Hey, friends! I always think better with others, so I’m putting out the call for some help, looking for a few willing comrades who’d like to play with me. Have I piqued your interest? If so, read on!

Here’s what’s what: I’ve been working on Gero-punk Lexicon entries for the following ideas:

• Embodiment (Across the life-course but particularly in later life)
• Future older self (One of my coinages from way back!)
• Traveling through the life course (Another one of my favorite catch-phrases!)
• Agency & Sovereignty (Most especially in later life; these are important concepts for which there are multiple definitions and usages.)
• Aging identity (For example, what does it mean to be “middle-aged” or in one’s “mid-life”?  How can we even know we are at the mid-point except retrospectively? How do we know we are aging? When do we become an old person?)

While I have plenty to say about this collection of ideas which play such a central role in my thinking, learning, teaching, inquiry and action, I’ve been feeling an increasingly intensifying desire to collaborate with others in fleshing all of this out.  I’d love to have your input into possible ways to conceptualize and articulate these ideas, as well as examples of these ideas. If you take a look at some of the entries to the Lexicon I’ve already made, you’ll see that if there’s a convention for the format, it is something along the lines of a provisional definition of the idea (or perhaps just a series of questions about the idea), followed by some textual examples meant to enunciate, explore, or enact the idea.

Oh, and there’s another way in which you can contribute to the Gero-punk Project in general, and the Lexicon more specifically, and that is by offering me your ideas for concepts to explore for the Lexicon as well as potential subjects for my observations and essaying. (And, if you’d like to be a guest blogger, let me know that, too!)

What’s the time-frame for this project?  Well, the Lexicon is a living, emergent project—I have been adding to previous entries as my understanding continues to shift and nuance, and will continue to do so, hopefully for a long time, so that means you can share  your ideas with me as you like.  And: I’d like to include provisional entries for the ideas listed above by the end of 2012, so get cracking, will ya?

In closing, if you’ve got some notions about either or both aspects the Lexicon project, and you’d like to collaborate with me (and get some Gero-punk Project contributor props as well), please email your input to me at: jsasser@marylhurst.edu

Thank you for your time and consideration. Shine on, friends.

Love,

Jenny