Marlene Dietrich’s War on Nature
by John Byron KuhnerMarlene Dietrich's life is a parable about growing old and being famous. Continue Reading »
Consolations of Middle Age
by Elizabeth C. CoreyThis past June I attended my daughter’s high school graduation. Observing the wrinkles, gray hair, and softening jawlines of the other parents, I concluded that most people weren’t aging well. A few mothers, hoping to escape these indignities, had been victims of aggressive plastic surgeons, but . . . . Continue Reading »
On Sleep and Dreams
by John WilsonI have been fascinated by sleep and dreams ever since I was a small boy in the 1950s. Continue Reading »
Worst Cases
by John WilsonPlanning ahead with an eye toward potential catastrophe is a much-needed antidote to both despair and the presentism bedeviling much of our public discourse. Continue Reading »
You Are Old, Father William
by John WilsonWhy are old people so invisible in our “culture”? Continue Reading »
The Kominsky Method and the Hollywood Boomers
by John William SullivanUnlike most of what emerges from Tinseltown, a new genre of comedy focuses not on the travails of the young, but of those in their 70s. Continue Reading »
On a Photograph of My Cousin Jean
by Catharine Savage BrosmanAs lovely as a girl aged twenty-twocan be—intelligent, slim, self-possessed,and beautiful. It’s Florida; it’s newto her, like marriage. Smiling, smartly dressed, she poses, shaded by a palm, besidea terra cotta jar. The honeymoonhas just begun, the cattleya fresh, the bridestill radiant. . . . . Continue Reading »
Gnostic Longings
by Peter J. LeithartComplaints about aging contain an implicit affirmation of the body, rooted in the truth that our bodies are us. When our bodies ail, we ail; when they fail, we fail. We touch the world—lovers and enemies, soccer and sunsets, sonnets and sushi—only through eyes and ears and brains and nerves and hands and tongues. Continue Reading »
Sixty-Two
by Timothy MurphyNot fit enough to wander the wild woods or separate my wouldn’ts from my shoulds, what can I say? Not spry enough to scamper on a deck or fend a tall sloop from a leeward wreck, I steer my way. No longer lean or lithe enough to climb a groaning glacier out in Mountain Time, here I shall stay. So: . . . . Continue Reading »
Not a Poem
by Ruth WellsOld people can’t write poetry. Only those who think and live and feel and praise and swear and fight and love and give birth to babies can give birth to poems. Not old people. No dear old lady living in retirement with a shawl around her shoulders, living among . . . . Continue Reading »
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