Having read your article “Hearing seniors’ concerns” (Dec. 6), I was left with a concern I could not articulate until I moved on to the “Friday Takeaway: Thinking through grammar judgment” in the same edition.
In the “Friday Takeaway” piece, the author, Naomi Shulman, in describing her parents, said: “They understood that the words we use broadcast certain things about us, intended or otherwise.”
And that, I realized, was the gist of my discomfort. Marie Westburg, the senior center director, is quoted as saying: “We are all working hard to serve them.” To my ear that statement is, at best, a defensive retort, at worst an indication of a “them versus us” relationship in which “us” are underappreciated by “them.”
I am a senior, living in Northampton, but have not participated in any programming offered by the senior center. The message broadcast by the director, intended or otherwise, is not an inviting one.
Marlene Lyons
Florence