Category: 1968

A Quick Trip with Leonard Cohen

I can see the room.  It’s a little scruffy and smells like pot and incense. (Yes that’s a cliche but there you are.)  There’s a mattress on the floor, crazy Berkeley posters on the wall, a turntable and speakers, one window over the bed, another on the long wall.  Lots of bookcases, record albums, a coffee grinder for stems and seeds, a big old stuffed chair, and us.

It was a long time ago.  Hasn’t crossed my mind in years.  Then, right there, on the Spotify singer-songwriter channel, comes a young Leonard Cohen singing this:

Music is dangerous.  Suddenly I was back in Massachusetts almost half a century ago, when Suzanne, and Sisters of Mercy too, were part of my lexicon, along with everything from Milord

to Ruby Tuesday

to Blowin’ in the Wind.

Years ago Garry Trudeau published a Doonesbury thta included the line “You’ve stolen the sound track of my life!”  I don’t remember the context but it’s disconcertinly accurate, as he usually is.   Every song is a movie of the past, running — sometimes joyously, sometimes with enormous sadness, in my head.

It was such a different time, full of righteous anger and, at the same time, joy at being alive, sometimes in love, always part of the changes taking place all around us, many at our instigation.

Now, as we face the rage and disappointment of many of our children and their peers, it’s kind of heartbreaking to look back with such nostalgia at a time that they clearly see as debauched and destructive and, even worse, egocentric and selfish.

It’s paricularly hard when these songs rise up, so transporting.  Everyone, if they’re lucky, has fond recollections of the younger times in their lives.  But for me, as the music carries me there, it was so much more.  Hope, freedom, equality, beauty, love and peace — every song an anthem moving us forward.  And  lovers in a scruffy dorm room, a little bit stoned, listening, and sometimes, singing along.

John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers REDUX

JFK Inaugural tickets

I wrote this piece right before the Obama Inauguration.  This seems like a good day to share it again.

I seem to be living in the WayBack Machine this year.  Lots of memories of 1968 and even 1963.  Now as January 20, 2009 approaches, yet another looms.  January 20, certainly, but in 1961.

See that crowd?  Somewhere, way in the back, probably at least a block beyond, stand an almost-fifteen-year-old girl and her mother.  Fresh off an overnight train from Pittsburgh, having arrived at Union Station in time to watch the Army flame-throwers melt a blizzard’s worth of snow on the streets of the inaugural route, they make their way to their parade seats: in the bleachers, way down near the Treasury Building.

I spent most of 1960 besotted with John Kennedy.  And Jackie.  And Caroline.  And all the other Kennedys who came with them.  Most of my lunch money went to bus fare as, after school, I shuttled  back and forth “to town” to volunteer in the local JFK headquarters.  I even had a scrapbook of clippings about Kennedy and his family.

So.  My parents surprised me with these two parade tickets.  My mom and I took the overnight train and arrived around dawn Inauguration morning.  We couldn’t get into the swearing-in itself, of course, so we went to a bar that served breakfast (at least that’s how I remember it) and watched the speech on their TV, then made our way along the snowy sidewalks to our seats, arriving in time to watch the new president and his wife roll by, to see his Honor Guard, the last time it would be comprised solely of white men (since Kennedy ordered their integration soon after,) in time to see the floats and the Cabinet members and the bands and the batons.

It was very cold.  We had no thermos, no blankets, nothing extra, and my mom, God bless her, never insisted that we go in for a break, never complained or made me feel anything but thrilled.  Which I was.   As the parade drew to a close, and the light faded, we stumbled down the bleachers, half-frozen, and walked the few blocks to the White House fence. I stood there, as close to the fence as I am now to my keyboard, and watched our new president enter the White House for the first time as Commander in Chief.

That was half a century ago.  I can’t say it feels like yesterday, but it remains a formidable and cherished memory.  It was also a defining lesson on how to be a parent; it took enormous love and respect to decide to do this for me.  I was such a kid – they could have treated my devotion like a rock star crush; so young, they could have decided I would “appreciate it more” next time.  (Of course there was no next time.)   Instead, they gave me what really was the lifetime gift of being a part of history.  And showed me that my political commitment had value – enough value to merit such an adventure.

Who’s to say if I would have ended up an activist (I did)- and then a journalist (I did) – without those memories.  If I would have continued to act within the system rather than try to destroy it. (I did)  If I would have been the mom who took kids to Europe, brought them along on news assignments to Inaugurations and royal weddings and green room visits with the Mets (Yup, I did.)  I had learned to honor the interests and dreams of my children the way my parents had honored my own.  So it’s hard for me to tell parents now to stay home.

My good friend, the wise and gifted PunditMom, advises “those with little children” to skip it, and since strollers and backpacks are banned for security reasons, I’m sure she’s right.*  But if you’ve got a dreamer in your house, a young adult who has become a true citizen because of this election, I’d try to come.  After all, he’s their guy.  What he does will touch their lives far more than it will ours.  Being part of this beginning may determine their willingness to accept the tough sacrifices he asks of them – at least that – and probably, also help to build their roles as citizens – as Americans – for the rest of their lives.  Oh — and will tell them that, despite curfews and learner’s permits, parental limit-setting and screaming battles, their parents see them as thinking, wise and effective people who will, as our new President promised them, help to change the world.

*I know, I thought of Christina-Taylor Greene as I re-read this too.

This post also appears in the forthcoming PunditMom’s Mothers of Intention: How Women & Social Media Are Revolutionizing Politics in America

 

 

 

RIOTING IN AFRICA? STRIFE IN IRAN? You Have to Read This

You’re not going to believe it but this was written by
Sheldon Harnick in 1958 and recorded by theKingston Trio.  Does
anything sound familiar?   I couldn’t find a decent video but it was too good to waste.

They’re rioting in Africa (whistling)
They’re starving in Spain (whistling)
There’s hurricanes in Flo-ri-da (whistling)
And Texas needs rain
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
AND I DON’T LIKE ANYBODY VERY MUCH!!

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man’s been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off

AND WE WILL ALL BE BLOWN AWAY!!?
They’re rioting in Africa (whistling)
There’s strife in Iran
What nature doesn’t so to us —
Will be done by our fellow “man”

Unplugged for Shabbat: Something the “Cool” People Want Too. Wow.

Sabbath-Manifesto-cell-phone-sleeping-bags-white-00351 Are you unplugged?  It's Friday morning and soon Shabbat will be here.  I'll light the candles and we'll go to friends for dinner and tomorrow to services and to lunch (I'm bringing part of it).  Later we're going to another home to be part of what they call a "shabbat hangout" where the kids all play and the parents (and their older friends, like us) talk, and study and enjoy the peace of 24 hours of an unplugged, non-electric, non-driving, non-cooking,  non-working life.* 

We started living this way five years ago, as I've often documented here (I dare you to read this one about observant Judaism and Patti Smith), and now it seems that others — many of them cool hipster digital types, — are looking to do the same.  Take a look.

Over these years I've struggled with keeping kosher, with the role of women, and with much else.  But there are moments of such beauty and meaning that I find myself spinning – knowing why I'm here and wondering at the same time.

I've always been Progressive; worked in the anti-war movement and the McCarthy campaign – and was in Chicago at the 1968 convention, and when I first found observant Judaism and Shabbat, it felt counterintuitive.  Too many rules.  Sometimes it still does.

But the reason why Unplugged is so great is that when you start, you think Shabbat will be what you hate.  No more errands or Saturday manicures or movies.  No phone calls or emails or web wandering. 

And then you unplug.  And even if – as I suspect will be true for many -  you don't go the way we went and adopt (almost) the entire package, you find the peace of what Josh Foer, in the video, calls this "ancient" idea, and are grateful for it.  And for the people around you — IRL — close, and easy and at peace.

*OK I admit it.  I'm really glad the health care vote is on Sunday; if it had been on Saturday it would have been a real pain.

All Hail Rock and Roll

Hall of Fame 1988

I don't spend my time talking about the "olden days" – really I don't.  Working on the web has kept me very much in the present.  But tonight I watched a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony retrospective and since you have to have given music at least 25 performing years to be inducted most of the performers were closer to my age than to that of my buddies here on the Web.  And wow. 

I feel the way you feel 2/3 of the way down a fantastic black diamond slope with the wind in your hair and frost on your ear lobes and your heart pounding.  Where else is there the power that music brings to us?  We go where it takes us — return to places we'd forgotten we knew, find pride in the memories we cherish and an abashed amusement in those that might have been a bit – um — less luminous.  Our moods, our clothes, the way we're driving, or eating, or doing less discussable things, changes with the music around us.  It's bits of soul reflected.

I was blessed to be at a couple of the most amazing inductions; I've written about that before but some of those moments appeared tonight and I could feel again the hair raising thrill of watching Ben E King and The Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan and Billy Joel and Mick Jagger and dozens (literally dozens) of others performing together.   Coming as we all do from a generation that did so many things as a tribe, it's particularly moving to watch them trade glances and cues — such a familiar pattern.

I love my life now and am so grateful to be a part of the explosion of the new connected world, but I am also grateful for the years those musicians gave us.  They are brothers and sisters and inspirations and former fantasies and just plain fun.  I know how many died of overdoses, I know there are seamy stories and I know that there are wonderful musicians who have followed them and will themselves end up on that stage when enough years have passed but my time was a wonderful time to be young and loving music.  And once again tonight I remembered how many moments of my own personal Hall of Fame were accompanied by, or part of, or generated from – the music they gave us all.

Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck and Roman Holiday: a Political Lesson? No, Really.

Romanholiday2

It was a fairy tale about a princess on a journey. Doing her duty, kind of like Diana (but, since she was played by Audrey Hepburn, even classier,) she came to Rome, after Athens, London and Paris, to conclude her mission.

But she was young and beautiful and sick of receptions and parades. And so, in the middle of the night, she snuck out the embassy window and ventured across the Piazza di Spagna and into the Roman night.

If you know this movie at all, you remember with sweet nostalgia the way you felt the first time you saw it.  The princess asleep near the Trevi Fountain on the Roman equivalent of a park bench is awakened, like Sleeping Beauty, by reporter Joe Bradley, played by Gregory Peck. ( If the film has a flaw, it’s that we know some of what will happen once we see him there.  He’s a good guy and that’s who he plays.  He is Atticus Finch, after all.)
The film was released in 1953, right in the middle of the 1950’s.  Written by Dalton Trumbo, “Roman Holiday” was credited to a “front” named Ian McLellan Hunter, because Trumbo, blacklisted as a member of the Hollywood Ten, wasn’t permitted to write for movies any longer.  It’s one of the darkest chapters in Hollywood history, very much a part of the image of the decade and a sad facet of a beloved film that won three Oscars and introduced the world to Audrey Hepburn.
There’s something else though.  The people in this film behave well.  There are things that they want, desperately, but there are principals at stake, and they honor them.  When Peck meets Hepburn, he doesn’t recognize her but lets her crash at his apartment.  Once he figures out who she is, he knows this “runaway”  could be the story of his life.  Even so, after a brief, idyllic tour of the city, (SPOILER ALERT) she honors her responsibilities and returns to her royal duties, and of course, he never writes the story.  It was very much an artifact of the
“Greatest Generation” ideals, manifested with such courage during
WWII and very much the flip side of the jaundiced (and just as accurate) Mad Men view of the 50’s.  Duty and honor trump romance and ambition. 

Once again, I’m struck with admiration for the people of these times.  Yes the 50’s did terrible damage and made it difficult to be eccentric or rebellious or even creative.  But films like this one, or Now Voyager and similar films of the 40’s, sentimental as they may be, remind us of what else these people were.  They’d lived through the Depression and the war and they had an elevated sense of responsibility.  As we watch much of our government (and some of the rest of us) disintegrate into partisanship and self-interest, it makes a lot more sense than it did when we rose up against it all in the 1960’s.  Doesn’t it?

So Long Mr. Salinger, and Thanks

Salinger book  All I wanted when I was a kid was to be Franny Glass.  To be part of the Glass family, intellectual, quirky, and with lists of beautiful quotes on a poster board on the back of their bedroom door.  They were sad and weird and wonderful.

And now, today, we lose their creator, most beloved for Holden Caulfield, the eternally adolescent hero of Catcher in the Rye.  Holden is worthy of every affectionate word written about him, and his palpable pain is familiar to those who’ve journeyed through the teen years, but the Glasses — well  — they were a different kind of lovely.

They are all the children of one man, and he died today.  I wish I could tell you what it felt like to read Catcher in the Rye at 13.  I can remember where I was sitting as I read it – how I felt – and the deep sadness that accompanied Holden’s story.   It must have been traumatic though, because later, when my son and I read it together, I was shocked to learn that Holden’s brother had died.  I had jammed that fact someplace hard to reach, which means it was even more disturbing than I remember.  Reading it with my own child was a beautiful experience to share with a young man of deep compassion and great sensibility – a memory I cherish.  So Salinger gave me that, too.

(I’m not mentioning Joyce Maynard here.  She had a right – but sheesh!)  And I really don’t have much to say about the quiet recluse in the hills of New Hampshire.    Farewell to him, yes, but also to yet another connection to the days when I was young – and more like Holden than like women of a Certain Age.  The passions, the pain, the poetic anger at people for not being what we expect them to be and the desperate longing to rescue the imperiled and the lost.

Anyway,
I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of
rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big,
I mean – except me.  And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy
cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go
over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re
going I have to come out from somewhere and <span>catch</span> them.  That’s all I do all day.  I’d just be the
catcher in the rye and all.  I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing
I’d really like to be.”

I guess those who don’t dream of being the catcher long
to be the one who is caught.  And those longings don’t go away whether you’re 13 or
63 (right – I first read it FIFTY years ago!)  Imagine.  No, it
doesn’t go away, but your perspective changes.  The loveliness of that
kind of protecting — or being protected – it isn’t around much in the real
world.  All the more reason to be grateful for the rare observer who can remind us of its sweetness, and of what we are capable of aspiring to.

And grateful I am.  For Franny and Zooey and Seymour and all their craziness and for Holden, what he gave me then, and what I remember, even today.

RePost – Don’t Gel’s Best of 2009 & Happy New Year: 2008, 1968, Our Country’s Journey, and Mine. Oh, and Thanks to Barack Obama for Turning on the Lights

New Hampshire Primary Election night
I came of age in 1968 (that's me on the right – New Hampshire election night.)  A civil rights idealist and anti-war activist, I was formed by the horrible events, remarkable activism and leadership of that critical year.  Forty years later, mostly because of Barack Obama, lost threads of memory emerged – all year long.  I'm very grateful for the opportunity to reconsider those times through the lens of this remarkable election.  Together they tell a story, or at least part of one, and I thought you might like to take this journey with me one more time as we move toward inaugurating the first black President of the United States, elected in the first real "Internet election"; abetted in great measure by a generation that seems, in many ways, a better, "new and improved" version of my own.

I'm going to start at the end though – the coming Inauguration, because I attended that of another "rock star" – John Kennedy, nearly fifty years ago – and all that came after was born that day.  The rest is in order and I think I'm going to ** my favorites. 

**The charismatic Robert Kennedy and first-comer Eugene McCarthy fought for the nomination in 1968.  When McCarthy shocked everyone with his March near-win in New Hampshire (that's the photo at the top), Lyndon Johnson pulled out,  guaranteeing that his Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, would win the nomination and lose the election.  In 2008 the battle was between two equally disparate Democrats: Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. Having lived through the first disaster, I was horrified by the possibility of a second.  It would be too much to suffer that kind of heartbreak again.

**The spring and summer brought the assassinations of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy.  I was with Senator McCarthy, in San Francisco the night Dr. King died; in LA that night Robert Kennedy was killed.  I was young, traumatized and in the middle of history.

That same summer, Senator Obama accepted the Democratic nomination on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's great "I have a dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963.  Again, the person I was reached out to the woman I have become.  Again, two points in history merged.

Meanwhile, throughout the year, the McCain campaign tried, often through Sarah Palin, to re-ignite the smoldering culture wars.

For the first time since 1968, since I had been a journalist for much of the time in between and done no campaigning or petition signing or much else that would be partisan activity, I went canvassing in Virginia
with friends, including a four-year-old who added enormous to each trip
and enchanted quite a few fence-sitters.  Each trip was an adventure, always interesting, often moving.

**Of course, Election Night meant a great deal to all of us, but for me, Obama's speech in Grant Park, where my friends had been beaten and bloodied in 1968, was a perfect "exorcism" of those indelible memories.

Toward the end of the year, Judith Warner wrote about her efforts to explain the election to her kids – and so did I.

One more thing.  A year-ender trip to London and Vienna once again reminded me, as the Obama Berlin trip had done, how much Europe has longed for the America that stood for decency and hope.  Barack Obama was named the first-ever Times of London Man of the Year.

So here we are.  I'm not sure if I'll ever have the gift of so many
reasons to remember gigantic events of the past, but this year
certainly provided plenty.  It was a wonder and a privilege.  My hope
now is that, as we move forward, the hope we've all sensed over these
past months will morph into a real sense of mission and purpose.  That
is what will take all this promise and, as we Americans have done so
many times, use it to move us forward to the place we long to, and need
to be.