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Readers' responses and thought-provoking reads
Readers Respond to ”Life’s Later Years”
When sickness strikes:
Ann Larabee: After I read Bruce Curtis's remarks on old age, I had to share that I was thinking along the same lines, that old age (or at least post-retirement) was for doing good works, making amends, getting ready for the next karmic stage. But lo and behold, I got very sick and now everyone is being so kind and loving and doing good works for me. I am so humbled by that and learning from those good acts. I may be learning more than from doing the good works myself, although I do hope to return that love and more.
On the ages of world leaders:
Kate Lindemann: When we look at World Leaders by age, we find that Biden at age 80 is not even in the Top 10. .... The US has always had a predilection for youth and tends to force seniors out of the work force...and even public life. .... Not so in much of the rest of the World.
On Biden’s stutter:
Kate Lindemann: I have never heard anyone suggest that Warren Buffet retire because he is too old although he, like Biden, is age 80. Now Buffet, unlike Biden, does not have a stutter and so when he speaks his speech may be more fluid but that is because Biden is constantly working to overcome his stutter and that control, as I assume most people know, affects breath and speech patterns. ...... Few people know about Biden's stutte r... or the fact that he has helped children who stutter. (One of those children did a YouTube video about his help.) And here is a video about how Biden has dealt with his stutter
On being through with mammograms . . . or not.
Elizabeth (Betty) Seagull: I have been told there is no upper age for mammograms. I ask every year when I get mine, in case the recommendation has changed. They say no, breast cancer is actually more likely in older women.
(That sent me searching. I found that the issue is (surprise, surprise) complicated. Yes, breast cancer is more likely. But the advantage of searching for it is debatable. Many cancers do not progress; they just sit there, so to speak. We have no way to separate the idlers from the thugs. Surgery, radiation, chemo are harsh, and of no use for those whose tumors were not dangerous But ignoring them puts women in danger. Betty and I agree: talk to your own doctor, and then make your own decision.)
Compelling reading
Africa’s baby boom:
In most of the world, more people die every year than are born. I’ve written about the resulting problems. But in Africa, there’s a baby boom. A special report in the New York Times talks about the resulting excitement, its promise and its dangers.
By 2050 Africans will make up one quarter of the world’s population, and one third of its youth. The energy of this “youthquake” shows in the bustle and thrum of the cities, in the packed stadiums of London or New York where African musicians are storming the world of pop, and in the heaving megachurchesshaping the future of Christianity. African leaders are spurning the image of victim and demanding a bigger say.
But the problems are also serious. Almost one million Africans enter the labor market every month, but fewer than one in four get a formal job. Frustration feeds desperation.
The Time’s special insert is filled with photos of happy, energetic youth, and with powerful graphics.
Cars and the space they need:
The automobile changed the world in so many ways. We focus now on its role in climate change, and hope the rush to EVs will help. These books suggest we think beyond EVs, to a time with fewer cars of any kind – because however benign their emissions, the sheer space they require rules the planet. Roads are so mundane we don’t even notice them. Parking space is still less noticed, except when we want one. “By square footage, there is more housing for each car in the U.S. than there is for each person.”
Fifty years ago building codes started requiring parking spaces for each occupant/customer/user. Detroit’s code, for instance, requires an off-street parking space for every “tumbling apparatus” at a gym, every pool table in a pool hall, every hundred square feet in a beauty shop or golf course clubhouse. The requirement has distorted building patterns everywhere. To meet them, downtowns have torn down and paved over much of what had made them attractive.
There are solutions.
Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, by Ben Goldfarb
Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, by Henry Grabber
A detailed summary of both by Bill McKibben in The New York Review of Books
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