This photo is on my friend Leticia's wonderful blog Tech Savvy Mama. Why? Today is the birthday of the wonderful Theodor Seuss Geisel , known to all of us as Dr. Seuss. For twelve years now, the week of Dr. Seuss's birthday ( he was born in 1904) has been "Read Across America" week, which uses Geisel's beloved books to encourage reading and a love of books.
Leticia has a wonderful set of resources for activities, books, games and teacher support for any who want to make the most of this very smart holiday. Everyone from the National Education Association, which initiated the effort, to Reading Rockets to You Tube boasts special features. Leticia even has a link to free digital book downloads!
So for heaven's sake, send every kid you know a Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss email or call them and sing happy birthday with them. Even better, hit Tech Savvy Mama and use some of the dozens of great ideas to share some quality time with them.
Oh, and, in case you forgot, here's a list of the amazing works of this remarkable man, from the Seussville website:
First-ever Times of London Man of the Year. This is pretty amazing if you’ve followed the disdain with which the U.S., and particularly George Bush, have been viewed here in Europe. The UK may in many ways be more angry than most, because they were sucked into the Iraq war too.
But my son, the one who works in London and has been going back and forth for five years or more,reported that the day after the election it felt better to be American in Europe than it had in a long time. Add that to what happened when Obama went to Berlin: the amazing reception arising, I believe, because he stands for the America that the rest of the world wants to know. The America of promise and compassion and justice and hope.
Now the Times of London, one of the great London newspapers, has, in its first Timers Person of the Year – worldwide – chosen President-Elect Barack Obama. In their editorial, they say:
What, then, made Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency so remarkable, such a landmark event, is not the fact of his improbability or of his extraordinary background. What made it landmark is the nature of those things. For unlike his predecessors, Mr Obama’s improbability, Mr Obama's extraordinary background, is not just important to him and to the story of his personal triumph. It caps a period of incredible change in America and makes possible incredible change in the world. And it is this – and the way he won the presidency – that made him the obvious choice as The Times Person of 2008.
Of course the next four years are pretty scary, and it's probably impossible for him to live up to all we hope for him, but at least, for now, we are once again members in good, or at least better, standing, in the world community.
There's more evidence. These are the best-sellers in Waterston's bookstore in Chiswick. Number one and number four. This will be a president the world wants to know. So while it's scary, it's also exciting: to have selected a leader who makes us proud, through a process that made us proud, to have elected an African American president for our country, which, with all its troubles, once again makes us proud too. The Bush years broke more hearts than our own, and the world reaction to Obama, from the Berlin speech to the London Times to front pages and African murals and Sunday commentary from one end of the world to the other proves it.
We don't know what will come next; we don't know how we will respond to that which is asked of us - and much will be. But we do know, I think, that we have chosen, as our leader, someone whose place in the world enhances that of our country, and of us, and begins to build the faith, and determination, that will take us where we need to go.
I was in high school when I read Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin's heartbreaking story of pain and loss. It was the first time I'd understood anything of the harsh realities of life for gay men, and it changed me, opened my soul and my mind the way great writers are supposed to. Toni Morrison, his close friend who has often said that she misses him still, told NPR's Michele Martin how much she would have loved to see his reaction to the election of Barack Obama. Me too.
I kept thinking of Baldwin as I sat in a screening of Milk ,the story of a gay man, years later, who fought discrimination with determination - and humor - and lost his life to an assassin in the process. Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, moved to San
Francisco from a dead-end job in Manhattan and ended up launching a political gay rights movement that took over first the Castro, then San Francisco, then the nation. Battling anti-gay referenda in cities, towns and states, he made it possible, in ways probably not dreamed of when Baldwin fled US racism and homophobia by moving to Paris in the 1940's, for gays to live openly.
Here's what's hard though. Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956, when gay men suffered, for the most part, in secret. Harvey Milk led his battles in the 1970's, as, at least in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, they emerged from the closet into the light, fighting for their rights every day as efforts were made to push them back into silence. In California, one of Milk's greatest successes was the defeat of a bill that would force the termination of all gay teachers.
Look at us now. On the same landmark day that we elected Barack Obama president, California, in a statewide referendum, repealed the right for gays to marry. Similar efforts have become a cottage industry, and have succeeded all over the country.
Where kids are concerned, Florida, where Anita Bryant originated her cruel anti-gay campaign in the 70's, is still fighting to maintain a recently-overturned ban on gay adoption. Arkansas and Utah ban any unmarried couples, straight or gay, from adopting or fostering children; Mississippi bans gay couples, but not single gays. Arkansas voters last month approved a measure that, like Utah's bans any unmarried straight or gay couples from adopting or fostering children, a clever way to be "nondiscriminatory." Gay couples who want the non-biological parent to adopt their baby have to choose carefully in which county they file their papers. Get the wrong judge and you're toast. Perfectly fine candidates can lose elections because of their stands supporting gay rights.
To read the policy side of these issues in more detail, visit Leslie Bradshaw. She's one of the most passionate writers about the past election and the current state of gay rights and discusses the issue far more completely than I can.
But to a pop culture vulture like me, it's sad to sit through a docudrama, which is basically what MILK is, 52 years after Giovanni and 30+ after Harvey Milk, and feel that, in too many ways, it could be today's news.
ADD: I just discovered this post from Uppercase Woman. A great survey/meditation on gay marriage.
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer' series of novels about the love between Edward, a noble vampire, and his high school sweetheart, Bella, is everywhere. Translated into 20 languages and now a film, with even a Twilight Moms site for, well, moms who love the books, it's what is usually called a "cultural phenomenon." It's been: a New York Times Editor's Choice, an American Library Association "Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults" and "Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers", a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade...So Far", a Teen People "Hot List" pick, and a New York Times Best Seller. All before I even got to read it. There would have been a time... ah well. At least it's fun now.
And in a way, embarrassing. After all, a teen vampire love story isn't exactly typical reading for a well-educated, grown-up, fairly worldly woman who fancies herself reasonably intelligent. It was curiosity that got me there, and I'm glad. There's something about this steamy yet chaste story that slams me back into my 15-year-old self, wondering what sex was like, what love was like, what anything remotely interesting, none of which had happened to me yet, was like. I had forgotten about her but she was still in there just waiting for a reason to emerge. When she did, she reminded that I'd had my own Edward.
Precisely the same age, a high school junior, I fell, hard, for the school's bad boy poet, one of the "drugstore boys" who hung out outside the pharmacy or, in good weather, the Dairy Queen. He was the first conscientious objector I knew; introduced me to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Sound and the Fury and A Canticle for Leibowitz. We would sit in our basement game room and talk, and smoke, for hours. When things got too bad at his house, he often slept at ours. Having raised two teenagers myself I'm still shocked that my parents never objected. It was a beautiful time. There was no way I was going to sleep with him; parent power was still too strong then. He told me years later that even if I'd been willing, he was too scared of my mother to let it happen. As it was for Bella though, that was almost irrelevant. He'd opened my mind, and my soul, so completely that there was no turning back. There's more than one way to be free.
In Twilight, as with Buffy and Angel, sex is impossible. Edward understands that the loss of self involved in sexual consumation would remove the inhibitions that these "vegetarian" vampires have developed to meet both their values and their desire to live among the human. There's lots of lovely making out, but that's it. The less disciplined of the two is Bella, who more than once has to be restrained in her enthusiasm for her perfect, shining, somewhat chilly-to- the-touch lover.
I don't know if such limited innocence is possible today; don't know how the teenagers who read these books could be even partially as un-knowing as I was. When I was a kid, there was no MTV, no Friends episodes about who would get the last condom, no Brittany, or God forbid, her pregnant little sister, no pregnant candidate progeny either. Sex was private, and for grownups. Not necessarily in real life, but in perceived values. There's so much more to disturb their discipline; so little to support the kind of determination that protets Bella and Edward.
I think that's part of the wonder, the attraction, of Twilight. Remember the Simpsons have a long-running joke about Lisa's Sexually Non-Threatening Boys Magazine? It's funny because, at a certain age, that's where girls go. And then, as they begin to move toward true sexual ripeness, the attraction changes. The longings emerge, along with the need to control the young men who would exploit them. Who better than a conscience-stricken, loving, gorgeous, perfect vampire to guide the way? Or, to remind us later, was a thrilling, scary, remarkable journey it was?
You know this photo: Nazis burning books in Babelplatz, a large public square across from Humboldt University in the heart of Berlin. Germany was a highly cultured society, yet it wasn't too difficult to get to the place where its students willingly burned the books they were to supposed to be studying if they had been written by Jews.
The U.S. wasn't immune in those years either. In the 1930s there were huge battles about James Joyce's classic Ulysses, a gorgeous and very moving book but so difficult to understand that I took an entire college course on it. Hard to believe that anyone would bother working through it for any but literary reasons. Even so, copy after copy was seized from trans-Atlantic passengers arriving on ocean liners in Manhattan. Finally, in 1932, after an edition of the book intended as a model for U.S. publication had been seized along with the others, Judge John M. Woolsey lifted the ban in a famous, highly cited opinion* that appears as a preface in many editions. There are many such stories, about many books, but most of them well before the 1960s. After that, it seemed we'd "grown out of" book banning. Wrong.
I read Catcher in the Rye in the 7th grade. Years later I had the privilege of reading it aloud with my own son at precisely the same age. Nearly 20 years apart, we both loved it. Yet efforts to ban it in both school and community libraries have gone on almost as long as the life of the book itself. BlogHer and book blogger SassyMonkey, in a detailed BlogHer post, reminded us that Banned Books Week is here (September 27 to October 4, 2008). The American Library Association created this week in 1982, and sadly, we still need it today. Sarah Palin was not the first, nor will she be the last, government official to fire a librarian after a discussion about removing books from library shelves. There's a long history of such behavior, and other, more overt attempts, both here and around the world.
Try to imagine a time where you had to hide the books you love. Or where you couldn't get Harry Potter from the library to re-live the Hogwarts adventure with your own children. Or you couldn't get access to published health information from books like Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Imagine no Huck Finn, no Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison or John
Steinbeck or -- and this is a biggie in the book banning world, no Judy
Blume. Right now there are community and school librarians risking
their careers to fight to protect their shelves from marauding
moralists. Right now.
I wrote much of what appears below without knowing just how to begin it - and those wacky Republicans solved my problem. The response to this boilerplate Obama statement was to issue a vicious attack accusing him of sexism because of Palin's convention speech "lipstick/hockey mom/pitbull" quote. This despite the fact that the metaphor has often been used by Republicans including Dick Cheney - to say nothing of John McCain - look here:
The McCain campaign, not only in its choice of Sarah Palin but in how they use her, is leaning on very scary tactics that are similar to the successful exploitation of voters illustrated by some of the mostmemorable characters in American political films. Watch this trailer for Tim Robbins' Bob Roberts; see if it isn't more familiar than you wish:
Creepy, isn't it? A demagogue making his way to the top by lying about his opponent and manipulating the alienation of the American people for his own ends. That could never happen in real life, right?
Much, much earlier in film history, the beloved Andy Griffith played one of the scariest public personalities ever in A Face in the Crowd -- written by Budd Schulberg and directed by On the Waterfront's Elia Kazan. He's not a politician but watch the trailer and see if it doesn't seem familiar. You have to watch until the end to get the full impact.
It's so depressing -- and enraging -- to watch this campaign peddling pseudo-folksiness to win over its public. It's time for that to stop working in our country. Stakes are too high to permit us (or the press) to fall for the most approachable (and least honest) over the most excellent.
Finally, remember Robert Penn Warren's remarkable novel, clearly based on Louisiana's Huey Long - All the King's Men? It portrays a politician on his path to becoming a dangerous demagogue. Yeah, I know it's melodramatic but does it feel at all familiar?
Clearly we should consider these archetypal characters as cautionary tales; instructive representations of our future if we allow this kind of campaigning to prevail. Movies are our largest export (unless video games have taken over while I wasn't looking) and often reflect, if not our truths, at least our ghosts, shadows and neuroses. It gave us The Body Snatchers in the 50's, Easy Rider in the 60's and Working Girl and Wall Street in the 80's. It's easy to be seductive, to manipulate language and truth; easy to pretend to be one of the people in order to win them. The vicious, craven strategies of this campaign - and Sarah Palin herself - are perfect examples; John McCain, whom I used to admire, has allowed, no encouraged, this shameful campaigning in his name and surrendered all the positions of principal that he once held. If we don't want (another) Bob Roberts (He does remind me of GWBush) or a cynical populist pretender or a MS Wilie Stark as our government, it's up to use to exercise vigilance and fierce commitment to fight off these transparent manipulations and to ensure that it does not happen.
I used to run a television newscast for teenagers. It was tough to get them to pay much attention to the news, so one of the features I experimented with was "If you don't know the news, you can't get the jokes." Dennis Miller was doing Saturday Night Update then, and sadly, wouldn't talk to us, so the idea failed. It wasn't that original anyway; humor has always been part of American politics. But I wanted the kids to care more about it - and I thought that connecting news and cool comedy would help. I'm pretty sure I was right; political comedy is certainly a factor this year's campaign. If you're my age, you're probably sitting there thinking "Hasn't this woman ever heard of Mort Sahl? Yup. He's just turned 80 and his political humor is as sharp as ever. But he didn't have a daily "Daily Show" as a podium. Look at this:
I started thinking about this because this headline just appeared in the Media Bistro LA edition - which linked to this piece in the Washington Post. Comedy, at least this year, is an important factor in the campaign. Of course, Bill Clinton rebounded from one of his many backslides in 1992 with a saxophone-playing appearance on standup comedian and talk show host Arsenio Hall's show. This clip, in fact, appeared on Channel One, the show I used to run!
That was the second time Clinton used nightly talk as a life preserver. After this disastrous keynote convention speech in 1988
Clinton went on the Johnny Carson's Tonight Show and did the same thing. Not quite comedy but definitely popular culture. Carson had a unique impact, too. A wise Republican political consultant told me he could tell the mood of the country by listening to which jokes audiences responded to on The Tonight Show. So this year, despite all the fuss about Comedy Central, is not the first time that the worlds of entertainment and comedy have had more than a small role in choosing our leaders. And those are just in the past few elections. (OH, and don't forget JibJab. )
We aren't alone, of course. The 18th Century British cartoonist William Hogarth, is still taught in political propaganda classes. This one, The Times, is an example.
The difference today may be the ubiquitousness of any information that emerges; it's not just in some elitist newspaper, it's all over the place. It may also be the diminished influence of what used to be our respected news media. Young people (and others) turn to comedy not just because it's arch, and fun, but because it's less pretentious and heavy-handed, and treats audience members as co-conspirators rather than as a single passive body.
I worry that the deflation of our leaders that comes from the Comedy Central syndrome is as scary as it is useful. Americans like to believe; that's part of the appeal of both Obama and McCain, I think. And it's possible to believe without mindless acceptance. But if all, or most of one's information emerges from the acerbic minds of comedy writers, does it undermine any capacity to follow a leader in what are truly perilous times?
Franklin Roosevelt, through his Fireside Chats and other communications with Americans, was able to bring the country along as war drew closer. Doris Kearns Goodwin, in NO ORDINARY TIME*, one of my favorite books, tells the story of one chat in particular. FDR asked Americans, in advance, to get a
map of the world and follow along as he described the current state of the war. Maps sold
out. And the Americans who had bought them sat there by the radio and followed as Roosevelt spoke. You don't need comedy to inspire confidence when you have that kind of respect for your audience. I guess you could say that FDR was a kind of rock star who had built such a relationship with Americans during the Depression that he was in a different situation, but still, it's a provocative example to place against 5 minute guest spots with Stewart or Colbert.
This has been long and a bit rambling because I'm trying to think it all out here - and I still don't have an answer. I do think it's going to be interesting to see how long this trend lasts -- at least in this incarnation.
*go to the link and search inside under Fireside Chat and map and you will find the story (pg. 319)
Sex and religion have always seemed at odds. Stories of sexual impulsivity have been with us forever - King David and Batsheva , Anna Karenina, , Atonement , Prince Charles, presidents, senators, preachers and ball players. So it's not surprising that human beings struggle to maintain heavy sexual controls within the rules of faith. Any faith.
In a class this week though, we studied the unique textual perspective toward sex within Judaism. The great teacher Laura Shaw Frank, about whom I've written before, returned for four weeks to teach the Orthodox "Laws of Family Purity" -- an unfortunate term since, for me at least, the first association I make when I hear "family purity" is "racial purity." But never mind, that's another
conversation.
There are complicated laws concerning marital relations, menstruation and other issues within the intimacies of marriage and we will study them for the next three weeks. Last night though, we began at the beginning. What do Jewish texts tell us about the place of sex in a Jewish life?
The premise: that sex, within Jewish life, is part of the holiness of families, and serves to hold families, and traditions, together. "How can we say the "evil inclination" (sex drive) is very good? It is to teach us that if there were no evil inclination, a man would not build a home for himself, and wouldn't marry a woman and wouldn't beget children.*" The bottom line appears to be that honor, decency and institutional preservation depend upon sexual desire - which in turn, in those working to control it within themselves, leads to the creation of and adherence to civilization, marriage and family.
Beyond that, these connections must work on three levels -- the interpersonal, between man and woman (or man/man or woman/woman, but not then), the cosmic - with God - and historic - with all of the Jewish people. Always, sex is meant to allow us to honor one another and therefore honor God. Throughout the class I kept thinking of this -- it seems to sum it all up. A young soldier, leaving for war, trying to explain his departure to his beloved. It's going to be interesting to see how all of this supports some of the more unusual Orthodox rules of physical intimacy. Stay tuned.
To Lucasta, Going off to the Wars Richard Lovelace (1618-1658)
Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such As thou too shalt adore; I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more.
OK so I grew up with sisters. And I went to a women's college. And most of my life I've worked in offices with more women than men (amazing, no?) So, when I was pregnant I was terrified at the idea of having boys. They were so strange -- so noisy -- I just had no idea what was coming. Except that what was coming was Josh. And then Dan. And it turned out that -- hang on sisters -- boys are a blast, great company, luuuhhhv their moms and --- boys are easier! I know this because I've watched my friends raising daughters and the tensions are fierce. Girls and their mothers -- boys and their dads. Not easy.
But let's get back to basics. Little boys run around a lot and make noise. They jump off things. They ride the dog around and fall off and hit their heads and need stitches. They, later, seem to be trying to kill each other much of the time. And before I go any further - let me tell you that there's an old shrink saying that therapists never believe that babies are born with personalities until they have their second child. This is also true with many women regarding gender differences - it hits you once they show up. My kids are feminists and very good to the women in their lives as far as I can tell - but they are men and they were boys and that is not like being a girl. Nope.
I have great memories from when they were little - stomping around singing Free to Be and Da Doo Ron Ron Ron and The Garden Song and Abiyoyo, skiing down black diamond slopes and going to Yankee Stadium to see Billy Joel and Carnegie Hall to see Pete Seeger and Madison Square Garden to see Sesame Street on Ice and being dragged to an infinite number of Police Academy and other disgusting movies.
And I lived in alien space much of the time. Some of our hit toys (ie things I would NEVER have had in my house if there were not these strange male creatures inhabiting the premises -- and pre-video game age of course): One of those Radio Shack electronics build-your-own thingy kits that make bells ring and bulbs light up if you hook them up correctly. Legos Anything aviationary Anything Star Wars Anything GI Joe Voltron Weird wrestling stuff (boy did I fight that one!) Folk music (that's my fault though) Baseball cards (and proudly, I did NOT throw them out) Stuffed animals Ernie
There's serious stuff to having sons, of course. We have to be sure, no matter how much we love hanging around with them, that they get enough alone time with their dads or some other male figure. And wave bravely as they off together on a Sunday (also your day off after all) without you. We have to accept and celebrate the guy stuff.
Just like girls, but differently, we have to let them know we think they can take care of themselves - enable independence at each landmark, if we think they can handle it, even when we really want to help. It's so easy, with a boy, to want to remain more connected than is useful for them as they grow. At certain points they may pull back for a while, when they need to untangle. We have to let them and respect the struggle
With regard to respect for women - I am deeply impressed with my sons' perspectives. I hope that being honest and respecting their developing attitudes, helped. I never threw a Playboy out of our house but I made it very clear how I felt about them in the (brief) period they were around. Anything like that, of which I (or my husband) disapproved, had to come out of their allowance. They had to put their money on the line - and I think that helped more than locking it all out of the house and pretending they weren't interested. It also helped us understand where their heads were. Although that is easier for boys because they are, honestly, more straightforward.
Of course none of what I write here applies to all boys. Much of it may apply to plenty of girls. But it was my experience and in a kind of stream of consciousness baby shower kind of way it's what rose to the top. The bottom line though, is that even though it's scary if you've lived in a world of women, as I had, they are just wonderful. Most of all, because I know Julie, from reading your blog for so long, you would be a great mother to any child with whom you were blessed, this kid is in for a great life. And where advice is concerned, I say take it only as far as your gifted mother gut takes you. Where the two collide, trust yourself. Girl, boy or android, that way your little one will always be in the right hands.
Yesterday I promised to write regularly about that infamous year, 1968, from the perspective of the forty years that have passed. I was there for so much of it and have wanted to re-think it for some time but could never seem to face it in its entirety. Among other things, it's the year I graduated from college. And worked in the McCarthy campaign. And was present at the Chicago "police riot" at the Democratic Convention. I'm going to do it - I promise.
But last night's insomnia led to the two of us watching Reds, Warren Beatty'sremarkable film about John Reed, Louise Bryant, Greenwich Village radicals, Eugene O'Neill, Emma Goldman and left wing intellectual life before and during World War I. At the end of what was, in the theaters, the first act, there's a wonderful montage. John Reed (Warren Beatty) gives an impassioned speech, revolutionaries begin to sing the "Internationale" and the film cuts between scenes of political passions and those of the passions, both physical and intellectual, between Reed and Louise Bryant. To me, it's the perfect metaphor for our lives in 1968 -- shared political passions even with the most intense of lovers - inextricably combined with personal passions intensified by the sadness, rage and sense of mission brought on by events - in their case the attempt to build a "workers paradise" in Russia, on ours, the war in Vietnam. The YouTube clip of this beautiful five minutes won't post outside YouTube - it's been blocked, but you can see it here. In the meantime, watch the trailer and think about what it's like when life, love and politics intersect with such precision.
Warren Beatty's award winning epic mixes drama and interviews with major social radicals of the period. "Reds" tells the story of the love affair between activists Louise Bryant and John Reed. Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous start of the twentieth century, the two journalists' on-again off-again romance is punctuated by the outbreak of WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution. Louise's assignment in France at the outbreak of the war puts an end to their affair. John Reed's subsequent trip to Russia
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