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 next Thursday, August 31st. After that, prices go up, slightly…
I was a total sap for tear-jerker family saga This is Us, and I was sad to learn that Ron Cephas Jones, who played William, Randall’s biological father, died this week at 66. - at People, Alexis Jones reports.
“Naysayers and trolls want to shame an older woman for daring to feel sexy or comfortable in her own skin.” - at Gloria, Denise K. James interviews 58-year-old supermodel/actor/author Paulina Porizkova about aging and social media.
Here’s a clip from another interview Porizkova did last January with psychotherapist Terri Cole about gendered age discrimination:
- authorintroducing her interview with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Mary O’Connor, co-author of Taking Care of You: The Empowered Woman's Guide to Better Health.
Speaking of Fonda and Tomlin, Brian and I have recently—belatedly—gotten hooked on Grace & Frankie, after initially resisting it on grounds that we were too young for it. (Well, we’re eight years older now than we were when the show was launched in 2015.) Funny, smart, touching. Light—a nice contrast to dark Painkiller, which we’re also watching. What’s more, my mom and I are bonding over G&F. (Might write more about this after we finish the series…)
A reminder that the writers and actors who work on our favorite shows and movies are still striking for fair wages and other contract terms from Hollywood studios and streaming services. - via Emily Stewart at Vox. Help them out with a donation to the Entertainment Community Fund.
“My book Elder Sex came out of an article about sex after the age of 70 which was published in the New York Times Magazine in January 2022. It’s all the pictures that the Times couldn’t publish.” - in the Guardian, Nell Frizzell interviews Marilyn Minter about her new photography book.
“We are disregarding this group of women’s suffering to a greater degree than we’re ignoring all the rest of the menopausal women suffering.” - in The New York Times, Alisha Haridasani Gupta writes, “Menopause is Different for Women of Color.”
Stop Making Sense, The Talking Heads’/Jonathan Demme’s 1984 concert film, has been remastered and will be re-released on September 24th by A24, and the band will be reuniting for some tour dates.
“What do you call a person who’s central—indispensable—to the happy functioning of your family, yet is in no way tied to it by blood? And how do you describe the grief when that person is gone? Carmen Ayala was that indispensable person to us.” - In my last roundup I linked to “The Ones We Sent Away,” Jennifer Senior’s Atlantic piece on a developmentally delayed aunt who was rarely spoken of after she was sent to live in an institution. Here, Senior profiles her late aunt’s former caretaker, who died at 87 two days after the initial piece was published.
Okay, I lied. Here’s 61-year-old Rosie O’Donnell on Instagram on “mug shot day.”
“I’ve probably gone through like four different women’s revolutions in my life. I’ve seen this in a lot of different guises. So when I recognized that for these kids that was, like, new information, I was like, oh, this is fantastic. And also I just loved that girls and women were laughing. It’s pretty disarming.” -
’s talks with Laurie Anderson about seeing Barbie, and also: studying tai chi with her late husband Lou Reed, co-editing his book, The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi, sexism and more.“For eight months, I’d open the freezer, see the cake, and let it mind it’s own business. Then one moonless night I opened the freezer with a different intent. I live on a hill, far from shops, and there was nothing else to eat. I tell myself.” - at Dirt, “Cake,” fun new fiction from Oldster columnist
.I recently answered 10 Questions for ’s excellent newsletter.
“I was, by all accounts, an adult. Yet I was never really a grown-up, particularly not when my parents were around.” - Around this time last year, we published author
’s essay, “Age Appropriate.” (With Oldster’s 2nd birthday coming next Thursday, and in light of so many new subscribers climbing aboard, I’m going to start showcasing pieces from the archive more often.)Are you caught up on the latest Oldster posts—Leah Wells’ ode to telephone directories? Meredith Maran’s answers to the “Ask a Sober Oldster” Q&A, our monthly collaboration with
? My genealogy journey? Corinne O’shaughnessy’s essay about a surprising experience at a hammam? Questionnaires by 81-year-old Andy Romanoff and 64-year-old Yvonne Liu?
That’s a lot of links! Have a great weekend, everyone.
-Sari
The Laurie Jones story is wonderful.
Love these eclectic roundups. Rare not to find something that sparks a thought or gives valuable information.
My wife and I really like Marilyn Minter and own a few of her photographs. We didn't know she had new work out and ordered the book. Thanks!
We particularly like this one:
https://www.marilynminter.net/photos-4/dirty