Ripe Old Age Quotes

At the ripe old age of seventeen, Donna had decided that "happily ever after" didn't exist for freaks like her.

What self-respecting American teenager gets to the ripe old age of nineteen without getting high at least once?

When we try to understand something, more often than not, we kill it, and now I can feel the dangers of this encroaching on me: cynicism, bitterness, and infinite sadness...It's impossible to live if you're too aware, too thoughtful. Take nature for example: everything that lives happily and too a ripe old age is not very intelligent. Tortoises live for centuries, water's immortal, and Milton Friedman's still alive.

Do the thing you love to do. Hank Williams died at the ripe old age of twentynine. Stevie Ray Vaughan at thirty-five. Jesus at thirtythree. Don’t think you’re special and the Lord’s gonna bless you with time.

May you keep dreaming until the day you die. May imagination overtake memory. May you die young at a ripe old age.

No age of life is inglorious. Youth has its merits, but living to a ripe old age is the true statement of value. Aging is the road that we take to discern our character. Fame and fortune can elude us, but character is immortal. We must encounter a sufficient variety of experiences including both failures and accomplishments in order to gain nobility of character.

Dying is beautiful- even the first time around, at the ripe old age of 20. It’s not easy most of the time, but there is real beauty to be found in knowing that your end is going to catch up with you faster than you had expected, and that you have to get all your loving and laughing and crying done as soon as you can.

Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunch-backed makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed form kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries' vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers, heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters' sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottle-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night's rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

At Evensong one night, while Holly played at sax and Mrs. Bethel Utemeyer joined in, I saw him: Holiday, racing past a fluffy white Samoyed. He had lived to a ripe old age on earth and slept at my father's feet after my mother left, never wanting to let him out of his sight... I waited for him to sniff me out, anxious to know if here, on the other side, I would still be the little girl he slept beside. I did not have to wait long: he was so happy to see me, he knocked me down.

Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

doubt I’ll manage to finally push past five feet at the ripe old age of twenty-seven,

But if you judge safety to be the paramount consideration in life you should never, under any circumstances, go on long hikes alone. Don’t take short hikes alone, either – or, for that matter, go anywhere alone. And avoid at all costs such foolhardy activities as driving, falling in love, or inhaling air that is almost certainly riddled with deadly germs. Wear wool next to the skin. Insure every good and chattel you possess against every conceivable contingency the future might bring, even if the premiums half-cripple the present. Never cross an intersection against a red light, even when you can see all roads are clear for miles. And never, of course, explore the guts of an idea that seems as if it might threaten one of your more cherished beliefs. In your wisdom you will probably live to be a ripe old age. But you may discover, just before you die, that you have been dead for a long, long time.

Deke: 'You know what I'm wonderin'?' Malachi: 'No, and to tell the truth, I don't care' Deke: 'I'm wonderin' how you've managed to live to the ripe old age of 36, when it's a known fact that you've been brain-dead since birth' 'Strength of will', was the flat reply

But the trouble is that conscious futility is something only for the young. One cannot go on "despairing of life" in to a ripe old age. One cannot go on being "decadent", since decadence means falling and one can only said to be falling if one is going to reach the bottom reasonably soon. Sooner or later one is obliged to adopt a positive attitude toward life and society.

That's the thing about people you loved. They disappeared on you. I didn't know much at the ripe old age of fifteen and a half. But, for better or worse, I knew that.

If I’d learned anything at the ripe old age of forty-one, it was that no dream could last forever, and no man can save you from yourself.

A beautiful woman should always have at the back of her mind that her ravishing appearance is only an ephemeral quality. When she wakes up in the morning, looks into the mirror, and notices that something is fading away, she knows that the time is ripe for marriage. She should be careful of who she takes into her life because the union is gonna be everlasting.

And you and your wise prince will talk long into the night, every night, and live to a ripe old age. And the children in this town will grow up telling the story of how they saw the Raven Princess, before she found her prince.

We should remember that even Nature's inadvertence has its own charm, its own attractiveness. The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven; the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why. Or how ripe figs begin to burst. And olives on the point of falling: the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty. Stalks of wheat bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of the lion. Flecks of foam on the boar's mouth. And other things. If you look at them in isolation there's nothing beautiful about them, and yet by supplementing nature they enrich it and draw us in. And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure. Even what seems inadvertent. He'll find the jaws of live animals as beautiful as painted ones or sculptures. He'll look calmly at the distinct beauty of old age in men, women, and at the loveliness of children. And other things like that will call out to him constantly—things unnoticed by others. Things seen only by those at home with Nature and its works.

In the early 1900s, researhers first posited the idea that longevity is inversely related to metabolic rate. They called it the “rate of living.” In other words, if you consistently burn energy at a high rate, you will quickly burn out.

I know more about Emily Bronte than anyone I know. I know enough about her family to have been a part. I’ve walked with her on her damp luscious lonely moors, watched her strain to write on miniscule scraps of paper, seen her hide her works from prying eyes. I’ve brooded alongside her and participated in her taciturnity. Before her death at the ripe old age of 30, I nursed her from the things that ultimately killed her: tuberculosis with a side order of Victorian thinking.

Youth is pert and positive, Age modest and doubting: So Ears of Corn when young and light, stand bolt upright, but hang their Heads when weighty, full, and ripe.

The "Hazeldean heart" was a proverbial boast in the family; the Hazeldeans privately considered it more distinguished than the Sillerton gout, and far more refined than the Wesson liver; and it had permitted most of them to survive, in valetudinarian ease, to a ripe old age, when they died of some quite other disorder. But Charles Hazeldean had defied it, and it took its revenge, and took it savagely.

I am beginning to realize, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, that one of the problems I have in life is a tendency to completely romanticize how things will be in the future, which inevitably leads to disappointment because it's pretty much never, never, what I expect

A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country. This is not so strange when you reflect that from the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture...

Stomach acid is so important to protect your gut barrier that my colleagues at the Medical College of Georgia (where I went to medical school) are starting to use baking soda as a treatment for autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Fructose, the main sugar in fruit, is actually a toxin that can directly injure cells and disrupt mitochondrial function.

Sure, you know that tea is good for you, but pu-erh tea? Go to the head of the class if you guessed what it does: it promotes the growth of Akkermansia muciniphila bacteria!30

He returned to Cambridge feeling, at the ripe old age of twenty, that life was passing him by.

I’d always wanted to be the only funny one. But now, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, I quickly realized that it’s better if everyone is funny.

and ideally not die of a stress-induced heart attack at the ripe old age of twenty-eight.

The Methuselah Complex The Bible tells us that Methuselah lived to 969 years of age. Issac died at 180. Do you think Jacob bemoaned the fact that his dad didn't live to a ripe old age?

Some of us come here as shooting stars, to shine brightly for only the briefest moment, and others of us come and overstay our welcome, living to a ripe old age and forgetting our own names.

Now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of retirement, I feel it my duty to teach you everything I’ve learnt about love, so listen closely. Love is like… That’s as far as I’ve gotten I’m afraid.

Her face was round and rosy, with a healthful downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her hair, partially silvered by age, was parted smoothly back from a high placed forehead, on which time had written no inscription, except peace on earth, good will to men, and beneath shone a large pair of clear, honest, loving brown eyes; you only needed to look straight into them, to feel that you saw to the bottom of a heart as good and true as ever throbbed in woman's bosom. So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

During rush-hour traffic, emissions of siloxane, a microbiome-destroying ingredient in shampoos, lotions, and deodorants, are found in comparable levels to vehicle exhaust.17 Just one more reason to dread your daily commute.

Are we really supposed to know what we want to do for the rest of our lives at the ripe old age of seventeen?” “Don’t you want to know?” “I guess? I wish I could live ten lives at once.” “Ugh. You just don’t want to choose.” “That’s not what I mean. I don’t want to get stuck doing something that doesn’t mean anything to me. This track I’m on? It goes on forever. Yale. Medical school. Residency. Marriage. Children. Retirement. Nursing home. Funeral home. Cemetery.

I’m learning this now at the ripe old age of twenty-four. I can’t control how you see me, but I can control how I will be seen. And you will only ever see me very put together. You don’t need to know about the parts of me that aren’t.

Professor Sprout awarded Gryffindor twenty points when Harry passed her a watering can; a beaming Professor Flitwick pressed a box of squeaking sugar mice on him at the end of Charms, said, ‘Shh!’ and hurried away; and Professor Trelawney broke into hysterical sobs during Divination and announced to the startled class, and a very disapproving Umbridge, that Harry was not going to suffer an early death after all, but would live to a ripe old age, become Minister for Magic and have twelve children.

IF ONE WISHES to live to a ripe old age, there are certain activities one should avoid. Chief among these is eating anything larger than one’s own head—but not so very far down the list is any activity that involves clambering around the outside of a spaceship.

I'd like to make you an offer." An offer? I was suddenly reminded of who I was dealing with here. Lillian Taft wasn't a powder puff. She was the merciless, dictatorial matriarch who'd kicked my pregnant mother out of her house at the ripe old age of seventeen. I stalked to the front door and retrieved the Post-it I'd placed next to the doorbell when our house had been hit with door-to-door evangelists two weeks in a row. I turned and offered the hand-written notice to the women who'd raised my mother. Her perfectly manicured fingertips plucked the Post-it from my grasp. "'No soliciting,'" my grandmother read. "Except for Girl Scout cookies," I added helpfully. I'd gotten kicked out of the local Scout troop during my morbid true-crime and facts-about-autopsies phase, but I still had a weakness for Thin Mints. Lillian pursed her lips and amended her previous statement. "'No soliciting except for Girl Scout cookies.'" I saw the precise moment that she registered what I was saying: I wasn't interested in her offer. Whatever she was selling, I wasn't buying.

I must do what I can to make myself intelligible to you. Our natures, however, are so different, that this may not be easy. Men and women live but to die; we, that is such as I-we are but a few-live to live on. Old age is to you a horror; to me it is a dear desire: the older we grow, the nearer we are to our perfection. Your perfection is a poor thing, comes soon, and lasts but a little while; ours is a ceaseless ripening. I am not yet ripe, and have lived thousands of your years-how many, I never cared to note. The everlasting will not be measured.

Cynthia wondered how anyone could withstand this sort of happiness. But no doubt no one had ever before been as happy as she was at this moment, so there couldn't possibly be any precedent. She would have to show them all how to do it by surviving it and marrying Miles Redmond and living to a ripe old age.

Nor does anyone know what the purpose is in anything, or why things happen in the way they do. It don’t seem fair when you see some of them mean buggers living to a ripe old age and here’s your lovely daughter took so soon. All I can tell you is what I believe. There’s justice up above the street, my dear.

There is a significant hereditary contribution to ADD but I do not believe any genetic factor is decisive in the emergence of ADD traits in any child. Genes are codes for the synthesis of the proteins that give a particular cell its characteristic structure and function. They are, as it were, alive and dynamic architectural and mechanical plans. Whether the plan becomes realized depends on far more than the gene itself. It is determined, for the most part, by the environment. To put it differently, genes carry potentials inherent in the cells of a given organism. Which of multiple potentials become expressed biologically is a question of life circumstances. Were we to adopt the medical model — only temporarily, for the sake of argument — a genetic explanation by itself would still be unsuitable. Medical conditions for which genetic inheritance are fully or even mostly responsible, such as muscular dystrophy, are rare. “Few diseases are purely genetic,” says Michael Hayden, a geneticist at the University of British Columbia and a world-renowned researcher into Huntington’s disease. “The most we can say is that some diseases are strongly genetic.” Huntington’s is a fatal degeneration of the nervous system based on a single gene that, if inherited, will almost invariably cause the disease. But not always. Dr. Hayden mentions cases of persons with the gene who live into ripe old age without any signs of the disease itself. “Even in Huntington’s, there must be some protective factor in the environment,” Dr. Hayden says.

So may'st thou live, till ripe fruit thou drop into thy mother's lap, or be with ease gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature: this is old age; but then you must outlive thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change to withered weak and grey; thy senses then obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forgo, to what thou hast, and for the air of youth hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign a melancholy damp of cold and dry to weigh thy spirits down, and last consume the balm of life.

Romance is part of our female DNA. If you don’t believe me, think back on the Disney movies they started feeding us at the ripe old age of two. Although humorous supporting characters helped advance the plotlines, each and every one essentially involved a girl, a guy, and a happy ending: Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, Snow White, they’re all just looking for a good man!

Each of us reaches the set upper limit of his personal potential, and thereafter ceases to develop. That is the basis of old age, this incapacity for change. We stop on our own journey. It happens to some people in midlife, and to others as soon as they finish their education. Yet others go on developing into ripe old age, right up to death in fact, but they are a rarity.

Sure enough, a long-range study published in 2017 that looked at nearly 16,000 healthy people aged 40 and older found a significant association between cumulative PPI use and the risk of dementia.

There is a kind of man who appears to be fashioned in circles. His body is a collection of curves topped by a round and shining head. His soul is as round and polished as his body, with no mad and jagged corners to scarify society’s epidermis. Even his life is a circle, for, as a rule, he will die, as his temperate habits deserve, at a ripe old age, on the very threshhold of infancy once more.

I was fourteen years old--and that is an age when a girl just begins to feel her power over men. And I knew I was what most boys and men considered beautiful, and I guess, in a way, I was ripe for love.

All my adult life, I was branded by officials as ‘an exponent of the right’ who wanted to bring capitalism back to our country. Today-at a ripe old age-I am suspected by some of being left-wing, if not harbouring out-and-out socialist tendencies. What, then is my real position? …I refuse to classify myself as left or right. I stand between these two political and ideological front-lines, independent of them. Some of my opinions may seem left-wing, no doubt, and some right-wing, and I can even imagine that a single opinion may seem left-wing to some and right-wing to others-and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t care less. But most of all I am loath to describe myself as a man of the centre. It seems absurd to define oneself in topographical terms, the more so because the position of the imaginary centre is entirely dependent on the angle from which it is viewed.

Suppose..." And for the first time he linked his hand with hers. "He runs and wins and lives to a ripe old age writing his memoirs and traveling as an ambassador of goodwill or playing Parcheesi on the sun porch. You're going to be damned mad he had fifty years without you." She let out a long breath. "Yeah. But-" "We've already gone through the buts," he interrupted. "Of course, they're probably several million possibilities in between.He could get hit by a car crossing the street-or you could. He could lose the election and become a missionary or an anchor on the six o'clock news." "All right." Shelby dropped her forehead to their joined hands. "Nobody makes me see what a fool I am better than you." "One of my minor talents. Listen, walk out on the beach; clear your head. When you come back, eat something, then get about twelve hours' sleep, because you look like hell.Then..." He waited until she lifted her head to smile at him. "Go home.I've got work to do." "I love you,you creep." "Yeah." He shot her one of his quick grins. "Me too.

I’m turning fifty in five months. I mention to the healer how it feels a little late in my life to begin this kind of journey. As healers sometimes do, she tells me an interesting story about her parents… It seems her father was thinking of starting college at the ripe old age of 24. He was working, so he’d have to go at night. After figuring out the timing, he told his wife (her mom), “If I do this, I’ll be 29 years old before I graduate!” His wife replied, “How old will you be if you don’t do it?” He enrolled. Smart parents. Smart healer.

Hundreds of studies have shown that people overrate their health, leadership ability, intelligence, professional competence, sporting prowess, and managerial skills. People also hold the nonsensical belief that they are inherently lucky. Most people think they are more likely than the average person to attain a good first job, to have gifted children, and to live to a ripe old age. They also think that they are less likely than the average person to be the victim of an accident, crime, disease, depression, unwanted pregnancy, or earthquake. Why

If you hadn’t found the way into the tombs tonight, I probably would have done something foolish.” “So long as you take me with you.” “I’d rather you didn’t get killed for my foolishness.” “I have been resigned to dying for a long time.” “Fenris…” “No, no, don’t sound stricken. What else am I good for? You gave me something useful to do with my death. I will be grateful forever.” “No dying,” said Marra angrily. “I don’t want you to die! I want you to live to a ripe, old age so that I can say, ‘Hey, Fenris, remember the time we went into a horrible catacomb and the dust-wife said something cryptic and Agnes waved a baby chick at us,’ and you say, ‘Of course I remember,’ and I don’t have to try to explain to someone who wasn’t there.” The silence from the other side of the room was suddenly deeper and more textured. Marra bit her lip. “Besides,” she said, after a moment, “someone has to chop all my firewood. I’ve gotten spoiled.” “Hmm.

People who don’t play golf pro to envy their golfing neighbors, admiring it as a nifty game you can play to a ripe old age. What they don’t understand is that we don’t keep playing because we can; we play because we don’t know how to stop. It lands in our hands for just a moment before slipping through our fingers, and we grab for it again and again. It’s a shell game, a music man, a three-card monte from which we can’t walk away. Once in a while it glances back at us, and it’s achingly beautiful. A siren? Perhaps. But those sailors at least got the closure of wrecking on the rocks. Golfers find the rocks and just drop another ball.

In 2015, the cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared glyphosate to be a “probable human carcinogen.”22 As a result, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and the Feed the World Project (now the Detox Project) teamed up to offer the public the opportunity to have their urine tested for glyphosate.

The teachers were, of course, forbidden from mentioning the interview by Educational Decree Number Twenty-six, but they found ways to express their feelings about it all the same. Professor Sprout awarded Gryffindor twenty points when Harry passed her a watering can; a beaming Professor Flitwick pressed a box of squeaking sugar mice on him at the end of Charms, said “Shh!” and hurried away; and Professor Trelawney broke into hysterical sobs during Divination and announced to the startled class, and a very disapproving Umbridge, that Harry was not going to suffer an early death after all, but would live to a ripe old age, become Minister of Magic, and have twelve children.

On the surface, their longevity is perplexing and just downright weird. In fact, there are lots of weird things about naked mole rats. (Even their appearance. Go ahead, google it.) They can live without oxygen for up to eighteen minutes, almost never get cancer, and on average live about ten to fifteen times as long as other rodents their size.

Dr. Longo’s studies have also profiled a group of people in Ecuador called the Larons (named after the researcher that originally studied them, Zvi Laron). The Larons, who have absent growth hormone receptors, are unable to make IGF-1. These short adults are free from cancer and diabetes, similar to another group with the same syndrome in Brazil.

The latest studies conducted on mice prove that this inflammatory response is also a major cause of aging. In 2018, researchers at the Yale School of Medicine correlated a microbe that was present in mice with a lupuslike autoimmune condition that crossed from the gut into the mice’s organs. The result was gut wall disintegration and immune cells (which you can think of in this case as mouse cops) in the same organs as the invading bacteria. Notably, the same bad bugs were found in liver biopsies of human patients with autoimmune diseases, but not in healthy control subjects.6 In other words, a leaky gut that allows bacteria to cross the border of the gut lining causes autoimmune disease in both mice and humans.

There was once a bunny who lived by the ocean. Every day he would stroll along the sandy beach and pick up thoughts which had washed ashore. He would find them in shells, under rocks, and sometimes even tangled up in seaweed. "Oh, this is a good one,” he would say, “We see chaos, but if we look carefully, if we look beneath the chaos, we find perfection." And into his bucket the thought would go. When the bunny had reached a ripe old age he gathered all the thoughts together and placed them carefully into a large silver cauldron heated by the fires of life. Using a straw broom, he stirred them thoroughly, and as he was stirring he listened carefully. Much to his surprise he heard the ocean singing a wordless song of incomparable beauty. The bunny closed his eyes and said, “Ah, it was all worth it.” --The Blue Monk of Niim

And everywhere, just as there were animals on land, were the animals of the sea. The tiniest fish made the largest schools- herring, anchovies, and baby mackerel sparkling and cavorting in the light like a million diamonds. They twirled into whirlpools and flowed over the sandy floor like one large, unlikely animal. Slightly larger fish came in a rainbow, red and yellow and blue and orange and purple and green and particolored like clowns: dragonets and blennies and gobies and combers. Hake, shad, char, whiting, cod, flounder, and mullet made the solid middle class. The biggest loners, groupers and oarfish and dogfish and the major sharks and tuna that all grew to a large, ripe old age did so because they had figured out how to avoid human boats, nets, lines, and bait. The black-eyed predators were well aware they were top of the food chain only down deep, and somewhere beyond the surface there were things even more hungry and frightening than they. Rounding out the population were the famous un-fish of the ocean: the octopus, flexing and swirling the ends of her tentacles; delicate jellyfish like fairies; lobsters and sea stars; urchins and nudibranchs... the funny, caterpillar-like creatures that flowed over the ocean floor wearing all kinds of colors and appendages. All of these creatures woke, slept, played, swam about, and lived their whole lives under the sea, unconcerned with what went on above them. But there were other animals in this land, strange ones, who spoke both sky and sea. Seals and dolphins and turtles and the rare fin whale would come down to hunt or talk for a bit and then vanish to that strange membrane that separated the ocean from everything else. Of course they were loved- but perhaps not quite entirely trusted.

The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. ‘And yet,’ I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, where the bugles after a pause had taken up the second call and were sounding ‘Pick-em-up, pick-em-up, hot potatoes’, ‘and yet that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back. ‘Something quite remote from anything the builders intended, has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame - a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

Sugar substitutes aren’t any better. Many people (including me when I was overweight) turn to artificial sugars to quell their cravings without packing on the pounds. Back then I would have happily performed heart surgery with a Diet Coke in my hand if only I could have found a way to sterilize it! But ironically, although these products are supposed to aid in weight loss, they do just the opposite. That’s because products such as sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, and other nonnutritive artificial sweeteners kill your gut buddies and allow the bad bugs to multiply. Believe it or not, a Duke University study28 showed that a single Splenda packet kills 50 percent of normal intestinal flora! It’s sad but true: if you eat too much of anything sweet, your gut buddies will starve to death, and your bad bugs will live long and prosper—and multiply. Even fructose, the sugar in fruit, has been shown to be a mitochrondrial poison! There goes the neighborhood.

we see that two types of stress (calorie restriction and exercise) cause you to turbocharge your cells with more mitochondria. But as they get older, most people don’t restrict calories, use intermittent fasting, or do much strength training. The result is less muscle mass and fewer mitochondria for most older people—but this is not inevitable. Slightly stressed cells and hungry muscles will lead to more mitochondria, lower insulin levels, more muscle mass, and overall better health for many years to come.

Life is a crapshoot. It is also brief. No generation is invulnerable to the formidable and grave powers of creation and obliteration that time renders. All people are subject to the vagrancies of time’s steady pulse and subordinated to brute chance engendered when pulling the levers of fate found in our risk-filled environment. We can tilt the odds in our favor of living happily to a ripe old age by displaying a high degree of awareness and exercising self-control. We must rightfully display pride in our lives by claiming responsibility for ourselves and by taking on every challenge without mental equivocation. I seek to conquer personal fears and employ honest effort, energy, endurance, and enthusiasm supplemented with booster shots of intellectual integrity to become my personal master. Self-mastery, self-discipline, conscientious study, uncompromising integrity, and ethical awareness form the foundation stones of all religions and these qualities anchor every person of high character. While no personal medicine wheel is without faults and frailties, a person who exhibits an annealed temperament constantly searches inward to improve him or herself while maintaining a vigilant eye upon fulfilling their caregiver responsibilities.

These examinations and certificates and so on--what did they matter? And all this efficiency and up-to-dateness--what did that matter, either? Ralston was trying to run Brookfield like a factory--a factory for turning out a snob culture based on money and machines. The old gentlemanly traditions of family and broad acres were changing, as doubtless they were bound to; but instead of widening them to form a genuine inclusive democracy of duke and dustman, Ralston was narrowing them upon the single issue of a fat banking account. There never had been so many rich men's sons at Brookfield. The Speech Day Garden Party was like Ascot. Ralston met these wealthy fellows in London clubs and persuaded them that Brookfield was the coming school, and, since they couldn't buy their way into Eton or Harrow, they greedily swallowed the bait. Awful fellows, some of them--though others were decent enough. Financiers, company promoters, pill manufacturers. One of them gave his son five pounds a week pocket money. Vulgar . . . ostentatious . . . all the hectic rotten-ripeness of the age. . . . And once Chips had got into trouble because of some joke he had made about the name and ancestry of a boy named Isaacstein. The boy wrote home about it, and Isaacstein père sent an angry letter to Ralston. Touchy, no sense of humor, no sense of proportion--that was the matter with them, these new fellows. . . . No sense of proportion. And it was a sense of proportion, above all things, that Brookfield ought to teach--not so much Latin or Greek or Chemistry or Mechanics. And you couldn't expect to test that sense of proportion by setting papers and granting certificates...

There was one part of the house I had not yet visited, and I went there now. The chapel showed no ill effects of its long neglect. The paint was as fresh and bright as ever. And the lamp burned once more before the altar. I said a prayer — an ancient, newly-learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked back, and the cook-house bugle sounded ahead of me,I thought:— The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle. Year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the Age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. And yet, I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, where the bugles after a pause had taken up the second call and were sounding Pick-em-up, Pick-em-up , hot potatoes — and yet that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back. Something quite remote from anything the builders intended had come out of their work and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame, a beaten copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame, which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians. And there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. Bus number twelve is her favorite place for watching, inside and out. The bus passes cars and bicycles and people walking dogs. It passes store windows, and every so often Minna sees her face reflection, two dark eyes in a face as pale as a winter dawn. There are fourteen people on the bus today. Minna stands up to count them. She likes to count people, telephone poles, hats, umbrellas, and, lately, earrings. One girl, sitting directly in front of Minna, has seven earrings, five in one ear. She has wisps of dyed green hair that lie like forsythia buds against her neck. There are, Minna knows, a king, a past president of the United States, and a beauty queen on the bus. Minna can tell by looking. The king yawns and scratches his ear with his little finger. Scratches, not picks. The beauty queen sleeps, her mouth open, her hair the color of tomatoes not yet ripe. The past preside of the United States reads Teen Love and Body Builder's Annual. Next to Minna, leaning against the seat, is her cello in its zippered canvas case. Next to her cello is her younger brother, McGrew, who is humming. McGrew always hums. Sometimes he hums sentences, though most often it comes out like singing. McGrew's teachers do not enjoy McGrew answering questions in hums or song. Neither does the school principal, Mr. Ripley. McGrew spends lots of time sitting on the bench outside Mr. Ripley's office, humming. Today McGrew is humming the newspaper. First the headlines, then the sports section, then the comics. McGrew only laughs at the headlines. Minna smiles at her brother. He is small and stocky and compact like a suitcase. Minna loves him. McGrew always tells the truth, even when he shouldn't. He is kind. And he lends Minna money from the coffee jar he keeps beneath his mattress. Minna looks out the bus window and thinks about her life. Her one life. She likes artichokes and blue fingernail polish and Mozart played too fast. She loves baseball, and the month of March because no one else much likes March, and every shade of brown she has ever seen. But this is only one life. Someday, she knows, she will have another life. A better one. McGrew knows this, too. McGrew is ten years old. He knows nearly everything. He knows, for instance, that his older sister, Minna Pratt, age eleven, is sitting patiently next to her cello waiting to be a woman.

That baking day was the third day Mrs G had shut herself away in the stillroom, dosing herself with medicinal waters. As I rolled the pastry I lived out a fancy I had nourished, since the first apple blossom pinked in May- the making of the perfect dish. Next day was All Hallows Eve, or Souling Night as we called it, and all our neighbors would gather for Old Ned's cider and Mrs Garland's Soul Cakes. After the stablemen acted out the Souling play, the unmarried maids would have a lark, guessing their husband's name from apple pairings thrown over their shoulders. So what better night, I thought, for Jem to announce our wedding? At the ripe age of twenty-two years, the uncertainties of maidenhood were soon to pass me by. Crimping my tarts, I passed into that forgetfulness that is a most delightful way of being. My fingers scattered flour and my elbows spun the rolling pin along the slab. Unrolling before my eyes were scenes of triumph: of me and Jem leading a cheery procession to the chapel, posies of flowers in my hand and pinned to Jem's blue jacket. In my head I turned over the makings of my Bride Cake that sat in secret in the larder- ah, wouldn't that be the richest, most hotly spiced delight? And all the bitter maidens who put it underneath their pillows would be sorrowing to think that Jem was finally taken, bound and married off to me.

Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunchbacked makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed from kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries’ vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters’ sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etoliated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men’s wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

Those who do not carry within them the soul of everything the world can show them, will do well to watch it: they will not recognize it, each thing being beautiful only according to the thought of him who gazes at it & reflects it in himself. Faith is essential in poetry as in religion, & faith has no need of seeing with corporeal eyes to contemplate that which it recognizes much better in itself. Such ideas were many times, under multiple forms, always new, expressed by Villiers de L'Isle-Adam in his works. Without going as far as Berkley's pure negations, which nevertheless are but the extreme logic of subjective idealism, he admitted in his conception of life, on the same plan, the Interior & the Exterior, Spirit & Matter, with a very visible tendency to give the first term domination over the second. For him the idea of progress was never anything but a subject for jest, together with the nonsense of the humanitarian positivists who teach, reversed mythology, that terrestrial paradise, a superstition if we assign it the past, becomes the sole legitimate hope if we place it in the future. On the contrary, he makes a protagonist (Edison doubtless) say in a short fragment of an old manuscript of l'Eve future: "We are in the ripe age of Humanity, that is all! Soon will come the senility & decrepitude of this strange polyp, & the evolution accomplished, his mortal return to the mysterious laboratory where all the Ghosts eternally work their experiments, by grace of some unquestionable necessity.

From this moment, start looking at everything as a blessing. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Even when you sometimes feel pain it is a blessing. You may not understand, but it is a blessing. One day you will understand and you will see that it was a blessing, that it was needed, absolutely needed, that it helped your growth. Even suffering is a blessing. It cleanses, it helps you to become integrated, it takes away childishness, it helps you to become mature. A certain ripeness arises out of suffering. A man who has never suffered remains childish, juvenile, superficial. He can’t understand life’s deeper things. He thinks that life is just a merry-go-round, so he goes on moving from one sensation to another. He is continuously greedy and hankering for all kinds of toys. But they are toys. A man who has suffered enough becomes mature. He can see that toys are toys — not worth the labor, not worth the worry. He can understand the depth and can see other people’s lives with more sympathy, with more compassion, with more love. Because he has suffered, he knows what suffering is. That makes him more human. So suffering too is a blessing. Watch, observe and try to find a blessing everywhere. Sometimes it is in disguise and sometimes not so disguised, sometimes utterly nude. But if you watch, you will find it is always there; in success, in failure, in pain, in pleasure, in life, in death too. It is there in summer, it is there in winter, it is there in youth, it is there in old age. It is there in health, it is there in illness. I call that person religious who can see blessings everywhere, who cannot find any place, any point which is not a blessing.

II. This also thou must observe, that whatsoever it is that naturally doth happen to things natural, hath somewhat in itself that is pleasing and delightful: as a great loaf when it is baked, some parts of it cleave as it were, and part asunder, and make the crust of it rugged and unequal, and yet those parts of it, though in some sort it be against the art and intention of baking itself, that they are thus cleft and parted, which should have been and were first made all even and uniform, they become it well nevertheless, and have a certain peculiar property, to stir the appetite. So figs are accounted fairest and ripest then, when they begin to shrink, and wither as it were. So ripe olives, when they are next to putrefaction, then are they in their proper beauty. The hanging down of grapes - the brow of a lion, the froth of a foaming wild boar, and many other like things, though by themselves considered, they are far from any beauty, yet because they happen naturally, they both are comely, and delightful; so that if a man shall with a profound mind and apprehension, consider all things in the world, even among all those things which are but mere accessories and natural appendices as it were, there will scarce appear anything unto him, wherein he will not find matter of pleasure and delight. So will he behold with as much pleasure the true rictus of wild beasts, as those which by skilful painters and other artificers are imitated. So will he be able to perceive the proper ripeness and beauty of old age, whether in man or woman: and whatsoever else it is that is beautiful and alluring in whatsoever is, with chaste and continent eyes he will soon find out and discern. Those and many other things will he discern, not credible unto every one, but unto them only who are truly and familiarly acquainted, both with nature

Bharata, do not think that I have no sympathy for you in this your predicament. I understand it fully. But, then, my child, no man is allowed to do as he pleases. Man has no freedom. Fate tosses him about in all directions. The game which Fate plays is unpredictable. Nothing lasts in this world. What has been gathered is scattered about. What was once at the top soon reaches the lowest position. Meetings only end in separations and, as for life, it only ends in death. Ripe fruits have but one fear, that of falling down. And even so, man has no fear other than death. Think of a house built sturdily with strong pillars. Even that, in course of time, becomes weak and ancient. Men too become old, lose their power of thinking and death claims them. The night which passes will never come back and the waters of the Yamuna which flow fast, when in flood, towards the sea, will never return. In this world, Bharata, just as the waters on the surface of the earth get less and less, dried constantly by the rays of the sun, man’s life also gets lessened day by day. Your life and mine are fast ebbing away. Think on the Lord, my child. Do not spend your time in the contemplation of another’s life. Death walks with us: and he accompanies us on the longest journey we undertake. The skin gets wrinkled. Hair grows white. Old age makes man weak and helpless. Man delights at the sight of the sun rising and again, the setting sun is pleasing to the eye. But man forgets that every sunrise and every sunset has lessened one’s life on earth by another day. The seasons come and go and each season has a charm of its own. But they come and when they go, they take with them large slices of our lives every time. On the large expanse of the sea two pieces of wood come together. They float together for a while and then they are parted. Even so it is with man and his relationship with life, child, kinsmen, wealth and other possessions. Meetings end only in separation. It is the law of nature. No one is capable of altering the course of Fate. Weeping for one who is dead will not bring him back to life.

you are not what you eat; you are what your gut buddies digest.

Each book deals relentlessly with themes of illness, death and suicide. It was a rather touching irony that the author lived to the ripe old age of 84. By the time Cioran died in 1995, he had become a cult in France, attracting the sort of faddish attention he witheringly denounced in his work. Every life, he maintained, is utterly peculiar – and wholly unimportant. In the age of Walt Disney, this kind of darkness matters. Cioran’s writing belongs in the line of those great aloof European miserabilists, including La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort, Leopardi, Nietzsche and Beckett. Like them, he saw civilization as an absurd distraction from the ultimate meaninglessness of existence. ‘Only an idiot could think there is a point to any of this,’ he insisted. But he always kept his wit and good cheer.

As a guide, your HDL level should be equal to or higher than your triglyceride level, which basically signifies that you’re recycling more fat than is being stored. But during our current 365-day growth cycle, the vast majority of people have the exact opposite ratio.

No dying,” said Marra angrily. “I don’t want you to die! I want you to live to a ripe, old age so that I can say, ‘Hey, Fenris, remember the time we went into a horrible catacomb and the dust-wife said something cryptic and Agnes waved a baby chicken at us,

She had a long life, dear,’ one of the old village ladies reminded her, gripping Chloe’s hand when she said goodbye. ‘A long, full, and colourful life. To be celebrated, not mourned.’ Of course, she was right. Gran had lived to the ripe old age of ninety-five and had died peacefully in her sleep. But, even so, the loss was hard to bear.

the giant Queensland groper species.1 Apparently, they are the biggest reef-dwelling fish in the world and are renowned for their curiosity. They are usually solitary in nature and live to a ripe old age. Giant Queensland gropers are commonly seen in caves on coral reefs and

Blessed be any wind that blows us into the port of our Saviour's love! Happy wounds, which make us seek the beloved Physician. Ye tempted ones, come to your tempted Saviour, for he can be touched with a feeling of your infirmities, and will succour every tried and tempted one. Morning, October 4 "At evening time it shall be light." Zechariah 14:7 Oftentimes we look forward with forebodings to the time of old age, forgetful that at eventide it shall be light. To many saints, old age is the choicest season in their lives. A balmier air fans the mariner's cheek as he nears the shore of immortality, fewer waves ruffle his sea, quiet reigns, deep, still and solemn. From the altar of age the flashes of the fire of youth are gone, but the more real flame of earnest feeling remains. The pilgrims have reached the land Beulah, that happy country, whose days are as the days of heaven upon earth. Angels visit it, celestial gales blow over it, flowers of paradise grow in it, and the air is filled with seraphic music. Some dwell here for years, and others come to it but a few hours before their departure, but it is an Eden on earth. We may well long for the time when we shall recline in its shady groves and be satisfied with hope until the time of fruition comes. The setting sun seems larger than when aloft in the sky, and a splendour of glory tinges all the clouds which surround his going down. Pain breaks not the calm of the sweet twilight of age, for strength made perfect in weakness bears up with patience under it all. Ripe fruits of choice experience are gathered as the rare repast of life's evening, and the soul prepares itself for rest. The Lord's people shall also enjoy light in the hour of death. Unbelief laments; the shadows fall, the night is coming, existence is ending. Ah no, crieth faith, the night is far spent, the true day is at hand. Light is come, the light of immortality, the light of a Father's countenance. Gather up thy feet in the bed, see the waiting bands of spirits! Angels waft thee away. Farewell, beloved one, thou art gone, thou wavest thine hand. Ah, now it is light. The pearly gates are open, the golden streets shine in the jasper light. We cover our eyes, but thou beholdest the unseen; adieu, brother, thou hast light at even-tide, such as we have

But I’m all grown up now— at the ripe old age of twenty-two

Paul “Mousie” Garner, a first-rate talent, was often referred to as the “grand old man of vaudeville”. As the last surviving Healy stooge, he died at the ripe of old age of 95 August 8, 2004 after a movie career that began in 1929. His last on-screen appearance in 2008 was yet another testament to his talent and longevity in the business.

The method used in this upbringing is light deprivation. But what purpose does this restriction serve? Don’t parents want their offspring to become independent as quickly as possible? Trees, at least, would answer this question with a resounding no, and recent science backs them up. Scientists have determined that slow growth when the tree is young is a prerequisite if a tree is to live to a ripe old age.

Lest I be accused of being overly dramatic, here is some evidence of the devastating effects of antibiotics: studies show that every time you take a course of antibiotics, you increase the likelihood of developing Crohn’s disease, diabetes, obesity, or asthma later in life.19

Any bacteria, LPSs, or other invaders lurking where they don’t belong trigger an immune response that generates widespread inflammation and lays the groundwork for accelerated aging and illness.

Your body is designed to be a part of a beautifully orchestrated dance between periods of sleep and wakefulness, eating and fasting.

Realistic. That's the word he used.” “Well, why not? It's a lousy world, Lily. It's probably all going to get blown to hell by an H-bomb in five or ten years. Or maybe tomorrow afternoon. The old rules don't work any more, can't you see that? We don't have a ripe old age to live to. So we might as well make the best of it now.” Lily smiled bitterly. “Eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow comes the H-bomb?

Eat first and then tell stories,” I suggested to him. “Tell me yours while I eat. Something momentous has happened to you. It’s in your bearing and eyes.” And so I spoke to him, as I could no other, divulging all that had befallen me. He smiled but it seemed weighed with sadness, and nodded to himself as if I were but confirming things he already knew. When I had finished, he tossed his plum pit into the fire and said quietly, “Well. It is nice to know that my last vision and prophecy was a true one.” “So. I’ll live happily ever after, as the minstrels sing?” He twisted his mouth at me and shook his head. “You’ll live among people who love you and have expectations of you. That will make your life horribly complicated and they will worry you sick half the time. And the other half, annoy you. And delight you.” He turned away from me and took his cup and looked into it, like a hedge-witch reading tea leaves. “Fate has given up on you, FitzChivalry Farseer. You’ve won. In the future that you now have found, it’s most likely that you’ll live to a ripe old age, rather than that fate will try to sweep you from the playing board at every opportunity.” I tried to lighten his words. “I was getting a bit tired of being hauled back from death’s door and beyond every time I turned around.” “It’s nasty. I know how nasty now. You’ve shown me that.” He almost had his old smile as he asked me, “Let’s leave it at this and call it even, shall we? One time pays for all?” I nodded to that.

The clear message is to start exercising now, no matter how old you are.

But perhaps the greatest risk to our musculoskeletal systems as we age is invisible muscle loss.

Regular exercise also dramatically reduces your risk of Alzheimer’s disease. A study from 201815 showed that women who were physically fit at middle age were a whopping 90 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease even decades later. The few fit women who participated in the study and did eventually develop Alzheimer’s did so an average of eleven years later than women who did not exercise, at the age of 90 compared to 79. Now listen up, my female readers. As my good friend Maria Shriver and I both know, Alzheimer’s disproportionally affects women, and the cure is prevention, not a long-sought-after but not-yet-discovered drug. Imagine that you read a headline saying that taking a “drug” would prevent 90 percent of all Alzheimer’s disease if the treatment is started early. How much would you pay for it? Well, that drug is a combination of exercise and, as you’ll soon learn, simple choices in food. Another study examined the effects of exercise on patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s and found that it improved memory performance and even reduced atrophy of the hippocampus, the memory centers of the brain.16 We also know that exercise that uses the legs in particular stimulates brain cells, keeping you alert and healthy long into old age.17 Remember “Michelle”? I have no doubt that walking her Pomeranian (in her high heels!) multiple times a day helped her stay sharp well into her ripe old age. Meanwhile, “brain training” apps that claim to help you improve your brain actually do nothing for working memory or IQ.18 So skip the games and go out for a walk instead. Exercise

The alternative for someone his age would have been the retirement home near Punahou School called Arcadia, which was ripe with old folks, and in its hushed air were the mingled smells of meatloaf, Jell-O, and mortality.

Every one he collected had a different birth year; they were his vintages, his collection of lives all from different eras. He knew based on her file that she was twenty-eight years old. A ripe age, a perfect age.

At the ripe old age of seventeen, he was hardly the epitome of logic and sound decisions. In fact, since our mother had died, his volatile teen emotions had been even more prevalent. I hated to witness the changes in him—partially because he’d always been so sweet before but also because his struggles had magnified his desire to follow in my father’s Mafia footsteps. He saw the power and prestige while being blinded to the uglier aspects of the job.

My mother’s father, Grandfather Thieme, the son of a railroad engineer, looked quite dapper as a young man. Prior to 1933 the Hamburg Police Department consisted of 21 units, with 2,100 men. My grandfather was a Polizist with the Sicherheitspolizei or uniformed policeman with the department. Later, with an expansion of the Hamburg Police Department to 5,500 men and the formation of an investigative branch, he was promoted to the esteemed position of a Kriminalbeamte inspector. He rose to the rank of Chief of Detectives, and had a reputation of being tough, and not someone you could mess with. Having a baldhead and the general appearance of Telly Savalas, the late Hollywood movie actor, I don’t think anyone did. An action story and part of my grandfather’s legacy was when he chased a felon across the rooftops of prewar Hamburg, firing his Dienstpistole, service revolver, as he made his way from one steep inclined slate roof to the next. Of course, Grandpa got his man! Even with this factual tidbit, there isn’t all that much I know about him, other than that, at the then ripe old age of sixty-four, he peacefully died in his chair while reading the evening newspaper.

At the ripe old age of fourteen, my brother has decided that he wants absolutely nothing to do with the whole Santa Claus thing. Instead, he wants to be an actor. He just isn’t very good at it. Acting isn’t a dangerous thing not to be good at, however, unlike that alarming sword-fighting phase he went through when he was ten, during which he dented several walls, caused a ceiling to collapse and nearly beheaded Dad.