Home// Internet Marketing// What Is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the process of promoting your business online. There are dozens of different strategies that can be a part of this process.
All of these strategies are designed to improve brand awareness and consistently grow your business over time.
With a minimal investment, digital marketing can change the future of your company by earning you more customers, bringing in more revenue, and achieving your business goals.
Want to get started using digital marketing to increase brand awareness, site traffic, and overall sales? You can call 888-601-5359 or contact us online to learn more about our custom digital marketing packages!
Maybe you still have a few questions though, like - What goes into digital marketing? What does it encompass? How does it help?
We'll answer all of those questions (and more) with a comprehensive look at all of the marketing strategies that fall under the umbrella of "digital marketing."
Keyword research is the process of identifying valuable words and phrases that your customers use to find your business online.
It's the first step to almost every digital marketing strategy on our list because it forms the foundation of each one.
To find keywords related to your business, you have a few research options at your disposal.
While it's not an official keyword research tool, Google has a built-in keyword research tool right in Google Search.
All you have to do is start typing a word related to your business — like "shoes" if you sell running shoes — and see what pops up.
The suggested keywords will be listed in order of popularity based on how many people search them.
Unfortunately, that means this keyword research strategy has a limited success ceiling. It won't be able to tell you everything you need to know to create your strategy, but it will give you a good place to start.
Google Autocomplete is also sometimes called Google Autosuggest. The terms mean the same thing, and they're used interchangeably.
Keywordtool.io is a great way to generate long lists of keyword ideas.
All you have to do is type in the root of your keyword — so again something like "shoes" if you sell running shoes — and Keywordtool.io will generate a list of possible keywords for you to target.
Unfortunately, this tool doesn't tell you how frequently people search for those keywords. So you'll have to take your list and use it in another tool to get the full picture of keywords you should target.
Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to accomplish this task as well.
SEMrush is a paid tool with package options between $69.95 and $549.95 per month.
Most companies can research keywords with the cheapest package, though you can upgrade to get more of SEMrush's functionality.
With SEMrush, you can upload a spreadsheet of the keywords you find with tools like Keywordtool.io and get data like how many people search for those keywords every month, current websites that rank for those keywords, and other information that can help you decide what keywords work best for your needs.
Ideally, you want to find longtail keywords, or phrases of four to five words. They may have low search volume, but they'll also typically have lower competition.
Better yet, they'll drive qualified traffic to your business because long search queries imply a searcher's intent to make a purchase.
The idea is to target these keywords with future strategies so you can pull a consistent audience to your website.
Once you have your keywords chosen, it's time to use them.
Content marketing is the process of creating pages on your website that target important keywords so that the pages show up in search engines.
So if you wanted to create a page that showed up in searches for "long-distance men's running shoes," you'd write a page on the topic, include that keyword in the page's text and — if you're an ecommerce company — offer different products for sale.
But what kind of content works best for different keywords? And what does each form of content actually do?
Blogging is the most popular form of content on the Internet. Thanks to platforms like WordPress, anyone can run a blog for practically no investment. Blogs help build your brand, reputation, and authority online.
You can use your blog to post regular updates about timely issues in your industry. For an online shoe retailer, for example, that could be something like how someone can size their feet at home, how arch support works, and why some brands are more expensive than others.
By giving that information away for free, you answer your potential customers' questions. That brings them to your site, educates them, showcases your knowledge, and improves the chances that they'll want to buy from you in the future.
Writing and publishing blog posts on a regular schedule also gives your readers a reason to come back to your site. On top of that, it encourages search engines like Google to crawl your site more frequently so your newest pages show up in search results.
Blogging is an easy, effective, and powerful way to build your brand online. As a result, it's often the first content marketing strategy most companies adopt online.
But blogs aren't the end-all-be-all of content marketing. In fact, another format is much better for more permanent pages on your site.
Article pages are evergreen pages on your site that you can use for a variety of purposes.
Most of the time, these pages are used for service pricing, product information, or ecommerce category listings.
Service pricing pages are helpful because they show potential customers how much you charge for different tiers of service. This is especially useful for B2B sales.
Product information pages are great for ecommerce sales because they give your customers all the information they need to make an informed purchase.
Ecommerce category listings are helpful for collecting similar products into categories, where customers can browse for what they want.
Some companies also use this format for FAQ pages, which is a great way to answer a lot of common questions all at the same time.
Aside from these options, you can also use article pages to target long-tail keywords that can continually pay dividends long after you publish them.
That evergreen content pairs well with blog posts to make a robust, well-rounded content strategy. By using both of these strategies together, you can target a variety of keywords and drive traffic to your site day after day.
But these two strategies only deal with text. What about multimedia?
Infographics are visual representations of information that make a compelling point with hard data.
Infographics are ideal for explaining complex concepts in simple terms. They don't need to be anything fancy, either — some of the best infographics are lists of data points with charts and graphs.
If you need infographic ideas, think about how you could best represent your products or services through data.
That could be sales trends in your industry by year, the popularity of certain products, the impact of different innovations, and more.
Then, once it's up on your site, you can promote it on social media and earn backlinks for it, both of which help spread the word about your brand.
But still, there are other content formats that can help your website grow.
Video is another great content medium that presents information in an engaging, efficient, and user-friendly way.
Plus, Google really likes to see videos on pages since they provide a great user experience.
For example, our video on website costs has become one of our most popular content products. The information it provides is excellent, and it's delivered in a clear, concise, and simple way.
Example video: How much should a website cost?
Your business can use videos like this to improve your rankings in search results, attract more traffic to your website, and provide a quality experience to your users.
That shows everyone — including Google — that you're an authoritative source on your industry, and that kind of reputation goes a long way online.
But still, there's one last popular form of content marketing that you can use to build your brand.
Podcasts are episodic audio content that allow you to discuss issues in your industry. You can make a podcast for about $100, and it comes with a whole host of SEO benefits.
Podcasts let you showcase your expertise by discussing current industry topics, offering advice, or even making predictions about your industry's future.
You can even use it as a source of revenue, if you'd like to sell ad space. While that's not common for business podcasts, it's still a possibility.
More commonly, podcasts are used to interview influencers or discuss trends among coworkers. That keeps the format simple, easy-to-follow, and enjoyable.
You can also post your podcasts to networks like iTunes and enjoy search saturation as a result of your work.
Plus, podcasting is the only form of content that doesn't require your audience to stare at a screen. Your listeners can enjoy your podcast in the car, on a walk, or while doing chores around the house.
With these five formats, you'll have a powerful content marketing strategy that, given enough time, can build your business into an empire.
SEO is the process of improving your website to make it show up in search engine results pages.
It's also probably the most popular strategy in digital marketing, and at this point, almost every marketer has at least heard of SEO.
The previous two digital marketing strategies both play a part in SEO. After all, without high-quality content, you won't have anything to optimize for search engines.
While SEO has a lot of ranking factors, these three elements play the biggest roles in SEO success.
Technical SEO is the practice of using coding languages to identify different parts of a webpage.
Regardless of the languages you use to create your site, you need to write the code well enough for search engines to read it.
You don't have to be a computer programmer to make simple changes to your site's code, though. In fact, if you spend some time doing your research, you can find places online to learn them for free.
Title tag <title>: The name of your page and the blue text that shows up in Google search results.
With these three tags, you'll at least have a start on your technical SEO.
Local SEO is the process of adding your business to online directories and targeting location-based keywords with content on your site. This helps you show up in multiple areas online with your brand name, address, phone number, and more.
When people look up your business name or industry online, local SEO increases the chances that they'll find your company before they find your competitors.
That helps get more customers, earn more revenue, and grow your business.
Best of all, most local SEO outlets are completely free.
p>The most popular local SEO outlet is Google My Business. It lets you add your company to Google Search and Maps results, which are two of the most popular online properties in the world.
But there's still more to SEO than coding and local directories.
Once you've achieved your goals for rankings, website traffic, conversions, and other digital marketing metrics, it's crucial that you maintain your site so you can keep growing in the future.
After all, digital marketing is constantly changing – and if you don't keep up, your competitors could leave you in the dust.
With that in mind, you (or a digital marketing agency) have to keep up with recent trends, updates to SEO, and other factors that impact your ability to compete in the digital marketplace.
Once you've laid the foundation of your SEO strategy, maintaining it is typically much easier. In fact, it'll be more time-consuming than difficult, as you'll just have to update tags, add content, remove content, test calls-to-action, and other factors.
But some maintenance jobs are tediously difficult and knowledge-intensive.
The best example of this is adapting to algorithm updates, like the "Mobilegeddon" of 2015. This required website owners to incorporate responsive design into their websites, which we'll discuss in more detail later.
This wasn't a big problem for most companies with SEO partners.
But for some smaller businesses, it absolutely destroyed their ability to rank online.
These updates mean that every company needs to stay on top of their site and work to maintain their rankings online, even after they've achieved their goals.
Social media marketing is the process of promoting your business on popular social networks.
Most of the time, it's completely free to promote your company on social media. All you have to do is create a page, fill out all the required information, and start posting links to content on your site.
That drives people to your main site, where you can convert them into leads or paying customers.
That means that your initial investment with social media marketing can be as small as you want, though there are many paid options you can use to improve your results.
These five social networks are the most important to businesses.
Facebook is the world's most popular social network, and has more than 1 billion users today.
That means there are guaranteed to be a few possible customers on Facebook for your business, even if you only operate a single storefront in a small town.
Facebook lets you set up a business page for free, which you can optimize quickly with your business name, hours of operation, address, phone number, and more.
In that regard, Facebook helps with your local SEO strategy, too!
Once you have everything set up, you can post updates to Facebook that include content from your site, contests for followers, and more.
Twitter is the second-largest social network today, and limits its users to 140-character updates, called tweets.
Twitter is another place where you can post your brand name, images, and the city of your headquarters. It also lets you quickly gain followers by tweeting links to content, interesting stories, industry news, and more.
In recent years, Twitter has also become a customer service medium. This is more common for larger businesses, but its format makes it easy for customers to reach out to the companies they buy from.
When you address their questions or concerns professionally, Twitter can become a powerful medium to improve your company's reputation and serve your customers.
Pinterest is one of the Internet's most popular social networks, especially for images, DIY ideas, and crafts.
That may not sound like it's ideal for every business, but it's actually helpful for every industry — including B2Bs.
Pinterest lets you share images of your team, the results of your work, and how your products work, among other opportunities.
This allows you inform your customer base more effectively than you could with text alone. This is the same principle behind infographics and videos, which is why Pinterest is such an effective social network for marketing.
LinkedIn is the world's largest professional social network.
It's one of the most important online meeting places for professionals from new graduates to Fortune 500 CEOs.
When you use it for marketing — by posting links to your site and participating in discussions — you show that you're a part of a quality business that strives for excellence.
Creating a business page allows you to list essential information about your company in yet another location online, and it lets people follow you to get updates about your business.
The most powerful part of LinkedIn is its professional context. Since its users are there for professional purposes, you can use it to establish new business relationships, promote your company to potential customers, and more.
Snapchat is one of the newest ways to promote your business online.
Snapchat is exceptionally popular with young smartphone enthusiasts, which is a growing demographic with more spending money by the day.
You can use the app to send or post photos and videos to attract new followers to your account.
Snapchat's main purpose is to connect with followers through humor or entertainment.
This is easier to do for more laid-back brands than it is for professional brands, so it's up to you whether Snapchat is worth testing.
But if you do, you have the potential to engage with millions of users and grow your brand awareness every day.
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an advertising model that allows you to reach users on search engines or social networks.
It's also important to note that some PPC outlets charge based on a CPM basis, or every 1000 times someone views your ad. Typically, search engines charge per click and social ads charge on either basis.
But both of these systems can help you achieve your goals.
CPM is typically better for when you want to drive brand awareness. So if you want to reach a lot of people without racking up a big ad bill, CPM is your choice.
Per-click is best for converting ad viewers into paying customers. This system works best when you have an optimized landing page that you've A/B tested to convert as many visitors as possible.
But although search engines and social ads are based on the same ideas, they operate differently.
When you advertise with search engines like Google and Bing, you can assign ads to certain keywords. Then, you place a "bid" for how much you're willing to pay for each click to your website, and the advertisers with the highest bids show up above the other search results.
This means when you outbid your competitors, your ad shows up directly underneath the search bar — right where search users look after a page loads.
The idea is that more people will click your ad when you rank higher. On the one hand, that means you'll pay more by "buying" more ad clicks.
On the other hand, it means you'll have lots of opportunities to convert ad clicks into paying customers.
And in some cases, it only takes one or two conversions to recoup your cost and turn a profit on your PPC campaign.
So once you determine keywords that generate results for your business, you can use PPC to maximize your visibility and generate more qualified traffic.
Social platforms often let you choose between a CPM and per-click payment model. That makes social ads more versatile than search ads, but social networks — even the big ones — don't get as much daily traffic as Google.
However, social ads allow you to incorporate images, gifs, and sometimes video into your ads so you don't have to rely on text to get new customers.
Many social networks still have rules regarding their ads, though. For example, Facebook doesn't allow any images to have more than 20% text.
Other networks, like Twitter or Pinterest, are more accepting of other ad formats.
And still others, like LinkedIn, prefer to keep ads to small images or text-only formats.
With social ads, you have so many choices at your disposal that it'll take some time to find the most effective network for your needs.
Email marketing is the practice of sending tailored messages to your audience so you can reach them where they're already looking every day — their inboxes.
Email marketing is fundamentally different from spam because email marketing requires people to give you their contact information before you reach out to them.
That means the only people who hear from you are people who want to hear from you. That protects your company's reputation, increases the chances that recipients will enjoy your email, and will generate better results.
For most companies, email marketing breaks down into two main categories: newsletters and lead nurturing.
Newsletters are emails that go out to a large list, and provide general information on your company or industry. So if someone wants to keep up with your business, they'd subscribe to a newsletter.
This is ideal for people in your industry who want to know what you're doing, and it allows your business to show the public that you're an authoritative resource in your industry.
Newsletters accomplish that by going out at regular intervals, like every week. They showcase important information, like new hires or other company news.
In fact, you could have a newsletter dedicated to curated industry news from around the Internet. Then, you don't just prove you're an authority — you prove you're helpful and informed, too!
Lead nurturing is the process of converting leads into paying customers by sending them additional information based on where they converted on your site.
This kind of marketing requires a lot of in-depth thought, testing, and revision to work. But once it does work, any lead-based business can earn new customers (and more revenue) much more quickly than before.
So let's say you sell industrial equipment to construction companies.
A new user converts into a lead and gives you their contact information. They converted on a page about bulk movers.
Another user converts on a page about backhoes.
While these machines fall under the same category — construction equipment — they're used for different purposes. That means the company that's interested in bulk movers won't want the same information as a backhoe.
By sending them different emails that are tailored to their specific needs — which you can also automate — you increase the odds that one of those leads will convert into a paying customer.
Influencer marketing is the practice of reaching out to well-known people in your industry and getting them to talk about your business.
First, you need to create compelling content that'll resonate with others in your industry.
That could be new data on trends, a well-written answer to a common problem, a great graphic, and other forms of engaging content.
Once you have your content, you can reach out to influencers via two channels — email and social networks.
Email works great when you want to deliver a personalized, unique message to an influencer to show that you know them and respect their work.
Reaching out over social media is also great for reaching influencers, but has the added bonus of having your message potentially seen by other people in your industry.
That naturally proliferates your brand to new viewers, some of whom may visit your site for more information.
In this way, influencer marketing can deliver excellent results in terms of brand awareness and site traffic.
In fact, it can even get you more customers, depending on your industry.
The point is to ask an influencer to share a link to your site with their social media followers and other influencers. That influencer basically vouches for you to others in your industry, giving you more credibility.
But best of all, it'll show that you're an authority in your industry. Even if an influencer turns you down, they (and anyone who may see your message on social media) now know you exist.
That's an essential first step in growth online.
Outreach is the process of creating great content on your site and sending it to other website owners to earn a backlink.
This is similar to influencer marketing, but the goal of outreach isn't to earn credibility or social clout — it's to improve your SEO.
Outreach works best over email. You can send someone a short message that asks them to look at your content, repost it on their site, and link back to your site for credit.
This is important because backlinks play a huge role in SEO. When you have a lot of backlinks from high-quality websites, Google sees those backlinks as votes of confidence.
Google will then rank your site better in search results, which will help you attract more traffic and customers to your site from organic search results.
Webinars are online conferences based on a certain topic that are used to educate potential customers and build the authority of your brand.
Typically, only industry-leading companies offer webinars to their clients or others. That's because webinars can be time-consuming and expensive.
However, they offer a great opportunity to reach potential customers in a format that very few businesses use.
All you have to do is create a slideshow, get a working microphone, find a webinar provider, and start.
Webinars can also work for your video marketing strategy as well. Most webinar providers let you record your presentation, and you can post the recording on different pages of your site to help those pages rank better in Google search results.
Webinars are one of the most complex strategies in digital marketing today, but if you spend the time to learn how to host them, they're incredibly effective for two purposes.
The best way to get new customers is to make sure they feel comfortable buying from you.
And the best way to do that is to educate your main customer demographic.
That's the main point of digital marketing, after all — informing your customer base instead of selling directly to them.
You can check out an example below where Tyler Bouldin from our strategy team talks about SEO for beginners.
Providing information on your industry helps your customers understand what they need and how you can help, which makes them more qualified buyers.
You can use webinars for education by sending out webinar invitations to everyone on your email list. If you want to address a specific vertical in your business, you can send invitations only to people who qualify for that vertical.
Similarly, if you want to give a general overview of your business to a more general audience, you can invite everyone on your email marketing lists.
Then, you can set up a webinar and earn great results for your business. You just have to prepare your information, send out the invitations, and present!
Webinars can also work well to prove your authority on a subject.
You don't necessarily have to set up a separate webinar to prove your authority on an issue, though – this is often a byproduct of educating your customer demographics.
That makes authority a great coincidence of hosting a webinar in the first place.
After all, how many companies can say they host webinars for their customers?
Unless you're in a tech-savvy industry, there's a good chance you're the only one!
Web design and development are essential to online success.
Without a good-looking, high-functioning website, you simply won't attract or engage the customers you need to grow.
That's because people make snap decisions about companies based on their websites.
Even if you're not selling to a web-savvy demographic, your website should still have modern design elements, convenient usability, and other qualities that set it apart from your competitors.
Web design refers to the overall look of your website.
Today, modern websites use responsive design, which makes them work seamlessly on desktop computers, smartphones, and every device in between.
In addition, web design includes elements like navigation menus, logo usage, coloring, and general layout.
Even your fonts are determined by web design!
So when you want to get and keep people on your website, the best way is to make your website look great.
But web design needs development behind it to succeed.
While web design deals with how your website looks on the front end, web development is all about functionality from the back end.
That may sound familiar — we mentioned the same coding languages in our section on SEO.
But web development is different.
SEO is concerned with making sure Google can "read" the code on your pages. Web development is concerned with providing a great user experience to your website visitors.
So if you want to have a calculator, slide bars, or any other interactive element on your site, you'd need to use web development.
Similarly, proper web development ensures every part of your site works the way you intend it to work, whether that means links taking people to the right pages, setting up a sitemap for Google to read, or any other back-end quality that improves your website.
At WebFX, we have hundreds of experts who specialize in different aspects of digital marketing.
When you partner with us, their skills are all at your disposal. We have years of experience creating digital marketing strategies for clients in a variety of industries, and we've worked wonders for our current and past clients.
Do you want to grow your business through digital marketing? Contact us today to speak with a strategist!


To share your comments, concerns, or to request help with your teaching, write us at lto@ryerson.ca. We would love to hear from you!
Wendy Freeman is the Director of eLearning at Ryerson, and the Interim Director of the Learning and Teaching Office and an Associate Professor in the School of Professional Communication, Faculty of Communication and Design. Wendy came to Ryerson University in 1998 as an instructional designer from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She holds an M.Sc. from Syracuse University in instructional design, and a PhD in education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Wendy's research focus is on digital literacy, technology adoption, and technologies for learning.
Lauren Wilson is the Manager of the Learning & Teaching Office. Lauren supports the LTO Director in executing the office's strategic initiatives, supervising the LTO's incredibly motivated team, and overseeing the budget and general operations. Lauren comes to the office with a background in program development and mentorship. She is a PhD Candidate in Higher Education at OISE at the University of Toronto, and holds a Master's of Professional Communication from Ryerson University and a Bachelor of Arts in Speech Communication from the University of Waterloo. She currently teaches in the School of Professional Communication, and is the former Academic Services Coordinator in the Athletics Department where she supported the Athletic Director in the development of Ryerson's first academic support program for student athletes.
Lauren's research interests include student-athlete mentorship, student persistence and retention, and postsecondary academic motivation. Her doctoral research focuses on the academic motivation of high performance student-athletes in post-secondary education.
Michelle Schwartz is the Instructional Design and Research Strategist at the Learning and Teaching Office. She provides research support for all LTO programming, and develops the content for the LTO's website, newsletters, and Teaching Tips documents. Her primary responsibilities include developing workshops and training materials in support of open access education and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) at Ryerson, as well as coordinating Ryerson's university level Teaching Awards.
Michelle has a BA in Art History from New York University and received her MLIS from Long Island University. She is a Research Fellow at Ryerson's Centre for Digital Humanities, where she co-directs the Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada project. She is also an editor for Shameless Magazine, an independent Canadian voice for young women and trans youth.
Curtis Maloley is the Educational Developer in the Learning and Teaching Office. He coordinates and delivers orientations, workshops, and professional development programming for both faculty and TA/GAs, including the Professional Development in Teaching program for Ryerson graduate students.
Curtis also teaches in the RTA School of Media, the Department of Sociology, and in the G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education. In 2016, he received a Deans' Teaching Award, and was voted as a "Prof Who Made a Mark" by undergraduate students living in Ryerson Residence. He is also the recipient of a 2015 Alan Shepard Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Award for his work in the Spanning the Gaps program. He holds an Interdisciplinary Master's in Popular Culture (Film Studies & Sociology) from Brock University, and a Bachelor's in Radio and Television Arts (Minor in Sociology) from Ryerson University.
Gosha Zywno is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, a 3M Teaching Fellow (the highest academic teaching award in Canada and the first-ever for Ryerson), and a winner of the provincial (OCUFA) and Ryerson teaching excellence awards. As an LTO faculty associate, Gosha's focus is on faculty development, instructional design and the use of educational technology. Gosha's professional interests are in control theory and in engineering education, particularly in the use of instructional technology. She has published extensively and conducted seminars and workshops at universities in Canada, Europe and the USA. Her research and educational leadership has been recognized by several international best paper and achievement awards from ASEE, iNEER, UICEE and ACC. Gosha holds an M.Eng. degree from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, U.K. She is a Professional Engineer, Senior Member of IEEE, and a member of SLTHE and ASEE.
Noura Sinno is a Graduate Educational Developer in the Learning & Teaching Office. She is responsible for planning and delivering workshops for TA/GAs. She supports the LTO Educational Developer with the administration of the professional development program and helps in co-facilitating orientations within the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science.
Noura is also a PhD candidate in the civil engineering department at Ryerson University. She holds a Master of Engineering degree from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Engineering from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests focus on concrete durability and development of test methods. She is the recipient of the TA/GA award in 2017. She received the Ontario Graduate Scholarship in 2016 and 2017 and the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship in 2015.
Zahra Vahedi is a Graduate Education Developer at the Learning and Teaching Office. She is responsible for supporting the Educational Developer in the development and facilitation of workshops, as well as the preparation of various resources for TA/GAs and Faculty, including materials for the LTO's Best Practices and Faculty Spotlight.
Zahra is a PhD student in the department of Psychology at Ryerson University. Her current research interests include the cognitive, emotional, and social effects of media and technology. She holds a Master's in Psychology from Ryerson University, and an Honour's Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto.
Lesley Zannella is a Graduate Educational Developer in the Learning & Teaching Office. At the LTO, she collaborates with others in designing and facilitating workshops for TA/GAs. She also works with the Educational Developer to progress the Professional Development in Teaching Program.
Lesley is a PhD student in the Psychology department at Ryerson University. She holds a Master's in Social Psychology from Ryerson University, a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, and a Bachelor of Arts in Criminology from Carleton University. Lesley's research interests include the interaction between psychology and law, with a particular focus on factors associated with wrongful convictions. Her doctoral research explores the experiences of exonerees and their needs upon their release and reintegration back into society.


If you know me, you know I am not a quitter. I face adversity head on--physical, emotional, mental--gritting my way through as needed….often defying some pretty great odds against me. And on top of that, I take pride in doing it all with a smile on my face. Just because life is too short NOT to smile at any given opportunity. I am stubborn, I am determined. I do not admit defeat.
And yet recently, that was exactly what I did. I hit the big D……DNF, that is. Did Not Finish. Did not finish the race, which was a goal I had set for myself. At first I was really worried for me…how was I going to take this news? Not finishing something is quite out of character for me. Would I forgive myself eventually? Would it ruin my weekend? Would it ruin my next goal? All questions I internalized and agonized over. So, what happened? Here are the highlights, after I signed up for the Galena Triathlon with a dear friend, as a part of her quest to claim her September title of Ironman.
A couple weeks before the race I had actually switched to Duathlon, fearing those early spring water temps. The day began with rain; which quickly turned into a downpour. Yes, transition quickly became a mud hole. And then my first leg—a two-mile run. Easy-peasy, right? Turns out, this was a mile down an Edgewood Hill Equivalent….which can only mean the last mile is UP that Edgewood-like hell. I mean, hill. Yet I did good! Better than good! I conquered that @#%$%.
Then, down a very steep hill to the mud pit called T1. Which means….the start of the bike leg was going UP that steep hill. Bike seat and pedals were wet & slippery. But I did it! I grinded through, and put another "win" mark in my mind. But, what I soon became to realize, is that there would be no good end to the bike portion. "Interesting terrain" equals out-of-control hills. I wasn't sure which was worse…..grinding it out to get to the top, or the fear I felt flying down on wet roads.
At the top of one such hill, I just called it. I. Was. Done.
I pulled over to hang with the county sheriff until the Sag Wagon came up to get me. In my heart, I just didn't think it was going to end well…..meaning primarily injury free…and would rather go out on my terms, then anyway else. You see, next weekend, I have a marathon, and in the end that meant more to me than risking road rash—or worse—or burned out quads. I let the hills win.
I truly showed up and tried. But I could not finish.
And…I was okay with that. I put as much of myself into that race as I could allow. I quit on MY terms. And, as a bonus, I got to spend time in the sag van with a local biker pointing things out to me along with way….different roads, history, direction to the winery, etc. And, it almost had a bit of a parade feel to it as we followed the last biker in, waving to the farmers who were out cheering for these last athletes. Turns out the driver and his wife head up a local Bike Group….G.O.A.T.S., and I even got invited down for their Wednesday night paddles on the Galena River & brews! An offer I most certainly hope I can take up.
And my friend? She had an excellent race! I am so proud of her, and do not regret one minute going down to attempt this along-side (ok…behind) her. Her joy more than made up for my defeat. Normal, I do not wear a race shirt prior to doing the event. Just my own little quirk. So for a second, I was stymied….does this mean I couldn't ever wear this particular shirt? The judge (me) and jury (me) ruled that I absolutely WILL wear this shirt. Because at the end of this day, DNF did not mean Did Not Finish. This day's DNF meant Did Not FAIL.
And the absolute BEST part of the day? Before the swim start, before I headed to my leg one run, there was the playing of the National Anthem. But, as can be typical when there is technology mixed with downpours, the audio tape of the National Anthem would not play. The race director apologized for the delay, as he continued to work on getting it to play.
But then this happened: slowly one voice, then a few, then many, then all of the athletes and spectators broke in song, singing our National Anthem with no music or single person to follow. We all just were one voice. One voice, overcoming an obstacle; one voice united. That is what it is all about. And that is what will keep me coming back, because that it is what I want to belong to.


Business Mackay marina to host World ARC.
Environment Mackay Tourism are working hard to get the region to bounce back.
News Mackay received about 16,500 votes in the poll.
Business Airport chief returns to roots after seven years in Mackay.


text:
13 Days.13 Writers.
Jamie Lee Scott
The porch creaked as the woman stepped outside to be sure there were plenty of spiders hanging from the cobwebs near the light. And the screen door groaned as her friend stepped out to put the fake jack-o-lantern in the corner, then went back inside.
"You know, parents aren't going to let their kids eat this stuff?" The friend, dressed as Medusa, hefted a bowl of homemade rice crispy treats in the shape of pumpkins, dyed with orange food coloring, and wrapped in plastic wrap, onto a table in the entry.
"Oh, please, I'll bet half of the kids eat them before they even get home." She stepped back into the house, leaving the main door open, letting the screen door slam behind her. She adjusted her witch's hat, and tugged down her shirt, to show a little cleavage for the boys who should've stopped trick or treating years ago. It'd be her real treat to them.
Inside, the foyer had been encased with black fabric, painted with a scene from a graveyard. The two ladies sat in rocking chairs, waiting.
"Still, Lexi, I don't think it's right," Medusa said, as she rocked back and forth.
Lexi practiced her witch cackle as a response. She stood when she heard the voices and laughter of children in the distance.
They'd hit almost every house in their four block neighborhood. All except the ramshackle house on the corner of Lupin and Primrose. Billy's barely had enough candy to fill the bottom of his bag, and Zane's bag was mostly loose wrappers.
Billy stared up at the house as Zane said, "The porch light is on. So maybe someone does live there."
Most of the kids had come and gone, the neighborhood buzz quieted, and the streets again deserted. But Zane was avoiding going home, so they roamed the sidewalks.
"Let's go knock on the door," Zane said. He took off at a sprint.
Billy, in his makeshift Minions costume of too big overalls and his dad's yellow shirt, couldn't run, so he waddled along, eventually catching up.
The Victorian's paint peeled liked the dried lips of an old lady, and the shutters hung at odd angles. The curtains were drawn, but it wouldn't have mattered, because the landscaping had overgrown its boundaries, and covered most of the lower level, no one would be looking in or out of the downstairs windows. Billy thought he saw someone looking down at them from an upstairs window though, and his breath caught.
"What?" Zane asked, irritated.
"I'm ready to go home. Let's just skip this one." He looked toward the porch, where the light still shown. "Besides, I think I saw the light flicker."
Zane stepped up to the rickety picket fence, dense with a jungly tangle of vines and branches. When he leaned against it to get a closer look, something scrambled from beneath the leaves that hadn't been raked since fall set in. Zane jumped, and fell into Billy, who plunged backward onto the sidewalk.
"Don't be a wuss. It's just a trashy yard." Zane pushed off Billy and stood. "Here comes a bunch of kids. Let's see if they go."
He pulled Billy off the sidewalk, and they climbed over the flimsy fence, thinking they'd hide near the house, but the dried leaves crunched under their weight. They stopped short and dropped flat on their bellies, up against the fence. Out of sight. Or so they hoped.
Four kids, a ballet dancer, a witch, a clown and a...a...mmmm, opened the gate and crept up the path. There was something missing as the kids approached the front door. Chatter, laughter, and the sound of leaves. The path to the front door must be well-worn , Billy thought, as the boys and girls crept toward the light. They seemed more terrified than he was. He could feel his heart beat, as he waited for one of them to knock on the front door. But it seemed time slowed, the closer they got. Then wham, creak, thwack, the screen door flew open.
In harmony, the kids almost whispered, "Trick or treat."
The witch in the doorway said, "Well, you aren't very scary. How disappointing." Then she cackled, and shoved a huge bowl at the group. "Take one, oh, hell, take two. I have plenty."
The little hands reached out and took whatever was in the bowl, then turned and ran back down the walk at warp speed.
Curiosity got the better of Billy. "Come on, before they turn out the light." He wanted to know what was in that bowl.
"No, let's just go home."
Billy ignored Zane and stood up, walking directly to the front door. Zane, not wanting to look like a chicken, followed.
The door opened before they could knock, and the green faced witch with huge boobs answered the door. His voice cracked when he said, "Trick or treat."
She shoved the bowl at him. "I'm too tired for tricks, here's a treat, boys."
Billy took one of the treats. They were the size of a softball. Zane, who had said nothing, took one too.
"Take a couple. I'm turning out the light," Medusa said, stepping up behind the witch, making them both jump.
They took two more each.
Zane and Billy didn't run away from the porch like the other kids, but they walked fast, heading to the kiddy park at the end of the neighborhood.
"We aren't supposed to eat homemade treats," Billy reminded Zane, who unwrapped the pumpkin and took a huge bite.
"Fine, don't eat yours. I'll eat it for you. It's delish."
Billy couldn't help himself. He unwrapped his, intending only to take a small taste. Thirty minutes later, he and Zane had eaten all three pumpkin treats, and were laying in the grass, ready to vomit.
Billy said, "It's probably getting late. We should head home."
"Hey, Billy, do you feel kinda shaky?"
Billy lay really still. "Yeah."
"Is your heart racing, like you just sprinted across the playground?"
Again, he lay still, and listened to his body. His heart pounded in his chest, so hard he was sure Zane could hear it, so he didn't answer.
"I think I'm going to barf," Zane rolled over on his stomach, but he didn't barf.
Softly, Billy said, "There's going to be a lot of sad parents in the morning."
Pushing himself up to his hands and knees, Zane croaked, "Why is that?"
"Because I don't think that lady likes kids." Billy tried to stand.
"I don't get it."
"Nothing. I just think we should go home now. So we can be with our parents before it's too late." Billy's heart raced as he reached out his hand to help his friend up.
Zane leaned against Billy as they walked back to the apartment complex they called home. At one point he looked up at Billy and asked, "Are we going to die?"
Lexi pulled off her hat as she turned off the porch light. Then she turned around and ripped down the black fabric to reveal a nearly vacant house. She unbuttoned her witch costume, removed it, and folded everything, putting it neatly in a cardboard box.
In the kitchen, Medusa still wore her wig. She put the lid on a hypodermic needle that was attached to a 10cc syringe, and stuffed it in a box along with a coffee cup and a stainless steel machine.
Medusa, whose real name was Nancy, said, "This is the last time I help you do this."
Lexi, emptied the leftovers into the sink, and helped put the rest of the kitchen items in the cardboard box. "What's the big deal? That's what their parent's get for turning their little brats loose on the neighborhood for the night. They should know better. Especially in this day and age. Maybe next year they'll reconsider, and keep their kids home for Halloween."
"Whatever. I'll bet half the kids won't even eat it. Their parents have warned them."
Lexi grinned. "Oh please, did you see those things? They were eye candy. Even I almost ate one. No kid was waiting until they got home to ask permission. Mission accomplished."
"Once they unwrapped them, the smell alone would deter them."
Lexi pulled a bag from the box and pointed. "White coffee beans. Almost no flavor, and the caffeine content is much higher than a regular shot of espresso. And I put at least one shot in each pumpkin. Those kids will be bouncing off the walls all night. Those parents won't get a wink of sleep."
>She stuffed the bag back in the box, and tucked the top flaps over. "Ready?"
They walked out to the garage and flipped down the main breaker, then carried the boxes down the street to their car.
Jamie Lee Scott is the USA Today bestselling author of the Gotcha Detective Agency Mysteries, and a produced screenwriter.
Her short film, No One Knows, made its television debut in January 2015 on DirecTV, where it was voted Editor's Choice on ShortsHD.
She lives on a farm with her family, 2 dogs, 2 cats, and 3 horses.
When she's not writing or reading, she's riding horses and competing at barrel races.
Check out her website at www.jamieleescott.com.
Jordan Drew - 10/19/2015 12:54 AM
13StoriesTil.com
Awesome story, I absolutely loved it. Thank you, Jamie!
Matt Roberts - 10/19/2015 2:06 AM
https://officialmattroberts.wordpress.com
Wow, nice twist. I thought for sure there was something more lethal than coffee in those treats! I like it. I think a great follow up story would be about the kids pulling an all nighter while the parents cried lol.
joey - 10/19/2015 4:04 PM
jolenemottern.com
Heather - 10/19/2015 5:12 PM
https://instagram.com/nivermoore
Ha! Terrific twist!
Alice - 10/19/2015 5:26 PM
www.aliceloweecey.net
Hahahaha! Nice twist, and always nice to see another Billy Zane fan.
Jamie Lee Scott - 10/19/2015 8:31 PM
Ha! I didn't even think about the names! Thanks for pointing it out.
Robin O. Cochran - 10/19/2015 8:45 PM
http:// witlessdatingafterfifty.files.wordpress.com
This was strange because I felt a little bad for the kids. I guess the point or meaning of overdoing caffeine given to kids was their "revenge." I was just happy no one died. Twisted and wicked story for halloween! Shriek!
Not sure maybe my comment went into awaiting approval but thought it could have been my mistake somehow. Lol I appreciated the story since it was unpredictable and scary for the kids. I felt a little bad for them. They obviously feel kids are spoiled and need being set straight. I was relieved the hypodermic needle held caffeine. Twisted and wicked, strange but good. Happy Halloween! Smiles, Robin
Carole - 10/19/2015 8:54 PM
http://caroleoldroyd.blogspot.com/
Momma always told me never to eat homemade treats. Freaky deaky, man. :-)
Susi - 10/20/2015 12:59 AM
Very cute...
1jaded1 - 10/25/2015 2:40 AM
This is so chilling.
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text:
Q: How to fetch a list of the current users' friends who also use my app? My requirement is to find the list of friends who installed the application.
Here I need to give the input as application id, based on this application id I need to get the users who have installed this application.

A: Faster than avs099's answer (single call):
Make an API call, using an access token for that app, to /me/friends?fields=installed (or /USER_ID/friends?fields=installed for an app access token)

A: that's relatively easy:

*

*Get a list of friends using https://graph.facebook.com/me/friends call (you can use Graph API Explorer for that)

*For each friend, get his ID and send a request to the following Graph API: https://graph.facebook.com/FRIEND_ID?access_token=APP_ID|APP_SECRET&fields=installed
note: fields=installed is required, as per documentation
if you get back something like

{    "installed": true,    "id": "FRIEND_ID" }

that means that friend has that app installed. If it's just ID coming back - then he does not have app installed.
APP_ID and APP_SECRET can be found on your app's page.
Hope that helps.

A: I was running into the same problem, but was still a little fuzzy on using the Facebook API with FQL. The Facebook FQL page was little to no help, so I went ahead and wrote up a quick solution for those who might be struggling with this in the future.
Suffice it to say, that the long FQL solution can be condensed into a couple lines if you are using the Facebook PHP SDK, which was very nice to see.  My Facebook API Solution

A: If you are using Koala, you can do this way
In the controller user.rb
@user = User.all

In the model user.rb
def friends_using_app
facebook { |fb| fb.get_connection("me", "friends?fields=installed") }
end

In the view
 <% friends = current_user.friends_using_app %>
 <% friends_using_app = friends.find_all {|x| x['installed'] == true}    %>
 <% friends_id = friends_using_app.map {|x| x['id']}  %>
 <% show_friends = @user.find_all{|x| x[:uid] = friends_id} %>
 <% show_friends.each do |x| %>
 <%= image_tag x.avatar %>
 <% end %>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
J. Levine Books and Judaica is an independent bookstore located in Midtown Manhattan. J. Levine is a fifth-generation family business and one of the oldest standing Judaica stores in United States since it opened in 1905.

History
The business was founded in 1890 in Vilkomir, Lithuania, where sofer Hirsch Landy began selling the Torah scrolls he produced. In 1905, he immigrated to the United States and continued the business as a pushcart on the Lower East Side. In 1920, his son-in-law Joseph Levine incorporated and expanded the business to selling synagogue vestments, and his sons Harold, Melvin and Seymour Levine continued the business.

J. Levine expanded to its current location in Midtown Manhattan, where it offers books, menorahs, and various Judaica, including gifts and children's games and toys that are popular during Hanukkah.

Like many traditional booksellers, the store saw a decrease in sales in the first few years of the 2000s, as Amazon.com surged in popularity. Seymour's son Daniel Levine, the fourth-generation owner, said business dropped 18 percent from 2000 to 2005. However, the store expanded its own business online in order to compete, and sales rose 20 percent, Levine said.

In 2019 after 130 years operating a Judaica store, the J Levine Manhattan store closed its brick and mortar store. It retains its online store and continues a Torah rental business and a retail Ketubah store in Manhattan by appointment.

References

External links

2016 New York Times Profile

Bibliography

Jewish American literature
Jewish organizations based in New York City
Jews and Judaism in Manhattan
Retail companies established in 1905
Bookstores in Manhattan
1905 establishments in New York City
Independent bookstores of the United States

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Reporter Shares Life Lessons From A Year With 'The Oldest Old'
Published January 24, 2018 at 11:24 AM PST
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.
My guest, John Leland, became known for writing about things associated with youth culture and post-youth culture. But at the age of 55, he started a series of articles for The New York Times about old age. He spent a year with six New Yorkers above the age of 85, including a gay man who had lost his partner six years earlier, a woman who was in an intimate relationship with another resident at her nursing home, an African-American man who was a veteran of World War II and a retired civil servant and a Chinese immigrant who kept her social connections through playing Mahjong.
At the same time Leland was writing about their lives, he was the main caregiver for his mother, who was 86 and was dealing with chronic pain from a spinal fracture. As for Leland, he'd recently gone through a divorce, was in a new relationship and was trying to figure out what he wanted from a relationship now as opposed to when he was a younger man. His new book is called "Happiness Is A Choice You Make: Lessons From A Year Among The Oldest Old."
John Leland, welcome to FRESH AIR. So I was initially surprised that you were writing about old age because you'd written about things associated with youth culture and post-youth culture like music. You have a book about Kerouac's book "On The Road" and why it's still relevant. You have a book called "Hip: The History." That's a history of what has been considered hip over the years. So when did - when did aging and old age become an interest of yours?
JOHN LELAND: Well, I'm a reporter at The New York Times. And some years ago, I got this assignment called the How We Live team. And each of us were supposed to take two small beats and cover them at the same time. And so I was asked what I wanted to do. And I said, well, great, I want to do gay life in the creative class. And my editor said, perfect, you do religion in retirement.
GROSS: (Laughing).
LELAND: And so we really saw eye-to-eye on that. And I - so I started writing about older people, and it was just completely fascinating to me. You know, my mother is now 89, so I go through all these things with my mother. And the thing about talking to older people or talking to younger people about their parents or their grandparents is it really gets to the emotional part of life really, really quickly. There's just no messing around.
GROSS: I remember Fran Lebowitz once saying - and I'm going to paraphrase here, paraphrase a lot. But she was saying that when she was young, she thought of old - she thought - she thought of age as an ethnic group. So, like, she was part of, like, the youth ethnic group. And older people, they were part of, like, the elderly ethnic group. And, like, she was born young. They were born old. And she was never going to become that because she was part of the youth group. And then she realized - nope, you get older. Like, if you live, you get older. And it's a kind of shifting thing. Was that a revelation for you, too?
LELAND: That we get older?
GROSS: That you would get older. You're in your 50s, it's not like - you're not nearly the age of the people you're writing about in this book, but, still, you're not youth culture age.
GROSS: I still walk down the street and see somebody and think, oh, that's so-and-so from my college English class. And then it takes me a minute to realize that so-and-so from my college English class isn't 24 anymore, and so it can't be that person. That could be his son or almost grandson.
So yeah, I don't think of myself as aging. And I guess it's because, you know - and this is, like, sort of something that I figured out while writing the book. When we think about ourselves as not aging, then we think about age as something that happens - old age is something that happens after you've completed your life, after it's a story. Well, you've done everything. And now you're sort of shot. And now you're in old age.
But what really happens is old age isn't that, it's just the next chapter of the life you've been living before. It's a continuation of it, not this, you know, happy or unhappy chapter tacked on at the end.
GROSS: So before you started writing this series about aging, were you afraid of old age at all?
LELAND: Oh, yeah. And there's times that I still am. And when I started doing this series, I'd set out to - what one of the people I talked to calls - rewriting the Book of Job and doing a story on how this is terrible about aging. And you fall down, and you break your hip, and then it's all over. And you lose your eyesight, and then your friends all die, and then it's over. And your heart stops working. And you don't have sex anymore. And you don't work. And you don't have anything that gives you purpose. So now, it's all over. And that's what I thought old age was. But then you spend time with people, and a lot of that stuff is a part of their lives in old age but in no case was it how they defined themselves. So I wasn't getting it - what the truth about their lives was as they saw it.
GROSS: The people who are living into their late 80s or 90s are kind of pioneers in a way because people didn't live that long. Very few people lived that long before we had the current medicines and imaging and interventions that we have now. So this subject is kind of a new thing.
LELAND: They're in uncharted territory. They're really, like, the vanguard that your kids think they are.
GROSS: So I want to ask you first about your mother's health. What was her health like during the year that you were writing this book?
LELAND: My mother's health hasn't been terribly good. And she's had chronic back problems all her life, so she deals with a lot of pain. And she'll often say that she'd rather be dead. She doesn't want to go on with her life. And she's confined to a wheelchair. And she lives in a lovely building in downtown New York. And she goes to the theater. And she goes to the music. But she doesn't see that role for her anymore in life.
And her physical health isn't good. And her emotional health isn't always as good as it should be either. And she says well, you know, I lived - a quarter of my life, I was pursuing my education. And then the middle half of my life, I was raising a family and doing a job. And now I just don't have a place anymore. I'm a useless eater. And that was the phrase she used that really stuck with me, that she was a useless eater.
GROSS: Yeah, and you're right that she had no idea where to find meaning in life at this stage in her life. And you had no idea how to help. Can you elaborate on that a little more?
LELAND: Like I said, my mother had the sense that she's a useless eater. So what do you do? How do you replace the things that gave your life meaning when you were able to - back when you were able to cook for people, back when you were able to go work at a job? What's going to satisfy you now? And for the son, how do you help the person find meaning when they just say, I wish you hadn't signed that order to revive me when I had that surgery five years ago?
So we're in this uncharted territory together, and we're exploring it. And it was an incredibly huge benefit to me to see this in people that weren't my relatives because I would go see one of the people that's in the book, a Fred Jones or Ruth Willig - who are two of the characters in the book - and I would see them and just be fascinated by their lives. And then I would go see my mother and think, boy, I wish she didn't feel that way. I didn't wish - you know, I would go see the other people and just accept them as they were and realize I was getting a great benefit out of spending time with them.
GROSS: You're saying you weren't accepting your mother as she was, you were just accepting the subjects of your articles as who they were?
LELAND: Yeah.
GROSS: You weren't conferring that same generous approach to your mother?
LELAND: Yes, and it took me a while to see that because I'm not the smartest guy in the world all the time, especially when it deals - comes to family matters. So - but when I did see it, then I just started to enjoy my time with my mother so much.
GROSS: Nearly - I think it's fair to say nearly each of the six people you spent time with for your book - you profiled - probably needed a cane or a walker or a wheelchair and didn't want to use it. And several of them, therefore, did not use it. They wouldn't use the cane or the walker that they really needed. I think that's a really common thing. I've saw that with members of my family. What's your understanding of why that is?
LELAND: Well, I'll tell you about one of the people in the book. And that's John Sorensen, who had had lost his partner, Walter, of 60 years. And John had been a decorator. And he just had this image of himself as the healthy guy that he had been all his life. And to have a walker sitting in his apartment was such an unsightly thing - or to be out with this walker was such an unsightly thing that he - it was just offensive to him.
And he told me about going to the Metropolitan Opera. And there was a woman named George Washington Kavanaugh. And they would go into the opera. And she would be there opening night with the beautiful gown and the jewels. And she'd be there with her two handlers.
And just before the curtain went up, she would walk down the aisle. She would leave her walkers behind - her minders behind and walk those 20 steps or whatever she needed to walk to her seat in her gowns and her pearls and sit by herself. And that was John's idea of, you know, a role model. And so he didn't want to be the frail guy with the walker because that wasn't how he saw himself. And he never wanted to see himself that way.
GROSS: So did he fall as a result?
LELAND: He didn't go out as a result. And he lived right by Central Park. So he lived in a beautiful area and...
GROSS: See, that's the kind of thing that makes me sad, that somebody won't go out because they don't want to be seen using a walker. And I realize it's his choice to make but what a sacrifice.
LELAND: It's heartbreaking and - but we have to accept that that's the choice that people make. And it's - if it's not the choice that I would make or you would make, it's the choice that John made. And the idea of being out there with the walker would've just made him more unhappy.
GROSS: You had several people tell you that they really wanted to die. John told you the only bad thing about dying is that I won't be alive long enough to enjoy the fact that I finally died (laughter). So when people like John would tell you that they wanted to die, what would you say?
LELAND: Well, it evolved over the course of the year - and really the two and a half years. I started off saying, oh, John, but your friends would miss you. They loved you. And it - this was foolish because John's issue wasn't that he didn't feel loved. He knew he felt loved. He just didn't want to live anymore. So I finally stopped saying it. But I still thought it because I didn't want John to die. And then I began to think that, you know, we wouldn't want him - we don't want immortality for anybody.
So it's really - it's a cruel thing to want people to live or to wish people, you know, eternal life on people if it's not what they want. And so I gradually gave up even thinking it. And it really helped me understand John and this strange paradox about John because he wanted to die, but he wasn't depressed. And he wasn't sad.
And he loved to talk, so talking always cheered him up. And I would ask him, you know, do you wish you died yesterday? And he would say, no, because, you know, we're having this great conversation now. And do you want to die tomorrow? And he'd say, no, because Anne (ph) is coming over later - my niece - and I wouldn't want to miss that. So he was able to enjoy his life in the moment as long as he didn't have to think that there was another, like, five years of this ahead of him.
GROSS: Did the people who you spent time with fear death? I don't mean fear suffering or pain but fear the end of life and death.
LELAND: Well, there were six people I spent time with. And I would ask this often of them because sometimes their views on things would change. And five of them were constant - they didn't fear death. They did fear dying. They did fear being completely incapacitated and in a terrible vegetative state and just hanging on. There was one who was afraid of death. And I asked him why. He just started crying. And he said - because I don't know. It was that unknown that just scared him. And he was probably the most religious of the group. Although, his - he was also the smuttiest of the group. So it's a little bit of a contradiction there as well.
GROSS: Right. OK. If you're just joining us, my guest is John Leland. His new book is called "Happiness Is A Choice You Make: Lessons From A Year Among The Oldest Old." I'm going to take a short break here, and then we'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEVIN EUBANKS' "POET")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is New York Times reporter John Leland. His new book is called "Happiness Is A Choice You Make: Lessons From A Year Among The Oldest Old." And it's based on a year assignment of spending time with six New Yorkers over the age of 85 and just observing and reporting on what their day-to-day life was like and what their feelings were like about that period of their lives. I mean, one of the real issues for people, I think, is what is it like or what will it be like to carry on without your life partner or spouse? And one of the people you spoke with, John, who had been partners with his companion, Walter, for 60 years, you know, outlived him. I think he was dead for six years. By the time you talked to John, Walter had been dead for six years.
LELAND: That's right.
GROSS: And did John want to find another companion afterwards? And I should say they weren't married because legal gay marriage, you know, marriage equality came after Walter's death. So I think I'm right on that, that it was too late for them.
LELAND: That's right. And it's one of the heartbreaking things on that because they - Walter died before they could legally marry in New York. And as a result, John was not eligible for Social Security survivor's benefits from Walter's life. And so he lived on about half of what he would've lived on had they been a married couple. So that's a heartbreaking thing.
And I think John would've made another life for himself did he not have some of the health problems that he had. And one was that he was losing his eyesight. And the other is that he had gout that was causing him to lose the use of his hands. And he'd always been the handy guy. If something broke down in their house in Fire Island or somebody - a neighbor's house in Fire Island, they would bring it to John to fix. They didn't know how to hook up their stereo, John would hook it up. He was that guy.
And when he couldn't do it anymore, he felt sort of useless. So it was the combination of the two things. He did have friends that he loved. And his friends were almost a generation younger than him. So he wasn't losing them right and left. But going on without your partner, it's tough. Nobody wants that. But the people that are doing well in old age, I think, are able to distribute that to a bunch of people. They - your partner used to do everything for you. But now you find somebody who you like to talk to - about current events with. And there's somebody else, maybe, who's your friend you talk about books with. And, maybe, someone else - you go to the theater. Or you look at plants together. Or you just sit around and play Pinochle with - those are the people that I think do very well.
There's some people that will find another mate. One of the people in the study, Helen Moses, had met her husband in kindergarten. And they'd gotten together right away. And they were together until his death about 50 years after they got married. And she thought it was over for her. And she was in a nursing home. And she met a man named Howie. And they just took up together. And they were inseparable.
GROSS: Well, you watched Helen think through whether she wanted to get married or not to Howie, the man she met in the nursing home. And, you know, the cons were the kind of thing you mentioned, you know, that responsibility of caring for the person and the pain of it, the pain, you know, of losing somebody so close. But there's some pluses she saw to the possibility of marriage, too. What were those?
LELAND: Well, it would be they would get their own room together. They would have sex. She - Helen said, oh, you're never too old for sex. I'm not too old for anything. I think - Helen would say she's from the old school. She didn't believe in premarital sex. I - and I think part of that was just talk. I don't think she was that that interested in it but, maybe, more physical intimacy and going to bed with a man and waking up with that man. I think that was something she wasn't going to do without marriage.
So maybe that's it - that additional closeness that comes to couples when they get married, when they've made a formal tie to each other. But, you know, Helen's 93 now. So were she to get married, there's - the possibilities were really great that in this fairly short period of time, one would die on the other. And that's really hard to deal with.
GROSS: So did Helen and Howie ever get married?
LELAND: Helen and Howie are still not married. And I think Helen will often say that she wishes she could get married but I don't think she really does. I think she's got that perfect equilibrium where she is at the center of this love triangle involving her daughter and her partner. And she's the focus of both their attention. And she's able to focus her attention on both of them. And I think that's the best of all worlds for her.
GROSS: So Helen had told you that, you know, if they were married, they could have sex because she doesn't believe in premarital sex. And I'm wondering what sex means to her just in terms of its importance but also how she would define sex now if she would define sex differently than she used to. You described them spending time in bed together. They have separate rooms in the nursing home, but they'd watch TV together in the same bed. And then, you know, one of them would leave and return to their room. So I'm just wondering what - if this isn't too forward to ask - what level of physical intimacy they have with each other or what level they - she wishes that they had?
LELAND: Well, Helen would open that door. And when I would try to walk into it, she would close it down.
GROSS: (Laughter).
LELAND: Helen would say, I'm from the old school.
LELAND: You're asking very personal questions. Tell us about you and your girlfriend.
LELAND: No, I'm not going that way with you, Helen, either. But - so I don't know. I would imagine that sex involves a certain making yourself vulnerable that sitting in the bed together and watching TV together doesn't quite do. But that's really me projecting myself onto it. So I'm not sure what she meant by that.
GROSS: My guest is John Leland, author of the new book "Happiness Is A Choice You Make: Lessons From A Year Among The Oldest Old." We'll talk more after a break. And we'll remember science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula Le Guin, who died Monday at age 88. We'll listen back to my 1989 interview with Le Guin. I'm Terry Gross. And this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT'S "ROSETTA")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with John Leland. We're talking about the yearlong series he wrote for The New York Times about old age. He profiled six people over the age of 85, learning about what their day-to-day lives were like, what they wanted out of relationships, what were the times they wanted to die and what made them happy to see another day. His new book, which is about that series and is also about his relationship with his mother who is now 89, is called "Happiness Is A Choice You Make: Lessons From A Year Among The Oldest Old."
I think it was the person who's a World War II veteran and retired civil servant who said that he just couldn't fathom that no one else he knew remembered World War II or the Depression. And it just made me think about, how at a certain age when you've outlived everybody you know and when the people who you do know are younger, how easy it would be to feel like you're from a different world than they are, that your baseline is different. Your set points are different. Your whole frame of reference is different. And that maybe there's not really a place for you anymore in the world as it exists.
LELAND: Well, I think that's a great point. And a lot of people feel left behind by technology. The smartphones are beautiful things but not if your hand shakes. You know, if you have a slight tremor in your fingers, that device becomes, you know, just a brick in your hand. And it's useless. And so a lot of people felt left behind by that. And like for most of human history, we could turn to these elders for wisdom because they knew about what it meant when that cloud structure came or when the animals would migrate. And that kind of knowledge, we have Google for that now. So people felt left behind by technology. And John Sorensen was the man who said he couldn't imagine that people didn't know - didn't remember World War II or the Depression. And John is a 90-plus gay man. So they had - his generation of men had had a particular, you know, devastation in the '80s and '90s.
GROSS: Right, so he lost a lot of his cohort to the AIDS epidemic.
GROSS: Yeah, so you write about a time when you were in Iraq on assignment, and your mother had surgery. She was in very bad shape. And you and your brother, who at the time was living in North Carolina, had to make the decision about whether to allow the hospital to give her a feeding tube. And it was a very hard conversation because you were talking to your brother like from Iraq (laughter) like on a really bad line. So did she have a DNR at the time?
LELAND: Yes, she did. And my brother was able to get me a copy of it. I don't think I had it. And we read it together the best we could over these - the lines were always like - there were cell phones from Iraq. And they were always hanging up on each other. And - or one of us could hear the other and not the other way around. So it was no way to decide the life or death of your parent. But we soldiered through. And the DNR said if she were ever to be in a persistent vegetative state or have no quality of life, then we weren't supposed to perform - take our own measures.
And this didn't - those - that didn't apply to the circumstance at hand. This was more like - you know, we compared it to putting out a fire if the drapes caught fire. You know, this was a temporary thing that would allow her to go back to the life she had before. And the life that she had before had things in it. She went to the Philharmonic. She had friends she ate dinner with. So we didn't think that that was a life that had no quality to it. So we authorized the feeding tube. And she will, every so often, mention that she wished we hadn't.
GROSS: How seriously do you take that?
LELAND: My mother loves her kids, so she wouldn't lay that on us so hard. But I think maybe it's something she hangs on to - this idea that she could have gone. And she got cheated out of that. Or later on when she had pneumonia, she said she was thinking about, you know, just how easy it would be to drift away. And somebody in the early annals of medicine had called pneumonia the patient's friend because it takes you away fairly painlessly. So I think it's - I take a little bit seriously.
And at the end of my year with the elders, my mother had a heart attack, and she thought this was it for her. I think she thought it was it for her. And she was so at peace that it was really easy to accept, OK. You know, she said, you know, if I die, this is the minister I want to perform the ceremony. And you should check his website. He writes about jazz and sermons, and you'd like it. And she was completely comfortable. And then when she started to recover, and it was clear she was going to make it, you know, she got to be that person who's been in the hospital too many days. And they're irritable that the food didn't come, and they just get that sort of hospital-itis (ph).
GROSS: (Laughter) I like that word.
LELAND: My younger brother had been in North Carolina during the beginning of this. And so I'd been on my own. And then, you know, he and I would compare notes about the woman we saw. And my mother was the - the woman I'd been with had been like, you know, completely at peace and accepting of the situation. And the woman that he was with was, you know, grumpy and ready to go home as people are after a couple of days in the hospital. And it was just funny to compare notes like that.
GROSS: You know, I'm thinking with the feeding tube that you were going to inevitably feel guilty either way. If you deny the feeding tube, and your mother died, that's guilt - you know, guilt and uncertainty that probably would have followed you for a very long time. But you went through with the feeding tube, and your mother made you feel guilty for not letting her go. So you were in a tough situation - guilt on either side of that one.
LELAND: Yeah, and if it happened today, I think I understand my mother and her wish to die a little better than I did before. And I might decide the other way.
GROSS: Seriously? Tell me more why.
LELAND: Because it's something that she's expressed in sober terms for a long period of time. And because of my experience with John Sorenson - again, watching it in a detached way that you can with somebody who's not a relative. And I was quite fond of John, so it wasn't completely detached. But it was not the same as with my mother. And when John went into the nursing home towards the end of his life, and he had basically stopped eating - he was starving himself to death - I knew that this was what John wanted. He was like a singer who'd been on stage long enough and was out of material, and he was just ready to go. So I wasn't - it was hard to even feel sad when he was dying. You know, I liked him a lot. And I miss him, but I don't wish he had lived another month or another week.
I do know that he spent those last days listening to arias that he loved and just saying thank you to anyone who spent time with them. And I was there with him on one of his last days. And he was in a lot of pain, and he hated the physical therapy because, you know, it was just bringing more pain. But he saw that physical therapist, and the physical therapist said, I'll be back again tomorrow. And John said, I look forward to this already. And it's just remarkable to me. So I think I'm more capable of letting go of my mother when the time comes.
GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us my guest is New York Times reporter John Leland. He's the author of the new book "Happiness Is A Choice You Make: Lessons From A Year Among The Oldest Old." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE ACORN'S "LOW GRAVITY")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is New York Times reporter John Leland, who's the author of the new book "Happiness Is A Choice You Make: Lessons From A Year Among The Oldest Old." And it's based on a year of profiling six people over the age of 85 in New York City. This is for a series for The New York Times. And it's also about his mother who was in her late 80s when he was writing the book. She's 89 now.
One of the things you got to observe is the infrastructure for older people whether it's the nursing home or the home health care aide or the family that lives close by. I don't know if there was like Meals on Wheels kinds of things involved in what you observed. But standing back and looking at the different versions of the infrastructure for the aging that you came across, what are some of the things you'd really like to see that you weren't seeing enough of?
LELAND: That's a great question. I think what people do really well in is when there's possibilities for interaction and closeness and making decisions in their own lives. I didn't have an experience with writing about anyone who was in a bad nursing home. There are a lot of bad nursing homes where there's just not enough staff, and people are confined to their beds for long periods of time. So that's really bad.
But even in the good nursing homes, the residents there often aren't making decisions of what sort of life they want, what kind of activities they want, what kind of interactions they want, what they want to eat, when they can eat. And I think that's something that as the baby-boom generation gets into that slightly more dependent state, they're not going to accept being told, well, OK, Terry, you eat at table nine at 8:30. I think we'll want something where we have all the supports that people need - or that we need, but we want more individual decision-making.
GROSS: Do you have a DNR? I know your mother has one.
LELAND: Oh, I'm so terrible with record keeping. I did finally make a will. But a DNR is slightly beyond me.
GROSS: Have you thought about if you do get around to making one, what you'd want in it because I think they're getting more and more detailed as time goes on.
LELAND: I think so. And there's an interesting thing. They're starting to do sort of a cognitive breakdown or a dementia DNR to make decisions about how far is too far.
GROSS: I just was just reading about that in your newspaper.
LELAND: Yeah, a great article by Paula Span - I think it was wonderful. But there was a study by the British Psychiatric Association of people with Alzheimer's. And they asked them about their quality of life. And they asked their - I think it was their health proxies, which is typically their kids, about their parents' quality of life. And all the time, people with the dementia rated their quality of life much higher than their kids did. And even as the disease advanced, the people with it still rated their quality of life as high, whereas the kids thought their quality of life was getting lower and lower and lower.
So they still had cognitive challenges - you know, things that challenged their minds. And they still had people that would come to see them. So it raises questions about advance directives because if a certain level of dementia looks like a life that's not worth living to you now, but when you're in it, there's the possibility that it won't look like that at all to you. So it makes that kind of complicated. And the British study was very, very small. So it's not conclusive in any way, but I think it's really fascinating.
GROSS: Yeah, so that leads to this question. Has the line shifted for you for when you think you'd want to die - at what point you think life would no longer be worth living if it ever comes to that point. And what I mean by that is it's often not a choice. You're just - you're dead (laughter). It's not always that kind of slow process, yeah.
LELAND: I think if we think of old age as another country, I've become less confident in the ability of the people who have never visited this country to make life and death decisions about it. In other words, some day I'm going to be there. And I can make this decision now about what constitutes a life worth living. But the way I look at it in 20 years or 10 years might be entirely different. There was an essay a couple of years ago by Ezekiel Emanuel, who's an oncologist and was one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act. And it was that - it ran under the headline something like "Why I Want To Die At 75." And it didn't quite mean that. It was about why he didn't want extraordinary measures or life-prolonging measures after he was 75. And those included like flu vaccine - flu shots or vaccines.
But he felt that, boy, everything after 75 was the far side of the slope. And if I set this directive now, I'll live more fully in the lives - in the years I have before that. Now I agree with the second part of that - that if you knew when you were going to go, you would live more fully in the time you have now. I just don't think there's anything stopping us from doing that. But I do think when he gets to be 75, he might think about that question a lot differently. And he might want that flu shot.
GROSS: Yeah, right. So what are some of the examples of ageism that you see around you that really irritate you the most?
LELAND: Oh. I think that every person over a certain age can tell you that they hate being called sweetie or hun or dear. Oh, Terry, you're 80 years young.
GROSS: Oh - the years young thing. Yeah.
LELAND: No, I am not years young. I am years old. And the daughter of Ruth Willig, who's the woman who had to move out of her assisted living facility - and her daughter is kind of a very forceful woman. She would be out with her mother and someone would say, oh, your mother is so cute. And she would say, my mother is not cute. You know, my mother went to college during the war and became a microbiologist. My mother is tough. She - and she raised four kids. And she went through the depression. And she is not cute. She's smart. She's loving. She's wonderful, but she's not cute. So that's the kind of ageism that could just really stick in your craw.
GROSS: There's something, like, so unbearably patronizing and condescending about that as if being older and even being - you know, having lost certain functions is an embarrassment that has to be, kind of, covered up with these meaningless things that - meaningless terms posing as terms of endearment but are really terms of condescension.
LELAND: Oh, yeah because you're in the position to call that older person dear. You know, that's setting up a relationship between you guys that you're not equal and they're grateful to be - to have you call them dear or hide that they're old by calling them 101 years young. You know, it's - it would be so offensive, I think, to any of us.
GROSS: People, but I think especially women, were always uncomfortable saying what their age was because it was supposed to be both embarrassing and a sign of your pending uselessness if you told your real age, right? And now, hopefully, that's changing. But with the Internet, if you have any kind of profile, someone wants to know how old you are - you go on the Internet. You find out. There's no hiding it.
LELAND: You know, as a newspaper reporter, I'm always asking people their age. And often, that gets - a lot of women don't want to say their age. But I found two groups of women who said that right away. And one was women in China. When I was reporting in China, I asked them their age, they're like, 34. And the other is people over the age of about 80 or so who will say, in March, I'll be 93. So they're not only telling you their age, but they're adding a little bit of time to it.
GROSS: Right. OK. John Leland, thank you so much. It's really been a pleasure to talk with you.
LELAND: Thank you.
GROSS: John Leland's new book is called "Happiness Is A Choice You Make: Lessons From A Year Among The Oldest Old." After a break, we'll listen back to my 1989 interview with science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula Le Guin. She died Monday at age 88. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSETTE EXPLOSION'S "DOUCE JOIE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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