The failure to stay young. ℘℘℘ The greatest failure in America is the failure to stay young. It is a failure of imagination, the inability to grasp the alternatives offered by surgery, cosmetology, and pharmacology. It is a failure of will, the indiscipline that results in flagging energies, flabby bodies, and clogged arteries. It is a failure of financial planning, the … [Read more...] about The Last Word: Things Fall Apart
Aging
A World to Care For
Mary Manning Walsh, a nursing home for the elderly, proves that the twilight years can be joyful if the people in charge really care. The massive stroke that left my mother speechless and paralyzed also left her family despondent. Having a stroke had always been her greatest fear, and now, somewhere in the mists of her intelligent mind, she understood that the terrible thing … [Read more...] about A World to Care For
Seamus Heaney Poetic Champion
A native of Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. The following excerpts are taken from interviews conducted with him in 1986 and shortly after he won the Nobel in 1996. Poetry summons you. That's been my own experience. The real difficulty about being a poet is not in the writing. It's surviving the silence, surviving lack of … [Read more...] about Seamus Heaney Poetic Champion