- I guess the pickleball is what keeps me going, boss.

Every morning I'm out there a couple hours most mornings.

- So art is really a way to document things and also, I mean, memories.

And so I do a lot of landscaping.

- I had polio, and in those days, there was no such thing as homeschooling, and everybody walked.

Even my doctor doesn't get this.

- To me, there's a lot of emotional issues, and we didn't want any of that.

We have a closed adoption from Indiana.

(gentle upbeat music) - Welcome to "getting dot OLDER," the new TV series where Americans over 50 share intimate, personal revelations about aging.

I'm your host, Roberto Mighty.

This series interviews people live and online and asks everyone the same questions like, number one, getting older means, and number 16, I'm most proud of... You can answer these questions on our online survey.

So join us.

Stay tuned on TV, and I'm looking forward to hearing your story online.

(Motown music) In our Boomer Passion segment, Jean-Pierre paints his childhood in France.

George loves pickleball.

Erica's life was changed by polio.

Robbin and her husband adopted a child.

Our Boomer Quiz boldly asks about Star Trek, and viewers share revealing answers to our survey.

(gentle upbeat music) My next guest grew up on the West Coast, retired on the East Coast, and now makes his home in South Carolina.

- Okay, hi, I'm George Buggs.

I'm a photographer.

I'm a creative writer as well.

I enjoy doing a lot of equestrian photographs here in Aiken, South Carolina, which is where I retired to from Boston, Massachusetts, where I've worked for too many years as a manager in the commonwealth's government.

- Now, George comes across as a jovial fellow, but there was tragedy in his youth.

- Now you were raised by your grandmother and your aunt.

Now, why is that?

You know, what happened with your parents?

- My father was a Navy enlistee, and two years after I was born, he passed in an auto accident.

- Mm.

- My mother, after a year, was unable to sustain the ability to raise us by herself.

She was institutionalized for the rest of her life, all right.

- Sorry.

- So my grandmother basically stepped up to the plate and took over the household and became the primary caregiver.

- George's late dad gave his kids a life-changing gift.

- My opportunity to go to college was only because of my father's GI Bill.

The Junior GI Bill was bestowed upon me and my sister as well, so that we opted to go to college.

We managed to get through.

And I am pleased to say that I found my way to doing more college studies after that and would like to think that it served me very well to make me a better person as I am, hopefully.

- Man, that is a great American story, isn't it?

That's terrific.

- Oh, well thank you very much.

I appreciate the thought.

- George has an unorthodox prescription for eternal youth.

By the way, how old are you now?

- I'm 75.

January was my birthday.

- Man, you look so much younger than that.

You're very fortunate.

- Thank you.

I guess the pickleball is what keeps me going, boss.

Every morning I'm out there a couple hours most mornings playing a good, serious game of pickleball with folks who enjoy it as much as I do.

- I wanted to know more about pickleball, and George was very happy to give me the 411.

But let me ask you, so would you please describe pickleball?

Because I've actually never seen it played, even though people tell me about it all the time.

- All right, I'll do my best.

- Yeah, could you compare it to, let's say, tennis, badminton, racquetball, and squash?

I mean, you know, what would you say?

- Okay, it's played on the same size court as a badminton court.

- Okay.

- The history of the game is that it was started by a couple of gentlemen who came off a golf course when they found it, found it sitting on the backyard, having lost the shuttlecock for their badminton game.

So they went to the garage after they lowered badminton net down to halfway, or to the ground, basically, and created some wood paddles on the jigsaw, found a wiffle ball.

You may be familiar with the whole baseball practice, wiffle ball.

- Right.

- And invented a game called pickleball.

Now, the name of the game, they said just, any number of sources suggest one or two things.

It was named after a pickle boat, which is a boating term used for sculling, where you have a motley crew of people to come together.

That's called a pickle.

And it was also said that the game was named after the founder's dog, who was named Pickles.

(Roberto laughs) Okay.

I'll let you decide which one you like.

- (laughs) I like that second one.

I like that second one.

George and I spent a lot of time talking about fishing, another hobby he enjoys.

When I asked him the final question in our survey, he painted a very poetic image.

Question number 27, here's what I want done with my remains.

- Here's what I want done with my remains.

I'm very happy with the idea of being cremated, which is in my will.

Ideally, I would like to have those ashes tossed into the surf of a returning fishing trip of former fishing friends, if they could find themselves there.

And barring that activity, I would want my ashes to be strewn on a beach somewhere, low tide, and have the high tide come in and take them out.

- That's great.

I'm curious, why a returning fishing boat?

- Oh, they've had a good long day, I would imagine, of thinking about why they took that trip and memorialization, the utterances have been made, and they're returning from the sea, as many sailors did not and do not.

For me, that looks like a nice image.

That looks like a nice image of folks standing at the stern watching the ashes blow into the face of the seagulls that are abundant above the stern of the boat maybe for their catch-of-the-day kind of thing.

Well, you're getting George Buggs today, guys.

(both laugh) - We'll hear more from my interview with George in an upcoming episode.

But what about you?

Have you caught the pickleball bug?

And what do you want done with your remains?

(inspirational music) - During when the hummingbirds are here, we have a number of feeders, and they come, and it's such a thrill to see them.

(Motown music) ♪ Ah, can't you see that look in my eye ♪ ♪ We're running out of time ♪ ♪ Running out of time ♪ ♪ Can you hear it when I talk to you ♪ ♪ There's something going on inside ♪ ♪ I don't know what I got to do ♪ ♪ I don't know what I got to say ♪ ♪ I don't know what I ♪ (gentle upbeat music) - Thanks to all the viewers who are filling out our "getting dot OLDER" online survey.

Here is a viewer survey response from Dave.

Here's his answer to question number five, the thing I love most about my age now is.

Dave says, "The thing I love most about my age, 68, now is that I do not have to deal with bosses and authority figures."

So, yeah, Dave, thank you for sharing.

(gentle music) Baby Boomers were the last American generation to fear poliomyelitis, a dreadful disease that caused death and infantile paralysis.

In 1952, there were over 57,000 cases in the USA.

Thanks to widespread vaccination, polio was mostly eradicated in the US by the early 1960s.

(gentle upbeat music) My next guest is an accomplished visual artist, whose works are exhibited in Europe, the USA, and Canada.

She was also a college art professor for many years.

I asked her how she got started painting.

How did you get started as an artist?

When did that begin?

- That's simple, really.

I had polio, and in those days, there was no such thing as homeschooling, and everybody walked.

Even my doctor doesn't get this.

I said, "There were no buses.

You walked, or you didn't go."

And since I fell every few feet, it was not optimal for me to, like, be walking.

And then- - Wait.

(laughs) - Yeah, yeah, oh Lord.

- I shouldn't be laughing.

- Well, you know, this is dark humor, right?

- I love it.

This is great.

Dark humor, I love it.

Keep going.

- Yeah, yeah, I know.

We don't have a better word for it right now, but till then, right?

- That's all right.

That's fine.

- You know, my mother kept me at home, and so there was this big greenhouse with all these huge rocks that went up to a pinnacle with this cast-iron woman pouring water out of a Grecian vase, and that's where I started to paint.

That's where I did it.

And my mother used to come over, "And what are you painting, dear?"

And I thought, "Oh, I better do something for her," you know?

- Aw.

Now, about how old were you when you started painting?

- Four.

- Four?

Wow.

- Yeah.

That's not to say you get better with practice.

It's just I've been doing it that long, right?

- Erica's unusual childhood affected her social development.

- I had a lot of physical problems.

Like I had years of surgery.

When kids were out, like when I was a teenager from 14 to 19, I had three dislocations.

That meant a cast of my knee from my hip to my ankle for six months and then therapy.

And so following that from 19 to 22, I had two surgeries on the knees.

And so basically from 14 to 22, I was in and out of casts.

- Wow.

- And not the best thing for being footloose and fancy-free, right?

- No, no, right.

- And I always sort of knew what I wanted to do 'cause when I was seven, my father and I used to make photographs together.

And so I really continued that from age four, starting to paint.

And if you really look at a lot of artists, they started when they were sick when they were children.

- Interesting.

- And I think, really, it's that when you're sick, you're not active in interacting with people 'cause most of us are pretty clueless.

We just do, right?

- Yep.

- But if you can't just do when you're sitting there, you're sick, you're trying to get healthy to be normal so you could be clueless and just act, you become an observer.

- Perhaps because of her surgeries, Erica was out of sync with her peers.

- I went to school late, and I started undergraduate at 23, and then I started my master's at 32.

I got it when I was 37, and so I sort of did everything late, and I was kind of shocked that when people were 19, women were 19, they were talking about, "Oh, don't you wanna be young and have children?"

And I'm thinking, "Actually, no, I really wanna be doing what I'm going to school for."

- Right.

I always ask Baby Boomers about their relationships with young people.

Now some people don't have their own biological children, but perhaps they've adopted others, or perhaps they are mentors to others.

Do you have relationships with younger people that are in any way like relationships between a parent and child?

- I think that the relationship of a parent to a child is what teaching is essentially about.

It's about mentoring.

And so I have lots of those.

Even before this interview, I was in touch with one of my favorite students.

I have many favorite students.

Yeah, so I have that, but there's not so many kids in my life, and I'm finding that a lot of my friends now, they never had children, either.

And so it's a strange demographic in our time.

I mean, I enjoy kids.

I'm a great aunt for 20 minutes or a couple of hours.

- 20 minutes?

(laughs) - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

My friends' kids say I'm really easy to talk to, and I like that very much.

But I don't have the relationship with them that their parents do.

- Right.

- Yeah, so I can just enjoy them.

- Yeah, that's great, I'll bet.

I'll bet the kids enjoy you a lot, I'll bet.

- Oh, I get down on the floor right with 'em.

- I'll bet you do.

(laughs) That's great.

What about you?

Did you spend a lot of time alone as a kid?

And did that lead you to a lifetime of some sort of solitary activity?

Do you have relationships with young people you're not related to?

What do you get out of those relationships?

(gentle upbeat music) Here's a viewer survey response from Jack.

Here's his answer to question number one, getting older means.

Now Jack says, "Getting older means coping with possible death, aches, pains, harder to walk.

Yet one must carry on and do the job."

That's right, Jack.

Thank you for sharing.

The "getting dot OLDER" series includes expert advice for people over 50.

Our growing number of topics will include medicine, eldercare, financial services, nutrition, geriatrics, estate planning, and lifelong learning.

We often hear the term mindfulness with regard to our mental state.

I asked Dr. Lesley Fernow to define the term and describe what it means for seniors.

What does that mean?

Yeah, I'm really fascinated by that.

What does that mean exactly?

- Well, I don't wanna be too prescriptive about how that mindfulness is done, but there's a lot of work being done now about engaging people in being aware of their lives in the moment as they live.

And that's what we would call mindfulness, being mindfully aware of each moment.

And I will say that the benefit of that is that it actually increases enjoyment of the moment.

It also increases a sense of gratitude.

And there is increasing evidence that people who have more gratitude have the ability to evolve more compassion.

And they also, it is beginning to look like they also live longer.

So they live more satisfied lives, and they live longer.

So there's not a lot of data on that, but they are beginning to find that mindfulness relieves pain, relieves the sense, the experience, of suffering.

That doesn't mean you don't have pain, but it means you articulate it in a different way.

You experience it as something that is more fluid.

It comes and goes rather than saying, "Oh, I have pain all the time," which then causes you to, you know, suffer more, so.

- Right, or the people around you to suffer more.

(laughs) - That too.

It causes the people around you to suffer more.

All you do is talk about you.

- All right.

We'll hear more about mindfulness practices in upcoming episodes.

(gentle upbeat music) My next guest has a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, and is a licensed mental health counselor.

But when she was a kid, no one would've predicted any of that.

Now, you say you have a speech impediment.

When did that begin?

Did you have that when you were growing up?

- Yes, I did, I did.

I went to speech therapy in fourth, fifth.

In sixth grade, we had budget cuts.

I didn't even know I had a speech impairment.

I guess I had a lisp, per se, and people used to make fun of me, call me names.

Didn't think anything of it.

And then in middle school I was in Long Island, and people were making fun of me.

And in high school, I had to go to speech therapy in middle... Well, by then, it was junior high and then high school and a little bit after college, after my college.

And it still comes out now.

And you know, I was just strong-minded that I don't care if people make fun of me because I knew who I was, and this is who I am.

I'm better at speaking.

I mean, look, I'm hosting my own TV show.

- Yeah, how about that?

- And sometimes in class, I do make a mistake, and somebody did write on the evaluations that they wish that I was able to pronounce words more clearly.

First time I've had that.

(Roberto chuckles) So, hey, I know who I am, and this is me.

- Right.

What did your parents say about this speech impediment business when you were a kid?

- They just acknowledged.

Back then, you didn't talk about those things.

It is what it was.

- Right, right.

Robbin grew up to have a successful career.

She and her husband decided to adopt a child, and it took them five years to learn the ins and outs of our country's differing rules for adoption.

- And one of the things why we didn't go through the foster care route, not the foster care, or kids in custody, is that Massachusetts has it where they promote open adoption, and we didn't want that.

We wanted to have closed adoption because I found being in the field that I am, a lot of biological parents say to their children in adoptive homes, "Oh, you don't have to listen to them.

You're gonna come back to me."

There's a lot of emotional issues, and we didn't want any of that.

We have a closed adoption from Indiana.

- Robbin is candid about the timing of their adoption.

But do you think it's harder?

I mean, 'cause when you and your husband adopted, you weren't like 19 and 20 years old, right?

- [Robbin] No, we were in our 40s.

- You were in your 40s.

So are there pros and cons about adopting, you know, as a mature couple as opposed to being, you know, a young couple?

- Yes.

Yes, I think one of the reasons, and I can only speak for me, why faith wanted me to wait, is because mentally I just wasn't ready in my 30s, for me.

And then in your 40s, you know, well, my husband and I were already established.

- Right.

- So we didn't have to go through that.

And we were very mature, and we had family members who had babies.

And then I was teaching child psychology at the time.

I just think it was just the right time.

I mean, yes, you know, we were getting older, and we were worried about that, but it happened.

It was meant to be.

- As we said at the beginning of this episode, Robbin was made fun of as a child with a speech impediment.

Perhaps she was well equipped to handle her son's learning difference.

- I was an advocate for this 504 plan.

We had to advocate, my husband I had to advocate, to get him back on it for two years.

- Wait, would you say that again?

- He's on a 504 for ADHD, and it's- - Now, wait, what does that mean, 504?

- 504 is for people who, their impairment or disability doesn't impact them in the way they would need an IEP, an instructional education plan.

He has a 504, where either he's on target in terms of his grade.

You know, he's smart, has a good IQ.

It's just that his ADHD of impulsivity and not sitting still can impact how he performs in class in terms of focusing.

So he's on target.

- We'll hear more from my interview with Robbin in an upcoming episode of "getting dot OLDER."

But what about you?

Are you considering adopting?

Were you adopted?

Was that adoption open or closed?

What's the situation with the child, the birth parents, and the adoptive parents?

I really do wanna hear from folks about this one.

(soft dramatic music) For season two, we've conducted 39 new in-depth interviews with diverse Baby Boomers coast to coast.

- And I told my mother, I says, and I'm crying, I says, "I almost drowned.

I almost drowned."

This in the middle of wintertime, you know?

And she turns to me, and she goes, "Well, you didn't."

(both laugh) - I think in my elementary school, there were maybe, I think there was one other Asian family.

I think they had two daughters.

So we always stood out.

- What were the circumstances of your being homeless three times?

(relaxing upbeat music) Just for fun, every season-two episode includes a new Boomer Quiz, this time with engaging archival images and more questions to test our audience's Boomer IQ.

(uplifting music) For season two, we're also introducing exciting new action segments called Boomer Passions.

Each half-hour episode will contain one of these original short films two to five minutes long about the hobbies, pastimes, and passions of Americans after retirement.

- Thankfully there's places like MSPCA - Though father often worked in restaurants from three o'clock on to midnight.

- To me, time, it doesn't mean anything.

- Susan, I have your groceries here.

- Ooh, I'm so happy with that.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle guitar music) - So my name is Jean-Pierre Ducondi.

I'm 67 years old, and actually I'm from France.

I'm from Normandy.

(birds chirping) So I'm retired, and my career was in the software business.

So I have been in the state for 37 years now.

My wife actually is a master gardener, but I took care of the garden and other things.

(birds chirping) We've actually quite a number of feeders, and during when the hummingbirds are here, we have a number of feeders.

And they come, and it's such a thrill to see them.

(camera shutter clicks) (camera shutter clicks) (camera shutter clicks) So I've always done some photography, but since I retired, I picked up painting, which I used to do in my youth.

And so now, I spend quite a bit of time doing painting.

So art is really a way to document things and also, I mean, memories.

And so I do a lot of landscaping based on the place I come from, from Normandy, and also, I mean, around here.

When I retired, I started to paint again, and I wanted to connect with other people.

So I found this wonderful group of people that belonged to the art gallery, to Arts Wayland, and I joined to show some of my work.

And then I got more involved, and now I'm on the board of directors.

And I run with another volunteer all the exhibits for the gallery.

And at the same time, I use some of my previous skills.

So I maintain the website and other aspects of the organization.

Volunteering and helping people and make whatever little difference you can make, it's rewarding.

(Motown music) - Thanks so much.

Please go to our website and take our survey and let us know if you're interested in doing a video call interview with me.

I am really looking forward to hearing your story online.

(gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music continues) (chiming music) (upbeat string music) (upbeat music)