Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

My Review of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at 50

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is celebrating their 50th anniversary with a unique series of seven performances (that’s 18,000 tickets!) at the Opera House thanks to the Celebrity Series of Boston. I was there on opening night for the Boston premiere of “Go in Grace” (2008), a collaboration with the incomparable African-American women’s a cappella vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock (who themselves are sometimes featured by the Celebrity Series.)

Choreographed by an Ailey company member, Hope Boykin, “Go in Grace” integrates the dancers and the singers, including the sign language signer who has long been an integral part of Sweet Honey and the Rock. However, it feels like a light opera and fails to challenge the audience, the dancers or the singers. The music is more expository than melodic and the dancing is more descriptive than exciting. Despite such a bundling of talent on the stage, the thirty-minute piece (which isn’t repeated this week) lacks energy and needs edited down. The story revolves around a nuclear family with a dad, mom, teenage son and young daughter. When the son slips out of the lyrical rhythms of the patriarchal family to dance to the staccato hard beats of the two “boyz” – as they are listed in the program, the father dies of grief. We watch the daughter, a sweet deaf girl, as she grows up, petted and guided by the wisdom of the singers. By failing to engage us emotionally with any of the characters, “Go in Grace” lacks Alvin Ailey’s usual charm. As an audience member from London put it, “This was not entirely successful.”

Preceding “Go in Grace,” was a 12 minutes documentary celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary, with lots of audio and film footage of Ailey himself. Of particular interest are the clips tracing decades of productions of pieces like “Revelations” (1960) and “Cry” (1971) which encapsulate the most iconic of Ailey’s movement language. The development of the company over the generations into one of the most powerful American dance institutions is impressive.

Two classic pieces choreographed by the young Alvin Ailey himself round out the evening to audience delight. The always moving “Suite Otis” (1971) pays tribute to Otis Redding’s body of music with dances that remain today sexy, robust and cool. From the rhythmic opening scene of rippling naked male back muscles – not the least the super-human undulations of Jamar Roberts, to a witty, flirtatious cheek-to-cheek to the lyrical extensions done to “I’ve been Loving You too Long,” the work feels exciting and familiar at the same time.

The final piece is “Revelations,” through which Ailey established in 1960 the centrality of the African-American experience in modern dance. This is the Ailey company’s evergreen – it is never packed away and Ailey fans pride themselves on how often they have seen it performed. It is the only piece being offered every night of the run. In the opening scene, the dancers make no eye contact with the audience, always looking to heaven or lowering their heads. Grouped in the center of the stage, the audience responds to each of the iconic poses – arms like a flock of gulls, hands shooting up to heaven and lit from above – with animated recognition. The traditional gospel music is full and textured, in contrast to the first piece.

The fundamental tension in Ailey’s work is sexual. He clearly choreographs for the male body (duh!), but his couplings and story lines are strictly boy/girl. There is none of the gender play of a Mark Morris, for example, but Ailey’s men, often bare-chested and in tights, have the strongest, sexiest parts. The women are heavily costumed and often serve their props – whether it is a parasol, a fan or a ruffled hem. The men shake their booties shamelessly, to everyone’s delight, but the women rarely get to dance with raw sexuality.

Each performance at the Opera House has a different program, emphasizing original Ailey choreography, including many pieces that “haven’t been out of the mothballs for quite a while,” Jack Wright, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Celebrity Series, told me. Despite the economic downturn which has had a strong negative impact on donations, Wright feels they’re doing well at the box office. Compared to shows at the Wang in previous years, this Opera House appearance “is a more aggressive program and we are getting at least the audience we always get.” Since Boston receives the ever-touring Ailey company annually via the Celebrity Series, it should be a matter of pride that Bostonians are digging deep to maintain their support.

The End of Travel As We Know It: Going to New York City

Wednesday, April 22, 2009
I am in NY to meet up with my dear ones: Jaya the exciting marble sculptor from Italy and her partner Madeleine the accomplished acupuncturist from Zurich. If I am a bit high-strung, it is because during the over-air-conditioned Greyhound Bus ride from Boston, I’ve had the annoying inconvenience of a pubescent dickhead reclining his seat onto my lap for nearly 5 hours. During the pee-break, when I suggest to his father that his son’s response to my request that he sit up a bit (“Fuck you”) was only slightly less irritating than my inability to read or to use my laptop, the father tells me, Change seats if you don’t like it. (The bus is full.) My answer: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

My friends are there to sweep me from the bus station into the NY subway, a system that is too old for such modern conveniences as escalators and elevators. So schlepping my suitcase, laptop and shoulder-bag up steps and down steps as we change trains or exit the station is going to become an unwanted habit in the coming days. This time, though, with assistance from Jaya’s strong arms, we make it to our peculiar hotel to dump my stuff before setting out to tour.

Man oh man, as my dad would’ve said, does New York’s “Hotel Thirty-Thirty” need a lesson in customer care.

Q. Do you have wireless in all rooms?
A. Yes we do.
Q. Free?
A. Just a modest fee of $13.99 a day.

Q. What are you, a retro hotel? Well, do you have a computer guests can use to get online?
A. Yes, a whole bank of them.
Q. Free?
A. Only $.50/minute, with a minimum charge of $3.00

Q. Can we check out a bit later than your usual 11:00am tomorrow?
A. No problem, we charge $50/hour for overtime.

If only my feet didn’t have this painful walking time-limit, I would say that our unplanned but comprehensive walk in the incessant drizzle throughout Central Park is simple magic. The trees are in a haze of Spring, as one friend described it, budding or blooming in the softest mist of transition.

Once my peeps find Katz’s Deli listed in their tourist material, no other dinner spot will do. It is an 1888 institution with classic Jewish Ashkenazi food, high prices ($15 for a sandwich) and an archaic payment system. Each diner gets a little orange ticket as she enters. Our bill total is scribbled on one of them (it takes an effort to get a separate itemized receipt), which we pay. But when we try to leave, they demand we return the other two little tickets. We are forced to search them out back at our table once they tell us that without them, two of us will have to pay $50 fines. A restaurant that fines customers? If I didn’t know better I’d think that the Katzes (no relation, unfortunately) had inter-married with the Thirty-Thirties (of Hotel Charge-Ya-To-Breathe).

Thursday April 23, 2009
Our breakfast at Penelope’s is satisfying and we set off for the too-little-known Noguchi Museum in the Queens industrial zone Long Island City. Again there are steps galore at all stations and I wish my friend Stan was around to sue MTA’s asses for inaccessibility. I have been protected from excessive steps since I moved out of my nasty upper floor walk-up and into my dazzling elevatored 7th floor flat. I’m out of shape steps-wise, even without all my baggage, but the NY subway system cuts me no slack. Yes, I know the oldest lines were built over 100 years ago – about as old as my feet feel.

The Noguchi Museum is an amazing space; the bio video provides useful context; and the special exhibit of Noguchi’s Chinese lanterns is breezy. A Japanese-American, Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988) was known for an ever-evolving body of work – from large abstract stone pieces to landscape design to sets for Martha Graham. His Japanese poet father never really wanted to know him, but his American writer mother encouraged his artistry. Never particularly political, when the Japanese-Americans on the west coast were interned after Pearl Harbor, he formed a lobby group “Nisei Writers and Artists for Democracy," but failed to impact government policy. Despite being safe on the east coast, he volunteered in 1942 to become interned in Arizona in the hope that he could offer artistic support to the internees. He didn’t last long there, although it took months to extract himself.

My European friends’ flight schedule forces us back to the Hotel. Up and down and climb and mount; we pick up our luggage from Thirty-Thirty’s storage unit (it’s free!) before hugging goodbye. My schlepping is only beginning. I re-enter the world of subterranean steps fully encumbered once again to make my way to Tribeca, to spend the night with one of my very oldest friends Abby, the global professor of photography (check out her amazing site), with whom I was matched as a freshman in 1965 by the roommate machine at college. Her distinctively decorated Tribeca loft (two flights up, for my sins) overlooks the film festival which opened last night and I watch the limos coming and going as I piggyback gratefully onto her wifi.

Friday, April 24, 2009
In the morning, after feting me with bagels, Scottish salmon and crème fraiche, Abby helps me down the steps and walks me, in her pajamas, to the subway entrance for my unnecessarily difficult trip (local trains suddenly changing to express) to Brooklyn where my chosen niece, nephew and grandbaby await me. It is a long love-fest from morning to night. We drive to the Botanical Gardens, but luckily Sadie (a little over 2 years old) walks at a pace that the wooden blocks that seem to have replaced my feet can actually keep up. Hot dogs among the blooms seems like just the right lunch, especially when I know I’m going home to a succulent home-cooked meal, fresh-baked scones both savory and sweet, and a pear cake warm from the oven.

Oona did not get these cooking/baking genes from me, that’s for sure. Nor the self-discipline to divorce, via small portions and punishing workouts, the 60 or 80 pounds that were coming between her and her pre-pregnancy wardrobe. Matt is the funniest man in the world and cares for Sadie daily. Under his influence, she will probably be punning before she can read. I’m grateful that they’ve come up with a baby from whom I can get a full measure of grand-delight.

After hanging out with them during their bubble bath, I kiss Sadie good night and as it is clear the parents are wilting, Matt drives me to my next destination: the nearby Brooklyn home of my old friends Vicki and Zach. I’ve known Vicki since the 80s and Zach since the early 90s – before they first joined their lives together in London in the back seat of my car.

They are both unique individuals and I am instantly comfortable in their rented railroad flat. I get into my pajamas, catch up on their news and connect to their wifi. Zach is, in one of his present incarnations, a gamer geek and multimedia man with a side-gig in transforming video footage of party-goers into personal flip-books.

Vicki is a devoted early educator and an expert at friendship. Uncommonly sexy, she can dance a mean jitterbug. She volunteers to save me more ups and downs on the miserable subway by driving me all the way to Port Authority tomorrow morning.

Saturday, April 25, 2009
After a handsome breakfast, we set out in the car, but Vicki’s generosity is foiled by the first summery day in NY. It seems that everyone has come out to play and the bridges and roads, some of which are closed for fairs, are one big gridlock. I miss my bus, but talk my way onto the next one, despite the fact that there are twice as many potential travelers as seats.

I sit down and in a moment the guy in front of me starts lowering his seat back. Been there, done that. I get up and sit elsewhere. It’s going to be a long ride because of the congestion on the roads. A young guy named Mark is next to me. He is completely wiped out, having been making his way on Greyhound after Greyhound from southern Florida for 48 hours without a shower or decent food. He couldn’t find a flight under $550 and after losing his job, he wanted to make it back to his New Hampshire parental home for a modest sum.

Something, though is very wrong. It’s the pervasive cloud of stale urine smell assaulting me. Is it Mark or another passenger neighbor? Is it from the rear toilet? The woman next to me takes out a tissue and covers her nose. I look around, but I can’t tell what anyone else is experiencing. Finally we pull off the highway for our one pee break and standing in line (what else) at the women’s room, I ask the others. They burst into a cacophony of complaints, not the least those sitting in back near the stinky toilet. Some of them say they are close to fainting, others to puking.

I complain to driver and he says that no one else has said a word to him, but he goes back and sprays with place with something and opens the roof-top window. Although we’re nearly an hour late, we all make it alive. I will never, I hear all around me as we disembark – and it echoes in my heart – ever, never take a Greyhound bus again.

I feel increasingly imprisoned in New England, because there’s simply no decent way to get around. Flying in America is daunting on so many levels. Trains are obscenely expensive. NYC is a bit far from Boston to drive it alone. And my Segway Personal Transporter hasn’t yet arrived.

I have cut my New York weekend short in order to try to spend time with friends from out of town. I’m already missing out on a day window shopping with Sue from London (she’ll move in tomorrow). But because I missed my intended bus and the next one has been so delayed in traffic, it is about 10:00pm when I get home. Despite my best intentions, I’ve failed to make it to dinner with friends who are in town from New Jersey, but reschedule for brunch tomorrow.

I take the subway and a bus from the Boston Greyhound station; due to the enforcement of the disability rights act (thanks again Stan), I have escalators and elevators to keep me mobile. I get home and rip off all my urine-stinking items and stuff them into a plastic bag in preparation for the washer tomorrow. I used to be a world traveler, but until I take delivery of my Star Trek Transporter or can borrow an amphibious hovercraft, I think I’ll be restricted to flights of fancy.

Pull Your Head Out of the Afghani Caves

Hey Obama et al, why poke around the Afghani caves looking for evil doers when you can find them governing? According to the NY Times, a law has been “approved by both houses of Parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai” that does the Taliban’s work for them. (The post to the left says: Prisoners aren't always behind bars.)

One provision makes it illegal for a woman to resist her husband’s sexual advances. A second provision requires a husband’s permission for a woman to work outside the home or go to school. And a third makes it illegal for a woman to refuse to “make herself up” or “dress up” if that is what her husband wants.

Translated, that means men can legally rape their wives, women are prisoners and husbands have their fetishes enshrined in law. Ironically, the law is only to be imposed on the Shiite community, that minority which particularly suffered at the hands of the Taliban. (This poster says: Never takes freedoms for granted.)

The miracle is that Afghani women have been demonstrating on the streets for two days running, despite, according to Amy Goodman, being “pelted by stones” by crowds of violent men. Meanwhile, Karzai dines at the table of Western best-buddies.

Obama is taking on Afghanistan as “his” war. No one I know thinks this is a good idea. Other empires have tried military “solutions” in Afghanistan without positive issue (as in iss-you, not ish-you). If Obama is concerned with human rights in Afghanistan, he should know that these won’t be achieved through inaccurate drone bombers and a plethora of police trainers.

Well, that’s Afghanistan, right? Couldn’t happen here. Let us not under-estimate our home-grown fundamentalists. Sarah Palin has managed to unearth a Talaban-ish nominee for Alaska’s Attorney General – guardian of the state’s law. This right-winger, Wayne Anthony Ross, brags about putting his initials (WAR) on his Hummer’s vanity plates and crows that his wife, poor thing, drives around with MRS WAR.

But it’s not his accessories that are the problem. Perhaps he has been secretly training in Afghanistan for this momentous career move. According to Max Blumenthal:

However, his nomination was thrown into grave peril when his opponents presented evidence that he called homosexuals "degenerates," hailed the "courage" of a student who lionized the Ku Klux Klan, vowed to undermine the sovereignty of Native American tribes, and allegedly defended men who rape their wives.

Blumenthal further reports that the lobbyist Leah Burton who works on domestic violence issues…

...submitted a letter to the Alaska State Judiciary Committee claiming that Ross publicly defended spousal rape. According to Burton, ... Ross allegedly declared during a speech before a 1991 gathering of the "father's rights" group Dads Against Discrimination, "If a guy can't rape his wife, who's he gonna rape?"

Despite feminist organizing since the 1970s against violence in the home, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights only established marital rape as a human rights violation in December 1993.

Perhaps Obama, rather than impotently bombing suspected terrorist hide-aways, would do better to get Karzai and Palin in a cave together with a few human rights experts who might simply talk them through the issues. If that fails, perhaps Palin's fans among the Radical Lesbian Aeriel Hunters might try their luck.

Slice of a Disconnected Off-line Life

FRIDAY:
Have you missed me? While I was working at my computer, I turned on the noon broadcast of Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! and watched it to the end. As a reluctant Facebooker, I’m never caught up, but I did note a few recent stories, among them that vandals sliced some fiber optic cables in the Santa Cruz area leading to at least one of my friends being totally off the grid for a full day.

I tried to open a couple of emails, but they came up empty. In both cases Comcast gave me one of those blushing “whoops” messages and told me to “click here.” But clicking took me nowhere. Then the TV news went down, replaced by a note on the screen instructing me: “One Moment Please. This channel should be available shortly.” I tried CNN. I tried MSNBC. They were united in their insistence that they needed “one moment please.”

I picked up the phone to call Comcast to see what was up. No dial tone. I have the triple-whammy package with Comcast and suddenly I had visions of the California saboteurs making it to the East Coast in a national anti-cable attack.

The problem with using my cell phone to call Comcast is that just this month I reduced my program to a very low-minute one, as a savings measure, so I knew that contacting them would cost me a bomb if, as usual, they took their sweet time shuffling me from one nice undertrained operator to the other. Three very long calls later and all I had achieved was a promise that my bill would be credited for a day and that a technician would come tomorrow between 9:00 and 11:00a.m. (See the $3 million Comcast bill to the left.)

What about lost work? I had left Friday completely free to deal with two pressing freelance jobs that involved both the internet and the phone and was unable to do either. The first is a total loss; the second I can probably delay. What about my cell phone minutes? What about having to spend the day pissed off from being abandoned out of reach of civilization?

I know I should be offering biting observations about my dependency on technology, but that seems very 1990s. Duh. I’m dependent. I’m a writer, blogger, researcher. I have friends around the world. I receive and send documents and phone calls.

I didn’t collapse in frustration: I searched for options. I now live in a town that prides itself on being enlightened and progressive. I remembered my laptop. I live in a building with 35 apartments surrounded by houses – someone has to have unsecured wireless service, as I do. Maybe I can even pick up my own wireless (nope, can’t). I scrolled through the dozens of wireless addresses brought up on my list. Not one unsecured. Not one. What the hell is wrong with people? If someone really wants to get into your online knickers, clicking a “secure” box is not going to prevent them.

Unable to escape isolation at home, I decided to go to the library and use their wireless – at least to put up auto-messages to explain my disappearance – but after calling them on my cell-phone, I was led to ask, Why is this night different from all other nights? On all other nights the library stays open until 9:00 but on Fridays it turns out to close at 5:00. And it was 4:50.

OK, what about a café. Perhaps that café just a few blocks away named Something-Java had wireless. I’ll just do a quick search for the number… Nope, I won’t, can’t. I decided instead to clear out the shelves near the front door. On the bottom I found four local phonebooks of various types. Two of them had fonts entirely unsuitable to 60-year-old eyes. None of them seemed to list anything except the chains (I don’t patronize Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts doesn’t have wireless) and I realized that these must all be paid listings.

Oh dear, I had promised to call my friend Sandy who is visiting our hometown Pittsburgh, but of course her travel phone numbers are in an email. In fact, ten times an hour my mind does the “look it up” thing, but by the time my hands twitch on the keyboard, I remember that it isn’t an option.

I am used to keeping on the TV as company – usually a so-called-news channel –while I write. The radio is okay at the top of the hour, but otherwise it requires me to pay attention, so it is the opposite of empty company. The DVD player is independent of Comcast, so I played my beloved, much-viewed public television Doo Wop DVDs.

I remembered the adorable 6” TV I have plugged in on my kitchen counter to keep me entertained while I cook and clean in there. It has a wonky antenna and gets at least two snowy channels reliably. However, once my Waldorf salad was done and every corner was cleaned, I couldn’t see continuing to just stand pathetically in the middle of my kitchenette staring at whatever the two channels were providing.

My partner called my cell in early evening. Human contact! “Why not just bring the kitchen TV into the main room and plug it in there?” Genius. I find this combination of lateral thinking and problem-solving ability very hot.

I set up the mini-TV, destined to be obsolete by June (the switch to digital from analog was put off from February to June because of poor national preparation) and happily have my pick of either channel.

It was, in the end, a productive day. I revised a couple chapters of the novel I’m working on, I wrote a draft of an article about writing the Sarah Palin book in 28 days and my kitchen is spotless. Now I’m awaiting the technician.

SATURDAY
At 10:15 Tom arrives and wants to know if I paid my bill. Uh, unfortunately, I did. He goes down to the laundry room and unlocks the control panel and by the time he comes back up the hall, everything is working.

Comcast has, itself, turned off my everything! Apparently a technician must have been in that cabinet yesterday and because, Tom theorizes, my connection was not marked with my name, the technician assumed it was a pirate connection and disconnected me. He offers three measly months of HBO as compensation.

I want more. Much, much more. Lost work. Wasted time chasing them. Expensive cell phone minutes. Hands raw from cleaning the kitchen. And emotional distress. I’m open to suggestions, friends. What should I demand? (I'll be sure to let you know the final outcome as it ain't over yet.)

The Daily Show Gets it Totally Wrong - Again

Why would a group of single people who like going clubbing while looking their best be an object of ridicule on a “progressive” comedy show? Why would a program about safer sex aimed at a group of sexually active adults be considered ludicrous? If you ask The Daily Show, it’s because they’re old.

I’ve often complained that Jon Stewart seems to surround himself with jerks on The Daily Show, perhaps as a way to make himself look better. His gaggle of guys is a tiresome crew with an adolescent humor based on humiliating – rather than exposing – people.

Tonight, one of those idjits, Jason Jones, “reported” from a community of Jewish elders in Florida. He “discovered” two facts: first, the older people are having a lot of sex and second, they’re suffering a spike in sexually transmitted diseases. The first fact he found nauseating – a point he made repeatedly – and the second he found laughable.

Jones is 42 and is married to the only woman who is part of this dumbed-down Stewart support cohort on The Daily Show, Samantha Bee. (Her bits are often as puerile as the others, although not always.) Jones won his reputation, such that it is, for an elevated level of rudeness others found hard to achieve, but only when Samantha Bee took leave to have their babies, was Jones “promoted to a full time correspondent.”

For part of his ugly routine last night, he dressed up in what he considered old-man couture: eye-exam-sized dark glasses and pleated slacks hiked up to his nipples. Next to the sharp crowd he was out with, he looked like a putz.

So what is the problem with “discovering” that many people want to be sexual throughout their lives? If he had ever been friends with folks in their 80s and 90s, he would’ve already known that. What would Jones recommend instead? That elders go sit on a cold mountain-top when they get to the age that reminds Jones of his own mortality?

Even more bewildering, why would anyone with even a sliver of a brain ridicule safer sex education in a community that is seeing a rise in sexually-transmitted infections? For a man who is in his 40s, Jones does protest too much. I wish him what he seems to wish for the rest of us: a strict celibacy for the rest of his life. And I would ask Mr. Boss Man, Jon Stewart, to hire a witty elder to bring some sex appeal to the show.

Three Ways that Boomers are Being Thumped by the Economic Crisis

The majority of people – here and abroad – have been sucker-punched by the economic mess. We’re paying, in wretchedly concrete fashion, for the American government’s irresponsible encouragement of the greediest, rich-boy behavior. Capitalism gone mad is capitalism at its most “successful.”

There are many groups who can claim a very particular set of injuries from this “downturn,” as it is euphemistically called. Here are just a few.

Kids trying for higher education are facing a double-whammy of reduced support: colleges have lost investors and investments and parents may be un- or under-employed.

Elders are depressed to see their lives sandwiched in between two dire depressions.

Union members are watching the gains they fought their asses off for being traded away – supposedly to keep their industry alive, while their bosses, as a gesture, shave the old million off their own bountiful packages.

Freelancers are losing jobs to laid-off staff, who now do piece-work for the departments they know so intimately from the inside.

Mass murdering men are proliferating, and the usual victims of home abuse – elders, children and women – are multiplying.

Boomers from their mid-fifties through their mid-sixties are especially hard-hit. Here are three specific ways in which they are feeling screwed:

1. EMPLOYMENT
Even before the economic chaos, people over 50 were finding it difficult in most fields to get work. One of the trends of capitalism that led us to this crisis has been the consolidation of companies. Lacking essential regulation, whole industries – media not the least – have been taken over by just a few huge corporations. Such conglomerates, when they eat their smaller siblings, can find themselves with doubled staff.

Which marketing manager gets fired? Which editor is dumped? It is likely to be the more senior person, the one who after decades of experience has achieved the heftier salary. Better to keep their assistant or the junior staff from the swallowed company – easier to control and cheaper to maintain. One result? Former professional people are now competing with young folks for jobs at Walmart and McDonalds, without much joy.

  2. HOUSING
Everyone seems to be squashed in the housing crunch. I’ve seen this situation before. When that reactionary maniac Margaret Thatcher decided to eviscerate the splendid public housing system in Britain, she changed the rules so that just about anyone could buy their municipality-owned flat. An exuberant public relations campaign promised poor people – those who were living in these subsidized units – that they could become condo-owners. Mayhem ensued, with many people unable to maintain their payments and finding themselves living in a cardboard box instead of residing in the ownership class as they had been promised.

If there’s one childhood lesson every Boomer was taught, it was that you can’t go wrong with real estate. Now Boomers are retiring and wanting to put their long-held plans in motion: moving to the sunbelt, or to DC to be near the kids, or buying that RV and travelling, or moving to a senior complex with a range of support services. But like everyone else, Boomers have lost the home equity all their plans were built on, and they can’t shift the big house anyway. The contractor of the senior complex may have suspended building. The Boomers are stuck in a place and a life they were all along intending to dump. When you are 60 or 70, time is of the essence and the last thing you want to be doing, when you’ve decided on a condo in Arizona, is shoveling the walk of the old house in Hartford.

3. INVESTMENTS
Everyone who has managed to pull together money enough to invest during their lives has watched supposed gains shrivel. The given wisdom is that we’ve all lost 33%, give or take. This is bad news all around, but probably the worst for Boomers. Those in their 30s and 40s have a couple of decades – assuming that the job market recovers – to work and save and wait for the stocks to rise again. Those in their 80s and 90s may well be spending down their capital already. With out-of-work Boomers unlikely to get good jobs in these last years of their working lives, they have no way to add to their “portfolio” and no time to wait for the recovery. For those of us who have been life-long anti-capitalists, it is the ultimate tear-gassing by the establishment.

And somewhere along the way, the most rebellious of generations has lost its passion for protest, its love of taking over the streets, its brilliant movement-building skills. Hey Boomers, if they’re tear gassing our future, the least we can do is raise hell.

 

NOTE: This posting is my Day Two homework for a free course I’m hoping to complete called “31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge.” Apparently it is run annually by Darren Rowse, known as the ProBlogger, an Australian expert recommended to me by my agent. If you’d like to join, it’s not too late. Just check out his site here.

I Was Kettled in London

I was kettled in London and it was a nightmare. If I recall the right demo, it was against the first Bush’s first Gulf War and I was marching with my remarkable political group WAF (Women Against Fundamentalism). The police herded us down a side street and then forced us around into a one-block-long road behind a huge building. I remember the shadow of that building as it became part of the claustrophobic pressure. The police closed off the exit and as the thousands of demonstrators continued to pour into that corral, it got scary crowded. We worried about the consequences if just one person panicked.

Little kids were not the only ones who needed the loo, as hour after hour of our imprisonment passed. People with disabilities were not the only ones deprived of somewhere to sit. Short people weren’t alone in feeling there was nothing to breathe. The sense of annoyance mixed with trepidation probably wasn’t exclusive to women, as we watched the young white men toss bottles and belligerence at the stressed cops.

I was reminded of that dreadful, endless experience during last year’s political party conventions (and the one in Boston 4 years ago), as protestors were fenced into distant, isolated container cells. Even before that, my friends and I were among the many thousands stuck between metal barriers when we went to NY to be part of the world-wide pre-war (Bush2, Gulf2) protest. This police tactic is anti-democratic, stifling and, believe me, bloody uncomfortable.

Now the London police, facing the massive crowds protesting the G20 and the vile situation the big economies have brought down on the world, have employed this containment technique they call kettling. According to the Guardian, the police prevented people from leaving the area where they were penned in for more than seven hours! The place was transformed into a gross toilet.

“For hours, demonstrators had been trying to leave – to go home, to pick up their children, to watch the England v Ukraine match on television were some of the reasons given to police as people, some in tears, asked to be allowed to go but were forbidden from doing so. The chants accompanying the last two violent clashes with police, when bottles were thrown, were: ‘Let us out!’"

When eventually some people were permitted to leave at 8:00pm, they had to give their name and address and have their photo taken if they wanted to get out. One long-term effect is that folks are going to think twice next time about the consequences of democratically demonstrating.  In the short term, this police action impacted the overall protest. There were multiple demonstrations in London – some about the finance industry, some about unemployment, some about the environment and some against the wars – but because they were held captive by lines of police and their dogs, people who started in one location were never able to reach the next.

For a long time there have been mass demonstrations all over Europe fueled by the real fury of people who have been screwed by unscrupulous finance, corporate and political “leaders.” I continue to be appalled by the quiet acceptance of so many Americans. Jon Stewart cracked me up the other night – and I’ll be damned if I can find the clip – when he talked about how the French and Germans and Brits take to the street when they smell injustice, while too many Americans, well, text someone.

The Connecticut Middle School Principal and Kinky Sex Rules

A few days ago Connecticut principal Catherine Williams sent a letter to the parents of her East Shore Middle School students in response, apparently, to an incident in which a groin was kicked. Ouch. Actually, double ouch. Groin pain can be quite, well, painful – but then so can exaggerated reactions that smell like hysteria and feel entirely inappropriate. Williams has outlawed all touching – from high-fives to hugs. Threatened punishments are dire. Even the students know that this makes no sense and have threatened all sorts of hug-ins and high-five-ins.

Principal Williams could learn something from the kinky sexual subculture, which has this universally-accepted mantra at its foundation: safe, sane and consensual. Rather than put a blanket ban on physical contact among young people, educators should be teaching them these important life lessons:

Safe: Always look out for your own safety and that of the folks around you. Maturity involves taking responsibility for the health and well-being of yourself and those you care about.

Sane: Balance your experimentations and risks with common sense. Don’t put yourself or others in danger, even when you’re trying to explore the edges.

Consensual: And whenever there is touching, make sure that it is mutual, that all parties are okay with it. A high five is just one example of outlawed touching that is likely to be safe, sane and consensual. Without the other person’s consent, it’s not a high-five – it’s an air slap.

Touching is profoundly human. So is learning to make reasonable judgments. Educators who cannot distinguish between a kick between the legs and friends holding hands are in trouble. A rule that bans both a slap in the face and a judo match is unlikely to help students figure it all out.

Get a grip, adults. If you can’t sort out attacks from mutuality, go read some kinky sex instruction. Don’t teach your kids physical alienation. Teach them to behave in a way that is safe, sane and consensual.