Fall Back
You'll have one more hour this weekend to check out the links in this roundup.
I tend to read, watch, and listen to an awful lot of Oldster-adjacent content. Every other Friday I’ll pass some of it along to you in a link roundup like this one.
PS This monster roundup will probably be too long to show up in full in your email. Click on the title to read the whole thing on the web.
PPS By the by, I never raised to annual subscription price to $60 like I said I would after Oldster’s 2nd birthday. It’s still a very affordable $55, which helps me to pay contributors…
Be kind to your Gen X friends. We just lost a real one: Matthew Perry, at just 54.
Perry wanted to be remembered more for helping others get sober than for Friends. - per Michaela Zee in Variety.
Speaking of Gen X, in Dame Magazine, Andi Zeisler pushes back against some misconceptions about this age group.
“She always had concerns about the happily-ever-after ideals of the [rom com] genre. Now as a director she’s pushing its boundaries to examine issues of aging and regret.” - in The New York Times Magazine, Melena Ryzik profiles Meg Ryan, who has written and directed, and also stars in, What Happens Later, just out.
Maybe artificial intelligence isn’t all bad—it helped produce a new Beatles song, “Now and Then.” - at The Verge Chris Welch reports.
It’s officially the band’s last song. 🥲 And I’m guessing this video, which explains how the song came about, is their last film.
At
, has some great practical advice for finding love, as she did, after 50.- on 88-year-old Dame Maggie Smith’s new modeling job for Loewe, and “the belated lure of the much older woman.”
“There are now more seniors and fewer kids in NYC, says state comptroller.” - per Ramsey Khalifeh at Gothamist.
Elderly and Imprisoned: ‘I Don’t Count It as Living, Only Existing.’ - in The New York Times, photographer Joseph Rodriguez and writer Carmilla Floyd profile elderly inmates living out their twilight years at California Institution for Men state prison in Chino.
83-year-old Smokey Robinson’s still got it. I really enjoyed his NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
In the 33 1/3 book series, journalist Kimberly Mack writes about iconic Black rock band Living Colour’s 1990 record, Times Up.
“Millennials are facing an elder care crisis nobody prepared them for.” - at Vox, Anna North writes, “Baby boomers are aging. Their kids aren’t ready.”
“How am I going to get down on the floor with my kid?” - in The Cut/NYMag, Anna Maltby tells the story of 72-year-old “Brooklynite Ezra,” who became a dad at 69.
On Weds., 11/15,
’s The Write Treatment Workshop launches The Write Treatment Anthology Vol. 2: The Pandemic Years, stories, poems and plays about life with cancer. (Check out Vol. 1, too.) Readings and refreshments. Time: 3-4:30p Location: Mount Sinai Union Square, 10 Union Square East, 2nd fl Auditorium.“I’ve chosen to be child-free: here is how I plan to build a life full of joy and meaning.” - in The Guardian,
on the “alternative milestones” she’s created for herself, so that she’s always looking forward.Outside has reprinted “Cowgirls All the Way,” their 1981 feature by
’s on the Miss Rodeo America contest, “equal parts rodeo and beauty pageant.”In The Atlantic, Helen Lewis on the influencers and corporations looking to cash in on menopause.
“Aging has brought a modicum of self-compassion, and acceptance of what my husband and I call “the Sitch”: the bodily and cognitive decline that we all face sooner or later.” - in Washington Post Opinion, wonderful Anne Lamott writes “It’s good to remember: We are all on borrowed time.”
Don’t forget to turn your clocks back an hour on Sunday. Inspired by the “fall back” to Standard Time, here’s a little something from
, about the time change, and the latest figures she’s made out of clay, her current artistic practice:November
Clocks do something tonight, I think it’s tonight. Today? Backwards or forwards? I keep remembering Cork’s quandary. “Because my inclination, “ he told me, “is to fall forward and spring back.” It still makes me laugh.
Today I made a few heavyset men, each one a little bigger than the one before. They all have reptilian heads, which is indicative of my dim view of us as a species. I have nothing against reptiles, they are born that way, but we are devolving.
Now it’s an hour later and this new woman is so pregnant it must be twins. She is naked and beautiful. So then I made a naked man to go with my pregnant woman. Everything was going well, nice shoulders, chest, working my way down until I got to the genitalia, and I couldn’t remember how it all fits together. It’s been a minute, as they say. Where do the balls go? So I googled images, and was amused by how many naked young men sit there smiling mischievously with a towel against their junk. Scrolling down I finally found a workmanlike picture of the setup. It all came rushing back. Despite my best effort, it wound up looking like a fig leaf.
I'll turn the clock behind but it isn’t going to change anything.
While we’re turning the clocks back this weekend, shall we dip back into the Oldster archive from this time last year? Here’s
’s essay Old Birds and Empty Nests … Supper at Scribners … art critic Jerry Saltz’s Oldster Questionnaire…
That’s all I’ve got. Have a great weekend, everyone.
-Sari
DON'T TAKE MY EXTRA HOUR SARI! I need that extra sleep here in Perimenoland. Love this roundup, love Oldster, love your inspiring and ferocious commitment to quality in everything you do :)
The Meg Ryan interview was really good -- "It took me this long to have something to say."