The presidency comes with more horrors than perks, but there are a few: like joining in when Paul McCartney sings "Michelle" to your wife, and getting up on stage to sing along on "Hey Jude." Boomer fantasies fulfilled.
Friday, June 04, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Not So Over
A New York Times article points out that two current politicians are in trouble for statements they've made concerning two of the dominant issues of the 1960s, a half century later. The Times offers some opinions on why, but the short and obvious answer would be that these issues are unresolved.
Rand Paul tried to dodge from his previously stated position that, contrary to the Civil Rights Act, private businesses should have the right to discriminate because of race-- such as a restaurant refusing service to blacks, one of the flashpoints of the Civil Rights movement. Breaking legal segregation was the purpose of the lunch counter sit-ins, in the photo above.
Paul's view not only reflects a current nostalgia for libertarian ideals and simplicities, it plays to the resurgent racism brought to the surface by, among other things, the daily sight of a black U.S. President. Rand Paul may not be an overt racist himself, but his Tea Party supporters undoubtedly include racists, who would perhaps also deny the charge. Their rhetoric is about liberty, which they seem happy to reserve for themselves and for their businesses, but not for minorities. The true meaning of freedom and a democratic society must be learned and relearned.
Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut at the very least allowed others to retain the impression that he was a soldier in Vietnam, when he was in the Marine reserves, and may have been an opponent of the war. Whether it is political opportunism or the kind of emotional identification that led Hillary Clinton to believe she'd been under fire in Eastern Europe, it speaks in part to a new alignment of the honored veteran versus the protestors. Blumenthal apparently even repeated the discredited lie that returning veterans were routinely spit upon as they returned, when in fact it was protestors who literally were spit upon and worse, with documentary footage to prove it.
Without odious comparison of the injuries, those of us who were young men then were all victims of that war, and while I have come to appreciate more the positive aspects of character that soldiering requires, I am not revising my moral judgment of the Vietnam war itself. During media discussions of the Blumenthal story I also heard a Vietnam veteran say that vets didn't bear grudges against protestors, but that isn't what Maxine Hong Kingston found in her Bay Area group, where men who served as U.S. soldiers in Vietnam met and reconciled with their Vietnamese adversaries, but would not reconcile with American protestors. It seems that particular aspect of the war will never be over until we're all dead.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The Quiet Crisis
Between last Earth Day and today--in fact, in March, during the final healthcare votes--Stewart Udall died. He was appointed by President Kennedy to serve as Secretary of Interior in 1961, and stayed under President Johnson until 1969, just before the first Earth Day. He was an environmental pioneer, part of the transition from conservation to environmental activism. The first environmental laws were passed, or were proposed (and passed soon after the first Earth Day, in the Nixon administration) on his watch.
Udall also wrote one of the pioneer books on the environment, though The Quiet Crisis is not much remembered. It followed by a year the first environmental classic and best-seller, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Udall's book took a more historical view, chronicling American conservation efforts. But crucially it also took a wider view, beyond chemical pollution to the total environmental effects of the growth-at-any-cost economy: "In a great surge toward 'progress,' our congestion increasingly has befouled water and air and growth has created new problems on every hand. Schools, housing, and roads are inadequate and ill-planned; noise and confusion have mounted with the rising tempo of technology; and as our cities have sprawled outward, new forms of abundance and new forms of blight have oftentimes marched hand in hand."
Although it preserves sign of hasty writing, The Quiet Crisis remains remarkable in the appropriate breadth of its content. He dealt not only with facts but the underlying and overarching philosophy. He elevated the work of Aldo Leopold and his "land ethic", now acknowledged as a central figure in even contemporary environmentalism, into public policy discussion. He went after examples of air, water and soil pollution--and assembled the first official endangered species list--but he also looked to the historical and spiritual sources that support and sustain attention to the natural world. He could be eloquent on this topic. "To pursue his vision more intently, Emerson steeped himself in Plato, Goethe, and fresh air. The easiest wayh to develop Olympian insights was to turn the mind into an aeolian harp and attune it to the winds and sounds and rhythms of nature."
In this book, he also dealt with urban environments as well as wilderness, with needed legislation and individual action. That the book has an introduction by President Kennedy shows that the environment was on the agenda almost a decade before Earth Day.
Stewart Udall was also one of the voices heard throughout this year's American Experience documentary, Earth Days. He was part of the mass movement before and just after Earth Day in 1970 that led to the laws that saved the United States--from erasing more wilderness, from poisoning more water, earth and air and therefore poisoning itself. But as this documentary notes, expanding effective environmental change to the world, and applying it to the most deadly threat human civilization has ever faced, climate change (which, the documentary documents, was talked about in a national news broadcast on the first Earth Day) has failed.
Udall called it the Quiet Crisis in 1963. It became pretty noisy on Earth Day 1970, when 2 million Americans participated, and soon after, when the fledgling movement targeted and defeated anti-environment legislators. But on its 40th anniversary, it has gone quiet again. There is still is no collective, focused action by environmentalists. Too much separate noise can also add up to a quiet crisis.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Unfinished
The photo is of Senator Ted Kennedy's grave, where his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, left a note after the health insurance reform bill passed, saying that the "unfinished business" was now finished. Ted Kennedy used those words, unfinished business, in his last letter to President Obama, and those words were used often by President Kennedy to describe what needed to be done--the unfinished business of America.
The health insurance reform law does cap the long struggle for reform that provides a fairer health care system for most Americans, that Ted Kennedy called his life's work. So President Obama made sure that his widow and his niece Caroline as well as his son Patrick were present when he signed the bill into law. Others also recognized his long championing of this cause. Today the Senate honored Ted Kennedy's contribution with a moment of silence.
This was the most significant step in health care since Medicare was passed in 1965. This had been proposed and advocated by President Kennedy. I was in high school during the Kennedy administration, and "medical care for the aged" (as it was called) was a debate topic one year. So I spent months researching it, and became familiar with the arguments, including many similar to those heard this year, although "socialized medicine" was as far as the right would go--"socialism" would have been scandalous, or laughed away. So much about the debate hasn't changed, including the blinders worn by the opposition. (One significant change, though: a major opponent of Medicare was the American Medical Association, the largest doctors group. The AMA announced its support of the Obama plan days before the House vote.)
That we've progressed so little in our politics is discouraging. But there is always unfinished business, in a country trying to be better. This new law may well do more than anything since the 60s to reverse trends that damage a lot of non-rich Americans, and not only their health. But there is still so much left to finish.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Then and Now: Kumbaya
Demonstrators singing in Cambridge, MD in 1963; Joan Baez at the Obama White House concert of Civil Rights music. Why that didn't include holding hands and singing "Kumbaya"--in the post below.
Kumbaya
A version of this was on the Rescued List at Daily Kos.
About ten days ago, the White House held a celebration of music integral to the Civil Rights struggles of the 60s. I recorded the PBS broadcast but haven't gotten around to watching it yet. But I'm pretty sure that among the songs by Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, etc., those assembled did not sit around holding hands and singing "Kumbaya."
But they could have. Because we did that, sitting-in, marching, demonstrating for Civil Rights. That was one of the songs that held us together. Now it's a common cliche of scorn and disdain, on the left these days even more than the right. It deserves better.
Not that it's such a great song (although Pete Seeger did try to add some African-style low harmonies--check him out on YouTube.) It was far from my favorite, but after Joan Baez recorded it in 1962, it did become part of the rituals that expressed the hopes, yearnings and commitments of a generation.
Not later, apparently. And certainly, not anymore.
I remember the first time I read what is now the common usage of "Kumbaya." And I remember how I felt.
It was a magazine article purporting to witness a group of young conservative Republicans drinking and talking in a posh Washington hotel, at the height of the GW Bush Youth takeover. They were disparaging the liberal idealists who didn't understand the real world, whose idealism was proven to be futile and naive. They made fun of them by proposing to light some candles, hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
As soon as I read that I felt strange. I saw us in the 60s, not just at the March on Washington (and though I don't remember specifically, it wouldn't surprise me if we had sung "Kumbaya" on the march to the reflecting pool) but marching through the streets of a midwestern town that had never seen anything like a black-and-white together demonstration, or later huddling with a much smaller group in the town square with our candles lit in protest of the Vietnam war, amidst angry shouts from passing cars.
In some circumstances especially, I'm sure we did look silly. And looking back, I realized the delicacy of what we were doing, and how weird it might look now. Non-violent resistance was at the heart of the Civil Rights movement, thanks to Martin Luther King, Jr. And so it wasn't surprising that he opposed the Vietnam war, and that a significant part of the anti-war movement adopted non-violence. If you were going to oppose a violent war, it made sense to do so without violence.
In this space I can only hint at what it felt like to light candles and sing together: We Shall Overcome, We Shall Not Be Moved, If I Had A Hammer, Michael Row the Boat Ashore, and Kumbaya. Some songs that had literal meaning for what we were doing, others that were more symbolic, and frankly, easy for a large group to sing.
And our singing together was the point. We were singing, not fighting. Though we sometimes did this in an innocuous "hootenanny" kind of settings, we were usually where we weren't supposed to be, doing what we weren't supposed to do. We were making a statement, and we weren't always safe.
There were proximate threats of violence around us at times. But we knew we were standing against a violent society, that reverted to trying to solve problems with violence. We were standing for Civil Rights, racial justice and equality, an end to an unjust war. But we were also enacting an alternative to violence, emnity, mistrust and cynicism.
We knew and we made the principled and factual arguments. We knew and sometimes had to face the rage and hate of the opposition. So the singing was to express our emotions, to affirm ourselves and to connect, not only with each other, but some of those who might hear us.
All political change eventually depends on cultural and social change. That change is not entirely based on rational arguments, or to appeals to self-interest. Such change involves shifts in perception and commitment, matters not entirely of the mind but also the heart.
While conflict and barely bounded violence in politics may be part of change, social change depends eventually on consent, and change of heart. While this kind of change is ultimately in the hearts of individuals, what prepares for it and precipitates it is often social: relationships, the possibilities seen and felt when observing others behaving in a way, and for a reason, that surprises them. That causes them to consider an alternative, emotionally as well as conceptually and then politically. So maybe it wasn't so bad that people saw us, young faces lit by candle light, daring to look ridiculous by sitting on the floor and singing Kumbaya.
I realize that the Kumbaya cliche is deployed today to criticize a naive idealism detached from practical politics, a wishful thinking or an excuse to fall back from a political struggle. But for all the need to practice politics with courage, we should also be mindful of the resurgence of violence in political life. As recently as Friday, Rachel Maddow documented the increasingly violent threats made not just by a right wing fringe, but by established Republican politicians and officeholders.
It has not escaped notice that this loose talk of hanging, loading guns and violent overthrow has a racist tinge, which relates it back to the Civil Rights movement. Such reversion to violence at any level is dangerous to all. We should not be contributing to that mood. However it is meant, the Kumbaya cliche suggest to me that even on the Left, the need in our present and certainly our future for the skills of peace is out of fashion and perhaps out of consciousness.
"Kumbaya" is just a simple song with roots in an American minority. Apparently it got picked on because kids later learned it in camp. Some people value it as a religious song. I don't particularly, but it's a target for precisely the reason I do value it: they could have chosen We Shall Overcome but that might look overtly racist, and besides the lyrics are militant. They could have picked If I Had A Hammer, but its symbolism is simple and connected to militancy, and besides, it doesn't sound quite as funny, as easy to mock, as the one word: Kumbaya.
Whatever it has come to mean, the point is scorn. And scorn is not going to get us very far. Cliches communicate quickly, but they are reductive, and often careless. Cliches of scorn tend to discourage openness to alternatives. Cynicism is self-limiting. The future will probably be hard, but it can be full of meaning. It's going to require compassion, cooperation, empathy and altruism, and a lot of lives are going to depend on face-to-face community, including very small ones. Enough people, say, to renew their commitment to each other and to what they believe in and how they live their lives, by sitting together, holding hands and singing something like Kumbaya.
About ten days ago, the White House held a celebration of music integral to the Civil Rights struggles of the 60s. I recorded the PBS broadcast but haven't gotten around to watching it yet. But I'm pretty sure that among the songs by Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, etc., those assembled did not sit around holding hands and singing "Kumbaya."
But they could have. Because we did that, sitting-in, marching, demonstrating for Civil Rights. That was one of the songs that held us together. Now it's a common cliche of scorn and disdain, on the left these days even more than the right. It deserves better.
Not that it's such a great song (although Pete Seeger did try to add some African-style low harmonies--check him out on YouTube.) It was far from my favorite, but after Joan Baez recorded it in 1962, it did become part of the rituals that expressed the hopes, yearnings and commitments of a generation.
Not later, apparently. And certainly, not anymore.
I remember the first time I read what is now the common usage of "Kumbaya." And I remember how I felt.
It was a magazine article purporting to witness a group of young conservative Republicans drinking and talking in a posh Washington hotel, at the height of the GW Bush Youth takeover. They were disparaging the liberal idealists who didn't understand the real world, whose idealism was proven to be futile and naive. They made fun of them by proposing to light some candles, hold hands and sing Kumbaya.
As soon as I read that I felt strange. I saw us in the 60s, not just at the March on Washington (and though I don't remember specifically, it wouldn't surprise me if we had sung "Kumbaya" on the march to the reflecting pool) but marching through the streets of a midwestern town that had never seen anything like a black-and-white together demonstration, or later huddling with a much smaller group in the town square with our candles lit in protest of the Vietnam war, amidst angry shouts from passing cars.
In some circumstances especially, I'm sure we did look silly. And looking back, I realized the delicacy of what we were doing, and how weird it might look now. Non-violent resistance was at the heart of the Civil Rights movement, thanks to Martin Luther King, Jr. And so it wasn't surprising that he opposed the Vietnam war, and that a significant part of the anti-war movement adopted non-violence. If you were going to oppose a violent war, it made sense to do so without violence.
In this space I can only hint at what it felt like to light candles and sing together: We Shall Overcome, We Shall Not Be Moved, If I Had A Hammer, Michael Row the Boat Ashore, and Kumbaya. Some songs that had literal meaning for what we were doing, others that were more symbolic, and frankly, easy for a large group to sing.
And our singing together was the point. We were singing, not fighting. Though we sometimes did this in an innocuous "hootenanny" kind of settings, we were usually where we weren't supposed to be, doing what we weren't supposed to do. We were making a statement, and we weren't always safe.
There were proximate threats of violence around us at times. But we knew we were standing against a violent society, that reverted to trying to solve problems with violence. We were standing for Civil Rights, racial justice and equality, an end to an unjust war. But we were also enacting an alternative to violence, emnity, mistrust and cynicism.
We knew and we made the principled and factual arguments. We knew and sometimes had to face the rage and hate of the opposition. So the singing was to express our emotions, to affirm ourselves and to connect, not only with each other, but some of those who might hear us.
All political change eventually depends on cultural and social change. That change is not entirely based on rational arguments, or to appeals to self-interest. Such change involves shifts in perception and commitment, matters not entirely of the mind but also the heart.
While conflict and barely bounded violence in politics may be part of change, social change depends eventually on consent, and change of heart. While this kind of change is ultimately in the hearts of individuals, what prepares for it and precipitates it is often social: relationships, the possibilities seen and felt when observing others behaving in a way, and for a reason, that surprises them. That causes them to consider an alternative, emotionally as well as conceptually and then politically. So maybe it wasn't so bad that people saw us, young faces lit by candle light, daring to look ridiculous by sitting on the floor and singing Kumbaya.
I realize that the Kumbaya cliche is deployed today to criticize a naive idealism detached from practical politics, a wishful thinking or an excuse to fall back from a political struggle. But for all the need to practice politics with courage, we should also be mindful of the resurgence of violence in political life. As recently as Friday, Rachel Maddow documented the increasingly violent threats made not just by a right wing fringe, but by established Republican politicians and officeholders.
It has not escaped notice that this loose talk of hanging, loading guns and violent overthrow has a racist tinge, which relates it back to the Civil Rights movement. Such reversion to violence at any level is dangerous to all. We should not be contributing to that mood. However it is meant, the Kumbaya cliche suggest to me that even on the Left, the need in our present and certainly our future for the skills of peace is out of fashion and perhaps out of consciousness.
"Kumbaya" is just a simple song with roots in an American minority. Apparently it got picked on because kids later learned it in camp. Some people value it as a religious song. I don't particularly, but it's a target for precisely the reason I do value it: they could have chosen We Shall Overcome but that might look overtly racist, and besides the lyrics are militant. They could have picked If I Had A Hammer, but its symbolism is simple and connected to militancy, and besides, it doesn't sound quite as funny, as easy to mock, as the one word: Kumbaya.
Whatever it has come to mean, the point is scorn. And scorn is not going to get us very far. Cliches communicate quickly, but they are reductive, and often careless. Cliches of scorn tend to discourage openness to alternatives. Cynicism is self-limiting. The future will probably be hard, but it can be full of meaning. It's going to require compassion, cooperation, empathy and altruism, and a lot of lives are going to depend on face-to-face community, including very small ones. Enough people, say, to renew their commitment to each other and to what they believe in and how they live their lives, by sitting together, holding hands and singing something like Kumbaya.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Age Discrimation
For boomers not quite ready for Beatles-themed retirement homes--or more relevantly, who will never be able to afford to retire--there's some news about the job market: about age-based discrimination and how the discriminations gained by age can prove value even in a "new media" job.
The statistics on age-based discrimination (up nearly a third in 2008, and double the claims for all other reasons, including race and gender) won't be too surprising to boomers. I spent almost ten years wondering why I didn't get jobs or assignments for which I was more than fully qualified, before I caught on. Then the Supreme Court made winning age discrimination suits harder, and then Congress tried to make it easier.
Maybe some successful suits will help, but it's hard to fight cultural bias. I was sure employers would see that I had the optimum blend of experience and skill in my fifties, but turning 50 turned out to be the effective end for anything but jobs that don't pay enough to tempt any but entry level youngsters.
In publishing it's worse, and apparently in television it's even worse than that. This weekend I got a notice of a class action suit against television companies for discrimination against writers older than 40.
But some boomers who manage to get reasonably good positions are proving the worth of the particular contributions they can make. Jim Gaines was much more of a big muckedy muck than I ever was in print media, and he got a chance to work for a new media company with much younger writers and editors. They had to teach him the technology, and I'm sure there are new habits of mind that he'll never learn. The experience he brings comes into play in perhaps unexpected ways. Since he's gone through highs and lows, triumphs and the agony of defeat, he keeps his head. He comforts the afflicted.
He also has a clear idea of the mission. He can discriminate between the wheat and the chaff, and cut to the essential: "Media will change as radically as technology allows, and right now the Internet is moving over the media landscape like a tsunami. But the job I learned to love when young was to tell stories, and the story has lost nothing in this transition."
Although anyone who has that kind of focus from the beginning and can keep it will likely be pretty successful, that's the kind of discrimination that can come with experience. It's worth having around, if that's what the people in charge care about. Most places don't. Most places are caught up in other agendas. The kind of place--the company, industry, agency, office, etc.--where those in charge really value diversity, and the insurance that different perspectives, points of view, experiences provide, will see the value of boomer participation. And maybe even pay them decently.
Otherwise we'll get the assignments we get now: stuff that for one reason or another nobody else can or will do, at least not at what it pays.
The statistics on age-based discrimination (up nearly a third in 2008, and double the claims for all other reasons, including race and gender) won't be too surprising to boomers. I spent almost ten years wondering why I didn't get jobs or assignments for which I was more than fully qualified, before I caught on. Then the Supreme Court made winning age discrimination suits harder, and then Congress tried to make it easier.
Maybe some successful suits will help, but it's hard to fight cultural bias. I was sure employers would see that I had the optimum blend of experience and skill in my fifties, but turning 50 turned out to be the effective end for anything but jobs that don't pay enough to tempt any but entry level youngsters.
In publishing it's worse, and apparently in television it's even worse than that. This weekend I got a notice of a class action suit against television companies for discrimination against writers older than 40.
But some boomers who manage to get reasonably good positions are proving the worth of the particular contributions they can make. Jim Gaines was much more of a big muckedy muck than I ever was in print media, and he got a chance to work for a new media company with much younger writers and editors. They had to teach him the technology, and I'm sure there are new habits of mind that he'll never learn. The experience he brings comes into play in perhaps unexpected ways. Since he's gone through highs and lows, triumphs and the agony of defeat, he keeps his head. He comforts the afflicted.
He also has a clear idea of the mission. He can discriminate between the wheat and the chaff, and cut to the essential: "Media will change as radically as technology allows, and right now the Internet is moving over the media landscape like a tsunami. But the job I learned to love when young was to tell stories, and the story has lost nothing in this transition."
Although anyone who has that kind of focus from the beginning and can keep it will likely be pretty successful, that's the kind of discrimination that can come with experience. It's worth having around, if that's what the people in charge care about. Most places don't. Most places are caught up in other agendas. The kind of place--the company, industry, agency, office, etc.--where those in charge really value diversity, and the insurance that different perspectives, points of view, experiences provide, will see the value of boomer participation. And maybe even pay them decently.
Otherwise we'll get the assignments we get now: stuff that for one reason or another nobody else can or will do, at least not at what it pays.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Martin Luther King: Faith in the Future
"Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.
I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow."
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
The New York Times recently ran a piece by Barbara Strauch on "How to Train the Aging Brain," which was top rated on its web site--testimony I suppose to boomer interest in the subject, as well as in newspapers, even on the Internet.
The advice--the "how to" part--was unsurprising: learn new things. But there was also some reassurance, both in terms of common memory changes (less retention of recent information, forgetting names, etc.) and in the latest brain science, which shows much less actual brain deterioration due to aging than previously believed.
But one paragraph in particular stood out:
"Recently, researchers have found even more positive news. The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can. "
Just as some of the problems ring a bell, so does this assertion. Maybe this is what they used to mean by the wisdom of years: perspective, the main idea, the big picture.
It's especially important now. Life is being reshaped so rapidly and extensively by pervasive new technologies that experienced perspective is correspondingly more valuable. It may not be as important to keep up as to keep an experienced eye on what's going on. Outside the main flow, you aren't swept up in it so completely as the young tend to be.
Information is still important, but different information (gathered from a span of time) and a different way of seeing it, makes different connections. It isn't the whole answer, of course. The blizzard can be as bewildering outside it as inside. But seeing significance and even solutions constitute useful contributions, that it seems we can more naturally make.
The advice--the "how to" part--was unsurprising: learn new things. But there was also some reassurance, both in terms of common memory changes (less retention of recent information, forgetting names, etc.) and in the latest brain science, which shows much less actual brain deterioration due to aging than previously believed.
But one paragraph in particular stood out:
"Recently, researchers have found even more positive news. The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can. "
Just as some of the problems ring a bell, so does this assertion. Maybe this is what they used to mean by the wisdom of years: perspective, the main idea, the big picture.
It's especially important now. Life is being reshaped so rapidly and extensively by pervasive new technologies that experienced perspective is correspondingly more valuable. It may not be as important to keep up as to keep an experienced eye on what's going on. Outside the main flow, you aren't swept up in it so completely as the young tend to be.
Information is still important, but different information (gathered from a span of time) and a different way of seeing it, makes different connections. It isn't the whole answer, of course. The blizzard can be as bewildering outside it as inside. But seeing significance and even solutions constitute useful contributions, that it seems we can more naturally make.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Wrong Enemy
The future has lots of enemies--greedy insurers, egomaniacal Senators, Climate Crisis deniers, petrified (in both senses) industrialists...so why on Earth would a someone want to invent a new one?
In this Worldchanging post, Alex Steffan declares that the war for the future is generational, young against old, apparently because of polls (which he doesn't bother citing) that say the older demographic believes in the Climate Crisis less than do the younger. The key graph:
"And this is what most older observers seem to refuse to understand: The world looks dramatically different if the year 2050 is one you’re likely to be alive to see. To younger people, Copenhagen isn’t some do-gooder meeting; it’s the first major battle in a war for the future. Their future."
It's not unusual for a younger generation to anoint itself the hope of the world, in opposition to the old people who have so far screwed things up. We did it in the 60s. Maybe with more justification, maybe with less. But it's like a lot of broad-brush categorical statements: even if it is in some sense true (and it is also always in some sense false) it alienates your potential allies within the group (older, male, white, etc.) you condemn.
Of course, scientists, writers, artists and even politicians in all of these categories are demonstrably in the forefront of the fight to address the Climate Crisis and to build a sustainable future. Some of them are from the 60s generation, like Al Gore, and others are even older, like the foremost climate scientists in England and the U.S. (James Hansen for one. James Lovelock, more radically that just about anyone, is in his nineties.) Steffan might be forgiven for youthful exuberance for ignoring this, except that later in his post he writes "if I were ten years younger" he would join the young "on the barricades."
Yes, in a statistical sense, there is a divide--older voters in the U.S. not only tend to be behind the curve on global heating, but on race, gender and social issues as well. Younger U.S. voters also tend to be more diverse racially and in other ways. But those are percentages, not numbers of people. And even the numbers aren't altogether relevant. There are millions on one side, and millions on the other.
What Steffans basically contends is at the heart of the difference--the dividing line that makes the older the enemy--is their relation to the future. The young will live to see it, and the old will not. Therefore, the young care more about the future.
There is some visceral truth to this idea. But only to a degree, and not enough to condemn the imaginations and commitments of older people. Older people are often parents and grandparents. Many older people do care about the future, partly because they are older. Past a certain age, older people are often less interested in the present than in the past and the future. They care about legacy, and about the planet that has borne their lives, and about their descendants, their grandchildren. There's hardly anything they care about more.
But speaking for my generation, many of us have made a lifetime commitment of caring about the future. And we have the scars to prove it. We were always a minority, even within our own generation. Just as you probably are within yours.
I doubt that every young person is worried about 2050. It takes imagination as well as motivation to think about the future, in any sense beyond the very narrow, and very short.
So my advice to Steffans and the others looking for enemies: you've got enough real ones, you don't need to invent--or create--new ones. The old are easy to scapegoat--the older, the easier. Yes, the biggest human barriers to change are usually older than 30. You have to be to be elected to the Senate, etc. Most of them are also right-handed. But then, maybe you are, too.
I echo Steffans' concern that the young will become discouraged and disheartened. Maybe older veterans of other fights can help with that.
In this Worldchanging post, Alex Steffan declares that the war for the future is generational, young against old, apparently because of polls (which he doesn't bother citing) that say the older demographic believes in the Climate Crisis less than do the younger. The key graph:
"And this is what most older observers seem to refuse to understand: The world looks dramatically different if the year 2050 is one you’re likely to be alive to see. To younger people, Copenhagen isn’t some do-gooder meeting; it’s the first major battle in a war for the future. Their future."
It's not unusual for a younger generation to anoint itself the hope of the world, in opposition to the old people who have so far screwed things up. We did it in the 60s. Maybe with more justification, maybe with less. But it's like a lot of broad-brush categorical statements: even if it is in some sense true (and it is also always in some sense false) it alienates your potential allies within the group (older, male, white, etc.) you condemn.
Of course, scientists, writers, artists and even politicians in all of these categories are demonstrably in the forefront of the fight to address the Climate Crisis and to build a sustainable future. Some of them are from the 60s generation, like Al Gore, and others are even older, like the foremost climate scientists in England and the U.S. (James Hansen for one. James Lovelock, more radically that just about anyone, is in his nineties.) Steffan might be forgiven for youthful exuberance for ignoring this, except that later in his post he writes "if I were ten years younger" he would join the young "on the barricades."
Yes, in a statistical sense, there is a divide--older voters in the U.S. not only tend to be behind the curve on global heating, but on race, gender and social issues as well. Younger U.S. voters also tend to be more diverse racially and in other ways. But those are percentages, not numbers of people. And even the numbers aren't altogether relevant. There are millions on one side, and millions on the other.
What Steffans basically contends is at the heart of the difference--the dividing line that makes the older the enemy--is their relation to the future. The young will live to see it, and the old will not. Therefore, the young care more about the future.
There is some visceral truth to this idea. But only to a degree, and not enough to condemn the imaginations and commitments of older people. Older people are often parents and grandparents. Many older people do care about the future, partly because they are older. Past a certain age, older people are often less interested in the present than in the past and the future. They care about legacy, and about the planet that has borne their lives, and about their descendants, their grandchildren. There's hardly anything they care about more.
But speaking for my generation, many of us have made a lifetime commitment of caring about the future. And we have the scars to prove it. We were always a minority, even within our own generation. Just as you probably are within yours.
I doubt that every young person is worried about 2050. It takes imagination as well as motivation to think about the future, in any sense beyond the very narrow, and very short.
So my advice to Steffans and the others looking for enemies: you've got enough real ones, you don't need to invent--or create--new ones. The old are easy to scapegoat--the older, the easier. Yes, the biggest human barriers to change are usually older than 30. You have to be to be elected to the Senate, etc. Most of them are also right-handed. But then, maybe you are, too.
I echo Steffans' concern that the young will become discouraged and disheartened. Maybe older veterans of other fights can help with that.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
"I Will Protect Medicare"
After noting the charge "made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens," and stating "Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple," President Obama addressed seniors directly in his speech on health care reform to a joint session of Congress on 9/9/09:
"In fact, I want to speak directly to America's seniors for a moment, because Medicare is another issue that's been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.
More than four decades ago, this nation stood up for the principle that after a lifetime of hard work, our seniors should not be left to struggle with a pile of medical bills in their later years. That is how Medicare was born. And it remains a sacred trust that must be passed down from one generation to the next. That is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.
The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies - subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care. And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.
These steps will ensure that you - America's seniors - get the benefits you've been promised. They will ensure that Medicare is there for future generations. And we can use some of the savings to fill the gap in coverage that forces too many seniors to pay thousands of dollars a year out of their own pocket for prescription drugs. That's what this plan will do for you.
More than four decades ago, this nation stood up for the principle that after a lifetime of hard work, our seniors should not be left to struggle with a pile of medical bills in their later years. That is how Medicare was born. And it remains a sacred trust that must be passed down from one generation to the next. That is why not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan.
The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies - subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care. And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.
These steps will ensure that you - America's seniors - get the benefits you've been promised. They will ensure that Medicare is there for future generations. And we can use some of the savings to fill the gap in coverage that forces too many seniors to pay thousands of dollars a year out of their own pocket for prescription drugs. That's what this plan will do for you.
So don't pay attention to those scary stories about how your benefits will be cut - especially since some of the same folks who are spreading these tall tales have fought against Medicare in the past, and just this year supported a budget that would have essentially turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program. That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare. "
Saturday, August 29, 2009
The Kennedy Generation
Ted Kennedy last year, leaving a Boston hospital, with Caroline Kennedy looking on. See post below: the Kennedy Generation. Photo: Boston Globe.
Even after I knew that Ted Kennedy was terminally ill, and for most of a day after I learned he had died (which apparently was unexpected, as his children were away), I was not prepared for the effect it would have on me. I could feel it coming on during the day Wednesday, until I realized I had to recognize it, and I retreated to the television to watch the retrospectives and listen to the talk.
The reason this death was so important, of course, was that for my generation, Ted Kennedy--and his older brothers--were prominent in our hopes and dreams, tragedies and political disappointments, for most of our lives.
Some of the talk told me things I didn't know about Ted Kennedy himself, while other comments confirmed impressions I had. Ted Kennedy's maternal grandfather, "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, was a quintessential Irish politician, and the Mayor of Boston who threw out the first pitch in the first baseball game played at Fenway Park. Last spring, Ted threw out the first pitch at Fenway to begin this Red Sox season. More than John or Robert Kennedy, Ted was a throwback in style to his grandfather. I thought this when I watched him during his 1980 presidential nomination campaign, in particular when he came to Pennsylvania for our primary (which he won.) He had an old-fashioned braying oratorical style on the stump, and he clearly delighted in it.
But if he hadn't learned a lot about rhetoric from his brothers, he absorbed their most important political insights. He even continued to quote Arnold Toynbee and his theory that the civilizations that prosper do so by responding to challenges--an idea central to JFK's campaign, but rarely heard since.
Ted Kennedy was in the Senate to help pass Medicare. To help pass the Voting Rights Act. He helped bring the United States out of the nineteenth century essentially, to where it is now, which is in crucial ways still several decades behind other democracies.
I saw him for the first time in Washington during JFK's Inaugural weekend, when I was 15. I heard him speak for McGovern in 1972 in Boston, and there for a few minutes I found myself in an anteroom where he was standing, talking to someone. I was covering the event for the Boston Phoenix, and I knew I should jump on this opportunity to interview him. I looked steadily at him, trying to think of something to ask him beyond handicapping the race, while with one hand I tried to fish my notebook out of my coat pocket, where it was stuck. This went on for a few minutes when a man came up to me and started a friendly conversation, pretending to mistake my newspaper's name on my nametag for the city of Phoenix. I glanced at him and knew immediately--from having been an usher at a JFK event, where I was told how to identify them so as to report any suspicious activity--that the friendly guy was Secret Service. If my mind had been a bit boggled before, it was completely blown at that point.
I heard Ted Kennedy speak several times after that, and even shook his hand. I worked on his presidential primary campaign in Pennsylvania in 1980. But I never got past the feelings about the assassinations of his brothers when I saw him, and then over the years the rumors and revelations and revisionisms about the Kennedys took their toll: Kennedy fatigue.
But seeing parts of some of the retrospectives--some good, some bad, but with film and "fact" new to me, the former Kennedy scholar--I was forced to see again how much the Kennedys had influenced me, my life and times. So I especially note a memorial piece by Tom Hayden. Hayden was a founder of SDS and a cerebral radical when I first heard him speak in the '60s. Back when I first read Jack Newfield's book after RFK's murder, I was very interested to see a small reference to Tom Hayden standing in the back of the church at RFK's funeral, weeping. Real radicals weren't supposed to admit that establishment politicians like RFK made a difference.
But today Hayden says forthrightly what I have believed since JFK's murder: "If either of the earlier Kennedy brothers had not been murdered, the likelihood is that American would have evolved steadily in a progressive direction, without Vietnam, without the black uprisings and repressions, without Nixon and Watergate, because that was the trajectory where Ted Kennedy believed his brothers' legacy would be honored. That is why, as Jack Newfield wrote in 1968, we would become not a generation of has-beens, but a generation of might-have-beens, while we were very young."
That in a nutshell is the chief tragedy of my generation, my country and my life.
This is not to excuse us for what we didn't do, and certainly not to diminish Ted Kennedy's achievements. Indeed, he had a hand in almost every positive change of the past 45 years, to a staggeringly degree. Which of course makes his passing all the more frightening. Others will achieve important things, including other Kennedys. But it's not likely to be to the extent or at least in the way that he did. And in so many ways, he did the work his brothers set forth, and got little glory doing it, until he came to the end of his service.
His last major service was, of course, to help in a crucial way to make Barack Obama President. Exactly a year before he died, Ted Kennedy placed the entire Kennedy legacy behind Obama's candidacy. He overcame pain and illness to address the Democratic convention, and in his 8 minute speech, made specific references to RFK ("the belief that we are called to a better country and a newer world") and JFK ("This November, the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans") and by concluding with a variation on his own famous words that concluded his 1980 convention speech. And these would be his last words to a national audience: "The work begins anew, the hope rises again, and the dream lives on."
The reason this death was so important, of course, was that for my generation, Ted Kennedy--and his older brothers--were prominent in our hopes and dreams, tragedies and political disappointments, for most of our lives.
Some of the talk told me things I didn't know about Ted Kennedy himself, while other comments confirmed impressions I had. Ted Kennedy's maternal grandfather, "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, was a quintessential Irish politician, and the Mayor of Boston who threw out the first pitch in the first baseball game played at Fenway Park. Last spring, Ted threw out the first pitch at Fenway to begin this Red Sox season. More than John or Robert Kennedy, Ted was a throwback in style to his grandfather. I thought this when I watched him during his 1980 presidential nomination campaign, in particular when he came to Pennsylvania for our primary (which he won.) He had an old-fashioned braying oratorical style on the stump, and he clearly delighted in it.
But if he hadn't learned a lot about rhetoric from his brothers, he absorbed their most important political insights. He even continued to quote Arnold Toynbee and his theory that the civilizations that prosper do so by responding to challenges--an idea central to JFK's campaign, but rarely heard since.
He saw the poverty JFK saw in West Virginia, and RFK saw in New York, the deep South, among the migrant workers and on Indian reservations in the West. He knew what RFK knew about Vietnam, and he helped end the military draft and he voted against the Iraq war. But my theory is that he was less comfortable in foreign affairs, and that might be why he wasn't really enthusiastic about the presidency. His achievements--which are so many and so profound that they have, as eulogists point out, touched the lives of everyone in America--are mostly in domestic policies--everything from mental and physical health to education, worker pay and safety, to equal rights for immigrants, gays and women as well as African Americans.
Ted Kennedy was in the Senate to help pass Medicare. To help pass the Voting Rights Act. He helped bring the United States out of the nineteenth century essentially, to where it is now, which is in crucial ways still several decades behind other democracies.
I saw him for the first time in Washington during JFK's Inaugural weekend, when I was 15. I heard him speak for McGovern in 1972 in Boston, and there for a few minutes I found myself in an anteroom where he was standing, talking to someone. I was covering the event for the Boston Phoenix, and I knew I should jump on this opportunity to interview him. I looked steadily at him, trying to think of something to ask him beyond handicapping the race, while with one hand I tried to fish my notebook out of my coat pocket, where it was stuck. This went on for a few minutes when a man came up to me and started a friendly conversation, pretending to mistake my newspaper's name on my nametag for the city of Phoenix. I glanced at him and knew immediately--from having been an usher at a JFK event, where I was told how to identify them so as to report any suspicious activity--that the friendly guy was Secret Service. If my mind had been a bit boggled before, it was completely blown at that point.
I heard Ted Kennedy speak several times after that, and even shook his hand. I worked on his presidential primary campaign in Pennsylvania in 1980. But I never got past the feelings about the assassinations of his brothers when I saw him, and then over the years the rumors and revelations and revisionisms about the Kennedys took their toll: Kennedy fatigue.
But seeing parts of some of the retrospectives--some good, some bad, but with film and "fact" new to me, the former Kennedy scholar--I was forced to see again how much the Kennedys had influenced me, my life and times. So I especially note a memorial piece by Tom Hayden. Hayden was a founder of SDS and a cerebral radical when I first heard him speak in the '60s. Back when I first read Jack Newfield's book after RFK's murder, I was very interested to see a small reference to Tom Hayden standing in the back of the church at RFK's funeral, weeping. Real radicals weren't supposed to admit that establishment politicians like RFK made a difference.
But today Hayden says forthrightly what I have believed since JFK's murder: "If either of the earlier Kennedy brothers had not been murdered, the likelihood is that American would have evolved steadily in a progressive direction, without Vietnam, without the black uprisings and repressions, without Nixon and Watergate, because that was the trajectory where Ted Kennedy believed his brothers' legacy would be honored. That is why, as Jack Newfield wrote in 1968, we would become not a generation of has-beens, but a generation of might-have-beens, while we were very young."
That in a nutshell is the chief tragedy of my generation, my country and my life.
This is not to excuse us for what we didn't do, and certainly not to diminish Ted Kennedy's achievements. Indeed, he had a hand in almost every positive change of the past 45 years, to a staggeringly degree. Which of course makes his passing all the more frightening. Others will achieve important things, including other Kennedys. But it's not likely to be to the extent or at least in the way that he did. And in so many ways, he did the work his brothers set forth, and got little glory doing it, until he came to the end of his service.
His last major service was, of course, to help in a crucial way to make Barack Obama President. Exactly a year before he died, Ted Kennedy placed the entire Kennedy legacy behind Obama's candidacy. He overcame pain and illness to address the Democratic convention, and in his 8 minute speech, made specific references to RFK ("the belief that we are called to a better country and a newer world") and JFK ("This November, the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans") and by concluding with a variation on his own famous words that concluded his 1980 convention speech. And these would be his last words to a national audience: "The work begins anew, the hope rises again, and the dream lives on."
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Latest Big Lie: Death Panels
Seniors are understandably vigilant about detrimental changes to Medicare, Social Security and other systems they depend on. So it is an easy if despicable tactic by opponents to healthcare reform that they are inflaming fear with their latest Big Lie: that reform includes government "death panels" that will decide who gets care and lives, and who is denied care and dies. It is wholly and entirely a lie--a very cynical and ugly lie.
It is an especially ugly lie because, as others point out, Death Panels do exist--not only for seniors but for everyone--and they are the insurance companies who decide who gets covered for what, when and how, and who doesn't. Insurance companies who make things up in order not to pay out what they've promised. And even some hospitals who deny care because insurance won't pay for it, even when it leads to someone's death.
In his town hall meeting on Tuesday in New Hampshire, President Obama reassured the audience that there is no such death panels provision in any proposed healthcare plan, and he would not permit such a provision. But he mentioned something that should be a real concern for seniors:
"Our deficit will continue to grow because Medicare and Medicaid are on an unsustainable path. Medicare is slated to go into the red in about eight to 10 years. I don't know if people are aware of that. If I was a senior citizen, the thing I'd be worried about right now is Medicare starts running out of money because we haven't done anything to make sure that we're getting a good bang for our buck when it comes to health care. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against people for the simple crime of being sick. Now, that's not a future I want for my children. It's not a future that I want for the United States of America."
The President wants healthcare reform that saves money, saves Medicare, expands coverage, increases choice, guarantees care cannot be denied because of preexisting condition or any other reason, and stops insurance companies from deciding who lives and who dies. "And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because no one in America should go broke because they get sick. "
But there is another aspect of what's been happening at town hall meetings on healthcare that should concern those who remember the traumas of the 1960s: the instigation of violence and the presence of guns.
Monday, July 20, 2009
One Giant Leap
With a lander that looks like an aluminum foil junk sculpture, and using all the computing power now contained in a cell phone, Apollo 11 reached the moon and forty years ago today Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on ground not on this Earth. I'd spent the day--July 20, 1969-- being driven through Colorado hills that looked to me as desolate as the moon, before watching this moment on live TV (I don't recall if it was Cronkite I saw then, though I've seen that footage since.) And as I'll never tire of telling you, a couple of years ago I shook the hand of the first man on the moon, making my personal physical connection to the universe beyond our fragile planet. Here's Wired's guide to other information and events.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
R.I.P. Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite, who defined the role of TV news anchor in the 1960s, died Friday. See post below.
That's the Way It Was
Cable news is eulogizing Walter Cronkite, who died Friday at the age of 92. Cable news is seldom anything Cronkite would have recognized as news, and in hearing Dan Rather and others talk about him as "an honest broker of information," a surrogate for the public who felt his responsibility was to educate the audience, I realize how many of my ideas about journalism came as much from Cronkite (and Huntley-Brinkley) as any newspaper or certainly any class in school.
Show biz was always the temptation of TV, and even in his early heyday, while Cronkite was doing hard news series like See It Now, he was also hosting the supremely silly You Are There, where he pretended to interview historical figures like Joan of Arc on her way to the stake. (Although, to be truthful, I was thrilled by those shows as a child. With this strange medium of television, it seemed possible he was actually there.) But Cronkite resisted the incursion of tabloid journalism and infotainment that dominates television now. He set a standard of fact and knowledge. His background in print reporting was typical for his era, and sadly missing now.
Yes, Cronkite was so influential partly because there were only three networks then, and news came on a couple of times a day at the same time every day, so one anchor could command the simultaneous attention of 25 million viewers. But the standards were the same across major journalism, and and many others could have upheld them no matter how many competitors. The current state of news is as much a failure of intelligence and character as any of the excuses, legitimate or not.
For my set of early boomers, Cronkite was a little late in concluding the Vietnam War was a waste, or in exposing Watergate, but as an establishment figure, he shook the establishment when he did so. He did steer small town, working class, Middle America and his own generation through the tumultuous 60s and 70s, as well as providing some parental or grandparental solidity to my generation.
I didn't see the celebrated moment when he announced that President Kennedy was dead--I was in school at the time--but I do remember that his presence and those of other trusted news figures were essential in getting through that weekend, when the news seemed literally unbelievable, and news that we did not want to accept.
Cronkite was himself one year older than JFK. He didn't quite live to see the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, with which he remained identified as the most enthusiastic and apparently knowledgeable reporter covering it. I remember when he was more or less forced out of his anchor chair at CBS, which marked for me as the end of legitimate television news. Not that it was always truthful, but it was always serious, and it always paid attention to important matters in detail. I suppose some of my sadness at his passing, which I would not have expected, is that with his death, that era and that kind of news is definitely and definitively over.
Show biz was always the temptation of TV, and even in his early heyday, while Cronkite was doing hard news series like See It Now, he was also hosting the supremely silly You Are There, where he pretended to interview historical figures like Joan of Arc on her way to the stake. (Although, to be truthful, I was thrilled by those shows as a child. With this strange medium of television, it seemed possible he was actually there.) But Cronkite resisted the incursion of tabloid journalism and infotainment that dominates television now. He set a standard of fact and knowledge. His background in print reporting was typical for his era, and sadly missing now.
Yes, Cronkite was so influential partly because there were only three networks then, and news came on a couple of times a day at the same time every day, so one anchor could command the simultaneous attention of 25 million viewers. But the standards were the same across major journalism, and and many others could have upheld them no matter how many competitors. The current state of news is as much a failure of intelligence and character as any of the excuses, legitimate or not.
For my set of early boomers, Cronkite was a little late in concluding the Vietnam War was a waste, or in exposing Watergate, but as an establishment figure, he shook the establishment when he did so. He did steer small town, working class, Middle America and his own generation through the tumultuous 60s and 70s, as well as providing some parental or grandparental solidity to my generation.
I didn't see the celebrated moment when he announced that President Kennedy was dead--I was in school at the time--but I do remember that his presence and those of other trusted news figures were essential in getting through that weekend, when the news seemed literally unbelievable, and news that we did not want to accept.
Cronkite was himself one year older than JFK. He didn't quite live to see the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, with which he remained identified as the most enthusiastic and apparently knowledgeable reporter covering it. I remember when he was more or less forced out of his anchor chair at CBS, which marked for me as the end of legitimate television news. Not that it was always truthful, but it was always serious, and it always paid attention to important matters in detail. I suppose some of my sadness at his passing, which I would not have expected, is that with his death, that era and that kind of news is definitely and definitively over.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Wisdom
In his last Charlie Rose interview, John Updike quoted another writer on whether he had attained wisdom with age. "No--still baffled," was the reply. Rose asked Updike if that was his answer as well. He said yes, "still baffled--but more comfortable in my bafflement."
Monday, May 25, 2009
Pinup for Peace
Donna Reed was a disconcertingly pretty mom in her TV sitcom for those of us growing up in the 50s, but to our parents' generation, she was a minor movie star, and apparently a pinup for U.S. servicemen in World War II. The NY Times today (Memorial Day) notes that a recently discovered cache of letters from servicemen she received is now just about all that's left of the thousands of letters that went from war zones to Hollywood stars in the 1940s. Though the story emphasizes her girl-next-door sweetness, anyone who's seen her performance with Jimmy Stewart with a telephone between them in It's A Wonderful Life might notice that she generates some serious sexual heat.
Donna Reed had mostly supporting roles in movies (a soldier mentions The Human Comedy and she won the Oscar for From Here to Eternity) but had a long career in television, not only with The Donna Reed Show but a range of character parts. She died in 1986.
That she saved more than 300 letters takes on more significance because--and I confess I didn't know this before--she "became an ardent antiwar campaigner, serving during the Vietnam era as co-chairwoman of a 285,000-member group called Another Mother for Peace and working for Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential race. In his biography, Mr. Fultz quotes her as saying that “she looked forward to a time when ‘19-year-old boys will no longer be taken away to fight in old men’s battles.’ ”
Monday, April 13, 2009
Change Begins Within
Here are two guys in their 60s staying faithful to something they learned in the 60s, besides rock and roll. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr performed together for the first time since the memorial Concert for George, along with Donovan, Mike Love of the Beach Boys and younger, lesser stars, in a benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation called "Change Begins Within." The purpose was to support teaching Transcendental Meditation in schools. The Beatles of course made TM famous by going to India (with Donovan and Mike Love) to learn it from the Maharshi (who died just recently) in 1967. The idea is not really so far out--a school in Oakland, CA taught mindfulness meditation to students and showed great results in conflict resolution, attentiveness, study habits and peace of mind. Various kinds of meditation have proven to help in pain management and stress reduction, since those crazy days of wild ideas in the 60s. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Hair Today
A new production of the 60s musical is a surprise smash hit on Broadway--could it be that the intense emotions of the time are resonant again? See post below. New York Times Photo.
It's Happening...Again
A flubbed economy, crazed spiraling change that looks mostly downward, and empty theatres on Broadway...at least until recently. At least until...Hair?
Well, if we're to believe Ben Brantley in the New York Times, a revival of the quintessential sixties musical is "tearing down the house."
"This emotionally rich revival of “The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” from 1967 delivers what Broadway otherwise hasn’t felt this season: the intense, unadulterated joy and anguish of that bi-polar state called youth... what distinguishes “Hair” from other recent shows about being young is the illusion it sustains of rawness and immediacy, an un-self-conscious sense of the most self-conscious chapter in a person’s life."
At the time we (well, people I knew) tended to think Hair was a bit artificial, but then it all depends on the vision of the people producing it, and maybe Diane Paulus has found the key to presenting it authentically. Brantley thinks so. "But there’s intelligent form within the seeming formlessness. And the whole production has been shaped in ways that find symmetry — and complexity — in a show that people tend to remember as a feel-good free-for-all."
Maybe it took the distance of time to see and portray the truth of our lives then: "The kids of “Hair” are cuddly, sweet, madcap and ecstatic. They’re also angry, hostile, confused and scared as hell — and not just of the Vietnam War, which threatens to devour the male members of their tribe. They’re frightened of how the future is going to change them and of not knowing what comes next."
That's pretty much it.
Oh, and Hair isn't the only show doing really well in the current doldrums. Brantley says there's another one "playing to packed houses" nearby: it's called West Side Story.
Well, if we're to believe Ben Brantley in the New York Times, a revival of the quintessential sixties musical is "tearing down the house."
"This emotionally rich revival of “The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” from 1967 delivers what Broadway otherwise hasn’t felt this season: the intense, unadulterated joy and anguish of that bi-polar state called youth... what distinguishes “Hair” from other recent shows about being young is the illusion it sustains of rawness and immediacy, an un-self-conscious sense of the most self-conscious chapter in a person’s life."
At the time we (well, people I knew) tended to think Hair was a bit artificial, but then it all depends on the vision of the people producing it, and maybe Diane Paulus has found the key to presenting it authentically. Brantley thinks so. "But there’s intelligent form within the seeming formlessness. And the whole production has been shaped in ways that find symmetry — and complexity — in a show that people tend to remember as a feel-good free-for-all."
Maybe it took the distance of time to see and portray the truth of our lives then: "The kids of “Hair” are cuddly, sweet, madcap and ecstatic. They’re also angry, hostile, confused and scared as hell — and not just of the Vietnam War, which threatens to devour the male members of their tribe. They’re frightened of how the future is going to change them and of not knowing what comes next."
That's pretty much it.
Oh, and Hair isn't the only show doing really well in the current doldrums. Brantley says there's another one "playing to packed houses" nearby: it's called West Side Story.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Triumph of "The Good Sixties"?
A Huffpost column by Robert S. McElvaine caught my eye. It begins: "The legacy of the 1960s has been a matter of contention, with an uncertain outcome, for the past four decades. That contest was finally settled on November 4 of this year, when the "Good Sixties" triumphed over the "Bad Sixties."
With the election of Barack Obama as president, the Civil Rights Movement, which represented the best of the Sixties quest for freedom, has prevailed over the Selfish Rights Movement, which embodied the worst of the decade's freedom quest and which has most often in the years since defined the Sixties in the popular imagination. This month, "We shall overcome" overcame "I shall overindulge" as the meaning of the Sixties."
Well, such a shift from selfishness to "we're all in this together" certainly seems possible as the Obama administration begins, though at this point only time will tell. I am not entirely persuaded by Mr. McElvaine's attempt to link this sentiment to a particular Sly and the Family Stone song--or to his new book--though I'm sure both are related. But I hope he's right.
His division of the good sixties and the selfish sixties might explain the problem I've had in how the culture has come to characterize the decade. But I have never seen it this way. I don't equate the hunger for self-exploration and discovery, self-expression and self-fulfillment in the 60s with selfishness. A case can be made that the Me Decade of the 70s was a consequence of those quests for meaning in the 60s, though it was more of a perversion. It was pretty clear to me, standing in my t-shirt and jeans outside a disco in 1975, watching the suits, dresses and jewels on those entering.
But the era of greed is good really began in 1980. Those who fomented it, used what they regarded as 60s self-indulgence as a projection of their own hidden decadence. And we've been in that swamp of selfishness as virtue (which was also their newly perverted meaning of patriotism as American selfishness in the world) ever since.
It's going to take more than an election to turn that around. Although Obama's leadership is crucial, it's going to take more than initial enthusiasm. But Obama provides a balanced view: he honors the individual and the journey to fulfill individual potential, as part of the "we're all in this together" ethic. Self-discovery is essential to responsibility. You have to know yourself to be truly responsible, over the long haul.
In the 60s we battled against conformism as well as against social injustice. Often they were deeply related battles, especially when racial injustice was the standard we were supposed to conform to. But though we always have to find a balance, self or society is one of those false either/ors we need to get beyond. That was an equal rights message in most of our music.
With the election of Barack Obama as president, the Civil Rights Movement, which represented the best of the Sixties quest for freedom, has prevailed over the Selfish Rights Movement, which embodied the worst of the decade's freedom quest and which has most often in the years since defined the Sixties in the popular imagination. This month, "We shall overcome" overcame "I shall overindulge" as the meaning of the Sixties."
Well, such a shift from selfishness to "we're all in this together" certainly seems possible as the Obama administration begins, though at this point only time will tell. I am not entirely persuaded by Mr. McElvaine's attempt to link this sentiment to a particular Sly and the Family Stone song--or to his new book--though I'm sure both are related. But I hope he's right.
His division of the good sixties and the selfish sixties might explain the problem I've had in how the culture has come to characterize the decade. But I have never seen it this way. I don't equate the hunger for self-exploration and discovery, self-expression and self-fulfillment in the 60s with selfishness. A case can be made that the Me Decade of the 70s was a consequence of those quests for meaning in the 60s, though it was more of a perversion. It was pretty clear to me, standing in my t-shirt and jeans outside a disco in 1975, watching the suits, dresses and jewels on those entering.
But the era of greed is good really began in 1980. Those who fomented it, used what they regarded as 60s self-indulgence as a projection of their own hidden decadence. And we've been in that swamp of selfishness as virtue (which was also their newly perverted meaning of patriotism as American selfishness in the world) ever since.
It's going to take more than an election to turn that around. Although Obama's leadership is crucial, it's going to take more than initial enthusiasm. But Obama provides a balanced view: he honors the individual and the journey to fulfill individual potential, as part of the "we're all in this together" ethic. Self-discovery is essential to responsibility. You have to know yourself to be truly responsible, over the long haul.
In the 60s we battled against conformism as well as against social injustice. Often they were deeply related battles, especially when racial injustice was the standard we were supposed to conform to. But though we always have to find a balance, self or society is one of those false either/ors we need to get beyond. That was an equal rights message in most of our music.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Seniors for Obama
an 11 minute video about Barack Obama, heavy on biography but geared to the concerns of seniors, such as protecting Social Security and especially the practical and detailed changes needed in the health care system. But seniors also care about the future, so the video discussed the Kennedy legacy and the kind of inspirational leadership that Obama will bring.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
August 28, 1963/2008
Reflections on the August 28, 1963 March on Washington and the nomination of Barack Obama on August 28, 2008--with photos.
Living the Dream
I've been hearing and seeing the media and the blogs repeat that today is the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech. It is certainly that, and it is an historic speech. It is also a speech that King substantially repeated from earlier events, and what made it so historic was the occasion.
For it is the 45th anniversary of something larger: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when more than a quarter of a million people demanded justice.
I have two buttons to wear today. One you may have seen conventioneers wearing in Denver: in two shades of blue, it says” HOPE is in the air/Barack Obama/Invesco Field at Mile High/ Aug 28 2008.” The other is stark black on white. It says: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom/August 28, 1963.”
In August 1963, Barack Obama was two years old. I was 17, and I marched that day. I’ll never forget it. Today I’ll be watching on TV as Barack Obama becomes the first African American to accept the nomination of a major party for President. In a way, it’s not something Martin Luther King even dared to dream.
[This narrative continues after photos below]
For it is the 45th anniversary of something larger: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when more than a quarter of a million people demanded justice.
I have two buttons to wear today. One you may have seen conventioneers wearing in Denver: in two shades of blue, it says” HOPE is in the air/Barack Obama/Invesco Field at Mile High/ Aug 28 2008.” The other is stark black on white. It says: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom/August 28, 1963.”
In August 1963, Barack Obama was two years old. I was 17, and I marched that day. I’ll never forget it. Today I’ll be watching on TV as Barack Obama becomes the first African American to accept the nomination of a major party for President. In a way, it’s not something Martin Luther King even dared to dream.
[This narrative continues after photos below]
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