If Memory Serves

Every now and then, my mother will respond to an edition of this newsletter with something like, “The article on the history of this region was quite good, you might want to go back and actually read the whole thing.” Aside from the suggestion that I would ever shirk my official duties by skimming (Fake News! Witch Hunt!), my mom’s deep knowledge on many matters and her notably sound memory put her into a category researchers call Super-Agers – folks who are 80 and up, but they have the memory ability of a person 20 to 30 years younger.” (For what its worth, they also tend to make up my most enthusiastic readership demographic.) I’m more of an accelerated ager. By the time you receive this, I’ll have forgotten I sent it. NYT (Gift Article): A Peek Inside the Brains of Super-Agers. “There were a lot of similarities between the super-agers and the regular agers … For example, there were no differences between the groups in terms of their diets, the amount of sleep they got, their professional backgrounds or their alcohol and tobacco use. The behaviors of some of the Chicago super-agers were similarly a surprise. Some exercised regularly, but some never had; some stuck to a Mediterranean diet, others subsisted off TV dinners; and a few of them still smoked cigarettes.” (I bet all of them read the full articles.)