Delicious, funny, irreverent, salty, poignant. 41 essays by women over 50, assembled and edited by award winning journalist and author Shari Graydon. Essays that reveal the wisdom, beauty and power of aging women.
I Feel Great About My Hands – And other Unexpected Joys of Aging, is a collective riff off of Nora Ephron's, I Feel Bad About My Neck. You'll recognize many of the contributors, Green politician Elizabeth May, poet Susan Musgrave, Senator Sharon Carstairs (I feel great about my voice – and about using it!), film maker Bonnie Sherr Klein, and broadcaster Alison Smith.
Here's a sample from Mary Walsh the funniest person on tv: "Just looking at the poor younsters breaks your heart… tottering around with their pant down below their bums with their piercings, cuttings and brandings, as if life itself weren't going to cut and pierce and brand them enough. And then the crowd going around dressed up like the bride of Dracula or Mortician or something. God, I love the young. They’re so cute. They think you can be into death as it were a hula hoop or something.”
Or former journalist now truck driver Marlaina Gayle: "Turning forty-nine forced me to change. Turning fifty set me free."
And Carleton University Law Professor Diana Majury: "… the other day I had a wrinkle revelation…I fixated on my friend's face. She has lots of lines. And these lines moved as she talked, they opened when she laughed, bulged out when she was unhappy, scrunched up when she was uncertain and rested attentively when she listened. I looked at her lines, and I loved them – they were signs of wisdom, life and learning; they were guides to her responses and emotions. They were entrancing. I stared at her for the rest of the meeting, interpreting its tone and outcomes through the lines on my dear friend's face. I enjoyed myself immensely and saw her – as I always have – as extremely beautiful. What was new was noticing her lines and seeing them as part of her beauty, not as detracting from it."
You can read Lorna Crozier's, Last Erotic Poem; Harriett Lemer's, The Pleaures of an Older Man; Lyndsay Green's, Turkey Flap Wisdom; Lillian Zimmerman's, No County for Older Women? And not to be missed, why Shari feels so great about her hands
This is a book for all ages. Buy lots of gift copies. Get it for your Mom, your wife, your sister. Mother's Day is coming. Get it for Father's Day. For your buddies.
And after your copy has been read and passed around, I suggest putting it in your time vault, insert a current picture, and instructions not to be opened by your children until they reach the age you are today. Based on I Feel Great About My Hands, I'd suggest you write on the back of the picture something like the following observation from the French novelist Colette: "What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I had realized it sooner."
One last good thing to feel good about. All the authors in this book waived their royalties so that proceeds could benefit Media Action, the longstanding Canadian feminist organization that is so much a part of Shari's life and that has worked for three decades to challenge the under representation, stereotypic portrayal and sexual objectification of women in the media.
So what do you have to show for your age?
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2 Comments
Basement Flooding
Hello!!!
This is was a great post and very helpful as well.
Thanks
Basement Flooding.
Donna Thomson
You sold me! Will google and find out the publisher now. Thanks, Al!