The Island of Long Life

My sweetheart and I plan to marry when I’m 100 and he’s 107½. If we stay here in America, however, we might not still be alive in 2039, so maybe we should move to a Greek island called Ikaria which is near the coast of Turkey. That’s because people there live longer than those in most any other place in the world.

There are almost 10,000 Greek nationalists there, and they are said to reach 90 two and a half times as often as Americans. Of course they can still get diseases such as cancer, but for a number of reasons, they aren’t as apt to die from sickness as soon as the rest of us. For one thing, they eat less meat than most of us do. Instead, they eat a number of their island’s herbs which have strong antioxidant properties.

Folks in general also have a less stressful pattern. They get up later in the morning than we do, and they regularly take naps. Then in the evening they get together, drink wine, and have fun with their friends before a rather late bedtime. Also, they don’t care nearly as much as we do about the exact time for anything.  “Have you noticed that no one wears a watch here,” said Dr. Ilias Leriadis, one of the island’s few physicians. “When you invite someone to lunch, they might come at 10 a.m. or 6 p.m. We simply don’t care about the clock here.” In addition, approximately 80 percent of older folks still have sex regularly, and that is also said to prolong life.

According to a book by Dan Buettner called “The Blue Zones,” a man named Stamatis Moraitis had originally come from Ikaria to this country in 1943, at age 27. He eventually contracted lung cancer in 1976 and was told he wouldn’t even live for another year. When he learned that, he decided to take his wife back to his old country so that he could be buried there. He ended up surviving, however, for over 35 more years. He was 98 when he finally died, and his wife lived almost as long as he did.

Moraitis was of course very glad that he had moved back to Ikaria, and though he did come back to this country 25 years later to see doctors here, he announced, upon going back, that unlike him, all of his old American doctors had already died.

Apparently long-living isn’t new, either, on Ikaria.  In the 17th century, Joseph Georgirenes, the bishop of Ikaria, wrote, “The most commendable thing on this island, is their air and water, both so healthful that people are very long-lived, it being an ordinary thing to see persons in it of 100 years of age.”

The author Dan Buettner said on a TED talk that we have more control over how healthy we remain and long we live than we realize.  As he put it,  “Scientific studies suggest that only about 25 percent of how long we live is dictated by genes. The other 75 percent is determined by our lifestyles and the everyday choices we make.” By working with, rather than against, our biology, “we could add at least ten good years and suffer a fraction of the diseases that kill us prematurely.”

Though I truly doubt that Andrew and I will move to Ikaria, we certainly can try to make all efforts to survive until sometime after December 3, 2039. And that’s what counts!

Letter to a Korean Schoolgirl

The following was published some years ago in the Battle Creek Enquirer, before I started my regular posting of Linda Jo Scott's columns.

Back in the mid seventies I spent a year teaching English at a university in Seoul, Korea. I fondly remember the beautiful countryside and the high level of creativity evident in the art and architecture. But most of all, I remember the warmth of the Korean people. My colleagues invited our family into their homes; my students were very respectful and eager to  learn, and my neighbors generously helped me with shopping and cooking.

I wrote the following open letter to a particular young girl whom I observed during one of my many bus rides around Seoul. I don’t remember her name and perhaps never saw her more than once, but my letter to her appeared as one of my many columns in "The Korea Times.”

My dear young lady,

I just watched you give up your seat to an old woman with a bundle of cabbages in her hand, and I want to convey to you my admiration for this simple gesture.

I want to tell you that I think you are beautiful in your simple, long, gray school uniform, with your straight-cropped hair, your dark stockings, and your modest expression.

Your refusal to wear makeup or curl your hair--even on a Sunday afternoon--is admirable. You accept your role as a schoolgirl with such grace and simplicity, hoping, no doubt, that someday you will emerge from this somber cocoon into a beautiful and desirable woman. But not yet.

You were born some eight or nine years after your fathers and uncles fought together with some of my older friends for your freedom. And yet you are not naive. You have lived all of your life knowing that your freedom is precious, knowing that your people have been oppressed for most of their existence and will continue to live in danger. Saddest of all, your people seem always to have been the victims, never the aggressors.

Korea is like a young school girl, attacked time and again by hungry, possessive men, and yet she retains her purity and dignity.

Perhaps some of your own family are unknown to you because they live

in North Korea. Perhaps you will never know them.

You know that your city could be bombed anytime by the people of the north, and you know, also, that your own family might well not escape south of the Han River, for there are so many people, so few bridges. And, sad to say, there would be so little time.

And yet, my dear, you have such a calm about you. I feel as though I have seen you on a hundred streets of Seoul with your school chums, often walking arm in arm or hand in hand, with a serenity far beyond your years. I have never seen you girls put on airs; I have never even seen you laugh loudly.

Even now if I smile at you, you will only return a slight acknowledgment. I cannot speak your language, and so I must write to you in my own tongue, expressing the warm feeling that I, as an older sister from the West, have for you.

May you never lose your innate respect for those older than you. May

you someday become a wise mother who will pass on these values to her

children. And may your children grow and blossom in freedom.

Warmest greetings, Linda

I can only hope that this girl--now a woman of close to 60 years old, probably a mother and perhaps even a grandmother--is having a good life.

Albert Schweitzer Lived an Extraordinary Life

I still remember when Albert Schweitzer made his only trip to America. It was in 1949, back when I was just 9½ years old, and my mother and grandmother went to hear him speak in Chicago. They didn’t take me along because they thought I was too young. I’ve always regretted their not taking me, for I’ve admired Schweitzer tremendously all of my life and wish I had had that only chance to see him and hear him speak.

I’ve never heard of anyone as accomplished in as many different fields as he was, and I’ve also never known of anyone as generous and devoted to others.

It certainly helped his positive outlook that Schweitzer grew up in a loving family. His father was a Lutheran minister, and Schweitzer said often that his father was his best friend. In addition, his whole family was musical, and Schweitzer, who played piano and organ wonderfully, could easily have had a fine career as a musician.

He also studied philosophy and theology in both undergraduate and graduate school, and could have been a highly successful professor or minister as well. Then, at age 30, he decided to go to medical school for six more years, for though he continued to play music and to be fascinated by philosophy and theology, he had decided to devote himself instead to becoming a missionary doctor.

He eventually married a woman named Helene Bresslau who was an anaesthetist for surgical operations. Her family had been Jewish, but her father had his children baptized in 1866 at least partly because of anti-Semitism in Berlin. Schweitzer first met her in 1898, but they didn’t marry until 1912. A year later they went to Lambaréné, in Africa and set up the beginnings of their hospital. Sad to say, they soon had to go back to an internment camp in France during World War I because they were German.

Unfortunately Helene wasn’t able to stay in Africa as long as Albert because of her serious problems with tuberculosis. All the same, they were a happy, loving couple and had one child, Rhena, who was born in 1919. She became an American humanitarian activist, the director of the hospital her father founded in Africa and a key organizer of the fellowship that bears his name. Despite her health problems, Helene was always loving and helpful. In 1937, for example, she came to New York alone to tell Americans about her husband and to raise money for his work.

During his 50 years in Africa, Schweitzer often had more than 5,000 patients per year, at his hospital, including many with leprosy. He also allowed their families to stay at the hospital and eat with the patients. Many of those people in return worked in the hospital garden and helped Schweitzer share the vegetables not only with people but with cats, dogs, birds, fish, and other animals. They also helped with creating new buildings, especially after Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1953, including its monetary bonus.

I decided to write this column after watching two excellent films online about Schweitzer. The first one, which is called “Albert Schweitzer: Documentary,” is an hour and 20 minutes long and took six years to create, while Schweitzer was still alive. The second one, “My Life is My Argument,” is shorter but newer and also excellent. You can find them both simply by going to “Albert Schweitzer Youtube.”

I strongly recommend that your watch both films not only for information but for inspiration.

It's time to drink in the wonders of tea

I have been drinking a lot of tea ever since I was a young child, back in the mid 40s. My dear grandmother was a constant tea drinker, and I guess I started drinking it mainly because I wanted to be just like her.

For me tea is a perfect drink. It helps me become awake in the morning; it has no calories, and therefore it doesn’t put on weight, and it makes me remember my wonderful grandmother. Unfortunately, I have to drink mostly decaf tea these days after breakfast, so as not to interrupt my sleep. Decaf is delicious, too, however, and it doesn’t taste too much different from real tea.

I just read a really good book on the subject, “The Chinese Art of Tea,” by John Blofeld, a British writer who has spent much of his life in Asia. He lived from 1913 to 1987, drank a lot of tea for over 50 years and felt strongly that it kept him healthy and happy.

Blofeld quoted an Asian emperor who said that tea “induces lightness of spirit, clarity of mind and freedom from all sense of constriction, whether mental or physical; and it promotes such serenity that mundane cares fall away so that whatever is strident or exacerbating in daily life can be put out of mind for a while.”

Or as Chinese poet Lu T’ung, who lived from 775 to 835 A.D. put it, “I care not a jot for immortal life, but only for the taste of tea.”  As a part of his poem, “The Song of Tea,” Lu T’ung wrote,

“The first bowl sleekly moistened throat and lips;

The second banished all my loneliness;

The third expelled the dullness from my mind,

Shaping inspiration gained from all the books I’ve read.

The fourth brought forth light perspiration

Dispersing a lifetime’s troubles through my pores,

The fifth bowl cleansed ev’ry atom of my being

The sixth has made me kin to the Immortals.

This seventh is the utmost I can drink--

A light breeze issues from my armpits.”

Blofeld himself certainly agreed, saying “a whole range of leisure involving ears, eyes, nose, palate and mood can be enjoyed by two or three people who have come together to make and drink fine tea.”

Tea is a very old drink, Blofeld explains, first enjoyed, according to tradition, in approximately 2700 B.C.in China, in the time of Emperor Shen Nung. Tea eventually got to Japan in the 600s but not to Europe until the 1600s. As tea moved around the world people often changed its taste. Though the Chinese and Japanese generally left it plain, the Russians and people in central Asia added lemon and sugar and even sometimes jam to their tea, and many Muslims added mint. Some cold countries even added Vodka or rum.

Besides simply drinking tea, Blofeld also explained that rinsing your hair with tea can make it soft and glossy, and rinsing your face with tea can help get rid of pimples and minor skin rash. If you keep tea leaves in your mouth for a short time, you can get rid of the smell of garlic, onions and alcohol and even ease toothaches. Also, if your eyes are tired, you can help them by bathing them in a weak bit of green tea.

I feel that Blofeld is right in emphasizing the power and joy of drinking tea, and I hope it will give me many more years to drink it with my friends and my sweetheart.

Depression Didn't Stop These Great Composers

Two of my favorite more recent musical composers are Edward Elgar, an Englishman of the late 19th century, and Samuel Barber, an American of the 20th century.

Elgar was an English Roman Catholic, a denomination that was not readily accepted in England in those days, and also he was pretty much self-trained. For both of these reasons it was hard for him to make a name for himself in the world of British music.His wife, Caroline Alice Roberts, helped him with lyrics and acted as his secretary and agent, and he composed one of my two favorites, “Salut d’Amour,” for her when they were engaged, in 1888. In turn she offered him a poem called “The Wind at Dawn,” which he soon set to music.

I have played “Salut d’Amour” many times on my violin, and I love to hear it played by others, either just with a piano or with a symphony orchestra. It somehow conveys the warmest and deepest emotions of love. My other favorite of his, “Nimrod Variation,” is the 9th of his famous 14 “Enigma Variations.” First performed in the summer of 1899, it is also extremely emotional in the best sense.

Elgar was definitely a “people person” who had one of his real friends in mind for each of the variations. Nevertheless, he apparently did suffer at least infrequently from deep depression, vowing sometimes, when it happened, that he would stop composing music altogether. On one of those sad occasions shortly before he composed “Enigma Variations,” Elgar’s friend, Augustus J. Jaeger, tried to comfort him by singing part of the second movement of Beethoven’s “Pathetique” for him. Apparently it worked, for Elgar later said that when he composed his wonderful “Nimrod Variation,” he used the “Pathetique” as an indirect source, though he called it “only a hint, not a quotation.”

Our Battle Creek Symphony played “Enigma Variations” back in the 80s under Bill Stein’s conducting, and then again in the 90s, under the baton of Matthew Hazelwood. Matthew was generally a conductor who knew which music needed to be worked on and which music would pretty much play itself. When it came to practicing the Elgar, however, he kept making us go back over “Nimrod” repeatedly, simply, we figured, because he loved it so much.

The other more modern composer whom I admire greatly was an American named Samuel Barber, who lived from 1910 to 1981. His “Adagio for Strings,” second movement, which he composed at the age of 26, is another favorite of mine. It is an extremely sad kind of piece which has been played for such somber, international events as the funerals of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, Princess Grace of Monaco and Mary Travers of Peter Paul and Mary, as well as having been played by the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London just after September 11, 2001. It also was used at the end of that deeply emotional film “The Elephant Man” and throughout “Platoon,” one of the saddest films ever made.

It’s interesting that Barber, like Elgar, had times of depression and also became an alcoholic. But like Elgar, he composed truly passionate magnificent music which I love to play.

I hope you will listen to these three works on YouTube:
“Salut d’Amour” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXLOF-z5Zlk
“Nimrod” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEl4WrfX8lg
“Adagio” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcPR95QfPeM

The Need to Write

My mother was a compulsive writer. She taught English and French, and she also loved to write in different genres all the way from letters to diary entries to poems. Her brothers would complain that they always owed her a letter, for as soon as she heard from them, she would reply.

Because she died in 1975, she was limited to “snail mail,” but she made the most of it, writing to family members and to her life-long best friend every week of the year. I often think of how she would have loved emailing, by which letters to her family and friends could have been delivered instantly and freely.

Like mother, I’m a compulsive writer, too. I taught poetry writing, as well as other fields of literature for many years at various schools, including Olivet College, and wrote hundreds of poems along with my students. Unfortunately, however, most of my poems sit unread, unpublished, in a manila folder in my den closet.

But after I retired from the college in 1998, I began writing part-time for the Enquirer, and my words were actually published. Most of my early assignments were on subjects that would be considered minor, such as local fund raising events, city government decisions, and the like. But even if they were unexciting reports I nevertheless simply enjoyed the writing process.

Then they began letting me write feature stories. I especially remember writing about a woman who had seven siblings, all of whom had different fathers. There was also the one about the standard poodle who, together with his owner, was said to serve as principal at the elementary school in Olivet. And then there was the one about the Battle Creek Symphony violist and piano-tuning friend who always invited me to his “Piano Burning Party” where, each year, he would select an instrument which was beyond repair to be consigned to the flames.

For some years now I have had the honor of writing a regular column, and I am grateful to be able to indulge myself in my passions, my compulsions, in the Enquirer every week.

This need to communicate is certainly not uncommon among people in general. It was particularly fervent among the Jews in concentration camps. Even though they were weak from starvation and disease and even though they knew they were probably going to die, they would gather up any bits of paper they could to write about their feelings and their suffering. According to Roger Rosenblatt, a prominent American writer, these prisoners “rolled those scraps into small scrolls and slipped the scrolls into the crevices of the ghetto walls. . . . because they had to do it. They had a story to tell.”

True enough, after losing his parents and one sister at Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel didn’t write anything about the Holocaust for ten years. But, upon the urging of French Nobel Prize winner, Francois Mauriac, he wrote his powerful book “Night.” He then went on to write 56 more books, many about the war, and he won the Nobel Prize in 1986.

British writer Vita Sackville-West said it well when she declared, “It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows.”

Harold Kushner on Pain and Goodness

Two of the most powerful books I’ve read in a long time have been “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” and “How Good Do We Have to Be.” Both were written by the Jewish rabbi and highly successful writer, Dr. Harold S. Kushner.

The first book I mentioned was about the dreadful disease Progeria, which had caused Kushner’s son’s death when he was just a teenager. I was inspired by that book to write not only about Kushner’s son but about others around the world whom he also described as they suffered from Progeria and died young.

His second book, “How Good Do We Have to Be” has been equally profound for me and makes me want to suggest that my readers read both books.

Kushner writes many times in this book about how good we need to be, but he also says just as many times that none of us is perfect. As he also puts it, “The challenge of being human is so great that no one gets it right every time.”

It’s downright sad, he emphasizes, that many people seem to insist that their parents, their spouses, their children and their friends be perfect. This kind of outlook on others is never even realistic, and it can sadly result in lifelong “guilt, anger, depression and disappointment.”

For Kushner, the story of Adam and Eve is not a story of condemnation but rather what he calls “an inspiring, even liberating story, a story of what a wonderful, complicated, painful, and rewarding thing it is to be a human being.”

He even goes on to say that perhaps “God wanted Adam and Even to eat the fruit, though He knew it would make their lives painful and complicated.” As he also puts it, “God didn’t want to be the only One in the world who knew the difference between Good and Evil.”

Because of Adam and Eve eating forbidden fruit, humans began to have “sexual intimacy, parenthood, a sense of mortality, [and] the knowledge of good and evil.” Kushner goes on to say that some on of the new life “may be painful, but it is the sort of pain that leads to growth.”

It’s amusing that Charles Darwin, when asked what was unique about human beings, said, “Man is the only animal that blushes.” As Kushner put it less humorously but more clearly, “Human beings are the only creatures capable of recognizing the gap between what they are and what they can be expected to be.”

I especially liked two quotes which Dr. Kushner used in his last chapter about that gap. “As the folk saying puts it, ‘I’m not much, Lord, but I’m all I‘ve got.’” And, as Mother Teresa said, “We are not here to be successful; we are here to be faithful.”

Dr. Kushner also explained that a Duke University study indicated that “honest, cheerful, generous people tended to be healthier than suspicious, selfish, hostile ones.” That finding alone should make us want to be positive, forgiving people.

I especially love his paragraph at the end of this book: “At the end, if we are brave enough to love, if we are strong enough to forgive, if we are generous enough to rejoice in another’s happiness, and if we are wise enough to know that there is enough love to go around for us all, then we can achieve a fulfillment that no other live creature will ever know. We can re-enter Paradise.”

The Skeleton in the Fish Pond

When my Bellevue friends Amy and Eric Witzke decided to make a small fish pond in their yard, they were surprised to unearth some large bones.

Eric and his friend Danny LaPointe originally intended to dig only about a 200 square foot area, but after they discovered a few of the bones, they kept digging, and eventually expanded the hole to the size of a high-school gymnasium. As they carefully dug up more and more of the ground they found almost 40 huge bones, including ribs, pelvis, vertebrae and scapula.

It turned out that these were the bones of a mastodon, animals which were in existence for over two million years. Though they didn’t date back as far as dinosaurs, they were nevertheless ancient and lived up to the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 11,000 years ago. They were about seven and a half feet tall at the shoulders, and weighed as much as five tons. They were therefore some of the largest of all land mammals.

Mastodons were so called because the name means “nipple teeth” and refers to the cusps on their molars or grinding teeth. Amazingly, unlike our human teeth, the mastodon’s teeth could replace themselves up to seven or eight times. New ones would develop in the back of their mouths and then would gradually move forward to replace old teeth. The mastodon’s tusks, which are modified incisor teeth, like those of modern elephants, were among the largest in the animal kingdom, 14 feet or more. The longest was found in Greece in 2007, and was over 16 feet.

The Witzkes were most fortunate to make contact with Professor Dan Fisher of the University of Michigan, for Dr. Fisher is a renowned expert on extinct animals and has traveled to such a faraway place as Siberia in order to study such creatures. When he heard about what the Witzkes had found, he gladly came out to their property and was truly impressed with what they had found.

As he told them, these animals existed in both North and Central America. Though there were over 350 sites containing these remains in our state, only four had been found so far in Eaton County. He also explained that these animals originally had 280 bones, so the Witzkes might well find more bones if they continue to dig in their yard.

It was fun for me to learn that unlike mastodons, we humans have only 220 bones in our bodies. It was interesting, too, that the bones had been quite dark when they were first found, but when the Witzkes put them in their dry, warm barn, they turned much lighter in color.

Dr. Fisher even estimated that this animal had been about 38 years old when it died, figuring this out at least partly because of its teeth. Perhaps it had been killed by early humans for food, Dr. Fisher guessed. As he explained, the skull may have been broken because those ancient folks would often eat both brains and sinuses.

Eric Witzke and Daniel LaPoint took the bones to Olivet Middle School classes and allowed the children to touch and admire the various bones. 

Eventually these bones may be taken to the University of Michigan Paleontology Lab where Dr. Fisher and his team will continue to study them to learn more about mastodons in general.

There can be harmony between religions

“If there is beauty in the person There will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, There will be order in the nation If there is order in the nation, There will be peace in the world.”

- A Chinese proverb

I’m sad that many Americans categorically dislike Islamic, Hindu and Sikh folks and assume that they are aggressive and even dangerous.

I have never visited any of the Asian countries where millions of people of those three faiths live, but I have known some truly wonderful, loving Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs right here in America.

In this column I want to tell you about the ones I met to assure you that though it is true there are definitely some reprehensible people who claim to be of various faiths, they are only a small and totally irreligious group.

Some years ago, for example, I met a very nice single Muslim named Abdur Rehman, who came here from Pakistan. He got a graduate degree in engineering at the University of Michigan and worked at Eaton Corporation. Rehman shared an apartment in Marshall not with a fellow Muslim but with yet another very nice fellow, Brijesh Kumar, who was a Hindu from India. Kumar also had a degree in engineering, and they seemed to be close friends and worked together.

Because I was doing an article about the two of them, I felt free to ask if there were any religious controversies between them. “Not at all,” said Kumar. “I respect the Muslim religion, and I admire Rehman He is a true Muslim who worships five times per day.” And Rehman said he respected his friend Kumar greatly and felt he had learned valuable facts about Hinduism values from him. Of course there were differences between them. For example Kumar didn’t eat beef, and Rehman didn’t eat pork, but even though they sometimes ordered those meats in a restaurant together, they simply didn’t share their food.

In addition, though both Rehman and Kumar worked full time, they spent many hours helping their friends, Azhar and Yasmeen Pervaiz, a Muslim couple who owned a gas station there in Marshall. I had already gotten to know the Pervaizes and also did an article about them. Though they didn’t know each other at all until the day of their arranged marriage, and though both had been married before, they seemed to be very happy together and had two very cute young children whom they loved dearly. The Pervaizes were also extremely friendly and invited me to have a meal with them in their home near their gas station.

Yet another valuable experience happened when I was visiting my son and his family in Cleveland. While there I happened to stop to see a beautiful Sikh temple. It was just 8:00 in the morning, but as soon as I knocked on the door, a very kind man named Bhai Sahib Suba Singh greeted me warmly and asked if I would like a cup of sweet, milky tea. I ended up staying there for a couple of hours and later wrote a column about their faith.

This man and his wife had two very nice teenaged sons who were studying with their father to become priests and planned to go back to India for official training.

Have you met any kind, loving Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs? I feel most fortunate to have met such jewels, and my life has certainly been enriched by each of them.

Inspiration from Anna Quindlen

Anna Quindlen is a wonderful writer, and I find that I agree with her on many of her beliefs and preferences. I’ll tell you about a couple of them which she elaborates upon in her autobiographical book, “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake.”

The first one is about women. Though she is happily married to a fine and loving husband and has two fine sons whom she loves dearly, Anna says, “I think women are superior to men. There, I've said it. It's my dirty little secret.”

I must admit that even though I have a wonderful fiance named Andrew, whom I will happily marry on my 100th birthday and I also have two loving sons and some fine male friends, most of my friends from throughout the years are women. Andrew agrees with me, saying most of his friends, too, are women. As Anna says, “The older we get, the more we understand that the women who know and love us--and love us despite what they know about us--are the joists that hold up the house of our existence. Everything depends on them.”

Whereas male friendships generally involve doing things together and talking about sports and politics, women’s friendships depend much more upon deep, honest discussion of feelings.

The second belief of Anna is about aging. As she puts it, people who are older “feel as if they’ve settled into their own skin, even if that skin has sun damage.” In addition, for older folks, “stress, anger and sadness have all declined.” She refers to a Gallup Poll of 340,000 people which “shows unequivocally that we get more content as we age.”

As part of Anna’s comments on aging, she says, “There was a time when I behaved as though I was the center of the universe. It was a good time, when I was young, and arrogant, and foolish, and eager, and terribly insecure and horribly insensible to others and not beholden to anyone else, without responsibility for houses or children or dogs or the clean up after a disaster. I just like this time better.”

Another aspect of all of this is that people feel younger than their parents and grandparents did. I especially like a quote she uses from the Pew study which says, “Most adults over fifty feel at least ten years younger than their actual age.”

I’m 75, now, and I agree completely with Anna. As I said earlier, I have a wonderful, loving boyfriend who is a much better match than either of my two husbands ever were. Also, instead of teaching college students, I get to teach older people who want to learn, through the Institute for Learning in Retirement. I therefore don’t need to grade any papers or evaluate their work in my class. We simply have fun learning together.

Instead of playing in the symphony, which I did for 31 years and for which I had to practice a lot, I now simply play favorite songs by ear for older folks many times each month. I also love getting to write these columns each week these days on any subject I wish to pursue.

And, finally, I noticed at my 50th high school and college reunions, that people were more relaxed and fun. They didn’t seem to need to brag about their careers any more. They were just happy to be alive and getting to gather once again with old friends.

Anna has definitely inspired me, and I hope my column will have the same effect on some of my older readers, too.