ABSTRACT
The tendency to think of the old only as deprived, as those we have shoved into nursing homes, neglected, only “half there,” rather than as treasures and exemplars is one more example of the lack of imagination that keeps us in America from being truly civilized. It is as though the need for good nursing homes and care had blinded us to a greater reality, that old age can be magnificent! We have become neurotic about it—to speak of it at all touches a raw nerve. Isn’t all this a little as though we thought of children only in terms of the starving or disabled or neglected?
