This Month's Features

Not only can technology make your life easier and more fun but it also may allow you – or your loved one – to retain an independent, healthy lifestyle. Here are just eight of the many innovations now popular:

Most visitors to the Czech Republic confine their stay to Prague, and with good reason. Known as “the city of a hundred spires,” although it’s actually decorated by nearly a thousand towers and steeples, it challenges the most magnificent capitals of Europe in its beauty, and boasts a history that stretches back over a millennium. In addition, since the Middle Ages Prague (Praha) has been recognized as one of the most vibrant cultural settings on the continent.

Arlington – The Retired Men’s Club of Arlington (RMCA) offers a number of unique activities including the Singing Grandpops, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. The vocal group performs regularly at senior centers, civic clubs, nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Its musical director, Frank Vaughan, has been active with the group since its founding in 1990.

Boston – Monday through Friday, Aziline Booth, 66, looks forward to seeing her “grandchildren” at the CAAS Head Start Program in Cambridge. For the past four years, sometimes leaving at 6:30 a.m., “Miss Aziline” travels by three different buses from her Cambridge home to the program at the Frisoli Center.

Some vacationers soak up sun on beaches with white, black and even green sand. Nearby, skiers speed down snow-covered slopes of a dormant volcano. Other people check out a surreal moonscape of hardened pitch-black lava and hike through a lush tropical rainforest. If this sounds like a continent-wide choice of activities, it’s because the island of Hawaii in ways resembles a miniature continent. Since it shares its name with the state, it’s often referred to as the Big Island to avoid confusion, and with good reason. It’s almost twice the size of the other Hawaiian islands combined.

A longtime passion for dance progressed to working as a dance/movement therapist for Donna Newman-Bluestein. In recent years, personal family experience compelled her to focus her work on helping people with dementia. “My father had dementia and I saw that the care he was given was not anywhere near good enough,” she shared. “People with disabilities who cannot speak and advocate for themselves get minimal care. I want to right that wrong.”

Tillie Sweet personifies the showbiz motto, “The show must go on!” She’s a retired registered nurse with over 50 years’ experience in community theaters. Now, she serves as director of the Senior Dramatic Society of the Concord Council on Aging (COA). “Once theater is in your blood, you absolutely fall in love with it,” she declared.

What do journaling, backyard astronomy, and Italian all have in common? They are all courses offered by Explorers Lifelong Learning Institute of Salem State University. Explorers, one of more than 400 Lifelong Learning Institutes across the country, offers a multitude of courses in two main semesters for people ages 50 and over.

In Gilroy, California, people line up to purchase watermelon, ice cream and chocolate, all of which are laced with fresh, pungent garlic. Underwater divers off Florida’s Looe Key are serenaded by sounds ranging from a song sung by the Beatles to the high-pitched call made by humpback whales.

Southborough - According to the National Fire Protection Association, people age 65 and over are twice as likely to be killed or injured by fires compared to the population at large.