Sometimes things seem to align. Right now the writings of several people I read, the comments on my posts, and just knowing and having met many of these women writers in the last year or so convinces me that there is a wisdom brewing.
Many of us write from monikers real, imagined, or somewhere in between out in cyberspace, that suggest midpoints in midlife, although I think we all know that the midpoint of our lives is apt to be behind us unless we live to be over 100.
I cannot speak for the other women, but I know that for me I have been thinking about the ending of individual lives and how we personally feed into the human legacy. I realize that I might be a bit young to be thinking about what we leave behind, but I guess I tend to be an outlier in most things. As an anthropologist I am intrigued by what we as individuals add to the nebulous collective of knowledge and structures and rules that we call culture. Recently facing the reality of probably losing another brother in the near future brings the theoretical into the world of personal, practical, nitty-gritty reality.
I am 57. I am an elder of the Late Boomer Cohort within the so-called Baby Boom Generation. Sid Vicious and I were born within a week of each other and I have taken on the comparison as a mantle so as to show that Punks obviously delineated something significant breaking away from our older Hippie brothers and sisters. I try to use female examples wherever possible, but I have not found an easily recognized icon of my own gender that fits the bill as well as Sid does. Patti Smith rose up in the rock world at the same time as Sid, but she is one of the oldest of the Boomer Gen. I guess that shows that women of the Boom couldn’t sneak through the cracks into the new cultural paradigm until a critical mass of change burst through the barriers and opened a new ecosystem, or at least a new niche, defined by a new level of open communication and personal determination.
Women began to really come into their own when reliable birth control allowed larger and larger numbers of women to direct the course of their lives more than at any point in human history. The later born boomers are the women who were just becoming sexually active as Roe v. Wade was decided. The 1970s were where the trends of the 1960s became real in the lives of the culture as a whole. The last half of the Boomer Generation are the first women to have had self-determination for all of their adult lives. We are also the first group of women to have a level of comfort with the interconnectivity that the online world brings with it.
This is a shift of seismic proportions that is still playing out as human culture works this development into the mix. Women who are of an age to become a wise woman, an elder, to sit at the grandmothers’ counsel right now have perspective that was impossible to fathom even a generation ago.
The balance of power is shifting. Let us continue to work toward wisdom, as the women elders we are developing into have more important work in preservation of the world and humanity, as part of that living system, than any generation has faced. We are up to the task. We are finding our way, making our way.
Autumn and Bygone Days
In the spring I do, in the autumn I think.
We are an urban people now who reckon time passing by the changing of decorations in stores and the types of sales offered by retailers.
As a woman who grew up playing, observing, and walking amid overgrown fence-lines, that I like to think of as hedgerows, I try to keep seasons alive in the old way of knowing I learned through experience that the climate, weather, and seasons guide our lives and activity.
I am a bridge. I embody and represent a connection between generations and lifestyles. My parents were 41 and 42 when I was born in 1957. I ride along the top of the demographic wave, the bell curve, that is the Baby Boom. My mother would celebrate her 100th birthday next month if she lived.
I do not remember there being no electricity or plumbing in the house, but my brothers did. They remembered using horses to pull farm equipment. Modernizations came after WWII and before I was born. Our central heating was a coal-burning furnace in the basement. These facts shock my coastal and urban friends. But in the midwest and intermountain west the Rural Electrification Program was a big deal and farming communities saw their cities and major highways have power lines run along them in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Electric pumps allowed water into houses in the same way we know it today. A few houses, ours included, had gravity fed baths and sinks, supplied from attic-based tanks.
The contemporary urban migration and expansion into the agricultural hinterlands began in the 196os bringing factory and office workers into previously agriculture-based communities. My favorite book as a child was Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House that presented this change in the way wee ones could understand.
The the time and length of the evening progression of waining light was noticeable and the night skies were dark. Living on a farm, we spent lots of time out of doors for work and relaxation. Some of my favorite memories of being a little child are from being outside in the backyard with my dad after dark. He would point out which lights were what: a pole-light from a farm a mile down the road, a satellite, a star or planet. Echo was the first satellite he pointed out to me. I remember him making sure I knew how to find the North Star. He also wanted me to memorize Longfellow’s poems about American History; The Song of Hiawatha, and The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere were favorites of his.
I grew up in the midst of a vanishing lifestyle. The small, mixed crop, farm of the late 19th and early 20th Century had already given way to the small corporate family farm of the mid-late 20th Century when I was small. A man, one tractor, and land he owned and farmed was extremely old-fashioned when compared with the multiple, rented farms, big equipment, and incorporated businesses that were what most of my friends from farming families experienced as kids. I think of this during autumn when so many living systems become dormant in the temperate and Northern latitudes. Some will come to life again in the spring, and some will not.
The fall is harvest season. There is deep-seated satisfaction about seeing the rewards of spring and summer’s labors gathered, preserved, and stored for the coming winter. Though I now live where trees stay green the year around, I feel the pull of learned ways to harvest and prepare for long winter months. But there is no longer a need to do this, so I sit on the patio, warm breezes and hummingbirds keep me company and I ponder other times and the old ways that live on only in my memory. Sometimes I feel like the last passenger pigeon must have felt one hundred years ago.
The Personal Nature of Politics
Those who know me fairly well, or know me over time, will know that I have strong political beliefs. Those who do not know me but have read recent pieces I have written may be surprised that I would talk politics when my brother is in hospice and his life weighs so heavily on my heart and soul.
My brother, the little brother of my family, is nine years older than me. I was born into a family of four brothers who were at various points between 9 and 18 years of age when I was born.
Most of us do not consciously think about family as a concept much while we are young. Family, like so many essential elements of human life, is so integral to our identities that we do not, cannot, separate the concept from our very selves. As a deviant (yes I am one, and it is okay) a psychological only, an analytical observer from an early age, and an accidental after-thought to a family, I probably think about family in relationship to culture and identity more than most people.
Roger is the only brother I actually remember as a brother, as someone with whom I remember playing. Cops and robbers – I was the robber in jail (my crib,) – Cowboys and Indians, and so on in a litany of 1950s-influenced, early-1960s game variations.
These were profound and defining memories that distinguished him from my older brothers whom I loved, but who seemed more like what was probably more typical of an avuncular relationship.
His actions, viewed from a sisterly perspective, taught me the ways of the real world.
- My first political discussion was with him. I was probably about four or five years old and maybe as old as 7, and we were walking together up from the barnyard to chicken coop. The conversation topic was the Cold War and propaganda. I said something about how the Russians would find our farm to be a wonderful place. He laughed and said he didn’t think so.
- My first awareness of global politics rending apart personal lives was with him. In 1968 he walked across a street in Hue and the television screens of a hundred thousand homes, including mine, on the nightly news, helmetless, mustached, with an M14 slung over his shoulder.
- My first awareness of police targeting of individuals was when I was in high school and the local cops began a decades long vendetta to jail him, one of those purportedly whacked out vets, for pot.
- I first kept silent about personal assault when I was sexually assaulted when I was 15. I could not let anyone know because I knew he that if he knew, he would kill the rapist and I did not want my brother to be executed or serve life in prison.
War, a needless war against an ideological boogeyman, communism, half-way around the world from where we lived, sliced and diced his flesh like so much meat. It hurt and hardened his psyche in a way that still breaks my heart. He was the last soldier out of Khe Sanh, horrifically wounded there during the first week of August, in 1968, six weeks after the official end of the battle.
Through him I learned that countries and the economies in which those countries operate use the children of the poor, the underclass (whether through conscription or the economic draft) as cannon fodder and regard us as little more than slaves and sub-humans. I see everything from taxation, in which we are taught to use the phrase “income tax” when we refer to wage taxes (to the exclusion of taxes on making profit from money, which is what income is) to election law and the Citizens United Supreme Court decision (talk about double speak!) that grants corporations, and the families they serve, the rights of individuals with none of the responsibilities, through this lens.
The pain and horror my brother suffered, because of war, impacted my family and all we were and are, and all we did and do, since the the late 1960s.
Women, the mothers-sisters-wives-daughters of the warriors who fight for the ruling classes and corporations, are the ones who must change our culture. The price the workers and soldiers pay to preserve a society that cares nothing for them is a high one. The price is the destruction and permanent underclass status of the families we women build and nurture.
My brother taught me this. It is political. It is personal.
A Milan Kundera Day
Today I am struggling with being and nothingness.
My mind travels from the bleak, drenching, 21st Century Arizona rain to artful black and white photos my mother never snapped of pans filled with shelled peas my brother and I had spent hours extricating from pods on an Indiana, summer afternoon.
Creativity allows me to examine an imaginary composition, a nonexistent thing, but a very real thing, prior to my mind assembling them just a few minutes ago.
The photo’s context is black and white too. A large bank barn, sets at the top edge of a long slopping hill. In front of the barn is a solid tamped-down barnyard with another outbuilding to the north located just before it also dips down to meet a tiny stream that drains a nearby wooded knoll. A rusty two-bottom plow rests there too, where last spring, it was detached from the old John Deere.
Closer still, to the vantage point of the scene, is a country lawn a few feet higher than the barnyard. In this imaginary, contextual panorama a skinny boy, scarcely adolescent, sits in a stiff gangly, non-pose in an aluminum lawn chair. A well-used aluminum pie-pan, filled with raw peas, rests in his lap. He wears denim dungarees, and a plain white t-shirt, and sports roundish tortoise-shell, horn-rimmed glasses. His hair is cut short, but the front has a little bit that stands up.
He seems fragile, and anxious, constrained by an unknown future so heavy it already presses in on him and weights him down.
I am there, too. I am incidental to the scene and too young to know more than the moment, the sunshine, and the bright, starchy crunch of raw peas. I am next to the lawn chair, lying on my stomach. I’m distracted, not noticing Mom taking the picture, by a sticky, sweet dance of a honey bee on the soft spikes of a clover blossom. I cannot imagine the scene being any different than it is.
Another non-existing moment, that is much harder to imagine, is of nuclear-tipped missiles being deployed against an island, Cuba, by my country at this very same moment/non-moment.
I wish I could not, now, imagine that second image as it hints at a real future. Maybe not a real moment from the Cuban Missle Crisis, but to a continuation of Cold War battles waged in Asian Jungles.
In the third image, I imagine that skinny boy in ten more years.
I am the same age as that pea-picking boy in the first picture. The vantage is from a second story farmhouse window looking down to the midnight black silhouette of a young man. Cigarette in hand, he leans against a vivid-red, Plymouth. The car, A Road Runner, a muscle cart hat he purchased, brand new, that shouted to no one in the night, “I am alive! I survived. Fuck you!” The car is outlined against the light gravel of the driveway. The red-hot glow of the cigarette punctures the moment and tears a rift in time as a maelström of shredded flesh and shrieking wraiths of Khe Sanh detach from this man and are sucked into a collapsing universe of another dimension.
Even at that moment, bits of him were already connected to that netherworld.
Soon the connection will be complete, and I will watch the scene unfold, alone, from that long-ago bedroom window; this time I will be alone in this universe and his journey to the netherworld will be complete.
Boomer Blogging Bog-down
Women have chronicled family history, recorded life events, written diaries, and journaled for all the centuries since writing became feasible through technological advancements. We still do, but for some of us this is just what we do, we write no matter what the limitations of our access to technology, there are lots of options when the muse is cooperative.
My muse has not been cooperative as of late. I am getting back on my feet after being sick for a few weeks. When I am not feeling well I am overly critical of everything I do. I make unfair comparisons of my self with others. I knew I was seeing things askew when I decided I could not read my friends and fellow mid-life bloggers because they made me feel jealous of their achievements. Now that I am getting back my balance and perspective I am wondering why I reacted in such an exclusionary fashion.
Speculation on motivational undercurrents in women’s blogging
The group of women I consider to be my peers in the blogging world are mainly women I have met through the BlogHer blogging network. That is where the similarity ends. We are incredibly diverse in our backgrounds. We all bring distinct elements of what it is to be a successful 21st Century writer to the table. There are many kinds of success.
- Being published on a high circulation site, paid or not, is considered success by some.
- Making money from advertising is considered success by others.
- High number of readers is considered the goal by some.
- Writing sponsored posts for a recognizable national corporation the goal for some.
- Being able to blow your own horn about success can be viewed as being a successful marketer.
- Reaching readers with a message is the pinnacle of achievement for others.
- Being considered a good writer by peer writers is an honor for many.
- Being an expert and blogging may increase the perception of a writer as a subject expert.
- Some blog as a necessity for their business site.
Women’s life situations differ dramatically too
One of my main problems, in addition to battling depression, is that my support network of one, the Hubby, is not all that supportive of anything I do that does not either involve working outside the home for at least 30 hours a week, or making more money than him. He recently told me, “I don’t know why you think you have to be a successful entrepreneur. Can’t you just go get a job?” Scientists are at times distant and diminish the importance of everything other than work similar to their own. I’ve heard this from spouses of both sexes with partners who are scientists.
Other bloggers have supportive and successful partners and spouses who underwrite their efforts with action and moral support, while others have partners who underwrite the costs of professional start-up, networking expenses, and travel.
That said, there are some folks who have come to blogging with perks that are unrelated to writing, per se, after having worked in an industry for years, and they bring their networks or expertise with them.
Still others just have the seemingly innate ability to sell, sell, sell themselves. Marketing is a skill that comes naturally to some.
Why write this?
At times I have to remind myself of all these things, so I thought that someone else might want to see them too.
Our lives and paths are very different. But each of our life situations bring blessings and curses.
I was born a writer. I was also born an anthropologist. Neither are practical occupations though they provide for an interesting life.
I was born poor, my family was not supportive emotionally, and my only mentor in life is a brilliant but eccentric academician.
By the time I was 30 I had learned to trust no one. By the time I was 40 I was so broken that I had to do a complete restart to re-evaluate and rebuild my self. Other than for my daughter, I felt I had nothing but a fair intellect that was positive in life. I wrote about subjects that were important to me, but I did not really write myself into the story.
Then on my 49th birthday I found myself again. Over the course of the 50th year I learned a great deal about who I was coming together as in this rebuilding. I decided to build a network of connections through the Blogging Conference I adopted as my professional conference. It was a good choice.
I think I am talking to all the women writers who face challenges that at times seem insurmountable. Allow yourself time and space, and if necessary even envy when you need to step back and regroup for whatever reason. If you have a talent that can share and a passion to do so, it will come back to you. You may not have money, the perfect support system, or luck, but you have the fire inside you and that burns as long as you live. I am convinced of it. If I can lose my way, get knocked down, become demoralized by comparing myself to others, and then get back up and start all over again, then you can too.
This year I will turn 57, and having been born in 1957, I have decided to consider this a magical point in my life. In the next month, or so, until my birthday, I will write a few personal pieces on what I know about — how to keep going. I am nothing if not tenacious and resilient.
Getting bogged down for a bit isn’t so bad. The bog or swamp goddess told me so. That is one of the reasons she, Nerthus, is my twitter handle. @nerthus.
Google, Doctor Who, and Me
I just found out that in NZ, on the other side of the world and on the other side of the International Date Line, released the Google Doodle commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first airing of an episode of Doctor Who. It is an 8 bit Dr. Who Game to celebrate and recognize 50 years of the Doctor.
Lot’s of non-nerdy type folks my age do not recognize the importance of Doctor Who. I participated in a blog hop that went live today that was supposed to be about the Kennedy assassination. Downer. Trendy. Obvious. Important but obvious. My juxtaposition of the event with another 50th anniversary, that of Doctor Who, did not resonate well with most of the other “hop” participants… nice ladies close to my age. I certainly did not get the same number of comments that most the where I was and what I was doing posts in the “hop” seemed to get. Perhaps I seem strange to them, perhaps my post seemed irreverent, but I did not want to write about an assassination. I wanted to connect with the time and culture. And there were other things going on 50 years ago. I know, I was there. Space exploration was big.
Most gray-haired, I need a color touch-up, pudgy to plump, grandma-type humans are not techy-nerdy types. But I am. I have never fit in with my own cohort, the people who should be my tribe. Sometimes this makes me sad. I blame my mother. Really. I’m working on a book about that. She isolated me most of my childhood. But I digress. I have found great comfort in the ability to observe my culture and society. Because of that observant nature I see things that others do not take the time to notice. It is not that they cannot. It is that they do not or have not. I have no special abilities, but I am always heartened when some of my peculiarities are shown to be not so peculiar. This time I was right on track with no less than Google.
The rest of the world is reliving a day in time when our new age with its glorification of personal violence was cemented as a constant via the cathode ray tube. I am to but not, not to the same degree or in the same way. Doctor Who mystique is for nerd culture, outsider culture, and released a game tribute doodle for the Saturday world while the Friday world mourned a man long dead and in many ways mourned the birth of their culture.
I love these little juxtapositions. I love life. I love its intricacies. I detest glamorizing assassination. I’m so glad there has been something else on which I have been able to focus this week.
In a few hours I will be able to watch new programming on BBC about the the history of the series and a new drama about the creation of the series.
- Nov 22 8:00PM Doctor Who: Explained
- Nov 22 9:00PM An Adventure in Space and Time
That is today. If you are still trying to catch up and figure out about The Doctor I recommend reading this online summary about this week of special programming.
Tomorrow there will be a new episode with the two most recent Doctors, and the fun continues on Sunday with the top episodes with Matt Smith as voted for by Whovians.