Over Easy; 1009

Thank you. And now with yours the post of over U.S.. Cuba. Thank you very much. Welcome to overeasy. We have a good crowd here in the studio. We were talking earlier about about cameras. I saw some cameras in the lobby if you may be watching this on a holiday and you might be watching it outside of

Thanksgiving but I couldn't help thinking more people are taking pictures now on holidays and other times than ever before in this country. And I thought of a man who took a picture once of a 93 year old you know ninety nine year old man it was a 9th birthday and this photographer got his picture. And when he thanked him for being able to take his picture he said I hope to be around to take your picture when you're 100. And the man said why not you look pretty healthy. Kind of expresses our point of view on overeasy depending on our attitude we could be over the hill at 21 or on the brink of a whole new life at 65. Sen. Frank Church is our in-person guest tonight. A fascinating man I had a really nice talk with him. We're also going to be talking with Dr. Carl I store for on stress how to recognize when you're being affected by that. You don't always recognize it you know and how to deal with stress in a positive way. According to Col we have more control over the stress in our lives that we might realize and he's going to give us some tips on. Barbara Gregg is here to keep us posted on saving money on prescription drugs that can be done

and will pay a lifestyle visit to Petaluma California or to gentlemen in their 70s make delicious cheese in the French tradition. They spend a long time learning their curds from their ways. Well now to our in-person guest Frank Church has been a mover and a shaker in Congress concerning the way older people are treated in this country. He is also on the Senate Energy Committee. He's a ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee. And since way back chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Aging shortly after his well-known trip to Cuba I went up to Weezer Idaho to talk with Senator Church. He and I walked and talked down by the Snake River in a park called Mortimer's Island. And later we had lunch in the Weser senior center where he visited with old friends and listened to the fiddle music from which we were justly famous. Ah I'm sure that green has finally been approved. For Idaho. This thread is something

like Amtrak you know took a long long time to get it. And it's proving out a lot better than people sat. And saw it and saw it's been with green thumb. Now as you know originally that green program. Was mainly an outdoor kind of work program. It had to do with. Beautification projects improvement in the public park. Landscaping. And things of that kind. Now the work is more diversified and includes work in senior citizen centers and with the mail program and the outreach program. But where ever green time has come people have found it to be productive and useful. So I want you to know that I appreciate having that hard hat. And every once in a while I put on a hard hat just to prove that a politician is a working man. I promised you a question and answer session and I know you have

some questions. Please feel free to ask them and I'll do my best to answer. Yes. Very limited with the time versatility with a good question. Question is when are we going to eliminate that retirement limit. Call the retirement test so that people who still want to work can earn whatever they can without being limited. I've been trying to get that retirement test taken out of Social Security ever since I went to the Senate. We've been able to increase that limit so that it's possible to earn almost $3000. I have a billion that would raise that to thirty six hundred dollars and I want you folks to know that is chairman of the Committee on Aging and I'll keep trying. Do you consider yourself a country boy. You I consider myself a small

cowboy when I was growing up all the time but I don't always moan when you come out here like I'm from Washington. Do you get a chance to relax or are these below your time in a meeting with constituents. Well this is not a place to take a vacation except I get a chance once in a while to get up in the day. That's when I get that opportunity I got a few days of that and I was like recharging your batteries and generally you have you started your career in the Senate at age 30 to which I think is some kind of a record. No more senators of that age or younger. And yet early in your career you were interested in the problems of the elderly. Was it where their personal reasons or what was on what triggered your interest. I've always had that feeling of affinity for older people. I remember when I was very young my two grandmothers had a big influence I didn't know my grandfathers they had I but my two grandmothers had an immense impact on my life they were such pungent colorful people.

And and I love them you know. So when I was just a young boy I had a great affection a bond with older people and I'm glad for that because I've had it all my life through. Now after 22 years in the Senate and with. You're about to embark on middle age do you give any thought to your own age. It's what's called the latter middle age when you pass 50. I don't like to look at it that way. Yes I think about retirement now. Once you pass the 50 line I think you recognize the you are mortal. Young people tend to think of themselves as never getting old. You know I did when I was a young youngster. Yes a man. I never thought about it but now I do and I I want I'm beginning to plan for retirement I think it could be a very enjoyable and creative period of life. What kind of laws would you like to see and act. For Americans who are

now young and middle aged who are going to get older. First of all I think that no one should be forced to retire at a given age. As long as the person wants to work and is able to work he or she should have that opportunity. But when the time comes for retirement then I think we we ought to have a Social Security system that guarantees at least a minimum retirement income for all our people. That will enable them to live decently above the level of poverty for example here in the richest country in the world to have. Nearly a fourth of our people living in poverty and nearly half living either in poverty or next to poverty is a dreadful commentary upon the failure of the United States to adequately provide for the elderly. When you were in Cuba was there an opportunity to see how older people are treated there. What the attitudes are toward them.

It's hard as I could tell there. Cuba's a poor country and it's pulling itself up by its bootstraps so to speak. So everybody works. And the older people work but they find jobs for them that they can do. For example I met with an old farmer in a newly built village farming village and he had been given the task of helping the children in the vegetable garden that produced vegetables for the school this was something he could do. He took a great pride in it. We crossed over a railroad track and I was in the jeep with Castro and Castro. Waved at the old man who was there at the shed too to warn the traffic and then he said he works there about three hours a day. That's all the longer he can work he can contribute and in Cuba one thing I noticed is that the elderly are not separate segregated. They are living integrated lives in their communities with a middle aged and younger people. That's good for the younger people as well as for oh yes it's it you that the better the

mix the better for all. And that made me think you know that we might learn from other countries and so I have advocated that we have a World Conference on Aging bringing together all countries for a cross-fertilization of ideas. I think that could be very productive. When you think it might come about. Well I hope that the resolution will be introduced to the United Nations soon and that we might be able to organize such a conference by say 1982 here are we doing anything right. And if so what are we doing right now. I think we're doing some things that are right it's to be found in all of the thousands of senior citizen centers that now exist bringing order people out of isolation and into that community where they are not likely to live again. On my

hand and my go with that we would reach that point when everybody going through life would look forward to surprise the time when they could retire knowing that their basic needs would be provided for and that would be John Browning's idea. Yes Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be masters. The first has been. Sober for a church. Did you hear him say that he considered himself in the latter middle age I find that unacceptable. DR KARL AIs door for with us he's a medical expert on some of the problems of our later years and he's going to tell us something about stress now that I think you're going to find fascinating. First of all how Carl would you define stress.

First of all I hope I'm not too nervous to answer that question but you know to do a stress to give an answer. What is it really. Well stress is a term that's used really quite a bit now. I'm not sure that people know it came originally from engineers I think where it was a way of figuring out what kind of a load that a bean or a bridge would bear. Then subsequently we began to use it in physiology really describes an emergency state the body is flooded with hormones it affects the heart speeds up the heart rate moves the blood out to the periphery of the body and changes the skin it really gets us ready to fight or to run. At the same time it's a psychological that's a it's a feeling state. It's a state that comes over you in relation to the physiology but also it's sort of a tension state. It is the stress that we don't feel like we're under at the moment. I think so you know as we get used to it. It tends not to be as much experience psychologically even though the body is being influenced by these hormones. Why is there so much concern about it is it is at all a destructive.

It really is I think there are two general kinds of issues and I hope we talk more about this it's an important problem. The first one is that the emergency reaction of the body is really not very good for the body over the long haul. It's designed to get us out of trouble. Secondly the psychological state is not a very comfortable state it's tense. We're ready for something sometimes or even know what we're ready for but that's a state of tension and readiness you can almost feel it. And we like to avoid it. But what can we do to avoid it or to reduce stress if it is there. Well obviously that's very complicated First of all there are no absolutes. Some people tolerate much more stress than others. Some people even like it. I think we could probably come up with a few general rules though. First of all we do a lot of stress inducing. I think there are two kinds of stress inductions. We drink a lot of coffee. We smoke cigarettes. We take in alcohol and with the resources of stress. Absolutely they really do affect the body they're drugs of kinds. We can drop those. We

tend some of us to go into life by overplanning why planning is good. Getting every second is not good. It gets to the point where you can enjoy your vacation because you're two minutes late to tennis one minute and a half late to the swimming pool earlier and by golly if we don't get there we're going to lose. That's really something we can deal with. Secondly and perhaps something that's difficult for us to consider we really can plan for stress. If you look at somebody else you can see immediately that you know their life is going to be subject to certain stresses and a good example would be widowhood. We don't like to talk about it but it's very clear that most women marry men who are older than they are. Secondly the longevity of women is longer than men. Well it's fascinating the number of women who don't really know what to do who can't cope and who in effect set themselves up for stress retirement is another good one. You know it's funny how many people know they're going to retire but have done nothing to cope with the time after retirement. What do you do with your involvement and involvement like money in the

bank. If you don't use it it deteriorates and then you feel. My God I'm worthless I'm hopeless I can't do anything about my life. So that kind of investment is important. Planning for specific things I find. Can I give you a personal example or. My mother passed away recently in the last few months of her life me she she knew what her condition was. She and I talked and it was very important to me to be able to plan for her funeral. It was bad enough to lose her and she was a person we dearly loved but just my knowledge and I was able to do what she wanted and that I didn't have to be pressured by a lot of other people to tell me what was right and to make decisions when I knew I really wasn't in a good time to make decisions. Those are the kinds of things that we can talk about. Now there are other more media things. If something happens right now unpredictable for example. You know some of us like people around of us some of us don't like people around. I think you have to be selfish a little bit. If somebody is bothering you say look you know this is a

bad time for me could you come back tomorrow. Or conversely we have family we have friends we can turn to them and say you know it's tough for me to be alone trying to come on over. Recognizing that we trade we trade back and forth communities can help. You know we've talked about widowhood the presence of a group of weirdos who are willing to help out other recently widowed people. Probably is better than any psychiatrist or any psychologist. Just having another human being who's experienced that can be enormously stressful comforting. Sometimes people just need to withdraw to lie down close the lights and just breathe quietly and think about pleasant thoughts and let could help reduce enormously. Another thing that most people don't believe is is the working it out cleaning the house getting on the golf links playing tennis. A long walk is enormously good for me I know sometimes I gotta get rid of the tension here. In the extreme of course you know you can see physicians and psychologists. We have new

techniques that are being developed. Bio Feedback is an important one. Even meditation for some people can be enormously helpful. And it seems to me that the first attitude is that we have to recognize we can control much more of ourselves and we didn't. I had to realize that until up till just now what you said that that that much stress was was avoidable. I thought there is some unavoidable stress like if the ceiling started falling. But the things that you wish and there are things you can do really. Each person can do to help reduce the amount. Exactly right and you have to say you know what the stress can overwhelm me again. We have to try each of us to master our own world a little bit better. Good good advice and thank you Dr. Krauss Dorothy. Now for tonight's life style visit Petaluma California is a small town in northern California near the wine country. And what goes with wine but cheese. We're going to look at cheese making a kind of cheese that you'd expect to find only in

the wine areas of Europe. And we're going to listen to a couple of men. Ed and Pierce Thompson were cousins in their 70s whose grandfather started this cheese business over a hundred years ago. It's been a family business ever since. If you want to know about good French style cheese and about how a family stays together and works together. Listen to at times I am my own error and an enemy. I've learned a little bit about cheese making before he left L.A.. As the story goes kind of developed I mean he left home when he was 17 years old. And. In 1965 he bought this place. And this was the start of the chemical business. It's a soft ripening cheese French variety. These cheese are not made to any extent in this country. Most of this type of cheese. Is derived from. France or Europe. Different

size mole determine the different varieties of cheese debris right. There. Was. A grandfather passed on by the 90s I don't I I don't remember that trail either. But after the turn of the century there were just his two sons and two daughters left. They care that they came back here the sons day and my dad bears instead. Chardonnay cheese and butter again there. And I remember of course working in the cheese factory here is a help and a hindrance to his grave before. I don't know there's anything to do in doing a lot of things when there wasn't anything to do. And then this generation has gone. There's myself and my brother my brothers retired.

We got together in the cheese factory and I think probably if you look at it I was probably the guy that had his feet on the brakes all the time while there was a guy with the ideas. And. Over my objections made how we put in some very good ideas. Well that's true and I think that's important. On the serious side I think it's very important because there's a balance there's a balance. I know I've had as there says I've had a lot a lot of ideas. And he stopped some of them very definitely. And after I did we had time to think about it it was a darn good they did it but I don't feel like I want to retire. What would I do if I retired. I keep busy every day. I'm interested in everything that's going on and every bit of progress I can see a lot of this. While I have an adopted son in the cheese Doug Johnstone

radio this morning. Fanchon. Yes when I was here this morning. The I intended to give this guy a like it. But I wait. For you. Right now. I've got to. Do it. They're right here but they say. Course they're only 13 and a half years old. Oh and I don't think they really know what they want to do yet but at this point they seem to be very interested in what's going on at the ranch in the cheese factory and they have voiced the desire to come back here and be part of it some of the it is just it's just as simple as that that might be another generation that will come along here and take hold of this thing and I can see a lot of development future develop. I've seen a lot in the past of course. But future development it can.

Maybe this is this is the optimism in my brain or there is. 5. Percent your mommy's got some. Lamb. Well yes I have. I don't know why one thing leads to another because you think of something. But yeah right now. The. Place is going. On what I supply and it's tight enough water at this point to keep this thing going while you look ahead and. Even more than that. That's another project. Have you ever been in a drug store and felt that you were going to spend your very last dime for prescription drugs. Well our consumer expert Barbara Gregg is here to keep us posted on the most economical way to buy prescription drugs. Barbara there is a way or you wouldn't be here telling us of it to save some money on prescription drugs home.

Well I'm really glad that people are looking for these savings you know for a long time we looked at the over-the-counter drugs like say aspirin and we looked for the brand name and we'd shop around to different stores and look for specials. But I guess just recently with the cost of health care going up and as you said prescription drugs particularly being so expensive What we're recommending is that people ask their doctor to write the prescription and use the generic name of the drug rather than the brand name. You know what is meant by generic name. I well I'm not a pharmacist but I think just briefly we can say that the generic name is the official name. It's a longer it's harder to pronounce hard to spell as far as we're concerned the brand name is usually very catchy. But the generic drug when the physician uses the generic name when he prescribes you can save a lot of money. We just recently priced some drugs and a lot of people are doing this and doing various surveys and we found that Don in one pharmacy cost nine dollars and seventy cents. It's generic equivalent was $6 in 95.

And I don't have a little card here with me but I think if my math is correct that was a two dollar and seventy five cents savings. If you had the drug prescribed by the generic rather than the brand name what if a doctor has written a prescription loonies used to use the brand name instead of generic. Can you get one or the other going to interchange in some states. The pharmacist himself can substitute the generic equivalent. Now certainly this isn't true. You know every place where our listeners will will be people that live in areas where you can't get the generic name when the pharmacist doesn't have that power might want to write to their local politicians and say look let's let the pharmacists and the children they would have to go with what the doctor with their brand name and then their only way out would be to really ask their doctor to. Prescribe it in the generic name. I think it's rather difficult for doctors they've gotten used to using brand names. The pharmaceutical companies of course give them samples and do a lot of advertising but

most of your conscientious doctors. Certainly if you request it will look it up and write it in the only sort of laziness there on the part of all of us and it's more convenient to take a shorter name with the analogy between generic and brand name be like the difference between calling classifying a human being as homo sapiens as opposed to just saying a human. That's what I said earlier. What would be the difference if you were going after the generic. Name a drone and would there be a difference from one drug store to another as to the pricing of that. If you are one wherever whatever source you are there really can be and by the way. Again talking about using the generic you save a huge amount of money you should also though shop from pharmacy to pharmacy and you might find that in many pharmacies you will get the generic name much less expensive like now you also want to look for the services the pharmacist gives you though not only for the price but you want to do some comparative shopping and save not just often two dollars and 25 cents but many many dollars and especially for people that are on regular

maintenance of certain kinds of drugs that they could save a lot over the year. Money can be saved. Thank you Barbara thank you. We have Tomorrow night we're going to be visiting with cabaret singer Portia Nelson and Robert Mann of the Juilliard School of Music we have a musical show for you. You know speaking of music I was thinking of something that Robert Schumann the composer said about composing he gave some advice and he said it's very simple in order to compose. All you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has ever thought of. I wish I'd thought of that. I mean the program was on long enough I will. Thank you all for being with us. We'll see you tomorrow. And good night from all of us own overeasy.