Elderism #100

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”

–Eleanor Roosevelt.

Elderism #99

“…[O]ne critical measure of the health of a modern democracy is its ability to legitimately extract taxes from its own elites.”

–Philosopher Francis Fukuyama, in an essay in the current issue of the “American Interest” re whether or not the U.S. is a plutocracy.

This Week in Old

– Bernie Madoff is miffed that he spent all his stamps on that jar of toilet wine for nothing. (Gawker)

– “Precious Moments” figurines will always be the safest investment in Boca Raton. (CNN)

– Barbara Walters was only joking when she told Brian Williams that he’s feasting on her table scraps. (New York Post)

– Even Pat Roberston wants to tone down sentencing for marijuana possession. (Los Angeles Times)

– Billy the Kid may soon be just another fine, upstanding, law-abiding citizen. (Reuters)

– “Yes, Virginia’s great-great-granddaughter, there is still a Santa Claus.” (New York Times)

Fodder for the Conversationally Impaired

Stuff to talk about here. (New York Times)

Such a Little Fatal Pause

In the current New York Review of Books, critic Helen Vendler has written a somewhat thorny review of “The Best of It,” the new collection from former Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. But we get the full “After Zeno,” a lovely elegy that Ryan wrote for her father when she was twenty:

When he was

I was.

But I still am

And he is still.

–

Where is is

when is was?

I have an is

but where is his?

–

Now here–

no where:

such a little fatal pause.

–

There’s no sense

in past tense.

This Week in Old

-Jimmy Carter goes with the “short answer” when discussing his biggest failures as president. (Big Think)

-Joshua Hammer airs out Nelson Mandela’s dirty Batik shirts. (The New Republic)

-Meghan Daum’s reality check on Larry King’s legacy. (Los Angeles Times)

-Early-detection Alzheimer’s tests are turning into a moral dilema for doctors. (New York Times)

-CNN and the Morgan Freeman death-tweet hoax. (New York Daily News)

-Scientists quit rehearsing their Yorrick monologues long enough identify the embalmed head of France’s King Henri IV. (Washington Post)

Elderism #98

“Why would anyone be interested in wiggling?”

-My mother, on overhearing that my boyfriend is considering taking up whittling.

Elderism #97

“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

–Albert Einstein.

I wholeheartedly agree. At age 16, desperate to be liked by my peers, I was a bit of a goer, and managed to get myself kicked out of the boarding school, Hotchkiss, for party animalism. It took only a year or two more of maturation for me to crystallize many of my prejudices.

This Week in Old

-Prehistoric humans may have been hunted by giant storks. It turns out your crippling fear of Big Bird is instinctual. (LiveScience)

-Pair of Queen Elizabeth II’s underwear up for auction expected to go anywhere between one “Oh my!” to two “Why I never!’ (New York Magazine)

-U.S. life expectancy dips by about one month. (AARP)

-Helen Thomas says that Congress is “owned by the Zionists.” (CNN)

-80-year-old ex-sailor auctioning off an old watch on eBay starts the bidding at $9.95, sells it for $66,100. (Hodinkee)

-Noah’s Ark-themed amusement park is coming to Kentucky. (New York Times)

-This Grandma bumps and grinds something besides the bones in her knees against one another. (Gawker)

Elderism #96

“As you know, no one over 30 is afraid of tittle-tattle. I find it much less difficult to strangle a man than to fear him.”

–Queen Christina of Sweden