Grandmother upgrades town’s only library

Ellisville, Ill. — The new library in this town 45 miles west of Peoria may have doubled its size but it will remain the state’s smallest library.

Ellisville resident Helen Myers started the library about 40 years ago by hauling her own books to a 140-square-foot space about the size of a shed. She supported it over the years through yard sales, book sales and by donating thousands of dollars.

“If you can read, you can do anything,” said Myers, a 76-year-old grandmother. “I think every town should have a library. I don’t care how small,”

So when her original library started to fall apart and patrons stopped coming, she decided it was time to offer Ellisville and its 85 residents something better.

She closed the original in June and cobbled together $8,000 from donations — including $200 she ponied up herself — and hired two local contractors to build the new one on a narrow strip of property she owns just off Main Street.

Insurance companies planning for longer lives

We’re living longer these days.

The evidence goes beyond the big jump in centenarians. (There are 50,000 centenarians nationally, and the numbers are expected to double each decade.)

The evidence now extends to insurance companies such as USAA Life Insurance of San Antonio. The company has established lower premiums for its term life insurance products in 39 states. The new rates incorporate a decrease of 10 to 30 percent, on average.

But the astonishing shift isn’t just in the lower rates.

The revised actuarial tables increase maximum theoretical life expectancy to 120 years, a 20-year increase since the last update in 1980.

While it’s highly unlikely that someone would actually live to 120, according to USAA, the American Academy of Actuaries consider this age to be the absolute maximum that a person might reach.