Are you unplugged? It's Friday morning and soon Shabbat will be here. I'll light the candles and we'll go to friends for dinner and tomorrow to services and to lunch (I'm bringing part of it). Later we're going to another home to be part of what they call a "shabbat hangout" where the kids all play and the parents (and their older friends, like us) talk, and study and enjoy the peace of 24 hours of an unplugged, non-electric, non-driving, non-cooking, non-working life.*
Over these years I've struggled with keeping kosher, with the role of women, and with much else. But there are moments of such beauty and meaning that I find myself spinning - knowing why I'm here and wondering at the same time.
I've always been Progressive; worked in the anti-war movement and the McCarthy campaign - and was in Chicago at the 1968 convention, and when I first found observant Judaism and Shabbat, it felt counterintuitive. Too many rules. Sometimes it still does.
But the reason why Unplugged is so great is that when you start, you think Shabbat will be what you hate. No more errands or Saturday manicures or movies. No phone calls or emails or web wandering.
And then you unplug. And even if - as I suspect will be true for many - you don't go the way we went and adopt (almost) the entire package, you find the peace of what Josh Foer, in the video, calls this "ancient" idea, and are grateful for it. And for the people around you -- IRL -- close, and easy and at peace.
*OK I admit it. I'm really glad the health care vote is on Sunday; if it had been on Saturday it would have been a real pain.
I don't spend my time talking about the "olden days" - really I don't. Working on the web has kept me very much in the present. But tonight I watched a Rock and RollHall of Fame Induction Ceremony retrospective and since you have to have given music at least 25 performing years to be inducted most of the performers were closer to my age than to that of my buddies here on the Web. And wow.
I feel the way you feel 2/3 of the way down a fantastic black diamond slope with the wind in your hair and frost on your ear lobes and your heart pounding. Where else is there the power that music brings to us? We go where it takes us -- return to places we'd forgotten we knew, find pride in the memories we cherish and an abashed amusement in those that might have been a bit - um -- less luminous. Our moods, our clothes, the way we're driving, or eating, or doing less discussable things, changes with the music around us. It's bits of soul reflected.
I was blessed to be at a couple of the most amazing inductions; I've written about that before but some of those moments appeared tonight and I could feel again the hair raising thrill of watching Ben E King and The Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan and Billy Joel and Mick Jagger and dozens (literally dozens) of others performing together. Coming as we all do from a generation that did so many things as a tribe, it's particularly moving to watch them trade glances and cues -- such a familiar pattern.
I love my life now and am so grateful to be a part of the explosion of the new connected world, but I am also grateful for the years those musicians gave us. They are brothers and sisters and inspirations and former fantasies and just plain fun. I know how many died of overdoses, I know there are seamy stories and I know that there are wonderful musicians who have followed them and will themselves end up on that stage when enough years have passed but my time was a wonderful time to be young and loving music. And once again tonight I remembered how many moments of my own personal Hall of Fame were accompanied by, or part of, or generated from - the music they gave us all.
Two years ago I wrote this piece to honor the pending birth of a friend's child. It's about the first days after the birth of a first child. Yesterday marked the 35th anniversary of that birth - so, one more time, here's the memory - with gratitude and love.
What an emotional shock it has been to write this. I need to start with that; the feelings, years later, are still there.
What an emotional shock it has been to write this. I need to start with that; the feelings, years later, are still there.
Since this baby shower is for one of my favorite bloggers, and
friends, I'm grateful to be part of it. Our task is to share those lovely early
moments with our brand new children. That's why I've added this - which
may be the most perfect photo I own because it says just what we all know.
The connection of a mother and newborn is so complete that it's almost
impossible - even with writers as remarkable as this community -- to describe.
At least I can't find words that say what I know this photo says.
This is actually my second son, very soon after he arrived.
He's 28 now and more extraordinary than even I, proud mama, could have imagined
that cold November day in Roosevelt hospital in 1979. He and his brother
both started off with beautiful souls though. They are beautiful still.
When I think of those early days, it isn't all the getting up at
night (although it could be) and it isn't that I had so much trouble nursing
that I needed to supplement (although it could be) and it isn't the absolutely
perfect terror that I might do them harm that accompanied the first days of
their lives (although it certainly, indubitably could be.)
Nope. Here's what I remember, and what I wish for the two
of you and all you other moms and moms-in-waiting: it's a cold winter
night, maybe after about a week as the new parent of son number 1. It's
dark, but out the window you can see the boats going up and down the Hudson
River (even though our windows leak so there's ice on our windows, on the
inside.) You hear a cry and struggle out of bed, grab a robe, go retrieve
this new little person from his crib, change him and move with him to the
bentwood rocking chair (of course there's a rocking chair) facing the window.
And you hold him in your arms and you feed him. The dark envelops you,
the dim skyline across the river in New Jersey is the only light you have,
except for the tiny pinpoints of light on the tug boats and barges as they make
their way. And it's silent. Not a sound. And, with this new
life in your arms, you rock gently back and forth. The gift of peace of
those nights in the rocker was so intense that as I write this, I can feel it.
If I let myself, I could cry.
I remember watching my mother with each infant - can still see
her face as she responded to them, thinking to myself then "Oh.
This must be the way she was with me. How beautiful. How
beautiful."
And I remember this. My parents came to us very soon after
our first son was born, helped put the crib together, celebrated with us.
Late one night, as I stood with our baby in my arms, my dad walked into the
room. Looking at the two of us, in perfect peace, he said to me "NOW
do you understand?" Of course I did.
All I wanted when I was a kid was to be Franny Glass. To be part of the Glass family, intellectual, quirky, and with lists of beautiful quotes on a poster board on the back of their bedroom door. They were sad and weird and wonderful.
And now, today, we lose their creator, most beloved for Holden Caulfield, the eternally adolescent hero of Catcher in the Rye. Holden is worthy of every affectionate word written about him, and his palpable pain is familiar to those who've journeyed through the teen years, but the Glasses -- well -- they were a different kind of lovely.
They are all the children of one man, and he died today. I wish I could tell you what it felt like to read Catcher in the Rye at 13. I can remember where I was sitting as I read it - how I felt - and the deep sadness that accompanied Holden's story. It must have been traumatic though, because later, when my son and I read it together, I was shocked to learn that Holden's brother had died. I had jammed that fact someplace hard to reach, which means it was even more disturbing than I remember. Reading it with my own child was a beautiful experience to share with a young man of deep compassion and great sensibility - a memory I cherish. So Salinger gave me that, too.
(I'm not mentioning Joyce Maynard here. She had a right - but sheesh!) And I really don't have much to say about the quiet recluse in the hills of New Hampshire. Farewell to him, yes, but also to yet another connection to the days when I was young - and more like Holden than like women of a Certain Age. The passions, the pain, the poetic anger at people for not being what we expect them to be and the desperate longing to rescue the imperiled and the lost.
"Anyway,
I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of
rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big,
I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy
cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go
over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're
going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the
catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing
I'd really like to be."
I guess those who don't dream of being the catcher long
to be the one who is caught. And those longings don't go away whether you're 13 or
63 (right - I first read it FIFTY years ago!) Imagine. No, it
doesn't go away, but your perspective changes. The loveliness of that
kind of protecting -- or being protected - it isn't around much in the real
world. All the more reason to be grateful for the rare observer who can remind us of its sweetness, and of what we are capable of aspiring to.
And grateful I am. For Franny and Zooey and Seymour and all their craziness and for Holden, what he gave me then, and what I remember, even today.
What do you watch at 11:30? Are you even up? The Daily Show is over, but there's still Steven Colbert. Or are you sucked away from basic cable to join one of the Established Hosts on those antiquated broadcast networks? And if you are, which one? The answer to that question probably depends on how old you are.
Last week's Saturday Night Liveincluded this imaginary Larry King Show, mocking, as both hosts have, the ham-handed dismissal of the younger Conan to honor expensive contract obligations made to the older Leno. For many of us, this is simple: Jay Leno is old and grouchy (well not as old as I am but still...) and O'Brien younger, more creative and definitely holder of the "younger, cooler, hipper" mandate. (Yes I know there's David Letterman (and George Lopez) but for now let's think about NBC.)
Younger viewers have been up late watching Conan for years - after many of the rest of us had gone to bed - and they know and like his ironic, goofy, smart persona. The Harvard-educated O'Brien, (who wrote for the university's humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon,) and served as a long-time writer for Saturday Night live and later for The Simpson's, is a perfect 21st Century personality.
Leno, on the other hand, is a real 20th Century man. He came up through comedy clubs and Tonight Show appearances and is a car collector and motorcycle freak. His humor is less subtle and, somehow, although less arch than Conan it's also less friendly. Mostly though, it's old-school. In my view, it's for the dwindling older audience and not for the emerging majority of TV viewers (and of Americans) born well after we Boomers had finished college.
It's funny, but as much as I loathe the idea of age discrimination, I also see this decision as a symptom of a generational division visible in the women's movement, in life on the Web and in the politics that brought out so many younger voters for Barack Obama and then betrayed them with posturing and partisanship.
I first thought about all this when I saw an interview with the gifted and admired Dick Ebersol, long an icon of sports coverage who has led NBC Sports for many years and presided over several Olympics seasons on the air. In the Huffington Post, he called Conan's Tonight show a "spectacular failure." In his long career, in addition to sports, Ebersol was an executive in charge of the TODAY SHOW (full disclosure, I worked for him - and happily) and of Saturday Night Live so he's no slouch. But it seems that seven months, preceded by a failing Leno show with ratings so bad the affiliates, bleeding audience for the local news that followed Leno, demanded a change, was hardly the best audience-builder for Conan, whose show followed that news. More than all of that though, Ebersol is far from the days when he had his finger on the pulse of the emerging audience, the Gen Xers and Millennials and those younger than they are. They want something different, something cooler, something more like -- Conan.
I've written about, and been on panels about, the generational divide. The economic crisis has only exacerbated it as young people consider the disappearing Social Security benefits and their own futures in a world where job security and benefits is hazy history. They're mad at the Boomers, blame us for more than we're responsible for and often have no idea what we really accomplished in the 60's and 70's -- for the better. Events like this one, however superficial and entertainment-based, are just another example of the disregard in which they are too often held. NBC will pay for that -- in the PR game it already has (did you see the Golden Globes?) and, I fear, in a larger sense, so will the rest of us "older" Americans. We should be listening to them about more than product preferences and if we don't, we'll be sorry.
My posts seem to run in bunches. After
two meditations on marriage in the past month, here I am again.
It's all Meryl Streep's fault. If you know what it feels like when your kids run off together when you thought you were all going to dinner, or to struggle to remain your own person in a long marriage -- whether it ends or it doesn't, or just to be married for a long time and build a family with a partner - you know this story.
We went with another couple also married 38 years. It's hard to describe the shared recognition, the warmth we all felt at the familiar moments on the screen - the rare family dinners with our adult children, continuing to learn and grow - together or apart, watching the accomplishments and weddings and occasional rages of each kid, accepting the fact that we've entered that part of life where they're on their own - and so are we. Children grow up and earn their own lives, careers begin to ebb, and those of us who are blessed spend those years with one another. Or, if we must, search for and find someone else to ease the way.
It was all there, gentle, funny, loving and true. Like looking in a mirror. Oh - and lest you wonder whether a movie about a 50-something (or maybe 60) couple recovering from a divorce - in the torrent of high-profile films and stars, it's in the top five for the holidays. It may be complicated, but loving it isn't complicated at all.
I came of age in 1968 (that's me on the right - New Hampshire election night.) A civil rights idealist and anti-war activist, I was formed by the horrible events, remarkable activism and leadership of that critical year. Forty years later, mostly because of Barack Obama, lost threads of memory emerged - all year long. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to reconsider those times through the lens of this remarkable election. Together they tell a story, or at least part of one, and I thought you might like to take this journey with me one more time as we move toward inaugurating the first black President of the United States, elected in the first real "Internet election"; abetted in great measure by a generation that seems, in many ways, a better, "new and improved" version of my own.
I'm going to start at the end though - the coming Inauguration, because I attended that of another "rock star" - John Kennedy, nearly fifty years ago - and all that came after was born that day. The rest is in order and I think I'm going to ** my favorites.
**The charismatic Robert Kennedy and first-comer Eugene McCarthy fought for the nomination in 1968. When McCarthy shocked everyone with his March near-win in New Hampshire (that's the photo at the top), Lyndon Johnson pulled out, guaranteeing that his Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, would win the nomination and lose the election. In 2008 the battle was between two equally disparate Democrats: Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. Having lived through the first disaster, I was horrified by the possibility of a second. It would be too much to suffer that kind of heartbreak again.
**The spring and summer brought the assassinations of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy. I was with Senator McCarthy, in San Francisco the night Dr. King died; in LA that night Robert Kennedy was killed. I was young, traumatized and in the middle of history.
For the first time since 1968, since I had been a journalist for much of the time in between and done no campaigning or petition signing or much else that would be partisan activity, I went canvassing in Virginia
with friends, including a four-year-old who added enormous to each trip
and enchanted quite a few fence-sitters. Each trip was an adventure, always interesting, often moving.
Toward the end of the year, Judith Warner wrote about her efforts to explain the election to her kids - and so did I.
One more thing. A year-ender trip to London and Vienna once again reminded me, as the Obama Berlin trip had done, how much Europe has longed for the America that stood for decency and hope. Barack Obama was named the first-ever Times of London Man of the Year.
So here we are. I'm not sure if I'll ever have the gift of so many
reasons to remember gigantic events of the past, but this year
certainly provided plenty. It was a wonder and a privilege. My hope
now is that, as we move forward, the hope we've all sensed over these
past months will morph into a real sense of mission and purpose. That
is what will take all this promise and, as we Americans have done so
many times, use it to move us forward to the place we long to, and need
to be.
Beside him, Bruce Springsteen, a modern troubadour whose songs speak for many Americans whose opinions are never sought, whose voices are seldom heard.
As
they stood together at the Lincoln Memorial in celebration of the
Inauguration of Barack Obama, they represented, to me, all that I had
believed and tried to help bring into being. To many, though, they
were "the ultimate in subtly old-left populism."
Speaking about the concert early Sunday before it began, I kept talking
about Bruce. A younger friend gently suggested that he was probably
not the day's headliner. That would be Beyonce Knowles, she said. I'm sure she's right.
As one who was present the last time
"the torch was passed to a new generation;" as a strongly defined Baby
Boomer, it's painful to hear anchormen celebrate the fact that "there
will never be another Baby Boom President." It' s not that I mind the
fact of that; it's just painful that it seems to be something to
celebrate. So many of us have tried so to be productive agents of
change, have spent our lives working either full or part of the time to
see that our country offers more to the least powerful, demands quality
education, justice and maybe, even peace. So to hear Joe Scarborough
revel in the fact that "16 horrible years of baby boomer presidents is
over" really hurts. All my adult life we've been tarred by the brush
of the least attractive of us while the work of the rest of us went
unnoticed. For most campaigns, as I'vewritten before, we were the secret weapon of the right.
So
as exciting as all this is, especially for one who has supported Obama
for so long, it's also bittersweet because I feel the shadow of the
disdain in which so many of us are held. I really don't know how to
respond. If I were to try, it might be by offering some of the words
to Si Kahn's They All Sang Bread and Roses. It's better with the music, but it does the job.
They All Sang "Bread and Roses (Si Kahn, 1989,
1991)
And now it's ending. No, nobody fired her, she still has a large audience and many adoring readers but she's decided to stop. Here's part of what she said in her valedictory meditation on covering women in America - and I recommend you go read the entire thing:
My generation -- WOMEN -- thought the movement would advance on two
legs. With one, we'd kick down the doors closed to us. With the other,
we'd walk through, changing society for men and women.
It turned
out that it was easier to kick down the doors than to change society.
It was easier to fit into traditional male life patterns than to change
those patterns. We've had more luck winning the equal right to 70-hour
weeks than we've had selling the equal value of care-giving. We have
yet to solve the problem raised at the outset: Who will take care of
the family?
As a young mother and reporter, it did not occur to
me that my daughter would face the same conflicts of work and family.
Or, on the other hand, that my son-in-law would fully share those
conflicts. I did not expect that over two-thirds of mothers would be in
the work force before we had enough child care or sick pay.
Yes - those things are true. My own sons expect (and one has) wives who keep their names and expect to remain in the workforce. And yes, they still face issues of child care and equal pay and glass ceilings. The sad thing is, they won't have the provocative, inspiring, funny and very gifted voice of Ellen Goodman to cheer them on. Maybe she'll write another book though; if she does, I'll send a copy to each of them.
