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An Oldster Magazine Friday roundup.

Useful and ornamental plants, hand-colored wood engraving, published in 1887. Germany. Getty Images.

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

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• Quincy Jones is 91, Gloria Steinem is 90, and Ali McGraw is 85.

  

• “Hearing aids may cut risk of cognitive decline by nearly half.” - by Lindsey Bever at The Washington Post. Remember last Friday’s open thread about aging-related hearing loss and hearing aids? Thanks to all of you who commented. 🙏 Something that stood out to me: a connection between untreated hearing loss and dementia that some of you mentioned. And one of you linked to the related article above, which seemed important to share.

• What Artists in their 90s Are Teaching Me , by

  Dan Blank
  in
  The Creative Shift by Dan Blank
  .

• “Julia Alvarez wrote her new novel as if it were her last…” - in The Washington Post, Sophia Nguyen interviews the 74-year-old author, who’s just released her latest novel, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, which she wrote while going through a health crisis.

  

  Order the book.

• “What is it about Carrie that has intrigued me? It’s one of those books that manage to dip into the collective unconscious of their own age and society.” - in The New York Times,

  Margaret Atwood
  writes about Stephen King’s classic 1974 novel turning 50.

• “As a 50-something, I’d met my closest friends decades earlier. Did I even need new ones?” - in The New York Times/Well, Tom Vanderbilt writes “I Thought I Was Too Old to Make New Friends. One Trip Changed My Mind.”

• Planning to watch Monday’s solar eclipse? Either way, it’s never a bad time to read Annie Dillard’s “Total Eclipse,” her 1982 essay in which she writes about the haunting, surreal experience of witnessing a solar eclipse in 1979, after driving five hours inland in Washington State to catch it from a hilltop. - The Atlantic.

• Around this time last year,

  Maggie Smith
  took The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, as did
  Irwin Epstein
  .

  This is 46: Maggie Smith Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

  This is 85: Irwin Epstein Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

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• 🚨It’s time for the monthly Oldster Top 10 by Modern Sounds radio host Cliff Chenfeld:

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

Welcome to the Oldster Top 10, where Modern Sounds radio host Cliff Chenfeld features wonderful new tracks from noteworthy artists who may not have caught your attention.  Finding new music to listen to can be a challenge but we take pleasure in making music discovery much easier for you. You can find all of these songs on the Modern Sounds playlist. Enjoy…

1. Girl in Red – Too Much – Peppy, poppy, smart break-up song from one of the most interesting pop stars to emerge in recent years.

2. Teddy Swims – Lose Control – Always intriguing when a soulful, gospel-ish song becomes a hit. Here is the latest one.

3. Kacey Musgraves – Too Good To Be True – While we don’t normally include songs from big stars (figure you know them already), Musgraves’ new album is so intimate that it feels like a much smaller project.

4. Justice/Tame Impala – One Night/All Night – Syntho disco track from the French electronic duo Justice and the always very vital Tame Impala.

5. Hozier – Eat Your Young – For those who only know the Irish singer from his hit Take Me To Church, his new single is irresistible. Sort of updated ‘70s Hall & Oates soul pop.

6. Allison Russell – Springtime – Grammy-nominated American artist goes way beyond the genre with this joyous sting-laden exclamation mark of a song.

7. Slowdive – Kisses – A romantic, sleek entry from shoegaze legends who could have been listening to Roxy Music’s Avalon when making this one.

8. The Smile – Read The Room – Radiohead’s Tom Yorke’s does a lot of side projects, but this is as close as you’ll get to a new Radiohead song.

9. The Black Keys – Beautiful People (Stay High) – They do what they do, they do it well, they don’t surprise, and they keep it moving.

10. Elephant Stone – Lost In A Dream – Textbook melodic, sweet psychedelic power pop from Montreal.

11. Bonus track:  Brittany Davis – Sepricorn – One of the funkiest new tracks of the year by sightless singer who sang, wrote and played all the instruments on her new album. 

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That should be enough Oldster-adjacent content to keep you busy this weekend. Have a great one, and thank you, as always, for your support!

-Sari