Age

We seem to have settled the issues of race and gender this election season (although that might be optimistic), so only one rude and divisive issue remains on the table: age. John McCain is old, there's no getting around it. He'd be 72 at his inauguration, the oldest president ever. His hair is white, he protects his cancer-scarred face with a silly hat that makes him look like he is a member of the cast of Cocoon and he moves like the Tin Man because of all the injuries and torture he suffered during his time as a prisoner of war. Barack Obama is young by comparison.

He's back. Bond. James Bond. Double-oh seven himself. In Die Another Day. Opens tomorrow. In theaters everywhere. Why am I writing like this? Don't know. Maybe 'cause it's how they talk in the trailers. Clipped. Dramatic. The legend continues. Pierce Brosnan. Halle Berry. In the greatest Bond movie of them all! Die ... Another ... Day. OK, enough of that. You could go crazy writing that way. But the fact is, I'm a huge James Bond fan. Have been since I was a kid in the early '60s and nearly singed my corneas watching Ursula Andress wade out of the surf in that shimmering white bikini in Dr. No, the very first Bond movie.

NEW YORK -- The top American seed walked onto Court 16 yesterday with a slight case of the nerves.Only a year ago, Lindsay Davenport was unseeded, unknown and unexpected.At 6 feet 2, 165 pounds, she is neither petite nor svelte, and the casual tennis fan passed her by.Even the Women's Tennis Association passed over her for most impressive newcomer last year.But no one is passing Davenport these days.A quarterfinalist at Wimbledon last month, she is now the No. 6 player in the world and the No. 6 seed at the U.S. Open.

They say growing old is not for sissies. Apparently, it isn't for the barefoot, either. I broke my foot. Again. Faithful readers of this column will remember that I broke my foot a year or so ago while moving the hose in the yard. I was barefoot that time, too, and I stepped in a hole. I told people it had happened during full-contact gardening. This time, I was safe inside my kitchen, putting groceries away and making a pot of spaghetti sauce on a rainy Sunday night, when I slammed my baby toe into a chair leg and broke the same bone in the same foot.

Karen Graham believed that her days as the "Estee Lauder girl" were long behind her. After all, she was retired from modeling and had spent most of the past decade at her country home in upstate New York, teaching the sport she loves: fly-fishing. Then, "out of the blue" in the summer of 1998, Lauder senior vice president Robert Luzzi called her up. "Would you be interested in doing another ad campaign for us?" he asked. Graham was surprised, pleased and excited. Then she had "this moment of terror," as she puts it. "Do you know how old I am?"

With four players over the age of 40 and nine eligible to compete in a 35-and-over softball league, the Lax World Lacrosse Club has grown to expect some good-natured ribbing from its opponents."

In an age when faster isn't fast enough and newer isn't new enough, it's easy to overlook the virtues of aging.We assign value to antique furniture, stately homes, classic cars. But at the first gray hair, we shudder with fear as if sentenced to a long, terminal illness."Old age is very hard, and it's no joke. But it's not a disease. That idea is more of an affliction on the old than their own afflictions."So says James Hillman, a prominent Jungian psychologist, talking about his new book, "The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life" (Random House, $24)

THE PEW RESEARCH Center recently reported that 60 percent of working mothers say they would prefer to work part-time. I am not sure the numbers would be much different if you asked working fathers. Or working 50-year-olds of any description. We all see part-time employment as the way to balance our lives between work and family, between work and recreation, between time off and money, between ambition and just a paycheck, between career and kids. But there is another kind of balance in our lives that isn't getting the attention it deserves.

JUST TWO WEEKS ago, he appeared the picture of health when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Monday, A. Leon Higginbotham died at the age of 70 after a series of strokes.When he retired in 1993, Higginbotham was chief judge of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. He was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, for his contributions to his profession and country, including his landmark multivolume work, Race and the American Legal Process.

DALLAS - Across just about every industry, many U.S. workers are pushing retirement later, staying in their jobs to keep busy or to earn income needed to fund longer lives. But for the nation's airline pilots, careers have a hard stop: age 60. Some pilots and airlines are challenging the federal rule that was drafted for safety reasons in 1959, putting the age-60 rule to the test. Dallas-based Southwest Airlines Co., the dominant carrier at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, said yesterday that it plans to file a friend of the court brief soon in support of a group of 12 pilots that has asked the Supreme Court to review its request for an exemption to the rule.