Bristlecone Pine – Worlds Oldest Living Organism
Editor’s Note – In our May Zoom discussion, we talked about health and more with Glenna Stearman Park moderating. At one point, Skip Granger mentioned Alan Patricof, a well known venture capitalist in his late 80‘s and his thoughts on the very real possibility of living to 150. That created some significant interest, so we thought we would share the information with all of you on the website.
Alan Patricoff recently ran the New York Marathon and is an avid adventurer. He probably does his best explanation of his “living to 150” theory in his SALT talk of August 13, 2020. He has also written an autobiography, No Red Lights, Reflections on Life, copyright May 3, 2022. You can find the SALT talk with a simple internet search and you can probably find the book at your local library, either in print or as an electronic version, which at many libraries can be downloaded for free. Or, of course, you can order it from Amazon. And, another internet search will let you find more than one instance of Alan Patricof on YouTube.
And, our very own Diane Rusch Zinn suggests the following re a long life, “Another book, which I haven’t finished yet, is The Science and Technology of Growing Young, by Sergey Young, with projections of living to 200! Lots of biology, technology, etc. in it.” This is copyright August 24, 2021.
Now think about life at 150. If you lived to 150, you would now be just slightly past middle age. What would society look like? Would our form of government survive? What would be your principal food sources? Where would you live? How would you travel? What discipline kept you from running out of money over the intervening years? Could you walk unaided? What will your clothes look like?
Hopefully, this will help you conjure up a story we can post on the website. Write it and send it to Marilyn, Diane, or Fred. And – everyone will be interested in your telling us how to stretch those savings dollars for an additional 69 years!!
Marilyn (mbellert@niu.edu)
Diane (ddzinn@aol.com)
Fred (ftelder@wisc.edu)
