To introduce his newly published memoir, my friend cites the advice of a nineteenth century writer to those who might want to choose a last name. That author, Samuel Butler, recommends the name Aaron because “you will be pretty safe to head all alphabetical lists.”

Starting from his schoolboy days during World War I, Daniel Aaron has presumably headed hundreds of lists. Now in his 95th year, he has just published The Americanist; in it, he looks back over his life and work with quiet satisfaction about his accomplishments at home and with mixed feelings about his part in explaining American culture abroad.  

The title of his book comes from the role Aaron took on long ago, as a graduate student at Harvard. In 1943, he was the second person to complete a Ph.D. in the new field of American Studies. This academic specialization combined history, literature, sociology and other disciplines in order to reach a deeper understanding of American civilization.

Before receiving the Ph.D., Aaron had accepted a faculty position at Smith College where he taught from 1939 to 1969. He then returned to Harvard and taught there until his retirement in 1980.

Retirement, however, has never meant stopping work. In fact, Aaron walks from home to his office every day and spends his time reading, writing, and keeping up with his many friends. Until recent years, he rode his bike regularly: every Sunday he would pedal, with a couple of colleagues, from Harvard Square to Lexington.

He remains intellectually acute, as his memoir shows, and interested in the world of ideas and action. My friendship with him extends back only some ten years, during which time I have felt fortunate to talk with him frequently.

For anyone interested in literary America, Dan is a treasure house of memories. In the memoir, readers will recognize the names of many distinguished writers. Among the poets, he knew W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, and E. E. Cummings (as he was known before he dropped the capitals.)

Prose writers included Katherine Ann Porter, James T. Farrell, Truman Capote, Edmund Wilson, Richard Wright, and Sinclair Lewis. One of Dan’s great achievements was co-founding the Library of America series, which has published definitive editions of important American writers.

He also knew, or at least met, significant political figures like Adlai Stevenson, Socialist leader Norman Thomas, and Massachusetts governor Foster Furcolo. When he lived in Northampton, he often received visits from aspiring office seekers who wanted to stir up support in western Massachusetts.

Aaron’s own politics were consistently leftist, and his best known book, Writers on the Left, reflects his interest in those who shared that orientation. Looking back to 1954, he refers to “fellow travelers like me,” implying sympathy for the Communist Party, though he was never a member of it. However, he seems to regret that, long before, he had upbraided the “reactionary press” for criticizing the Soviets.

In the post World War II period Aaron spent much time in European countries and elsewhere as a guest lecturer or member of university faculties. He had not expected to do this, because he was not fluent in other languages. But opportunities arose that made him a kind of spokesman for American culture abroad.

Despite his obvious experience of the subject, the author does not say very much about old age, though I would have welcomed his reflections on its mysteries. Rather, Dan seems to take it as a matter of course. He does notice changes in his own thinking: “At post-ninety,” he writes wryly, “I have less to conceal than I did when I was twenty, and I look back over the years I’ve lived through, if not complacently, at least with relief that I’ve managed to escape hanging.”

His review of the past has been supported by the personal journals that he kept in earlier years. These private writings have now enabled him to recapture how he felt about events that happened long ago. Without this younger voice, it might have been far more difficult for him to reclaim the past.  

Of course, he remains aware that memory is fallible. Early on in the book he writes: “Some of the comments and judgments herein, many of them drawn from old journal entries, lack historical dignity and weight, and not all of the ‘facts’ cited here are certifiable.”

Were the memoir more deeply personal than he intended it to be, the author might say something about “the ills that flesh is heir to” in later life. In fact, he has had to deal with serious mobility problems in recent years.

It has been a special pleasure for me to find out more about the life of a friend, and learn things that do not always emerge in private conversation. The Americanist is published by the University of Michigan Press, and thanks are due to that publisher for bringing Daniel Aaron’s remarkable story to a wider public.

Richard Griffin

Everybody knows what the telephone number 911 leads to ─ help in life- threatening situations.

But almost no one yet knows about 211. Though familiar with human services, I had not heard of this number until a few weeks ago. But now I have discovered that these three digits are already making a crucial difference in the lives of many people and stand ready to help many more.

211 serves people confronted with all sorts of problems. However, those whose lives are in immediate jeopardy and others assisting them should continue to call 911.

On a recent rainy and windy April day, I visited 211 headquarters, housed at 95 Berkeley Street in Boston in the offices of the Medical Foundation, the agency that runs this program. There I met with Gary Lever, the director, who explained to me how 211 operates and listed several examples of needs that can be met by this new information and referral service.

Those who have lost power in their homes could call 211. Or people without heating oil. Others may need day care for their children or elder family members. Or be without food or money for rent. Perhaps a water heater has broken, or parents may need counsel for their teenage son. If a woman has run out of diapers for her baby, 211 can help.

Established in Massachusetts six months ago, 211 serves people throughout the  entire state. As of now, the number can be called from 8 to 8, Monday through Friday. However, the agency hopes, by the end of the year, to make the number active 24/7.

Massachusetts does not have a monopoly on 211: 41 states now use the same number, though only about half offer state-wide coverage. Presumably the whole country will be covered in the foreseeable future.

Funding for the Massachusetts program comes from the Council of Massachusetts United Ways and the Massachusetts Association of Information & Referral Specialists.

While visiting the office, I saw the call-receiving professionals at work. While talking with callers, they sit before computer screens that give them access to information about some 8,800 service agencies.

These information and referral specialists, most of them women, are highly trained and sympathetic to the callers. They do not ask the names or identity of callers but preserve their privacy.

Currently some six or seven hundred people call 211 each week. That may not seem like many but for an agency that has been only six months running, it suggests a lot of work. As of now, callers can expect to get connected quickly; the agency’s goal is to answer 80 percent of the calls within 90 seconds.

Most conversations last from five to seven minutes, but some can last 10 or 15. More calls come early in the morning and at the beginning of the week than at other times.

The woman I talked to, Robin Fox, is a social worker with wide experience who obviously loves her work. “What’s so great about this service is that there are many people out there who really need help,” she says. “I think it’s a great idea that people have one place where they can call.”

Having been with 211 from the beginning, she sees progress: “At this point, we’re able to go a little bit deeper, now that we understand the system a little bit better.”

The elder service network, with which I am most familiar─notably the Councils on Aging and the ASAPS (formerly known as home care agencies), have their own numbers for information and referral. And the Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs has the 1 800 AGE-INFO (243-4636) number that can be called free of charge from anywhere.

These resources do not conflict with 211. The people there are familiar with these and other networks and work hand in hand with them. 211 also receives calls from professionals at these and other agencies who may themselves need information about other human service resources.

Most of us have no better than foggy ideas about how to contact the appropriate agency when we need help. I would be the same way, had I not once worked for the Cambridge Council on Aging. While serving there, I received a crash course on the large array of human services agencies throughout the Commmonwealth. I came away from the experience with admiration for the wealth of such services available in this state.

But sometimes you can feel yourself in need of a Ph.D. to find your way toward help. Each agency has its own rules and procedures, sometimes making it hard for people without special knowledge to navigate the murky waters.

That’s why 211 seems important to me. To have a single number, and to find knowledgeable and sympathetic voices at the other end to help guide you on your way─ impresses me as worth a whole lot to a great many people.

Richard Griffin

“What does it feel like to be burdened by stuff?”

Many Americans could answer this question readily. “Uncomfortable, depressing, and humiliating” might be the response of those who have acquired too many possessions.

That is how Marilyn Paul would have replied before she found a way out of the web that entangled her. She once had 25 Gentle Giant boxes stacked in her bedroom because her other rooms were filled.

And this happened after she had received a Ph.D. in managing change from Yale. “It never occurred to me to apply the tools of my trade to myself,” she ruefully admits.

Dr. Paul spoke in a series sponsored by the Theological Opportunities Program. Calling itself “a learning community of feminist women and men seeking clarity around issues of daily life and religion,” this group has been running conferences for 34 years.

Under the leadership of Elizabeth Dodson Gray, TOP meets at Harvard Divinity School for weekly presentations on a theme chosen by its steering committee. This year’s choice is “Making Sense of Our ‘Stuff’ & Its Profound Meaning in Our Lives.”

What merits attention, as I see it, is the way TOP deals with everyday realities from the perspective of the spiritual life. The members of TOP’s advisory committee (34 women and one man, all from the Greater Boston area) feel that exploring the issues of women’s lives is “a sacred work.”

Marilyn Paul’s approach to the problem of stuff expresses this same approach. She sees it as a spiritual challenge to become free from the paralyzing effects of having more things in your life than you can manage.

When she was entangled by her stuff, her life gradually became intolerable. “I was afraid of my mail,” she acknowledges. She would not pick it up from her mailbox until she got a note from the deliverer. Then she packed it in a bag and put the bag in a closet. The stuff included credit card bills and bounced checks.

Her social life suffered badly. It made dating impossible. She couldn’t have anyone over because of the chaos that reigned in her house.

Her kitchen was a mess thanks to her belief (inherited from her mother) that doing household tasks was anti-feminist. Plates, glasses, and silverware piled up until she discovered that “aging the dishes” makes them much more difficult to wash.

Gradually, however, she made the break with this kind of chaotic living. In her book, “It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys: The Seven Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized,” she presents what she learned from her experience.

The seven steps toward good order include three questions and four imperatives: 1) What’s your reason for changing?; 2) How would you like it to be?; 3) What is it like now?; 4) Get support; 5) Learn organizing tactics; 6) Become familiar with strategies for change; 7) Go deeper toward liberation.

For her approach, Paul draws upon her own Jewish spiritual tradition. Exodus tells how the people of Israel escaped from Egypt, the latter name expressed in Hebrew by a word meaning “a tight place.” When God gives manna to the people, they do not need pots and pans and other things.

She interprets Passover as a time for “cleaning out and developing humility.” As such, it rates as a perfect time to explore one’s stuff. It is time to realize what it feels like to be free.

Her personal exodus has brought her much more freedom. “I love doing the dishes,” she now says. It gives her time for quiet and produces a result.

Our materialistic society affects everyone, she believes, no matter how spiritual we are. “We are embedded in a society that tells us part of our worth is our stuff.”

But Marilyn Paul has come to appreciate the contrary view: “Our worth is our soul, our spirit, our being, our body, our love, our care, our friendship. All of that is our unique contribution and the world would not be the world that we’re in without you being here just as you are.”

Speaking for myself, I’m not there yet. I plead guilty to having too much. But I’m working on it.

Fortunately, my house is small so it places limits on accumulation. And I throw out a lot of stuff, mostly paper, each week.

My own spiritual tradition helps too. It has taught me to be wary of amassing things. It also strongly suggests the advantages of detachment from the things that I do have.

Late life does not always produce detachment, however. Though an abundance of years can promote a sense of proportion, it may also make you anxious to keep things around you as a form of self-preservation.

I’m grateful to TOP for choosing to explore the subject of our relationship to stuff. My hope is to draw from the conference further inspiration toward establishing a soul-nourishing relationship to my unruly possessions.

Richard Griffin

Youth isn’t always wasted on the young. Despite the witty saying of George Bernard Shaw, some young people prove remarkably wise.

That certainly holds true of Sean McCue, the 23-year-old who manages McCue’s Taxi company in Watertown. No sooner had he graduated from college last May, than he had to take over the business from his father Robert who had suddenly fallen ill with leukemia, a disease that soon proved fatal.

As president, Sean directs a Watertown Square company that began in the 1930s when his great-grandfather Thomas McCue established it. In 1945, Thomas’s son Paul took over the business after army service in World War II.

Continuing the family pattern, Paul’s son Robert, after serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, came home to help his father with the business. The 1970s were a time of expansion: the company acquired 14 licenses owned by Watertown Yellow Cab.

In the background during much of this time was Sean’s mother, Mary McCue, who took care of bills, paperwork, and taxes. Her son calls her “the backbone of the business” without whom the company would not be where it is today. In addition to this work, Mary McCue has been a kindergarten teacher for 33 years.

Unlike many other people his age, Sean McCue has a sharp sense of the past. Speaking of his company, he says: “It’s been in the family for four generations. I intend to carry on that legacy. That’s my father’s life work. I don’t want to do anything to harm that name.”

Sean keeps alive a vivid memory of his father. “I think of my father constantly,” he says. “I can’t go 15 minutes here without running into someone who knows him.”

According to Sean, his father responded generously to those who came to him for help. “He took care of a lot of little people, those who needed a second chance.”

Sean has inherited stories that form part of the company’s heritage. Once, in 1974, a woman with “Harvard” in crimson letters emblazoned on her sweattshirt came into the office carrying a bag crammed to the top. The contents turned out to be cash, stolen from the Watertown Savings Bank.

Robert McCue noticed what she had in the bag but arranged a taxi for her. Then he called the police who tailed the cab and stopped it. Imagine the driver’s consternation when he saw cops approaching him with guns drawn!

Another remarkable woman is remembered for having come into the taxi office dressed conventionally but then walking down the adjoining Spring Street with nothing on except, perhaps, a smile.

And Robert recalled being confronted with a young Irishman who was visiting the country for the first time. He was staying with his brother, a Watertown resident who roomed with a friend under whose name the apartment was listed. After a late evening at a local bar, the brothers became separated, leaving the visitor with only one vague clue to his brother’s whereabouts.

At five A.M, Robert directed one of his cab drivers to drive the visitor on a search for “a house near the water”. Finally, they found the right house adjoining the Charles River, but not before ringing a few other doorbells.

Then there was the story of a customer who ordered a meal from Low Fat, No Fat Gourmet Café in Watertown. He wanted it delivered to his room in Boston’s Ritz Carlton Hotel. The driver dutifully picked up the food, drove to the hotel where he was told to take the package up to the customer.

Opening the door was Manny Ramirez, a Red Sox star the driver had not heard of previously. To Sean, the action qualifies as “Manny being Manny.”

These stories offer a taste of life in a suburban taxi company. “It changes every day,” says Sean. “You never know what you’ll get.”

This young company president regards himself as fortunate to have so many drivers of mature years. “My best drivers are the older ones,” claims Sean. “They know how to get in and out of Boston better than anyone else. They know the community, having seen kids grow up.”

One of them, John McKinnon, has been driving for the company for the last 45 years. At least six others have chalked up more than 20 years.

Another veteran driver, Richard Brannelly, has been there 28 years. Of his job, he says: “It’s enjoyable work. I like the customers; I like the freedom of being out.”

Sean explains his approach to employees a generation or two older: “What I have been trying to do is gain their respect and at the same time run a business and show them I know what I’m doing.”

Ken Carlson, a marketing mentor whose office is above McCue’s Taxi, agrees with his friend Sean’s self appraisal: “It’s a fine line Sean has had to walk but I think he’s done it admirably.”

Richard Griffin

“I don’t know how to make the time pass.” In words like these, a friend laments the boredom that retirement has brought him. He wishes that he had more going on in his life so as to escape the emptiness of his days.

My friend needs something that would make a given day stand out as different from the others. Having them all on the same flat plane, with hardly any peaks and high points, renders his life oppressively dull.

In the contemporary industrialized world, it has become easier to escape the natural seasons than it used to be. Central heating, air conditioning, electric light─to say nothing of television and the Internet─can make us insensitive to the world around us.

And the secular quality of daily life usually makes us unaware of the liturgical markers that, in religious society, moved people to feel times and seasons as sacred. When, for example, the bell of my parish church rings out a prayer at noon each day, I wager that not one person in a thousand of those within earshot ever thinks of the special character of midday that the bells are meant to evoke.

Thus a sense of sameness and monotony comes to characterize the daily lives of many people, perhaps especially those of us whose lives are no longer structured by paid employment. We may chafe under the burden of excessive leisure that defies our capability for finding enjoyable and absorbing things to do.   

I thought of my friend and others like him during a recent talk given by a couple of my age peers, Elizabeth and David Dodson Gray. Using a variety of often unlikely props, these Wellesley residents collaborated in explaining how they use time to enhance  the life of their family.

Underlying their approach is the liturgical year of the religious tradition that they hold dear. Both of them are steeped in Christian theology, he as a retired Episcopal minister, she as a former divinity school student.

In their animated and colorful presentation, Elizabeth and David explain how, for variety’s sake, they divide the year into nine parts. For each of these seasons they have gathered objects that give expression to the season and act as stimulants to thought and action.

Basic to the “stuff” of each season is color. “For me, color is very, very important,” says Elizabeth. “God is a sensuous God,” she adds, in appreciation of the material world.

She speaks first about the season of Lent, which she and her husband are currently celebrating. This they do by bringing into their home many purple things, to create an atmosphere appropriate to a time of penitence. These include candles, flowers, small statues, paintings─ even wash cloths. Among the paintings is one of Jesus standing with other poor men in a breadline.

For Easter, they choose objects in yellow or orange. Pillows, Marimekko tablecloths, a painting of a sunflower, tulips and other flowers. All of these things express that “we are living in a rejoicing time.”

The next season is the month of May. Then they emphasize Mother’s Day, an observance that Elizabeth considers important because it can serve to honor mothers everywhere. The color she chooses is pink. Pillow cases, a basket filled with dried roses, candles, and a poem written by a minister friend all mark the occasion.

To celebrate the arrival of summer and its duration, the couple selects blue and green. This reminds them of the sea as they try to bring the natural world into their house.

In the fall, walks with the children were scheduled so they could collect leaves in various colors. The house is decorated with stained glass autumn leaves. Orange and yellow runners appear on the dining table. A still life of seasonal fruit is prominently displayed.

The four other special times for this family are Advent, Christmas, Mid-Winter, and Valentine’s season. Each of them bears a distinctive color motif, blue for winter and red for Valentine’s, for instance.

At first glance, this segmenting of the year into nine parts may seem forced, even precious and fastidious. But viewed sympathetically, it qualifies as a clever way of marking and enlivening the days of one’s life.

“The mood of the whole house changes dramatically,” says Elizabeth of the scheme she and her husband have concocted. They experience at first hand the power of the senses to affect one’s interior life. Bringing up their children in this way must have given them a concrete sense of what distinctive times and seasons mean.

This scheme strikes me as valuable for its power to differentiate among the days of human life. Not all days are the same. Some are special; others less so.

As Elizabeth says of her experience: “It lights up time for you. It makes you much more appreciative of the seasons.”

Richard Griffin

The folks at Miller Brewing Company have done it again. Once more they are using old people to sell beer. Their latest television commercial shows two oldsters in the service of Miller Lite. If you share my low tastes and watch professional sports, you may catch it on the tube as I did last week.

A year and a half ago I wrote a column about a previous ad which showed an elderly couple on a couch late at night making out. Called “Young at Heart,” that commercial was made for Miller by an advertising team from Sweden. I called one of the actors, Marge Lintz then 80 years old, and asked what she thought of the ad.

“I don’t understand how anyone could be critical of it,” she said, as she rejected negative views alleging exploitation of elders. Her only complaint was that at the end of two days of filming her chin was rubbed sore by Hal’s beard.

The current ad, “Old Man,” lasts 30 seconds and has no spoken words. It opens on a cook-out with people milling around. The camera first focuses on an old man who is casting amorous glances toward a woman sitting on the other side of the open space. She is shown animatedly talking to beer-drinking young women, presumably her daughters, sitting on either side of her.

Then we see the old man approaching, leaning on a cane as he walks toward the woman. The older woman’s face lights up with anticipation as he draws near.

When he gets close, he stops, and accepts a bottle of Miller Lite that a young fellow has removed from a cooler and thrust into his hand. Having received the beer, the old man turns around and walks back into the distance. The camera returns to the older woman; her face registers a mixture of disappointment and pretended indifference. The guy obviously had preferred the beer to her.

In an effort to evaluate the ad, I recalled background given me earlier by my favorite advertising guru John Carroll, now at WGBH. Speaking about “Young At Heart” he had told me, “A lot of campaigns are like this .  .  .  outhip the other guy. They’re strictly image ads hip, cynical attitude .  .  . they want to make it edgy.”

He suggested that the older people were being used to grab the attention of young viewers who have grown up so saturated by television ads that, if you are to get them to notice anything, you have to shock them. And what’s more shocking than old men and women feeling sexual passion?

The actress in “The Old Man” is 74-year-old Clara Harvey with whom I talked at length. She turns out to be a remarkable woman, someone who emigrated from the Yucatan fifty years ago and who now lives in Los Angeles. She started acting only two years ago and loves it. Of this particular ad she says, “I thought it was wonderful” and she quotes approvingly her daughter ‘s judgment – “hilarious.”

A wise and witty friend, Mike Shinagel, also takes a straight-out benign position. “Equal strokes for old folks” he tells me approvingly.

For a more detailed view, I talked to an old friend, Joe Perkins, current president of the American Association of Retired Persons. Joe favors analysis of the ad from two angles.

First, he says the ad reflects the humanization of older people in American society. “Neither ad would have appeared a few years ago,” according to Joe. “The woman had feelings, she was hopeful.”

But he also expresses concern about possible toying with elders. “If they intended the ads to be pejorative,” Joe adds, “then they’re bad ads.” Mind you, he was laboring under the disadvantage of not having seen either one. Presiding over the 33-million-member AARP clearly does not leave much time for TV.

My own feelings reflect the tension between the two views. On the one hand, I welcome seeing older people in advertising. Thus far, we have been underrepresented in that medium. When shown, we have too often been portrayed as needing dentures or laxatives. Our image has been usually associated with some form of decrepitude.

However, I also feel the need to take older people seriously. The trouble with both beer ads is that they make old people cute. The ad makers use advanced age to play with viewers, to entertain them with images of older people doing things associated with youth, and ultimately to titillate television watchers with visions of geriatric sex.

Sex at any age has its ludicrous aspects; when shown in elders it is easy to make it look quite ridiculous. The suggestion that an old man who needs a cane to walk could be sexually attractive to a woman his own age is calculated to stir up in viewers complicated emotions.

With no little anticipation, I shall await the judgment of this column’s readers.

Richard Griffin

“I won, he lost” boasts Daniel Schorr, summarizing the outcome of his collision with President Richard Nixon in 1974 over his covering of Watergate and its aftermath. “I had survived an attempt by the president of the United States to do God knows what to me,” he tells this columnist in a recent interview.

That happened after Nixon put the then CBS reporter on his now-infamous “Enemies List.” Placing number 17th of 20 names, Schorr parlayed his notoriety into riches.

As he now describes his victory, “It typified my whole career: I tried to investigate, people who were investigated got mad at me, and they never did anything to me. In the end, as it turned out, I got a lot of fame in being an enemy of Nixon, it netted me hundreds of thousands of dollars in lecture fees.”

Now 90, this icon of American journalism divides his career into two parts. Before the domestic segment, he served for 20 years as a foreign correspondent.

One of his achievements as CBS’s man in Moscow in 1957 was getting a televised interview with Nikita Khrushchev in his Kremlin office. “Don’t ask me how I did it, but I did it,” he tells me as he looks back.

He also takes pleasure in an exchange with Khrushchev at a diplomatic reception. The international atmosphere was especially tense at the time and, according to rumor, the Soviet Central Committee was about to meet in special session. But Dan Schorr was scheduled to go away on vacation for two weeks.

He presented his dilemma to Khrushchev: “My capitalist bosses say ‘you can’t go on vacation’ and I don’t know what to tell them.”

Then, sotto voce, the Soviet leader assured him: “Mr. Schorr, you can go on your vacation.” But he added: “If absolutely necessary, we’ll hold the meeting without you.”

With chutzpah like this and a fair amount of luck, Schorr built a career that stands out in the history of American journalism. He owes some of his inspiration to Edward R. Murrow, the eminent CBS broadcast pioneer whose example of investigative reporting stands as a memorial.

Schorr believes deeply in the freedom of the press. He sees this freedom as a basic right, necessary for the wellbeing of American democracy. At an awards ceremony that followed my interview, he staunchly defended the role of investigative journalism.

Against all comers, he will uphold the right of journalists not to reveal the identity of unnamed sources. He regrets that this latter privilege “does not today enjoy widespread public support.”

It did in 1976 when the House Ethics Committee threatened to send Schorr with jail for releasing a confidential report of illegal actions by the CIA and FBI. Letters from the public presumably helped sway the committee not to punish him, though only by a five-to-four vote.

Schorr also deplores the control of today’s media by a relatively small number of corporations. And he is upset that some outlets focus on trivia rather than solid news. Fox News, he tells, devoted more than 13 times as much coverage to the death of Anna Nicole Smith than it did to news of the horrors of Walter Reed Hospital.

Listeners to National Public Radio, will recognize Schorr’s resonant voice almost immediately. It remains strong, although some frailties of advanced age have marked his body otherwise. Veteran journalism professor Alex Jones, at the awards ceremony honoring Schorr, told of restaurant waiters addressing the latter by name as soon as they heard his voice.

About the present condition of the United States and its future, Schorr feels deeply pessimistic. As he looks back to the 1930s and the Depression, he recognizes difficult times. But then, there was hope that things would improve.

In that era and later, there were huge problems. “Yet always underneath it there was a sense of we’ll fix it.” He adds sadly:  “I don’t have that sense any more. At 90, I’m almost glad to say─hey, you fix it. I did my part. I’m too tired.”

When I asked about retirement, however, Daniel Schorr issued an adamant negative. “The only thing that keeps me going,” he replies, “is the fact that I’m still working. I’m not sure what I would do if I didn’t have the structure of my day made every day, by reading the newspapers, calling the editor at NPR saying this is interesting, I think I’m going to write a commentary on it.”

His current work does not require much physical exertion, he observes. But it clearly calls upon him to use a great deal of brain power. And that he retains vigorously. Among other things, his memory is tenacious as he recalls the events of a life filled with happenings and personalities of historic importance.

He ends the interview with a definitive statement of his attitude toward his present status: “I find the best medicine for old age is work.”

Richard Griffin