Ellen Goodman Doesn’t Write there Anymore

GoodmanAs long as I've worked in media, which is a long time, Ellen Goodman's been there too.  Her Pulitzer-prize-winning column, originating in the Boston Globe, has been a beacon and a landmark and a treasure. 

And now it's ending.  No, nobody fired her, she still has a large audience and many adoring readers but she's decided to stop.  Here's part of what she said in her valedictory meditation on covering women in America – and I recommend you go read the entire thing:

My generation — WOMEN — thought the movement would advance on two
legs. With one, we'd kick down the doors closed to us. With the other,
we'd walk through, changing society for men and women.

It turned
out that it was easier to kick down the doors than to change society.
It was easier to fit into traditional male life patterns than to change
those patterns. We've had more luck winning the equal right to 70-hour
weeks than we've had selling the equal value of care-giving. We have
yet to solve the problem raised at the outset: Who will take care of
the family?

As a young mother and reporter, it did not occur to
me that my daughter would face the same conflicts of work and family.
Or, on the other hand, that my son-in-law would fully share those
conflicts. I did not expect that over two-thirds of mothers would be in
the work force before we had enough child care or sick pay.

Yes – those things are true.  My own sons expect (and one has) wives who keep their names and expect to remain in the workforce.  And yes, they still face issues of child care and equal pay and glass ceilings.  The sad thing is, they won't have the provocative, inspiring, funny and very gifted voice of Ellen Goodman to cheer them on.  Maybe she'll write another book though; if she does, I'll send a copy to each of them.

Repost – Best of Don’t Gel 2009: Loving London

Waterlloo Bridge nice long shot

That old rascal Samuel Johnson told us that when we were tired of London, we'd be tired of life
 I know it's summer when any city is inviting but this week is cool and
bright and breezy and London is full of British school groups and kids
from everywhere else too, and we have an apartment right in the middle
of Covent Garden (well NOT the market, God forbid, just the
neighborhood) and our older son and his new wife are only 40 minutes
away and we have friends here, too.  So how could we be tired?

What you see here is the view from Waterloo Bridge  (and yes that's St. Paul's Cathedral in the background.)  This morning I went out and walked all along the , over where the trees are, then crossed a bridge just out of view on the right and returned via South Bank,
London's wonderful (relatively) new arts and museum area.
 My entire
walk was around three miles and I'm realizing that it's much easier to
do the walking when there are new things to look at, not just the old
neighborhood or, as lovely as it is, Rock Creek Park. 

Kids trade addresses

The wonder of a great city is that it's always changing, that even the most
trivial journey is full of surprises.  On my way home tonight I came
across a group of teenagers – one of dozens of groups we've been seeing
ever since we got here.  The reason they're all sitting on the sidewalk
is that they're exchanging addresses and spelling them out – different
nationalities, different spelling.  Kind of an EU photo.

Of course there's lots else going on here.  Huge waves of immigration, the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what looks to me to be an appalling
amount of youthful alcohol consumption and unemployment all take their toll.  There's something about the
place despite those issues though.  The day after the2005 subway bombing that killed 52 people, Londoners got back on the train and went to work.  They did that all during the Blitz as much of the rest of the world watched them face down Hitler almost alone.

London Eye w big ben but cut off tigt

Cities are supposed to change.  That's what makes them exciting.  Even so,
London has seen more than its share: waves of immigration that have
transformed it, an early history of wars and fires and plagues,
contemporary royal scandals and of course the "troubles" between
Belfast and the rest of Ireland and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  
After all, who would have believed before it arrived to help celebrate
the Millennium, that there would be a ferris wheel right in the center
of town?  They call it the London Eye to
make it sound fancy but it's still a ferris wheel, here in same town
that has a real live queen living in a real live palace?  It's pretty
amazing.

I'm
thinking that while we're here I can try to get past some of what I've
written here and learn a bit of what it's like to truly live
here.  It's got to be different from wandering around with no need to
be on time or face the traffic or crowded mass transit and infinite
numbers of tourists and, incidentally, deal with what appears to be an
enormous amount of alcohol consumption – especially by men.  I'm hoping
to keep you posted as I make my way.  I hope you'll come along.

Art Imitates Life and Dr. Horrible’s Nemesis Is an Author!

Heat-wave-cover I'm not sure who's on first, which chicken chased which egg or even how to tell you about this.  See this book cover?  It's a real book – and Entertainment Weekly says it isn't even bad.  But the author – well, the author isn't real!!!  He's a character on an ABC TV program called – guess what — Castle

Played by Dr. Horrible's own Biggest Enemy Captain Hammer — aka Nathan Fillion – he's a debonair, wealthy mystery writer with an actress mother and a typically New-York-wise daughter with whom he has a refreshingly healthy relationship  (Mom too, actually.) 

So there's nothing wrong with the show; it's slight, sweet and kind of funny although it could certainly be better written.  In fact, from the reviews I've read, it might be better if Richard Castle (who remember, doesn't exist – really) wrote the scripts as well as his books. 

Yes books because apparently this is the first of many.  And you can get it on Kindle and Castle even has a brief (equally fictitious) bio on Amazon "Richard Castle is the author of numerous bestsellers, including the critically acclaimed Derrick Storm series. His first novel, In a Hail of Bullets,
published while he was still in college, received the Nom DePlume
Society's prestigious Tom Straw Award for Mystery Literature. Castle
currently lives in Manhattan with his daughter and mother, both of whom
infuse his life with humor and inspiration."

Captain Hammer lrg Got that?  Fillion/Captain Hammer (this guy) also plays a fictitious writer on a lightweight TV show and somebody – whose name isn't anyplace and as far as I can determine hasn't played anyone (other than a ghostwriter) has written a novel in his name.

This isn't a scandal or a crime – it's just so damned funny.  Fillion seems like a fine fellow and Castle is certainly likable enough.  But it's hard to get books published these days – especially fiction. 

So all you struggling writers out there — now you know how to sell your novel.  Make it into a TV show and your literary career is assured.

As my mom used to say, "Only in America!"

Oh No! Say It Isn’t So!!

Susa tim

OK I know.  The world is ending, the climate is cooking, the economy is crashing and God only knows what else is happening in the "real world."  Even so – Twitter and Facebook and all points in between are so so sad.  This break up is just not fair.  Susan Sarandon and I are the same age and I once spent time with her (well, twice but both times in an elevator in our building where friends of hers lived and we DID talk…) and in some crazy way felt more in common with her than with most shiny people.  The politics of course didn't hurt either. And Bob Roberts may be my favorite political movie and so Bush-prophetic.

Because of all that, I too feel a floating sadness – nothing heart=wrenching – just sad.  These two  have always done what they believed and made us all happy.  And they deserve to be happy too.  Whatever it takes to get there.

So You Say You’re Married, Eh?

WEDDING Cindy-Rick TIGHT SHOT Yesterday I went to a birthday party.  It was a serious birthday, a landmark, and even for a successful young mother with three kids, it had an impact.  So what did her sweet husband do?  He made her a present, with the help of his 5 year old son.  I don't want to violate their privacy with a description; just know that it was something that only someone who knew her well could have given her.

It was quite moving to watch her open her gift; presented in the 12th year of their marriage.  I kept thinking that I was already married for three years when she was born; that their journey still has such a long way to go and that we had learned so much in the years still before them.

We've been through chronic disease and heart disease, financial crisis and seven moves, two children, the loss of all four of our parents, extraordinary travel, deep friendships, huge lifestyle changes and daily complications.  And every one of them added a brick to the house.  Every child's birth, and birthday, and graduation and wedding; every torn knee, broken shoulder or opened heart — all the things that make up a life — they're what a marriage is made of.

Not very profound, but true.  The power of a shared history is the foundation – or at least a foundation, of a good marriage, and it gets stronger with every day.  That's all.

Except that those two on the left are celebrating their wedding, September 12, 1971.  And I'm one of them

The Vietnam Moratorium, 40 Years Ago Today

Time Magazine Moratorium It wasn’t that long ago – not really.  Thousands of us singing “All we are saying, is give peace a chance” on the Mall in Washington.   It all started when Sam Brown, David Hawk, David Mixner, Marge Sklenkar, John Gage and other peace luminaries, many of whom were veterans of the failed McCarthy and Kennedy campaigns, decided to call a “moratorium on the war in Vietnam” and ask everyone to come to Washington to support it.  It was a great idea: a kind of strike against the war, but with manners.

And 250,000 came, followed by at least 500,000 exactly a month later, during the November Moratorium that followed.   But on this day, a manageable and peaceful crew assembled.  My memories of the day are scattered.  I worked for CBS News by then and my job was to keep track of the march, marchers and plans for all the peace activity going on in the capital.  There was plenty, in a wide spectrum of militancy and affect.

I wish I could describe for you some of the more radical “peace houses” I visited; collectives with tie died cloth covering the windows and mattresses on the floor – working for a much tougher way to oppose the war.

Organizers and participants in this march , though, slept in church basements and the homes of local people who made room for them.  Everyone who lived in Washington didn’t have a spare bed or couch – or inch of space on the floor.  You know this, but just to remind you, listen to what the BBC says about that time “in context:

American combat troops had been fighting the Communist Viet Cong in Vietnam since 1965.

Some 45,000 Americans had already been killed by the end of 1969. Almost half a million US men and women were deployed in the conflict, and opposition to the war was growing.

The Moratorium for the first time brought out America’s middle class and middle-aged voters, in large numbers. Other demonstrations followed in its wake.

I guess that song is what I remember most – that, and members of the Chicago 7, out on bail as they awaited trial, addressing the crowd and pulling off wigs to show how their jailers had cut off all their hair.  For some reason, I can still see that – it felt to me like such a violation.  A less than friendly observer asked me later “How did you like what they did to “your friends” huh?  They weren’t my friends; I barely knew them, but the question was a punch in the gut.  So many things stood for other things then. Long hair on men meant rebellion and outlier.

Anyway, it’s yet another 40 year anniversary and I didn’t feel that I could let it go un-noted.

If you have never heard the Lennon song “Give Peace a Chance” here are John and Yoko singing it with a crew of friends during a peace “bed in” in, I believe, Amsterdam.  Happy Anniversary

Memories of Peter, Paul, and Mary Travers

Peter Paul and Mary 2

The first time I ever heard Peter Paul and Mary I was 15 and spending the summer at a writing program at Exeter Academy – the first year they ever let “girls” into the school at all. I remember loving Blowin’ in the Wind, If I Had a Hammer and of course, Puff.   I remember visiting another student’s home in Concord where her older brother, already in college, told me that the three were just “popularizers of Bob Dylan songs” and scornfully complaining  that I should be listening to Dylan not them.  (I didn’t find Bob Dylan until later – junior year, I guess.)  I thought he was nuts  To me, Peter Paul and Mary were an introduction to  music that was about things I cared about: civil rights, war, peace and love —  from a more political perspective.

From then on, through high school, into college and “out into the world” Peter Paul and Mary held a special place in my life.  We seemed to cross paths often.  We played their music all the time, of course.  My sister and I saw them at a summer concert in Pittsburgh (my long-suffering mom driving us, of course.)  I remember watching them sing at the 1963 March on Washington,  and later seeing them at Wolf Trap with a blind date.  And, most profoundly, I remember seeing them quite literally, save lives in Grant Park at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968.  Hordes of demonstrators were coming over a bridge into the part of the park right outside the Hilton.  There had been trouble, lots of trouble, for at least days and this would be another terrible confrontation.  Then, from nowhere, Peter, Paul and Mary started to sing.  The demonstrators slowly converged around their platform, diverted from certain misery.  It was quite a thing.

Here’s what else I remember.  Mary Travers herself, who died today.  She was a powerful model: not just her deep, resonant voice but also her powerful, sure presence, on stage and off. She was brave and funny and looked amazing.  We all knocked ourselves out trying to have straight hair like hers: ironed it, slept with it wrapped around orange juice cans.   She was a powerful presence.

Of course, part of her power, and that of Peter and Paul was their commitment.  Where they were needed, they came.  Civil rights marches, peace marches, the McCarthy presidential campaign” even regional and local union struggles.  It was a signal to the rest of us: if we can show up, so can you.  And we did.  As another friend wrote to me tonight:  “I just saw the news story.  Can’t believe how much of our history was tied up with them.”

Making my way out of my office, thinking about writing this, I started singing to myself: “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane.” But I couldnt finish.  I was close to tears.  It’s happened so often this summer – icons of my life fading from view.  Teddy Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, Robert McNamara, Don Hewitt, Ellie Greenwich, Patrick Swayze just yesterday, and now Mary.  Each representing so many lives; so many memories.

I keep writing here because somehow I don’t want to stop.  This ought to do it, though.  (The other guy is John Denver)

 

So Long Patrick, and Thanks

Dirty DancingDoes anybody not love Dirty Dancing?   At least for the many of us who were the darling Frances “Baby” Houseman, the idealistic, embryonic 60’s activist, Daddy’s girl for her brains, not her looks, the film is a misty, wonderful time capsule.  And so,  it may be, in essence, a women’s film – so romantic and sexy in a new-at-sex kind of way.  But it wouldn’t have worked without the sweet, gifted Patrick Swayze, who died today.  Although as Johnny Castle he gave us a young man who tried to present a weary, streetwise persona, he also brought us a man as idealistic as the rich girl who fell for him.  The perfect first lover.  Swayze, with grace and generosity, was all that and more.

This was a class story and coming-of-age story and a Times They Are A-Changin’ story, evocative in ways that are difficult to express.  Baby, like us, was riding the cusp between the 50’s end of the 60’s and the Sixties that were to come.  Her relationship with Johnny was the bridge between those times, and so he meant even more than his lovely self.  I’ve always thought Swayze underestimated anyway but as I decided to write this I began to realize just how underestimated.  Without the right Johnny, Frances would not have mattered.

I, at least, could look at her and know her future.  Because it was mine.  Like Baby I never hated my parents.  Most of what I did that they wouldn’t have liked, I hid.  Defiance was never a goal because I loved my parents and they loved me.   We just didn’t see things like love and sex the same way so I decided just not to tell them.  There were many other things we saw differently too, but they changed their minds because they listened to us as often as we changed ours by listening to them.  We respected each other.

So I did all my overnight disappearing on campus and kept my mouth shut about it.  And went home as the Cindy they knew — more political and determined, but with no desire to blow up the neighborhood or leave the people I’d loved — and still loved — behind.  Like Frances, I responded to the Civil Rights movement and President Kennedy and longed to be part of what was to come.   Like Frances I had a “Johnny” though mine didn’t dance.

Of course, Swayze went on to make Ghost, which I think was at least as successful and even more of a fairy tale.  He appeared in gritty films like Road House and, as a tribute to his fellow dancers, many of whom died of AIDS, in drag in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.  And which role we choose to remember most probably depends on gender, and even more on age.

But for me, gratitude for the gift of memory, of the same sense of romance, in a way, that Twilight offers another generation, that’s tough to beat.  And the gift, the reminder of the girl I remember and the hopes and dreams she took with her to college, that gift was from Patrick Swayze too.

9/11 Predicted the Role of Bloggers (I’m Not Kidding)

911 by Macten I don't know about you, but 9/11 footage still wipes me out.  It doesn't get any easier to watch.  But this morning MSNBC was running the first few hours of coverage from the TODAY SHOW in real time and I watched a couple of hours.

It was like watching a horror movie as Katie and Matt started out so cheerily, then began reporting a "small plane" flying into the first Tower.  Then, gradually, the awful reality began to emerge.  And for a good long time, and intermittently thereafter, it was "eye witnesses" and "neighborhood residents" and other information "civilians" who delivered the best information. 

I listened as a young woman on the telephone, on her way to work at a downtown hotel and having just emerged from the subway just below the Trade Center, described the early sights of the attack.  She calmly detailed what she saw, at least until the second plane hit when she responded with understandable emotion.  Even then, she was able to carefully report developments – even putting her questioners on hold to check with a local policeman.  No seasoned reporter could have done it better.

Later, other eyewitnesses appeared, one after the other.  They used words like "reportedly," were very careful as they described what they saw, and offered careful, tempered accounts.  This went on all day.  Of course those closer to the real product of the attacks, the bodies, the people jumping out of the windows – civilian and reporter alike – were deeply moved and it showed. 

So fast-forward to today.  As the mainstream media fights for its life, as programs like my alma mater (9 years) the TODAY SHOW move more and more toward infotainment, the serious, thoughtful and original journalism is done as often on blogs as it is anywhere else.  Of course there are impulsive writers and rumor mongers and gossip tramps but that's true everywhere and, as the witnesses demonstrated eight years ago, you don't need a network paycheck to deliver reliable and well-presented information.  The citizen army of bloggers today is validated every time a caring and thoughtful eyewitness offers mainstream media a sane, helpful description of what's happening, or has happened.

So next time you hear someone going on about "those bloggers" and their untrustworthy nature, take it from a long-time broadcast journalist turned blogger:  it's the content of character, not the brand of employer, that makes a journalist.

Photo via Creative Commons by macten