Don't Gel Too Soon

Meryl Streep and "It's Complicated" - As If We Didn't Know That

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.

Ellen Goodman Doesn't Write there Anymore

As long as I've worked in media, which is a long time, Ellen Goodman's been there too.  Her Pulitzer-prize-winning column, originating in the Boston Globe, has been a beacon and a landmark and a treasure. 

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.

Oh No! Say It Isn't So!!

OK I know.  The world is ending, the climate is cooking, the economy is crashing and God only knows what else is happening in the "real world."  Even so - Twitter and Facebook and all points in between are so so sad.  This break up is just not fair.  Susan Sarandon and I are the same age and I once spent time with her (well, twice but both times in an elevator in our building where friends of hers lived and we DID talk...) and in some crazy way felt more in common with her than with most shiny people.  The politics of course didn't hurt either. And Bob Roberts may be my favorite political movie and so Bush-prophetic.

Because of all that, I too feel a floating sadness - nothing heart=wrenching - just sad.  These two  have always done what they believed and made us all happy.  And they deserve to be happy too.  Whatever it takes to get there.

I Don't Know Why but This Just Makes Me Happy

 

Planned Parenthood is offering them on pre-order.  It's enough to make you move to VA, no?

Thanks to the one and only PunditMom for tweeting this.

Sisters and Aunts and Daughters and Nieces and Holidays

Thanksgiving always makes me think of the people who are missing.  By now that's almost an entire generation: my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents.  We all came together at our house.  As the oldest cousin, I got to help in the kitchen and set the table. Sounds lame but it felt very grownup.  Not that that lasted for long.  Over the years we went from three to six to nine cousins, producing plays to perform after dinner, playing Sardines and Murder, telling secrets and wreaking civilized havoc.  

My favorite memory, though, was time with the sisters: my mom and my aunts.  One lived nearby but the other came with her family from Cleveland so when they were all together they wanted to talk.  They'd sit in my parents' room for ages; they let me hang around too.  In a way, all of us gathered on the bed those afternoons, and later in the kitchen after dinner, washing dishes, is women passing along stories and traditions, preserving the wisdom of the tribe.

I had no idea then of the value of those times.  It wasn't just being treated like "one of the girls," it was the sisterly warmth, the laughter and sudden emotion, eye welling up, when one aunt spoke of living so far from "home."    Now, probably 50 years later, I can see her leaning against the wall, her sisters looking toward her with understanding sympathy.  I can hear them talking about their parents, my grandparents, one difficult, both disappointed with their lives.  For a little while, the burden of worry lifted a bit as they shared it.

They were part of what is literally another world; hats and gloves, scars from the Depression, government service during World War II, an abiding sense of appropriateness.   Like Betty Draper, they left careers to stay "home with the kids."  Their lives were so different from ours, constrained and regulated -- lives that many daughters went to work to insure against.  

What we forget is that, even then, there was sisterhood.  Maybe it wasn't as powerful and certainly it wasn't as organized, but for me it still modeled a solidarity, loyalty and love of the company of women that I still cherish.  And it's so exciting to see us all now, taking that example along with the many farther afield, to enhance our larger community - still a family of sisters - from one end of the Internet to - well - to the whole wide world.

Cross-posted at BlogHer

So You Say You're Married, Eh?

Yesterday I went to a birthday party.  It was a serious birthday, a landmark, and even for a successful young mother with three kids, it had an impact.  So what did her sweet husband do?  He made her a present, with the help of his 5 year old son.  I don't want to violate their privacy with a description; just know that it was something that only someone who knew her well could have given her.

It was quite moving to watch her open her gift; presented in the 12th year of their marriage.  I kept thinking that I was already married for three years when she was born; that their journey still has such a long way to go and that we had learned so much in the years still before them.

We've been through chronic disease and heart disease, financial crisis and seven moves, two children, the loss of all four of our parents, extraordinary travel, deep friendships, huge lifestyle changes and daily complications.  And every one of them added a brick to the house.  Every child's birth, and birthday, and graduation and wedding; every torn knee, broken shoulder or opened heart -- all the things that make up a life -- they're what a marriage is made of.

Not very profound, but true.  The power of a shared history is the foundation - or at least a foundation, of a good marriage, and it gets stronger with every day.  That's all.

Except that those two on the left are celebrating their wedding, September 12, 1971.  And I'm one of them

Happy Mountain Day - and May There Be Many More

 
When you're nineteen or twenty and living in a college dorm in western Massachusetts life is beautiful.  Especially in the morning.  There's something about a New England morning that feels like a new beginning.  If you're in the country, that's even more true.

So today, when I received my "Happy Mountain Day" message, I found myself hurtling back to those mornings- once a year - when the fall foliage was at its best and mid-terms were coming, when we'd awaken to the sound of bells and know it was Mountain Day.  Classes were canceled, box lunches were waiting in the dorm dining rooms, and the day was ours.  The idea was that we take our bicycles or the bus or someone's car and go see what a New England autumn was all about. 

Smith College was way before its time in many ways: educating women, educating the whole person (maintaining a healthy body AND a healthy mind), advocating for an equal role for all of us.  It's no accident that Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan along with Julia Child, Molly Ivins, Jane Harman, Madeleine l'Engle and hundreds of other remarkable women studied there. 

You didn't teach at Smith to get famous or publish best-sellers.  University professors got the attention, even though those who taught us were certainly as knowledgeable.  Somehow though, people who taught "girls" were considered lesser beings.  Of course there were rewards:  eager, grateful students who reveled in learning and arguing and growing toward success, students who returned to say thank-you, and a lovely, civilized environment.  When we wanted to start an African-American studies curriculum, we just found a professor who was willing to supervise us, and we had one.  Faculty members were expected to come to dinner when they were invited, and eat with a table of curious underclasswomen.  We spent enormous amounts of time hanging around with professors, and one another, figuring out everything from the meaning of pacifism to the puzzles that were Stan Brakhage films.

As women, we formed a sisterhood that lasts.  Meet another "Smithie" and there's a bond - a grateful understanding of what we've shared.  I know that happens in lots of schools, but women's colleges have a special understanding - because we made a choice to study with one another in a specific environment that enriched and strengthened us.

And Mountain Day?  Well, think about it.  Seasons, beauty, nature, a sense of priorities, self-education, fun, friendship.  All enhanced by ringing bells, box lunches and the oranges, reds and yellows of a New England fall.  Reminding all the ambitious, capable and very busy women who came to and left to remember, as they moved forward, to ring the bell once in a while, go outside and look at the leaves. 

So Long Patrick, and Thanks

Does anybody not love Dirty Dancing?   At least for the many of us who were the darling Frances "Baby" Houseman, the idealistic, embryonic 60's activist, Daddy's girl for her brains, not her looks, the film is a misty, wonderful time capsule.  And so,  it may be, in essence, a women's film - so romantic and sexy in a new-at-sex kind of way.  But it wouldn't have worked without the sweet, gifted Patrick Swayze, who died today.  Although as Johnny Castle he gave us a young man who tried to present a weary, streetwise persona, he also brought us a man as idealistic as the rich girl who fell for him.  The perfect first lover.  Swayze, with grace and generosity, was all that and more.

This was a class story and coming-of-age story and a Times They Are A-Changin' story, evocative in ways that are difficult to express.  Baby, like us, was riding the cusp between the 50's end of the 60's and the Sixties that were to come.  Her relationship with Johnny was the bridge between those times, and so he meant even more than his lovely self.  I've always thought Swayze underestimated anyway but as I decided to write this I began to realize just how underestimated.  Without the right Johnny, Frances would not have mattered.

I, at least, could look at her and know her future.  Because it was mine.  Like Baby I never hated my parents.  Most of what I did that they wouldn't have liked, I hid.  Defiance was never a goal because I loved my parents and they loved me.   We just didn't see things like love and sex the same way so I decided just not to tell them.  There were many other things we saw differently too, but they changed their minds because they listened to us as often as we changed ours by listening to them.  We respected each other. 

So I did all my overnight disappearing on campus and kept my mouth shut about it.  And went home as the Cindy they knew -- more political and determined, but with no desire to blow up the neighborhood or leave the people I'd loved -- and still loved -- behind.  Like Frances, I responded to the Civil Rights movement and President Kennedy and longed to be part of what was to come.   Like Frances I had a "Johnny" though mine didn't dance. 

Of course, Swayze went on to make Ghost, which I think was at least as successful and even more of a fairy tale.  He appeared in gritty films like Road House and, as a tribute to his fellow dancers, many of whom died of AIDS, in drag in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.  And which role we choose to remember most probably depends on gender, and even more on age.

But for me, gratitude for the gift of memory, of the same sense of romance, in a way, that Twilight offers another generation, that's tough to beat.  And the gift, the reminder of the girl I remember and the hopes and dreams she took with her to college, that gift was from Patrick Swayze too. 

Back to the Future: Futurism at the Tate and 1968

In the early 20th Century there was a band of wild men who created an entire new way of thinking about "Art."  They were called Futurists and for those of you who took Art 11 and already know about them, I understand that I didn't discover them - this being particularly true since they are currently appearing in a retrospective at the Tate Modern here in London.  AND for my penultimate (I think) post here I want to tell you about them because they were a real kick.

This painting, by Luigi Russolo, is called "The Revolt."  On the right you can see "the people" pushing up against the hard line of the establishment.  It's the same thing the Futurists themselves were doing.  Here's their major "Manifesto."

These are our final conclusions:

With our enthusiastic adherence to Futurism, we will:

1. Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients, pedantry and academic formalism.
2. Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.
3. Elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.
4. Bear bravely and proudly the smear of “madness” with which they try to gag all innovators.
5. Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.
6. Rebel against the tyranny of words: “Harmony” and “good taste” and other loose expressions which can be used to destroy the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin...
7. Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in the past.
8. Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.

The dead shall be buried in the earth’s deepest bowels! The threshold of the future will be swept free of mummies! Make room for youth, for violence, for daring!

As I wandered through, alone and more available for being by myself, (this one is Carra's The Funeral of an Anarchist)  I felt that I knew these guys.  Yes they denigrated women (more on that in a second) but their rebellion, their anger, their passion, their desire to change everything - that was familiar.  Of course I never wanted to destroy; none of us did.  But the feelings of anger, of disappointment in the ways of the world, the desire to find new ways to say things, those were familiar -- and swept me back to the determined, impassioned girl I was then.  I can only describe my reaction as delight.

You're going to tell me that this is the kind of blind passion is just what was wrong with the 60's.  And for those who transformed these feelings not into art but into primitive acts of violence - they were wrong then and they're wrong now.  That's what is so amazing about art.  You can act, and express, through representation instead of concrete acts of violence and hatred.  That's what these enraged men did.  Meanwhile, the women artists were pretty angry, as you can imagine.  One of them, Valentine de Saint-Point, although she agreed with their ideas, had some of her own to go along with them.  Like this:

"Women are Furies, Amazons, Semiramis, Joans of Arc, Jeanne Hachettes,  Judith and Charlotte Cordays, Cleopatras, and Messalinas: combative women who fight more ferociously than males, lovers who arouse, destroyers who break down the weakest and help select through pride or despair, "despair through which the heart yields its fullest return."  

I wish I knew more because there's so much more to this; the impact of Cubism on all of it, the way it affected artists in nation after nation, and, most of all, the sheer energy of art that, instead of freezing a moment, seems to set it free and follow it.    

 

Kevin Spacey, David Letterman, Twitter and Moms Rising - All in One Post!!!

OK so I'm in London and a friend posts this on my Facebook page.  And I should be telling you more about London and that we're leaving for Paris this afternoon (on the Eurostar!!) for the weekend but this is just fun.

ALSO on that same Facebook page though, from Moms Rising, is this:  

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner “...we are now lagging behind the rest of the world in closing the gender gap. According to the World Economic Forum, the US ranks 31st of 128 countries overall, but 76th in educational attainment, 36th in health and survival, 69th in political empowerment, and 70th for wage equality for similar work. In the representation of women in our Congress, we rank 71st."

Reps. Maloney, Biggert reintroduce Equal Rights Amendment

Source: maloney.house.gov

Congressman Carolyn Maloney

So when you're finished laughing at Kevin and Dave, think what we can do about these devastating numbers!l   I've just gone to work at Causes Managing Editor at Care2 and we have an active women's rights section there - and we all know plenty of other places to raise some hell.  Somehow, seeing it all aggregated like this makes it worse, no?