Evening star., 1953-03-08
Why Grow
Old?
By Josephine Lowmon

Some women make a crisis out
of every incident. You can spot
them by their nervous gestures,
their tenseness, and their keyed
up voices. They treat incidents
which should be trivia in a days
work as mountainous blows of
fate.
This has dramatic effect on
health and on appearance and
personality It also is one of the
quickest ways to lose friends be-
cause people tire of those who
are always fretfully in trouble.
Maybe some one spilled coffee on
the rug or the cleaning woman
did not show up. That is too
bad but it is not vital and not
worth the damage you do your
self with a hectic attitude.
Other women may be har-
asSed by a succession of such
happenings but survive them
with a that is that" attitude
or sense of humor.
These latter are serene, COM
petent, restful and fun to be
with. They will not allow lines
of tension in their faces and
feel that they cannot afford the
waste of energy which goes with
them.
Nadine Conner, soprano star
of the Metropolitan Opera Asso-
citation, is charming example
of this last type. She has a
top-fight career and a family
Ga husband and two children).
For six months each year she is
involved in endless rehearsals at
the Metropolitan, a big concert
tour all over the country and
many radio and TV appearances.
She handles the details of these
as though they were the simplest
things in the world and looks
like teen-ager at the beginning
of career rather than woman
who has had the problem of be-
ing an established star for
some years now.
How does she do this? She
has developed definite attitudes
and cutoffs which give her
young quality which is rather
unusual in those who have at
tained top stardom in a highly
competitive field.
Nadine herself says, There's
no sense worrying about how a
thing will come out once you're
in the middle of it. The time for
worry is before you have become
involved in it. After that you
have to assume that it will come
out all right and do your part to
see that it does. In that respect
I am like the queen in Alice in
Wonderland who cried before
the pin stuck her"
Miss Conner did not come by
this philosophy easily. She
learned it the hard way. When
she first married she retired from
the world of music. Soon she
found herself caught up in the
minor problems of running a
household and in the habit of
magnifying small mishaps. She
says, "One evening I found my
self too exhausted to 60 to a
parry we had been invited to and
looking too tired to want to go.
I'd been able to go to college.
sing on a radio program, and go
to a dance, all in one day, with
out feeling such fatigue only a
short time before. I sat down
and asked myself, How Gomez
Il realized that I had been
considering myself frustrated or
thwarted for the mildest reasons
and that it must have been
using up a lot of energy. I de-
cided to stop this leak in my
energy"
Just to show you to what an
extent Nadine has conquered
the worry habit, a short time ago
she gave a concert at Montclair,
N. j. At the beginning of
the program something went
wrong and the lights failed. Miss
Conner sang the entire program
holding a f1ashlight in her hand
and without an intermiss;on be-
cause she did not want her audi
ence to have to wait in darkness
for her to rest.