Bernie Sanders has been called “elderly.” I don’t think so. I was enjoying Michael Kazin’s New York Times Magazine column about the term “populist” in American political history, a term that this election cycle has been applied to both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. I love language and history, so I was enjoying Kazin’s romp […]
The Middle Ages
The Conversation
Last week, a friend told me that her elderly father whose kidneys are failing is refusing dialysis. “It sounds like it’s time to have The Conversation,” I said. “I know,” she sighed. The Conversation, of course, is about Dying, and talking about it with an elderly parent can make you nostalgic for the awkward conversations […]
Typing & Kissing
The two most important skills I learned in high school were typing and kissing. Considering I was on the fast track for college and not secretarial school, I’m slightly astonished to admit that these skills have proved more useful than learning to solve a quadratic equation or reading Hamlet. It turns out that life is […]
Self Portraits of the Middle Ages
The art of self-portraiture has advanced significantly since the Middle Ages, from panel portraits by European artists in the fifteenth century to high-resolution videos of internal organs of middle aged Americans in the twenty-first. Not content even with the digitally enhanced selfie, healthy middle-aged people with health insurance undergo significant, self-imposed discomfort in order to see […]
Retirement?
Recently, I’ve been attending retirement parties with the frequency I once attended weddings. Unlike weddings, however, these parties have been lighthearted, informal and fun. They’ve been free of the anxieties about the future, finances, fertility and fidelity – those aspects of matrimony that make for its poor statistical success. Instead, these parties have been celebrations […]
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