 2023
The commentary announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had issued a proposed rule to establish comprehensive staffing requirements for nursing homes—including, for the first time, national minimum nurse staffing standards. CMS officials said that the requirement would improve both safety and promote high-quality care in the nation’s 18,700 skilled nursing facilities delivering care to 1.2 million residents each day.
National and Rhode Island nursing home trade groups pushed back on the unfunded mandate requiring more staffing especially during a severe labor shortage forcing hundreds of facilities across the nation to close because of lack of workers.
John E. Gage, President, and CEO of the Rhode Island Health Care Association, reported that six Rhode Island-based facilities have closed since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Three others are currently in receivership. He warns that arbitrary federal staffing mandates will result in more closures, and residents will be displaced from their homes just as they were most recently when Charlesgate Nursing Center in Providence.
James Nyberg, president, and CEO of LeadingAge Rhode Island, with offices in East Providence, sees a staffing ratio mandate as a blunt enforcement tool that does not consider the numerous challenges facing providers, including Medicaid underfunding, lack of workforce, and the diversity of resident needs. Moreover, he charged that fining for being unable to meet a staffing ratio is counterproductive by siphoning off scarce resources that facilities need as they seek to address their workforce and resident care needs.
To review ALL of Herb’s articles published by RINewstoday, go to https://rinewstoday.com/herb-weiss/
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Herb Weiss has enjoyed a distinguished 43-year career as an age beat journalist, earning a national reputation as an expert on aging, health care and medical issues. Over 930 articles that he has authored or co-authored have appeared in national, state and local publications and newspapers.
Today, Herb’s weekly newspaper column appears in the Blackstone Valley’s Woonsocket Call and times, a daily newspaper, and in RINewsToday, a statewide digital news site. He also writes for the Warwick Beacon, Cranston Herald and Senior Digest.
In 2016, he published his first book, a collection of his columns called Taking Charge: Collected Stories on Aging Boldly. Herb has also published an additional anthology of his collected articles and columns in 2021 called Taking Charge, Volume 2: More Stories on Aging Boldly. He is a recipient of the 2003 AARP Rhode Island’s Vision Award for his weekly columns that appeared in the former Pawtucket Times.
He is a two-time recipient (1994 and 199) of the American College of Health Care Administrator’s National Award for his coverage of long-term care issues. He was also awarded the Distinguished Alumni’s Award by the Center for Studies in Aging, North Texas State University, in 1997, for his career coverage of aging issues. That year, he was also selected by the prestigious McKnight’s LTC News to be one of its “100 Most Influential People” in Long-Term Care.
Here was appointed by five governors to serve on the Rhode Island Advisory Commission on Aging. The appointments were made by Governors Bruce Sundlun (1994), Lincoln Almond (1990, 2000), Donald L. Carcieri (2005), Gina Raimondo (2016) and Daniel J. McKee (2022, 2024). He was also appointed by Rhode Island President Dominick J. Ruggerio in Nov. 2021 to serve on the state’s Advisory Council on Alzheimer’s Disease and Treatment.
Herb is a 2012 graduate of the Theta II Class of Leadership Rhode Island.