No longer haunted by holiday depression

For much of my life I spent the holidays obsessing about not having the perfect family. I’ve always been haunted by Brady Bunch like visions of the big happy family. My family of origin was small and dysfunctional. And continuing the family pattern I went on to two unhappy marriages. I finally got the marriage thing right the third time around but the dream of the perfect family still eluded me--a loving partner, wonderful children, and a large, supportive extended family.

My husband I did not have children (which was the right decision for us) but one consequence was putting the Brady Bunch dream further out of reach. And my little son was stuck shuttling back and forth between 2 households in a tension- filled joint custody arrangement.

For the most part, I haven’t wasted too much time feeling sorry for myself because I don’t have this dream family. But the holidays always brought these anxieties to the foreground and there were years when I really dreaded the holidays.

Yes, I know how rare it is to have a happy marriage and to have an extended family free of tension, in-law problems, and ancient, unresolved quarrels threatening to disrupt the family dinner. It’s not like the whole world has something from which I alone am shut out.

For reasons I don’t fully understand I’ve gotten beyond my dream of the perfect family. I have my wonderful husband, my son, my sister and her family, and many wonderful friends. I will never have that huge happy family I’ve always dreamed about, but I’ve made my peace with that. And one consequence is that the holidays are no longer an ordeal to be gotten through.

A cautionary tale from Gail Collins: Or why we have to pass a health care reform bill

Today I received an email from NOW President Terry O'Neill. One of the reasons many feminists support NOW is to have an organization we can count on to look out for women’s rights. From Terry O'Neill:

The so-called health care reform bill now before the Senate, with the addition of Majority Leader Harry Reid's Manager's Amendment, amounts to a health insurance bill for half the population and a sweeping anti-abortion law for the rest of us. And by the way, it's the rest of us who voted the current leadership into both houses of Congress.
The National Organization for Women is outraged that Senate leadership would cave in to Sen. Ben Nelson, offering a compromise that amounts to a Stupak-like ban on insurance coverage for abortion care. Right-wing ideologues like Nelson and the Catholic Bishops may not understand this, but abortion is health care. And health care reform is not true reform if it denies women coverage for the full range of reproductive health services.
We call on all senators who consider themselves friends of women's rights to reject the Manager's Amendment, and if it remains, to defeat this cruelly over-compromised legislation.

Support for abortion rights is a litmus test issue for me. I’ve never voted for an anti-choice candidate, no matter how good that candidate might be on economic justice issues. And I don’t expect to ever vote for an anti-choice candidate.

I will write to my senators to let them know how outraged I am by the anti-choice language in the bill. I will continue to lobby to get this language out of the final bill, but I don’t want to ask my representatives to torpedo the final bill.

I have gone back and forth on this. What finally clinched it for me, was Gail Collins’ article which jogged my memory about what happened when progressives failed to work together to mobilize support for child care.

Collins relates a cautionary tale:

Back in 1971, Congress passed a bill aimed at providing high-quality early childhood education and after-school programs for any American family that wanted them…Then Richard Nixon surprised almost everyone by vetoing it. The social right, which was just beginning to come into its own, was delighted….
Meanwhile, there was hardly a peep from the other side. Children’s advocates had been enthusiastic at first, but as the legislation made its way through Congress, they squabbled over what kinds of community groups should be allowed to deliver the services…
In the end, the people who hated the whole idea were much more energized than the people who loved the idea, but disagreed on the details.
“People always think there will be another day,” said Jack Duncan, who was counsel for the subcommittee that handled the bill in the House. “Well, there might be another day, but not in my lifetime.”

At that stage in my life, I thought the 1971 child care bill was too flawed to support—-nothing short of free childcare for all would have satisfied me.
I didn’t realize at the time that we had just blown a historic opportunity which would have made an enormous difference in women’s lives. If there had been enough support from progressives to override Nixon’s veto, the bill would have in all likelihood have become stronger over time.

By now, Americans would view government subsidized high quality child care as a right—-just the way Europeans view child care as a right. We forget that social security was not widely supported initially, but there is now a consensus that financial support in old age is a right of citizens. Something similar is likely to happen with health care.

At this stage in my life, I am willing to take half a loaf to establish the principle that all Americans have a right to health care. We can’t miss this opportunity.

How I’m dealing with my depression about health care reform

This is not the way I expected it to turn out. No public option, no Medicare buy –in for people 55-64. But I don’t want to kill the bill.

I spend too much time reading liberal/ progressive blogs and am dismayed by how many on the left are making the argument that it’s better to scuttle this bill.

Many thanks to Nate Silver who kept me from falling into this defeatist way of thinking! One of my Facebook friends alerted me to
His 20 Questions for Bill Killers

Silver convinced me that passing this bill is so much better than starting over. Among his most compelling points:

8. How many years is it likely to be before Democrats again have (i) at least as many non-Blue Dog seats in the Congress as they do now, and (ii) a President in the White House who would not veto an ambitious health care bill?

11. Would base voters be less likely to turn out in 2010 if no health care plan is passed at all, rather than a reasonable plan without a public option?

[An aside: Nate Silver got me through the 2008 general election. Whenever I stated to panic, I went to fivethirtyeight.com and Nate’s solid, fact-based analysis calmed me down. Silver demonstrated that electoral arithmetic was clearly in Obama’s favor and that helped me get beyond the headline of the day.]

Silver’s arguments helped and a little bit of history helps. Major social reform has always been piecemeal. In order to get the votes to pass social security, FDR made a devil’s bargain with Southern Democrats to exclude domestic workers and share croppers, effectively excluding the majority of African-Americans.

In many ways the New Deal was racist, but it established the principle that the elderly were entitled to financial support. In the 1950’s the laws were amended to ensure that the principle applied to all workers. (Those who had been excluded from social security or their descendants should have been compensated.)

Medicare was similarly a work in progress, with prescription drug coverage not included. Medicare established the principle that the elderly were entitled to health care, but it took forty years for prescription drug coverage to be included, and even then, the prescription drug coverage passed during the Bush administration was deeply flawed. We are still working on fixing that one.

Killing the bill will kill reform for the foreseeable future and kill more of our fellow citizens who are dying for lack of health care.

And from Bill Clinton:
“Take it from someone who knows: these chances don't come around every day. Allowing this effort to fall short now would be a colossal blunder -- both politically for our party and, far more important, for the physical, fiscal, and economic health of our country."

Maybe Obama and the Democrats could have fought harder, fought smarter but the archaic senate rules have stacked the deck against change. It’s time to get rid of the filibuster and the 60 vote threshold required.

So I’m reconciled (sort of) to passing this flawed bill as a first step and trying to talk myself into a "don’t mourn, organize!” mind set.

I’m going to work like crazy to make sure the people who came out for Obama in 2008 come out in 2010 to give the president the votes he needs to fix this bill. Too bad Lieberman doesn’t come up for re-election until 2012.

Karen Bojar

President Obama deserves the Nobel Prize

One downside of retirement is I have more time to obsess about what troubles me. If I were still working, I’d be too busy grading papers to be obsessing about Afghanistan and Obama’s Nobel Prize.

I am in the minority who thinks Obama deserves the award. I don’t share the disillusionment of many of my left wing friends with Obama. He inherited a horrendous mess. There were no good options in Afghanistan and the economic disaster was not of his making. And as for the difficulty of getting real health care reform passed, although the Democrats control congress, Obama does not have an ideological majority. A lot of those blue dogs might as well be Republicans.

But the escalation in Afghanistan gave me pause. I had hoped for a different decision. There is an argument for trying to stabilize a region in which there is a real possibility of nuclear weapons winding up in the hands of some truly scary people. But is increasing troop levels the way to forestall this? I've read some compelling arguments against Obama’s surge—even from Arlen Specter! So I’m very uncertain about all this and worried, really worried.

Yet I still think President Obama deserves the Nobel Prize and am happy it was awarded to him—-largely because of what this says about the world’s changing view of our country. In less than a year Obama has dramatically changed the image of the US. In the first days of his administration he declared an end to torture, the intention to close Guantanamo, his commitment to a world without nuclear weapons and , in the truly remarkable Cairo speech, he reached out to the Muslim world. Granted it’s more promise than achievement, but after 8 years of Bush/Cheney such a dramatic shift counts for a lot. Obama has raised the hopes of people around the globe that just maybe another world is possible.

Karen Bojar

More thoughts on the winter garden

A beautiful medititation on the winter garden from my friend Fran who gardens in Cambridge, MA:

I think of the winter garden as the place for stock-taking. The “bones” of the garden are evident and I, thanks to retirement, have the leisure to reconsider, regroup, and plan. This year I’ll try to do more with autumn flowers. I’m also looking for a good groundcover for a bank where the dogs run—plants that are low-growing, very hardy, and willing to spread. The ground phlox hasn’t been entirely satisfactory, but maybe more of it would work better. I always want something in bloom throughout the year but am far less successful than Karen. Maybe next year. Time to check out plant sites on the web.

Of course, a lot of what I see now is jobs that I should have done already—tie up the broom so it doesn’t get beaten down by the snow, prune here and there, do any odd job that cold and rain and snow will allow. And leaves always remain. Nonetheless, it is rather peaceful since there really isn’t all that much that I can physically do, but I can dream. And when snow comes it covers up all the problems and everything looks beautiful.

Like Karen, people ask me if I would prefer living where I could have a year-round garden and, like Karen, I prefer (actually need) the varied seasons. Seasonal change and weather are very important to me. I love the drama of storms and the comfort of warm sunny days. When spring comes, I really feel that I’ve earned it by surviving winter. A friend, a fellow New Englander, moved for a time to California and said she didn’t know how Californians developed any personality without weather to contend with! I also think that without the winter break from gardening I wouldn’t have that pause that makes gardening something to really look forward to. I await the snowdrops and crocuses as the first sign that, once again, spring will really come.

Reading gardening books in the winter is a special pleasure for me. I plan such wonderful gardens, even if they are only very partially realized. At the moment I’m reading Olive Pitkin, My Garden and I: The Making of a Mid-Life Gardener (1992). I prefer narratives like this one to “how-to” books. Pitkin does most of the gardening herself (aided by relatives and friends), which I admire. I can’t really identify with gardeners whose work is done primarily by others. I also can’t identify with those who seem to have unlimited resources. When the famous gardener Christopher Lloyd was laying in a garden on an estate, a road was in the way of what he planned so the owners had the road moved. That’s a bit more ambitious than I can manage. I’m content with my little city plot of ground in all the seasons that it passes through.

The Winter Garden

This is a tough time of the year for me. We’ve had our first snowfall and hard frost, so there’s not much left in my garden—just a little bit of winter jasmine.

I try to have something in bloom for as much of the year as possible but December and January are tough. I usually get a snow drop or two in January, but that’s it.

Friends who know of my passion for gardening sometimes ask if I’ve ever wanted to move to a warmer climate where I could have an all year round garden. Not an option. Not only do I love my city, my house, my friends, I don’t think I could live without the drama of Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring.

I’m sure that I would never burst into tears of joy at the sight of the first species crocus (usually in late February) if it weren’t for several months of ice and cold. Now maybe that sounds a little crazy—wanting the pain of winter to fully experience the joy of Spring, but that’s how it works for me. And then Philly winters aren’t all that bad; it’s not like I’m living in Maine.

I’ve tried to figure out why seasonal change is so important to me and I think it has a lot to do with growing up on English literature. My imagination has been shaped in a really deep way by all those references to seasonal change. Bits and piece of poetry pop into my mind when I am out in the garden. Right now it’s “bare, ruined choirs where once the sweet birds sang.”

And the Holidays for me are a Winter Solstice festival. I just can’t imagine the holiday season without cold weather and at least the possibility of snow.

The way I make sense of the world is bound up with seasonal change. Sure some of it may seem clichéd—e.g., the autumn of my life—but it’s powerful nonetheless.
Karen Bojar

I’m glad I got it together to go to DC for the National Lobby Day to Stop Stupak

I’m glad I got it together to go to DC for the National Lobby Day to Stop Stupak and Pass Health Care Reform.

A diverse group of women from all over the country gathered in DC; the really good news is that the majority were young women in their 20’s and 30’s. I think many women in my generation breathed a sigh of relief when we saw all these young women determined to protect reproductive rights.

Lobby days can be tedious as you go to one office after another, usually meeting with staff rather than with elected officials. (Thanks to Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz, one of the few elected officials who met with constituents.)

The lobbying may have been tedious, but the rally was inspirational. Leaders of major feminist organizations and women legislators with long careers fighting for gender equality affirmed their determination to stop this assault on women’s rights.

Many emphasized that that here has been a compromise in place for decades that federal funds can not be used for abortion but that women can purchase insurance coverage which includes abortion with private funds—-i.e.with their own money. The Stupak-Pitts amendment would overturn this compromise and dramatically change the status quo.

No other legal medical procedure has been singled out to be excluded from plans on the proposed newly created insurance exchange—just this procedure which applies only to women.

A common theme from the women legislators who have been fighting for real health care reform is “We are going to win this one. We are not going to pass health care reform which restricts access, which takes away a right which women currently possess.” As Carol Maloney (Dem. representative from NY) said, “I didn’t go to Congress to roll back women's rights."

We must make sure that in arguing that health care reform not undo the compromise in place for decades(the Hyde amendment), that we are not legimitizing this law's discrimination against low income women.

After we defeat Stupak, we will mobilize against the Hyde amendment which denies government employees and women on Medicaid access to abortion. And we will win!

I can’t believe we are still fighting for abortion rights.

I can’t believe we are still fighting for abortion rights. In 1973 after the Roe decision, I thought the battle had been won. How wrong I was.

When I went to a pro-choice demonstration in DC in the early 90’s, I couldn’t quite believe that we were still fighting this battle. But I was heartened to see so many young women there and thought that soon this would be settled and we wouldn't be wasting our energy fighting for this basic right. Wrong again.

When I dragged myself to DC for the 2004 March for Women’s Lives I began to worry that I might be fighting this battle until my dying day. Bush was president and had the power to shape the Supreme Court for years to come.

Now we have a Democratic president and a Democratic congress, yet we’re still fighting an energized anti-choice movement. But supporters of abortion rights are energized as well. According to NY Times , Nancy Keenan, Executive director of NARAL describes us old folks as “a menopausal militia”—women who can remember a world without access to safe, legal abortion. (Most women my age know someone, either directly or indirectly, who died from or suffered serious complications from an illegal abortion.)

Young women may lack this direct experience, but many see access to safe, legal abortion as a right and they don’t want health care reform to endanger that right. So I expect to see at a lot of young women at the rally/lobby day for abortion rights in DC on Dec. 2.

One concession to age: I no longer take the bus. There is no way I can get to Center City Philly by 6:00 and then return to Philly at 9:00 for a 17 hour day. I plan to drive down the night before, stay in DC overnight, and get up at a reasonable hour in the morning. I’ve paid my dues—40+ years of taking the bus to marches in DC. Unlike so many of my friends, I’ve never enjoyed the experience. I went out of a sense of obligation. I’ve always been a little phobic about crowds and was never really comfortable marching around with like-minded folks chanting slogans in unison. My politics may have collectivist tinge, but temperamentally I’m an individualist.

But there are times when you just have to stand up and be counted.

Who was sitting around your Thanksgiving dinner table? Family? Friends?

Holidays have a way of making me review my life—-memories of Thanksgivings past. When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was strictly a family affair. During my first brief, troubled marriage, I don’t recall our ever celebrating Thanksgiving. My second marriage was another mistake, but it lasted much longer, and about a decade of Thanksgiving dinners were spent with my ex's family. They were a very nice group of people who were very good to my son and I have fond memories of them.

My third try at marriage was a success and many Thanksgiving dinners were spent with my husband’s family in Rhode Island. Sadly, my husband’s parents and many of the relatives who sat around that Thanksgiving table are no longer with us and we are no longer driving up to Rhode Island for Thanksgiving. The common thread in all this is that the folks around the Thanksgiving table were all family—-traditionally defined.

My sister and a group of her friends have been having Thanksgiving together for years. And luckily for us they have taken us in. Much as I enjoy having dinner with my husband, a Thanksgiving dinner with just the two of us wouldn’t be much fun. Holidays are communal celebrations.

My guess is that in our increasingly mobile society with our changing notions of what counts as family, many of those communal celebrations are as likely to consist of a small circle of friends as of a group of relatives.

Fall Cleanup: Here I am retired and still behind schedule.

My lawn and walkways are covered with leaves and I still have bulbs I haven’t gotten around to planting. For years I’ve promised myself that I would get my bulbs in the ground before the weather gets cold and miserable, but each year the mountain of student papers and my various volunteer jobs got in the way. Every year I found myself out there in the rain and cold, desperately trying to get my bulbs planted before the ground froze.

I was sure that when I was retired I would be all caught up on the garden chores. True, that trip to New England cost me almost 2 weeks of time in the garden. Even so, I’m retired-- I shouldn’t be so far behind!

My husband tells me: “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re supposed to be able to take it easy when you’re retired.” He’s not giving himself a hard time for being behind in leaf raking, his main garden job.

For other procrastinators out there: Don’t worry, you can plant until the ground is frozen (usually Mid December in the Philly area.) The bulbs will come up a little later in the Spring, but they’ll be fine. But you’re probably not going to enjoy the experience on a cold, gloomy late November Day.

There is a generation of young feminists out there ready to fight for reproductive rights.

Book Your Seat Today!
National Day of Action
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Washington, D.C.

There is a generation of young feminists out there ready to fight for reproductive rights. Many older feminists (myself included) have bemoaned the fact that we are having trouble recruiting younger feminists to take over our organizations. Maybe younger feminists want to form their own organizations rather than build those that emerged from second wave feminism. Maybe they’ll do both.

What’s becoming increasingly clear is that there are young, energetic feminists committed to fighting for equality for women. I went to a meeting today convened by WOMEN’S WAY, a local foundation which raises money for organizations providing services to women and girls. The room was filled with young women determined to fight against any erosion of abortion rights in the health care bill before Congress. (If anyone doubts that the Stupak-Pitts amendment effectively denies coverage for abortion in the plans to be offered in the proposed insurance exchange, read George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services report on the Stupak/Pitts Amendment

These young women do not want to choose between expanding heath care and maintaining a right many women currently possess. One theme which emerged at today’s meeting was that the pro-choice movement has been energized by Stupak-Pitts. When we defeat this attempt to erode abortion rights, we’ll be ready to take on the Hyde amendment, which denies access to abortion to low-income women who are receiving Medicaid.

I don’t think young women are going to meekly stand by and accept the loss of hard fought rights. Something is happening out there.

Another retiree in the city!

My friend Fran is retiring in Cambridge MA and values an urban area for reasons somewhat different from mine.

From Fran:

Like Karen, I plan to stay put in the city. I recently attended my high school’s 50th reunion and was amazed at the number of classmates who had retired to Florida. Not my idea of retirement, nor is moving to the country. Unlike Karen, however, I fear that I make very little use of the cultural resources available to me, abundant as they are in Cambridge, MA. I do, however, like being close to anything I want—gym, dog training club, library, garden center, lots of stores. I like knowing that I can go out for something I need in the middle of the night—though I have to admit that, except for medical emergencies or when the dogs got sprayed by a skunk, I’ve never had to make a midnight run.

Both my husband and I are homebodies and enjoy it that way. I live a pseudo-rural life in the midst of the city, spending a lot of time in my garden. I put up 30 jars of jelly from the grapes I grew (and have enough juice in the freezer for another 40 jars). I knit a lot and made almost all the sweaters my husband wears (and all the ones my dog wears). I love to potter around the house and yard. Just came in from raking leaves, which I enjoy—though unrealistically I expect them to stop falling anymore after I’ve raked. In the absence of gardening in the winter, I tend to my houseplants.

Perhaps this kind of life sounds boring to others, but not to me. I spoke with a retired friend and said that I’ve been so busy since retirement that I wouldn’t mind being bored occasionally. He said, “Ah, yes, I remember being bored one day in 1997.”

Retiring in the city!

I finally have the time to take advantage of the cultural resources of Philly. When I was working, I was usually too tired to go to all the wonderful programs at our library, at our Constitution Center, the exhibits at our museums, the many forums sponsored by our civic organizations. Our city may not be rich in per capita income, but we are certainly rich in civic life and cultural institutions.

My husband and I have always tried to take advantage of the cultural resources of the city (e.g., our orchestra and theater subscriptions), but exhaustion often got in the way. Sometimes we just didn’t have the energy to go down town to the concerts we had already paid for. Sometimes we forgot we had tickets and so missed the chance to give away or donate our tickets.

Now I no longer fall asleep at plays and concerts. Thanks to all those Philly Funsaver discounts much of this cultural life is very affordable. And we have all these seriously good, affordable BYOB restaurants

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to retire somewhere out in the boondocks without access to concerts, theater, a wide range of ethnic restaurants. (My good friends who fled the city for rural Vermont can’t imagine why I would want to stay.)

Finally I have the time to enjoy the city I love! And it's not just within the city limits. There’s much in the Delaware Valley that I have never explored. Last week, my husband and I finally got it together to go the Barnes Foundation

Friends have traveled to Philly just to see this collection and could not believe that my husband and I had never been to the Barnes. (I’ve lived here all my life and my husband since his mid-20’s.)

Next week, it's the Brandywine Museum, another cultural resource that despite our many years in the Delaware valley, we have never visited.

Health Care reform must not come at the expense of chipping away at abortion rights

I had come to terms with the fact that health care reform would not be all I wanted. I assumed that like previous major social reforms it would represent a step forward and the inadequacies would be remedied over time.

But unlike Social Security and Medicare, this legislation takes a step backward by mandating that plans included in the insurance exchange, including the public option, will not cover abortion. Some women who currently have abortion coverage would lose the right to it.

Major social reform has always been piecemeal. In order to get the votes to pass social security, FDR made a devil’s bargain with Southern Democrats to exclude domestic workers and share croppers, effectively excluding the majority of African-Americans. In many ways the New Deal was racist, but it established the principle that the elderly were entitled to financial support. In the 1950’s the laws were amended to ensure that the principle applied to all workers. (Those who had been excluded from social security or their descendants should have been compensated.)

Medicare was similarly a work in progress, with prescription drug coverage not included. Medicare established the principle that the elderly were entitled to health care, but it took forty years for prescription drug coverage to be included, and even then, the prescription drug coverage passed during the Bush administration was deeply flawed. The proposed health care reform should improve it somewhat.

I had expected similar gaps and inadequacies in the current legislation, but I didn’t expect an erosion of hard-fought rights.

Tomorrow I will be contacting my Senators. We’ve got to keep this erosion of abortion rights out of the Senate bill!

Election Day is very different now that I am retired.

For over two decades I have been a democratic committeeperson. In my radical youth I never expected to end up doing grunt work for the Democratic Party. As a young woman, I had no interest in working within the two party system; why bother choosing between Tweedledum and Tweedledee? I didn’t want to settle for piecemeal reform nor engage in the messy compromises that are part and parcel of participation in the electoral arena.

For me the wake-up call came in the early l980’s with the election of Ronald Reagan. It really did matter who won elections. This may not seem like a major revelation to most folks, but it was for me. I decided I could no longer afford to vote for protest candidates. (My first presidential vote in 1968 was for Peace and Freedom Party candidate, Dick Gregory.)

So in the 80’s I became a Democratic committeeperson. I don’t have the temperament (or inclination) to run for office, so I decided that I would work to elect good people—-particularly good women—-to office. It’s been a lot of fun, but usually I was simultaneously working at the polls and grading papers. A woman once came up to me at the supermarket and said, “Aren’t you the lady who’s always grading papers at the polls?”

For the first time, there were no papers to grade. No need to check my work voice mail and email to reply to those students who didn’t get my message that class was cancelled.

Maybe it would have been better to have had those papers to grade—-something to distract me from the absence of voters. Finally I was free to chat with all the voters for as long as I wanted, but the voters were scarce indeed. Most were unfortunately not all that interested in the state-wide judicial races which were the only real contests on the ballot--a far cry from the long lines and incredible excitement of November, 2008.