Sterling Alam, an Attleboro resident retired from AARP, has read (or, at least, scanned) all 700 pages of the so-called Medicare Modernization Act, the legislation that will bring us the new prescription drug program starting on January 1, 2006. You can be assured that hardly any senators or representatives in Washington can make the same claim.

Alam says he found reading the bill difficult, not merely because of its legalistic language, but because “there were so many things to object to.” For emphasis, he adds: “I think it’s one of the worst bills ever to pass Congress.”

That puts him in the same corner as me. I still seethe at members of Congress for having passed, in late 2003, this politically motivated legislation, favoring vested interests and harmful to American citizens at large. And, typically, the Bush administration has given the new law a euphemistic name─Medicare Modernization Act─ that suggests progress rather than a step backwards.

It also irks me that Congress has failed to accept a single one of the many proposals for improving the program.  

Surely there is something absurdly wrong with a law that, among other provisions, forbids Medicare from bargaining with drug companies for lower prices, even though the Veterans’ Administration has been doing so successfully for years. Also the ban on Americans purchasing prescription drugs from Canada (or any other foreign country) counts in my book as an arbitrary restriction of personal freedom.

I hope that you are not as confused as I am by what you have heard thus far about Medicare Part D (another title for this program). Right now, I do not know what, if anything, to do by way of response to the oncoming plan. Nor does it console me that hardly anyone else seems to understand how to deal with it.

However, in the effort to discover what information is available now, I

tapped into an online Medicare site (www.medicarepartd.org). There I filled out a questionnaire designed to show unnamed officials how to help me.

In response I received an electronic report of several pages adapted to the information I had provided about my own drug situation.

It begins with an announcement of what they call good news and bad news. The allegedly good news is that Medicare will spend 724 billion to assist us with our prescription drug costs; the bad reveals that only four percent of people understand the program “very well.”

From the response, several pages long, I learned some facts about older people who qualify for “extra help.” If you are single and your income is below $14,595 and your resources  $11,500 or less, you will automatically become eligible for Part D. For couples, the figures are $16,862 and $23,000. (Another official Medicare web site gives somewhat different numbers.)

Some other people, however, will be given the subsidy automatically. These include those on Medicare with full Medicaid, those on SSI (Supplemental Security Income), and people covered by the Medicare “Buy In” program. Still, even these groups will have to enroll in a Medicare drug plan if they are to use the subsidy.

Massachusetts residents who are enrolled in the state’s Prescription Advantage program will continue to enjoy the benefits they have now. In addition, the state will provide some help with expenses, such as premiums and co-payments, that are required by Medicare Part D.

Those of us enrolled in Health Maintenance Organizations can reasonably expect to become part of Medicare Part D while continuing to enjoy the drug discounts provided by our membership in the HMO. But, when I called the HMO to which I belong, they could not confirm this or tell me anything more because they are still talking with Medicare authorities.

For information, advice, and counsel about this complicated program, I suggest calling the state-sponsored SHINE program. Counselors can be reached at (800) 243-4636 (AGE INFO). It might also be prudent to save all mail that deals with Medicare matters. You might want to attend some presentations made in an area near you; information about them is available at the phone number noted above.

Many of us already know about the “doughnut hole” which will require individual subscribers to pay prescription drug costs themselves, once they have reached $2250 in total expenses. That requirement lasts until expenses mount to $5100.

The new plan issues drug discount cards, but these will do nothing to discourage increases in costs for individual drugs.

A longtime colleague in the service of older people and their families assures me that the new plan is “frustrating right now for everybody.” This lawyer reports that “all the advocates are dreading the fall season.” And speaking of the intention of the movers behind the prescription drug program, she says with chagrin: “They are privatizing Medicare.”

Another person involved in the field offers simple advice: “Don’t panic.” That seems to me wise counsel, one that I am adopting myself, despite my angry emotions at what is being imposed on us.

Richard Griffin

For several days, I simply could not remember my colleague’s last name. His first is Bob ─ that I knew. But a quick mental run through the alphabet did not reveal even the letter with which his last name begins.

Later, in conversation, when a mutual friend also happened to be searching for my colleague’s name, I suddenly blurted it out. And I did so with complete confidence of having it right.

Almost everybody complains about memory lapses. Worse than forgetting names, we cannot remember where we put our keys, our hats, our notes. Spending time searching for any one of these objects can make us feel acute frustration until we find them.

My favorite anecdote involving such a lapse featured a member of my former religious community whom, for his absent-mindedness, we called “Foggy” MacKinnon. This scholar reportedly drove his automobile from Boston to Detroit for a professional conference, and then took an airplane back home! Sure, the story may be apocryphal but it does communicate the sometimes drastic inconvenience of forgetfulness.

In preparation for giving a workshop on the subject of memory in mid-life, I have been reading a fascinating 2001 book called “The Seven Sins of Memory.” Written by Daniel Schacter, it combines the latest psychological science with a humanistic approach based in daily life and good literature.

What Schacter calls “sins” are the following: transience (forgetting over longer or shorter periods of time), absent-mindedness, blocking (you know the word or fact but it remains out of reach), misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence (you can’t get rid of a certain memory). He sees these defects in memory as the price we pay for the marvelous powers that memory gives us.

In addition, Schacter considers each of these “sins” to have compensating advantages. In general, forgetting preserves us from being overburdened with the recollection of events that we no longer need to remember. Bias, for example, might make us cherish an inflated idea of our own accomplishments, but that condition is far better than underrating our own worth.

If you wish to do better in remembering names or other facts, the way toward improvement goes through what Schacter calls “encoding.” This means that the name is registered in the brain sharply enough that it can be recalled when needed.

My own surprising ability to remember names has come about in part by my practice of first repeating the name aloud when someone is introduced. Then, I have retained the habit of associating the name with something or someone else.

You say your name is Ben Jones. Well, I spent a year living in Wales where just about half of the population seems to be named “Jones.” As for “Ben,” that suggests to me the youngest son in the Hebrew Bible.

Schacter also explains that memories are not like simple records stored in our brain that we pick out of the file ready-made. Instead, they are complicated sets of mental realities with contributions coming from various parts of the brain. And they are not just literally replicas of the events; instead they are larded with emotions, imagination, and other forms of experience.

Researchers can now actually see changes in the brain as people exercise their memory. Various parts of the brain are perceived to register these changes when we engage in certain mental functions. And the brains of women operate somewhat differently from those of men.

How about the effects of aging on memory? Professor Schacter writes: “Aging does not produce an across-the-board decline in all memory functions.” Nor does he hold the conventional view about our memory systems losing brain cells as we age.

This observation comforts me since it takes me considerably longer to do the Sunday crossword puzzle than it used to. Now I might need every day of the week to finish it and even then I may fail to complete the whole puzzle.

Of course, I am painfully aware that not a few of us are afflicted with dementia, the disease that has not yet yielded to research efforts to break through and solve.

Perhaps the best way of dealing with memory issues is to take good care of your brain. This means doing all the things that are good for one’s body overall. Physical exercise, good nutrition, and control of blood pressure certainly count. So do spiritual activities, along with friendships and close family relationships.

Paul Nussbaum, a neuropsychologist based in Pittsburgh, asks how we would like to have a three or four pound computer at our disposal for use during every waking hour. The human brain qualifies, except that it is far better than any computer. In fact, you could say, with some truth, that it is the most complex entity in all of creation.

The next time you forget something, you might want to remember, not how fallible memory is, but rather how awesome is the power by which we can recall past experiences and let them enrich our lives now.

Richard Griffin

“Dentists are not covered by Medicare; eyeglasses are not covered by Medicare; (nor) podiatrists. Does anybody really think we don’t need a healthy mouth to be healthy? That we don’t need healthy feet? They tell us, everybody tells us, to go out and walk. What are you going to walk on if you have a bunion pushing against the side of your foot?”

In ringing, almost prophetic terms, Barbara Ackermann thus explained why she had come to Faneuil Hall this month for the rally in favor of universal health care. She was one of some 200 elders who assembled at that historic site to advocate legislation to cover all Americans, young and old.

Ackermann, a veteran of municipal and state political involvement, feels deeply about this issue. She cannot understand how our national government can leave more than 40 million Americans uncovered.

In the statement quoted above, she was refuting the commonly held view that people over 65 already have universal health care coverage. Admitting that her own financial situation gives her special access, she and her husband spend some $17,000 each year on health care not covered by Medicare.

“You don’t have to add to the worries about health care how you’re going to pay for it,” she tells fellow advocates. “It (coverage) seems normal to me, and it seems outrageous that we don’t have it.”

The driving force behind this rally was the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, a group of elders who are actively concerned with health care and other issues that affect the well-being of our society. I asked Ralph Hergert, the dynamic new director of the association, how he could put so much energy into a cause that, at the moment, seems hopelessly lost.

Chuckling, my old friend responded: “I believe in impossible ideals, that we need to work on them every day.” Like the other leaders present, he knows what the odds are, but he feels determined to push ahead for something of such vital importance to the community he serves.

Among those other leaders were two congressmen, John Tierney from Massachusetts’ North Shore area and Maurice Hinchey who represents a New York district near the Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains.

Tierney thinks that a grassroots effort is needed and calls for working from idealism. “This country was built on idealism,” he said. But he also offered a pragmatic reason: “The cost to businesses, forcing them to be uncompetitive with others, it’s all coming to a head.”

Hinchey also struck this same note: “For Americans to be healthy and strong, we need a system of national health insurance now. It’s important for our economy, we are at a disadvantage – General Motors spends more on health insurance than on steel.”

Longtime advocate Sterling Alam, now retired from AARP, was among those in the audience. In asking him questions, I discovered how he combines a certain skepticism with hope. “I think the single payer is something we are going to do eventually, when things get bad enough,” he told me.

Union organizer Rand Wilson outlines the three basic elements of any comprehensive health plan. Access, quality, and cost are the issues that it must address. Does everyone have the right to treatment? Is this health care excellent across the board? How much do people have to pay for coverage?

Another viewpoint on health care came from April Taylor, who works with African American residents in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. She sees the need for not mere coverage but what see calls “culturally competent health care.” In her experience, some service providers have a poor understanding  of culture, class, race and gender.

Ms. Taylor points to national statistics that suggest black people have their limbs amputated more often than do other people. Instead of getting life-saving drugs, too frequently they suffer this drastic surgical intervention.

These advocates have two specific goals in mind. The first is proposed legislation in Congress. HR 676 currently has some 50 sponsors, Congressman Hinchey among them. But even he admits that “in the current environment it has absolutely no chance.” He believes, though, that we can and must change that environment.

The other initiative is a Massachusetts constitutional amendment for health care. This citizens’ initiative needs over 70 thousand signatures before qualifying for a constitutional convention. Sponsored by an agency called Mass-Care, it would ensure that every resident of the commonwealth would have access to affordable health care.

One speaker revealed that the number of uninsured in this state is at an all-time high, and the problem continues to grow worse. There is pressing reason to move forward on both fronts, national and state.

AARP would seem to be a strong ally. In “Reimagining America,” a newly published agenda for change, it states that “the U.S. health care system needs to be transformed to ensure access to more affordable, higher quality care.” This change AARP calls “America’s highest priority.”

Those wishing to get involved can call the Massachusetts Senior Action Council at (617) 442-3330.

Richard Griffin

A front-page newspaper photo shows sick old people, mostly women, lying on flimsy stretchers, with their legs exposed, or on the baggage area conveyer belt as they await evacuation from the New Orleans airport. How heartrending to realize that they have been deprived of dignity, security, community and almost everything else in the last days of their lives!

This image, one of thousands shown by the national media, reveals what residents of that city and other parts of the Gulf coast have endured since the storm hit. Unfortunately, it also reveals what it can be like to be poor and disadvantaged in America. These are the people left behind, literally and figuratively.

Televised interviews with those able to talk have shown many faces of poverty and deprivation. They have been residents of a city where the official poverty rate has reached 28 percent. Most of them are people of color, with low levels of schooling and few if any financial resources as backup for themselves and their families.  

The bad effects of inadequate medical and dental care were obvious in the faces of many shown on television. Many adults are clearly overweight and have bad teeth. Surely they belong to the group of some 40 million Americans who lack health insurance and thus go without their basic health care needs receiving attention.

Yet these evacuees have resided in an area that qualifies as a center of great wealth and industry. Many of this country’s exports of farm products and other goods pass through New Orleans on the way to other parts of the world. Similarly, many imports enter through the same port city. And the revenues from the oil and gas industries based in the surrounding area and the tourist business amount to a huge treasure.

This wealth, however, has not benefited the poor of New Orleans to any obvious extent. They have continued to live as a kind of underclass, cut off from the many of the goods that most middle-class people take as their right.

This revelation of another America has come as a shock to many of us who enjoy the good things of life. No one acquainted with the way things are for the poor is surprised except, perhaps, for the sheer extent of deprivation among the people of one beloved city.

Nor should we have been surprised at the woeful failures of our national government to have anticipated the crisis and to have responded promptly and adequately. Among other factors, both failures are the fruit of federal policies that starve human welfare for rigid ideological purposes.

For me, the havoc of Hurricane Katrina itself also belongs to the great mystery of the natural world and its potential for destruction. As we have witnessed memorably in this still new century, that world has not surrendered its awesome power to the control of human beings and presumably never will. We do well to respect the ability of nature to surprise us with its violence.

Despite considerable theological education, I confess no more understanding of what this world’s cruelty means than anyone else. This is why calling it a “mystery” makes sense to me: there is more to be understood than we can ever understand.

Similarly for the evil inflicted by human beings on one another, in this instance the shootings, lootings, and other violent crimes committed by some New Orleanians against defenseless others.

Long ago I learned not to be surprised by the enormity of evil in the human family. Early on, my religious tradition imbued in me the idea that there is something fundamentally askew in us all, a perversity that can lead us to prey on one another.

The industrialized mass slaughter of the Jewish people and others by the Nazis and the butchery of millions of his own people by Stalin, in my own lifetime, have also made it impossible for me to underestimate human savagery.

To these two great mysteries, the world’s evil and our own, I will add a third. How can it happen that some people can live their whole lives escaping the natural and human evils that prevail over so many others? Through no virtue of our own, we have been exempt from the immediate effects of wars, persecutions, dire poverty, and other cataclysms that have engulfed the world’s people at large.

This, too, is a mystery, too much to understand. How is it that, if you were born in a certain place, at a certain time, in particular circumstances, you inherited an exemption from these widespread ills? That has been my fate thus far, something that also leaves me to wonder.

These three mysteries confront me as I look at the world and my own life. Moving into the latter stages of this life does not diminish the power of these mysteries but continues to provoke the same questions over and over.

Richard Griffin

Four columns ago, I celebrated the life of Cicely Saunders, the British doctor who inspired the modern hospice movement. In response to news of her death, I praised her for her approach to care for the dying, one that takes into account the emotional, spiritual, and familial needs of patients.

Dr. Saunders focused on relief of their pain and suffering, and taught other medical professionals around the world to do the same; this makes her, in my view, deserving of special appreciation.

Nothing in that column was untrue, so far as I can tell. However, further reading and conversation with professionals involved with hospice has revealed the current situation in this country to be more complicated than I realized.

For example, in the New York Times Magazine of August 7th, contributing writer Robin Marantz Henig asserts that the hospice movement has abandoned much of its original approach. Instead, it has conformed to Americans’ desire to keep living at almost all costs, including the acceptance of medical interventions formerly seen as incompatible with the ideals of hospice.

According to Henig, hospice “began in the 1960s as an antiestablishment, largely volunteer movement, advocating a gentle death as an alternative to the medicalized death many people had come to dread.”  But now hospice practices what it calls “open access,” meaning that “terminally ill patients can continue chemotherapy and other treatments and still get hospice benefits through Medicare.”

My longtime friend Art Mazer also sees hospice as having disappointed its original vision. He took part in planning the first hospice in the United States, which opened in New Haven in 1974, and he tells of the struggle to keep the emphasis on home care, rather than institutional services. From the beginning there were pressures to bring dying patients into a newly-built care facility rather than caring for them in their homes. “All this was a distortion in the original plan,” Mazer says.

The hospice pioneers in this country also wanted to educate mainstream doctors about taking care of pain, but that did not happen. Instead, hospice seemed to settle for what my friend calls “its own little niche” in the American medical system.

Part of hospice’s loss of momentum might be attributed to the rise of the palliative care movement. However, Janet Abrahm, a pioneering Boston physician who is involved in both palliative medicine and hospice care defends hospice’s current approach. “I don’t think the hospice programs are giving up their focus,” Dr. Abrahm says. “Hospices are trying to expand to people who say ‘What’s wrong with taking oral chemotherapy to prolong life?’”  “Nationally, Americans don’t want to die,” she adds.

Of one of hospice’s achievements she observes: “I’ve seen that magical work of bringing families together.”  

I have also talked with Dr. Rosemary Ryan, a medical director of hospice programs in the Boston area for over 25 years. She rejects the criticism of hospice for using medical means to help patients. According to her, Cicely Saunders wanted to use whatever would help care for the dying.

It is hard, Dr. Ryan says, to make sweeping rules for those approaching death. What makes a good death varies from person to person, and family to family. “Hospice has adapted to where our population is,” she believes.

If transfusions make people feel better, then hospice can accept them. So, too hospice will take patients who have not given “do not resuscitate” instructions. As for calling 911 when a terminally ill person needs help, it is something hospice does not encourage but does not try to stop.

Dr. Ryan also sees the palliative care movement as not being in conflict with hospice. In fact, she considers hospice as part of palliative care.  

As so frequently with complicated issues, I stand somewhere in the middle. I regret that hospice has made what seem to me compromises with the American refusal to face up to death. It was the special genius of hospice to treat dying people, not by fighting off death but by helping them die as peacefully as possible.

On the other hand, I welcome hospice’s collaboration with the palliative care movement and the latter’s commitment to relieving pain.

However, as Dr. Abrahm points out with regret, many American hospitals and cancer centers lack fully developed palliative care programs. Palliative care has not yet received recognition as a medical specialty, has relatively few doctor practitioners, and is established in only about one-half of America’s hospitals.

In all of this discussion, the most important fact is that altogether too many dying people go without their pain and suffering being relieved. This is an intolerable situation. It calls out for remedy through various approaches, with hospice and palliative care leading the way.

Richard Griffin

“I can hardly think I am entered this day into the seventy-eighth year of my age. By the blessing of God, I am just the same as when I entered the twenty-eighth. This hath God wrought, chiefly by my constant exercise, my rising early, and preaching morning and evening.”

These words, written in 1780 and reprinted in the Oxford Book of Ages, come from the great Methodist preacher John Wesley. They suggest a person of great vigor and a strongly positive outlook on life. No wonder this man of faith had such an impact on 18th century England and on later times and other places

As someone who became authoritative late last month on the subject of entering the 78th year of life, I am a reliable critic of what Wesley wrote in his journal. In that role I dispute the faqmous evangelist’s claim of being the same 50 years previously. Clearly he was indulging in hyperbole to indicate his high spirits on his 77th birthday.

No such claim will come from me. Otherwise, why should I be rapidly approaching Woody Allen’s situation of having a doctor for every part of his body? No, I cannot boast of having the same resiliency that I had in 1955.

Running from first base to third in my long-established Sunday softball games also reminds me of changes. Why else do I arrive at my destination panting? And why is the batter at my heels, approaching the same base?

If Wesley is referring to the continuities in his life, then I am with him. Fortunately, I do recognize in the 27-year-old me some of the same traits that I own now. Skepticism, orneriness, a certain curmudgeonliness, and other such virtues continue to adorn my life as they did five decades ago.

Of course, I agree with Wesley about the value of exercise, and attribute to its daily use whatever vitality I have salvaged from the wear and tear of life. What relish to swim indoors each day, especially when the temperature outside reaches 90-degrees!

As to rising early, I have recently decided it is overrated. I have taken my leave from the abundant ranks of the sleep-deprived in favor of the eight-hour-a-night cohort. Maybe early rising worked for Wesley, but I now suspect that more sleep would have enabled him to live longer.

Preaching I have given up, except when carried away in columns like this one. Wesley probably went on for hours in his sacred harangues, something which I rejoice at neither giving nor receiving.

My source for age anecdotes moves to the 20th century for one about Sir George Sitwell of the celebrated British literary family. Described by his doctor as an “old man of seventy-seven years of age,” Sitwell is introduced fussing about his health.

His son Osbert leaves his bed-ridden father for an errand. On returning, he finds the elder Sitwell still in bed, looking depressed and wondering how long the doctor thinks he will last. About 20 years, the son tells him.

“At this he suddenly jumped out of bed with an agility that would have done credit to a man half his age, and said: ‘I must dress now.’ That night he came down for dinner.”

Throwing off self-pity always strikes me as an ideal for any age. In a funk, George Sitwell hears news good enough to propel him out of bed. Dressing for dinner must have further upped his morale, the exterior making an impact on his inner being.

None of my many doctors tells me how long I’m going to last. Fortunately, they know better, that is they don’t know at all. I am glad to have outlived the infallibility of the medical profession and hope, one day, to be granted the same satisfaction by the ecclesiastical profession.

Sir George’s dinner was at night. It may have been thin British gruel, for all I know, but it was consumed at a gracious hour. I am still afflicted by memories of feeling logy after family dinners at one o’clock in the afternoon. They seem as outmoded as going to the movies at any old time, even in the middle of the film, as we all used to do.

Though 77 does not hold much distinction as a birthday, it does have a kind of alliterative ring to it. In ancient times, a mystical aura would probably have clung to this number. After all, seven was special, so having two of them strung together would presumably have qualified as a mysterious power.

In the modern world, only the numbers ending in zero or five are thought powerful. That’s why people edge close to despair on reaching 30. In a worldly culture like ours, you attach secular meaning to numbers that otherwise seem arbitrary and nonsensical.

For me, 77 feels just fine. I even like the steam-engine sound of it.

Richard Griffin

If you were to seek advice from a doctor about extending life into your nineties, what would you expect to hear?

Most physicians, I suspect, would respond by urging ongoing care of your blood pressure and maintaining strict control of your cholesterol. The most savvy among them would almost emphasize the benefits of physical exercise. And presumably they would want you to have physical check-ups at regular intervals.

Because a friend was in town celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation from Harvard College, I went to a symposium, this June, in which panelists spoke about various health issues. Most of the speakers were physician classmates reporting on their research. I listened without avid attention until the last presenter took the stand.

He, George Vaillant, is a psychiatrist who serves as a professor at Harvard Medical School. More important, he is director of the university’s long-time study of human development, a role on which he drew for his valuable 2002 book Aging Well.

In his brief remarks Dr. Vaillant shared with members of the class of 1955 his formula for those among them interested in returning for their 75th reunion. His two-fold agenda for longevity must have astonished anyone expecting the conventional wisdom.

What this veteran researcher recommends is, first, taking good vacations. He finds solid therapeutic values in getting away from one’s home ground for extended periods. Pursuing one’s interests and avocations in other places strikes him as an excellent way of adding to a person’s years as well as to the enjoyment of them.

The second piece of advice Vaillant gave to the alums was “take care of your marriage.” He considers the quality of one’s personal relationships to have a strong impact upon longevity. For those who are married, solid harmonious relationships with their spouses have a central place in their lives or─ at least, ought to─if well-being is to be assured.

So the members of the class of 1955 went away from this talk with advice that must have seemed fresh and new. Many of them, I suspect, were amazed to be given such a simple prescription for living longer. “Is that all I have to do?” some must have asked themselves.

On examination, however, the double-barreled advice may not prove all that simple. Many of the people to whom it was addressed have probably become masters at ignoring one or both pieces of this counsel.

The hard-driving, Type A personalities among them may be workaholics who have never developed habits of leisure. Their neglect of taking time off from work may be ingrained by now so deeply that even retirement will not free them of its effects. Powerful cultural forces in American life have enshrined unrelenting work as the supreme value.

These same people and others may have failed to cherish their marriages, and suffered from the fall-out that so often results. Being a caring husband or wife requires priority-setting that goes against conventional notions of success.

Retirement, however, does give many people an opportunity to set out anew toward a life that is more fully human. It can offer the chance for living with a set of values capable of rendering us more relaxed and, perhaps, more loving.

The beauty of this change may be, as Vaillant suggests, the lengthening of one’s years because of a growth in life satisfaction. To me, it also signifies a recognition of the importance that spirit plays in both physical and mental well-being. Ultimately, we prove to be more than our body; the soul, too, needs nurturing.

Vaillant has not pulled this advice about marriage out of thin air. In his book referred to above, he grounds this recommendation in the decades-long research project which he directs. Here is what he writes about one of the findings: “A good marriage at age 50 predicted positive aging at 80. But, surprisingly, low cholesterol levels did not.”

For fear the two pieces of advice seem elitist, meant only for affluent marrieds who graduated from a notoriously privileged college, let me apply this counsel more broadly.

Not everyone can take vacations like those that show up in the travel section of newspapers. By reason of disability some of us cannot endure the rigors of certain forms of transport. And others of us lack the funds necessary for wide-ranging trips.

However, even people not able to travel can adopt the spirit of the first recommendation. This we might accomplish by building change into our lives. By learning something new, for instance, we might discover the moral equivalent of travel.

The advice about taking care of one’s marriage can also apply to those who do not have a spouse. The quality of our human relationships in general surely conduces to our overall well-being. By making sure that our friendships flourish we help to build our own self-worth and find our positive feelings about ourselves reinforced.

Richard Griffin