Since I did all my serious thinking about death long ago I give it very little thought these days. Sure, I'm going to die, probably sooner than later, but that won't keep me from living every day that's left to me to its limit, sometimes with generosity and more often with an old guy's prerogative to snarl at the stupidity and cruelty he sees. Funny, I don't mind being considered an old man, but in the politics of aging I'll be damned if I let anyone call me a senior citizen - an ugly designation designed to push anyone over sixty into that ghetto of game show TV, Vic Damone records and early bird dinners. For many years I lived in California where middle age began so early that you were barely out of diapers before they wanted to put you back into them again. When I came back East to live it felt like I had dropped a decade as I set foot in Manhattan. Now I've been blessed to live in this great city where walking is a way of life, and no matter how old you get there are magnificent museums and buildings older than you are. Much of my work in the theatre has recently taken place in Chicago, another old city that I've learned to love and honor for its age spots and its wrinkles, and its ability to overlook mine and focus on my work.
I worked as a writer in the TV and movie business for forty years, with time out for work in the theatre; did some good work and some not so, but it enabled me to put my sons through college, travel a bit, and to enjoy the company of a few good friends and the love of some great dogs and cats along the way. Yes, I am an unabashed animal lover. Me and Doris Day. But the only thing movie star about me was trusting in a business manager who made off with most of my savings years ago, made off as in Madoff. Although I wish today that I had the means to help out an old friend, an elderly woman who is facing foreclosure and a life in the streets, I don't need much other than the company of the family I cherish, my infant grand-daughters who are heart stopping beautiful, my laptop, and the comic novels of P.G. Wodehouse to see me through a bad patch.
Being old I am free to tell Jeffrey Katzenberg and his fellow trustees at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills where sick and dying friends of mine reside - that the planned closing of that home is an act of cruelty towards the helpless that defies all understanding. Guys, you say you have to kick these Parkinson, Alzheimer, and stroke victims out of your institution beca

Here's the good stuff. Age is so damned liberating. It allows you to let go of so much ambition, so much despair, so much ego, and so much envy and vanity. I look at my contemporary John McCain and I wonder why he can't relinquish his anger, his disappointment, and his old fashioned nastiness. As the kids might say, "Johnny, its so seventies."
Born under Herbert Hoover in the dark early days of the Great Depression I am delighted to have Barack Obama as my president to help us get through these difficult times. Getting older you get a little closer to your emotions and I cried tears of joy when Obama was elected. It was a vindication of what was good about America, often hard to recall during the long dark night of the Bush years. I may be delusional but I feel that the recession will soon be calmed if not immediately cured by the policies that Obama has put in place and I hope to live to see that happen. I'm less sure about expanding the war in Afghanistan - it has proven time and again to be a burial ground for western armies - devouring young soldiers and changing nothing in that medieval world. I hope Barack Obama thinks more than twice about this. Our armies may be able to pacify the Taliban in one mountainous region only to have the killing fields moved to another, more distant spot. Pakistan and Afghanistan together are the world's Pandora's Box, not to be meddled with lightly without a grand plan. Strikes me that we need more covert and less overt action in that part of the world.
Sure there's plenty of small stuff I find disquieting in modern life. As a lover of songs and musicals let me start with singers who warble away tunelessly in that style called melisma, all push and no pleasure. Then there's the degradation of language through the careless, witless use of profanity.

Having inherited my mother's iron will and my father's love of life I aim to be here for the long haul. I still live in a world of infinite possibility not because I am an optimist but because I am a realist. Sadly, having lost to death so many close friends and loved ones in the past few years I can only repeat the message of the old postcards, "Wish you were here." Trust me on this - bad as it may now seem to some - and I do not diminish the pain and the problems of these times, it's a great time to be alive.
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Labels: Barack Obama, Living, Politics, Sherman Yellen