Tag Archives: Aging

Is Old Age Becoming Overrated?

By Robin Bates | Published: November 26, 2019

A “New Yorker” article on aging turns to literature to debunk the notion that aging is a good thing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Mrs. Dalloway and the Gift of Aging

By Robin Bates | Published: February 28, 2019

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 , , , , | Comments closed

In Honor of a Nonagenarian

By Robin Bates | Published: September 26, 2018

My mother turned 93 yesterday so I share this moving R. S. Thomas poem on visiting a woman turning 90.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , | Comments closed

The Dreamlike Pleasures of Rowing

By Robin Bates | Published: July 31, 2018

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 , , , | Comments closed

Coping with Aging through Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: July 25, 2018

Wordsworth has written some of the world’s great poems for coping with aging.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Jane Eyre on Caring for the Sick

By Robin Bates | Published: July 21, 2017

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 , , , | Comments closed

Federer, Unlike Ulysses, a Family Man Hero

By Robin Bates | Published: July 13, 2017

Time and again with Roger Federer, thinking he is nearing his end, I have cited Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” He keeps proving me wrong. One reason may be because he has a different relationship with his family than Tennyson’s protagonist has.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Kranz & Muriel Spark on Insulting the Aged

By Robin Bates | Published: August 21, 2016

Today I share a poker post from my 61-year-old novelist and poker playing friend Rachel Kranz, about the indignities of being called “young lady” while at the poker table. Muriel Spark similarly objects to the indignities heaped upon those who are aging in her novel “Memento Mori.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , | Comments closed

How to Keep Beauty from Vanishing Away

By Robin Bates | Published: March 1, 2015

Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo” works as a Lenten meditation on the beauty of God’s grace.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , | Comments closed