I never think about getting older, but I do cultivate resilience.

A recent New Yorker article described how a private guardian convinced a judge to give her the power to remove an elderly Nevada couple from their house and send them to a nursing home, sell off their personal belongings and take control of their assets, completely shutting out their daughter, who visited nearly every day.

Here’s an existential question: If video killed the radio star, then what killed the video star? The surprising answer may be public media.

So far, I’m finding middle age to be like adolescence – only better. Sure, my body’s changing in alarming ways: I’m again developing bumps and hair, but now the bumps are where my waist was, and the hair’s on my chin. During puberty, I worried over every blackhead; now, the normal, age-related vision changes of presbyopia spare me from seeing the age spots dotting my face. And the exquisite confusion of hormones and ignorance of my first adolescence isn’t plaguing me this time around. I’ve moved

I peered into my clothes closet the other day and had one of those epiphanies people my age sometimes have about the passage of time.

Performing arts events bring people together for experiences of shared community. In this age of virtual community where we congregate on the Internet with millions of others we will never see or meet, it’s especially vital – and comforting – to interact with people that live in or visit our own place.

When my father turned 35, the average life expectancy for a white male in the United States was approximately 66 and a half years. His own father never retired because he worked up until he died.

Any male not now asking himself about his own behavior towards woman and children is extending the risk to both into future generations. Sexual abuse rolls forward from generation to generation until someone – both victim and perpetrator – decides to get honest with themselves and others. Victims are now coming forth in droves.

Not long ago, I took my five-year-old granddaughter to see a rollicking musical based on the popular children’s book Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard and James Marshall.

For those old enough to remember, the fall of 1989 was an exhilarating time. One had to have a heart of stone to not be moved by the chants of “We are the people”. So many East Germans had mustered the courage to challenge their repressive regime that it finally collapsed, and they did it peacefully.