I've been writing about people over 80 in the workforce for a year and a half, on a blog called Staying Vertical: Dispatches from the Old Old on Work and Happiness [1]. I'm delighted to be introducing some of these remarkable people to Eldr.com readers.

When I conceived of the project, typical responses were, "Isn't that awfully, uh, old?" "Won't it be hard to find people to interview?" "Don't you want to set the cutoff somewhere in the 70's?" No, I didn't. I wanted that lift of the eyebrow. I wanted my subjects to seem old to baby boomers like myself, for whom 70 is no longer such a distant shore. And I bet that it wouldn't be hard to find octogenarians doing all kinds of interesting things.

Not only has that proved to be the case, I've interviewed almost as many people in their 90's, along with a 101-year-old industrial designer with a list of commissions. My criteria are that the employment need not be paid, but it must involve a fixed commitment to a tangible enterprise: doing or making something on a regular schedule.†

My credentials? I have no advanced degrees, but I dig deep and ground my writing in current research. It's a good career for a generalist, and it's taken me lots of interesting places. As a contributing editor to IEEE Spectrum, the magazine of the international engineering association, I've traveled to Laos to cover a village getting internet access via a bicycle-powered computer. As a staff writer at the American Museum of Natural History, I write for educators on topics ranging from evolution to extrasolar planets.

On the basis of Cutting Loose [2], my book about women and divorce, I was invited to join the Council on Contemporary Families, an organization of distinguished family researchers and clinicians. And in connection with this project, I've received fellowships from the New York Times Foundation and the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism to study longevity-related issues.

My goal is to find out what these octo- and nonagenarians have to teach younger generations about the traits and circumstances that† make for an engaged old age. We know that people who get up in the morning with some sense of purpose live longer and better lives than those who don't. We need support in facing the realities of aging and death—something youth-obsessed Americans are lousy at, despite the wealth of evidence that satisfaction and serenity in late life are grounded in exactly that. We learn best by example, and I hope the profiles in this blog illuminate the path.

† (A cautionary note: in our hyper-capitalist society, personal worth is
often correlated with earning power. Many of the old old are unable to
work, but they are no less valuable individuals and citizens.)

– Ashton Applewhite is a Knight Fellow, a New York Times Fellow, and the author of Cutting Loose, a book about women who initiate divorce. Read more about work and old age on her blog, sowhenareyougoingtoretire.com [3].