Welcome to Tuesday Tours. There's so much good stuff out in the Blog Universe; we all have our blog readers filled with those we love. It's tough to keep up though, so until further notice, I'll be offering Tuesday tours of some of my own frequent favorites.
One of my favorite bloggers, Pundit Mom, offers posts at two ends of the spectrum as the week begins. Both are worth reading. The first: advice to the Obamas about the neighborhood around Sidwell Friends School. It's just fun. The second is a serious post with a serious question: When is it right to tell an airline official that a passenger is making you nervous
?
Concerned about what's going on in Israel? Check back daily at Writes Like She Talks, where Jill Zimon has her finger on what's up all over the Web. Here's a sample.
The wise Maria Niles is looking to figure out all those generation labels like X and Boomer and Millennial — and what they mean (and what the heck her own is.)
Also "generationally speaking," you know that all last year I wrote comparing 1968 and 2008. Well, Time Goes By columnist Saul Friedman has done me one (actually two) better, writing of lessons from his own iconic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Obama's point of reference, Abraham Lincoln.
Beth Kanter is a legend. Rightfully so. So when she offers 52 ways for Non-profits to use social media efficiently as a New Year's gift to her readers, I'm figuring that at least some of them can help the rest of us too.
Two of my favorite moms have something special too: I'm late on this one, but Her Bad Mother's description of a willful three-year-old (it's long so wait until you have time) is priceless. Some kids are just strong strong little people.
Also, Woulda Coulda Shoulda's Mir Kamin celebrated her son's last single-digit birthday with a wonderful hymn to a newly-nine-year-old. She never misses, that one.
This film, Doubt, is exceptional. Smart, funny, moving, intricate and remarkably well-acted, it is, without exception, a remarkable accomplishment. I grew up in Pittsburgh and nuns like Meryl Streep’s Sister Aloysius Beauvier were a staple in my life, not in Catholic school, but every weekend, at speech tournaments at Greensburg Catholic or Central Catholic or other parochial schools that so often hosted the competitions.
God help you if one of your judges was one of these sisters. They were the toughest and the scariest. Even in the cafeteria between Round 2 and Round 3, they wandered with the same “eyes in the backs of their heads” that Sister Aloysius demonstrates to her young protege. The teams they coached were the amazing. Practiced, smart, disciplined and resourceful, they did the sisters proud.
As I watched Meryl Streep as the principal of a Catholic elementary school where accusation and suspicion take over, all the memories of those scary Saturday mornings at the front of a classroom, giving speeches on labor unions or disarmament or the dangers of the Soviet Union came tumbling back. The nerves were unavoidable; when the sisters were among your judges, you had to be prepared, organized, well-spoken and committed. Or else.
Probably the familiarity of those nuns (weird for a nice Jewish girl to have access to, I suppose) and the memory of all the Sundays I went to Mass with friends after a sleep-over added to the film’s impact. I know I had a very personal reaction. But whether you grew up in Idaho, Arizona or the Bronx, the film is irresistible and won’t leave you alone just because it’s not on the screen any longer. I’m not going to talk about the plot because that will diminish the pleasure of watching it unfold, but if you respect great writing, great acting and excellence in film-making, you don’t want to miss this one.
Nobody ate lobster tail at our house, or bought anything else that came from South Africa, even way back in the 50’s, . Well before Randall Robinson’sTransAfrica or Steve Van Zandt’sSun City (see below**), my mother was actively boycotting the apartheid regime. Despite her generally moderate liberal perspective, she was fierce about this and created my own boycott habit, something that drove my kids crazy all the years that they drank Ovaltine while their friends got Nestle Quick. (That’s another story though.)
Of course anyone back then who knew about South Africa or read Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country understood the horror of it, but barely anyone talked about it, or demanded action from their own countries. So why was this the issue that set fire to my mom?
Helen Suzman*, who died on New Year’s Day at the age of 91, was the reason. For years she stood as the only anti-apartheid voice in the entire South African Parliament – for six of those years as the only woman as well.The Jewish wife of a well-to-do physician, she entered politics, visited Mandela in prison, stood and spoke, often alone, for the end of apartheid and all that it stood for. Because she was brave, and because, like so many early white activists there, she was Jewish, her often solitary and always dangerous crusade was a matter of particular pride to many Jewish women, my mother among them. Her powerful example was a foreshadowing of much that came later. By the time I was in college, friends were lying in at the doors of Chemical Bank to demand divestiture – removal of American funds from South African investments. By the 80’s daily demonstrations, and arrests, outside the DC South African embassy kept a drumbeat of attention on the issue. It took until February of 1990 for Mandela to be released from prison, granting great credit to Ms. Suzman, who later stood at his side as he signed the new constitution.
How interesting that one of the earliest moral political lessons I learned came from the courage of a woman half way around the world, not only because of her courage and effectiveness but also because of her faith. We speak so casually of “role models” these days, but when there is a true model of how to live, the impact is enormous. I’ve known that for a long time, and as I watched Barack Obama tell city kids he visited on Thanksgiving eve that ” You guys might end being the president some day” I thought it again.
Ms. Suzman’s example multiplied her power: not only did she stand alone for change when such a stand was desperately needed, she also taught all those who watched her that they could stand too, that just as her stands gave birth to theirs, their own actions multiplied the impact of hers. As we enter this new year, with so much ahead of us, it’s something we would do well to remember – and live by.
*Here’s an interview with Ms. Suzman
**Here’s the 1985 video from “Miami Steve” and artists from Herbie Hancock to Pat Benetar and Bonnie Raitt to Lou Reed and The Boss himself.
NO this is not the lazy way out – sending you to another blog. Ronni Bennett is a highly visible, highly regarded "elder blogger" and has formed a large, vital community around her blog Time Goes By. A retired CBS News producer, she moved from Manhattan to Maine for a more affordable standard of living and she's got her fingers on many pulses. Today, she writes about the already tragic costs of the economic crisis for "the rest of us" – those not losing fortunes because of Bernard Madoff but just losing ground.
I think the Madoff story is worth the attention it's getting, not just or even mainly because of the damage it did to high-end investors but because someone of such stature (Head of NASDAQ) would – and could- do such things – and that he got away with it for so long. It's institutionally mind-blowing. As I wandered the web reading stories for this post, I discovered more reasons, too. It did disproportionate damage to Jews and Jewish charities – and Madoff was Jewish. Another "how could he?" Non-profits around the world, literally, are devastated; an example of the non-profit chaos generated by Mr. Madoff's activity.
Even so, Ronni's point about the focus on the big stuff when there are so many stories, especially at this time of year, is worth taking a look at. She's right about that; we need to see more profiles of those people who "work hard and play by the rules" and are struggling to figure out how to survive. They're our neighbors – and, in many cases, they're us.
I was in high school when I read Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin's heartbreaking story of pain and loss. It was the first time I'd understood anything of the harsh realities of life for gay men, and it changed me, opened my soul and my mind the way great writers are supposed to. Toni Morrison, his close friend who has often said that she misses him still, told NPR's Michele Martin how much she would have loved to see his reaction to the election of Barack Obama. Me too.
I kept thinking of Baldwin as I sat in a screening of Milk ,the story of a gay man, years later, who fought discrimination with determination – and humor – and lost his life to an assassin in the process. Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, moved to San
Francisco from a dead-end job in Manhattan and ended up launching a political gay rights movement that took over first the Castro, then San Francisco, then the nation. Battling anti-gay referenda in cities, towns and states, he made it possible, in ways probably not dreamed of when Baldwin fled US racism and homophobia by moving to Paris in the 1940's, for gays to live openly.
Here's what's hard though. Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956, when gay men suffered, for the most part, in secret. Harvey Milk led his battles in the 1970's, as, at least in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, they emerged from the closet into the light, fighting for their rights every day as efforts were made to push them back into silence. In California, one of Milk's greatest successes was the defeat of a bill that would force the termination of all gay teachers.
Look at us now. On the same landmark day that we elected Barack Obama president, California, in a statewide referendum, repealed the right for gays to marry. Similar efforts have become a cottage industry, and have succeeded all over the country.
Where kids are concerned, Florida, where Anita Bryant originated her cruel anti-gay campaign in the 70's, is still fighting to maintain a recently-overturned ban on gay adoption. Arkansas and Utah ban any unmarried couples, straight or gay, from adopting or fostering children; Mississippi bans gay couples, but not single gays. Arkansas voters last month approved a measure that, like Utah's bans any unmarried straight or gay couples from adopting or fostering children, a clever way to be "nondiscriminatory." Gay couples who want the non-biological parent to adopt their baby have to choose carefully in which county they file their papers. Get the wrong judge and you're toast. Perfectly fine candidates can lose elections because of their stands supporting gay rights.
To read the policy side of these issues in more detail, visit Leslie Bradshaw. She's one of the most passionate writers about the past election and the current state of gay rights and discusses the issue far more completely than I can.
But to a pop culture vulture like me, it's sad to sit through a docudrama, which is basically what MILK is, 52 years after Giovanni and 30+ after Harvey Milk, and feel that, in too many ways, it could be today's news.
ADD: I just discovered this post from Uppercase Woman. A great survey/meditation on gay marriage.
Once again the Blogging Boomers Carnival arrives – this time at I Remember JFK. This week it covers everything from midlife love affairs to commuting by bike to Peyton Place – and, of course, the holidays. Don't miss it!
See that crowd? Somewhere, way in the back, probably at least a block beyond, stand an almost-fifteen-year-old girl and her mother. Fresh off an overnight train from Pittsburgh, having arrived at Union Station in time to watch the Army flame-throwers melt a blizzard’s worth of snow on the streets of the inaugural route, they make their way to their parade seats: in the bleachers, way down near the Treasure Building.
I spent most of 1960 besotted with John Kennedy. And Jackie. And Caroline. And all the other Kennedys who came with them. Most of my lunch money went to bus fare as, after school, I shuttled back and forth “to town” to volunteer in the local JFK headquarters. I even had a scrapbook of clippings about Kennedy and his family.
So. My parents surprised me with these two parade tickets. My mom and I took the overnight train and arrived
around dawn Inauguration morning. We couldn’t get into the swearing-in itself, of course, so we went to a bar that served breakfast (at least that’s how I remember it) and watched the speech on their TV, then made our way along the snowy sidewalks to our seats, arriving in time to watch the new president and his wife roll by, to see his Honor Guard, the last time it would be comprised solely of white men (since Kennedy ordered their integration soon after,) in time to see the floats and the Cabinet members and the bands and the batons.
It was very cold. We had no thermos, no blankets, nothing extra, and my mom, God bless her, never insisted that we go in for a break, never complained or made me feel anything but thrilled. Which I was. As the parade drew to a close, and the light faded, we stumbled down the bleachers, half-frozen, and walked the few blocks to the White House fence. I stood there, as close to the fence as I am now to my keyboard, and watched our new president enter the White House for the first time as Commander in Chief.
That was half a century ago. I can’t say it feels like yesterday, but it remains a formidable and cherished memory. It was also a defining lesson on how to be a parent; it took enormous love and respect to decide to do this for me. I was such a kid – they could have treated my devotion like a rock star crush; so young, they could have decided I would “appreciate it more” next time. (Of course there was no next time.) Instead, they gave me what really was the lifetime gift of being a part of history. And showed me that my political commitment had value – enough value to merit such an adventure.
Who’s to say if I would have ended up an activist (I did)- and then a journalist (I did) – without those memories. If I would have continued to act within the system rather than try to destroy it. (I did) If I would have been the mom who took kids to Europe, brought them along on news assignments to Inaugurations and royal weddings and green room visits with the Mets (Yup, I did.) I had learned to honor the interests and dreams of my children the way my parents had honored my own. So it’s hard for me to tell parents now to stay home.
My good friend, the wise and gifted PunditMom, advises “those with little children” to skip it, and since strollers and backpacks are banned for security reasons, I’m sure she’s right. But if you’ve got a dreamer in your house, a young adult who has become a true citizen because of this election, I’d try to come. After all, he’s their guy. What he does will touch their lives far more than it will ours. Being part of this beginning may determine their willingness to accept the tough sacrifices he asks of them – at least that – and probably, also help to build their roles as citizens – as Americans – for the rest of their lives. Oh — and will tell them that, despite curfews and learner’s permits, parental limit-setting and screaming battles, their parents see them as thinking, wise and effective people who will, as our new President promised them, help to change the world.
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer' series of novels about the love between Edward, a noble vampire, and his high school sweetheart, Bella, is everywhere. Translated into 20 languages and now a film, with even a Twilight Moms site for, well, moms who love the books, it's what is usually called a "cultural phenomenon." It's been: a New York Times Editor's Choice, an American Library Association "Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults" and "Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers", a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade…So Far", a Teen People "Hot List" pick, and a New York Times Best Seller. All before I even got to read it. There would have been a time… ah well. At least it's fun now.
And in a way, embarrassing. After all, a teen vampire love story isn't exactly typical reading for a well-educated, grown-up, fairly worldly woman who fancies herself reasonably intelligent. It was curiosity that got me there, and I'm glad. There's something about this steamy yet chaste story that slams me back into my 15-year-old self, wondering what sex was like, what love was like, what anything remotely interesting, none of which had happened to me yet, was like. I had forgotten about her but she was still in there just waiting for a reason to emerge. When she did, she reminded that I'd had my own Edward.
Precisely the same age, a high school junior, I fell, hard, for the school's bad boy poet, one of the "drugstore boys" who hung out outside the pharmacy or, in good weather, the Dairy Queen. He was the first conscientious objector I knew; introduced me to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Sound and the Fury and A Canticle for Leibowitz. We would sit in our basement game room and talk, and smoke, for hours. When things got too bad at his house, he often slept at ours. Having raised two teenagers myself I'm still shocked that my parents never objected. It was a beautiful time. There was no way I was going to sleep with him; parent power was still too strong then. He told me years later that even if I'd been willing, he was too scared of my mother to let it happen. As it was for Bella though, that was almost irrelevant. He'd opened my mind, and my soul, so completely that there was no turning back. There's more than one way to be free.
In Twilight, as with Buffy and Angel, sex is impossible. Edward understands that the loss of self involved in sexual consumation would remove the inhibitions that these "vegetarian" vampires have developed to meet both their values and their desire to live among the human. There's lots of lovely making out, but that's it. The less disciplined of the two is Bella, who more than once has to be restrained in her enthusiasm for her perfect, shining, somewhat chilly-to- the-touch lover.
I don't know if such limited innocence is possible today; don't know how the teenagers who read these books could be even partially as un-knowing as I was. When I was a kid, there was no MTV, no Friends episodes about who would get the last condom, no Brittany, or God forbid, her pregnant little sister, no pregnant candidate progeny either. Sex was private, and for grownups. Not necessarily in real life, but in perceived values. There's so much more to disturb their discipline; so little to support the kind of determination that protets Bella and Edward.
I think that's part of the wonder, the attraction, of Twilight. Remember the Simpsons have a long-running joke about Lisa's Sexually Non-Threatening Boys Magazine? It's funny because, at a certain age, that's where girls go. And then, as they begin to move toward true sexual ripeness, the attraction changes. The longings emerge, along with the need to control the young men who would exploit them. Who better than a conscience-stricken, loving, gorgeous, perfect vampire to guide the way? Or, to remind us later, was a thrilling, scary, remarkable journey it was?
The Boomers are blogging again, this time at So Baby Boomer. There's lots of holiday stuff, clues on social networking, avoiding holiday weight gain, sentimental family time with grown kids, midlife dating and even — Lizzie Borden, among others. Don't miss it!
Here's the thing. My children live far away, one six hours to the west and the other, with his fiance, six hours to the east. We've been together for Thanksgiving week – all of us – hanging out, cooking, touring around DC, running errands and just being — and being thankful. It's always special when the whole family is together; it seemed so natural when the boys were little and now it's a treat. I cooked a million meals with them banging around in the kitchen. Now it's a precious thing when I make turkey meatloaf with my younger son. I watch him, an accomplished cook, chop like a pro, listen as he reassures me that this new thing will taste great, laugh with him, trade recipes. I rode around in cars, subways, buses with them all the time, and, along with their dad, dragged them into a million stores from grocery to toys to clothing to antiques. Now it's the pleasure of serious shopping at Ikea with my older son and his fiance, getting to be around while they choose a sofa. Seeing what a fine woman she is, watching them seamlessly making decisions together, measuring, taking photos, laughing, planning. It feels great to see them launching themselves so well together and makes it OK that much of their life is lived far from us. That's how it is.
I know though, that when kids are little, schlepping them in and out of car seats and strollers, keeping them occupied while you try to cook, keeping little hands out of the Ikea toy bins, mediating murderous sibling battles, keeping a home running while keeping kids in line – it's a lot. I remember. It doesn't matter whether you work outside your home or stay home with your family; either way there's so much to handle. I kept thinking about that as I wandered around Washington with these adults who are also, forever, my children, reminding myself how long it would be before we would all do it together again. Reminding myself that it's a credit to us that our kids are self-sufficient, productive and wonderfully decent, funny, loving men — and how blessed we are that they chose to come to us for the holiday — and that it's right, and good, that they have their own lives and homes and futures.
But though that's true, I wanted to tell you about this because it goes so fast. All the cliches are true. Turn around and they're grown. That doesn't mean it isn't hard to keep things going now, it just means that those days will be gone, sooner than you think.
My youngest is approaching 30. My oldest is getting married. They have money market accounts and careers and fiances and plans and even some gray hairs. They teach me more than I teach them (although that was always true.) They are, like those of you reading this, grown ups, and my husband and I have our own rich and happy life together. But it still can be, for those few moments of farewell at the end of each visit, desperately painful, on both sides.
As we drove to the airport last night, I (sort of) joked that I had to hook my iPod up to the car radio so that, when I was sad after leaving them off, I could blast Bruce, or Great Big Sea to make me feel a little better. When we arrived at the departure entrance, I got out of the car to help unload the bags. My son the chef was still in the front seat of the car. I was worried that a cop would throw me out of the parking place so I went toward the door to ask what he was doing. He turned around. "You iPod's all hooked up" he said, and reached out to give me a hug goodbye.