Play the Game

A friend of mine has been part of the Google Glass Explorer program for the past six months.  You know about Google Glass, right?  It’s “wearable tech,” in other words, a holographic smartphone screen that’s projected from a pair of glasses.

He was invited to be part of this beta program last year.  He’s one of the 8,000 people world-wide who were invited to spend $1,500 to wear Glass for a year, as Google explains it, “to help shape the future of Glass.”  That is, to help prepare the market – that’s us – to accept and want this product when it is released for public sale next year.

I met this man 25 years ago.  I hired him out of a temporary secretarial firm, where he had landed as he was trying to break into the professional world in my mid-size, West Coast city. I hired him because he was articulate, because he was willing to change himself to fit into a system until he could figure out how to change the system, because he was a cheerful problem solver who could get along with anybody, and because there was not one grammatical or punctuation error in his cover letter or resume. 

John is a funny, energetic guy who, upon learning that he’d been accepted into Stanford’s MBA program, did a back flip into my office, narrowly missing a display of antique tea cups.    And yes, as you would expect a Silicon Valley venture capitalist to be, he’s brilliant.  Not as much as some software designers I know who can’t talk to people with IQs less than 140.    His brilliance lies in his ability to think sideways, and he doesn’t see the boundaries and limitations that most of us accept as really there.

The other thing that is unusual about John, at least in my experience with techno-geeks, is that personal connections are important to him.   Even though we haven’t seen each other in a quarter of a century, he was happy to schedule two hours out of a busy day of changing the world to talk to his old boss.

And I trust him enough that I’m willing to entertain his point of view, even when it runs entirely counter to my most closely held opinions and beliefs.

I had asked to meet with him because I had just gone to a conference in Portland, Oregon where leaders in industry, education and regional governments were meeting to talk about how to solve the problems posed by global warming, and I’m interested in that.  I had signed up – as a spectator, not a participant – for a session on how to get the word out on global warming, so grass-roots groups (I guess Intel and the Trailblazers and the local governments in the Pacific Northwest counts as grass-roots) can help to get some traction on this world-wide problem.

As I listened, I was struck by a disconnect that nobody else seemed to notice.  One panel participant had said, “It’s a question of how to get the data out there.”  I thought about my computer screen and how, every time I go to Facebook or YouTube or Amazon, I’m slowed down by pop-up ads for Disneyland and Star Trek memorabilia and classes in Italian, and suggestions that I click on this article about sustainability or that article about education.  And I thought about how my very conservative aunt complains about getting pop-up ads for resorts in the Bahamas and suggestions that she click on this article about how 90% of the scientists in the world are involved in a hoax to make us all believe in global warming.  She sees a very different version of the world than I do.

When the facilitator asked if there were any questions, I got up and walked to the microphone.  There were probably 500 people in the ballroom, but I was an opera singer in a previous life so this didn’t bother me.  This was my question.

“Every time I use my computer, marketing algorithms make sure that I see things that reflect what I’m interested in and beliefs I already hold.  My aunt, also, is presented with information that reflects what she’s interested in and beliefs that she holds.  I’m a liberal who’s worried about global warming and thinks universal health care is a great idea.  She’s a Tea Partier who thinks global warming is a hoax and that poor people have brought their problems on themselves.  We see entirely different versions of the world.  Because of how the use of the Internet has evolved in the last few years, each of us now sees the contents of our brains amplified and reflected back to us, reinforcing what we already think and connecting us only to people who think the way we do.  It’s polarizing.  Until you solve this problem, it doesn’t matter if you get the data out there, because most people either won’t understand it, or believe it.  And worse, this fragmentation of information makes it impossible for us to have the rational, educated discourse that we need to solve global problems.  What’s being done about this?”

The room went absolutely silent.  The silence lasted for a few seconds.  Then the facilitator said, “That’s a good question.  Does anyone have an answer?”

More silence.  Finally the head of the Trailblazers said something about sports being an experience that could help people find some common ground.  An interesting idea that I hadn’t thought about, since I’m not a sports person, but not really the answer I was looking for.

So I had flown to Palo Alto, mostly to ask John this question, and incidentally to talk to him about Google Glass, since I’d recently learned that he had a pair.

His answer wasn’t comforting.  “Essentially, people pay attention to whatever media choices they want to.  It’s deeply ingrained.  It’s comes down to democracy, freedom of speech…and you know, no matter if we’re liberal or conservative, we’re going to go to a black and white answer to minimize the time we spend being uncertain.  We’re more comfortable with dualities.   The answer is fixing the education system.”  He looked at me wryly. He knows I’m a former educator.

“And good luck with that,” I said, equally wry.  The problem I see with this is, as big-brained primates, it takes at least twenty years to educate us enough to be functional adults, and another ten years or so to mature enough to make wise decisions.  Meanwhile, the technology that gives people the power to control what we think we know is changing monthly. 

Technology is literally changing the physical structure of our brains.  More than that, it is changing how we communicate, and what information we receive, and how we engage in the world – the “real” world, that is, as opposed to the “virtual” world. 

In his excellent book The Shallows:  What The Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr explains that technology rewires how we think.  He pointed out that autopsies on the bodies of London cabdrivers showed that the spatial part of their brains was bigger than most people’s.  They needed it to navigate London.  When you rely upon GPS to get everywhere, the part of the brain that learns directions and navigational skills is pruned – your brain doesn’t waste energy maintaining unneeded systems.  Socrates didn’t embrace the new technology of written language because he thought humans would lose the ability to store memories.  Well, he was right – cultures that rely upon oral tradition do have what we would interpret as unusual abilities to store memory.

Technology changes how we engage with our fellow humans, too.  My friend Marcia went to live in Shanghai, China, some years ago.  She comes back to visit once a year, and looks to me to interpret the changes she’s seen since her last visit.  Two years ago, as we sat over tea, she asked, “I see people staring into their palms all the time, at some glowing thing.”  She pantomimed thumbing a smartphone.  “What are they doing?”

“They’re communicating.  At least, that’s what they think they’re doing.  They’re texting.  Sending short bursts of conversations back and forth to their friends.”

“But I’m their friend.  And I’m sitting right there.”

Well, yeah…

Our relationship with the Internet is changing us, individually and as a society, profoundly, maybe too rapidly for us to be aware of the difference most of the time.

For instance.

A friend of mine is the IT guy for a health clinic.  Turns out Comcast changed their IP address suddenly, in the middle of the business day.  Poof!  This clinic suddenly lost its online presence. It took him a day to find out what had happened and to talk Comcast into changing the IP address back.  Until then, they were frantic.  As far as most people were concerned, the clinic didn’t exist until he got the web site back up.

Another example.  A startling number of airline pilots don’t do the right thing if the onboard computer navigation system crashes, because they are only used to controlling the plane for a few minutes per flight and they don’t have the built-in reflexes to do the right thing automatically anymore.

In ten years, the percentage of young people who had read at least one book in a year dropped from 53% to 43%.  That’s a lot of people losing the attention span necessary to follow a long or complex argument. And according to Google researchers, if a YouTube video is longer than 3.5 minutes, on average – it’s too long.  Most viewers don’t have the patience for anything longer.

Okay, geek disclosure.  I watch a lot of Star Trek, and I remember an episode called “The Game,” where everyone on the Enterprise wore a device that looked a lot like Google Glass.  It was a wearable video game that shot a beam of light into your eyes when you made a point, and directly stimulated the pleasure center of the brain.  Highly addictive, as you may expect.

Science fiction?  Not really.  Anyone who’s gotten hooked on on-line solitaire knows that you can lose two hours just hoping for a fireworks display.  My twenty-year-old son thinks this is absolutely pathetic.  But I notice that he plays Assassin’s Creed for hours on end.  Behaviorism works, people.  Reinforce that positive behavior!

Just remember how positive behavior is defined, and who defines it.  Because the people deciding what you’re going to see on your screen define positive behavior as “Buy my product,” or, “Believe what I want you to believe.”

And what happens when the system goes down?  Someone hacks into Facebook and Gmail and ADP, the system that controls our paychecks, or the GPS system, and all of a sudden you can’t talk or get your money or find where you’re going?  Remember the classic Star Trek episode where everyone was controlled by a computer?  “Llandru, guide us!”  I grew up in the sixties and I know what I’m talking about. 

And then I lived through the 1990s, when Wesley Crusher got hooked on Google Glass – sorry, playing the game on Star Trek Next Gen.

So there I was in California on a November afternoon to talk to John, wanting to do an expose on Google Glass and how it’s going to take down Western Civilization.  And even though he’s a big proponent of Glass, somehow I’ll talk him into helping me do it. 

I waited to meet him in a California-Mex restaurant on a subdued, elegant Palo Alto Street, Teslas and Priuses parked outside.  John walked in the door and I instantly knew it was him, not just because he was the only one on the restaurant wearing Glass.  It had been a quarter of a century since I’d seen him but I told myself that neither of us had changed that much.  John grinned at me.  We started to shake hands, but then hugged.  I led him to our table where guacamole and chips awaited.  He took off his Glass, put on his reading glasses (Google hasn’t rolled out the prescription model yet) to look at the menu and order, and then left his glasses on the table.  I took off my glasses, too.

“John, you just took off your glasses,” I said.

He shook his head.  “I don’t like to wear glasses when I’m talking to people.”

“Me too!” I said, surprised.  “I always take my glasses off.  I’d rather have you be a little blurry than see you through plastic.”

“Yeah,” he said.  “I’m making a big sacrifice to wear these as part of the program.  If I’m in an intense social situation, I don’t want it in the way.  It can be distracting.  I think it’s a little disrespectful to wear it, actually.”

We chatted, catching up, and gave the waiter our orders.  We discovered that he’s interested in the Singularity and that I’m a big Vernor Vinge fan.  Then I asked, “If you have to wear computer glasses at work, and you don’t like to wear glasses when you talk to people…how much do you really wear Glass?”

He looked thoughtful.  “Well, when I’m out and about.  I was excited to wear it traveling…people will come up and ask me questions.  It’s not for introverts at this stage.”

The waiter arrived with our drinks and burritos.  I checked my list of questions.  “Why did you want to be part of the Glass Explorer program?” I asked.

John laughed.  “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.  I applied, but $1,500 seemed like a lot of money.  Then I thought, Oh!  Why am I even pausing?  I grew up on science fiction, and then realized that things didn’t move along as fast as I wanted them to.  Here I can buy into a magical, unique experience!  I’m not buying into Glass.  I’m getting to experience the future before everyone else does.”

“Tell me something.  What’s the point of Glass?”

He put down his marguerita.  “It’s just a smartphone that you don’t need to hold.”

Huh. That’s all it is.  That doesn’t seem so bad.  “How do you control it then?”

“It’s voice activated.  You can say, Glass, take a picture.  Or, Glass, show me where the Stanford campus is, and it’ll show me a map and directions. You can do Google searches and that’s awesome. Or you can set it up for a feed.  I figured out how to get my Twitter stuff piped to it, so now every few minutes a little bit of the world comes to me, and that’s a game changer.”

“Cool.”  That could come in really handy, I thought.  Except that…

I thought of the QWERTY keyboard.  Technology that was made intentionally clumsy, to slow us down.  Recently, our ability to miniaturize our devices has been limited, not by our technology, but by the size of our thumbs.  When you take that limitation away, you remove another barrier between yourself and the Internet and whoever is deciding what information you should see.  Would that always be a good thing? 

“So will we see Google Glass contacts in five years?”

He shook his head.  “No.  More like ten.  You see, this…” and he tapped the thick part of what we think of as the earpiece leading from the glasses to what hooks over the ears.  “…is the computer.  The battery fits behind the ear.  We won’t be able to make it that much smaller for awhile yet.”

And I thought, small enough to implant behind the skin behind your ear so it’s just hooked directly into your brain.  I didn’t ask how far away that technology is. 

And I thought about the Google ad for Glass.  Happy people on roller coasters, riding in hot air balloons, watching kids blow bubbles.  Only why would anybody do these real world things when it’s much more interesting to sit in front of a screen?

And now you don’t need the screen.  The computer that you must go to a desk to sit in front of became a lap-top, then a netbook, then a smartphone.  Now it’s attached to your face.

“I have to go in a couple of minutes,” he said.  “Do you have anything else you want to ask me?”

“No,” I said, getting out my wallet to pay the check.  “I really appreciate you giving me so much of your time.”

“This was great.  Let’s not wait another 25 years before we have lunch again, okay?”

“Deal.”  I started to put my wallet back into my purse.  

Then he tapped the Glass, which was still sitting there among a few shards of tortilla chips, almost hidden beside a bowl of browning guacamole.  “Don’t you want to try it on?”

I thought of Shakespeare’s wonderful quote from Hamlet.  “The devil has the power to assume a pleasing shape.”  I thought of Wesley playing the game.  I even think of the pilot of Sherlock, when the evil cab driver tries to get Benedict Cumberbatch to take the poison by saying, “You’ll do anything to keep from being bored.  Come on.  Play the game.”

I shook my head.  “That’s okay.”

“You mean you flew all the way down here to talk to me about Glass, and you’re not even going to try it on.”

Well, that would be stupid.  I picked up the Glass and put it on. I looked directly at John, who was smiling.  “I don’t see anything.”

“Look up and to the right.”

I looked up.   There, floating in space, was a little screen.  It informed me that the temperature in Palo Alto was 72 degrees and that the traffic on highway 101 was light.  There was a little picture of a beach behind that information.

I said, “Oh.  Wow.”

“I want one.”

Preparing For the Future Is a Full-Time Job

            I was looking at my grandmother’s vanity the other day.  I use it for a make-up table, because we never did get the bathroom set up with good lighting and a countertop, and then I put a little rocking chair that I got at the dump for $5 in front of it because I meant to get a real little vanity chair but couldn’t find one.

            Next to the vanity is a big pink antique chair.  I don’t like the pink, and we were going to reupholster it, but Ed has resisted taking up upholstery as a hobby.  I would like him to learn upholstery and also auto mechanics, but he has steadfastly insisted on choosing his own hobbies.  Go figure.

            But the chair is looking better now, since my sister-in-law gave me a little lap quilt that has pink and black squares in it, and I hung that over the back of the chair.   Then I found a little pillow that has pink and black in it that says, “Too Much of A Good Thing is Simply Wonderful,” and then my mom gave me a big wooden red elephant to use as a side table, and now the whole corner looks pretty good, even if it is by accident, so when we do reupholster the chair the whole effect will be spoiled.

            And the vanity sits in front of the window because there’s a fake stained-glass window piece of plastic stuck to the window, which makes it so you can’t see into the neighbor’s bedroom, and I don’t like the plastic window covering so I put the vanity in front to hide it until I can peel it off or even replace the window.  But then I put the bed in that part of the attic because now that corner looks pretty cool.  So when I fix everything up the way I want it, I’ll have to put the bed back where it was, and I can’t really, because I have made a temporary walk-in closet with some IKEA cabinets and a laundry room clothes-hanger-upper-thingie where the bed used to be, until Ed can make a real walk-in closet.

            And this all makes me think of the Accademia Bridge in Venice, also known as “The temporary bridge.” You see, the old bridge fell down about 80 years ago, so they put up a temporary wooden one, and then it got a little rickety over the next 50 years, so they put up a second temporary one to look like the old temporary one, and now they want to replace it with a real stone bridge but there’s a lot of controversy about it because, you see, somehow the temporary one became a historical structure and now some people can’t bear the thought of changing it. Kind of like my bedroom.

            Anyway, this all has to do with preparing for the future.  You know that I used to always have a 20 year plan, until I noticed that I had to revise my plans really often, so the 20-year-plans became five-year-plans, and then those never worked out either.  Then I just came up with some general goals.  My general goals last year were:

• Be a concert soprano again
• Start up a jazz singing career
• Become a writer

            Then I left the singing stuff by the door (forever!! Back of the hand to the forehead), except that last week I bumped into one of the leading chanteuses in Portland and it turned out, in a conversation over a vintage tie I was buying because it made me think of a book I was going to write, that we knew a lot of the same people and would I like to come to one of her salons and sing with some friends?  So then I started thinking about cabaret repertoire again.

            And then I almost got a job in educational software sales, and that made me start to think about working as a grant writer or a sales person or maybe a project manager, but then I signed up to write a novel in a month for the National Write a Novel in November marathon, and then a writing friend of mine asked for all my essays so she could show them to her publisher.  So by the end of November I will have written four books, if you count the children’s book and the fitness book.  And I have three more ready to start.

            This made me get serious about organizing my time.  So now I've decided that I will write from eight in the morning to noon, then spend the afternoons teaching voice or doing informational interviews or learning music.  That way, when the future gets here, I’ll be ready for it. 

            So maybe the vanity and the bathroom and the bedroom and the closet will have to stay the way they are, like the Accademia Bridge in Venice.  Because preparing for the future is a full-time job.  Even if you aren’t sure what the future’s going to be.  Go figure.

Wisdom Learned from Tom and Della

I can't believe I have never posted this before.  My parents are two of the wisest people I know.  Here is a compilation of their best bon mots for your own personal resource library.  If you nail it to the wall of the kitchen, you'll always have it available for handy reference.

 

Always look in the direction the car is moving.
If you clean up the kitchen as you go, it is clean when you are done cooking.
A slice of potato in the doughnut fryer cleans the fat, and you can eat the potato afterward.
Always carry a calculator and nail clippers in your pocket.
You can make a great fort out of a table, three chairs, two blankets and a sheet.
Iron the collar last.
Do not be afraid of butter when making a sauce.
Spend money on really good ingredients.
It is more important to spend time with friends than to sleep.
Spend money on ephemera, like trips to Europe.  It is worth getting a second job to have the money, too.
Play music loudly so everyone can hear and enjoy it.  You can do housework or just sit and listen.  It’s all right to insist that people stop and listen to the really good parts.
Reading is fun.  Poetry, history, recipes, short stories, novels, maps, science fiction, and comic books.
Opera is a good thing and it’s not just for stuffy rich people.
Magic is real, including ancient, arcane Egyptian practices, thiotimiline, and fairies.  How do you know elves don’t exist if you’ve never seen one?
You must eat pickled peaches at Thanksgiving.
It is worthwhile to spend three days making a special dish, like sauerbraten.
You can’t make enough potato pancakes or lefse.
Keep the water running when it’s below freezing outside.
Always keep your options open.
You don’t have to do something just because you’re good at it.
It is not hard to make homemade chocolate pudding.
Use the good dishes.
Cover the blueberry bushes with netting so you’ll get some blueberries.
Sing loudly.
It is always a good time to play the ukelele.
Grind the coffee beans the night before.
Lift from your knees.
Cooking is an end until itself.  It is recreational, social, and creates works of art.
It is important to spend chunks of time and money to gather friends for talk, food, and drink.  Do it often.
Be nicer to your spouse than anyone else you know.
Toothpaste will stop mosquito bites from itching.  Usually.
If you have hiccups, drinking a glass of water in a steady rhythm will make them go away.  Every time.
Don’t open the door to the dark room.  All the dark will leak out.
When playing gin rummy, discard the high cards first.  But sometimes you can panic your opponent into error by throwing a low card early.
Talk to your spouse a lot.  Make sure you spend a lot of time with him or her.
If you walk by a weed in your yard, pull it.
Be involved in your community, your street, your city, your state, and on the national level.  Make things better, no matter how busy you may be.  Stay informed.
Make friends with all kinds of people, all colors, ages, backgrounds, religions, nationalities, and professions.  Most people are good, kind, and interesting.
Learn new things – how to cook a complicated dish, deciphering land use regulations, a language so you can travel somewhere you’ve never been before.
Let go of things you don’t need.  Make room for something new.  Or just enjoy the empty space.
You don’t always need a coat.  Sometimes it’s okay to just be cold for a few minutes.
Pay attention to how you look.  It’s fun to dress up.
You can clear a stuffy nose by standing over a steaming kettle with a towel or a newspaper over your head.
Gargling with salt water eases a sore throat.
Write.  Stories, poetry, and letters.  Show them to people.
Sing to, and with, your children.  Sing harmony.
Share new recordings with your family.  Rock and roll, jazz, Sibelius violin concertos.  It doesn’t matter as long as you are excited about it.
Take pictures.
You don’t have to heat the whole house.  Light a fire or put on a sweater or go out for a walk to get warm.
Growing some of your own food is not that big a deal.
Camping is fun.  Keep a box stocked and ready go to.
Spray the tablecloth with water before you iron it.
It’s not a big deal to bake a birthday cake from scratch.  Black Midnight is the correct cake, although June birthdays may prefer strawberry pie.
If you use a lot of something, figure out how to get it wholesale.  Sometimes you can get others to go in on it with you.  This works for cheese, beef, wine, beach condos, and lots of other things.
Don’t bother with mixes or frozen food.  Food made from scratch tastes a lot better and usually it’s surprisingly easy to make.
Popcorn should be made in a pan, not a microwave.
Cold pizza makes an excellent breakfast.
So does popcorn.
Radishes and green onions are good with a little salt in the palm of your hand.
Sprinkle pepper on your buttermilk before you drink it.
Learn more than one language.
Recycle, even if it’s not convenient.
You don’t have to follow a recipe too closely.  Sometimes it’s okay to guess.
You can make up recipes.  It’s good to write them down.
You can design your own house or dress pattern.
If some things are in a routine, it gives you more brain space for the other things.
Don’t cook the eggs or the coffee too long or too fast.
You can choose how to live your life.  You are not stuck with what you did before or what your family or friends thought was normal or inevitable.
It’s okay to spend money on new cooking equipment.
The candle will stay in the holder if you drip wax in it first.
Antique furniture often costs less than furniture from Ikea, and it’ll last longer, too.  It already has!
What you cook at home usually tastes better than restaurant food.
The family eats together every night.
There should always be a candy bar on a shelf in the cupboard.  You can slice pieces off of it.
A batch of chocolate chip cookies makes anything better.
You don’t need a lot of champagne to make it flow in the streets.  Scraping it with your toe makes it go farther.
You must play a bagpipe recording really loudly on New Year’s Eve at midnight.  Open the door so the neighbors can share the experience with you, and to let the New Year in.
Ketchup is good on scrambled eggs.
Make your own syrup with brown and white sugar.
And my personal favorite…if the pasta sticks to the wall, it has cooked too long.

There.  If you nail this list to the wall, it will be  handy for reference, although you may eventually want to memorize it.  

I'm Not the Wreck of the Hesperus

Dr. Oz, say it ain't so!

I've just read my third article in a month about how many Americans think it would be a bad thing to live to be 120.

It'd be depressing because the world is going to hell.  You'd be old forever.  It's bad for society.  We're overpopulated!  The Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation need to die off so the younger people can have their jobs.

All right.  I am fifty seven -- let's spell that out folks, f-f-f-f...can't do it.  All right.   Deep breath.  FIFTY SEVEN, and I'm starting to take this personally.

I agree that overpopulation is a problem.  I'm in the middle of writing a book where 90% of the human race dies off, and this tragedy, ironically, ushers in a new Golden Age.  Let's agree that there are two or three times as many human beings as the planet can sustain comfortably.

But I don't agree that my stubbornness about checking out causes overpopulation.  There are a lot of complex reasons why we have too many people on this planet.  From what I understand, it has to do with, among other things, a drop in infant mortality, a lack of options for women worldwide (I'm talking education and equal rights, folks), access to clean water and antibiotics.

Yes, a higher life expectancy is also a factor.  But maybe the answer to overpopulation is more complicated than lowering our expectations of how long we can live healthfully if we're interested in carrying on.   Could we educate women and allow them to work and give them the resources they need to control how many children they have?  And once children get here, can we be intelligent about how many resources they use?  I think it's ironic that this keeps coming up here in the United States, where five percent of the population uses 25% of the fossil fuel.  After all the fuss about Grandma and the alleged Death Panels, I don't understand why I'm now getting the message of "Here's your hat, what's your hurry?"

We need to stop working so younger people can have our jobs?  Really?  Have most thirty-year-olds mastered the skill sets that I have?  Amassed the experience, the wisdom?  I've lived three adult lives for their one.  They are doing different jobs, jobs that I outgrew a generation ago.  And all these jobs need to be done, because the more people there are in the world, the more people we need to take care of everybody -- we staff each other.  Living longer is only a problem if we decide to sit around for the last half of our lives and let other people take care of us.  If you're going to live to 120, why would you stop being productive at age 65?  Sit around for 50 years?  Please.

And why would an older person be a less valuable consumer, a less valuable volunteer, family member, counselor?  I assume that you'd get 50 more years of health and vigor with 50 more years of life.  I could understand a reluctance to sit around being spoon-fed Cream of Wheat for half a century.  But I don't think that's what we're talking about here.   The science of aging is exploding.  Researchers are completing large-scale studies that clearly show that what we think of as "aging" is actually just cumulative dis-use.  Eat well, move vigorously, stay connected and productive and you will double or triple your chances of living healthfully into your eighties and beyond, effectively extending middle age.  I know that I am more healthy and energetic than I was in my twenties and thirties.  And yes, I like walking four miles a day and lifting weights twice a week, and I don't miss ice-cream, much.

It's bad for society to have older human beings around?  In many parts of the world, it's understood that when you live a long time, you become wiser.  Your talents, skills and experience all create a nice synergy and the younger set tend to seek you out for advice.  The long-lived ones are considered to be a precious resource.

I don't know why this isn't the case in this country.  I've been bumping into age discrimination since I was in my early thirties -- I was trying to make a career as a performer at the time -- in my forties when I entered grad school and was told at one school "We're uncomfortable with older students" and faced blatant age discrimination at another -- into my fifties where I have to edit my resume very carefully to hide the fact that I'm old enough to still be mad at President Ford for pardoning Nixon.  I've been told that I'm "ageless," and that's nice, but why do I have to look younger than my years?  Why isn't it good to look my age?  Is there something wrong with it?  (I happen to think I look great.  Not for my age.   For me.)

Finally, the argument that it will be depressing because the world is going to hell in a handbasket...people, I have been depressed about the state of the world since I was a teenager.  Between the ages of six and sixteen, I lived through the 1960s and early 1970s.  My heroes were being assassinated, we witnessed riots and murders associated with according U.S. citizens civil rights, students were shot on the Kent State campus on their way to class, and we were just really beginning to be concerned about possible damage to the planet (Silent Spring was published in 1962, and then there was Carl Sagan and his writings on nuclear winter the year my first child was born).  I lived through the Vietnam War and the Cold War.  Even the advent of rock and roll couldn't disguise the fact that those were not happy times. 

It's never happy times, though.  My parents and grandparents lived through the Depression, the Dust Bowl and the first two World Wars, and I don't think those were a chuckle-a-minute years, although they made for some great stories.

The world, as I keep noticing despite all my best efforts, still isn't saved.  As a matter of fact, it seems to be getting messier.  But isn't it possible that people of my generation could be helpful in fixing it?  I read recently that on the whole, people of my generation are more concerned about the ecology of the planet Earth than the thirty-somethings demographic is.

If you're one of my age cohort or older, I want to say:  Depression, apathy, loneliness, being unproductive -- these problems aren't necessarily age-related.  You are not a number.  You have some control over how healthy and productive you are.  Don't let the wrinkles and gray hair scare you.  You didn't let pimples ruin your life, did you?  (Don't answer that.)  Jerome Hines made a comeback at the Met in his 80s.  The great Wagnerian soprano Kirsten Flagstad was 40 when she made her Met debut and recorded the definitive Isolde at the age of 63.  (In case you don't know, singing Wagner should qualify as an Olympic event).

If you are younger than I am, be aware that an accumulation of wisdom and knowledge, and comfort with yourself and the world, IS age-related.  Enjoy it as it comes.  Enjoy us, the long-lived ones.  Get to know us.  We're actually pretty cool.  Don't be afraid of us -- we're you, or at least, you're going to be us, pretty soon here.

And don't show us the door.  We've earned our right to be here.  And you need us.

Gifts

(I admit it’s a little late for my annual solstice post, but better late than never.)

I am sitting under a quilt in my living room, listening, as I have for the past forty years, to the Christmas Eve service broadcast (live!) from Kings College, Cambridge.  
 
“Adam lay ybounden, bounden in a bond; four thousand winter thought he not too long.  And all was for an apple, an apple that he took, as clerkes finden, written in their book.  Ne had the apple taken been, ne had never our ladie been heav’ne queen!  Blessed be the time that apple taken was, therefore we moun singen.  Deo Gracias!”

I've sung this ancient carol before, and I love listening to these Old English words in the candlelight.  As I sit in the pre-dawn dimness, I can see the congregation all those thousands of miles away in the English twilight.  I can hear them rustling and coughing in their seats. I see the adorable-looking boy sopranos in their starched cassocks and surplices.  (Although having been the choir mom for a men and boys’ choir, I know that this is “surface cute.”  The contraband magazines in their music folders are not the kind of reading material you expect pink-cheeked boy sopranos to be reading, until you realize that they are 12- and 13-year-old boys.)

But I get to thinking about the words of the carol.

“Blessed be the time that apple taken was, therefore we moun singen.  Deo Gracias!”

What?

Isn’t that the “original sin” we keep hearing about?  Why was this apple-taking a good idea?

Because “Ne had the apple taken been, ne had never our ladie been heav’ne queen!”

Oh, that's right.  I forgot about that whole redemption thing.

Then I got to thinking about Sleeping Beauty.  (This follows…it’s  Christmas, right?   The magi brought gifts…we give presents on Christmas…the good fairies gave Briar Rose gifts of beauty, wit and musical abilities…good.  Glad you’re coming along with me on this.) 

Remember, Briar Rose’s parents didn’t invite the bad fairy to their new baby’s party?  So she got mad?  So when the good fairies gave her all the nice presents, she decided that the baby would prick her finger on a spindle and die when she was a teenager?  The last good fairy, you remember, was able to modify this gift a little bit…instead of dying, Rose would sleep for one hundred years, when a prince would wake her with a kiss.

(Scholars of Grimm’s fairy tales, if this isn’t EXACTLY the way you remember it, give me a break.  I’m not even going into how this story is constructed of bits and pieces from earlier myths and stories, including Brunnhilde.)

And of course, despite her worried parents burning every last spinning wheel in the kingdom (and just what did everybody do for clothes, in this pre-industrial age, with no spinning going on for fifteen years), Rose managed to find the only spindle in the entire kingdom – isn’t that just like a kid – and pricks her finger on it and falls asleep.  And so does everybody else.  The rose bushes grow up over the castle.

At this point in the story or the movie, everybody says, How Awful!

Well, no, think about this.  Because she falls asleep for a hundred years, Rose awakens in her own future.  (She’s kind of like an early cryogenic time traveler, if you read a lot of science fiction, which I do.)  She gets to take all her family and friends and culture with her.  And she is awakened by her true love, who wasn’t even born until at least 90 years after she fell asleep.

Boy, no wonder the bad fairy got so irritated -- Malicious Gift turns into Happily Ever After!

This brings me to extended life spans.  Apparently there is a lot of talk right now about new biotechnology that may extend the human life expectancy to 120, 150 or beyond.  Just how long would most people like to live?  David Ewing Duncan did a survey, and found that, although the majority of people he asked wanted to die around 80, a few wanted to live to 120.  They had things they wanted to get done that just wouldn’t fit into a normal life span.

That’s me.  I often feel like I wasted the first forty or so years of my life.  I’ve done a little bit of everything.  Directed one musical.  Sang in one major opera production.  Acted in one film, ran one choral program, directed one choir, sang with one symphony, acted in one play.   Jeez, just settle on something, anything.  Three bad marriages.  (Two beautiful children.)  Ran a pasta company, worked for a lot of non-profits, but I never felt like I stuck with anything long enough to really accomplish anything.  If I can live to be 120, maybe I’ll finally do something significant with my life.

And those three bad marriages really bother me.  What a waste of time!

But…wait.  Each of those marriages had a gift.  George, thank you for the gift of Mozart and the musical training and opening of horizons that came because I moved to Baltimore with you.  Paul, thank you for the gift of my beautiful daughter, and for that pasta business that turned me into a real foodie.  Tim, thank you for creating a situation that forced me to realize that I can choose to be happy, leaving unhappiness and abuse behind.

The last gift those three “failed” marriages gave me was, of course, the last twenty years of happiness with Ed.  I learned how to recognize a good man when I saw him, and how to gratefully accept a good life with him.

Sometimes it takes four thousand years for the exile from heaven to make sense. 

Sometimes you have to sleep, surrounded by thorns for a hundred years, before your real life can start.

Like my daffodil bulbs, sometimes you can't bloom until you've sat in the cold dark winter, waiting for the light to dawn.  And it always does.

Like I said, better late than never.  Welcome Yule!

Past Lives, Or Are They?

I remember feeling resentful and disoriented when I took a class in U.S. History that taught the events of my childhood and adulthood out of a textbook.   It is strange to read a history book about events that I remember clearly.  Although I've been too busy working and raising children to pay attention to every little world event -- when, in 2002, my history teacher at Portland Community College introduced a discussion about the ending of the Cold War, I said, startled, "The Cold War's OVER?"

Now I'm re-reading "The Year Everything Changed," the brilliant history of the women's movement by Gail Collins.  Again, it feels strange to read about my life's events as "history."    Because the women's movement doesn't feel like history.  It's pretty recent.  My grandmother was 19 years old when women finally got the right to vote, and had to have written permission from her husband to teach school in the 1930s and '40s.  My mother was one of the first women in Portland to go "back to school" for a degree, while her own children were still in junior high.  That was a pretty radical thing to do in 1970.

And I seem to have missed the recent swing to the right among young women who feel that the women's movement was something disreputable and tiresome.  Many young women, it seems, are so far removed from what it was like before the women's movement that they can afford to dismiss it.

When someone like Hillary Rodham Clinton can go from being the wronged First Lady who has to make cookies and get the right haircut to be accepted as a worthy First Wife, even though she's uncomfortably smart and capable, to becoming a celebrated member of the U.S. Senate, to candidate for President once (and maybe twice!) and then Secretary of State, you know we've come a long way, baby. 

How far have we come, how fast?  Here are just a few examples of common occurrences among girls and women in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, drawn from my personal experience.  These were so commonplace that they weren't worth talking about at the time.   As a matter of fact, you would be thought to be unreasonable, or whiny, or irrational, or a bad sport for bringing them up, at the very least.  Or you could lose your job or your boyfriend or husband for bringing them up.  If you're under 30, you might think I'm making this stuff up.  I'm not.  Ask anybody over 50.

In 1968, my 8th grade science teacher told me that girls couldn't do well in science and math.  They didn't have the brains for it.  (My grade in science promptly fell from an A to a C, and I gave up on my dream of being a neurosurgeon.)

Also in 1968, I was sent home from a school dance because I was wearing a pantsuit with a tunic.  I could stay if I took the pants off and just wore the thigh-high tunic.  No thanks.  (I should have known better.  If a girl wore pants to school, she could get sent to the vice-principal's office to be paddled.  Bend over!)

During high school, it was understood that the girls who got leads in the school musicals got them because they spent long periods of time with the drama teacher in his windowless office.  I didn't.  I was never cast in anything but the chorus.  (I did get to stand in for the lead one year when she suddenly lost her voice halfway through the first scene of "My Fair Lady," but just for opening night.)

In 1975, my college advisor told me that "they" discouraged women from getting a secondary certificate in music (choral directing, that is) -- because "we don't believe women can handle the large classes." 

As a secretary at a major real estate management firm in 1980, I saved all my copying chores to do once a day, because going down the hall to the copy machine meant running the gauntlet of men standing in the narrow hallway who would grope me as I shouldered past them.

As a secretary in the placement office for the largest employer in Oregon, my manager patted me on the fanny, as he did every woman in his office.  I wheeled around, pointed my finger at him and said, "Never do that again."  When I asked later that year about opportunities to move up, I was told, "You'll never get out of the secretarial pool."  I noticed that two women in the office who didn't object to the fanny-patting had been promoted to interviewer.  My father was the head of Human Resources at the time, and my manager knew that.  I didn't tell my father about the incident.  The Common Wisdom was that it wouldn't do any good to complain, anyway.  This was in 1981.

In 1985, I divorced a man who was an alcoholic and wife abuser.  I was supporting a small child as a researcher in a small private college.  Because my ex-husband wouldn't leave our house and wouldn't pay the mortgage, I had to make the payments by myself, without being able to live there, essentially becoming  homeless (or at least dependent upon the kindness of family until I could sell the house).  My credit union responded by requesting the return of my credit card and immediate payment of the balance, because I was no longer a married woman.

(That was the same year that I was asked to leave the chamber choir in my church, because I was single now and that made the wives of the men in the choir uncomfortable.)

In 1988, as the development officer of a nationally renowned private school, I raised more than one million dollars in one year -- a record.  On the way to a City Club speech by the president of NOW, my boss, the headmaster, announced that he was going to fire me after the fall fundraising campaign because "a man could be more successful because the school's culture was patriarchal."  I asked for a  copy of my latest (glowing) performance review so that I could use it in my job hunt and he refused, because it proved that I had done a good job and shouldn't have been fired and he was concerned about liability issues.

Now I hear that there are worries about the imbalance in the numbers of men going to college.  The majority of people on college campuses, in law programs, medical programs, divinity schools, are women.   This is a grave concern.

Really?  A gender imbalance surely wasn't a concern when most of the people in professional college programs were men.

We have just endured an election season where the right to contraception -- not abortion, contraception -- was back on the table, where the Republican candidate for President seemed to believe that professional women couldn't work the hours necessary to be successful in a cabinet post because they needed to get home to cook dinner for their family -- I'm not even going to comment on the "binders full of women" statement -- and where a U.S. Senator was quoted as saying that pregnancy as a result of a rape was God's Will. 

And last week, a news item popped up on a local TV station.  Seems that a treatment clinic for sex offenders has been operating in an unmarked building five blocks from my house, for the past year.  This came out because of "incidents" involving men from the clinic and women and children in the neighborhood.  I was advised not to walk alone after dark  -- this would mean anytime after 5:00 p.m., in November in my city -- because, being a woman, I wouldn't be safe.

It's 2012.  I'm fifty-six -- fifty-six years old -- and I'm tired of this nonsense now.  I'm tired of it, but I still don't understand it.  Why this unremitting hostility against 51% of the population? 

I'm still taking my walks.  I'm a trained opera singer with an excellent pair of lungs, and besides, I've got my umbrella and I'm not afraid to use it.

I once read that Women's Liberation was defined as the radical notion that "women are people, too."  Yes.  We are. 

And maybe this is an artifact of my age, and maybe not, but there is part of me that is uncomfortable with posting this essay, because I am afraid of provoking comments that I'm whining or being unreasonable.  Don't be a bad sport.  Get over it.

I'm posting it.  There.  Get over it.

Seismic Shifts

When my youngest graduated from high school and left two days later for a three-month job out of state, several of my friends felt that it would comfort me if they repeated variations of the common wisdom, “He’ll come back.  They all come back.”

Maybe yours does.  Mine didn’t.  Oh, somebody who resembles Robin came back after three months of 14-16 hour days on an island with no ferry service, no electricity, hot water, wi-fi, and only intermittent cell service (and that in one spot in the middle of the woods).   I'm not saying this was a bad experience.  It wasn't, although I could tell it was hard from the few texts he sent periodically.  But it's obvious that the summer, plus the steady girlfriend, has changed him.  He makes his own plans.  He doesn’t always tell me where he is or what he’s doing.   I was sitting in the living room when he and his girlfriend were making plans to set up a joint checking account to satisfy one of the requirements for family student housing when they go to college together next year.  This is all good and right, and we knock ourselves out to raise functional, happy adults.  But succeeding in this lifelong goal has been rocking my reality, more than I ever expected.

Perhaps most pivotally, I’m no longer the most important woman in his life.   Kaylee comes first, as she should.

Then my daughter announced three weeks ago that she and her boyfriend are engaged – this was on the heels of her realizing that she’s coming up on 30 years old and that physiologically, her child-bearing years are limited. Wonderful, we like her fiancé very much and while the concept of being a “grandparent” might take some getting used to, having grandchildren is just going to be really, really fun.

Still, here’s the thing I keep stubbing my mental toe against.  My children don’t need me to feel loved or to learn how to get along in the world.

I’m not the central person in either of my children’s lives anymore.

Well-meaning friends and family members have objected to Robin and Kaylee’s plans by saying, “They’re so young.  You have to know who you are before you can have a good relationship with somebody else.”  (I get the impression that if they were just being flaky on-again-off-again teenagers, nobody would be worried about them.)  The thing is, I wonder just WHEN is that magic moment when you know who you are?  I know plenty of confused 50-year-olds.  Some of them even make bad decisions about relationships, based on no information or wrong or misinterpreted information, or delusions, wishes, fantasies or dreams. 

Or, like me, they make a decision that turns out well just because of dumb luck.

Ed and I didn’t have a textbook courtship where people could comfortably say, “That’ll work.  That’s a good gamble.”  I was 34 when I called Ed as part of a series of phone calls to recruit volunteers for his alma mater.  That’s right, we met because I was a telephone solicitor.  Really.  That’s how we met.  One of those little voices on the other end of the phone that most people hang up on. 

He was in a rocky relationship at the time, had just moved back to Portland after ten years on the East Coast and was trying to figure out if he really could make a living as a musical instrument maker.  I was in a rocky relationship, raising a toddler pretty much by myself and on medication for chronic depression, the biggest pessimist you ever saw, ricocheting from one disaster to another.  None of my friends today would have recognized me then, a really overweight business-like woman in a dark blue suit.  When Ed learned that I was the fundraiser from his high school, he said rudely, “How did you get this number?”  I had just spent a week making cold calls on people who didn’t want to talk to me.  I laughed.  It was the only response I could make short of starting to cry and quitting my job.  Then he laughed.  Then I said I liked his laugh and he said he liked my laugh and we talked for two hours on company time.  Then he became my star volunteer and we became friends and over the next two years, we both got out of those rocky relationships.  Then he looked at my fat depressed self and saw something that he could be in love with and I looked at his sincere sweet face and fell in love with him and we got married.  Next month, it’ll be 21 years.

I didn’t know who I was then and I’m not sure he knew himself well either.  We changed each other and helped and healed each other.  Neither of us would be who we are today without these two decades of being together.

And now our relationship is on the brink of “coming of age,” ha!  Actually it’s true.  Our children are grown.  We both get the senior discount at Fred Meyer.  We’ve figured out how to do weekends and vacations together, finally (since we’re both introverts, time off involves a lot of alone time, but it took a couple of decades to really figure that out. I mean, alone alone, not alone together alone).  We now know that we don’t have to be interested in the same things.  He doesn’t have to love travel and opera and I don’t have to love optics, kayaks, melodeons, inkle looms, smocking or whatever craft he’s focused on this year. 

We're lucky, we've always had a solid foundation to our marriage.  We love each other and our children; we love sharing a home and a basic philosophy toward life; and most of all, the primary concern for each of us is that we make the other happy.  And I suppose it's telling that I can't imagine life without Ed, and he can't imagine life without me.

It also helps that I think he’s just about the cutest man who ever trod shoe leather, and he still seems to think I’m pretty cute, too.

But it feels a little funny to feel more independent within a marriage.  We were joined at the hip for so long, and now we finally feel confident enough in ourselves that we feel we can afford to let each other out of our sight from time to time. 

Then there’s the ‘rents.  We are lucky, we still have them.  But like everybody else, our parents can push our buttons.  To quote Martin Seligman, the behavioral psychologist who wrote “Flourish,” and “Learned Optimism,” our parents can push our buttons efficiently because they’re the ones who installed them.  Well, that’s old news.  For years, we spent a lot of energy trying to feel like the adults we really were, trying not to care about their opinions of us, working to create our own family traditions.  But now we don’t need to, because to quote another hero of mine, George Harrison, I’m "gettin’ old as my mother.”  When did we get older than our parents?  And when did our parents start to be, not older, but old?

Ed’s parents moved into a lovely retirement facility last year.  We all thought it was too soon, but really, Bill is 80, when is it too soon?  They’re comfortable and busy and none of us middle-aged “children” need to worry about their safety and how they are dealing with the medical issues associated with aging.  My parents have just spent a week touring retirement communities and are planning on moving this year.  Well, they’re kids of 78 and 82, so this also isn’t too soon, and we’ll be happy when they, too are comfortable and busy in a place where we don’t have to worry about their safety and how they're dealing with medical issues…

We’re all on that Small World After All conveyor belt, and some of us are closer to the end of the ride than the others.  Maybe it’s the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, sudden drops and splashes and cannon fire, and the sound track does change as you go along, but there is definitely an embarkation and a disembarkation point at either end of the adventure, and I’m noticing just where I am on the ride.  And I’m farther along than I thought I was.

I’m not a-weepin’ and a-wailin’.  I’ve written plenty in this space about enjoying the back half of the game (my father once referred to the “seats on the fifty-yard line”) and boy am I aware of how lucky I am.  Just a generation or two ago, being 56 put you on the brink of retirement and old age.  I still feel like I’m just getting started and I do have at least one full adulthood ahead of me, there’s no reason for me not to be vigorous and capable for another 40 years.  Yes, I need three pairs of glasses to deal with eyes that don’t readily change focal lengths on their own, and Ed can’t hear without hearing aids, and I need to write everything down, and my feet don’t always work as well as I’d like.   I’m not new in box.  Got a few miles on me.  But I’m like a late ‘90s Honda – I’ve probably got another 150,000, 200,000 miles still.

Meanwhile, I hear rumbles.  The solid earth isn’t so solid anymore, and I wonder why it’s a little hard to keep my balance.

I’m thinking about learning how to dance.