I visited Oregon recently to see my daughter, her husband, and The World’s Cutest One-Year-Old (not to be confused with The World’s Cutest Two-Year-Old, who lives in NYC). My son-in-law asked about my focus on older women's creativity and whether anyone else was doing that kind of work.
Oh yes, I told him. There are novelists like Erica Jong
who tell the stories of vivid older women. Podcasters like Wendy Green, who covers everything from money to creativity. Photographers like Joyce Tenneson, who captures the beauty of women after midlife. Memoirists like Billie Best
who tell it exactly like it is. Instagrammers like efftheiragingstandards, who captures crone culture one little square at a time.
Oh, he said. You have a posse.
A posse. Yes, in fact I do: A posse of crone influencers who dispense crone wisdom and build crone culture, brick by electronic brick. I’ve captured their names and websites on little scraps of paper all over my house.
Reflecting on my random collection, I wondered whether anyone had created a central place online where Women of a Certain Age can find our culture. A place where we can immerse ourselves in the art, literature, and critical thinking of women over fifty. I asked that question of the people who would almost certainly have the answer.
If you know Ashton Applewhite’s book, This Chair Rocks, and the organization she founded, Old School Clearinghouse, you know that Ashton is at the absolute center of the anti-ageism movement. She knows everybody and everything. And the Clearinghouse is a tremendous place to look for resources that are actively anti-ageist—not to be confused with pro-aging culture, which is what we are talking about here. Pro-aging is a wider category that includes things like novels that tell the vivid stories of older women but are not actively involved in combatting ageism. Tricky distinction, but a real one. And in another way we’re talking about a narrower scope, to focus just on women. I visited Old School's "office hours" one Wednesday and asked if anybody had put together a central clearinghouse for all the cultural resources for older women. Ashton and company said no, not as far as they knew. Ashton even suggested a name for this venture: Old Ladies’ School.
If it doesn’t exist (and it sounds like it doesn’t), somebody’s gotta do it, so how about you and me? Picture this: a place online where a woman in her fifties could learn about all the cool cultural things that are happening. A place to make our burgeoning culture highly visible. And a place where crone influencers can find one another: A woman about to publish a novel could find podcasts to interview her. Two women bloggers could arrange to swap guest blogs. Writers and illustrators could trade ideas.
I already have a tab
on my Stella Fosse website with certain resources. Joan Price, the expert on senior sexuality, is on there, along with some of my favorite writers, like memoirist Rae Padilla Francoeur. But some of the information on my website is out of date, and the list is incomplete. It is time to think bigger.
So here’s what I ask of you:
Please send me the names of your favorite sources of crone culture. Maybe you love a novel about lesbians in their sixties, or a podcast run by a woman after midlife who talks about subjects of interest to our community. Could be a poetry collection or a photo essay. A newsletter, a blog, a podcast. Wherever you are getting the best of the best.
And if you are a crone influencer, please send me a brief (two sentence) writeup about what it is you create, with links to wherever you are, on social media or online bookstores.
I will take all your great info, along with all that I’ve collected while wandering the ether, give everything to the amazing human being who brings Stella to the interwebz, and we will have ourselves a brand new place to play.
So that is happening. Meanwhile my retooled script for Brilliant Charming Bastard is under review at The Writer’s Lab, the competitive script retreat for women over forty founded by Meryl Streep and supported by Oprah and others. No news is good news—they haven’t bumped it yet!
And I’ve just signed a contract with an organization for seniors to teach my workshop series, Thee and Me Could Write a Bad Romance in August.
Doesn’t that sound fun? The materials don’t exist yet (ooops), but there’s still time.
Steeviejane Parks and I are still hard at work on our process for women growing into our sixties. Looks like we will beta test it in the Fall with a local group of women before finalizing a manuscript for publication. We are covering everything from internalized gendered ageism to spirituality, so it’s a big project with a big scope.
Meanwhile I hope you are finding your creative voice, through singing, writing, painting, or in whatever way you express your creativity. The world needs all our creative ideas, if we are to thrive in the years to come.
Keep the pen moving (or the keys clicking).
All the best,
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