What to Read, Watch, and Listen to this Weekend

A link roundup...

Bikes on Rainbow Beach, Queensland, Australia. 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.

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• No, not Tony Bennett! RIP to one of the great crooners, who passed away this week at 96. - at Vulture/NYMag, Hilary Hughes on the way Bennett kept coming back into style, recording duets with younger artists, and appearing on The Simpsons.

  

  Bennett, center, with the late Lena Horne, left, and Burt Bacharach, right, who also passed away this year, in The Sound of Burt Bacharach, November 1969. Via Getty Images.

• “I never expected to publish this project publicly. It was too vulnerable. Too much of my heart. I made it 6 years ago after finishing an artist’s residency at Zen Hospice.” I loved author and illustrator

  Wendy MacNaughton
  ’s recent post about her new illustrated book, How to Say Goodbye: The Wisdom of Hospice Caregivers, out this week. (I’ll be interviewing her for The Oldster Magazine Podcast soon!)

  

  Order the book.

• Another illustrated book that caught my eye this week: I Am “Why Do I Need Venmo?” Years Old: Adventures in Aging, by Janine Annett and Ali Solomon.

  

  Order the book.

• Modern Sounds radio host Cliff Chenfeld will be back soon with another playlist featuring new music (and some musician interviews!) but in the meantime, our friends at

  TueNight
  have a new Spotify playlist of old music (from the 80s) tailored for Gen X-ers.

  

  Check out TueNight’s new Spotify playlist.

• “This summer brings my debut. I’m 65. I wear orthotics, not heels, and step lightly through the Trader Joe’s parking lot.” - at Electric Literature, Ilana Debare writes “Am I Too Old For This?” about debuting as a novelist in her mid-60s.

  

  Order the book.

• “…recent studies suggest that something unexpected happens to many people as they reach and pass their 60s: Their personality starts changing again.” - at The Atlantic, Faith Hill writes about “The Curious Personality Changes of Older Age.”

• “‘She used to say, “You can change your career at any time—don't let anybody tell you that you can't.” It's excellent advice, regardless of the industry you're in. Despite never wearing any makeup, she radiates beauty. She's a true force.’" - In Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper, in the “Radically Reframing Aging” section, Kyra Sedgwick on being inspired by her 91-year-old mom.

  

• “‘I want to be left alone…’ The legal battle is drawing renewed attention to the historic expropriation of Black-owned land.” - At CNN, Nicquel Terry Ellis on 93-year-old Josephine Wright’s battle with a predatory developer in Hilton Head, NC, over her her family-owned property. And here’s a related video from WSAV3, an NBC affiliate in Savannah, GA:

• “It’s hard to think of another writer with as fecund and protean an imagination as the 85-year-old, who is surely on any shortlist of America’s greatest living writers.” - In the New York Times Magazine, David Marchese interviews Joyce Carol Oates: “Joyce Carol Oates Figured Out the Secret to Immortality”

Order Joyce Carol Oates’ new story collection, out this week.

• “When Toby Keith wrote ‘Don't Let the Old Man In,’ inspired by a conversation with the legendary Clint Eastwood, he probably never dreamed it would go on to be recorded by another hero: country music legend Willie Nelson.” - at Wide Open Country, Bobbie Jean Sawyer on “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” written by Toby Keith and recorded by Willie Nelson:

• As a theater geek who was in all the plays at summer camp in the late 70s (a…sports camp, where I rarely participated in sports 😂) I can’t wait to see Theater Camp. In the New York Times, Alexis Soloski interviews Broadway veterans about their theater camp memories.

• “Marlon hadn’t turned up in any of my other classes, but I had seen him sitting in the hall, playing bongo drums, surrounded by a coterie of admirers. He made a point of not looking at me.” - If you enjoyed the excerpt of Alan Shayne’s memoir, The Star Dressing Room that was reprinted in Oldster on Monday, check out this other excerpt in The New Yorker, called “Upstaged by Marlon Brando.”

• Did you get to read the latest installment of “Ask a Sober Oldster,” our collaboration with

  the small bow
  featuring Dionne Ford, and illustrated by
  Edith Zimmerman
  ?

  

  Illustration of Dionne Ford by Edith Zimmerman.

• Also, did you get to read

  Elissa Altman
  ’s Oldster Magazine Questionnaire? It’s a goodie.

Well, this list ought to keep everyone busy. Have a great weekend!

- Sari