OurSeniors.Net, its webpage, its printed magazine for seniors, and its online magazine for seniors try hard to be your go-to resource for senior living in Florida. In each issue, we bring you useful information about topics that are important to seniors and their families. Senior housing news, Social Security and Medicare information and resources for elderly living are all common topics as we try our best to be your senior living resources library.
Our printed magazine has grown in scope and circulation to cover most of the state. To provide better local coverage, this magazine for seniors now publishes several regional editions, each aimed at seniors in a specific area of Florida. We feel that this is the best way to meet our goal of serving the needs of all seniors. But there has been one big hole in our coverage: Spanish-speaking seniors! We have not been with them in their preferred language.
That is changing! Starting in October, the Southeast Edition of our magazine for seniors will be printed in both English and Spanish. This area of Florida includes Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties, a very large Spanish-speaking service area. Future editions of your favorite magazine for seniors will expand this feature to include other areas of the state. We know that senior living in Florida is great, and OurSeniors.Net strives to serve the Hispanic senior community as it serves all seniors.
Both Spanish and English-speaking seniors will find this new edition useful. It will be a unique, two-sided publishing approach with English text on one side of a printed page and Spanish on the other. Useful for both communities. Your favorite senior online magazine, OurSeniors.Net Magazine will also be available in both Spanish and English versions.
Our bilingual edition launches a few weeks in the future, but right now let’s have some fun recalling a past event. That event bears some relationship to our upcoming Spanish-English debut. It was the groundbreaking TV series Que Pasa USA, the first bilingual situation comedy in the U.S.
Cuban citizens began to pour into South Florida in the early 1960s, but for many years they fully expected to return to the Cuba they loved. As the years passed and these hopes faded, they began to assimilate into their new home. As with all groups, the process of assimilation was not always easy for Cuban Americans. Older Cubans often clung to the customs, social habits and language of their native land. Younger Cubans had come to the U.S. as very young children or were born here, and they grew up in a bilingual world. The two cultures were bound to have some conflicts, and Que Pasa, USA treated these skirmishes with humor and understanding.
Today’s seniors may well remember this well-produced and written show. It was a class act; in fact, it was funded by the National Council on Fine Arts. The show was bilingual, just as Miami, South Florida, and many other American communities were becoming. It’s story-line related to the relationships in and around the family of Pepe Peña, who immigrated from Cuba in the 1960s and settled in Miami. With him, he brought his wife, her parents, and a young son. A daughter was later born in Miami.
Que Pasa, USA delved into the tribulations of three generations of family members as they struggled to fit into a new country and language. Critics loved the show for the way it accurately depicted family life in Miami’s Little Havana in the 1970s. Its bilingual script earned it both English and Spanish-speaking followers.
When our bilingual edition launches in October, it will feature an interview with Ana Margo Menendez, the actress who played the part of Carmen Peña, the daughter who was the first Peña born in the USA. Ana (Carmen) will share her remembrance of the show and her extensive career. Ana is still very much a part of the South Florida scene.
Be on the lookout for this exciting addition to the OurSeniors.Net Magazine. Our hard-copy senior living magazine and our on-line senior living magazine are here to serve the needs of seniors.