Rhymes With "Bold"

After reading this, then being horrified by this, and finally this too, I feel I must offer a personal response, in the form of five women who have lived long enough to actually have something important to say.

Here, in no particular order, are five "rhymes-with-bold" biddies who kick ass.

1. Helen Mirren, assasin

 

 2. Joan Didion, change artist

"Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."

(From The Year of Magical Thinking, her memoir which won The National Book Award in 2005 when she was 71.)

3. Madeleine L'Engle, explosives tech

“One day while I was happily pretending to myself that I was Madame Curie, I blew up the lab.”

(From her address to the Library of Congress on Nov. 16, 1983. At 15 she was pretending to be Madame Curie; when she addressed the Library of Congress, she was 65. And had won the Newberry Award, the USM Medallion, the Smith College Award, the Sophia Award, the Regina Medal, the ALAN Award the Kerlan Award and was President of the Author's Guild.)

4. Diane Wakoski, truth teller

"You ride a broken motorcycle, You speak a dead language, You are a bad plumber, And you write with an inkless pen."

(From her poem, "Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch," published when she was about 50. Backstory here.)

5. Dora Hain, trailrider, trailblazer, ukulele player, long-distance swimmer, sport fisherwoman, campfire chef, and my maternal grandmother.

"Cryin' about it will get you exactly nowhere, Mard. Now, do you want to swim across the lake or go pike fishing?"

This is my hero, who's yours?

Comments

[Onely]

Thanks for this great post. I forwarded the "Eight Over Eighty" link to my writing group, as we were recently discussing the cult of youth and its disheartening impact on writing/publishing culture.

Perfect example of youthwashing:
I watched your clip of Helen Mirren (who is AMAZING) and this banner ad appeared along the bottom: "Get youthful skin today!--Bare Minerals". HAHAHAHAHAHAH. Sigh.

Christina