The Gero-Punk Project

Hey, guess what? The Gero-Punk Project’s official one-year anniversary is coming up. August 14, 2012 was the date of my first post on this blog, though as some of you are aware of, I was gero-punking well before then (as were many of you!).

So, to honor our upcoming anniversary — and the 50-plus essays published here over the past year — I wanted to remind you, dear readers and contributors, that the Gero-Punk Project has always been envisaged as a collaborative and collectivist space for creative exploration and praxis regarding our travels together through the life course. Wouldn’t the summer months be an ideal time to contribute a bit of writing to the project (What a nice anniversary gift!)? You can volunteer to do so at any time by submitting an idea or a fully-formed essay to me at jsasser@marylhurst.edu. Or you can gracefully accept my offer when I track you down and beg you. 

Please invoke your inner gero-punk and essay away!

What will I be doing over the next few weeks of summer? Well, Harry R. Moody and I are working away on the 8th edition of our text Aging: Concepts and Controversies, alongside of which I’ll be updating the instructional materials for students and instructors that accompany the text. Let me take a moment to thank those of  you — teachers and students alike — who have been using our text to teach and learn about adult development and aging, and the field of gerontology. We appreciate your participation in our ongoing project to bring critical thinking to the study of adult development and aging. If you have any ideas or input you’d like to offer us as we work on the next edition, you know how to reach me.

Another project I’ll be spearheading this summer is a primer on gerontology geared toward an international market. I’m working on the proposal over the next couple of weeks and we hope to get cracking on the full-blown book later this year. The opportunity to open up a larger conversation about what the heck this field of study and practice called “gerontology” is, where it came from and where it might be going, is, well, beyond my dreams and very exciting. Very.

As far as the Gero-Punk Project is concerned, I’ll be happily posting all of the great essays the rest of you will be generously offer me as well as taking a look at the Gero-Punk Manifesto to see if there are any additions or alterations I want to make to it (If you are stymied as to what you might write about for this blog, perhaps you’d rather take a re-look at the Manifesto and let me know your thoughts about where to take it next. You’ll find the Manifesto in the archives of this blog).

A manifesto, to my way of thinking, shouldn’t be seen as written in stone and a done deal, but, rather, as a living, emergent manifestation of intent and lived experience. So, time to pause, take another look, reflect, and revision, as needed.

Thanks again for your interest in and support of what I’m trying to do as a gero-punk and for reading — and pondering — the essays that my comrades and I offer here.

Many blessings,

Jenny Sasser

An essay by Guest Gero-punk

Jennifer Ortiz

I was 70. They were 20. I was 30. They were 10. We weren’t any particular age at Jackson Café.

Wheelchairs, walkers, canes, shoes, sandals. Feet.

It wasn’t that I decided to become a chameleon in the midst of my generation’s elders. Nor did I intend to act as if there were no differences in our stations in life or condition of our bodies. But we were eating together in a place just happened upon. A table placard said it was a senior center and a teaching kitchen for young culinary students. I ordered the day’s special: salmon with chutney, rice and salad. “Oh, and just so you know, the Coke is bottomless. Just let me know when you needed refilling,” she smiled.

Hunger, thirst. Drink, live.

The room was flooded with florescent lights and open spaces – function over style. My three traveling companions were glad to relax. We gazed at the walls of countless bulletin boards tacked with activity schedules and community events. I people watched: the group of women in matching pastel sun hats; the man in the wheelchair with an unseasonably warm plaid jacket sitting alone. He laughed with the food server.

And then she walked in. An accordion was strapped over her crisp white blouse. She wore a red felt beret. The man in the wheelchair clapped his hands.

Rhythm, swaying. Memory songs.

Voice tones and clinking tableware streamed into familiar melodies. We moved like the ocean; lulled away into a singularly liminal streak of light. White hair, brown hair, green veins, folds, creases and scars formed the scene. We breathed in and out with the accordion’s bellows and keys. Collective energy can be intoxicating. I sat there, buzzed.

Dancing, humming. Breathing, dying.

Jennifer M. Ortiz is a social observer and Progressive Era historian. She holds a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies from Marylhurst University, and has worked as a writer for the past several years in the non-profit sector. Jennifer and her husband live in Portland, Oregon, with their three sons.

I am a gero-punk graffiti artist. Only I know that my spray paint is impermanent and will wash away with it rains.

 There is a person – look at them frown and fume! – striding toward me as I begin to spray

                       YOU DON’T WANT TO BE….

on the sidewalk in front of the playground at the park.  I am asked what I think I am doing. I respond by asking them what they think they are doing. 

We look at each other, eye-to-eye, for what seems like a long time. They have really lovely eyes: deep blue artesian pools surrounded by crags and crevices. We share silver hair though I have peacock blue streaks in mine. We are about the same size and height, it seems to me, though what do I know—I always feel like I am the same size and shape, even the same age, and like I am similarly embodied, in relationship to whatever creature I happen to be observing (Remember the story I told about trying to walk like the goose with the lame leg?).

Enough already. I have surfaces to deface.

I tilt my head to the right and hold up a can of silver spray paint.

They tilt their head to the left (are they mimicking me?) and hold up their splendidly ornamented walking stick.

I say: Care to come closer and take a look?

They are frozen at first. Then they shuffle side-to-side in a dance of indecision.

So I shrug my shoulders in response. I return to my work, finishing the gero-punk inscription

                                                     …OLD? STFU!

My peripheral vision sucks but I feel movement, energy originating from behind me, arcing wide to home in at my right side.

I keep at my project until it is complete.

                        YOU DON’T WANT TO BE OLD? STFU!

I turn to look at the old one beside me. They are sussing. And either they have intensely bad hyperopia or they are about to kick my ass.

Right hand on my hip, can of silver spray paint in my left hand, I ask: So? What do you think?

They say: What the hell do you know?

I say: I am not sure what the hell I know. What the hell do you know?

Then I offer them the can of red spray paint.