Haithman, Diane

PERSONAL:

Female.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Los Angeles, CA. Office—Tribune Co., 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Journalist and writer. Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA, reporter, general assignment arts writer for the "Calendar" section.

WRITINGS:

(With Doug Meckelson) The Elder Wisdom Circle Guide for a Meaningful Life: Seniors across America Offer Advice to the Next Generations, Plume (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Diane Haithman is a general assignment arts writer for the Los Angeles Times and focuses primarily on the performing arts. "I provide a range of coverage, but my beat essentially includes any kind of news and features in the area of fine arts," Haithman noted in an interview on the Bulldog Reporter Web site. The author went on to comment: "I'll cover anything from the construction of the downtown Walt Disney Concert Hall to an interview with an actor."

Haithman is also the author, with Doug Meckelson, of The Elder Wisdom Circle Guide for a Meaningful Life: Seniors across America Offer Advice to the Next Generations. The book focuses on the Elder Wisdom Circle, a group of more than 600 "cyber-grandparents" sixty years of age on up to 105 who offer advice on the Internet based on their collective 45,000 years of experience. Meckelson is a San Francisco-area businessperson who founded the organization in 2001 based on the inspiration he received from his grandmother. The group responds primarily to questions asked by people from their teens to their thirties.

In the book, the authors write specifically about sixty individual "Elders" and nine specific groups from across North America. In the process, they discuss some of the most compelling and provocative issues that the Elder Wisdom Circle members have offered advice about to those in need of help. The book includes profiles of the advice-givers and also provides a forum for multiple responses, creating a dialogue between Elders that presents several different answers or alternatives to a question or a problem. The book's ten chapters address topics such as parent-child relationships, sibling rivalry, lasting love, how to make decisions, career problems and challenges, and aging and loss. The "Elders" also offer advice on problems such as arguing with neighbors and even giving a eulogy. The questions and issues were taken from the group's Web site. In the book, the issues are presented and discussed via the major stages of life in which they usually occur. The final chapter presents the Elders offering their secrets and watchwords for living a wise life.

"Many engaging and thoughtful questions and responses are recounted," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor in a review of The Elder Wisdom Circle Guide for a Meaningful Life. Deborah Bigelow, writing in the Library Journal, noted that the book "should prove interesting to patrons of all ages," adding that it is "highly recommended."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, July 1, 2007, Deborah Bigelow, review of The Elder Wisdom Circle Guide for a Meaningful Life: Seniors across America Offer Advice to the Next Generations, p. 107.

Publishers Weekly, June 4, 2007, review of The Elder Wisdom Circle Guide for a Meaningful Life, p. 37.

ONLINE

Bulldog Reporter,http://www.bulldogreporter.com/ (April 9, 2008), "Hook LA Times' Haithman with Arts News, Entertainers," information on author's work.

Elder Wisdom Circle,http://www.elderwisdomcircle.org/ (May 1, 2008), questions and issues.