Have a wonderful weekend. See you later.
Tag: NABLOPOMO
This Just In: The Longer You Live, the Older You Are!
They look like big insects with wheels, those people with walkers and canes. I pass so many of them on the streets. Every time, it gets scarier.
“That’s OK” I tell myself, “Lots of them are really obese, many are clearly far far older or looking it and some are obviously dealing with life-long disabilities. They need all those appliances. I don’t.” Even so, each time they pass I see, for the first time, not another species but a possible (perhaps inevitable) future.
We all age. Our grandsons are growing so fast; miss a week and they seem transformed. Our kids have somehow become men of 35 and almost 40! Younger people are more willing to reveal their resentment of those of us from the 60’s and 70’s. (“We’re just bitter because the media spent our formative years (well, the teen and college ones) calling us slackers and then our entire generation got known as a waste of space. It’s still mean about us! I think we are the hardest workers who will work until we drop dead.”)
I understand what that means, even though I disagree with much of it. I don’t mind the idea of aging; so far I’m pretty lucky in how I feel and what I can do and think and be. Even so, I know it all turns on an illness, or a fall, or a loss of strength or hearing or sight. I continue to see myself apart from those old people, but somewhere inside I know the truth. I can’t hide from it forever.
We all get old. We all change, sometimes decline and sometimes gain wisdom. Boomer or Millennial, Gen X or Y – all of us move along the continuum no matter how much we fight it. And no matter how long I sit here trying to finish this, I can’t find a way to make it any better.
Mo(u)rning in America: 2014
I spent W’s eight years in political despair. It was hard to watch the news or read the paper, harder still to think of all our fellow Americans without resources who would, and did, suffer on a very concrete level. Our kids were educated, our mortgage getting paid; we had work and health insurance and political and religious freedom but for many the pain of those years was personal.
Barack Obama’s election felt like the turning of a corner. This morning, as we face the unremitting and successful (and un-American and cruel and racist) assault on voting rights, the prospect of Joe McCarthy-like hearings in both bodies about almost everything that this president has been able to accomplish despite unprecedented, treasonous opposition, certain continued and brutal safety net cuts, violation of workers rights, a terrifying, determined erosion of the rights of women, a near-caliphate level of fundamentalism among even some of our newly elected members of Congress, the now-certain, veto-proof approval of the Keystone Pipeline, obscene power grabs by wealthy oligarchs and their ALEC, Americans for Prosperity operations not only nationally but state-by-state and unimaginable foreign policy attitudes, it’s a grim day.
Friends of mine have posted look-ahead messages and I admire them for it. For me, it’s going to take a little longer.
Damn! Scary Days Ahead!
My son called tonight to ask me if I was finished packing and ready to leave the country. He was kidding… Sort of. And I joked back at him… Sort of.
This is a tough night. So much was at stake and so much has been lost. I’m not certain how grotesque the new government of our country will be, but it will be hard to watch. Right now Joni Ernst is making her victory speech and it’s all I can do not to throw something at the TV. She, Cory Gardner in Colorado and several others hold views so extreme and benighted that it is painful to imagine what our lives will be like for the next two years
Of course they didn’t win in a vacuum. Democrats made mistakes, ISIS and Ebola didn’t help and the deep damage done to President Obama by the Republicans from the day he took office didn’t help either, nor did the long years of gridlock or the disproportionate number of Democratic seats up this year. But they won, and excuses won’t change that. I think I’m giving up MSNBC for Netflix for a while.
Big Change for BlogHer: A NABLOPOMO Recollection
BlogHer has merged with SheKnows, as Lisa Stone and and AdAge announced this morning. Since 2006 the wonder that is BlogHer has been a central part of my life. On this NABLOPOMO day 3, here’s why*:
In 2006, I was working with David Aylward and the National Strategies firm. He doesn’t know this but there’s a story (If you know me you know there’s almost always a story.) We had a client who wanted to reach parents. David hired me to help and I had this big idea about making a parent website to promote them. Well. David sort of said “What about these blogs I keep hearing about? Would that be better?” I knew so little about blogging that I had to go look it up online. I found a story about this little conference in San Jose called BlogHer, meeting for only its second year. David and I convinced our client that I should attend this mysterious event and off I went along with fliers for our product and real curiosity about who these women were and what they were up to.
Here is what I received – from BlogHer 2006 and every one since:
1. Access to an entirely new world of remarkable women (and men too.) Including ( a little bit of a yearbook list) Elisa Camahort Page and Lisa Stone and Jory Des Jardins and Morra Aarons-Mele and Cooper Munroe and Emily McKhann and Liz Gumbinner and Kristen Chase and Asha Dornfest and Jennifer Burdette Satterwhite and Mary Spivey Tsao and Danielle Wiley and people I haven’t mentioned here (Sorry – some I’m not completely sure who I met in 2006 and who later.) Feels like I’ve known you all forever as well as Sarah Granger and Kelly Wickham and Jill Miller Zimon and Joanne Bamberger and Stacey Ferguson and Cynthia Liu and Anita Sarah Jackson and Jenn Pozner and Cheryl Contee (and and and) And that doesn’t count the new (to me) folks like Sharon Hodor Greenthal!.
2. An entirely new way to communicate and create.
3. More fun than a barrel of groovy blogger women knew they could deliver. And – here’s the reason I’m writing this post at all:
4. Another decade at least of being part of and participating in the new parts of the world – online and on screens, instead of watching from the bleachers.
Lots of boomer women have joined me and the other early birds each year and I am certain they feel the same way (I’ve asked several and besides they’ve written about it.) At a time when many of our friends are settling into a more and more peer-centered life, we have the gift of having broadened, rather than narrowed, our world and hearing the voices of women we never would have known about, much less known for real. So David, thank you for the gift of my entry into this universe and for the imagination and vision that opened your mind to its possibilities. It’s a beautiful place to hang out and I’ll always remember who sent me through the door.
*This post first appeared on August 2, 2014.
Nablopomo Day 2, and I Almost Missed It
This would be longer if it weren’t almost tomorrow. I’m sitting here finally finding out why everyone is so crazy about Orange Is the New Black. I was literally afraid to watch it; not sure what I expected but it is SO MUCH BETTER than I could have expected.
So much more to say but this is it for now.. Placeholder Sunday. Tomorrow I want to talk about Citizenfour and Dear White People.
Every Day for a Month – You, Me and WordPress
Well here we are again! A post a day, all month. Last time I tried this was 7 (seven!) years ago. Then, as now, Sabbath observance meant that I couldn’t post on Saturdays or Friday nights so I scheduled weekend posts in advance. After today I will do so again — but for this, the first day, I’ll just declare my presence as the sabbath departs.
It’s exciting to be part of Nablopomo again. May we all celebrate one another’s adventures, observations and ideas. Oh and a sad farewell to Daylight Savings Time!
LAST OF THE LEAVES, LAST OF NABLOPOMO, HARRY CHAPIN AND LIFE
I can see this out my office window. In a couple of months it will be silvery with snow. Months after that, long after these last end-of-autumn leaves have fallen, new ones will bud in their place, and there will be a riot of color once again — this time with blossoms.
I titled a post a few months ago "ALL MY LIFE’S A CIRCLE, SUNRISE TO SUNDOWN" as I wrote about a beautiful Bar Mitzvah. For some reason, I’m feeling that way today. Listen to Harry Chapin’s wonderful words:
All my life’s a circle
Sunrise and sundown
Moon rolls through the night time
Till daybreak comes around
All my life’s a circle
Still I wonder why
Season spinning ’round again
Years keep rolling by.
Seems like I’ve been here before
Can’t remember when
I got this funny feeling
We’ll all be together again
No straight lines make up my life
All my roads have bends
No clear cut beginnings
So far no dead ends.
CHORUS
I’ve met you a thousand times
I guess you’ve done the same
Then we lose each other
It’s like a children’s game
But now I find you here again
The thought comes to my mind
Our love is like a circle
Let’s go ’round one more time.
All my life’s a circle
Sunrise and sundown
Moon rolls through the night time
Till daybreak comes around
All my life’s a circle
Still I wonder why
Season spinning ’round again
Years keep rolling by.
Beautiful, no? Tomorrow it will be December – NABLOPOMO will be over for another year and the year itself as fast approaching its final days. We’ve been through health scares and crises, major adventures and small pleasures, moving and rewarding family time and some times not so great. So I guess that’s why I’m kind of weepy, having loved the release of daily writing and aware of how fragile is life — and love — and laughter, ready to "go ’round one more time."
Here’s the song:
Have a good weekend.
NABLOPOMO GRADUATION DAY MINUS ONE
So here’s what I know so far:
- Everyone loves COSTCO. Yesterday’s post garnered a ton of traffic; I was frankly amazed. Of all the things I’ve written about, from Vietnam to Jewish funerals to East Berlin to my kids to Bruce Springsteen, this is the one that hit something. Not sure what but it’s kind of interesting, no?
- Writing every day is definitely good for you. Hard, but good.
- As I’ve continued to write, I’ve discovered both a capacity to be honest and a certainty that there are things I will never write about. Those things belong to others, people I love to whom they happened. They belong to them.
- When you’re writing but you’re beyond tired, you should wrap up your document and go to bed. Which is what I’m going to do now. Tomorrow we’ll celebrate graduation day together. G’nite
TIRED TUESDAY
NABLOPOMO is almost over. I’ve spent half of it seven time zones to the east and another five days three time zones to the west, so, basically, I haven’t know what time it was all month. Oh – and in part of my head it’s still about…August. I can’t believe how fast this year has gone. We’ve had plenty of ups and downs and I’m sure there will be more, and slowly, over the year and most particularly over this month, I’ve discovered how important this blog has become. It’s not just an outlet or a project, it’s become something of a refuge. I love the freedom to think out loud, to write it all down — sometimes spontaneously with little or no discipline and sometimes with great care. In either case, I’ve reminded myself how much I used to love to write and how glad I am to have returned to the old habit. It’s still a bit premature to bid the big NAB farewell though; we’ve got the 28th, 29th and 30th left. More to come – and then it’ actually the last month of the year. Unbelievable.