Links Galore
A roundup. Plus: A playlist of summer songs you all helped curate...
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.
RIP Jimmy Buffet, who died September 1st at 76, after a four-year battle with Merkel skin cancer.
“As a journalist, I search for the truth. But as a moral person, I am also obliged to do something about it.” - a year ago September 1st we lost journalist, author, and activist Barbara Ehrenreich, who founded the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. At Time (in a piece from last year), author and EHRP executive director Alissa Quart remembers her.
“Bound by traditional Chinese cultural beliefs, my parents were compelled to swear my brother and me to secrecy about our adoptions. The shame and stigma surrounding infertility and adoption were more than they could bear.” - In The Huffington Post, (Oldster Magazine Quesetionnaire™ taker)
writes about keeping her adoption secret for 60 years.“Boerum Hill was thought up in my lifetime, by people I knew.” - Can you remember Brooklyn before it was gentrified? In The New Yorker, Jonathan Lethem recalls growing up in the New York City borough before it changed, and reports on how the real estate industry remade it.
“…at ninety-one, she’s completed fifty-six films, and is working on her next two.” - at The Walrus, Zoe Heaps Tennant profiles nonagenarian filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin.
The New York Times features thirteen older photographers and their self-portraits.
“Hot Flush from writer Sally Wainwright follows ‘five women of a certain age’ who form a punk rock band.” - this BBC show, forthcoming from the screenwriter behind Gentleman Jack and Happy Valley, sounds right up Oldster’s alley, and I hope we can watch it in the U.S. At Radio Times, Morgan Jeffery reports.
“…while the knees hold up and the memory remains intact, why shouldn’t I carry on? I really feel I’m quite good at this acting thing now.” - 84-year-old actor Ian McKellen, starring in soon-to-be-released film, The Critic, tells Variety’s Bret Lang he has no intention of retiring.
“I felt that my husband treated my (writing) work like an interruption of my (domestic) work.” - in The Guardian, an excerpt of (Oldster Magazine Questionnaire™ taker)
’s wonderful memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful.How about a poem?
Weathering, by Alastair Reid (h/t Jeff Gordinier)
I am old enough now for a tree
once planted, knee high, to have grown to be
twenty times me,
and to have seen babies marry, and heroes grow deaf —
but that's enough meaning-of-life.
It's living through time we ought to be connoisseurs of.
From wearing a face all this time, I am made aware
of the maps faces are, of the inside wear and tear.
I take to faces that have come far.
In my father's carved face, the bright eye
he sometimes would look out of, seeing a long way
through all the tree-rings of his history.
I am awed by how things weather: an oak mantel
in the house in Spain, fingered to a sheen,
the marks of hands leaned into the lintel,
the tokens in the drawer I sometimes touch —
a crystal lived-in on a trip, the watch
my father's wrist wore to a thin gold sandwich.
It is an equilibrium
which breasts the cresting seasons but still stays calm
and keeps warm. It deserves a good name.
Weathering. Patina, gloss, and whorl.
The trunk of the almond tree, gnarled but still fruitful.
Weathering is what I would like to do well.
“When I was growing up, the bat mitzvahs didn’t have themes. The theme for the bat mitzvah was bat mitzvah.” - in The New Yorker, Emma Allen goes dress shopping with Gen X-er Amanda Stern, whose book, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, (written under the pen name “Fiona Rosenbloom”) has been made into a Netflix movie starring Adam Sandler and Idina Menzel.
Happy 102nd birthday to style icon Iris Apfel, whose birthday was August 29th!
“…the travel industry is catering to a new niche: Women who want help dealing with everything from hot flashes to mood swings, with perhaps some classic spa treatments thrown in.” - in The New York Times, Caren Osten Gerszberg reports on the new menopause retreats.
“He was a lifelong bachelor. Now he’s getting married at age 93.” - in The Washington Post, Cathy Free writes about Joseph Potenzano, 93, who in October will get married for the first time, to 83-year old Mary Elkind.
“The mere pursuit of a goal won’t promote your well-being — you have to be selective. This is where the chuck-it list comes into play.” - also in The Washington Post, philosophy professor Valerie Tiberius writes “Why you should swap your bucket list with a chuck-it list.”
“At 97 years old, Ms. LaLanne reminds herself each morning, ‘You have to believe you can.’” - in The New York Times, Danielle Friedman profiles exercise pioneer (and Jack’s widow) Elaine LaLanne.
Are you up-to-date on the latest from Oldster Magazine? “The Source Years,” by
? ’s moving remembrance of his late wife, Fran? “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down,” by ? ’s Oldster Magazine Questionnaire? ’s Questionnaire?Oh, I made a Spotify playlist of songs you all mentioned in last week’s open thread. Thanks for your contributions.:
That’s all I’ve got. Have a great weekend, everyone.
-Sari
So much in this post to explore, thanks Sari. I'll delve into the links and check out the playlist over the weekend, but I want to mention that on top of the documentary (at least one), and books on/by Iris Apfel, I came across a Little Golden Book about her as I was leaving the supermarket the other day. I had to take a picture: /Users/joan/Desktop/IMG_1743.JPG
I so greatly look forward to the link round up for the weekend, thank you Sari for your curating!