I read recently that about half my 1,000 college classmates are still living, and that a few of us may live well past 100 years. My day lifted!

Today, I saw a notice that about 25 members of a club I belong to in NYC (with about 2,000 members) had died in the past three months. Then I looked again and saw that I personally knew quite well six of those people. I felt like I had taken on a few pounds of lead.

For some time, in an effort to be funny (judgements on my success are mixed), I have been telling people I am planning my 100^th birthday — wanna come, I ask?

Every time I curate my rolodex –about once a year–I must write DELETE in about 40 names.

I am now in London visiting for the first time in 10 months, where four of our ‘chums’ – cozy best friends — have died ‘good’ deaths over the age of 90. Happily, we have others, but it takes time to qualify for cozy, and time appears to be both short in supply and randomly distributed.

Obviously, mortality is on my mind.

I guess the accumulation of evidence and historical statistics render these thoughts normal –even expected. I do not know, because this seems NOT to be a topic for everyday conversation.

I would not say that I am depressed. Rather, I think I am more determined than ever to stretch – one never beats! – the odds to see what lies ahead. I would really like to see Trump — and his Republican enablers — beaten to pulp at the ballot box next year, and I am intently curious about who will become the next President, and how.

I don’t yet (and may never) know the ending of those and many other stories waiting to be written. What I do know is that the geniuses actively planning to extend human life forever are doomed to fail if, in the end, they aren’t able to keep enough people alive at the same time to enable us to still have ‘old’ friends!