My father survived his mother by 16 years and lived shorter than his father for 10.
My mother has already been living longer than both of hers by 20 years. This, in spite of being very overweight, eating crap, never exercising, and never going for checkups which is why her cancer wasn’t detected before it got to stage 4. Her parents lived in the countryside, grew their own food, etc. All day in the fresh air, no pollution, walked everywhere. All of the urban side of my family except Grandma Klara lived into their eighties. This isn’t ethnicity, by the way. Great-grandpa was Polish. He died at 82, completely healthy, energetic, and clear-minded. Went in his sleep, no suffering. He was an absolute saint of a man, and God gave him the peaceful release he deserved.
Modernity is pretty great.
Clarissa's Blog 
Very graceful use of the word “moderinity””s freight of association and connotation to get your point across [1]. Unfortunately, “modernity” is one of those words now regularly used in motte-and-bailey verbal gamesmanship.
What’s the etymological history of this one, do you know? Is it like “renaissance” or was the word hijacked (pace C.S. Lewis’s Studies in Words. Recommended along with The Discarded Image). See it’s use as term of ignominy in the contemptuous phrase “it was made for Modern Audiences”.
But I digress:
Like so much in the world, it all depends on what men do with the technological opportunities of the industrial and computer revolutions. Your joyful smile of the day:
[1] My mother had a similar experience growing up on a farm, though not, mind you, in a Soviet-occupied state that deliberately used state power to brutally starve its countryfolk. “Western Science is so Wonderful” as the Djinn said to the travelers.
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Do I look ancient in the new profile photo? I’m starting to worry.
My grandparents died in the 1980s.
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Yes? How ancient is “my grandparents lived behind the iron curtain” supposed to be?
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No, you look like a serious teacher — kind of remind me of my French teacher some 50 years ago. She was of Norwegian descent, but loved French, particularly Parisian, culture and spent many of her holidays there. She regularly rewrote my scribbling with red ink including, “you can do better” and I did, but my accent remained a disgrace ;-D
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Yes. I’m grim. 😆😆
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“my accent remained a disgrace”
Has any French speaker…. ever…. been satisfied with the accent of a non-native speaker?
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OT: Is there any reason that there’s no way to leave comments on your post about Anna Grau’s book?
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That’s really weird. Can you leave a response to a comment I made on it?
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