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Gray Matter
“Why This Column?”
Q.
Why did you return to column writing? Didn’t you retire from the job months ago?
A.
The answer has many parts, but let one of them be the response from readers when my employer,
Tribune Media Services of Chicago, announced how after 22 years, it was a proper time to kill off
Lindeman.
“Not enough profits,” was the edict. So, your scribbler was put to pasture.
Unsolicited, and to the complete surprise of this essayist, readers spoke through their emails:
“As a 47-year-old who leads senior discussion groups, I am sorry your column has been eliminated,”
wrote Caryl Derenfeld, of Across Generations (“Life Stories to Share”). “I looked to you as a source
for my discussions ... Shame on the distributor of your column.”
Don Pieper, of suburban Chicago, said: “Didn’t realize you were pitching advice to the older
generation. I’m 68 and believed your words good for all ages. We’ll miss your helpful information.”
Declaring she was 83-years young, Gertrude L. Rodig wrote directly to my Arlington Heights (IL)
paper, “Not only is Lindeman’s senior insight very perceptive,” she began, “ but he has an excellent
command of the English language and knows punctuation, not a consistent occurrence in daily
newspapers today.”
To advocate Rodig, and to Marie (“One giant thank you”), to Arthur Aman (“You have given sage
advice”) and all the Toms, Patty’s, Jim and Betty Jordans, as well as Bonnie (“I’ll miss your
positive spin on life”) and especially to Ms. Peggy Shannon, I offer up profound thanks.
Here, then, is a message I took to heart: “I am a grandmother as well as an Activity Specialist in
Older Adult Day Care at Lutheran General Hospital” outside Chicago, begins Ms. Shannon. “It seems
you always were in my newspaper, and these past 13 years I have consistently ripped out your column
to read aloud to my seniors.
“We have discussed many columns,” she continues, “as well as laughed at the stories about
grandchildren. You surely will be missed.”
Well, following a long summer and fall at leisure, I’m pumped and ready to return. In the weeks
ahead, we’ll together examine the Medicare prescription drug imbroglio, we’ll bump against a book
that asks, “What Are Old People For?” and, inevitably, we’ll dig into that complex, thorn-bush known
as the “healthcare delivery system.”
For laughs, we’ll share twice-told tales of our grandkids, and I’ll answer your questions about
caregiving. Finally, a moment please for nostalgia: in my teens, I became a copy boy in The New York
News building on E. 42nd Street. I thereafter worked as a GI-newsman for the Pacific Stars &
Stripes in Tokyo, then for the Associated Press in Dallas and New York, next for the New York
World-Telegram & The Sun, the Miami Herald and, even as I wrote three nonfiction books, I remained
“at heart” a print journalist.
In 1983, I sold management on a weekly column focusing on growing older in a country madly,
hopelessly in love with youth.
For the next 22 years I produced two columns a week, without fail. Neither holidays, nor family
travel, not even a struggle against a malignancy kept me from this weekly responsibility. As a
writer son says, “It is what we do. It is who we are. On a good day, I write in enthusiasm, and with
intent. For whom and to what end? I can’t always say. Only, I must write.”
Indeed, we must ... and, I shall.
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Outrageous Associations
