Shirley Ross and Scott Kalin share the joy, the little annoyances, and the responsibilities that come with having a good roommate. Then Max talks with artist Maira Kalman about how she discovered a newfound sense of herself during the pandemic and why she’s no longer looking for answers to life’s biggest mysteries at age 72.
Know someone who should be on 70 Over 70? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email 70over70@pineapple.fm or call 302-659-7070 and tell us your name, age, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.
transcription
[PRE-ROLL]
[OPENING MONTAGE]
Madeleine Albright: I know this program is 70 Over 70, but I really wish I were younger. I wish I was 70…but, I am ready!
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
William: I’m 72 years old.
Paula: I’m 75, miraculously enough.
Sandy: I am 83 years old.
Betty: I am 88 years old.
James: You know, I’m here at 92.
Lucia: I’ll be 94 in May.
Donalda: I’m 101 years old.
Shirley Ross: My name is Shirley Ross. I'm 101 years old. I've lived in Los Angeles since 1933.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Shirley: After I turned ninety five, I could no longer drive, so, I had to make a choice of whether I wanted to live, uh, in assisted living of some kind and I realized it was not the kind of life that I would choose for myself. So I made the decision to stay in my home.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Scott Kalin: I'm Scott Kaylin, I'm 78 years old, I’m housemates with Shirley.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Scott: My wife died in 2013, and I couldn't really find anything that I like that was really affordable. So I started looking around, well, what else can I do? And somehow I ran across, um, that organization –
Shirley: An organization called, Alternative Living for the Aging
Scott: And so it's kind of like matchmaker. And then the magic kind of happens from there.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Scott: I describe our relationship as being very good friends, albeit unlikely to some.
Shirley: Oh, the difference in our ages, difference in our skin color, the difference in our height. I'm about maybe 4”10 and he's about 6”2.
Scott: I'm 6”1
Shirley 6”1. OK, well, that I was exaggerating [laughs]. Anyway Scott-Scott is very gracious about getting me where I need to go, you know, shopping and errands and things like that.
Scott: I mean, I actually enjoy shopping. I don't rush her. I don't go drop her off and sit down and she's going to buy a top or something. She-she actually asks me what I think
Shirley: [laughs] But I would say our relationship is excellent.
Scott: Yeah, it’s been delightful, to say the least. And we’ve had to adjust to various things.
Shirley: Ah, well, Scott goes to bed with the chickens. He's asleep by 10 o’clock every night.
Scott: I do, but I rise with the roosters. I'm up like, you know, I'm like 5:30--6 o'clock.
Shirley: I go to bed at, in quotes, a normal time [laughs].
Scott: And out of-out of the two of us, I am, without a doubt, the messy one.
Shirley: [laughs] I have to agree with that. I had to remind him a few times to take the trash out every night. And do the dishes. And when he doesn't, I tell him. I'm not shy [laughs]
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
Shirley: If anyone were to look into their past life, of course, there are things that you wish you could do.
Scott: Yes I…I-I would have to say that, I would happily give up all of my tomorrows for just one yesterday with my late wife, Margaret. I really would. Uh, but it's not realistic, it's not even practical.
Shirley: And uh, I'm grateful to be alive and well and able to, you know, still feel that my brain is still working most of the time, and it’s wonderful having him around, um, but I’m-I’m hadicapped, and I do wish I could see better, but you know, we have to make these compromises.
[MUSIC ENDS]
Shirley: Would I say that life is better with Scott? Yes, of course, having a good roommate, uh at this point in my life, is extremely important.
Scott: And the most you can hope for in friendship is to share. And I think the thing I've learned from Shirley is that sharing something, like a house, with a person is a responsibility. I mean, these things aren’t my things, but she kind of exudes warmth. And I appreciate the fact that…
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
Scott: That I'm in her life.
Shirley: I’m glad to hear that, Scott [both laugh].
Max Linsky: That was Shirley Ross and Scott Kalin, and from Pineapple Street Studios, this is 70 Over 70, a show about making the most of the time we have left. I’m Max Linsky.
[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]
Max: My guest this week is Maira Kalman.
Maira is an artist and her work spans almost too many mediums to name. She's had exhibitions at the Met, she’s done tons of covers for the New Yorker, and she’s written or illustrated more than 30 books for adults and kids.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: Maira’s work is observational. She sees art in what’s right in front of her, the stuff most of us are too busy to notice. And I asked her to come on the show because I wanted to understand that totally unique way she looks at the world. But instead, we ended up talking more about how she sees herself, and the surprising way that that changed during the pandemic.
The conversation you’re about to hear was recorded a few months before we launched 70 Over 70. And at least to me, it feels different than other ones I've had on the show.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: It’s a little more familiar, and a little more personal.
And it ended in a different way too. After we finished talking, Maira offered to create the cover art for 70 Over 70. And what she made … it’s just perfect. Nobody else could have done it.
Maira Kalman is 72 years old.
INTERVIEW
Max: Hey, Maira.
Maria: Hey, Max.
Max: How, uh, how are you doing?
Maria: Completely fantastic.
Max: Completely fantastic!
Maria: Couldn't be happier [laughs].
Max: That's so good.
Maria: I'm inexplicably happy and you always have to kind of apologize for being ridiculously happy.
Max: Wait, you mean, you've been inexplicably happy your whole life?
Maira: No, for the last [laughs] maybe the last month or two, in a consistent sort of manner, and I attribute it to various factors which we can go into or not so...
Max: Oh, I'm interested in the factors.
Maira: Oh, you want to hear, like, the secret to happiness, right?
Max: Yeah, if you could just, uh, spell it all out right now, we can-we can just shut this down [laughs].
Maira: Yeah, we’d be done. We’re all done.
Max: So wait, you're telling me that like a switch flipped and you just woke up and felt, um, inexplicably happy?
Maira: Uh, it took a few weeks [laughs] for the--
Max: Wh-what was happening over the few weeks?
Maira: I can't remember you know more of the same. I think it also clearly is the cumulative effect of a pandemic lockdown, which for me has meant a tremendous limitation and repetition of the days, which I find incredibly thrilling and interesting. So the lack of options has opened up a new world of emotion for me. I think that the intensity of not having too many options, not seeing too many people walking, working and reading and watching murder mysteries every night [Max laughs] is an incredible thing. And the cumulative effect of that is that if you can't find content in that, well, that's a shame. So something happened with all of that.
Max: So something about the limitations of lockdown opened things up?
Maira: Very much so.
Max: And is just about removing distraction and bullshit. What's that about?
Maira: Living in New York or.. living anywhere, living now, there are a million things that you do and want to do and commit to doing with many, many people in my life, in my work. But I think that everybody suffered, in a sense, from the two muchness...too much... too much everything.
Max: What do you mean? What do you mean?
Maira: [laughs] You know, the first thing I think of was too much performing, there were too many things going on and too many places to go to and too much running around, which I enjoyed.
Max: When you say performing, do you mean like on a stage or at a cocktail party?
Maira: Well, I definitely mean at a cocktail party [Max laughs]. All of us are performing a lot of the time in-in our way of interacting. Seeking approval, being amusing, being smart, being something, that's a pressure.
Max: Mm hmm.
Maira: And the-the search for authenticity continues because if you have not that many options, you better feel pretty good about what you have. And so, I like the sense of authenticity in a kind of snappier way.
Max: What do you mean snappier? What-what are you….um, what are you talking about?
Maira: It means having self-confidence and the courage of your convictions and you hold on to what you believe is real. I hate myself a lot less during the pandemic.
Max: That sounds great.
Maira: It's unbelievable [laughs]. I hope it lasts, you know, I expect every morning to wake up and go like uh..uh...well, I hate myself again. There you go.
Max: What did you hate?
Maira: A sense of shame. A continual sense of shame and guilt.
Max: I think those two things are slightly distinct. Self-loathing and shame.
Maira: Uh....I don't know.
Max: [both laugh] Okay.
Maira: I beg to differ with my newfound self-confidence. I'm sorry, you're wrong!
Max: I understand. Yeah. Well, now you're-now you're inexplicably happy, so you-so you can just speak your truth.
Maira: Yeah, exactly. Well, actually, since you're speaking to people who are over 70, that's a lot to overcome on some--on many levels. The sense of shame and self-worth and, uh, doubt.
Max: Mm hmm.
Maira: My mother always said that the most important thing was time, and my aunt said the most important thing was self-confidence and self-respect. So that's a state that's a very delicate state to inhabit. But once you get older, it's, you know, the cliche of people saying what's really on their mind when they're older and all of that because time's a wastin. So I better tell you what's on my mind as opposed to kind of dancing around the issue.
Max: Yeah. What's your most important thing?
Maira: Time.
Max: Time is yours?
Maira: Yes, time. Absolutely. Time is everybody's most important thing.
Max: Why do you say that?
Maira: Because that's all you have. And you don't have much of it. If people don't bring up time and mortality, I'll be stunned. And what you do with your time, of course, I could say that the most important things are, uh, love and work. And to love your work and to love the people that you're with is the--that's all you have. So you have time, love, and work. The end.
Max: That's the, uh, that's the math equation.
Maira: Yes. And hopefully a few trips to Italy.
Max: Time, love, work and bread.
Maira: Well, pasta. Not bread.
Max: [laughs] Can I ask you a little bit more about this--what happened this fall?
Maira: Sure.
Max: You've led this incredible life. You've done this incredible work. You've been celebrated and featured and I wonder what changed. What, like, what wasn't there when you were out in the world in a way that you-you were not this fall? Like, what wasn't there before that's there now?
Maira: Being with yourself, and it's not that I wasn't with myself before, but now I've really been with myself and everybody else has too. So there's a common experience of the ground falling away. And you find out what keeps you stable, you find out what keeps you curious and happy and, uh, alive.
Max: Is there another side of that coin of, like, being with yourself that's loneliness? Have you felt lonely in this time?
Maira: Absolutely, I’m very-I'm very sad a lot of the time that I'm not with somebody that I love. I have my family and I love them, but I'm not with a mate.
Max: Mm hmm.
Maira: But that's offset by being absolutely jubilant that I don't have a mate [Max laughs]. And then I probably, you know, the don't think too much. Don't think too much enters into the equation big time. So, it's all of those things.
Max: This whole thing, it sounds like it's-it's come from within you, and yet I know you to be this person who looks outside of herself constantly, like habitually, you've made your life noticing things and observing things and taking it in.
Maira: Sure.
Max: You spent your life observing and yet it feels like this quite incredible process that you've gone through feels very internal.
Maira: They go hand in hand. I haven't stopped looking at things. I haven't stopped working. I'm working all the time. Painting what's going on around me...writing about it. So I have an outlet for my observations.
Max: Has your work changed?
Maira: Yes. How so?
Maira Kalman: Oh, well, the work may be a little bit, uh, dreamier and less tight if you want to speak about specifics of painting. The desire to not paint, to unpaint, to leave things undone, but not doing us a bad job, whatever that definition is for me. And that keeps changing.
Max: Wait, what do you mean? What do you mean, what's a bad job?
Maira Kalman: Bad job is a...is a rushed painting, that's not good when it's rushed [laughs]. I can't, I don't like talking about painting. I don't like talking about that process because it becomes too specific. And I don't want to talk to you about how long it takes me to mix a color or change colors, because I don't think that's interesting.
Max: Does that qualify as like thinking too much on some level?
Maira: That qualifies as talking too much [Max laughs]
Max: Wait, are you saying that you think you make things that are bad?
Maira: Of course. Everybody makes things that are bad. Are you kidding?
Max: No!
Max: How could you not? Everybody makes things that are bad. Everybody on Earth.
Max: What do you do with the bad things?
Maira: You throw--you tear it up and throw it away. Of course. And without any question, you tear it up, literally--- I can because it's paper---and I throw it away. And if you write something that you don't like, you tear that up and you throw it away. I mean, there isn't a-a person you look up to on the planet who doesn't do bad work some of the time.
Max: Has it gotten easier to just tear it up and forget about it?
Maira: Um, probably. I think that I'm enjoying throwing things away more than I used to. I used to hold on to more things.
Max: Now I'm imagining you like drawing something and being like, “Oh, look at that. It's terrible, great.”
Maira: [laughs] I'm not celebrating when things are bad, when I think things are bad, I'm not jubilant. But because I do-I do want to do what I consider to be good work and whatever that means. And, uh, so I don't lose heart--I lose a little bit of heart--but I do go on.
Max: Do you think there's a connection between that and like and not needing to perform or not feeling like you have to perform?
Maira: Definitely. I think that the minute you say I don't have to do anything other than just be myself and say what's on my mind, and I may or may not be interesting to you, that's fine.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[AD BREAK/MIDROLL]
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: Do you feel like you've, um… this may be like a funny phrase to use, but do you feel like you've, um, grown up during this thing, does that feel right to you?
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Maira: Well, actually, I feel as if I am more childish than I ever was, and one of the things that I've said about my life, with whatever luck it was that I had a very happy childhood and I had a lot of self-confidence. And was a...I really thought that the world was a rosy place, and then, of course, you enter puberty and things get a little bit shaky and then adolescence and things get even shakier and then actual real life, which is a blow, but, I feel as if I have returned very much to that state of being a 7 or an 8 year old. I always--I am a 7 or an 8 year old with money.
Max: Yeah?
Maira: So what could be bad?
Max: [laughs] And do-do you feel like that’s part of what’s happened in the last couple months, like, whatever this breakthrough is that has you feeling inexplicably happy, do you think- do you think that’s connected to that?
Maira: I'm really fortunate that I have the right elements in my life to make these leaps or these understandings that what I have is more than enough. It's the accumulation of experience and time. It's layering one on top of another, decades and work and people. And so in different eras--well, I had my children when I was in my mid-thirties and life with them accumulated, the accrued value of life with them, meant that we've grown up together. Now I have grandchildren. That richness is extraordinary, topped with expressing--having an outlet for expressing myself. Um, it's like some kind of fantastic, you know, triple decker sandwich, some club sandwich of life, shall we say.
Max: [laughs] It's like what [laughs] what else could you possibly want in this sandwich?
Maira: Yeah, maybe a little bit more mayo [Max laughs]. But I don't know what I'm missing. I might be missing something really incredible, but I don't know it. So we'll see what happens.
Max: Alright wait, I'm going to stick with the sandwich metaphor for a second [Maira laughs] because it's helpful for me.
Maira: Now that we reduced it to a sandwich, I'm kind of--I'm really unhappy [both laugh]. Let's [laughs] let's get rid of the sandwich. I don't like the sandwich, but, um, I mean, the sandwich also has a lot of loss in it and I think that that's something that adds to the experience of a fulfilled life, that you've gone through some tragedies [Mhm] and the forces that keep the world a place that you want to inhabit reveal themselves.
Max: What do you mean?
Max: I guess the reasons, you know, you can say it more simple way that, there's no reason for being here. There's no reason for being alive, there's no religion, there's no superstition. There's no anything that is going to say this is why you're here. So everything that happens, you have to find a reason to keep...keep things going for whatever number of years, you know, that the explanation is not there, so the only thing is to live. That's all.
Max: You're going to, like, reach through Zoom and smack me in the head [Maira laughs]. While ridiculous the sandwich metaphor is slightly helpful. And wh-what I hear you saying is, if there isn't some plan, if there isn't some--someone's not going to come along and explain why you're here, you have to do the work of figuring out why [right] and the way that that happens is not that you set out every day to answer that exact question [no], but that over the course of a life, the things that provide meaning reveal themselves. And some of them can be positive and some of them can be heartbreak.
Maira: Absolutely correct.
Max: But no one is going to tell you how to make the sandwich.
Maira: Nobody can.
Max: I think the thing that I'm trying to ask you about and trying to dig into, which is admittedly hard to talk about and articulate, is just I'm fascinated in the moments in which something revealed itself to you to be true, moments in which you realized something, and I think I'm interested in that because I don't know-- I don't understand how that works, you know?
Maira: Well, I don't think you realize it. I think you feel it.
Max: Mm hmm.
Maira: You know, and thus what I say to you, “don't think too much” [Max laughs]. And listen, you should listen to me because you can drive yourself crazy by trying to figure it out as opposed to allowing your brain to just turn off and do--go with your feelings and go with what makes you feel good.
Max: Mm hmm.
Maira: Well, you're looking for answers.
Max: Sure. Sure, are you--would you say that you are no longer looking for answers?
Maira: No, I would say that I'm not looking for answers anymore.
Max: When did it stop?
Maira: [laughs] As I said, it stopped last Thursday at 3 [both laugh]. No, it stopped--its you know it, of course, but, you know, it's not a definitive state, but I mean really again, this is an age thing. If you're still looking for answers--and I don't mean not being curious and not being attentive in all of those things--but if you're still looking for answers... well, maybe you should think of doing something else with that time.
Max: Are you talking like, uh, hypothetically or to me personally?
Maira: No, I'm talking [laughs] I'm talking to you literally. You know, like take up tennis, I don't know! [Max laughs] So, uh no, I don't know. You know, I don't know. I'm saying that conceptually that don't get too obsessed with trying to find the answer because you'll find it anyway.
Max: Mm hmm. Sandwich will just make itself.
Maira: If you use that sandwich metaphor one more time.
Max: [laughs] My dad has this metaphor that he's used with me for years and years about um, like, being on the dance floor and then being in the balcony.
Maira: Oh, uh huh.
Max: And you know, about like, are you observing or are you part of it? Where is that balance for you?
Maira: It keeps changing.
Max: How so?
Maira: You know, where are you, are you on the dance floor, or you're in the balcony. There's so many different definitions of what that means. You can be so out of it. You can feel so excluded. You can feel so far away from the center of action that you're on the upper upper upper balcony. You're not just on the balcony, uh, you're on the roof. You're in a different building completely. Then sometimes you feel you're just did the delightful center and you have the desire to communicate. It can't be one thing. You have to be all of those things, otherwise how could you possibly function?
Max: Can you think about times in your life in which you felt like you were in whatever definition of the balcony or the dance floor? Like, does that--
Maira: Sure, all the time. That’s one of the, I think, wonderful things of coming to a new country came when I came when I was a young child, that my aspect, my understanding of myself was that I was observing. I like to be an observer of what was going around-on around me. And that that became a definition of kind of being a journalist. I'm going to look at stuff and I'm going to report to you. So I gave myself a job. It wasn't as if I was, you know, I felt meaningless.
Max: Like, if you started, like, as a young person in this role that where observing, felt comfortable and reporting back, felt comfortable, what was your version of the dance floor?
Maira: Let's see. When I played hopscotch in school, when I-when I was bike riding. Well, actually, you know, if I'm-if I'm just plucking experiences out of the air, I'm probably plucking the time when I was just doing something and not trying to be something, so... I think that playing music, though I played--I didn't play well, but reading was felt so real and natural. Having children.
Max: What about having children?
Maira: That was, to me a moment of now I know why I'm alive. That was a clarity that was complete and incontestable. So why that happens? Not for me to know. But it did.
Max:Yeah that- that thing, that reason for being because of your kids, I think that comes across in your work, specifically, like, your books for kids. You’re so good at understanding and communicating with kids in ways that make it feel like you’re, you know, you're really talking to them. And then you take these really surprising, or at least to me, really surpurprising topics, like, you wrote a kids book about 9/11.
Maira: Yes, I did.
Max: How do you take these intense, scary, serious problems or moments or events and make them accessible to kids? Like, how do you do that?
Maira: If you love the people you're talking to and I happen to love the children, the idea of children that I'm talking to, you'll find a way to talk about anything. There's not-there's nothing that you can't talk about that if you do it with a certain kind of kindness and understanding of the limitations, because children understand sorrow and children understand loss and fear very much so. So if you pretend it doesn't exist, then you're not being yourself with them. Doesn't mean you have to dwell on all of the terrible things. So to write about 9/11 was a way of writing about that no matter what happens, there's a resurrection and there is the future and there is the little things in your life that you can do. So there's always a way to talk about-about anything to children.
Max: You said that nonchalantly, but I don't think that's easy.
Maira: Well, I don't know if it's easy, but it's, you know, how I think about things. So in Fireboat, in that book about 9/11, there was an entree, which was the story of this fireboat that ended up fighting the fires of 9/11. And there was a way of looking at the world in a bigger picture and to pick out the moments of heroism and the moments of hope.
Max: Mm hmm.
Maira: You have to have that for children.
Max: Have you had to have that for yourself too? Like, in the moments in your own life of loss and sadness and--is it the same muscle like finding a way through that?
Maira: Of course. You have to. Wven though you don't think it's going to come and everything seems too overwhelming, but of course, the process of time helps you to find your balance.
Max: And is that all it is when when you experience loss like that, when you're dealing with sadness like that is-is the only thing time?
Maira: Well, time is a really tremendous part of it, but it really is doing your work, being with the people you love and allowing for time to do its work. That's pretty much the way that, I think, that that process works. As I say, of course, your intellect has a part of it, but a lot of it is just instinct, whatever that is. So I don’t think you can-- so not only can you not set out to figure something out, the revelations that you have, you can't hold on to the revelations, they're, just kind of a flow like a river flow. And what you're--what you do is you accept the fact that you're a river flow and that you're constantly, you know, this rock being rolled in the river and as you get older, you understand the process and you have stability within that process.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
CREDITS
Max: 70 Over 70 is a production of Pineapple Street Studios, and it’s produced by Jess Hackel.
Our associate producer is Janelle Anderson. Our editors are Maddy Sprung-Keyser and Joel Lovell. Research and additional reporting by Charley Locke.
Our mixer is Davy Sumner, and Jenna Weiss-Berman and I are the executive producers.
Our theme song is Like A Dream by Francis and the Lights and the music you’re listening to right now is by Mavis Staples, who’s 82 years old. Original music by Terence Bernardo. Additional music by Noble Kids, and music licensing by Dan Knishkowy.
Our episode art is by Lynn Staley, who’s 73, and also my mom.
Thank you, Scott and Shirley. And thank you, Maira Kalman for the conversation, for the cover art, for everything.
I'm Max Linsky. Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]