Category: Commentary

Most of the people from my parents’ generation have already left this earth. Both of my parents have died and out of dozens of aunts and uncle only one remains and she will be 103 next month. They were the men and women who were children during the Great Depression and teens and twenty somethings during World War II. Then they settled down in the nineteen fifties and enjoyed the fruits of the economic boom with good jobs mostly for the men and new inventions like televisions. The majority of the women were stay at home moms although a few broke barriers in universities and at work. They often had lots of children without benefit of birth control and lived what one might call rather traditional lives. They tended to be a kind hard working lot that famously earned the designation of “The Greatest Generation” and they were indeed good people, but like any group not without flaws. 

Most of my elders smoked heavily for years until the effects of this bad habit were finally openly publicized and their hearts and lungs were already severely damaged. They tended to just accept horrific practices like segregation even when they were not racist at heart. I heard most of the racist pejoratives that we abhor from my elders and cringed at them even as a child. I listened to women asserting that they had to ask their husbands how they should vote and lamenting the fact that they often had to defer to men in determining their lifestyles. They were nice, compassionate, hard working and patriotic people who just wanted to live quiet lives without upsetting the status quo. Perhaps living through challenging times as children and enduring war as young adults was as much tumult as they wanted to experience and so they did not seem to want to question things. They went to work, cared for their families and homes and saved money by living rather simply even though they might have enjoyed more luxuries. 

Then along game my group, the Baby Boomers, one of the largest conglomeration of souls to overtake the world in all of history. We grew up in a different kind of time dominated by television programs and news that featured vivid images of happenings in the world. We were the Sputnik kids whose educations were accelerated by a race to space between the United States and the Soviet Union. We rolled into balls under our desks on Fridays when the duck and cover drills were part of our routine preparation for potential nuclear war. We watched the stirrings of demands for justice and civil rights grow ever more demanding until some of us were defying our parents’ wishes and marching alongside Black citizens that we had never really known because we had been hidden from each other. We became vocal about segregated water fountains, bathrooms and lunch counters. We questioned our parents and wondered how they could have been so silent about so many egregious things. They in turn wondered where we had learned to be so bold.

When the older generation got us entangled in a civil war in Vietnam we became the pawns of a conflict that would change our lives and divide our ranks forever. Some of us thought that patriotism meant fighting willingly in a an endeavor to promote democracy and others thought that patriotism meant fighting to save our peers from senseless injury and death in what appeared to be a doomed endeavor. We would never be quite the same after our years as young adults when some of us rebelled and some followed the example of our parents by faithfully doing as they were told. When the older generation bowed to pressure and signed voting rights and civil rights laws and withdrew from Vietnam we settled into our own adult lives much as our parents had once done only things were quite different. 

We had opened wounds that would scab over but never quite go away. We were almost evenly divided between conservatives and liberals who debated back and forth, slowly changing the world in which we lived. Women went to work in droves, if not breaking glass ceilings as least asserting their independence in lifestyle and thought. Birth control made family planning an acceptable idea. We became more mobile and better educated. We watched our neighbors become more diverse. We lost the pensions and union safety that had protected our parents and turned to 401ks and investments. Technology brought unimaginable wonders into our lives. It became commonplace for ordinary souls to travel on planes to places all over the world. 

It seemed to be a good life but there were still rumblings of despair that we often ignored much as our parents had done. We had not faced the realities of injustice or racism or poverty or sexual identity. Many of our fellow citizens were no closer to lives of security and luxury than their parents or grandparents had been. While our world grew more diverse the treatment of those different from ourselves was not always fair. The world somehow seemed to grow smaller even as it grew more complex. Suddenly happenings in far away lands had as much impact on our daily lives as events just around the corner. We saw that much had changed and not always for the better while we were busy living in the day to day. 

We are enjoying longer and healthier lives than any other generation in history. We cling to our generational power longer than any other as well. Our children are hoping to take the reins of power and do their part in reshaping the world for the betterment of mankind but fear that their time will come and go as Baby Boomers in their seventies and eighties hang on tightly to influence. Much as we have done since the days of Vietnam we quibble with one another about what are the right things to do to leave our country in better condition than it was when we first took the power. We want to repair the generational gaps but get little or nothing done because of our intransigence. We don’t appear to have the good sense to retire and give our children and grandchildren a chance to try their hands at unraveling the gooey mess of history and politics that has confounded generations for all time. 

In truth we are far less different from one generation to another than we may believe. We want to set things right but we only have so much energy for revolution. Sooner or later we grow weary and just settle for less than we actually need to set things right. Maybe the respite is necessary for allowing ourselves to observe and think or maybe it is a sign that it is time for a newer generation to carve out the kind of world that they wish for the future. We have done our parts just as our parents and grandparents did. The cycle of life demands that we know when to let go, With or without our input the world will continue to evolve toward closer and closer approximations of a better way of living for all. 

As a young girl my grandparents often told me about items that were commonplace during their youth that had become outdated. Both of them had travelled from one place to another in horse drawn buggies. They had no refrigeration or electricity in their childhood homes and they relieved themselves in outhouses where they often used old Sears Roebuck catalogs for toilet paper. They enjoyed telling me about the old days and I was often stunned by the stories they told. 

My mother had her own set of tales about growing up in a world quite different from mine. She spoke of listening to music and programs on the radio and reminisced about going downtown to see a movie with a dime that covered the cost of the trip on the bus and the admission fee for the film. Movies were of course all black and white at least until The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind came along. As a teen Mama spent time working as a phone operator connecting people’s calls with cables that she had to insert into the correct holes to complete the process of communicating. It all sounded so quaint and it never occurred to me that I too would one day begin to recollect the things that I used as a child that had become all but extinct.  

I remember the first time I was in an antique store and I found artifacts from my youth being sold as though they were relics from an ancient time. Suddenly I began to feel my age if not physically at least psychologically. Somehow the time that had passed seemed so short and yet when I did the math I realized that some of the things I saw had to be sixty or seventy years old. 

We have progressed rapidly over time. We used to clip coupons from magazines and newspapers but now such things are rare to find. They have been replaced by barcodes on smartphones. Typewriters are playthings for toddlers often found in the offices of pediatricians. Who would even want to use them with word processing software that instantly corrects mistakes and aligns papers with precision? Our phones today are capable of providing more information that the computers used to send a man to the moon back in the nineteen seventies. Few people still have their VCR tapes of movies and even the later DVDs seem almost useless with instant streaming capabilities, but I still have mine. The old Blockbuster type stores where we spent Friday and Saturday nights choosing entertainment have gone the way of dinosaurs. 

I remember getting green stamps at the grocery store and sitting at the kitchen table with my mother using a sponge to paste them into little books. When we had enough of them we would eagerly look through a catalog of prizes for which we might redeem them. Some stores gave us certificates that we saved to claim dishes or pots and pans. Even gas stations provided ways to earn points reimbursable for all sorts of items. 

There was a time when stores and most everything else were closed on Sundays. Television went off the air at midnight. The news programs lasted little more than an hour each day. Women and girls had to wear hats and gloves in church. Most families had only one car and few of the homes were air conditioned before the end of the nineteen sixties. We ate lots of fried foods but rarely went out to eat. Vacations were mostly road trips to visit relatives with food for the journey packed at home. 

I have honestly lost track of the acceleration of technology. I vividly remember my husband bringing home a computer called the TRS 80 that was outrageously expensive considering how little it was able to do. I sent my eldest daughter to a computer camp when she was in the seventh grade and she was one of the only girls there. My spouse often drove me a bit crazy by insisting that we get the latest and greatest gadgets even if it meant sacrificing in other ways. He believed that we were on the cusp of changing the world as we had known it and he was absolutely right. 

I still love to hold a real book in my hands and print materials for online coursework. I have to be able to highlight and put notes in margins. I can’t even imagine taking a test online. I need the physical security of paper and pencil. I want my teachers to see my work and be able to determine whether I understand something but just made a small error. I feel for students who have to learn from videos and demonstrate their knowledge by picking multiple choice answers before the time has elapsed and it’s too late to even try. There are some advances that just don’t work for me and I suspect that they are not particularly popular with most people either. 

I laugh now as I think of some of the things we enjoyed that make me sound so old now. I like the popcorn that we made from kernels in an iron skillet but microwave popcorn is not bad. I remember slaving over a sink full of dirty dishes and having to wash, rinse and then dry them. There was the process washing and rolling our hair until it air dried which sometimes meant sleeping with the bristles of the curlers boring little holes into our scalps. Even worse was having to hang clothes on lines in the backyard and then take them down so wrinkled that we had to devote at least one day a week to standing over an ironing board. We did not walk to school five miles uphill in the snow both ways, but we often played outside in our bare feet with the water hose as our only source of hydration and we thought nothing of riding in the back seat of our cars while standing up with no seat belts. Those rides in the open space of someone’s pickup truck were so hairy that even we somehow knew that they were not especially safe.

I now see adults the age of my daughters discussing things that they owned and did that have become a memory of another time. I am grateful for advances that I would not want to do without but there are other aspects of my childhood and teen years that were actually somewhat fun. I still have many items that people would be hard pressed to identify. Some belonged to my grandparents and parents and some belonged to me. Progress continues with or without us. I like to think that I am modern enough to keep up with the times. 

We  humans communicate in multiple ways. We think of words when we want to convey information or ideas but our creative instincts have always used many kinds of media to express our thoughts. The artistry with which we make ourselves heard is one of the most incredible aspects of our humanity. 

The Sistine Chapel and other works of art speak to us centuries after they were created. We do not need a translator to sense the message that such artistic expressions hope to send to the world. Visual art is a way of speaking that transcends language or even culture. We understand and marvel at the ingenuity of people who walked the earth thousands of years ago. We see that people have been compelled to tell their stories for all time.

Our bodies move in the rhythms of dance to demonstrate our feelings and to tell wordless stories. With music we are carried away into the imaginings of our minds. We tell tales with the simple expressions on our faces or the fluttering of our hands. Children do not have to be prompted to create. It is as natural to them as sleeping or eating. We only need what is all around us to begin a narration. 

Today’s young people are enjoying a kind of renaissance of graphic novels and texts. Many of the bestselling volumes resemble elaborate comic books with incredible artwork and complex stories. This trend is worrisome to those who wonder if the glory of the written word is coming to an end. I would argue that such books are simply different ways of manifesting ourselves and the genre are filled with treasures that will be cherished many years from now along with the classics of old. 

When I was a young girl my mother thought it was frivolous to spend money on comic books. I always laughed a bit because my father had several collections of comics from his favorite illustrators and humorists. He read the comic strips in the newspaper every single day, often putting one of us on his lap while he pointed to the characters and chuckled out loud. I grew to love reading such things. I understood that they were not necessarily great literature but they were fun and sometimes I even learned things from them that I had not known before. 

My grandmother kept a stack of comic books at her house for any grandchildren who came to visit. I thought she was so forward thinking to do so. I often wondered if she enjoyed looking at the drawings and figuring out what they meant because she was illiterate. I think comics were a kind of midway means of reading for her and often she purchased the ones that told the stories of actual classic literature. Since she was able to explain what she saw happening in the visuals I felt that she was receiving a certain level of education from them even if she was unable to translate or understand the words in the bubbles. 

Today’s graphic novels are far superior to even the best comics of the past. Some are quite brilliant like Maus which provides a stunning view of the Holocaust or Persepolis which details the coming of age of a young girl in Iran. The beauty of such books is that they are not only filled with beautiful language but they also provide dramatic witness to history and culture in ways that are often insufficient with only words. They spark the interest of reluctant readers and pull them into a world of art and thought that they might otherwise never enter. They have the power to deepen discussions and prompt additional research as the reader wants to learn more about the topics. They are more than a kind of entry way into reading like the comic books once were. They are high art and stunning literature in their own right.

I still enjoy The Far Side and the best of Mad Magazine. I find wisdom in Calvin and Hobbs and laugh at the gang in Peanuts. Graphic renderings of humor or even tragedy can be stunning in the right hands. To me art is art no matter the form, but I am still continually undone by a brilliant manipulation of words. I am in awe of a natural born poet like Amanda Gorham. When words are put together is a way that transcends the ordinary I am moved. The written word, the classics and the offerings of the new geniuses of wording are still my favorite mode of gathering information or hearing a story but I am also open to the modern arts of storytelling. Like Picassos of writing they take the process of communicating and put it back together in new and sometimes powerful forms. Moreover if the new ways actually encourage reading I am all for them. Whatever gets people turning pages rather than just sitting in front of screens is a worthy effort. 

All too often we get set in our ways and want everything to be exactly the way it was when we were young. My father found great joy in the new and different while also appreciating the best of human traditions. We do not want to simply stand still. It is important that we continue to explore and experiment even with the ways in which great stories and histories are told. We should always have an eye on the future while treasuring our favorite moments from the past. We learn both from the old and the new and progress into better ways of understanding and knowledge. An open mind leads to discovery and joy as words with pictures often do as well.

Would you rather be happy or successful? It’s an oft asked question which appears to assume that life is a choice between one or the other. I believe that it is absolutely possible to be both happy and successful without having to compromise. In fact I have often believed that the happiest and most successful people are those who define their own lives rather than adhering to some general definition of what constitutes the best of everything. 

Growing up I was a bright hard working student. By the end of my high school years I had earned the title of valedictorian of my graduating class. It was an honor but what meant more to me was knowing that I had but forth great effort and had learned new ideas and skills that would serve me well for the rest of my life. The joy in being valedictorian was not in being number one but rather in taking full advantage of the educational opportunities that I had been lucky enough to have. 

I sometimes wonder if I would have done so well had it not been for the death of my father who had always challenged me to read and think and push myself to be my best. Somehow after he was gone I wanted to prove to him that I had heard his message and so I embarked on a journey geared to gaining as much knowledge as possible. I was successful in that endeavor and in the process I just happened to end up ranked high in my class, but that had never been my goal. My happiness upon graduation came from all of the books I had read, the mathematics that I had learned and the habits that I had developed. I would use every one of the skills from those years throughout my life just as my father had so often told me I would. 

Many people in my family had ideas about how I might turn my academic achievements into a success story. They urged me to become a doctor or a lawyer or a business woman. They spoke of the prestige and earning power of such endeavors. They reminded me that I had the abilities to achieve remarkable goals and that I should never settle for being ordinary. Because I wanted to please them as much as I believed that I had posthumously satisfied by father’s dreams for me I floundered in my early years at the university. I earnestly attempted to consider the more lofty kinds of majors that our society so admires but whenever I entered such departments and took the courses I made high grades but left feeling empty and unfulfilled. I felt no joy in the school of business. Sciences for medicine bored me. I only felt the giddiness of happiness when I was studying the subjects that would train me to be a teacher. 

Because so many who knew me kept insisting that I should do more than train for a job that they thought anybody might do, I went back and forth between considerations for my future. I took unrelated classes and changed majors while getting stalled in my progress toward earning a degree. It was only when I decided that finding happiness and purpose was my definition of success that I stopped listening to the naysayers and forged full steam ahead toward becoming a certified teacher. After that I never looked back and I learned how to tune out the negativity from those who seemed saddened that I would never achieve as much as they had hoped I would. 

I loved my work and even though I made a pittance of what I might have if I had followed the advice of the well meaning people in my life I felt happy and successful every single day that I worked. There were times when my personal life became stressful due to my mother’s mental illness or health challenges that my husband or children endured. Teaching was my anchor, my place of calm. My classroom was a second home for me. Just as schooling had always distracted me from the sorrows of losing my father so early, teaching kept my mind busy and provided me with a sense of accomplishing something so much more important than filling my bank account.

I think that if someone is as lucky as I have been he or she will discover what is exciting and meaningful and in the process both happiness and success will follow. For some that will mean securing careers in the kinds of areas that did not work for me. The beauty of work life is that there are so many possibilities from which to choose. The key is to find the link between our abilities and our passions and our jobs. I was able to do that and even in my retirement and role as a grandmother I am still teaching on a regular basis. Being able to help young people feel more confident with mathematics and themselves has been such a joyful experience that I have continued to teach and tutor during our dreaded COVID 19 pandemic. 

Our society is more and more often discouraging young people who want to study history or literature or languages or philosophy in favor of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, business. Parents send their young adults to college urging them to major in something that will ensure them a high paying job. They cringe at the thought of psychology or sociology classes which they view as worthless and yet if they were to glance at a listing of the classical educations of old they would be surprised to see that the emphasis was on thinking and learning about a variety of topics rather than training for specific jobs. We have begun to chase money rather than ideas and ideals. In doing so I wonder how many young people will one day find themselves feeling both unhappy and unsuccessful. 

I would like nothing more than for everyone to feel as satisfied with their lives as I do. I have thousands of memories of glorious days when I reached the hearts and minds of my students. I  never reached a six figure salary but the riches of living a purposeful life have meant far more to me. I have enough to live well and more than a good share of happiness. If that is not success then I do not know what is. 

I both love and hate those poorly written articles that pop up on Facebook and Twitter pronouncing “the biggest home decorating mistakes.” They usually end up being a collage of stock photos of different color combinations and personal decor choices that aren’t that offensive at all. It soon becomes apparent that the purpose of the piece is to encourage readers to toss their current home designs and spend a fortune on totally redoing everything. Such features would have us all turning our rooms into look alike clones of one another just to be in sync with the so called current styles. 

While I admit to reading my monthly copies of magazines that show me the latest trends I much prefer putting my home together using items that have meaning and evoke memories. I love my books and can’t bear to part with them so I have shelves of them all over my house, a feature that is supposedly passé. I own furniture from multiple generations of our family. Each piece has a history, a story and I choose not to paint any of it because somehow that seems to detract from the feeling that all of it connects me to the journey of our family. Mine is an eclectic style popping with colors that calm me and make me smile. I feature artwork that has been passed down for generations along with finds from my travels and originals from my daughter and a favorite cousin. I am literally able to recite a pleasant memory about anything one might find in my house. My decorating style is quite personal.

I love visiting my friends and family members and viewing the ways that they have chosen to set up their households. The styles to which they are drawn say so much about who they are as individuals and that is the way decorating should be. There is nothing colder than a room designed by someone who never met the person who resides there. It looks like the lobby of a hotel rather than the domain of someone real. 

I’ve seen homes decorated in ways that I would never want but that delight me nonetheless with their daring, seeming to match the personality of the owner to perfection. My current mother-in-law has a living room swathed in a deep purple eggplant color with tables of guided wood and hot pink pillows on the lilac sofa. It bespeaks of her, a strikingly beautiful and flamboyant woman who lights up a room upon entry. Her predecessor in that house, my husband’s mother, was more of a deep thinker, someone who was constantly learning and reading. She used light sunny colors that reflected her optimism and generosity. Her interior design made me long to tarry for a time over a cup of tea and conversation. It was elegant and sophisticated just as she was.

My friend Pat was a devotee to the color blue. Varying hues of that tint throughout her home created a feeling of floating through a heavenly sky. She liked fun accent pieces that always brought a smile to my face. She was someone who enjoyed “rainbow” days and in many ways she had created her own decorative arch of colors on a canvas of blue in her domicile.

My eldest daughter stays more abreast of current trends by using her color sense to reinvent what she already has. A new pillow here, an accent wall there, a different rug transforms her old style into magazine cover worthy spaces without great expense. I never quite know what I will find when I go to visit her but one quirky thing remains constant and speaks to her organizational nature as an accountant. She has her books arranged according to color. It is both a unique and lovely way to display the texts that date back to her childhood. She has turned her prized volumes into a work of art. 

My youngest daughter likes comfort and her home shows it. The central feature of her decorating style is the view of the Texas hill country from her living room. She likes soft throws and pillows and sweet paintings of cute little birds. It is easy to see the childlike joy and idealism that drives her personality. She is a minimalist, someone who only wants enough to create a relaxing environment for her family and her dogs. She does not mind a bit of dog hair on the couch because it speaks to snuggling with her pets and keeping her priorities focused on the people she loves. Hers is a home where time stands still and there is no sense of hurry or need to rush from a cushy chair in front of the fireplace.

I suppose the favorite home of all that I visit belongs to one of my cousins. It is literally a riot of color, lipstick reds, deep navy blues, bright yellows. It takes a bold and confident person to design such a home and it works. Nothing as far as the eyes can see is dull or ordinary which is in keeping with its owner’s bigger than life personality. From the collection of red plates hanging on the dining room wall to the blue mosaic countertops in the kitchen it is a feast for the eyes and the imagination. The house is as unique and unapologetic as she is. 

I hope we never reach a point when everyone chooses a one size fits all way of decorating. How we each design our homes is what makes life interesting. Our houses should be representations of who we are and what is important to us, not meaningless imitations of some interior decorator’s ideas. If we are fortunate enough to even have a home or be able to fill it with amenities that should be cause for celebration. It’s fun to observe the way we each decorate and feels a bit like snooping into the essence of each individual’s soul.