Hey there, Gero-Punks old and new and every/anything in-between!

Time for some Gero-Punk News!

Gero-Punk Salon: This past sunny Sunday, 6/9/19, we had a great gathering of ten of us, the perfect number of creatures for diving deeply into collaborative inquiry around complex questions about traveling through the life-course as gendered beings.

We also shared items of note for a reading list I’m curating and will publish here, so stay-tuned for that (and feel free to contact me if you have any titles you’d like me to add to the list!).

We closed our gathering by unleashing our playful, creative spirits, the result of which was three rather awesome poems.  I’ve published the first two: What to Make of Changes?; and Sweet Noise and New Breath. Keep your eyes open for the third and last poem of the bunch!

Hey, if you have any ideas for potential themes around which I might conjure and facilitate a future Gero-Punk Salon, let me know!

ChangingAging:  I wanted to share with you that I was invited by Dr. Bill Thomas’s digital community, ChangingAging.org, to publish one of my recent essays.  It came out this past Tuesday! Check it and let me know what you think: Gero-Punk Dharma. 

I’m somersaulting with gratitude for the opportunity to widen the gero-punk discourse. Thanks, ChangingAging.org!

Generations United: The Generations United Global Conference took place in my fair city Portland, Oregon over the past three days. I met many really passionate and interesting new people, caught up with some colleagues I’d not seen for a couple of years, and had a great time sharing a workshop session with colleagues from Bridge Meadows (Hi, Shelley!) and LeadingAge Oregon (Hi, Kirsten).

And it (almost) goes without saying that the highlight of the entire conference was co-facilitating with my dear comrade Roger Anunsen, Portland Community College Gerontology faculty and co-principle of Mindramp.  Roger and I presented on the PCC Ending Ageism Campaign, spearheaded by our fearless leader Dr. Jan Abushakrah.

The name of our presentation was “Singing the Same Song: Fostering Intergenerational Understanding,” and we highlighted three ongoing initiatives: 1) A flexible training module developed to increase awareness and offer practices for addressing ageism at the individual, interpersonal, social and cultural levels; 2) A 10-week online course, GRN 201 Understanding Ageism, predicated on a collaborative active learning design; and 3) The Flipping Mindsets project, which focuses on powerful perspectives and practices for serving returning, mature students.

Curious?  I’m happy to share more with you. Let me know your questions and ideas and the projects you are working on!

Intergenerational Bon Voyage: Guess what I’ll be up to the next couple of weeks?  I’ll be on a grand three-generation adventure with my mother and daughter. France, Spain and Italy, watch out, here we come!