The Peru Diaries: The Pro’s and Con’s of Group Travel, Part I

My husband, Rick, and I have been traveling together for 30 years. We’ve developed our own style and at this stage in our lives it’s hard to learn new tricks. Group travel requires adaptability and I’m afraid that’s not us.
What follows is an attempt to give a fair account of the pro’s and con’s of group travel. My apologies if I sound like an old curmudgeon.

Whether its group travel or individual travel, traveling is getting harder. And it’s not just a matter of flight delays, long lines at security, ever shrinking seats and disappearing amenities. Taking a mid day flight to Miami with a long lay-over before a midnight flight to Lima is just too much for our sixty something bodies. Access to business class lounges made it tolerable—but just barely.

Our tour group, although it offers relatively low budget tours, manages to get surprisingly inexpensive upgrades to business class. Always ask your group-- you might get a pleasant surprise.

The downside to our business class upgrade—it’s going to be really hard to take a long international trip in coach next time around.

When we arrived at Lima airport, the pro’s and con’s of group travel became immediately apparent. First the pros: when you are dead tired, it is really nice to have everything all taken care of. The tour company met us at the airport with bottled water and we were soon in a van en route to the hotel. The tour guide gave us all sorts of useful information such as the need to carry around small denominations. Small coins are critical if you want to use public restrooms in Peru. (Access to a restroom is really important to me!) He said he was bringing someone to the hotel to change money for us later in the day—now that’s a real service.

The con’s were just what we expected. The other people on the tour were very nice and a very upbeat group but their non-stop chatter during the ride from the airport gave me a headache. When you’re exhausted and in a not particularly good mood, all this hyper-cheeriness can be tough to take. (I know I sound like a grumpy old lady.).

But despite the exhaustion and our longing for quiet rather than non-stop chatter, entering a city you’ve never seen before is always exciting. I didn’t know very much about Lima and didn’t quite know what to expect. The ride from the airport was grim—-but what city has a beautiful ride from the airport?

But then the surprise: we were soon on an ocean road. Lima comes right up to the Pacific Ocean. Of course I knew Lima was on the Pacific but I hadn’t realized that so much of the city proper was right on the ocean.

In a state of absolute and total exhaustion, we stumbled into our hotel. The hotel was pretty much what we expected from a package tour: clean, in a reasonably good location, but lacking in character. Definitely on the minus side is the lack of choice of hotels. Over the years Rick and I got very good at finding charming affordable small hotels in European and Latin American cities. Only the expensive group tours have really charming hotels.

Our hotel was perfectly okay, but it’s not one we would have chosen. I was a little apprehensive after reading some very negative reviews on Trip Advisor, but the breakfasts were good and there was an attractive bar which turned out to be a good place to hang out at night.

The restaurants included with the package tour were also on the minus side of the ledger. Rick is a real foodie and one reason we travel is to explore different culinary traditions. We search out small restaurants which serve interesting food and good wine at reasonable prices. Tour group restaurants (with the exception of high end or food-themed tours) are generally mediocre at best. So we seized the opportunity whenever we could to go out on our own and make our own restaurant discoveries.

We generally do rather well as Rick and I put a lot of effort into restaurant research. We always spend more on food than on lodging when we travel and this time we figured since we opted for a relatively low-cost tour we could splurge on a few high-end restaurants.

We sure can’t afford to go to the best restaurants in town in London and Paris, but we can manage this in major Latin American cities. So here are restaurant recommendations for anyone planning a trip to Lima:

Astrid y Gaston: the guidebooks call it the best restaurant in Lima. I‘ve only been to three restaurants in Lima so can’t comment on that, but can say this was seriously good and by American standards very affordable. It serves Peruvian cuisine—they call it novoandino

La Rosa Nautica: Seriously good seafood in a beautiful if touristy restaurant overlooking the Pacific. The portions were gargantuan. My husband, who usually has a very healthy appetite, could not handle La Rosa’s gigantic dishes.

To be continued

The Peru Diaries: I didn't want to get on that plane

My Mt. Airy garden on April 8


It was really hard to leave my garden. Our trip to Peru was originally planned for mid March before all the action happened in the garden. But mudslides and avalanches got in the way; Machu Picchu was closed and the trip rescheduled.

We had a choice of dates to reschedule and I thought mid April would be safe. The real glory time is the last week of April when the Carlesii viburnum and the lilacs are out.

Well, we had an amazing early April with temperatures in the mid 80’s and an astonishing eruption of bulbs and flowering shrubs several weeks ahead of schedule. I was not a happy camper when we got on the plane to Lima. The trip I had been looking forward to was now getting in the way of smelling the lilacs.

My ever sane husband convinced me that I can’t let missing the bloom period of a favorite plant get in the way of enjoying a trip I had always wanted to take.

In 1972 I spent a summer in Ecuador and Chile. When we flew over Peru, I thought that we should stop to see Macchu Pichu, but decided we’ll get that together next year. It didn’t happen and now 38 years later I finally went to Machu Picchu.

And for the first time in our lives, my husband and I traveled in a group. It just seemed too hard to make all those arrangements on our own, and as retirees, the economies of scale in group travel were a further plus. We’d never deal with the lack of freedom that group travel entails if were going to Europe, but for Machu Picchu we thought that perhaps a group made sense.

There are advantages and maybe for some it works—-but not for us.

To be continued.

Some good news on the generational front!

Recently there has been a lot of interesting discussion in the feminist blogosphere about generational tensions in the feminist movement, much of it in response to NARAL President Nancy Keenan’s comment that young women lack the passionate commitment to abortion rights which characterized the feminists of her generation.

See my summary/analysis at Why is it so hard to pass the torch? Some thoughts on intergenerational change in the feminist movement

And if you do check it out, make sure you read some of the very thoughtful comments I received on this post.

Today I came across some good news on the generational front. We older feminists have nothing to fear. There are young women out there who are passionate about feminism.

See the Salon review of a new collection Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists, edited by Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan and interview with Sullivan.

Sullivan is optimistic about relations between young and old feminists. She was asked: “There's an argument that pops up in the news every so often that older feminists complain about a lack of passionate young feminists. It came up recently in Newsweek, specifically about abortion rights. Where does this argument come from? What can be done to bring the generations of feminists closer together?” She replied:

When you read about it, it seems like there's this great divide, and in some ways there may be. But when you get in a room with a feminist of a different generation, the whole thing changes. Part of it is just getting together and talking. A lot of women from the last generation of feminism want to know that everything they did was not in vain and that we are carrying it on.

Sure hope she's right!

Why is it so hard to pass the torch? Some thoughts on intergenerational change in the feminist movement

The remarks of NARAL president Nancy Keenan in a recent Newsweek article “Remember Roe! How can the next generation defend abortion rights when they don't think abortion rights need defending?” have generated some very interesting discussion in the feminist blogosphere.

Keenan thinks young women lack the passionate commitment to abortion rights which characterized the feminists of her generation. She points to recent NARAL research:

A survey of 700 young Americans showed there was a stark "intensity gap" on abortion. More than half (51 percent) of young voters (under 30) who opposed abortion rights considered it a "very important" voting issue, compared with just 26 percent of abortion-rights supporters; a similar but smaller gap existed among older voters, too. Worse still for NARAL, the millennials surveyed didn't view abortion as an imperiled right in need of defenders. As one young mother in a focus group told NARAL, it seemed to her that abortion was easily accessible. How did she know? The parking lot at her local clinic, she told them, was always full.

Rebecca Traister’s recent Salon post "Where did all the angry young women go?" challenges the notion that the intensity gap indicates apathy among young women but rather reflects a changing landscape:

The fact that young women have been raised without knowledge or experience of back-alley abortion does alter the dynamics of their approach. It makes the issue less personal, less urgent, less terrifying. That is part of the victory of Roe v. Wade. Frankly, that support for legal abortion has remained so high for so long is a testament to the enduring commitment of younger women -- who never experienced the atrocities of illegal abortion or lived without the power to control their own bodies -- to the issues of women's health and freedom.

Traister’s post gets really interesting when she turns to analysis of intergenerational tensions in the feminist movement. The problem of young people impatient to move into leadership positions and old people determined to hang on to power is certainly not unique to feminist organizations. But because so many of us cling to the ideal of sisterly solidarity, the generational struggles can be particularly painful. If older feminists want their organizations to endure they must listen to voices like Traister’s:

Many of the young women who formed and populate the feminist blogosphere will tell you that they took to the Internet because they found no welcome in institutional women's organizations and decided not to work within a system designed and run by leaders who did not trust them, take them seriously, or show any interest in their opinions. Instead, they set out to create their own approach to women's rights, to reach their own peers in their own way, rather than wait to be acknowledged by their elders. As a result, some feminist institutions indeed find themselves with an age imbalance, membership listing precariously toward the senescent.

The Newsweek piece reports that Keenan and her peers at Planned Parenthood and NOW "will retire in a decade or so." But perhaps if, instead of holding on to their crowns like Queen Elizabeth, they might consider passing them down to women who are frankly far better equipped to communicate with future generations than they are, there would not be quite such a perceived crisis.

Traister questions the value of doing pro-choice activism through organizations like NOW and NARAL. Does it matter if younger feminists abandon second wave organizations like NOW and NARAL and turn to the blogosphere? I've heard the argument that these organizations have served their purposes and younger feminists will develop different vehicles for advancing a feminist agenda.

As a long time NOW activist and recently retired chapter president, I’m admittedly not exactly objective here. I believe there is a need for a multi–issue feminist organization which operates on the local, state and national levels. Effective social change activists understand how to navigate our complex system of government; they know which issues are best addressed on which level of government and are capable of mobilizing activists who lobby their local governments, their state legislatures as well as come to national marches/lobby days in D.C.

And just as we need multi-issue organizations like NOW which make the connections between issues and participate in broad based feminist coalitions, we need single issue organizations like NARAL which focus laser-like on abortion rights.

These organizations will no doubt evolve as new leaders take over. But there is a danger they will die if older feminists do not take Traister’s message seriously.

Not every disagreement within feminist organizations is generational at its core. The divisions over sexuality that divided the movement in the early 70’s have been largely overcome, but the feminist movement is still struggling with issues of race and class.

However, the major challenge for the continuation of the organizations of second wave feminism is generational. NOW will hold regional conventions in May to elect members to the national board. I hope that that young women will run for and win these slots. We’ll see.

NOW has elected young women to the ranks of national officers, such as VP Erin Matson who posted an angry reply to the Newsweek article, Have period, will rally: let young women speak for ourselves about abortion rights which defended her generation’s commitment to abortion rights and castigates Newsweek for “bringing that same tired old narrative back."

Although young women like Erin Matson have been officers of National NOW,some of NOW's local and state organizations have been less hospitable to young women. This appears to be the case with other established pro-choice organizations. From Maritza, one of the commenters on Anna North’s post on The Graying Of The Abortion-Rights Crusade at Jezebel.com:

I wonder if a part of the problem isn't local chapters of PP/NARAL and their leadership's unwillingness to let in new voices. When I was a summer associate, my mentor took me to a PP board meeting (she's on the board) and the women were all older, and the fundraiser they were doing skewed older and wealthy. There didn't seem to be any interest in reaching out to younger women, but then again I don't know what happened in the past, maybe they'd tried and found no interest.

It’s clear that there is interest on the part of young women. From Jessica Valenti’s post Young women respond to Newsweek erasure at Feministing.com

Um, perhaps these organizations are all run by older women because institutional feminism is not very good at passing the torch and/or sharing power. It is certainly not from a lack of young women trying to be in leadership positions! Because let's be honest, young women are often kept from being visible in the feminist movement.

The work of the mainstream pro-choice movement is built on younger women's labor - unpaid and underpaid - who do the majority of the grunt work but who are rarely recognized. And I don't know about you - but I'm sick of working so hard on behalf of a movement that continues to insist that we don't exist.

Valenti suggests that young women should boycott organizations that do not honor their work:

Even if for a month young women boycotted the organizations that refuse to acknowledge their hard work - the movement would fall on its ass.

In the responses to Valenti’s post the idea of starting new pro-choice organizations run by younger women comes up frequently. I hope young feminists don’t start new organizations, but rather take over existing ones. It is so much harder to start a new national organization from scratch.

Organizations like NOW and NARAL have a history, resources and a donor base. They are the legacy that second wave feminists have to leave to a younger generation. Let’s hope the older generation listens to Traister and Valenti gets serious about passing the torch.

Thanks Mary Kay, Linda, and Fran for keeping my blog alive while I was in Peru!

Thanks Mary Kay, Linda, and Fran for keeping my blog alive while I was in Peru.

Mary Kay's post about the role of poetry is her life is beautifully written. As always, I love Fran’s garden writing and think she should write a book about gardening as one ages. Linda has a very interesting post about how the opportunities for publishing have changed over her writing life time.

I haven’t had email access since April 12 so I have come home to the usual deluge of email. Once I get though this mountain of email, I’ll post my thoughts on the pro’s and con’s of group travel.

A suggestion: if you have any desire to go to Machu Picchu and you are in your 50’s or 60’s, don’t wait. I wish I had gone when I was younger and had the stamina to see more of this amazing site. But better late than never!

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.