Americans are famous for believing in self-help books. Starting with Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac of 1733, we have been publishing and buying them at a great rate ever since. Walk into a bookstore and you will find shelves full of advice adapted to every stage and condition of life.

Self-help, however, turns out to be something of a misnomer. Actually, it’s other people wanting to help you. All sorts of people are ready with counsel, flying in the face of mankind’s almost universal experience: no one really welcomes advice from anyone else about how they should live their own life.

And yet the books sell. Can one suspect the lurking presence of masochism, self-torture, which drives us to heed the imperatives that figure largely in such volumes? Something in us, after all, wants to be told what to do.  

But is there not often something patronizing about advising people who have reached 80, 90, or 100 on the subject of how to live? If they have been successful enough at this kind of longevity, perhaps they have been doing something right.

Al Franken, a leading comedian on the current scene, has also got into the act. But he, at least, has fixed his tongue firmly in his cheek. Most recently, he has authored “Oh, the Things I know!: A Guide To Success Or, Failing That, Happiness,” a 2002 book, newly in paperback, that satirizes the self-help genre.

I confess mixed feelings about “100 Tips For Healthy Aging,” a new manual from the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center For Aged, just published in celebration of its 100th birthday. The tips are more than the word suggests. They all begin with imperative verbs, driven words such as “Get” (8 mentions), “Have” (6), and “Protect” (3).

After some 70 years of doing it on my own, do I need to be told “Snack Well?” Or “Wear properly fitting shoes?” Or must those who have them be instructed: “Spend time with your grandchildren or great-grandchildren?”

However, for fear of seeming overly curmudgeonly, let me single out some creative injunctions that do not offend the sensibilities of even purists like me. Here, too, I would prefer exhortation rather than imperatives but these commands have enough merit to make me forgive their style.

“Maintain a sense of humor about life,” the folks at Hebrew Rehab tell us.  In this column, that’s what I am trying to do. As you can see, however, it’s by no means easy to pull off. And isn’t this virtue something you either have or don’t have and will find it impossible to manufacture?

At least, we are not told: “Have a nice day.” To that I might have replied, “Excuse me but I have other plans.”

“Listen to or make music,” they order us.  Bravo!, except they have never heard me play the piano, or, even worse, sing. However, I do believe in listening to the pros and continue to take delight in opera, a dubious habit contracted in my early teenage years.

Under the heading “mental stimulation,” our Hebrew Rehab friends tell us “Keep a journal,” and “Write your memoirs.” Perhaps they should have added a caveat “Take Care Who You Show Them To,” advice that I have been known to violate, to my continuing chagrin.

Another injunction that grabbed my interest is “Pursue spiritual meaning in your life.” Amen, I say, Amen. But I have been running after spiritual meaning for years without having yet caught up with it.

Of course, catching up with spiritual meaning may be worse than pursuing it. As the monk who was rumored to have become enlightened replied when asked how he felt: “Just as miserable as ever.”

Though it belongs in my banal class, the instruction “Wear your seat belt” can at least claim the virtue of simplicity. I need no convincing of its value but, again, must we, who never fail to do it, be told what to do?

This Poor Richard prefers some of the imperatives in Roger Rosenblatt’s 2000 book “Rules For Aging.” For example, he urges: “Do not attempt to improve anyone, especially when you know it will help.” When what Rosenblatt calls the muse of improvement whispers in your ear, he succinctly tells you what to do: “Swat it.”

Now you know what a misanthrope I can be, a guy who can look quizzically at an excellent booklet, full of prudent advice, much of it based on solid research, and tested by experience. And it comes, to boot, from an institution that enjoys an international reputation for its fine tradition of care.

So “100 Tips” is a brochure that you, a person of sound judgment, may well want to have. It will cost five dollars, plus a shipping and handling charge. You can find out how to get it by calling (617) 363-8385 or by emailing
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.

Richard Griffin

“The older you get, the healthier you have been.” That is the mantra Tom Perls has devised, after almost ten years of studying people who have lived to age 100. Most of these centenarians, it turns out,  have not so much overcome life-threatening diseases as avoided them.

Dr. Perls, a geriatrician and  researcher now at the Boston University Medical Center, last week shared with a small but enthusiastic audience some of the insights he has gained from his dealings with people who have broken the century barrier.

Perls started his medical career believing, like most other doctors, that the older you get, the sicker you are. However, after getting to know two centenarians,  residents at Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale,  he began to change his mind.

By now he feels enthusiastic about life in extreme old age. The 800 centenarians he has had contact with thus far have taught him so much that it has affected the way he lives his own life.

He attaches great importance to continuing to learn, especially acquiring  new skills. It’s a way of building cognitive reserve that can protect against decline in brain power. The links between two telephone poles are improved by adding new wires; if we learn a new instrument or a new language, we are, in a sense, adding new wires to our cognitive capabilities.

Dr. Perls also considers nutrition vitally important. And yet he is not a fanatic about food: rather, he believes in achieving and keeping a balance. If restricting your intake of calories is going to make you miserable, it’s not going to be good for you and you will not long keep doing it.

But Perls is dead set against being overweight. He confesses having been in that condition himself until he determined to stop eating two bagels a day along with several chocolate bars each week. He now takes special care to ration the carbohydrates in his diet.

He credits Walter Willet, a prominent researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, with seeing that the famous food pyramid put out by the United States Department of Agriculture should be turned upside down.

Instead of carbohydrates being the largest item, at the base of the pyre, they should be on top. Fruits and vegetables should replace them as the nutrients of choice with carbos being carefully controlled. Fats are not always what they seem: they do not pose the same threat of obesity as do carbos. Carbos make the pancreas produce insulin that stores fat in the body.

Since some 70 percent of Americans are overweight, the importance of these nutrition issues is evident. Besides bad nutrition, another reason for this unhealthy situation is our lack of exercise. Only 15 percent of people over 65 exercise regularly, a factor that lessens chances for increased longevity.

Many of us who do exercise do not realize the importance of strength training, such as stretching arms and legs. Unlike aerobic exercise that boosts endurance, strength exercise aims to build muscles.  Amazingly enough, strength training of this sort can increase one’s brain power. To make sure his patients take it seriously, Dr. Perls writes prescriptions for strength training.

Certain common traits tend to characterize people who have reached 100. “Centenarians tend not to dwell on things,”  says Perls. “Also, they tend to be a gregarious, funny group.” What this means is that they manage stress very well.

A couple of other characteristics run through them as a group. “Religion seems to be quite prevalent among centenarians,” Perls says. Having some form of faith has led them to discover a reason behind things. Prayer seems to reduce stress, especially forms of repetitive prayer like the rosary.

Another trait is having social networks and enjoying other people. “I have come across only two or three curmudgeonly centenarians,”  says this researcher into their ways. Most of them are gregarious and they have the good sense and the ability to bring young people into their lives, people to receive help from them.

Despite his enthusiasm for the centenarians he has known, Tom Perls does not see getting to 100 as some kind of life goal. Rather, he is interested in the quality of life, in extending one’s life to its full span while enjoying good mental and physical health. He supports the “compression of morbidity” ideal, whereby the time when we are seriously ill at the end of life is reduced to the shortest time possible.

As for the so-called anti-aging purveyors who see aging as a sickness and doing away with the limits to life as a goal, he judges them dangerous. “There are  hucksters out there that are doing no different than what the snake oil salesmen of the 1800s were doing.  When they are selling human growth hormone, it’s the same as ground-up goat testicles. Injecting yourself with this stuff is buying yourself an aggressive form of cancer 20 years down the road.”

Richard Griffin

It was my first visit ever to a nursing home where residents are free to go to bed at night at whatever hour they wish and to get up when they feel like doing so.

“We are trying to emphasize a different model, where the residents have control,” says Paul Hollings, director of Neville Manor, an institution in my home town where I stopped to see how that new model works.

Located at Youville Hospital until its new facility near Fresh Pond opens next spring, Neville Manor makes no small claim for historical roots. It traces its remote origins back to 1779 (starting with the city’s poorhouse and allowing for many changes of site and institutional culture.)  

According to Hollings, until recently the mindset for nursing homes went, “I will take care of you; you are dependent on me.” This was not all bad but it led to institutions that were focused much more on the bodies of the people who lived in them than on their overall wellbeing, psychological and spiritual as well as physical.

Neville Manor is by no means the only nursing home that recognizes the right of residents to determine their own bedtimes and to make other decisions about themselves. It is one of a significant minority of institutions across America that have begun to change the culture of nursing homes.

These innovating institutions have drawn inspiration from a group of far-sighted people from around the country. A leader among them is Bill Thomas, a Harvard Medical School-trained physician who has developed the Eden Alternative, an innovative plan for a new approach to nursing homes. I recently heard this charismatic reformer speak in Chicago, where he called for a new view of aging to propel a new kind of facility.

At Neville Manor, an important vehicle for change is the residents’ council. Paul Hollings wants it empowered not so much to address gripes as to solve problems. “We’ve been working actively with the residents to get them to come up with solutions,” says Hollings.

I talked to the three officers of this council and was impressed with their upbeat approach to life at their facility. Knowing that their opinions on important issues count for something, they would seem to experience a higher level of morale than residents of old-style homes.

In a mission statement the cultural change committee at Neville says of applicants: “Their admission to our institution should not require them to sacrifice what made their lives meaningful in order to receive (our) treatment and care.”

Just as members of the staff in their own private lives enjoy the right to make choices such as “what we will eat, what we will do to entertain ourselves, when we will get up and how often and when we will bathe,” so residents should have the same right, so far as possible.

Another principle vital to nursing home change concerns the treatment of staff members. The reformers believe that how management deals with staff determines in large measure how staff deals with residents. When staff members have their own rights and dignity respected, then they are much more likely to treat residents with respect.

At Neville, every staff member expects to answer resident requests for help. If a particular staffer cannot take care of it, he or she will find someone else who can. Regardless of their job title, they are all involved in the common enterprise of meeting the needs of residents.

Normally, however, nursing assistants are assigned to the same small group of residents, thus enabling these staff members to get to know better the people they serve.

I talked with several staff members about the changes in ways of doing things and in atmosphere. A nursing assistant, Mahnaz Akhtar, told me about the improvement in communication among staff members. “When we have a problem, we can talk to each other,” she said.

With her was Rohi Khan who explained how they resolved a problem that resulted from managers at first not talking to the staff members directly involved in a difficult situation. “It worked out really good,” she said of the solution.

Wendy Lustbader, a Seattle-based geriatric social worker and author, calls for creating a homelike environment and promoting a sense of community.

“Dogs, cats, birds, plants, children, and gardens accessible to everyone,” Lustbader writes, “can transform a sterile monoculture into a human habitat worthy of a home.”

A conversation I had with Jenni Caldwell, Ombudsman Program Director at Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services supports what I have written here.

Of Neville Manor and Paul Hollings, she observes: “What is unique is that they welcome finding out about problems so they can change things.”

And speaking at large of nursing homes committed to the new ways, Caldwell says: “Culture change is the most exciting thing that has happened in a long, long time – an idea whose time has come.”  

Richard Griffin

A small personal encounter in my 75th year has brought into sharp relief the fact that we all, young and old, are silently changing, growing older physically and being transformed internally. Even in an anxious time when the world is preparing for war, and people feel unsettled by catastrophe, incidents like this one call for attention and reflection.

On a recent evening I arrived at the home of dear friends and was greeted at the door by their 11-year-old daughter, whom I will here call Alison. She is a delightful young girl, sprightly in body and lively in mind, whom I have known from almost the beginning of her life.

Arriving at her house for dinner, I was warmly greeted at the door by my young friend. On this occasion, Alison made conversation with me more easily than usual, among other things telling me about her dog Euterpe who was running around the area near the front door, excited by the approach of us visitors.

I did not notice anything else unusual in my contact with Alison on this occasion. While we conversed, she maintained eye contact and was attentive as I took off my coat. Assuming the role of hostess while her parents were busy in the kitchen, she made me feel comfortable in her home.

Later in the evening, however, when Alison was out of earshot, her mother, whom I will here call Wendy, told me of questions Alison had asked her about me. “What has happened to Richard’s arm? Did he injure it?” Alison wanted to know.

Wendy was astonished to hear her daughter’s questions and replied: “Why nothing has happened to Richard. His arm was always like that, since it was damaged during his birth.”

Like Wendy, I also was surprised at Alison asking about my arm since, throughout her life, she had seen me dozens of times previously and had had many opportunities to notice the signs of this injury. Never before had she given any indication of recognizing my impairment.

In reflecting later on the girl’s discovery, I attributed it to Alison’s arrival at a new stage of development. Previously, I surmised, she was not able to notice my disability, despite numerous opportunities to do so. She had not matured enough to take note of this kind of defect in an adult. It required more internal growth for her to see me as I really am.

Some adults, it is true, have occasionally failed to notice that my left arm is shorter and smaller than my right. Looking at me from certain angles, they could have missed this fact. But they would not have taken years to discover the bodily defect caused by birth injury.

Incidentally, I do not claim this disability counts as major, comparable to what many other people face. But, like all bodily differences, it has loomed large in my psyche, especially when I was young, and has had an important role in my own personal development.

Thus, aside from the growth in consciousness that I assume this discovery on Alison’s part may reveal, I paid attention to my own response to Wendy’s telling me about the incident. Though she related it to me in the presence of several other friends, I did not recoil in shame and embarrassment as I would have done earlier in my life. Instead, I listened to her anecdote with intense interest, but with most of my attention focused on what was going on in Alison’s adolescent psyche.

I confess, however, to some lurking feelings of defensiveness, but they were lodged in the far background of my psyche rather than in the front of my mind. Not yet am I entirely free of emotional response to remarks about my body image.

Reflecting further on this event, I take this apparently minor incident as an important sign of change in myself. It serves as evidence of my progress in self- acceptance, to my mind the most fundamental of later life’s tasks.

I had come far from the time when I used to stand before three-way mirrors in department stores, trying on new sports coats, and cringing at my own image. Now, after the passage of decades, I can at last accept myself with some equanimity as I actually am rather than as I wish myself to have been.

However, God has not finished with me yet, my life is still not at an end and I still have a distance to travel before that self-acceptance becomes more definitive.

This apparently trivial incident has signaled for me the way younger and older are all in the daily activity of growing interiorly as well as visibly. What we are able to see and how we come to feel about ourselves and our body image form part of the human adventure.

Richard Griffin

Never had the familiar words struck me with such force as they did at a concert last week. Those Latin words “dona nobis pacem” (grant us peace) come at the end of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and express a request for a gift needed at every stage of history.

This prayer rang out even more eloquently than usual at this time when war once again so menacingly looms before us.

This petition  for peace had a special impact on me because it was sung by a combined chorus of some 200 college students. Massed on the stage of Sanders Theater behind a professional orchestra, the youthful singers gave eloquent expression to my own desire for peace and that of many other people around this country and, indeed, the world.

In my 75th year, there is nothing I hope for more ardently for my own daughter and others in the rising generations than for them to live in peace.

Beethoven himself lived in a time of armed conflicts that roiled the countries of Europe. When his Solemn Mass was first performed in 1824, listeners would have been reminded of Napoleon’s recent invasions of Vienna where the composer lived.

At the beginning of the words “Dona nobis pacem” in the score, he inscribed German words translated as “Prayer for inner and outer peace.”  This heading showed his understanding of the spiritual meaning of peace as well as its external manifestations.

This winter has brought us all a turbulence that strikes me as different in character from any I have experienced in a lifetime of ups and downs. Andrew Delbanco, a Columbia University professor of literature, in a recent talk, referred to these months as “a time of great darkness and pessimism.”  That is what I hear from many people encountered on my daily rounds.

This period perhaps could also be called a “phony war,” evoking the October 1939-April 1940 waiting period before World War II heated up. We feel ourselves on the edge of a crevice, ready to leap over or disastrously fall in.

Many people, now senior, grew up believing in the adage “there is nothing new under the sun.”  By now, we know better. The current time of tension stretched out over many weeks is unique in our experience. Some 250,000  warriors ready to spring on Iraq, intense diplomatic struggles at the United Nations, continued erosion of personal savings, and much more, mark this as a period that tests the inner resources of just about everyone.

I also bemoan our decline in representative government. How, for instance,  can the president promise some 30 billion dollars to Turkey without any debate in the Congress that has the responsibility to appropriate major expenditures?

Is not the veteran senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, right to bemoan the silence of the senate at a time of such crisis? “There is no debate,” he lamented, “ no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.”

The thunderous silence on the floor of the senate in the face of decisions that may affect our national well-being and will determine our nation’s place in the world troubles me. Our representatives ought to be debating the wisdom of alternative courses of action.

I find the conduct of our federal government profoundly disturbing in other ways as well. Though it is delicate to question personal religious practice, the strong reliance of the president on religious motivation, something he himself talks about, especially bothers me. As a person to whom religion has loomed large over a lifetime and continues to do so now, I have learned how hazardous it can be to interpret a particular course of action as willed by God.

To justify the use of massive force against Iraq, the president puts faith in “regime change” and the creation of democratic rule. A  new government in Baghdad will supposedly serve as a model inducing other Arab nations to change their ruling structure. What a utopian plan built on wishful thinking!

But, in case you don’t like that scheme,  he comes up with alternative rationales as occasion requires. No one of them justifies an assault on Iraq without the backing of the UN. That is the conviction of most spiritual leaders of the world, including those of my own tradition.

I have chosen to write about the threat of war this week because of feeling torn by it. In doing so, I assume that many other people of my generation feel the same way. Even those of us blessed with long life have never previously experienced quite this set of circumstances. We have survived many other crises but this combination is different.

“Grant us peace” remains my prayer, along with the hope that our nation will find paths leading  to the well-being of our own people and peaceful  solidarity with the other nations of the world.

Richard Griffin

One morning last month, if you had been in the village of Sarceaux in northwestern France, you might have seen a man named Olivier, 33 years of age, placing in the mailboxes of townspeople a sheet of paper with a shocking message that he had composed on his computer.

The message angrily told what it was like to grow up the unacknowledged son of a Roman Catholic priest. For his whole life almost up to that point, everyone had considered him fatherless. On his school identification papers he had always written “Father’s name: X,” as was customary for children of  unknown paternity.

In 1989 he had discovered his father’s identity.  However, he did not feel free to discuss the matter until this past January when his mother went on television and talked openly about her 40-year relationship with a priest whose name she did not disclose. Several times previously, she had talked about it on television, but anonymously.

Now, with the backing of his mother Françoise, Olivier had decided to reveal his father’s name to the residents of Sarceaux.

His father, it turns out, is Jean Mabille, now 80 years old and the parish priest of Sarceaux. In addition to his son, he also fathered two other children by Françoise, sisters younger than Olivier. Since the end of last year, the priest has also been a grandfather.

When they first came together, Françoise was only 16 years old and the priest was 25 years her senior. When Olivier was born, he says, he could not have acknowledged his paternity but he promised his bishop not to see Françoise again. He managed to keep this promise for 13 years but the couple ultimately came together again.

After keeping her lover’s identity secret for so many years, Françoise finally decided to expose the father of her children. The Paris newspaper Le Monde, which recently reported the story, quotes her as saying: “I would be remiss to wait till he was dead before witnessing” to what the priest had done.

Now that the news is out, the local church has had to take action. The bishop of Sées, with the backing of his diocesan council, has told Jean Mabille to acknowledge his children. Through the years, the priest has been giving some money to Françoise for the children’s support, but this new requirement goes further in requiring him to go public.

In general, Francoise does not feel bitter against her quasi-husband. However, she has one complaint, namely that “he shares the joys and sorrows of other people but not ours.” She was baptized as a Catholic but now is an agnostic.

People in Sarceaux appreciate their pastor, one recalling how he comforted her when her father died. There also seems to be widespread feeling that priests should be allowed to marry. “A pastor is not a stick of wood,” says one man. Listeners to a call-in radio program said, in essence: “It’s better for a priest to produce children than to be a pedophile.”

His son feels thankful at not having to appear a half-orphan any longer. Were he still a schoolboy, he would not now have to mark his father’s identity with those humiliating X’s. Olivier has been in touch with the bishop by both  telephone and email. The prelate admits that there’s a basic underlying question connected with the story–the celibacy of priests.

How the daughters feel, Le Monde does not tell us. It would not be surprising to find them identifying with their mother and what she has been through in this longtime affair.

The advance of age can bring surprises, some of which can be quite unsettling. The situations of Jean and Françoise, she only 56, he 80, surely differ between them. And having unfolded in such a small community, this crisis has an especially dramatic edge.

I wonder how the pastor feels about having been exposed at his advanced age. Perhaps he has been fearing the revelation just now made by his clandestine sexual partner. Or maybe he had confidence that, after so many years, the secret would never be revealed.

As a psychiatrist friend has suggested to me, this crisis in Jean’s life can be seen as a rich opportunity for a spiritual breakthrough. Confronted with the public knowing about his illicit liaison of years past, he can now accept the consequences of what he did and reach out to his children and their mother with love and sympathy.  Whether he feels in inclined to do so, however, seems doubtful, at least if the newspaper reports are accurate.  

The best index of his current feelings may be his reported failure to telephone Françoise since the time when she went public. The bishop wants him to acknowledge his wife and children, but he apparently shows himself more distant from her than formerly.

Further details about the story are available online in French editions of both Le Monde and Figaro.

Richard Griffin

“I don’t know what they’re trying to do to elderly people.” That is what a friend, on the verge of her 87th birthday, says about elder service program cuts that she has heard talk of recently.

For the past six months or so, she has been enrolled in Prescription Advantage, the state’s drug program for people over 65 and low-income people under that age with disabilities. She finds that it provides excellent coverage, regards herself as lucky to be on it, and hopes the program will continue.

Some human service advocates are worried, however, about what has already happened to the program and what is likely to happen in the future. Already, as of February 1, the state office of elder affairs has cut off any further applications for membership. And Governor Romney’s budget, if enacted, will require increases in costs for current members. As of now, those increases are planned for April 1.

For the last two years, however, Massachusetts residents have enjoyed the benefits of “Prescription Advantage,” getting badly needed help with the costs of drugs. Our state has thus stepped out in front of the nation in doing something practical about the health needs of some of its most vulnerable citizens

But the new elder affairs secretary, Jennifer Davis Carey, has pronounced Prescription Advantage to be “unsustainable” because of insufficient money given her in the new budget. And yet she has cut off new enrollments despite expert opinion that larger enrollments are the key to making the program affordable for the state.

If the reductions kick in, Massachusetts will run the risk of surrendering its position as a leader in helping older citizens to meet their prescription drug needs. The only state plan in the whole nation to offer prescription drug coverage to all citizens over age 65 will have lost much of its clout.

The amounts required in premiums, co-payments, and deductibles will take the advantage away from the prescription program. These higher costs may cause many moderate-income elders to drop out.

It’s no use waiting till politicians in Washington take care of those of us over 65 and those younger but disabled. The pols of both parties have frittered away opportunities to include a prescription drug package under Medicare. Last week the president was again talking about taking action but talk will not do it.

With huge amounts of money promised or spent on tax cuts, military forces sent to the Middle East, and even some 30 billion for Turkey, there will be nothing left for Medicare improvements. No time soon, it appears, will relief come from Washington.

Many of us, perhaps, will have to see if we can buy drugs in Canada, as residents of some other states have been doing. Perhaps the Commonwealth will have to charter buses for us to travel to Montreal and other points north.

Other reasons for concern have emerged from the new governor’s budget priorities. What is happening to the drug program is of a piece with cutbacks in vital services to elders in need. The home care program for which Massachusetts decades ago established a nationwide reputation finds itself at its lowest ebb since the 1980s. Advocates such as Al Norman of Mass Home Care report that 2000 fewer elders are receiving services than 14 months ago. Adequate funding is being nibbled away.

These advocates worry about the shrinking of home care, in part, because it may drive many more people into nursing homes. This is likely to have the self-defeating effect of costing the state more money by driving up the costs paid through Medicaid.

It also seems that the state office of elder affairs is  losing much of its clout. Again, Massachusetts was the leader back in the 1970s as one of the first states to establish a cabinet level office to serve the interests of older people. Through the intervening years, it has functioned remarkably well, giving organized elders leverage to ensure that their needs are met by state government.

Last week when Governor Romney announced his budget plans, it became clear how far the elder affairs office has fallen in his hierarchy. Instead of reporting directly to him, he wants it to answer to the secretary of health and human services who will control the money and determine budget priorities.

Al Norman characterizes the elder affairs structure that will be left as only a “shell organization.” It does seem a shame that what so many leaders such as Frank Manning and Elsie Frank fought for on behalf of older citizens may now be sacrificed in the name of reorganization.

Yes, Massachusetts, like all the other states that face severe budget shortfalls, must make changes. The challenge is to make changes that will serve the greatest good and ensure the well-being of those who are most needy.

Richard Griffin