So yesterday I attended a really great intergenerational conversation hosted by Woodhull, housed in the lovely conference room at In Good Company, a place whose company I’d love to one day keep. More on that event soon! But in the meantime, I wanted to let folks know that a special GWP discount may be available for this weekend’s nonfiction writing retreat, “Raise Your Voices: An Intensive Nonfiction Writing Retreat for Women”, where I’ll be teaching along with Kristen Kemp and Katie Orenstein. For more on that, please email me (address below) or Elizabeth Curtis, ecurtis@woodhull.org. Just don’t forget to tell them GWP sent you in order to receive the discount.

My father always told me, “Follow your passion and the money will follow.” Since leaving the academia track, I’ve definitely been following my passion, and the money, well, still kinda waiting for it to catch up in spades. Along the way, however, I’ve found my bliss so I know that there’s no turning back. The topic is the focus of a blogger roundup over at The Art of Nonconformity. Definitely worth checking out. And big thanks to Marci Alboher, who has covered the topic in her New York Times column Shifting Careers, for the heads up.

Image cred

The next in our lineup of new monthly guest bloggers will be Courtney Martin, with a column that extends on the theme of “Making It Pop”. Courtney will be sharing tricks of the trade and inside scoop on writing in ways that will help you reach the next generation. So stay tuned!

And while I’m on the topic of platform, I’m personally looking for models of author websites that incorporate blogs and workshop listings, because my workshop offerings are expanding. I’m working with a fabulous intern this summer (Kristen Loveland) to revamp things a bit over here at GWP. So far on my list I’ve got Elizabeth Merrick and Marci Alboher. Anyone seen anyone else that’s doing this on their site, and doing it well? Thanks for leads, in comments!

And PS. Keep an eye out for some guest posting from Kristen in this space too. I’m going to be learning a lot from her, I know.

I often suggest that writers I’m working with start blogs to start building a platform around their book. My colleague Ashton (of the post below, and not a coaching client of mine, btw) has done just a good job of that, I wanted to send her a shout out and make her blog visible as a model for others of you who are trying to do the same. Again, the site is called So When Are You Going to Retire, and what I love about it is that Ashton has included lists on the side called “Stories I’m hearing,” “Stuff I’m reading,” “Questions I’m asking,” “Zeitgeist,” and then she also has a bibliography link. These categories are great not only for folks interested in her work (whether interest means participating or coverage) but also for Ashton, who can then go back to these links later as she’s ready to return to this material for the book. She’s also written, right up top, the following: “questions? critiques? stories? please comment or email me” to encourage reader response.

Has anyone seen other examples of good platform building blogs? If so, please add them in comments!

So in addition to it being Jewish American Heritage Month and all, it’s also Older Americans Month. I told Marco this just now and he said, “Hey, a month for me!” (Note: he’s not really Jewish, just really likes my tribe. And he’s not truly old, just kind of.)

Anyway, here are three important facts about older Americans to start off your day, courtesy of Ashton Applewhite and CCF:

MORE MARRIAGE: Men and women over 65 are more likely to have partners than at any time in history. They are now more likely to be married (as opposed to widowed or divorced without remarriage) because both men and women are living longer and because the gap between sexes is narrowing. In addition, people are more likely to remarry at older ages, although unmarried elders are also much more likely to cohabit than in the past.

HOT SEX: There’s no association between menopause and reduced sexual desire, once we control for other factors. Nor are post-menopausal women less likely to be orgasmic, although some report their orgasms are less intense. And Americans in their sixties and beyond are certainly interested in sex: they’re fueling a booming Viagra market.

MORE POVERTY: Widowed and divorced women who took time off from work to raise children are especially vulnerable to poverty because almost all retirement income is based on work — theirs or theirs spouses’. And Social Security is the only source of income for more than 40 percent of older women living alone.

Ashton is currently working on a project about older Americans called So When Are You Going to Retire: Octogenarians in the Workforce. For much, much more on any of this, contact Ashton at applewhite@earthlink.net.

This weekend I participated in The Great Saunter–a walk around Manhattan, sponsored by an environmental conservation group called ShoreWalkers.  Their motto is “See Manhattan at 3MPH!” Full disclosure: My crew and I walked from 42nd St to the northern most tip, then took the subway home.  But still, it was an amazing chance to just walk and talk and talk and walk and take in the Hudson River.  This here is a pic of that little red lighthouse underneath the George Washington Bridge.  There’s a kids’ book about it, and I’m here to say the lighthouse really does exist.

And thank goodness they are. In an earlier post I commented on the CCF panel on hooking up and wrote about the scarcity of research on adolescent sexuality. Well, I just learned that researchers at the Wellesley Centers for Women have been following a sample of Gen Y kids* through six grade and, over the next year, new research from the study will look at children’s friendships, adolescent romantic relationships, puberty and adolescent health, risky behavior and aggression, school achievement, the black-white achievement gap, and more. For more info on the study, click here. And to sign up for the WCW’s e-newsletter, try here.

*Gen Y is that cohort name for children born to Boomer parents between 1981-1995.

Caroline Grant, coeditor of the forthcoming anthology Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life, just gave me the heads up that InsideHigherEd.com is launching a new Mama PhD blog, and seven of the book’s contributors — Libby Gruner, Megan Kajitani, Susan Bassow, Dana Campbell, Liz Stockwell, Anjalee Nadkarni and Della Fenster — will be blogging regularly for them. As Caroline notes, “This is a terrific opportunity to bring the discussion of academic work/ family life balance issues out of the book, into the blogosphere and from there into classrooms and campus administrative offices.” Hells yeah.

Megan, of the very cool blog Having Enough, will be writing a weekly advice column. For more on everything, check out the book’s website here. And congrats, you Mama PhD powerhouses out there! I’ll be sure to blog more about the book in this space when it comes out.

Regular readers know I rarely catblog. But Marco just sent me this image, and I just couldn’t resist. This, my friends, is the sneaky Amelia Bedelia in the tub, who we are convinced has been on some secret government mission all along. This confirms.