I’ve been steering clear of the Methuselah-minded crowd for whom the grail is the extension of the human lifespan. For one thing, the science is muddy. Secondly (and very scientifically), they give me the creeps. Thirdly, the more important  question, it seems to me, is how to improve the quality of the additional 30 years of life that refrigeration and clean water have just delivered to us.  

Older people are not a homogeneous group —  something I’d never thought about until I started this project. In fact, writes Dr. Robert in The Longevity Revolution, “there is increasing variability among people as they grow older. Children are much more like one another than are ‘the elderly.’”

Hats off to Susan Llewellyn. In a New York Times Letter to the Editor today, she called New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on his response (above) to reporters pressing him about a recent spate of offensive remarks. “It reads a lot like, ‘I am 67 years old and too old to change.’” Llewellyn commented.  “As someone who has two years on His Honor, I still hope never to use my age as an excuse for my attitudes!”

"There is no brick wall." So speaketh the noted demographer and biogerontologist Jay Olshansky, referring to the fact that humans have no “death genes”, nor “aging genes” that regulate the process of making you old. He was speaking at the 2009 Age Boom Academy at the International Longevity Center, tp which director Bob Butler was kind enough to welcome me back as an alumna. Some other compelling facts from Olshansky’s talk, which was titled “The Demographic Perspective on Longevity”:

The card sharks of Laguna Woods, an Orange County, CA, retirement community, can’t even play bridge in peace. They’re part of the world’s largest decades-long study of health and mental acuity in the elderly. Begun by University of Southern California researchers in 1981, the 90+ Study has tracked more than 14,000 people aged 65 and older — the first group “large enough to provide a glimpse into the lucid brain at the furthest reach of human life,” as Benedict Carey wrote in the New York Times.

To be precise, a Visiting Fellow at the law school’s Information Society Project (ISP) for the 2009-10 academic year.  The ISP describes itself as an intellectual center that “brings together students, scholars, activists, and policymakers to define the problems and identify the solutions on topics stemming from the interplay between memes, genes, and bits in our contemporary information society.” Depending on the line-up of speakers and activities, I’ll probably head up to New Haven once a week or so, and will be tracking down scholars working on age-related employment discrimination and ageism in general. 

Thirty-five years ago, in his landmark portrait of the turbluent ‘60s, historian Theodore Roszak coined the term “counter culture.” Now he’s publishing a sequel of sorts, The Making of an Elder Culture, a look at the potential for the change-makers of yore to shape an elder-dominated society. How likely is it, he asks, that “a generation numbering millions — who were ready to doubt everything and try anything — will settle, in their later years, for their parents’ idea of retirement any more than they settled, in their youth, for their parents’ idea of success and happiness?”

If I had to live the rest of my life without breaking a sweat, I could cope. Strapping lads could carry me up subway steps on a litter. Somehow, I’d get my brain from place to place. Vigor, agility, beauty . . . those, too, I can acknowledge losing, though not without a struggle. They don’t hold a candle to my deepest terror: that I’ll lose my mind. Just how reasonable is this fear?

That’s a quote from neurologist Rita Levi Montalcini, the oldest living Nobel laureate.  Don’t miss the photograph, which shows the impossibly elegant scientist and politician sipping a glass of bubbly at her 100th birthday party in Rome yesterday. (It probably doesn’t hurt to be Italian.) Do, however, be irked by the pesky “still” in the title of the story:  “Italian scientist, turning 100, still works.”

I’ve been working on the Introduction for the book proposal, and am delighted by the fact that a number of ideas fell nicely into place. One of them was the framing of three central paradoxes of aging well.  The first I knew intuitively.  The third one was a complete surprise when I encountered it through my reading; then (duh!) I realized that it mirrored my own experience. The second one I only figured out a few weeks ago, while trying to synthesize research findings.