WOMEN – Page 13 – Don't Gel Too Soon

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.

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.

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

ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL NEW MOM POSTS EVER

This is Catherine Connors, also known as Her Bad Mother. Mom to a preschool daughter and a brand new son, she’s a former professor of political philosophy and a blogging star. And this week, after the birth of her son, she wrote one of the most powerful posts I’ve ever read about being a mother, bearing a second child and being a woman with a heart and a soul and a body. Read it.

WEDDINGS, INDY, CARRIE BRADSHAW AND ME (SPOILER ALERT – BIG HINTS ABOUT SATC ENDING)

I went to see Sex and the City tonight with a group of women in their 20’s, much younger than Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte or Miranda. I’m older than all of them. They liked it, thought it was disorganized, or OK, or so-so or good. I loved it.

As I tried to explain why, I got strangely emotional, struggling to describe how Samantha’s 50th birthday, the remarkable relationship shared by these four friends, the happy endings and the fairy tale aura, just made me happy. It’s tough to measure the impact of experience on a life perspective, or the different perspective of those just beginning to accumulate those experiences; good friends who are young adults newly married or newly parents – still far from my place as the mother of grown sons.

This, the film’s opening weekend, saw it push Indiana Jones out of first place. I’ve complained a great deal about the latest Indy movie. My husband emailed our older son that the movie "sucked." He responded that he had loved, it, that it was just "one big comic book." Clearly, he felt the same way I’d felt about the girls of Sex and the City. As he put it, with his usual wisdom "I guess everything is a matter of perspective."

Continue reading WEDDINGS, INDY, CARRIE BRADSHAW AND ME (SPOILER ALERT – BIG HINTS ABOUT SATC ENDING)

CHARMED, AGAIN. AND PROBABLY NOT FOR THE LAST TIME

NOTICE: YOU MAY NEED INSULIN TO READ THIS – IT IS REALLY SAPPY — CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED

Right now, I’m crying. Not just teary, crying. Right now, the third time I’ve been to this moment. It’s so embarrassing that until I complete this post I don’t even know if I’ll ever let you see it. Why such emotion on a sunny day so close to my birthday? Over a television show? The final epsiode of one that went off the air in 2006. One that’s about witches?

If, like me, you never paid much attention to CHARMED, appearing on the now-defunct and youth-oriented WB – about three sisters who are witches and who have witchy powers including, when acting together with the “power of three”, to best Ultimate Evil (I know, I know), let me tell you a bit about them. I’ve written about them before – when I first found them two years ago and again almost a year ago, after a wedding whose ritual reminded me of theirs, even though in theirs families gather from across the divide between living and dead. As I wrote then:

On my favorite guilty pleasure, Charmed, rituals of birth and marriage are attended not only by those who share the lives and loves of the Halliwell sisters (yeah they’re witches and their story spent 8 TV seasons enchanting us all) but also by those who came before. They summon, “through space and time” all members of “the Halliwell line.” Surrounded by these translucent figures of past
generations, today’s Halliwells celebrate marriages and new arrivals. Those fully and those ephemerally present conclude together “blessed be.”

What does this have to do with Jewish weddings — or any other terrestrial weddings for that matter? A lot. Eight years on the air, the longest running show with female leads, it dealt often with travel through time and space and dominions never imagined. But when really important events arose, all the magic was supplanted by a single, simple spell that basically –well — brought the family together.

I just looked the show up on Wikipedia and discovered that it went off the air on my 60th birthday – having run from October 7, 1998 to May 21, 2006. My
husband, when he’s in psychiatrist mode, talks about “anniversary reactions” – when we experience deep feelings but can’t quite figure out where they come from. Sometimes, they have to do with the occurrence of anniversaries we haven’t even noticed have arrived. In this case, though, I didn’t know the year the show ended, much less the date. In fact, I was in Paris with my family to celebrate this 60th birthday landmark on that day and didn’t even notice the demise of the long-running series. In fact, I first discovered it, in re-runs, airing as I worked in my office. I used it to keep me company (believe it or not, it’s on four hours a day – two in the morning and two in the afternoon.) Didn’t know a thing about the show or its success.

I got an earful from one of my sons when I asked though, who claimed that the show caused plenty of fights with his (then) girlfriend. Apparently, it was on at the same time as the Simpsons and every week was a negotiation.

But for me it’s somehow more than that. These three sisters, and their powers, are deeply moving. Their battles and solidarity, their humor and courage, their conviction that they could literally save the world from evil (p.s., they did) all resonated in a very weird way. Still do.

Hence the tears. The final episode, as the post-show future unfolds, feels like my own life. Endings. Loving farewells. The (hopefully) gratification of recognizing a life at least partially well-lived. The kids and their kids and an idyllic togetherness among sisters and their husbands and their children and their destiny. A lot to hope for and, I guess, as my own life moves forward, something to cry about.

FIFTY-SOMETHING MOMS AND I’M ONE OF THEM!

This is really exciting. Silicon Valley Moms has launched a Fifty-Something Moms blog and I’m honored to be one of them. Although it’s been around for a while, the site’s OFFICIAL launch is today. I’ve only posted twice so far, once on being a "fake grandparent" and once on childbirth for us in the First World versus for women in developing nations but hope to post at least once every two weeks. There are plenty of lovely posts already so have a look. I’ll be mentioning posts from this sister blog as we move forward. It really is an exciting project – as are the other blogs that share the franchise – Silicon Valley Moms Blog, Chicago Moms Blog, DC Metro Moms Blog, New York City Moms Blog and New Jersey Moms Blog, with a Deep South Moms Blog launching soon. So get over there. Now!

BLOGHER COMES OF AGE WITH ITS OWN INTERVIEW WITH BARACK OBAMA

As you know, I am a very loyal supporter of BlogHer and a great admirer of its three founders, who have built a community of respect and honesty, humor and warmth that is a treasure to many of my sister bloggers and to me. At last year’s BlogHer conference much was made of the absence of presidential candidates, even though they’d all been invited AND even though we were in Chicago, where Yearly Kos (now called Netroots Nation) was happening in literally one or two days, and all the Democrats came there. It was if the "little ladies" were just not worth the trouble.

So it’s very exciting to see Barack Obama sit down with BlogHer’s Erin Kotecki Vest and answer questions submitted by the BlogHer community. No headlines, but a broad survey of topics with sound, thoughtful and well-expressed responses. This is a landmark moment and I’m so proud to be a BlogHer and a small part of its universe. Watch it for yourself.