Current research into the relation between work and longevity describes an intricate web. “A constellation of work-related factors — whether you're employed, how secure you are in your job, how much you enjoy your work — may influence both your day-to-day health and how long you live,” writes Katherine Hobson in Newsday.

That’s Truthdig’s headline for Ellen Goodman’s column, more moderately titled “The benefits of working longer” in the Boston Globe. Goodman points out the mixed message going out to older Americans:  keep working to lighten the load on the next generation / retire to make room for the young. While it’s true that workers in their 20’s are most vulnerable to layoffs, the notion that the employment of one group comes at the expense of another is a fallacy - and a persistently ageist one.  Furthermore, as recession looms, the notion that older workers are at liberty to choose whether or not to keep working on feels almost quaint, akin to the presumption that working mothers bail on bottle duty on a whim rather than out of economic necessity.  Goodman shrewdly calls out the policy-makers “revving up generational conflict” and calls on the baby boomers to “to make a virtue — or a revolution — out of the necessity of working longer.”  That’s doable.

Just coincidence that end-to-end stories in this week’s New Yorker magazine feature two men in full stride at 80? Street-fashion Photographer Bill Cunningham, who turns 80 this month, produces a wittily-themed, weekly feature for the New York Times and covers his beat on a bike. The other was architect Frank Gehry, whose field (unlike, say, mathematics) favors those over 50. “I have plenty of work,” he told critic Paul Goldberger at the star-studded eightieth birthday party he threw himself last week. “I don’t feel like eighty. I guess you never think you’re the age you are, and, as long as you don’t look in the mirror, you aren’t.”

For over a year, this blog has answered to the name of So When Are You Going to Retire? That’s what people kept asking my octogenarian in-laws who inspired this project — and who can’t quit, as I keep reminding them, because they have children to support.

Ruth Friendly is the Vice President and Editorial Director of Fred Friendly Seminars: award-winning television programs that explore ethical, legal and public policy questions. I met her through work, writing educational materials to accompany “Our Genes, Our Choices,” a seminar about the implications of genetic testing. I’m embarrassed to admit that before the first meeting, I assumed that as the founder’s widow, her role would be largely symbolic.

Having just returned from India, land of the over-the-top in so many ways, I wasn’t all that startled by a story in the Indian press about an octogenarian organ donor. Upon her death this month at 82, Gyanant Kaur donated both corneas and her liver to three different people.

I started this project with a hunch and some theories, and also with what I hoped was an open mind. I wanted my research to inform my thinking, not the other way around. A year later, with a 37 interviews and a lot of reading under my belt, I’m still navigating an immense territory. One thing did become clear: the book had to be more personal than originally envisioned. My voice, as I face my own fears about aging, needed to be a central part of the narrative.

till the end of January, in India, with the whole family.

I’ve just finished making my way through an excellent book: Aging Well by Dr. George E. Vaillant, a psychiatrist and the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development.  The study has used periodic interviews and questionnaires to track three groups of elderly men and women since 1937, making it the longest prospective study of physical and mental health in the world.

As a little girl in Missouri, Penny Kyle thought that teaching was “the greatest thing.” Seventy-plus years later, nestled in the study of her 1930s Tudor house in Detroit, she adds wryly, “I didn’t know any better. Well, teaching isn’t the greatest thing. It’s low pay, and it’s very difficult work.”