Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Inspirational Oldie of the Week: Olive Riley

Grammyism: "I don't know how to work this thing!" (Referring to her phone)

(20 October 1899- 12 July 2008) 


Olive Riley created a blog called The Life of Riley in February of 2007 at the age of 107 years old. Olive, who called blogging "blobbing" was inspired to make her blog by a documentary film maker, Mark Rubbo who named his documentary All About Olive. The documentary was based on the lives of people who have lived to be 100 years old or older. 

Although olive did not make fame within the press world, she sure did inspire and gain adoration from the blogging world. 

Mark Rubbo announced her death through a blog post on Olive's blog:

It’s funny to say this, but doing the blog with her, doing all the typing, the photographs, the movies, has been a big part of my life this last year, something that many friends couldn’t quite understand.
“Why all this effort for an old lady? they’d ask, “Are you in a hurry to age yourself?” (Me being 70 this year)
Quite the contrary. Olive Riley’s been keeping me young... if a woman who left school in 1914 can embrace the internet in her 106th year, what is there you can’t do, friend?
I was gob smacked by this dame with a memory like a hard drive. At 104, Olive was able to remember conversations she’d had in 1908 and bring them to life. Amazing!
I knew I’d not only found my film star, but I that I’d been given a reprieve from worries {about my own death}.
Post Olive, there’d be no sense of having an age limit, no downward slope for me!
 




The moral of Olive's story is that we don't have to let youth escape us no matter our age! As long as we open ourselves to the wonders of generations, our hearts can be young forever. 







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