Nothing Old About It

[Paul Taylor is a college classmate. The feature photo is Paul taking his cuts at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium. SB SM]

This Is Getting Old is the memoir of Paul Taylor, journalist, lover, researcher, spouse, Dad, data geek, athlete wannabe, and lifelong resident of Fourth Lake, an Adirondack community of mostly seasonal residents.

“This is getting old” is also a hackneyed phrase that you might use when the home team is behind 11-0, and it suddenly is more important to beat the traffic than stay to see if they avoid the shutout. It’s a phrase with more than a tinge of resignation.

Taylor weaves a rich tale that, literally, looks at life from four sides now (Thank you, Joni Mitchell, squared.) There is his storybook, lifelong love affair with Stephanie, his soulmate since toddler days, but a tale still fresh from the wounds of aging bodies and the gut-punches from relationship battles. Respect and regret, nostalgia and admiration, courage and complaint … each has its moment on Taylor’s unflinching stage.

There are four elements, or themes, that Taylor weaves into this tapestry. Foremost is his relationship, about which he is refreshingly and disarmingly honest and frequently self-deprecating. In the final analysis, however, the marriage has stood the most important test of all: time. Second, on the scale of human importance, is the community of Fourth Lake where Paul and Stephanie recently completed (well … almost) the home renovation that will be their physical legacy for generations to come. To claim that the project nearly put their marriage on the rocks is neither a joke nor an exaggeration. It’s a testament to durability that they’ve survived long enough to enjoy the fruits of their labors.

Paul, with Walter Cronkite and John McCain

Third is Paul’s career as a journalist, and Stephanie’s parallel life as a homemaker. To his credit he attaches equal weight to each pursuit. While he is unabashed in his admiration of his wife’s achievements, he’s a little harder on himself. Following a quarter century of top-level reporting at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Washington Post, culminating in a stint as bureau chief at the latter’s South African office, Taylor abandons reporting in favor of spearheading an ambitious and idealistic effort to level the playing field in terms of public access to information. The project brings him in contact with the most important figures in our generational history, from Fidel Castro to Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton to Nelson Mandela, and yet it’s a movement that loses its momentum due to larger cultural forces. Looked at through the fake-news/AI lens of today’s turmoil, Taylor’s project was ahead of its time.

Taylor’s career culminates with a decade-plus span at the Pew Research Center where as Executive Vice-President he oversaw the analysis of public opinion data to understand social and demographic trends. This provides the backdrop for the fourth element of his memoir, the “Who are we?” and “Why are we here?” part of the story. Taylor thinks the verdict is in on his generation. They (we) had the opportunity, they (we) blew it, and have left the mess for future generations to clean up. It’s a harsh assessment, but one that is hard to dispute at the moment.

Paul Taylor is doing exactly what he should be doing in his late 70s– he’s acting his age by telling his story, and doing it with style, humility, and accumulated wisdom. In This Is Getting Old he has graced us with an engaging saga that portrays a life, a relationship, a community, and a world where fulfillment arrives more in vignettes than sweeping victories: friendships made along the way, successfully launched children (and now grandchildren), an ageless community of Fourth Lake, and a home renovation that is mostly (thank god!) behind them, leaving Paul and Stephanie to navigate challenging, but ultimately satisfying, waters of advancing age. It’s a phrase more forgiving than “getting old.”

Highly recommended!

(caption) The rocks that nearly had the Taylors marriage “on the rocks,” but now stands as a testament to the relationship’s durability. This is their waterfall in Fourth Lake.