Your profile is closed to all except your two well-known lonely "friends", so before you entice people into your new website, I suggest you make yourself more approachable.

Yikes! I'll fix that. Is my sketchy face red!

Fixed. Ahem. Like it never happened. Sorry, fokes. Thanks, Britscot.

I read through your on-line mag. It has some good information and it is well written.

Where you need help is in layout. You need a front page that is headlines and blurbs leading to separate articles that can be downloaded or printed.

You have a variety of tried and true subjects which many people seem to be attracted to as they move into the second half of life. You have chosen, so far, the bland road. Money and how to grow, stow and spend it seems a natural focus but hell, if that were all there were to life, I would take all my money out of banks, CDs, properties and whatever else I have it in, convert it all to pennies and spend my days like Scrooge McDuck diving into it as if it were a swimming pool.

Tell me something all the others aren't telling me. Talk about how nostalgia ain't what it used to be. Show me pictures that are from my remembered past but I haven't seen in half a century. Tell me something that will make me feel young, not something that confirms the belief of the world that all the old farts do is sit around talking about their money, their vacations, their health and their gardens. I can read that crap in AARP. Finally, I'd like someone to be honest about old age: It sucks! Like my Mom used to say, it takes a hero to be abn old person. She was right and the only way I could find that out was to get older. I'm your age less a few insignificant months.

Everybody takes the scary road through the woods: Do you have enough money? Is your money safe? Will you ber able to afford to rot in luxury when your body ceases to function independently? The bleeping truth of the matter is: Those who know what they are doing have it down pat when they are 40. Those who don't are going to read all the articles in the world, go to all the advisers and get fleeced and die not knowing what they are doing. Health? If you have it wonderful; you already know how to preserve it - inherit good genes. If you don't have it, you need to know more about the mental challenges of living with diminishing capacities than remedies or doctor's stats. Nothing remedies worn out parts no matter how many meadows they shoot with happy white-haired white people tottering around. Like movies, ads are not the real world where 24 hours can be a moment or a hell of a lot of time according how you are positioned in it.

You want to do something really useful? Don't imitate the 345,986 other publications covering the same topic. Find a new road in. Write both for the run of the mill reasonable prudent person and people who don't need a guide dog to lead them through the forest of maturity as well as the eternally clueless who have nothing better to do so they read anything you put in front of them.

Lif is complex. You can choose what level you want to shoot for. Give me a person still chasing a dream rather than a hundred sitting on a park bench talking about their debentures ... or dentures!

Just one man's opinion but since that one man is me, I'll stand behind it. I make this offer to anyone who wants to try life my way: If after thirty days, you don't like it, bring it back and I will refund all your misery.

Lollipops and unicorns.

Terrific stuff, Milt. Want to write for me? I pay.

I'd be happy to explore that possibility. I got your other note and will respond off site to your comments.

Once I started a short story with this line: "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." I often couch philosophy in fiction because reading about a character is easier to swallow than intimating that aging is no kind of real fun.

Even getting out of bed can be a chore when you get to a certain age. I'm lucky. I haven't yet reached that age but it could happen any day now. I checked my warrantee. It ran out in 1956.

My advice to old people: Buy a little mirror. Keep it on the table next to your bed. If you don't have a table next to your bed, what the hell did you work all those years for? Anyway, when you awake in the morning - not when you have a potty call in the middle of the night - place the mirror under your nose. If it fogs up, get out of bed. You have been given at least a part of another day to get into mischief. Remember, it may be your last opportunity so don't procrastinate. Procrastination is for people who are still sufficiently optimistic to buy five year calendars and green bananas.

I love to joke about that which I cannot control.

Lollipops and unicorns

Well Dave, its hard to tell what your website is like. As near as I can tell you have two big parallel columns running into infinity.

I'm working on a couple of websites right now (not posted yet) and I have one tenth the information you have and 10 times the choices of what to read you do already.

Point is I read a few lines hear and there and said "there is no way I am going to go through all of this to see if there is anything worth reading.

You really need to redesign your site for openers is my opinion. You get something where I can see what my choices are, let me know, I'll give you an opinion on content.

Jerr