Heading east along the I-81, I catch fleeting glimpses of familiar country music scenes: countless fluttering Stars and Stripes flags, pick-up trucks outside shabby roadhouses.

BBC: America��s country music heartland

Mr. DON CHEADLE (Actor): You are what you have to defend, because it doesn't matter that I'm 19 percent European, 81 percent African.

NPR: Scholar Helps Black Americans Trace Family Roots

"I have no earthly knowledge of it, " said the 81-year-old, listed as chairman emeritus and a director for Stanford Financial Group.

BBC: Agents find billionaire Stanford

One conversation I particularly enjoyed was with one of India's greatest historians, 81-year-old Romila Thapar.

BBC: Romila Thapar

And so I'm predicting that China's going to move from 63 to 81 total medals.

NPR: Using Economics To Predict Olympic Medal Standings

"I foresee several hurdles along the way, " Khin Maung Lay, the 81-year-old editor of Golden Fresh Land, told the Associated Press.

BBC: Burma sees return of private newspapers

Above all whether you are a fan of monarchy or not it would, I suggest, be perverse not to agree that it was a personal triumph for an 81-year-old monarch who first visited Washington soon after the Second World War, when Harry Truman was president.

BBC: The Queen and President George W Bush

"It's a great place to live, and I think there's probably no better place in the world to die, " says Joanne Karp, an 81-year-old resident who was supposed to be in her room recovering from eye surgery but instead was down the hall at the piano, accompanying three kids learning to play the recorder.

WSJ: For the aging, a commune-like alternative in NY