Raging Against Insipid Present

Thanks for T. Jefferson Parker’s lovely piece of writing (“Gaining Perspective: Looking Into the Future With an Eye on the Past,” Jan. 6). I am also peeking reluctantly from between my fingers at a 40th birthday due to arrive in a few weeks.

Although my youth was spent in Sierra Madre, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, Parker’s lament of the lost glories of O.C. goes double for me--I knew and loved both places as they were.

I think that it’s OK to go out kicking and screaming. Not at aging, but at what we now settle for. The last line of Parker’s column is slam-to-the-diaphragm accurate.

The consolation is that remembering the past won’t age us if raging against the insipid present keeps us young.

I enjoy your columns, both light and dark.

ELLEN BOSTELMAN

Huntington Beach