-83 year-old musician Chuck Berry, in an article by Neil Straus in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone. We witness the sometimes difficult-to-work-with Berry—Keith Richards once said of him, “I love his work, but I couldn’t warm to him even if I was cremated next to him—waiting to accept one work proposal until that proposal is made more “loveable.”

But by article’s end, the portrait of the inventor of rock & roll  that emerges is less crankypants than hopemongering: “I want to do something I know will last after I leave,” Berry says. “…Something as powerful as ‘My Ding-A-Ling.”

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Elderism #73

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Possible Conversation Topics for the Upcoming Weekend

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Thought of the Day

A piece in Wednesday’s New York Times reported that according to a study published by The New England Journal of Medicine, “patients who began receiving palliative care immediately upon diagnosis not only were happier, more mobile and in less pain as the end neared – but they also lived nearly three months longer.” The study showed that patients with fast-growing lung cancer who received treatment for the physical and psychological symptoms of the disease experienced “less depression and happier lives as measured on scales for pain, nausea, mobility, worry, and other problems.”

Contrary to the rumors that engulfed the debate over last year’s health care reform - “Death Panels” looking to “pull the plug” on Granny - the study showed that proper end-of-life care could actually be more effective in extending life than typical treatment. The authors theorized that “patients whose pain is treated often sleep better, eat better, and talk more with relatives,” minimizing their depression, which has been “known to shorten life.” Also, those who had undergone counseling and had discussed their options at length with their doctor typically chose to forego more aggressive treatments as their condition worsened, keeping them out of hospitals, which “are dangerous places for very sick people; they may get fatal blood infections, pneumonia or bedsores, or simply be overwhelmed by the powerful drugs and radiation attacking their cancer.”

And over at Salon.com, Mary Elizabeth Williams has declared the week following her cancer diagnosis “the best week of [her] kickass life.” After announcing that her doctor had discovered melanoma on her scalp, Ms. Williams received an overwhelming number of emails, phone calls, and visitors with bottles of wine in hand. Strangers wrote in with everything from their “own stories of living with disease and beating the odds” to recommendations for “alternative healers in Illinois.” Her friends offered her the use of their medical marijuana cards and assured her that “wig sex is hot.” Though she has yet to undergo surgery, and is even unsure about how far the disease has spread, Ms. Williams writes that the love coming from the people around her has “kicked lousy news in the face” and given her the strength to tell cancer that it “picked the wrong crazy bitch to mess with.”

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Cancer: The Upside

And other possible topics of conversation here.

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10 Things to Talk About This Weekend

That’s right. While every other 86 year-old was spending his birthday at home, opening box-set after box-set of Ken Burns documentaries, and gumming down sugar-free birthday cake, Sen. Lautenberg was at Radio City Music Hall tearing it up with the First Lady of glam-rock-electro-pop-dance. When asked why he chose to attend the concert in the first place, the Senator, like most Gaga-goers, said he was looking for a bit of escape from the daily grind:

“Last week in Washington was like a bad romance. I wanted my birthday to be a little more fun.”

A Lady Gaga concert: More fun than sitting through an Appropriations Committee hearing.

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The Senator and the Bad Romance

Here is the second one that has run.  In it, we learn that my new mantra is something that Oprah Winfrey apparently once said about herself, “Oprah doesn’t do stairs.” My notion here is that, if you are asked to do anything you don’t wish to–clean the garage, have dinner in a neighboring state, turn the channel–simply reply, “Oprah doesn’t do stairs.” Then proceed as before.

UPDATE. Here are the columns for 4/22, 4/29, 5/6, 5/13, 5/20, 5/27, 6/3, 6/10, 6/16, 6/23, 6/30, 7/7, 7/14, 7/21, 7/29, 8/4, 8/11.

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I Go Columnar

It all airs this weekend on the public radio show, “Studio 360.” (The clip is here.). Hiss boom bah.

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La Symphonie Radiateure

At the risk of being repetitive, not to mention braggy, I thought I’d re-post some of the reviews of the book, for those who have just arrived at the party.

Here’s Publishers Weekly calling it one of the Best Books of 2008 (somewhat  strangely, as the book came out in January, 2009). Here’s some hearty meat-and-potatoes from Time magazine’s website, and a steaming bowl of bouilliabaise from NPR’s Book We Like. Laura Miller’s Salon.com piece makes most other reviews seem like book reports by comparison. The Vanity Fair review isn’t online but you can get a taste here. Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time Out New York–you are all my children. The Guardian spells “marvellous” with two l’s–you’ll want to roll that second “l” as if your tongue were cradling a lychee or stray eyeball. And everybody loves a lady named Oprah.

I greet you.

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To the Best of Our Knowledge

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How To Break Up the Banks