Poetry Suggestions from Mary Kay

Good morning Karen,
I share your love of poetry and find that it has been there for me at all the significant moments of my life. Like you, I always have a book of poetry at hand and look forward to reading something new or to re-read a favorite daily. After gardening, open a book of poems by Wendell Berry or Mary Oliver—they know just what you’ve been up to. Difficult conversations with my daughters have been helped along by Rilke, especially his insights in Letters to a Young Poet. My struggling marriage had me turning to John Ciardi with some frequency. My friends get a birthday poem along with their card from me, and our book group, at least annually, selects their favorite poem to bring to the table.

Poets were there when my dad died, when my daughters were born—and through all the momentous events in their lives. There is some wonderful poetry for fly-fishing, for taking a train in England, for my divorce, for passing (though not knowing when), the day you will die. Poetry is outrageous, cynical, comforting, in-your-face, amazingly beautiful, often cryptic, but it is always there for us.

Philadelphia is filled with poetry readings, open mikes and slams this month and Billy Collins is in town for a lecture on the 22nd. Derek Walcott, (Feast on Your Life is a favorite), is releasing a long-awaited compilation this month—reportedly his finest since, Omerta.

Finally, I was saddened earlier this year to hear of Lucille Clifton’s passing. I was sure that she wrote the following poem just for me to give to my beloved daughters…and she did—for all of our daughters, sons, family, friends…and for us.

blessing the boats by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

This is national poetry month!

I try to read a poem or two a day. I thought I would be reading a lot more during retirement. I expected I’d devour books; it would be like a return to my adolescence when I was a voracious reader.

But to my surprise (and chagrin), retirement has not been a return to the compulsive reading of the last period in my life when I had a lot of free time. I’ve been trying to figure out why and have identified a few likely culprits.

First, I’ve always been something of a political junkie and the internet has been a real enabler. I spend far too much time reading online newspapers and blogs.

Also, my husband and I subscribe to far too many periodicals. When I was working, I usually did not have time to get through them all and would read an article or two and then throw them into the recycle bin.

Now we have these long breakfasts every day and slowly get through the stack. I may not be reading many books, but I sure am reading a lot of book reviews! There is something really wrong with this picture.

To make sure that I have some connection each day with literature, I try to dip into one of the poetry anthologies scattered around my house. No matter how packed my day, I can always find time for a poem or two .

And another tremendous advantage of poetry—-it forces me to slow down. The internet has turned so many of us into skim-readers. But you can’t skim poetry. It has to be read word for word or it’s not experienced. I find it very satisfying to spend time really reading one short poem.

And has Audre Lorde said in her 1984 essay, “Age, Race, Class: Women Redefining Difference," in Sister Outsider:

Of all the forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper. Over the last few years, writing a novel on tight finances, I came to appreciate the enormous differences in the material demands between poetry and prose. As we reclaim our literature, poetry has been the voice the major voice of poor, working class and Colored women.

I’m planning to compile my own personal anthology of poems I love. Any one have any suggestion of poems I should include?

Thoughts of an Aging Gardener by Fran Waksler

Thank you, Karen, for encouraging my occasional posts here. I enjoy and learn from all your posts, but those on gardening especially motivate me to respond.

What I find most discouraging about being an “aging gardener” is that my body can’t work as long as my mind wants to. I have to pace myself—something I’m not very good at. I find it frustrating that I can’t keep up with projects and tend to forget that with gardening one is always behind anyway.

My approach this spring is to focus on cleaning areas just before things are coming into bloom. Unfortunately the forsythia beat me and are now blooming in a patch of fall leaves—I never get to that area on time! My current tasks have been to prune the kerria of dead wood before the flowers open (just made it) and to make sure that the many clematis, which love my yard and reseed freely, all have support so they will climb the stockade fence. I always find working with clematis fussy. They transplant easily for me, in part because it was only recently that I learned one needs to be careful and I just dug holes for them and stuck them in—a process that worked remarkably well. The fussy part is being sure that the stems of the old ones have sufficient support without my breaking them. They require the softness of a hand that holds a baby bird.

My next job: plant ground phlox on the little rise made by the racetrack the dogs dug out. I hope the phlox with stave off erosion. Gardening with dogs is an adventure and requires innovation. They used to run through my vegetable garden, with expected damage, but once I made them a path through the middle of the garden, they use that and my plants stay safe.

With all the past wild weather the ground is covered with sticks, mostly from the birch tree—my mother warned me that it is a messy tree, but I love it nonetheless, sticks and all. I save some sticks to use as kindling in my wood stove, but the rest has to go in the yard waste bags for the city to pick up. I’m envious of those people who put out 10-15 yard waste bags at one time when I only have the energy to fill a few. Of course I compost a lot, but I still end up feeling like a wimp with my two bags.

Now that the weather is good, I can put extra house plants out on the sidewalk for passersby to take. (I feel a moral compulsion to root everything that breaks off even though I have no room for more plants.) I also put out things I have to clear from the yard—raspberry seedlings that have run amok, pachysandra from the neighbor’s yard that strays into mine (for some reason I hate pachysandra), invasive bee balm, and other odds and ends. Whatever I put out is taken (I hide them when trash is collected), which I find very rewarding.

The best retirement days for me are writing in the morning, gardening in the afternoon, and reading in the evenings. I’ve been having a lot of best days lately.

free lance publishing after retirement

From Linda Beckman

I am a free-lance writer after having published academic books and articles as an English professor (plus an article on poverty in Alabama in Ramparts back in 1968 after my civil rights experience). Since retirement I have been doing local journalism, with plans to do something far more ambitious.

I returned to Gee’s Bend to research for a piece on what happened to the African American hamlet where the famous quilts come from, the ones that have been called ”modernist art” and been shown in nearly every art museum in the country. My essay is inappropriate for a blog or other on-line venues since it is 9,000 words. Many reader/friends like it a lot—but so far I haven’t been able to bring it out.

It is harder than ever to publish now because of the decline of print culture. There are fewer serious print magazines, and those that exist, such as Harper’s, the Atlantic, and Mother Jones now only take articles that are shorter than mine. This must be because of budget constraints and also the decline of people’s willingness to read longer articles.

Others, such as Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, which do publish lengthy pieces, almost always focus on celebrities: it’s the take-over of what Chris Hedges in his latest book calls the Empire of Illusion. I will find a place for my article about Gee’s Bend, but I had wanted maximum exposure since mine is about the heist of the Benders’s artistic heritage by an unscrupulous entrepreneur.

The gardening season has begun, but there’s a dark little thought in the back of my mind.

After one of the hardest winters in recent memory, we are enjoying 70 degree weather in early April!

Usually the sight of the first little purple crocus brings tears to my eyes but this year was something special. And despite all the ice and snow I didn’t lose any more plants than usual—just a few ancient rhododendrons that had been looking sickly for the past few years .


One of the really fun things about gardening is the element of surprise: we never know which plants will survive the winter and we ever know when the show will begin. (According to my gardening records the appearance of the first crocus can vary by up to 2 and half weeks.)



But there is one constant. The crocuses always follow the snowdrops, the early daffodils follow the crocuses, then the scilla, hyacinth, the early tulips, mid and late seasons tulips, the alliums, the irises. The succession of bloom never changes. For reasons, I can’t quite explain I find this very gratifying.

The flowering shrubs have their own invariable sequence: witch hazel in February, followed by winter honeysuckle (the aptly named lonicera fragrantissima), pieris in mid March; forsythia, quince and early rhododendrons in late March: magnolia and cherry trees in early April; the explosion of azaleas and the over- powering fragrance of lilacs in late April; the rhododendron and tree peonies in May, the mountain laurel, peonies, and roses in early June.


Will this predictable succession of bloom be upended by climate change? There might be some gaps in this amazing sequence of bloom but the sequence would remain, wouldn’t it?

Since the scientific literature on climate change is way above my reading level, and since at my age it is unlikely I will be around for any really dramatic changes, I haven’t made much of an effort to try to sort it all out.

Yet fear of what climate change might do to the beauty of my little patch of earth is in the back of my mind. (I’m convinced there is no place on earth more beautiful than the Delaware valley in Spring! We’re the southernmost zone for many northern plants and the northernmost zone for many southern plants—the variety is astonishing.)

I don’t brood about the impact of climate change all that often. Usually I am happy just playing in the dirt, but sometimes the thought surfaces: Just how fragile is all of this????

Happy Birthday Nancy Pelosi!!!

I wasn’t a fan at first, but now Nancy Pelosi is my number one feminist hero.
We wouldn’t have gotten health care without her. According to Harold Meyerson

The president's insistence on a big bill that guaranteed nearly universal coverage -- a position he was encouraged to maintain by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who played Margaret Thatcher to Obama's George H.W. Bush in this tale -- is what motivated the base organizations to go all out for the bill…

In the process, Obama and Pelosi became a legislative force that Democrats have not seen since Lyndon Johnson. Pelosi's contribution, no less than Obama's, is one for the history books. While there have been notable House speakers over the past century -- Pelosi is the first speaker in more than 100 years whose role in the passage of major reform was indispensable.

If I had known about it, I would have been among the Daily Kos bloggers who sent Speaker Pelosi thousands of roses:

"Thanks to the community at Daily Kos, and others who joined in, Speaker Pelosi received thousands of roses this morning for her 70th birthday," Pelosi's staff wrote. "She sent half of the roses to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and is distributing the other half to hill staff to thank them for all their hard work on the health reform legislation."

When Pelosi first became speaker, I recall having some difficulty with her hyper-feminine affect, her delicate lady-like beauty, and expensive wardrobe. In appearance, she reminded me a little of Nancy Reagan.

My first feminist heroes in the world of electoral politics were Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug and they became for me the template for feminist politicians.

Initially, it was hard for me to believe that someone like Pelosi could be as strong and tenacious as women like Chisholm and Abzug How wrong I was!

Although a lot of Tea Party types would no doubt disagree, I think It’s good experience to have one’s preconceptions challenged.

I had another such experience in the past week when 59,000 nuns broke with the Catholic bishops and issued a public statement supporting Obama’s health care reform plan. They declared the plan abortion neutral and thus gave much needed cover to anti-abortion Democrats.

As a product (or should I say victim?) of 12 years of Catholic education the 1950’s and early 60’s, I’ve never had anything good to say about nuns. However, our country is changing and that includes the Catholic Church. In my day it would have been unthinkable for nuns to publicly oppose the church hierarchy. (No doubt all the sex scandals in the Catholic Church have weakened the authority of the hierarchy and made such a challenge a good deal easier.)

So in addition to the amazing Speaker Pelosi, I now count 59,000 nuns among my heroes!

I didn’t expect to feel euphoric when the health care bill was passed.

I didn’t expect to feel euphoric when the health care bill was passed. It’s not what I had hoped for—-no public option and restrictions on funding for abortion.

But, nonetheless, this is huge. The expansion of Medicaid is major redistribution, especially as much of it is paid for by new taxes on families earning in excess of $250,000.

So,yes, there are aspects of the bill I am not happy about, but this legislation is part of the redistributionist project that began with the new Deal, continued with the Civil Rights Movement (which was a redistribution of power rather than of wealth), continued with Medicare and now finally with health care as a right of all citizens.

Just as Social Security (which excluded the majority of share croppers and domestic workers and thus effectively excluded the majority of African-Americans) was amended, this bill (which excludes undocumented workers) will eventually be fixed.

And yes, we will eventually overturn the Hyde amendment which denies abortion coverage to women on Medicaid.

At every step, there have been those who have said, “I have mine, why do we need to create social programs for “others." Fortunately this narrow, mean-spirited approach was defeated again last night.

This battle has never been about just health care. The ugly racist, homophobic language of the Tea Party people has made clear what we have long suspected: this is about who has fundamental rights in our society. As House Majority Whip James Clyburn stated:

I heard people saying things today I've not heard since March 15th, 1960, when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus," Clyburn said. "This is incredible, shocking to me."
He added, "A lot of us have said for a long time that none of this is about healthcare at all. It's about extending a basic fundamental right to people who are less powerful."

Thank you Speaker Pelosi and President Obama!!

Now we have to work to make this better just as previous generations worked to amend the flaws in the original social security legislation.

Does political activism make us happy?

One of my facebook friends sent me a link to a recent Guardian article by Aditya Chakrabortty summarizing recent research claiming to demonstrate a link between happiness and political activism:

According to Chakrabortty :

Marching in the drizzle against wars in far-off countries, writing letters protesting the government's latest reactionary policy, sitting through interminable meetings that keep sprouting Any Other Business. It may be noble, but political activism is hardly a barrel of laughs. And yet it makes you happier.
So find two university psychologists in new research that looks for the first time at the link between political activity and wellbeing. Malte Klar and Tim Kasser started by interviewing two sets of around 350 college students, both about their degree of political engagement and their levels of happiness and optimism. Both times, they found that those most inclined to go on a demo were also the cheeriest.

I guess this applies to the Tea Party groups as well as to the left of center, feminist groups I identify with--although the tea party folks strike me as far more angry than “happy.”

Klar and Kasser’s research provides some support for what I’ve observed. I remember as a young activist marveling at all the old communists who seemed so cheerful handing out their leaflets and copies of the Daily World. They seemed so much more alive than most of the old people I knew.

And yes, people on the left can be just as angry and embittered as any tea party type, but for the most part the people I have known in social movements have always seemed so much more alive and engaged with the world than the non-activists.

Although the projects changed in response to changes in my life circumstances and the political possibilities of the time, activism has been a constant thread in my life. Like many young people who came of age in the 60’s, my activist projects were the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. After a brief involvement in far left politics, I backed away from trying to change the world and focused on changes I could make in my own backyard. When my son entered public school, I began a whole new very rewarding second career (unpaid of course) as a public school activist.

In the aftermath of Reagan’s election in 1980, a real shift occurred. As I watched the Reagan administration build up the military budget and starve social programs, I realized I could no longer afford to vote for protest candidates.In the early 80’s I discovered my real activist passion--feminism. I missed the early 70’s golden age of feminist activism thanks to participation in groups which viewed feminism as a petit bourgeois deviation, but I’ve made up for it in the last 30 years!

I managed to combine feminist activism with involvement in electoral politics by working to elect feminist candidates and encouraging more women to become involved in grassroots politics. The last 8 years as Philadelphia NOW chapter president was probably my most satisfying activist project.

Now that I am retired, both from my teaching job and my main volunteer job as Phila NOW President, I've started looking around for new activist projects. I have the time!

I’ve been involved in setting up a new organization, Southeastern Pennsylvania NOW PAC, I am still a Democratic committeeperson and am now running for Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee. (Forty years ago, I would not have believed that I would end my activist days as a democratic committeeperson. But at this stage in my life, slow gradual change is all I can imagine. There is a reason that revolutions are always made by the young.)

One of the wonderful things about an activist career is that there is always the opportunity for learning something new-–options not always available in paid employment. I ran for the board of Philly Cam, our local cable access station, and now have the opportunity to learn about something totally new(to me).

I didn’t set about to do all this to become happy, and I’m not sure if I would call myself “happy”—-whatever that means—-but I feel engaged and part of the world and hope to keep this up as long as I can.

I finally got a chance to hear President Obama in person: his health care speech at Arcadia University

Well, I finally got a chance to hear President Obama in person. During the campaign I was still teaching and didn’t have the time to wait in line for tickets and get there 3-4 hours early to get a good seat. I’m kind of phobic about huge crowds, so I didn’t go to the open air events such as the huge Independence Hall rally in Philly in late spring, 2008. And of course those $1,000 a ticket receptions were way out of reach.

But now that I’m retired, I had the time to track down tickets and get to the event several hours early—although unfortunately not early enough to get a good seat. My first perk after 25+ years of grunt work as a Democratic committee person—2 tickets to Obama’s speech at Arcadia University

Obama’s speech was powerful, outlining all the good things his health care plan would accomplish: no denial of coverage for preexisting conditions; no lifetime caps on coverage; expansion of Medicaid for low-income people; subsidies for working families and what got the biggest applause given that the room was packed with college students—allowing young people to stay on their parents’ plan until age 26.

It may not be the single payer plan I’d like to see if I could wave a magic wand and get exactly what I want, but it may be the best plan that’s achievable in the current political environment.

I’ve lost all patience with middle class progressives who want to kill the bill and start over. They almost seem to be competing with each other: “I’m more disillusioned with Obama than you are.”

I’ve yet to meet a "kill the bill" progressive (?)who is not a middle class person with health insurance. These folks may have the luxury of waiting for the perfect bill, but low income Americans and those with preexisting conditions do not. The expansion of Medicaid is a huge step forward. As health care expert Paul Starr wrote in the American Prospect
:

…the legislation as a whole, with its expansion of Medicaid and insurance subsidies to people with low incomes, would be the biggest, most redistributive economic-security program in decades.

Granted, the bill is far from perfect, but it establishes the principle that government has a responsibility to ensure access to health care for all citizens. We’ll gradually improve it; as Tom Harkin (or was it Daschle?), described it, this is a “starter bill.”

The President’s speech at Arcadia has inspired this aging activist to work a little harder to get this done!

Should we do more to encourage those older works who can afford to retire to make room for young workers?

I’m a retiree with no plans of ever again entering the paid work force, but I’m nonetheless really worried about the grim unemployment statistics. I worry about the young people in my life who might be facing long-term joblessness and I worry about the consequences for our society.

Should we do more to encourage those older works who can afford to retire to make room for young workers? My decision to retire was based primarily on my own exhaustion and longing to do something different with my life, not on an altruistic desire to make room for younger workers. But although altruism did not drive my decision, I was happy to make room for a younger teacher who would bring fresh ideas and energy to the classroom. There are too many young teachers out there who can't find jobs.

Don Peck’s article in the March 2010 Atlantic points out that the problem of long-term joblessness is the not just a consequence of the current recession but rather of fundamental changes in the structure of the economy. Peck describes the consequences of our jobless recovery--if it is indeed a recovery:

The effects of pervasive joblessness—on family, politics, society—take time to incubate, and they show themselves only slowly. But ultimately, they leave deep marks that endure long after boom times have returned. Some of these marks are just now becoming visible, and even if the economy magically and fully recovers tomorrow, new ones will continue to appear. The longer our economic slump lasts, the deeper they’ll be.
If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults—and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well.

The grim picture includes research based in my home town of Philadelphia. Peck cites the work of sociologist Kathryn Edin:

Communities with large numbers of unmarried, jobless men take on an unsavory character over time. Edin’s research team spent part of last summer in Northeast and South Philadelphia, conducting in-depth interviews with residents. She says she was struck by what she saw: “These white working-class communities—once strong, vibrant, proud communities, often organized around big industries—they’re just in terrible straits. The social fabric of these places is just shredding. There’s little engagement in religious life, and the old civic organizations that people used to belong to are fading. Drugs have ravaged these communities, along with divorce, alcoholism, violence. I hang around these neighborhoods in South Philadelphia, and I think, ‘This is beginning to look like the black inner-city neighborhoods we’ve been studying for the past 20 years.’ When young men can’t transition into formal-sector jobs, they sell drugs and drink and do drugs. And it wreaks havoc on family life.

Peck’s article is a powerful warning but short on solutions. The Obama administration is doing the right thing with investment in green technology and pressuring banks to start lending to small businesses, but it clearly isn’t going to be enough.

In addition to job creation we need to think more creatively about job sharing, such as the ideas about work sharing reported by Robert Pollen in his recent Nation article:

In the same vein are work-sharing programs that extend unemployment compensation to workers who accept reduced hours that then enable their companies to avoid outright layoffs. Indeed, work-sharing can be even more effective and fairer than traditional unemployment insurance, since it spreads the reductions in work hours across a wide group of workers rather than concentrating the effects of the recession on the minority of workers who become completely jobless. Work-sharing programs have long been a major part of the social safety net in Western Europe. Over this recession, Germany has been especially aggressive in extending these benefits to prevent rising unemployment.(my emphasis)

We need to spread the jobs around. Lowering the age at which one is eligible for Medicare might make some older workers decide to retire. Our society has been pushing workers to stay in the paid work force by gradually raising the age at which they are eligible for full retirement benefits. But either we pay more in social security and Medicare by encouraging older workers to leave the workforce or we’ll be paying more in unemployment compensation--not to mention the range of social ills resulting from a generation of young people who can’t find steady employment.

European societies have historically encouraged early retirement to make room for young workers. With plunging birth rates, some European societies are rethinking generous early retirement policies. But the United States with its relatively youthful population is in a position to move in this direction.

I hope some of my seventy something friends who are still teaching aren’t reading this, but I think reinstituting the mandatory retirement age for college professors might be a good idea. In the past, the law allowed institutions of higher education to set a mandatory retirement age and most did so. Now there is no mandatory retirement age and professors can work as long as they choose.

Also, there used to be a limit to what seniors eligible for a full retirement check could earn without their earnings counting against their social security check. Now there is no limit and a 66 year old worker can pull in a high six figure salary and still collect a full social security check. Social security was never intended to be the icing on the cake and this policy needs to be rethought. Possibly, savings here could be applied to lowering the age for eligibility for Medicare.

There’s no one solution and we need to think about both job creation and job sharing. And job sharing should involve sharing across the generations. To return to Peck’s cautionary tale:

We are living through a slow-motion social catastrophe, one that could stain our culture and weaken our nation for many, many years to come. We have a civic—and indeed a moral—responsibility to do everything in our power to stop it now, before it gets even worse.

Are the tea party folks giving “socialism” a good name?

A few weeks ago I heard a story on NPR about Americans’ changing attitudes towards socialism. I was surprised to hear that 36% of Americans and 53% of Democrats have a positive impression of socialism.

I thought I must have misheard, so went to the Gallup website and sure enough my ears had not deceived me. No surprise, the terms free enterprise and capitalism had much more positive ratings (86 % and 61%respectively).

However, I didn’t expect the favorable responses for socialism to be this high given the way the term has been demonized and given that no elected officials holding national office (except for Vermont’s Bernie Sanders) have embraced the term.

From the Gallup website:

Socialism had the lowest percentage positive rating and the highest negative rating of any term tested. Still, more than a third of Americans say they have a positive image of socialism.
Exactly how Americans define "socialism" or what exactly they think of when they hear the word is not known. The research simply measures Americans' reactions when a survey interviewer reads the word to them -- an exercise that helps shed light on connotations associated with this frequently used term.
There are significant differences in reactions to "socialism" across ideological and partisan groups:
A majority of 53% of Democrats have a positive image of socialism, compared to 17% of Republicans.

So what gives? I decided to check other polls to see if the Gallup poll was an outlier.

An April 2009 Rasmussen poll showed even higher favorable responses for socialism—a story I somehow missed.

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

The most amazing statistic:

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided.

Something is going on here. Perhaps when those who like President Obama hear all these ( ridiculous) charges that Obama is a socialist, instead of feeling less positive about Obama, they feel more positive about socialism?

Those who find the tea party crowd small-minded and mean-spirited might think if these guys think socialism is so awful, then maybe it’s not that bad after all.

What just about all polls have found is that Americans don’t pay much attention to complicated public policy debates. Most are stressed out, overworked, struggling to keep their heads above water. They don’t have much time (or inclination) to pay serious attention to politics.

But when folks hear ideas grouped together over and over again, unexamined associations can form. The Obama = socialism craziness of the far right might just be having the unintended consequence of making the word socialism a lot less scary!

One of the best things about retirement: Not having to go out on cold snowy days

Sometimes you don’t realize how much you hated something until you no longer have to do it.

That’s how I feel about trudging to work in ice and snow. And give the amount of snow in Philly this year, I am thanking my lucky stars I didn’t decide to work for one more year.

Granted in blizzard conditions, the College would be closed. The real problem came when the storm was over, the roads were partially cleared, school was open, but it was seriously hard to get to work.

Buried deep within me I must have a little bit of the Catholic school girl striving for perfect attendance. In 35 years of teaching I never took a sick day and missed only one day because of snow when, despite my husband’s Herculean efforts, we could not get our car out of the driveway and the R7 train was not running. If it was at all possible, I managed to get to my classes.

I wasn’t conscientious about every aspect of the job. Towards the end I stopped going to department meetings and sometimes didn’t return student papers as quickly as I should have, but I was always super conscientious about showing up. I really identified with what one of my colleagues wrote on Facebook last week:

Faculty who blew off class today when students trudged all the way to school simply suck.

My sentiments exactly.

So given my compulsion to get to work no matter what, it has been such a relief to no longer have to make that effort.

John Judis’ article “The Quiet Revolution: Obama has reinvented the state in more ways than you can imagine.”

John Judis’ article “The Quiet Revolution " is worth a read for progressives unhappy with President Obama.

I don’t understand how progressives who worked so hard to elect Obama are so quick to turn on him for not cleaning up Bush’s mess in a year’s time.

Yes, there are decisions that can be questioned, appointments that can be criticized, but I don’t see how this justifies the 180 degree turn on the part of some in the progressive community.

I too worry about Afghanistan—my biggest reservation about the Obama adminstration. I blame the health care mess largely on spineless Democrats and obstructionist Republicans—a truly dysfunctional Congress.

But there have been some real victories which been overlooked by many progressives. John Judis in his New Republic article makes a compelling case for this:

Yet there is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for--but done it so quietly that almost no one, including most liberals, has noticed. Obama’s three Republican predecessors were all committed to weakening or even destroying the country’s regulatory apparatus: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the other agencies that are supposed to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices. Now Obama is seeking to rebuild these battered institutions. In doing so, he isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century. Taken as a whole, Obama’s revival of these agencies is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office.

There’s a lot of non-sexy detail in this article which is probably why it hasn’t lit up the blogosphere. When I’ve mentioned it to my friends, I’ve discovered that none had heard of it. And probably if I weren’t retired with the time to read a lot of policy stuff, I would have skipped it and gone on to read something more entertaining--like an article about Sarah Palin.

But this is a really important article about how government works and should have an audience beyond policy wonks.

More Thougths on New Year's Resolutions

From my friend Fran Waksler:

I was motivated by Karen’s New Year’s resolutions to consider my own, but I never did get around to an “official” list. I think that the idea of “to-do-list” resolutions is excellent and I at least have a mental idea of what such a list should be.

Two hours a day of writing would be a useful goal for me, though other stuff keeps getting in the way. I also like the idea of 20 minutes a day of dealing with junk—it’s been on my mind, but I’ve made only a little progress so far. It can be useful with to-do lists to give some wiggle-room. I have found that the most effective to-do lists include things that you want to do so Karen might add “two hour breakfasts” to her list. I also think it best to follow the list 5 days a week, not 7; that way one can miss a day or two and still keep to the list.

Taking stock with record-keeping, as Karen does, is a great idea. It can help to be more focused and also feel less like one is not getting anything done. So what did I do in January? I continued to send out materials to publishers and may have an actual nibble from one!

My first goal in retirement was to find publishers for a bunch of materials and while I haven’t been successful in the search, I’ve worked out a method of keeping things circulating. It turns out to be remarkably time-consuming. I’ve been doing lots of reading (but just in English), so that will take care of itself.

I alternate between the academic/quasi-academic and the lighter stuff, e.g., English mysteries that are charmingly described as “cosies.” (As an aside, I share a birthday with Wilkie Colllins—the day, not the year!--so try every year to being reading one of his novels on “our” birthday. This year it was Fallen Leaves.)

I have cleaned out one bureau drawer full of junk—made some interesting discoveries! Put some books out in front of the house for people to take—some have been taken, but I keep having to bring them in because of the weather and then get lazy about putting them back out. And I’ve started a bag of clothes to bring to Goodwill.

I do go to the gym pretty faithfully 3 times a week (in part to stay in shape for gardening) and, when weather allows, walk my dog a mile a day, but weather has not been allowing much lately. I’ve been doing lots of dog training and will be entering obedience trials with Greta. And I’ve done lots of knitting (see photo of Norman’s dog Duchess with the sweater I made for her). Spelling it out this way is helpful—it looks like a lot more than it feel like.

I think retirement takes some getting used to. Hardest for me is that I still never seem to have enough time. The other day I thought of something I’d love to do—can’t remember what—and heard myself saying, “Maybe I’ll have time when I retire.” Oops.

Fran




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In praise of New Year’s resolutions: I didn’t keep them, but I’m glad I made them.

Maybe it’s a silly gimmick, but as a retiree I need help keeping track of my time. It’s easy to let the days slip by without doing much of anything. The Italians have a phrase for this-—dolce far niente, sweet doing nothing.

Yes, it is pleasant to just relax and hang out, but I really want to finish Feminism in Philly: The Glory Years within the next few years. So I have to make sure dolce far niente doesn’t take over my life.

Less urgent than the book project, but high on my list, is really learning Spanish. I resolved to spend at least 2 hours a day on my book and 30 minutes reading books/articles in Spanish.

So how did I do? In the month of January, I averaged 54 minutes a day on my book and 18 minutes a day on Spanish. Not great, but if I hadn’t been keeping track, I’m sure it would have been much worse. (The Spanish number is somewhat inflated as I included my Spanish group at which more English than Spanish is spoken.)

The biggest failure was exercise. I had resolved to swim or walk briskly for 30 minutes at least 3 times a week. This averages 12.8 minutes per day of aerobic exercise. I managed a pathetic 3.5 minutes a day.

For people in their 60’s, it’s “use it or lose it” time with our brains and our bodies. Supposedly learning something new (like a language) is a great anti-Alzheimer’s strategy. So I guess I have that covered with Spanish.

I put exercise on my list primarily for my husband. I get a whole lot of exercise in my daily life. I’m a fidgeter and a forgetful fidgeter who lives in a 3 story house, so I'm continually running up and down stairs. During the gardening season I get a lot of weight bearing exercise lugging 50 lb. bags of fertilizer.

But my husband is nowhere near as active on a daily basis. I want him alive and well for a long time, so I’m trying to get him to exercise. Several years ago we joined a health club with a good laps pool. We hardly ever used it and vowed when we were retired we would swim 3 times a week. Well, it hasn’t worked out that way and keeping track of this really brought it home to me. I’m determined that we’ll do better.

My final resolution was to spend at least 20 minutes a day on the kind of housework which is not done as part of my weekly routine: cleaning kitchen cabinets and junk-filled drawers, tackling a filthy basement and cluttered attic. I managed an average of 9.3 minutes a day—-better than the 3.5 minutes on aerobic exercise, but still pathetic.

All this record keeping may seem a little silly, but I’m kind of getting into competing against myself and reaching my goals in February.

Anybody have any progress reports on their New Year’s resolutions?