Images, headlines, exclamations soar into the atmosphere and plummet earthward-news of nations wrestling, economies rising,
poverty spiraling, entertainers dazzling, heroes falling, catastrophes looming, business trends booming. Satellites and
fiber optics propagate in the informational ecosystem that now engulfs us. Required to adapt to this ever-changing
environment are the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the leaders, the everyday workers.
Visit the Philadelphia Senior Center just after lunch on a Wednesday and you'll see more than a dozen people doing just what brain experts recommend, though most of them don't know it.
There are three tables of pinochle players. A twosome play chess. Upstairs, four men play dominoes. In short, they're using their brains.
Ask them why and most respond like 67-year-old Roosevelt Cook, a retired dressmaker who plays pinochle almost every day. "It's like Einstein's theory of relativity," he says. "When you're doing something that you don't like, time drags. When you're doing something you like, the time goes fast." Well, most of his fellow players just say they're having fun, but, like him, they add that the games make them feel mentally sharper.
