Interesting Notes and Analysis from Reading The New York Times

"The study, published in Current Psychology, found a substantial link between procrastination and clutter problems in all the age groups. Frustration with clutter tended to increase with age. Among older adults, clutter problems were also associated with life dissatisfaction."
“Cable networks have figured out that the most interesting television of the week is the National Football League pregame show, and that if you put enough experts on arguing about something that hasn’t happened yet, people will watch."

"The real story of Trump isn’t his amorality and outrageousness. It’s Americans’ receptiveness to that. It’s the fact that, according to polls, most voters in November 2016 deemed him dishonest and indecent, yet plenty of them cast their ballots for him anyway."

"There is an amazing calculus in old age. As much is taken away, we find more to love and appreciate. We experience bliss on a regular basis. As one friend said: “When I was young I needed sexual ecstasy or a hike to the top of a mountain to experience bliss. Now I can feel it when I look at a caterpillar on my garden path.”

“Cash was the only major asset class that posted positive returns in ’18,” according to a Bank of America report. Even the reed-thin 1.9 percent return on cash in money market funds was less than the 2.2 percent consumer inflation rate, the report said, but at least it was a positive number.

"For patients who have one terminal illness that is either resistant to treatment or can’t be safely treated, combined with a second very serious illness or complication, along with a high degree of physiological frailty, physicians should consider comfort measures instead of cure."

Why Walking is the Key to Being More Productive

by Clay Skipper

"Ultimately, his point is not that walking is a nice, mind-clearing activity (though it certainly can be). It’s that removing all friction from your life, and replacing it with the seductive speed of convenience, has pernicious effects.

For one thing, when we rush or move quickly, we stop being present and forget what we experience. (“High speed is a menace to memory, because memory depends on time and spatial awareness,” he writes.) Secondly, there’s a political aspect to walking: When we don’t walk among our fellow citizens—when we have the privilege of only traveling privately—we can become coldly detached from the fabric of the community. (“What would happen if world leaders were forced to take daily walks among the people?” Erling Kagge asks.) And, finally, taking a shortcut to what you want often leaves you disappointed because objects of our desire are less meaningful without the struggle to capture them. (How much less interesting might summiting Everest be if you could just take an elevator to the top?)"

Will Trump Be the Sage One? by Maureen Dowd

"But Trump, unlike W., is driven by the drama of it. “It’s a game of revving up the excitement and making people afraid and then backing off on the fear in order to declare that he’s resolved the situation,” D’Antonio said. “Trump prefers threats and ultimatums to action because that allows him to look big and tough and get attention without doing something for which he will be held responsible. This is who he is at his core: an attention-seeking, action-averse propagandist who is terrified of accountability in the form of coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base.”

Apt Description of Getting Older

"When you hit your 50s life starts comin' up on ya fast,  Gordo Tallman said to me on the occasion of my 49th birthday.  For that time life is pretty much a straight line. Wife looks up to you and the young kids are small enough, and the older kids smart enough, not to weigh you down. But then, just when you start puttin' the pounds an' losing your wind, the kids'er are expectin' you to fulfill your promises and the wife all the sudden sees every single one of your flaws. Your parents, if you still got any, are gettin' old and turning back into kids themselves. For the first time you realize that the sky does have a limit. You comin' to a rise, but when you hit the top there's another life up ahead of you and here you are – – just about spent."

Walter Mosely Known To Evil

Tell Me Something I Don't Know

“If you think culturally, socially, after about 67 we run out of narrative as to what to do,” he (Joseph Coughlin, the director of MIT’s AgeLab) explains. “There’s only so many cruise ships that you can enjoy norovirus on, only so many golf games, so many daughters to walk down a wedding aisle.”

G. Clay Whittaker

We’re Not Ready for a Population That Lives to 100

The most obvious culprit here is the Catholic obsession with the sinfulness of sex for pleasure, especially homosexual sex, along with a peculiar sexual proscrip­tion for clergy: celibacy. Intentionally or not, the celibate priesthood specifically attracts applicants who are at best confused or conflicted about their sexuality, and at worst deliberately seek positions conducive to sexual exploitation of the vulnerable. Although Catholicism condemns homosexuality, priests appear to be disproportionately gay. The prevalence of homosexuality among priests has not yet been properly measured via random sampling, but when 101 American gay priests were asked to estimate this prevalence, most of them guessed 40 percent or more—a rate far higher than in the general population. A different study of a thousand priests found that 20 percent of them were in homosexual relationships, and another 20 percent were in stable relationships with women. Most of these were verified by interviewing the sexual partners. Aside from being an ineffec­tive sham, the doctrine of celibacy for the priesthood apparently attracts young Catholic homosexual men, either as a means of suppressing a sexual orientation they perceive as evil, or—in certain Catholic subcultures—as a safe venue for hooking up with other gays.

Excerpted from “The Illusion of God’s Presence” by John C. Wathey.

According to the New York Times, over half of all American women under 30 who give birth are unmarried. When adjusted for levels of education and economics, the numbers skew dramatically higher.

According to the Washington Post, 25 percent of millennials don’t affiliate with a faith-based tradition and almost twice as many don’t belong to a church. More so, a Pew Research study suggests that an astonishingly low number of youth believe in the existence of a God. As religious participation, affiliation and even belief wane in both post-Christian Europe and the Americas, atheism is now among the fastest-growing affiliations among young adults who have turned anti-faith into its own kind of faith.

This is the end of marriage, capitalism and God. Finally! My fellow boomers might mock millennials, but what if the new generation has the big questions absolutely right?

Jeff DeGraff