The volunteers of the Springs Library, Meals on Wheels, the food pantry, and other agencies are some of the many faces of dedication to community, speaking to a kind of altruistic giving that Dr. Stephen Post, director of Stony Brook Medicine's Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, says is the mark of someone who stands to a live a longer, more fulfilling, and happier life. "There's an endless list of benefits that are well studied," Dr. Post told The Star.

In simpler times, the most prevalent scam to be on the lookout for was the so-called "Nigerian Prince" email scam, in which a fraudster would send out an email that persuaded a potential "mark" — often an older adult — to wire them some money in order to trigger the release of a bigger pot of money that was coming the victim's way. More recently, scammers have gotten menacingly creative and even use technology to take advantage of victims.

At 88, I've been granted tenure in an institution called "old age," a.k.a. "senior citizenship." It resembles a lifetime appointment in a university, where tenure is granted because of your books, articles, the quality of your teaching. But in tenure due to elderliness, the entrance requirements are entropy, chronological time, the density of your complaints, and your bone density. Aging into senior citizenship transforms your transient maladies into thermodynamic decay.