What streaming series can’t you stop talking about?

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“ “Imagine this: It’s 25 or so years after Sam Spade has sent Brigid O’Shaugnessy up the river because he wasn’t going to play the sap. Now it’s the early sixties and “The Maltese Falcon”’s private detective is retired and living in a small village in the south of France when six nuns are mysteriously murdered. It’s absurd, of course, except it’s actually the plot of a series on AMC called “Monsieur Spade”…. --Neil Offen

When I launched my website, “Could You Be a Kidney Donor?”, at the age of 70, I thought I wanted simply to encourage people to consider living donation. By sharing my story of donating a kidney to my son, plus information and resources, I was hoping to make a difference and maybe even save lives. Not being very tech savvy (I can hear my husband chuckling as he reads this), I had to learn to speak a new “language” in my 70s.

But I think now that subconsciously, I also had another goal: to inspire other people, particularly those of retirement age—and especially women—to get outside their comfort zones for what they believe in….

(Photo above is of Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers)

By “they” I mean almost everyone.

I leave my umbrella under the table at a restaurant and the waitress chases me half-way down the block to hand it to me. I show up in hiking boots at some out-of-town park and two different locals discuss the merits of the various trails. My bike tire feels a little flat—and the guy at the gas station offers to pump it up himself.

Okay, I’m an optimist, with an eye for the bright side. And okay: there’s Donald Trump and robo calls and road rage and those jerks in the comments on one or another website (not this one).

But it sure seems as if people—not everybody but most people—are extraordinarily nice nowadays. And I live in New York City….

Neil Offen told me his Muhammad Ali story years ago and it remains one of the best things I've ever read about him. For my part, I met the Champ twice, years apart, and each encounter had a striking effect on me.

The first time was around 1980 in the U.S. Capitol Building. I was on the hill covering who knows what when someone in the Senate Press Gallery hollered “The Champ’s in the building!”

Ali had been named by then-President Carter as a roving international goodwill ambassador and was making the rounds. You literally could hear pens drop in the Press Gallery as we all forgot what we were doing and raced downstairs to see the Champ….

Featuring a video with footage of the last US total eclipse

This is an argument for managing to get yourself into the “zone of totality” on April 8th and doing your darndest to avoid clouds (crowds are fine). And it is arguing – if somehow it is inconvenient for you to do so this time around – that you should feel shitty, cause it is a really, really cool thing to do and, given the significance the sun and moon undoubtedly had in your life, a pretty important thing to do. And there won’t be another total eclipse in the United States for twenty years.

When I was 12 years old back in 1962, my mother died, and I stopped eating. Because of my lack of food, I developed amenorrhea—I no longer had my period. I was told I would never have children. No one had ever heard of anorexia.

Fast forward to my college years and being introduced to a psilocybin experience. That night, under the influence of mushrooms, I had a period. Two years later my son was born….

The old saying goes “There’s lies, damn lies—and statistics.”

Today, I would amend that to the following:

“There’s lies, damn lies—and Republicans.” to

Now that the once-respectable GOP has been transmogrified into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Donald Trump--a lying sack of shit who also happens to be a traitor, a rapist, and Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping‘s useful idiot--the future of serious two-party government in this country is in dire jeopardy.

(photo © Frank Van Riper)

So, you now take a lot of medications. Pop some pills at breakfast, during dinner, before bedtime. But have you had a chance to look at the warnings that come with all your prescriptions?

I’m pretty sure this is what they say: Dizziness and headaches may occur when taking this medication that you are taking for

dizziness and headaches. You should not drive, operate heavy machinery, or listen to talk radio while taking this medication until you can do it safely and not scream, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

It’s night-time and the headlights coming at me on the small, two-lane road seem to have a halo around them. I’m mesmerized by the blinding beams of yellow light but, fortunately, reflexively shy away from them. Somehow, I’m able to figure out where the road bends to the left, only because I’ve driven this road through my neighborhood a thousand times.

But I don’t like driving it at night anymore. In fact, I don’t like driving at night pretty much anywhere nowadays….

(Image by Samuele Errico Piccarini, Unsplash)

…When I ambled around the perimeter, she followed just out of reach. I had brought along treats for encouragement. She inched up to me, stretching out her neck and lips to grab an apple biscuit, and then darted away. We eyed each other at opposite ends of the arena. Cuing off each other’s shoulders, we followed the other’s lead in an exquisite dance…

Occasionally, when we get to a certain age—that is, our age—we start to have difficulty remembering stuff. Like where we put the house keys, if we left the water running in the bathtub or the Pythagorean theorem. Yes, this happens to all of us from time to time. In fact, studies show that about a third of members of our generation have trouble knowing where I put my glasses.

I was once young and busy and often, you know, bored.

It’s not that I lacked stuff to do. I am a New Yorker. But frequently—while standing on a grocery line, in the days when someone had to punch in the price of each item by hand; or waiting on Broadway and 86th to meet a tardy friend at a time when there was no way of contacting anyone anywhere beside their office or home; or on a plane having finally finished “Jane Eyre” with three hours still to go until JFK and no other book in my briefcase—I was deathly bored…..

Currently, however, I am old and much less busy but never bored…

Wintry months have me meandering indoors at the University Mall in South Burlington, VT. Morning crew starts at 8:30 a.m. when only the IHop restaurant is open. We are quiet and determined with our walkers, canes and shuffling gaits. Regulars acknowledge each other. We are on task in our forward momentum.

After a lap or two, some sit and join their coffee klatch. Others soldier on. Even with my Ferrari stickers, me and my walker are about the slowest. I am passed again and again as I do three rounds. A few determined shop owners get their steps in before start of business….

(first published in VTDigger)

…On our second-to-last day the boat that carries tourists around the Seine was fully booked. It’s been a staple of our many visits here, and it suddenly struck me I might never have the chance to ride it again. Age has a funny way of doing that, of creeping up the back of my neck when I least expect it….

(Photo by Devon Lanson-Alleyne)

… When I was a kid, I used to laugh at my parents always reading the obituaries in the daily newspapers, back when we had daily newspapers, and frequently noting how young someone who had just died was. How that person was younger than they were. I thought I would never do such an old-person thing.

I now do such a thing. …

(photo: Michelle Henderson, Unsplash)

(This piece was originally submitted as a response to our query: “Does age bring wisdom.”)

…The muscle memory that comes from a half-century of newspapering means I can write journalism about as easily as Derek Jeter used to field hot grounders….

….Hippie kids like me were galvanized by our opposition to the Vietnam War. We experimented with drugs and directly faced-off against our parents’ materialistic, straight and conservative lifestyles. Many of us adopted vegetarian diets, joined communes where we cohabitated with others of like minds, dropped out of school, joined militant organizations and were fearless in using our collective power to change society….

Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met? How did you meet? How did it go?

Answer in the comments on the Waddaya Think page or email your answer to us at: writingaboutourgeneration.com

Excerpts:

Melinda Moulton: Michelle Obama….She hugged us tight and looked down into our faces (she is so tall) and told us that we mattered and that we should keep our faith in America.

Chris Harper: We did a profile of Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown. Barbara Walters wasn't in a particularly good mood…because she'd just come from a meeting with OJ's defense team and couldn't convince them to let her interview him….Gordy and I did a duo of "Money, That's What I Want!"

David Mindich:….The bartender…pulled me aside and said, “I want you to bring this drink to Andy Warhol….When I came back the bartender, said, “You idiot! That guy isn’t Warhol!”

Jerry Lanson: I was working with the kitchen crew at The Putney School when Robert Kennedy (the real one, not his son) came walking through, shaking hands.

Mark Kurlansky: "Possibly the most famous was Walter Cronkite. He invited me to his Upper East side apartment and he answered the door himself. In that voice I had heard all my life…”

Marty Appel: The most famous person I ever met will make you smile, Maury Allen.

Neil Offen: …She called him “boy” as often as she could. “Cassius, boy, gotta take a picture with you. C’mon, boy, let’s go take a picture.” “OK,” he said now. “Cheese.” …And just as he said it, Ali turned and bent down to the woman and gave her a big, wet, messy kiss right on the lips.

Mitchell Stephens: …Bill Clinton…We pushed a piece of paper out toward him and he, hurriedly, signed. That extraordinary piece of paper became the subject of perhaps our longest running family dispute: Who the heck lost it?

A Video by Eiko Otake, John R.Killacky,

and Brian Stevenson

(Photo credit: Jeanmarie Cross)

When the wheels of the plane lifted off from the tarmac at LaGuardia that January day I sobbed as if my heart were broken. 

I could no longer afford rent in NYC and  was returning. Permanently.  To my Midwestern roots. 

That was 3 years ago.

"My life, " I thought, "is over." 

Turns out, it was.