12/18/06 If I were a senior... Actually, I am. I just don't think of myself that way, unless I glimpse my reflection or feel all my creaks, twinges, and pangs. The sixteen-year-old is still here; however she now has eight grandchildren. Anyway, if I hung out at the Senior Center, and several of my friends do, I suspect I'd want a lounge.
It seems curious that an expensive new library (or isn't it new anymore?), built with senior center and community rooms on the lower level, made no provision for a gathering place. When I think back to important places in my life, the first, and sometimes the only, image that pops into my mind is the lounge! At Oberlin, it was the dorm lounges and the library study room, really a smoking room, where students gabbed and flirted; at London School of Economics, I spent my days in the refectory meeting people from all over the British Empire; at Columbia University, it was the Lion's Den. At hotels, where do people linger and meet? The lounge.
The Senior Resource Center has a book club, bridge games, talks, performances, trips, but without a lounge, when nothing's going on, there's really nothing going on. Shorewood is loquacious, full of cafes, restaurants, organizations, informal groups and clubs, community activities, sociable stores, and even sociable sidewalks (which is not true everywhere on the North Shore). Still, I think older people, many of whom live alone, need a place to relax, meet, and mingle.
If I'd known about it, I would gladly have signed the 137-signature petition delivered to the Village Board asking for a senior lounge. Instead here's my one-person petition.
