Chaos at Social Security Administration.
1. But Do They Have a Harris-Teeter in John O’Groats?
Later today, we’ll walk to the store (and back!) and feel pretty damn good about it. David Ensor, on the other hand, is getting ready at the age of 80 to walk from one end of Britain to the other to raise funds for Alzheimer’s Research.? It’s 1200 miles from John O’Groats to Land’s End, and he is making this walk in honor of his wife Susan, who passed away from Alzheimer’s three years ago. We are full of admiration for anyone who would undertake such a solo trek, at any age, and we are also full of admiration for a country which has a town named “John O’Groats”. For those of you not familiar with John O’Groats, or don’t have two minutes to google, it’s a small village on the northernmost tip of Scotland, and has been described as the “place you start or finish if you want to cover the length of Britain playing hopscotch or pushing a pea with your nose.” Our further research has not found anyone who has done either, but we would definitely contribute to a Go Fund Me campaign for anyone who wants to try.?
Reading about Ensor’s plans has made us wonder about similarly mobile elders. There are lots of them, but near the top is Dale “Graybeard” Sanders who in 2017 became at age 82 the oldest person to hike the entirety of the Appalachian Trail - all 2,190 miles of it - which he did over the course of seven months. Since turning 80, Sanders has also rafted the Mississippi River from Source to Sea twice and became the oldest person in 2020 to hike the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim. And he is now planning, according to his website, to break his own record this fall by hiking the Appalachian Trial at the age of 90. It’s impressive for sure, though someday we hope he will hike through John O’Groats as a capstone to his journeys.?
2. Chaos at Social Security Administration.
In truth, we could have entered the name of any federal government agency after the word “chaos” and still be on the nose, but we’re getting asked some form of “what is going to happen to our Social Security” with uncomfortable frequency these days, so we want to take a shot at that particular question. Here is our update, with the caveat that things may change between the time we write this and the time you read this:?
Shameless Self Promotion #1.
It’s the waning days of Black History Month, so it is an appropriate time to honor Dr. Vivian Pinn, a pioneering doctor and public health official who was the first head of the Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) at the National Institutes of Health. After graduating from the University of Virginia Medical School, where she was the only woman and the only African American in her class, Dr. Pinn joined the pathology department at Tufts University School of Medicine, eventually rising to chair the pathology department at Howard University Hospital. In 1991, she was tapped to lead ORWH and over the course of the next two decades, did as much (or more) than anyone else in American healthcare to expand opportunities for women, increase research into women’s health, and rectify the exclusion of women from so many major health research investigations.??
Here’s the self-promotion piece: we were fortunate to have interviewed Dr. Pinn at length in the first episode of Season 7 of the Century Lives podcast. That episode, entitled “Overlooked and Underfunded,” focuses on how the American health research establishment systematically ignored women’s health for generations and how leaders, heroes really, like Dr. Pinn and Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland labored to change that. It’s an extraordinary story and we hope that you will listen here.?
#BlackHistoryMonth??
3. Live From New York.
It’s Saturday night. Fifty years ago, who would have thought that SNL would be around to celebrate its 50th birthday. It did just that last week, in a three-hour prime time special that received mostly positive reviews, though the Atlantic complained of its recency bias – that it failed to honor the great comedians and sketches that laid the foundation for success in its first decade.?
Our reaction was a little different, because who would have thought that fifty years ago, so many of the comedians and singers that made the show great would still be around to be part of this celebration. And not just alive, but active and as funny and compelling as they were a half century before. Not all of them made it – RIP Gilda Radnor – but SNL 50 was dominated by the people, now in their 60s, 70s, and 80s – who built the franchise.?
Many of the bold-faced names that have been part of the show were back, such as Robert DeNiro (age 81), Paul McCartney (age 82), and of course Lorne Michael (age 80). But for us, the most poignant moment was the replay of a 1978 short film by Tom Schiller called “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” starring John Belushi. In the film, Belushi is the last surviving Not Ready for Primetime Players, visiting the cemetery of all his fellow cast members – all who, in the film, died before age 38. The irony is heavy and sad – Belushi, who died at age 33, says in the film, “I thought I would be the first to go”. He was right on that point, by at least four decades, as all (except for Radnor), of?the rest of the crew featured in the short are not only still alive, but still vibrant, relevant, and funny: Lorraine Newman at 72, Dan Ackroyd at 72, Bill Murray at 74, Jane Curtin at 77, Chevy Chase at 81, and Garrett Morris, who introduced the film, at 88. We hope they are all back for the 60th.??