VIRGINIA--Poet and activist Nikki Giovanni urged the older generation at Lynchburg College’s annual Conference on Aging to “write your story down.”
“We should not have to be apologizing for our age,” said 68-year-old Giovanni Tuesday afternoon to a packed audience at the college’s Snidow Chapel.
“There’s something entirely crazy about that… We have to tell our story so they can see how we came to be.”
Giovanni — a Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech — fired up the audience with jokes, poems and stories about getting older. She called hospice workers among the “greatest people in America” and chided our nation’s obsession with youth.
“We in America have a bad habit of thinking everyone should be dumb and young ... Every age is wonderful and every age opens up to something different.”
Giovanni’s talk culminated a day-long conference that tackled the theme “Aging Well in Mind, Body and Spirit.” The event, sponsored by LC’s Beard Center on Aging, drew a record crowd of 425 people.
With more than 24 workshops on topics ranging from dementia to social security, the conference aimed to raise awareness about issues affecting the region’s expanding elderly population.
Year round, the Beard Center on Aging organizes classes on Alzheimer’s and dementia, along with other support services. The center collaborates with more than 90 local agencies, health care providers and organizations to address concerns impacting elderly citizens and their families. The Conference on Aging serves as a marquee event, drawing speakers from Lynchburg and beyond.
The conference kicked off with keynote address by Dr. Peter Betz, a geriatric psychiatrist and medical director for Centra’s Senior Psychiatric Program. Betz spoke about mental health changes that can occur during the aging process.
Giovanni added a poet’s perspective to a lineup of speakers who mostly came from the medical field. Dubbed a “living legend” by Oprah Winfrey, she has received national recognition for her writing, including the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award and the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry.
She recounted the tough love approach she took with her father while he was recovering from a stroke, and talked with humor about the challenges of communicating with her granddaughter, for whom letters are an alien concept.
“I have to text her or Facebook her. I haven’t learned how to twit yet,” she said in a bumbling reference to Twitter, drawing laughs from the audience.
Giovanni said she approaches life “with a good feeling” and finds a reason to smile each morning.
As a writer, Giovanni built her career around crafting observations into words and poems, but that has not stopped her from taking part in the action.
“I’ve spent most of my career letting things come to me…” she said. “But my response to almost everything is ‘yes.’”
Between the stories and jokes, Giovanni echoed her advice to write down stories for the future generations:
“If you’re not going to tell it now, when are you going to tell it?”
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Tuesday, May 29th 2012 at 12:28PM
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