Aging – Page 18 – Don't Gel Too Soon

BONNIE AND CLYDE, VIOLENCE AND TIME PASSING

Last Sunday the New York Times reminded us that Bonnie and Clyde, a film seared behind the eyelids of people like me, is 40 years old. I remember it particularly because just after I saw it, I went to a 21st birthday dinner for a friend at her uncle’s home on Park Avenue in Manhattan. I was new to such places then, and, despite my anti-war lefty politics, both thrilled and intimidated – particularly because her uncle was a writer of some renown. For a college senior, it was another experience milestone.

Along with most of adult America, our host had been appalled at the violence of the film. We, on the other hand, argued that the film was an accurate metaphor for the violence in Vietnam; a social comment that spoke deeply to all of us. The argument was long, fierce and audacious — and, of course, unresolved. I haven’t seen the film in many years and am curious how I would react.

I’ve become a lot more sensitive to visual violence as I’ve raised my sons. Beverly Hills Cop was released when my younger son was five. His big brother was nine and really wanted to see it; since we hated leaving Dan behind, he came too. Do you remember the ending? It was a gun battle too but multiples more gory and violent than Bonnie and Clyde ever dreamt of being. The worst part? My son was upset, yes, but the audience barely reacted – and many cheered. Film and TV violence in the years between 1967 and 1984 had escalated slowly, right in front of us – and we had barely noticed. That progression has continued.

It’s a creepy dilemma. I’m a true romantic who revels in love stories like Bull Durham (1988) and Shakespeare in Love (1998), oldies like Now, Voyager (1942) and two I’ve written about before, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)and Rebbecca (1940) as well as decade-old satires like Wag the Dog (1997)and Warren Beatty’s (aka Clyde’s) masterpiece Bulworth (1998). But another of my favorite films is Pulp Fiction (1994)- steeped in violence, much of it random. Silence of the Lambs, too. And of course, The Godfather Trilogy (1972, 1974, 1990) None of these, and other more "realistically violent" films, would have been possible before Arthur Penn brought Bonnie and Clyde to life.

My protective instincts as a mother and activist clash with my respect for the vision of the artist and the gifts those visions can bring to the rest of us. This isn’t a new conversation of course, any more than it was new in 1967. It’s been going on as long as artists have. What’s different this time is that I was a kid when Bonnie and Clyde slammed into our lives; now I’m at least the age of that angry uncle. I know a lot more and that colors how I look at things I don’t know.

I named this blog Don’t Gel Too Soon because I struggle to stay open – available to understand, to appreciate, that which comes next, and to remember that no matter how lovely the lovely there’s more to life than that. And that, after all, if someone doesn’t help us to see it, we can’t join together to change it.

The 50s, TV, The Company and The Hungarian Uprising

I was ten in 1956, when the people of Hungary rose up to end the Russian occupation. It was a rout – and they remained under Communist domination until the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s difficult to explain now just how scary it was to hear of these heroic people crushed in the streets, and, for a child, difficult to place. Could it happen to me? To my family? How did the Russians get there? Why did they care what people did in Hungary?

A couple of years later a local church group sponsored a Hungarian family’s move to the US and their son, our age and pretty good at speaking English, came to dinner at the home of my friend Lois and spoke to a group of us – maybe it was our Girl Scout troop; maybe just a bunch of girlfriends – I’m not sure. He was dramatic and dignified and so happy to be there. Listening to him and the stories of those he’d left behind was a haunting experience – especially in the mind of a romantic politicized 13 year old mad for JFK.

I hadn’t thought about any of this in years, but this summer TNT brings us The Company – a history of the CIA — and of the Hungarian tragedy of 1956. From the perspective of 50 years it’s still so sad, even through the gauze of TV melodrama – and the freedom and prosperity of Hungary today doesn’t mitigate much.

I’ve kept my eye on what happened in the East since then. We took our kids through Czechoslovakia and East Germany while they were still behind the Iron Curtain. We couldn’t get the boys dry socks after a heavy rain because, as the storekeeper told us “we don’t have socks today.” We gave all our Bruce Springsteen tapes to our guide; each one would have cost him a month’s pay on the black market.

I’ve even been to Pottsdam. That photo on the left is the bridge where spies were exchanged during the days of the Cold War. So it’s not like I don’t know what happened historically. Once in a while though the recreation of reality, even with Hollywood gloss, slams me back where I was for a little while.

That’s all – I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a real ending for this – and I can’t — no massive summary available. Good night.

BACK FROM BLOGHER 07

This post is a valentine. I learned at the Blog Her 07 Conference – in a story telling panel, that a story is a series of unanswered questions – answered gradually over time. But I have to start with the answer today because it informs everything else.

That answer begins with the three women in this photograph – (left to right) Elisa Camahort, Lisa Stone and Jory des Jardin, whose vision led to the gathering of almost 800 women who streamed into Chicago for the third annual BlogHer Conference. From its small beginnings in 2005, this conference and the community surrounding it has become something far more than the sum of its parts. The reason for its success and for the remarkable warmth and commitment to the community from the community emerges from this trio’s commitment to building concept, content and structure from the ideas, perspectives and attitudes of the bloggers — us — ourselves.

It’s tough to describe the high of so many powerful, rebellious women gathered in one place – dressed up, made up (this photo is from Suburban Turmoil) and smart as whips. Why begin with "dressed up, made up?" Because I’m old enough to remember when women only got dressed up when they were dressing for men. Now we dress for one another; our joy in one another’s company is boundless. Most of the women I spent the weekend with are too young to remember that, but for me it’s one of many wondrous facts emerging from this conference. Times have changed.

Then too, the entire conference empowers us. In fact, one of the major BlogHer initiatives is the product of an idea from just two bloggers: Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann (That’s Cooper on the left.) They and BlogHer’s founders have created BlogHers Act and it’s about to become a year-long initiative on global health issues — topic and focus chosen by BlogHers. How did it happen? A survey seeking nominations for topics and then a vote that chose global health. It’s an exciting enterprise — all generated from within the BlogHer community

The rest of the conference was also quite wonderful. Some details:

*That Art of Storytelling panel I mentioned, which I attended almost by accident, was moving in its honesty and support of artfully structured storytelling rather than the impulsive writing that blogging can become. Birdie Jaworski, Claire Fontaine and Ree were the generous, inspiring speaker and their words will stay with me for a long time.

*Another, on branding and promoting yourself and your blog, was fascinating. I’ve been in journalism most of my life and know all the obvious "tricks" people use to get attention, but there’s lots of thought and planning beyond that stuff and, even more importantly, serious discipline.

*Since the Presidential election is [only?] a year away, there was a Get Out the Vote panel too – with some real heavyweights brought together by BlogHer political editor Morra Aarons: Kim Gandy from NOW, and BlogHer’s own Lisa Sabatier (seen together in this photo) and others.

There was a second political panel, Earn Our Votes – also organized by Morra – to select issues women bloggers wanted to see the candidates focus on.

*I co-chaired a Media Training – which I had proposed because blogging women are of so much more interest to reporters but aren’t all experienced in managing those relationships- with Rachel of Sarcastic Journalist. We had great questions – the audience set the agenda for the panel and we got lots of positive feedback, which felt great.

Most of all – beyond the sessions and the very interesting keynotes was the community that BlogHer is. If I write too much about it I’ll get all goopy (I do do that) but in an era of Third Wave and post modern and generational blah blah these few days bring together women of all sorts in a common space, help them find common ground and just plain have a wonderful time – with one another.

If that doesn’t deserve a valentine, I don’t know what does.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Some picture, huh?

Yesterday a friend who is writing a book about the TV news business in the 60’s and 70’s asked me for some photos from the time we worked together. As I went through old albums and pulled out the few I had, I found this one. I remember the day it was taken – a sunny spring Sunday in Washington in a public garden. Newly out of college, newly employed, newly in possession of a Nikon, I’d gone with a friend to take photos of all things lovely. She took this one of me. (note to all curly haired people – this look was achieved by sleeping with hair wrapped around orange juice cans!)

Almost 40 years later, I am surprised that I look at this with pleasure, not sadness. I expected the familiar "ah I looked so much better then – so much was ahead of me" stuff but found none.

I’m sure something is still there – I got kind of weepy going through the books and seeing family photos from when the boys were little – so much time gone by. But that’s nostalgia for the joy that comes from wonderful children and the memories lucky families build. But this photo – no pangs at all.

Nope. I was a lucky girl. I had more adventures by the time I was 25 than many people get in a lifetime and I’m still having them. So there she is – the weekend me from the beginning of my grown-up life, young and happy in the sunshine.

REBIRTH OF WONDER (REDUX)– DEATH AND LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

One more deadline, one more rerun- the last for a while, I promise.

In A Coney Island of the Mind, San Francisco poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote of a search for a rebirth of wonder.* It’s out there – that wonder — sometimes in the strangest places.

Here is what I know: Some things in life surprise us — not with shock but with wonder. Today we flew to Boston for Rick’s dad’s funeral. It was a beautiful day – sunny and almost as warm as spring. With Rick and me traveled not only our remarkable rabbi, but also two of Rick’s dearest friends. Despite the mid-week madness of Washington, they had chosen to leave their work and fly north to support us. In addition, the sisters of two friends unable to come arrived as their surrogates. That was the first wondrous thing.

An Orthodox funeral is deceptively simple. The coffin is a plain pine box held together with pegs. As it leaves the hearse it is borne by the mourners to its place over the grave. On the way, Psalm 91 is recited and the procession stops seven times. Once the coffin – reverently referred to as the "aron" is in place, the service proceeds.

With our rabbi leading the service, each step along the way was accompanied by warm and loving exposition: Why do we do this? — How should we participate? — What is the blessing of bearing the aron and seeing to its burial? As he led the prayers and answered these questions, it was with such love and individuality that participation became a privilege and a comfort. That is the second wondrous thing.

As the service moved toward conclusion the rabbi explained the final act. We, not the cemetery employees, would bury the coffin – my husband’s father. One by one, we took up the shovels and poured earth into the grave. Not until the grave was full and the coffin covered did we leave… and then, all those in attendance formed a double line so that Rick and his brother could pass through, moving from the funeral to the initial mourning period, or Shiva.

This last, loving duty is perhaps the most remarkable of what an Orthodox Jewish funeral offers mourners. At the funerals of each of my parents, way before we moved into this new life, the cemetery distributed little envelopes of "dirt from Israel" which attendees dropped on the coffin. We all left then, and the cemetery employees finished the job.

I told my sister about the custom that mourners fill the grave, thinking that she, who is not thrilled with our decision to live a more observant life, would be appalled. Instead, she said "That’s so great – leaving them covered and at peace. I felt so badly leaving Daddy there so exposed…." That’s probably the most critical. Imagine the difference, at the close of such a painful day, filled with loss and grief, if you knew you’d bid a farewell that leaves your loved one cared for and at peace. Imagine, too, that those you love – beloved friends and family members – have all left a part of themselves there in the grave; that the final resting place includes their loving labor. That’s the final wondrous thing.

We’re nowhere near the Age of Wonder, that’s for sure. But we are occasionally given a peek. Today the window opened and a bit emerged — not quite a rebirth but present nonetheless — just enough to help us see what’s possible. If that’s not wonder, I don’t know what is.

*I Am Waiting
I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER – (AND SO DOES THE MUSIC)

Music has always had power over me – and it seems that rather than growing out of it, as I age, it just keeps getting more intense. Oh – and somehow in the second half of my life, Patti Smith keeps showing up. Last night I plugged my iPod into my car radio for a drive home from an evening meeting. I opened the sunroof and the windows to the summer night, set the player to "shuffle" and just let it choose. What emerged? THE PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER – the Patti Smith anthem that closed the final night of the 2004 VOTE FOR CHANGE tour – one of the greatest musical experiences of my life.

So there I was – singing along – beating rhythm through the roof window and just so happy. Of course the concert tour was unable to produce the change it sought – so maybe the people don’t always have the power – but even after all the disappointments of my political life – and what for me has been the heartbreak of the past 6 years –the idealism of this song and all that it says: "the people have the power to redeem to work of fools" … and "I believe everything we dream|can come to pass through our union| we can turn the world around| we can turn the earth’s revolution | we have the power — People have the power … " still lifts my heart.

I couldn’t find video of everyone in the tour singing PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER but I did find this and it was so great that even though it’s not what I was writing about, it’s from the same night and you’ll love it. Now I have to go do some work. Enjoy yourselves.

Vote for Change ~ Cleveland ~ Oct 2, 2004

A PICTURE WORTH 1000 WORDS BUT HERE ARE SOME WORDS ANYWAY

They’re all gone now – my mom and my aunts. Here they are at the wedding of Barbara, the youngest, who died this week. My mom, Jeanne, the oldest, gone since 1998, is the one on the right – that’s my dad next to her. On the left side of the photo is Bettie, and my Uncle Jim.

Growing up in the Depression, they were wartime girls – my mom worked for the Office of Price Administration — the agency that controlled prices and tried to prevent gouging and war profiteering. She met my dad there – his hearing loss prevented him from active military duty so he fought unscrupulous businessmen instead. Bettie was in the WAVES. Barb, the youngest, came of age closer to the war’s end; her husband Bob was a Ranger, decorated several times.

The Depression had been hard on them. My grandfather was unable to bring in much. It was so traumatic that once, when Bettie started to talk about putting cardboard in their shoes to cover the holes, my mother cut her off. We were in a car, the three of us, and Bettie was just kind of spinning yarns. But to my mother she was raising things better left alone. I have always understood that these three sisters – so lovely and happy here — went through plenty. I also understood that they were not alone; no one their age was untouched by the Depression and the war.

I’ve come to realize over the years that my parents’ Depression experiences had a profound effect on me. Not only did I read menus from the price to the item – and check dangling price tags before examining clothing on a rack. That was the obvious stuff I inherited. Beyond it though was a sense of sadness for them all. My mother, who was an artist, got a scholarship in education, so she because a teacher. My father, who wanted to be an architect, got a scholarship to law school so he became a lawyer. My Uncle Bob was to be a veterinarian but his wartime injuries impaired his movement too much for him to be able to lift the animals so his dream died too. That was just how it was.

In some ways, they were the lucky ones; all three sisters and my father and uncles — were able, on scholarships, to go to college. All three marriages, despite tensions and tough times, survived with a real friendship between spouses for most of their lives. Each had three children who were smart, interesting, and self-sufficient. Even so, the bounty of choices they gave to us was so much more than they had had themselves. The young women in this photograph, and their husbands, never had the luxury of dropping out of school to campaign for Eugene McCarthy or majoring in music or theater or spending years doing trauma medicine a couple of months a year to pay for a life of mountain climbing and exploration. There was no give, no leeway, in the lives of those whom the Depression and the war that ended it – had stamped forever.

None of that shows here, of course. It’s a wedding. There’s no hint of all the scars the Depression had left on them, no hint of the loved ones and friends lost to World War II, no indication of the profound pain of watching a father who couldn’t support them and a mother who was permanently enraged. Nope. This was a wedding day and a lovely one at that. Tonight – well tonight I’m thinking of what it must have been like as the third sister, the baby sister, married. Who, I wonder, was missing – lost to the war. Who, I wonder, were the absent friends lost to the jolt of economic inequality when their parents retained a steady income and my grandparents could not. What are the stories my sisters and cousins and I will never know?

When we cleaned out my mom’s apartment I found the strangest thing: the Phi Beta Kappa key of the husband of one of my mother’s best childhood friends — a woman whose first husband had died early in the war. Why did my mother have it instead of her? What, if anything, had been between them when they were young? To me, the key is a symbol of all that was never said – the reserve of this brave and noble generation who didn’t want us to know how tough it really was. One picture and so many random thoughts — probably self-indulgently cobbled together here.

I’m writing this at the beach — the ocean slamming against the shore just steps away. This little barrier island on the Jersey shore has been a family destination since I was little –well more than 50 years — so I’m probably more available for all this nostalgia as memories rise up unfiltered on the sidewalks and sand dunes and ice cream parlors. But that’s not all it is; these thoughts are never very far away and when my sister sent this photo tonight many rose to the surface. I so wish I had asked more questions and said more often “You guys were great, so brave, so remarkable.”At my mothe’s funeral I said something to an old friend of hers about their role as “the Greatest Generation.” He laughed. “We weren’t great Cindy. We just did what we had to do. If you have to, so will you.”

Look at this photo and think of all that touched these young women and their families. If, as they did, we faced more than a decade of economic and political upheaval, wiould we be as strong, as determined?

So long girls. I know we always loved you, but appreciate all you were and all you never got to be? No we didn’t do that. At least not enough.

Scared and Grateful

You know how the US health care system is allegedly dead? Mangled beyond recognition? Well — don’t you believe it. There are places here where the true wonder of good health care is visible in abundance. The best of them, in my opinion, is the Cleveland Clinic. I need to tell you why.

When someone you love – and live with – is sick, it’s scary. When they’ve been through open-heart surgery, a shattered shoulder repair and a lengthy illness, it’s very scary. That’s where I am right now. Scared.

My husband’s heart surgery was in 2002. Five years later, he began to feel sick. Many of the symptoms were similar to those from his initial illness, congestive heart failure caused by a faulty aortic valve. The fear: that his valve was again failing — that the repair had not held. So we went one more time to Cleveland to the remarkable institution where he’d had the surgery, to find out what was wrong.

After many tests, all perfectly scheduled and wonderfully administered, we learned that his heart is in good shape – at least the part that had been repaired. The trouble was that the arrhythmia – irregular heart beat — sometimes very fast — that had also been dealt with in the surgery, had returned. Now he’ll take a medication that, at least initially, is like being kicked by a horse. If medication can get his heart back into rhythm, he can avoid the thing that scares me most. It’s a surgical procedure, far less invasive than heart surgery, but still with some risk. And it’s not fair. He’s had enough to deal with – and frankly – so have I. But apparently, higher powers have declared that not altogether true and this is our next mission. So we’re on it.

The thing I try to remember and I want to tell you though, is how blessed we are to have access to the best that health care can deliver – and how remarkably common-sense a lot of it is. This hospital is declared number one in cardiology every year because it is excellent. The staff standards are high — and the hospital is headed by one of its top surgeons ( who operated on my husband.) His standards are demanding and every surgeon who is hired "from Hopkins or Harvard or anyone else" still is vetted in action by the Director. In addition, the nurses are empowered to make decisions and raise issues with physicians, the morale is positive and energetic and there’s not a nasty or impatient person behind any desk or lab coat.

All of these truths add up to a single truth: there’s no mystery. To get good health care we need a nimble, well-educated, trained and motivated staff and leadership to keep it that way. Of course the equipment and endowment matter too. But somehow in the insurance mess, the malpractice mess, the escalating cost mess – all provoking defensive driving by doctors and hospitals, we’ve weakened quality control and management in service to these other issues. It’s a tragedy — one made far more real to me by our experience with the best – something that used to be true of our health care system altogether and sure isn’t anymore.

I’m desperately grateful for what we are able to do to keep Rick healthy but every time I walk into the Clinic I remember again what’s going on in so many other health care sites and seeing what could makes it all even more tragic.

FLOWERS IN THEIR HAIR

This morning the New York Times told me that the San Francisco Summer of Love was 40 (forty!!!) years ago. No, I wasn’t there. I was still in college, and that summer I was working a the Housing Authority of Pittsburgh, Pa, taking pictures in various buildings and helping with community organizing.

It was the days of VISTA and there were volunteers all over town, working with residents to learn how to budget, how to prepare nutritious food, child development and work skills. It was moving, exciting work – a job I’d gotten for myself after the director initially told me that "no nice girl from Smith belongs in the projects." He was from the original public housing establishment and a great teacher, once I convinced him I wasn’t some Muffie prepazoid.

But the Summer of Love… my boyfriend was out there – his family lived in Berkeley – and it all looked so romantic. I was far too committed to what I was doing – and too much of a coward to ever tell my parents I was going. I also knew that hanging around stoned was not the way to help people who couldn’t help themselves – and that was what I most wanted to do. Even so, it was tough thinking that all the action was "out there" and I was on the shores of the Monongahela River in Head Starts and food banks.

Between my house and "downtown" there was a bridge that went through the famous Homestead neighborhood where the Pinkertons beat up the steel strikers so brutally. Crossing between a smoking mill with a red aura generated by molten steel and the Mesta Machinery plant, it rattled and clanked with age and instability. Ever since we were little we had called it the "rickety bridge." I loved it.

One day that summer, somehow emblematic to me of the whole three months, I was driving along and, just as I began to cross the bridge, Scott McKenzie’s "If You’re Goin’ to San Francisco" came on the radio. At first I smiled, then – suddenly – without warning, I began to cry. I ended up sobbing, almost unable to drive. I still don’t know why. The song was moving, of course, and very seductive, but now as I recall that day I think I was also crying for the side of me I couldn’t allow to rule. I loved the ideals of the counterculture, adored the music and light shows and communes and home-made bread — but either my fear of the risk or my commitment to politics or both kept me home. It was probably better. I later left college to work in the anti-war campaign of Senator Eugene McCarthy – a risk more suited to my nature and dreams. Even so – remembering that day, which I do, with particular intensity – I’m still sad – for what I may have missed, for what the movement disintegrated into, for those shiny dreams that even then seemed a bit naive. You know that old Gerard Manley Hopkins poem that ends: It is the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for. True then – and sometimes, just as true now.

LEAVING WAY TOO MANY BEHIND

This is the kind of thing my friend Cooper usually writes about, but foster care has been an obsession of mine for as long as I can remember. Kids who, because of the incapacity of anyone in their families to care for them, get placed "in the system" and shuttled among foster homes – some group homes, some loving families and some just plain horrifying. It’s a disgrace.

Now, there’s some particularly disturbing news. When foster kids turn 18, they "age out" of the system. Often they have nowhere to turn and end up on the streets, in jail or both. They don’t know how to get a job, open a bank account, balance a check book, fill out a resume or be a family. As of this year, reports the Pew Charitable Trusts Kids Are Waiting campaign , the number of kids aging out of the system is up 41%. Here’s some of what they say:

The report, Time for Reform: Aging Out and On Their Own, found that although the total number of children in foster care has decreased, the number who "age out" of the system has grown by 41% since 1998. In total, more than 165,000 young people aged out of foster care between 1998 and 2005 – nearly 25,000 in 2005 alone.

"When children are removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect, we, through our government agencies, assume responsibility for their protection and care. We have failed these children if they ‘age out’ of foster care without a safe, permanent family they can count on," said Jim O’Hara, managing director, health and human services, The Pew Charitable Trusts.

"Every day we do not reform foster care, we fail 67 more young people who exit foster care completely on their own."

Think about that – 67 kids a day set loose with no moorings, nowhere to go for Thanksgiving, no apartment, job, phone, home address.

I have no answers for this; I know there has been work to try to reform a foster care system which has been burdened by budget cuts and a surge of (truly) broken families. But I don’t see how we can continue to allow our supposedly "child centered" society to allow these kids to tumble into adulthood with no safety net at all. Not much help to rant without suggestions — I know that in LA for a while there was a group that held formal "graduations" and "proms" for kids aging out and that in some places there is some effort to help the kids learn how to live on their own before they have to — it just seems we should have it on our radar.