Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, May 6, 2017

THE GOOD LIFE

WHAT TO DO WITH CREMATED ASHES?

10

Mountain Views-News Saturday, May 6, 2017 

SENIOR HAPPENINGS

NIFTY GADGETS THAT CAN HELP SENIORS WITH 
HEARING LOSS


HAPPY BIRTHDAY! …May Birthdays*

Joann Serrato-Chi, Harriett Lyle, Jean Coleman, Birgitta Gerlinger, Donna Mathieson, 
Dorothy Murphy, Linda Wochnik, Marian Woodford, Debbie Sheridan, Joanne 
Anthony, Carole Axline, Kika Downey, Shirley Hall, Annie Scalzo, Janet Ten Eyck, Jane 
Thomas, Ray Burley.

* To add your name to this distinguished list, please call the paper at 626.355.2737. 
YEAR of birth not required

...................................................................

ACTIVITIES: Unless listed differently, all activities are at the Hart 
Park House (Senior Center) 222 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre

 

 

Hawaiian & Polynesian Dance Class: Every Tuesday morning from 10a.m. to 
11a.m. Join instructor Barbara Dempsey as she leads you in the art of Hula. 

Bingo: Every Tuesday beginning at 1:00p.m. Cards are only $0.25 each! Everyone is welcome to join. 
May be canceled if less than five people. 

Free Blood Pressure Testing: 2nd Tuesday of the month from 11a.m. to 12p.m. No appt. is necessary. 

Brain Games: Thursdays, 10:30a.m. to 11:30a.m., improve your memory and strengthen your 
brain. Activities facilitated by Senior Volunteers.

Free Legal Consultation: Wednesdays from 10:30a.m. to Noon. Attorney Lem Makupson is 
available for legal consultation. He specializes in Family Law, Wills, Trusts, Estates, and Injury. 
Appointments are required by calling 626-355-7394. 

Senior Club: Meets every Saturday at the Hart Park House Senior Center. Brown Bag Lunch at 
11:30a.m. 

Tax Assistance: Every Wednesday beginning on February 1st through April 12th from 1:00p.m. 
to 2:00p.m. - Don Brunner is available for income tax consultation. Appointments are required by 
calling 626-355-7394.

Chair Yoga: Mondays and Wednesdays from 11:00 to 11:45a.m. with Paul Hagen. 3rd Monday of each 
month, a variety of balance exercises are practiced. All ability levels are encouraged and welcomed! 

*A suggested donation of $5 at one of the classes is requested, but is not required.

Case Management: Case Management services are provided by the YWCA and provide assistance in 
a variety of areas. Appointments are required and can be scheduled by calling the Hart Park House 
Office at 626-355-7394.

Birthday Celebrations: Every 2nd Thursday of the month at the Hart Park House, share some free 
birthday cake provided by the Sierra Madre Civic Club.

Game Day: Every Thursday starting at 12:00p.m. Come join this group of Seniors in a poker game. 
Other games are offered to all. Please note time change. 

Free Strength Training Class: Every Friday from 12:45p.m. to 1:30p.m. with Lisa Brandley. This 
energetic class utilizes light weights for low impact resistance training. All class materials are provided.

Stress, Resilience, Positivity: Finding Balance - by The Kensington Sierra Madre Four Tuesdays, 
March 7 - 28th from 2:00 - 4:00p.m. Register by calling 213-821-6919 or 213-821-6908. 

SEASONAL FUN AT THE SENIOR CENTER

Thursday, May 25th from 10:30a.m. – 11:30a.m. at the Hart Park House!

Just in time for spring! Join us in making a silk flowers planter. All supplies will be provided. Let’s get 
creative... Please call the Hart Park House, 626-355-7394, to make your reservations. 

Invite your friends and family for some arts and crafts fun and take home your planters for the season



SENIOR EXCURSIONS

 MAY EXCURSION

BOWERS MUSEUM - SANTA ANA 

Date: Tuesday, May 30th

Time: 9:15a.m. to 3:00p.m.

Meeting Location: Hart Park House

Cost: $15.00 (Not including Lunch)

The Bowers Museum is an art museum located in beautiful Orange County. The museum’s permanent 
collection includes more than 100,000 objects featuring notable strengths in areas of pre-Columbian 
Mesoamerica, Native American art, the art of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, and California plein-air 
painting.

 Participants will have time to explore the museum and have lunch on their own. Restaurant is open in 
the museum and fast food places are a short walk away. There will be a docent-guided tour in the afternoon 
which will feature highlights of galleries throughout , providing a great overview of the museum’s unique 
collections. Level of walking: Medium – High; please call us at the Hart Park House for reservations at 
626-355-7394!


Dear Savvy Senior,

What types of products can you recommend to help people 
with hearing problems? My 65-year-old husband has some 
hearing issues, but doesn’t think he needs a hearing aid, so I’m 
looking for some alternative devices that can help.

Loud Talker

Dear Loud,

If your husband feels he’s not ready for a hearing aid but needs 
some hearing help, there are dozens of “assistive listening 
devices” on the market today that can make a big difference. 

 Assistive listening devices are over-the-counter electronic 
products (they are not FDA approved hearing aid devices) 
that can amplify and improve sound to help your husband in 
different listening situations. It’s also important to know that 
these products are best suited for people with mild to moderate 
hearing impairment, and they usually aren’t covered by 
insurance or Medicare. 

 Here’s a breakdown of some of the different devices that can 
help.

 Personal amplifiers: For better hearing, especially in 
noisy environments, there are personal sound amplification 
products that can be worn in the ear like a hearing aid, and 
are designed to amplify sound while reducing background 
noise. Two top rated products to consider that were recently 
recommended by Consumer Reports are the SoundWorld 
Solutions CS50+ and the Etymotic Bean. 

 The CS50+, which costs $350, looks like a Bluetooth cell 
phone headset, and has customizable settings that can be 
programed with a smartphone. The Etymotic Bean, which 
costs $399 a pair or $214 for one, is ready to use right out of the 
box and is best suited for those with high-frequency hearing 
loss. 

 If these are too pricy, there are also a number of small 
hand-held or body-worn amplifiers – like the Williams Sound 
Pocketalker ($139) and Bellman & Symfon Mino Personal 
Amplifier ($188) – that have a microphone and headphones or 
earbuds that are very effective too. 

 TV amplifiers: To hear the television better, there are TV 
listening devices that will let your husband increase the volume 
and adjust the tone to meet his needs, without blasting you out 
of the room. 

 Some of the best options include wireless infrared, radio 
frequency or Bluetooth devices that come with standard or 
stethoscope headphones. Sennheiser makes a variety of quality 
products with prices running between $130 and $450. Or, for a 
more affordable solution, consider the Serene Innovations TV 
Sound Box for $120. This is a wireless amplified TV speaker 
that would sit near your husband, and provide clear stereo 
sound from the TV without the need for headsets.

 Amplified telephones: To have clearer phone conversations, 
there are a wide variety of amplified telephones that offer 
enhanced volume and tone adjustments, and they usually 
come with extra loud ringers and flashing ring indicators to 
alert him when a call is coming in. 

 Some top makers of these products are Clarity, ClearSounds 
and Serene Innovations, and a top seller today is the Clarity 
XLC2+ Amplified Phone ($144), which is a cordless phone that 
provides three tone settings and 50 decibels of amplification. 

 Alerting devices: There are also a variety of alerting devices 
that can help people who have trouble hearing the doorbell, 
phone, alarm clock, smoke detector or even weather radio. 
These products use flashing lights, multi-tone ringers or 
vibrating devices as a means to alert you. 

 Some popular products in this category include: The 
Bellman & Symfon Care Home Alerting Solution that provides 
door and phone notification with a flashing alert ($198); the 
Silent Call Weather Alert Radio with strobe and bed shaker 
($165); and the all-in-one Serene Innovations CentralAlert 
CA-360 Clock/Receiver Notification System, which provides 
alarm clock, doorbell, phone, motion and storm warning 
alerts ($180). 

To locate these and any other hearing loss products visit Harris 
Communications (HarrisComm.com, or call 866-476-9579), 
which offers more than 2,000 assistive devices and provides 
customer support services to assist you. 

 

 Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, 
Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a 
contributor to the NBC Today show and author of “The Savvy 
Senior” book.


I’M STILL SO GLAD I’M NOT YOUNG ANYMORE!

This article originally appeared in the 
Mountain Views New years ago. But even 
after all this time, I’m STILL so glad I didn’t 
go to prom!

 Youth is a wonderful thing. The young are 
mostly healthy, beautiful, and, in middle and 
upper class America, blissfully unacquainted 
with the harsh realities of financial self-
reliance and a diminished metabolism. 
Youth involves rites of passage. Kids learn 
to drive. Girls get training bras; boys’ voices go through a 
crackling journey to manly tones. Everyone needs to use 
deodorant, contrary to the belief that “some people don’t sweat.” 
And usually somewhere in there is a “formal dance.”

 Stopped in traffic by the Arboretum one spring day, I noticed 
a fashion shoot taking place on a grassy knoll. Five women, in 
thigh-high halter-top dresses, posed as the photographer fired 
off rapid shots. After they were finished, the group headed 
toward some young men in suits and tuxedos. As the women 
awkwardly stepped into a stretch Hummer it dawned on me. 
That’s not a fashion a shoot –that’s someone’s prom! 

 It goes without saying that proms have changed over the 
years. My mom enjoys telling how she fooled her date (a well-
known prankster) by opening the front door in a very old 
fashions, dumpy dark turquoise taffeta dress and her Stouffer’s 
waitress shoes (think the Queen Mum). She and her dad got a 
big laugh after he snapped a picture of the boy’s horrified face. 
She then changed in to her real dress. Yes, things are different 
these days... 

 I have a few regrets about my youth. I wish I had put more effort into my second language courses 
(although I doubt it would’ve helped), and I suppose it might’ve been good to attempt a sport. But 
one thing I’ve never regretted is not going to prom! I know that sounds bitter and antisocial, but even 
approaching 20 years later, I can still say I didn’t miss a thing!

 In the same vein as class elections, proms seemed to be another means of social exclusion. Every 
detail of the night involved decisions about who was “in” and who was “out.” Who’s house do we 
meet up at? Who’s riding in the [the ostentatious vehicle of choice]? Who’s sitting at our table? 
There’s only room for eight, so that eliminates [the least-liked classmate].” It gave me a nervous 
ulcer just listening to it. To drive home the point that prom was overrated, my boyfriend-less 
friends all complained about their dates’ behavior the next day at school. Heck, even some of the 
girls who had boyfriends complained! 

Of course, another reason I nixed the prom was because I’m cheap. I just couldn’t rationalize the 
cost of the tickets, dress, etc. Even as an unemployed teenager, I had some concept of the value of 
money. On top of everything else, prom tends to bring out the worst in people –administrators 
as well as students. There’s always a few headlines about some poor kid getting kicked out of 
prom for a dumb reason. Back when I first submitted this article, a boy in the Midwest asked 
his crush to the prom by writing “Will you go to the prom with me?” on a large poster. And she 
said “Yes!” Aww! But there was trouble in paradise when the villainous principal banned the 
boy from the prom because his placement of the sign was against school rules. In response to the 
national outcry against her decision, the principal finally reneged and allowed the young lovers 
to attend the prom. It would be one thing if this were an isolated incident, but it seems that every 
year there’s some news story about power-crazed administrators concocting frivolous reasons for 
excluding students from the prom. One girl was denied admission because she came without a 
date. It’s bad enough if you can’t get a date, let alone the school broadcasting it! Like Maurice 
Chevalier crooned, “I’m --STILL-- so glad I’m not young anymore!”


SCAM ALERT: WHO’S CALLING?

By Monica Vaca

Acting Associate Director, FTC

 The millions of people who reported scams last year 
told us that imposters were the top fraud of the year. 
Imposters have called many of us – maybe even most 
of us, pretending to be anyone from the IRS to a family 
member in trouble, from fake tech “help” for your 
computer to a business selling things that turned out 
to be bogus. 

 Their goal? To get your money as quickly as possible.
Thanks to the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii, we recently 
heard about scammers calling to ask for contributions 
to the “Legal Aid Society” and pretending to be from 
the “national legal aid/defenders office.” A quick 
search of the phone number the callers used showed 
complaints for different kinds of imposter scams. 
(Of course, scammers can make caller ID show any 
number – even the name that shows up on the display. 
So don’t rely on caller ID to help you decide if a call 
is legit.) Imposters can pretend to be anyone, but the 
twist on this imposter scam is that the scammers are 
pretending to be from well-respected community 
service organizations and appealing to your civic 
spirit.

 To make sure your donation dollars are doing the 
good you want them to, learn more about giving 
wisely. If you get a dubious call, or one that pressures 
you to donate right away, tell the FTC so we can 
investigate. We rely on you – and our partners in your 
community – to tell us what you’re seeing. In fact, our 
most recent imposter scam case – against a company 
that pretended to be from a community help center, 
the government, radio stations, and companies like 
Walmart – came about because of a tip from a legal 
services group in Washington, DC. So every report, 
from everyone, makes a difference.


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com