Vote As If Our Lives Depends On It (Because They Do)

And other matters. A link roundup...

Don’t be this person! ^^^ Cartoon by Carolita Johnson.

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

---

• First things first, for everyone of every age (well, of voting age, at least): VOTE. Have you voted yet? If you haven’t already, please do so. There is so much riding on these mid-term elections. We’ve already lost so much. Any semblance of democracy hangs in the balance. Just do it, okay???? No excuses, not even yoga class. Me, I voted early, and I got that cool Ulster County voting sticker.

• I was puzzled by this hospital ad on an enormous billboard in Manhattan. Giving birth at 57??

  

  Then someone pointed me to Barbara Higgins’ moving story behind it. By Maressa Brown, for Parents.

• “Iran was a place where I lived in fear that the terrible things happening around me could happen to me—and then they did.” Recently writer and filmmaker Naz Riahi wrote a moving piece for Oldster about her experience with hijab mandates as a young girl in Iran. At Harper’s Bazaar, she expanded on the story, just as movingly.

• That time Marjorie Taylor Greene told a caller that she was too old to comment on abortion rights. More on this from Bess Levin at Vanity Fair.

  Aaron Rupar @atrupar

  During a call in show last night, Marjorie Taylor Greene dismissed a woman who criticized her abortion views over her age, repeatedly telling her things like, "I know you say it's your body your choice, but I don't think you're having any children anytime soon."

• A one-stop shop for all menopause needs? Sign me right up for Midi Health. Here, Ladyparts author

  Deborah Copaken
  interviews founder Joanna Strober.

  The Menopause Disruptor

• “You might say that, at 80 years old, Jane Campbell is a literary late bloomer. But you also might say, as the poet Sharon Olds once did, that “anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.” At Slate, Heather Schwedel interviews author Jane Campbell, who recently published her debut short story collection, Cat Brushing, at 80—and who is featured with me in Poets & Writers’ “5 Over 50” feature.

• Hmmm, what could be making 76-year-old Cher so happy? Maybe it’s her new paramour, who’s 40 years younger? Go, Cher.

Cher @cher

One part of my life is SO AMAZING 😍

• The food writing world lost two influential women writers last week—Gael Greene at 88, and Julie Powell, at just 49.

• At Vulture, Rax King looks back on Julie Powell and the messiness that made her and her writing unique.

• Powell in her own words, on the Julie/Julia project that made her famous, in a Bon Appetit piece from 2003.

• Did I mention that you should vote?? Did I say should? I meant must. You must vote! Vote. Voooooote. VOOOOOOOOOOOOTE.