Hi Tom, hi Norah.

At eighteen, I found my first white hair and and left it taped to the bathroom mirror for months. At twenty-three, I am gleefully discovering where my wrinkles will be. I hope that I am not alone in my belief that aging is beautiful and something to be looked forward to.

Hello Tom & Nora:

I am a woman who has to be in the “looking for a job mode – interviewing” of late. I am 30 something but I am EXPECTED to be all made up, with make up and not a gray hair in sight, no hair on my stockinged legs, no wrinkles and gorgeous for my job interviews in the technology field!!!

It is my brain and knowledge I am selling not my looks and I have to interview with these guys in the field and all they do is look at my looks and in that classic guy thing … they are all looking to have that cute girl in the office as opposed to someone with good skills and some knowledge in her repertoire.

How do I cope with this barrier to entry when it shouldn’t be like that?

Your 800 number is broken. It tells me to call you back when the show is on.

Holy cow, Tom! What is so dam funny here?

Super-privileged, self-obsessed, appearance-fixated ’sharing of yuks’ about the full time job of it all for this writer doesn’t offer much more than an occasional weak smile and a wondering if she has more money than sense, from me. Boy-o. If this is the everywoman experience I reckon I live on another planet ($100 jars of face cream?). Of course there’s plenty to laugh about and dislike about the shared experiences of aging but this stuff is facile- and well – pretty lame.

Great show, Tom and Norah!

My pet peeve, as a woman over 50, is that the products at the make-up counter do not come with warning labels:”Warning! Yellow, green and purple eyeshadow is not appropriate for anyone over the age of twenty!” On youngsters these colours are a fashion statement, on old ladies, however you appear to be the victim of a mugging.

Sparkles are not for aging skin. The diamond dust lipstick that looks so good on the model will smear and move about throughout the day and settle into your creases making you look like a kindergarten art project gone bad.

While her book is intended to be entertaining and silly, I wish the conversation would touch upon the reality that a woman’s value has historically been based on sexuality. Women who “look their age”, i.e. grey-haired & wrinkled become basically invisible and no longer command respect because they no longer can compete sexually. A whole sociological discussion that this book may be inappropriate for this light stuff, but it does come to mind.

I tried to call but couldn’t get through. I just want to present a different point of view than the ageism that is all too prevalent in our society. I have 73 years of life experience and feel happy about it. I teach yoga at senior centers and participants include a woman who is 104. Before going to hike 10 miles a day at 20,000 feet in the Andes I did 108 yoga sun salutations each day to prepare for that trip. My hair is gray yet last summer walking on the beach in a bathing suit, a woman recognized me whom I had not seen since college 50 years ago. I am also a Certified Sage-ing Leader presenting programs on Harvesting the Wisdom of Life, based on the book “From Age-ing to Sage-ing” by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.

Forgot that this was an archival edition(!) Happy holidays, have a great new year etc.

(It struck me though that a comment from the other distaff side might be appropriate concerning older men not wanting to be seen with “older” women.

My focus group has reached this consensus: Whenever a snow-roofed gentleman seems unwilling to en-arm a woman who is his contemporary, it is NOT about the woman or her attractiveness.

NOR is it about the man wanting to have a trophy-companion to “veracify” his continuing attractiveness (I think here of Henry Kissinger, who, to my collection of litmus paper, is physically repellant, morally repellant and is apparently so stupid that he has been unable to learn unaccented English in the few-score years he’s lived in the United States).

So, what is the male geront’s reticence all about? Our agreement is this: Men cannot countenance, on any continuing basis, the fact of their own senescence, and looking at women of correlative or congruent chronology is like looking into a mirror at yourself. Double-plus un-good.

On the other hand, living with, being with a woman with whom you have aged is completely different, because she is an amalgamation of all of the recollections the old guy has of their lives together.

bw

ATOP THE MIDDLE

The fabled golden years
Exist in legend solely
And even then are bestowed
Solely on the holy.

Despite misguided rants
Emitted by some dunce,
Embrace the summit years–
You’re middle-aged just once.

The prime time peak of 40
Will never be outdone
So hug it fast before
You stumble to 41.

THE PLIGHT OF THE BABY BOOMER

Not ready yet for boomer work
Because you feel all right
And not considering a problem
With shortening of your sight?

No question of a cataract
Presenting a bit of blight
Or of a needed knee replacement
For climbing just one flight?

No thought of replacing a rusty hip
–Hardly a delight–
Or ordering a new pacemaker
To fight off breathless fright?

Nor any view of a heart bypass
For coronary slight
Nor any other surgery
That aging might invite?

Then take a page from a car device
That gets you through the night
And have a mechanic fit you up
With a Check Engine Light.