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.
Defining Myself: Progressive, Pissed-off, Action-prone, Multiple Genre Music Lover, and Late Boomer
There is one thing I love about blogging every single day in these monthly blog challenges like NaBloPoMo, and that is finding new blogs that I can learn from. Dangling participles or not, cross-sectional slices of culture are deserving of a dollop of whipped cream in my book, almost as much serendipitous mind-bending explosions of realization that everything has changed (since some unbounded time in the past that we consciously or unconsciously us as a reference.) What the hell am I talking about? Stuff I’ve “discovered” this morning, oh silly one. It is Saturday. I intended to write about the complete and utter dishonesty of corporate identities and how they lie with impunity. But I also intended to write about “self” for GBE2 which I have decided is a dy-no-mite community of women writers and readers in a way that is completely different from so many of the purported communities I see online. So do bear with me as my first cuppa joe kicks in and I cool down from a quick doggie-dash around a few blocks with my pooch Daisy before the temps climb to the 102˚F it is expected to get up to today. It is June in Tucson! It is 80˚F at 8 a.m. The humidity has risen a bit from a few days ago, thank heavens, to 13%, so it isn’t quite as dehydrating to just breathe as it was. Did I mention it is hot?
I’m consciously trying to put more of my self into my writing. I am not disclosing more, in fact I may well disclose fewer personal “facts” as my voice takes on more of my personality. I know exactly when I found my writing voice. It was when I wrote Art, Angst & Zeitgeist which I published on July 24th, 2002. But then I became distracted by a little old thing called War that had evolved from the invasion of Iraq and turned into the occupation of Iraq. I wrote as Pink Tucson from 2004 to 2007 and published on various blogs, but that was only a part of my self. My truest depiction of myself is as a Late Boomer. I can’t help it. I am from the very top of the demographic birth bubble that was the post WWII baby boom. That boom peaked in 1957 and I was born smack dab in the middle of that year. Sid Vicious and I were both born mid-May of that year. Others in the “oh my god, where are we going to put them all” year of 1957 include: Judge Reinhold, Spike Lee, Fran Drescher, Steve Buscemi, LeVar Burton, Melanie Griffith, Gloria Estefan, Lyle Lovett, Vanna White, and Osama bin Laden, Katie Couric… you get the idea. Not exactly Hippie Boomers, now are we?
I started thinking about compadres this a.m. when I sat down to write. I then flipped on Pandora and it was on an ambient/new age “station” and when I went to change it over to something that had a better chance of playing Neko Case, Natalie Merchant, or Calexico, I saw that the piece that was playing on the spa music station was by Rick Wakeman. My ex from my errant youth imagined himself a Rick Wakeman type guy. He wasn’t, but he listened to Yes, long after I decided Patti Smith was more my type. Somehow it struck me as hysterically funny that the trip-meister, rock icon is making elevator and massage music! This was in juxtaposition to stumbling over, pre-coffee, to a fellow politico, nablopomo sojourner at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News who is big into sustainability, but grabbed my attention with reference to The Mote in God’s Eye and Van Halen’s Jump. The inclusion of these two refs suggest that this guy is no spring chicken. Now, say, with reference to, er, Peter Gabriel, for example, you don’t know if you are talking to some panty waist Gen X-er or a British Art rock devotee from the early-mid 1970s. But Van Halen? I resisted the urge to mention him in reference to “Jump” which is the nablopomo theme for this month because he is so 70s and reminds me of all the things I was glad to get away from when I left the mid-west where the 1970s never left.
Okay…. now to get to the corporate liars part of this post” – watch this little split cam presentation about how the duplicitous right was trying to set up Planned Parenthood by lying with film so as to have “evidence” for the ridiculous legislation introduced, and defeated, this past week. They sent this woman out to attempt to entrap a social worker who actually mentioned adoption and was very non-judgmental with a client who was obviously psychotic or an actor. This is a Huffington Post clip that I found that perfectly captures the lying, manipulation, and attempted entrapment that is mainstream right-wing politics. The article that highlights the heavily edited sting video is here.
After I watched this comparison video, I did some digging into sex-selective child abuse via a U.S. government statistics in a report entitled, Child Maltreatment 2010, which is available at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/index.htm#can. It does not exist from what I can tell per the extensive, fifty-state coverage of data in this 200 plus page report. If there was any sex selective abortion being widely practiced in this country, it would also show up in sex selective child abuse and death, which it doesn’t. This whole thing is so contrived it would be ridiculous if it wasn’t intended to limit the rights of women to legal and necessary healthcare.
Hmmm….. self? This was supposed to be a post about “self.” I guess I’m a progressive, pissed off, action-prone, multiple genre music lover, and Late Boomer.
Iconic Figures Receive Presidential Medals of Freedom
What an amazing group of people honored at the White House today! Those bestowed with the Medal of Freedom included:
Bob Dylan, Juliette Gordon Low, Toni Morrison, and John Glenn topped the list of those honored this day who touched my life and are household names for large swaths of the America public. I get a bit sappy here and say, “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.” For me it blows among the trees of campsites where Girl Scouts learn to lead and take charge. The backpacks of older girls are apt to contain a book with a strong woman’s voice on issues of equality and pride in difference. And somewhere within this web of good and proud actions and service, the final frontiers for us expanded beyond the bounds of the earth. There were many honored today, 13 in all, including the four individuals already mentioned in my sappy little tribute.
Honorees:
- Pat Summitt, retired University of Tennessee women’s basketball team coach who lead them to NCAA Final Four appearances, bringing women’s basketball national attention and respect.
- Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the first woman to hold the job.
- John Paul Stevens, former Supreme Court justice.
- John Glenn, the first American in space to circle the Earth.
- Toni Morrison, writer,
- Shimon Peres, president of Israel. He will receive his medal at a White House dinner next month.
- John Doar, Assistant Attorney General in the 1960s, who actively implemented civil rights laws at a turbulent time in hostile locations.
- William Foege, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who helped lead the effort to eradicate smallpox as a Director of the CDC.
- Dolores Huerta co-founded the organization that eventually became the United Farm Workers of America. Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth.
- Folk singer and rock icon Bob Dylan changed the voice of America and captured the sentiments of a vast human rights movement.
Posthumous recipients:
- Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, who died in 1927.
- Jan Karski, a resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation of Poland during World War II. He died in 2000.
- Gordon Hirabayashi, who fought the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. He died in January.
Media coverage of the award ceremony emphasizes President Obama’s acknowledgement of the profound impact of the honorees had on him personally. I was moved by the group as a whole. At first I did not understand why the ceremony leapt out to me as significant. Then I realized it is because President Obama is from the same cohort as me. He is member of the later born Baby Boomers, a group called Late Boomers a group distinctly different from the Early Boomers. There have been two other Presidents who were at the very leading edge of the post World War II baby boom; both President Clinton and George W. Bush were born in 1946. President Obama was born in 1961. The Baby Boom spanned 1946 to 64 as officially defined by the U.S. government and 1946 to 68 demographically as defined by birth rates.
The culture of the 1960s and 1970s was extremely different from the Post WWII culture. This collection of individuals honored today probably resonates with a group of Americans who are proud of a very different America than the one to which Romney wants us to return. Geesh, didn’t he ever read Thomas Wolfe? You really can’t go home again.
Anyway, the things I did yesterday were still spinning around in my head when I flipped on the TV today and saw the Presidential Medal of Freedom award ceremony. I felt a sense of pride beyond militarism or jingoism that I don’t get to feel for my country as often as I would like.
I spent yesterday reading about General Smedley Butler as a way to educate myself about military history. I can’t watch or read about wars since the Korean because it makes me think of my brother who was injured twice in Vietnam in 1968, can no longer walk, suffers from PTSD, and is in real decline and receiving far less from the V.A. than he, or any veteran who served and gave so selflessly, should be receiving. Then last evening I watched Hemingway and Gellhorn on HBO, a great depiction of two important 20th Century writers, within the framework of the Century’s wars that brought them together. Together, this juxtaposition made me consider the elemental nuance of time periods that can be lost if we do not search them out and honor them. No one wins wars any longer. So who writes history? The answer of course is that we do. What we choose to do becomes life, and what we choose to remember becomes history.
I was really moved to see the times within which I have lived most of my life being honored through some of the best people who shaped those times. It made me proud to see people who shaped good parts of my world be honored for shaping good parts of my country and world. It gives validity to my cohort that has so often been besmirched as a ruthless or shallow “Me Generation.” We see our first Presidential representative shown more disrespect than any President since the Civil War. But there is something good happening even though we are living in disgustingly divided times; it is a recognition of the good people who shaped the people who are beginning to lead the world as elders. It is heartening.
The Medal of Freedom was created by executive order of the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, on July 6, 1945. Over the decades it has expanded from being awarded to civilians for meritorious service that aided the security of the United States, as in its first awards to civilians who served in WWII. Amendments to the executive order have renamed it the Presidential Medal of Honor and expanded its scope to include eligibility to military and government personnel, and eventually to extend to civilians who have furthered our national interests in profound ways.
The large hubbub created by the awards ceremony, at least it was large relative to the usual amount of press received by such events, signaled not just an interest in Bob Dylan but, IMO, a changing of the guard. These folks influenced not only Obama, but Obama’s cohort, and that signals a turning of the cultural clock as to whom we as a society consider to be our honor-worthy elders. Lots of women and a rock star folksinger… I can dig it!
Rum Diary Review
My husband and I saw the Rum Diary this past weekend. The critics do not like it, but I do. The movie is based on the first and only Hunter S. Thompson novel, written in the early 1960s, though not published until 1998.
The movie offers a thinly veiled autobiographical peek into the early Thompson’s psyche. To any person seeking to understand a bit more about the not yet gonzo journalist while he was still finding his footing as a writer the film will be intriguing. Of course we will never know for sure what aspects of the novel and now film were and were not based on actual experiences of Thompson, but the feel is right at many levels. I have not spent tons of time in Puerto Rico but I spent a month there, and scenes were reminiscent of things I experienced there living on a regular old street in a beach town and on a nearby island and bombing range, Culebra, where I vacationed for a few days while in the area. The bombing range features prominently in the plot although it is never specifically named in the film.
For later born Baby Boomers, of whom I am one, Hunter S. Thompson was an iconic figure as we came of age. And even though the timeline in this novel takes place before some of us were even born, the life and work of Thompson such as Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail 1972 and his regular articles in Rolling Stone during the 1970s framed many of our views on political events and on popular culture.
Late Boomer Johnny Depp (b. June 9, 1963) isn’t alone in his belief in the importance of Hunter S. Thompson as a writer and cultural icon to those of us who polishing our world views at the height of Thompson’s influence. The proto-gonzo, parts of the male anatomy to the wall, journalist in this film rails against the same nemesis that was enemy to counter culture when Late Boomer political psyches were forming and enemy to the 99% today: greedy and heartless capitalists (not all capitalists fit this description) and complacent media that care more for advertisers and bottom lines than the need to report the truth.
This is not a feel good movie. There is no happy ending. There are cock fights. The pace of the plot mirrors the stifling heavy tropical atmosphere. The film is sooooo Thompson with its short term belief and passion and its long term pessimism. See it. Not a great film but a necessary reminder about a life that shaped a generation.
Rum Diary Review
My husband and I saw the Rum Diary this past weekend. The critics do not like it, but I do. The movie is based on the first and only Hunter S. Thompson novel, written in the early 1960s, though not published until 1998.
The movie offers a thinly veiled autobiographical peek into the early Thompson’s psyche. To any person seeking to understand a bit more about the not yet gonzo journalist while he was still finding his footing as a writer the film will be intriguing. Of course we will never know for sure what aspects of the novel and now film were and were not based on actual experiences of Thompson, but the feel is right at many levels. I have not spent tons of time in Puerto Rico but I spent a month there, and scenes were reminiscent of things I experienced there living on a regular old street in a beach town and on a nearby island and bombing range, Culebra, where I vacationed for a few days while in the area. The bombing range features prominently in the plot although it is never named in the film.
For later born Baby Boomers, of whom I am one, Hunter S. Thompson was an iconic figure as we came of age. And even though the timeline in this novel takes place before some of us were even born, the life and work of Thompson such as Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail 1972 and his regular articles in Rolling Stone during the 1970s framed many of our views on political events and on popular culture.
Late Boomer Johnny Depp (b. June 9, 1963) isn’t alone in his belief in the importance of Hunter S. Thompson as a writer and cultural icon to those of us who polishing our world views at the height of Thompson’s influence. The proto-gonzo, parts of the male anatomy to the wall, journalist in this film rails against the same nemesis that was enemy to counter culture when Late Boomer political psyches were forming and enemy to the 99% today: greedy and heartless capitalists (not all capitalists fit this description) and complacent media that care more for advertisers and bottom lines than the need to report the truth.
This is not a feel good movie. There is no happy ending. There are cock fights. The pace of the plot mirrors the stifling heavy tropical atmosphere. The film is sooooo Thompson with its short term belief and passion and its long term pessimism. See it. Not a great film but a necessary reminder about a life that shaped a generation.
BlogHer11
The conference is just starting – a.m. of the first day, though I was at the business path section of pathfinder day yesterday. BlogHer has changed so much in the last few years.
Corporations have arrived. BIGTIME. I will be talking about semiotics and corporations in many different ways from the differing perspectives throughout the next month on my topical blogs. Yes, there will be opinions, evaluations and tips. Pay attention chill ones, there is much to learn.
Brands are listening. Brands are doing things right. Brands are doing things wrong. The best ones are listening. The not best ones are hoping for free content
Quickly–just to review my current pitches for BlogHer for readers who are checking me out through a connection made at the conference.
N.F.Hill is my business.
Casita Gaia (TM) is a branded component of N.F.Hill dedicated to the interplay of local community driven economy and informed trajectories specifically directed by networks of women. Tucson-based.
My blogs are topical. Please don’t tell me I have too many interests. Think of my blogs as categories.
Mother Hurt is a blog about Munchausen by Proxy medical child abuse.
Late Boomers is a term I coined and worked five years on developing and pitching, successfully I might add, the distinct cohorts to baby boomers an the demographers and marketers who categorize them and serve to them.
Build Peace is my political blog that has been around for a long time. I’m biased, progressive, and female — live with it. Most of my accounts of pink adventures reside on this blog.
Done Nesting is for empty nesters who do not feel empty. It is an “evolved” Mommy Blog. All mommy bloggers will become the demographic I’m talking to and about with any luck.
Casita Gaia is having a blog carnival on August 20 to celebrate Tucson’s Birthday. Neighborhoods in Tucson celebrate the birthday of The Old Pueblo in August every year. Think of it this way – I am hosting a cyber-neighborhood event.
Explore. Drop me a note. Comments on posts will be opened.