Anyone with an elderly parents–and anyone with a three-year-old–will related to Milne’s “James James Morrison Morrison.”
Tag Archives: Aging
Birthday Wishes at 95
For my mother’s 95th birthday, I turn to Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73” to express my continuing love.
Flowers for Algernon, Parable on Aging
With regard to my improving tennis game, I see my present–and my future–in the Daniel Keyes novel “Flowers for Algernon.”
Is Old Age Becoming Overrated?
A “New Yorker” article on aging turns to literature to debunk the notion that aging is a good thing.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Vanity of Human Wishes", "Sailing to Byzantium", "Tithonous", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Aristotle, As You Like It, Ecclesiastes, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, King Lear, Merchant's Tale, old age, Plato, Rasselas, Samuel Johnson, Ulysses, William Butler Yeats, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Mrs. Dalloway and the Gift of Aging
Friday My wife Julia alerted me to a luminescent Atlantic article about women disappearing as they grow older. Although some regard this as a problem, author Akiko Busch draws on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to show how women can turn it to their advantage. First, the apparent problem. When women are treated as objects, they […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged identity, Mrs. Dalloway, Sur, Ursula K Le Guin, Virginia Woolf Comments closed
In Honor of a Nonagenarian
My mother turned 93 yesterday so I share this moving R. S. Thomas poem on visiting a woman turning 90.
The Dreamlike Pleasures of Rowing
In “Alice through the Looking Glass,” boating is a metaphor for life slipping by–unnoticed by Alice but seen as deeply tragic by Carroll.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alice through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, lost innocence, rowing Comments closed
Jane Eyre on Caring for the Sick
As I support people who are sick and aging, I turn to Jane Eyre as a model of one who considers such activity to be, not a self-sacrifice, but a gift to herself.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged caregivers, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, sacrifice Comments closed
