Life After 80:
Conversations, Stories and Opinions

At breakfast the other morning, we got onto one of those subjects that is particularly appropriate for a group of men our age: retirement. More specifically, when you should do it and what on earth you're supposed to do once you do. The retirement age seems to have changed considerably since we were working. When we were young, 65 was considered the normal retirement age, and many of us worked well into our 70s. Now, apparently, some people are being shown the door much earli

Once in a while, my friends and I talk about our failures in life. Most of us are willing to admit to a few, although there are still some old men who can’t talk about anything except their wonderful successes. The truth is, no successful man or woman has not had a couple of failures. After all, it is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. One of our guys told a pretty amusing story about one of his failures. Here is what he told us: My piano teacher

I saw the other day that LIV Golf, the upstart professional golf league, might be calling it quits. “Golf, but louder” was LIV’s much-repeated tagline. I remember thinking when I first heard it: Isn’t professional golf loud enough already? Consider the Waste Management Phoenix Open, played at TPC Scottsdale, which is operated by the PGA Tour. The best-attended golf tournament in the world, with half a million spectators annually, the WM Phoenix Open is notorious for its par-3

So today's breakfast for me was creamed chipped beef on toast with home fries. One of my table mates asked for something called scrapple. He was told that they don't serve it at our senior living place. Scrapple is some kind of Pennsylvania delicacy, and the name describes it all. It's made from the scraps left over at the butcher's after they have used every other part of the poor victim animal. Even bologna comes ahead of scrapple. I remember going to a friend's house when

Our friend who visited Maine is now back but he did email me one commentary that I thought was worth sharing with all of you. "My daughter and I went back to bingo the night before I left to return to Philadelphia. Again, it was chaotic and packed. There were a lot more women than men at the senior center. It seemed like most of the winners were women. That’s no surprise since there were many more of them, but it did surprise me that it looked like a couple of women won mult

One of our group recently went to Maine to visit his adult children, who have cottages along the coast. When he came back, I asked him to give us a quick overview of what stood out most about Maine. I was expecting to hear about lobster rolls, rocky cliffs, sandy beaches, beautiful blue skies, quaint little towns, golf courses, and the lack of crowds compared to the New Jersey shore. Instead, this is what I got. "I went to Maine to visit my adult children, and almost the firs

Unfortunately, I missed breakfast this week because I had to go to Europe and visit some friends in Switzerland and the UK. One of them is a very bright Asian woman who runs a large business in Singapore. Most of our conversations centered on what the United States is doing in Iran and whether President Trump knows what he is doing. It was interesting listening to the Swiss perspective. They were clear on two things. First, they believe Trump needs to finish the job in Iran.

Welcome to our new blog where you will hear a bunch of old men pontificating about things they probably don't know much about. But that's the way it is when you're in your 80s and living in a "rest home" where as we say you come in vertical and leave horizontal. It may put you to sleep, but sometimes that's good too. We are a group of men in our 80s who occasionally meet for breakfast and talk about books, sports, politics, religion, children, wives and other controversial to