Author: Magazine Editor

Drawing on her own experiences as well as stories and studies about aging from other cultures, Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle explores the ways readers can nourish their inner lives and spirit even as their bodies age and faculties diminish. She offers guidelines in seven areas for being attentive to the gifts that grow more valuable with age: spiritual orientation, practice of silence, practice of mindfulness, practice of stopping, finding the sacred in the commonplace, meditation, and the practice of gratitude. She also shares the stories of six “wayshowers,” individuals whose stories illustrate aging with compassion. Olivia’s book invites inspiring reflections on finding beauty in aging, facing death with dignity, and rejoicing in earthly...

Most people say they would like to die quietly at home. But aggressive medical advice, coupled with an unrealistic sense of invincibility or overconfidence in our health care system, results in the majority of elderly patients dying in institutions. Many undergo painful procedures instead of the more peaceful death they deserve. At Peace outlines active and passive steps that older patients and their health care proxies can take to ensure loved ones live their last days comfortably at home and/or in hospice when further aggressive care is inappropriate. Informed by more than 30 years of clinical practice along with Dr. Samuel Harrington’s own experience with the aging and deaths of his parents, he describes the terminal patterns of the six most common chronic diseases; how to recognize a terminal diagnosis even when the doctor is not clear about it; how to have the hard conversation about end-of-life wishes; how to minimize painful treatments; when to seek hospice care; and how to deal with dementia and other special...

The December 2016 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine featured a 26-page spread on a project Beka Sturges completed at the Clark Art Institute, an art museum and research center in Williamstown, Massachusetts. An award-winning building expansion led to an opportunity for a new landscape design for the museum’s 140-acre site. Beka, an associate principal of Reed Hilderbrand, served as project landscape architect and manager for the project. Beka leads the firm’s office in New Haven. Always working to achieve spatial power by shaping the land, she aims to demonstrate the cultural and environmental value of landscape. Since opening the office in New Haven, she has also led projects for Yale and Brown Universities. According to the article, Beka “has made a study of Japanese architecture and culture, [and] likens it to the ‘hide and reveal’ of traditional Japanese design, which is incorporated into the site design and architecture at the...

At the height of the race to build an atomic bomb, an indoor tennis court in one of the Midwest’s most affluent residential neighborhoods became a secret Manhattan Project laboratory. Polonium in the Playhouse presents the intriguing story of how this most unlikely site in Dayton became one of the most classified portions of the Manhattan Project. Weaving Manhattan Project history with the life and work of the scientist, industrial leader and singing showman Charles Allen Thomas, Polonium in the Playhouse offers a fascinating look at the vast and complicated program that changed world history and introduces the men and women who raced against time to build the initiator for the...