How Old Were They? Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 5 when he composed his first piece of music. Already competent on keyboard and violin, the prodigy performed for European royalty and wrote his first symphony at age 8. Despite his short life (1756-91), Mozart is credited with creating between 650 and 800 compositions, including operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, religious music, and other instrumental works such as serenades, divertimenti, and dances. Read Who Cares? about the struggle for dignity at Woodruff Home for the Aged, “a lively place where old people go to die.” Learn more about the book and its characters, aged 9-90, in NOVELS.

Child prodigy Mozart composed hundreds of works in his short life

Woodruff Home for the Aged, where aging with dignity battles corporate greed

How Old Were They? Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was 19 when she wrote Frankenstein, in response to a dare to write a ghost story. An early example of science fiction, the idea came to her in a waking dream. The Gothic theme and philosophical questions were likely influenced by the death of her premature daughter with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the suicide of his wife. More tragedy followed. Only her fourth child survived; her husband drowned. Shelley continued to write until she died of a brain tumor at 53. Read Who Cares? about the struggle for dignity at Woodruff Home for the Aged, “a lively place where old people go to die.” Learn more about the book and its characters, aged 9-90, in NOVELS.

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, wrote the story on a dare

Woodruff Home for the Aged, a lively place where old people go to die

How Old Were They? Roget

Peter Mark Roget was 73 when the first issue of Roget’s Thesaurus, a project to scientifically order language, was published in 1852. An esteemed member of London’s Royal Society, he’d already developed the slide rule, published medical and scientific papers. and contributed to the invention of motion pictures. Roget oversaw every update of the thesaurus until his death at age 90. Read Who Cares? about the struggle for dignity at Woodruff Home for the Aged, “a lively place where old people go to die.” Learn more about the book and its characters, aged 9-90, in NOVELS.

Roget, of thesaurus fame, didn’t rest on his laurels

Woodruff Home for the Aged, where aging with dignity battles corporate greed

How Old Were They? Varian Fry

Varian Fry was 33 in 1940 when he snuck $3,000 into Nazi occupied France and facilitated the escape of 2,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees. Among those saved by the U.S. journalist were Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Hannah Arendt. Fry was the first of five Americans recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honorific given by the State of Israel to non-Jews who saved many refugees during World War II. Read Who Cares? about the struggle for dignity at Woodruff Home for the Aged, “a lively place where old people go to die.” Learn more about the book and its characters, aged 9-90, in NOVELS.

“Righteous” Varian Fry helped 2,000 refugees escape the Nazis

Woodruff Home for the Aged, a lively place where old people go to die

How Old Were They? Théodore Chassériau

Théodore Chassériau at age 15 became the youngest painter ever exhibited in the Louvre. He was a Dominican-born French Romantic painter known for portraits, historical and religious paintings, and Orientalist images inspired by his travels to Algeria. A prolific draftsman, he made a set of prints illustrating Shakespeare’s “Othello” and his 1834 portrait of Prosper Marilhat was hung in the world-famous museum. Driven to exhaustion while completing a series of commissions, he died at age 37. Read Who Cares? about the struggle for dignity at Woodruff Home for the Aged, “a lively place where old people go to die.” Learn more about the book and its characters, aged 9-90, in NOVELS.

A portrait created at age 15 made Chasseriau the youngest painter exhibited in the Louvre

Woodruff Home for the Aged, where aging with dignity battles corporate greed

How Old Were They? Bill Wilson

Wilson founded Alcoholics Anonymous at age 40. An Army veteran and businessman who struggled with depression and alcohol, he crashed five years after the 1929 stock market and checked into a hospital, where he overcame drinking through the spiritual principles propounded by the Oxford Group. Several years later, tempted to drink again, he contacted a fellow patient, surgeon Robert Smith. Their five-hour conversation led them to found AA in 1935. After a Saturday Evening Post article about AA in 1941, the organization took off in popularity. Today, AA has more than 2 million members worldwide. Read Who Cares? about the struggle for dignity at Woodruff Home for the Aged, “a lively place where old people go to die.” Learn more about the book and its characters, aged 9-90, in NOVELS.

Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous helped himself, which now helps 2 million members worldwide

Woodruff Home for the Aged, a lively place where old people go to die

What I’m Reading: Leave the Kid Alone by Steve Zettler

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Leave the Kid Alone: A Fractured Remembrance (Rated 5) – Inn-side Story. In his coming-of-age memoir, Leave the Kid Alone: A Fractured Remembrance, Steve Zettler offers an entertaining mix of youthful innocence overlaid with adult wit. In short, pithy chapters, the book zips along as quickly as childhood itself. Young Stevie’s (mis)perceptions about the world are at once hilariously off target and astutely on the mark. Growing up in a family-owned inn in rural Pennsylvania, Zettler is exposed to people from widely different backgrounds. What he doesn’t learn from his tough Navy veteran father and outspoken schoolteacher mother, he learns from the guests and staff, who range from the New York City celebrities who come to “shack up” for the weekend to the hardened “stew bums” who man the kitchen, pretty waitresses, and street-wise bartenders. As a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page, I admire Zettler’s skill bringing each character to life on the page. Like many children with families in the hospitality business, he was expected to work. Much as he missed playing with his classmates, he recognized the “silver lining” of his position. Literally, he got paid. Metaphorically, he learned things that enriched his knowledge beyond that of his peers. The closed world of the inn opened Zettler to the bigger world of human experience that is captured in his endearing and entertaining recollections.

The world of an inn seen through a 7-year-old’s eyes

Why writers read: “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” – Ernest Hemingway

Old Were They? The Munchkins

The 124 Munchkins in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz were mostly adult actors with pituitary dwarfism. Only ten, aged 7 to 9, were children of normal height. The youngest non-child, Margaret Pellegrini, was 16. The oldest little person, Meinhardt Raabe, was 24. [Note: My novel A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. is a fictional biography of Raabe, who played the Munchkin coroner.] Toto the dog was five. Read Who Cares? about the struggle for dignity at Woodruff Home for the Aged, “a lively place where old people go to die.” Learn more about the book and its characters, aged 9-90, in NOVELS.

All but 10 of the 124 Munchkins were adults with pituitary dwarfism

Woodruff Home for the Aged, where aging with dignity battles corporate greed

A fictional biography of the actor who played the Munchkin Coroner

How Old Were They? John A. Roebling

John A. Roebling was 63 when he designed the Brooklyn Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world at that time. Born in 1806 in Prussia, Roebling emigrated to the U.S. at age 25. Work on the span began in 1869 and was completed in 1883. Tragically, the architect died from a tetanus infection during the bridge’s construction, but his son, Washington Roebling, finished the project. Read Who Cares? about the struggle for dignity at Woodruff Home for the Aged, “a lively place where old people go to die.” Learn more about the book and its characters, aged 9-90, in NOVELS.

John A. Roebling, the Brooklyn Bridge architect, died before the project was completed

Woodruff Home for the Aged, a lively place where old people go to die

What I’m Reading: Whistler by Ann Patchett

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Whistler: A Novel by Ann Patchett (Rated 5 – Surprise and Inevitability. Whistler: A Novel by Ann Patchett is a small quiet book about the big noisy subject of love. Love in its infinite combinations, between parents and children, spouses, siblings, humans and animals, people and their work. Love that boasts its presence and the love that “dare not speak its name.” Love that calls to us and, like Whistler, the horse of the book’s title, shows up to save us. Patchett creates unforgettable characters. Life has been kinder to some than others, yet each finds a way to survive. Some are instantly endearing: Protagonists Daphne and Eddie, a middle-aged woman who accidentally meets the stepfather who abruptly left the family when she was nine; Daphne’s considerate and down-to-earth husband Jonathan. Others, like Daphne’s birth father Buddy, set up to be villains, turn out to be mensches. And even the real baddies, Eddie’s overbearing friends Skip and Polly, merit sympathy as victims of the social norms that force people into compromising roles they wouldn’t have chosen for themselves. Patchett creates a network of ties among people brought together by chance whose relationships nevertheless feel meant to be. As a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire her ability to make surprise and inevitability coexist on the page. Whistler is a satisfying and deceptively deep book.

Rekindling a lost love

Why writers read: “A good book is an event in my life.” – Stendhal