Nick from New School University in Manhattan is teaching me how to blog. He is 24 and I am over three times his age. He both studies and works at NSU and he answered when I called for part-time tutoring. He said he would do it. A true find! He does not holler when I [...]
It’s no consolation to learn from The New York Times of a few weeks ago that tens of millions of baby boomers are having memory lapses, better known as senior moments These indicate the decline of the brain’s acuity. To give these boomer lapses an appropriate name, we might call them midlife lapses. I used [...]
I’m beginning to feel a little like a vintner, not a merchant rich with money but someone rich with decades of accumulated experience who can review them, study them, and draw out the best of the cache. And hopefully, with this treasure, see my way with some degree of equanimity towards the future. Hopefully this [...]
Regardless of the attack today on John McCain by columnist Charles M. Blow (New York Times, 6/28/08), in my book John McCain is Mr. AgeBuster #1.
Generally, he is being vilified for being too old. But nothing I’ve seen so far is as nasty as the Blow piece. It includes a host of negatives: he is [...]
They looked to be in their 70s, or even their 80s, the superactive men and women on the Lexington Avenue bus going downtown,. It was about 4 p.m. on a weekday. They carried their shopping bags and packages of all sizes, containing what? You name it. Looking at labels and spillovers, I saw groceries, blankets, [...]
I had been a constant reader of Jane E. Brody, the veteran personal health columnist for the New York Times, always finding her as solid and level-headed as could be desired in a health journalist. Then, for no reason at all, I stopped reading her. Perhaps it was all the newsletters that began popping up [...]
I had a great moment last week visiting friends in Jensen Beach, Florida. For the occasion, I bought a new l-piece bathing suit off the rack, without trying on. It was black, simple, a few ruffles at the breast.
After breakfast we put on suits for a swim. I had always been on the heavy [...]
My great grandmother Carmela was a small parenthesis of a woman, blinded, with minimum hearing and bright eyes that seemed lit from behind. At 92 she was still living with her daughter Rusina, who had cared for her since Carmela’s husband died in Italy before the family emigrated.
Holding my hand, my [...]
At church this morning I was reminded that St. Ann, Jesus’ grandmother and mother of Mary, conceived Mary after years of childlessness. Ann was in late life when she became a mother, having refused to accept the conventional wisdom that young stock makes the best mothers. (As a late bride, I too hoped for a [...]
Write a book! It will keep you occupied, fully absorbed and energized. I’m convinced that unused spare time ages people. Writing a book keeps you interested, curious, coping with the computer. You begin to feel like a 30 year-old.
Also consider this: today it’s so simple to access information. In other times, writers had to go [...]
