Articles.
Literally, thousands of articles about aging are published weekly. Here are a few of our favorite sources and articles.
Next Avenue is PBS’s first and only national journalism service for people in the latter half of their lives. Their tagline is, “Where grownups keep growing.” You can find fresh information daily on just about any topic relevant to aging. They write, “Every day, we invite readers to consider what is next, what lies just ahead and what will be revealed in their lives.” Don’t miss it!
Sage-ing International is a nonprofit dedicated to connecting elders and supporting spiritual growth and development. Each issue of Sage-ing's quarterly newsletter, The Communicator is devoted to one "Quality of a Sage in Service." You can find resources on Deep Listening here, on Compassion here, on Joyfulness here, and on Peacefulness here. More to come! Stay tuned.
I've written a few articles for an emerging magazine for millennial women, called The Brick. You can find my articles -- "Big Worries & Good News about Healthy Aging," "The World in a Drop of Water, Our Lives in a Moment's Choice," and "Waking Up Every Day without Aging" -- right here. I might pick up writing for The Brick again after my work on the 2020 is behind me.
Thank you, journalist Nancy Branka and Startup Decoder for this terrific article, "Five Articles about Employment Over 50 That Won't Depress You." The links are terrific, the news is pretty good, and Startup Decoder itself is great support for mid- to late-career people in tech! For more on continuing to work through your 50s and beyond, see my Resources page.
Great choreographer Twyla Tharp says "Keep It Moving" in this interview with PBS Newshour (republished in Next Avenue). I do everything she says! You don't want to miss this.
In September 2019, the New York Times published a special section titled, "The New Retirement." It collects several articles published over the last few years, along with some brand-new material on saving, discovering what's next, and re-thinking the whole project of retirement.
Encore.org is the home of an initiative called Gen2Gen, created to encourage individuals and organizations to link generations in fun, mutually supportive, and productive relationships. This report is a terrific guide for public-sector innovators looking for ways to connect the generations. This link takes you through the 64-page document chunk by chunk.
This 2014 spread from the New York Times Magazine, titled "Old Masters. After 80 Some People Don't Retire. They Reign," is a fascination. Very brief interviews accompany great photos by Erik Madigan Heck of artists, legislators, financiers, athletes, and others in their 80s and 90s. In his wonderful introductory essay, Lewis Lapham quotes the advice given by the wizard Merlyn to the young King Arthur in T.H. White's novel, The Once and Future King: "Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting." Lapham cites this as "the lesson I’m now almost old enough to learn: that the tree of knowledge and the fountain of youth are one and the same." The interviews with the luminaries in the article certainly seem to validate that lesson.
Psychologist Mary Pipher (author of several books, most famously, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Lives of Adolescent Girls) writes in the New York Times opinion pages about "The Joy of Being a Woman in Her 70s." Personally, I think Pipher is a little cavalier about the use of "we": not all of 70-year-old women are as sanguine about their age as she describes. Still, it's a good read, and food for thought.
The incomparable writer Maria Popova, creator of the astounding blog, Brainpickings, regularly delivers nuggets of brilliance into the mailboxes of subscribers. Several friends forwarded to me Popova's beautiful brief piece on author and activist Grace Paley (1922-2007), who wrote with piercing intelligence, in this instance on the art of growing older. (In the photo on the left, Paley is in the dark coat in the middle). A warning about Brainpickings: Popova's links take you to the most fascinating places. You might need to schedule some time for wandering . . . .
In "No Country for Old Age," published in The Hedgehog Review, University of Virginia professor Joseph E. Davis nails how badly wrong contemporary American culture is for us as we age. He writes, "Current constructions of old age in individualistic terms of self-reliance, the fit body, productive accomplishments, or an imperative to deny or defeat aging technologically cannot but deepen our predicament and the need to render it invisible. These constructions . . . leave us hemmed in by a predatory commercial culture, a punishing ideology of health, fewer and weaker social ties, an ethic of active striving and mastery, and a mechanistic picture of ourselves." He points toward spiritually healthier directions. This article dovetails perfectly with Dr. Bill Thomas's discussion of denialist, realist, and enthusiast approaches to aging.
