I was thinking about Christmas the other day. It’s the season, of course, but that’s not the reason. What started me off was the reporter who threw his shoes at George W. It made me think of the stories about bad little boys who got lumps of coal rather than toys in their stockings. Most of us at this point might consider throwing other things at him—like dead polar bears, shopping carts used by the homeless, cheating financial advisors (who probably ought to dropped onto him from, say, the top of the Empire State Building), and strips of mildewed and rat-chewed wall from the veteran’s hospitals. Most of us, also, might take more care with our aim. But I digress. As I said, I was thinking of Christmas.
It occurred to me that Christmas has changed a great deal over the years—over my years anyway, and I’m not sure that it’s been all for the best. Everyone says this and affects the proper degree of exasperation while rushing out to buy the stores out of anything remotely Christmassy. I, on the other hand, have retreated into a kind of cave from which I blink like a mole in daylight at the goings-on around me.
It wasn’t always this way.
My earliest memories of the season are actually among my happiest. There was just my mother and I and money was tight. I got one present. I knew what it was but that never stopped the anticipation. We always went up to London by train to see Father Christmas at Harrods or Marks and Spencer and the Regent Street lights, then we caught the train home. It was a splurge for us, always appreciated, and always cherished. Mum made a Christmas cake for us, a heavy dark fruit cake with marzipan and royal icing. She’d generally work an additional shift relieving other nursing staff so she could make a bit of extra money. I’d go along with her. Once I remember a slightly drunk doctor kissing all the nurses. I got kissed too. The first time anyone had ever kissed me on the lips.
When I married and had a family, I tried to duplicate some of the joy of my youth (sans inebriated doctors) for my son. The problem, however, was that my husband had family. My youthful enthusiasm for Christmas yielded to the expectations that came with the season. These became burdens as the volatile Italian family I had married into celebrated Christmas with fewer or more people, depending on who was talking to whom at the time. My sister-in-law held the record for non-arrival. When she actually appeared, it was like the second coming and the topic of conversation for months. We all endured and went back for more because it was Christmas, right?
Christmas took a sharp turn to the dark side when my husband died on December 16, 1997. I don’t know why I felt I had to proceed as if he was still with us. I think I was numb. It seemed pressingly important for me to have “a Christmas.” I think my mistake was forgetting that Christmas is not a stand-alone event. I should have understood that none of us had even begun the grieving process—least of all me—and that probably none of us was ready. My son and his wife and the children came to my house and proceeded to get into a disagreement. I sat watching things escalate until they packed up the kids and went home without even having dinner. I didn’t want to be alone, so I threw the uneaten dinner into the fridge and went out looking for some place to be. Nothing was open except a sports café with a small, tilted plastic Christmas tree on the bar. The place had a handful of regulars and I got the feeling they too had nowhere to go. I had a glass of white wine and a bucket of chicken wings and listened to canned Western music. I remember particularly the song, “All my exes live in Texas.” Then I went to see Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. I’ll always be grateful the movie house was open.
Since then, I don’t do much for Christmas. It seems pointless with my family thousands of miles away. On the other hand, I enjoy the opportunity to be in touch with friends who are spread across the country. Fortunately, the tradition of writing newsy accounts of the year is alive and well; otherwise, I might never hear of the good things that have happened. I also use the time to reflect and count my blessings for my relationship with Sid, for the health of the people I love, and the fact that I have a home and enough to eat. During this season, I share what I can with the charities serving the poor. Other than this, I retreat to my cave and remember how things used to be.
That’s why I find the case of the thrown shoes so interesting. The reporter must have reflected on what he owed our peerless leader at this holy season and felt that the great decider deserved only footwear, surely the presidential equivalent of a lump of coal. What a comment this is. The reporter will undoubtedly apologize. He will have to: punishment in that part of the world is swift and unpleasant. But I, for one, will long remember the image of the president ducking shoes; my bet is that it will appear in myriad history books in the future. Too bad it wasn’t a lump of coal given the mining he wanted in our shrinking wilderness, but—what the heck?—shoes are better than nothing.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
They
Now that Sarah has gone back to Alaska and back to making moose-meat chili, I’ve found time has lost some of its meaning. The election seems years ago and it's a shock to realize that George W. is still in possession of the White House. I feel only irritation over the mess the country’s been led into and somewhat hopeful that something can be done about it—but neither of them passionately enough for me to want to write about (just yet).
Clearly I need to move on and think about something else. So rather like the sherbert they serve between courses to clear the palate, I want to write about something from my childhood that set me on whatever crooked path my life has taken. I’ve shared this with only a few people because I don’t much like having to defend myself. It happened. I didn’t make it up. The memory has lasted a lifetime and forever changed the way I understand the world. But it’s one of those things when it happens to you, the memory is indelible. When it happens to someone else, people want to explain it away—that is, unless they already “know.” Things like what happened to me tend to upset the applecart of things that people have primary certitude about. If you are passionately fond of a particular variety of apple—you may want to skip this blog. If, on the other hand, you have curiosity and a sense of wonder about apples and trees and the universe--by all means read on.
It is about what I call “they.”
I was ten. I checked on my school records to be sure. The younger I was, the more enchanting it seems to me now. I was attending the Brighton and Hove High School, except it really wasn’t high school in the American sense. My mother was doing private nursing for a very rich old man who lived in the penthouse of an exclusive block of flats just down the hill from my school. Since Mum got on very well with the young wife and was always open to a bit of extra money to help with my school bills, she agreed to do a double—24 hours on, which required her to live in. I came along for the ride.
We settled in nicely and I rode my bike up the hill every day to school. The old man was in and out of it but I didn’t see much of him after my mother took me in to introduce this strange little urchin who was to share his flat, sleeping in the room directly across the hall from his. I think he noticed me. Mum sort of stage managed it. She introduced me and then whisked me out. Mum had seen that I’d been around death—even putting pennies on my grandmother’s dead eyes to set the lids down—because she never wanted me to be afraid of it. So from the brief experience of sort-of meeting him, I could tell from the slightly sweet smell of death that he was not too long for the world.
One night after about a week, I was awakened by noises that seemed to be coming from upstairs. It didn’t occur to me that this was a penthouse so there couldn’t be any upstairs, but no matter, to my childish mind that’s where the sounds came from. There were footsteps and doors opening and shutting, all distinct and noisy enough to have woken me up. I was annoyed. It sounded like a party and it was far too late—didn’t they know I had school the next day?
I opened my door to cross the hallway, which to my surprise was silent. I had expected the noises to intensify. I remember feeling perplexed as I crossed the hall to open the door to the old man’s room. I saw my mother get up quickly from her chair. She looked concerned and I got the sense I shouldn’t have bothered her. I whispered in my high-pitched little English voice, “Mummy, those people upstairs are making a terrible racket.” She didn’t seem angry after all but put her arm around me and guided me quickly back to my bedroom. “Lock the door, darling,” she told me, “and go back to sleep.” I heard no more noises until she knocked on the door next morning to wake me for school.
I learned then the old man had died in the night. No one explained anything and that might have been the end of the story except for some reason the memories refused to die. Years later I asked my mother why she had told me to lock the door.
By then, I guess, I was old enough to be admitted into the circle. It seemed I was not the only one hearing them. But the old man was not only hearing them, he was seeing them. Mum said that the footsteps came to the door and even though he was in deep coma and giving the death rattle, he spoke to whoever had come. He saw his parents. He saw his brother. He saw his dog, and my mother heard the sound of claws on a wood floor. She said she couldn’t be frightened because there was so much joy in his voice as he spoke to them. Well—maybe she hadn’t been frightened until I opened the door: God knows what she must have thought as she watched it open. The sounds ended, she said, the moment he died.
But the story doesn’t end there. It wasn’t just my mother and I. The young wife, who had not been the most faithful of brides, heard them and locked herself in her room with a bottle of whiskey, saying they were going to get her too.
Three of us heard them, one of us a child. The old man saw them, even calling his dog by name. They came for him. I cannot believe anything else.
Since then, I do not believe anyone who purports to tell me about death unless they have somehow looked into that place beyond life. All the fire and brimstone in the world cannot supplant for me being told of the joy of an old man who was seeing once more the things he had loved and believed he had lost.
For many, many years I did not speak of this. Those I told sometimes looked at me with sympathy and shook their heads. They offered all manner of explanations that best fitted with what they had been taught. From their doubting, I learned to be silent because it was easier.
Then one day, I went to the Spiritualist Society of Great Britain. I wanted to know—I had to know—were we all just delusional on the night that the old man died? No, I was told. When death is shared, as this old man shared his with us, there is always a reason. It was not my imagination, nor that of my mother and the young wife. What was unusual and very special was the fact that he shared it. There was a purpose--and in fact, I had betrayed it by letting fear prevent me from talking about it. Your purpose and your duty, the spiritualist minister told me, is to talk about this without fear of consequence or reprisal. Whatever communication we are given from beyond--whether in dreams or imagination or in more conscious contact--is a gift to guide us to become whom we are meant be.
My mother said that in fifty years of nursing, she never before or after experienced anything comparable. Hospice nurses tell me that it happens from time to time and that the transition to the other side is always easier when it does. The nurses tell me it always a privilege to share it when it happens.
This blog is the first time I am openly acknowledging my experience as a child. I wish that everyone could have direct experience to dispell the doubts. It has given me the knowledge that guides my life. I know that “they” come for you because I have heard it. I know that what waits beyond is hopeful and joyful. I know that we each have a purpose and that sometimes it is difficult to find and sometimes scarey in the demands that it makes of us. I find the sense of a community around us, waiting to welcome us back—to be profoundly comforting.
I just hope by speaking out at last, I am finally worthy of that night when an old man shared with us one of the most private things we will ever experience.
Clearly I need to move on and think about something else. So rather like the sherbert they serve between courses to clear the palate, I want to write about something from my childhood that set me on whatever crooked path my life has taken. I’ve shared this with only a few people because I don’t much like having to defend myself. It happened. I didn’t make it up. The memory has lasted a lifetime and forever changed the way I understand the world. But it’s one of those things when it happens to you, the memory is indelible. When it happens to someone else, people want to explain it away—that is, unless they already “know.” Things like what happened to me tend to upset the applecart of things that people have primary certitude about. If you are passionately fond of a particular variety of apple—you may want to skip this blog. If, on the other hand, you have curiosity and a sense of wonder about apples and trees and the universe--by all means read on.
It is about what I call “they.”
I was ten. I checked on my school records to be sure. The younger I was, the more enchanting it seems to me now. I was attending the Brighton and Hove High School, except it really wasn’t high school in the American sense. My mother was doing private nursing for a very rich old man who lived in the penthouse of an exclusive block of flats just down the hill from my school. Since Mum got on very well with the young wife and was always open to a bit of extra money to help with my school bills, she agreed to do a double—24 hours on, which required her to live in. I came along for the ride.
We settled in nicely and I rode my bike up the hill every day to school. The old man was in and out of it but I didn’t see much of him after my mother took me in to introduce this strange little urchin who was to share his flat, sleeping in the room directly across the hall from his. I think he noticed me. Mum sort of stage managed it. She introduced me and then whisked me out. Mum had seen that I’d been around death—even putting pennies on my grandmother’s dead eyes to set the lids down—because she never wanted me to be afraid of it. So from the brief experience of sort-of meeting him, I could tell from the slightly sweet smell of death that he was not too long for the world.
One night after about a week, I was awakened by noises that seemed to be coming from upstairs. It didn’t occur to me that this was a penthouse so there couldn’t be any upstairs, but no matter, to my childish mind that’s where the sounds came from. There were footsteps and doors opening and shutting, all distinct and noisy enough to have woken me up. I was annoyed. It sounded like a party and it was far too late—didn’t they know I had school the next day?
I opened my door to cross the hallway, which to my surprise was silent. I had expected the noises to intensify. I remember feeling perplexed as I crossed the hall to open the door to the old man’s room. I saw my mother get up quickly from her chair. She looked concerned and I got the sense I shouldn’t have bothered her. I whispered in my high-pitched little English voice, “Mummy, those people upstairs are making a terrible racket.” She didn’t seem angry after all but put her arm around me and guided me quickly back to my bedroom. “Lock the door, darling,” she told me, “and go back to sleep.” I heard no more noises until she knocked on the door next morning to wake me for school.
I learned then the old man had died in the night. No one explained anything and that might have been the end of the story except for some reason the memories refused to die. Years later I asked my mother why she had told me to lock the door.
By then, I guess, I was old enough to be admitted into the circle. It seemed I was not the only one hearing them. But the old man was not only hearing them, he was seeing them. Mum said that the footsteps came to the door and even though he was in deep coma and giving the death rattle, he spoke to whoever had come. He saw his parents. He saw his brother. He saw his dog, and my mother heard the sound of claws on a wood floor. She said she couldn’t be frightened because there was so much joy in his voice as he spoke to them. Well—maybe she hadn’t been frightened until I opened the door: God knows what she must have thought as she watched it open. The sounds ended, she said, the moment he died.
But the story doesn’t end there. It wasn’t just my mother and I. The young wife, who had not been the most faithful of brides, heard them and locked herself in her room with a bottle of whiskey, saying they were going to get her too.
Three of us heard them, one of us a child. The old man saw them, even calling his dog by name. They came for him. I cannot believe anything else.
Since then, I do not believe anyone who purports to tell me about death unless they have somehow looked into that place beyond life. All the fire and brimstone in the world cannot supplant for me being told of the joy of an old man who was seeing once more the things he had loved and believed he had lost.
For many, many years I did not speak of this. Those I told sometimes looked at me with sympathy and shook their heads. They offered all manner of explanations that best fitted with what they had been taught. From their doubting, I learned to be silent because it was easier.
Then one day, I went to the Spiritualist Society of Great Britain. I wanted to know—I had to know—were we all just delusional on the night that the old man died? No, I was told. When death is shared, as this old man shared his with us, there is always a reason. It was not my imagination, nor that of my mother and the young wife. What was unusual and very special was the fact that he shared it. There was a purpose--and in fact, I had betrayed it by letting fear prevent me from talking about it. Your purpose and your duty, the spiritualist minister told me, is to talk about this without fear of consequence or reprisal. Whatever communication we are given from beyond--whether in dreams or imagination or in more conscious contact--is a gift to guide us to become whom we are meant be.
My mother said that in fifty years of nursing, she never before or after experienced anything comparable. Hospice nurses tell me that it happens from time to time and that the transition to the other side is always easier when it does. The nurses tell me it always a privilege to share it when it happens.
This blog is the first time I am openly acknowledging my experience as a child. I wish that everyone could have direct experience to dispell the doubts. It has given me the knowledge that guides my life. I know that “they” come for you because I have heard it. I know that what waits beyond is hopeful and joyful. I know that we each have a purpose and that sometimes it is difficult to find and sometimes scarey in the demands that it makes of us. I find the sense of a community around us, waiting to welcome us back—to be profoundly comforting.
I just hope by speaking out at last, I am finally worthy of that night when an old man shared with us one of the most private things we will ever experience.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Early December
Sid and I exchanged our presents early this year—it was hardly even December but this seemed to be an appropriate moment, perhaps because we needed to cheer one another up. There are simply times when it doesn’t seem good to be alive and with the economic meltdown and the violence in India, I’d say this is one of them.
I don’t want to over exaggerate the difficulties—after all, it’s hard to find people who lived in a time that wasn’t desperate. The various groups who spread across Europe—Celts, Gauls, Norse, Germanic, Romans among them—didn’t occupy the land without inflicting harm on the previous inhabitants. Even when the various tribes had settled into their areas, there were continuing disputes over boundaries, trade, religion, and power. Asia and the Steppes have had an unquiet history as have the various regions of Africa.
More recently, our parents and grandparents lived through two world wars, a major depression, a police action in Korea, whatever it was in Viet Nam, followed by two gulf wars, and this doesn’t even begin to include various hot spots. Fact is that the human species occupying the planet is as restless as the planet itself.
Even given all that, though, I find the current upheavals profoundly depressing. In WWII, at least, there was a relatively clear purpose and everyone was involved in one way or another, if only collecting scrap at home. Korea was further removed, but by the time of Viet Nam (when I first started teaching college English) things were murky indeed. Afghanistan seems more clear to me, but our decision to go into Iraq seems to have been based on whatever justification someone thought might work: Hey—if you don’t like the reason for this war, wait five minutes and I’ll come up with another one.
What sets this age apart, I think, is the understanding that much of it has descended into mindless and random violence. Consider the confusion about knowing who’s responsible for the explosions and rockets and bombs that fill our newspapers. Strange new hybrid groups spring up, detonate something (often themselves), and then disappear into the crowd. In Mumbai, the gunmen sought people with US and British passports (I would have been shot twice), but for what reason since most of the people they killed were Indian? It seems someone believes the greater the number of people killed, the more serious the purpose behind it, except that the purpose is sometimes not even clear either.
When I was in college some eons ago, I had an assigned reading on relativism. It disturbed me. It wasn’t that I minded different cultures and different beliefs (no—I don’t justify cannibalism just because it’s practiced in New Guinea--that, after all is not good manners to the person being subject to it). I objected to the lazy, intellectually bereft offshoot that claimed that something was right if it felt right at the time. I could accept different viewpoints as long as they were based on self-analysis and a modicum of respect and compassion. In today’s violence, I’m not seeing anything beyond the raw expression of passion and misogyny masquerading as purpose, perpetrated by a group of people who have raised personal vendetta to political philosophy. Don't they realize this is how Sicily managed to depopulate itself?
What scares the hell out of me, though, is not the violence, terrible as that is—but what will follow it. Even if all the perceived injustices in the world were to be removed: the kashmirs, the Palestinian state, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka among them—I am afraid that our species will just find other reasons to justify violence. Once this chain was begun, I truly see no end. I hope I am wrong, and I hope that someone will come forward with a magic way to end this cycle while we still have a planet left.
I don’t want to over exaggerate the difficulties—after all, it’s hard to find people who lived in a time that wasn’t desperate. The various groups who spread across Europe—Celts, Gauls, Norse, Germanic, Romans among them—didn’t occupy the land without inflicting harm on the previous inhabitants. Even when the various tribes had settled into their areas, there were continuing disputes over boundaries, trade, religion, and power. Asia and the Steppes have had an unquiet history as have the various regions of Africa.
More recently, our parents and grandparents lived through two world wars, a major depression, a police action in Korea, whatever it was in Viet Nam, followed by two gulf wars, and this doesn’t even begin to include various hot spots. Fact is that the human species occupying the planet is as restless as the planet itself.
Even given all that, though, I find the current upheavals profoundly depressing. In WWII, at least, there was a relatively clear purpose and everyone was involved in one way or another, if only collecting scrap at home. Korea was further removed, but by the time of Viet Nam (when I first started teaching college English) things were murky indeed. Afghanistan seems more clear to me, but our decision to go into Iraq seems to have been based on whatever justification someone thought might work: Hey—if you don’t like the reason for this war, wait five minutes and I’ll come up with another one.
What sets this age apart, I think, is the understanding that much of it has descended into mindless and random violence. Consider the confusion about knowing who’s responsible for the explosions and rockets and bombs that fill our newspapers. Strange new hybrid groups spring up, detonate something (often themselves), and then disappear into the crowd. In Mumbai, the gunmen sought people with US and British passports (I would have been shot twice), but for what reason since most of the people they killed were Indian? It seems someone believes the greater the number of people killed, the more serious the purpose behind it, except that the purpose is sometimes not even clear either.
When I was in college some eons ago, I had an assigned reading on relativism. It disturbed me. It wasn’t that I minded different cultures and different beliefs (no—I don’t justify cannibalism just because it’s practiced in New Guinea--that, after all is not good manners to the person being subject to it). I objected to the lazy, intellectually bereft offshoot that claimed that something was right if it felt right at the time. I could accept different viewpoints as long as they were based on self-analysis and a modicum of respect and compassion. In today’s violence, I’m not seeing anything beyond the raw expression of passion and misogyny masquerading as purpose, perpetrated by a group of people who have raised personal vendetta to political philosophy. Don't they realize this is how Sicily managed to depopulate itself?
What scares the hell out of me, though, is not the violence, terrible as that is—but what will follow it. Even if all the perceived injustices in the world were to be removed: the kashmirs, the Palestinian state, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka among them—I am afraid that our species will just find other reasons to justify violence. Once this chain was begun, I truly see no end. I hope I am wrong, and I hope that someone will come forward with a magic way to end this cycle while we still have a planet left.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Meltdowns and Indian Summer
The two may be related if one assumes that the economy market has had something to do with global warming: an overheated financial world of profit at any cost producing an overheated planet busily choking itself with careless consumption. Or at least until recently.
I find it ironic that once people start conserving and saving, we’re told that we can’t stop the financial bleeding unless we buy the latest gas-guzzler or LCD television because we need to create jobs. Huh? I’m curious where will these jobs be. In China? We don’t create anything much in this country anymore. Our manufacturers found it cheaper to get the stuff made abroad. Now they wonder why we don’t have the money to buy their products.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that not too long ago spending was supposed to be our road to prosperity: those who could (and some who couldn’t) were to spend themselves mad for the sake of the economy with no thought given to where the money was coming from, except for tapping the equity in our houses. Someone must have figured that all that capital tied up in our houses was just sitting there, not really making money except for the homeowner. How wasteful when a buck could be made. Bye bye equity.
Someone could go insane trying to figure out all the ironies and inconsistencies.
Now it is Detroit with its hand out. Sorry. I don’t feel very loyal or sympathetic. We had one of the lemons from the 1980s. Even with proper, recommended care, the US made car self-destructed at 82,000 miles. The Toyota Camry we got next chugged along uncomplaining to 208,000 miles. I can do the arithmetic. Not even patriotism or Consumer’s Reports will make me buy an American car again. Fool me one, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Besides, I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to being taken. I can’t help feeling that with further bailouts the people in power—the carpetbaggers—are taking one last dip into the national till before it snaps shut on their fingers.
But it’s not just the national players being ugly. I read in the paper today about homeowners “considering” whether to make their mortgage payments either because they owe more than the house is worth (right now) or because they think they can become eligible for a handout after ninety days of non-payment if the government relief program kicks in. Everyone wants something for nothing and as quickly as possible.
Why should I be surprised by this behavior? This is how the corporate world and the government has operated—my mother called it behaving as if there is no tomorrow.
AOL has a slide show right now on its homepage about nineteen big-time crooks (Kenneth Lay, Milliken et al) and where they are now (in jail for the most part). What an example they set.
There are times when I feel like the woolly mammoth revealed by unseasonable melting in the arctic. I’m frozen in a situation not of my making, but I’m going to be paying the price of the meltdown along with everyone else.
I find it ironic that once people start conserving and saving, we’re told that we can’t stop the financial bleeding unless we buy the latest gas-guzzler or LCD television because we need to create jobs. Huh? I’m curious where will these jobs be. In China? We don’t create anything much in this country anymore. Our manufacturers found it cheaper to get the stuff made abroad. Now they wonder why we don’t have the money to buy their products.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that not too long ago spending was supposed to be our road to prosperity: those who could (and some who couldn’t) were to spend themselves mad for the sake of the economy with no thought given to where the money was coming from, except for tapping the equity in our houses. Someone must have figured that all that capital tied up in our houses was just sitting there, not really making money except for the homeowner. How wasteful when a buck could be made. Bye bye equity.
Someone could go insane trying to figure out all the ironies and inconsistencies.
Now it is Detroit with its hand out. Sorry. I don’t feel very loyal or sympathetic. We had one of the lemons from the 1980s. Even with proper, recommended care, the US made car self-destructed at 82,000 miles. The Toyota Camry we got next chugged along uncomplaining to 208,000 miles. I can do the arithmetic. Not even patriotism or Consumer’s Reports will make me buy an American car again. Fool me one, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Besides, I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to being taken. I can’t help feeling that with further bailouts the people in power—the carpetbaggers—are taking one last dip into the national till before it snaps shut on their fingers.
But it’s not just the national players being ugly. I read in the paper today about homeowners “considering” whether to make their mortgage payments either because they owe more than the house is worth (right now) or because they think they can become eligible for a handout after ninety days of non-payment if the government relief program kicks in. Everyone wants something for nothing and as quickly as possible.
Why should I be surprised by this behavior? This is how the corporate world and the government has operated—my mother called it behaving as if there is no tomorrow.
AOL has a slide show right now on its homepage about nineteen big-time crooks (Kenneth Lay, Milliken et al) and where they are now (in jail for the most part). What an example they set.
There are times when I feel like the woolly mammoth revealed by unseasonable melting in the arctic. I’m frozen in a situation not of my making, but I’m going to be paying the price of the meltdown along with everyone else.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Silly Me
Silly me indeed! I thought that once the election was over that we’d have a patch of peace. Apparently not. If anything, the diatribes against Obama and the Democrats have notched up to a level of hatred that scares me. Obama has not yet been sworn in and not yet faced down the horrendous economic problems he has taken on, and yet we already have Republicans offering themselves as candidates for 2012. This doesn’t make me believe anything they have to say about bipartisanship.
I also don’t get it. What part of dumped are they struggling with? Eight million more people thought that Obama would provide better leadership than McCain. The whole country said much the same at the last election when Democrats gained control of Congress. Why didn’t the Republicans get it then? People were sick of them. The electorate spoke and the people elected whom they believed. Calling Obama a socialist and a communist only makes me, for one, wonder if these people have any idea what the words mean. We have come closest to a dictatorship with the current administration, yet these people feel morally outraged at having been voted out?
I’m reminded of a Durer print depicting an outraged artist showing his painting that has just been turned down for a major art show. He’s pointing to a very nondescript painting of a candlestick and saying “This the fools rejected.”
It would be funny if not so tragic watching the Republican leadership not learning from this election. “Reaganomics is still a good idea,” the head of the Colorado Republicans was quoted as saying. Well, not very much has trickled down anywhere. We have a class of obscenely rich people who aren’t trickling anything except into their bank accounts and dividends—unless of course buying $12 million houses in Aspen or Beaver Creek can be considered trickling.
What’s troubling me most, though, is not just the wrongheadedness of not hearing what should be obvious, but the actual refusal to accept the will of the people. Some of the vituperative commentaries being spat out at the public through media such as FOX could be seen as inciting violence. Do they really want to see race and class warfare in the streets?
At a time when we should be joining together in a coordinated effort to get this country back on its feet, we are instead hearing just more of the same “petty-mindedness” and “mean-spirited” attack (to quote a would be presidential candidate in 2012). Is this what passes for political dialogue in the red states?
Please. The election is over. The winners won. The losers lost. Let’s get on with doing the work that has to be done and support the man we have chosen to do it.
I also don’t get it. What part of dumped are they struggling with? Eight million more people thought that Obama would provide better leadership than McCain. The whole country said much the same at the last election when Democrats gained control of Congress. Why didn’t the Republicans get it then? People were sick of them. The electorate spoke and the people elected whom they believed. Calling Obama a socialist and a communist only makes me, for one, wonder if these people have any idea what the words mean. We have come closest to a dictatorship with the current administration, yet these people feel morally outraged at having been voted out?
I’m reminded of a Durer print depicting an outraged artist showing his painting that has just been turned down for a major art show. He’s pointing to a very nondescript painting of a candlestick and saying “This the fools rejected.”
It would be funny if not so tragic watching the Republican leadership not learning from this election. “Reaganomics is still a good idea,” the head of the Colorado Republicans was quoted as saying. Well, not very much has trickled down anywhere. We have a class of obscenely rich people who aren’t trickling anything except into their bank accounts and dividends—unless of course buying $12 million houses in Aspen or Beaver Creek can be considered trickling.
What’s troubling me most, though, is not just the wrongheadedness of not hearing what should be obvious, but the actual refusal to accept the will of the people. Some of the vituperative commentaries being spat out at the public through media such as FOX could be seen as inciting violence. Do they really want to see race and class warfare in the streets?
At a time when we should be joining together in a coordinated effort to get this country back on its feet, we are instead hearing just more of the same “petty-mindedness” and “mean-spirited” attack (to quote a would be presidential candidate in 2012). Is this what passes for political dialogue in the red states?
Please. The election is over. The winners won. The losers lost. Let’s get on with doing the work that has to be done and support the man we have chosen to do it.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
November 5
And now it starts—the taking back of America from what someone has called “the monster of the Republican Party.” Obama has won in a landslide. It was time.
The country that I took citizenship in is not a country of belligerent selfishness nor of hypocritical self-righteousness. The avenue that the country has traveled down in the last decade is not the America I knew—and for some time thought was gone. But it has survived and was just waiting to be reawakened.
Despite the thunderings of religious bigots who so often proved themselves to be the gays or adulturers that they denounced; despite the posturings of free-market zealots who had their hands in the national till all the while; despite the cynical manipulators of patriotism and national pride who sent us into a war that has claimed over 4000 of our young people and countless thousands of the people we were supposedly “saving”—despite all this, America has come back. We have elected someone who seems to have the steady hand and the composure to sort out the lies and tell us what we need to hear and not what America’s vanity might prefer.
In the weeks ahead, I hope that Obama brings us a message of sacrifice and working together. We need to hear it. I was touched by the poll that showed that a majority of people earning over $200,000 said they expected to pay more taxes and that it was all right. America has been good to them. It is fitting that they pay something back. For too long we have all been sipping from the public trough.
Obscene CEO compensation has been merely the tip of the ice berg. We’ve all had tax rebates. Defaulted credit spending has helped drain national capital. We have systematically dismantled our self-sufficiency by sending our manufacturing overseas. We were told to spend, spend, to keep the economy going. But, as my late husband used to say—it’s not possible to spend yourself rich.
Everyone was involved. Short-sighted local governments, dazzled by visions of increased income and an unwillingness to look for the long-term downsides, granted permits to developers to throw up more and yet more of development houses that borrowers could not afford and are now in foreclosure, leaving everyone else, including those who did not default on their mortgages, with devalued houses.
Everyone had a hand in this and everyone will suffer regardless of whether they were financially prudent. That’s not the American ideal—but it is the American reality.
It was one hell of a party with everyone coming dressed as some form of greed. Now it is morning and the room stinks of corruption and last night’s booze.
Anyone who thinks that this election was about abortion and “values” and supporting the military has watched too much FOX. It was about the economy and about the final waking up of the electorate to the fact that we’ve been had.
So, I say to Obama—put us on diet, make us be frugal, remind us about the lessons of prudence and cooperation, and try to get us beyond the easy self-serving answers that require no thought. We need to think more than ever.
Above all, though, I would say to him: I am delighted that your generation—the one we have stuck so cruelly with the bill for the party—has the chance to take the leadership away from the people who have messed up so royally. Go for it! But I also send you my most ferevent hope that you be safe from those who fear you and the change you must bring us.
The country that I took citizenship in is not a country of belligerent selfishness nor of hypocritical self-righteousness. The avenue that the country has traveled down in the last decade is not the America I knew—and for some time thought was gone. But it has survived and was just waiting to be reawakened.
Despite the thunderings of religious bigots who so often proved themselves to be the gays or adulturers that they denounced; despite the posturings of free-market zealots who had their hands in the national till all the while; despite the cynical manipulators of patriotism and national pride who sent us into a war that has claimed over 4000 of our young people and countless thousands of the people we were supposedly “saving”—despite all this, America has come back. We have elected someone who seems to have the steady hand and the composure to sort out the lies and tell us what we need to hear and not what America’s vanity might prefer.
In the weeks ahead, I hope that Obama brings us a message of sacrifice and working together. We need to hear it. I was touched by the poll that showed that a majority of people earning over $200,000 said they expected to pay more taxes and that it was all right. America has been good to them. It is fitting that they pay something back. For too long we have all been sipping from the public trough.
Obscene CEO compensation has been merely the tip of the ice berg. We’ve all had tax rebates. Defaulted credit spending has helped drain national capital. We have systematically dismantled our self-sufficiency by sending our manufacturing overseas. We were told to spend, spend, to keep the economy going. But, as my late husband used to say—it’s not possible to spend yourself rich.
Everyone was involved. Short-sighted local governments, dazzled by visions of increased income and an unwillingness to look for the long-term downsides, granted permits to developers to throw up more and yet more of development houses that borrowers could not afford and are now in foreclosure, leaving everyone else, including those who did not default on their mortgages, with devalued houses.
Everyone had a hand in this and everyone will suffer regardless of whether they were financially prudent. That’s not the American ideal—but it is the American reality.
It was one hell of a party with everyone coming dressed as some form of greed. Now it is morning and the room stinks of corruption and last night’s booze.
Anyone who thinks that this election was about abortion and “values” and supporting the military has watched too much FOX. It was about the economy and about the final waking up of the electorate to the fact that we’ve been had.
So, I say to Obama—put us on diet, make us be frugal, remind us about the lessons of prudence and cooperation, and try to get us beyond the easy self-serving answers that require no thought. We need to think more than ever.
Above all, though, I would say to him: I am delighted that your generation—the one we have stuck so cruelly with the bill for the party—has the chance to take the leadership away from the people who have messed up so royally. Go for it! But I also send you my most ferevent hope that you be safe from those who fear you and the change you must bring us.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
I Just Want it Over
Anyone else as sick of this election as I am? I can't even remember when this all started. I just remember an array of people in both parties putting each other down. Then the ridiculous sight of candidates behind a row of desks on stage trying to answer stupid questions intelligently (anyone else think of the Miss America pageant?). Then the barbs sent from one front runner to whoever appeared to be the competition. Now the last ditch efforts at name-calling and trying to dredge up scandal to convince the "undecided." Undecided?? Pullease--are these people just waking up from comas?
Come on. Enough already. Most of us have known for weeks if not months whom we're voting for. I want this thing over. I'm worn out with hanging up on recordings and muting the political ads. I've voted already. I just want some peace.
But even as I say that I realize that peace may be elusive. I read the other day that Ms. Palin is thinking about announcing her candidacy for the presidency in 2012should John McCain not make it. Does that strike fear into anyone else's heart besides mine? If she starts running the day after the election, we can look forward not only to an election season that never ends--bad enough--but to four more years of the wink and the smug anti-intellectualism.
The anti-intellectualism really troubles me because it seems to make a triumph of not thinking just at the time that we need to think harder than ever. The Puritans brought anti-intellectualism to American life. Thinking was counter to God, the pulpits thundered, and if you want to know the wages of thinking, just look at the lost Eden. It shows up now and then usually promoted by authoritarians, people who don't want others to think. Intellectuals are often the bad guys (for the religionists, it's the humanists)because they think, want proof, and aren't docile. They generally speak out when someone is just blowing smoke.
I'm an intellectual (if I don't sound too arrogant) and a pragmatist. I measure success by outcome and not by whether it makes me feel good that I am forcing someone else to conform to my personal set of beliefs.
I voted for Obama (early voting) because I want someone calm at the wheel and not the continuing bunch of carpetbaggers who have destroyed the economy. Sometimes I shake my head in disbelief as I listen to people. Can't they get beyond abortion and "palling with terrorists" to look with cool eyes on where this country is headed? Can't they get beyond emotion to see the policies that have led to the economic melt down? Can't they become informed partners in running the country and not rely on politicians who promise anything to get elected? This race shouldn't even be close.
When I taught writing to college freshmen, I used to warn them about "primary certitude." This is when you believe you have the absolute truth on something and refuse to listen to any other arguments. When you raise your voice and yell vehemently that you are right, you are generally falling into it.
There's been a whole lot of primary certitude--too much for my books--of it this election. I just want it over.
Come on. Enough already. Most of us have known for weeks if not months whom we're voting for. I want this thing over. I'm worn out with hanging up on recordings and muting the political ads. I've voted already. I just want some peace.
But even as I say that I realize that peace may be elusive. I read the other day that Ms. Palin is thinking about announcing her candidacy for the presidency in 2012should John McCain not make it. Does that strike fear into anyone else's heart besides mine? If she starts running the day after the election, we can look forward not only to an election season that never ends--bad enough--but to four more years of the wink and the smug anti-intellectualism.
The anti-intellectualism really troubles me because it seems to make a triumph of not thinking just at the time that we need to think harder than ever. The Puritans brought anti-intellectualism to American life. Thinking was counter to God, the pulpits thundered, and if you want to know the wages of thinking, just look at the lost Eden. It shows up now and then usually promoted by authoritarians, people who don't want others to think. Intellectuals are often the bad guys (for the religionists, it's the humanists)because they think, want proof, and aren't docile. They generally speak out when someone is just blowing smoke.
I'm an intellectual (if I don't sound too arrogant) and a pragmatist. I measure success by outcome and not by whether it makes me feel good that I am forcing someone else to conform to my personal set of beliefs.
I voted for Obama (early voting) because I want someone calm at the wheel and not the continuing bunch of carpetbaggers who have destroyed the economy. Sometimes I shake my head in disbelief as I listen to people. Can't they get beyond abortion and "palling with terrorists" to look with cool eyes on where this country is headed? Can't they get beyond emotion to see the policies that have led to the economic melt down? Can't they become informed partners in running the country and not rely on politicians who promise anything to get elected? This race shouldn't even be close.
When I taught writing to college freshmen, I used to warn them about "primary certitude." This is when you believe you have the absolute truth on something and refuse to listen to any other arguments. When you raise your voice and yell vehemently that you are right, you are generally falling into it.
There's been a whole lot of primary certitude--too much for my books--of it this election. I just want it over.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Insanity, Mendacity, and Incredulity
Sid and I were buying cat litter and other essentials in the usual elephantine quantities (50 lbs of litter) at Sam’s Club the other day when the young, female clerk remarked on my Obama button. She told me that she’d recently had to reassure her mother by correcting an e-mail claiming that Obama was a Muslim and that he wasn’t born in the US.
Well, I replied—I hope you told your mother only if you don’t count Hawaii as a state (since 1960 but it was a territory before that and so everyone was already a US citizen) and only if you stop having it both ways: if he’s not a Christian, why beat up on him for his decidedly Baptist Christian minister?
I had to shake my head. Anyone reasonable who researched the matter of Obama’s birth ought to know that while birth certificates are not public knowledge in Hawaii (thank God because of identify theft), the Honolulu Star-Bulletin publishes regular lists of births, deaths, and marriages in the newspaper. My marriage was listed. And so was Obama’s birth in 1961 just ten days after the fact. Enough, you would have thought. Apparently not. The persistence of these rumors and untruths leaves me wondering about the sanity, mendacity, or incredulity of the people who forward them.
Sam’s Club seems to be a cultural crossroads of some kind. George told me a good one last week about Colorado Springs. Those in the know realize that the Springs is the conservative core of Colorado. No one is as conservative or as sometimes whacky as the Springs can be. A judge had to tell them that an ordinance allowing landlords not to rent to gays because they are gays—was actually against the very Constitution they hold sacred. The Springs is the headquarters of Focus on the Family, which ought to be enough said. A recent drive through some very nice Springs neighborhoods shows a few defiant Obama-Biden yard signs sprinkled among those for McCain and Palin.
Back to George’s story: He heard from a friend that she went into Sam’s in the Springs wearing an Obama button. This is pretty gutsy, but no one said anything until a woman came up to her in a rage and demanded to know if she was really going to vote for a Black Man. George’s friend was deeply offended and told her she was stupid. Good for her. But that question was actually rather exceptional in its honesty and directness. Most other, more PC, people might have couched it as “liberal” or “socialist.” I guess PC in the Springs means Politically Caustic.
I’m bemused by why anyone supports John McCain and Sarah Palin. I respect Senator McCain and I would have preferred him to George Bush, but with the economy making death rattles and over 4,000 deaths in Iraq and the fact that the Republican Party has been the one calling the shots for the past eight years, I just don’t get it. I would have liked to see the current administration forced to defend itself. If that meant an impeachment, so be it, but Speaker Pelosi seems to have desired sainthood and took impeachment off the table. I felt frustrated when she did that. Clinton never cost 4,000 lives or ruined the economy, yet he was subject to it. Why ever not someone who clearly lied about taking us to war? Is this now acceptable behavior for US presidents? I hope the next Congress finds someone more in touch to be speaker.
I’ve already made my feelings on Ms. Palin clear. She’s on the take. I don’t blame her. Everyone else is and has been for eight years. But why ask me to continue the plunder? They were saying on E! (the entertainment channel) that she should be a talk show host. I think she’d be great at that. Her appearance and her spunkiness might give Oprah a run. But run the country? Please spare me.
Somehow or other, I and the country will get through the next ten days until the election. When it’s over, I want to go back to writing genial, funny blogs about human relations and growing older. Until then, I can only hold my breath and hope that no one fixes the elections this time.
Well, I replied—I hope you told your mother only if you don’t count Hawaii as a state (since 1960 but it was a territory before that and so everyone was already a US citizen) and only if you stop having it both ways: if he’s not a Christian, why beat up on him for his decidedly Baptist Christian minister?
I had to shake my head. Anyone reasonable who researched the matter of Obama’s birth ought to know that while birth certificates are not public knowledge in Hawaii (thank God because of identify theft), the Honolulu Star-Bulletin publishes regular lists of births, deaths, and marriages in the newspaper. My marriage was listed. And so was Obama’s birth in 1961 just ten days after the fact. Enough, you would have thought. Apparently not. The persistence of these rumors and untruths leaves me wondering about the sanity, mendacity, or incredulity of the people who forward them.
Sam’s Club seems to be a cultural crossroads of some kind. George told me a good one last week about Colorado Springs. Those in the know realize that the Springs is the conservative core of Colorado. No one is as conservative or as sometimes whacky as the Springs can be. A judge had to tell them that an ordinance allowing landlords not to rent to gays because they are gays—was actually against the very Constitution they hold sacred. The Springs is the headquarters of Focus on the Family, which ought to be enough said. A recent drive through some very nice Springs neighborhoods shows a few defiant Obama-Biden yard signs sprinkled among those for McCain and Palin.
Back to George’s story: He heard from a friend that she went into Sam’s in the Springs wearing an Obama button. This is pretty gutsy, but no one said anything until a woman came up to her in a rage and demanded to know if she was really going to vote for a Black Man. George’s friend was deeply offended and told her she was stupid. Good for her. But that question was actually rather exceptional in its honesty and directness. Most other, more PC, people might have couched it as “liberal” or “socialist.” I guess PC in the Springs means Politically Caustic.
I’m bemused by why anyone supports John McCain and Sarah Palin. I respect Senator McCain and I would have preferred him to George Bush, but with the economy making death rattles and over 4,000 deaths in Iraq and the fact that the Republican Party has been the one calling the shots for the past eight years, I just don’t get it. I would have liked to see the current administration forced to defend itself. If that meant an impeachment, so be it, but Speaker Pelosi seems to have desired sainthood and took impeachment off the table. I felt frustrated when she did that. Clinton never cost 4,000 lives or ruined the economy, yet he was subject to it. Why ever not someone who clearly lied about taking us to war? Is this now acceptable behavior for US presidents? I hope the next Congress finds someone more in touch to be speaker.
I’ve already made my feelings on Ms. Palin clear. She’s on the take. I don’t blame her. Everyone else is and has been for eight years. But why ask me to continue the plunder? They were saying on E! (the entertainment channel) that she should be a talk show host. I think she’d be great at that. Her appearance and her spunkiness might give Oprah a run. But run the country? Please spare me.
Somehow or other, I and the country will get through the next ten days until the election. When it’s over, I want to go back to writing genial, funny blogs about human relations and growing older. Until then, I can only hold my breath and hope that no one fixes the elections this time.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Honor
The other evening I watched John McCain take back the microphone from an elderly woman who had proclaimed Obama to be an Arab. McCain rebuked her ignorance and earned boos for calling for respect for his opponent. One has to assume that the woman came to the rally to be reassured that McCain shared her hatred of things different and foreign—one also has to assume that she was not the only one. McCain’s response was at least a step in the right direction toward being presidential, but it was also and only a fleeting glimpse of the decent man who once was.
I’d like to think that McCain had a shock of horror as he recognized his base in this woman. It must have been like seeing members of the Ku Klux Klan, Skin Heads, Neo-Nazis, and fascists sprinkled in the audience. Is this who he wanted to support him? How far he has fallen since giving in to the right wing of his party and since bringing on board a vice presidential candidate who has been told to raise the rabble. I shake my head as I watch the mayhem: how can we talk about extremism in the Middle East when we do such a good job of it here?
But it’s not just McCain—it’s the entire Republican Party that has become the home of the emotional, prejudiced, and unthoughtful, fanned on by those who fear a future where the leaders are not white and not evangelical Christian and by the self-interest of cynical political and corporate leaders who have between them brought this country almost to ruin and who fear a change in administrations because it will mean taxes and regulation.
Where is the honor of the Republican Party? Apparently it sold out to religious fanaticism and to economic greed.
How insignificant by comparison seems an undignified romp in a closet in the Oval Office. And where are the family values they hit Clinton with back then? We hear little about those anymore given Ms. Palin's own shotgun marriage and her daughter’s pregnancy. One can only imagine how this would have been used against Hillary Clinton. Things don’t have to be true anymore—only shouted loudly for the panic to begin.
One of the greatest ironies for me is listening to Alan Greenspan. He’s the one who, as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, opposed any regulation on Wall Street and who is now backpedaling fast. His explanation for the stock market decline is to shake his head like some sorrowing grandfather and say that deregulation would have worked if the banks had been honorable. Honorable? Where money’s concerned and obscene salaries and bonuses depend on profit with no questions asked? I want to scream back to him—who was it that destroyed that honor if not you?
Let’s be honest about this. Obama represents the future of this country. It is a minority future. It is not white and exclusively Christian. This scares the hell out of those who are. In my opinion they have to understand that they’ve had a good run, they courageously settled the country, and they’ve profited. Now they have to share. There were American Indians and Hispanics here long before the White settlers and there will be an increasingly mixed population in the next generations.
Change is never comfortable but neither is clinging to a past that no longer works. The honor I hope for in my president is not to hold rallies where people shout threats and scream insults but to provide the leadership to hold on to what is good from the past and also to turn to face America’s future with pride and hope. Most important to me, though, is to give that message to those who fear and to turn away from those who shout hate and ignorance.
May I indulge in one little nasty (I never said I was pefect)? My hope is that Ms. Palin goes back to Alaska after November and does not win re-election as governor.
I’d like to think that McCain had a shock of horror as he recognized his base in this woman. It must have been like seeing members of the Ku Klux Klan, Skin Heads, Neo-Nazis, and fascists sprinkled in the audience. Is this who he wanted to support him? How far he has fallen since giving in to the right wing of his party and since bringing on board a vice presidential candidate who has been told to raise the rabble. I shake my head as I watch the mayhem: how can we talk about extremism in the Middle East when we do such a good job of it here?
But it’s not just McCain—it’s the entire Republican Party that has become the home of the emotional, prejudiced, and unthoughtful, fanned on by those who fear a future where the leaders are not white and not evangelical Christian and by the self-interest of cynical political and corporate leaders who have between them brought this country almost to ruin and who fear a change in administrations because it will mean taxes and regulation.
Where is the honor of the Republican Party? Apparently it sold out to religious fanaticism and to economic greed.
How insignificant by comparison seems an undignified romp in a closet in the Oval Office. And where are the family values they hit Clinton with back then? We hear little about those anymore given Ms. Palin's own shotgun marriage and her daughter’s pregnancy. One can only imagine how this would have been used against Hillary Clinton. Things don’t have to be true anymore—only shouted loudly for the panic to begin.
One of the greatest ironies for me is listening to Alan Greenspan. He’s the one who, as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, opposed any regulation on Wall Street and who is now backpedaling fast. His explanation for the stock market decline is to shake his head like some sorrowing grandfather and say that deregulation would have worked if the banks had been honorable. Honorable? Where money’s concerned and obscene salaries and bonuses depend on profit with no questions asked? I want to scream back to him—who was it that destroyed that honor if not you?
Let’s be honest about this. Obama represents the future of this country. It is a minority future. It is not white and exclusively Christian. This scares the hell out of those who are. In my opinion they have to understand that they’ve had a good run, they courageously settled the country, and they’ve profited. Now they have to share. There were American Indians and Hispanics here long before the White settlers and there will be an increasingly mixed population in the next generations.
Change is never comfortable but neither is clinging to a past that no longer works. The honor I hope for in my president is not to hold rallies where people shout threats and scream insults but to provide the leadership to hold on to what is good from the past and also to turn to face America’s future with pride and hope. Most important to me, though, is to give that message to those who fear and to turn away from those who shout hate and ignorance.
May I indulge in one little nasty (I never said I was pefect)? My hope is that Ms. Palin goes back to Alaska after November and does not win re-election as governor.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Who Benefits?
Cassandra was a Trojan princess given the gift of foresight by Apollo who, since she rejected him, accompanied it with the curse of not being believed. I don’t claim Cassandra’s flawless pre-knowledge but at this point in my life and America’s history, I think I understand how she must have felt.
Let me picture her for a moment. She has offered the prophecy that Troy is going to fall to the besieging Greeks. She pleads with the Trojans to listen. They don’t of course—that’s her curse after all. Troy falls and she is doomed to live the rest of her short life as a Greek prisoner, trapped in the guilt that if perhaps if she had only been more persuasive, if she had only couched things in better terms, if she had only chosen different words, that perhaps she might have been heard and might have saved her city and family. Apollo indeed had his revenge.
We all live with what-ifs. When you’ve lived as long as I have and have been around power, as I was—on the sidelines admittedly but I could see there from where I was—most people develop a wise and seemly skepticism—or at least ought to.
One of the things you learn is that the ways things are spun are seldom the way they are. The wise person approaches every proposal with the question “Who benefits?” So often otherwise altruistic leaders succumb to the loudest voices among their constituents. Nothing then can get done unless somebody benefits and it is not always the people in whose name some contract or program is funded.
This principle applies as much to contracts to build schools and roads as it does to wars and nuclear-non-proliferation treaties. It particularly applies to groups wanting approval of constitutional amendments. Someone is benefiting. Is it whom you believe it to be? Find out and you find out what really is happening.
Eight years ago, I found myself faced with a presidential candidate appealing to patriotism and the “American Way.” My bull meter turned on. Who’s benefiting? The candidate wanted to lift all “interference” on business. He said removing all restraint would enhance competition and would create jobs. He promoted the ideal of a world in which business unimpeded by government would raise all boats.
I didn’t have to be Cassandra to predict what was likely to happen given the reality of human and corporate greed. He may have been wedded to the idea of a free economy but his supporters were committed to profit. Who benefited was every corporation and entity that could afford a lobbyist and wanted to feed at the public trough. I was perplexed and still am: how could anyone not understand the greed and public damage such a policy would inevitably arouse?
Through the years, I’ve learned to be skeptical. I’ve watched money change hands supposedly for some noble purpose but actually for personal ego and future favor. I’ve watched people not in the know think they have “won” some benefit without understanding how they have been pawns in some process far larger than they. Sometimes it’s been so obvious that I’ve had to conclude that people were being willfully ignorant.
Above all, I’ve learned that human nature doesn’t change. It was just as greedy and willful in Greece and Troy as it is today. Even the Church has had to reign in unruly human beings: the Ten Commandments are basic rules for people who have to live together.
As of October 2008, what frightens me most, though, is the possibility that the lessons of controlling human greed have apparently not been learned.
Cassandra today might tell us to move beyond phony idealism and old, comforting “truths” and accept that we are just as prone to error as the Trojans. She might challenge us to grow as a nation by allowing ourselves to recognize that pride is blinding us to those who cynically profit from it. We ought collectively to be able to look into the mirror and shudder at how we tolerate personal attacks, name-calling, appeals to emotion and prejudice, flag-waving, half-truths, and the artificial us-versus-them. On the contrary, we need to be clearheaded to recognize where the power really is and what it’s being used for.
Power is hard-edged, silent, and unemotional. I’ve seen it. It’s a coiled snake waiting for opportunity. It uses patriotism and vanity as the venom to remove its opponents. It never believes in intangibles like patriotism. It hisses with pleasure when people waste their time squabbling over lapel pins because they never ask the real questions. It shakes the rattle in its tail to panic us into feeding it. And until we as a nation are mature enough to confront and control this power, it will continue to distract us from our responsibility of determining and taking responsibility for our future.
Let me picture her for a moment. She has offered the prophecy that Troy is going to fall to the besieging Greeks. She pleads with the Trojans to listen. They don’t of course—that’s her curse after all. Troy falls and she is doomed to live the rest of her short life as a Greek prisoner, trapped in the guilt that if perhaps if she had only been more persuasive, if she had only couched things in better terms, if she had only chosen different words, that perhaps she might have been heard and might have saved her city and family. Apollo indeed had his revenge.
We all live with what-ifs. When you’ve lived as long as I have and have been around power, as I was—on the sidelines admittedly but I could see there from where I was—most people develop a wise and seemly skepticism—or at least ought to.
One of the things you learn is that the ways things are spun are seldom the way they are. The wise person approaches every proposal with the question “Who benefits?” So often otherwise altruistic leaders succumb to the loudest voices among their constituents. Nothing then can get done unless somebody benefits and it is not always the people in whose name some contract or program is funded.
This principle applies as much to contracts to build schools and roads as it does to wars and nuclear-non-proliferation treaties. It particularly applies to groups wanting approval of constitutional amendments. Someone is benefiting. Is it whom you believe it to be? Find out and you find out what really is happening.
Eight years ago, I found myself faced with a presidential candidate appealing to patriotism and the “American Way.” My bull meter turned on. Who’s benefiting? The candidate wanted to lift all “interference” on business. He said removing all restraint would enhance competition and would create jobs. He promoted the ideal of a world in which business unimpeded by government would raise all boats.
I didn’t have to be Cassandra to predict what was likely to happen given the reality of human and corporate greed. He may have been wedded to the idea of a free economy but his supporters were committed to profit. Who benefited was every corporation and entity that could afford a lobbyist and wanted to feed at the public trough. I was perplexed and still am: how could anyone not understand the greed and public damage such a policy would inevitably arouse?
Through the years, I’ve learned to be skeptical. I’ve watched money change hands supposedly for some noble purpose but actually for personal ego and future favor. I’ve watched people not in the know think they have “won” some benefit without understanding how they have been pawns in some process far larger than they. Sometimes it’s been so obvious that I’ve had to conclude that people were being willfully ignorant.
Above all, I’ve learned that human nature doesn’t change. It was just as greedy and willful in Greece and Troy as it is today. Even the Church has had to reign in unruly human beings: the Ten Commandments are basic rules for people who have to live together.
As of October 2008, what frightens me most, though, is the possibility that the lessons of controlling human greed have apparently not been learned.
Cassandra today might tell us to move beyond phony idealism and old, comforting “truths” and accept that we are just as prone to error as the Trojans. She might challenge us to grow as a nation by allowing ourselves to recognize that pride is blinding us to those who cynically profit from it. We ought collectively to be able to look into the mirror and shudder at how we tolerate personal attacks, name-calling, appeals to emotion and prejudice, flag-waving, half-truths, and the artificial us-versus-them. On the contrary, we need to be clearheaded to recognize where the power really is and what it’s being used for.
Power is hard-edged, silent, and unemotional. I’ve seen it. It’s a coiled snake waiting for opportunity. It uses patriotism and vanity as the venom to remove its opponents. It never believes in intangibles like patriotism. It hisses with pleasure when people waste their time squabbling over lapel pins because they never ask the real questions. It shakes the rattle in its tail to panic us into feeding it. And until we as a nation are mature enough to confront and control this power, it will continue to distract us from our responsibility of determining and taking responsibility for our future.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
My Vice Presidency
I want to thank everyone who pledged me their votes--all twenty of you. I appreciate your trust but realize that it would be most unfair of me not to release you to vote for the other candidates. I am therefore suspending my campaign. It has been a wonderful experience for me personally as I had not believed before that I could attract twenty votes. I am humbled and grateful.
America's Political Super Bowl
With the Wall Street bailout debacle going on, I feel like a failed lemming who doesn’t know which cliff to jump off. I have no idea who to believe: the group that is predicting that we will all lose our jobs through lack of available credit, or the one that says this is just another rip off. I’m not invested in the stock market precisely because I don’t pretend to understand it. All I know is that someone—make that a whole lot of someones—failed in their jobs.
The Washington Post says that a major part of the problem was not the usual culprits we’re hearing about but instead was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who decided their role was profit and they used their money—our money—to hire lobbyists to tear down any regulation imposing controls on them. I suppose grab and run sums up corporate philosophies these days. I sure hate to see them rewarded by further mortgaging our children.
This whole affair, coming as it does with that period of insanity known as the election, provides a double whammy, meaning that there’s no one left to trust. Everyone’s become corrupt and a special interest—even organized religion. I am left to wonder what it is that I am watching.
The closest I can come to describing the spectacle is to call it the American Political Super Bowl. This seems appropriate because people are not choosing candidates—they are choosing sides, and they are prepared to defend their team with flag waving and loud shouting that says absolutely nothing except “Go Team.”
On the one side, we have Team America. They are known for loud foot stomping while chanting USA, USA. They wear American flag pins. They want things to remain as they were: comfortable and predictable and flattering to their vanity. They do a lot of talking about values (their own), standing on their own two feet and not taking hand-outs, and building fences to keep out illegal immigrants. They still want to dominate the world through military force (“Americans love a war,” said General Patton, the team owner of Team America), and they love to kick butt. Corporations love them because Team America believes in the almighty (although now devaluing dollar) and tries to remove all restraints on raising that buck. They tend to look on minorities as mostly illegals, encroaching on the American dream, and better off out of the country if they aren’t willing to work for less than minimum wage. Their hero is Ronald Reagan, the head coach and author of trickle down economics.
On the other side, we have Team Future. These are people who are chanting “Cut us in. Cut us in.” They distrust corporations because they are making money and not offering benefits. They like to picket Wal Mart because they think it doesn’t pay its workers enough. They may be part of America’s growing minority future and have an attitude problem toward Whitey or the Man or Gringos, or whatever they call the shrinking Caucasian population. They are likely to favor Affirmative Action programs but get resentful if someone suggests that they or anyone else might not have succeeded without them. They like to blame lack of opportunity for their lack of progress and talk a lot about raising the minimum wage. Many of their parents look back with nostalgia to the days when unions meant something. They like social programs and are more likely to favor choice when it comes to what they call reproductive rights. John Kennedy is the owner of this team and its coach is Ted Kennedy.
Trying to referee, somewhere in the middle of the field, is a bunch of Independents who are endlessly courted by either team and who stand, like me, dazed in the glare of the headlights of the two on-rushing groups. These Independents are something of a mystery to the two teams who either feel that if they aren’t part of the solution they’re part of the problem, or that they should either love America or leave it. While the teams line up along the sidelines and the cheerleaders kick up their thighs to loud cheers, the Indies are likely to be in the end zones and wondering what the hell is going on.
What IS going on? In the end it is only a game, after all. Presidents can’t do that much without majorities in Congress. Bush’s trouble was that he had a Congress in which his party had the majority in both houses. He might have been a more successful president if he had encountered opposition and been forced to defend his policies. I see him now as a tragic figure as Aristotle described that figure in The Poetics: a man who does what he believes is best and is destroyed by it, destroying others around him in the process.
Personally, I would like to see both teams cool it a bit. All the cheerleading, the name-calling, the posturing, and the ticket selling is turning me off—and I’m one of the people in the middle so supposedly I’m desirable. I want both sides to quit telling me they are absolutely right. I want them to talk about issues rather than spin me slogans. And I PARTICULARLY want them to stop sending me passionate e-mails that are false, misleading, and full of crap. Do they think because I’m independent I am also stupid?
I nominated myself for Vice President because I was tired of this nonsense. I want someone to come forward who is not an ideologue, not zealous, and not a messiah.
I want someone to acknowledge the fact that dealing with Middle East has no easy answers because there are thirty-five hundred years of history that most Americans don’t bother to learn before they rush in with fix-its such as democracy. These are people who live two thousand years ago as if it is yesterday. Now we are part of what they will remember in another 2,000 years.
I want someone who will understand that governments balance and protect for the sake of fairness and the national interest; they do not promote one group over another except in exceptional cases such as ensuring fairness and civil rights, which are part of what this country prides itself for.
I want someone who will understand that the rule of law is not something to be manipulated to someone’s pet point of view. Either we have a nation of laws or we have a nation of constitutional amendments that serve special interests.
My God—what I really want in a president is intelligence, objectivity, judgement, education, and compassion. Does such an animal exist? I hope that America is the winner when the referee calls, “Play Ball.”
The Washington Post says that a major part of the problem was not the usual culprits we’re hearing about but instead was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who decided their role was profit and they used their money—our money—to hire lobbyists to tear down any regulation imposing controls on them. I suppose grab and run sums up corporate philosophies these days. I sure hate to see them rewarded by further mortgaging our children.
This whole affair, coming as it does with that period of insanity known as the election, provides a double whammy, meaning that there’s no one left to trust. Everyone’s become corrupt and a special interest—even organized religion. I am left to wonder what it is that I am watching.
The closest I can come to describing the spectacle is to call it the American Political Super Bowl. This seems appropriate because people are not choosing candidates—they are choosing sides, and they are prepared to defend their team with flag waving and loud shouting that says absolutely nothing except “Go Team.”
On the one side, we have Team America. They are known for loud foot stomping while chanting USA, USA. They wear American flag pins. They want things to remain as they were: comfortable and predictable and flattering to their vanity. They do a lot of talking about values (their own), standing on their own two feet and not taking hand-outs, and building fences to keep out illegal immigrants. They still want to dominate the world through military force (“Americans love a war,” said General Patton, the team owner of Team America), and they love to kick butt. Corporations love them because Team America believes in the almighty (although now devaluing dollar) and tries to remove all restraints on raising that buck. They tend to look on minorities as mostly illegals, encroaching on the American dream, and better off out of the country if they aren’t willing to work for less than minimum wage. Their hero is Ronald Reagan, the head coach and author of trickle down economics.
On the other side, we have Team Future. These are people who are chanting “Cut us in. Cut us in.” They distrust corporations because they are making money and not offering benefits. They like to picket Wal Mart because they think it doesn’t pay its workers enough. They may be part of America’s growing minority future and have an attitude problem toward Whitey or the Man or Gringos, or whatever they call the shrinking Caucasian population. They are likely to favor Affirmative Action programs but get resentful if someone suggests that they or anyone else might not have succeeded without them. They like to blame lack of opportunity for their lack of progress and talk a lot about raising the minimum wage. Many of their parents look back with nostalgia to the days when unions meant something. They like social programs and are more likely to favor choice when it comes to what they call reproductive rights. John Kennedy is the owner of this team and its coach is Ted Kennedy.
Trying to referee, somewhere in the middle of the field, is a bunch of Independents who are endlessly courted by either team and who stand, like me, dazed in the glare of the headlights of the two on-rushing groups. These Independents are something of a mystery to the two teams who either feel that if they aren’t part of the solution they’re part of the problem, or that they should either love America or leave it. While the teams line up along the sidelines and the cheerleaders kick up their thighs to loud cheers, the Indies are likely to be in the end zones and wondering what the hell is going on.
What IS going on? In the end it is only a game, after all. Presidents can’t do that much without majorities in Congress. Bush’s trouble was that he had a Congress in which his party had the majority in both houses. He might have been a more successful president if he had encountered opposition and been forced to defend his policies. I see him now as a tragic figure as Aristotle described that figure in The Poetics: a man who does what he believes is best and is destroyed by it, destroying others around him in the process.
Personally, I would like to see both teams cool it a bit. All the cheerleading, the name-calling, the posturing, and the ticket selling is turning me off—and I’m one of the people in the middle so supposedly I’m desirable. I want both sides to quit telling me they are absolutely right. I want them to talk about issues rather than spin me slogans. And I PARTICULARLY want them to stop sending me passionate e-mails that are false, misleading, and full of crap. Do they think because I’m independent I am also stupid?
I nominated myself for Vice President because I was tired of this nonsense. I want someone to come forward who is not an ideologue, not zealous, and not a messiah.
I want someone to acknowledge the fact that dealing with Middle East has no easy answers because there are thirty-five hundred years of history that most Americans don’t bother to learn before they rush in with fix-its such as democracy. These are people who live two thousand years ago as if it is yesterday. Now we are part of what they will remember in another 2,000 years.
I want someone who will understand that governments balance and protect for the sake of fairness and the national interest; they do not promote one group over another except in exceptional cases such as ensuring fairness and civil rights, which are part of what this country prides itself for.
I want someone who will understand that the rule of law is not something to be manipulated to someone’s pet point of view. Either we have a nation of laws or we have a nation of constitutional amendments that serve special interests.
My God—what I really want in a president is intelligence, objectivity, judgement, education, and compassion. Does such an animal exist? I hope that America is the winner when the referee calls, “Play Ball.”
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Writing to be Read
Hello to my loyal readers: all dozen of you! If you are enjoying this blog, how about forwarding it to your friends? I'm human and just as egoncentric as everyone else. I'd love to be read. You can reach me at dianamdeluca@aol.com if you want to comment or argue. But there is also a place at the end of each entry for you to comment more publicly. Thanks for reading this! Diana
Running on the Coololdtech Party Ticket
Since my self-nomination for US Vice President, I’ve received an outpouring of support from people in all walks of life. Mechanics, hair stylists, secretaries, public relations folk, retirees, relatives—all have pledged their support and each day more come in. I’m proud to announce that as of tonight—including my own vote for myself, I have a grand total of 10 votes. This is certainly enough for me to accept my own nomination and declare my official candidacy for vice president, especially since I fully expect that over the next 40 days until the election, I will at least double that number.
Why me? Well, for one thing I’m real. I’ve seen plenty of posturing and people promoting one candidate or another, often with high passion, without giving much real thought to the candidates beyond what they represent. I shake my head at all this unexamined passion: it’s not a case of finding the best candidate for the economic and global messes we are in, it’s promoting whoever best represents whatever prejudice we happen to have. Unfortunately, this kind of zeal is making us the laughing stock of the world.
So Sarah Palin presumably represents a certain type of issue (the Canadian press aroused great annoyance when a columnist there called her the red-neck candidate), similarly Obama supposedly highlights the minority experience that is rapidly becoming the majority—John McCain represents all the old white dudes who feel they are being pushed aside—and Joe Biden represents—well, I’m not sure what Joe Biden represents. I don’t hear much about him these days.
I, on the other hand, think politics is a crock and I listen to the candidates with my bull-geieger at my side. My meter goes off when I hear Sarah gush about McCain policies she can’t answer questions about, when McCain flies in like Mighty Mouse to save to day, when Obama says he is not playing politics, and Biden---well, I don’t know about him, but there’s a reason he dropped out of the presidential race.
So here I am. I am not a Harriet Myers sub who has not been out of the country until this year. Oh ye heavens—I guess she imbues internationalism by breathing the air that blows over from Russia. I am not a member of the armed forces and never have been, so I do not offer my military background as evidence of my fitness to guide intricate economic debates and provide hurricane relief. I am not a Harvard-trained lawyer, although I will offer up my own earned arrogance as a trained researcher. I am not—well—a former hopeful for the presidency. That would be hubris. Vice president is fine for me.
I represent common sense, relative sincerity, and some much-needed levity. For heaven’s sake, families and friendships are being torn apart by all this hyperbole. In another fifty years, only historians will give a damn. Even though I am running for vice president, I do keep in mind that one of the previous incumbents described the office as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”
Currrently, I invite your votes and also suggestions as to who might run for president with me on the Coololdtech party ticket. I can bring him or her ten promised votes.
Why me? Well, for one thing I’m real. I’ve seen plenty of posturing and people promoting one candidate or another, often with high passion, without giving much real thought to the candidates beyond what they represent. I shake my head at all this unexamined passion: it’s not a case of finding the best candidate for the economic and global messes we are in, it’s promoting whoever best represents whatever prejudice we happen to have. Unfortunately, this kind of zeal is making us the laughing stock of the world.
So Sarah Palin presumably represents a certain type of issue (the Canadian press aroused great annoyance when a columnist there called her the red-neck candidate), similarly Obama supposedly highlights the minority experience that is rapidly becoming the majority—John McCain represents all the old white dudes who feel they are being pushed aside—and Joe Biden represents—well, I’m not sure what Joe Biden represents. I don’t hear much about him these days.
I, on the other hand, think politics is a crock and I listen to the candidates with my bull-geieger at my side. My meter goes off when I hear Sarah gush about McCain policies she can’t answer questions about, when McCain flies in like Mighty Mouse to save to day, when Obama says he is not playing politics, and Biden---well, I don’t know about him, but there’s a reason he dropped out of the presidential race.
So here I am. I am not a Harriet Myers sub who has not been out of the country until this year. Oh ye heavens—I guess she imbues internationalism by breathing the air that blows over from Russia. I am not a member of the armed forces and never have been, so I do not offer my military background as evidence of my fitness to guide intricate economic debates and provide hurricane relief. I am not a Harvard-trained lawyer, although I will offer up my own earned arrogance as a trained researcher. I am not—well—a former hopeful for the presidency. That would be hubris. Vice president is fine for me.
I represent common sense, relative sincerity, and some much-needed levity. For heaven’s sake, families and friendships are being torn apart by all this hyperbole. In another fifty years, only historians will give a damn. Even though I am running for vice president, I do keep in mind that one of the previous incumbents described the office as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”
Currrently, I invite your votes and also suggestions as to who might run for president with me on the Coololdtech party ticket. I can bring him or her ten promised votes.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Me for Vice President
The wisest political commentary I’ve received lately comes from my hair stylist. She’s a single woman, earning her living the hard way, paying her taxes and not seeing that she’s getting much in return. “Calm down,” she told me as she cut my hair. “Now that the Wall Street thing has happened, people are reminded of what’s important. They’ll see through the cute stuff with Palin. We’re smarter than they think.”
Her calm confidence made me wonder why I am so personally offended by the selection of John McCain’s Mini-Me, the trophy Vice President, Sarah Palin. I think part of it may be because many other women—including me—appear better qualified to be a heartbeat away other than just being women, handy, and agreeing with John McCain.
Wow--you may be thinking. She thinks she's qualified to run for such high office? Well--if Ms. Palin is the yardstick, I think I am. And why not? I've been in public life for a lot longer than she has and I'll stack my university experience against her state experience. The budget and infrastructure of most big public universities are larger than Alaska's and I'm willing to bet that our students and faculty are just as independent and unruly as her citizens. So please bear with me and allow me to provide you with the following checklist of our qualifcations.
People Skills: In my younger days, I went out on the picket line for women’s issues. We didn’t get it all (the Equal Rights Amendment) and women still earn less than men but we got some of it. In fact, it was quite exciting to think that the FBI might have files on us all—alas, when I applied to see my file, the FBI claimed not have one. I bet Ms. Palin doesn’t even think about what we went through to make sure she could have a career. Score: one point for me for social activism.
Overcoming Adversity: My doctorate got earned the hard way—even though I was a good student the scholarships went to the men (they had families to support, don’t you know?) so the burden of graduate school fell on me and my family. Score: one point for me for proven determination.
Administrative Experience: My most salient experience, of course, is that I have been a cabinet member on the staff of the president of the University of Hawaii. I was, in fact, listed as one of three most powerfully placed women on the president’s staff. We worked with a budget about $1 billion (fifteen years ago), so it probably compares well with Alaska’s state budget today which is around $8 billion. Administering a university system has to be equivalent of being the mayor of a small town. Score: Let’s be generous: one point for each of us.
Dealing with Difficult People: The president sent me out as a trouble shooter to wherever trouble appeared. This included dealing with fraternities (who liked to send their pledges on a nude run round the campus after dark--the Honolulu Police Department loved that), the Athletics Department and the NCAA, which I am sure Ms. Palin has never been faced with. Score: One point for me although anyone who has dealt the NCAA might say this was worth two.
Federal Policy: Then there were the legal problems. I worked with the state attorney general to manage the university’s unending law suits (usually with the university as a defendant)—everything from people cutting their feet on sprinklers to equal opportunity and sexual harassment complaints. Ms. Palin probably knows about the employment policies given the brouhaha with her ex-brother-in-law, but I doubt she has dealt with a student complaining about being stalked by a professor. Score: One point for me.
State Legislature: When I left the university, I had two commendations from the State of Hawaii Legislature and a personal commendation from the governor. Now, I admit that I did not run for office but my office supervised the university’s lobbyists and I was named by the governor to commissions and task forces. I was part of the hands-on, direct process for establishing international agreements with Viet Nam (prior to normalization of relations), Russia, and Thailand. I figure my international experience (got her there) makes up for at least some of her public experience. Score: I’ll give myself a point here, but I’ll concede her three points.
The grand total then is six points for me and four for Ms. Palin. The only real advantage I see that she has over me (besides getting herself elected) is her hobby of shooting wolves from aircraft. But since I feel that even a wolf deserves a fair chance, I will concede that one to her. Forgive me if I don’t award any points.
Wal-Mart Mom: I’ve been told that Palin’s strength is with Wal-Mart Moms—apparently these are votes that McCain can’t get by himself. Now, I don’t know who they mean by Wal-Mart Moms— Cindy McCain may not shop at Wal-Mart, but I do. My step-granddaughter works there and if the economy keeps sliding, I might be glad of a job there myself. I therefore believe I can counter Ms. Palin’s advantage by arguing that I too am a mother and that I do indeed shop at Wal-Mart.
Therefore, given my obvious advantage, may I ask for your support of my nomination for Vice President of the United States? As I hope I have demonstrated, I have the requisite experience and will stand by my pledges to you (as long as they are useful). But I do make one promise that I intend to keep. I promise faithfully that I will not go out and buy new eyeglasses no matter how cute they look on my opponent.
Her calm confidence made me wonder why I am so personally offended by the selection of John McCain’s Mini-Me, the trophy Vice President, Sarah Palin. I think part of it may be because many other women—including me—appear better qualified to be a heartbeat away other than just being women, handy, and agreeing with John McCain.
Wow--you may be thinking. She thinks she's qualified to run for such high office? Well--if Ms. Palin is the yardstick, I think I am. And why not? I've been in public life for a lot longer than she has and I'll stack my university experience against her state experience. The budget and infrastructure of most big public universities are larger than Alaska's and I'm willing to bet that our students and faculty are just as independent and unruly as her citizens. So please bear with me and allow me to provide you with the following checklist of our qualifcations.
People Skills: In my younger days, I went out on the picket line for women’s issues. We didn’t get it all (the Equal Rights Amendment) and women still earn less than men but we got some of it. In fact, it was quite exciting to think that the FBI might have files on us all—alas, when I applied to see my file, the FBI claimed not have one. I bet Ms. Palin doesn’t even think about what we went through to make sure she could have a career. Score: one point for me for social activism.
Overcoming Adversity: My doctorate got earned the hard way—even though I was a good student the scholarships went to the men (they had families to support, don’t you know?) so the burden of graduate school fell on me and my family. Score: one point for me for proven determination.
Administrative Experience: My most salient experience, of course, is that I have been a cabinet member on the staff of the president of the University of Hawaii. I was, in fact, listed as one of three most powerfully placed women on the president’s staff. We worked with a budget about $1 billion (fifteen years ago), so it probably compares well with Alaska’s state budget today which is around $8 billion. Administering a university system has to be equivalent of being the mayor of a small town. Score: Let’s be generous: one point for each of us.
Dealing with Difficult People: The president sent me out as a trouble shooter to wherever trouble appeared. This included dealing with fraternities (who liked to send their pledges on a nude run round the campus after dark--the Honolulu Police Department loved that), the Athletics Department and the NCAA, which I am sure Ms. Palin has never been faced with. Score: One point for me although anyone who has dealt the NCAA might say this was worth two.
Federal Policy: Then there were the legal problems. I worked with the state attorney general to manage the university’s unending law suits (usually with the university as a defendant)—everything from people cutting their feet on sprinklers to equal opportunity and sexual harassment complaints. Ms. Palin probably knows about the employment policies given the brouhaha with her ex-brother-in-law, but I doubt she has dealt with a student complaining about being stalked by a professor. Score: One point for me.
State Legislature: When I left the university, I had two commendations from the State of Hawaii Legislature and a personal commendation from the governor. Now, I admit that I did not run for office but my office supervised the university’s lobbyists and I was named by the governor to commissions and task forces. I was part of the hands-on, direct process for establishing international agreements with Viet Nam (prior to normalization of relations), Russia, and Thailand. I figure my international experience (got her there) makes up for at least some of her public experience. Score: I’ll give myself a point here, but I’ll concede her three points.
The grand total then is six points for me and four for Ms. Palin. The only real advantage I see that she has over me (besides getting herself elected) is her hobby of shooting wolves from aircraft. But since I feel that even a wolf deserves a fair chance, I will concede that one to her. Forgive me if I don’t award any points.
Wal-Mart Mom: I’ve been told that Palin’s strength is with Wal-Mart Moms—apparently these are votes that McCain can’t get by himself. Now, I don’t know who they mean by Wal-Mart Moms— Cindy McCain may not shop at Wal-Mart, but I do. My step-granddaughter works there and if the economy keeps sliding, I might be glad of a job there myself. I therefore believe I can counter Ms. Palin’s advantage by arguing that I too am a mother and that I do indeed shop at Wal-Mart.
Therefore, given my obvious advantage, may I ask for your support of my nomination for Vice President of the United States? As I hope I have demonstrated, I have the requisite experience and will stand by my pledges to you (as long as they are useful). But I do make one promise that I intend to keep. I promise faithfully that I will not go out and buy new eyeglasses no matter how cute they look on my opponent.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Baa-Baa Black Sheep
Mum used to repeat a saying whenever she was about to buy something more expensive than she had planned to—like a pair of glamour shoes that she couldn’t resist. “Oh well,” she’d sigh. “I might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.”
I thought about her the other day when I received an e-mail apparently from someone who does not support Barrack Obama. Normally I read the first sentence of these political missiles, whether Republican or Democrat, and send them to the trash bin. This one, however, managed to get my attention. It stated outright that Obama was looking at a tax on property owners whose houses were larger than 2400 square feet. I have to admit that my common sense went out of the window for a few moments. I froze. My house is 2700 square feet and I already pay multiple thousand dollars in property tax. Could this be true and I hadn’t heard? There was even a list of articles from reputable magazines where this was apparently reported.
It took me several moments to regain my bearings. Huh? Property taxes are local and state. How could the federal government possibly impose this tax? Didn’t make sense. Nor did the other alarmist claims in the e-mail. I went down and actually read the articles listed at the bottom of the e-mail and found that not only was Obama NOT proposing that kind of tax, but the articles cited actually said the exact opposite of what the e-mail was claiming. Whoever wrote the e-mail was hoping/expecting that the recipient (me) would surrender to panic and not read the so-called supporting material.
The e-mail, in other words, was a lie and a big one. That’s what made me think of Mum and her sheep. It seems that if you are going to lie these days, you might as well make it a whopper. This experience probably had the complete opposite effect of what the sender intended. I checked out the claims and now am highly suspicious of what the Republicans have to say—not that I can hold John McCain personally responsible for this e-mail, but I’m human—I have to wonder if this is typical of the ethics and honesty of his supporters.
I can report now that my new skepticism appears somewhat justified. I find myself wondering how the Republicans can be fielding a platform of change when they are the ones who have been in power for the past eight years. What, in other words, are they changing from? Is it, we’ll do the same thing only this time we’ll do it better? We are now watching the meltdown in the financial markets resulting, I believe, from lifting of regulations and the belief that if the economy is driven solely by the profit motive then competition will provide whatever regulation is necessary rather than government doing it. I happen to believe that some regulation IS necessary because the world cannot long endure on the basis of a greed that encourages the strong to devour the not quite so strong (those who can only afford a million dollar house rather than a ten million) let alone the weak who tend to live in flood plains.
The current news of the collapse of the investment banks makes my point. Even I can see that corporations and investment banks are not a substitute for government even if their lobbyists would like to believe so. Corporations exist for one purpose: to make money. They do not have to worry about unemployment rates in the US—they are multinational and are free to move jobs to wherever the work can be done more cheaply. There’s nothing wrong with this self-interest. This is what corporations do. But it is not what governments are meant to do. They are meant to balance all the competing interests in the national interest. When was it decided that enriching corporations was to be the national economic policy? How naive can one get? We learned from the Reagan administration that trickle-downs don’t trickle down. They trickle out to investors and corporate leadership. We’re all greedy in some way—but corporations are greedy with about five zeroes after my net worth and what they do matters. They represent too much of our net worth as a nation to be allowed to flounder around just pursuing the buck and rewarding their executives obscenely on the basis of increased earnings regardless of how they are achieved.
If I sound my usual churlish self about this, well I don't apologize. I don't have investments and pots of money tied up in this market. But I am still concerned about my house value, how far my pension will stretch, whether my commercial bank made stupid investments, and whether I will be able to afford whatever medical nonsense my body inflicts on me. I don't believe John McCain and his trophy vice president (sorry) feel the angst of people like me who are likely to feel the fall out from the Republican's great economic experiment in believing that what is good for corporations is good for America. In the end, though, politicians can make whatever claims they want--it's up to us to think for ourselves and sort the lambs from the sheep.
Baa
I thought about her the other day when I received an e-mail apparently from someone who does not support Barrack Obama. Normally I read the first sentence of these political missiles, whether Republican or Democrat, and send them to the trash bin. This one, however, managed to get my attention. It stated outright that Obama was looking at a tax on property owners whose houses were larger than 2400 square feet. I have to admit that my common sense went out of the window for a few moments. I froze. My house is 2700 square feet and I already pay multiple thousand dollars in property tax. Could this be true and I hadn’t heard? There was even a list of articles from reputable magazines where this was apparently reported.
It took me several moments to regain my bearings. Huh? Property taxes are local and state. How could the federal government possibly impose this tax? Didn’t make sense. Nor did the other alarmist claims in the e-mail. I went down and actually read the articles listed at the bottom of the e-mail and found that not only was Obama NOT proposing that kind of tax, but the articles cited actually said the exact opposite of what the e-mail was claiming. Whoever wrote the e-mail was hoping/expecting that the recipient (me) would surrender to panic and not read the so-called supporting material.
The e-mail, in other words, was a lie and a big one. That’s what made me think of Mum and her sheep. It seems that if you are going to lie these days, you might as well make it a whopper. This experience probably had the complete opposite effect of what the sender intended. I checked out the claims and now am highly suspicious of what the Republicans have to say—not that I can hold John McCain personally responsible for this e-mail, but I’m human—I have to wonder if this is typical of the ethics and honesty of his supporters.
I can report now that my new skepticism appears somewhat justified. I find myself wondering how the Republicans can be fielding a platform of change when they are the ones who have been in power for the past eight years. What, in other words, are they changing from? Is it, we’ll do the same thing only this time we’ll do it better? We are now watching the meltdown in the financial markets resulting, I believe, from lifting of regulations and the belief that if the economy is driven solely by the profit motive then competition will provide whatever regulation is necessary rather than government doing it. I happen to believe that some regulation IS necessary because the world cannot long endure on the basis of a greed that encourages the strong to devour the not quite so strong (those who can only afford a million dollar house rather than a ten million) let alone the weak who tend to live in flood plains.
The current news of the collapse of the investment banks makes my point. Even I can see that corporations and investment banks are not a substitute for government even if their lobbyists would like to believe so. Corporations exist for one purpose: to make money. They do not have to worry about unemployment rates in the US—they are multinational and are free to move jobs to wherever the work can be done more cheaply. There’s nothing wrong with this self-interest. This is what corporations do. But it is not what governments are meant to do. They are meant to balance all the competing interests in the national interest. When was it decided that enriching corporations was to be the national economic policy? How naive can one get? We learned from the Reagan administration that trickle-downs don’t trickle down. They trickle out to investors and corporate leadership. We’re all greedy in some way—but corporations are greedy with about five zeroes after my net worth and what they do matters. They represent too much of our net worth as a nation to be allowed to flounder around just pursuing the buck and rewarding their executives obscenely on the basis of increased earnings regardless of how they are achieved.
If I sound my usual churlish self about this, well I don't apologize. I don't have investments and pots of money tied up in this market. But I am still concerned about my house value, how far my pension will stretch, whether my commercial bank made stupid investments, and whether I will be able to afford whatever medical nonsense my body inflicts on me. I don't believe John McCain and his trophy vice president (sorry) feel the angst of people like me who are likely to feel the fall out from the Republican's great economic experiment in believing that what is good for corporations is good for America. In the end, though, politicians can make whatever claims they want--it's up to us to think for ourselves and sort the lambs from the sheep.
Baa
Monday, September 8, 2008
Not All Peas Are Alike in the Pod
I don't usually write about politics, but when I thought about the rather obvious connection between being senior and being interested in what happens to the national programs such as Social Security, into which I have paid all my working life, I decided that perhaps it was time.
The catalyst for me to do this is the recent nomination of Sarah Palin to run as vice president on the Republican ticket with John McCain Ordinarily I would just shrug and say if the Republicans really want to send a lady to Washington who opposes sex education and abortion in all cases (including rape and incest) and who said in an interview that God intended us to be in Iraq, well that's their thing. Most of our leaders can afford to send their wives and daughters to Europe for abortions anyway. But what gets me—certainly enough to write this blog—is the assumption in the highest circles (Republican) that because I was (and still am) a Hillary Clinton supporter that I would immediately transfer my vote to someone just because she is a woman and never mind that she stands against everything I value, including freedom of religious thought.
I was born British and the values still flow through my veins. Britain has a well-founded suspicion of religious conflict. We fought a civil war over religion (Catholics versus Protestant) and we weren't afraid to create a new religion because one of our kings wanted to divorce his queen. We think discussing religion in public forums, let alone letting it guide national policy, is not good manners and is rather a bore. The closest we've come to religious activism is when the countrykicked out the Puritans and sent them to America—they were too enthusiastic for British comfort and made themselves a nuisance.
Given that moderation, I am particularly annoyed by having Sarah Palin offered up as a substitute for Hillary. I grew up alongside Hillary. Like her I was a Goldwater fan at first. Like her I faced all manner of professional discouragement. Like her I put up with the comments—like the time when I, a very junior untenurable instructor, stepped onto the elevator in my university's English department and heard one of the male senior profs say to his colleague, "There's getting to be a lot of women in the department." He was a polite man who was just stating what he saw as a fact. He just didn't get it. I put in the same category the graduate school dean who, at the peak of the Viet Nam war, said that if the draft continued taking students and faculty, universities would be filled with "the lame, the halt, the blind, and the women." Hillary would have understood what I felt.
When Hillary had to deal with her husband's very public embarrassment, she did so both with class and sad resolution. People said she was too cold and reserved—they wanted to see her mete out public punishment reflecting their own disappointment in her husband. Instead she thought it through carefully. I could imagine her making a column withpro on one side and con on the other. In the end, she decided that though he was an idiot, she valued who he was and his companionship. She decided in other words that they were better off together. The religionistas pillored her for it. They said she was calculating and self-absorbed. They either wanted her to judge him and throw him out or play a public roleof anguished, long-suffering wife. She didn't do either. She showed herself to be an independent lady not given—as she once let slip—to making cookies.
Expecting me to immediately transfer my vote to Ms. Palin just because she is a woman begs the whole question of qualifications. That assumption insults my intelligence. I agree with the Founding Fathers of this country about wanting good sense in government. I haven't seen enough of Ms. Palin's decisions to know if she has it.
When I vote for Hillary, it will be for her and not for some substitute whose opinions are scary in their absolute judgment on people. Hillary will get a very nice post in an Obama administration if she wants it. If she doesn't, she will be one of the major movers in Congress. She will still be eligible to run for president next time—and she will be even better prepared. I trust her to be pragmatic about the human condition and compassionate to those of us who stumble along the way. I trust her to weigh up a situation as she did with her husband and decide in all of our best interests rather than impose herreligious views on me. And above all, I trust her to continue to be the class act she is. My vote for Obama is as much a vote for her.
The catalyst for me to do this is the recent nomination of Sarah Palin to run as vice president on the Republican ticket with John McCain Ordinarily I would just shrug and say if the Republicans really want to send a lady to Washington who opposes sex education and abortion in all cases (including rape and incest) and who said in an interview that God intended us to be in Iraq, well that's their thing. Most of our leaders can afford to send their wives and daughters to Europe for abortions anyway. But what gets me—certainly enough to write this blog—is the assumption in the highest circles (Republican) that because I was (and still am) a Hillary Clinton supporter that I would immediately transfer my vote to someone just because she is a woman and never mind that she stands against everything I value, including freedom of religious thought.
I was born British and the values still flow through my veins. Britain has a well-founded suspicion of religious conflict. We fought a civil war over religion (Catholics versus Protestant) and we weren't afraid to create a new religion because one of our kings wanted to divorce his queen. We think discussing religion in public forums, let alone letting it guide national policy, is not good manners and is rather a bore. The closest we've come to religious activism is when the countrykicked out the Puritans and sent them to America—they were too enthusiastic for British comfort and made themselves a nuisance.
Given that moderation, I am particularly annoyed by having Sarah Palin offered up as a substitute for Hillary. I grew up alongside Hillary. Like her I was a Goldwater fan at first. Like her I faced all manner of professional discouragement. Like her I put up with the comments—like the time when I, a very junior untenurable instructor, stepped onto the elevator in my university's English department and heard one of the male senior profs say to his colleague, "There's getting to be a lot of women in the department." He was a polite man who was just stating what he saw as a fact. He just didn't get it. I put in the same category the graduate school dean who, at the peak of the Viet Nam war, said that if the draft continued taking students and faculty, universities would be filled with "the lame, the halt, the blind, and the women." Hillary would have understood what I felt.
When Hillary had to deal with her husband's very public embarrassment, she did so both with class and sad resolution. People said she was too cold and reserved—they wanted to see her mete out public punishment reflecting their own disappointment in her husband. Instead she thought it through carefully. I could imagine her making a column withpro on one side and con on the other. In the end, she decided that though he was an idiot, she valued who he was and his companionship. She decided in other words that they were better off together. The religionistas pillored her for it. They said she was calculating and self-absorbed. They either wanted her to judge him and throw him out or play a public roleof anguished, long-suffering wife. She didn't do either. She showed herself to be an independent lady not given—as she once let slip—to making cookies.
Expecting me to immediately transfer my vote to Ms. Palin just because she is a woman begs the whole question of qualifications. That assumption insults my intelligence. I agree with the Founding Fathers of this country about wanting good sense in government. I haven't seen enough of Ms. Palin's decisions to know if she has it.
When I vote for Hillary, it will be for her and not for some substitute whose opinions are scary in their absolute judgment on people. Hillary will get a very nice post in an Obama administration if she wants it. If she doesn't, she will be one of the major movers in Congress. She will still be eligible to run for president next time—and she will be even better prepared. I trust her to be pragmatic about the human condition and compassionate to those of us who stumble along the way. I trust her to weigh up a situation as she did with her husband and decide in all of our best interests rather than impose herreligious views on me. And above all, I trust her to continue to be the class act she is. My vote for Obama is as much a vote for her.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Los Alamos Mon Amour
When I was an undergrad at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa campus back in the early sixties, there was a tavern called The Blue Goose in Mo’ili’ili, the small town below the campus. I had a husband and child at home so I didn’t get to spend much time there, but I did have lunch now and then. I remember it mostly as dark and somewhat noisy, but one thing remains vivid. On one wall, there was a large poster about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack on the Hawaiian Islands. There was a list of what sounded like fairly prudent precautions (stay away from windows, don’t look at the blast etc.) but it ended with the advice to get under a table, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.
The question of surviving a nuclear attack was intensely interesting to us in Hawaii because of the many military targets in the chain. We knew that if the main island of Oahu came under attack, very few would be left to kiss anything goodbye. This realization was underlined by the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had happened less that twenty years before, there was a mad scramble among nations to amass as many weapons as possible, and even our own government was occupied blowing up empty land somewhere in the deserts of Nevada and New Mexico. I know every generation loses its innocence at some point, but I also have to believe the new power to blow up the world made our angst uniquely poignant.
All during the time I was in college, we lived under threat. It was the 1960s version of today’s terrorism and just as real. We watched the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold and held our breaths. Even when that passed, the threat didn’t. With time, we developed a cynical ability to laugh at what we feared—a point of view brilliantly reflected in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” in 1964. Some of us became activists against all wars, others tried not to think too much about it, yet others—like me—became morbidly curious. I found myself wondering why this monster had been developed, how it came about, and where it had all happened. This is what took me recently to Los Alamos—a city on a plateau high above Santa Fe, the site of the Manhattan Project that developed the bomb and still home to the Los Alamos National Lab.
I think I went to Los Alamos looking for a piece of the youthful joy that we of my generation lost. But as Sid and I drove down the main street of modern research facilities—still secure but not surrounded as they once were by barbed wire designed to both enclose and exclude—I realized I was seeking the wrong thing. All of a sudden it was 1942. The war could still be lost. The Axis allies were said to be working on a new weapon of catastrophic power and if this nation were to survive, the Axis had to be beaten to it. The most brilliant scientific brains were gathered on this muddy mesa with no less a mission than to develop a weapon that would end the war. Among those who literally “disappeared” from civilian life, there was a real sense of mission and excitement. The Los Alamos historical museum housed in one of the few surviving buildings used by the original project shows just how uncomfortable the setting was and what little reward there was except for contributing to the national effort. And yet that was enough. The scientists and the graduate students stayed and did the job.
I am quite sure the scientists didn’t think at first about the consequences of what they were achieving. Their focus was on solving the various technical issues associated with fission and implosion—a chain reaction that they weren’t even sure would work. They certainly weren’t thinking about students at The Blue Goose twenty years in the future. The awareness of the bomb’s potential came after the Trinity test and as the implications of nuclear weapons became more obvious and the post World War II world began to take shape. There were to be protests around the world. There were to be recriminations. There were to be the true horror stories of what happened at Ground Zero. There were to be accusations of disloyalty made against some of the scientists who wanted to harness the power of the atom for peaceful purposes and discourage its use as a military weapon. There was, in other words, to be the luxury of hindsight.
Los Alamos reminds me of the controversy surrounding WWII Bomber Command. At a time when Britain stood alone and at one point had only two-weeks’ worth of food for the island, the niceties of bombing only military targets seemed beside the point. No one wanted deliberately to bomb civilians, but in the struggle for survival they died on both sides. When the RAF and then the RCAF and the USAF took the war to Germany, the point was to win. Looking back on the bombing and the incredible loss of life both among the aircrews and those on the ground, some revisionist historians have tried to rewrite history to the intense annoyance of the surviving aircrews who risked their lives and watched their comrades—my father among them—drop to a fiery death. But nothing is clear-cut during wartime. I remember bomb craters in the roads in my hometown of Brighton on England’s south coast. I heard how adults still talked about the Blitz in London and how they said bombing Germany was getting a bit of our own back. It’s only natural that perspectives change with time and victory.
Much the same has happened at Los Alamos. When it comes to how we view the Manhattan Project and the scientists working on it, it seems to me that we have a choice. We can look only at the devastation caused by the splitting of the atom and decry the waste of the arms race that ensued. Many have done that and I can recall protesters in London waving placards saying ‘Ban the Bomb.’ Or we can marvel at the fact that the work was achieved at all, let alone under conditions of extreme security and haste, and understand that it was part and parcel of the time that spawned it. Perhaps we need to do a bit of both. But however we choose to view the work conducted at Los Alamos, we need to acknowledge that it changed our world forever.
The question of surviving a nuclear attack was intensely interesting to us in Hawaii because of the many military targets in the chain. We knew that if the main island of Oahu came under attack, very few would be left to kiss anything goodbye. This realization was underlined by the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had happened less that twenty years before, there was a mad scramble among nations to amass as many weapons as possible, and even our own government was occupied blowing up empty land somewhere in the deserts of Nevada and New Mexico. I know every generation loses its innocence at some point, but I also have to believe the new power to blow up the world made our angst uniquely poignant.
All during the time I was in college, we lived under threat. It was the 1960s version of today’s terrorism and just as real. We watched the Cuban Missile Crisis unfold and held our breaths. Even when that passed, the threat didn’t. With time, we developed a cynical ability to laugh at what we feared—a point of view brilliantly reflected in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” in 1964. Some of us became activists against all wars, others tried not to think too much about it, yet others—like me—became morbidly curious. I found myself wondering why this monster had been developed, how it came about, and where it had all happened. This is what took me recently to Los Alamos—a city on a plateau high above Santa Fe, the site of the Manhattan Project that developed the bomb and still home to the Los Alamos National Lab.
I think I went to Los Alamos looking for a piece of the youthful joy that we of my generation lost. But as Sid and I drove down the main street of modern research facilities—still secure but not surrounded as they once were by barbed wire designed to both enclose and exclude—I realized I was seeking the wrong thing. All of a sudden it was 1942. The war could still be lost. The Axis allies were said to be working on a new weapon of catastrophic power and if this nation were to survive, the Axis had to be beaten to it. The most brilliant scientific brains were gathered on this muddy mesa with no less a mission than to develop a weapon that would end the war. Among those who literally “disappeared” from civilian life, there was a real sense of mission and excitement. The Los Alamos historical museum housed in one of the few surviving buildings used by the original project shows just how uncomfortable the setting was and what little reward there was except for contributing to the national effort. And yet that was enough. The scientists and the graduate students stayed and did the job.
I am quite sure the scientists didn’t think at first about the consequences of what they were achieving. Their focus was on solving the various technical issues associated with fission and implosion—a chain reaction that they weren’t even sure would work. They certainly weren’t thinking about students at The Blue Goose twenty years in the future. The awareness of the bomb’s potential came after the Trinity test and as the implications of nuclear weapons became more obvious and the post World War II world began to take shape. There were to be protests around the world. There were to be recriminations. There were to be the true horror stories of what happened at Ground Zero. There were to be accusations of disloyalty made against some of the scientists who wanted to harness the power of the atom for peaceful purposes and discourage its use as a military weapon. There was, in other words, to be the luxury of hindsight.
Los Alamos reminds me of the controversy surrounding WWII Bomber Command. At a time when Britain stood alone and at one point had only two-weeks’ worth of food for the island, the niceties of bombing only military targets seemed beside the point. No one wanted deliberately to bomb civilians, but in the struggle for survival they died on both sides. When the RAF and then the RCAF and the USAF took the war to Germany, the point was to win. Looking back on the bombing and the incredible loss of life both among the aircrews and those on the ground, some revisionist historians have tried to rewrite history to the intense annoyance of the surviving aircrews who risked their lives and watched their comrades—my father among them—drop to a fiery death. But nothing is clear-cut during wartime. I remember bomb craters in the roads in my hometown of Brighton on England’s south coast. I heard how adults still talked about the Blitz in London and how they said bombing Germany was getting a bit of our own back. It’s only natural that perspectives change with time and victory.
Much the same has happened at Los Alamos. When it comes to how we view the Manhattan Project and the scientists working on it, it seems to me that we have a choice. We can look only at the devastation caused by the splitting of the atom and decry the waste of the arms race that ensued. Many have done that and I can recall protesters in London waving placards saying ‘Ban the Bomb.’ Or we can marvel at the fact that the work was achieved at all, let alone under conditions of extreme security and haste, and understand that it was part and parcel of the time that spawned it. Perhaps we need to do a bit of both. But however we choose to view the work conducted at Los Alamos, we need to acknowledge that it changed our world forever.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Hail to the Chief
One of the joys of Denver is the number of the trails close in to the city. Oh sure, there is great hiking all throughout the state, but Denver’s trails are special because they are both spectacular and within an hour or so of the city. It’s also possible never to hike the exact same one twice—a change of season means the trails can be vastly different—and there are plenty of them: a Forest Service map shows just how many.
We’ve done a lot around Golden and Evergreen, but yesterday we found a gem: Chief Mountain. Even though we were told it is well-loved, we’d never heard of it before, nor of the ski area, Echo Mountain, just across the road from the trailhead. But before I get to that, a little background.
A few weeks ago, finding myself grown a little tubby, I proposed to Sid that we start climbing again rather than just walking. He was happy to agree. He’d taken me up to the top of Loveland Pass on our second date (the first one was snow shoeing at Jones Pass—you can’t say I wasn’t warned), which was nearly our last date. But I survived and realized that Colorado is best seen from the top of things—high things like mountains.
The apex of my climbing career was getting to the top of Gray’s Peak and Mount Bierstadt, but then I encountered a snowboarder at Copper and hurt my knees, which promptly swelled up like little melons. I suggested that for a time at least we hike around the Denver foothills instead of sleeping in the truck and trying to bag fourteeners. That’s when we started hiking the Denver trails and I realized how differently Sid and I look at things.
Sid will do the same trail repeatedly if he likes the degree of challenge and if it fits into his training routine (be that what it may at the time). I, on the other hand, am fickle. I want new trails and new scenery. The challenge for us is to find a trail with enough pitch to keep him happy and his heart rate up and with enough scenery to keep me not thinking about my knees. The Chief Mountain trail is all uphill although it’s never to the point of bouldering (except at the very top and you don’t have to do that unless your pride demands it), so Sid had a nice workout and once we cleared timber line, I had all the scenery I could ever want. Sid is not given to superlatives. His “not bad” means “very good” (I think). He proclaimed the Chief Mountain trail, “very nice,” which is excellent, again I think.
I find it interesting that even after eight years together I still have to guess what Sid is feeling. I know he enjoyed the mountain as much as I did, but I also know that if I try to press him further to explain, he will look at me with exasperation and say something like “I just told you.”
We’ve done a lot around Golden and Evergreen, but yesterday we found a gem: Chief Mountain. Even though we were told it is well-loved, we’d never heard of it before, nor of the ski area, Echo Mountain, just across the road from the trailhead. But before I get to that, a little background.
A few weeks ago, finding myself grown a little tubby, I proposed to Sid that we start climbing again rather than just walking. He was happy to agree. He’d taken me up to the top of Loveland Pass on our second date (the first one was snow shoeing at Jones Pass—you can’t say I wasn’t warned), which was nearly our last date. But I survived and realized that Colorado is best seen from the top of things—high things like mountains.
The apex of my climbing career was getting to the top of Gray’s Peak and Mount Bierstadt, but then I encountered a snowboarder at Copper and hurt my knees, which promptly swelled up like little melons. I suggested that for a time at least we hike around the Denver foothills instead of sleeping in the truck and trying to bag fourteeners. That’s when we started hiking the Denver trails and I realized how differently Sid and I look at things.
Sid will do the same trail repeatedly if he likes the degree of challenge and if it fits into his training routine (be that what it may at the time). I, on the other hand, am fickle. I want new trails and new scenery. The challenge for us is to find a trail with enough pitch to keep him happy and his heart rate up and with enough scenery to keep me not thinking about my knees. The Chief Mountain trail is all uphill although it’s never to the point of bouldering (except at the very top and you don’t have to do that unless your pride demands it), so Sid had a nice workout and once we cleared timber line, I had all the scenery I could ever want. Sid is not given to superlatives. His “not bad” means “very good” (I think). He proclaimed the Chief Mountain trail, “very nice,” which is excellent, again I think.
I find it interesting that even after eight years together I still have to guess what Sid is feeling. I know he enjoyed the mountain as much as I did, but I also know that if I try to press him further to explain, he will look at me with exasperation and say something like “I just told you.”
I suspect this has to be a guy and maybe a generational thing. The men I've been around seem to have a shorthand that they intuitively understand when they talk with one another, and if they don’t understand one another completely—well, they seem able to live with it. Women on the other hand, speaking for myself, seem to have the need to communicate something purposeful, even if it is just gossip. Men gossip too—oh lord can they—but not for the same reason. They don't seem to be bonding or trying to see if everyone is on board or trying to find some hidden motive for why people behave as they do (as if anyone can ever know).
I wonder if there is a new proposition here: that men not only think vertically but also communicate that way (if this doesn’t make sense to you, check out my previous blog on vertical and horizontal). Abraham Lincoln once said something like it's better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and prove it. I look back on the number of times that I have done just that. But I gave other people the chance to shine and I learned something in the process. I guess I would rewrite the president a little: sometimes it is generous to open your mouth even if you do look foolish--but I wouldn't make a practice of it.
When we got back, I had delusions of grandeur since I’d done so well on the trail and suggested that we try for another fourteener. We slept on it. Today I am gloriously stiff and even Sid admitted that he took an advil. Mais, ou sont les neiges d’antan?
When we got back, I had delusions of grandeur since I’d done so well on the trail and suggested that we try for another fourteener. We slept on it. Today I am gloriously stiff and even Sid admitted that he took an advil. Mais, ou sont les neiges d’antan?
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Into the Fun House
I’ve just woken up from eleven hours of sleep preceded by two day-naps and am finally feeling more or less alive—that means I’ve just come back from Las Vegas. The Strip these days is a marathon survival course: 105 degrees in the day and non-stop temptation at night. I overheard the cabin attendant on the plane back to Denver saying that she had spent four days leave in Vegas and had slept only eight hours during that whole time. That’s not surprising because the hotels have nothing in the rooms to encourage you to stay out of the casinos. There wasn’t even a coffee maker in our otherwise luxurious room in the Bellagio—just tons of booze in the room fridge.After a couple of drinks, though, it didn’t really seem to matter where you were. Hotels began to look alike—one large casino room in the middle of a theme park. You had to look for the lions to know it was the MGM or the Italianate marble floors and elaborate garden for the Bellagio, the Egyptian frieze to know it was Ceasar’s, the close-up of a woman’s behind in a thong to know it was Bally’s, or the New York shop fronts or the French stores etc. etc. Otherwise the machines were the same, the card tables were the same, the mini-dressed cocktail servers were the same, the important-looking people in a hurry with their with walkie-talkies were the same, and the gigantic statuary (griffins, lions, athletes etc) were the same.
But if Las Vegas itself has a sameness once the novelty wears off, that can’t be said for the people. English was definitely only one language among many. This wasn’t the Manolo shoes or Dior and Armani crowd. These were people happy to wear t-shirts spelling out the words Las Vegas in rhinestones. Children were few and far between and even those were misbehaving as if they knew they were where they shouldn’t be. When we checked in, three little Asian girls were playing chase around the fountains in the extremely crowded lobby. No one said a thing. What plays in Vegas stays in Vegas, after all.
The Bellagio’s casino floor was actually fairly quiet except for the din of atonal chimes and the occasional loud music announcing some bonus spin. Husbands and wives occupied side by side slot machines, playing what looked like traditional diamond games. Single women went more for the theme machines: hoot loot, wheel of fortune, Texas Tea which made a mooing sound if you won, Cleopatra, Blue Coyote which howled etc. Single men tended to either play the card tables or sit seriously at the slots, dragging on their cigarettes or cigars and taking a long time before pushing the spin button or pulling the arm—as if willing the machines to produce the solid payline. Some spent hours at the same machine. They probably broke even with the free drinks though, which was about the only free thing in the entire city.
The casino floor at the Wynn did come alive at 1:30 am—which is why I was short on sleep. A group of young women on a girls’ night out took up station in front of the Oz machine. They cheered everything. They cheered the wicked witch, they cheered Judy when she said they didn’t seem to be in Kansas any more, they cheered Glenda, they even cheered winning two quarters when they were playing five. Only the action from the men over at the dice table rivaled them. A roar would go up when the dice fell out the right way. There’s nothing like doing something physical, it seems, when you’re out for a night on the town and just want fun.
In the end having fun—or trying to—is really what Las Vegas is about. I’ve found that after the initial novelty wears off, gambling can be rather boring unless you’re serious about it and unless you are winning. It’s always amazing to me how everyone says they win. Maybe losing is not something you want to admit. I will. I won and lost several fortunes in my two days: up $40, down $40, up $30, down $30, finally ending down $30 again. Like everyone else I hate losing money, but I look on it as a money raffle. Just maybe one day I’ll be lucky.
What I really do appreciate are the fabulous food, the amazing opulence, and the glorious over-the-top excess of casinos trying to out do one another. It’s something like Oz—over the rainbow, a yellow brick road through the casinos, confusion about how to get out of the place, no sleep unless you lie down in the poppies—and, like the wizard, not real at all.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Fantasy and Unreality
I’m off to Las Vegas on Sunday to spend two luxurious days with Kimi at the Bellaggio Hotel, where she’s got us very good mid-week rates. We try to get together on our birthdays which are close together in August except that she is one year younger—something she reminds me of now and then. She drives up from Los Angeles and I’ll be flying Frontier—I like their tail animals and they still let me check one bag free.
Given the fact that I am not only one year older than Kimi but that I will also be celebrating(?) my 65th, I decided that my usual slacks and t-shirts needed some updating so I trekked on down to Saks Off Fifth at Castle Rock Outlets (I never said I wasn’t going to be cheap chic) and happily found myself in the middle of a sale. There was even the magic word clearance.
On the way home. It suddenly occurred to me that I might have gone about the whole business backwards. I hadn’t done any research. I didn’t know whether the things I had bought were last year’s rejects. I know designers say to make things your own, but what if I was going to be what my mother called “mutton done up as a lamb”? I wasn’t about to take anything back, but the niggle of doubt led me to pick up the latest copy of Vogue at the supermarket to see what was “hot.”
I haven’t looked at Vogue for years—make that many years—not since I figured that anything the models wore was going to look awful on me. A particular model, in fact, was probably one of only about ten women in the nation who could wear the outfit and not look like something I would flee if I met her in the street. Actually, there were a good number of models that I would run away from—the dark circles around their eyes made them look like depraved raccoons. But I digress.
This edition of Vogue attracted me because it was supposedly about looking good at any age, a topic dear to my heart. The sections were devoted to the decades. Women in their nineties were represented by John McCain’s mother who is 96. Somehow this lady occupies a different universe from mine: when she was told she was too old to rent a car in Europe, she bought a Mercedes Benz and left it there for future travels. She looks aggressively good and she has opinions to match. I’m afraid that I found her more intimidating than inspiring. Diahann Carroll represented the 70s, looking impossibly gorgeous with smooth, unwrinkled skin. Mia Farrow was the 60s and Chrissie Evert, looking like a mermaid in sleek evening gown, was the 50s.
Each of them was a reproach to those among us (like me) with wrinkles and bulges we have not addressed. Clearly, Vogue is suggesting that to look our age is our own negligence. Of course, each of these ladies has one thing in common—they all have uncommon resources. That makes all the difference, and lest anyone not understand how such unreality and fantasy of eternal beauty and youth come about, Vogue includes an article on the latest miracle surgery, including knee and elbow lifts, all of which is pricey. But then Vogue always was about money just as Vanity Fair was always about edgy eccentricity.
If I were willing to part with the money, I might consider a neck lift if only to feel socially responsible. After all, what I have done lately for the cause of remaining perpetually forty and for helping the surgeon buy his wife a new Mercedes? But I’m not willing to either shell out or put up with the recovery. I suppose I might consider it if I was worried that my husband was eying younger, dishy girls who had no scruples about the latest “tweak” (as Vogue calls it). Otherwise, I look at the costs and imagine what else I could be doing with the money. For me, it's like playing golf--around about the 9th hole, I start thinking of all the other things I could be doing with the time. That's why I don't play any more. To slightly misquote Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to be part of any foursome that would have me.
I guess I'll just have to make do with visiting to Las Vegas with Kimi--that's probably as close to fantasy and unreality as I am going to get.
Given the fact that I am not only one year older than Kimi but that I will also be celebrating(?) my 65th, I decided that my usual slacks and t-shirts needed some updating so I trekked on down to Saks Off Fifth at Castle Rock Outlets (I never said I wasn’t going to be cheap chic) and happily found myself in the middle of a sale. There was even the magic word clearance.
On the way home. It suddenly occurred to me that I might have gone about the whole business backwards. I hadn’t done any research. I didn’t know whether the things I had bought were last year’s rejects. I know designers say to make things your own, but what if I was going to be what my mother called “mutton done up as a lamb”? I wasn’t about to take anything back, but the niggle of doubt led me to pick up the latest copy of Vogue at the supermarket to see what was “hot.”
I haven’t looked at Vogue for years—make that many years—not since I figured that anything the models wore was going to look awful on me. A particular model, in fact, was probably one of only about ten women in the nation who could wear the outfit and not look like something I would flee if I met her in the street. Actually, there were a good number of models that I would run away from—the dark circles around their eyes made them look like depraved raccoons. But I digress.
This edition of Vogue attracted me because it was supposedly about looking good at any age, a topic dear to my heart. The sections were devoted to the decades. Women in their nineties were represented by John McCain’s mother who is 96. Somehow this lady occupies a different universe from mine: when she was told she was too old to rent a car in Europe, she bought a Mercedes Benz and left it there for future travels. She looks aggressively good and she has opinions to match. I’m afraid that I found her more intimidating than inspiring. Diahann Carroll represented the 70s, looking impossibly gorgeous with smooth, unwrinkled skin. Mia Farrow was the 60s and Chrissie Evert, looking like a mermaid in sleek evening gown, was the 50s.
Each of them was a reproach to those among us (like me) with wrinkles and bulges we have not addressed. Clearly, Vogue is suggesting that to look our age is our own negligence. Of course, each of these ladies has one thing in common—they all have uncommon resources. That makes all the difference, and lest anyone not understand how such unreality and fantasy of eternal beauty and youth come about, Vogue includes an article on the latest miracle surgery, including knee and elbow lifts, all of which is pricey. But then Vogue always was about money just as Vanity Fair was always about edgy eccentricity.
If I were willing to part with the money, I might consider a neck lift if only to feel socially responsible. After all, what I have done lately for the cause of remaining perpetually forty and for helping the surgeon buy his wife a new Mercedes? But I’m not willing to either shell out or put up with the recovery. I suppose I might consider it if I was worried that my husband was eying younger, dishy girls who had no scruples about the latest “tweak” (as Vogue calls it). Otherwise, I look at the costs and imagine what else I could be doing with the money. For me, it's like playing golf--around about the 9th hole, I start thinking of all the other things I could be doing with the time. That's why I don't play any more. To slightly misquote Groucho Marx, I wouldn't want to be part of any foursome that would have me.
I guess I'll just have to make do with visiting to Las Vegas with Kimi--that's probably as close to fantasy and unreality as I am going to get.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Mount Evans and Ethics
A few days ago we drove up Mount Evans (14,264), which is one of Colorado's fourteeners 
(fifty plus peaks in the state above fourteen thousand feet). It's one of two peaks 
you can actually drive up to. The other is Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, but that's another matter: it not only hosts a well-known car race each year but also sports a very popular narrow-gauge train to the top. Mount Evans retains a little more mystery--you must drive about fourteen miles from I-70 to the entrance sta
tion and then fourteen miles after that on a oh-my-god road.
(fifty plus peaks in the state above fourteen thousand feet). It's one of two peaks 
you can actually drive up to. The other is Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, but that's another matter: it not only hosts a well-known car race each year but also sports a very popular narrow-gauge train to the top. Mount Evans retains a little more mystery--you must drive about fourteen miles from I-70 to the entrance sta
tion and then fourteen miles after that on a oh-my-god road. 
Sid's climbed about thirty of the fourteeners in the state and, when we first met, wanted me to attempt some with him. I did two but it wasn't pretty. It took me three separate tries to get up Gray's Peak (14,270). I'd get to the last pitch, where the mountain goats were, and then some part of me would give out. Finally, I did it. Then I did Mount Bierstadt (14, 060) in one try. After that, it was literally down hill. We tried the highest peak in Colorado--Mount Elbert (14,433 ) twice. Each time, I got to the final pitch. The first time it snowed and the peak disappeared. The second time a thunderstorm drove us back. But by that point in the trail I'd had it anyway. My back hurt and I was panting for oxygen like a malamute in hundred degree weather. I knew the descent would throw out my knees and blacken my toe nails, so I was not a happy camper.
To encourage me, Sid gave me a statuette of Winged Victory with two gold plates on the base showing two mountain names and the date I got up them. There was room for two more plates. But I wasn't to be moved. I could live with a half-filled base.
Now, Mount Evans seemed to be another matter. You could drive up as far as you wanted and walk to the top. I had visions of an easy plate for my trophy. Of course it was craven and Sid wasn't encouraging when I suggested it. "It's cheating," he said. "You need to climb a couple of thousand feet to claim it." I suspected he just wanted to see me earn my plate the hard way. So matters stayed, but then for some reason he relented and said we'd go up. As we drove up the narrow road with its sharp drop-offs and eroded asphalt, Sid told me he’d never taken anyone else up there. It turned out that he used to climb up from Crater Lake, across a sawtooth ridge and on to Mount Bierstadt the back way. I looked at the ridges and secretly thought he was crazy, but he looked so wistful I couldn't say anything. He rwas remembering the Mount Evans area from long before it became a stop for visitors on their way into the mountains from Denver.
They’re powerful, these memories linked to places as we remember them as they no longer are. I remember seeing Waikiki when the pink lady, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, was the tallest building along the shore line. Now she is dwarfed by towering high rises that almost seem to be one piece. Not all change is progress, as Sid likes to say—and that applies just as much to the Colorado Rockies, which are being loved to death. Some trails are so popular that it’s possible never to be alone. We certainly weren’t alone at the end of the Mount Evans road, which has a sign saying that it is the highest in North America. Above us was a rock pile several hundred feet high marking the real top of the mountain. I was struck by summit fever and was prepared to climb over the boulders, but it turned out that there is a sedate set of mild switchbacks leading up to the top. The summit was packed with people from Oklahoma and Texas savoring the view of Denver and the Front Range of mountains. It was, as Sid said, a destination stop.
They’re powerful, these memories linked to places as we remember them as they no longer are. I remember seeing Waikiki when the pink lady, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, was the tallest building along the shore line. Now she is dwarfed by towering high rises that almost seem to be one piece. Not all change is progress, as Sid likes to say—and that applies just as much to the Colorado Rockies, which are being loved to death. Some trails are so popular that it’s possible never to be alone. We certainly weren’t alone at the end of the Mount Evans road, which has a sign saying that it is the highest in North America. Above us was a rock pile several hundred feet high marking the real top of the mountain. I was struck by summit fever and was prepared to climb over the boulders, but it turned out that there is a sedate set of mild switchbacks leading up to the top. The summit was packed with people from Oklahoma and Texas savoring the view of Denver and the Front Range of mountains. It was, as Sid said, a destination stop.
I suppose some of Sid’s ethics must have rubbed off on me because I have decided that I won’t claim Mount Evans on my statuette. I guess I have to live with myself. The first two plates represent mountains where I struggled and pushed myself on, plodding one foot down after the other. I can’t claim what was really just a walk in the park. I'd secretly like to bag Elbert and maybe Blanca in Alamosa, but I know they're beyond me now. I will, though, smile whenever I see Mount Evans looming above the Denver skyline and will definitely take visitors there the senior way--in my sure-footed all-wheel-drive Subaru as long as they don’t mind getting scared out of their wits on the undulating and crumbling road.
Friday, July 25, 2008
The Midnight Click
Well, with the midnight click less than one month away, I've decided might as well get on with it (collective sight of relief is OK, everyone). The midnight click is what I call the day I reach the dread sixty-five. Those of you patient enough to put up with my angst over this will recall that one minute before midnight I am (supposedly) competent--or as much as I have ever been--and one minute after I am on the slippery slope to final ash.
I've been thrashing about because I didn't feel any less competent as I approached the witching hour. I felt that this great threshhold was being forced on me by other people's perceptions. To that extent, it's still true. But now I've accepted that what's more important is what I think about myself. I've never felt more in control of my writing and my decisions and my life as I do now, even though I concede that may be relative. Someone told me once that people can't fall off the floor. Don't know about that. I think I may have started in the basement. But still, I don't have to buy into media perceptions of older people and I am now in a position to correct them rather than just resenting them. Laughter, I have decided, is the best remedy.
I have a t-shirt that says "In order to be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid." Young people look blank when they read it; the older folk just laugh. We've all been there. I imagine the Generation X are going to relate once their extreme sport injuries turn arthritic. Ah youth. I've certainly been my share of young and stupid, but I don't really feel I can claim to be old and wise. Old, maybe. But wise? Hell no--I still make mistakes worthy of me in my thirties. I still say awkward things at inappropriate moments. I still jump to conclusions and make assumptions. I still have an optimistic squint that says I have forever ahead of me. I am still surprised when I am asked if I want a senior discount. I want to look around at the someone they must be talking to behind me. It can't be me. I dye my hair and hide the wattle on my neck--I can't look a day over 50.
But in honor of this birthday, I am going to cut myself some slack. All those clothes in my closet that I have been saying I will diet and get into again?--we all have them--they are now heading out of the door. At 65, I am no longer prepared to starve myself back into a size 10. All the mindless extra housecleaning that someone told me was my job? I no longer need to polish the silver--it can tarnish. We don't entertain as we did in our forties so I can send on the serving pieces to the younger members of the family who have appearances and expectations to maintain. All my friendships date back forty years and more (remember Varney Circle, Kimi?) and my friends will overlook the dust. I am not going to avoid things because someone thinks they are inappropriate for my age: I will wear shorts, I will eat candy floss, I will slide down a water tunnel, I will bash my grandson's bumper car, I will go to Disneyland. And even more important to me, I will no longer be defensive about being into New Age stuff--one of these blogs I'll write about the childhood experience with the supernatural that led me to write Every Purpose Under Heaven. I am going to allow myself to be.
I don't think I will wear a t-shirt that says "old and still stupid sometimes," but that's how I feel. I am still learning, still growing, and still making mistakes. Now--about all those assumptions about people in the seventies.
I've been thrashing about because I didn't feel any less competent as I approached the witching hour. I felt that this great threshhold was being forced on me by other people's perceptions. To that extent, it's still true. But now I've accepted that what's more important is what I think about myself. I've never felt more in control of my writing and my decisions and my life as I do now, even though I concede that may be relative. Someone told me once that people can't fall off the floor. Don't know about that. I think I may have started in the basement. But still, I don't have to buy into media perceptions of older people and I am now in a position to correct them rather than just resenting them. Laughter, I have decided, is the best remedy.
I have a t-shirt that says "In order to be old and wise, you must first be young and stupid." Young people look blank when they read it; the older folk just laugh. We've all been there. I imagine the Generation X are going to relate once their extreme sport injuries turn arthritic. Ah youth. I've certainly been my share of young and stupid, but I don't really feel I can claim to be old and wise. Old, maybe. But wise? Hell no--I still make mistakes worthy of me in my thirties. I still say awkward things at inappropriate moments. I still jump to conclusions and make assumptions. I still have an optimistic squint that says I have forever ahead of me. I am still surprised when I am asked if I want a senior discount. I want to look around at the someone they must be talking to behind me. It can't be me. I dye my hair and hide the wattle on my neck--I can't look a day over 50.
But in honor of this birthday, I am going to cut myself some slack. All those clothes in my closet that I have been saying I will diet and get into again?--we all have them--they are now heading out of the door. At 65, I am no longer prepared to starve myself back into a size 10. All the mindless extra housecleaning that someone told me was my job? I no longer need to polish the silver--it can tarnish. We don't entertain as we did in our forties so I can send on the serving pieces to the younger members of the family who have appearances and expectations to maintain. All my friendships date back forty years and more (remember Varney Circle, Kimi?) and my friends will overlook the dust. I am not going to avoid things because someone thinks they are inappropriate for my age: I will wear shorts, I will eat candy floss, I will slide down a water tunnel, I will bash my grandson's bumper car, I will go to Disneyland. And even more important to me, I will no longer be defensive about being into New Age stuff--one of these blogs I'll write about the childhood experience with the supernatural that led me to write Every Purpose Under Heaven. I am going to allow myself to be.
I don't think I will wear a t-shirt that says "old and still stupid sometimes," but that's how I feel. I am still learning, still growing, and still making mistakes. Now--about all those assumptions about people in the seventies.
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