Day of the Thigh Whip, 18th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Electra):  Out with the old and in with the new. I'm old, but even I recognize that it's time for fresh new voices and new solutions to our problems.

Nancy Pelosi announced today that she is retiring after 39 years in Congress.  Chuck Schumer has been in the Senate since the Clinton presidency. The Stable Genius is 79 years old and last year beat an incumbent who was 81. There's an argument to be made that we're in the mess we are now because Biden didn't recognize the limitations of his age and was oblivious to how he appeared to others.

On the other hand, Jasmine Crockett is 44 and Jon Ossoff is 38. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is 36. Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City this week at the age of 34. Sam Foster, a 24-year-old IT systems engineer, lost the mayoral election in Marietta, Georgia to a 78-year-old incumbent by fewer votes than there are letters in this sentence. Susan Collins has been Maine's Senator since 1997, but is being challenged by 41-year-old candidate Graham Platner. 

I'll take some of that Crockett-Ossoff-AOC-Platner energy over the same old Pelosi-Schumer rhetoric any day of the week. Politically I don't have major problems with either Pelosi or Schumer. Thank you for your service, madam and sir, but it's time to step aside and give some oxygen to the next generation.

There's a lot to be done to change America for the better. We have to fight for our freedoms, for the environment and the climate, for justice and equality. This fight will take more leadership and energy than old mee-maw and paw-paw have to offer. 

The woman ahead of me in line at my polling place who was concerned about "whatever will happen to New York City?" had to have been in her 60s. I don't know the age of the homeowner association person who emailed me a warning about "radicals" running for the Atlanta City Council, but she's lived in the house she's in now since 1994 and has an aol.com email address. Old people are frightened by change while the young embrace it, and we need change right about now.

When I was in my teens, a popular slogan at the time was "Don't trust anyone over 30." It was people over 30 who started the Vietnam War, created the war on drugs, and were pro-censorship and anti-sex. But then we all turned older and the Yippies became yuppies and the slogan was abandoned. But it's been scientifically proven that the adult mind loses a few thousandths of a second reaction speed each year and that by the age of 40 our brains have begun to deteriorate. However, the process actually begins as early as 30, when brain maturation is fully complete and it's harder to create new neural pathways.