Paul Simon: How terribly strange to be seventy..

Subject: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 06:55 AM

Paul Simon ...seventy years old!

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 07:00 AM

I hope to reach 70 myself, next year.
Happy birthday Paul Frederic Simon

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Leadfingers
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 07:33 AM

Now nearer Seventy than Sixty Nine !   SCARY !!!

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Midchuck
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 08:10 AM

Tell me somethin' about it!

Sixteen days to go!

"The days of our years are threescore years and ten...

Peter

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: SINSULL
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 08:14 AM

Who is that old woman in the mirror?????
Scary.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: JennyO
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 08:19 AM

I'm hurtling towards that figure WAY too fast. There should be a law against it!

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 08:22 AM

I shall be 80 in 7 months less one day.

You young people!...

~Michael~

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Midchuck
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 08:23 AM

We're face to face with the fact that the great bulk of hard-core folkies are people who were of college age, more or less, in the late '50s and early '60s. I was strongly impressed with the present result of that, at the Getaway.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Charley Noble
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 08:40 AM

Where's the way-back machine?

Well, I suppose we'll just have to party on!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble, still 69

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Elmore
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 09:05 AM

Turned 70 this year, along with people I idolized in my youth; Dylan, Baez, Carthy etc. Who knows where the time goes?

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Nancy King
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 10:02 AM

Yeah, me too. Well, as they say, it beats the alternative...

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 11:04 AM

One day when my mother was that age, she said to me, "I'm not the person you see. Inside of me is an 18-year-old girl." She was right.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 01:05 PM

As I have mentioned before, I once heard some 'kids' talking, and one said, "Wow...I'm gonna be 20 next week! I'm getting old!"

I butted in and said, "Hey...20 is great! I like 20. In fact, I liked it so well I did it 3 times!"

Bill D.-- 72, and working on 4 times, with plans for 5.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Midchuck
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 01:14 PM

Who was it said "Inside of every old person is a young person saying 'What the f*** happened?'"

P.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 01:22 PM

Well, those of you who are near 70+ might appreciate knowing THIS. Something to look forward to!

Subject: ADD: Old Friends (Paul Simon)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 02:17 PM

OLD FRIENDS
(Paul Simon)

Old friends,
Old friends,
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends.
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes,
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends.

Old friends,
Winter companions,
The old men,
Lost in their overcoats,
Waiting for the sunset.
The sounds of the city,
Sifting through trees,
Settle like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends.

Can you imagine us
Years from today,
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy.

Old friends,
Memory brushes the same years.
Silently sharing the same fear....


Recording from Bookends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3NYWzHLEZw

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: SINSULL
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 02:19 PM

Looking good, Nancy. I thought you were younger than me.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 02:20 PM

Children!

I hit 80 just this past June, and I've got about twenty-five or thirty years' worth of stuff I have to do yet before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

"St. Peter, doncha call me, 'cause I can't go....."

Good article, Kat! I wonder what all this brouhaha is about—some guy being on trial for having a bomb in his underwear. Heck, I have a bomb in MY underwear……

But that's another story.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 02:40 PM

I see Paul Simon's birthday isn't musical, while Art Thieme's finger apparently is!

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 02:41 PM

"Just because there's snow on the roof, it doesn't mean the fire's out in the hearth!"

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: gnu
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 02:45 PM

I am a pup I guess. Just glad I chanced to find this site because I have learned so much... from people who know so much. Thanks.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: fat B****rd
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 02:50 PM

I'll be UK pensionable next year (Cameron permitting!!) and shall visit the portrait in the attic regularly.
Happy Birthday Mr.Simon.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Amos
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 03:03 PM

I just told our local SOcial Security office to start sending me money. I am happy to say they seemed agreeable. But oh, the hidden cost of being able to do it!! Sheesh!!

Anyway, I felt quite young at the Getaway, not because of the age of those around but because I always get tulips blooming in my brain when I go to the Sacred Secret Island on the West River.


A

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 03:43 PM

Would that I were seventy again!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 03:55 PM

"it beats the alternative..."

How do you know?

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: gnu
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 04:03 PM

On accounta being dead is gonna happen so why not flog THIS for all it's worth? I mean, eternity is a fairly long time and life certainly isn't by comparison.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: gnu
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 04:05 PM

Oh shit! Yer gonna start up with that reincarnation stuff aren'chya?

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 04:12 PM

My wife already owned the bookends album when I first met her in 1969. She was 19, I was 20. I remember reading that line on the back of the album, 'how terribly strange to be seventy.....'

And seventy seemed as remote as the dark side of the moon. I wish I could get that feeling back.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 04:12 PM

Vi, my ex-mother-in-law, was 97 a couple of weeks back, so you're all just teenagers still..

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 04:59 PM

Reincarnation is just one possibility, gnu. Yeah, I think it's probable, but it's just one possibility.

My point was, how does anyone alive now know that death is the "worse alternative". They don't. None of us do, because we haven't experienced it yet. We've seen things die, but we haven't experienced death, and we don't really know what happens to the consciousness of a living being after death...

People just make common assumptions about it, and their assumptions are based on fear of the unknown. You cannot knowledgably state that something is the worse alternative when you don't yet know anything about it.

You can just make a statement based on faith. That's what a person does when they say that death is anything they've decided it is. They make a statement based on faith, not knowledge...whether or not they are "religious".

We do know what happens to physical bodies after death. They become inert and rapidly start to decay. That's easy to observe. But you and I are not just our bodies...we are the living consciousness within our bodies. That consciousness remains in a way "forever young" while the body it resides in ages and finally dies. Maybe the consciousness knows something intuitively that the body-limited awareness does not, if you follow my meaning. The consciousness may be deathless. If so, death may not be such a bad alternative as people think, and it may lead to new life in another body...or in some other state.

I'm not saying I know it does, because I'm not making faith-based statements here....but I'm raising the possibility that it does. Therefore, I do not necessarily assume that death is the worse alternative to staying here indefinitely in an aging body. Remember what happened to Dorian Gray? In the story he wanted immortality in an ageless body. He got it. It did not prove to be the happy experience he had been hoping for, and he finally destroyed himself. His body had became a prison for his consciousness.

In my opinion, the human body is rather like a small, tight shoe and we are the enormous consciousness that's been shoe-horned into it for a brief period. Getting out of that shoe might be a marvelously liberating experience.

We'll all find out presently. ;-D

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 05:08 PM

Even those who profess to be sure of going to heaven, aren't anxious to die too soon.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Bobert
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 05:57 PM

John Lennon would be 71...

Get over it...

B~

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 06:24 PM

John, I think that's because although they may profess absolute faith that they're going to heaven...in truth they are still not quite sure of what lies ahead. They may have heard about some version of Heaven, but they still don't know for sure what it's like. They still fear the unknown territory of death and feel safer with the known territory of physically embodied life. Additionally, there may be many things here that they value and don't wish to leave behind...family and personal relationships, their possessions, their own body, their social role, etc...and because of that they aren't anxious to die too soon.

I figure life is a lot like a part in a stage play. You want to play it out right to the final curtain call...unless your specific dramatic role requires an earlier departure. Even then, though, you'll still want to show up at the final curtain call itself along with the rest of the cast. And then everyone goes out and has a big party afterward. At the party you meet Woody Allen, and he starts explaining to you the problem that he still has with the whole idea of "God", death, love, sex, guilt, and judgement.... ;-)

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: gnu
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 06:37 PM

My point exactly Giok.

Perhaps not the best time to post this one, but I am minded of it so what the heck...

Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing


The same thing to them at funerals.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 07:05 PM

LOL!!!

They'd have been frustrated by me. I'm almost 63 years old now, and never married yet. Couldn't see any sense in it at all.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Fossil
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 07:07 PM

Oh, that's all right then. Was beginning to think I was the only geezer on this site. Now I find that at 67 I am just a stripling!

Good luck to all you old folks. Never stop caring!

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: katlaughing
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 07:19 PM

Like the caterpillar, LH, not knowing that in "apparently" dying, it will become a being of beauty. How do we know we aren't all caterpillars?*bg*

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 07:32 PM

Caterpillars?

I think that might be a distinct possibility.

When I woke up this morning, my tongue felt fuzzy.....

Don Firth

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 08:05 PM

Yes indeed, Kat.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Bobert
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 09:00 PM

Well, LH... You may no be marryin' material... That's okay... No big deal... But, hey, you ain't 70... We'll check back in 8 years... Who knows??? Maybe you'll be married with 3 kids by then??? Maybe not...

B~

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Amos
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 09:28 PM

It's better than the alternative just because that's the game that's being played--move into the future, survive, bring your family forward with you, make things happen, move your piece, put on a show in this theater, improvise or recite or whatever.

Dying may be blissful or gruesome or black and empty, but the one thing for sure is, you lose your game when your token is removed from the board. That's why. Has nothing to do with Hebbin or Rinkernation or nuffin' but the losing of the game. The screen goes blank and the thought "Game Over, Man!" gets writ large across the screen. Bummer.


A

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Oct 11 - 10:35 PM

True. However, there's always the next game. I do think it makes sense, as you say, Amos, to do your best in the present game that's being played.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Gurney
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 03:19 AM

70 and 3/12ths.

NO, NO! Not me! I'm only 19!
Inside.

As John Mc. says, even Believers look both ways when crossing the road.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Becca72
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 09:42 AM

Thanks, all! You've made me feel slightly better about turning 40 in 3 months. :-)

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 10:11 AM

I'm only 39


(in hexadecimal!)

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 10:22 AM

Someone asked me recently how old I am. I replied, (like Jack Benny) "39".

"Aw...c'mon, when were you born?"

"39!".... true.

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 12:29 PM

I like that system, Bill. That means I'm 31!

I'll drink to that.....

Don Firth

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: olddude
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 12:44 PM

I got a ways to go, but like I told my doc buddie. The only things I need him to keep working is my brain, and one other part LOL. Everything else is secondary

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 12:49 PM

I just turned 69.








Sits back and waits for the rude comments

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Becca72
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 01:34 PM

So you were facing the wrong direction up to that point? :-)

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 01:41 PM

Aha! Now I get why we often disagree, Don. It's the age-old "old geezer vs young whippersnapper" syndrome...me being the latter of the two, since I'm only about to turn 63.

(I'm joking.)

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: MikeL2
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 02:42 PM

hi

I didn't feel strange to be 70. I am 76 next week....and I thought Paul Simon was older than me !!!

I remember going to see him many years ago and he seemed then years older than me. Maybe he just aged early ??

Cheers

Mikel2

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 02:45 PM

Been around the block a few more times, Little Hawk.   :-}

Don Firth

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: BK Lick
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 07:47 PM

Turned eighty today. Sheesh, dunno how that happened.
As George Burns, Bob Dylan, Mark Twain, and others supposedly
said, if I knew I'd live that long I would have taken better
care of myself.      —BK

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: gnu
Date: 14 Oct 11 - 09:09 PM

Many happies at ya BK!!!

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 Oct 11 - 04:56 AM

Abslolutely BK....Mudcat (with Broonzy on the Ipod) beats being 'sat on a park bech quietly....'

Party on dude!

Subject: RE: How terribly strange to be seventy..
From: fat B****rd
Date: 15 Oct 11 - 04:42 PM

HAPPY BIRTHDAY bk.