Starvin Larry

“Gather therefore the rose, while yet is prime,
For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower.”*

“Life with its glories glides away,
And the stern footstep of decay
Comes stealing on.”**

I turn sixty-one today, and thus am now but two years short of the momentous birthday our forefathers knew as the grand climacteric.  They said that a man arrives at the threshold of old age when he turns sixty-three.  The word climacteric literally denotes a step on a ladder (Greek climax), and therefore was used as a metaphor to denote the step changes (or paradigm shifts) that mark the four ages of a man’s life. In the old reckoning, these climacterics occur at multiples of seven (or nine) years, with the most significant steps at twenty-one, forty-two, and sixty-three (hopeful systems added a fourth climacteric at eighty-four).  The intervening ages are childhood, youth, maturity, and old-age.