About Me

My name is Madeleine Kolb, and I’m writing this blog because as I’ve grown older, I can’t help but notice that a lot of the grim and depressing things we all hear about aging don’t seem to be true. The stereotypes just don’t fit me or most of the people I know.

As Mark Twain said,

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble.  It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

And much (or maybe most) of what we know for sure about life in our 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond just ain’t so.

So I started reading everything I could about some of the things that matter most as we move from youth to middle-age to old age. Things such as good health, nurturing relationships, and work that we care about. I gave speeches about my own experiences, and I became a human guinea pig, testing for myself  whether it’s really true that you can’t teach an old dog (or an old person) new tricks. So far, it doesn’t seem to be true.

In my younger days, I earned degrees in zoology and genetics at the University of Washington in Seattle. After that I moved to Boston where I worked for over 20 years in the environmental field in both the public and the private sectors. Then it was back to Seattle where I got a Certificate in Technical Writing from the UW and a job as a technical writer in a federal agency.

Recently, I moved across the country again, this time to the Pax River area in southern Maryland with my BF. I have a passion for cooking healthy food, exercise, reading, birdwatching, and writing.  Ten years ago, I joined Toastmasters and learned to love public speaking. Currently, I’m an Advanced Toastmaster Gold.

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