AofA's Hot To Trot Talking Points
Every Friday
Join us to debate or simply be awed by this week’s talking points in our FB group.
Photo Sotheby’s
Sue Tilley is a member of Advantages of Age and she was also the model for the painting The Sleeping Benefits Advisor by Lucien Freud which is now one of his most famous paintings. Sue is retired now but very active on the design and run-a-quizz night front in Hastings. Hence it’s no surprise that the Hastings Observer featured her this week in report about this painting Sleeping by the Lion Carpet - part of the sleeping quartet - which is up for sale at Sotheby’s and they are expecting £35 million. What can we say - that’s the crazy art market for you. But happy for Sue herself to be taking centre stage.
This is something that a lot of us are facing. Ageing alone. In other words, getting older and needing care and support. Are we preparing? Are you preparing? As featured in the Wallstreet Journal. This is something that a lot of us are facing. Which is in part why Jane Duncan Rogers and I have set up a Zoom call for June 15th. The dilemmas involved in solo ageing.
‘Amy Kant initially thought she should name a power of attorney about 10 years ago after caring for a dying friend. She still hasn’t appointed someone to do it.
The 65-year-old is single with no children, and bound up in that choice over who should make financial decisions on her behalf are other big questions that are often intensified when aging alone. How to handle eldercare? Estate planning? Where will she live in her later years?
Kant had long cherished the freedom that came with being single. She prided herself on doing headstands in yoga and walking 5 miles a day. But lately being single has felt like a struggle, and not just because of the weighty financial decisions hanging over her head. Back surgery and a heart valve replacement in the past few years have turned her condominium outside Boston into a recovery ward.
Kant is among the millions of Americans learning to navigate aging alone. Roughly 10% of the more than 125 million adults ages 50 and older in the U.S.—or at least 12.5 million people—are solo agers who live alone and have neither a spouse nor a child, according to an AARP analysis of census data. It’s a growing demographic hitting both genders, driven in part by climbing divorce rates among older Americans and a rising number of adult children becoming alienated from their parents.’
3. One of our members alerted us to this new Australian book. And there was some kickback - after all we’re not a group that likes being told what to do as the title is How to Dress for Old Age. But a debate still happened. Some people felt they were slipping and wanted to bring out their dapper suits again, some were happy with monochrome and others were the colourful kind. One of the authors' fathers has gone into grey track suit mode at 86, the other's mother takes the colourful approach. I take the flower-in-the-hair approach...What about you?
Camp Out - campout.live - is a great small festival taking place in Herefordshire next to the Bridge Inn Pub from Aug 6 to 10th. Peter Lawrence who used to run the Big Chill instigated Campfire Convention - campfireconvention.network -a few years ago for progressive thinkers about the world and how it could be as well as the pleasure seekers.Only about 200 people. I'm running a poetry writing workshop. Poppy Altmann is running a constellations workshop. Jamila Signore is giving a sound journey workshop. Would be lovely to have more AofA people along!! It is camping. Although we have found ourselves a yurt to rent that's already put up!
If you want to do this - please sign up. Jane Duncan Rogers and I are offering a conversation about care, our future care, in response to a post that I put up where it was evident that not many of us had really considered it. And there was a lot of putting our heads in the sand! June 15th .... 6 45 to 7 45pm.... Quite a few said you wanted to but haven't signed up. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/.../lets-talk-about-care-and...?
One of our members said this story made his heart sing. Was so happy to hear that. Thank you World Service.
‘Mama Nike was one of 15 wives. When she left her husband to make art, the other 14 wives chose to follow her...
Artist Nike Davies Okundaye - better known as Mama Nike - grew up in an area of Nigeria where polygamous marriages were common.
The women in her family were makers of traditional adire cloth. From the age of six, Mama Nike’s great grandmother, mother, and aunt taught her how to spin, weave and dye.
“I didn’t know it was my own future food,” says Mama Nike - because, despite her family’s craft, money was scarce.
At the age of 13, her father decided to marry her off to someone who already had several wives.
But her great grandmother wanted her to choose her own marriage - and so did Mama Nike. She escaped from the men who had come to take her away, and trekked for five days back to her village.
“It’s the biggest risk I ever took,” she says. “I didn’t care if I died.”
She arrived home exhausted and covered in bee stings. Even so, her father tried to marry her off again. This time, Mama Nike ran away and joined a travelling theatre, until police arrested her and brought her back.
Eventually, she agreed to marry a well-known artist and musician from Oshogbo, a town renowned for its artistic community.
She used her sewing and embroidery skills to make costumes for her husband’s band - while trying to make her own art.
“The men didn’t want a woman to be an artist. So, I worked in the night, and worked for them in the day,” she says.
Her husband went on to marry 14 other women.
Tradition demanded those who were already wives accept each new marriage - but Mama Nike says they didn’t always want to.
On one occasion, the husband took the women to a church where they were denied food, water, or access to their children.
“By the third day we said, ‘Bring the wife, we’re not jealous anymore.’ Our mouths were like boards - dry,”.
She says living with her husband made her feel “like a lion with no teeth. You have no power.”
She began to teach her co-wives traditional adire making skills, and soon, each of them was able to make their own money.
Sick of her husband’s control and abuse, Mama Nike left him as soon as she’d saved enough to buy her own place - and the other wives chose to follow her.
She opened her first formal gallery in Oshogbo in 1986.
She is now an internationally renowned artist, with a huge gallery in Lagos where she teaches others and makes her own colourful, beautiful art.