Fall clean-up: The way to deal with depression about the mid-term elections!

Whenever I’m down in the dumps working in the garden is usually the cure for what ails me. It’s gotten me through some difficult patches in my life and it's helping me get over my deep depression about the mid-term elections. We Pennsylvanians we’re hit really hard—a Republican governor, the Republicans in control of both houses of the PA legislature, and a far right wing Republican senator.

So it’s garden therapy time! And there’s a lot to do. My bulbs are not in the ground, very few leaves have been picked up, some of my house plants are still out in the cold, and most of the daylilies and hostas I planned to divide will have to wait until Spring.

How can this be? I’m retired. I thought that when I was retired I would have the perfect garden, but it hasn’t worked out that way. I did manage to transplant a few flowering shrubs. I know enough about gardening to make sure this gets done in time for the shrubs to settle in before frost. Bulbs can be planted any time until the ground is frozen—-which in Philly usually doesn’t happen until late December. I have planted bulbs around Christmas and yes they have come up, but it sure is a lot pleasanter to do this when the temperature is in the 60’s.

So we procrastinators have some time with our bulb planting and leaf pick-up. And my guess is my husband and I will still be picking up leaves in December. One of the truly wonderful things about our Northwest Philly neighborhood is all our mature trees. But everything has it’s downside and our beautiful trees drop a ton of leaves—in addition to each one a power outage waiting to happen. Just about every year a tree (or a tree branch if we’re lucky) falls and does major damage.

But then the downed trees sometimes provide opportunities for new plantings and in a garden as jammed packed with plants as ours, the only opportunity to introduce a new plant is a death in the garden.

Despite all my complaints and frustration as the perfect garden continues to elude me, I can’t imagine a life without my beloved plants. And when I'm out there planting my bulbs, I won't be thinking about Senator Toomey and Speaker Boehner.

Thoughts on the 2010 mid-terms: after the euphoria of 2008, this is really hard.

After the euphoria of 2008, this is really hard. I thought after Obama’s election, that just maybe the long backlash against the 60’s might be over. I thought I would be spending my retirement years helping to build a revitalized progressive movement.

WAS I EVER WRONG. Of course the rotten economy was a major factor in the Democrats’ losses. But there’s more going on. A segment of the electorate (largely white and over 60 and associated with the "Tea Party") is unsettled by the country’s changing demographics and can’t accept the election of an African-American president, the cultural diversity of 21st century America and the increasing acceptance of same-sex marriage. This segment of the electorate will ultimately lose. But they came out to vote in large number and scored a major victory in 2010.

They claim that this is all about reining in big government. Considering that these very same people did not protest the huge deficits of the Bush administration, I can’t believe that all this anger is just about the deficit. The Tea Party may have cleaned up the overt racism in many of the signs brandished in their 2009 rallies, but their “take back our country” rhetoric has an ugly racially charged subtext.

I’ve been a grassroots political activist for 40+ years. It was one disappointment after another--the tragedy of the sixties generation was to have spent our youth at time of tremendous social possibility and our middle and later years in a time of reaction.

And then came the heady victory in 2008. Well, the euphoria didn’t last very long—-the idiocy of the birthers, the ugliness of the Tea Party and now the Republican resurgence of 2010.

Of course the Democrats bear some responsibility. Some progressives think we lost ground because we didn’t push hard enough for progressive policies. (The defeat of progressives such as Russ Feingold and Alan Grayson tends to undercut that analysis.)

Some think the leftwing attacks on President Obama for compromising overmuch contributed to disaffection with the president and his party. From Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column, “Give Obama a Break:”

The sourness toward Mr. Obama reminds me of the crankiness toward Al Gore in 2000. We in the news media were tough on Mr. Gore, magnifying his weaknesses, and that fed into a general disdain. So some liberals voted for Ralph Nader, and George W. Bush moved into the White House.

There’s a lesson here.

And from Rachel Maddow who seems to have learned this lesson:

We may have attacked the Democrats in power from the left, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said last night, but let's take a look at what they've done. She showed a long reel of clips in which she and her fellow anchors reported on bill after bill getting signed.
With a Democratic majority in both houses of congress and a Democrat in the White House, the legislation (watered-down though some may find it) has been coming fast and furious--and although it may have spent a lot of political capital, it's made a difference.

Now she tells us after months of relentless criticism!

We progressives have demonstrated that we can elect left of center candidates like President Obama but we don’t know how to support our candidates once they’re in office. I don’t mean uncritical support. I’m not saying we shouldn’t criticize the President nor try to pressure him to support progressive polices. But there is a way to criticize that acknowledges the real achievements and doesn’t buy into the right wing narrative that President Obama has done nothing right.

This has been rough for progressives--especially for Pennsylvania progressives--a Republican governor, the Republicans in control of both houses of the PA legislature, and a far right wing Republican senator. We’re back to playing defense, most of our energy going into fighting back against the right.
Once again, we’ve got to pick ourselves up and soldier on. Not so easy.

Liberal disillusionment with President Obama has been greatly exaggerated

I’m convinced that the media narrative that liberals are disillusioned with President Obama is a gross exaggeration.

Last summer when my husband and I were traveling in New England, I conducted my own unscientific poll of friends and relatives. My friends are not media folks—neither main stream media nor the blogosphere. They’re not blogging and tweeting their political opinions.

I asked them, have you become disillusioned with the president? In every case, I heard something like: “Hell no. He’s doing the best possible job in horrible circumstances. When you inherit a mess like this, it takes time to dig out of the hole.” This is exactly what my Philly friends (with a few left wing exceptions) have been saying.

I have a little bit of sympathy for Robert Gibbs and his denunciation of what he called “the professional left.” It was a poor choice of words, but he had a point.

I’m not saying that liberals should not criticize Obama nor try to pressure him to support progressive polices. But there is a way to criticize that acknowledges the real achievements and doesn’t buy into the right wing narrative that President Obama has done nothing right.

The Obama administration has an impressive record of achievement and I’m convinced there is a silent Democratic majority which knows this. Although the president is not on the ballot this November, the election has been nationalized and the outcome will be seen as referendum on the Obama administration. I expect the Democratic base will come out to register their support for what the president has accomplished.

To cite just some of these accomplishments: The consensus of most economists is that the stimulus program brought the economy back from the brink of real disaster. It probably should have been larger, but was arguably the best that could be done given this dysfunctional congress.

And in this economic climate, President Obama (with a lot of help from Nancy Pelosi) still managed to pass a healthcare bill establishing access to heath care as a right of all citizens. Sure, it’s an imperfect bill but just as with other programs (such as social security) which started as deeply flawed, we now have the opportunity to improve the bill. We’re no longer debating the basic right to health care; the debate can now move to making the existing program more inclusive, more affordable.

The overhaul of the college loan program will save significant money for students, their families and the taxpayers. And then there is the passage of meaningful—again not as much as we need—regulatory reform. We have a long way to go before we have real recovery, but the dismantling of regulatory agencies at the root of the current economic crisis dates back to the Clinton years. This crisis was many years in the making. Reasonable people understand this.

I could go on and on, but it would be much better for folks to read the first rate analysis of the achievements of the Obama administration by Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone. Some excerpts from Dickinson’s well researched, must read article, “The Case for Obama”:

By any rational measure,Obama is the most
accomplished and progressive president in decades, yet
the only Americans fired up by the changes he has delivered
are Republicans and Tea Partiers hellbent on reversing them.

This president has delivered more sweeping, progressive
change in 20 months than the previous two Democratic
administrations did in 12 years. "When you look at what
will last in history,"historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells
Rolling Stone,"Obama has more notches on the presidential belt."

In fact, when the history of this administration is
written, Obama's opening act is likely to be judged as
more impressive than any president's - Democrat or
Republican - since the mid-1960s. "If you're looking at
the first-two-year legislative record," says Ornstein,
"you really don't have any rivals since Lyndon Johnson
- and that includes Ronald Reagan."

Taken together, Barack Obama's achievements are not
only historic in their sweep but unabashedly liberal.
By contrast, President Clinton's top legislative
victories - NAFTA and welfare reform - catered to the
right wing's faith in free markets and its loathing of
big government. "When you add them all together, it's
clear that Obama's accomplishments have been
underrated," says Brinkley. "Saving the auto industry,
health care, getting out of Iraq - these are big things
for the progressive movement." .

So why aren’t these undeniable accomplishments driving the narrative? The conventional wisdom is that the Obama administration could have done a better job communicating their achievements.

That may be, but I think the liberal Democratic base understands the argument Dickinson is making even if we’re not on top of all the specifics.

The liberal base gets it. We know this President has delivered. I’m not worried about middle aged and older liberal Democrats. The question of course is the young folks.

My only regret about retirement is that I’ve lost my connection to young voters. This week I spoke to a class at Community College of Philadelphia where I taught for 35 years. I was heartened by these students' awareness of what is at stake. They intend to come out. Of course, Philly is one of the deepest blue patches in the country, so the interest in voting I picked up in this group of students might not extend beyond Philly. We’ll see.

In search of the holy grail of peak fall foliage

Last October my husband and I took advantage of retirement to take a two week fall foliage tour in New England.

Last year I wrote:

For many years, I longed to see New England’s spectacular fall foliage, but it’s just not possible for a teacher to take off a week or two in October. Southeastern PA is beautiful but we just don’t have all those deep reds and purples.

My husband and I just returned from our retirement gift to ourselves – a trip to New England in October. We were chasing that mythical “peak.” We just missed it in Vermont (but it was still beautiful) and we had a great time visiting with good friends.

Then off to New Hampshire in quest of the peak. Our innkeepers told us we were a little past peak. My reaction: if this is past peak, the peak must be unimaginably beautiful. We had one glorious day in New Hampshire—blue skies, brilliant sun. Then it SNOWED! See photo of Columbus Day snowfall.

Maybe next year we’ll catch that mythical peak on a balmy Indian summer day. Will I spend my retirement years chasing the mythical peak and not quite catching it? .

Well, we failed again. We had a great time visiting our friends in Vermont over Columbus Day week-end but those glorious reds and purples continue to elude us. I had read somewhere that fall is coming later to New England, but our Vermont friends say that in their patch of Vermont Fall appears to be coming earlier. Go figure.

There was still glorious foliage and unlike last year the weather was spectacular—relatively warm with dazzling sunlight—but the reds and purples were all gone. Apparently the red maples are the earliest to drop their leaves.

Oh well, the consolation prize is that it looks like we are going to have a good foliage season right here in the Delaware valley. Maybe what I was seeking is right here in my back yard.

Photos from my Philly garden:

Thank you, Nora Ephron. You nailed it with your statement re feminism and abortion rights!

I’m more than a little annoyed when women opposed to abortion rights (like Sarah Palin and her Mama Grizzlies) claim to be feminists. But I get really depressed when women who are themselves pro-choice start buying into this saying things like: “Who are we to police the boundaries of feminism? Let’s be open to all women who want to identify as feminists.” Groups like Feminists for Life have been making these arguments for years. But hearing this from members of the pro-choice community is something new.

On one level, I am happy to hear that so many women want to claim the feminist label, but not at this price. Feminists differ over priorities/strategies. We have our race/class /generational faultlines. But even if abortion rights may not be a feminist’s top priority issue, it’s got to be on the list of non-negotiables! Let’s not buy into the notion that insistence on support for abortion rights makes one a narrow-minded feminist.

The recent series at Slate By DoubleX Staff, “Who Gets To Be a Feminist? That's the Wrong Question brought home to me the extent to which this “big tent feminism” has taken hold.

The comments from avowed conservatives were no surprise:

From Christine Rosen:

Americans have often underestimated the political power of conservative women. (Remember Phyllis Schlafly?) But feminists shouldn't underestimate the appeal of a feminist message that emphasizes equity and opportunity, not gender grievances. After decades of the feminist establishment owning the term, perhaps the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. The feminism of women like Palin isn't the feminism of the past. But it might be the feminism of the future.

From Christina Hoff Sommers:

If conservative women wish to describe themselves as feminists, and if they offer a new model of women's empowerment that large numbers of American women find inspiring, even determined feminist bouncers like Traister and Holmes won't be able to keep them from the party.

Much more disturbing were the comments from pro-choice feminists. From frequent critic of the feminist movement but definitely pro choice, Katie Roiphe:

I think the question of whether or not Sarah Palin should be "allowed" to be a feminist is a bit beside the point. What is interesting is the question behind the question: Who is it that does this "allowing"? What does it mean to be "not allowed"? I don't like Sarah Palin any more than the next registered Democrat, but I think the idea that she should somehow be cast out of feminism is revealing of the narrower vision of the movement and its uglier, more cliquish instincts.

Or this from Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick:

I am not prepared to announce a categorical rule for who gets to be called a feminist. It sounds too much like the rules about who gets to be called a good mother or a real woman, and such rules always obscure more than they clarify. I am also not prepared to rope out whole categories of women who happen to oppose abortion as bad feminists.

Or this from Amy Bloom:

If she[Palin] understands that she is a product of feminism and is prepared to pursue its goals, I can give her a pass on abortion because there are, apparently, honest-to-God feminists who believe that abortion is murder and even though I think that that's not true, I have to respect that (I guess.)

Thank you, Rebecca Traister and Katha Pollitt, for challenging this, and most of all Nora, who cuts right to the chase:

From Nora Ephron:

I know that I'm supposed to write 500 words on this subject, but it seems much simpler: You can't call yourself a feminist if you don't believe in the right to abortion.

For years, I’ve been depressed that we still need to defend abortion rights. When the Roe v. Wade decision came down in 1973, I never thought that I would still be working to defend abortion rights in 2010!

Women have made incredible progress in so many areas; it’s hard to believe that we are still fighting for the right to have control of our own bodies. In our tax phobic society, it’s not surprising that we haven’t achieved some of the feminist goals which would cost real money—-e.g. high quality affordable child care provided by well-paid professionals. But settling the issue of abortion rights is not an issue of economic redistribution but rather of basic human rights. Sadly, so many people who claim to want government off their backs support government intrusion into this most private decision.

It’s bad enough we’re still struggling to secure abortion rights, but to have pro-choice feminists backing away from a definition of feminism which includes abortion rights, well, that is really hard to take.

Susan Faludi's:"American Electra: Feminism's Ritual Matricide”: An old feminist's response

Susan Faludi's recent article in Harper's, American Electra: Feminism's Ritual Matricide” is the latest attempt to characterize a movement as diverse as American feminism in terms of a single theme: the generational divide. Faludi argues:

No one who has been engaged in feminist politics and thought for any length of time can be oblivious to an abiding aspect of the modern women’s movement in America—that so often, and despite its many victories, it seems to falter along a “mother-daughter” divide. A generational breakdown underlies so many of the pathologies that have long disturbed American feminism—its fleeting mobilizations followed by long hibernations; its bitter divisions over sex; and its reflexive renunciation of its prior incarnations, its progenitors, even its very name. The contemporary women’s movement seems fated to fight a war on two fronts: alongside the battle of the sexes rages the battle of the ages.

The generational faultline Faludi describes is real but no more so than the divide between those who focus on gender above all else and those for whom gender politics are inextricably intertwined with issues of race/class /sexuality .

I'm convinced that Amanda Marcotte in her response to Faludi is correct that what appears as a generational divide may be really something far more mundane.

I think the causes are more mundane than dramatic differences in outlook between generations. I think women are basically like men have always been. We struggle for power.....because we struggle for power...Older people are worried, for good reasons, that our ageist society will push them out. Older people, for less honorable reasons, think they should be able to rest on their laurels a little bit and dismiss the opinions of younger people, who they see as less experienced and therefore uninteresting. Young people can be stubborn and not willing to learn from the experiences of their elders. Everyone’s self-interest gets in the way of communication.

There are just so many good jobs to go around, just so many leadership positions available. The Great Recession has exacerbated the problem—-fewer jobs for old folks to hang on to, fewer job openings for young people trying to get a foot in the door.

Granted this is complicated; women have often entered careers later in life than their male counterparts. At 66, if one has been a tenured professor for 35 years maybe it's time to make room for a younger scholar. But if the 66 year old has been in the position for only 20 years, one can understand the reluctance to retire. And then there are those women in positions of real power. What liberal feminist would want Nancy Pelosi to step down at the height of her career? We wouldn’t have gotten health care reform through without her. But if everyone hangs on, options for young women are few indeed.

And there are just so many leadership positions in feminist organizations. It is certainly understandable that older women would not want to give up running organizations in which they have invested so much. But if everyone hangs on, where are the opportunities for younger women to develop their leadership skills?

Faludi uses the 2009 NOW conference as one of the key examples to illustrate her point that older feminists just do not want to let go:

Fifty-five-year-old Kim Gandy’s presidency had lasted eight years. With her retirement came an opportunity that many NOW members, and in particular many younger members, found hopeful. The candidate who seemed to be in the lead was thirty-three-year-old Latifa Lyles, a charismatic speaker attuned to a youthful sensibility, a black woman who insisted on a more diverse constituency, a technologically savvy strategist who had doubled the organization’s Internet fund-raising and engaged the enthusiasm of a host of feminist bloggers.....

Just weeks before the convention, another candidate had jumped into the race, fifty-six-year-old Terry O’Neill, who made a point of representing the concerns of NOW’s older, more traditional constituency. She had enlisted two young women to run on her slate, but her campaign was geared to her boomer sisters: its rallying cry was a return to Sixties-style street activism, and its view of young feminist social networking ranged from tolerance to bewilderment.

I was one of Latifa Lyle’s supporters. I was bitterly disappointed by Latifa’s defeat and at the time saw this primarily though the generational lens. But there was more going on. There were real differences about how to handle the organization's deteriorating financial condition, and anger about the Clinton defeat was also a subtext in a variety of ways. The vast majority of NOW members were Clinton supporters and that included most of Latifa’s supporters and most of Terry’s supporters. But to the extent that there were NOW members who supported Obama rather than Clinton, most of them were backing Latifa. (Being an Obama supporter and a NOW activist was a challenge as I can personally attest.)

Finally, as is always the case in any kind of bitterly contested election, personal animosities were mapped onto the ideological/ political divides and disentangling the personal from the political was not so easy.

Faludi as an outsider to the organization was probably unaware of these other divisions and she exaggerated the generational dimension.

NOW is struggling to heal the generational divide. As Faludi reports, two young women, Allendra Letsome and Erin Matson, were part of Terry O’Neill’s team. I don’t know Allendra personally but I do know Erin and she is a dynamo. So the transfer to a new generation will occur, maybe not as I once would have liked, but it will occur. And at the 2010 conference many of the divisions appeared to have healed. Those of us who care deeply about NOW have no intention of abandoning the organization just because our candidate did not win.

Younger women are questioning whether it will matter if NOW continues to exist or withers away. From Slate’s Emily Bazelon:

I'm sorry to hear about NOW's generational split, even if I don't get why Faludi is blaming the younger women for it. I'd care more, though, if I thought that NOW was central to the lives of American women or even to political feminism. But it's not and hasn't been for a long time.

As a second wave feminist who thinks the continued existence of NOW really does matter, I hope Bazelon and her generation think the organization is worth taking over! We’ll see.

Katha Pollitt in her response to Faludi’s piece, “Feminist Mothers, Flapper Daughters?” writes: "young women in a hurry should use their fabulous social networking skills to start their own organizations.” When I read Pollitt, I’m usually nodding my head in agreement, but this is one of those rare exceptions.

It’s not so easy to start a new organization (especially a national organization). Also, I've begun to think we already have too many feminist/progressive organizations with overlapping agendas competing for the same foundation grants, targeting the same donors. NOW and other second wave organizations have resources and an extensive donor base. Rather than starting from scratch, I’d like to see a younger generation of feminist leaders (diverse in race, ethnicity and class) take over these organizations and reshape them so they connect with young feminist women and men.

Yes, there are the generational tensions Faludi describes which will complicate the transition to new leadership. But Emily Bazelon, Courtney Martin and others at Feministing.com are certainly right that divisions in feminism cannot be explained in purely generational terms. A part of the story? Certainly. The whole story? Clearly not.

I love getting those Facebook birthday greetings!

A week or so ago, my husband Rick and I were talking about how the number of people who remember our birthdays is dwindling. Both of us have lost our parents, we each have only one sibling, I have only one child, and neither of us has much of an extended family.

I have a few close friends, who always call me on my birthday, but Rick’s guy friends don’t remember birthdays and he’s also lost a few very close friends. It happens at this stage of life.

But Facebook has stepped into the breach and I now receive all these birthday greetings from my Facebook friends! Rick thinks it's ridiculous. He doesn’t understand how I can waste so much time on social networking sites, but I really enjoy hearing from all these folks, especially from my former CCP students.

There are people I once knew well who have moved to different parts of the country. I may not see them again, but I really enjoy getting their updates. My guess is as I get older and less mobile, social networking sites will become increasingly important.

And when you’re involved in politics you have large social network and a whole lot of Facebook friends. (I’m such a political junkie I spent my birthday at a ward meeting!)

It's nice to know that thanks to Facebook I can count on getting birthday greetings.

Working Within the Democratic Party? Is it worth it?

Working Within the Democratic Party? Is it worth it? That’s what I’ve been asking myself for the past 30 years. When I was in my 20’s, that was the last thing I wanted to do. Like so many “radicals” (were we really all that radical?) I disdained working within the Democratic Party. I saw D’s and R’s as virtually indistinguishable and didn't see the point of choosing between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee.

Despite this, I did vote--for protest candidates. My first presidential vote was cast for Dick Gregory, Peace and Freedom Party. People like me were responsible for Richard Nixon’s victory—although since Hubert Humphrey won PA, at least I wasn’t directly responsible.

For me the wake-up call came with the election of Ronald Reagan. I realized there really was a difference between D’s and R’s and that it really does matter who wins elections. A few years after Reagan’s victory I took the plunge and became a Democratic committeeperson. I’ve been toiling away in the grassroots ever since.

Not until the victory of Barack Obama did I feel that all the work we did to build the progressive wing of the Democratic Party was worth the struggle. And I still feel that way. I’ve lost patience with progressives who refuse to acknowledge how much Obama has been able to accomplish given Republican obstruction and the horrendous mess he inherited.

So yes, my answer to the question whether it’s worth working within the Democratic Party is yes— although the Philadelphia Democratic Party does test my faith. This week-end I attended my second PA Democratic State Committee meeting. The good news: we are making progress towards organizing a progressive caucus. I hope that the success of this effort will inspire our Philly progressive Democrats to do likewise.

The Philadelphia regional caucus was the one really depressing session. The meeting was dominated by complaints about insufficient street money and Philly committee people not getting enough respect from the candidates.

Of course, it’s not just grassroots committee people with their hands out, looking to politics as a way to make a buck. I am sure there were some private meetings going on with well-connected lawyers talking about how they hope to get this contract or that contract if we elect a Democratic governor.

To a social movement activist like me, the Democratic Party has been hard to adjust to. In my years working with Philadelphia NOW and now Southeastern PA NOW, none of the wonderful NOW activists volunteering their time have expected to make money from their political activism. Au contraire—many of us were donating far more than we could easily afford to feminist candidates/organizations.

Sure, we got our psychic rewards. For those of us in leadership roles, there’s the ego gratification; for all of us there's the high that comes from working with like-minded (and really nice) people for a cause we care passionately about. So yes, we get our rewards but we’re not looking for a financial pay-off.

My guess is the Philly Democrats complaining about the lack of street money are getting their psychic rewards as well. What I found really strange (and disturbing) was the meeting chair’s comment when he introduced state committee’s new young executive director “as someone who’s close to Bob Brady (the party chair) and therefore close to every one of you.” Sorry, I don’t feel this special connection to Brady and didn’t particularly like the assumption that all the State and local committee people shared that connection.

This party functionary was quoted in Mike Sokolove’s recent NY Times article which a lot of Philly folks seem to have missed:

One morning, I went to visit Lou Farinella, a top lieutenant on the Democratic City Committee under Representative Robert A. Brady, the chairman... I asked him how Sestak could make sure he comes out of Philadelphia with enough votes. “He’s got to get close to Bob Brady,” he answered. “Real close. There’s not a person running for statewide office that doesn’t have to be extremely close to Bob Brady.”
Brady and Sestak represent side-by-side Congressional districts, and I wondered why they weren’t already close. “They are, but they need to get closer,” Farinella explained. And what would happen then? “Bob has a big stick that nobody can see,” he said. “And somehow he manages to wave it in such a way that everybody knows the direction to go in. When he does that, we roll out the big numbers to the polls.”

“A big stick that nobody can see?” Huh? This cult of personality among the party diehards is one of the many reasons talented young people choose not to work within the Democratic Party.

The article continues with a fascinating quote from Ed Rendell:

The day after I visited with Farinella, I talked with Rendell, who is nearing the end of his second term as governor after eight years as Philadelphia’s mayor. ..when I related my conversation with Farinella, Rendell sort of chuckled and said the party, in essence, is over. Sestak’s victory exposed the Democratic organization’s weakness as an Election Day force. “You can’t really say there’s a Philadelphia machine anymore, because if there was one, Arlen would still be standing,” Rendell said. “We backed him, and the turnout in Philadelphia was less than 17 percent.”

The local party desperately needs new leadership. Bob Brady’s machine is probably on its last legs; after all he and Farinella aren’t getting any younger. (But by the time Brady and Farinella leave, I’ll probably be too old and tired to remain politically active.)

And the current constellation of political parties won’t last forever. My guess is that at some point there will be a new party for those who are socially liberal and fiscally conservative—a group which doesn’t fit easily into either party.

I want a political party that is both socially and economically liberal/progressive. However, since the left wing of the Democratic Party is not large enough to form a viable party, for the foreseeable future the only alternative I see is building the progressive wing of the Democratic party—although that nagging question, “Is working within the Democratic Party really worth it?” will no doubt continue to crop up.

Retirement: The new normal

Last year, my husband and I brought out the champagne. It was our first year of not going back to teaching. Every August, I had dreaded the sound of the cicadas. I felt they were taunting me with their song that I heard as: “you must go back to work. You must go back to work.”

Last year, it was real thrill to hear the cicadas and NOT hear that grim message. It was so strange after all those years of thinking of September as back to school time not to be going back. Strange and exhilarating.

This year we hardly even noticed when back to school time rolled around. Retirement has become the new normal. I’m always a little puzzled by the question: “How are you adjusting to retirement?” The assumption seems to be that there will be some difficulty.

Probably one reason adjustment has been so easy for us is that we had so much time off when we were working. I never taught during the summer, never took overloads. Time to pursue my interests was always so much more important than extra money.

Many of my colleagues who did work over time did not do this out of economic necessity. I am always stunned when I hear people say, “ I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I weren’t working.”

Fine, if you love your job and you can't think of a better way to use your time. But there’s so much I wanted to do: political activism, writing, and gardening. My job was getting in the way of all my volunteer projects.

My only regret is that I haven’t gotten as much done as I intended: I haven’t read as many books as I planned; haven’t made as much progress with my book on second wave feminism in Philly as I had hoped; my Spanish is not a whole lot better than it as a year ago (although it is better); my garden is still far from the garden of my dreams.

I spend a lot of time hanging out with my husband and catching up with old friends, and as Rick says, isn't that what retirement’s for, the chance to take life more slowly, to enjoy just hanging out?

He’s got a point and despite nagging feelings I’m not using my time as well as I might, I love the new normal.

Rick reminded me of how surprised I was when other tourists who at first were stunned by the beauty of Machu Picchu on the return train trip quickly reverted to ignoring the scenery-- chatting away, reading, writing their postcards.

This weekend Rick and I were hanging out with some dear friends (all of us in our 60’s) and we came up with countless examples of how quickly the extraordinary can become unremarkable. We never thought we would see the election of an African-American president, the rapidly changing attitudes towards same sex marriage, and the dramatic changes in gender roles. We never thought the cold war which dominated our childhood (all those air raid drills), our youth, and early middle years would end with a whimper.

And we never thought we would become old and would adjust to this and find out that it wasn’t as bad as we had feared. That too has become the new normal.

A feminist tries to overcome her Islamaphobia

This anniversary of September 11 has been marked by a much more virulent outbreak of Islamaphobia than we have had in the past. It’s motivated me to work on my own anti-Islamic biases. I do not want to be in that company!

My bias against Islam was not the result of 9/11. I realize most Muslims are not terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. For me it’s the burqas, the honor killings, the stonings.

Several months ago in a conversation with a good friend, I expressed my very negative feelings about Islamic societies' treatment of women and how, as a consequence, I could not help but feel intense dislike for the religion. She reminded me that her sister, a woman for whom I have the greatest respect, was a convert to Islam and urged me to separate the religion from the misogyny of some of the societies in which it evolved.

A week ago I was having a conversation with another good friend who was making exactly the same arguments I had been making several months ago. She was reading Hirsi Ali’s latest book and was essentially repeating Ali’s arguments that Islam was a misogynist religion which must be condemned. And I was making the very same arguments my friend with the Muslim sister had made.

With regard to Ali, I greatly admire her courage, but understand why so many Islamic feminists feel that she is undercutting the work they are doing to advance women’s rights in the Muslim world. You are not going to change people if you trash their religion.

The Islamic feminists who want to work for women’s equality without rejecting Islam are likely to make much greater progress advancing women’s rights than Hirsi Ali.

As a secular feminist, I’ve always had some difficulty understanding how important religious traditions are in most people’s lives. And it’s been particularly hard for me to understand why any woman would embrace Islam.

What I found most helpful in trying to disentangle Islam from the misogyny of many Islamic societies was Nicholas d. Kristof and Sheryl Wu's Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide . (If you haven’t already read this book, it’s now in paperback.) Kristof and WuDunn acknowledge the problem:

A politically incorrect point must be noted here. Of the countries where women are held back and subjected to systematic abuses such as honor killings and genital cutting, a very large proportion are pre¬dominantly Muslim. Most Muslims worldwide don't believe in such practices, and some Christians do—but the fact remains that the coun¬tries where girls are cut, killed for honor, or kept out of school or the workplace-typically have large Muslim populations.
To look at one broad gauge of well-being, of 130 countries rated in 2008 by the World Economic Forum according to the status of women, 8 of the bottom 10 were majority Muslim. Yemen was in last place, with , Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan right behind it. No Muslim country ranks in the top 40. Kazakhstan ranks highest, at number 45, followed by Uzbekistan, at 55.

They argue that these attitudes are better viewed as cultural rather than religious practices. Just as attitudes towards women have evolved in Christianity and Judaism, we are witnessing a nascent move towards gender equality in the Muslim world. They note the cultural attitudes which have already changed:

A useful analogy is slavery. Islam improved the position of slaves compared to their status in pre-Islamic societies, and the Koran encourages the freeing of slaves as a meritorious act. At the same time, Muhammad himself had many slaves, and Islamic law unmistakably accepts slavery. Indeed, Saudi Arabia abolished slavery only in 1962 and Mauritania in 1981. In the end, despite thse deep cultural ties, the Islamic word ahs entirely renounced slavery. If the Koran can be read differently today because of changing attitudes towards slaves, then why not emancipate women as well?

Half the Sky is a hopeful book. I had resisted reading it because I expected it to be depressing. A friend encouraged me to read it as the stories Kristof and WuDunn tell are primarily about resistance rather than oppression.

The struggle for women’s rights around the globe is the major battle of the 21st century. After reading the book, I thought if I were a young woman trying to decide on a career path I would choose working on women’s rights in the international arena. I’d try to get a degree in something like international economic development with a gender emphasis. (It would have been difficult—there’s a reason I was an English major.)

Unfortunately, at this stage in my life my contribution will be primarily a financial one. The final section of Kristof and WuDunn’s book contains a valuable list of resources and various ways to contribute to the cause of women’s rights around the globe.

Their book is a powerful argument that those who want to fight gender inequality in the Muslim world must resist simplistic notions of Islam and instead view Islamic traditions as complex and evolving. It changed my mind.

I never thought we’d return to the same vacation spot every year: Falling in love with Block Island

I never thought we’d return to the same vacation spot every year, but my husband and I have fallen in love with Block Island, a tiny little island about 14 miles off the coast of Rhode Island.

You have to really love this place to put up with the hassles of getting there. Demand for rentals exceeds supply, so to rent a house you need to book in January and book your ferry reservations in January as well. Whenever the weather is bad, the ferry doesn’t run and you’re stuck sometimes for days waiting for service to resume. (This happened to us this year and we wound up spending 3 nights in Jamestown, R.I.)

But Block Island is worth it—gorgeous uncrowded beaches, unspoiled meadows and woodland, great restaurants--the perfect chill-out place. We rent a house big enough to invite friends and relatives. Rick is from Rhode Island and it’s an opportunity for him to see some of his RI friends and relatives and we always invite some of our Philly friends . Part of the fun is sharing Block Island with good friends.

The view from our deck:



The view from our deck at sunset:



Last year I wrote a post defending our low-key vacation. In a sense I was arguing with my younger self. From last summer’s post:

I remember giving my sister a hard time about her Jersey shore rentals: “For the kind of money you’re spending on these shore houses, you could be going to Europe!”

I no longer think our choice needs defending. We’ll go to Block Island every year as long as we can drive.

I love the ocean and for years tried to interest Rick in the Jersey shore. I’m a Philly girl so the Jersey shore is fine with me. And the Jersey shore is only an hour and half away!

But I have to admit the Block Island beaches are far more beautiful than the Jersey shore and I’m hooked--and I'm not at all apologetic about going there year after year.

If a summer goes by and I don’t spend time at the beach I get really depressed. I don’t need a whole summer—a week will do. But I need that ocean fix. (Freud was onto something when he referred to religious/ spiritual experience as that “oceanic”feeling.)

I noticed that I’m no longer constantly second guessing decisions and subjecting everything I do to hypercritical scrutiny. Psychologists tell us we get less neurotic as we age--compensation of sorts for the wrinkles, aches and pains that come with one’s 60’s.

Maybe this is what’s going on with me. I don’t feel guilty about not going to a foreign country and learning about a different culture. So what if we want to go to the same low-key vacation place every summer!

The over-planted garden

This year my husband, Rick, and I were judges in the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society city gardens contest. The requirements to be a judge are not that stringent— membership in the Horticultural Society and attendance at a training session for prospective judges.

At the training session, we were shown examples of good and bad gardens, including a photo described as “an over-planted garden.” I didn’t understand what the problem was; it looked good to me.

When I got home, I looked at my garden and realized I had created one of those horticultural no-no’s: "the over-planted garden." Rick said if the Horticultural Society trainers could see our garden, they would never let us be judges. Probably so.

Thanks to my friend Fran Waksler, I’ve learned the trick of taking photos of my garden when it’s especially wild and unkempt: close-ups.

Here’s the star of my August garden, crape myrtle:



And when my garden’s really a mess, there’s the close-up of the single flower. This amazing dahlia (variety unknown) begins as a rosy lavender and gradually morphs into a blazing orange:



It’s clear my garden will never win a prize in the city gardens contest. Rick made me feel a little better about it; “Think of a garden as creating an environment—a place you want to be—not a showpiece which meets the highest standards of the Horticultural Society.”

I thought I had made my peace with the messiness of my garden and wrote a post last August in which I proudly stated: “ I can deal with the fact that some of my friends think my garden is a chaotic mess… It took me a lot longer than it should have to get to this state of acceptance, but I think I’m there.”

Well, I’m not quite there yet, but I’ll keep working on making peace with my garden’s imperfections. It’s a lot easier than creating the perfect garden.

The White House Project in the Age of Sarah Palin and the Mama Grizzlies

I attended the White House Project workshop at the 2010 Blogher conference although I had been feeling increasingly ambivalent about non-partisan efforts such as the White House Project and the Women’s Campaign fund, “She should Run” Campaign.

After the White House Project workshop, it was a relief to see Emily’s list put out a frankly partisan attack with its hilarious video “Sarah Doesn't Speak for Me” .

For the past several decades, electing women has been a major focus of my activist life. I first heard Marie Wilson at a Womens Way conference in Philadelphia in 2004 and was convinced she was on the right track. I attended Emily’s List training sessions and over the years participated in numerous local workshops on women in politics. I organized a series of workshops in Philadelphia to encourage women to run for committeeperson, and worked on numerous campaigns to elect women candidates, etc.etc.

So why was I doing all this? It wasn’t just the belief that both genders should be represented in roughly equal numbers in positions of political power. I saw gender parity in politics as way to achieve a progressive agenda. More women in power would mean redirecting funds from a bloated defense budget and investing instead in human needs. Sure, there were the Margaret Thatchers, but I explained them away as women who had clawed their way to the top in a male-dominated political culture. When women achieve critical mass, they will support each other and make it possible for more progressive leaders to emerge.

Well, it turns out the Thatcher types have their female support networks too. And focusing on women does not automatically lead to advancing a progressive agenda.

In this context the White House Project did not resonate with me the way it did in 2004. I understand that the White House Project is a 501c3 and cannot be overtly partisan without jeopardizing its tax exempt status and funding sources. And I grant that the kind of skills-oriented, non-partisan training the White House Project provides is valuable for women new to the political process.

The speakers were excellent. Jill Miller Zimon who described her journey from blogger to elected official was really inspirational and Kathryn Poindexter who did the practical “everything you need to know to run for office” workshop provided all kinds of useful advice. She encouraged everyone at the session to think about running for office.

But not everyone should run. Over the years, I’ve seen workshops like these encourage women who lack the skills/ temperament /the politics which are good fit for their district take up supporters’ time and money on doomed campaigns.

Every successful woman candidate needs a good team behind her and that’s the role I’ve played, but I have become increasingly resentful of candidates with little or no chance to win asking me for my time/money.

After Poindexter’s session, I expressed some of my reservations. She had some good answers: there are so many women out there who have difficulty thinking of themselves in this role. We need to get more women running if we are ever to get that critical mass. Gender parity changes the political dynamic. So if we encourage some weak or inappropriate candidates, that’s a small price to pay to get the word out to large numbers of women.

She and I are on opposite trajectories. Poindexter said she began her career as a campaign consultant, focusing on candidates with progressive /feminist politics—-not on the candidate’s gender. The 2008 election was a real turning point for her; when Cris Matthews said that Hillary Clinton just didn’t sound "presidential," Poindexter decided she’d had enough and wanted to focus on advancing women.

I agree we have a real problem here and grant that at least Sarah Palin and her Mama Grizzlies help to normalize the idea of women in high political office. But with their emergence on the national scene, I’ve begun to question my earlier focus on electing women as a kind of magic bullet.

Yes, I want gender parity but don’t want to achieve that critical mass of women leaders through electing women like Sarah Palin. I want to elect more feminist women (and men). Sarah sure doesn’t speak for me.

New York City: The New American Heartland!

My husband and I just spent a few days in New York City for the Blogher 2010 conference. (More about that later.)

Over dinner, I happened to use the term heartland as shorthand for white, small town, Christian America and Rick said, “I think you’re sitting in the heartland.” He may be on to something here.

Walking down the streets of Manhattan (especially lower Manhattan) you see in what sometimes appears to be roughly equal numbers, the descendents of Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. And a casual glance at the street scene confirms that so many of the children of recent immigrants (with their unaccented English, their dress, their friends and partners) are clearly part of our ever-evolving American culture.

I always feel a little more alive when I’m in NYC and the cultural mix is a major part of the reason for that "center of the universe" feeling I always get in Manhattan.

When my husband and I retired, we planned to get to NYC more frequently but we haven’t done it nearly as much as we intended. We’ve resolved to change that. Rick has always thought of himself as a New Yorker in spirit and we always spend his birthday in NYC. We’ve tended to avoid the city in July and August and wouldn’t have come this August except for the Blogher conference. But I’m beginning to rethink that. The NYC street scene in August has its charms; people move a lot more slowly and seem more relaxed.

Not only do I love the cultural diversity of NYC, I love the relative lack of age segregation. You see so many really old people in their late 70’s, 80’s, even 90’s out and about in on the streets of Manhattan. They’re at the museums, the theaters and restaurants. This has a lot to do with NYC’s public transportation—plentiful taxi’s and accessible buses. A good friend told me her 89 year old mother who just had a hip replacement goes all over the city by bus. For older people who can afford to live there, NYC is a great place to grow old. I never noticed this when I was a young woman coming to NYC for all the excitement Philly could not offer, but as a retiree in her sixties I sure notice it now.

I find it especially gratifying to see women in their late 70’s, 80’s going to the theater alone and enjoying every minute. Sure, it’s much more fun to go to the theater with a friend, a partner. But for people who live alone, it might not always be possible to find someone who wants to see a particular play or be available for an impulse theater trip.

An elderly theater lover can probably easily find a friend who wants to see West Side Story or South Pacific, but it’s not so easy to find someone who might be interested in seeing an off-Broadway production like In God’s Hat described as a “noirish tale of loutish people.” So there she was, the elderly women in the front row having a great time at the theater by herself.

We’ve been going to more off-Broadway shows of late and it’s not just because of the ticket prices. There is so much theatrical talent in NYC and much of it is found off-Broadway The acting in In God’s Hat was astonishingly good. I think somehow it will live beyond its 4 week run at United Stages.

If you like seriously good theater at relatively low prices get on the mailing list for United Stages or for the Atlantic Theater. We’ve seen some fantastic productions of interesting, albeit flawed, plays at the Atlantic. There are far more good productions than there are good plays. But for me there’s nothing like the excitement of live theater and an interesting play that doesn’t quite work can still be a wonderful theatrical experience—and can lead to really great post theater conversations.

This is the main problem with going to the theater alone, but I bet the woman in the front row went home and engaged in the online discussions of the play. So many ways to connect now.

Anyway Rick and I are determined to make more frequent trips to the new heartland!

MY BOOK IS DONE AND MY GARDEN IS A MESS

I just received the following post from my friend Fran Waksler. August is a really tough month for gardeners and most of our gardens look a mess, but at least Fran has finished her book!

Hibiscus that self-seeded to a place it loves.


Tall phlox that Karen gave me from her garden many years ago

As you’ll notice, the photos are close-ups because any broader view would seem to be of an abandoned lot. But first, to my book.

In April I got a contract from University Press of America for a book I’d completed called The New Orleans Sniper: A Phenomenological Case Study of Constituting the Other, due out in December. As the title suggests, it is not destined to be a million seller, but it does have a niche in phenomenology, sociology, and criminal justice. UPA publishes scholarly books with small runs and thus asks authors to provide camera-ready copy. It’s possible to hire someone to produce such copy, but, hey, I’m retired and can do it myself. I did not, however, entirely understand what I was undertaking. Fortunately, very fortunately, I enjoy detail work, but it ended up being a rather complicated job. I learned more about formatting that I was aware there was to know. Fortunately UPA provided great support and the book is now in their hands. So from April to August I spent most of my time revising, formatting, getting permissions, and doing a hundred necessary bits and pieces.

And thus the state of my garden. Actually, the book was only one of three reasons that my garden is a mess. The weather has been extremely unaccommodating, alternating between too wet and too miserably hot. And then my dog, who always spends time in the yard with me, pulled a muscle, and was on the doggie equivalent of bed rest, i.e., no yard play. Without her beside me, gardening is much less fun. I even began to wonder if I was no longer as interested in gardening. But the day I mailed off my book, I found myself back in the yard, my now healthy dog at my side.

There is no way I can catch up with all there is to be done in the yard so I’m doing my best to deal with the things that are most offensive to me. The weather has produced many of these things: trees have been losing leaves (it looks like autumn), plants have died, the grass is brown (no amount of watering seems to help with days at 90 degrees), and the weeds have run amok. Some things have done well, too well: in my narrow north side moss path the hydrangea has gotten so big that it hits me when I walk by and if I swerve to the other side I get hit by Concord grapes. The Rose of Sharon has had a spectacular year and a wild red rose has been blooming non-stop. But all this is happening surrounded by weeds so nothing looks as pretty as it should. I do find weeding peaceful so my main goal is to pull as many weeds as I can before they reseed, do lots of pruning, and look to next year, when my garden will be immaculate.

The next book I write will be in the winter!