Our Crowd: In the Arena and in the News

Lily Tomlin: Not Your Typical Grandma
Do a search for “Grandma” on Google Images, and you’ll be greeted with row after row of older women—almost all of them be-spectacled, almost all of them be-halo-ed in a puff of white hair, almost all of them smiling, beatifically and benignly.

What Hollywood Says About Our Changing Views on Aging
It is always tricky proclaiming zeitgeist shifts, difficult enough to pinpoint in retrospect, much less while the winds of change are swirling still. Yet when it comes to the ideal for later life and retirement, there is an argument to be made that profound change is in the air.

50 Plus Workers Need to Embrace Technology
In the new Robert DeNiro movie, where the seasoned actor plays a 70-year-old job intern at a tech company inhabited by mobs of with-it Millennials, CEO Ann Hathaway notes that he’s on Facebook.

Paul McCartney: Star simply shines
Paul McCartney has nothing left to prove. After nearly three hours and three dozen songs Tuesday night at Nationwide Arena, any doubters surely came around. Yes, he played “those songs,” many, many of them.

Yoko Ono: I still fear John’s killer
In a candid, exclusive interview, Yoko Ono tells Tim Teeman about why Mark David Chapman should stay in jail forever, the truth about John Lennon’s bisexuality, and the ‘pain’ she shares with Paul McCartney.

The secret to aging is in the title of Dick Van Dyke’s memoir ‘Keep Moving’
When someone mentions Dick Van Dyke, the first image that pops to mind is probably the actor in motion: making pratfalls across the living room he shared with Mary Tyler Moore on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” or shuffling like a penguin in a candy-cane-striped blazer in “Mary Poppins.”

Frank Gehry designs his first yacht, “Foggy”
It took him nearly 87 years, but Frank Gehry has finally designed his first yacht, for developer Richard Cohen – joining the ranks of Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Renzo Piano and John Pawson who have all taken a stab at nautical design.

Seven Questions For Billie Jean King
The 23rd annual Mylan WTT Smash Hits benefits the Elton John AIDS Foundation and Aid for AIDS of Nevada. How did your involvement begin? Elton and I have been friends since 1973, and we always wanted to do music and sports together, so when he started his foundation,

Patti Smith’s most personal interview
Salon: I’m not going to ask what it feels like to be a rock ‘n’ roll star, but I am going to ask you this: How do you feel being the friend and companion to generations that follow you in the same way that Rimbaud and Whitman and Burroughs and Blake were friends and companions […]

Was Mencken right?
Even high school students knew of H. L. Mencken in the day. That is no longer true, according to the blank stares that greet a mention of his name among today’s developing intelligentsia. More’s the pity. Revisiting this early 20th century journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English is a continuing revelation. Witness […]

How Ralph Lauren created an empire
The story of how a second-generation immigrant tie salesman from the Bronx became a multibillionaire fashion designer is the embodiment of the American Dream.

How to Save the World
This commentary is entitled simply: “How to Save the World.” It began as an exercise in how to avoid Armageddon in the Middle East, and was first written on May 15, 2001, and saved until now in hope it would improve with time. Step One. First you have to move one foot, either to the […]