This website would like to officially apologize for its recent foray into the overtly up-to-the-minute, the decidedly topical. Our stories on the death of the writer John Barth, the Republican presidential candidate and the solar eclipse were, we insist, just momentary lapses from our traditional focus on existential kvetching about being, somehow, old. We will now return to our regular diet (Mediterranean, low in sodium, high in Omega-3s), but cannot promise that we may not again stumble into the annoyingly contemporary.