A golden retriever named Molly has a remarkably fine record as a pet therapist. Her handler, Bonnie Malm of Lexington, tells of the impact her dog had on one person who was a patient at the geriatric psychiatry unit in Mount Auburn Hospital:

“A gentleman had five family members visiting. This man never smiled. I brought Molly in and she headed right for him and put her head in his lap and now he had the biggest grin on his face. He loved the dog.”

Another woman, Lynne Peters of Arlington, speaks in similar glowing terms about the work of her dog Andy, a greyhound: “There was a lady here, she was quite depressed, you could not see any recognition of anything from her. Andy went up to her and gave her a little kiss and looked at her and she looked at him and they said that was the first time she had recognized anything around her in some months.”

Lynne Peters points out another beneficial effect of Andy’s presence: “I think it’s a good thing for family members, too; they enjoy seeing their loved ones enjoy themselves and seeing others care about their relative.”

Watching Andy and Molly interacting with elderly patients at the hospital on a recent Sunday afternoon was my introduction to the Caring Canines program. Started in 2001 by Marilyn Gilbert, a Winchester resident, this program now boasts 92 dogs who are trained, approved, and registered for visits to facilities where elder citizens, children, and others of various ages welcome them.

Another of the dogs I have met is Zoe, the English cocker spaniel handled by my friend Deana Furman, an 11-year-old girl who lives in Arlington. She and her mother, Carole Bohn, take Zoe to several elder residences and nursing homes, much to the delight of elderly residents.

Of the dogs who visit Mount Auburn, Marilyn Gilbert says: “I select them very carefully; in a psychiatric unit you need our most engaging dogs.”

Andy has a special trait: he is trained to lean against people. “He leans, so he’s a good therapy dog,” boasts his handler Lynne Peters.

The patients in the room where the dogs were visiting all seemed delighted with them. “Molly and I are buddies,” announced one man.

Two other patients, both women, also praised their visitors: “They’re beautiful, they’re so friendly.” Another explained why the dogs please her: “I like the dogs because they’re very well behaved. They have nice personalities.”

My only problem with the program is that so little  time is given to visiting. At Mount Auburn, the dogs come only once a month and stay for a half hour or so. Marilyn Gilbert says it’s because the program does not have enough dogs and volunteer owners to satisfy the demand from nursing homes, hospitals, adult day care centers, and assisted living residences.

To take part in Caring Canines, a dog’s handler must follow a series of rules designed to safeguard the patients’ well-being and comfort. You can find these rules and other information about the program at its web site, www.caringcanines.org. This site features handsome photos of the dogs, along with tallies of how many visits they have accumulated thus far.

Throughout my first experience of pet therapists, I kept wondering if Phileas J. Fogg, our household cat, could ever take part in such an activity. Unfortunately, I knew the answer as soon as the question rose in my mind: Phil is simply too ornery ever to submit to the discipline required of pet therapists.

In looking for reports of research done on pet therapy, however, I did find mention of two cats who take part in animal visitation at Bayside Medical Center in Springfield. They have visited patients in intensive care units and, according to nursing staff there, “eased the patients’ isolation and depression symptoms.”

An article with the arresting title “Take One Pet and Call Me in the Morning,” appeared two years ago in the periodical “Generations.”  The author says research suggests “the human-animal bond is perhaps stronger and more profound in late life than at any other age.” That conclusion, however, is based on companion animals who live with people rather than visiting animals.

A huge number of Americans have such companions at home, some 60 percent of households.  Of these the author says, “Companion animals offer one of the most accessible enhancements to a person’s quality of life, increasing happiness, and improving physical functioning and emotional health.”

Obviously, more research needs to be done if the value of visitations is to be proven scientifically. But many people do not need to wait to be convinced: they already experience at first hand the benefits of visiting dogs like Andy, Molly, and Zoe. 

To inquire further into the program, you can call the director at (781) 729-8285.

Richard Griffin

On entering the room, I began to weep.  For the first time in many years, I could not stop crying. The sight of my friend Jack lying on a bed, his eyes closed, his mouth open wide, and him obviously dying caught me by surprise. I had come to the Veteran’s Hospital knowing of his entering into crisis but I did not expect to see him this much changed.

Next to him in that narrow room stood a priest saying prayers that go with the Anointing of the Sick. Around the bed stood members of Jack’s family –  – his wife, their sons, and one daughter-in-law, all of them holding hands as they joined in the prayers and blessings. Seeing them stirred my emotions further, as I felt solidarity with them in our common loss.

My two companions and I, arriving late, were embraced and made to feel part of this community of shared grief. We extended our hands in the prayer circle and also received the priest’s blessing. He consoled us by saying how good it was to have other people with him as he prayed over Jack

The pity of it! The pity of it! Those words of Shakespeare welled up in me as I looked upon my friend of six decades. He was asleep so deeply as to seem already removed from the world. The disease that had worn him out was now breaking down his last walls of resistance.

It had been a long and agonizing struggle over the last eight years or so. Alzheimer’s, at first subtle in disclosing its presence, gradually took away Jack’s power to think logically and finally his ability to recognize old friends like me and even family members. In time he had become entirely dependent on others.

He had become lost several times, so lost on one occasion that a helicopter had to be dispatched to search for him. His profession had been lost too, a legal career in which he had shown much brilliance. Finally, he could no longer stay living at home.

What had stayed with him and even grown in power, however, was the love directed toward him by his wife, grown-up sons, and other family members. With courage and devotion his wife Penny had kept coming to see him and to attend to his needs, even when his responses were not identifiable.   

The old fashioned pool in which I swim every day  reminds me of Jack and our first week as college classmates. In those days, entering freshmen had to pass a swimming test in that pool, a feat I could not have accomplished since I could not swim at all. Sizing up my situation, Jack offered to take the test for me. With my connivance, he jumped in, swam competently up and down the lane, and posed as me until I was registered. Dubious ethically, this was an act of charity on his part that I still appreciate.

We had also been classmates in high school, two among the 21 boys who entered our new school in 1943. Jack was a far stronger student than I in math and science and so beat me out academically in our last two years. Instead of being resentful, I admired his all-around ability especially his excellence in analyzing  problems and solving them with confidence.

He finished his college studies in three years and then went on to law school where he continued to excel. After a stretch of military service, he did further studies in financial accounting, preparing himself carefully for his career in a prominent Boston law firm.

I provide these details, not so much for their own interest, but because they witness to the sadness of Jack’s decline. He was intellectually sharp, a person whose overall abilities and judgment stood out. To observe the relentless stripping of these native gifts has been terribly painful, as it is in all those who suffer from this illness.

When I saw him on his deathbed, I also recognized something of the fate that awaits me and everybody else. Only some of us will get Alzheimer’s, but we all know that death lies ahead. As the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says, “It is the blight man was born for.”

I have always believed that death does not finish human existence. Faith in resurrected life continues to form part of my response to dying. I hope for Jack to live on in what my spiritual tradition calls a place of comfort, light, and peace.

But no matter what consolation I find in this faith, to see my friend dying was unutterably sad. My tears gave expression to a sorrow I could not express otherwise. I was about to lose an old friend and that loss cut into me deeply.

Richard Griffin

Of all the women I have met in my years of working with older people, none can quite equal Maggie Kuhn for personal dynamism. Big ambitions for changing society, willingness to defy convention, skill at manipulating politicians and media figures, courage in the face of physical decline – she had qualities of leadership that were altogether unique.

This physically small but soulfully impressive woman, who came to look like an ideal grandmother, accomplished a surprisingly large amount of her agenda. According to a new documentary on her life, “Maggie Kuhn changed the way we think about aging.”

Before Maggie, the film claims, “older people were not allowed to work, were not expected to socialize with people of other age groups, were not expected to have sex, were not expected to contribute to society.” Like other sweeping generalizations, this one cries out for qualification, but it bears enough truth to suggest what Maggie’s leadership meant.

Founder of the Gray Panthers, a name associated with militancy, Maggie Kuhn did not lack a sense of humor. In this spirit, she taught her followers how to growl. They were to stick out their tongues, turn toward another person, and make a deep sound from the throat. The new film shows an auditorium of people following Maggie’s instructions and growling with laughter.

A friend, Art Mazer, recalls another instance of Maggie’s humor when local Gray Panthers presented her at Boston City Hall. When introduced, Maggie had to rock back and forth a few times to get out of the low-slung chair in which she was sitting. Arrived at the podium she quipped: “That’s called the rock of ages.”

This film, entitled “Maggie Growls,” is scheduled for Boston-area showing on Monday, February 17th at 10 P.M. on the PBS channel 44. I recommend it for sheer human interest, and because the film recounts how one woman helped to change America in the period between her forced retirement in 1970 and her death in 1995 at age 90.

Maggie had radical ideas about how to improve American society. We needed to abolish compulsory retirement that put people on the shelf at 65. Our country desperately needed single-payer universal health care coverage. And we had to transform our basic ideas about older people and the experience of growing old.

A way of achieving this last goal was to help change the way older people were portrayed in the media. The “Media Watch” established by the Gray Panthers served for a time as an effective device to ensure change in television, movies, and advertising, change that has taken hold to a considerable extent.

It was not only her agenda that differed from most other people’s; so did her methods. She believed it a mistake for older people to push for change only with those of their own age. Rather, she wanted old people to join forces with the young.

Similarly, she thought old people should not advocate for changes primarily for themselves. Instead, she thought their advocacy would have much more credibility if they tried to bring about change benefiting the nation’s younger generations as well.

Despite her brilliance as a leader, Maggie was not successful in all her enterprises. Her organization, the Gray Panthers, never did turn into the alliance of old and young that she envisioned. I remember attending one national convention of the GPs, and immediately noting the absence of young people among the delegates.

And she never was able to develop effective leadership to direct the Panthers after her death. Even before 1995, her organization had lost its momentum and now has only a faint heartbeat. But it was never much of an organization; instead it was a movement with all the strengths and weaknesses of minimal structure. Never would it become an AARP, but Maggie would sooner have died rather than for that to happen.

And, of course, we still seem no closer to her goal of assured national health care for everyone. Even getting prescription drug coverage for Americans under Medicare has proven maddeningly elusive.

Maggie’s ideas about sexuality did not please everyone; in fact they shocked even many of the Panthers. She once recommended to an audience of older women the practice of lesbianism, and an embarrassed silence followed. She herself liked young men and once had an affair with one fifty years younger than herself.

When someone expressed to Maggie regret that she had no spouse or children, she replied, “I am completely happy with my life; I have no regrets.”

She suffered much pain in her latter days. I remember having dinner with her one evening and feeling some of that pain myself as I watched her eat with difficulty.

When the end came, she lay in bed in her house in Philadelphia. A friend watched her wake up, sit up in the bed and say “I am an advocate for justice and peace.” Then she went back to sleep and never woke up.

Richard Griffin

Joe Coughlin is full of provocative ideas. Talking with him, one soon discovers why the Age Lab at MIT has drawn the attention of so many people across the country who are interested in improving the experience of growing older.

Professor Coughlin founded this laboratory, a notable force for change, in 1999. He determined to bring together an interdisciplinary team of researchers and engineers in fields as disparate as health sciences and aeronautics in order to better the lives of older people.

Coughlin came to the field of aging through his work with transportation issues. He realized there was a major “infrastructure or mobility gap” between the needs of older people to get around and their available choices. After all, 70 percent of the American population live in the suburbs, but many older suburbanites have no access to transport other than the private car.

This situation highlights the contrast between our brilliant success in achieving greater longevity on the one hand, and our failure, thus far, to ensure that older people have the mobility necessary to ensure their quality of life.

In his own research, Coughlin is trying to “develop new business models that respond to the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s older adults by seamlessly integrating technology and consumer services.” This brings him into collaboration with major companies in the United States and abroad as they enter into partnerships with the Age Lab.

Already, the Age Lab, working with these industrial partners and service agencies, is developing some promising new products. In the course of a recent interview, Professor Coughlin singled out several:

• A device, either handheld or for the shopping cart, to provide personal information about healthy diet, appropriate exercise, and prescribed medications, to help people choose among products in a grocery store;
• A warning system in automobiles for left-hand turns. These turns –  -requiring judgments about speed and distance –  – are the number one causes of accidents among older drivers, with men better at judging speed, women at estimating distance;
• For drivers suffering from dementia, their family members, and caretakers, the Age Lab has co-sponsored a guide developed by The Hartford Financial Services Group and designed to prepare those drivers for phasing out operating a car altogether;
• An electronic data system that will enable people to make a daily check-up on their health. The technology already exists; the challenge is to figure out a system for professionals to respond at the other end.

Trained as a political scientist, Coughlin considers his studies to be a fine preparation for dealing with the problems of later life. “I don’t question whether or not we have the technology for fixing many of these problems,” he says. “What I question is whether society is organized in such a way as to be able to do so.”

He rates MIT’s chances high because it is accustomed to looking ahead boldly. “The real gift MIT gives any problem: it’s not afraid to be innovative.” But technology, as he sees it, is often not the issue. What he calls “the value-added part” is. Coming up with a new widget is easy compared to getting it wanted, marketed, and accepted.

For this, you have to better understand the user. Coughlin is convinced that the baby boomers will demand better-designed goods and services. If a product does not work easily, they will rightly blame the designers rather than themselves, the users.

The lack of effective technology can be seen as part of the reason why so many older people are cut off from the larger community. “Society cannot afford to have 20 percent of its people disengaged,” Coughlin says. They should be demanding a place at society’s table and they would enjoy better health if they did so.

On the contemporary scene, communities are changing. They are now being defined not so much by geographical proximity as by shared interests. The Age Lab director sees new life-long learning opportunities in the future.

The Audubon Society and the Sierra Club, for instance, could provide distance learning for the many people interested in gardening. More people should live near college campuses and every high school should be turned into a community learning center. Staying involved, learning constantly, can add vibrancy to people of just about any age.

Getting new products on the market for people of any age is time consuming. Just to get anti-lock brakes into cars sold in the United States took 17 years. Ideally, it would be advisable to get to utilize products useful in old age before that time comes. No mobile person is going to buy a wheel chair at age 40 but there are other devices, such as the microwave oven, that are useful both early on and later on.

The question of assisting older people to find meaning in their lives is complex but technology can definitely help. “Everyone has to find his own meaning,” Coughlin asserts. “The role of technology is to open the doors.”

Richard Griffin

“St. Paul’s will always be in my mind, heaven’s outpost.”  These words, spoken by New York City firefighter Robert Senatore, refer to the Wall Street chapel that was built in 1766. That makes it the oldest church in New York and the only one to date from before the American Revolution.

Miraculously, it survived intact the destruction of the World Trade Center in September, 2001, despite being located only two blocks away.

I visited this small church two weeks ago, on my first visit to Manhattan since the great disaster. This contact with tragedy formed one event in a 48-hour stay in the city; by contrast, my other experiences while there proved entertaining and nostalgic.

When looking at the site of the two towers and later walking through the chapel, I felt anew some of the pity and fear of 9/11/01. In addition, seeing St. Paul’s gave me a new vision of the spiritual dimensions of the response made by so many men and women to unspeakable tragedy.

Of course, the debris of destruction has long since been cleared away and the surroundings of the Trade Center site are now neat and clean. But huge cavities remain where reconstruction continues. A crude cross made of steel beams, erected by a firefighter, stands in mute remembrance to those who lost their lives.

At St. Paul’s, the paper and other trash that once littered the churchyard outside are long gone and the chapel has now become a site of pilgrimage for visitors like me. But evidences of the crisis activity that once filled this space still remain. Black smudges on the backs of the pews, made by the boots of rescue workers, silently testify to their oftentimes heroic labors.

This sacred space became a place of refuge for workers where they received food, rest, supplies, and sympathetic attention. These human services at the chapel turned into a new and vital ministry where people serving others could themselves be served.

On this weekend, I would not see anything else to equal for human interest this area of lower Manhattan, the theater of events that now help define our new century. On other parts of this still-fabulous island, life has returned, if not to normal, at least to day to day existence, New York style.

But for me, being there invariably stirs some of the same magical feelings I had as a boy on my first visit. Then it was the World’s Fair of 1939 where I still remember feeling wonder, as we slowly circled around the General Motors futurama exhibit.

This time, I saw an old  play which evoked that same era. “Dinner at Eight,” written by Edna Ferber and George Kaufman in 1932, is often hilarious but it also creaks by now, with some scenes moving altogether too slowly.

However, watching old pros work their magic on stage always delights me. Notably, the veteran actress, Marian Seldes, whose role allowed her to display the flamboyance at which she is so skilled, vindicated once more the esthetic pleasures of theater at its best.

A Sunday morning walk up Fifth Avenue brought me the subtle joys of being outside on a bracing winter’s day along one of the world’s great streets. I lingered to join children gazing at some of the fabulous window displays in the major department stores. Seeing Herr Drosselmeyer, Clara, the Mouse King and others go through their paces (thanks to hidden electronics) pleased me as much as the kids.

The usual holiday season sounds filled the air, but traffic noises were muted. As one of the taxi drivers informed me, the mayor has levied fines of $500 on them and other motorists who blow their horns needlessly. Mike Bloomberg, the new mayor, is a native of Medford, MA, where, surprisingly enough, he may have grown up on quiet streets.

My stroll down Fifth Avenue was not entirely frivolous. Partly to escape the cold, I dropped into St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Sunday worship. As usual, I was impressed by the astounding variety of people assembled in that sacred space and, for that time at least, achieving a unity that I found moving.

A reunion at lunch with a cousin also brought pleasure. I think of him as a young man but, like so many other people, he has entered into advanced middle age. When you stop seeing people for a while, that’s the sort of thing that happens.

This cousin knows the New York opera scene and also, with surprising versatility, the pop music scene as well. He loves Wagner and yet had a hand in the writing of the Broadway show Dance of the Vampires.

The occasion for this 48-hour visit to the Apple was a family wedding. It turned out to be a blast, provoking even the likes of me to fairly frenetic dancing. But that’s another story that has already entered the annals kept by my extended family.

Richard Griffin

Last weekend marked my first visit to the World Trade Center site in Manhattan since the devastating attack of September, 2001. Like most other Americans, I had raptly followed the awful events on television and the other media. But actually being there, I discovered, makes a difference.

By now, the rubble has been cleared out of the huge craters where the great buildings rose. Chain link fences allow visitors to look inside but not to enter. My gaze was drawn to the awkward cross made of steel building fragments constructed a fireman to commemorate the people who died. It serves as a stark reminder of their bright lives and of what they meant to others.

The surrounding buildings show no obvious signs of damage at this time and business has resumed, though at a much lower level. Vendors stand on sidewalks nearby selling photos and other memorabilia to tourists. Down in the excavation workers continue to rebuild underground systems.

One block away, on Wall Street, I also visited St. Paul’s, the oldest church in New York, dating from 1766. George Washington worshiped there on the day of his inauguration, and at other times as well, since New York was still the seat of the federal government.

Before the events of September 2001, St. Paul’s Chapel was already a national landmark. It has always boasted a simple beauty of design, a classic building both exteriorly and inside. Now it would take on new standing because of its response to the tragedy.

After narrowly escaping destruction, this church was reborn on September 11; it quickly became a center for providing food and respite to the emergency workers at the site. Visitors can still see the black smudges on the pews where exhausted workers lay down to rest with their boots on. Wisely, the church authorities have left these marks as a sign of the dedication of people who worked themselves long and hard.

St. Paul’s thus became the site for various forms of ministry over the next several weeks and months.  Meals were served, healing conversations took place, clothing and needed gear were provided, and people were given a sense of a community of caring.

So the rich background of this oldest New York church took on an additional layer of history. Now, in addition to being valued for its association with the beginnings of the American republic, St. Paul’s will be associated with the events of September 11th as long as the structure endures. If every church is a holy place, this place is doubly so by reason of its invaluable role in responding to a national tragedy.

The building would have been leveled by the blast that leveled the twin towers except for the force being absorbed by an old sycamore tree that stood in the church yard. According to information on a panel outside the church, the building could not have withstood the physical forces that destroyed the twin towers. As it was, the church exterior was covered by ash from the great fires and the church yard and burial ground overlaid with papers and other debris.

Can one see in this escape the work of God’s providence acting to safeguard a spiritual resource for the community devastated by so much loss? Whatever the answer, the ministry of St. Paul’s continues and now envelops tourists who come from all over the world to relive the events of that fateful day.

As I walked slowly through the interior of the church, I felt the sacred character of the place. Along side aisles of the church, colored banners are hung as tributes from people who live in other parts of the country. They give testimony to the devotion people at large feel toward those who died on September 11th  and to those who worked to recover their bodies.

Something stirred within me as I reflected on the dire events of that time as well as on the generous responses of both those in the rescue forces and those who ministered to them. This was an outpouring of charity, the greatest of spiritual gifts and the sign of God’s presence. I felt glad finally to be in this spot so many months after the dire events commemorated here.

Richard Griffin

The faces of the people in the studio audience are positively worshipful. Television cameras focus on them frequently as the smooth dermatologist tells them how to beat aging. They seem to believe everything he says, no matter how far-reaching his claims.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone has become a public television star in cities across the country. His programs, “The Wrinkle Cure” and “Healthy Aging: the Perricone Prescription” have probably been watched by millions, especially during fund-raising periods.

During its recent drive for money, KQED, the San Francisco PBS channel, reportedly devoted four hours of prime time to Perricone programming. No wonder another writer has called his tapes “the best fund-raising gambit these stations have ever had.”

WGBH, Channel 2, our public television station in Boston, has featured this same medical performer as recently as last month. Presumably he helped this station; I am sure he also helped himself at the same time.

If my words here seem negative, you’ve got it right. What we see operating here is a conflict of interest being sponsored by a public entity. To say the least, one must distrust doctors who have a vested financial interest in their practice.

Yet Dr. Perricone unabashedly hawks his skin care products as remedies for the “disease” of aging. Many beauty shops around the country, notably the 80 stores in the Sephora chain, with outlets in Boston’s Prudential Center, the Burlington Mall, and the Chesnut Hill Mall, carry his creams, lotions, and other products in which he has a major financial interest.

Sephora’s web site lists Dr. Perricone’s  Prescription Starter Kit, a $210 value available online for $150, as one of its top sellers. The high priest of skin is not growing poor while he doubles as a physician/television star.

He is doubtless not the first physician to assume an ethically awkward posture. What is surprising, though, is that public television should choose to abet him.

In response to this criticism, John Abbott, Vice President of WGBH for TV Stations, defends the choice of the Perricone programming. His purpose was “to bring in a range of viewer interests.” Deftly finessing the issue, he says: “I tried to watch it like Joe Everybody.” Listening to Abbott, one would never have guessed that fundraising had any role whatsoever in the decision to air Perricone’s programs.

Apart from ethical issues, however, I distrust anyone who peddles simplistic remedies for human well-being and happiness. Or anyone who says, as does Perricone at the beginning: “Aging is a disease” and “Aging is optional.”

Our lives are too marvelously complicated for a person of any wisdom to say, as Perricone does, that his approach will guarantee positive results: “If you do that, you will have a long healthy life. More important, you will have a good quality of life.” The length of our life and its quality depend on a lot more than health care.

And Perricone’s pedagogy stirs serious objections in me. His explanations are long and complicated, replete with pharmacological terms that are obscure to educated lay people. Does this qualify as good adult education? Is it acceptable practice to tell the general public that they should all take certain treatments?

At his web site this doctor presents himself as a “pioneer in the field of appearance.” Such a field is new to me and, I suggest, bears an instructive double meaning. Magicians, too, are experts in “appearance.”

Another coinage favored by Perricone is “Cosmeceuticals” a designation he puts after his M. D. He counts himself among the “world’s foremost anti-aging specialists,” a claim that, in my opinion, does him little credit.

In explaining his formulas for the war against aging, this much-hyped physician favors simplicity. “If the program isn’t simple,” he pronounces, “there’s something wrong with that program.”

Admittedly, Perricone does prescribe some good practices. For instance, he urges careful control of what we eat and proposes diets that control intake of fat and carbohydrates. He also recommends physical exercise, especially because it boosts the immune system.

However, another Perricone promise is of more dubious value: “You will never be a burden on anyone,” he assures those who follow his plan. Can you imagine this being a human good?

As must be obvious by now, I do not believe in fighting against aging as such. For me, it serves greater happiness and fulfillment in life to accept aging gracefully. Science and technology, though they bring us marvelous benefits of many kinds, cannot assure us of happiness and fulfillment. Fortunately, human life is much more intricate than that.

I also find repugnant some ideals of Perricone and his tribe of anti-aging crusaders. Again, the promise of never being a burden on anyone else seems to me not only unrealistic but humanly abhorrent. Sharing one another’s burdens, after all, goes far to build relationships that enrich our lives.

Richard Griffin