Now with a new package, Neenah Ellis’s New York Times bestselling book takes us inside the world of the very old and invites us to learn from them firsthand the art of living well for an exceptionally long period of time.
A beautifully written and elegantly wise book that takes us inside the world of centenarians and invites us to learn from them firsthand the art of living well for an exceptionally long period of time.
Neenah
Ellis always wanted to live to 100, and her fascination led her to interview centenarians
from all over the US about what life was like at the very beginning of the century,
and how things have changed over time. Ellis, a producer for National Public Radio,
spent an unforgettable year traveling with her tape recorder and listening to the
stories of America’s oldest men and women. She met a couple who courted by horse
and sleigh in Vermont during the winter of 1918, and she spent a week with the oldest
living black lesbian in America. She visited a nationally known expert on dyslexia
who published a book at 96 and whose great-great-grandfather was a colonel in Washington’s
army; and she met Anna Wilmot, the row-boating centenarian from New England who captured
the hearts of thousands of NPR listeners with her confession that she swims in the
buff only when it’s foggy and there’s no fisherman around.
Originally conceived
as an American history project, Ellis’s year of interviews became much more, a personal
journey of growth and transformation. After two decades of acting as the reporter
and inquisitor, Ellis finally shifted gears and was able in the process of these
conversations to start really listening. Once she had put away the exigencies of
her cusp-of-the-millennium life-her deadlines, the intense focus on current events,
the endless e-mail and ringing phones-she began to learn the kinds of things that
we do from much older people. She started to connect in her conversations with them,
and to see the virtue of looking forward, as the centenarians did, not backward.
They reminded her that the moment-this very moment that we’re in right now-is precious
and fine. And that the true richness of life is to be found in each other-in our
marriages and friendships, in the intellectual life that we share with each other,
and in the ways that we become connected. Their stories add up to a course in living
well, with lessons and inspiration for all of us.
