A Story Idea That Was Shot Down

In the early 1980s, I did a few taped interviews by phone or in-person for the Inquiry page of the newspaper USA Today. The Inquiry page used a Q and A format. Among the people I interviewed were Arthur Mitchell, the artistic director and co-founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the actress Cicely Tyson.

One person I wanted to interview was the African-American Life magazine photographer and film director Gordon Parks (1912-2006). Parks had written a series of autobiographies, beginning with A Choice of Weapons (1966). A subsequent book was called To Smile in Autumn (1979), which dealt with the latter years of his life.

In an interview, I wanted to focus on aging, not race or racial conflict. I pitched the idea by phone to Peter Prichard, an editor at USA Today. He wasn't interested.

If blogging had existed back then, I would have set up the interview and posted it. And today, in a society and at a time in which ageism has not receded, we would have had, I believe, a thought-provoking, life-affirming interview to add to the literature on gerontology.

Wishing To Be A Centenarian

I would like to be a centenarian like the Delany sisters, Sadie and Bessie, of Having Our Say book and television movie fame, who lived well past a hundred. (The Delany sisters, now deceased, were the aunts of science fiction writer Samuel Delany.) Living such a long life would enable me to accomplish more of my goals. But, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, longevity has its place.

If I do live to see my one hundredth birthday, I want to be a spry and alert one hundred, not one unable to put one foot in front of the other or who doesn't know day from night.

Living Past 100 And Still Working

I recently heard a story on New York's all-news Ten-Ten WINS about a barber in upstate New York who's 107 years old. And he's still cutting hair.

A story about people living beyond one hundred years is still newsworthy because so few people make it that far. Most people if they live to old age are more likely to die in the 85 to 115 age range. (The ones called super centenarians are the ones who die within the 116 to 125 age range.)

With that in mind, I'm looking forward to reading Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging by Dick Van Dyke (Weinstein Books, 2015). Van Dyke, the comic actor, is in his nineties and still working. And I hope he will continue to work when he's past a hundred.