Elena LaVictoire's Library tagged aging →  View Popular, Search in Google

Brown is the oldest working federal judge in the nation, one  of four appointees by President Kennedy still on the bench. Federal judgeships  are lifetime appointments, and no one has taken that term more seriously than  Brown.

"As a federal judge, I was appointed for life or good  behavior, whichever I lose first," Brown quipped in an interview. How does he  plan to leave the post? "Feet first," he says.

In a profession where advanced age isn't unusual - and,  indeed, is valued as a source of judicial wisdom - Brown has left legal  colleagues awestruck by his stamina and devotion to work. His service also  epitomizes how the federal court system keeps working even as litigation  steadily increases, new judgeships remain rare, and judicial openings go  unfilled for months or years.

"Senior judges keep the federal court system afloat given  the rising case loads," said David Sellers, spokesman for the Administrative  Office of the U.S. Courts. Of the 1,294 sitting federal judges, Brown is one of  516 on "senior status," a form of semi-retirement that allows a judge to collect  his salary but work at a reduced case level if he chooses. They handle almost a  quarter of federal district trials.

And no one alive has logged more service than Brown, who  took senior status in 1979 but still worked fulltime until recently. In March,  he stopped taking new criminal cases and lightened his case load a bit. He still  takes his full share of the new civil cases.

"I do it to be a public service," Brown said. "You got to  have a reason to live.

GUSTAVIA, St. Barts — Eugenie Blanchard, a nun who was considered the world's  oldest person, died in the French Caribbean island of St. Barts on Thursday. She  was 114.

Bruyn Hospital director Pierre Nuty said she died early Thursday at the  hospital, where she had lived in the geriatric ward since 1980.

Cousin Armelle Blanchard told The Associated Press that while Blanchard could  no longer talk, she had seemed to be in relatively good health.

"When you talked to her, she would smile," she said. "We don't know if she  understood us."

Blanchard was born in St. Barts on Feb. 16, 1896, and lived much of her life  in a convent in the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao before returning home in  the 1950s. She was the last survivor of a family of 13 brothers and sisters.

Blanchard had earned the nickname "Sweets" because of how she treated others,  said Victorin Lurel, who represents St. Barts in France's lower house of  parliament, the National Assembly

Barzilai believes his super agers were born with a genetic code that got them  long past 80, but that living a healthy life is important for everyone --  regardless of whether they have those magic genes. "If you want to get above 80,  you have to not smoke, you have to exercise, and you have to watch your diet,"  Barzilai says.

Exercise your mind, too. You don't see many easy chairs and  remote controls in the videos of Barzilai's centenarians. These people are  constantly on the go--traveling, visiting their grandkids, even working. At age  104, Irving Kahn was still working five days a week as an investment advisor. "I  enjoy debating with him about business subjects," his son says in the video.  (Incredibly, Kahn also had a 108-year-old sister.)

This story came to mind on reading baby boom actress Geena Davis' interview with The Daily Beast Website. There are no good roles for women her age, said the 53-year-old star of such iconic feminist films as "Thelma & Louise" (1991) and "A League of Their Own" (1992). Her male co-stars, Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks, are still hot box office at 45 and 52, respectively.  

 By most any yardstick, Davis still looks superb. Furthermore, she has a brainy appeal that should transcend starlet parts. Recall her recent role as a U.S. president in the television series "Commander in Chief." But there Davis was, in a bare office promoting an independent film that no distributor has picked up.  

 The lament that Hollywood drops female stars as they age is not new. But truth be told, it's not very friendly to women actors of any age. Martha Lauzen, a professor of communications at San Diego State University, has been tracking women's progress in the film industry for a long time. Her conclusion: Progress has not been made.  

 Today only 28 percent of the movie actors with speaking parts are female. In 1946, the number was 25 percent. The few actresses chosen are mostly under 40, and even the supposedly older parts are filled with women far younger than their characters.  

 In "Alexander" (2004), Angela Jolie was one year older than the actor playing her son. As the mature Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate" (1967), Anne Bancroft was only six years older than Dustin Hoffman, the recent college boy she was trying to seduce. Gloria Swanson had just turned 50 when she portrayed the haggard Norma Desmond.  

 As a result of this odd casting, "our eyes are not used to seeing older female characters when they do show up," Lauzen tells me. "We judge them as being older than they really are."