David Gergen on the country’s future
Katherine Gergen Barnett, David Gergen’s daughter, wrote down her father’s fleetingly lucid thoughts.
Katherine Gergen Barnett, David Gergen’s daughter, wrote down her father’s fleetingly lucid thoughts
Long-term care insurance: my 2¢
Now that my mom's long-term care insurance (hereafter, “LTCI”) has run out, I feel free to offer some observations.
Your work age
A quiz from The Washington Post: “How to tell your real work age.”
Eleven at ninety
“I feel like I’m eleven!” says Carol Burnett, who turns ninety tomorrow.
“Older”
I liked this detail from Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s address to the House yesterday, as he moved through a catalogue of American lives: “We are young. We are older.” “Older” — not “old.”
“Older person”
In The Washington Post, Gary Abernathy writes about ageism and how it grates.
Q & Q & Q & A
From Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book.
The quickening art
Anyone who doubts that music is “the quickening art,” as Oliver Sacks, borrowing from Kant, put it, would do well to watch last night’s 60 Minutes story about Tony Bennett, “The Final Act.”
Paul McCartney and relativity
”George Martin was like our teacher, just because of the age. He was a little bit older. It wasn’t much. I mean, I think we always thought of him as an old man. I think he was like probably thirty when he started with us, which I certainly don’t think of as old now.”
Roger Angell, closing in
A celebration for the writer Roger Angell, who’s nearing his hundredth birthday.
The oldest working barber
Anthony Mancinelli, the world’s oldest working barber, has died at the age of 108.
Old barber, old joke
“I eat thin spaghetti, so I don’t get fat”: Anthony Mancinelli, 107, is the world’s oldest barber.
Frank Stella, here and now
“I feel that there’s nothing other than the moment though. So you have to do it now.”
Age and happiness
From an interview with Dilip V. Jeste, M.D., a geriatric neuropsychiatrist. He is talking about age and happiness and wisdom.
Life style or life
From The New Yorker, in a film review by Anthony Lane: “one of the rare benefits of age: maybe you can start, at last, to tell the difference between a life style and a life.”
Roger Angell FTW
Roger Angell’s essay “This Old Man” has won a National Magazine Award for The New Yorker in the category of Essays and Criticism.
Alive Inside
“Albert Ayler was right: music is the healing force of the universe.”
Ellsworth Kelly, drawing
“I want to work like nature works.”
Stritch wisdom
“Everybody’s got a sack of rocks.”
Roz Chast on her parents
Good reading for children of all ages.
Roger Angell, “This Old Man”
Roger Angell is ninety-three.
Nora Johnson on falling in love at seventy-one
In The New York Times, the author of the novel The World of Henry Orient writes about falling in love at the age of seventy-one with an eighty-three-year-old man.
For Valentine's Day
Four couples and their songs.
Russell Procope and relativity
Older than you is old.
Fathers and sons and ringtones
A good son would not let his father fumble for a month setting up Lady Gaga ringtones.
Roger Ebert’s fall
Roger Ebert, writing about diminishing mobility and a recent fall out of bed.
111
If you were born before the year 2000: add the last two digits of the year of your birth and the age you will be on this year’s birthday. The answer will be 111. Pretty mysterious? Not really.
Van Dyke Parks on Bananastan, cont’d.
Some more details about his forthcoming 7"-vinyl singles. And some observations about age and resilience.
Howard Armstrong on staying young
“I’m not ashamed to tell anybody my age: I am seventy-five years — not old, but seventy-five years young, because I have most of the attributes that young men should have.”
Orange Crate Art: Manson H. Whitlock, typewriter repairman
He's 94.