On my exercise walk I pass the Quaker Meeting House. 

I’ve only read 50 pages. I just got started. There are 400-some pages. So far it’s very good. Better than you’d think. Get it. 

 

IS THE AGE OF READING OVER?

Rose Horowitch on her cover story and what happens when a society becomes “postliterate”

https://apple.news/A2pH7di6iRgGspR2nOoPpNA

 Aging. My 79-year-old hand the other day.

Nikole Hannah-Jones Talks About Her Mission to Put Challenged Books Directly Into the Hands of Children in Iowa

https://apple.news/AZOMJQR0gQz6aTktt2f5CNQ

 

 He’s good. NYT.

 Too Many Books.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/style/too-many-books-new-york-city-apartment-scholar-landlord.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

I decided this week that this was probably the best book I ever read. 

K

 Chinatown the other night. 

 Last night in fantastic Chinatown.

 I just voted for Jack Schlossberg.

Maybe 30 more minutes with Josh Shapiro’s book. Here’s a talk with him.

https://youtu.be/GDtO6MGlyNk?is=sFBdAddh7t14ekoQ

 Bob Seger. ‘Against the Wind’.

https://youtu.be/PmrkY-EZy74?is=LW85O3SuLNHUtMAo

 I just bought this. 

Three days ago. A thin guitar store right next to the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd where friends were staying.

 Two Asian-American girls today late afternoon.

Bob Dylan, 85

About aging. Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and Nobel Prize recipient. (In The New York Times.)

The best thing

The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It's freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don't chase the parade anymore. You're an old king from some vanished country. You're harder to program.

You're not rushing to become anything and you're not haunted by things that you did. You're haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would.

The worst thing

The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it. Also, nothing surprises you. It sounds like a luxury but it's not, and also you've run out of illusions. People treat you like either you've solved something or you've lost something, and you haven't. You see life repeating itself everywhere.

The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you've got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered. When you're young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn't, it stands still. We're the ones that move.

 

My five grandchildren. One in college. Another going this year. Three are high schoolers.