[islandgal]

This is an article in the Orlando Sentinel about the book firing up an outrage in TV It has a Photo Gallery of TV and 143 comments, most of which are infuriating.



http://www.orlandosentinel.com/commu...,4287752.story

[Barefoot]

Originally Posted by wiw1819

This is an article in the Orlando Sentinel about the book firing up an outrage in TV It has a Photo Gallery of TV and 143 comments, most of which are infuriating.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/commu...,4287752.story

Wiw, just read all of the 143 comments. Scary! Not only are the comments infuriating, there is so much misinformation, hatred of northerners, and distain for anyone who choses to stop working and retire. Comments such as "The Developer owns the land and everyone rents, perhaps they'll all be evicted", "Villagers are egotistical, selfish morons", "Grandchildren are only allowed to visit for 3 days at a time", "One of the fastest growing rates of HIV/Aids in the country", "Villagers do nothing to contribute to the economy" (no mention of volunteer organizations or tax dollars contributed).

Why did the author write this book? He is laughing his way to the bank! I hope no-one in TV puts more money in this author's pocket by buying his book.

[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by barefoot at last

Wiw, just read all of the 143 comments. Scary! Not only are the comments infuriating, there is so much misinformation, hatred of northerners, and distain for anyone who choses to stop working and retire. Comments such as "The Developer owns the land and everyone rents, perhaps they'll all be evicted", "Villagers are egotistical, selfish morons", "Grandchildren are only allowed to visit for 3 days at a time", "One of the fastest growing rates of HIV/Aids in the country", "Villagers do nothing to contribute to the economy" (no mention of volunteer organizations or tax dollars contributed).

Why did the author write this book? He is laughing his way to the bank! I hope no-one in TV puts more money in this author's pocket by buying his book.

I am always amazed that it is the human condition for many to be jealous of another's happiness. I feel that the infuriating comments were made by people that have not yet realized that the happiest people SEIZE THE MOMENT and try to concentrate on the positives in life. I think that for the most part life dishes out bad things almost equally, some in our youth, some in our middle life and some in our dotage. We can't escape them, so we need to live in the good moments. I also found that good luck came more frequently to those who worked hard and planned ahead.

GracieGirls sermon for THIS Sunday morning.

[islandgal]

[samhass]

I read some of the comments and found them so off base that I didn't continue. The ignorance exhibited by many of the posters was amazing in it's scope. Poor babies.

[beady]

I am wondering about Mr.Blechman's credentials. An author certainly has a right to form an opinion, however the misinformation about the TV and the people who retire here is blatant. :dontknow: :dontknow:

I agree with Barefoot, dollar signs were all the author and publisher were focusing on. The real story, about an incredible community, contained nothing controversial that would sell books.

[Boomer]

Somewhere on here, a couple of weeks ago, I said that I had bought Leisureville and I would report in. Well, I am about halfway through it. And here is what I have learned so far:

In the beginning the author whines around because his neighbors are moving. This seems to have more to do with what he thinks his neighbors should be doing to make life better for him than with any great concern over what his neighbors might want to do with their own lives.

He wanted to hold their coats so they could start some fight with the town about some park being paved over or something.

They, on the other hand, just wanted to move to TV and enjoy themselves.

"Harrumph," snorted the author. "How dare my retired neighbors not wish to live their lives around me, me, me."

(I personally saw some foreshadowing here. The author has a little kid and I suspect that he probably had his eye on his neighbors as potential free babysitters.)

Then there was a chapter about the history of retirement communities. There was also a history and an explanation of the 55+ law, and the holes in the law. I thought that was pretty interesting. But sometimes I think stuff is interesting that other people find tedious.

Then there was a chapter on the Morse family. It told about their business acumen and marketing skills. These people know how to make money. They are not doing mission work. The author did not seem to be passing judgement. Just reporting. It is a business, after all. I thought that part was OK, too.

Then there was the chapter on Mr. Midnight.

Hellooooo, there are something like 65,000 people in TV. Ya think there might be a pathetic ol' horndog or two among 'em? Oh, and there was also stuff about the counterpart to the Mr. Midnights, the aging floozies. Who cares? TV is a big, big place. Everybody knows that most Villagers are not like that. And I guess those really bad girls from high school have to live somewhere now. And besides, I guess the author thought that chapter might liven up all the talk of law and business and sociology.

So anyway, that's my book report for tonight. I think the book is kind of fascinating and I plan to finish it. So maybe I will report in on the second half.

And, oh yeah, if this guy thinks he is going to have any influence over what some baby boomer wants to do, well, I think he has not met too many baby boomers.

Boomer

[captain1202]

Just read all the posts in the Orlando Sentinel article. WOW!! It's amazing what people will say behind the shroud of anonymity.

It all CONFIRMS my decision to move to "isolated" TV. I can't think of one reason I would WANT to interact with Mr. Blechman or his Florida supporters writing in the blog. Judging from the environs "off the reservation" around here they could use a little "cultcha" that the northerners might just bring to the area.

I happen to work with a lot of Southerners of the redneck variety and I have to say the "recent period of unpleasantness" is NOT over. It all boils down to ignorance and there seems to be plenty of that to go around these days.

What really bothers me is that these idiots might actually be voting for a national leader.

The U.S. as we knew it is in it's twilight years. Have a drink and another round of golf, it's later than we think!

[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by Boomer BeBack

Somewhere on here, a couple of weeks ago, I said that I had bought Leisureville and I would report in. Well, I am about halfway through it. And here is what I have learned so far:

In the beginning the author whines around because his neighbors are moving. This seems to have more to do with what he thinks his neighbors should be doing to make life better for him than with any great concern over what his neighbors might want to do with their own lives.

He wanted to hold their coats so they could start some fight with the town about some park being paved over or something.

They, on the other hand, just wanted to move to TV and enjoy themselves.

"Harrumph," snorted the author. "How dare my retired neighbors not wish to live their lives around me, me, me."

(I personally saw some foreshadowing here. The author has a little kid and I suspect that he probably had his eye on his neighbors as potential free babysitters.)

Then there was a chapter about the history of retirement communities. There was also a history and an explanation of the 55+ law, and the holes in the law. I thought that was pretty interesting. But sometimes I think stuff is interesting that other people find tedious.

Then there was a chapter on the Morse family. It told about their business acumen and marketing skills. These people know how to make money. They are not doing mission work. The author did not seem to be passing judgement. Just reporting. It is a business, after all. I thought that part was OK, too.

Then there was the chapter on Mr. Midnight.

Hellooooo, there are something like 65,000 people in TV. Ya think there might be a pathetic ol' horndog or two among 'em? Oh, and there was also stuff about the counterpart to the Mr. Midnights, the aging floozies. Who cares? TV is a big, big place. Everybody knows that most Villagers are not like that. And I guess those really bad girls from high school have to live somewhere now. And besides, I guess he thought that chapter might liven up all the talk of law and business and sociology.

So anyway, that's my book report for tonight. I think the book is kind of fascinating and I plan to finish it. So maybe I will report in on the second half.

And, oh yeah, if this guy thinks he is going to have any influence over what some baby boomer wants to do, well, I think he has not met too many baby boomers.

Boomer

OH Boom, I just love your way with words. You are my kind of writer. I loved what you had to say about the "Ol' Horndog". I have been dying to know if he is the one who alone caused the STD's to skyrocket? That report was several years ago. I wonder if he is still at it. I love gossip.

You can read and report on any book for me. You are a wonderful, funny, bright person and from Ohio too!!!!! YOU are one of many I can't wait to meet. Sigh. When are we all gonna get down there?

[JohnM]

Another review...this one from yesterday's (5-25-08) Washington Post. For me the most telling comment in this review is the statement near the end of the article: "What happens to the rest of us...those left behind..."

=================================================

Jonathan Yardley
For some members of the older set, paradise is a town without children.

By Jonathan Yardley
Sunday, May 25, 2008; BW15

LEISUREVILLE

Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias

By Andrew D. Blechman

Atlantic Monthly. 244 pp. $25

If you've never heard of the Villages, a residential development in central Florida, welcome to the club, but after reading Leisureville, the first thing I have to say is: Listen up. The Villages, the brainchild of a reclusive developer named Harold "Gary" Morse, is, according to Andrew Blechman, "the largest gated retirement community in the world," covering "three counties, two zip codes, and more than 20,000 acres . . . subdivided into dozens of separate gated communities, each its own distinct entity, yet fully integrated into a greater whole that [shares] two manufactured downtowns, a financial district, and several shopping centers, and all of it connected by nearly 100 miles of golf cart trails."

The Villages has a population of 75,000 with houses for 35,000 more on the way, residents for whom it provides "anything their hearts could possibly desire, mostly sealed inside gates: countless recreation centers staffed with full-time directors; dozens of pools; hundreds of hobby and affinity clubs; two spotless, crime-free village centers with friendly, affordable restaurants; and three dozen golf courses -- one for each day of the month -- with plans for many more." But the icing on this particular cake is that it "provides residents with something else they apparently crave -- a world without children." The buyer of a house there "must be at least fifty-five years old . . . and no one under nineteen may live there -- period." Visits by children "are strictly limited to a total of thirty days a year."

This may sound like living hell to you -- it certainly does to me -- but to the vast majority of those who live there it's much closer to heaven. Located "about an hour north of Orlando International Airport," it's Disney World for the geriatric set, totally ersatz. Sumter Landing, one of its two "downtowns," is literally and figuratively a fabrication: "The Morse family hired a design firm with experience working for Universal Studios to invent this make-believe town, including its history, customs, and traditions." Its facades are "covered in clapboard and decorative second-story porches for the traditional feel of the Florida Keys," and "embedded trolley tracks run alongside the main street -- presumably, in the imaginary history, these were abandoned after decades of use in favor of golf carts."

As one who qualified for residency in the Villages more than a dozen years ago, I cannot imagine living in a community in which the dominant themes are leisure and make-believe, from which children are barred except as infrequent and closely monitored visitors, where all but a handful of residents are middle-class whites, where the "government" is totally under the control of the Morse family, which owns "liquor stores and liquor distribution rights, a mortgage company, several banks, many of the restaurants, two giant furniture stores as well as a giant indoor furnishings arcade called the 'Street of Dreams,' a real estate company, golf cart dealerships, movie theaters, and the local media." It's almost as much a company town as the ones owned in the past by textile companies, mining companies and the like, the chief difference being that residents of the Villages are wealthier and don't have to pay at the company store with scrip issued by the company.

Blechman, a freelance writer who lives in small-town Massachusetts with his young family, got interested in the Villages when his retired neighbors, Dave and Betsy Anderson, told him they were pulling up stakes and moving to "sunny Florida." The more Dave told him about the Villages, the more he "was filled with a sense of comic wonder mixed with a growing alarm." He decided to go down and have a look for himself, staying for a month, the maximum residency allowed for guests outside members' families. When he arrived, he was "registered and handed a bar-coded pass" that was, in effect, "a visa that entitle[d] me to experience The Villages' lifestyle, but like most visas, it also expires."

Somehow, Blechman's friendship with the Andersons survived his stay with them, and perhaps it will survive this book, which Dave encouraged him to write, but there's precious little here to give comfort to those who think they've found heaven on Earth at the Villages. Blechman sympathizes with residents there on one important count -- their desire to find community, "something that in today's turbulent world can be hard to chance upon, particularly for the elderly" -- and he found a number of residents whom he liked, but the artificiality of the place and its bewildering array of rigid covenants appalled him. One can only shudder to think what the late Jane Jacobs, the great evangelist for natural community and urban vitality, would have to say about the sterile desert described by Blechman:

"There is nothing about these housing clusters that even slightly resembles a 'village' in the traditional sense. There are no cafés, no corner stores, no newsstands. No commercial enterprise of any sort is allowed to take place within a village. Planned developments like The Villages generally spurn the one thing that make [sic] traditional cities and towns so varied and entertaining: mixed use. Commerce is shunted to a 'commercial zone,' i.e., strip malls, which one must drive to in either a golf cart or a conventional automobile. . . . Tens of millions of Americans have voluntarily given up certain liberties to live under private covenants enforced by fellow residents because they no longer trust their neighbors (who are increasingly transient) to do the right thing. For many communities, deed restrictions are a source of pride, and signs are posted at entrance gates proudly declaring their enforcement."

As that passage suggests, the Villages is unique only in its size. Age-restricted communities are springing up all over the country, built by developers seeking to cash in on the aging Baby Boomers, of whom "roughly 78 million . . . are still living." They are "an unparalleled business opportunity, and one that will probably skew commerce toward the needs and wants of senior citizens in coming years." Precisely what sort of retirement communities the Boomers want is a subject of intense debate among developers and others because they're "like a tsunami (some call it an 'age-wave') rolling over the housing industry; and trying to predict what they will want is like trying to predict the weather twenty years from now." Perhaps, indeed, many of them will reject artificial communities altogether and stay in the cities and towns they already know, but "given their staggering numbers, even if a development appeals to only a small minority, that market segment can still represent several million people and billions of dollars." With ample reason, Blechman views the future with dismay:

"The people living in age-segregated housing are still a small minority of Americans, but that's unlikely to remain the same. In 2004, ground was broken for 100 age-segregated developments; ten years earlier, that figure was fifteen. . . . What will happen when there are thousands of these segregated communities across America, housing millions of aging secessionists? What happens to the rest of us -- those left behind who don't qualify in terms of age or finances? For that matter, what happens to American society in general, and our municipalities in particular, when a critical mass of mature Americans form self-contained private cities and disengage from the general population? Experience shows that these privately owned quasi-governmental entities often resent paying local taxes for schools as well as for municipal services that they prefer to perform for themselves. And they are potent voting blocs that can swing elections addressing these issues."

Those are the deeper, darker questions beneath the occasionally amusing tales that Blechman tells about aging Romeos popping Viagra and pre-senile hot-rodders racing around the Villages in their souped-up golf carts. Blechman is not exactly a graceful stylist -- at best his prose is competent journalese, at worst considerably less -- but he understands the implications of this strange new phenomenon, and he knows that few of them are good. ·

[graciegirl]

[quote=JohnM ]




STRANGE? FEW IMPLICATIONS ARE GOOD? To whom I might ask? Another review by someone who has never been to TV.

It is like explaining the workings of a microwave oven to a cat.

[JohnM]

And yet another review...this one from Toronto's Financial Post. At least this reviewer acknowledges the right to choose one's lifestyle, even it is not for him...

==========

Financial Post

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Presented by
Freeway of the future?

Why are retirees locking themselves away in leisureville?

William Hanley, Financial Post Published: Saturday, May 17, 2008

Had Walt Disney envisioned the housing development of 2008, he might easily have conjured up The Villages north of Orlando in central Florida. Had George Orwell envisioned the housing development of 2008, it also might have been The Villages, a sprawling age-segregated and gated retirement community that could have the motto: In Golf We Trust.

Indeed, after reading Leisureville: Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias, I'm inclined to believe The Villages is Disney's Magic Kingdom for the over-55s with an undertone of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, a place where utopia meets dystopia, where endless leisure coexists quite comfortably with numbing, autocratic conformity.

Author Andrew D. Blechman, a young New Englander, at first can't believe the descriptions of The Villages provided by a retired older neighbour who is moving there with his wife. They seem so over the top and kind of creepy. After all, the largest gated community in the world has 75,000 residents (with another 35,000 on the way), spans three counties, two zip codes and 8,000 hectares, sports three dozen golf courses and has 160 kilometres of trails for golf carts, which are the primary mode of transportation for the Villagers.

In this totalitarian gerontopia for retirees, residents can drive their golf carts to movies, supermarkets, churches, recreation centres, clinics, dozens of pools or two crime-free "village" centres. Just about everything can be found in this peculiar paradise except for one thing: children.

The Villages, like thousands of gated retirement (and non-retirement) communities across North America, offers residents not necessarily a world without children, but a world with children on demand. A person must be at least 55 to buy a home in The Villages and no one under 19 may live there. Children can visit, but their stays are limited to 30 days a year.

The rules of The Villages are strictly enforced:Weeds must be removed, lawns -- at least 51% sod -- edged and hedges over four-feet high are prohibited. So, too, are clotheslines and individual mailboxes. Pets are limited to two per house, window air conditioners are forbidden, Halloween trick-or-treaters are not allowed.

And big neighbour, like Orwell's Big Brother, is always watching. Golf-cart passersby are sure to complain if these and other covenants are broken. Further, the local newspaper, The Daily Sun, is a junior league Ministry of Truth of the corporation that runs The Villages, so bad news is no news.

Though Blechman was both dismayed and amused by descriptions of The Villages, he decided to visit with his older friends and find out for himself what the attraction is behind retirement community gates. Leisureville is not exactly an expose of age-segregated retirement living, but a lively and thoughtful account of a lifestyle that can be at once entertaining and appalling. The book is full of warm, appealing characters. It also has tinges of the sadness and wistfulness that often accompany the later years.

Blechman goes beyond The Villages -- "a retirement community on steroids" -- to Arizona and to the oddly named Youngtown, the first elders-only community, and to Sun City, which once bloomed in the desert but is now a half-century old and showing it. The many problems and issues that have caught up with Sun City, the butt of many an ageist joke in my youth, will likely one day visit The Villages and its smaller kin, he

says. They include, most notably, a lack of tax-base support for local schools as retirees say they've paid their education support dues over their lifetimes. Blechman talked to many Villagers who said they'd also paid their share and were tired of giving back.

Blechman wonders what, exactly, they've given. "Blessed to be born into one of the richest generations in the history of the world, they've led a life that most people can only dream of. Such good fortune wasn't a matter of luck: it was given to them by previous generations who made untold sacrifices through two world wars and a devastating depression. ? Surely today's retirees have something more to pass on than a love of golf and perceived entitlement to lock themselves away

in leisurevilles. That's no citizenship; that's secession. It's a form of surrender, an acknowledgement of societal failure."

Hold on, Andrew. This is not the end of the world.

While there is something to worry about in the trend to leisurevilles, only a small percentage of retirees and Boomers will opt to lock themselves away. Indeed, well over half of Boomers say they're not going to retire. They and most others will stick around and work and coexist like the rest of society, possibly escaping for some R&R during the winter months.

In the meantime, many of those in The Villages and elsewhere will tire of the lifestyle, forgo the weather and head back home -- even if it is just for the summer or to visit family occasionally.

And those who stay the course will find their communities necessarily morphing over time into places resembling towns with the usual needs and problems.

The prospect of retiring to The Villages or any other gated retirement community doesn't interest me.

I've never even been in one, but I have this strong feeling that they're ghettos for the elderly --grey-ttos, if you will.

Yet, while I can't quite understand the desire some folks have to retire to such white-bread conformity, I respect the right of those who do. Even Andrew D. Blechman acknowledges that leisurevilles are "a powerful vision that has proved to be very appealing to a sizable segment of aging Americans."

whanley@nationalpost.com

Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

[jjdees]

Beady,

Blechman has been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the Des Moines Register. Since when do the media types care about the truth? Anything good is bad, and vice versa. This guy sounds like we should all live in lock step, kind of socialistic in my opinion. The fact that seniors choose to live in communities like TV has no effect on the lives of those that don't. The fact that some can afford it and others can't, well that's life. I can't afford to live in the multi million dollar gated communities so does that make them bad? Blechman should stick to his pigeons.

[Boomer]

Well, my own little opinion, on the first half of the book anyway, is a few posts above in this thread. The book has some interesting information, but this little whippersnapper has one condescending attitude.

But if you think Blechman :edit: some of us off, take a look at Boomsday by Christopher Buckley. Buckley is the guy who wrote Thank You for Smoking. His satire Boomsday has Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal written all over it.

Boomsday is not very well written, but the premise is that the government gives aging baby boomers tax incentives to off themselves before the onslaught drains Social Security. (Now don't come after me. I did not say that SS was about to be drained by boomers. I said that this is the premise of Buckley's satire.)

And just wait until Boomsday hits the big screen. And you know that it will.

The economic impact of the boomers has been a force to be reckoned with since somebody noticed that there are a whole bunch of us. There has always been a price on our heads. Whatever that means. And it has meant different things throughout our lives. And that will continue to be the case.

A couple of years ago, for some reason, I started noticing how elderly people are fair game, so it seems, as objects of derision in movies, ads, television shows, etc. Even one of my favorite fellow boomers, Steve Martin, had in his Pink Panther remake, a scene where a woman with a walker had to try to flee an out of control car.

Lots of people laughed.

Throughout various writings, there has been a concept of saturating the masses with whatever (usually violence) to make the masses immune.(Clockwork Orange. 1984.) Are we already immune to the media's often cruel portrayal and betrayal of the elderly?

Now that I have mentioned this, you may start to notice, too. If any other group were being hit like this, there would be an uprising of some kind, somewhere.

But wait! Maybe that is why the Blechmans of alleged journalism are writing books like this under the pretense of trying to save us from ourselves. Maybe they fear that if we all get back together, we could get way too organized. What is the saying? "Age and guile beat youth and inexperience any day." - or something like that.

Who knows? But it is kind of fun to discuss all of this.

And the last time I checked, I am free to live anywhere I want to live. You see, I can do that. I am over 55.

Boomer

[uujudy]

Originally Posted by Boomer BeBack

Boomsday is not very well written, but the premise is that the government gives aging baby boomers tax incentives to off themselves before the onslaught drains Social Security. (Now don't come after me. I did not say that SS was about to be drained by boomers. I said that this is the premise of Buckley's satire.)

Ooooh! Sounds like Soylent Green!