Category: aging

  • Age is relative

    Because I have a birthday coming up, I chuckled when I read this line from Margareta Magnusson, a Swedish writer. “If you are over eighty, even a 76-year-old is young.” –Joy

  • Birthdays are okay

    Miss Manners says it’s okay to grow older. In the January 31, 2023, issue of The Dallas Morning News, Miss Manners comments: “It is surely one of the silliest prejudices in modern society that growing older is considered so unfortunate a condition that it is supposed to be a compliment to pretend that it did…

  • As old as you feel

    A British magazine wanted to honor Queen Elizabeth, who is 95 and will celebrate 70 years as queen in 2022, as “Oldie of the Year.” Elizabeth declined the honor. “Her Majesty believes you are as old as you feel, as such The Queen does not believe she meets the relevant criteria to be able to…

  • Standing for DACA

    In 2018, Nancy Pelosi took advantage of a House rule that allows the Speaker to talk for “one magic minute.” As long as she keeps speaking and doesn’t take a break, she can keep going as long as she keeps standing. Nancy gave the longest filibuster-style speech in the House in at least a century.…

  • Still running at 103

    Julia Hawkins is a role model for all of us. At 103, she finished the 50-meter and 100-meter dashes at the National Senior Games in Albuquerque last month. She is the oldest woman to compete on an American track. Hawkins, a retired teacher, also does yard work and cares for 30 bonsai bushes.

  • Sharpened by age

    Monet painted most of his water-lily paintings when he was in his 70s—and 80s. “My sensitivity, far from diminishing, has been sharpened by age,” he said. I saw 20 of Monet’s water-lily paintings at a new exhibit “Monet—The Late Years” at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. –Joy

  • The shady side of 50

    “The heyday of a woman’s life is the shady side of 50.” Those are words of wisdom from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist and abolitionist, who died in 1902.

  • Keep walking!

    I’ve been traveling a bunch—which has interfered with my daily walks. But, I’m walking again—every morning. I recently read an article about Kenneth Cooper, age 87, the Father of Aerobics, in The Dallas Morning News. “You don’t stop exercising when you get old,” Cooper says. “You get old when you stop exercising.” –Joy

  • Jane Goodall at 84

    Jane Goodall, age 84, spends 300 days a year traveling around the world speaking to people and encouraging them to help save chimpanzees and the environment. “I think how lucky I have been,” she writes in My Life with the Chimpanzees. “I spent years and years doing what I wanted to do most of all—being…

  • Going “full steam”

    Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 84, but she’s not planning to retire. She has a standard answer for interviewers who ask how long she plans to stay on the Supreme Court, reports The Dallas Morning News. She will keep working as long as she can go “full steam.”