great response to my talk at the KGB Bar last night

It was great to give This Chair Rocks in public for the first time as part of the legendary KGB Bar readings series, and to have it be so warmly received.  On his blog my friend David Barton called it “consciousness-raising at its sharpest and most useful”— precisely the shift I hope to catalyze in my listeners. A high point was KBG proprietor Denis Woychuk lifting his glass from behind the bar and declaring, “This is our Stonewall!”

Both friends and strangers hung around afterwards to talk and share stories. I particularly liked a comment from an audience member who works at the Elder Abuse Center at the Hebrew Home in Riverdale. He observed that it’s people in his age cohort (25 to 40) who flip out about revealing how old they are, not those over 60. Or as my friend Lisa Montanarelli put it, “When I turned 25, a friend said, ‘This is the last good birthday.'” Anecdotes like these drive home just how early on ageism starts to corrupt our view of the life course.