Aging

One of Tom’s all-time favorite movies is Notorious, the Alfred Hitchcock thriller with Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains. It’s a typical ex-Nazi/spy/double-crossing feature, with some of the master’s best direction. One scene that always stuck with Tom was the final descent by Grant and Bergman down the main staircase, in which they were always moving, but which was shot in such a way that it seemed to take twice as long as it should have. It raised unbearable tension and a sense of heightened unreality. A simple staircase suddenly seemed something incredibly ominous.

Intimacy in the aging population has long been seen as a taboo subject, but in an interview for LeadingAge California’s Engage magazine, Dr. Patrick Arbore discusses its importance.

Frank Sinatra was, to put it mildly, the brainy and brawny enforcer of music’s old guard. He said of rock-and-roll (back when it was personified by Elvis and Buddy Holly) that it was the “most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear.” That was before he heard “Something,” George Harrison’s achingly gorgeous tune from Abbey Road (an album that the Chairman would no doubt have hated). However, he said “Something” was the “greatest love song of the last 50 years,” and even did a famous cover of it.

In Golden Gate Park that day