(twangy music) - Open any magazine.

We're fighting against aging.

If we're lucky, we get to age.

This is something we all should look forward to.

(acoustic music) - We are now seeing the leading edge of the Boomers age into not being able to do everything on their own.

That's very difficult for my generation.

We were going to be young forever.

We were never going to trust anyone over 30.

- I'm still shocked when you have to fill in your age on some of these internet things, and I go too far now to get down to 1946.

- Generally, I think younger people do still tend to put us in the picture of people who are on the verge of going into a nursing home.

Well, that's not me.

- The way America treats elders is absolutely abominable.

- We often see homelessness, a lack of affordable senior housing.

- There's gotta be affordable ways for people to live.

- The narrative that people are sold is you're gonna sit, you're gonna get outta the way, instead of "what are you gonna do next?"

"What are you gonna do with the rest of your life?"

- They think you're too old to do anything or think straight.

You can't think for yourself.

Well, maybe some can't.

I'm not fast.

I can't move around like I used to.

But we're still moving.

- I'm supposed to be retired.

I missed the bit about sitting on a beach somewhere or on my porch in a rocking chair.

That just hasn't happened.

(upbeat music) - We need community, and we find it here.

(upbeat music) ♪ In the Heart Land we rely on ourselves and one another ♪ ♪ Hand in hand, we must stand in the heartland ♪ - [Announcer] Production funding for “Life in the Heart Land” was provided by... - All of them call me Fawn, and so the people out in the street and everywhere call me that, I love it.

Some of 'em don't like it.

They say, "You're our grandmother."

No, I'm everybody that wants to call me Fawn.

Ophie, he was the first one to move on the street.

He built the first house here, and if I'm not mistaken, Paige had the second one 'cross the street from him.

We always followed each other.

We just liked being together.

I feel so blessed to have all these children.

They just like, "It's our turn to take care of you," but I still want to be independent on my own.

I still live in this house by myself, but you wouldn't believe it 'cause they always here meddlin.

(laughs) - When our grandchildren come along the first place, we take 'em is here.

"This is your grandmother.

"This is your great-grandmother."

Because we feel that's what family's supposed to do.

- She really has a caregiver's heart.

She's taken care of our grandmothers.

- Both grandmothers.

- Both grandmothers.

Took care of my father.

I said, "Dad, don't worry about Fawn."

I said, "We are going to take care of her."

- There are lots of concerns for folks that are living independently, that don't have family members or neighbors that they can call on.

We receive approximately 400 calls per month for adult services and adult protective services.

(acoustic music) - Isolation has not only mental detriment, but it also has physical detriment.

It's equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

- It comes with self-neglect.

It comes with not eating well.

It comes with not exercising.

It comes with just not caring.

- So self-neglect is the inability to care for one's own basic needs.

- In I think many rural communities in this part of the world, our children have moved away, so we're on our own and we're dependent on each other.

- We are a rural area.

Even as professionals, we rely on the informal support.

They know their family members, their neighbors because they grew up with them.

- Hey, you!

And you brought your mother-in-law.

- Yeah.

Whatever Mom wants, Mom gets.

Absolutely.

- I wish my kids would've realized that.

(chatting and laughing) In Highland County, being retired and being older is a norm.

Children are kind of an anomaly in a way.

- Told Dr. Herford, I said, "That's the day before rifle season comes in."

I said, "You might not see me."

- Some people that are here reschedule appointments, doctor's appointments, around this day.

Some of our regulars aren't here, which makes me concerned because I'm wondering if they're okay.

- Communities can create support systems where people can live lives with purpose and continue to be healthy and continue to have social networks that help them support themselves.

- VPAS has three regions.

One is the Harrisonburg-Rockingham region.

One is Staunton Augusta Waynesboro, and the third is our three rural counties, which is Rockbridge, Bath, and Highland.

In Buena Vista, we have about 6,200 people.

We're probably serving close to 70 or 80 people.

(people chatting indistinctly) There are days when they do more bad joke telling than practicing.

♪ It's a lesson too late for the learning ♪ - Music is the universal language, folks.

I'm a old folk singer from way back.

I was in a group called The Wayfarers, and we put out four albums on RCA.

Now, you know, I'm an old guy.

As we age, all of us have found that we can't play like we used to, but we laugh about it when we mess up, and it's fun, and that's very important at our age.

♪ I didnt mean to be unkind ♪ ♪ you know that was the last ♪ ♪ thing on my mind ♪ - Tony, what'd you make?

- "Mama, you okay?"

I said "Yeah, I was cleaning."

Ol' Conway had me going.

(residents laughing) - [Jeri] A place to come together to have some fellowship, to have some fun, get some education.

- [Facilitator] The tie dye?

- A Boys and Girls Club for people with mileage - [Participant] When they glitter.

- I don't know, but I guess I'll find out here directly.

Maybe I'll do a portrait of you.

- Okay.

(folk music) - [Jeri] We're also serving 106 people for Meals on Wheels.

- Seniors quite often are too proud to ask for help.

For some folks, we might be the only daily contact, at least during the week.

That, to me, is all part of it.

You can establish relationships with people and you can see them as they move through various cycles in life.

(folk music) - All right, here we go.

Let's play Bingo.

You can do it, Jim.

- I'm gonna bring my cards from home.

(laughing) - Almost everybody in this room knows everybody in the room.

People come here to socialize and because they're getting their bingo fix, but we just don't have the services and programs here to serve people as they age.

- This doesn't fill all the gaps.

People have to have some other possibilities.

[Bingo Announcer] B-5 - At the state level, majority of people don't know we exist.

What we could really, really use is affordable senior housing in the community.

And that's not just Highland County.

I think it's every community.

(gentle music) - When we moved in, everybody had a different idea of what community was, and it was two years before we really got settled.

We consider ourselves a community of mutual support and late life spirituality.

People, when they come, they get to know faces.

And don't know names.

They get tired of asking names and so they can come and see who you are, and I took my picture on a windy day.

Look at it.

It looks terrible.

- It was just serendipity.

I got in touch with a really old friend that I'd lost touch with, and she knew people who knew people who were setting up ElderSpirit.

- And I met this lovely old lady.

She wore her hair the way my mother did, and she introduced herself.

"I'm Catherine Rumschlag," and I could hear somebody giving the contractors the devil.

And Catherine says, "Hey, Dene."

And Dene stood up, and there was number two.

I just fell in love with those two women.

- First of all, I went to this group of ex-nuns.

They had formed a group called Federation of Communities in Service, FOCIS.

- My title was Mother General.

We're Catholics, still, I guess, most of us.

I was the ninth in a family of 15 children.

It trained me for community life.

Co-housing seemed like it would fit.

- I'd grown up in a small town in the middle of Kentucky.

Everybody knew everybody.

Everybody helped everybody.

And so I thought it was just a perfect way to retire.

You know, where you're known and where you're helped.

So I came to a group of people that I'd been in the convent with.

I came to them and asked them if they ever thought of retiring together.

And then I said, "If you did, what would you want?"

Well, they wanted rural and urban.

They wanted intergenerational and just aging.

I thought, well, no matter what I would do, it would be 50% would be happy.

- When I came here and I saw it, I mean, everybody's holding hands and singing together.

- I can hardly talk, much less sing, but I still try.

I irritate a lot of people.

- I liked the idea of co-housing.

- I had always been interested in community.

I think it's the natural way for human beings to live.

- I never had a big family and we don't have children, so this would be a really nice place for me to be either widow.

- Oh no!

- Widower.

- I was born in Normal, Illinois.

- And were you born normal?

- I was born normal.

That's right.

That's the last time.

That is the last time I had anything to do with normality.

- She said, "Well, they're all pretty weird, "but you're weird, so it might work."

- The first time I came, I wasn't ready, but then I got to be 79, and I have this little tiny part of me that's practical, and it said, "Huldah, get a base."

I've got my kitchen kind of set up.

I do that first.

This chair over here is so comfortable I actually named it.

It's Charlie the chair.

Just trying to get sort of my material sense and, you know, self settled.

- These are some of my photographs.

This is Shiiko's artwork, and this is hers as well.

- You have to say it's definitely not functional, so it must be sculpture.

(laughing) - We had our house for sale and this picture was on the wall and the mother said, "Is this the couple that owns this house?"

And they said, "Mom, that's John Lennon and Yoko Ono!"

- A lot of the co-housing that we looked at, I would call it high-end.

I mean, everything was really top drawer, and it was very nice, but it was outrageously expensive.

- The continuing care retirement communities, you have to be pretty rich to live in those.

I'd never done anything like this, and I wasn't sure it would ever get built.

Anybody can do it, but doing it without money was really the trick.

(laughing) In co-housing, you build houses and then you build porches and then you have common areas, from your privacy to meeting with others to having community.

We have 29 houses here, and we have about 12 people who are offsite members.

- Here he is!

The barn cat of the century!

We had been looking for a intentional community, but there aren't many of them that take horses.

- Can you say Moonshine's full name?

- His full name is Full Moon Rising Tubac.

She has some neurological issues, and he has some lameness issues, and Dixie is just fat.

(both laughing) - We had a perfectly good life where we were.

It was just that there was something else we needed, and we didn't know exactly what it was, but we knew that staying where we were, we weren't gonna grow.

- What I say to my kids and my friends, I just hope I'm up for this because it's pretty big.

(people chatting indistinctly) (people clapping) - And I almost feel like we should sing "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow."

(all laughing) ♪ For she's a jolly good fellow ♪ ♪ Which nobody can deny - You know, there's an adage in psychology.

"Usefulness builds self-esteem."

And I think one of the great things about co-housing is that we are useful to each other.

You know, that there's a purpose in that.

- One thing about ElderSpirit that I really like is that we do accept evolution.

There's a great tendency, I think, to, "Oh, we made it.

It's perfect.

"End of story."

And I think we have largely avoided that.

- Troublemakers.

- I'm not looking at- - That's why we'll watch them.

- Anybody have any question about the treasurer's report that was sent out?

Next?

Pam, you're up.

- I like to call ElderSpirit a microcosm of the world.

- Your three Ps.

Proposals, policies, and procedures.

- Since it's a policy proposal, it needs a second reading anyway.

- Anybody trying to build co-housing will tell you this is really difficult.

We propose the ideal, but we're human.

This is burdensome.

Members, there is a list of all decisions that have been made and recorded.

- Where?

- If you would've asked me, I would've showed you.

- Would you be willing to leave it today that we will find the darn thing?

- Making rules for old people is a trick.

(Dene laughs) People can do what they want, and there's very few consequences.

We had a big argument over clotheslines.

That was one of the major issues.

- November, I came to the meeting.

It was a ping pong table problem.

And then the clothesline problem.

- A lot of people think, well, we need more grass because we're getting all old here.

We can't pull weeds, so we need to plant more grass.

And then some people say, "Oh no!

No more grass!"

- Spirituality we got all figured out.

It's the planting.

- There are pro-tree people.

There are anti-tree people.

There are pro-mulch people.

Anti-mulch.

- And I just don't see need for even more complications.

- Shiiko gets a white card.

(gentle music) - Can you find an opportunity where you're gonna make an effort to say hello to people and make eye contact even if they look different from you, they have a different bumper sticker than you like.

The real joy is getting to be a community.

- I'm not that old.

- How many Kenny Rogers 8-track tapes do you have?

Come on!

- That I used to have!

- Fess up.

20% of the chance of you living a healthy life and really having the kind of life that you want, 20% of that is genetically based.

You know, that's the roll of the dice.

The 80% is up to you.

It's too easy to have inertia suck you into the couch.

You need to get out of the chair.

(upbeat music) (tap shoes clacking) - All the ways that we have wellness in our community, I feel like tap dance fits them all.

It offers rhythm, it's sequencing, it's memory, it's movement, it's social.

Yay!

Good work, good work!

Heart, rest.

See you next week!

Same bat channel, same bat time.

Woo-hoo!

- How do you mitigate isolation and loneliness?

It doesn't get any easier for us to meet people.

You know, that same anxiety you had in fourth grade, people have coming through the door every day.

But as a community center for active aging, what you want is a myriad of ideas and myriad of chances for you to get engaged.

(speaking indistinctly) Healthy aging is about what are you doing to support your mind, body, spirit, and community.

♪ I've seen you out on the prowl like this ♪ ♪ Night after night after night ♪ - Every human who comes in here has an interesting story.

When you reach my age, and I unfortunately lost my wife, coming up on five years, you need an interaction of humankind.

You know, there's a youthfulness to this, too.

You know, you can still feel and behave young.

(mandolin music) - I think the most difficult thing about being human is having to learn the same lessons over and over and over again and feel the pain that you've already felt over and over again.

Life will teach you that you better find your lessons where they are.

- The thing about aging, you don't have to believe in it.

You don't have to prepare for it.

It just happens whether you want it to or not.

- Nothing else is going on here.

Well, thanks for checking in.

- I tied flies for several years.

One of the symptoms of Parkinson's is I lost most of my fine motor skills.

I can't tie my shoes, but by God, I could tie flies.

So I did that for years 'til I had to give that up.

Gradually, I've given up so many things.

I just think it's a beautiful sport and a beautiful art.

Beauty means a lot to me.

It gives me comfort.

(dulcimer music) - I used to throw parties quite often when we first moved in.

It's such a difference now that we're 90 than it was when we were 70.

- We're realistic about what the future holds.

I mean, when you're in your seventies, what that means is you're gonna be in your eighties, and what that means is you're gonna be in your nineties if you're lucky, and things will be different in your nineties, so you're sort of preparing for that.

- Hi!

Let me say hello.

Let me have a hug from you.

I was so glad to see you on Zoom yesterday.

- I've gotta get back to you.

- I can't take a step up and you can't take a step down.

I love you.

- You look pretty.

- Good.

It is so good to see you.

- It's good to see you.

- Yeah!

- Her Parkinson's took a turn just this past week, and she's gone into hospice, so she's here getting ready to die, you know.

Let me see.

Jack's over here.

Let me see if it's still lasting.

Oh, this one.

This one, it was $3.20, and $50 to get the engraving.

The one says Jack Allen Skapowitz.

We can't have a cemetery because the state has a deed of trust on our property.

But I told 'em to put my ashes here and if they wanted to take 'em up, they could.

(Dene laughs) - This is probably the last stage for me, and I'm happy with it.

- In conscious aging, we do talk a lot here about death, being honest about what is ahead because we are gonna die and so are you and everybody is, and it happens because of nature.

That is what is meant to happen.

(violin music) - I wonder, too, why do I live this long, and God has more for me to learn before I die, before I'm ready to go into eternity.

And I'm grateful.

(acoustic music) - Successful aging is being able to contribute for as long as you can.

Being able to make your own decisions for as long as you can.

Being at peace with where you are now and where we'll all go.

I think that that's success.

- This is a hot mess, is what it is!

- Every day, we're just looking for friends and community.

- I can't wait to see what Tricia did over there.

- I will present it.

I will present it (laughing) - I don't know what this thing is.

- It is a beautiful place to live, and we have such a strong sense of community.

- [Lysandra] Oh, was that bingo?

- [Harmony] Was that a bingo?

- [All] Yes.

- [Bingo Announcer] Under the G3.

- Shoo!

Got in my run.

Come on down, Sarah.

- We are all in the people business.

You're never too old to reinvent oneself.

- We're all still kind of learning and accepting and questioning.

- The purpose of old age is to grow to the person you're supposed to be, you know?

And to get rid of some of the selfishness that we all have.

Is to be the person that, if you want to use the word God, that God made you to be.

- It's helped me grow.

Yeah.

One of these days I'll grow up, right?

(laughing) - All you can do is make plans and then it happens.

- You push ahead.

You don't stop.

- [Ophie] We are all more alike than we're different.

- It takes all kinds to make a heaven.

It keeps us alive, keeps us thinking, and hopefully keeps us open to one another.

- [Announcer] Production funding for “Life in the Heart Land” was provided by... (gentle music) ♪ Who belongs?

♪ Is there room ♪ ♪ enough for all?

♪ ♪ Who belongs?

♪ Do we stand or do we fall?

♪ And is there room ♪ ♪ In our hearts for this whole land ♪ ♪ Is there room ♪ ♪ For us in the heart of the land?

♪ (chime)