Let Me Edu-Tain You

Equal parts entertaining and educational—a link roundup...

A Sunday Crowd at Carolina Beach, N.C., Pub. by E. C. Moore & Co., Wilmington, N.C., via Wikimedia Commons

I tend to read, watch, and listen to an awful lot of Oldster-adjacent content. Now and then I’ll pass some of it along to you in a link roundup like this one.

P.S. A reminder that I have a 10% off sale on subscriptions running now through Oldster’s second birthday on August 31st. After that, prices go up, slightly…

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• I’m sorry, but it’s not fair that in the space of one week, we lost 56-year-old Sinead O’Connor and 70-year-old Paul Reubens.

Paul Reubens rides a bike in a scene from the film 'Pee-Wee's Big Adventure', 1985. (Photo by Warner Brothers/Getty Images); Right: Paul Bergen/Getty Images

• “His character wasn’t a Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo, a wise grown-up who kept the fun under control. He was a kid himself, who knew that kids wanted to lose control for a half-hour, to laugh at dumb jokes, to scream real loud! at the secret word.” - in the New York Times, James Poniewozik writes “I Loved ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse’ Enough to Marry It,” an appreciation.

• “She wanted to become a protest singer in the vein of Dylan, John Lennon, and Bob Marley, but there was no lane for that in an industry that prized young women for their looks more than their music. After signing her first recording contract at 18, O’Connor shaved her head and wore ripped jeans and combat boots, an act of protest that foreshadowed many more to come.” - at Vulture/NYMag, Allyson McCabe writes “Sinéad O’Connor Was Always a Protest Singer” and links to several of O’Connor’s protest songs.

• “I decided to cheer myself up by looking back at all the times people used Barbie to fuck shit up.” - speaking of protests, in her excellent new newsletter, Surfacing,

  Mikki Halpin
  writes “Protest Barbie,” about all the times artists have utilized Barbie subversively and/or for activism.

• I agree with Halpin, and Leslie Jamison in The New Yorker, that Greta Gerwig’s Barbie could have gone deeper in its critiques of patriarchy and capitalism. But like my friend and colleague

  Sara Eckel
  , I did find it to be fairly subversive, and all-in-all, I enjoyed it. (And Jamison’s piece helped me feel like less of a freak for chopping off my Barbies’ hair.)

• “Tissue taken from the Black woman’s tumor before she died of cervical cancer became the first human cells to continuously grow and reproduce in lab dishes. HeLa cells went on to become a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines…Despite that incalculable impact, the Lacks family had never been compensated.” - for those who read Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (and even those who haven’t), an update: her descendants have finally received a settlement from Thermo Fisher Scientific.

  

  Get the book.

• “…in ancient Sparta, you had to be 60 years old to be part of the governing council. And 2,500 years ago, 60 years old was probably more like 80 years old today.” - at Intelligencer/NYMag, Benjamin Hart interviews Steven N. Austad, an expert in aging, in an article entitled, “How Big of a Problem is Biden’s Age, Really?”

• Related: In case you missed it, earlier this week, in his essay, Coming Up for Seconds in My Old Age,

  Paul Zolbrod
  argued that President Biden isn’t too old to run for a second term—and at 90, neither is Zolbrod too old to keep writing books.

  

  Did you see last week’s open thread on about various generations and where we do and don’t fit in with them? (Meme Via 80s_foreverandever on Instagram)

• “None of us want to be defined solely by the person we were in our youth, or by the worst thing we ever did. The men serving life without parole feel the same way.” - in the New York Times, Marcus Kondkar, Calvin Duncan, Alexander Stockton and Jesse Wegman interview elderly inmates serving life sentences at Angola Prison in Louisiana.

• 25 Things I Learned the Year I Turned 50 - Girls They Write Songs About author

  Carlene Bauer
  at
  TueNight
  . (Gosh, I loved her book…)

• “After his wife died two years ago, Richard E. Grant began to film himself talking about his bereavement, creating a remarkable record of life after loss.” - in The Altantic, Sophie Gilbert writes about the 66-year-old actor’s Instagram videos about his grief, and his new memoir, A Pocket Full of Happiness.

  

  Order the book.

• “The mistake occurred 67 years ago inside a rural Canadian hospital where, born hours apart, Mr. Beauvais and Mr. Ambrose say they were sent home with the wrong parents.” - Imagine finding out in your mid-60s that you were switched with another baby at birth, and your whole identity is a lie. In the New York Times, Norimitsu Onishi reports on two Canadian men this happened to.

  

  Nice to see 70-year-old Lucinda Williams on the annual Forbes 50 Over 50 list.

• “I’ve never associated drugs and alcohol with morality. But in the pandemic, I began to in a through-the-looking-glass type of way.” - in The Washington Post, Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change and Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy writes about getting sober in mid-life.

• “When his big career break finally came, Beverly Glenn-Copeland was 73 years old and living in a state of financial uncertainty.” - in The Walrus, Simon Lewsen writes, “Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s Late Bloom.”

• “Up an elevator and down a narrow hall to the dressing room. And there he was — tall, his hair a mix of blond and gray, the shiny disco-era outfit traded for a black button-down and jeans…Shaun Freakin’ Cassidy, OK?” - in the New York Times, Lily Burana on going to see her teen crush Shaun Cassidy live, in her 50s—and getting a hug from him backstage.

• Excited to read pieces of

  Kim France
  ’s unpublished memoir, available for paid subscribers to her excellent
  Girls of a Certain Age
  newsletter.

• Also happy to see

  The Small Bow
  here on Substack. Have you checked out our collaboration, “Ask a Sober Oldster”?

• “I love being able to see the forest for the trees and being able to smell bullshit from miles away!” Did you catch this week’s Oldster Magazine Questionnaire™ featuring author, journalist, and former lawyer Anjali Enjeti?

  

• “It’s hard to imagine now, but you will find the courage to come out, write for gay magazines, and transform yourself into an activist with ACT UP and Queer Nation in New York City.” - Around this time last year, Jay Blotcher kicked off the “Letter to My Younger Self” series with “Batman, Robin, and Me”

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Check out Cliff Chenfeld’s show on WLIW/All Arts

• 🚨Bonus! The Oldster Top 10 by Modern Sounds radio host Cliff Chenfeld:

  You love your old favorites but if you want to hear new music, it can be a challenge to sort through all of the material out there. Modern Sounds radio host Cliff Chenfeld is here to make that discovery much easier for you. Here, Cliff features new music from mostly new artists who he thinks will have great appeal to Oldster subscribers. You can find all of these songs on the Modern Sounds playlist on Spotify.

1. The Beths – “Expert in A Dying Field” –Contemporary indie rock doesn’t get better than this.

2. Beabadoobee– “The Perfect Pair”  -- Bossa nova inflected hit from 23 year year old Filipino-English prodigy.

3. Rose City Band – “Slow Burn” – Sweet, summery, cosmic country from slightly Dead-adjacent band

4. Wolf Alice – “The Last Man on Earth” –  Big beautiful song from British rockers fronted by the transcendent Ellie Roswell.

5. Nude Party – “Somebody Trying to Hoodoo Me” – Swampy cover of obscure Dr. John song from down on the bayou.

6. Fred Again – “Delilah (Pull Me Out of This)” – The biggest dance music breakthrough act of the year.

7. Olivia Dean (featuring Leon Bridges) – “The Hardest Part” –Yet another soulful UK singer with her new hit.

8. Jenny Lewis – “Psychos” –Latest from the unique, cool, strong and independent Ms. Lewis.

9. Brandy Clark with Brandi Carlise – “Dear Insecurity” – Masterful songwriting from a great countryish singer with vocal help from the better-known Brandi.

10. Rosalia – “Saoko” – Space age futuristic music from Spanish superstar.

Okay, I’m all linked-out. Have a great weekend, everyone!

- Sari