Golden Years

It's playful and paranoid. It's tender. It's simplistic and it's profound. It's Stephen King. And, like Carrie's hand reaching up out of the grave, if you give King's "Golden Years" a moment or two, it's going to get you."Golden Years," which airs at 9 tonight on WBAL-TV (Channel 11), is network television's latest attempt at quirky. After tonight's two-hour premiere, the six-part series will air Thursday nights at 10.The story is about a 70-year-old custodian, Harlan Williams (Keith Szarabajka)

Margaret W. Fowler, a World War II nurse who later edited a pair of literary anthologies, died Wednesday of Parkinson's disease at the Broadmead retirement community. She was 87. Margaret Williamson, whose father owned Veneers LLC in Cockeysville and whose mother was an educator, was born in Baltimore and raised in Towson. She was a 1940 graduate of Bryn Mawr School and earned a bachelor's degree in English literature in 1945 from Wellesley College. Mrs. Fowler served as a Red Cross nurse in the Philippines and Japan near the end of World War II. While serving in Japan, she met Army Lt. James Randlett Fowler.

On The Weekend Watch:NOW YOU SEE HIM . . . -- Going back to at least Alfred Hitchcock, it has been a seemingly irresistible impulse for behind-the-camera creators to pop up in cameo appearances on screen. So it's no surprise that Stephen King can be seen -- and heard -- briefly in tonight's scheduled edition of "Golden Years," his first writing creation targeted specifically for TV. He's a bus driver in his own script for this episode of the limited series, at 10 p.m. on CBS/Channel 11.DID YOU KNOW THAT.

It will take me 15 years to make $1 million, figuring I could bank my entire salary. I make more than the average American family, which isn't anywhere close to the 2 percent that earn over $250,000. So I ask Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, to whom were you referring Thursday, when you said "a million dollars is not a lot of money"? Perhaps your greedy buddies on Wall Street? Or the fat cats you supported for tax cuts while opposing the Recovery Act, that has saved or created millions of jobs?

IN SCENE One of "Golden Years" -- oops, make that "Stephen King's Golden Years" -- an actor obviously made up to look much older than he is comes to work as a janitor at some sort of agricultural research facility that has the security of a nuclear silo.Though he is clearly a bright, alert fellow, there is much talk of his advanced age -- nearly 71. And, a few scenes down the line, he is even forced into retirement by a bad guy military boss citing a close failure on an eye exam, as if eagle eyesight is important for the clean-up crew.

She is 75. He is 77. They have lived in the same house on McHenry Street in southwest Baltimore since 1942.But they will not allow their address to be printed in the newspaper. They will not allow their names to be used.They say that if they were quoted by name in this story about elderly people's fear of crime, they might become victims themselves. A neighborhood drug dealer, or the prostitute who solicits customers from their front steps, might take offense at their comments and torch their house.

You'd never know Andrew Mason is retired.The 70-year-old South Carroll resident left the state Department of Education last year after a 40-year career as a teacher, principal and administrator. Yet he remains on the go.A man whose life story is far from complete, this amiable gentleman continues to add lively chapters.He immerses himself in a range of volunteer activities that must seem at times to surpass the demands of a full-time job."I'm staying very busy and that's good," Mason said.

LOS ANGELES -- Former President Jimmy Carter remembers clearly when reality struck, when he knew he had reached senior citizen-dom, a state he had until then rejected as only for older folks.He and his wife, Rosalynn, and friends had ordered identical breakfasts at a cafe in Georgia, but when the bills came, Carter's was less. An honest man, Carter "called the waitress over and said, 'You made a mistake,' " he recalls. " 'You didn't charge me enough.' "Whereupon, a farmer of a certain age sitting at the next table said: "That ain't no mistake, Mr. President.

Every Thursday, the Anne Arundel County Sun publishes a section highlighting the lives and activities of our senior citizens. We've told you about weightlifters and karate practitioners, world travelers and local Good Samaritans. Their stories reinforce the promise of "the golden years" when we retire.But there's another side to growing older, the tarnished side to the golden years. It's there you find the elderly who aren't healthy enough or wealthy enough to enjoy the promise. They're closed off from the rest of the world, living in nursing homes, closeted in tiny apartments and drafty trailers, sometimes praying that death will free them from facing another day.Medical advances have stretched life expectancy; many parents live to see their children's children graduate from college and begin a life on their own.But the retirement cushions they've come to depend on -- pensions, Social Security and medical assistance programs -- haven't kept pace with technology.

It will take me 15 years to make $1 million, figuring I could bank my entire salary. I make more than the average American family, which isn't anywhere close to the 2 percent that earn over $250,000. So I ask Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, to whom were you referring Thursday, when you said "a million dollars is not a lot of money"? Perhaps your greedy buddies on Wall Street? Or the fat cats you supported for tax cuts while opposing the Recovery Act, that has saved or created millions of jobs?

Five days of work on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope should end Tuesday morning with the release of what one astronomer said is "in many ways ... a brand new telescope." "At this point, Hubble actually has the largest complement of functioning instruments it has ever had" since its launch in 1990, said Mario Livio, senior scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "This is going to be an observatory that is just so much more powerful and more promising." The crew of the shuttle Atlantis was to release the telescope just before 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Lately, there has been a great deal of buzz about taking steps to keep our brains young and alert. Indeed, it may behoove us to pay attention: There are things most people can do to help keep their brains healthy, says Dr. Majid Fotuhi, director for the Center of Memory and Brain Health at the LifeBridge Health Brain & Spine Institute. Fotuhi also is the author of The Memory Cure: How to Protect Your Brain Against Memory Loss and Alzheimer's. Are there really things that we all can do to try to keep our brains young?

Vicki and Tom Goodman were thinking ahead when they decided to remodel their Catonsville cottage. They knew their 11-year-old son, Riley, would need more space and privacy as he entered his teen years, so just having two bedrooms on the upper level was not going to suffice. But they started thinking really long term after consulting with a contractor who also happened to be an "aging in place" specialist. Although they have no mobility issues now, they decided against their original idea of expanding the second floor and instead decided that remodeling the first floor would be wiser.

Richard Lunsford feels as if he's watching the economy fall apart, and along with it, his plans for retirement. The stock market is volatile. Inflation is rising. Health care is expensive. And housing sales are weak - a pointedly painful fact for Lunsford, 55, who runs a construction business from his Pasadena home. "Right now, there's hardly any work at all. No one's buying houses, no one's repairing houses, no one's building," he said. "I probably won't get to retire. I'm living on my savings right now."

We hear a lot lately about the retirement insecurity of American workers generally, but less about the fact that women are especially at risk. The demographics point to why we should care: By the time Americans reach age 85, nearly three-fourths (71 percent) are women. This segment of the population is expected to double, and possibly triple, over the next three decades. The result: Women will need more services from communities that are already overburdened and the target of cutbacks. Why?

At the height of the 1999 stock market frenzy, when betting on initial offerings of Internet companies with no profits seemed a sure thing, plenty of people still put their money on another roll of the dice. A survey by the Consumer Federation of America found that 27 percent of respondents said their best chance of accumulating a half-million dollars or more during their lifetimes was a lottery or sweepstakes win. Fast forward to 2005, when market expectations are far humbler. The worldwide gaming industry has soared: Two-thirds of adult Americans in a Gallup poll this year said they had gambled in the previous 12 months, and U.S. lottery players spent $49 billion in 2004.

For just a moment, forget about the graying of the population, the demographers and their dire predictions, the faceless abstraction of statistics.Forget about the stereotypes of doting grandmothers, of seniors whiling away the hours behind bingo cards, of aging globe-trotters satisfying their pent-up wanderlust while disposing of a small part of their considerable life's savings.For just a moment, look into the faces of despair and listen to the voices of the forgotten, the desperate elderly people most never see or hear.

Medical marijuana TECHNICALLY speaking, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court was correct: Just because a handful of state legislatures doesn't like a federal law doesn't mean that the law can simply be ignored. So, it's up to Congress to clear up the confusion that exists for most of us laymen despite the high court's unanimous ruling on Monday. Federal prosecution remains a possibility for those who humanely continue to help cancer and AIDS patients obtain marijuana, right? Creating a "medical necessity" exception that would allow for the very limited distribution of marijuana would be the sensitive and sensible thing for Congress to do. It should act with dispatch.

They frequent Pimlico Race Course several times a week, eager to see how much daily excitement a group of weathered, white-haired men can fit into their twilight. They call themselves the Backstretch Boys, an informal clique of mostly seventy- and eightysomethings who took to horse racing at Pimlico as youngsters and now carry around its memories like a pocket of rare coins. Want to know about Pimlico during heydays past? Visit nearby Miller's delicatessen in Pikesville each morning before racing begins and listen as the Backstretch Boys settle in, as much a part of the fixtures as the metallic gray booths, framed Hollywood portraits and scents of something good sizzling from behind the counter.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying. - Woody Allen Over the next 25 years, the number of Americans over 65 is expected to explode, growing from just over 35 million to nearly 80 million, as a tidal wave of baby boomers moves into senior status. The health of those added seniors has enormous potential social and economic consequences, and the outlook isn't good. It isn't that we aren't living longer - at age 65, we can expect to live another 20 years, according to the latest projections from the National Center for Health Statistics.