Besting 100 isn't what it used to be

So, a woman walks into the 21st century ... No, that's not quite right.

How about: And she said, "Let them eat cake -- quickly." No, that doesn't work either.

Forgive me, but I'm trying to figure out something: How do I rationalize writing a story about Harriet Davis? She turned 107 on Monday, surrounded by family and friends. Still, I cringed when her son-in-law called to invite me to the birthday party at her assisted living facility in south Minneapolis. I wanted to say: "107! I'll be there, and I'll bring a band!"

What I said was, "Thank you so much for calling. I'll be in touch."

Here's the problem, which isn't necessarily a problem when you think about it. Turning 100 is no longer newsworthy. Even turning 107 doesn't guarantee newsprint real estate anymore. My esteemed colleague, Warren Wolfe, who has covered issues of aging for decades, said that his newsworthy bar has risen to 110.

This means we answer our phones with trepidation (since the only people who call us anymore are either celebrating 100th birthdays or are their 75-year-old children. Everybody else uses e-mail.)

Our objective is to be polite and appropriately impressed. Then we have to figure out how to get them off the phone without promising anything.

Giberman's recent picks: a 107-year-old still working in an interior design firm, and a 108-year-old teaching Bible classes in her home.

Everywhere you look, people twice your age are moving twice as fast. At the recent World Masters Games in Sydney, 100-year-old Ruth Frith of Australia took the gold in the shot put. So what if she was the only female competitor?

Frith's secret to a long life, aside from avoiding being on the receiving end of those heavy metal balls? Vegetables. Never touches them.

"I know people that like diets that will scream at me," said Frith, in an interview in the newspaper, the Australian. "Don't eat vegetables. I never have."

Frith soon will have company. The world's population of centenarians is projected to reach nearly 6 million by mid-century. The United States has the greatest number in the world, more than 96,000. The Social Security Administration recently extended life expectancy tables to 119.

But I'm hoping we can table that essential conversation for now. I'd like to tell you about a birthday party I attended Monday.

Harriet Davis was wearing an eggplant-colored velour jumpsuit and bling on her ears. She kept her multi-colored purse in her lap and enjoyed her chocolate birthday cake very much. Born Nov. 16, 1902, in Halstad, Minn., the oldest of seven siblings, Davis was not an interior designer, although she was a fine seamstress, and she never lifted a shot put. But she had strength to work as a surgical nurse and to raise two daughters on her own after booting out her alcoholic husband in an era when nobody but nobody was a divorcée. And she had strength to bury both of those daughters and still manage to keep on living.

She has strength, still, to tell everybody what she's thinking. And what she's thinking, since moving last spring into assisted living after 30 years on her own, is that not being able to have a crockpot or coffeemaker in her room is just silly. "They don't let me do anything," Davis told her granddaughter Lisa Ostendorf.

But Davis didn't want to talk about herself. She wanted her friend, Janice, to stand up and be celebrated. Janice, a mere 68, has been fighting cancer for nearly five years and is doing well. Janice should enjoy the cake next year because Davis said she doesn't expect to be around.

Don't bet on it. I'm guessing we'll be back when she reaches the bar in three years. Still, I'm glad we stopped by for a warm-up visit.