The building where I go to swim each day has five doors on the way into the locker room. If others are walking behind me or in front of me, they often hold these doors open for me.
Many of these door holders are young people, college age. When I say “thank you,” they often say in return “no problem.” Those who don’t know me are likely to call me “sir.”
“The problem won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die.” They are elderly sick people in Japan. And the speaker is Taro Aso, the country’s Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.
Aso, himself 72 years old, has a reputation for verbal gaffes. Well deserved, in this case. He had to take back what he said.
“I haven’t used it since the price went up.” Kiki Chaiton, an 82 year old who lives in Lynn with her husband, age 87, told me this about The Ride. Before last July, the MBTA charged four dollars for a round-trip; the price has now doubled. And that’s more than Kiki can afford.
At 6:30 last Friday morning I received a phone call from the Cambridge Police. Its message: don’t stir from your house.
That was certainly the first time such a call, with such an instruction, had ever come my way. But it was just one sign, among many, of a wild week.
Each year, when I return from the annual conference of professionals in the field of aging, friends ask what hot topics were discussed. This year, Chicago was too cold to generate much other heat at the event. However, some of the speakers did stir some important thinking.
You had it first here.
That is if you are a long-time reader of this column. You would have been armed for the surprising news of Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement.
On the large map of the world that adorns my study, the name Tombouctou appears near the Niger River, in the African country of Mali. My map, it turns out, uses the French language spelling for a name more commonly known to our world as Timbuktu.