Reporter Pamela Paul kicked off a story in today’s New York Times Style section with the declaration that “most young people would prefer to be older and most old people yearn to be young.”  Actually, that’s not the case.  Aspects of youth do indeed appeal, but these are pangs, not ongoing yearnings.

When I told my brother Jarratt that I was starting to write about aging, he said, “I know this guy Bob Butler.  Want an introduction?”  I sure did.  The pioneering gerontologist died yesterday.  Butler was generous with preliminary advice, illuminating in a formal interview (he qualified, after all, as an octogenarian hard at work), magnanimous despite my lack of formal credentials, and unfailingly kind.

The heart of the matter, concisely put by the ILC-USA’s Executive Director Everette Dennis in his opening remarks at this annual journalism seminar, is the “perception of aging as a social problem versus as a great human achievement.”

Did anyone miss Betty White hosting Saturday Night Live on May 8th?  Now 88, which prompted her quip that there were a number of reasons to be glad to be on stage, the “Golden Girls” television veteran was superb, and garnered SNL its highest overnight ratings in 18 months.

Given my new tack, I thought it would be handy to understand the terms “geriatrics” and “gerontology” clearly. I knew that geriatricians were medical doctors, and Wikipedia puts the distinction clearly: “Geriatrics is a subspecialty of medicine that focuses on health care of the elderly. … The term geriatrics differs from gerontology, which is the study of the aging process itself.”   But check out the how Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 11th Ed., defines “geriatrics”

This weekend I presented my work for the first time, at the annual conference of the Council on Contemporary Families, a group of social scientists and practitioners whose work I greatly respect. The title of the talk was “The Value of Work in Late Life,” but I pulled a slight bait-and-switch, because it turns out that this project isn’t about work any more. It's about ageism, starting with our own internalized biases.  Here’s the ten-minute talk I gave:

Thanks to Sue Swartz for her kind words about this blog as Curator-of-the-Week for She Writes, a forum for women writers.  Quoting my observation that “Age is a frontier and these are our scouts,” Swartz writes, “Now that I’ve reached AARP membership age myself (if you don’t know what that is, you’re probably under 45), I find myself more interested in what happens to our lives at the point that we’re “supposed to” retire.

An entry in the New York Times Magazine’s annual Year in Ideas issue tackled the “reputational stigma” that penalizes people over 45 in today’s brutal job market. When economists pitted "seniors" (over 50) against "juniors" (under 30) in a set of decision-making tasks, the older group proved only “very slightly less” competitive. They also cooperated better, leading to the welcome conclusion that the ideal workforce consists of workers of all ages.

I'm still figuring out the structure of the book, but I know what I want its message to be. Here's a draft of the new Introduction:

The demographic good fortune of the baby boom generation has its dark side. Privileged and powerful, Americans came of age in an era of youth movements (never trust anyone over 30!) and we’ve worshipped at the shrine ever since.

Yesterday was the first day of my Visiting Fellowship at Yale Law School, where my colleagues are focused on the implications of new information technologies.   Like, say, Twitter. And sometimes the universe just hands you something, like this story about Twitter user Ivy Bean published by CNN on her 104th birthday.