The emeriti – dozens of retired faculty members of Simmons College – were festively garbed in their academic robes for the occasion. As their names were read, they came from their seats on the stage of Jordan Hall, one by one to be greeted by the audience’s applause and to receive a large commemorative medal.

With their names came a citation tailored especially for each. With grace and wit, a group of current faculty and an alumna had crafted a statement for each emeritus and emerita, describing their special gifts. The large audience – students, faculty, alums, family, and friends – responded with enthusiastic ovations.

Incidentally, this gala event was held at the distinguished concert venue Jordan Hall for a reason. It was there that Simmons held its very first commencement back in 1906.

I found this convocation in honor of Simmons College’s 100th aniversary a moving tableau of graceful aging. Even among these retired women and men there was a surprisingly wide range of years. Some traveled the short distance to center stage with uncertain agility, but with obvious spirit.

Among those honored, one stood out in particular. Ruth Leonard, associate professor of library science, brought down the house when the year of her arrival as a freshman was announced.

After college graduation and later graduate studies, she served as a faculty member for 34 yearsa. But that was just the start of her service to Simmons. Even now, at age 96, she continues giving time and talent to the college.

Her citation reads as follows: “Alumna, library science professor, devoted volunteer and a vital part of the Simmons scene for decades, Ruth Leonard came here as a freshman 75 years ago this fall! To this day, she continues to volunteer for the College, and is currently at Simmons one day a week archiving Alumnae Association minutes.”

Small in physical stature, this dynamic nonagenarian thanked the college “for giving me this opportunity to be of service.” Back in 1994, the college had awarded her an honorary degree in recognition of her work and placed her in the college’s hall of fame, but the Simmons community never tires of honoring her.

When I talked with her later, Professor Leonard was sitting with Eleanor Gustafson, a retired librarian who expresses high regard for her former teacher. Asked how she herself feels about her long career, the most Ruth Leonard will claim is: “All I can say is I enjoyed teaching.”

I also asked her attitude about growing old. “I don’t think about it,” she replied. However, she does admit: “I’ve slowed up. I’m unsteady on my feet.”

Not that any of this stops her. Using the MBTA’s Ride program, she now commutes from Goddard House in Brookline to Simmons for her volunteer chores.

Though I have no official connection with Simmons College, another reason makes me feel  tied to the life of the place. First, my beloved aunt, Mary Barry, was a student there in 1905 and 1906. A future public schoolteacher, she was then enrolled in the School of  Secretarial Studies.

Since the very first students did not arrive until 1902, my aunt can be numbered among the pioneers. She was the kind of student envisioned by the founder, John Simmons, who left money to start a college for women planning to enter the world of work, a novel idea at the time.

Secondly, my wife has been a Simmons faculty member since 1964. Now a veteran with almost unrivaled seniority, she continues to teach with relish, and to serve the college in other ways as well.

At the convocation, what held my attention most was the spectacle of generation succeeding generation. I reflected on the way each group of faculty comes along, people who build upon the work of those who have served and later stepped aside.

To me, recognizing the women and men who contributed their working years to the teaching enterprise is one of the most meaningful action an educational institution can take. This kind of event gives former teachers a sense that their service did make a difference, that they did in fact touch the lives of others.

It is true that former students will sometimes pay tribute to former teachers. But, often, retired teachers must believe in themselves without this kind of external support. That’s why the Jordan Hall ceremony was so heartwarming – it showed that, though the people who once taught at Simmons no longer frequent the classrooms, they are not forgotten and still count.

Perhaps the students who attended the convocation profited from seeing, in the honors accorded the retired professors, a model of how people who have served an institution well should be treated. They might have realized how it’s good for the community to recognize later life as a time appropriate for honoring dignity, merit, and service.

Richard Griffin

“I sat there for five hours. I didn’t think about the arthritis pain. All the physical things that annoy you, the other problems in life totally disappear when you get so involved in learning something and the challenge of doing it.”

This is what Ruth Abrams says about the effects on her of acquiring new knowledge and skills. A 77-year-old Brookline resident, this vibrant woman has  established a fine reputation as a video producer. Her weekly program “ElderVision” has run on Brookline Access Television since 1989 and her documentary “Fabric of Life” has been shown to audiences in many places.

The words quoted above refer to Ruth Abrams’ learning how to use new video equipment, but they apply more widely. Her most recent accomplishment is a new show entitled “Collage and Assemblage” that was on view last month in Watertown. To have seen the exhibit with the artist as guide, as I did, was both an esthetic experience and one that revealed something of what aging can be.

The artist has divided the exhibit into three sections: 1) “biographic;” 2) material flowing from guests who appeared in the documentary “Fabric of Life;” and 3) assorted pieces prompted by her own experience.

The first part, featuring memories of her family members, was the section that had made the most impact on me.

An assemblage devoted to her brother displays programs from the theatrical productions in which he was involved. A photograph shows him as a handsome young man; using the stage name Marnel Sumner, he would act in or help produce many shows of which the most popular was “Man of La Mancha.”

Ruth’s husband, Hyman Finkelstein, fought in World War II and won the Purple Heart. Speaking of this beloved spouse who died in 1996, Ruth says that three words typify him in his lifetime: “gentle and kind and caring.”

“The Gypsy” is the title Ruth Abrams gives to the assemblage centering on her mother. A photo shows her in Europe as a young woman. Later she emigrated to the United States from Lithuania where she had learned fortune telling from the gypsies. Her new country is indicated by a rainbow and a landscape.

The exhibit that features Ruth’s father bears the title “Golden Hands,” a traditional German/Jewish phrase denoting manual skill. This assemblage displays a model of hands that Ruth painted gold along with some of the actual tools that her father used.

This section witnesses to a family legacy rich in memories. One visitor wrote in the guest book of the effect it had on her: “Now I am inspired truly to get busy and create my loving legacy.”

The displays in the second section are too numerous to comment on one by one. The one entitled “Friendship Over a Cup of Tea” impressed me. To quote another guest’s written tribute to the artist, “It seems you look into peoples’ souls and create a picture from within. Beautiful, original, and warm, especially the teapot one – this reminds me of my mother.”

I also liked the one entitled “Marriage – We Have Mellowed’ that shows off Sophie and Ted Simons, aunt and uncle to Ruth Abrams. The lace in the assemblage evokes a marriage that lasted more than sixty years. The spouses attributed much value to their mellowing “that has helped us be not so demanding of one another.”

The third section quietly displays the artist’s imagination at work. She takes three pieces of driftwood, a dry portion of a sponge, a nut for the head, and makes of them Don Quixote. As a lesson in battling stress she shows us butterflies and suggests we learn from them.

In “Gardening” she quotes the Roxbury elder Ed Cooper who looked back over some ninety years and said “One of the greatest things I have learned is how to deal with the good earth.” We see there an old glove that proved Ruth’s most expensive piece. She washed it in the sink only to have the sand clog her drain requiring a plumber to come and unstop it at a cost of 45 dollars.

Written tributes witness to the effect that the artist’s work had on visitors. “Eye-catching, thought provoking, and very cool,” wrote one apparently younger guest. “It has a wonderful simplicity and charm,” wrote another. And, to top it off, a woman enthused: “What a treasure trove you are! So full of creativity, bravado, intelligence and talent! Never stop.”

Ruth herself does not allow her head to be turned by such tributes. In fact, only recently did she dare assume the title of artist. “Until two months ago,” she explains, “I could not let the words come out of my mouth saying ‘I am an artist.’ I’m just beginning to be able to say it.”

But she keeps on learning.  Of her recent show she says: “It gives me this feeling of really accomplishing, .  .   . of all the things I have tried in my life the most fulfilling.”

Richard Griffin

To live long is to be astonished often.

That’s the way I felt about the terrorist attack last week. Of course, I also experienced the other emotions felt by my fellow Americans – pity, fear, horror, indignation, and sorrow. But astonishment that such a thing could really happen dominated my psyche.

The prophet Joel in the Hebrew Bible says, “Your old men shall dream dreams and your young men will see visions.” For drama and vividness, the catastrophic events in New York and Washington go beyond the dreams that I can recall having in later life.

When the life of a man or woman stretches over many years, it bears witness to events that no one would have thought possible. The swift collapse of the Soviet Union, the rapid reunification of the two Germanys, the end of South African apartheid, a man’s dramatic walk on the moon – of these welcome events, most fooled the experts as well as the rest of us.

Of the horrible events –the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, the sudden fall of France in World War II, the Cuban missile crisis – these, too, caught just about everybody by surprise.

Like many others among my age peers. I have given up saying what cannot happen. All of us have been fooled too many times. The human capacity for bringing about massive changes or engineering acts of unimaginable destruction against all odds has made us wary of confident prediction.

I did not imagine it possible to knock down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. It seemed unthinkable that terrorists could highjack four planes on a single morning. The events of that day had to be judged likely material for a Hollywood script, not real life. September 11th was Hollywood turned into awful reality.

The hellish scenes in lower Manhattan as the towers first caught on fire, then burned and imploded will take their place among the searing images of a lifetime, along with such others as the London Blitz, the liberation of the death camps, and the landscape of Hiroshima after the bomb.

The brightness of that cloudless September morning with the fateful jet moving into view, the huge dark billows of cloud, the devastation of the landscape below – these features of that scene will stay engraved on our memories, part of our old men’s dreams, or rather nightmares.

As one introduced early in life to apocalyptic images in the page of the Bible, perhaps I should have been less surprised by encountering them in real life. Stars falling from the sky, mountains toppling, the seas rising, and other catastrophic events as depicted by the biblical writers might have better prepared me for the devastation wrought by terrorists.

But nothing can prepare us for the shock of a person hurtling out of a window a thousand feet above the ground. And to watch firefighters walk toward an inferno from which they will never escape fills one with dread. This real-life apocalypse has an ability to inflict continuing horror.
 
The response that my wife and I made at noontime on that fateful day last week was to walk to our parish church and take part in the Eucharist. This gesture was admittedly an intangible response to crisis but we saw it as a chance to express in community our grief for those who died and suffered injury as well as for those who love them.

By listening to the word of God and taking part in the sacred meal, we also sought strength for ourselves at a time of mortal threat. We needed spiritual reassurance that evil, no matter how devastating, would not ultimately triumph over us all.

We also wanted to pray for our national community and its leaders. Our hope remains that these leaders will not stir up in us the desire for vengeance against our enemies. And, if we ever yield to the temptation of searching for scapegoats among those of certain ethnic origins, this sin could diminish every one of us.

Whatever little wisdom I can find in this crisis focuses on values held dear for a lifetime. The precious quality of family relationships emerges more clearly than ever at a time of so many personal losses. The heroism of New York’s firefighters, police officers, medical personnel and many others, both those who perished and those who have survived, shines out as a summons to hope.

The primacy of the spiritual as a response to the mystery of evil seems to me essential.

Our nation must find some wisdom too at this time of transition toward the unknown. This is the time to cultivate solidarity with other peoples. (We can take heart from the editorial headline in the French newspaper Le Monde last Wednesday, “We are all Americans.”) It is also opportune to renew awareness of the need to share our resources with people living in poverty and wretchedness. And it is now, and always, time to treat one another with compassion.

Richard Griffin

In 1969, two of the Beatles, John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote a song that came to my mind last week. The sad lyric begins like this: “Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins: Silently closing her bedroom door / Leaving the note that she hoped would say more / She goes downstairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief / Quietly turning the backdoor key / Stepping outside she is free.”

The Beatles were singing about a girl who was making a painful break with her parents. She feels the pressing need to get away from them and find a freedom that she cannot have in the home where she grew up. The parents themselves are portrayed as uncomprehending because fixated on themselves.

The line which serves as something of a refrain says it best: “She’s leaving home where she lived for so many years alone.”

The reason why this sad ditty came to my mind recently was a leave-taking in my own home. However, you may be relieved to know that the atmosphere of this leaving was entirely different from that of the girl in the song. For one thing, this leave-taking came after so many years of living in a loving relationship with parents. For another, this departure qualified as a natural rite of passage after graduation from college and being hired in a job that means the beginning of a career.

My daughter left home at the right time in her life with the enthusiastic backing of her parents in anticipation of becoming a teacher. Of course, my wife and I felt some separation pangs but we also felt happy for our now grown-up child that she was going out into the world of work prepared for adventure and the opportunity to do some good.

Of course, this kind of leave-taking is one of the oldest stories in the world and you may wonder why it deserves retelling here. Millions of other parents have experienced the welcome departure from home of their children after the latter have come of age. In fact, for most parents with seniority, that event took place long ago. It has become part of ancient history for them.

But for me, a person who does everything later than normal people, this event has happened in my later years. Only after reaching age 73 am I old enough to see my daughter set out on her first job. It has taken me a long lifetime to arrive at this day so significant in the life of our family.

The major milestones of life can have a different resonance depending on the age at which you come to them. For me, going through the departure of my daughter at 73 hardly feels the same as it would have at age 43, for instance. Inevitably, I both experience it differently at the time and have formed a different set of reflections afterward.

My main response to this leavetaking is one of thanksgiving for longevity. When my daughter was born on New Year’s Day in 1980, I began to hope and pray for survival until she grew up. Despite being aware that most American men last until their middle seventies, I was painfully aware that many do not. For her sake and my own I wanted to enjoy good enough health to be around at least for the completion of her schooling.

Of course, I also feel thankful that my daughter’s upbringing was so harmonious. Unlike the girl in the Beatles’ song, she prospered at home, loving her neighborhood and making friends with a great many age peers and others. Despite having all of her schooling in the same zip code, she learned to appreciate the larger world and to face it with confidence.

That this has happened I take as a gift, the best I could have received. And for me to have been well in mind and body all during my only child’s development into a young woman gratifies me more than I can easily express. Clearly it was not my own doing; that’s why I call it a gift. The risky ride of my own growing older has carried me to an important destination.

And yet life remains vulnerable. Another of my reflections on my daughter’s departure abroad is that it could be the last time I see her. The longevity tables makes that quite unlikely; still, the thought has often occurred to me and freighted the event with extra meaning. Unlike most forty-year-old fathers, I know that the diseases associated with later life could do me in at any time.

If these latter reflections seem excessively dour, you should know that they do not depress me but rather add to my appreciation for the gift of life. I do value each day as it comes along and welcome whatever good it holds in store. That includes the day my daughter set out for life on her own.

Richard Griffin

The headlines and the photo on the front page of the Boston Post for May 7, 1937 have stayed fixed in my memory ever since I saw them. I was then a few months short of my ninth birthday and even then an avid reader of the newspaper that employed my father.

Had I been listening to the radio the evening before, I could presumably have heard a man named Herb Morrison announce the arrival of the Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Standing next to his network’s sound truck in the drizzle, he started to describe the mooring of this great German dirigible, just arrived from a flight across the Atlantic.

Clearly he found the sight awesome but his voice is controlled as he tells how the famous airship was hovering “like some great feather.” This it did as some two hundred handlers prepared to attach the Hindenburg to its mooring post.

Then, all of a sudden, he cries out: “It’s terrible, oh my get out of the way, it’s one of the worst catastrophes in the world.” Without warning the giant ship had burst into flames that were engulfing its entire structure, shooting four or five hundred feet in the air and endangering all the bystanders assembled for its arrival.

Listening to Herb Morrison on the recording, I find it difficult to discern all of his words, so caught up with emotion was he. As he realized what was happening to people around him, he actually began to weep. The broadcast’s original listeners would have had trouble developing a coherent notion of what was happening.

I have been listening to this dramatic spoken history on one of three phonograph records in the Columbia Masterworks album entitled “I Can Hear It Now.” This album was purchased by a member of my family decades ago. I play it on a venerable turntable that still gives good service and vinyl records that have preserved remarkable sound fidelity over so many years.

The segment on the Hindenburg disaster is only one among dozens of events and personalities, with words spoken by the central figures or by  eyewitnesses. Inside the album are comments written by Edward R. Murrow, Fred W. Friendly, and J. G. Gude. These producers say of the era from which I have culled a single incident “The thirteen years from the beginning of 1933 to the end of 1945 was an era for ear. The first and perhaps the last.”

With no little exuberance, they also call those thirteen years “perhaps the most fateful and exciting years in all the recorded story of civilization.” For people of my certain age, the events recorded here stir a rich collection of memories that have played a part in the development of our psyches.

Another of the bands on the record is entitled “Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returns from Munich and tells of his meeting with Hitler.” And a New York Philharmonic broadcast is interrupted for an announcement of the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. This latter announcement I myself heard by reason of having been banished to my room by my parents for bad behavior.

Harry Truman’s first speech to Congress in April of 1945 is included, a speech that produced a rash judgment from me. Not without regional prejudice, I remember feeling that this man from Missouri sounded like someone too unpolished for the job of president.

Another entry, this for August 6, 1945, still provokes in me disturbing thoughts about religion, warfare, and the dropping of the atomic bomb. “Chaplain William Downey, U. S. Army Air Forces, says a prayer at Tinian before takeoff of the Enola Gay, which carried the first atomic bomb used in warfare.”

Sprinkled among these events, some of them literally earth-shaking, are others that simply give the flavor of the times. The Yankee Stadium heavyweight bout between Max Schmeling and Joe Louis suggests the part that championship boxing then played in national life. And Mayor Fiorello La Guardia reading the comic strips to children during the New York City newspaper delivery strike of 1945 provides comic relief.

For fear this all seem mere nostalgia, it bears repeating that the events and personalities recalled here form part of who we are as a people.

To a greater or lesser extent, these happenings were shared by all of us alive then. And for those who have come long after, the material transcribed into “I Can Hear It Now” has some place in their heritage also. Our society was shaped by what you can hear on these records and it was affected by the people, good and bad, who figured in the events.

Listening to the story of the Hindenburg disaster also brings me back to my boyhood with its still unknown potential. Soon, the events of World War II would fill my imagination and made me feel part of a cause much larger than myself.

Richard Griffin

In a first draft for this column I wrote effusively in praise of the Internet and confessed awe for what I judged one of the greatest inventions in my lifetime. That initial version also recounted with admiration the history of the Internet and its child, the World Wide Web. Admittedly speaking from a deep ignorance of science and technology, I found something spiritual in the exchange of electronic impulses that fly through the air and through wires.

This early version assumed that many people my age and older actually use the Internet and find it as valuable as I do. Perhaps I was seduced by occasional publicity that claims older people are getting online at a rapid rate. Also I have met quite a few elders who feel very enthusiastic about email.

However, at the time of my first draft, I had not been able to locate any research that indicates how many older people actually use the Internet. It proved much more difficult than expected to locate solid data on this question and I was prepared simply to assume that the number of older users was substantial and growing larger day by day.

By now, however, I have located two pieces of research from respected sources that tell something about the numbers. To cite one here, the Pew Research Center in Philadelphia released a study in September 2000 with information that astonishes me. Pew reported that 87 percent of Americans over age sixty-five do not have access to the Internet.

Moreover, of people between ages fifty and sixty-four, 59 percent are not online. By contrast, 65 percent of those under thirty have such access.

More than half of people not on line are not even interested in getting there. The same percentage believe that they are not missing anything by passing up the Internet. In the words of the survey report, “the strongest Internet holdouts are older Americans, who are fretful about the online world and often don’t believe it can bring them any benefits.”

Some other reasons for what the Pew study terms the “gray gap” are also significant. Though most older people do not believe that Internet access is too expensive, about a third do. Of the seventy million “TechNos,” Americans who do not use computers at all, many live in low-income households.

Many others feel intimidated, though they may not wish to admit it. They bring to mind a college classmate of mine and his wife whom I encountered one day in passing. Charley confessed to me that they had bought a Macintosh some weeks before but had still not overcome their fear of unpacking it for use.

Others have little confidence about safety in the use of online services. A recent study sponsored by AARP found anxiety even among older people currently online. “Confidentiality of personal financial information is of utmost concern to this population. Virtually all those surveyed believe that any personal information given to a business during a financial transaction remains the property of the consumer. They express resounding opposition to unrestricted sharing of personal financial information among businesses.”

I confess never having made a purchase online myself. However, my reasons for not buying over the Web do not spring from fear of credit card theft but rather from my pleasure in dealing face to face with familiar local merchants. This holds true especially of the independent bookstore where I often buy books from people whom I know and want to prosper.

Others object to what they consider an overload of information. A woman whom I ran into while writing this told me that she disapproves of a system that releases so much data, with its likelihood of violating the privacy of individuals. She has absolutely no interest in getting mixed up with devices that go against her values.

I feel some sympathy for the problems older people have with the Internet. Yes, computers remain too complicated and expensive. They should be easier to use, like the television set. And they do have the potential for exposing elders to fraud and other abuse.

However I do not agree that those who eschew communication by computer aren’t missing anything. Some of the benefits are summarized in a new research report made available to me by Roger Morrell of GeroTech, a Washington area company: “older adults can use computers to improve their work productivity, entertain themselves, enhance education and daily functioning, and maintain independence.”

I will never forget the day in 1984 when my television screen first flickered with a program imported from my small Commodore 64 computer. I recognized that moment as historic in my life because it gave me access to a newly invented tool of huge potential, a potential that continues to give me solid benefits.

The Internet remains a tool that can hold solid value for many more elders than are currently using it. If only for giving us access to email, getting online can enrich our lives and help overcome the isolation that our society visits on so many of its older members.

Richard Griffin

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In 1984, the U.S. Bureau of Census documented that only one percent of older adults (65+) reported using a computer anywhere.  By 1997, 10% of older adults reported that they were using computers and 7% of them stated that they were online.

This column has come to you on the electronic wings of email. It does each week, much to my own continuing amazement. Only once have I ever visited the Community News Company office, the organization that publishes this paper. Instead, I send my words to CNC through the Internet, one of the great inventions of the twentieth century. From the central office, local editors then download the column for insertion into publications like this one.

This fall will mark the thirty-second birthday of the Internet, though people differ on whether September or October 1969 deserves to be called the founding month. The impulse that led to this invention came from the Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union and was intended to improve the American military’s use of computer technology. In time, university-based researchers took the lead and collaborated to link computer resources around the country.

According to the latest figures, 58 percent of Americans now have access to the Internet in their homes, up from only 39 percent in 1999. And, of course, many of us use the Internet in our workplaces.

The World Wide Web, a child of the Internet, forms part of this explosion in communications that has further extended our electronic reach. The Web enables users to draw on a huge reservoir of information of all sorts available across the globe.

It was developed, starting in 1989, by a British computer whiz named Tim Berners-Lee who is currently based at M.I.T. Incidentally, I once heard him lecture and on that occasion walked away wondering how a man of such genius could be such a dull speaker.

Who among us, now of advanced years, would ever have predicted the birth of this system that has so revolutionized the lives of Americans? It surely deserves to rank among the greatest inventions of our lifetime.

I will never forget the day in 1984 when my television screen first flickered with a program imported from my small Commodore 64 computer. I recognized that moment as historic in my life because it gave me access to a newly invented tool of huge potential.

The Commodore seems primitive now in the light of high-powered Macs and PCs that have come into my possession since then but it ushered in the beginning of a previously unimaginable transformation in work and social life.

Though Internet use has become routine for me as for many other older people, I hope never to lose a sense of wonder about it all. There is something spiritual about this device that relies on electronic impulses that fly through the air and through wires. (If this sounds naïve, it testifies to my far-reaching ignorance of science and technology.)

You cannot see the flight but can only admire the almost instantaneous arrival of your messages sometimes over a distance of thousands of miles. The telephone has accustomed us to contacts of this sort but email has extended the ways in which we can share ourselves with others.

Now, as with so many people older and younger, Internet use has become part of my daily life. In addition to email, I also make extensive forays into the Web as a convenient way of researching the subjects of columns. Sometimes I also follow up news items published in newspapers and occasionally I look for sports information.

However, I confess never having made a purchase online. A recent study sponsored by AARP suggests that in this respect I am typical of older users. We elders are supposedly afraid of how our credit card numbers can be stolen or, less drastically, about online merchants who might give financial information about us to other companies.

On the basis of a recent study, AARP worries about us older users fearing that we are generally less proficient and less confident than those who are younger, more affluent, and more educated. We remain “at risk in an increasingly technology-driven commercial environment.”

I have other reasons for not buying online, especially my desire to deal face to face with familiar local merchants. This is especially true of the independent bookstore where I often buy books from people that I know and want to prosper.

Those older people who use the Internet only for email have discovered a precious resource. Even though they may never take advantage of the information, games, chat rooms, and other services available on the net, they have made themselves rich in establishing contact with family members, friends, and others through the exchange of messages across the airwaves.

I remember talking with a boy from an immigrant family living in Boston. When I asked him about email, he told me that his grandmother sends him frequent messages. The grandmother, it turned out, lives in Saudi Arabia and corresponds with her grandson, presumably in Arabic.

I like to think of this enterprising woman as representative of millions of us who have entered bravely into the new world of far-flung communication.

Richard Griffin

Movie stars from three generations – Brando, De Niro, and Norton, plotting a high-tech heist in Montreal – provided this senior citizen filmgoer with an absorbing two hours of entertainment last weekend.

The film that featured these actors is called “The Score” and has received mixed notices from the critics. For me, however, this movie gets high marks, largely because it displays three such talented stars along the age spectrum.

To see Marlon Brando, now aged 78, on screen inevitably stirs memories of a storied career. In 1947 his performance as Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” took the American theater by storm, showing new acting possibilities to all aspirants to the stage.

Grant Keener, a friend who was present at the fifth performance of this play on Broadway, remembers vividly the power of Brando’s portrayal. “That night I felt challenged by a presence whose force I as a young male resented but reluctantly admired.” In particular he recalls the audience's gasp when Brando answered Jessica Tandy's line “A gentleman always clears his

dinner things” by cuffing his plate to the floor with “I cleared mine; want me to clear yours?”

When Brando turned to films, his roles in “The Godfather” and “Last Tango in Paris” made him part of cinematic history. The critic Richard Schickel says of Brando: “His shadow now touches every acting class in America, virtually every movie we see, every TV show we tune in.”

It adds to one’s interest in him that Brando has been long targeted by some writers as a magnificent failure. Schickel, for example, writes of “the greatness that might have been.” But this critic adds: “Brando may have resisted his role in history, may even have travestied it, but, in the end, he could not evade it.”

If a quotation attributed to him can be believed, Brando himself realizes the corrupting influence that the film capital of the world had over him. “The only

reason I’m in Hollywood,” he once said, “is that I don’t have the moral courage to refuse the money.”

When he first appears in “The Score,” he is shown wearing a bear-like coat that surrounds his huge girth. The man looks to be encased in fat like some latter-day Henry VIII or, more to the point, the aged Orson Welles. It was shocking to see Brando so far gone to obesity in his old age.

In this film he plays the part of Max, a criminal who does not do jobs himself but specializes in procuring master thieves for the task. In this instance, he persuades Nick, played by Robert De Niro, to steal a precious artifact from the custom house in Montreal. Nick eventually agrees despite a heretofore firm principle of never doing heists in his home city.

De Niro himself is a magnificent movie actor with a long history of success. Aged 58 as of this August 17th, De Niro has a fascinating face especially suited to characters who are up to no good. In this film he is conflicted because of his girlfriend’s willingness to settle down with him in marriage if he will give up his extra-legal activities.

The third star, Edward Norton, turns 32 on August 18th of this year. Though obviously inexperienced compared to the other two, Norton is quickly making a name for himself. A 1991 Yale graduate, he has already received two Academy Award nominations for his early roles. Some people consider him the best film actor of his generation.

My enjoyment of this film and numerous others leads me to ask the following questions.

Why do so few of my age peers attend current films? How is it that even the presence of stars like the three discussed here does not inspire more of us to go to movie theatres?

A Gallup poll taken last year confirms my suspicion that only a small minority of older people go to the movies any more. Surveying Americans over 65, Gallup found that 57 percent did not attend a single movie in the previous twelve months! By contrast, only 12 percent of those between ages 18 and 29 have not attended a movie in the past year.

It is not hard to suggest some reasons for this phenomenon. The dearth of neighborhood theaters is probably one. Long gone are those like the theater in  Watertown Square universally known by local kids as “The Flea House.” Disabilities can make it even more difficult for many to reach a theater.

Also many elders, I suspect, consider current films as too complicated, not simple like the films of old. My resident 21-year-old often rags me about my failing to understand certain films that speak to her. And, yes, too much sex and violence for their own sake mar many Hollywood flicks.

But, again, the chance to see such performers as my age peer Marlon Brando, along with veteran actor Robert De Niro, and the up-and-coming Edward Norton, makes me want to be at the movies.

Richard Griffin