If my grandmother Blanche were around to read the headlines today, I know just what story she would tell: in the mid-1920s, at the height of the Florida land rush, she was working in a real-estate office in Palm Beach. Times were flush and sales were booming. This exuberance was on display in a showy mosaic map of Florida embedded in the office floor.
To highlight Palm Beach, the artist had cemented in a shiny silver dollar. Before long, the speculative bubble burst, helped along by a hurricane. One morning my grandmother and her colleagues arrived at the office to discover that someone had chiseled the silver dollar right out of the floor. Times were that hard.
Blanche ended up losing her house, her car and all the money she had saved for my father's education. Those things, though, she seldom mentioned. Instead, she told me about the stolen silver dollar. It comforted my grandmother, I believe, by reminding her that in her misfortune she was far from alone.
I was raised on Depression stories; this was only one of many told around our dinner table. Hearing them again and again, I became fascinated by the role that stories play during hard times—the way they seem to strengthen people, offering a bulwark against loneliness and feelings of personal failure. That is how I came to find myself spending a year in a dimly lit storage room in the Library of Congress, sorting through thousands of interviews with ordinary Americans telling of how they survived the Great Depression.
The stories were collected in the late 1930s by the Federal Writers' Project, a unit of the Works Progress Administration that employed out-of-work writers. But before the intended series of anthologies could be published, the Writers' Project was Red-baited out of existence. The oral histories—of tobacco farmers, smugglers, midwives, jazz musicians, oil roustabouts and others—ended up crammed in rickety filing cabinets in a remote storage room in the library stacks.
When I learned of these forgotten stories, I decided to try to finish what the project had started by editing an anthology of the material. Sifting through the 150,000 pages in the dusty storage room, I was looking to fall in love. And I did—with a collection of people who were by turns scared, determined, funny and brave, and whose clamorous vitality seemed to burst from the pages. I fell in love with Marie Haggerty, a Massachusetts housemaid who talked about how, when her employer left a $5 bill on the floor, "my face burnt like fire, for I knowed I was gettin' tested." With Irving Fajins, who while trying to organize his fellow workers at Macy's hit upon the idea of secretly distributing the union literature via the toilet-paper dispensers. With Lloyd Green, a Pullman porter who lamented his move north to the big city: "I'm in New York, but New York ain't in me."
The inhabitants of those file drawers told stories about how they got by using a mixture of ingenuity and guile. They hawked lucky charms and patent medicine made from "roots and barks and good raw whiskey." They peddled cake flavoring and cased sausages, they auctioned tobacco, they fished and smuggled rum—and sometimes aliens—from Cuba to Key West. They worked in coal and granite and cotton and iron. ("You ain't an ironworker unless you get killed.")
The women quilted and pressed laundry, stitched shoes and danced in burlesque shows. They took in boarders and delivered babies, and when their men ran out on them, they swallowed their pride and threw rent parties, as Bernice Porter described doing in 1920s Harlem.
These days, we may not be passing the hat at parties to come up with rent money, but we are in the midst of an economic meltdown. Now that hard times have returned, I believe storytelling is due for a revival. While the Federal Writers' Project is no longer around, it has inspired a modern version in StoryCorps, a five-year-old oral-history organization that encourages people to "celebrate one another's lives through listening." And we have just elected a president who invited us on his transition Web site to "Start right now. Tell us your story."
We need again to imagine a future that is meaningful in the face of difficult circumstances. Listening to each other's stories may grant us a sense of common purpose that money can't buy.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, November 3, 2008
Talking to Studs
Telling Studs Terkel a story was not a relaxing experience. He listened really hard. And what he heard was what you would have said, had you been a more expressive and insightful version of yourself. Your job was to rise to his estimation of you. If this was an unnerving prospect, Studs was ready to pitch in and help. His magpie imagination was ever on the alert for stray bits of meaning and chance strands of connection.
You might find yourself absently mentioning a random detail that seemed to have no particular point or place in the narrative. Studs would seize on it, hold it up to the light, and marvel at how brilliantly it illuminated the theme you were developing. “There was something you said earlier,” he’d say, and rewind the tape and show you what he meant. “Listen to this,” he’d say. “You see? You see?”
Studs liked to call himself a guerrilla journalist, but I think that is exactly wrong. Journalism demands a consecutive habit of mind; Studs was much too non-linear for that. He always took the scenic route. And guerrilla implies stealthy tactics, which was never Studs’ way.
It suits most interviewers to distract their subjects from the tape recorder. Just ignore it, they will say, secretly hoping that they can steal off with some juicy morsel the interviewee never meant to reveal. Studs, on the other hand, deliberately drew attention to his mechanical beast, using it to create a sense of theater, the auditory equivalent of a proscenium arch.
The self-consciousness that lesser interviewers try to finesse with their tiny, unobtrusive recording devices, Studs used to raise the bar on his subjects. There was no way, talking into his lapdog-sized reel-to-reel machine,* that you were likely to forget it was there. Instead, he made it feel as though that you and he were going to use the bulky instrument to create something, and that together you would settle on its meaning.
Of course that was only part of the story. The several thousand words of mine that begin on page 43 of American Dreams: Lost and Found were culled from a 50-page interview transcript. As Studs described his method, this “rough, unexpurgated material” was panned for gold, molded into a narrative and given a title. I was “The Wanderin’ Kid,” in his book, and my interview appeared sandwiched between “The Travelin’ Lady” and “The Indian.”
To be honest, it’s embarrassing to read “The Wanderin’ Kid” today. I sound young, which I was, and eager to expound on my every thought. I’m touched that he captured my struggles to reconcile my happy childhood memories of Army post life with the larger meaning of the world I grew up in. The distant boom of guns, artillery practice, sounded like a lullaby to me. But I’m slightly mortified by the undercurrent of resentment Studs detected. My political awakening seems to have been fueled as much by pique that on Army posts men got all the attention as by any misgivings about American imperialism. I told Studs, “The feeling I had was that these men who got to lord it over others, just because they jumped out of airplanes, were macho. My only weapon was to make fun of it.”
Was this my truth, highlighted, as Studs once called the edited oral histories? I might not be eager to admit it, but I imagine that’s what I was thinking in those days. Studs just listened so hard that he got me to say it.
*Later, Studs switched to a smaller, but still dictionary-sized Sony.
You might find yourself absently mentioning a random detail that seemed to have no particular point or place in the narrative. Studs would seize on it, hold it up to the light, and marvel at how brilliantly it illuminated the theme you were developing. “There was something you said earlier,” he’d say, and rewind the tape and show you what he meant. “Listen to this,” he’d say. “You see? You see?”
Studs liked to call himself a guerrilla journalist, but I think that is exactly wrong. Journalism demands a consecutive habit of mind; Studs was much too non-linear for that. He always took the scenic route. And guerrilla implies stealthy tactics, which was never Studs’ way.
It suits most interviewers to distract their subjects from the tape recorder. Just ignore it, they will say, secretly hoping that they can steal off with some juicy morsel the interviewee never meant to reveal. Studs, on the other hand, deliberately drew attention to his mechanical beast, using it to create a sense of theater, the auditory equivalent of a proscenium arch.
The self-consciousness that lesser interviewers try to finesse with their tiny, unobtrusive recording devices, Studs used to raise the bar on his subjects. There was no way, talking into his lapdog-sized reel-to-reel machine,* that you were likely to forget it was there. Instead, he made it feel as though that you and he were going to use the bulky instrument to create something, and that together you would settle on its meaning.
Of course that was only part of the story. The several thousand words of mine that begin on page 43 of American Dreams: Lost and Found were culled from a 50-page interview transcript. As Studs described his method, this “rough, unexpurgated material” was panned for gold, molded into a narrative and given a title. I was “The Wanderin’ Kid,” in his book, and my interview appeared sandwiched between “The Travelin’ Lady” and “The Indian.”
To be honest, it’s embarrassing to read “The Wanderin’ Kid” today. I sound young, which I was, and eager to expound on my every thought. I’m touched that he captured my struggles to reconcile my happy childhood memories of Army post life with the larger meaning of the world I grew up in. The distant boom of guns, artillery practice, sounded like a lullaby to me. But I’m slightly mortified by the undercurrent of resentment Studs detected. My political awakening seems to have been fueled as much by pique that on Army posts men got all the attention as by any misgivings about American imperialism. I told Studs, “The feeling I had was that these men who got to lord it over others, just because they jumped out of airplanes, were macho. My only weapon was to make fun of it.”
Was this my truth, highlighted, as Studs once called the edited oral histories? I might not be eager to admit it, but I imagine that’s what I was thinking in those days. Studs just listened so hard that he got me to say it.
*Later, Studs switched to a smaller, but still dictionary-sized Sony.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Black Like Him
Remember Susan Smith, the young South Carolina mother carjacked by a black man who drove off with her two sons still in the car? Remember Charles Stuart, the Boston man robbed by a black man with a “raspy voice,” who also killed his pregnant wife? Now Ashley Todd has joined their ranks as creator of yet another lurid tale involving a fictitious black male criminal. Todd doesn’t need remembering, since she has starred in several recent news cycles.
The young, white McCain volunteer decided to stage her very own dirty trick. She would fake an attack on herself by a black man, purportedly enraged that she was working for the Republican campaign. She turned up at a police station in North Carolina with a black eye and the letter “B” scratched in her cheek -- which, a McCain flack helpfully pointed out to a reporter, stood for “Barack.”
You might think that this story would have excited suspicion right from the start, especially since the “B” was scratched backwards, Todd apparently not having figured out to reverse the image in the mirror. In the photographs her stage-makeup black eye looked like it would have yielded to a damp handkerchief, and apparently did, since it had disappeared by the time of her perp walk.
Todd’s story finally unraveled when no record of her was found on the security camera at the ATM where she claimed to have been withdrawing money at the time of the attack. Before she confessed, however, Todd reportedly received sympathetic phone calls from both McCain and Palin, and a concerned note from the Obama campaign expressing the hope that the perpetrator would soon be brought to justice.
Ashley Todd is a disturbed young woman and obviously not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Certainly her failed hoax wasn’t orchestrated by the campaign. Republicans are the party of Karl Rove, after all; they can do better. But it’s horribly depressing to witness the return appearance of this pernicious fabrication. The predatory Black Man. Him, again. He’s 6’4” and is wearing a track suit. Maybe a knit hat. He has a raspy voice. And a gun or possibly a knife. The details vary, but not by much, since the perpetrators of this particular falsehood tend to be imaginatively challenged. So it’s pretty much the same old story.
Our best hope is that the audience for it is dwindling. That would be a change I could believe in.
The young, white McCain volunteer decided to stage her very own dirty trick. She would fake an attack on herself by a black man, purportedly enraged that she was working for the Republican campaign. She turned up at a police station in North Carolina with a black eye and the letter “B” scratched in her cheek -- which, a McCain flack helpfully pointed out to a reporter, stood for “Barack.”
You might think that this story would have excited suspicion right from the start, especially since the “B” was scratched backwards, Todd apparently not having figured out to reverse the image in the mirror. In the photographs her stage-makeup black eye looked like it would have yielded to a damp handkerchief, and apparently did, since it had disappeared by the time of her perp walk.
Todd’s story finally unraveled when no record of her was found on the security camera at the ATM where she claimed to have been withdrawing money at the time of the attack. Before she confessed, however, Todd reportedly received sympathetic phone calls from both McCain and Palin, and a concerned note from the Obama campaign expressing the hope that the perpetrator would soon be brought to justice.
Ashley Todd is a disturbed young woman and obviously not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Certainly her failed hoax wasn’t orchestrated by the campaign. Republicans are the party of Karl Rove, after all; they can do better. But it’s horribly depressing to witness the return appearance of this pernicious fabrication. The predatory Black Man. Him, again. He’s 6’4” and is wearing a track suit. Maybe a knit hat. He has a raspy voice. And a gun or possibly a knife. The details vary, but not by much, since the perpetrators of this particular falsehood tend to be imaginatively challenged. So it’s pretty much the same old story.
Our best hope is that the audience for it is dwindling. That would be a change I could believe in.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
John McCain's Imaginary Friend
So John McCain is taking his imaginary friend campaigning with him in Florida. Candidate McCain has just kicked off a bus tour called the “’Joe the Plumber’ Keep Your Wealth Bus Tour.” Joe, being imaginary, will not actually be on the bus. The real Joe, as everyone knows by now, is not named Joe, does not have a plumbing license, and is a tax delinquent. Or he was until a sympathetic Oregon radio host raised $1,200 to pay his tax bill, Queen-for-a-Day-style.
In his famous exchange with Barack Obama, Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher fretted that his ability to buy a business would be undermined by the Obama tax plan – although in fact, an Obama administration would improve Wurzelbacher’s bottom line. Since he earns around $40,000 a year, he actually would get a bigger tax cut under Obama’s plan than under McCain’s, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. [http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/]
You’d think that these revelations would enough to make the Republican to tiptoe quietly away from their new Everyman. But wait, there’s more! As one blogger put it in a headline, “Joe ‘the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher related to Charles ‘the Crook’ Keating.” Oops.
It turns out that Joe is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher, son-in-law of Charles Keating of the infamous savings and loan scandal that tainted McCain’s early political career. You might think that the campaign would have done a better job vetting the man they planned to reference 22 times in the final debate. You might also think that Joe the Plumber was a Republican plant.
Either way, it makes no difference. A week later, the real Joe’s story is out there, his tax arrears, his unlicensed status, his disreputable relations. Yet Joe the Plumber has transcended these inconvenient facts and become Joe the Political Metaphor. A story in yesterday’s Miami Herald reports on a Florida polling phenomenon they call the “Joe the Plumber Effect,” which apparently has improved McCain’s standing in Florida.
For an imaginary friend, Joe seems to be working out pretty well for John McCain. Better than his imaginary enemies anyway.
In his famous exchange with Barack Obama, Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher fretted that his ability to buy a business would be undermined by the Obama tax plan – although in fact, an Obama administration would improve Wurzelbacher’s bottom line. Since he earns around $40,000 a year, he actually would get a bigger tax cut under Obama’s plan than under McCain’s, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. [http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/]
You’d think that these revelations would enough to make the Republican to tiptoe quietly away from their new Everyman. But wait, there’s more! As one blogger put it in a headline, “Joe ‘the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher related to Charles ‘the Crook’ Keating.” Oops.
It turns out that Joe is a close relative of Robert Wurzelbacher, son-in-law of Charles Keating of the infamous savings and loan scandal that tainted McCain’s early political career. You might think that the campaign would have done a better job vetting the man they planned to reference 22 times in the final debate. You might also think that Joe the Plumber was a Republican plant.
Either way, it makes no difference. A week later, the real Joe’s story is out there, his tax arrears, his unlicensed status, his disreputable relations. Yet Joe the Plumber has transcended these inconvenient facts and become Joe the Political Metaphor. A story in yesterday’s Miami Herald reports on a Florida polling phenomenon they call the “Joe the Plumber Effect,” which apparently has improved McCain’s standing in Florida.
For an imaginary friend, Joe seems to be working out pretty well for John McCain. Better than his imaginary enemies anyway.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
McCain Hearts ACORN
The time: 2006. The place: Miami. The occasion: a rally co-sponsored by ACORN, the community advocacy organization that a Republican spokesman recently called a “quasi-criminal group.” The keynote speaker: a man who is now running for President of the United States.
He addresses the enthusiastic crowd with these words: “What makes American special is in this room tonight.” The room erupts in cheers . . . for John McCain. Yes, the same man who is now “worried” about Barack Obama’s ties to ACORN, says he needs to “explain” them. Here’s the tape: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV9HX1Tjhyw
So I am worried, Sen. McCain – as recently as two years ago, you were praising the very same quasi-criminals you now deem a threat to our democracy. Can you explain?
He addresses the enthusiastic crowd with these words: “What makes American special is in this room tonight.” The room erupts in cheers . . . for John McCain. Yes, the same man who is now “worried” about Barack Obama’s ties to ACORN, says he needs to “explain” them. Here’s the tape: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV9HX1Tjhyw
So I am worried, Sen. McCain – as recently as two years ago, you were praising the very same quasi-criminals you now deem a threat to our democracy. Can you explain?
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Sarah "Pro-Choice" Palin
Governor Sarah Palin is famously opposed to abortion - even in cases of rape, and even, as she said in 2006, if the victim were her own daughter. Since then, the governor has walked the walk - unlike the hypocritical Rhode Island legislator I once interviewed who voted to bar abortion counseling in that state, and then arranged for his teenaged daughter to get an abortion in New York.
Two years after Palin delivered that speech, her teenage daughter Bristol is pregnant -- though not as a result of rape -- and she will be having the baby. Palin herself has also faced a situation where many have chosen abortion. Pregnant at age 44, she learned as a result of a blood test that the child she was carrying had Down syndrome. Baby Trig now accompanies her on the campaign trail
Yet according to her standard stump speech, the adamantly pro-life Palin apparently did make a choice when told that the baby would have special needs. She and her husband “talked, prayed, reflected and ultimately decided to have the child,” the New York Times reports. According to my thesaurus, “decide” is a synonym for “choose.” A decision is a choice.
Sarah Palin was still a child when many women in this country fought for the right she would later avail herself of, the right to reflect and then to choose. I wonder whether her daughter was allowed the same control over her own reproductive fate -- since Palin also believes that minors should be required to have parental consent to get an abortion.
In her own life, it seems that Sarah “pro-life” Palin is also Sarah “pro-choice” Palin. I'm all for that. You chose, Sarah, as was your right. Think hard about the justice of denying that right to others.
Two years after Palin delivered that speech, her teenage daughter Bristol is pregnant -- though not as a result of rape -- and she will be having the baby. Palin herself has also faced a situation where many have chosen abortion. Pregnant at age 44, she learned as a result of a blood test that the child she was carrying had Down syndrome. Baby Trig now accompanies her on the campaign trail
Yet according to her standard stump speech, the adamantly pro-life Palin apparently did make a choice when told that the baby would have special needs. She and her husband “talked, prayed, reflected and ultimately decided to have the child,” the New York Times reports. According to my thesaurus, “decide” is a synonym for “choose.” A decision is a choice.
Sarah Palin was still a child when many women in this country fought for the right she would later avail herself of, the right to reflect and then to choose. I wonder whether her daughter was allowed the same control over her own reproductive fate -- since Palin also believes that minors should be required to have parental consent to get an abortion.
In her own life, it seems that Sarah “pro-life” Palin is also Sarah “pro-choice” Palin. I'm all for that. You chose, Sarah, as was your right. Think hard about the justice of denying that right to others.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Votezilla
I've just had my first experience of registering voters and I believe I may have missed my calling. Not only did I love it, but to my surprise, I was good at it. Normally I hate accosting strangers. I may be one of the few women around who would rather get hopelessly lost than stop and ask directions. There's always a tape playing in my head of the reasons someone probably doesn't want to talk to me: they're late for an appointment; it's time for their son's nap; they just had a fight with their husband. Even if they're not in a hurry, maybe they're in a bad mood.
But armed with a clipboard and a fresh batch of crisp white voter registration forms, I turned out to be unstoppable. No excuses. Kids fussy? I'm happy to amuse them while you fill out your form. Need to check in for a doctor's appointment? I'll sit with you in the waiting room while you get this done. Aren't eligible to vote because you are an ex-felon? Wait! The law has changed! Sit right here and we'll get you registered. It will only take a minute.
Not everyone needed persuading. Many people I met had already registered to vote, and some expressed great enthusiasm about our efforts. There were hugs and offers of help. Thus I enlisted several deputies, including Kenneth Eady, a young man who told me that he was planning to attend a vice-presidential-debate-watching party that night at a skating rink. The voter registration deadline was looming and he was sure that some of the guests still needed signing up. I gave him all the forms I had left. “When everyone gets there,” I joked, “just lock the door and don't let them out until they've filled out the forms.”
I phoned the next day to see how things had gone, and discovered that Kenneth also had succumbed to registration fever. After signing up a dozen or so new voters at the roller rink, he'd acquired a second batch of forms from the Vote from Home headquarters. I caught him just as he was about to head out and start canvassing campus restaurants. “There are only two more days!” he reminded me, and I knew someone else had found a calling.
But armed with a clipboard and a fresh batch of crisp white voter registration forms, I turned out to be unstoppable. No excuses. Kids fussy? I'm happy to amuse them while you fill out your form. Need to check in for a doctor's appointment? I'll sit with you in the waiting room while you get this done. Aren't eligible to vote because you are an ex-felon? Wait! The law has changed! Sit right here and we'll get you registered. It will only take a minute.
Not everyone needed persuading. Many people I met had already registered to vote, and some expressed great enthusiasm about our efforts. There were hugs and offers of help. Thus I enlisted several deputies, including Kenneth Eady, a young man who told me that he was planning to attend a vice-presidential-debate-watching party that night at a skating rink. The voter registration deadline was looming and he was sure that some of the guests still needed signing up. I gave him all the forms I had left. “When everyone gets there,” I joked, “just lock the door and don't let them out until they've filled out the forms.”
I phoned the next day to see how things had gone, and discovered that Kenneth also had succumbed to registration fever. After signing up a dozen or so new voters at the roller rink, he'd acquired a second batch of forms from the Vote from Home headquarters. I caught him just as he was about to head out and start canvassing campus restaurants. “There are only two more days!” he reminded me, and I knew someone else had found a calling.
Election '08: Showtime in Ohio
The energetic young men and women who organized VoteToday Ohio want to impart some crucial training before their crew of 60-some volunteers hits the campuses, neighborhoods, job counseling centers and other places where likely voters may be found. First there are celebrity introductions to be made. Our numbers include people from many parts of the country and as far off as England, we are told. There is even a honeymooning couple, Vic and Yoni, who have been helping to save the redwoods in California and now are wrapping up their wedding trip by registering voters in Ohio. Vic and Yoni are adorable and we all applaud loudly.
The next volunteer to be introduced is Michael Guston. He is a character actor - L.A. Law, ER, The Practice - and he looks familiar in the way that character actors often do. “Everyone thinks they went to high school with me,” he says. But in fact I also look familiar to him, and it turns out that we have been New York City neighbors for many years. He recently moved to upstate New York near the Pennsylvania border and now spends many hours a week canvassing Pennsylvania voters. Guston plays General Tommy Franks in W., Oliver Stone's new movie about the President, which will open at the end of this month. There is sustained applause for him as well.
Finally the organizers present a tiny, elderly woman sitting in the back row. I don't catch her name, but when she stands, the crowd goes wild with clapping and cheering. She is Howard Dean's mother, and in this group there could be no greater claim to fame. She has come to Ohio with friends to register voters during “Golden Week,” a small window in early October during which it is possible to simultaneously register to vote and cast your ballot.
The training session proceeds in a very organized fashion, as the organizers describe what they want to accomplish, and how we should go about it. Politely, for one thing -- we are not to pester people to sign up. The sole note of discord is when the vehicles in which we are hoping to transport voters to the polls are referred to as “vans.” The consensus is that we should call them shuttles instead, as “vans” sounds slightly sinister.
Just as we resolve this weighty matter, a staff member comes in with an announcement: “Good News!” she tells us. “The Ohio Supreme Court just upheld the challenge to the early voting window.” Since we had no idea that the policy was even under appeal we were not as relieved as the organizers - who had wisely decided not to share with us that the entire program was in jeopardy.
Tomorrow is showtime, and we're ready to rumble. Politely, of course.
The next volunteer to be introduced is Michael Guston. He is a character actor - L.A. Law, ER, The Practice - and he looks familiar in the way that character actors often do. “Everyone thinks they went to high school with me,” he says. But in fact I also look familiar to him, and it turns out that we have been New York City neighbors for many years. He recently moved to upstate New York near the Pennsylvania border and now spends many hours a week canvassing Pennsylvania voters. Guston plays General Tommy Franks in W., Oliver Stone's new movie about the President, which will open at the end of this month. There is sustained applause for him as well.
Finally the organizers present a tiny, elderly woman sitting in the back row. I don't catch her name, but when she stands, the crowd goes wild with clapping and cheering. She is Howard Dean's mother, and in this group there could be no greater claim to fame. She has come to Ohio with friends to register voters during “Golden Week,” a small window in early October during which it is possible to simultaneously register to vote and cast your ballot.
The training session proceeds in a very organized fashion, as the organizers describe what they want to accomplish, and how we should go about it. Politely, for one thing -- we are not to pester people to sign up. The sole note of discord is when the vehicles in which we are hoping to transport voters to the polls are referred to as “vans.” The consensus is that we should call them shuttles instead, as “vans” sounds slightly sinister.
Just as we resolve this weighty matter, a staff member comes in with an announcement: “Good News!” she tells us. “The Ohio Supreme Court just upheld the challenge to the early voting window.” Since we had no idea that the policy was even under appeal we were not as relieved as the organizers - who had wisely decided not to share with us that the entire program was in jeopardy.
Tomorrow is showtime, and we're ready to rumble. Politely, of course.
Politics and Sleeping Bags
"Bring a sleeping bag and a hearty spirit," the memo says. Sure to the spirit part. The sleeping bag? I don't think so. The memo, written by twenty-somethings, showed up in the email boxes of four women old enough to be their mothers - me and my friends who, in response, are about to set out to register voters for a week in Ohio. The occasion is "Golden Week," a week in early October during which it is possible for Ohioans to register to vote and to vote on the same day. Our posse is eager to help our chosen candidate, but there are limits. Even though the organization we'll be working with has offered to find housing for all the volunteers, my friends and I are well past the age when sleeping on the floor is a viable alternative. We will spring for hotel rooms, instead.
I am reminded of a time when a certain level of roughing it seemed an important part of any political event. It was one of the big marches on Washington to protest the Vietnam War, and I went with friends then, too. We took a long bus ride from my home in New England and crashed on the floor of somebody's living room. I did know a couple of older people, grown-ups with families and professional jobs who attended the demonstration -- and who traveled there by plane.They flew in and out on the same day - no floor sleeping involved. I was appalled. Because they were so rich (by my standards) they were missing out on an essential part of the experience. Fast forward many decades and I am they.
Grass-roots campaigning is a young person's game. People my age usually do things like organize and attend benefits, and write checks. Nevertheless my friends and I will convene tonight at The Surly Girl pub in Columbus, Ohio to meet the (young) organizers of VoteToday Ohio and hear what's in store for us. We're marching in their parade this week, and that's as it should be. It's now their future, not ours, that is hanging in the balance. I'm ready to do anything I can to help. Except sleep on the floor.
I am reminded of a time when a certain level of roughing it seemed an important part of any political event. It was one of the big marches on Washington to protest the Vietnam War, and I went with friends then, too. We took a long bus ride from my home in New England and crashed on the floor of somebody's living room. I did know a couple of older people, grown-ups with families and professional jobs who attended the demonstration -- and who traveled there by plane.They flew in and out on the same day - no floor sleeping involved. I was appalled. Because they were so rich (by my standards) they were missing out on an essential part of the experience. Fast forward many decades and I am they.
Grass-roots campaigning is a young person's game. People my age usually do things like organize and attend benefits, and write checks. Nevertheless my friends and I will convene tonight at The Surly Girl pub in Columbus, Ohio to meet the (young) organizers of VoteToday Ohio and hear what's in store for us. We're marching in their parade this week, and that's as it should be. It's now their future, not ours, that is hanging in the balance. I'm ready to do anything I can to help. Except sleep on the floor.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Post Office Denies Absentee Voters
One day last week, Cara Loriz went to the post office in Shelter Island, New York, in search of an application for an absentee ballot. There weren’t any. Earlier this year, she was told, the U.S. Postal Service had ordered local post offices to stop making the forms available in their lobbies. Loriz was not only a prospective voter, however. She also is editor of the local newpaper in tiny Shelter Island, NY (pop. 2800), and she began looking into the story.
She obtained a copy of a USPS directive, dated August 22nd and faxed to post offices nationwide, explicitly banning applications for absentee ballots in lobbies. The directive lumps ballot applications together with partisan political material like flyers. (The directive also told postmasters that the distribution of voter-registration forms was “optional.”) Absentee ballot applications have never before been prohibited, according to a 25-year veteran Postal Service supervisor who spoke to Loriz.
The prohibition caught the Suffolk County Board of Elections off guard. An official there confirmed that it had it had long been standard practice to supply stacks of absentee voter applications to post offices, and indeed, voters calling the Board in search of the applications were still being told to go to their local post office.
Recently the Associated Press issued a report predicting that one-third of the nation will vote early, largely through mailed absentee ballots. Loriz turned over the results of her investigations to Congressman Tim Bishop and Senator Chuck Schumer, who are looking into the suppression of voter access.
Loriz’s story is at http://www2.timesreview.com/SIR/Stories/I-voters-09-25. Her accompanying editorial is at http://www2.timesreview.com/SIR/stories/I-edits-09-25
She obtained a copy of a USPS directive, dated August 22nd and faxed to post offices nationwide, explicitly banning applications for absentee ballots in lobbies. The directive lumps ballot applications together with partisan political material like flyers. (The directive also told postmasters that the distribution of voter-registration forms was “optional.”) Absentee ballot applications have never before been prohibited, according to a 25-year veteran Postal Service supervisor who spoke to Loriz.
The prohibition caught the Suffolk County Board of Elections off guard. An official there confirmed that it had it had long been standard practice to supply stacks of absentee voter applications to post offices, and indeed, voters calling the Board in search of the applications were still being told to go to their local post office.
Recently the Associated Press issued a report predicting that one-third of the nation will vote early, largely through mailed absentee ballots. Loriz turned over the results of her investigations to Congressman Tim Bishop and Senator Chuck Schumer, who are looking into the suppression of voter access.
Loriz’s story is at http://www2.timesreview.com/SIR/Stories/I-voters-09-25. Her accompanying editorial is at http://www2.timesreview.com/SIR/stories/I-edits-09-25
Monday, July 7, 2008
The Vacation of Lost Things
Things lose themselves. More and more frequently it seems lately. Or maybe it’s just that the longer we live the more we have had time to misplace. When I think back, I believe I could stock a very nice store with all of my possessions that have gone missing. A favorite blue cashmere sweater. Too many pairs of expensive sunglasses to count. Any number of half-read books, some of them the property of libraries. Single earrings in large numbers. A gold watch chain that belonged to my great grandfather (although that was stolen, so it doesn’t count in the same way.) Not to mention all the umbrellas and pens and subway passes and lipsticks.
Where did all of this stuff go? Perhaps to “the island of lost things,” as in a children’s book of the same name. In any case, they are somewhere, stubbornly elusive, despite in some cases intensive searching. I have been thinking about this lately because my husband and I were recently on the vacation of lost things. Every day there were half a dozen panicky false alarms – the camera, the guidebook, the ferry tickets, the hotel confirmation, all turning out to be safely stowed somewhere.
Among the actually lost items were my notebook, hunted for but never found. (Fortunately I had written most of my notes on odd scraps of paper, and I still had those.) My husband’s watch, probably left on a beach, with no hope of retrieval. And, most seriously, his prescription glasses with their clip-on sunglasses.
We were at a boat ramp helping a friend inflate and launch a rubber raft. At some point the glasses were in the way and Peter distinctly remembered putting them “somewhere semi-safe.” Our friend recalled seeing them in her car. We searched for an hour, tore apart both cars, scoured the ground, inch by inch. They had simply vanished. Finally it was dark and we were forced to give up.
The next day, it seemed the only remaining place to look was in the hidden crevices of the boat, which involved partially deflating it, and removing the wooden floor. Unlikely, but then again, the glasses couldn’t actually have disappeared into thin air. Not there. Then Peter decided to look in the one place we had all agreed they could not possibly be: the water. It took about 20 seconds -- there they were, in five inches of water, immediately beside the boat ramp. We were at the time on a Greek island, where every miracle calls for the building of a commemorative chapel on the spot, but instead we decided to go and get a celebratory beer.
Finding the glasses was very good news, especially under the circumstances. But I couldn’t help imagining that our vacation of lost belongings was a portent of things I would prefer not to think about. Leave it to the poets. One of my favorites, Elizabeth Bishop, perfectly summed this up in a poem called “One Art,” which I include below.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
-- Elizabeth Bishop
Where did all of this stuff go? Perhaps to “the island of lost things,” as in a children’s book of the same name. In any case, they are somewhere, stubbornly elusive, despite in some cases intensive searching. I have been thinking about this lately because my husband and I were recently on the vacation of lost things. Every day there were half a dozen panicky false alarms – the camera, the guidebook, the ferry tickets, the hotel confirmation, all turning out to be safely stowed somewhere.
Among the actually lost items were my notebook, hunted for but never found. (Fortunately I had written most of my notes on odd scraps of paper, and I still had those.) My husband’s watch, probably left on a beach, with no hope of retrieval. And, most seriously, his prescription glasses with their clip-on sunglasses.
We were at a boat ramp helping a friend inflate and launch a rubber raft. At some point the glasses were in the way and Peter distinctly remembered putting them “somewhere semi-safe.” Our friend recalled seeing them in her car. We searched for an hour, tore apart both cars, scoured the ground, inch by inch. They had simply vanished. Finally it was dark and we were forced to give up.
The next day, it seemed the only remaining place to look was in the hidden crevices of the boat, which involved partially deflating it, and removing the wooden floor. Unlikely, but then again, the glasses couldn’t actually have disappeared into thin air. Not there. Then Peter decided to look in the one place we had all agreed they could not possibly be: the water. It took about 20 seconds -- there they were, in five inches of water, immediately beside the boat ramp. We were at the time on a Greek island, where every miracle calls for the building of a commemorative chapel on the spot, but instead we decided to go and get a celebratory beer.
Finding the glasses was very good news, especially under the circumstances. But I couldn’t help imagining that our vacation of lost belongings was a portent of things I would prefer not to think about. Leave it to the poets. One of my favorites, Elizabeth Bishop, perfectly summed this up in a poem called “One Art,” which I include below.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
-- Elizabeth Bishop
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Raising the Kids: Whose Job?
In the course of her work, my daughter recently has had occasion to read various “mommy blogs,” an outlet for maternal obsessing that wasn't available when I was a new mother. (Instead I got to bore people in person.) My daughter was horrified by the compulsive preoccupation with every trivial detail of baby care, and it has put her off the whole of idea of motherhood.
She had a similar reaction to a Sex and the City rerun we watched together. It was the famous baby-shower episode, where a mommy character announces that she's given up a career as a corporate senior vice president to stay home with her child. “That is so unrealistic!” Cait said. “No one would ever do that.” “Yes they would, and they do,” I said.
Personally I guess I wouldn't recommend putting a career on the back-burner. Luckily for me I never had to make that choice, not being a senior vice president of anything when I got pregnant. As a self-employed writer, I could shape my work around taking care of my child. I could even channel my maternal preoccupations into my work by writing for parenting magazines. I never had to contend with the heartrending, impossible balancing act of mothers with employers and office jobs.
I wanted to say something reassuring to Cait about how times have changed and there were more options available. I wanted to say that the senior vice president would now be able to take a year of parental leave and return to her previous job without penalty. That the part-time or reduced-hour work week was widely accepted. That there were excellent government-subsidized childcare and education centers, and that these high-quality programs were staffed by trained well-paid workers. That she could contribute to her pension fund even in the years she wasn't working.
Unfortunately, there’s no way I can say such things. Most of these family-work reconciliation measures I mention are taken for granted in Europe. There, caring for the next generation is considered to contribute to the social good. But In this country, we are rugged individualists, where the prevailing attitude is, “you had 'em, you raise 'em.” This backward attitude toward family benefits is unique in the developed world.
Realigning our family policies would be an investment that pays dividends for everyone. Literally. Because these future generations will, if we’re lucky, be paying the taxes that fund our social security dividends
She had a similar reaction to a Sex and the City rerun we watched together. It was the famous baby-shower episode, where a mommy character announces that she's given up a career as a corporate senior vice president to stay home with her child. “That is so unrealistic!” Cait said. “No one would ever do that.” “Yes they would, and they do,” I said.
Personally I guess I wouldn't recommend putting a career on the back-burner. Luckily for me I never had to make that choice, not being a senior vice president of anything when I got pregnant. As a self-employed writer, I could shape my work around taking care of my child. I could even channel my maternal preoccupations into my work by writing for parenting magazines. I never had to contend with the heartrending, impossible balancing act of mothers with employers and office jobs.
I wanted to say something reassuring to Cait about how times have changed and there were more options available. I wanted to say that the senior vice president would now be able to take a year of parental leave and return to her previous job without penalty. That the part-time or reduced-hour work week was widely accepted. That there were excellent government-subsidized childcare and education centers, and that these high-quality programs were staffed by trained well-paid workers. That she could contribute to her pension fund even in the years she wasn't working.
Unfortunately, there’s no way I can say such things. Most of these family-work reconciliation measures I mention are taken for granted in Europe. There, caring for the next generation is considered to contribute to the social good. But In this country, we are rugged individualists, where the prevailing attitude is, “you had 'em, you raise 'em.” This backward attitude toward family benefits is unique in the developed world.
Realigning our family policies would be an investment that pays dividends for everyone. Literally. Because these future generations will, if we’re lucky, be paying the taxes that fund our social security dividends
Garry Trudeau and John McCain
Remember Mark Slackmeyer, aka “Megaphone Mark”? He was part of the original Doonesbury gang, the 60s slacker/activist who has ended up working for NPR, where he and his politically conservative life partner debate each other on the air. Around where I lived, Slackmeyer was a familiar type. (In fact, it was rumored that a local alternative newspaper journalist, a classmate of Garry Trudeau’s at Yale, was the original model for Megaphone Mark.)
We recognized many of the Doonesbury gang in our own circle. It was fascinating watching them grow up, because, unlike other comic strip characters, they did grow up. Like us, only somewhat more slowly. They left their communes behind, got married, had kids, got divorced, went to law school, got jobs on Capitol Hill, got fired, went into rehab. Ups and downs. Like the rest of us.
But in the last several years, Garry Trudeau has thrown something much tougher at one of the old gang. B.D., Michael Doonsbury’s college roommate, has lost a leg in a grenade attack in Iraq. Since his injury, the football coach and former college jock has turned into a moody alcoholic, now undergoing therapy for post-traumatic stress at Walter Reed Hospital.
This new storyline has won Trudeau admiration and awards in some surprising quarters, including the Pentagon and the Disabled Americans Veterans. Even John McCain has done an about face. In 1995, he went on record as saying he held the liberal cartoonist in “utter contempt.” This past year McCain wrote an introduction to Trudeau's The Long Road Home , a collection of his strips about B.D.'s injury and recovery. (The proceeds will go to a veterans’ charity.)
Doonesbury has always been topical, and often controversial. During the Vietnam War Trudeau’s anti-war cartoons were part of a larger protest movement. Because of the draft, that war was central to our generation’s experience. After it was over, many of those who opposed the war came to regard the veterans as victims, not perpetrators.
In the war in Iraq, decades later, Trudeau’s has directed his focus and sympathy to the soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to writing about their issues, he’s a frequent visitor to the injury ward at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and at gatherings of wounded troops.
On his website, Trudeau has also created a virtual community for soldiers – a sort of "Global War On Terror literary magazine,” as he has written. "The Sandbox," is a digest of military blogs, open to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Posts on The Sandbox include a list of 63 items every Iraq-bound soldier should pack (baby wipes, webcam) and attempts to compare real combat with the way it’s portrayed in the movies. (Movies are more interesting,” wrote one soldier. “It’s sort of the banality of being shot at.”)
In providing this forum for active duty soldiers, and in writing about disabled soldiers in Doonesbury, the humorist underlines and important truth as effectively in the era of Bush as in the era of Nixon and Johnson.
http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/
We recognized many of the Doonesbury gang in our own circle. It was fascinating watching them grow up, because, unlike other comic strip characters, they did grow up. Like us, only somewhat more slowly. They left their communes behind, got married, had kids, got divorced, went to law school, got jobs on Capitol Hill, got fired, went into rehab. Ups and downs. Like the rest of us.
But in the last several years, Garry Trudeau has thrown something much tougher at one of the old gang. B.D., Michael Doonsbury’s college roommate, has lost a leg in a grenade attack in Iraq. Since his injury, the football coach and former college jock has turned into a moody alcoholic, now undergoing therapy for post-traumatic stress at Walter Reed Hospital.
This new storyline has won Trudeau admiration and awards in some surprising quarters, including the Pentagon and the Disabled Americans Veterans. Even John McCain has done an about face. In 1995, he went on record as saying he held the liberal cartoonist in “utter contempt.” This past year McCain wrote an introduction to Trudeau's The Long Road Home , a collection of his strips about B.D.'s injury and recovery. (The proceeds will go to a veterans’ charity.)
Doonesbury has always been topical, and often controversial. During the Vietnam War Trudeau’s anti-war cartoons were part of a larger protest movement. Because of the draft, that war was central to our generation’s experience. After it was over, many of those who opposed the war came to regard the veterans as victims, not perpetrators.
In the war in Iraq, decades later, Trudeau’s has directed his focus and sympathy to the soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to writing about their issues, he’s a frequent visitor to the injury ward at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and at gatherings of wounded troops.
On his website, Trudeau has also created a virtual community for soldiers – a sort of "Global War On Terror literary magazine,” as he has written. "The Sandbox," is a digest of military blogs, open to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Posts on The Sandbox include a list of 63 items every Iraq-bound soldier should pack (baby wipes, webcam) and attempts to compare real combat with the way it’s portrayed in the movies. (Movies are more interesting,” wrote one soldier. “It’s sort of the banality of being shot at.”)
In providing this forum for active duty soldiers, and in writing about disabled soldiers in Doonesbury, the humorist underlines and important truth as effectively in the era of Bush as in the era of Nixon and Johnson.
http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/
John Adams: The Courage to Sign
It's not only youth that's wasted on the young, as George Bernard Shaw famously remarked. So is education. Other than learning to read and write, and maybe do the odd sum, is there any point in going to school before you're 40-something or even or 50-something?
Certainly teaching me history was a waste. As a schoolgirl, I was too self-absorbed and my imaginative powers were too undeveloped for me to fully appreciate any historical event. If it happened before I was born, my M.O. was “memorize and forget.”
This occurred to me recently because I am in the middle of watching “John Adams,” the seven-part HBO miniseries about the founding of our country. There are aspects I don't much like about the production, mainly Paul Giametti's John Adams -- he seems to have two facial expressions, both of them cribbed from Homer Simpson.
But I have found the history unexpectedly moving, and have for the first time begun to grasp what it really means. Watching scenes from the Continental Congress, where the terms of Independence were hammered out, I understood for the first time how terrifying it was for these men to repudiate their government -- how extreme an act, and how uncertain of success.
They had reason to be scared. Benjamin Franklin (played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson) expressed everyone's mood when he said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” And so they would have. Because we know how the story comes out, it's hard to fully appreciate the courage and audacity of these 56 men. In signing the Declaration of Independence, they might well have been signing their own death warrant.
Strip away the mythologizing and the pieties of history-books, and the fact remains: those Patriots were extraordinary men. Not only courageous, but also smart. Pretty much the same bunch went on to frame the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they created a substantially new form of government that has proved durable and important.
Certainly teaching me history was a waste. As a schoolgirl, I was too self-absorbed and my imaginative powers were too undeveloped for me to fully appreciate any historical event. If it happened before I was born, my M.O. was “memorize and forget.”
This occurred to me recently because I am in the middle of watching “John Adams,” the seven-part HBO miniseries about the founding of our country. There are aspects I don't much like about the production, mainly Paul Giametti's John Adams -- he seems to have two facial expressions, both of them cribbed from Homer Simpson.
But I have found the history unexpectedly moving, and have for the first time begun to grasp what it really means. Watching scenes from the Continental Congress, where the terms of Independence were hammered out, I understood for the first time how terrifying it was for these men to repudiate their government -- how extreme an act, and how uncertain of success.
They had reason to be scared. Benjamin Franklin (played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson) expressed everyone's mood when he said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” And so they would have. Because we know how the story comes out, it's hard to fully appreciate the courage and audacity of these 56 men. In signing the Declaration of Independence, they might well have been signing their own death warrant.
Strip away the mythologizing and the pieties of history-books, and the fact remains: those Patriots were extraordinary men. Not only courageous, but also smart. Pretty much the same bunch went on to frame the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they created a substantially new form of government that has proved durable and important.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Obama Plays the Age Card
Young people don't vote. That's the conventional wisdom, and this year it's big news that, in the primaries, young voters surged to the polls as they haven't in a long time. In 1970, when the voting age was lowered to 18, 55 percent of the young voters went to the polls, but in recent elections that figure has dropped dramatically.
This year, though, they're coming back--mostly, no surprise, to support Obama. He has delighted them in part by challenging the baby boom generation, whose members, he has said, should "get over themselves."
From an age standpoint, it’s hard to think of another election year that has been as interesting as this one. For the first time ever, three generations are represented in the Presidential horse race. Obama has declared that it's time for a representative of a new generation to enter the White House, namely him.*
Not baby boomer Hillary Clinton, born in 1947, the same year the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. And certainly not John McCain, whose 1938 birth date makes him a son of the Great Depression. The year Obama was born, 1961, was the year John F. Kennedy exhorted Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country." Some seasoned political hands say they see in Obama the youth and hopefulness of JFK.
After 16 years of running the country, maybe it is time for our generation to step aside. But it's annoying to hear Obama sound off on the subject. As even he acknowledges, many of the social reforms we now take for granted were initiated by the 60s politics that he now called "tired." If the Democratic nomination does end up going to him, I imagine he will begin to soft-pedal the anti-boomer rhetoric. We are, after all, still the largest generation in American history and we do vote.
*According to some demographers, Obama, with his 1961 birthdate, qualifies as a late boomer. But he counts himself as part of the baby bust, a.k.a. the boomer backlash. If you doubt there is such a thing, take a look at the blog dieboomerdie.
[http://dieboomerdie.blogspot.com]
This year, though, they're coming back--mostly, no surprise, to support Obama. He has delighted them in part by challenging the baby boom generation, whose members, he has said, should "get over themselves."
From an age standpoint, it’s hard to think of another election year that has been as interesting as this one. For the first time ever, three generations are represented in the Presidential horse race. Obama has declared that it's time for a representative of a new generation to enter the White House, namely him.*
Not baby boomer Hillary Clinton, born in 1947, the same year the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. And certainly not John McCain, whose 1938 birth date makes him a son of the Great Depression. The year Obama was born, 1961, was the year John F. Kennedy exhorted Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country." Some seasoned political hands say they see in Obama the youth and hopefulness of JFK.
After 16 years of running the country, maybe it is time for our generation to step aside. But it's annoying to hear Obama sound off on the subject. As even he acknowledges, many of the social reforms we now take for granted were initiated by the 60s politics that he now called "tired." If the Democratic nomination does end up going to him, I imagine he will begin to soft-pedal the anti-boomer rhetoric. We are, after all, still the largest generation in American history and we do vote.
*According to some demographers, Obama, with his 1961 birthdate, qualifies as a late boomer. But he counts himself as part of the baby bust, a.k.a. the boomer backlash. If you doubt there is such a thing, take a look at the blog dieboomerdie.
[http://dieboomerdie.blogspot.com]
Uncle Internet is Watching
Back in the Dark Ages, before there was an Internet, I subscribed to a newsletter called Privacy Journal. It was edited by Robert Ellis Smith, America's leading expert on the right to privacy. Smith counseled that you should never give your Social Security number without asking why, or if, it was needed. I followed this advice for a while and then gave up because it was too much trouble. In fact, privacy itself became too much trouble. There are only so many issues you can be angry about at any one time, and privacy infringements just did not make the cut.
It may be time to rethink that. A recent article in the New York Times reported on the amassing of consumer information by Web companies that track your every Internet search. They can then use this window into your tastes and desires to personally target the ads that appear on your screen. As a marketing executive explained, with more data, it's possible to put the right ads in front of the right people. "That's the whole idea here: put dog food ads in front of people who have dogs."
A while back, I posted a piece about my Googling habit, in which I described my computer Search History as a kind of stream-of-consciousness autobiography. Now I see that, from a marketer's angle, it's also a wish list. Let's see. Customer Banks orders lots of vitamin supplements; she appears to be a bit of a hypochondriac (though some of those symptom searches were on behalf of others); she's often on the lookout for high-end sheets at low-end prices; she researches more travel destinations than a person could possibly visit; and when she does travel, she is relentless about turning up the absolute cheapest airfare. Lots of possibilities for target marketing there.
Does this matter? Sometimes it might be convenient to get targeted ads, to have Uncle Internet know just what you want. But there's a cost - in privacy, not to mention the general creepiness factor.
The New York Times article quoted one of my favorite-ever New Yorker cartoons from 1993. Two dogs are sitting in front of a computer and one says to the other, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
Now they do.
It may be time to rethink that. A recent article in the New York Times reported on the amassing of consumer information by Web companies that track your every Internet search. They can then use this window into your tastes and desires to personally target the ads that appear on your screen. As a marketing executive explained, with more data, it's possible to put the right ads in front of the right people. "That's the whole idea here: put dog food ads in front of people who have dogs."
A while back, I posted a piece about my Googling habit, in which I described my computer Search History as a kind of stream-of-consciousness autobiography. Now I see that, from a marketer's angle, it's also a wish list. Let's see. Customer Banks orders lots of vitamin supplements; she appears to be a bit of a hypochondriac (though some of those symptom searches were on behalf of others); she's often on the lookout for high-end sheets at low-end prices; she researches more travel destinations than a person could possibly visit; and when she does travel, she is relentless about turning up the absolute cheapest airfare. Lots of possibilities for target marketing there.
Does this matter? Sometimes it might be convenient to get targeted ads, to have Uncle Internet know just what you want. But there's a cost - in privacy, not to mention the general creepiness factor.
The New York Times article quoted one of my favorite-ever New Yorker cartoons from 1993. Two dogs are sitting in front of a computer and one says to the other, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
Now they do.
Are We Scared Yet?
If you are old enough to remember Lassie and hula hoops, chances are your grandparents lived through the Great Depression. You may have been taught in school that the stock market crash of 1929 sent the country on a disastrous 10-year economic decline; you also may have heard, and heard again, personal stories of that time. Often these stories consist of a single memory, one that is meant to stand in for all the rest, and to convey what it was like to live through such an event.
My grandmother's story was this: She was working in a real estate office in Palm Beach, Florida, before the Crash. Sales were booming and times were flush. This exuberance was reflected in a large mosaic map of Florida embedded in the office floor. At the center of the map was Florida’s Gold Coast, and that the center of the Gold Coast was Palm Beach, marked by a shiny silver dollar that the artist had cemented among the tiles.
Not long after, the Florida boom became a bust and my grandmother ended up losing her house, her car and the money she had been saving for my father's education. But the story she told wasn't about that. Instead it was about the silver dollar – and how one morning she and her colleagues came in to work to discover that someone had chiseled it right out of the map. Times were that hard.
For a while after the '29 stock market crash, nobody understood the extent of the economic crisis. Especially the nobodies. On Wall Street, stockbrokers were jumping out of windows. But lots of ordinary people bought the government’s assurances that the shortage of cash was temporary, nothing to worry about. Then something would happen - in my grandmother's case it was the disappearance of the silver dollar - that crystallized the new reality. Yes, times were now that hard.
I haven't come upon my own silver dollar yet, but I'm on the lookout. It stands to reason, when in the same week, a major Wall Street firm collapses and Alan Greenspan announces the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. (Actually he said World War II, but that is essentially the same thing, since it was gearing up for war production that decisively pulled the U.S. out of the Depression.)
I was raised on stories of the Depression. I still have in my possession a photograph of the beautiful Victorian house my grandmother lost. I admit to being a pessimist about money issues, and I sincerely hope I'm wrong this time. But if I see something that looks like it might be my silver dollar, I will let you know.
My grandmother's story was this: She was working in a real estate office in Palm Beach, Florida, before the Crash. Sales were booming and times were flush. This exuberance was reflected in a large mosaic map of Florida embedded in the office floor. At the center of the map was Florida’s Gold Coast, and that the center of the Gold Coast was Palm Beach, marked by a shiny silver dollar that the artist had cemented among the tiles.
Not long after, the Florida boom became a bust and my grandmother ended up losing her house, her car and the money she had been saving for my father's education. But the story she told wasn't about that. Instead it was about the silver dollar – and how one morning she and her colleagues came in to work to discover that someone had chiseled it right out of the map. Times were that hard.
For a while after the '29 stock market crash, nobody understood the extent of the economic crisis. Especially the nobodies. On Wall Street, stockbrokers were jumping out of windows. But lots of ordinary people bought the government’s assurances that the shortage of cash was temporary, nothing to worry about. Then something would happen - in my grandmother's case it was the disappearance of the silver dollar - that crystallized the new reality. Yes, times were now that hard.
I haven't come upon my own silver dollar yet, but I'm on the lookout. It stands to reason, when in the same week, a major Wall Street firm collapses and Alan Greenspan announces the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. (Actually he said World War II, but that is essentially the same thing, since it was gearing up for war production that decisively pulled the U.S. out of the Depression.)
I was raised on stories of the Depression. I still have in my possession a photograph of the beautiful Victorian house my grandmother lost. I admit to being a pessimist about money issues, and I sincerely hope I'm wrong this time. But if I see something that looks like it might be my silver dollar, I will let you know.
"You Had 'em, You Raise 'em"
In the course of her work, my daughter recently has had occasion to read various “mommy blogs,” an outlet for maternal obsessing that wasn't available when I was a new mother. (Instead I got to bore people in person.) My daughter was horrified by the compulsive preoccupation with every trivial detail of baby care, and it has put her off the whole of idea of motherhood.
She had a similar reaction to a Sex and the City rerun we watched together. It was the famous baby-shower episode, where a mommy character announces that she's given up a career as a corporate senior vice president to stay home with her child. “That is so unrealistic!” Cait said. “No one would ever do that.” “Yes they would, and they do,” I said.
Personally I guess I wouldn't recommend putting a career on the back-burner. Luckily for me I never had to make that choice, not being a senior vice president of anything when I got pregnant. As a self-employed writer, I could shape my work around taking care of my child. I could even channel my maternal preoccupations into my work by writing for parenting magazines. I never had to contend with the heartrending, impossible balancing act of mothers with employers and office jobs.
I wanted to say something reassuring to Cait about how times have changed and there were more options available. I wanted to say that the senior vice president would now be able to take a year of parental leave and return to her previous job without penalty. That the part-time or reduced-hour work week was widely accepted. That there were excellent government-subsidized childcare and education centers, and that these high-quality programs were staffed by trained well-paid workers. That she could contribute to her pension fund even in the years she wasn't working.
Unfortunately, there’s no way I can say such things. Most of these family-work reconciliation measures I mention are taken for granted in Europe. There, caring for the next generation is considered to contribute to the social good. But In this country, we are rugged individualists, where the prevailing attitude is, “you had 'em, you raise 'em.” This backward attitude toward family benefits is unique in the developed world.
Realigning our family policies would be an investment that pays dividends for everyone. Literally. Because these future generations will, if we’re lucky, be paying the taxes that fund our social security dividends
She had a similar reaction to a Sex and the City rerun we watched together. It was the famous baby-shower episode, where a mommy character announces that she's given up a career as a corporate senior vice president to stay home with her child. “That is so unrealistic!” Cait said. “No one would ever do that.” “Yes they would, and they do,” I said.
Personally I guess I wouldn't recommend putting a career on the back-burner. Luckily for me I never had to make that choice, not being a senior vice president of anything when I got pregnant. As a self-employed writer, I could shape my work around taking care of my child. I could even channel my maternal preoccupations into my work by writing for parenting magazines. I never had to contend with the heartrending, impossible balancing act of mothers with employers and office jobs.
I wanted to say something reassuring to Cait about how times have changed and there were more options available. I wanted to say that the senior vice president would now be able to take a year of parental leave and return to her previous job without penalty. That the part-time or reduced-hour work week was widely accepted. That there were excellent government-subsidized childcare and education centers, and that these high-quality programs were staffed by trained well-paid workers. That she could contribute to her pension fund even in the years she wasn't working.
Unfortunately, there’s no way I can say such things. Most of these family-work reconciliation measures I mention are taken for granted in Europe. There, caring for the next generation is considered to contribute to the social good. But In this country, we are rugged individualists, where the prevailing attitude is, “you had 'em, you raise 'em.” This backward attitude toward family benefits is unique in the developed world.
Realigning our family policies would be an investment that pays dividends for everyone. Literally. Because these future generations will, if we’re lucky, be paying the taxes that fund our social security dividends
Monday, March 17, 2008
Pious Politicians
Here's a civics question: What successful candidate for President of the United States, when news leaked that he had never been baptized, announced that he'd get to it when he could - probably after the election? Hint: This didn't happen yesterday.
No recent presidential contender could have gotten out of the starting gate with such a casual attitude to the most basic ritual of Christian faith. The correct answer is Dwight D. Eisenhower. (Baptized or not, Ike considered himself a Christian, and it was he who signed off on inserting “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance.) In the half-century since the Eisenhower years, voters have come increasingly to expect candidates to fervently profess a personal relationship to the Almighty, in the form of the Christian God.
How did it happen that such public religiosity became a prerequisite for high office? This question is tackled in a recent book called “God in the White House,” by Randall Ballmer, a professor of religion at Barnard College. A self-professed evangelical Christian, Ballmer is also a firm supporter of the separation of church and state, and no fan of what he calls the “religionization” of the Oval Office.
It has been argued that this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind, that they believed their new nation would be Christian in spirit. Some did, some didn't. Some did one week and didn't the next. Their writings can be (and often are) selectively quoted to favor either side of this issue. But the law of the land which they wisely chose to put in place holds that the institutions of church and state are to remain separate.
I am very uncomfortable when candidates push the God button. Presidential contenders do this while at the same time
No recent presidential contender could have gotten out of the starting gate with such a casual attitude to the most basic ritual of Christian faith. The correct answer is Dwight D. Eisenhower. (Baptized or not, Ike considered himself a Christian, and it was he who signed off on inserting “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance.) In the half-century since the Eisenhower years, voters have come increasingly to expect candidates to fervently profess a personal relationship to the Almighty, in the form of the Christian God.
How did it happen that such public religiosity became a prerequisite for high office? This question is tackled in a recent book called “God in the White House,” by Randall Ballmer, a professor of religion at Barnard College. A self-professed evangelical Christian, Ballmer is also a firm supporter of the separation of church and state, and no fan of what he calls the “religionization” of the Oval Office.
It has been argued that this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind, that they believed their new nation would be Christian in spirit. Some did, some didn't. Some did one week and didn't the next. Their writings can be (and often are) selectively quoted to favor either side of this issue. But the law of the land which they wisely chose to put in place holds that the institutions of church and state are to remain separate.
I am very uncomfortable when candidates push the God button. Presidential contenders do this while at the same time
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