Winding up this year in Blogdonia

I had a lovely New Year's Eve lunch with my Cousin Bethie today. (At left: Me and Cousin Bethie at her son's wedding party in 2009.)




Time to look back at this Mayan year of 2012.

The newest, remarkable thing in Feminist Blogdonia this year, has been the wholesale demise of old-school blogs. Small blogs (one author only) seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur, and only stubborn hold-outs like your plucky narrator remain.

Where'd they go? Well, interesting that you should ask. They have all stampeded to Tumblr, that hip, young, visually-chic new net-destination. No room for grandma on Tumblr... as I said before (see link), I can't even figure out who is saying what. But even if I don't know who is saying what, I CAN read the basic messages... and damn. It's getting ugly over there.

The Tumblr feminists are identifiably young and post lots of cool graphics, videos and photos. They obviously come from affluent families and have advanced degrees; their education and experience can be quite intimidating. (I would not know what to say to any of them, which hardly ever happens.) I can understand why lots of people resent them. The Amazing Atheist informs me in one of his rants [caution, click that at your own risk; he can be pretty offensive to some folks... okay, most folks] that most of the Tumblr feminists do not seem to be into feminist theory or history or any of that boring, wonky political stuff. They mostly like to fulminate about pop culture, 'rape culture', trans women, men staring at them, and whatever else pops in their heads. (Typhon Blue, prominent female men's rights activist, did a funny bit about them also.) Their feminism seems to be a triumph of style over substance.

Clearly, the Tumblr feminists are on everyone's radar. Us Second-Wave ladies here on Blogspot are yesterday's news, the tired old-guard (yawns for emphasis).

But why have they all stampeded to Tumblr? What is it about the place that draws them? Is it inherently easier to post there than it is to post on Blogspot, Wordpress, Livejournal or Dreamwidth? I don't think it is. I think it's the fact that it's new and has an eye-catching layout (multiple publishing options and templates)... AND the fact that no comments are allowed. You can be as offensive as you wanna be, and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. No screaming at you in comments. You do not have to BLOCK people, or babysit threads that threaten to boil over into major flame wars. You can say your piece and be on your way.

But of course, people being what we are, we always find ways to fight. What the Tumblrites do is REBLOG things, and start the fight that way. For example, here is what one such verbal-brawl looks like, an argument via Tumblr reblogging. (See how unclear it is, just who is saying what? Or is it just me?)

The biggest feud in Tumblr Feminist Blogdonia right now, is about transgendered people. I find this fascinating, since I thought the superior young feminists, who have preached to me incessantly since I first started blogging (and have painfully picked apart the comparatively harmless minutiae of my language) knew absolutely everything on the subject of transgender. I was assured they had all that shit settled, and it was only us old fogies who are always wrong every time we open our mouths. And they are still alluding to this, since the label "radfem" (originally designating Second Wave radical feminists; feminists over 40-45) is the word they repeatedly employ to describe women younger than my daughter, who could not possibly have been radfems. This is a creative way to insult young feminists by calling them old hags, without actually saying that... the fact that they might actually insult us older women, by appropriating a term describing us (radfem) and connecting that with something that does not describe our actual political position (transphobia)? Well, who cares, right? (You don't think they actually care about those women who made it possible for them to get those great educations, now do you?) Let's not allow concern over ageism to get in the way of a great feud, amirite?


At left: I finally figured out how to get a photo of my constantly-squirming cat, Cyril. Just in time for New Year's! (see, I can be as narcissistic and off-topic as any of the Tumblr folks)



All joking aside. What I think this tells us: even though the "big feminist blogs" have taken pro-trans positions and have tried to be progressive beacons of equality (and some have failed at that, even so) ... the rank-and-file young feminists have not signed on. Transphobia is rife among young feminists.

This should not surprise anyone. Their politics are mostly undeveloped, since real-life activism is virtually unknown and foreign to the majority of these feminists. They do not do coalition work; they have very little experience in dealing with people in real life who are not of their own social circle and class. Activism is where politics are forged and solidified, and where one quickly learns who one's friends really are.

Sitting around talking, simply isn't where it's at, as we used to say.

And so, on Tumblr, the kidz can air their provincial little prejudices in a safe place. They can raise hell and nobody can comment or object. It makes them feel powerful and it is addicting. Every man a king, as Huey Long famously said... and every woman a queen.

The initial strength of the internet was the free-for-all environment of its countless message boards, chat rooms and blogs... and yet, these seemed to create chaos. They WERE chaos. People became unglued; they got very freaked out and quickly demanded ORDER, and so Facebook and other gated communities came into being, to satisfy the need for cops and babysitters. And so, we now see another desire for chaos... but not GENUINE chaos. The narcissistic, play-acting chaos of yelling your opinions at 96 decibels in an empty room... with no reply and no interruption. The echo sounds nice. The fantasy that you are important is fun. And you can post photos and fancy wallpapers to match your fantasy-self.

And that seems to be where we are right now... or where Tumblr is.

Thanks, but I think I'll stay right here.

Happy New Year, yall.



~*~

PS: Our last podcast of the year! Have a great 2013.

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Vegetarian intestinal distress leads to insightful thinking

I have discovered an excellent reason to stay vegetarian.

After a decade and a half, if you inadvertently eat anything made with meat, you barf your guts out.

I have been sick for several days... and my husband, who ate the same thing (and is not vegetarian) is just fine. It was not food poisoning... or rather, IT WAS, but not the usual kind.

For ME it was.

I guess there is no going back!

The item was already-prepared "chicken-fried tofu"--which I assumed (and you know what they say about that) was not actually fried in chicken. (After all, as Mr Daisy said, frying it in actual chicken fat kinda defeats the whole purpose of eating tofu in the first place, doesn't it?) It seems I have eaten it before (although hardly ever) and did not have this cataclysmic, days-long reaction... but I did eat a significant amount on this occasion. It has been horrific. I am genuinely surprised at my body's response.

It could also be that the person frying it, in this particular instance, went ahead and actually chicken-fried it and didn't consider trying to make it vegetarian. I have often tasted Chinese and other foods, duly advertised as technically "vegetarian" (as in, no meat in the actual recipe) but tasted suspiciously as if possibly dumped into the same wok as the chicken-fried rice, made earlier in the day... after a long time without meat, it jumps right out at you. But imitation-meat flavors are, admittedly, much harder to gauge... the whole focus of the flavor profile is the imitation-meat flavor.

I am not a purist, and I have eaten imitation-bacon-flavored potato chips and so forth, with no negative reactions. I read labels! (Of course, with prepared hot-bar foods, you can't do that.) A "flavor" is usually a chemical, and real meat is not the same as chemically-enhanced "meat-flavor" and never the twain shall meet. So, I assumed I was eating the equivalent of tofu fried in chicken flavors.

Wrong. My ailing intestines and tummy say otherwise.

As I said, sick for days. I even recorded my radio show while still suffering (the show must go on, and all that), so my pissed-off ranting came much easier than usual. Have a listen!

And pity the poor vegetarian who no longer has the 'choice,' as one always likes to think one does.

Perhaps this is a lesson about all such choices: after a certain point, you can't undo that choice, it is permanent. It is not simply a choice of the mind; the body, the life, is irreparably marked with it.

~*~

I have been reading Susan Sontag's diaries... and I am just so jealous of her brilliance. Her one-and-two-sentence observations, just while she is sitting on a beach or whatever, are far more brilliant, incisive, and genius than anyone else's (even as they congratulate themselves for their limited brilliance and clarity). My goodness, how I miss her. I always idolized her, and now I know why: this is the kind of public female intellectual that simply does not exist anymore. She was a pure product of her time.

One thing I did, was trot out to buy a little notebook and resolve to scribble my own (decidedly non-brilliant) observations in it. I can see that she would write lines that later ended up in her other books; ideas that would later direct her thoughts and passions. I can't tell you all how many times I have tried to remember what I was thinking back on Tuesday, only to forget all about it... one thing I have liked about blogging is how it is an accurate, uncensored record of our thoughts and feelings. I have decided keeping a notebook, even of one and two line-passages, is a way to make that even more detailed, more comprehensive, more precise.

~*~


Whilst recovering from my epicurean disaster, I watched TLC network, and although its hard to avoid the constant commercials for Honey Boo Boo (saints preserve us), I was very interested in the new show about conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel. The TLC documentaries about their lives were well-received and popular, and I watched them a couple of times; this show is not surprising. They are extremely likable, smart, capable... and they don't seem at all disturbed that other people are disturbed by them.

In a very real sense, their lack of being disturbed is part of their unique condition: they are together. They are not alone. A person defined as "a freak" by our society, left all alone and gawked at unmercifully (i.e. the Elephant Man), tugs at our heartstrings in an almost-excruciating way. That poor soul, we think, nobody will ever understand him. But Abby and Brittany have each other, and they understand what the other is experiencing. Their very difference itself, makes them strong together. They murmur to each other, they make inaudible one-word remarks and grin. They are able to make fun of us right back. Therefore, they plow onward, unperturbed and undaunted. You can't help but be drawn to them.

And you know, the fact is, it is going to be hard for these girls to make a living in the regular ways. It isn't like they are going to get hired for the local Burger King or Dairy Queen. They are very logical and realistic young women, and at some point, I can see them sitting down for the cost-benefit analysis: okay, how are we going to make money? The Salon article I linked above, asks the obvious question, IS THIS A FREAK SHOW?--but forgets an obvious historic reality: people went into freak shows to be able to eat and find a warm place to sleep. Many of the people in the shows took the proverbial bull by the horns and started running their own shows and were able to retire in relative comfort. Others were exploited by ruthless circus-ringmasters. It was not always obvious which was which, simply by looking.

To me, as in the prostitution business, the question is: who is making the money? The fact is the exploitation, not necessarily the "freak show" aspect. After all, people surround these girls everywhere they go. They might as well start charging. How to do that in a civilized fashion? Reality TV seems to be the ticket. After this TV-series, people will surround them as celebrities, not (only) as 'freaks'. Also, people will have heard of them. They will know who they are and not drop their iced tea in the mall, and start following them around to be sure they saw what they thought they saw, as some reporter did some years ago in Minnesota's Mall of America. (And then, writing a really rude, gee-whiz-guess-what-I-saw article about them, that of course, I cannot readily locate now to properly link.)

Instead, they might actually get some respect, since Reality-TV celebrity is one of the few ways physically-different people can get some respect these days.

And may I also say: Its also very nice to see a whole Reality-TV show in which so many young women are portrayed as decent for a change, instead of the usual nasty, mean-girl bitches. It is heartening to see Abby and Brittany's female support network; when the gawkers descend, they close ranks around them and don't allow them to take unauthorized pictures and videos.

Now, that's something to be proud of, too:

[The TLC show] is unrelentingly positive, and at times flatout heartwarming. In the documentary about them at 16, their mother explained just how protective their friends were, closing ranks whenever anyone would stare at them. In college, the twins seem to have duplicated this kind of sheltered social environment. Unlike so many TV shows — reality and otherwise — “Abby & Brittany” is a kind of soothing ode to the niceness of 20-year-olds, and especially of 20-year-old girls. The women who live with Abby and Brittany [in their college dorm] are normal in that explicitly Midwestern way, which is to say, normal to the point of notability, grounded, smiley, well-adjusted, well-behaved, just like Abby and Brittany. The roommates are a sort of Greek chorus, supplying the audience with the information it needs — about the girls’ physiological differences, how much tuition they pay (one and a half) and the differences in their personalities — and also expressing their endless, genuinely heartfelt admiration of the two and their astounding simpatico.

I won't be able to stay away from the show, and ain't ashamed to say so.

Note: In keeping with the disability-rights concept that disability is a social construct, as I believe it is, I am tagging this blog entry with "disability"--although it is pertinent to note that Abby and Brittany are not "disabled"--as dwarves also are not. But their man-made environment (car seats, college desks, etc) DOES disable them, as it does very small people. People are "disabled" by environments and their minority status, even if they are in perfect health. (i.e. Severely scarred individuals are disabled by other people's reactions to them, not usually by the actual scars.) Just wanted to do a quick commercial for this radical perspective, since Abby and Brittany are a perfect example of it.

~*~

Other links inspired by my new notebook habit:

The Death of Sun Ming Sheu: A Government Sponsored Assassination? Thanks to Onyx Lynx!

William Gibson on Punk Rock, Internet Memes, and ‘Gangnam Style’ Required reading!


As regular readers know, I am fascinated by the multitude of changes wrought by our relatively new internet culture. And so is Gibson:

WIRED: In your essay in the new book Punk: An Aesthetic, you write that punk was the last pre-digital counterculture. That’s a really interesting thought. Can you expand on that?

GIBSON: It was pre-digital in the sense that in 1977, there were no punk websites [laughs]. There was no web to put them on. It was 1977, pre-digital. None of that stuff was there. So you got your punk music on vinyl, or on cassettes. There were no mp3s. There was no way for this thing to propagate. The kind of verbal element of that counterculture spread on mostly photo-offset fanzines that people pasted up at home and picked up at a print shop. And then they mailed it to people or sold it in those little record shops that sold the vinyl records or the tapes. It was pre-digital; it had no internet to spread on, and consequently it spread quickly but relatively more slowly.

I suspect — and I don’t think this is nostalgia — but it may have been able to become kind of a richer sauce, initially. It wasn’t able to instantly go from London to Toronto at the speed of light. Somebody had to carry it back to Toronto or wherever, in their backpack and show it, physically show it to another human. Which is what happened. And compared to the way that news of something new spreads today, it was totally stone age. Totally stone age! There’s something remarkable about it that’s probably not going to be that evident to people looking at it in the future. That the 1977 experience was qualitatively different, in a way, than the 2007 experience, say.

WIRED: What if punk emerged today, instead of in 1977? How do you think it would be different?

GIBSON: You’d pull it up on YouTube, as soon as it was played. It would go up on YouTube among the kazillion other things that went up on YouTube that day. And then how would you find it? How would it become a thing, as we used to say? I think that’s one of the ways in which things are really different today. How can you distinguish your communal new thing — how can that happen? Bohemia used to be self-imposed backwaters of a sort. They were other countries within the landscape of Western industrial civilization. They were countries that most people would never see — mysterious places. You’d pay a price, potentially, for going there. That’s always cool and exciting. Now, where are they? Where can you do that? How are people transacting that today? I am pretty sure that they are, but I don’t have that much firsthand experience of it. But they have to do it in a different way.

He's totally nailed it... and I think this explains why I am so startled by the lack of "loyalty"--the lack of "investment"--that young people have in the ideas and lifestyles they adopt today.

That's because they ran across it on the internet, exactly as if they were leafing through a catalog.

I realize now, this is what is behind my constant requests for "cred" in young internet-denizens who challenge me... their challenges are just another fun thing to do, whereas I take them very seriously as challenges to my self. That's because I take such aspects of MY SELF seriously; I sweat for my ideas and experience. I didn't just thumb through some catalog and decide, "I believe/like this; its cool, so its me."

This may also be the reason they rarely ACT on their political ideas, since no ACT was required to gain the knowledge, other than sitting and clicking. Back in the day, you had to work hard for your counter-cultural knowledge, and thus, for some inexplicable reason, you therefore felt obligated to act.

Yes, I know, this whole post is "tl/dr"--as the kids say. (stands for "too long/didn't read"--you didn't expect them to read anything LONG, did you? Is it longer than a soundbite? Fuhgeddaboudit!)

The protracted length is precisely because: I didn't really write it for them. ;)

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Date a geek today

Can I say it? I feel really sorry for people who are dating now.

A whole generation has gone by since I last shopped for males. (In November, we will celebrate our 24th anniversary.) And from the looks of things, it's gotten kinda ugly out there.

I think it must be terrible for people to look you up and down, talk to you for five minutes, then press the buzzer: NEXT. Back in the day, before the internet, things were slower. You usually didn't press the NEXT buzzer until you knew the person fairly well and were CERTAIN it was time to press the NEXT buzzer. And even then, you might keep that person around as a good friend, the way Chris Rock says women keep a man in the wings: "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass." (Yes, she admitted, head hung low, I did that for years. Because as Chris Rock says, you never know.)

This post was inspired by a geek-hating tirade, and I just had to say something.

As an old lady married to a geek, let me say, geeks are the greatest. AND the smartest. (I admit, being married to a genius is important to my self-image.) But I understand that not everyone feels that way. Big Blogdonia hoopla over this intended-humorous post over at Gizmodo. (I thought Gizmodo was a geeky-site, so I was surprised that they would run an anti-geek piece.) Trendy young woman dates a geek, and suffers extended apoplexy:

The next day I Googled my date and a wealth of information flowed into my browser. A Wikipedia page! Competition videos! Fanboy forums! This guy isn’t just some professional who dabbled in card games at a tender age. He’s widely revered in the game of Magic that he’s been immortalised in his own playing card.

Just like you’re obligated to mention you’re divorced or have a kid in your online profile, shouldn’t someone also be required to disclose any indisputably geeky world championship titles? But maybe it was a long time ago? We met for round two later that week.

At dinner I got straight down to it. Did he still play? “Yes.” Strike one. How often? “I’m preparing for a tournament this weekend.” Strike two. Who did he hang out with? “I’ve met all my best friends through Magic.” Strike three. I smiled and nodded and listened. Eventually I even felt a little bit bad that I didn’t know shit about the game. Here was a guy who had dedicated a good chunk of his life to mastering Magic, on a date with a girl who can barely play Solitaire. This is what happens, I thought, when you lie in your online profile. I was lured on a date thinking I’d met a normal finance guy, only to realise he was a champion dweeb in hedge funder’s clothing.

I later found out that he infiltrated his way into OKCupid dates with at least two other people I sort of know, including one of my co-workers. Mothers, warn your daughters! This could happen to you. You’ll think you’ve found a normal bearded guy with a job, only to end up sharing goat cheese with a world champion of nerds. Maybe I’m an OKCupid arsehole for calling it that way. Maybe I’m shallow for not being able to see past his world title. But if everyone stopped lying in their profiles, maybe there also wouldn’t be quite as many OKCupid horror stories to tell.

This post exploded onto several blogs, as the geeks and geek-defenders came out in force. Gizmodo even replied semi-officially and took the guy's name out of the piece. (But with the multitude of information the author has provided, it would be really easy to locate him and his name.) Sady Doyle takes up the charge and defends the initial poster and her account of the shitty date. (NOTE: Sady is far funnier.) Eventually THAT thread has to be closed down too. The whole thing has caused a near-riot in Blogdonia.

Meanwhile, I am rendered mute and remain utterly clueless about the whole thing. Really? A game? Really?

And what's wrong with goat cheese?

See there, I am already hopelessly uncool. I don't even understand the underlying premises of why this man is bad. As far as I can see, he didn't insult her or women in general, did not grab her tit or pinch her ass, was reasonably literate and dressed inoffensively. (She offhandedly says they discussed "normal stuff" and includes "college" as one of those "normal" things... obviously, a man who had not been to college at all would not have been regarded as "normal" or good enough, regardless of his interests or intelligence. In virtually all angry replies to the post, this casual elitism was unremarked upon.) Is it supposed to be bad or good to dress like a hedge fund guy? And why? Is capitalism considered an unbridled good by this person? If the guy had oodles of money (if his card-game-of-choice was the World Series of Poker rather than Magic: The Gathering), would she have been impressed?

Feminism is not just about women. Feminism is also about men. We cannot expect men to transcend their base desires and like us as people, if we are not willing to do the same to them. If we judge men solely by their wallets or their hobbies, we can hardly be angry when they judge us by our boobs or our weight.

Does it shock you when I tell you I married AN UNEMPLOYED PERSON? Of course, now, he has had his job longer than everybody, but when I met him, this was certainly not the case. Sady says there is no such thing as the Frog turning into the Prince and sees this as propaganda for girls to accept Frogs and to be happy with them:

We get a lot of sexist narratives about love, but none of them are more pernicious and subtle than this: The Frog Prince story. You could call it “Beauty and the Beast,” too. Or you could call it “Twilight,” or “Knocked Up,” or “Rory Williams Won’t Stop Whining;” it’s always the same story, anyway. Girl meets guy. On the surface, this guy is unappealing! Because he’s a frog! Or he’s not sexually attractive to her, or he treats her badly, or he’s immature, or he’s Rory Williams and he won’t stop whining; all of these are frog-like states, generally considered unkissable. But only a bitch would think that frogs don’t deserve our sweet, sweet kisses, so the woman doesn’t leave. Instead, she looks for the guy’s good qualities. She lowers her standards; she changes her expectations. She gives up on her silly little “ideas” about “attractiveness” or “compatible lifestyles” or “having fun with her partner.” Finally, she loses touch with her own desires to the point that she winds up making out with a fucking frog. At which point he becomes a prince. Or a loving husband, or a responsible person, or a whiny little Roman Centurion; the point is, in these stories, once you give up on wanting things from men, men magically become what you want.

Here’s the secret, though, if you are the girl in this particular story: That guy never became a prince. At all. He’s still the same guy; he still possesses all those qualities you initially found unappealing, for all sorts of valid reasons. People don’t go from frog to mammal overnight, and they particularly don’t do so because you ask less of them; you are still making out with a frog, in the long run. The only reason he looks like a prince nowadays is that you lowered your standards to the point that you literally could not tell the difference between frog and mammal.

First of all, I was an alcoholic very active in AA when he met me, a single welfare mother with a three-year-old child, so I was not free of my own amphibian tendencies. And maybe those flaws are pretty glaring, but you know, everyone has them. Everyone. But because mine WERE so glaring, I could not lie about them or hide them, and had to face them up front. I was not a terrific bargain, and I did not present myself that way. Perhaps everyone should consider that? (Aside: Working-class and poor kids are frequently asked by their peers, Who do you think you are?, and I often wonder if the middle-and-upper-class kids are ever asked that question, because they sure don't act like it. But I digress.)

And second, I find it interesting Sady thinks the Frog tale is a propaganda story for women... when I think women wrote the story, out of personal experience.

In short, we SAW the prince emerge, so we know. For sure.

As one who has been married three times, let me share something crucial: you do not know who men are until the shit hits the fan. (Yes, I'm afraid the military is right about that one.) Our characters are forged in crisis. Will this man stand by you when you go to court with the ex? When you are sick? Been fired? Lost your mother? How will he respond? What kind of father will he be? You don't know any of this ahead of time, even if you think you do. One of the worst things that can ever happen, is finding out that you married someone who can't deal with emotions or reality, who subsumes himself in work or TV or porn. When you are young and carefree and everything is fun, you can easily handle things. But the first time something HAPPENS (i.e. somebody becomes an alcoholic, okay: ME) and this person can't deal? They will cut you loose and move on. It turns out they are not someone cut out for the long haul, and you had no clue. (How could you have had a clue? Nothing BAD had ever happened before.) You could go years and never know this about a man. And it happened to me.

What you want is a man who understands what true partnership means. These men are rare, so rare in fact, that you shouldn't turn them away just because they play the wrong game. Really, that is the least of it. (Some hints I can offer in retrospect: during the dating period, does he keep his distance when you are upset or yowling? Does he say, "call back when you have calmed down"? Move on. When you have children together, he will treat them like shit and refuse to deal. Because as you probably know, kids yowl all the time.)

The secret to being married a long time is: Your souls merge. Your MINDS merge. You may not like his games, but you will learn about them nonetheless. Even more than that: you will learn what traits he displays while playing said game, and why it makes him so happy. Similarly, he may not like your stuff either, but he will learn the lyrics of Who songs anyway. Eventually, you hear him tell someone else that the Who was great, and you privately preen. Just to yourself.

At this point, we finish each other sentences, or don't even bother with whole sentences.

Example: TV commercial comes on.

Him: "That reminds me of..."

Me: "Yeah, but that was a different actor."

Him: "No, same guy."

Me: "You sure?"

Friends: stare at us dumbfounded, and we don't even know why, until they tell us.

And I like it that way. :)

So here I am, defending the geeks. Because I am happily married to one, and have been for a long time. And girls, if you overlook them as a category, you are cheating yourselves. You really are.

But then, I occasionally eat goat cheese too. You might want to disregard my opinion.

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Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age by Susan Jacoby

First of all, I want to make it clear that it is sheer coincidence that I am criticizing another atheist today; this makes two-in-a-row, and I realize that looks bad. As I have said many times, I love the atheists for keeping us honest and forcing us (okay: me) to cut the perpetual starry-eyed routine. However, I have just read a very good book by an atheist, but I'm afraid her atheism has compromised the book, so I have to say so.



Susan Jacoby's fascinating NEVER SAY DIE: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age, is one of those books I have been waiting for, and didn't quite realize it until I found myself hungrily turning pages and consuming it all in one afternoon. Interestingly, I finished it right after my doctor-visit and a lecture (not the first) about my cholesterol.



Do I see the numbers? Yes.



My weight and glucose are way down... but that damn LDL number creeps up and up. "If diet and exercise are not enough..." echo those damn TV ads from evillll BigPharma. Yes, they mean ME, now.



My 35-40 lb weight loss over the past 18 months, coupled with my devoted Swamp Rabbit Trail hiking, was supposed to magically make my cholesterol number go down and... (stares uncomprehendingly at the printed lab results that announce my HDL/LDL) well, it didn't work. I am pleased I am no longer a diabetes risk, but... well, shit, it's always something.



And that is a very good description of aging, "it's always something"... in this hard-nosed book that debunks and deconstructs the various Hallmark-greeting-card myths of aging, Jacoby plows right in. As one of those dedicated atheist-rationalists that takes no prisoners, she decimates several of the major aging myths, and not a few of the minor ones. For example, if you are an asshole in your youth, there is no reason to think you will age gracefully into a nice person with appropriate old-age "wisdom" -- and vice versa. As evidence, she offers (on one hand) Henry Kissinger, who is ancient but still defending genocide with aplomb. On the other hand, she offers Jimmy Carter, who continues to contribute to and enrich our world in so many ways. Certainly, these are excellent examples, and she has no argument from me. My grandmother always said old age simply made you "more of what you are"--and Jacoby seems to agree.



Jacoby is careful to use the terms "young old" (which would be me) and "old old"--which are people in their 80s-90s. She believes the "young old" are used for propaganda purposes, so that (basically young and middle-aged) people can point to them/us with relieved sighs and reassure themselves they can "stay active" while growing old and spry. By contrast, nobody puts the "old old" in TV commercials and nobody seems very glad to see them. They are carefully segregated from the rest of us. She writes at length about the problem of loneliness in old people, as their friends and loved ones die off all around them.



One thing I found disturbing in Jacoby's book, is the casual way she accepts this. She does NOT accept other states-of-affairs as unchanging (in fact, she tells us she intends to go out as an "angry old lady"), without thorough questioning--so why is this particular fact just offered as a given? Perhaps because she simply states that she would not change her life for her aging mother, just as her mother had not changed her lifestyle for her aging mother. However, she does note that her grandmother DID take care of her great-grandmother. Somewhere along the way, "we" (there's that famous punchline: "Whatcha mean We?") stopped doing that. We did? (Did someone mention economic class?) Actually, lots of people didn't. The professional classes, the educated class to which Jacoby belongs, people who have book contracts and write regular columns for the Washington Post, did that first. People with important careers found that they could not (would not) be bothered with aging relatives. That was a deliberate choice that Jacoby made, but it is in no way a given.



"Old old" people are more segregated than ever, and that is because advanced capitalism demands total mobility from everyone, so we end up moving all over the world to get and keep jobs. Of course old people are warehoused, who else is going to look after them? (A possible good side effect of the economy tanking, might be that fewer people are forced to move around so much, and old people might actually be able to stay in real homes.)



One of Jacoby's chapters is alarmingly titled, Women: Eventually the Only Sex. Women overwhemingly overpopulate the "old old" ... social and political concerns about aging are basically about the future of women and how we will live in our final decades; as we all know, the guys check out earlier. Jacoby echoes my own feelings in how modern feminism, profoundly uncomfortable with aging, does not see the economic debates over Social Security and Medicaid to be directly concerned with women, even though WE are primarily who these programs are about... young feminists are preoccupied with sex, reproduction and other youthful pursuits, and it is unlikely we will get them to understand that this is THEIR future too. And that reminds me of another thing I disliked in the book, Jacoby's request that we lay off older men who prefer younger women, using some half-baked pseudo-Darwinian excuse about how men are visual and require more and more to turn them on as they age. Excuse me, but so? It takes me more and more too. If I can refrain (as most women do) from pinching boys on the ass and/or asking them to get married, I think most older men can show some restraint as well. The fact that they don't is because men don't need to exercise restraint... RESTRAINT is not masculine, after all. I am not sure why feminist Jacoby found it necessary to cut men slack in this one area in which they decidedly DON'T NEED ANY, but ... (yeesh)



From Jacoby's website, a summary of the book:

The author offers powerful evidence that America has always been a “youth culture” and that the plight of the neglected old dates from the early years of the republic. Today, it is urgent to distinguish between marketing hype and realistic hope about what lies ahead for more than 70 million Americans who will be over 65 in just twenty years. This wide-ranging reappraisal examines the explosion of Alzheimer’s cases, the uncertain economic future of aging boomers in a shaky economy, the predicament of women who make up an overwhelming majority of the oldest—and poorest—old; and the absence of control over dying in a society that devotes a huge proportion of its health care resources to medical intervention in the last year of life—even when there is no hope that the person will ever recover.

One amazing fact she offers is that even among Catholics, a majority support assisted suicide.



Since I am giving this book a (mostly) good review, where do I think Jacoby got it wrong? Exactly where an atheist would get it wrong: In not covering the role of religion in the lives of very old people. ESPECIALLY when she discusses depression and loneliness and other negative emotional states. Does religion help with these? (they do in young people) She totally avoids the question. I realize the answer may well be "no"--but I would like to see an honest airing of the question, preferably accompanied by some stats (which I realize would be difficult to obtain; like a nice meal, religion is a subjective experience, pleasant for some and pure hell for others)... but I am intelligent and self-aware enough to know that *I* will become a religious fanatic of some sort in my old age. I am trying to work it out so that I will not be an annoying type of religious fanatic, but a benign presence or (at best) one that people might take some comfort from. But I know already, that religion is my opiate, and at the end of my life, I will be administering opiates (all kinds) in spades.



What does atheism offer? I think yall might consider "atheist congregations" of one kind or another, for the social needs of atheists. Sweet Mormon, Baptist and Catholic ladies will come to visit you when you are old... In fact, I visited the late Monsignor Baum myself, about a week before his death (he gave me a blessing in Latin, he seemed to have forgotten the words in English, which I actually found charming) --even though I barely had time to wipe my butt in those days. But I made visiting him a religious priority.



Question: Do the atheists have ladies with angel-food cakes standing ready to visit the old atheists? (If not, yall really need to get to work on that.)



And if the atheists say, fuck angel-food cakes, we don't need people to visit us when we're old, well, maybe that is the major difference between them and the rest of us. They expect us all to be as hard-assed as they are, and we just can't do it.



Does religion make old age better or worse? And I don't simply refer to the religious practices of the old person in question, I also refer to religion as a social force; do not underestimate the importance of hundreds of Sunday School classes going to visit the old people and sing them songs.



I know I'll just love seeing them, when it's my turn.

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Betty Ford 1918-2011

I was 24 years old when I walked into my first AA meeting. Too young?

Certainly, I already looked like I belonged there, swathed in discarded old scarves like some pitiful hippie-ragamuffin. Although it was dark, icy and cold--January in Ohio--I had walked to the meeting at St Aloysius on West Broad Street. That fact seemed to impress the people at the meeting more than anything I had actually said, which was likely a jumble of drug-addled gibberish that made no sense.

I held onto the one hope I had: too young? Am I too young?

And then, she just sort of settled into my mind. Her presence. It was like she was with me.

The president's wife, you nitwit. It could be anyone. Anyone.
A-N-Y-O-N-E. Any age, any sex, anywhere; there is no membership requirement except the desire to stop drinking.

But... but...

Shut UP, said my conscience, eager to win one for a change. Shut UP. The president's fucking wife.

Anyone.

And she remained there, a presence in my consciousness, a presence occupying my head without my full realization... until now. And she is gone.

Betty Ford was crucial to me, to us. She was so important, possibly the most important person in the American recovery movement save for the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because she was Anyone. She was the respectable person who passed out at a dinner given in her honor. She was a rich man's wife who started to drink to deal with social pressures. And she wasn't Dick Van Dyke or Robert Downey Jr, either, she was a WOMAN. A lady. She had been, after all, the First Lady.

If it could happen to her, it could happen to you. (And do you know how many times I have heard that phrase, in meetings, in monologues, in phone conversations? I have said it myself, and it has been said to me.) Why do you think it couldn't? Who do you think you are? Of course it could. Luck, goodness, intelligence, class, decency, none of that means squat: you can't handle it, leave it alone. Even she had to. It could be anyone.

Anyone.

And how many lives were saved, all because we could point to her and confidently announce, ANYONE? Her presence, her life, became an object lesson for millions... certainly, it was very important to me, to know that she was in our ranks. See? I'm not the only girl! (In 1982, it often felt like I was.)

My deep affection and love for this woman is hard to convey. Her simple honesty and her life lessons, helped so many of us. Just her presence, in our minds, meant so much.

Her legacy overshadows her husband's easily.

Rest in peace.

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