Culture – Page 19 – Don't Gel Too Soon

MUSIC, POLITICS, PATTI SMITH, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, ROBERT HUNTER AND A LONG WALK

For weeks I’ve been writing about politics here, but today – some personal politics. They say the personal is political, and for me, the personal is music (and political) — and music makes all the difference — through time, sadness, joy, loneliness, political anguish, even spiritual connection.

I’ve started walking every morning – around two miles. Part of the reason is that I never get to listen to music anymore, so on my walks, I pretty much let my iPod take me wherever "shuffle" wants to go. For while we moved from Bruce to Great Big Sea to Juno. Then things got serious – an anthem really, of a time in my life when I valued awareness, aliveness, presence above all else: along came Me and Bobby McGee. Kris Kristofferson wrote it but this is one of the few videos I could find of him performing it – Janis Joplin’s version was the famous one. Still — it was this version, Kristofferson’s, that spoke to me.

A cut-loose road song and a love song too. "Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose." I remember my mother railing against this chorus — claiming that freedom was real and important and much more than "nothin’ left to lose" and she was probably right, but then… Then that road life was one I craved but never had the nerve to undertake and this song was my chance to travel along. Later, on Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner did a monologue as "Bobby McGee" who had moved home, and whose "mom even kept my room for me." She’d given up. There I sat on our water bed in our Upper West Side apartment in our married, new baby life, and cried. It was way too familiar. Made me face the gap between what I had wished and what I was, that gap we all face as we enter "grown up" lives, with kids and responsibilities.

Then, around the time my walk reached Georgia Avenue, I traveled to London’s Grosvenor Square, and Scarlet Begonias. The Robert Hunter/Grateful Dead song included this description: "Wind in the willows playin’ tea for two; The sky was yellow and the sun was blue, Strangers stoppin’ strangers just to shake their hand, Everybody”s playing in the heart of gold band." It sounds comical now, I suppose, and it was really about Dead concerts, but I remember so many marches where people passed food around, each taking what they needed, and driving on the turnpikes on the way as we gave M&Ms to each tollbooth operator along with our quarters and even, at the first Clinton inauguration, being hugged by some guy I’d never met as I stood alone, close to tears (again) when Bob Dylan came out and surprised everyone.

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MOURNING ENORMOUS LOSS: TISHA B’AV, THE TRAUMA OF MEMORY AND THE WISDOM OF JEWISH TRADITION

The lights were out; all that remained were small spotlights where the readers sat. It was a day of sorrow and mourning, so we spurned comfort and, as tradition dictates, sat on the floor. In front of the Sanctuary, the readings began: Eichah – Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah’s horrifying account of an ancent time of soul-shattering misery. Reading it aloud is part of the holiday** but,
since I was newly observant, it was previously unknown to me, as was the
enormous impact of the dimly lit room and haunting content and trope of the reading. That first time, just three years ago, I didn’t have a clue what was coming — that night or the next morning, when the readings continued.

Accompanied by a 25 hour fast, this all takes place on the holiday of Tisha B’Av – the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, to commemorate the multiple horrors believed to have taken place on that day.*

This is a lot of sadness (and foreboding of more to come) to have
taken place on the same date. So it’s fair to observe a period of
mourning and remembrance. What happened to me, though, was that the
language of mourning is so fierce, so hideous, and in some ways, so
applicable to what we see happening around us now, that it is almost
unbearable to listen to. And so, the first time I heard it, I fled in
the middle and went across the hall into the childcare room. My sweet,
ridiculously smart friend Aliza, with her
infant daughter and unable to join the prayers, was off to the side
praying on her own. In tears, so troubled that I was trembling, I
interrupted her prayers, something I would never do otherwise, and
demanded to know why it was necessary for us to listen to this. And to
know we’d be doomed to do so every summer. In her quiet way, she
replied that perhaps once a year isn’t too often to recall these
fearsome times in our history.

At the time, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but now, I’m,
shocked to discover that I look forward to this annual observance,
which
comes this weekend. Why? I guess after three years some of the shock
has worn off. Of course there’s more: as usual when I listen to Aliza,
I’ve had to think harder. One thing I’ve realized is that this day,
ignored by most Jews, is a kind of anchor — keeping us in place,
connecting us, those who came before, and those who will follow.

I can’t trace my family past my grandparents on either side; all my
grandparents and their siblings came here years before the Holocaust
and any records of their ancestors were lost or destroyed as the Nazis
decimated Europe. That they were Jewish, though, is irrefutable. Now
I find that, although I can’t share their stories and traditions, we do
share a history. I realize as I am writing this that moments which
commemorate that common history are not just religious, but also family
connections. Our mourning on the 9th of Av honors not just God’s
anger, which led Him to allow the destruction of the Temples, and not
just the martyrdom of so many, but also each individual, unknown person
whose DNA is mixed with mine.

I had often
protested that we need to honor that which we value as the positive
attributes of the Jewish experience, not just the martyrdoms that
remind us of our history of suffering, but also the joy and pride
our tradition offers. What I’ve realized is that we can’t forget..
There’s much to be learned by what’s
come before and by acknowledging our connection to it. And this deeply
moving, haunting and humbling tradition is connected to each of us
right
now, this minute.

* With thanks to the OU Tisha B’Av website :

In the time of Moses, the "sin of the spies" whom he sent out
to evaluate the situation in the soon-to-be conquered Canaan and who
returned with horror stories that questioned God’s power to protect the
Jews and caused Him to decree that none from the generation who went
out of Egypt would be permitted to go into Israel.
The destruction of the first Temple under Nebuchadnezzar. (587 BCE – 3338 in the Hebrew calendar)
The destruction of the second Temple under Titus. (70 CE – 3895 in the Hebrew calendar)
The Romans conquered Betar, the last fortress of the Bar Kochba
rebellion and Hadrian turned Jerusalem into a Roman city. (135 CE –
3895 in the Hebrew calendar)
King Edward I signed the edict that expelled all Jews from England (1290 CE – 5050 in the Hebrew calendar)
Jews expelled from Spain because of King Ferdinand’s decree (1492 CE — 5252 in the Hebrew calendar)
The last Jews left Vienna under expulsion orders there. (1670)
World War I began (1914 CE — 5674 in the Hebrew calendar)
Himmler presented the plan for the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish
problem" to the Nazi party. (1940 — 5700 in the Hebrew calendar)
Nazis began deporting Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. (1942 CE — 5702 in the Hebrew calendar)

** Also, interestingly, quoted in Christian prayers for Zimbabwe,

OVER ALREADY: BLOGHER ’08

This photo was taken at the closing plenary of BlogHer08 and I’ve barely covered the event at all. There are so many moments I’d love to tell you about: readings by bloggers whose words hold incredible power; one by one they reveal intimate moments of sadness and joy, anger and hilarity. The words, drawn from their posts, are the clearest evidence of the power of this institution, not yet five years old and already a gigantic force for good in the lives of the women who have come here. So many more.

We’re all on our way home now; to Austin and Sacramento and Virginia and Manhattan and Minneapois, energized for another year, ready to write and comment and commit ourselves to that which we create. From these two days we’ve learned about traffic and writing, activism and art, gender and age tribalism, friendship, sisterhood and the joys of San Francisco. What we gain here informs the rest of our year: makes us wiser and funnier and more determined. And really, whatever I would have written had it not been for Sabbath obligations and general exhaustion boils down to that. So thanks Elisa and Jory and Lisa (and Jill and Mary Margaret and Kristen and Asha and Erin and Sarah and Devra and Jill and Kari and Beth and Tekla and Catherine and the other Catherine and Morra and Nicole and Liz and Kelly and Jen and Julie ) and all the other beautiful bloggers who, when we’re all together, raise the roof of whatever building we happen to be in, and also – every one of our spirits and our hearts.

E3, FABLE II AND BEING THE PROUD MOM

I’ve written often about the ways life changes as your kids grow up and become adults. We are blessed that both of ours have brought us so much joy. This public accomplishment is really just icing on the cake; moment by moment is where the real wonder comes. Even so, how could I not post it here?

The man on the right is my older son Josh. Speaking at E3! (The annual video game trade show in LA) On G4 TV. About Fable II, a game he has been working on for a very long time. How cool is that?

THE OBAMA NEW YORKER COVER. YES, THE NEW YORKER

OK. What do we think about this? I can tell you one thing. It hurts to look at it, even though I guess I understand what the artist, Barry Blitt, says he was trying to do. Rachel Sklar’s Huffington Post interview with the magazine’s gifted editor David Remnick explains further.

Obviously I wouldn’t have run a cover just to get
attention — I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say. What I
think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about
Barack Obama’s — both Obamas’ — past, and their politics. I can’t speak for
anyone else’s interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of
images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some,
about Obama’s supposed "lack of patriotism" or his being "soft
on terrorism" or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the
second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow
all this is going to come to the Oval Office.

The free speech and marketplace of ideas concepts that I’ve treasured all my life clash with my reaction to all of this; I know that. The Constitutional protection of freedom of speech exists to guarantee the right both to speak and to hear not only popular, but also unpopular ideas. We don’t need to protect the popular ones; it’s the ideas that enrage people that need the protection. And I’m all for that.

But for a responsible and respected publication like The New Yorker to abuse that freedom by offering such blatant stereotypes to make its point, particularly when the subjects are the first African American Presidential (Columbia and Harvard-educated) candidate and his (Princeton and Harvard-educated) wife, an accomplished attorney — each of whose life trajectory suggests two stars who did everything expected of them to grow into exciting, productive citizens — seems to me abusive and dangerous. In an effort to make a point about the hate that’s being distributed concerning these two, they’re feeding it.

It will be interesting to see how many right wing websites and publications make use of this image. There’s been plenty of reaction so far and most of it is far more sophisticated than I could dream of being. I’m having too much trouble with my emotional, gut sense of right and wrong to be very thoughtful; this just feels wrong – perhaps even more so because of who printed it. I’ve been a New Yorker groupie since I was a high school kid in Pittsburgh wishing I was in Greenwich Village living the life of Susie Rotolo. Like this – walking through the Village with Bob Dylan.

So it’s particularly disturbing to me that something so terribly offensive was pubished by this beloved icon.

The stereotypes don’t fit the Obamas, obviously. That’s what the New Yorker is trying to demonstrate by feeding these stereotypes out there in such a naked way. But even if they did, how many of us who ever cared about anything is willing to stand by every position we adopted in our younger days?

Congressman Bobby Rush was a Black Panther. Now he’s chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection, serves on the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet and is a co-chairman of the Congressional Biotech Caucus. Isn’t that what we want? Growth.

Even if the Obama’s were flamers back then (and I don’t think they were, by a long shot), isn’t the American way for young activists to rebel, maybe the wrong way, early in their lives then "grow up" to ultimately help to make change from inside? Justice Hugo Black, one of the great justices of the 20th century, started out as a member of the Ku Klux Klan – then went on to be a staunch defender of civil liberties for all. If we deny our future leaders the capacity to grow and question while they’re young, we will end up with leaders who may be what we deserve, but not who we need, by a long shot.

I guess what I’m saying is that this effort to force Americans to confront political trash talk by offering up a visual representation of it all is, to me, a terrible mistake. An image that casts a shadow over the remarkable symbolic gift of this landmark candidacy – an image that lingers like a scar.

THEY WILL CAMPAIGN AGAINST US UNTIL WE’RE ALL DEAD – AND MAYBE AFTER

From the day Richard Nixon was nominated in 1968 until Tuesday afternoon, forty years later, when John McCain began running this “Love” commercial, Republicans have been running against us. All of us who share a history of opposing the Vietnam war and working to elect an anti-war president. Against everything we ever were, believed, dreamed, voted for, marched against, volunteered to change, spoke about, created, sang, wrote, painted, sculpted or said to one another on the subway or the campus or anyplace else from preschool parent nights to Seders to the line at the supermarket.

How is it possible that what we tried to do is still the last best hope to elect a Republican? They used it against John Kerry. They used it against Max Cleland. They did it every time (well, almost) they were losing policy battles in the Clinton years. They called CSPAN and said unspeakable things. And now they are using the history of people my side of sixty to run against a man who was, if my math is right, seven years old during this notorious “summer of love” which – I might add, had nothing to do with those of us working to end the war. In fact, there were two strands of rebellion in those years. The Summer of Love/ Woodstock folks and the political, anti-war activists.

At the 1967 National Student Association Convention in Maryland, I saw a room full of students boo Timothy Leary off the stage, literally. We didn’t want to “turn on, tune in, drop out” we wanted to organize against the war. The anti-war movement was not a party. I know that’s not a bulletin but it is so hard to see all of us reduced to a single mistaken stereotype. Those who chose to find a personal solution weren’t nuts; communes and home-made bread were a lot more immediate gratification than march after march, teach-in after teach-in, speech after speech. “If you’re goin’ to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Tempting, romantic – and not us.

Even more painful is the fact that the cultural and political divide is still so intense that research (I assume) told the McCain guys that this commercial would work. That our patriotic, committed efforts to change our country’s path, and the cultural alienation that drove others toward the streets of San Francisco, combine to become a stronger motivator than all the desperate issues we face today, this side of those 40 years. Perhaps even worse, these Bush years have dismantled so many of the successes we did have, so that in addition to facing, yet again, this smear against the activism of 1968 (and I repeat, that was forty years ago — longer than most of the bloggers I know have been alive) there’s the awareness of what we did that has been undone.

I need to say here that I grew up on the shores of the Monongehela River in Pittsburgh and my classmates were kids who mostly went into the steel mills or the Army after high school. I knew plenty of supporters of the war. I went to prom and hung out at the Dairy Queen with them. But it never occurred to me to demonize them, to hold against them their definition of patriotism.

I’m not writing off or looking down upon those who did support the war; I’m saying that this cynical, craven abuse of the devotion of people on both sides to the future of their country is reprehensible and precisely the kind of behavior that has broken the hearts of so many Americans, on those both sides of the political spectrum, who just want their candidates to lead us in hope for what our country can be, not defame others whose dreams aren’t quite the same as theirs.

SHUT UP AND SING: CATCHING UP WITH THE DIXIE CHICKS AND WORRYING ABOUT THE ELECTION

Have you seen this movie? I sat in bed watching it early Sunday morning on cable and was just blown away. It’s one of the saddest, scariest, most moving American documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. That’s no surprise, since it was directed by Barbara Kopple, who made Harlan County USA – the landmark documentary about coal mine union battles in Kentucky.

What happened to the Dixie Chicks is infuriating: performing in London just before the start of the Iraq war, lead singer Natalie Maines (married, by the way, to HEROES star Adrian Pasdar,) told the crowd "Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas." The scene is included in this preview.

As I watched the film, seeing the rage and cruelty that emerged in the response to this one sentence, my first thought was, "Oh my God, what does this mean for Barack Obama?" The people who went after the Dixie chicks were nowhere near a sense of respect for the First Amendment – and sounded like they would be particularly vulnerable to "elitist" or racist accusations against a candidate. If you remember the exit polls in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania you’ll recall that many respondents just about acknowledged that they would not vote for Senator Obama simply because of his race. Am I unfair to wonder if many of those people are the same ones booing and even threatening Maines’ life? Still "out there" in larger numbers than we wish? Look at these figures:

In Pennsylvania
exit polls on primary day, 14% of voters
said that race one one of several important factors. Fifty-five percent of those were Clinton
voters and 45% Obama voters. When asked
race was “important” 19% said yes – 59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if
race was a factor in their decision, 12% said yes. In this group, 76% were white Clinton voters.

In West
Virginia, when asked race was “important” to their decision, 22% said yes –82%
of them Clinton voters; when asked if race was a factor in their decision, 21%
said yes. In this group, 84% were white
Clinton voters.

Finally, Ohio. There, when asked race was “important” to
their decision, 20% said yes– 59% of them Clinton voters; when asked if race
was a factor in their decision, 14% said yes. In this group, 59% were Clinton voters. (the racial breakdown was not available here.)

Please understand – I don’t know if I’m right. I’m not alleging racial bias in all those who rose up to burn Dixie Chicks CDs and threaten country stations with boycotts if they "ever played one of their songs again" – but I do suspect they could be more vulnerable to campaigns run in an uglier vein – just as they responded to this one. It’s worrying me.

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HIGH FIDELITY – A LITTLE BIT OF EACH OF US – IF WE’RE LUCKY

Do you remember High Fidelity? We woke up early this morning and it was on Showtime. I’d forgotten how wonderful it is, especially if you remember being 28ish, love John Cusack and wonderful witty writing or just plain love music. Like Cusack’s character, I annoy those who love me with at least one song – and often a Top Five — to go with whatever is going on at the time. A friend and I throw songs back and forth all the time; his wife and my husband are, usually, tolerant. So the initial connection is there. But what is it about this film that is so irresistible? Here’s a scene from YouTube:

There’s been a lot of sadness in my life lately, and a lot of anxiety. All the grown-up stuff that High Fidelity’s hero is fighting desperately to avoid. So it was sweet and moving, my husband and I slightly drowsy, just waking up and holding hands, to watch as he struggled to get where he needed to go. The things he says here are all true as me makes his way from the thrill of the new to the warmth and deep meaning of lasting a relationship.

Married since 1971, we’ve been through plenty – personal, medical, parental, political, spiritual and even musical. There were many times when one or the other of us despaired of getting through it. A huge issue haunts us even now. But was what so nice, at this point in our lives was watching this very funny, sweet (and I know, made-up – but still..) young man understand, finally, how much more joyous it is to build a life with someone than "to jump from rock to rock for the rest of my life until there aren’t any rocks left." It was a reminder, in the midst of yet another crisis, of the wonder and power of a life built together, no matter what obstacles may rise up along the way,

BRUCE IN A LOVELY MOMENT — FOR TIM

I’ve written twice now about Tim Russert, feeling a real loss, and decided I was finished, but this afternoon my son sent this to me with the message "Crushingly moving." As usual, he was right. So if you missed it, here it is.

AT TIM RUSSERT’S WAKE: A LITTLE BIT OF HOW IT SEEMED

So many people here and on Twitter have been talking about this; I thought I’d just tell you what it was like.

I got there at around four. The line went from the door to a large room at St. Alban’s School just next to the National Cathedral, where the wake was, up the stairs and a long walk to the driveway, around to the Cathedral front lawn. The last little bit was lined with wreaths – some of them very large – of flowers from friends and colleagues. There were several TV trucks and groups of reporters and camera people on folding chairs under the trees.

This had begun at 2PM and would last until 9 — sad, but not dismal. It was a beautiful day, sunny, breezy, not at all humid – just gorgeous. And we were all grateful to be there. It was a generous thing for the Russerts to do in the midst of their own grief — allowing friends, as well as admirers who’d never met Tim but felt that they knew him anyway — to act on their own sadness.

I talked to some random people in line with me: a woman who’d not known Tim at all but just wanted to be there and, happily, an old friend and pollster with whom I waited most of the way down the hill. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, so we caught up on our lives and our kids and our sadness. I started to tell him about all of Tim’s kindnesses to my boys when they were little; he started to tell me about his son’s internship at Meet the Press. Any one of Tim’s friends would have had a dozen stories just like those.

All along the way, very kind staff and parents from the school, where Tim’s son Luke had gone, were there with name tags that said “volunteer” under their names and offers of help, directions, a place to leave a note for the family, ice water – just gracious and kind. I saw, as we arrived in the room itself, that the casket, covered with white flowers with a note that said “Love, Coco and Luke” was being guarded by what looked like young soldiers out of uniform. I’ve since learned that they are high school classmates of Luke’s who will stand guard throughout the night.

We made our way past the casket in two lines, one on each side. Tim’s wife Maureen Orth was there, thanking people for coming. Then we were out, in a hallway, where another volunteer offered us the opportunity to leave a note on paper that would be bound into a book. The line was long, and each person spent considerable time – the comments were anything but brief.

Just at the end, as we made our way out, stood this photo, the one I used yesterday, up on an easel. I was so glad to see it there – not because I’d used it too but because it was a declaration, which I’d felt and clearly his family felt, that the joy and mischief of this man was what we should take with us back into the world.

Tomorrow there is a small funeral and a memorial service at the Kennedy Center which I’m sure will be amazing. And all of it will help those who loved and admired this larger-than-life presence deal with the reality of his absence.

I want to say that, because of all the posts on Twitter and here on in the blogorama, I felt I was representing many of us and left a note that said as much. It was a privilege to be there.