The Holiday season can be a particularly difficult time for seniors. If you see or know of a senior in need of help, please reach out and, if necessary, contact the authorities. Here are some sites offering valuable information regarding seniors.
Green House Effect: Homes for the #Elderly to Thrive (NYT article)
The Guide to Overcoming Holiday Depression for the Elderly and their Caretakers
American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry
22 Senior Health Risk Calculators for Healthy Aging
Longtime readers know I’m a proud co-founder of Slated, an online film finance marketplace. We connect investors and indie filmmakers, and we’ve also built the first industry-only social network, with over 17,000 users. For more information, check out 
, and our FAQs on the Slated site.
Every month Slated hosts a Filmonomics panel at the Los Angeles SoHo House. The most recent panel was on the Catch-22’s of casting, and the panelists were myself, Peter Facinelli (“Twilight,” “Nurse Jackie”), and Jon Gries (“Napoleon Dynamite,” “The Bridge”).
Check out the Filmonomics video that includes parts of our panel. The Slated CEO, Stephan Paternot, hosts weekly Filmonomics videos. You can see and subscribe to all the Filmonomics videos.
Airing tmrw night: I’m back on the island! This time for “Hawaii Five-0.” It’s on CBS 
tomorrow night (Friday, Oct 3), 9pm/8C.
This weekend the National Geographic Channel is airing the two-hour special “American War Generals,” which I narrate. It premieres this Sunday, Sept 14, at 8pmET. 
The interviews and material are fascinating. The generals, nearly all of them household names, offer perspectives and information we rarely learn from reports on the wars. The NatGeo site has this synopsis:
“Powell. McChrystal. McCaffrey. Petraeus. Clark. For the first time, National Geographic Channel gathers the nation’s leading war generals for an unprecedented look at 50 years of military history, from the Vietnam War to America’s war on Al-Qaeda. The two-hour special American War Generals reveals never-before-heard stories and insightful opinions from eleven active and retired U.S. Army generals. Their accounts take us through the big changes that have transformed the U.S. military from the first troops to enter Vietnam to the last combat troops to exit Afghanistan, explaining the critical personal experiences that shaped their lives and the way they approached modern warfare.”
PS If you’d like to receive an email when my new projects air, you can sign up to the left. It’s usually 2-3x/year.
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The NatGeo page for the show
I’d venture that I probably don’t share many things in common with Muhammed Ali (link provided for those of you from Mars), but one thing we do share is a hometown—Louisville, Kentucky.
Among things we don’t share: He has an award-winning museum and multicultural center there; I don’t.
Every year his Center there hosts the ceremony for the Muhammed Ali Humanitarian Awards. The Center’s website describes them far better than I can: “The Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards celebrate the greatness of people from around the world who are making differences in their communities and beyond. In addition to awards given to seasoned humanitarians, six young people are honored with an award for each of Muhammad’s Six Core Principles: Confidence, Conviction, Dedication, Giving, Respect, and Spirituality.”
Recipients of the 2014 awards include six winners under the age of 30, and Jim Brown, Mick Ebeling of Eyewriter, Susan Sarandon, and others.
I have been given the great honor to present one of the awards at this year’s ceremony, on September 27. Louisville’s newspaper, The Courier-Journal, ran the following piece on the awards. (I’ve pasted and preserved it below because the paper’s content expires after a while..).
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The annual Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards are given to inspire people to continue to do great things in their community and globally.
This year’s recipients were announced Thursday and include Cleveland Browns running back and Hall of Famer Jim Brown, who will receive a Lifetime Achievement award for his dedication to civil rights. The Global Citizenship award will go to actress Susan Sarandon, whose many charitable works have included ambassador for UNICEF, the Amazon Conservation Team.
The Humanitarian of the Year Award will be given to Mick Ebeling, creator of Eyewriter, a low-cost device that enables individuals with paralysis to communicate with the movement of their eyes. Hip-hop artist Common will get the Humanitarian Award for Education for his work with disadvantaged youth in urban communities.
Other honors include a Kentucky Humanitarian Award, which will be given to Robert and Deborah Blair, founders of the West End School. There are also six young winners under the age of 30: Jessica Matthews of New York, Mario Andres Hurtado Cordazo of Colombia, Kennedy Odede of Kenya, Talia Leman of Iowa, Sejal Hathi of California and Mastura Rashid of Malaysia.
All recipients have been chosen because of their significant dedication to improving their communities and the world.
The awards will be presented Sept. 27, 7 to 11 p.m., at the Louisville Marriott Downtown, 280 W. Jefferson St.
Individual tickets are $1,000 and include the awards event plus a premium ticket to a special concert, featuring Bruno Mars and opening act The Temptations Review and Southern Sirens on Sept. 20 at the Kentucky International Convention Center. Check the Ali Center’s website for more information and tickets: alicenter.org/awards.
Matt Lauer, host of NBC’s “Today,” will serve as host for the awards ceremony. Other presenters include Lonnie Ali, Brad Montague and Robby Novak, Holly Robinson-Peete, Father George Kilcourse, William Mapother, Pearse Lyons, Donald Lassere, U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth and Pamela Brown.
Muhammad Ali and his wife, Lonnie, plan to attend.
