Aging like a fine wine - Part 1..........

 

All twenty here too.  Well, actually on #12, I recorded music from the radio to a reel-to-reel tape recorder, not a cassette.   Concerning typewriters - earned beer money in college by typing a friend's twice per week three page psychology papers.   Learned some psychology along the way.  It was a win-win-win.  Concerning maps - still prefer to look at a large scale paper map to get the "lay of the land" before setting off on a new journey.  Helps.  

The more things change..........................

 

.......................the more they stay the same:

Still, he preferred the nomination of Seward, whom he viewed as a real Republican, to the nomination of Bates or Bell, the elderly conservatives whose names were often mentioned that Spring.  "I have lost patience with what I hear of hunting of the fossils," Chase wrote to a friend.  "It will do for paleontologists but not for Republicans."

-Walter Stahr, Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival.  The setting is the campaign for the Republican presidential candidate in 1860.

Aging like a fine wine.............

 ...............five ways to keep your brain happy.

Probably some truth here..............

    via

Aging gracefully...............................................?

Of course, Hillary will turn 69 in October.   As a 64-year-old, I don't mind at all having these two candidates push back on the definition of "old".


thanks Ann

This is absolutely not true.......................

........................................We didn't have shag carpet.

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Keeping up with us "Boomers"...............

       Average boomer net worth, which was over $200,000 pre-recession, is now only $143,000.  The median outstanding mortgage balance for a 50-to-69-year-old is up from $48,743 in 1992 to $118,000 -- and 56% say they may apply for another mortgage.  "Boomers are just not planning that far ahead for some of the health issues and limitations they will face later in life," says Jeremy Burbank, a vice president at Neilson.  "They look around and have a general reticence for things that are labeled as seniors products, including housing.  Even with possible renovations to their homes, they're focused on updates instead of aging-friendly features.  They just aren't ready to settle yet."
-Robert Carr, as excerpted from this National Real Estate Investor essay

Doctrines...............................................

“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” 
-Henry Louis Mencken

cartoon via

This is what happens..................................

..........................when a country stops making babies.

In 2012, the land of the rising sun saw sales of adult diapers exceed those of baby diapers... and as the following chart from The Wall Street Journal shows, that trend is rapidly occurring in the land of the free...

Story, including interesting chart, here.

via maggie's farm

Archbishop Ussher..................call your office

The age of rocks:

The age of the Earth is 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years  (4.54 × 10⁹ years ± 1%).^[1][2][3]
-Wikipedia,   more on the story here

As we first learned from Frederic March in Inherit the Wind, Archbishop James Ussher calculated, in the mid-1600's, that the earth was approximately 4,000 years old.  It is an interesting story.  Ussher's wiki is here.  A few excerpts here:

"Ussher now concentrated on his research and writing and returned to the study of chronology and the church fathers. After a 1647 work on the origin of the Creeds, Ussher published a treatise on the calendar in 1648. This was a warm-up for his most famous work, the Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world"), which appeared in 1650, and its continuation,  Annalium pars postierior, published in 1654. In this work, he calculated the date of the Creation to have been nightfall preceding 23 October 4004 BC." 

"Ussher's work is sometimes associated with Young Earth Creationism, which holds that the universe was created, not billions of years ago, but thousands. But while calculating the date of the Creation is today considered a controversial activity, in Ussher's time such a calculation was still regarded as an important task, one previously attempted by many Post-Reformation scholars, such as Joseph Justus Scaliger and physicist Isaac Newton."

"Ussher's chronology represented a considerable feat of scholarship: it demanded great depth of learning in what was then known of ancient history, including the rise of the Persians, Greeks and Romans, as well as expertise in the Bible, biblical languages, astronomy, ancient calendars and chronology. Ussher's account of historical events for which he had multiple sources other than the Bible is usually in close agreement with modern accounts – for example, he placed the death of Alexander in 323 BC and that of Julius Caesar in 44 BC."

Say what you will about the Presidency..............

......................................but it certainly seems to age a man.

George W. Bush               2000

George W. Bush        2008

Barack Obama                      2008

Barack Obama                           2014

Sacred memory.................................

“You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

Agreement..................................

"Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong. Let them agree to differ; for who knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a form of agreement rather than a form of difference?"
-Robert Louis Stevenson, as excerpted from Crabbed Age and Youth

cartoon via

Here is a novel idea...............................

"But governments should focus not on redistributing income but on generating more of it by reforming retirement and education."
-as excerpted from the Leaders column, "A billion shades of grey," in the April 26th The Economist

There's a few who question that I have........

via

My story ... and I'm sticking to it...........

via

On schooling..........................

When I was young my teachers were old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung.
I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.
I go to school to youth to learn the future.

-Robert Frost

Thrive....................

I have become a fan of, and a regular visitor to,  David Kanigan's Tumblr.  Here of late, it has become apparent that David has been deeply dipping into Florida Scott-Maxwell's Measure of My Days.  Not being familiar with that work, the Colossus Amazon was consulted.  Since the spot price on a new hardback copy was $77.10, I did the next best thing and (sorry Jeff) Kindleized it.  Here is the opening paragraph:

We who are old know that age is more than a disability.  It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high.  If it is a long defeat, it is also a victory, meaningful for the initiates of time, if not for those who have come less far.

Expect more.

Family Reunion......................

The week in August you come home,

adult, professional, aloof,

we roast and carve the fatted calf

—in our case home-grown pig, the chine

garlicked and crisped, the applesauce

hand-pressed. Hand-pressed the greengage wine.

Nothing is cost-effective here.

The peas, the beets, the lettuces

hand sown, are raised to stand apart.

The electric fence ticks like the slow heart

of something we fed and bedded for a year,

then killed with kindness’s one bullet

and paid Jake Mott to do the butchering.

In winter we lure the birds with suet,

thaw lungs and kidneys for the cat.

Darlings, it’s all a circle from the ring

of wire that keeps the raccoons from the corn

to the gouged pine table that we lounge around,

distressed before any of you was born.

Benign and dozy from our gluttonies,

the candles down to stubs, defenses down,

love leaking out unguarded the way

juice dribbles from the fence when grounded

by grass stalks or a forgotten hoe,

how eloquent, how beautiful you seem!

Wearing our gestures, how wise you grow,

ballooning to overfill our space,

the almost-parents of your parents now.

So briefly having you back to measure us

is harder than having let you go.

-Maxine Kumin

Three of our four kids were home this weekend.  

Feeling the truth of the last five lines.

Thanks for the introduction Jeff.  

Just a bit......................

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