I met the incomparable Eddie Mae Holmes, a barber in Eddie Mae HolmesRichmond, California, through my friend Silver Rose. So I followed right up on her email suggestion to get in touch with a psychotherapist-turned-filmmaker named Laurie Schur. Schur is at work on a documentary called “The Beauty of Aging” about women 80 and up who’ve aged well.  Schur’s engaging short, “Greedy for Life,” highlights two of them.

These videos of Olga Georgia came to me via her daughter Olivia, who thought that Olga might not fit my demographic unless I counted her vivid imagination. Surely all viewers will agree, however, that this woman is hard at work. She’s 85, and lives next door to Olivia, who shot the video.

One of the pleasures of this project is listening to the history that my subjects have lived and witnessed. One of the difficulties is weighing how much to include, and my general rule has been less not more.  When I interviewed master ceramicist Eva Zeisel, for example, I learned that she had been involved with novelist and essayist Arthur Koestler and figures in his masterwork Darkness at Noon, which George Orwell drew upon when writing 1984. 

On Veterans Day, PBS aired a documentary called "The Way We Get By."  Much of it was shot in Bangor, Maine’s tiny airport, where flights from military bases all over the U.S. and inbound from Iraq and Afghanistan stop to refuel. Filmmaker Aron Gaudet’s mother Joan is one of the Maine Troop Greeters:  a group of older men and women who’ve taken it upon themselves to shake the hands of every soldier passing through.

Angelo Mucci had served in the Army Air Corps and was enrolled in college when he met Rose. “I thought, 'You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get a job and go to work and get married," he told me. "We had a great big Italian wedding. It was just outstanding. You weren’t there.”

Betty Soskin and I have been in touch, and she pointed me to this video about her life and work as an outreach specialist  and interpreter at Rosie the Riveter WWII/ Home Front National Historic Park in Richmond, CA. Her long history in the area makes her an invaluable asset, not least because, as she puts it, “I’m at an age where I know how all the stories turned out.”

Wincingly titled “The Loin in Winter,” a story on the front page of the New York Times describes Hugh Hefner’s work-, travel-, and fun-filled life.  Granted, not too many octogenarians would have a slew of 20-somethings eager to move in, as did Hef after breaking up with his “No. 1 girlfriend” last fall.  (He picked three blondes; don’t miss the photo.)

I’m lucky to be working with writer-editor and extremely sharp friend Marisa Bowe, who co-edited a terrific book called Gig: Americans Talk About Their Job at the Turn of the Millennium. She’s been reviewing my interview transcripts, and pulled the following quote out of my talk with Eddie Lewis, who worked for forty-three years as a milkman before getting hired by the local funeral home. “How come you didn’t get a job with better hours?” I asked, after prying out of him the fact that he’d never liked the 2:30AM wake-up call. “I don’t know. I never thought of it,” Lewis replied.

I’m deep into the book proposal, currently wrangling with the chapter on Identity (the fifth Terror of Aging on my list being “I’ll be invisible.")  Late life puts a different spin the link between work and identity, and I really liked Dave Davison’s take on things.  I interviewed the Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist in his gracious living room not far from the Stanford University campus.