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With age can come wisdom, which is more than beauty, a fast tongue, knowledge, or experience. It is something more than such pieces or their sum. Who has not realized that they will never be the smartest or best looking among their peers, but would gladly settle for being the more thoughtful and wisely comported? When I hear Mr Biden speak, fumble with some words, and speak off-handed, I hear the traces of his lifetime of experiences and mistakes addressed and learned from; considered thoughts absent smoothness of the naively certain.

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Thank you, Fred, for saying all these things, which I wanted to. But Biden inspired me to want to write a panegyric not only for him but to sing the virtues and advantages of age and experience -- all experience, errors, even disgrace, can become compost for fruitful growth.

And once again to plug my strong feeling that there's a crying need for alliances between young and old.

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Do write on, Peter. Last paragraph might be your beginning.

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Thank you, Fred.

At this moment, we all need every possible encouragement, especially the young, especially the children.

If we'd all thought first, not of ourselves but of the children, with the love and care they need and deserve, we'd never have come down to this hard place.

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