53.4 Million People Need To Get A Life

Only 160K geezer bloggers? I tried to interest the Computer Club in Geezerville (where I live) in blogs and blogging, but my effort was stillborn. I encountered a geezerette today who didn't know how to copy/paste a Web address out of an e-mail message. I feel as I'm living in "the land time forgot." At least it's not Skull Island. If this is (fair & balanced) gerontology, so be it.

Older, Wiser Bloggers: Want a Place in the Blogosphere? Join the Club
By Patrick J. Kiger

Only 0.3 percent of the Internet's estimated 53.4 million bloggers are age 50 or older, according to a recent study by Perseus, a Web survey firm, but their ranks—160,000 or so—are growing.

Among the pioneers is Millie Garfield, 80, of Swampscott, Mass., who's been writing "My Mom's Blog" for the past three years. "One day, I saw an article in the Boston Globe about bloggers, and so I asked my son Steve, who's into computers, 'What the heck is this blogging thing?' " she says. "He said, 'Ma, you should start your own blog.' "

Using Web-based blogging software, she's able to share with the world her observations and musings—even her recipe for apple crisp. Garfield's recent topics have ranged from sightseeing at the Grand Canyon to reminiscences about "Mexican Hayride," a 1940s Cole Porter musical. She's become so hooked on blogging, in fact, that she seldom watches TV anymore.

Clarence Bowles, 65, of Erlanger, Ky., calls his Web journal "Can You Hear Me Now?" It allows him to share his thoughts on movies, fishing and the monthly meetings of his Good Ole Boys Club companions. "I like having my own soapbox to speak to the world on," he says.

Perhaps the dean of older bloggers is Ronni Bennett, 64, of New York. Her blog, "Time Goes By," may be the only one that focuses exclusively on aging-related issues. Bennett, a former managing editor of CBSNews.com, often writes as "Crabby Old Lady," opining on subjects such as the dearth of cosmetics for older faces.

"Ninety-eight percent of what is written about getting older is about disease, decline and disability," Bennett says. "I'm trying to be an advocate for older people by taking on the youth and beauty police."

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Blogosphere 101: Older Bloggers List
By Patrick J. Kiger

My Mom's Blog "Thoroughly Modern Millie" Garfield, age 80, writes about everything from her travels to the Southwest to her recipe for baked apple crisp. She also includes humorous video clips, such as her recent discourse on packages that are too difficult for older fingers to open.

Clarence Bowles's Can You Hear Me Now? is the 65-year-old Kentucky man's soapbox for giving his views and observations on life, ranging from movies to fishing. "I like to write from my heart and write with as much emotion as I can," he says.

Texas Trifles is authored by Liz "Cowtown Pattie" May, who writes about her teenage experiments with Miracle Whip as a hair treatment, turkey buzzards, killer bees and other oft-amusing aspects of living in the Lone Star State.

Full Fathom Five written by English teacher and Maine resident Mary Lee Fowler, gives a snapshot of life in a "rural community of artists, craftsmen, farmers and gardeners, all united by our love of nature." Recent entries dealt with the experience of teaching English to Chinese immigrants and Fowler's adoption of a 10-month-old Grand Pyrenees-Husky puppy named Cody.

As Time Goes By (What it's really like to get older) may be the Internet's only blog devoted to aging issues. It's the work of former radio producer, TV scriptwriter and pioneering Web journalist Ronni Bennett, who writes in the guise of "Crabby Old Lady" about age discrimination and other subjects.

Frank Paynter's Sandhill Trek is about life on the farm, dealing with the inevitable loss of beloved pets, progressive politics, nature and other topics, rendered in sometimes lyrical prose.

The oddly-named Cop Car's Beat doesn't have anything to do with crime. Instead, it's the diary of an older woman blogger who writes about activities ranging from quilting to disaster relief work.

Silver Fox Whispers is written by a former elementary school teacher who now spends a lot of time traveling with her husband in their RV. She writes about childhood Halloween pranks in her native Minnesota and the difficulties of catching a pesky rat with a cruelty-free trap, among other topics.

The Joy of Six by Joy, a woman in her late fifties, often features her Ogden Nash-style poems about the pleasures and tribulations of everyday life.

Pure Land Mountain is written by Robert Brady, an American expatriate who has been living for the past three decades in Japan. Topics range from life in the rural countryside near Osaka to the joys of eating in Japanese noodle shops, to Brady's passionately dissenting view of U.S. foreign policy and politics.

AARP does not recommend or endorse any of these websites. AARP is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites. Please be advised that there are other similar websites available which were not reviewed and are not listed here.


Copyright © 2005, AARP. All rights reserved.

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Evolution Rules!

Even that Dumbo, Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), is backtracking on the evolution front. Facing likely defeat in his reelection campaign, Santorum has denied his creationism cronies 3 times. The good people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are sick and tired of the creationist crowd. Dumbo Santorum senses the direction of the new winds in the Keystone State and he is trying to trim his sails. If only the good sense in Pennsylvania could take hold in Kansas and Texas and all of the other states where the Yahoos have renounced reason and science. That would be a start in making 2006 better than 2005. If this is (fair & balanced) delight, so be it.

[x HNN]
How the Anti-Evolution Debate Has Evolved
By Charles A. Israel

In this last month of the year, when many Americans’ thoughts are turning to holidays—and what to call them—we may miss another large story about the intersections of religion and public life. Last week a federal appeals court in Atlanta listened to oral arguments about a sticker pasted, and now removed, from suburban Cobb County, Georgia’s high school science textbooks warning that evolution is a “theory, not a fact.” The three-judge panel will take their time deciding the complex issues in the case. But on Tuesday, a federal district court in Pennsylvania ruled the Dover Area ( Penn.) School Board’s oral disclaimers about scientific evolution to be an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The school district’s statement to students and parents directed them to an “alternative” theory, that of Intelligent Design (ID); the court ruled found “that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism. (Kitzmiller opinion, p. 31)” Apparently in a case about evolution, genealogical metaphors are unavoidable.

Seemingly every news story about the modern trials feels it necessary to refer to the 1925 Tennessee Monkey Trial, the clash of the larger-than-life legal and political personalities of William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow in the prosecution of high school teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in violation of state law. As an historian who has written about evolution, education, and the era of the Scopes trial, I will admit the continuities between 1925 and today can seem striking. But, these continuities are deceiving. Though the modern court challenges still pit scientists supporting evolution against some parents, churches, and others opposing its unchallenged place in public school curriculum; the changes in the last eighty years seem even stronger evidence for a form of legal or cultural evolution.

First, the continuities. In the late 19th century religious commentators like the southern Methodist editor and professor Thomas O. Summers, Sr. loved to repeat a little ditty: “When doctors disagree,/ disciples then are free” to believe what they wanted about science and the natural world. Modern anti-evolutionists, most prominently under the sponsorship of Seattle’s Discovery Institute, urge school boards to “teach the controversy” about evolution, purposefully inflating disagreements among scientists about the particulars of evolutionary biology into specious claims that evolutionary biology is a house of cards ready to fall at any time. The court in the Dover case concluded that although there were some scientific disagreements about evolutionary theory, ID is “an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion” not science. In a second continuity, supporters of ID reach back, even before Darwin, to the 19th century theology of William Paley, who pointed to intricate structures like the human eye as proof of God’s design of humans and the world. Though many ID supporters are circumspect about the exact identity of the intelligent designer, it seems unlikely that the legions of conservative Christian supporters of ID are assuming that Martians, time-travelers, or extra-terrestrial meatballs could be behind the creation and complexity of their world.

While these issues suggest that the Scopes Trial is still relevant and would seem to offer support for the statement most often quoted to me by first year history students on why they should study history—because it repeats itself—this new act in the drama shows some remarkable changes. Arguing that a majority of parents in any given state, acting through legislatures, could outlaw evolution because it contradicted their religious beliefs, William Jennings Bryan campaigned successfully in Tennessee and several other states to ban the teaching of evolution and to strike it from state-adopted textbooks.

Legal challenges to the Tennessee law never made it to the federal courts, but the constitutional hurdles for anti-evolutionists grew higher in 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Epperson that an Arkansas law very similar to the Tennessee statute was an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The law’s purpose, the court found, was expressly religious. So anti-evolution was forced to evolve, seeking a new form more likely to pass constitutional muster. Enter Creation Science, a movement that added scientific language to the book of Genesis, and demanded that schools provide “equal time” to both Creation Science and biological evolution. Creation Science is an important transitional fossil of the anti-evolution movement, demonstrating two adaptations: first, the adoption of scientific language sought to shield the religious purpose of the statute and second, the appeal to an American sense of fairness in teaching both sides of an apparent controversy. The Supreme Court in 1987 found this new evolution constitutionally unfit, overturning a Louisiana law.

Since the 1987 Edwards v Aguillard decision, the anti-evolution movement has attempted several new adaptations, all of which show direct ties to previous forms. The appeal to public opinion has grown: recent national opinion polls reveal that nearly two-thirds of Americans (and even higher numbers of Alabamians) support teaching both scientific evolution and creationism in public schools. School board elections and textbook adoption battles show the strength of these arguments in a democratic society. The new variants have been far more successful at clothing themselves in the language—but not the methods—of science. Whether by rewriting state school standards to teach criticisms of scientific evolution (as in Ohio or Kansas) or in written disclaimers to be placed in school textbooks (as in Alabama or Cobb County, Georgia) or in the now discredited oral disclaimers of the Dover Area School Board, the religious goal has been the same: by casting doubt on scientific evolution, they hope to open room to wedge religion back into public school curricula. But as the court in yesterday’s Dover case correctly concluded, Intelligent Design is “an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion” not science. Old arguments of a religious majority, though still potent in public debate, have again proven constitutionally unfit; Creationists and other anti-evolutionists will now have to evolve new arguments to survive constitutional tests.

Charles A. Israel is Associate Professor of History at Auburn University and author of Before Scopes: Evangelicals, Education, and Evolution in Tennessee, 1870–1925 (University of Georgia Press, 2004).

Copyright © 2005 The History News Network

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