Mom & Me Four Archive

...but, since it's mine, it doesn't get tooted unless I put it to my lips and fingers. Late last week and early this week a marketing tool for "The Senior Living Industry", the Goldman Mature Market Report, published a series based on three interviews with Anne Robertson, the author of Monday's with Mother: An Alzheimer's Story, one of the blogs in the Memory Lane Webring. An announcement of the upcoming articles was sent to members of the ring and one of them forwarded the announcement to me. So, of course, I followed the articles. I was pleased to note that a PR company that devotes some of its resources to the "Senior Living Industry" was paying attention to the blogophere as it pertains to real world seniors and their real world circumstances, even if it is in order to drum up business. In the second part of the article, the last paragraph admonished the industry for lagging on understanding the potential impact of such blogs, then devoted a bit of wordage to suggesting how individual businesses in the industry can begin to mine this resource for information. This paragraph bothered me. It was way too short-sighted. So, I decided to leave a lengthy comment on why businesses in the industry should look further, replete with some suggestions on what to look for and what they might find. Since the Goldman Mature Market Report moderates their comments and I'd left, as a comment, what amounted to a mini-article, I wasn't expecting to see it show up. But, it did. If you're interested, you can access it by clicking on the link above to the second part of the article, then further clicking into the comment. So far, mine is the only one.
    I mention it in case other members of "the industry" visit here and could use a little inspiration.
    Funny, though. Mona, the author of The Tangled Neuron recently reminded me of a PBS show she viewed, "And Thou Shalt Honor...". I saw it a few years ago but couldn't remember much about it, so clicked into her link. I remembered so little about the show that I'd forgotten that Dr. Bill Thomas, the author of What Are Old People For?, was a featured guest. At that time, I hadn't read the book. This time, since I've now read him, I was intrigued about what he might have said, so I clicked on his name. In this interview, he makes no bones about what his intentions are [scroll to the his response to the last question on the page] toward what he derisively refers to as the "long term care industry" [to read his specific comments, click here and scroll down to his answer to the last question on the page]. As I read through the interview, it was hard for me not to contrast it with one of Goldman & Associates goals, to nurture the same industry Dr. Thomas intends to bury.
    What interesting times in which to live!