Generations

My Dad was a member of what we’ve come to call the “Greatest Generation:” the folks who struggled through the Great Depression and then fought and won World War II. He would certainly laugh at the sobriquet and tell you he was just doing what was expected, what everyone did.

I am firmly a part of the Baby Boomers, those millions of kids who were fathered by love-starved, sex-crazed soldiers, sailors and airmen coming home from the war.

Sociologists cast around for a name for the next generation and didn’t do so well, coming up with the lame Gen X – though Wikipedia credits Magnum photographer Robert Capa with the phrase in the early 1950s. It’s generally taken to mean people born after the boomers, from the early sixties to the early eighties.

Following the alphabet, someone decided that the next generation would be Gen Y, though I’ve also heard these people described as the Millennial Generation (Millennials for short), the Facebook Generation, Generation Next, Net Generation and my favorite, Echo Boomers.

My thoughts today though are on a generation whose time frame is a bit uncertain. Not Gen X or Gen Y, but Gen Whine. These are the Americans who complain about their lives, look for someone to blame for their troubles, sue at the drop of a hat and stumble through life taking little or no responsibility for their actions. They feel they are owed something and that everything bad that happens to them has to be someone else’s fault. And someone sure as hell better make it right for them.

I thought about these folks a lot last week. While the nation was focused on the Supreme Court and the oral arguments over the Affordable Care Act, I was more interested in another case. A New York judge (Melvin L. Schweitzer) threw out a lawsuit brought by a group of former students against New York Law School (not NYU). They claimed that they couldn’t find jobs and that that was the school’s fault. They did the work, they paid their tuition (or took out loans to do so) and now there was no call for their lawyerly skills.

So what should they do with those skills? Why, sue, of course. “It’s got to be someone’s fault that I can’t find a job so, I know, I’ll sue the school that trained me.”

Now, I’ll admit, the facts are more complicated – they always are – but come on people, get real! The economy tanked, business shrunk, everyone’s cutting back, even cities are going bankrupt – and lots of other people can’t find jobs either. It sucks, yes, but that’s life. GFOI!

As Judge Schweitzer said “Not every ailment afflicting society may be redressed by a lawsuit.”

Take that, you whiners. And stop looking for people to blame.

What conservatives want

According to Morning Edition on NPR today, 71% of all the low-income women who went to a clinic in Odessa, TX, in 2010, under the Texas Women's Health Program, went to Planned Parenthood. Furthermore Texas has among the highest rates of cervical cancer and unwanted pregnancies in the nation.

So how did the Texas legislature respond to these facts? Well, they gutted the program of course, forcing the Odessa Planned Parenthood to shutter its doors!

Just another example of misogynistic, sex-negative Republican men trying to force back the clock and “put women in their place.”

I don’t understand why the women of America don’t rise up and say “Enough!” What will it take for women – and men – to realize that these people are not just after gays; they are after women and minorities as well. In fact, they are after one solid majority: the vast number of sex-positive folks who think the government has no damn business in our bedrooms.

Can someone explain to me how these fundamentalist Christian bigots can argue against birth control AND against abortion? How they can deny women access to proven methods of family planning that limit the number of unwanted pregnancies? How they can dare to pass laws that force their twisted, sex-phobic vision of the world on the rest of us?

What will it take for us to wake up?

Remember, the Christian right is neither!

Sailing the Memory Sea

My father crossed the International Date Line aboard the USNS General E. T. Collins on July 15, 1953, headed to Korea. I know this because he oddly enough kept the Domain of the Golden Dragon certificate he received that day (image above). I crossed the IDL fourteen months later, on another Navy transport ship, but I was only six and not as organized as he; I don’t know the ship’s name. I’ve spent some time over the last few days trying to figure it out.

It’s amazing what’s available online, and though I haven’t yet found what I’m looking for, I’ve learned a lot and had a great deal of fun. The closest I came was an article -- well worth reading -- published in MS Musings, an online journal for those with MS. Its author, Ron Crooker, sailed from Oakland, CA, to Yokohama, Japan, on September 4, 1954. At first I was convinced he was on the same ship I was, but the dates, while tantalizingly close, don’t quite match up. He arrived in Japan on Sep 17 while I celebrated my sixth birthday on Sep 19, still on the Pacific.

Of course his dates could be off . . . or maybe we celebrated my birthday early, knowing there would be no time while we were getting from Yokohama to our new house in Tokyo.

I’ll keep looking.

What’s most intriguing is that he sailed on the General Edwin D. Patrick – the very ship that we sailed on nine years later after Dad’s second tour of duty.

There are two stories that bear retelling, one from each of my early sailings.

On that first Pacific crossing I turned six, as I’ve said. We celebrated with a party and a game of Mr. Potato Head. I remember it well, for the game was interrupted by the ship’s PA system blaring “Man overboard!” Today of course it would be a soothing female voice saying gently, “Code 8, Code 8,” (or some such); back then we were more direct.

We rushed to the railing and watched with equal parts fascination and horror as they threw dye in the water, stopped the ship and sent out a boat. He was never found. It’s a memory, and a birthday party, I’ve never forgotten.

The other tale, tall but true, took place on the final night of our return stateside in June of 1963. I shared a cabin with my brother and a friend, but there was a fourth bunk. We stripped a sheet from that bunk and fashioned a pirate flag, using shoe polish for paint. We crept out on deck, lowered the American flag and added our skull and crossbones under it, raising the two together. Miraculously, we were not detected.

Just about the time we were sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge, the GIs onboard saw our flag and started hooting and hollering. This time the voice on the PA was clearly that of the captain: “Mate, bring that flag to the bridge!”

As we were getting off the ship a couple hours later the Captain, at the gangway to say goodbye to the officers, pulled us out of line and asked us to wait a bit. We were terrified. Visions of Dad being court-martialed played in our heads. Our parents went down the gangway wondering what the hell was going on.

“Boys, with your permission I’m going to keep that flag,” said the Captain, as we did our most nonchalant shoulder-shrugging, what-does-this-have-to-do-with-us pantomime. “That’s the best thing that’s ever happened on one of these crossings. Let’s just be glad the Navy didn’t see it and start shooting at us!”

Holy war at sea! We hadn’t really thought through all the consequences. We ran off the ship, shaking and laughing at the same time. Don’t remember what we told the ‘rents. Don’t wanna remember.

The ship my Dad sailed on, the USNS E. T. Collins, circa 1954

The USNS Edwin D. Patrick, sans pirate flag, on which we sailed June 1963

I can add nothing, except "Amen!"

In today's New York Times; too small? Click here to see it better.

Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words

I’m a huge fan of This American Life on NPR. I subscribe to the podcast; every show is automatically downloaded so I may listen to it at my leisure. Episode 457, What I Did For Love, aired 10 Feb 2012.

Kurt Braunohler and his girlfriend were together for thirteen years, having met on their third day of college. After turning thirty, Kurt wondered why they had never considered marriage. They had a conversation that led to them deciding to take a break and see other people for thirty days. A month became two, then three and, as you might guess, they then separated.

I was intrigued by Kurt’s description of the dates he went on during those three months. Because he had been coupled since he was seventeen, his dating skills were those of an adolescent. Add to that the fact that he’s a heart-on-his-sleeve kind of guy and he found himself wanting to say I love you on the first date and planning a future together on the second.

I was intrigued. I was also remembering my own experiences; they were much like his.

I got together with my first boyfriend, Sandy Adams (right), on January 10, 1972. A year later we celebrated with a party -- and I bought a wedding cake! A year after that we broke up, but I still wanted to be married and so hooked up with my next boyfriend within weeks. From then until 1986, when I moved to New York to be with Ransom, I was either in a relationship or trying to be in one.

I know I scared away possible mates by pushing too hard and rushing too fast. I don’t know that I said I love you on the first date, but I don’t know that I didn’t. And without doubt I was picking china patterns – in my head at least – after the first week.

I spent almost twenty years in the restaurant business, but I don’t really think of that as a career. I fell into it, liked it and so stayed a while. But it wasn’t a career with defined goals. My real goal has always been to be married, to be happy and to live with my husband for the rest of my life. Some of that springs from my insecurities but mostly it speaks to who I am and who I am not. I am a caregiver, I am a supporter, I am a comforter. I am not an over-achiever, I am not driven to succeed in business, I am not motivated by power or glory.

Unlike Kurt I sowed all the oats that needed sowing when I was younger. I don’t need to test the waters to see what I’m missing. I KNOW what I’m missing, and am happily rid of it.

This American Life is sometimes my American life. Check it out.