Essays

From Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands” to Jack Yellin and Ted Shapiro’s “Life Begins at Forty,” music has our number when it comes to growing old.

One measure of the extent to which we believe age influences political beliefs is the extent to which we know Churchill’s famous phrase, “If you’re not a socialist before you’re 25, you have no heart; if you are a socialist after 25, you have no head.” Or, at least, whether we believe we know it.

The great Irish poet’s late verse homage to “our changing face.”

Here are some common realities for aging adults.

There is perhaps one last chance for my exulted cohort, the baby boomers, to step forward and provide a moral voice and active leadership in righting the American ship of state toward its demographic realities. Those of us who are on the leading edge of our cohort are now moving toward our 70s.

To study aging and its impacts on a campus that, seemingly, never ages can be a stark reminder of a crucial dynamic at work.

Miles Ahead and Born to be Blue draw on the sacrifices professional musicians make for their art, and the consequences that result. Complaints could be lodged. But for the sake of jazz, both are worth discussing.

Twenty films on, and about, jazz hit every note in the genre. And then some.

Yudell shows how scientists, even with the best intentions of modernizing the concept of race to keep up with current evidence, often wound up reinforcing its standard view to help insure its survival.

“The peculiar form of an essay implies a peculiar substance; you can say in this shape what you cannot with equal fitness say in any other.”