Cynthia Samuels's blog

Anne Frank, the Holocaust Shooting and Forgiveness

2009-06-17T06:00:00-05:00

Anne Frank would have been 80 years old on June 12th. How ironic that within days of this anniversary, once again Jews were attacked - this time at the Holocaust Museum, a place designed to memorialize the victims, including Anne, of the Holocaust itself. It's an ironic reminder of what all our mothers - and most of our rabbis -- told us -- that there will always be people who hate Jews and that they will always find ways to try to hurt us - singly or in great numbers.

As someone who grew up at the end of World War II, I remember Anne, who felt like someone my age even though, in real terms, she would have been much older. Listen toLea Lane, at the Huffington Post:

I took Diary of a Young Girl home and read it through, crying along the read. I identified with the sensitive, Jewish teenager who could write openly and freely, who didn't get along with her mother, who was feisty and flirty and curious.

The book was everywhere then: school libraries, book stores, a play and a movie. The play was revived in the early nineties and starred Natalie Portman. It's impact has not gone unacknowledged. Our own Megan Smith listed the film in her post "Ten TV Shows and Movies That Taught Me Something About War." Julia Buckley at Mysterious Musings offers a sweet contemplation of Anne, and a lovely photo.

Many bloggers have connected the two stories: the Holocaust Museum shooting and Frank's birthday, among them: Weave and Sew Dust, Hummingbirdminds, and Feministe.

I came upon a couple of other posts that round things out, both here at BlogHer. Britt Bravo has a lovely interview with Janessa Goldbeck of the Genocide Intervention Network. Britt writes that her interest in genocide arose at least partially from all the Anne Frank stories and Holocaust films she grew up on. Their conversation summarizes many of the issue surrounding Frank - and creating the need for a Holocaust Museum, whose halls fill with new horrors from Darfur and Rwanda and wherever comes next. And another BlogHer mainstay, Mata H, offers us The Forgiveness Project, which encourages, and enables, efforts to forgive- countries, individuals -- whomever needs forgiving. Anne would have liked that.

The Death of Dr. Tiller and How It Used to Be

2009-06-03T08:00:00-05:00

The Sunday murder, in church, of Dr. George Tiller (profiled here by our own Suzanne Reisman) is devastating, not only for its savagery but also because it is one of many.

The National Abortion Federation lists 8 dead since 1993. Several others, before Sunday and including Dr. Tiller, have been shot and injured. Of course, reaction from the women of cyberspace, including those who oppose abortion rights, was swift and negative. Lisa Stone has aggregated many of them here.

For those of us in the Midlife universe though, this is also a deja vu and far more frightening because of what we remember. At a blog called Coffee Shop Dharma, blogger Alia posts a bloodcurdling recollection, by LA Times columnist Patt Morrison, of the days before abortion rights. Here's some of it, describing women without resources, trying to cause their own abortions:

They jabbed into their uteruses with knitting needles and coat hangers,
which (Dr.) Mishell sometimes found still inside them. They stuck in bicycle pump nozzles, sometimes sending a fatal burst of air to the heart. They’d try to insert chemicals – drain cleaner, fertilizer, radiator-flush – and miss the cervix, corrode an artery and bleed to death. Mishell once put a catheter into a woman’s bladder and “got a tablespoon of motor oil.”

“I’m telling you, it was really an awful situation. It touched me because I’d see young, [otherwise] healthy women in their 20s die from the consequences of an infected nonsterile abortion. Women would do anything to get rid of unwanted pregnancies. They’d risk their lives. It was a different world, I’ll tell you.”

(Why didn’t they just get birth control, you wonder. Because some state laws still defined contraception as “obscene,” and not until 1965 – in living memory of some of you reading this – did the Supreme Court say contraceptives were legal for married couples. The unmarried didn’t get that right until 1972.)

If that's not enough, Go read Time Goes By's Ronni Bennett's recollections. A small excerpt:

As I lay naked from the waist down on a cold, metal table, the doctor, using surgical instruments of dubious sterility, poked and scraped inside me. There was no anesthetic. I screamed. The nurse (well, she was dressed in white and wore a cap) slapped my face and told me to shut up.

So you see, as so many of us remember, Dr. Tiller's martyrdom recalls times of great pain, fear and suffering. As we join together to honor this brave doctor and prevent further mayhem, let's also remember just what he helped to deliver us from.

Star Trek, Friends and the Passage of Time (Just a Little Bit of a Spoiler)

2009-05-20T08:22:57-05:00

I'm writing this right after seeing Star Trek because I don't want to forget. By the time you read it though, the film will be more than a week old. The film is lovely - sweet, in fact. It includes an appearance (slightly more than a cameo) by Leonard Nimoy, as an aging Mr. Spock. The film skids back and forth in time, much as our own memories do -- and between the young Spock played by Heroes' Zacharay Quinto and Nimoy as his older self.

For me, as I suspect for many, there was a wonderful subtext to this dashing film: that of life moving on, lessons learned, friendships nurtured. Spock of the future, bundled up in a snowy cave, explaining to his junior self* about their relationship and the passage of time. Megan Smith of Megan's Minute, tells me that many of her friends have described their pleasure, on a whole other level, upon introducing their kids to the Star Trek they knew and loved. When William Shatner was Captain Kirk, not a lawyer with a failing brain or travel agent/kidnapping Priceline spokesman.

One example: Jennie Rigg of the UK, who describes seeing the film with her small daughter. It's really lovely.

Nordette Adams, who blogs at The Examiner and BlogHer, has written about Shatner as a novelist in her own meditation on the film. In the same post, she wonders why we saw so little of Kirk's mom while Spock's, played by the radiant Winona Ryder, was so, well, radiant. She also links to many of the major Trek sites, so the post is a real multi-tasking bonanza.

Also raising questions is Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood, who wishes that women were at least as represented in the film as they were on the TV series. True, although I was having so much fun I forgot to notice.

On another front, the GameGirls offer four perspectives - all of them positive and a couple dealing with the joys of the time-travel portion of the plot. They're young women and they don't altogether relate to the slight melancholy that accompanies a long friendship as live moves on, but they are four smart women with great perspectives on the beloved Star Trek - then and now.

Far from the world of GameGirls is a media literacy teacher and advocate in Culver City, CA who is also a nun. Her blog Sister Rose, is full of remarkable observations on the film, including several about time, friendship and -- well, listen to her:

It may be sci-fi but it is also “psy-fi”. It’s about character, how
everything in life stems from learning empathy, discovering self and
one’s identity, emotional intelligence, and the integrated personality,
love and self-sacrifice for others, family, ethnic diversity, community.

In other words, not surprisingly, many of the women who saw Star Trek love the film as much as the guys - maybe more - and for vastly diverse and interesting reasons. Just perfect for the world Gene Roddenberry sought to create so long ago.

EDITED TO REPAIR DUMB MISTAKE: JRose48 reminds me that Spock was talking to an older KIRK not to himself. Clearly a little too much what the shrinks call "transference" at work here. Sorry and thanks to JR for the help0.

Women Bloggers, Pete Seeger's Birthday and the Power of Music

2009-05-06T07:09:57-05:00

Pete Seeger turned 90 last Sunday. He's been a huge part of my life, concerts with my sisters, boyfriends, husband and children. Once my father, who didn't hear well, went with my little sister to see him. She had written down lyrics for him so he could follow and he loved it. He sent a letter to me at college, telling me that if I ever lose hope, I should listen to Pete, that he had such a life force of positive energy that he even made my dad feel great. And he was a Republican!

It reminds me not only of my youth and the folkie that I was, but also of the power of music. It's a common topic in the blogosphere both among midlifers and younger women. In fact, a wildly popular Mom blogger named Liz Gumbinner asked a great music question: What are the songs that were ruined for you by a bad memory or just a change in you? Among the 33 comments were several who said that songs appearing in commercials were ruined for them. It's a tactic that began with boomer music. I remember refusing to let my kids have Nikes for years because they used the Beatles "Revolution" song in an ad.

Midlife people are certainly defined by our music. Ronni Bennett of Time Goes By offers this summary of some great performances, with videos and including Bruce, Pete Seeger (Happy 90th Birthday Pete!) and Leonard Cohen. And if you're a real femme music junkie, this piece on B**ch about a little-know team of sister musicians will fascinate you.

Over at Rockin' Mama's Mother's Day give-away you have a chance at some wonderful DVDs, and it's fun to see where all the other commentors land as they choose among the ones on each list.

Finally, here's a two-year-old post, right here on BlogHer, that lists women music bloggers. It looks like there's room for a few more! Remember that when Catherine Morgan started the Political Voices of Women it was puny, and its now well over 500 blogs. SO if you're a music queen, maybe you'll find a new calling. Either way, happy listening and, once more, Happy Birthday Pete!

Happy Earth Day: My How We've Changed!

2009-04-22T06:44:26-05:00

I met my husband because of the first Earth Day I was covering all the "movement people" for CBS News - they had hired me because I knew all the 60s anti-war leaders - so when Earth Day emerged, I was assigned to the 'treehuggers" too. The guy who ran Earth Day, Denis Hayes, had been a friend of my husband's at Stanford so he asked him to leave medical school (something he did with some regularity) and come run the "worker health and safety" segment of the environmental movement.

Since today is Earth Day #39 (or 40 if you count the International version) it's a great day to think about it -- what it was like back then, and what it's like today. It looks different if you were around from the beginning, when being "green" was kind of embarassing. Now, of course, it's a moral imperative.

For example, as we learn more about the impact of our actions, we become more creative about how to reduce our role in causing harm. One really intriguing BlogHer blogger, Beth Terry in Oakland CA, blogs at Fake Plastic Fish. She even posts weekly photos of her plastic consumption on Flickr. Amazing.

One of my favorite contemporary enviroblogs is BlogHer Amy Gates' Crunchy Domestic Goddess It just has a nice, colleagial tone and a good feeling, plus good information. None of the self-righteousness or hi-falutin' rhetoric of the "old days."

Another is Diane MacEachern's Big Green Purse, full of ways to use our gigantic power as consumers to encourage green products, packaging and corporate behavior.

In general, the values that were jokes and appeared to be held only be eccentrics, and later only by rich, white, middle-class people have, thankfully, moved into the mainstream. We have a lot of people to thank for that, including Americans from Rachel Carson to Gaylord Nelson and the aforementioned Denis Hayes to, of course, Al Gore.

Let's hope that, moving forward, we live up to and exceed their efforts. We have to. Happy Earth Day.

Working Mothers, Careers and Ambivalence: What Else is New?

2009-04-08T08:17:33-05:00

How appropriate. Here I am with my first post as a mid-life blogger and the wonderful, wise Morra Aarons, a CE herself, offers a report that tells us that "The 2009 National Study of the Changing Workforce (NSCW),
which polls 3500 U.S workers across all professional levels, shows that
"for the first time, young women want just as much to advance to jobs
with more responsibility as young men. Moreover, being a mother does
not significantly change young women's career ambitions."

I wonder, though, what lies beneath. Aftere at all, was unthinkable. For professionals it was bad for advancement and image; for hourly workers it was impossible.

I know a report is a report, but I suspect there's less than meets the eye. I sent Morra's post to a thirty-something friend expecting her third child. Here's what she said:

I still think women have to make harder choices with larger implications when they decide to have a family and begin the precariouis baolancing act of working and having a family. I think it really depends. am not sure how I think this study coincides with reality. Maybe women who have kids and who have intense jobs are more secure about their decisions now, especially in this economy.

It's just different when you're doing it. The blogosphere has been popping about this generally, mostly from younger women. But those of us who've raised our kids have plenty to say about the compromises we faced. Marcia Yerman expands the issue from caring for kids to the entire spectrum of care that so often falls to women in the "sandwich generation." Former Planned Parenthood chief Gloria Feldt goes further, arguing that if the parity these young women perceive is really emerging, we need to fight even more intensely for politicies that enable effective parenting in working families. This is backed up in a scholar's perspective by a University of Chicago Post Doctoral fellow (fancy, huh?) that concludes: Put more strongly, our results suggest that improved work-family
policies or changes to social norms could drive labour force
participation rates of highly educated women closer to parity with men.

Professor Joan C Williams of the law school at UC Berkeley says, on Moms Rising, that at some companies the economy threatens the policies, like telecommuting and flexible hours that have developed to help moms work and stay sane. Encouragingly, others seem to find these accommodations more valuable now. I know what it would have meant to me, as the first woman in the CBS Newsroom to have a baby, to have had any flexibility at all. Just a little, even.

OH, and here's a really interesting, contemplative post from Peggy Drexler about the daily choices working moms, and really, all moms, have to make between responsiblities in one sector and another. In this case, it was split loyalties within her own family.

Finally, my friend Kristina Chew, BlogHer and blogger at Autism Vox, writes about the additional work-family pressures that come when a child has special needs.

So. We'll have to wait and see if the perspectives of the women in this report are borne out, if they will be able to push for enough change to ease their way.

Sarah Palin and Joe Six Pack

2008-10-03T07:43:46-05:00

I hate the term "Joe Six Pack." Just like I hate "the little housewife" or "the ball and chain" or any other gender/class stereotype. I grew up just outside a mill town along the Monongahela River -- with kids whose parents worked in the mills and coke plants outside Pittsburgh. It was actually the town portrayed in The Deer Hunter. Some kids lived in trailers, some in four room "starter houses" that no one ever moved out of.

I was the Jewish Girl and the lawyer's daughter and in some ways my life was very different -- so I was a bit of an outsider, but usually part of the gang - parties, sleepovers, crazy afternoons sneaking cigarettes in pine-paneled basement "family rooms."

I guess lots of those parents were what Sarah Palin called Joe Six Pack.
But that's not who they were- who they are. America is full of hard
working people who drink beer. Bruce Springsteen portrays them all the time - much better than I could. They are dads and husbands and
brothers and sons and they love their kids and their wives and, where I lived, the Steelers. Many of those dads that I knew sent
their kids to college though - or to "the service" which paid their tuition, and the next generation did better economically - the American dream at work.

I admired these people, and loved some of them. When you spend lots of Saturday night sleepovers at girlfriends' houses you get to know their parents. And, remembering those dads, I do NOT understand how Sarah Palin can talk about "Joe Six Pack" and still say she's one of "the people." It's like talking about "Polacks" and then claiming you're Polish. The term is a colossal insult, the speaker setting herself above the folks she's describing. For some reason, it's painful -- almost heartbreaking, to hear. I know it's partially my
rage at her for claiming some special channel to working class
Americans while, it appears, cynically performing like a parody of them. Her "Joe Six Packs" deserve better.

Cynthia Samuels blogs at <
Don't
Gel Too Soon where a version of this post also appeared.

It's the Economy Stupid!

2008-09-16T08:26:27-05:00

I am as angry and uneasy as anyone over the nomination of Sarah Palin but I think it's time to stop now. This morning I heard Paul Begala say on MSNBC that every day McCain isn't talking about the economy, he wins. That he can't win ON the economy so if he keeps distracting the voters and the press he will be better off - a premise supported by the current poll numbers. Begala also kept comparing Palin to the "shiny object in the water" on a fishing line that makes a fish take the bait. I think he's right.

The issues of this election are, as we all know, so enormous and scary that it may be easier to keep focusing on the governor, but that will not win the election. We need to help remind people of the real issues - the devastating effects of the subprime crisis, so evident in the past few days, the state of the economy generally, our sinking competitiveness in education and the tragic decline of many of our schools, the attempts by the Right to place (with hat tip to Auntie Mame)"braces on our brains" and of course, Iraq, Afghanistan, healthcare, energy and infrastructure.

We're in a mess. It wasn't caused by pigs or lipstick or tanning beds or even community organizers -- it was caused by the people currently in office who want four more years and are Orwell-ing us into giving it to them. This community has enormous impact and knows how to raise a ruckus (If you don't think so, mosey on over to the League of Maternal Justice!) Let's get some message discipline here, leave Sarah to others and push the issues. We're going to kick ourselves if we don't.

A version of this post also appears at Samuels' personal blog, Don't Gel Too Soon.

CAMPAIGN 2008 AND THE BLOGHER COMMUNITY

2008-09-12T08:25:00-05:00

From my first BlogHer three years ago in San Jose, I've understood the power and wonder of BlogHer. Through this campaign though, I've also been grateful for the friends and colleagues I've met. The combined wisdom, thoughtfulness, humor, passion and outrage that converges here is a real gift. There is so much to think about, and talk about, and rant about, that this built-in political community is a blessing. I've found many new blogs, both those I agree with and those I don't, and feel smarter, and less alone in my concerns, and gratified as well at those who've come to my blog for the same things. This is a pefect blogger campaign and a great one to be "in together." Yay us.

JUNO GETS FOUR OSCAR NOMINATIONS

2008-01-22T10:21:06-06:00

I seem to have developed a real attachment to this film - reviewed it on my blog (http://dontgelyet.typepad.com/dontgeltoosoon/2008/01/everyone-loves.html) and am working right now listening to the (amazing) soundtrack. It's exciting to see a film written by a woman, about a young woman, very 21st Century in its sensibility, get such attention. Makes me feel good. The nominations are for Best Picture, Best Actress (Elle Page/Juno), Best Director (Jason Reitman) and Best Screenplay (Diablo Cody.) Now we just have to hope our girl wins at least one of them....