“At 100+ years old, Hedda Bolgar remains a practicing psychoanalyst who sees patients four days a week and teaches on the fifth day.”

Growing old, something we all face. Growing old in the New York of the 1970′s where

“Life wasn’t so beautiful and the winters were cold”

created a diaspora to Florida–over half a million people over 55 moved to Florida from 1975 to 1980, according to the Census Bureau. In Delray Beach an enterprising developer created a seemingly idyllic community of two-story stucco buildings surrounded by tropical plants, with swimming pools, shuffleboard courts, and recreation halls. They named it Kings Point. The down payment was $1,500, slightly more for a second story unit since supposedly the bugs couldn’t get in. (In a stunning oversight, there are no elevators!)

The effort by the rich to take away Social Security keeps building momentum. Today Bill Keller urges his fellow baby boomers to admit they’ve created an entitlements debt crisis and agree to accept benefit cuts demanded by the rich.

After years of working a thankless job, more than 1,500 home healthcare aides in New York got some long overdue recognition this week, along with a $1 million paycheck in a landmark legal settlement.

The lawsuit involved home health aides working for a private provider of care to seniors and people with disabilities in New York City. The main allegations centered on a typical problem in the home care workforce–getting shorted on wages and overtime pay, thanks to huge gaps in labor protections. McMillan’s Home Care Agency, according to the suit, “consistently underpaid its workers and never paid overtime, despite frequently working more than 60 hours per week.”

Workers caring for our greying population are intimately woven into our family lives, but are alienated from essential labor protections–though that could change soon. As we’ve reported previously, a longstanding loophole in the Fair Labor Standards Act excludes home care or “companionship” workers from minimum wage and time-and-a-half overtime regulations. Nationwide, about 2.5 million home care and personal assistance aides–projected to grow to about 3.8 million by 2020–work around the clock to help their clients handle the basics of life, while often themselves scraping by on poverty wages.