Current Affairs – Page 25 – Don't Gel Too Soon

DON’T MISS IT: BLOGGING BOOMERS CARNIVAL #81

The fabulous Blogging Boomer Carnival – the 81st in fact – has
landed here at Don’t Gel Too Soon. And a real feast it is.

As the Baby Boomer generation approaches retirement age, over 7.7 million business
owners will exit their businesses over the next 10-15 years. John Agno at
So Baby Boomer says this demonstrates a tremendous need for exit planning.

And while we’re talking money, two more posts this week.

This comes from Janet Wendy at Gen Plus: If, like
much of America, you are sick of watching your dollar shrinking, Janet Wendy at
Gen Plus, points you to an eye-opening post on what banks are NOT doing with your money. Oh…and be
careful. You might bust a seam laughing.

And this from Ann Harrison at Contemporary Retirement: Although
we’ve always been told that money can’t buy happiness, an increasing number of
studies show that, if you know the right way to spend it, money just may be
able to buy you happiness after all… Find
out how at Contemporary Retirement:

Meanwhile, Rhea Becker of The
Boomer Chronicles has noticed something interesting about this
year’s Olympics: "A number of athletes in the Beijing
Olympics are older than the usual crop." She’s profiled some of
them. In the Northwest Arkansas area where
I make my home, that was the case with every community. Unfortunately, it is
also the case that every one of them has closed.

If you’re looking for someone
else to fix things, Laurel Lee at Midlife Crisis Queen says
"Cut it out." No one else can change your life for you, no matter how
much you pay them."
“Spiritual work is not something you can copy from someone else’s
homework…."

One of those things you have to do for yourself is keep a marriage going. Dina at This Marriage Thing says: "Counselors say marriages are
strengthened by honest talking. But when was the last time you
really communicated with your spouse? Here are a couple of
questions that might do the trick."

If that doesn’t work, and you’re facing the end of a marriage, Wesley Hein at
LifeTwo offers an important consideration: In a divorce, who gets custody of mutual
friends? This moral dilemma is discussed
in "The
Post-Divorce Custody Battle for Mutual Friends". Make no mistake about
it, in divorce every aspect of your life changes–including friendships.

On a lighter note, no matter what the status of the rest of your life, you can fix your hair. If you color your hair, then you know how the blazing summer sun and chlorine
pools can really fade and damage your hair. Is there anything you can do about
it, short of wearing a hat? Check out what the Glam Gals have to say about it at Fabulous after 40.

Our friends over at Vaboomers have an interesting offering too – a
kind of online mall they call "viosks"
–sort of online kiosks offering art, music, cookies — lots. As they put
it: "Vaboomer is excited to announce the Grand Opening of Vaboomer Viosks on Aug 8; A Suite of
“Viosks" with the best of Boomer reFiree’s original art, books, music and
education."

My own entry is a
pensive one – about a Jewish holiday with a huge emotional punch.

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,

PARIS HILTON ON THE OBAMA COMMERCIAL – AND IT ISN’T GROSS

OK so you’ve probably seen this but just in case I’m posting it here (probably like half the web.) I’ve (embarrassingly) never heard this woman speak before. I thought she’d sound horrible but she’s not half bad. And the ad? Pretty funny, huh?

BlogHer, Bella, Books and Us Women

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend with 1,000 remarkable women. You know where; the Web has been full of posts and tweets and messages about BlogHer, the women bloggers conference. Since its founding, BlogHer has held four conferences, and I’ve been to three of them. For those three years I’ve wondered at the strength and power of both the gathering and each woman, most far younger than I, who is part of it. Audacious and rambunctious, honest and gifted, they are far beyond where I was at their age. I’ve always known that all of us, sisters from the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s, scratched and kicked and pulled and fought to move our lives, and those of the women around us, forward. In many ways, we made a difference. I’m proud of that.

Today though I was reminded of a real heroine, one whose star lit the way for much of what we did, in a wonderful piece in The Women’s Review of Books: Ruth Rosen‘s review of Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought
Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the
Rights of Women and Workers, … Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along
the Way–an oral history of the life of Bella Abzug. Among other things, Ruth says:

She fought for the
rights of union workers and African Americans, protested the use of the atomic
bomb and the Vietnam War, waged endless battles to advance women’s rights, and
spent the last years of her life promoting environmentalism and human rights.
When she plunged into the women’s movement during the late 1960s, Abzug infused
feminism with her fierce, strategic, take-no-prisoners spirit. As Geraldine
Ferraro reminds us,
She didn’t knock lightly on the door. She didn’t even push it open or batter it
down. She took it off the hinges forever! So that those of us who came after
could walk through!

And with a bow to Bella and so many others, walk through we have. It’s tough to pass the stories ‘I walked six miles to school in the snow’
fogey. Younger women, though, would find courage to fight their own
battles in Bella’s story and in many of our own."

For me, Bella was a brave, untamed beacon of defiance and energy. Her story, and ours, laid the ground for these determined, gifted "blogger generation" women. I would so love to be able to tell them about her – and about all of us, just so they could know the solidarity, the battles, the anger and the hope. And why seeing them all together, hugging, laughing and raising hell, makes me so damned happy. And that Bella would have loved them.

THE DARK KNIGHT, HARRY POTTER, LORD OF THE RINGS, DARK U.S. DAYS AND POLITICS

I used to see Christ symbols everywhere. It drove my mother crazy; no matter what film or book, I’d find some kind of symbol in it. And Christ symbols were fashionable then (Ingmar Bergman, Robert S. Heinlein.) So I guess it’s no surprise that I found implanted meaning, this time political messages, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the loss of Hogwarts students’ freedom and rights to Dolores Umbridge) and the Lord of the Rings – listen to this:

"It’s
like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of
darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end
because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it
was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it’s only a passing thing.
The shadow even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun
shines it will shine out the clearer. Those are the stories that stayed with
you. That really meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why,
but I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. The folk in those stories
had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because
they were holding on to something." "What are we holding onto
Sam?" "That theres some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth
fighting for"- The
Lord of The Ring– The Two Towers

Now The Dark Knight joins my array of political films. Think about it. Irrational evil — the Joker (the late Heath Ledger, as good as the reviews but somehow a bit Al Franken-esque)– drives Gotham City to such anxiety that its citizens are willing to surrender freedom and privacy and even to turn on their Bat-benefactor, to return order to their streets. Sound familiar? Throughout the film members of the community at large, as well as Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale), his beloved Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal,) DA Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and even the sainted Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) face — and often fail — deep ethical temptations (including abusing prisoners — sound familiar?) — and, surprisingly, those who face the most horrendous choice are criminals and civilians whose behavior is far more laudable than that of any of us (including me) who know what’s been done in our name in Iraq and have mourned but not acted to stop it.

[SEMI-SPOILER ALERT] This gigantic challenge, issued from the Joker himself, is a formidable and hopeful moment in the film. Many have written that the film is dark and without humor but I don’t think so. This scene, in particular – and I don’t want to be too much of a spoiler — seemed to me to be there to remind us that there is always the potential for good. Even so, the film is crammed with talk, as in Sam’s speech to Frodo, and especially from the wise Albert (Michael Caine) of the pain and sacrifice required in the battle against the troubles ahead.

Maybe it’s a reach, and I can hear your saying "Hey, it’s ONLY a movie!" but there you are.

BARACK OBAMA, BERLIN, AND WHAT WE SHOULD AND CAN BE

First I got this email from a young friend: "LOVED IT – Just brilliant and I am happy to vote again." Then I watched The Speech again early this morning on C-SPAN and marveled at the reaction of 200,000 Berliners in a city that has been, in recent years, a tough room for American leaders. We’ve spent a lot of time in Berlin, so I know the city; in my parents’ lifetime it was the capital of the most racist country in the world but now it’s urbane, cerebral and pretty sophisticated, with a stunning history and a development we’ve watched throughout the last ten years that is unparalleled. War(and communist)-ruined buildings and just plain ugly ones have finally been replaced by gleaming new market and skyscraper squares, there’s fabulous mass transit as well as renewed activity in its two opera houses and many theaters and ballet companies. OH and enough museums to keep you busy for months. Just the kind of place to be particularly hostile to a president like George Bush.

So what did Senator Obama bring that made the difference? David Brooks was pretty harsh in the NYTimes: " Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney." To be fair, I guess it can sound that way. The reality, to me though, is that after eight years of a president of whom we could not be proud and whose policies, war, rhetoric and attitude shoved our allies far from our side, a bit of warmth and solidarity is a legitimate introduction. Beyond that, the most profound thing about the speech, in my view, wasn’t Obama but the response to him. Sure, Europe is liberal and politically correct (except, often, about their own immigrants, unfortunately) and a black candidate (even half) for president in the US is attractive, but it’s more than that. It looked, at least to me, like Europeans have been longing for a United States they can believe in again; that perhaps part of the reason Europeans have been so angry at us is that beneath the rubble of the Bush years, we still represent a promise and ideal that Europe has been furious that we’ve abandoned.

Of course, I could be projecting my own heartbreak over Abu Ghraib and the Patriot Act and all the other profanities done in our name; at the horrific lack of inspired leadership both at home and abroad just after 9/11, at the war (How could it happen again – after Vietnam; the same lessons never learned, the same hubris?), at the craven attitude toward energy and life at the bottom end of our economic ladder – at all of it. But I don’t think so. Rather, it seems that under all the anger Europeans have manifested toward the United States, they, like us, want an American leader they can believe in. An America they can believe in. And Barack Obama is about as close to that is you can get without moving to another dimension.

The foundation laid by that inspiration will get us, and our old friends newly re-engaged, through the terrible, tough days ahead. Without a leadership of hope and belief, natural allies outside our borders will be lost to us, as they so sadly have been these past years. And as Senator Obama reminded us, we can’t afford that. Not now.

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.

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.

THIS IS REALLY NICE

This mural is on a wall in Denver, home of the 2008 Democratic convention. Thanks to Tech President for the link.