Ever since I turned 70, which was four years ago, I have been attending a lot of “Celebrations of Life.” They always include many of my living friends and one dead one.

We gather and share memories of the person we are celebrating. Sometimes we cry, but most of the time we wish we knew the person better—had spent more time with them, visited them when they were sick, reached out and created friend time while they were alive.

I always feel very guilty at these events because I realize I could have done better while they were alive to let them know how much I would miss them when they left. . . .

On Sunday, at age 82,

It had gotten old

As all things do

So, on Monday

I turned the page

And moved into a different age

Now, tra-la-la, tra-la-lee,

I’m setting sail

At 83 . . . .

(click for complete poem)

We spend a lot of time lately and rightly worrying about the challenges and horrors of our day: climate change, war, pandemics, the rise of fascism worldwide, etc. It is certainly difficult to see progress through the miasma of such modern horrors, but it is there.

As a generation we have witnessed considerable progress—progress sometimes at a cost, progress sometimes woefully inadequate, progress usually inequitably distributed, progress not without some backsliding—but progress nonetheless.

Our generation, born between World War II and Woodstock, has lived through a period of major, perhaps unprecedented, growth in the economy and of similarly substantial improvements in medicine and life expectancy, in living standards and physical comforts, in transportation and, of course, in technology.

We experienced considerable improvements, as well, in civil rights and in sexual and cultural freedom. We even witnessed, globally in particular, a major, though still woefully incomplete, reduction in extreme poverty. . . .

Because of back beat, our generation lived through one of the most consequential evolutions in popular music, a change that profoundly affected and reflected our view of the world.

What Is Back Beat?

Quick definition: “back beat” is a musical term that establishes a particular structure for a song.

Think about the structure of measures in songs: Four beats to a measure: 1-2-3-4.

In the music of our parents’ generations and before, the emphasis in a song would be on notes 1 and 3. 1-2-3-4.

      Technology is wonderful. It helps keep us alive. It also helps keep the idea of us alive after we’re dead.  

      My voice mailbox now includes four messages from people who are no longer living. Some of them, in fact, have been dead for some time. I haven’t erased the messages although they fill up space in the mailbox and there is no practical purpose for them to still be there.

      But I still don’t want to get rid of them, erase them from my machine, delete them from my life, and I know I am not alone in doing this. Or not doing this. . . .

I am not known for the power of my memory, but I can tell you that the first time I saw the Rolling Stones (Mick and Keith plus Brian, Bill and Charlie—the original five lads) was 55 and a half years ago. It was easy to remember: Thanksgiving Day, my junior year of college, Madison Square Garden.

Keith was still on the upward slope of his career as an addict then. Mick, to the best of my recollection, was considerably less concerned in 1969 with our feelings as an audience, less likely to inquire, at frequent intervals, as he did last night “are you having a good time”?

The Stones when I saw them that year, had released, within the previous five months, three singles: “Jumping Jack Flash,” “Street Fighting Man” and “Sympathy for the Devil.” …

A poem by Mandy Kahn:

Wait, Survive this.

The old rules

die faster

than you do.

Breathe . . .

On the left in the above photograph is Ken Kesey: ace novelist, but also LSD aficionado, leader of the Merry Pranksters and the San Francisco Acid Tests in the mid-1960s, and captain of the original, brightly painted, used school bus, which traversed the country in 1964.

Kesey is the star of the best book written about the Hippies: Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Along with LSD guru Timothy Leary (whom Kesey and his bus visited in New York) and Jerry Garcia (whose band gained renown at Kesey’s Acid Tests), Kesey has a claim on the designation, if there were such a thing, Hippie # 1.

But my point here is that on the right in the above photograph, standing next to Ken Kesey, is a remarkably strong link between the Hippies and their precursors, the Beatniks: Neal Cassady….

The COVID 19 Pandemic has waned, but at the United Nations General Assembly Hall the list of speakers includes one unexpected individual, Virus Coronensis.

When it comes his turn to speak, no one appears at the podium, but a slide appears on the screen behind it, showing the now well-recognized drawing of the corona virus. Although he can’t be seen, Mr. Coronensis addresses the hall.

“There has been great suffering in the world due to the pandemic attributed to my fellow microbes. As much as you may not believe, we viruses, bacteria, amoebae and other micro-organisms are suffering, too.

“Please believe me when I say that we are not at all happy about our finding ourselves entering your bodies and multiplying at such a great rate. This is as great a tragedy for us as it is for you. And, worst of all, the planet that we all share is suffering as well. . . .

• In his Six-Chart Sunday newsletter, Washington strategist Bruce Mehlman spells out startling differences that have emerged between older and younger generations across a striking array of topics. . . . via Axios

• The end of pen and pad

• Why is everyone high on kale? I can't stand the stuff. The texture is crinkly, and the taste is bitter. If I see kale soup on another menu, I'll puke. Whatever happened to spinach? It's delicious, nutritious and look what it did for Popeye.

• I love submarine movies...all of them, from Run Silent, Run Deep to Das Boot (including the director's cut which runs over three hours), to Cary Grant in Operation Petticoat. Don't have a clue why. After visiting the Intrepid, I know I wouldn't want to spend the night in one.

• I spend huge amounts of money on designer clothes online at Neiman Marcus (Needless Markup), then when it's time to finalize the sale, I cancel it. . . .

Being able to enroll in Medicare is one of the major benefits of getting older, right after qualifying for the five-percent-off senior discount at the supermarket.

Like many of us, I thought enrolling in Medicare would be easy. I figured I’d have to prove I was 65 by remembering who won Super Bowl III (the New York Jets) and who was the Beatles’ drummer before Ringo Starr (Pete Best), but then I’d automatically be covered because … well, that was the American way.

Well, not exactly. Just like the American way, with its tolls every few miles, dangerous curves up ahead, and lack of a single clean rest stop, Medicare frequently has co-pays every few visits, dangerous deductibles up ahead and also not a single clean rest stop. . . .

In the mid-1950s I had a summer job working evenings at a Foster's Freeze at the then-minimum wage of $1 an hour. I had attended grammar school in Beverly Hills and was going to Beverly Hills High School.

Although Beverly Hills was and is well known for its celebrities and fabulous homes, I lived in a part with modest single-family homes and nondescript apartment buildings. The celebrities and the wealthy lived north of Santa Monica Boulevard and the really big names and wealthy lived north of Sunset Boulevard.

I lived south where Beverly Hills almost ends. There were four grammar schools—two in the wealthier areas and two in the middle-class type areas—but all students went to Beverly Hills High School, which was like a private school.

That summer a club I believe called the Executive Men's Club of Beverly Hills was offering an incredibly reduced price (like $10 a month) for teenagers who lived in Beverly Hills. . . .

There are now six pills in the morning and four pills at night. There are pills to help me sleep and pills for high blood pressure, pills for anxiety, pills for heart failure, pills for coronary artery disease and pills to lower cholesterol. On the weekend, I set out my pill case and carefully place each of the ten pills in their allotted slots.

It takes me about ten or 12 minutes and I hate every minute of it.

I had always prided myself on how few pills I took, given my age. I’d see other people, people my age more or less, sit down to meals and go through the ritual and I felt, foolishly, morally superior. . . .

(Photo by Myriam Zilles on Unsplash)

by Mitchell Stephens

on Leaves and their fate

(Pondering,

not for the first

or last time,

aging.)

Click here to watch video.

What movie would you want—along with an iPad and electricity —on a desert island?

click here, and answer or see answers in the comments.

      You know the song. You probably like the song. Most do. I did.

      In fact, in an article on Judy Collins for this website, I called “Send in the Clowns,” written by Stephen Sondheim, “a song that makes it hard to imagine that there could be a better song.”

      But I have listened to it some more. I have thought about it some more.

      And I want to apologize. I was wrong.

      It is indeed possible to imagine numerous better songs than “Send in the Clowns” because there is an awful line in an important place in “Send in the Clowns”. . . .

(See the comments for an account of Sondheim’s own position on this song and the play it is from.)

We’re supposed to leave at 6.

      I am ready at a quarter to 6, sitting on the couch, waiting, waiting. My wife is almost ready, she says. It’s 5:50. And then she’s just about ready, at 5:58. At 6, she’ll be just a minute.

Then it’s 6:03 and then she needs to find her sunglasses and then it’s just about 6:05. We finally leave the house at 6:09, but who’s counting?

      I am, of course.. . . .

My grandchildren think I am a really cool person because they think my generation was a really cool generation.

Indeed, we were rebellious, outrageous and colorful. Our music still plays all the time everywhere, and the grandkids know the words. They have heard the stories about us heralding in the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, the Disability Rights Act, etc. They hear us tell stories about how we fought to end the unjust Vietnam war that was killing our classmates.

We marched, demonstrated, defied, rebelled and enjoyed being nude. It was all about freedom to be and do whatever we wanted.

And part of what we wanted was to do drugs. . . .

What am I writing about?  Oh yeah: That tendency we formerly middle-aged people have to . . . draw a blank, to forget, you know, a lot. Not only the name of that neighbor we bumped into outside but why we decided to go outside in the first place. Or, to put it more kindly, that annoying habit that names in particular but facts in general have of slipping from our aging minds.

      I’m writing, too, about that tendency many of us who reach ripe or over-ripe ages have to suspect that such recollection-fails might be indicative of incipient neurocognitive disorder: the dreaded dementia.

      But here’s a surprise: I’ve stumbled upon, of all things, some good news . . . .