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trends are any indication, aging baby boomers will choose adventure when they plan their leisure time pursuits. Researche

at George Washington University in Washington, Dc. report that older people are spending more money – about $56 billion – in the “experiential marketplace” and that their spending on sensation, education, adventure and cultural vacations is expected to grow in the future.

How will baby boomers spend their leisure time when they are not on vacation?

Most Museums Have Trouble Connecting To the Public. Maybe It's Time For Some New Ideas.

underprepared for their pending encounter with the visual arts

many audience members seem intuitively aware of what is missing: more access to the story explaining how and why a work has arrived at this place for their enjoyment.

Museum theorists such as Elaine Heumann Gurian point out that admission fees may be the single biggest obstacle preventing museums from fulfilling their missions as educational institutions that are open and accessible to the widest range of visitors from all income levels and backgrounds. But is the financial position of most art museums so precarious that the 5 percent of operating budget provided by admissions fees is indispensable to the survival of the institution? Is there a middle ground between free admission and a standard entrance fee?

Potential visitors—especially families with children—are often concerned about the financial costs associated with a museum visit, such as transportation, parking and lunch. As the costs have risen, visitors expect greater value for their admission dollars.

Many of us have visited museums and seen the words “suggested donation” or “recommended amount” next to the admission fees. The actual amount collected per visitor is often significantly lower than the suggested amount

Budget shortfalls are forcing states to come up with novel solutions for the wide disparities between poor and affluent school districts. The latest reminder was a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in May that ordered the Legislature to increase spending for only the 31 poorest urban districts ("Court Orders New Jersey to Increase Aid to Schools," The New York Times, May 24). Not surprisingly, the decision did not please the other districts in the state. In light of the problem in New Jersey and in other states as well, perhaps it's time to consider what is known as weighted student funding. The Summer 2011 issue of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management contains a study by Helen F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske titled "Weighted Student Funding in the Netherlands: A Model for the U.S.?" For the past quarter of a century, the Netherlands has been using a version of WSF for all its elementary schools serving children from ages 4 to 12.

in this wager against the future, austerity is partly a moral calculus. For funds can grow with compound interest, but so too can ideas.”

“If (universities’) goal is to continue into the deep future, then spending more now could better prop up the university’s scholarship-driven mission than hoarding in strict deference to the dollar,” Bernard wrote. “The example of graduate funding illustrates how,

it turns out that the way the wealthy decide how to distribute cash is often even less fair than the way the state decides how to spend it.

More than half of the highly conspicuous donations of the ultra-rich were injected directly into the endowments of their already rich alma maters. Much of the rest was given to hushed museums in the form of very expensive donated art, or to other places that rich old people tend to congregate, like cultural arts centers and high-end hospitals. In other words, the funds the rich were giving went largely to institutions that tended to the needs and prerogatives of the rich and privileged.

Paula and most of her fellow farm workers have dementia. Boerderij Op Aarde is one of hundreds of Dutch “care farms” operated by people facing an array of illnesses or challenges, either physical or mental. They provide meaningful work in agricultural settings with a simple philosophy: rather than design care around what people are no longer able to do, design it to leverage and emphasize what they can accomplish.

For people with dementia, who are often less physically active and more isolated, farm settings promote movement and social interaction. And care farms can have emotional benefits, too, giving participants a sense of purpose and of making a meaningful contribution.

The workers get to choose which duties they’ll take on — that’s important, Monteny says, because people with dementia don’t have many opportunities to make decisions in their lives.