Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Four free reads on the Net: on growing older (dis)gracefully
This week I stumbled across the original Latin motto for the Bishopsgate Institute, Senesco non Segnesco, and took to Twitter (naturally) to find out its meaning - my personal classics tutor, OAE, translated it thus, 'I age (but) do not slow down' (or grow sluggish='segnis') while chief Bishopsgate Institute librarian from 1894, Ronald Heaton, (this is Twitter - you can converse with anyone past or present) provided, 'I grow old if I cease to learn.'
It got me thinking about ageing (something that is definitely on my mind these days) and stories and poems that bring some of the (home) truths of getting older home to me.
Short Story
This story sends shivers down my spine. One day we will all be a Miss/Mr Brill in the eyes of the younger generation...
Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield
Poem
We all like to imagine, don’t we, that we’ll be like Jenny Joseph’s protagonist in When I am old, with our brandy and red hats, but more often I fear becoming the second stanza of Yeats’s Sailing to Byzantium
Essay
Perhaps the greatest fear of ageing is the loss of self if dementia sets in. The essay below is a moving account of one woman’s attempt to understand what is happening to her - before she forgets.
My dementia by Gerda Saunders
Bonus links
If there’s truth in the old Latin motto above then perhaps we can slow down the ageing process with a bit of free learning on the Internet. FutureLearn from the OU offers free MOOCs on all sorts of topics and there's lots of good stuff on the OU’s OpenLearn pages (yes I’m an unashamed advocate of the Open University - their graduation days are pure joy).
The mighty OpenCulture lists hundreds of free courses online from top universities world-wide.
Photo: Geoff Charles Collection at the National Library of Wales from The Commons on Flickr
Tags for Forum Posts: free reads, old age
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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Of course, when Old Yeats wasn't sailing to Byzantium, he could be easily distracted from both Poetry and
POLITICS
How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows What he talks about,
And here's a politician That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again And held her in my arms!
Willie Yeats, OAE agrees with you. Youth and young lassies are wasted on the young. Grow old Gracefully, only if Grace was once the object of your distraction.
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