Oldster Magazine

Articles

Sending Aid to L.A.

Jan 16, 2025 | oldster.substack.com | Sari Botton

Readers,Last weekend I invited you to send me links to GoFundMe and other crowdfunding campaigns for those in the Oldster community (and their loved ones) who lost their homes or were badly affected by the fires in L.A. so that I could share them here. Thank you to those who responded. If you are inclined and able to help, great. I also understand that the need has been enormous and overwhelming, and many have already given to several campaigns. Do what you can, if you can.
Fashion Was in My DNA, Wasn't It?

Oct 20, 2024 | oldster.substack.com | Cathy Alter

My mother liked to say that I grew up in retail. I was 5 when she left her high school English teacher job to open a trendy woman's fashion boutique in our WASPY Connecticut suburb. In the land of Peck ‘n Peck monogrammed sweaters and Pappagallo Bermuda Bags (also monogrammed), Artichoke stood as a beacon to the hip, independent women of West Hartford.
The Problem with Nostalgia

Sep 22, 2024 | oldster.substack.com | Michael Musto

Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used To Be was the hilarious title of Oscar winning actress Simone Signoret’s memoir in 1978, and it’s truer than ever. Seeing the past through rose colored glasses is an increasingly myopic process, especially as technology makes giant strides forward and former modes of communication resound with an astounding obsolescence.
This is 52: Author and #1000wordsofsummer Leader Jami Attenberg Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

Sep 18, 2024 | oldster.substack.com | Sari Botton

From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”Here, ten-time author and newsletter writer/#1000wordsofsummer writing accountability project leader responds.-Sari BottonJami Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including The Middlesteins, All Grown Up and a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home.
Better Late Than Never

Jul 14, 2024 | oldster.substack.com | Sherry Amatenstein

Apparently, I am one of the few people on the planet, if not the solar galaxy, who missed David Nicholls’ global 2009 bestseller One Dayand the 2011 four-hankie movie version starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess as “best friends” Emma Morley and Dex Mayhew. In both incarnations Emma and Dex frustrate millions of fans by spending nearly two decades (1988 to 2007) dancing away from the obvious truth of what they really mean to one another.
Godfather's Hotel

May 27, 2024 | oldster.substack.com | Michael Gonzales

Recently while watching Ripley on Netflix, I smiled when I heard the characters were going to stay at the Excelsior Hotel in Rome. Though I’d never stayed at the swank spot where Patricia Highsmith’s characters dwelled, I was once a frequent visitor at a different Excelsior Hotel, this one on the upper west side of Manhattan, where my godfather, Uncle Hans (Wolfgang Schwerin) lived for decades.
This is 68: Author Susan Orlean Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

Apr 3, 2024 | oldster.substack.com | Sari Botton |Susan Orlean

From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”Here, bestselling author, longtime New Yorker staff writer, and newsletterer responds. -Sari BottonSusan Orlean is a writer. She’s been on staff at The New Yorker since 1992, and has written nine books including The Orchid Thief, The Library Book, and On Animals.
It's a Long Way Down

Mar 25, 2024 | oldster.substack.com | Ray Suarez

I was waiting for the light to change on a busy Washington street corner. My then- teenage daughter asked, just as the light started to change, “Dad, what are you afraid of?” That kind of question might have been a cue, the opening, for a heart-warming father-daughter conversation about life’s challenges and how to overcome them. Not today.
Notes On Another New Life #12

Feb 8, 2024 | oldster.substack.com | Laurie Stone

If you get people to stay with you out of obligation, they will never forgive you, and I’m with them. In recent years, it’s come to my attention some people may have stayed with me from duty and confusion. I had a way, even before kindergarten, of sitting next to you at a bar and striking up a conversation. Before you knew it, I would get in your car and go home with you, and I would live with you until you kicked me out or I got bored. I met Linda when we were seven.
Monster-in-Residency

Feb 5, 2024 | oldster.substack.com | Carolita Johnson

Six months into the Pandemic of 2020 I booked a moving truck, not to somewhere "safer," but to my mother’s house in Queens, NY, a hundred miles downstate from the town and apartment I loved. But this isn’t going to be a Pandemic piece. This is going to be a “how-I-turned-my-most-dreaded-cargiving-responsibility-into-a-writer’s-residency” piece. A writer’s residency unlike any writer’s residency you’ve seen or heard of before.