Heidi Hofmann White, a reader of this column who lives in Belmont, Massachusetts has sent me a copy of her memoir.  Entitled “At the Edge of the Storm,” it focuses mainly on her growing-up years in Germany during the Second World War. I found it fascinating to read.

Though Mrs. White modestly downplays her privately printed book as “flawed and imperfect,” it gives a vivid picture of what it was like to live in Cologne and elsewhere in Germany under wartime conditions. Her home city Cologne was often bombed by huge fleets of British and American planes that started fires and leveled city blocks.

Now 73, Heidi was a child during this agonizing time when her survival and that of her family was often at risk. An ironic twist on her situation came from her father being strongly anti-Nazi, so that he and his wife and children wanted Germany to lose the war. So, though they could have been killed by allied bombs, they remained sympathetic to the cause of defeating Hitler.

Her father, Josef Hofmann, had been a leader in the Center Party and belonged to the inner circle of Heinrich Brüning, who served as German chancellor in 1930-32. A distinguished journalist, Hofmann was chosen after the war by the American occupying forces to be founding editor of the Aachen newspaper. In this same period he also served in his state’s parliament.

Josef Hofmann himself left behind an unfinished memoir that recounts much of his experience during the war. His daughter asks, however, why he neglected to say much of anything about the fate of the Jews under the Nazis. Since he remained a staunch Catholic, I, for my part, would have wondered about his feelings when Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, pulled the Vatican’s support out from under the Center Party, opening the way for Hitler to assume total control.

In 1954, Heidi was to marry an American, Donald White, whom she had met when he was living in Germany as a Fulbright student preparing for an academic career. After a year’s delay because of immigration problems, she moved to this country to join him. She herself had done advanced linguistic studies in her native land and in France and England. One of her abiding regrets is not having finished her degree at the University of Heidelberg.

Cosmopolitan in spirit, Heidi White dedicates her book to her ten grandchildren, born in five different countries. She loves being American but maintains close contact with family and friends in her native land.

I believe that Heidi White can take justifiable pride in what she has written. She has skillfully shared her life and experience with readers, a life that takes on special meaning against the backdrop of a tumultuous history. Reading it, I felt caught up once more in events that have never lost their fascination for me. That a nation of people with such an advanced culture should have fallen prey to unspeakably evil internal enemies continues to provoke astonishment in me.

Heidi White’s memoir arrived in the same mail with “Generations,” the periodical published by the American Society on Aging. The latest issue is entitled “Listening to Older People’s Stories” and brings out the value of those stories for both those who tell them and those who listen to them.

Of course, I did not need evidence for this value, since many years ago I drafted a memoir of my own. At this time, its fate remains unclear but I have continued to work on my story through the years. To me, this kind of writing is not only therapeutic but also productive of invaluable insights into the meaning of one’s life.

A few weeks ago, a friend who is approaching 90 came for dinner, giving my wife and me an opportunity to hear some of her life story. She held us fascinated, regaling us with what it was like to grow up in Manhattan back in the days of Prohibition and the Depression. At one point I asked my friend if she remembered the Empire State Building being built. She did not remember it under construction but, of course, took due note of the tallest building in the world after its completion.

One of the authors in “Generations” lists several qualities one expects to find in a good autobiography. One is the way it embodies “the truth of the life of the writer.” Another is how it serves as a “second reading of lived experience.” The writer does not simply recount memories, however valued, but puts those memories into a framework that enables us to understand their role in a person’s life.

Heidi White’s memoir succeeds on both these counts plus others. If you yourself have not in some form recounted the story of your own life and times, let me recommend doing so. Unless I am mistaken, you will discover a new way of appreciating yourself and your experience.

Richard Griffin

One of the sweet pleasures of later life is enough leisure to read good books.  And, in my case at least, receiving some newly published ones unsolicited.

That is what happened recently when a reader of this column, Diana Muir of Newton, sent me her splendid “Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England.” From the handsome cover photo to the fascinating chapters within, the book has held my attention with its wealth of fascinating material about this part of the country.

The subtitle will perhaps scare off some potential readers because it makes the book sound too technical. Actually, however, the work comes full of carefully researched information interesting in itself and presented in a pleasing style. The author’s insights into the natural, economic, and cultural history of our region deserve wide circulation.

During the winter of 1990, Diana Muir and her family moved to a site only some twenty yards away from Bullough’s Pond in Newton. They did not come because of this small pond; only gradually did the writer value being close to it. Its history came to serve her as a focus for appreciating the natural beauty and history of our six-state region.

In the preface, the author sums up her chief message: “Reflections in Bullough’s Pond is an inquiry into why the Industrial Revolution happened, why it happened here, and what the implications of the revolution are.” However, Ms. Muir explains that this is not the only story the book delivers. It also tells of other stages in our regional history, both before and after.

The author has done a masterly job in turning a wide range of research findings into an absorbing narrative. The precise knowledge found here amounts to a treasure store of useful and absorbing lore. Using her scholarly tools, Muir explains many phenomena that otherwise might seem odd.

Chapter four of Muir’s book provides a fine example of its riches of information and insight. Entitled “The Politics of Extermination,” this chapter centers on beavers, animals that were practically wiped out here during the 17th century because of the fur trade. Without any regard for the work that these animals do in preserving the land and other living things, New England merchants who sold pelts to businessmen in England simply killed off almost the whole beaver population.

Muir devotes another chapter to shoes, a New England product that Yankee craftsmen found would sell in big numbers. As early as 1783, shoemakers based in Lynn supplied four hundred thousand pairs of shoes for shipment to the American south and elsewhere.

Similarly with ice. From Fresh Pond in Cambridge and other waters, men sawed out blocks of ice in the wintertime and shipped it to places as far away as Calcutta. Discovering how to pack the ice in sawdust to keep it from melting was a crucial to making this possible.

In tracing the economic history of New England, Muir attributes repeated recovery from threats to survival  and prosperity to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of local populations: “The Yankee was the child of Puritanism. The strong work ethic, respect for manual labor, tradition of assuming responsibility, willingness to accept risks, rational approach to life, and a certain independence of mind inculcated by the Puritan heritage combined to produce the culture that produced a revolution.”

But this book is not history detached from concern about the effect of human choices on our environment.  Instead, especially in her concluding pages, the author makes an fervent plea for us to enter upon what she calls the Third Revolution.  A fundamental change in attitudes and policies is required, she says, because of “the pressure of population on limited resources.”

The previous two revolutions were accomplished by different kinds of energy use. The first featured the use of such resources as wood and hay as New England developed in agriculture and commerce. Then came the Industrial Revolution with its discovery of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. The successful leaders of this latter revolution often did nothing to protect the earth from their industrial practices.

Now, given the harmful practices of past generations, we must take a new approach,  Muir says. No longer can we afford to deplete the ozone layer or destroy the topsoil so vital to the flourishing of the earth. There are now too many people for us to rely on automobile use to the extent that we do. “What we cannot do”, she writes, “is to go on commuting to work in Chevy Suburbans.”

I do not here pretend to a scholarly or critical appraisal of this book. Instead my appreciation for it is that of a common reader, one who looks for new knowledge and the stimulation of good writing. These Diana Muir has offered us in abundance and I thank her for these gifts.

Richard Griffin

If there are people who do not enjoy singing Christmas carols, I do not know them.  When these traditional songs ring out at this time of year, everybody responds joyfully. Joining in the singing stirs young and old to feeling better about themselves and the world.

These impressions, admittedly altogether too sweeping for the world at large, flow from an experience that has become a ritual in my neighborhood. Together with other nearby residents, we have been gathering each year, for the last 23, at the home of George and Emily, our next-door neighbors, who host a party in celebration of the season. This event has taken hold among us so that we look forward to it with pleasure and find renewed reason each year to cherish it.

Before we sit down to dinner, Emily is wont to summon us around the piano where she leads us in song. A veteran voice teacher, she knows how to create an atmosphere where even frogs like me venture to sing. We belt out the carols with gusto, repeating the familiar words most of us have known for decades.

While singing myself, I take delight in scanning the faces of my fellow choristers. Just about everybody looks joyful, even those whom I know to have had heavy problems to bear. I take special note of neighbors who do not espouse the Christian faith but who nonetheless will sing about Jesus as the savior of the world. As I would do in their place, they allow themselves to be swept along by the beauty they find in traditions they do not themselves entirely share.

This annual experience is what makes me so upbeat about the singing of carols. All is not right with the world. This Christmas finds us in the usual turmoil and assaults on human dignity take place in just about every large area of our planet, a situation in which I feel no complacency.

But I make no excuse for taking pleasure in the celebration of one small gathering of friends and neighbors. It is a consolation to find ours a peaceable community where we greet one another with not only respect but affection. I like to think us gifted with some of the best that Christmas offers: peace, joy, enlightenment, and compassion.

It is these same gifts that Christmas songs at their best celebrate. The luster of the standard carols resides, not just in their beautiful melodies and evocative lyrics, but in their bearing the message of what Christmas means. Despite the way they are vulgarized in shopping malls and on the radio, “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World,” among many others, retain their power to make the heart peaceful and to rouse one’s spirits. Lesser known carols such as “Masters in This Hall,” set to an old French tune, and “Once In Royal David’s City,” have their distinct charms too and carry forward the same message.

No carol, however, will ever hit me with such force as did “Hodie Christus Natus Est” (Today Christ Is Born) on one memorable occasion. That was Christmas Eve 54 years ago when I was a newcomer seeking acceptance by the Jesuits. Along with other first-year novices I was asleep that long-ago evening, only to be suddenly awakened by the sound of angelic voices singing that Latin hymn. The singers were second-year novices, positioned in a loft above our dormitory from which vantage point they could most plausibly imitate angel choristers.

Recalling this scene amounts to an exercise in nostalgia over the course of five decades, I suppose, but to me its importance lies deeper. The carol in that setting evoked in me the magic of Christmas in its spiritual dimensions. Words and music transported me, for that night at least, into another sphere of human existence, life lived in God’s light.

That kind of experience does not come on demand, nor do I expect to have its like again. But some of it has rubbed off, I like to think. In later life I feel content with the spirituality I learned then and have since developed further. And I now place even greater value on family members (now more than ever an extended family), along with friends and neighbors.

This year I feel happy to celebrate my 75th Christmas with the people whom I regard as gifts given to me. They continue to wear well, I find, as the years proceed in ever more rapid succession. (Would that I may wear well for them.) I treasure Christmases past and hope I can look forward to those still to come.

Meanwhile, Christmas present suffices for me. I want its gifts to take further root in me. Peace, joy, love, compassion – these and others associated with this day seem to me more than ever worth aspiring to.

Richard Griffin

If you stand on the windy strip of land outside Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as I did as a tourist one morning four years ago, you feel some of the adventure that must have marked the first flight on December 17, 1903, the achievement of Orville and Wilbur Wright. It was the first time in recorded history that anyone had successfully piloted a motor-driven, heavier-than-air flying machine.

The flight lasted only 12 seconds and covered only 120 feet, but it was enough to amaze a 17-year-old Kitty Hawk resident named Johnny Moore, as he ran to announce the news, shouting: “They done it, they done it, damned if they ain’t flew!” The Wrights also launched a transformation in the human world that continues to shape our lives.

I was surprised to find the site so near the ocean but that helps account for the abundance of wind. Another surprise was discovering how skilled and enterprising the Wright brothers actually were. I had thought of them as a couple of modest bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio; but I found out at Kitty Hawk that they were, in fact, sophisticated engineers.  

Hardly anyone old enough to remember that event is still alive but many readers will recall asking parents and grandparents about it. Some members of those generations will be remembered as expressing amazement at the development of air travel that they had lived to see.

My father-in-law, Roger Keane, was born in 1898, not quite early enough for him to have remembered the first flight as it occurred. Over a long lifetime, however, he did marvel at the progress made in travel above the earth. On the day in July, 1969 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon’s surface, Roger felt awe at how far we had come. His grandchildren were much calmer about it.

One of the many gifts that come with longevity is the long-range view of the history of almost an entire century. About the airplane in particular we can trace an evolution that is astounding in its scope. When you compare the airplane built by the Wrights to the Concorde (now defunct), you have to feel admiration at human inventiveness.

Progress came in surprisingly large pieces. Only two years after his plane rose ten feet into the air at Kitty Hawk, Wilbur Wright covered 29 miles in another plane and stayed aloft for 39 minutes.

Like so many others of my generation, I have taken numerous flights. Not yet have I lost my wonder at what airplanes can do. With old-fashioned taste, I always ask for a window seat because I love to look down on the scene below. The moments of take-off and landing continue to seem especially magical to me, though I often secretly wonder if this is the time something will go wrong.

Nothing has, thus far, in hundreds of flights to various parts of the world. Human ingenuity, at work not only in the engineered perfection of the planes themselves but also in the networks that keep track of all the traffic in the sky, has given most people reasonable promise of safety. Despite the threat of terrorism, by and large most of us who fly do with confidence of getting there and back.

My first flight took place in 1948 when I flew to New York in a DC 3. What I most remember about that adventure was the paper bag given to each passenger in case we had to throw up. Fortunately, I didn’t.

Since that time I look back in memory to other great views from the plane. A low-altitude flight from New York to Albany on a clear day took our plane skipping over the towers of Manhattan. Another from New Orleans to St. Louis traced some of the Mississippi River, a silvery ribbon as it twisted and turned in its unpredictable course. The arrival across the Mediterranean to Beirut, in the days before multiple disasters struck that city, stays with me for its beauty.  

I continue to enjoy my window on the world below. Clouds, rivers, mountains, seas, and cities offer endless material for contemplation. The Wright Brothers and their legions of successors deserve thanks for allowing us to appreciate the beauty of world the way we never could have without flight.

Perspective, physical and psychic, rates as one of the most valuable human possessions and air travel provides a boost toward it. Being able to see things from different angles counts for much in a well-balanced life. A sense of relativity also helps preserve sanity, I discovered long ago, and I keep coming back to this principle.

Airplanes deserve credit for enabling us to lay hold of new perspectives, angles of observation, and deeper appreciation of relativity. Sitting miles above the earth and from there viewing natural and human reality below is good for the soul.

Hurrah for Orville and Wilbur Wright and their great achievement at 100 years of age!

Richard Griffin

“Thirty-three million Americans in love with airline discounts.”  This was former Senator Alan Simpson’s snide quip about AARP, née the American Association of Retired Persons.

Since the time of Simpson’s broadside, the organization has grown to some 35 million, not counting those who have burned their membership cards in the last few weeks.

You cannot count me among the card burners since, for the last quarter century, I have steadfastly refused to join this thinly disguised big business. But, had I ever relapsed, I would definitely have burned my card weeks ago over AARP’s endorsement of the now-passed Medicare bill.

Despite AARP’s dubious record of advocacy for needy older people, I felt shock that this organization would support a piece of legislation that serves elder citizens and the whole nation so poorly. It forms a curious bookend to AARP’s refusal to back Medicare at all, when it was first enacted in 1965.

This time, AARP planned to spend 25 million dollars to spread word of its endorsement. In full-page newspaper ads and radio and television blurbs the association defended putting its weight behind a bill that even they admitted was “not perfect.” Now, after passage, we continue to read further justifications by AARP for its action.

“Not perfect” qualifies as the understatement of the year. In fact, the supposed main reason for the bill, the much ballyhooed prescription drug benefits contained within it, is seriously flawed. Among other problems, the drug coverage has a big hole in it, creating a so-called “doughnut.” If you should have incurred $2,200 of drug costs (not counting a monthly premium of $35 and a deductible of $250), then coverage ceases altogether until you have spent $3500.

But the legislation goes far beyond drugs. As economist Jeff Madrick writes: “What began as a prescription drug plan for the elderly has been turned into a major revision of the entire Medicare program.” Private health care companies will soon compete with Medicare so as to make one of our basic social welfare institutions almost unrecognizable.

The AARP’s action looks, for all the world, like a political ploy, designed to get George W. Bush elected to a second term. It raises the question of what kind of deal AARP has been promised, perhaps a quid pro quo that will result in the organization growing yet fatter on money.

Families USA , formerly the Villers Foundation, sums up the some other serious problems with the legislation. “It will cause deep disappointment for America's seniors and people with disabilities. It provides very limited drug coverage; fails to moderate skyrocketing drug costs; and spends lavishly to push seniors into managed care plans.”

Unfortunately, passage of this legislation has a deeper meaning. As Robert Binstock, professor of political science at Case Western Reserve University, laments, it represents “the dismantling of the old age welfare state.” It brings to a crashing end an era when the federal government provided for the well-being of elders who needed help.

At a recent meeting of the Gerontological Society of America in San Diego, Professor Binstock spoke out boldly about the likely effects of the changes in Medicare. He regards it as a reversal of American history of the last seven decades and foresees damage to the social structure carefully built up over this period.

Binstock, one of the nation’s leading gerontologists, is widely known for his ability to present clearly governmental and political issues as they touch upon the interests of us elders. I took a course from him some 25 years ago when he taught at Brandeis and still value his incisive accounts of dramatic improvements in the economic and social status of America’s elders during most of the twentieth century.

Binstock also foresees baby boomers being left high and dry by the future lack of Social Security funding, as younger Americans have long thought would happen. To him, it forms part of a “starve the beast” strategy designed to make money unavailable for social services. By next year, the federal deficit is slated to reach 500 billion dollars and the federal government will be constrained to stop feeding social services.

Before it becomes too late, he wonders if members of the boomer generation will organize and mount nonviolent confrontational challenges to governmental policies.

Important is that the new Medicare program will not start to take effect until 2006. That presumably will allow social policy experts to publicize little-known parts of this huge bill. Repeal does not seem at all likely in a Republican-controlled Congress, as happened to the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act in 1988, but pressure to fix some parts might develop. Don’t expect AARP to be part of that process any time soon.

Meantime, it’s worth taking note how AARP now shuns words like old, retired, or such language. It will no longer be caught associated with anything that smacks of advanced age. Can it now be that AARP is practicing a subtle ageism that goes against its stated ideals?

Richard Griffin

“A pedestrian in the U.S. is someone walking to his car.” This wry definition comes from Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway.  Its humor rests on the assumption that hardly any Americans do much walking, an assumption that evidence suggests is solid.

By contrast, a whopping 46 percent of all trips in the Netherlands are non-motorized. That means the Dutch do an awful lot of bike riding. Almost surely, they do a fair amount of walking too. Of course, theirs is a geographically small country without hills with a much more homogeneous citizenry than ours.

Transportation experts hold out no hope for us Americans changing our ways anytime soon. Those who assembled this September at MIT’s AgeLab, from around the country and a dozen other nations, agreed that most of us will remain dependant on the automobile. After all, we are a huge nation in which fully three fourths of us live in suburbs or rural areas, most of which places lack adequate public transportation.

People like me, urban dwellers who can walk to all our public services and do, are anomalies in American society. Planning for elders who live elsewhere cannot, I’m afraid, take us as models. Even if they want to walk, most Americans cannot get where they want to go simply by using their feet. And most often few alternative modes of transportation will get them to their planned destination.

So the question most professionals in the field of transportation ask is: How can we better provide for the safety of older automobile drivers and others? On various fronts they continue to explore ways of ensuring safer driving better adapted to the special needs of many elders. All are agreed that a whole lot can be done.

About the present situation there is widespread consensus on several points. First, drivers over age 65 are involved in fewer accidents, per capita, than are those younger. The instances of horrible events such as this past summer’s catastrophe in Santa Monica where ten people were killed by an elderly Californian who had lost control of his car are comparatively rare. Secondly, when older drivers do get into accidents their chances of being seriously injured or killed are much higher than those of younger drivers.

Contrary to popular impression, when older people experience disability they do not take public transportation even where it is available. Instead, they first give up using public transportation, then they abandon walking. That is because the easiest thing they can do is to drive or be a passenger.

There is also wide agreement that testing older drivers for their competence on the road does not work when it is made mandatory. Better are systems that target applicants for licenses who are considered at higher risk. Perhaps the best way to test such drivers is by giving them a personal guide who can help determine if they are still capable of safe driving.

Besides aiming to improve drivers’ capability behind the wheel, researchers envision changes in the automobiles they drive. Older drivers use seat belts more that those younger but there are different kinds of seat belts that could be introduced. A belt that fits over the torso with an X shape might give greater protection and so could a Y-shaped belt.

The third area that bears improvement is the roadway. Electronic systems that warn of collisions, for example, could prove beneficial although they can be tricky to rely on. Installing traffic calming modifications at sites where major roads cross such as raised and gritty surfaces can slow down traffic.

Much more could be done to protect drivers, improve vehicles, and modify roadways than we have seen up introduced up to now. With the arrival of the Baby Boomers into beginning old age, all drivers will presumably profit from technological enhancements that can be expected.

The changes talked about now should benefit everybody. An Irish geriatrician at the MIT event, Desmond O’Neill of Trinity College, quoted a two-line rule of thumb for planners.

“If you design for the old, you include the young.

If you design for the young, you exclude the old.”

Dr. O’Neill also cautioned against making decisions full of ageist assumptions about elderly people. Most older drivers, after all, perform well on the road. Many take the initiative when they realize the need to modify their driving habits. They deserve respect rather than coercive action to deprive them of the transportation that can severely cramp their lifestyle.

Though I myself do not feel entirely reconciled to the dominance of the automobile and judge alternative forms of transportation as eminently desirable, I also welcome technology being applied to make the driving experience considerably better for those committed to cars than it is now.

If the pros who took part in the AgeLab conference are a reliable sample of planners, it looks as if there is a whole lot that can be done.

Richard Griffin

“George Bush is brilliant; he’s sitting in the White House with less than one-half of the vote.” This tribute to the president comes from a member of Congress who agrees with hardly any one of Bush’s policies. That congressman is Michael Capuano, a Democrat who represents the Eighth Congressional District of Massachusetts.

Two weeks ago Representative Capuano spoke and fielded questions from some 100 interested constituents. As the words quoted above indicate, he readily acknowledges the president’s political skills and sees the Democratic Part badly outmaneuvered. He sees his party too often more interested in “being right” than in winning elections.

Capuano locates the source of his difficulties more with fellow Democrats than with Republicans. “My problem is with us,” he explains, because members of his party so often choose to adopt a pure position, as for instance on gun control, rather than one that will win success at the polls.

However, the Republicans who currently control the Congress also trouble him. Speaking of their efforts to pass their agenda he goes so far as to say: “This is a jihad of the right wing.” He does not hate these leaders; rather, he admires their skill in winning seats in the House and Senate from a national electorate that polls show to be evenly divided between the parties.

But, if these Republicans continue to control both houses of Congress and George Bush gets elected to a second term, Capuano foresees disaster for his own priorities. “Every issue my constituents care about is under attack,” he says. “It’s going to make the last four years look like kindergarten” he adds. “They will do everything they can to destroy our programs.”

For fear people think him simply anti-Republican in general, this congressman points out his admiration of the Massachusetts Republicans who flourished when he was a young man. He cites Frank Sargent, John Volpe, and others who represented a Republican tradition very different from that of Tom DeLay, Bill Frist and other leaders of the Congress now. He regrets seeing the few progressive Republicans being marginalized in their own party.

The last straw came for him when a proposal was made when “they tried to take away overtime pay.” According to him, legislation was introduced into the House to abolish overtime in certain circumstances and, to his shock, the proposal got 204 votes. He regards such legislation as un-American.

He also worries about the Medicare bill that would provide some coverage of prescription drugs for older Americans. “Within 10 or 15 years,” he warns, “the entire Medicare system would be gone.” The proposed legislation, still in conference committee, would set up competing health private health programs that could undermine Medicare as we have known it. (As of this writing AARP has endorsed the bill, much to the distress of the legislation’s critics among whom I count myself.)

To him, the leaders of Congress have become wilier than previously. “They have given up direct assaults,” he says. Instead, they cleverly insert what they want in bills that have good things too. One of his biggest complaints is the way so many moves increase the federal deficit because “every penny of the deficit comes out of the Social Security Trust Fund.”

During the course of the hour-and-a-half meeting, Capuano offered his views on many other issues. Of the so-called partial birth abortion act recently passed with much hoopla, he says “not a single abortion will be prevented” by this legislation.

This congressman has developed such low expectations as to say: “I think it’s a successful Congressional year when nothing happens.” He is convinced that the American public wants stalemate at the present time and, given the way things are, he welcomes it himself. The alternative is bad things happening.

This former mayor of Somerville says: “I am proud to be a hard-nosed politician.”  He does not shy away from a description of himself that many Americans would judge unfavorably.

You may wonder why this columnist is writing about the political views of a congressman speaking to members of his district. My rationale for doing so is my belief in the importance of older people staying in touch with issues of local, national, and international significance. I took the session with Mike Capuano as a sobering lesson in civics.

Some people, I realize, think later life is a time for standing aside from politics and devoting oneself to travel, leisure, reading, spirituality and other such interests. I cast a vote in favor of all of the above, but I also feel concern about the legacy we are leaving to our children and grandchildren, and their descendants.

Frankly, I feel anxious about the directions in which our country has been heading. My spirituality pushes me toward an active concern for the wellbeing of our fellow citizens and for the world community. For me, at least, advancing age cannot be used as an excuse for throwing up one’s hands and disavowing involvement in the issues that shape the world we ourselves live in and, one day, will pass on to others.

Richard Griffin