This New York Times piece by contributing writer Molly Jong-Fast about her recent face-lift, “I’m Not Going to Lie About My Neck,” has been living in my brain.

It reminds me of what a former co-worker told me about what her mother said said when she asked for life advice. Her mother replied: Get a face lift at 50, and then stop.

https://youtube.com/shorts/F2IblKkFHrY?si=dW5mauFlUNIMcmon

The short version of the NYT piece: Jong-Fast admits that she harshly judged women who had plastic surgery when she was younger. Now, at age 47, she has new view. Recently she had a “deep-plane face-and neck-life” in line with her role as as a frequent TV talking head.

I get it. Cable news outlets do not believe in letting it all hang out. They prefer young and sculpted over old and gravity-accepting. It’s clear why Jong-Fast decided to get work.

What bothered me about the piece is that Jong-Fast concocted an angle that would make her look virtuous, with strong feminist credentials, even though, she writes, “It’s not the surgery; it’s the inequality.”

Instead of fessing up and saying— I got a face-lift because I wanted one and I could — she informed readers that she remains a feminist because, yes, she got plastic surgery, but unlike other (unnamed) women, she is “transparent” about it.

As if people could not see what is as plain as the nose on her face.

“I’m not going to perpetuate the lie that my face came from drinking a lot of water or getting a lot of sleep,” Jong-Fast writes. Apparently, she thinks the public is highly gullible.

Oddly, the New York writer laments that women get face lifts because of male “misogyny.” Methinks women can be harsher critics than men. (Donald Trump excluded.)

I have not undergone the knife for two reasons. One is money. A face-lift or a trip abroad? I choose travel.

But also, cosmetic surgery is dangerous. Joan Rivers died during a cosmetic procedure. “First Wives Club” author Olivia Goldsmith died on the table. My big fear isn’t so much dying under the knife — it’s being known posthumously as someone who died getting a face-lift.

That’s not the look by which I choose to be remembered.

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Truth is, at 71, I’m too old to start getting plastic surgery — which I disclose as an act of radical transparency. As for Jong-Fast, at 47, she’s a baby.

In office, Biden could not hide and voters could not unsee the shuffling figure they often saw. Notably, in 2024, Special Counsel Robert Hur announced that he would not prosecute Biden for mishandling intelligence documents because of the challenges of prosecuting a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

And who could argue?

Yes, there is irony here. On June 14, Donald Trump will become the second octogenarian POTUS — and he got there because he retook the Oval Office after slamming “Sleepy Joe” Biden, now 83, for his age-related decline.

Of course, the age issue is not just about a number — it’s about energy, focus, judgment and fluency on domestic and international matters.

Voters understood that Trump had the energy Biden lacked — which is why, when faced with a binary choice, supporters gave Trump a pass on the age question. While Biden was supposed to be the candidate with foreign policy chops, he seemed lost on the world stage. Not Trump.

The comparison with the less vital Biden lasted long enough to shield Trump when a 59-year-old Kamala Harris took the ticket.

The problem for Trump now is that after a certain age, decline can accelerate.

Eagle-eyed White House press photographers have documented swelling in his legs and bruising in his hands — and there’s video that sure looks like Trump nodding off. Here’s Jonathan Lemire talking about it on MSNOW.

Expect the presidential prospects in 2028 to favor candidates South of 65 — or at least South of 70 — as voters seek fresher figures to represent them. Look at the likely names for possible Democratic nominees. Harris. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, 58, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, 48, former White House Chief of Staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 66, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, 66 of Minnesota.

The two biggest names in the GOP field are Vice President J.D. Vance, 41 and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 55.

In the meantime, the U.S. Senate has its share of solons who are 80-somethings, or higher.

The oldest Senator is Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, at a spry 92.

The terms for feisty Bernie Sanders, D-VT, 84, and Maine Independent Angus King, 82, do not end until 2030.

Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, 84, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., 81, are not running for re-election.

Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, 80, won re-election in 2022.

Jim Risch, R-ID, won the primary for his re-election. At age 83, Risch nonetheless is Idaho’s junior senator.

At age 79, Ed Markey (D-MA), faces a Democratic primary challenger, Rep. Seth Moulton, 47, who offers “generational change.” The Massachusetts primary falls on Sept. 1.

If he wins, Markey will be 80 when sworn into office for his third term.

This is the race to watch to see what effect, if any, that old age has on congressional candidates.

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Is it an Old Man’s World? Probably not in 2028, but yes in the Senate today.

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Jean Smart, 74, stars as a Las Vegas stand-up comedienne whose act is on cruise-control as she is about to be kicked to the weeknight curb. Except Vance will not go gently into that good night.

Enter Ava Daniels, played by a 31-year-old Hannah Einbinder, an up-and-coming comedy writer drafted to pump some air into Vance’s auto-pilot schtick. The two are not an automatic match. Deborah is a senior. Ava is an adult kid. Deborah is seasoned. Ava is hungry. Deborah is accomplished. Ava is ambitious, in the right way. She doesn’t just want to succeed, she cares about the writing and the jokes. It is their love of the “craft” of comedy that binds the two women.

“They evolved from their original broad-strokes typecasting, as Ava learned to appreciate the old-school craft of joke writing, and Deborah became radicalized,” chief New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik writes.

By the series’ end, Ava finds herself amused that in her crazy, wonderful life, her best friend is in her 70s.

Age be damned. Vance has a sex life worthy of James Bond. And lucky for her many lovers, unlike “Bond girls,” Vance’s flings don’t have to die to advance the plot.

Las Vegas serves as the perfect backdrop for this story — a neon Sin City in the desert with old-timer performers and support staffers who hustle to keep visitors and locals vibrant, pampered, manicured and at the blackjack table.

Ava, who is bisexual — does she use a different term? I either don’t remember or don’t care — hasn’t quite found what she wants in terms of relationships. But there is a great scene when Ava realizes that male sex worker she has bedded is also a magician. Ava is especially appalled because, he’s a bad magician.

Both women are free to play the field. Vance winds up in a series of relationships with exes, Hollywood biggies and younger lovers. Vance will do anything — bury hatchets, apologize to frenemies — to get back to where she once belonged. Actually, she wants to be bigger and better this time. Her determination deserves credit, but also Vance’s success gets a huge assist from — to borrow from Cyrano de Bergerac — her “panache.”

SPOILER ALERT — but important for the North of 65 theme

Vance receives a cancer diagnosis — and we know what that means for the modern cable TV series. It’s not good. During a girls’ trip to Paris, Vance announces that she wants to go to Switzerland to commit assisted suicide.

“Ava is distraught and furious, but she shouldn’t be surprised,” Poniewozik writes. “Deborah has always needed control: It eluded her when she was young, she achieved it through fame and wealth, and she lost it again when her former employer silenced her. Choosing to end her life might be a means of avoiding suffering, but it is also her mortal version of a Madison Square Garden show, a means of stage-managing her swan song.”

Ava sees another way. When Deborah tells her that she wants Ava with her for the final procedure, Ava pushes back. She begs Deborah, tells her that she is a fighter and should give treatment a chance. If it’s too painful, she adds, then can Vance check out.

Having seen Vance prevail so many times after she had been written off, Ava wants Debora to stand up against the odds one more time. There are still great jokes to be written.

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There were great things to be said about television when I was growing up. Think The Dick Van Dyke Show. “Hacks” showed the best of old-school entertainment and modern love and friendship.

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But really, when you move from taking any job for a paycheck into a cherished career, you feel that you’ve carved out your own space, whatever that means. In the free market, it means there are no guarantees. And what goes up must come down.

Ahead of the big tranche of layoffs Facebook implemented on May 20, I finished reading “Careless People: A story of where I used to work,” a memoir by one-time Facebook (then Meta) big-shot Sarah Wynn-Williams. The memoir, first published in 2025, is a cautionary tale.

Wynn-Williams and I have very different politics. Still, I was drawn to her story of a New Zealand native who went to work for Facebook with the belief that the social-media platform would change the world for the better. It’s a life lesson that extremely smart people can be really stupid.

“Employees are encouraged to believe they’re changing the world, not working for a corporation,” Wynn-Williams writes. And: “Changing how people communicate will aways change the world.”

Problem: Practically no one at FB HQ knew how the world would change, and there was little consideration of the possibility that social media could affect modern life in a bad way.

“Careless People” put me in a way-back machine to the early days of Facebook and big tech which I witnessed from the San Francisco Bay Area, aka Ground Zero. Google buses picked up San Francisco residents. Tech companies fed their workers tony catered meals, provided game spaces and enough distractions that workers could hang out with their co-workers and not venture out into the real world.

They worked and lived in a bubble. Long-time Ess Eff residents didn’t like what big tech did to an already pricey real estate market. Yes, there were Bay Area residents who did not take to their new — “entitled” was a favored adjective — neighbors.

Inside the bubble, however, they were young. Big tech would be their baby. What could go wrong?

Those of us North of 65 have seen this movie before. (It’s called, “The Terminator.”)

Wynn-Williams thought her very left-wing politics, then embraced in Silicon Valley, would tilt American politics even more to the left. I remember watching start-up workers marvel at how Barack Obama embraced social media — they saw Obama’s online presence as a sign they were on the Kumbaya team.

Later Donald Trump’s brain trust outmaneuvered Democrats; they mastered how the Facebook platform could be harnessed for the right as well. For Wynn-Williams, that was the day the music died.

Now, no surprise, the American public isn’t buying the unalloyed promise of the next level of technology, AI. A Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered AI index found 38 percent of Americans are excited about AI, compared to 84 percent in China.

AI now opens up the possibility that machines could start a war. I’m not saying it will happen, but I wouldn’t say that it could not happen.

As a laid-off worker myself, I have sympathy for the 8,000 or ex-Meta folk who won’t be working for Meta after this week. Indeed, I have far more sympathy than big-tech pirates showed for the shrinking band of professional journalists. The “tech bros” saw themselves as “disruptors” as they dismissed newspapers as “dead-tree journalism.” As AI threatens to disrupt their jobs, “disruption” is no longer a plus.

They don’t deserve what’s coming — the sense of loss, of being cut loose from a team that sometimes felt like family, the joy of being a bishop or a rook, not a pawn, and the loss of income.

Some of who are North of 65 may be facing the end of our career path, but these Facebook alumni, they’re young. They’ll have other shots. I hope they know that it stings, but they can get through this.

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Even once novel corporations that thrived on “disruption” have to face the cycle of life. I think of Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince,” in which the narrator observes, “I had to grow old.”

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Such was the disdain of mid-level middle-aged managers for their elders. Of course, no news outfit wants its customers (and revenue) to wither and die, but many managers felt that they should not be content with finding replacement readers — established adults who have time to care about the world, as non-news readers matured — when they could be turning younger adults into lifelong newspaper readers.

That was the hope, anyway. How did it work? With the advent of Facebook and other social media giants, lot of papers went under.

Here’s a link for them all, and I’ll show a smaller list of one-time California rags.

• Alameda Times-Star

• Anaheim Bulletin^[21]

• Antioch Daily Ledger

  • Pittsburg Post-Dispatch, merged with the Daily Ledger on October 1, 1990

• The Argus (Fremont)

• Beverly Hills Post

• Burbank Daily Review (1948–1969)^[22]

• Byron Times

• Weekly Butte Democrat (Oroville), 1859–1862

• California Eagle (Los Angeles)

• The Californian (San Francisco)

• Chung Sai Yat Po (San Francisco, in Chinese)

• La Crónica (Los Angeles, in Spanish, 1872–1892)^[23][24]

• Clovis Independent

• Hayward Daily Review

• Daily Star-Progress (La Habra)^[25]

• Dinuba Sentinel

• Evening Outlook (Santa Monica)

• Fortuna Advance (Fortuna) (existed in 1905)

• Fullerton News Tribune^[26]

• The Golden Era (San Francisco)

• Hispano América (San Francisco, in Spanish, 1917–1934)^[27][28]

• Hokubei Mainichi Newspaper (San Francisco, in Japanese)

• Hollywood Citizen (1931–1970)^[29]

• Hollywood Star

• Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News

• Los Angeles Examiner (1903–1962)^[30]

• Los Angeles Express (1871–1931)

• Los Angeles Herald Examiner (1962–1989)^[31]

• Los Angeles Herald-Express (1931–1962)^[32]

• Los Angeles Mirror

• Los Angeles Record (1895–1933)^[33]

• Los Angeles Saturday Night (1920–1934, illustrated weekly by Samuel Travers Clover)

• Los Angeles Star / La Estrella de Los Ángeles (bilingual English/Spanish, 1851–1879)^[34]

• Napa Sentinel

• The Nevada Journal (Nevada City)

• Nichi Bei Times (San Francisco, in Japanese)

• North County Times (Escondido)

• Oakland Tribune

• OC Weekly

• Oxnard Press-Courier

• The Pacific Ensign

• Progress Bulletin (Pomona)

• Sacramento Union (1851–1994)^[35]

• San Bruno Herald

• San Diego Daily Journal (1944–1950)^[36]

• San Francisco Bay Guardian

• San Francisco Call (1856–1913)^[37]

• San Francisco Evening Bulletin (1929–1959)^[38]

• San Francisco Frontiers (1994–2002)^[39]

• The San Francisco News (1903–1959)^[40]

• San Mateo County Times

• San Mateo Daily News

• Sanger Herald

• La Sociedad (San Francisco, in Spanish, 1869–1895)^[41]

• Viet Mercury (San Jose, in Vietnamese)

• La Voz de Méjico (San Francisco, in Spanish, 1862–1866)^[42]

Other papers have stayed in business by downsizing their news hole. The result: Smaller pages, thinner editions.

There are, of course, exceptions. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal saw the potential in online subscribers and now are the top two papers circulation-wise in the country.

But there is good news in journo-land. Smart editors finally are seeing the value of senior readers. Oldsters have more disposable income. They care about the world. The Gray Lady has put a lot of manpower into covering “Longevity” because aging is universal. There was a “Longevity” section on a recent Sunday, with an oldish dressed-up dog on the cover. The paper runs frequent well-reported stories about living North of 65. You can teach old dogs news tricks.

Probably, editors are getting older too.

What about you? Where do you get your news?

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As good newspaper readers know, there is research that suggests that when seniors forget, it may just be normal forgetfulness — not a sign of cognitive decline. If you’re 70 and don’t know where you left your keys, well, didn’t you also misplace your stuff in your 30s 40s and 50s?

So I am trying to fight my instinct to blame every trivial moment of forgetfulness on aging. This morning I had to ask our lurking, talking devices for the name of the governor of Georgia. (I’ll save you the trouble. It’s Brian Kemp.) Damn, I should know that, methought.

Now with COVID I now have three rationales for not remembering things I should know: Age, COVID, and normal forgetfulness.

I am sharper than I was when I first got this case of COVID.

I cannot figure out if this is my third or fourth case of COVID. The fact that I do not know argues in favor of keeping a medical journal. I resist the online health-care portal out of principle.

Walking one of the dogs earlier in the week I ran into a similarly aged neighbor who told me that she had no appetite, had a headache and all around did not feel well. She had tests at home.

Apparently there is a variant that is knocking on doors; its name is Cicada. This Today story has some information on it.

So, stock up on Kleenex and Vitamin D — and have a good book on the ready.

BTW, I know that some of you consider the COVID tests to be a waste of time and energy, because many of us likely will deal with COVID pretty much the same way we would act with a serious cold or flu. I disagree. The positive finding served as a stern directive to hit the bed, drink a lot of fluids and try not to give it to anyone else.

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Just when you thought that maybe COVID was going away, you get a wake-up call…

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I got my first case early, after I covered CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee). At that time, COVID tests were in short supply and hence hard to get. I met two of the criteria to qualify for a test — I had symptoms and had been in close contact with someone who had COVID, but not a third criterion. I had not been out of the country. So no test.

My wonderful doctor nonetheless prescribed COVID treatments.

I’ve had COVID since 2020. Then Tuesday I tested positive for COVID, after my husband tested positive on Saturday. Wesley hadn’t been feeling well. We had a bunch of tests that were past their due date but nonetheless worked well enough. So I suggested — actually insisted — he take a test. To our surprise, Wesley tested positive. He was shocked. But then COVID gave him a wallop.

At the time, I tested negative. We tried to keep our distance so that I would not get it. But Tuesday, I tested positive as well.

COVID in your 70s is no treat. Like Wesley, I spent three days on my back, barely moving. We arranged to have the dogs walked — a job we did ourselves during previous encounters with COVID.

And from bed, I’ve been reliving the early days of COVID.

In 2020, the White House Correspondents Association set social distancing guidelines for the 49-seat briefing room. Under the COVID regime, the room’s capacity was reduced to 14 seats.

I was surprised to see that in a room with less capacity — which meant a higher chance of being called on — many younger reporters were no-shows. Maybe they lived with someone who was elderly or vulnerable. Maybe some were risk-averse.

Even though I was over 65 — a category told to social distance — I showed up in the briefing room every chance I got. (You can see me above, sixth row.) After all, this was history.

I had a letter to show authorities that as a journalist I qualified as an essential worker, and was free to move about.

The thing that stood out most to me was the gulf between how the beltway reacted to COVID as opposed to California, my once long-time home.

In Alexandria, Virginia, where I live, after the original “45 days to slow the spread” campaign, restaurants expanded their use of outside tables and delivered food to local homes. They had an entrepreneurial spirit.

In California, many healthy, young residents isolated at home, did not send their children to public school, did not go to the office and thus fostered a culture of isolation.

I didn’t understand what happened to California — the Golden State that lured young Americans with its beaches, its weather and good vibrations. Cities that looked the other way when residents smoked dope, shot up and shoplifted, suddenly became hard-core enforcers that told churches and cafes what they could not do in the name of public safety.

In California, there was a real class divide. Gov. Gavin Newsom famously ate the French Laundry with his well-connected pals even as his office was warning residents not to attend big Thanksgiving get-togethers.

Outside of Sacramento, common sense prevailed. Three well-known epidemiologists, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, Sentra Gupta of Oxford and Martin Kulldorf of Harvard wrote the Great Barrington Declaration that recommended “focused protection” over heavy-handed social distancing, because the other risk from COVID was the toll imposed on children not going to school and workers not being able to work.

It’s Friday morning and I feel much better.

I can’t really tell if COVID is different in your 70s than in your 60s, because — brain fog — I don’t remember everything about having it before.

How did we get it? Last week we had two friends over for dinner and attended two public events ahead of our positive tests — one at an embassy, another a book party. It did not occur to us that the events were risky — in part because we like to tell ourselves that we had had COVID enough that we believed we had developed natural immunity.

And while we both feel like we are returning back to normal, it can’t be good for people in their 70s to get COVID.

That said, studies show that seniors live longer, healthier lives when they are out in the world. I think we’ve made our choice.

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Feel free to share your COVID memories, and the decisions you’ve made going forward. And of course, it would be wrong not to subscribe, so….

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I don’t get what Moyn wants, other than to upend human nature and remove this country’s commitment to rewarding hard work and good habits.

Moyn has cooked up his own special brand of “unfairness,” “a gerontocratic society in which the old control ever more power and wealth, leading to overrepresentation in political life and unequal power in social life.”

I’ll start with wealth.

Before I was born, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had ushered through Social Security, which was designed to provide retirement income for one-time workers.

Over time, numbers crunchers realized the system is becoming unsustainable. According to a federal report, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will be able to pay 100% of total scheduled benefits until 2033. After 2033, the nation’s debt — now more than $110,000 per person — only will get worse without changes.

As fewer Americans have enjoyed employer-funded pension plans, private savings filled in the gap. The advent of 401(k)s and IRAs allowed workers to put aside extra money for their retirement so they could have a reserve funds for emergencies and/or higher living on top of benefits that are lower than $24,000 annually.

Such saving used to be considered a good thing — a sign of personal responsibility. As the saying goes, a penny saved is a penny earned.

Now, in some corners, seniors with savings suddenly are moochers who have too much. Something must be done.

I look at my career. I started off with low-paying low-status jobs. As I aged, I developed skills that paid more. I worked harder and lived better. Bought and sold homes. I have more assets in the twilight of my career than I had in the start. I don’t know how to change that dynamic without poisoning the U.S. economy with magical thinking.

Are there reforms that would make sense? Sure, one answer is entitlement reform, which I generally support. Alas, I suspect Moyn’s remedies only would fuel the growth of the national debt. And guess who gets stuck with the burgeoning national debt? Not today’s seniors.

As for Moyn’s lament that the old have too much power, his examples are chilling. Older people vote more than young adults. To fix this dynamic, he flirts with making voting mandatory and lowering the voting age. Moyn’s remedy could entail handing the keys to the country over to teens who may not want to vote, can’t enlist in the military and never had to pay the rent.

Genius. (He thinks.)

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Do you believe that America’s big problem is too many seniors who vote too much for fellow oldsters and have too many assets? What do you think would happen if Moyn’s prescription actually happened?

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Why Fashion Suddenly Loves Older Women

Representation of women of a certain age has never been higher. What’s going on?

Two icons featured in the story and all over the rest of the media of late are Meryl Streep and Anna Wintour, both age 76, who have garnered lots of press attention ahead of the release of “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”

Wintour recently wrote in Vogue, “I feel age is actually an advantage.” In the entertainment world around this movie’s release, she may be correct.

Wintour and Streep are baby boomers, as am I. And for as long as I can remember, baby boomers have managed to make everything about themselves as cool. Remember: Don’t trust anyone over 30. Then there was the show “Thirtysomething.” Now there is a sequel to “The Devil Wears Prada,” released twenty years after the original, yet Streep somehow looks about the same. 70 is the new 30.

The New York Times reports that the new new thing features runway models North of 50.

Older Americans, have more of one thing more than the young — money. quoth the Gray Lady,

“Indeed, according to the Federal Reserve, more than 70 percent of all the wealth in the United States is concentrated in the over-55 age group, which is also responsible for more than 45 percent of consumer spending.”

Older ladies who can afford haute couture want to see older ladies wearing haute couture, so the movie feeds the market.

Does that mean there is a sea change here where all doors, inside and outside of fashion, are wide open for women North of 65? I suspect not.

Speaking to the New York Times, Ashley Mears, a model turned professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam and the author of “Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model,” tossed out some prominent examples of older women in entertainment, then offered,

“it’s a paradox because they don’t look their age. For women who are successful in their fields and need to be visible, which usually happens later in life, the message is: You need to do work to look good.” And that’s expensive, connecting youth with class and wealth, and creating further barriers to entry at a time when fashion needs to take them down.

In other words: If you’re North of 65 and hoping to maintain a high-profile perch, work on your face, stay on the treadmill, and hire a stylist.

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Do you detect a hint of envy in my post? Yes, you do. I thought at some point I would age out past the impossible models set for modern women, but that’s not going to happen.

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It was a gutsy David vs Goliath move that paid off. I covered that race and admired Swalwell’s willingness to take on a member who no longer served his district.

Who knew that 14 years later, Swalwell would become Stark 2.0? But worse.

Former female staffers have accused Swalwell of sexual assaulting them, which Swalwell denies. The stories, however, are ugly and credible.

Swalwell apparently believed that after spending time in D.C. and getting his face all over cable news as an anti-Trump gadfly, he was untouchable. (Just as Stark had believed.)

Swalwell even thought that he could run for California governor in a crowded field despite a trail of damning texts and cringe-y video.

It appears Swalwell had become everything people hate about Washington — a man always looking to climb up the ladder, not master the steps.

Maybe Swalwell was emboldened because the ugly stories did not make news when he ran for re-election, so he ran for governor with a what-could-go-wrong attitude?

We’ve seen this overreach before. Swalwell ran for president in 2020. His polling average never rose above one percent, USA Today reported.

My theory is that the self-righteous tone that has served Swalwell well on cable news has aged out. Consider Swalwell’s attacks on now Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was the subject of uncorroborated personal attacks.

Sunday, Swalwell suspended his campaign for governor.

There have been many reports about politicians who stayed too long in office — Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Nancy Pelosi. Their individual ability to serve into their 80s and 90s is open to argument.

As he turns 80 in June, there will be more scrutiny on Donald Trump. Like the rest of us, he isn’t getting any younger.

Swalwell represents the flip side of the equation — a youngish politician who held his seat for too long. That sense of institutional rank that it took more seasoned politicians decades to establish, well, Swalwell fast-tracked that. He ran for the House in his 30s, for the White House at 38 and now he is on his way out in his 40s.

You’re never too young to act like an old fool.

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That’s sort of impossible because older people are much more likely to read a newspaper than younger adults.

Now, to the mistake. This recent New York Times’ headline on NATO drew ridicule and scorn. Because, as every journalist should know, NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

It was a stupid mistake, but then most errors in newspapers are stupid mistakes. Newspapers frequently misspell names, misidentify public figures and at times regurgitate false reports.

The Gray Lady issued a correction.

Having worked for three dailies, my default reaction is to blame low staffing levels. Overworked people, after all, are more likely to stumble — although even well-staffed outlets screw up, as the above photo illustrates.

Problem with my default reaction: The New York Times has doubled its newsroom staff over the last decade.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

So how do you complain about an egregious errors without sounding like a stuck-in-time oldsters?

A reporter friend who is South of 65 tells me that there’s a solution likely to prevent similar correctible mistakes: Artificial Intelligence. The latest AI, she tells me, should prevent this sort of spectacular blunder.

Oh joy.

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Did I miss anything?

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-That coffee shop on S. Washington that has had many lives. Wesley tells the story of a commercial building in California that kept turning over and closing shop. Until a Jack Sizzler moved in.

-A Tesla Cybertruck drives by. That’s my cue to complain that Elon Musk for inflicting that hideously ugly design on the rest of the world.

• We drive through Old Town, Alexandria. I sigh about how much I loved living in Old Town.

Enough already. We decided we’ve got to mix it up, lest we keep saying the same thing over and over again. So we are giving our canned phrases numbers instead.

#1. Miss living in Old Town.

#5. Tesla Cybertruck looks hideous.

#8 Jack Sizzler turnover.

#12 We’re repeating ourselves again.

And we’re keeping the list in Field Notes or cell phone.

So the next time we take that drive, we won’t be repeating the same stock phrases. We are going shorthand with numbers.

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Don’t forget to subscribe, or to send this to a friend and tell the friend to subscribe, and oh yeah, suscribe. #12.

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The nut graph says:

“For decades, scientists assumed that mental capacity increased through adolescence, hit a high point in the 20s, and then declined steadily. But more recent research has overturned that long-held view. Our brains develop, plateau, and adapt in complex ways over their lifespans, with different skills rising and falling on their own schedules. Processing speed, memory, vocabulary, reasoning, and emotional intelligence all follow distinct arcs — and can peak at different times in our lives.”

But wait, there’s more…

“A 2015 study based on data from about 48,000 participants found that different mental abilities peak at different ages, rather than all at once. Processing speed tends to reach its height in the late teens or early 20s, while short-term and working memory often top out in the late 20s to early 30s. Vocabulary and other knowledge-based skills, however, continue to improve well into middle age, with some measures peaking in the late 60s or even early 70s.”

Knowledge and vocabulary skills peak in the late 60s, or even early 70s? Be still my heart. (As I write, 79 bpm, or beats per minute, according to my Apple Watch).

After you hit North of 65, you spend a lot of time checking yourself. Forget a word? You call it a senior moment. (There is no term for a memory lapse at a younger age.) Left your phone or wallet at home? Blame age-related cognitive decline, not distraction.

Many times, the urge to cite age as the reason for forgetfulness is just plain wrong. Everyone forgets.

Now what was I saying?

And I repeat myself…

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She swam from Cuba to Florida — and says she’s stronger than ever at 76

Diana Nyad made her 110-mile swim when she was 64. She reflects on how she continues to grow her strength and energy more than a decade later.

\When Diana Nyad was 64 years old, she swam from Cuba to Florida. (Courtesy of Diana Nyad)

By Maggie Penman

When Diana Nyad was 60, she set her sights on an audacious goal: swimming 110 miles from Cuba to Florida. She succeeded four years later, the first person to do it without a shark cage. During the 53-hour swim, she never exited the water.

Nyad’s story comes as some research suggests that seniors can become faster, stronger and sharper with age.

“I changed by the time I was in my 60s,” the 76-year-old Nyad, told the Washington Post. “We were in a true team.”

Less ego, more savvy.

Nyad also said that as she has aged, she has gotten nicer. “I was much less selfish or self-absorbed than in my 20s,” Nyad said of her long-haul swim.

She is playing tennis and engages in “badass workouts” which “a lot of 25-year-olds couldn’t do.”

Studies have found that optimism helps. (To which my husband grumbles, maybe the upbeat oldsters are that way because they are healthier, instead of being healthier because they are optimists.)

I have arthritis and it keeps me from engaging in high-impact aerobics, which I used to love. So sometimes when I read about great athletes in their 70s and 80s, I sense that the authors want to pretend there is no physical decline that goes with aging, as if any of us could run a marathon if only we put our minds to it, even though there are things many of our bodies no longer can do.

The positive side: I have found as I get older, I have stamina, and perhaps more important, a routine. I know what I can do when I pace myself, and I know when I need a day off. I enjoy walking. (Yes, I’ve seen that ad on the social media that says walking ages people, but then I see a lot of healthy older folks walking on a daily basis.)

Are you nicer with age? Does it help? Do you feel stronger, or weaker, or both?

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I had a dream that in my North of 65 years, I could live like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, traveling, seeing friends and solving murders, a la the late Joan Hickson who played the fictional sleuth so well.

Reality intrudes. I’ve never been anywhere that even remotely involved a drawing-room whodunnit. During a week’s fact-finding trip across the pond, nobody was so much as stabbed in the back and no butlers made gruesome discoveries.

With no murders to solve, I went sight-seeing.

Not for the first time, I visited the Churchill War Rooms or Cabinet War Rooms - both names are used - the underground bunker from which the great man commanded Great Britain’s military during World War II. As the tour’s audio noted, were it not for his role leading the military during World War II, Winston Churchill’s reputation would have been that of a “brilliant failure.”

Instead, after a career of notable catastrophes, Churchill became Prime Minister at age 65 and he triumphed when England needed him most.

We arrived in London as there has been talk of air-brushing Churchill and other historic figures from the U.K.’s paper currency. As Politico reported:

Banknotes issued by the Bank of England will soon feature images of wildlife rather than historical figures, following a public consultation on the design of the next set of currency.

On the current crop of notes are former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill (£5), author Jane Austen (£10), painter J.M.W. Turner (£20), and mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing (£50).

The Bank of England held a public consultation on banknote imagery last year. In a press release, it said that of the 44,000 responses received, about 60 percent wanted nature to feature, ahead of architecture and landmarks, historical figures, arts, culture and sport, innovation and noteworthy milestones.

I asked an older — even older than I am — volunteer in the historic tunnels for his take on the move to chase Churchill out of our wallets.

(My view: These days, we take the legends who helped make our world what it is today and nitpick at them because they are not just like us. We shall receive and deserve the same opprobrium from future generations.)

It is “inevitable,” the gentlemen told me, as the current crop of leaders casts judgment on their larger-than-life predecessors. If the effort to erase Churchill during this stab at changing pound note art, it will happen later, he opined. “They call it progress,” he shrugged.

Or maybe this scheme is so bone-headed that it never becomes official policy — not because it’s wrong to change pound notes or dollar bills, but because too many re-brandings are one part update and another part rebuke.

And another thing - Jane Austen, of £10 note fame, is a target. In the war to nuke Churchill’s legacy, the busybodies also want to ghost the woman who gave us Marianne Dashwood and Mr. Darcy. They apparently have nothing better to do.

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Methinks Miss Marple is popular because she portrays aging in its most flattering light - wisdom without error and aches and pains without complaint. She represents the ideal North of 65 woman.

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As I age, I find that I have seen fewer of the films that are nominated for best picture and have less interest in watching the self-congratulatory pronouncements that inevitably hail from within the entertainment bubble.

As I write this, the ratings are not out for Sunday’s show, but the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote last year,

“The Academy Awards continue to increase in viewership after a huge drop in 2021, when only 10.4 million viewers tuned in amid COVID-19. Viewership reached a recent high in 2025 with 19.7 million viewers.

However, this total is still significantly lower than the mid-2010’s. The last time the show drew more than 40 million viewers was 2014, when “12 Years a Slave” won Best Picture, according to Nielsen.”

According to Statista, 62 percent of viewers North of 65 are “not interested at all” in the Oscars; while 63 percent of viewers age 45 to 64 are also disinterested. Viewers age 18 to 44 are interested.

I blame COVID for my lack of movie-going. I worked through the pandemic and got COVID more than once. The rare changes I made to my routine were: Eating outdoors and not going to the movies. That and the lack of movies I really wanted to see.

The first post-COVID movie I went to was Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” which won best picture in 2024. Because it was a masterpiece.

But I digress.

The point here is that the older I get, the less likely I am to know anything about big-buzz movies.

Out of the ten movies nominated for best picture, I saw one and a half. “F1,” which I watched because it took place in Las Vegas, home of my former employer the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the first half of “One Battle After Another,” which I found interesting but, like many trendy films, annoyingly busy. And I found most of the characters unlikeable.

BTW, I read “Hamnet,” which garnered a best actress award for Jessie Buckley. I loved the book, but being a North of 65er, I thought I’d wait until I can watch it at home for free.

Another thing about being old: I recognized many of the actors who sat in the front rows, but their names did not click. It’s clear I am not watching what Hollywood watches.

I wasn’t always this way. I used to pay attention to the Oscars.

The first question I asked in the briefing room when I was a White House Correspondent during President Donald Trump’s first term was about the Oscars. I asked Press Secretary Sean Spicer:

You can see it at minute 14:43.

MR. SPICER: Debra Saunders

Q: Hi. The Oscars are Sunday night. Will the President be watching? If there’s a Meryl Streep kind of moment, how do you think he’ll react? And why -- if this has happened at other awards ceremonies, why do you think this happens?

MR. SPICER: Why do I think what happens? (Laughter.)

Q: Actresses and actors like Meryl Streep.

MR. SPICER: I have no idea. It’s a free country. I think Hollywood is known for being rather far to the left in its opinions. And I’ve got to be honest with you, I think the President will be hosting the Governors Ball that night. Mrs. Trump looks forward to putting on a phenomenal event, and the First Lady has put a lot of time into this event that’s going to occur in welcoming our nation’s governors to the Capitol. And I have a feeling that that’s where the President and the First Lady are going to be focused on on Sunday night, and so we’ll go from there.

You can scoff at the question, but my editor wanted to know because native Las Vegan Jimmy Kimmel was hosting.

Also, the question made international news.

And it must have been a great question because - as I just discovered while looking for a good video on this — an AP archive video I just found makes it look as if a man asked the question, even though Spicer called out my name before I asked the question. My name and voice were air brushed out.

I am standing, by the way, in the back corner, not in an assigned seat. It was a brutally competitive environment, and apparently the biggies didn’t want to share credit for a question they didn’t ask.

So you North of 65-ers, do you watch the Oscars?

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Forget Florida. They Got Older and Moved to New York.

A growing number of older transplants are undeterred by the city’s high costs and are connecting with young neighbors over brunches, birthday parties and running clubs.

Some moved to be near family. Others to fulfill a dream. There’s culture. The museums. The window shopping. Yoga at Bryant Park. One-level living in high-rises with elevators. And energy all around you. It’s a very walkable city.

As the story notes:

“There are a lot of older adults who don’t want to be cooped up in a retirement home,” said Jonathan Bowles, the executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan think tank that studies older adult issues. “For them, New York is a great antidote. It’s a place they can really live a second life.”

“A lot of people our age have saved,” Dr. Silverman said. “Now, if you can do it, instead of going on a cruise or something like that, why not invest in a lifestyle that’s going to pay you back every day, every hour, by having a world-class city at your fingertips?”

The caveat: These folks had assets that made moving to New York doable. Many sold the single-family homes in which they lived for years so they could buy a smaller, and perhaps pricier, condo.

Many seniors who worked their whole lives still find NYC remains unaffordable. According to the Center for an Urban Future, the number of older adults living in poverty in NYC surged by 40.9 percent over the past decade.

Of course, there are other smaller cities that are more accessible to middle-class seniors. Indeed, many of us grew up with a show that saluted a single working woman in Minneapolis.

Nearby suburbs with transit also can provide easy access to city energy, and you don’t need a car. One thing about aging in 2026: you’ve got options. And ideas.

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I thought I’d clean my office and file my papers.

I’m down from about six loose boxes in my home office to two. So, Incomplete.

I thought I’d have all the artwork up on the walls of a house we moved into in August.

I haven’t even hired someone to do the real work. So, flunking grade.

I thought I’d travel more. Not really. We’ve got two trips abroad ahead. (We don’t do long trips because of the dogs.)

I thought I’d walk the dogs more. Check.

I thought I’d read more books. Check.

I thought I’d do yoga again. I don’t even feel like it.

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I know I’m not the only person North of 65 with a list of things I thought I’d do. What about you?

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“The Golden Boy” is set for release on March 10. As Elisabeth Egan writes in the New York Times, the novel is about “Stafford Hopkins, a wealthy TV executive… living in Hawaii with his wife Agnes when he receives a letter notifying him that he has been named guardian of four young strangers who are the grandchildren of his childhood best friend. He returns to Canada to untangle the logistics and, in turn, untangles his past.”

From the New York Times:

71 and a First-Time Novelist: ‘I Was Tenacious and I Kept Coming Back’

For 50 years, Patricia Finn kept to the background and told other people’s stories. Now, in “The Golden Boy,” she’s finally telling one of her own.

I have a friend who often has said you can’t write a novel beyond a certain age — maybe age 50, of course I forget — because oldsters lack the energy needed to drive the plot.

Having worked as a ghostwriter, Finn was not new to writing. This novel, however, is the first work which she sees as entirely hers from the start. It took her some ten years to write “The Golden Boy.” She started working on the novel in 2014, gave up for a few years, then returned to the book during COVID.

Friend Hart Hanson told Egan, “She pressed on despite the fact that she thought she was too old and not flashy enough.” And: “She didn’t see a path and yet she kept working. I love her book. I also love the story of Tricia Finn.”.

Finn doesn’t do social media and she doesn’t have a website. I am guessing that those choices may help stay more focused in her book.

Lesson learned. You can take on a big project in your 70s. Don’t let your age by an enemy. Or fear of not succeeding.

“The line between promotion and humiliation can be so fine,” Finn told Egan. It seems that line gets thinner when you are North of 65.

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Marcus Tullius Cicero is believed to have been in his early 60s when he wrote “De Senectute,” with its imaginary dialogue on aging between three Roman solons, the prickly Cato the Elder, general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus and friend-of-Scipio Gaius Laelius.

I read Cicero so you don’t have to.

Here’s s fine description of the work from one translation:

In On Old Age, Cicero offers a thoughtful and dignified defense of aging, arguing that old age, far from being a burden, brings wisdom, peace, and opportunity for continued contribution to society. Written as a dialogue, the work reflects on how to live virtuously and gracefully in life’s later years, celebrating the enduring value of experience, friendship, and intellectual activity.

Like many a modern politician, Cicero can be a bit of a windbag, so I’ll skip to the highlights.

There is good news on aging, from the Roman big shot’s point of view: Old age “LACKS SENSUAL PLEASURES.” When in Cicero’s Rome, that’s a good thing. “What a splendid service does old age render, if it takes from us the greatest blot of youth!”

(No Viagra for Cicero. Such was aging before the dawn of the pharmaceutical industry.)

In the text you’ll find a cautionary tale of passion gone bad: A Roman had to be expelled from the Senate because, “when he was in Gaul as consul, he had yielded to the entreaties of his paramour at a dinner party to behead a man who happened to be in prison condemned on a capital charge.”

Note that Team Cicero’s hands are so clean that it’s the paramour’s fault when a public official orders the beheading of a criminal. (Old men in power never change. That was Herod’s rationale for beheading John the Baptist.)

“De Senectute” shares a legend about Scipio’s “grandfather’s foreign friend Masinissa” when in his 90s:

“When he has once begun a journey on foot he does not mount his horse at all; when on horseback he never gets off his horse. By no rain or cold can he be induced to cover his head. His body is absolutely free from unhealthy humors, and so he still performs all the duties and functions of a king. Active exercise, therefore, and temperance can preserve some part of one’s former strength even in old age.”

You could say Cicero was MAHA for Roma, or MRHA (Make Rome Healthy Again). Except this isn’t “Eat Your Vegetables” advice, it’s seeing virtue in ignoring the elements and arthritis.

Don’t worry about being forgetful in your old age. One of the sages offered that he never heard “of any old man forgetting where he had hidden his money.”

That was centuries before passwords and PIN codes.

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Here’s a good link to a text: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/cicero-on-old-age-de-senectute

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