“And now it’s all right. It’s okay.

And you may look the other way.

We can try to understand

The New York Times’ effect on man.

 

“Whether you’re a brother

Or whether you’re a mother,

You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.”

— Bee Gees, 1977

 

I have the amazingly good fortune of being alive. I’m 84. More than half the people who were born in 1935, the year of my birth, are gone. I…