Patti Shea

Biography: Love baseball, beagles and Mel Brooks movies. Grew up in LA. Learned the lessons in DC. Now caring for parents in Florida. Also a social media manager for AARP.

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Patti Shea 'sPosts

Part 1: How a High Schooler Used Social Media to Help Seniors, One Shoe at a Time

Posted on 12/5/2012 by Patti Shea | Home & Family blogger | Comments

Home & Family | Technology | Your LifeEditor’s note: We asked Matthew Walzer to tell us his story about how he got Nike to pay attention to the basic needs of the disabled. What he has done will help thousands of older people who have problems daily putting on shoes. I am a 17-year-old Florida high school student who has cerebral palsy from a brain injury at birth. I weighed 2 pounds, 14 ounces with severe lung dysplasia. Doctors feared I wouldn’t make it through the night …

3 Things Siblings Can Do to Care for a Parent

Posted on 11/29/2012 by Patti Shea | Home & Family blogger | Comments

Caregiving | Home & FamilyEditor’s note: The following is a guest post by Barry J. Jacobs, Psy.D., who specializes in helping families cope with serious and chronic medical illness. The brothers and sisters who file into my office have tight-lipped, apprehensive looks. They’ve voluntarily chosen to meet with me for a caregiving consultation in order to find a way to better coordinate their efforts to help an aging parent. But they’re afraid of what might happen once we begin talking: Will old rivalries and resentments rear their …

Family Photos Are the Real Holiday Crowd Pleaser

Posted on 11/21/2012 by Patti Shea | Home & Family blogger | Comments

Home & Family | LegacyThis is first in a series of guest blogs from professional genealogists Matthew and April Helm. If you’re tired of the same old Thanksgiving, Hanukkah or Christmas gathering routine — a large meal followed by cleanup then football — perhaps introducing family history into your celebration is a perfect answer to spice up things a bit. Breaking out those old photo albums and boxes is a surefire way to get everyone interested in talking about the family and here’s how to …

Car Talk — The Future of Driving Safety

Posted on 11/16/2012 by Patti Shea | Home & Family blogger | Comments

Home & Family | Technology | TravelEditor’s note. This is the first in a series from Ford that will talk about older drivers, technology and the future of transportation. Today’s post is by Mike Shulman, Technical Leader for Ford Active Safety Research. Like many fans of the NPR program Car Talk, I’ll miss the entertaining banter of brothers Ray and Tom Magliozzi (otherwise known as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers). No one can turn a car calamity into comic relief quite like they can! The …

Sure You’re Not a Caregiver Now, But …

Posted on 11/12/2012 by Patti Shea | Home & Family blogger | Comments

Caregiving | Home & Family | Your LifeI’ve worked on caregiving issues for AARP for five years now. I started as an erstwhile online producer for AARP.org wanting to bring great family content to the website. (Read: wanted to boost sex and pets content since they get the most clicks, right?) A few months into my tenure here, I was asked to help overhaul the online Caregiving Resource Center. At the time, being a late thirty-something singleton living in Washington, D.C., I really didn’t know a lot …

What Happens When Your Soulmate of 79 Years Dies?

Posted on 11/2/2012 by Patti Shea | Home & Family blogger | Comments

Home & Family | RelationshipsIt was a love that was going to last forever. Perhaps it didn’t last “forever” but it did run 79 years. We took note when we saw that Theresa Faiss, wife of a former Nevada state senator died earlier this week at the age of 97. Faiss and her husband Wilbur operated businesses around the Las Vegas area for more than 60 years, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. They even had a school named after them. Earlier this year …