On Wednesday, I attended my last learning-in-retirement class of the semester.  It was virtual and worked surprisingly well, even when in one session, the study group leader’s internet connection went down.  We just carried on without him for the five minutes or so it took to sort it all out.

In that class, we read five books by Philip Roth, all with subjects relevant to aging. Our discussions were lively and smart, and despite the dreary subject matter, we had our share of laughs.  The author of a forthcoming biography of Roth joined us for one delightful session. 

My other class was about demography.  Our text was The Human Tide. In addition, we looked at lots of United Nations graphs and statistics.  We pondered the future, noting that things like pandemics and global warming will have to be taken into consideration. But in general, it seems that in spite of all of the uncertainties, one can predict quite a bit about what our future world population will look like.

Once again, I was reminded that despite of how long I’ve been around, there’s still plenty for me to learn.