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Christy Warren's avatar

I think this is my favorite of yours.

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Britta Stromeyer's avatar

I agree!

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

Oh, wow, thanks so much, Christy!

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Marjorie Pezzoli's avatar

I am enjoying the mellow patina of greens and bronze of the 3rd age. Have been coasting and enjoying the view… still need to hit the gas pedal to get some poetry in print ( maybe leopard print 🐆😊 )

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Don Jacobs's avatar

I love to hear from younger folk like yourself! The next 20 plus years can be awesome! At 82 I am still practicing as an architect and love it. I relate well to your love of rust for many of the same reasons you state. Corten is a wonderful steel that takes on a patina of rust, ( it becomes a protective coating ). It changes colors depending on the atmosphere it is exposed to. Corten in a smoggy area will look different than one in a cleaner or saltier area. A friend and artist, Barbara Bowles, in Santa Fe, NM has made a career and gallery out of photographing rusty old trucks. Bbowles505@me.com. Great stuff! My sister, Karen Fitzgerald, introduced me to your blog!

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

Oh, I love this description of Corten—a patina that becomes a protective coating. And what mystery it has, looking different in different places. I'll check out Barbara Bowles' work. Here's to rust in all forms!

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David de Young's avatar

Oh, sixty! Maybe I'll write an ode. I'm almost exactly seven months older than you, but things started to click for me this year for many of the reasons you mention. We're enough to know better, yet hopefully young enough to have energy for that third act. My productivity these days seems to be constructed out of all the things I choose *not* to spend my time doing. Hope to catch up with you at our 40th (yikes!) college reunion in a year or so.

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

Great to hear 60 is causing some things to click! I think that's the case for me. I'd love to catch up at our reunion. I've forgotten when it is, but, yes, yikes to 40th!

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The Everyday Solopreneur's avatar

At 64, going on 65 in July, I’m just starting my first creative quarter. If I'm lucky, I might make it to quarter 2. You have my sympathies though. It sucks to get old, such is life🙏

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Jennifer Louden's avatar

I bought me a mob wife coat that needs to meet your coat and drink martinis together (never mind I hate martinis, I think my coat must love them!)

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

I'd love to drink martinis in the name of our coats!

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Jennifer Louden's avatar

We could fake smoke cigs too!

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

Haha, I love that we're at the stage of "fake smoking"! I'll bring the candy cigarettes.

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Jennifer Louden's avatar

I love those!!

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HOURGLASS - Memoir on the Fly's avatar

"Oh, to be 60 again!," she said, just shy of 74. "Oh, to be 70 again," sighed her 87 year-old beloved. Meanwhile, their 30-year old granddaughter grumps, "I'm old."

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

Haha, yep! It's all perspective ... and creaky knees.

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Jennifer Leigh Selig's avatar

"So the question: how to live, how to create, especially as our clocks crumble?" Yes. And to urgency, I often quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s phrase--"the fierce urgency of now." That's something, having turned 60 myself, I live with daily. Thanks Grant, for naming it too.

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

I love the "fierce urgency of now"! It keeps getting more and more fierce ...

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Jane Glendinning's avatar

Welcome to your 60s, Grant! As you let go of much of what was in your life, I hope you live in the happiness that many of us find in this decade of our years. Overall, the best and happiest decade of my life. Nunez fan that you are-2 films based on her novels are about to be released.

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

Thanks, Jane! I'm looking forward to those Nunez films ...

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Gretchen Staebler's avatar

I love this so much. I'm 72, which makes you still young, and I'm trying the rusting approach on for size. I think it fits. I'm going observe the shades of brown in tree bark. And I'm exploring this in my own Third Act monthly newsletter post. Thank you! (P.S. So far, this is my favorite decade.)

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

I love how Time shifts perspective on what's old and what's young. I think of 40-year-olds as babes. And some of them do still have some baby fat on their cheeks. Good to know that the next decade holds great promise!

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Ren Powell's avatar

Thank you. I needed this. Oh, God, how I needed this today.

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Chris Norris's avatar

Go ‘head, Pimpdaddy! Good looking out, Grant, and happy birthday.

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

Haha, Pimpdaddy for the elder crowd ...

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Shawna Kenney's avatar

Love this: "We say goodbye to something every day." And as I stare down 56, an age once associated with "other people," I related to so much of this. Beauty in the rust and dust, indeed.

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Hilary Mosberg's avatar

Thanks for this excellent piece. I'm currently ahead of you by a decade and lichen is my muse.

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

Oh, I love lichen. Good muse ...

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LaMonica Curator's avatar

So much to unpack there…

60 is not what it used to be, we are somehow more and less at the same time.

It’s my year to grab the age as well. Wouldn’t know it and yet, here it is.

Cheers🔥

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Mary Camarillo's avatar

Love the coat. Details please

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Grant Faulkner's avatar

Haha, it's a long story, but I tried it on in a consignment store in Ottumwa, Iowa, and loved it. But I didn't buy it because I knew I'd never wear it and didn't want to fly back with it. Some friends ended up buying it for me as a joke, and ... I've found places to wear it. It's a magic coat. It's good to have a magic coat in your closet.

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