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. 

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.”

“The people of early America exalted old age; their descendants have made a cult of youth.” That history, and its social consequences, is the subject of David Hackett Fischer’s terrific book, Growing Old in America. It’s always seemed a bum deal that aging Americans face a double whammy: physical decay coupled with social invisibility.