Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

My Lungs and Millionaire Matchmaker

I don’t think I’ve ever wasted over two weeks before. And I see no end in sight. I am just sitting and staring and choking and not writing and not reading and not working and not dancing. I’m not hanging with my peeps – none of whom are enthusiastic about breathing the same cooty-fied air as me. When Judy or Barry brings me groceries, they more or less leave them outside the door.

I’ve had plenty of online support from friends across the world. Many have called, but it has been hard to talk at all without bringing on a coughing jag.

I remind you that I’m supposed to be off in New Hampshire having time alone to write and that I set up this break from teaching months ago. I remind you that I’m starting another term in less than a week and there will not be another chance to write until mid-August.

To add insult to injury, my chair - from which I read, watch TV, eat (on my tray on the chair’s matching foot stool), edit, chatter - the chair given to me by my friend Howard who had it upholstered perfectly, my chair is broken. Its innards are fucked up and something mechanical is awry. It is nearly impossible to find a 50s slider of dimensions to suit a person of my size and I am devoted to my chair. Now I’m stuck at home day after day without a proper perch.

I am unable to do anything productive, not even clean, although my environment is degrading all the time. All I can do is to try to keep up with my copious medications, a profusion assembled over three different Dr appointments. Big Pharma is the only beneficiary of my wretched situation.

I have constructed a kind of spread sheet to accommodate the two nasty inhalers (one requires two puffs twice a day; the other two puffs four times a day – both require that I rinse my mouth thoroughly to avoid Thrush, whatever gross evil that might be), the cough meds (three to four capsules and codeine syrup at night), the antibiotics, the salt-water gargles, the painkillers to help with the stomach muscle strained during violent coughing, and the expensive homeopathic cough remedies I’m hoping will help. There’s probiotic yogurt against the yeast infections antibiotics can cause in women, plus things to suck against the cough and sore throat – from cough drops to Canadian Wintergreens to M&Ms with peanut butter centers. Luckily, I already had a stock of soft tissues.

I can only read about fifty words at a time – so People magazine and The Enquirer suit my simple-mindedness. I can’t absorb the TV news or follow documentaries, so I was only saved from the insidious Millionaire Matchmaker by a sudden run of Portlandia the other day. I’m going to Portland this September, so I can count that as research.

I’m trying to pull together my Will – a document that I’ve been working on since the early 80s and which has gone through many incarnations as friends die or fade, as life and locations change, and as death sneaks closer. My Will is full of lectures and declarations and doling out this, that and the other to my nearests and dearests. There is money for parties in each of my three countries and flippings of the bird in print to those who have betrayed me. I’m halfway through an update and rather stuck. I don’t have sufficient lucid moments to get the job done.

Months ago I watched as many of my friends and students got this flu/cold. It would start like a cold, get intense and then turn into bronchitis and/or pneumonia. I knew many, many people who went through this, unable to shake the scary cough for many weeks. It was so widespread and so devastating that I kept wondering why there was nothing in the local news about it. One gets three cases around the country of the flesh-eating bug and the papers are full of it. The State prepares for a flu epidemic on a massive public scale even though it never arrives. So why no mention of this scourge? And of course, I also bragged about never getting sick in general and not picking this thing up in particular. But the joke’s on me. These bugs have been crouching off to the side, the meanies, awaiting the three weeks I fought so hard to set up for myself to write. They struck on, literally, the last day of work before my break and they are going to continue to drain me until, at least, next Monday when I am to return to my grueling work schedule. They must be right-wing germs.

It’s Only Pneumonia

Is this the longest I’ve ever been sick? I can’t recall a more extended bout of feeling like crap. It started with a sore throat and swollen glands and then turned into trachea-itis and bronchitis. Now, with evidence of some fever and heightened white cell count, I’ve graduated to pneumonia.

Every surface of my house is covered with homeopathic cough medicines of various degrees of uselessness; things to suck from cough drops to Canadian mints; and broken dreams. Because I teach at a range of venues, it requires at least a half year of forward planning to carve out a week or two for my writing. All I really want to do is write, but then I have these eight jobs that get in my way and that put, well, cough medicine and chicken soup on my table.

So not only did I long ago carve out a break of over two weeks from my complicated multi-location teaching schedule (elder fitness, dance, writing), but I received the use of a super-comfy ski chalet in New Hampshire as a private writing retreat from my friends Judy and Clint. I’ve been hoarding the religious necessities (kosher salami, chala, matzos) that are unlikely to be found in “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire, and making an ambitious to-write list for my precious time away. There are items with deadlines (an erotic story about older people for Joan Price’s upcoming anthology), reworking to do (cannibalizing my unpublished manuscript for some good articles about alternative sexualities and over 50s), and further work on short stories about elders and sex and love. I’m going to be 65 in October and I have many books screaming to get onto the page. If not now, when? I only have two or three possible writing breaks per year. Losing this one is uber-frustrating.

But the fact is that I have been getting sicker and sicker, have been to see the Dr twice, and am now taking antibiotics, a rare activity for me. At night I cannot sleep because of explosive coughing attacks. Just two nights ago I ripped a stomach muscle while coughing and now I have to clutch my knee to my chest when I’m in bed coughing. Last night I had a scary experience. I nodded off at about 2:00 and then a half hour later was awoken by a mighty cough. But the cough got stuck: I couldn’t breathe in and I couldn’t breathe out. In the moments of that struggle, I worried about my Will not being in order and worried about my peeps who will be pissed off to find out that I wasn’t in NH as they thought, but stuck at home with pneumonia. That’s why I’m writing this.

Then I thought about the people so dear to me who are dealing with cancer, with MS, and with more cancer and decided to worry about them instead. And about all the people who are unable to afford the hippy cough meds – one for day and one for night, the Tylenol for the muscle strain, the co-pays for the visits to the Dr (assuming they have insurance) and the resulting medicines, the fresh orange juice, and the Enquirer scandal magazine (well, it was a present), which is just the level of reading that suits my present capacity.

Reporting Back: The NWU Panel on the ABCs of Social Networking

Here are just three of the many questions we three National Writers Union (NWU) panelists (see photo below) dealt with in Thursday’s program: “The Writer's ABCs of Facebook, Websites, Blogs, Twitter and LinkedIn”:

    1. Is Facebook an essential platform-building tool for writers, or is it a big time-suck?
    2. Can a blog become a gateway to other writing opportunities?
    3. What is the most widely used Internet application?

    Answers:
    1. Both
    2. Yes
    3. email (over 3 billion accounts)

Just to put the number of email accounts into perspective, there are 1 billion blogs, 800 million FB members, 555 million websites, 150 million Linked In subscribers, and 100 million Twitter users. (Thanks to Barry for the numbers.)

The workshop’s overflow crowd of members and non-members (see photo at end) was not unfamiliar with various online applications, but welcomed a chance to think about where to best put their limited time and energy. The three speakers honed in on the calculated use of these tools for writers.

                                    From left: Jeannette de Beauvoir, Barry Hock, Sue Katz

Barry Hock, a communications expert, talked about applying his Three Rs of communications to developing a strategic approach to these Internet programs.

• Relevance: What you’re saying must be relevant and interesting to your audience.
• Repetition: Your audience should receive your message more than once and in different ways.
• Recency: If your message isn’t relatively current, it won’t be remembered.

As a consultant who administers social networking for several organizations, Barry also explained Facebook (where you develop relationships with many people), Twitter (emphasizes immediacy) and LinkedIn (expanding your professional networks up to three degrees of separation), relating them back to the Three Rs.

Next, Jeannette de Beauvoir, widely-published author and owner of Customline Wordware, ran down the ABCs of websites, including whether to use the services of a technical person to set up your website or a point-and-click create-your-own website program. (Both have their pros and cons.) She emphasized the joys of having a single online home for your resume, your bio, and links to, and examples of, your work: everything an agent or editor might want to know. To someone who asked what to do about multiple identities, Jeannette noted that today many of us have composite professional profiles.

Finally, I talked about blogs, including the ways in which they can be a gateway to other gigs. For example, I published my book on Sarah Palin with an indie publisher who approached me after having read my daily postings about Palin on my blog, Sue Katz: Consenting Adult. Blogs also allow you to establish your identity as a writer and an expert, to showcase your writing, and to deepen your discipline and consistency as a writer. I confessed to an addiction to Facebook, and pointed out that it is an easier short-form structure, which both increased my “platform” (i.e., I seem to have more contacts on Facebook than readers of my blog), and super-reduced the amount that I blog.

All three panelists commented on the permanency of content on these platforms – with Twitter and Facebook as the most ephemeral, quickly scrolling away, and websites and LinkedIn as the most stable and enduring. Blogs are right in the middle.

In summary, I feel confident in saying that Barry Hock has the longest experience with online applications, Jeannette de Beauvoir is the most prolific writer of multiple genres, and I wore the most adorable hat.

Here's the crowd trying to register for the Panel discussion.

Dear Netroots Nation : Quit Lumping Us Together!

Dear Netroots Nation,

I am all excited to be going to Netroots Nation this June with my union, the National Writers Union. I’ve been wanting to attend your annual conference for a long time and have just now gone through the registration process.

I know this is a splendid gathering of progressives. I know I’m going to finally meet so many of my cool Facebook friends. I know I’m going to be energized, challenged – you know, all those good movement chills and fever.

But why must you slap me in the face with a dead fish during the registration process? Let me just excerpt one section of your very lengthy registration screen and you tell me if you notice something a bit askew:

What is your age?
•     24 and under
•     25 to 35
•     36 to 45
•     46 to 55
•     56 and above

Explain to me – and do you have any idea how often I’ve had to ask this? – why you break down humans in decade-long categories until you get to 55. Why is everyone over that age lumped into one category: geezers, hags, elders, seniors, old folks, aged, venerables, grey-hairs, fossils, geriatrics, boomers, ancients, old farts, gramps?

Twenty or thirty years is twenty or thirty years – whether you’re 25 looking towards 45, or you’re 80 starring back at 60. At 64, my own political perspective was formed by the civil rights movement, the anti-war (Vietnam) movement, our creation of this wave of feminism and of the queer movement, and our development of the Internetz. People 20 years older than me were shaped by the great Depression as kids and by WWII as young people.

If Netroots Nation thinks there is something to learn from age demographics and that the detail is in the nuance of one decade after another, what does it mean that you are lumping four decades of adults into one big dumpster?  If nuance is good for the goose, then it’s good for the older goose as well. I’m coming to Netroots Nation with a button that says: Give us our decades too!

"Jobs with Justice" Celebration

I was part of the UAW contingent (as a member of the National Writers Union) at the Jobs With Justice 20th anniversary fundraiser tonight. My niece’s dear friend Jennifer Doe, JwJ’s popular Workers' Rights Organizer, pulled the large event together flawlessly. It seemed that every speaker singled her out for the support she has provided to unions and community groups. And that’s what the Jobs with Justice coalition does: they’re on the streets with groups trying to protect workers’ rights.

The event was held at the club house of the Suffolk Downs racetrack and I was taken aback when I passed their members bar:
on the bar’s door was a sign saying “No Work Clothes” – and listing forbidden items (including sweatpants and t-shirts). Does that mean that if you work in a suit and tie you can’t go in there dressed like that? I don’t think so. In fact, one of the aspects of the party that I loved was the range of couture – from sexy cocktail dresses to hoodies. Shoes were mostly sensible (you know how I hate women teetering on stilettos) and neckties rather in absentia.

There was a list of activist speakers, but the man whose presentation really stood out was Gunner Scott, Executive Director, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, whom I’ve met a number of times. He opened with “mic check!” and a shout-out to the Occupy movement, which had a table-full of representatives. He talked about how the corporations were courting LGBT people and that even the vile Walmart had instituted a non-discrimination policy regarding transgendered people before Massachusetts passed such legislation. And then he pointed out that not all unions and other activist groups were equally as welcoming and it was time for some solidarity.

Praying Is Not My Preferred Route to Justice

Only one element of the evening’s program got me down. In union circle there seems to be an upsurge in religiosity and it is getting out of hand. At the JwJ dinner, one speaker asked people to fold their hands and bow their heads to ask “our lord Jesus Christ” to bless us and our struggles. Hello? The same thing had happened each morning at a recent UAW conference. What’s with the Jesus Christ bit? It’s one thing to have some kind of general non-denominational blessing at a secular union or movement meeting (as an atheist I don’t like that either); and another thing altogether to ask people to actively pray to one group’s named god. Don’t forget, there are plenty of non-Christian members of unions. As one of those non-Christians, I am offended and annoyed to be subjected to such inappropriate and presumptive praying at union events. Stop it.

Back to the otherwise great evening, which brought together Massachusetts activists to celebrate this fabulous coalition that has contributed to so many struggles and campaigns. And we heard about a number of them: from taxi drivers who are brutally exploited, to immigrants and their challenges in the workplace. I was happy to boo Bank of America and Walmart with the rest of the guests whenever given the opportunity.

I didn’t get a chance to tell her before I left, so let me add my “mazal tov!” to Jenn Doe for all that she and Jobs with Justice does.

If You Don’t Ask, You Don’t Get: Chapter Comcast

I have for many years been planning to write the definitive tome entitled If You Don’t Ask, You Don’t Get. If you know me personally, you know that I’m the scruffy queen of asking and the prince of getting, particularly when it comes to blood-sucking corporations.

I was born to this attitude, because often there was (and is) no other way to get what I need. America is a particularly fertile environment in which to ask/get, because it has traditionally been the land of “plenty”, some would say of “too much.” What used to be called, by people critical of my behavior, “mooching” – an activity that would embarrass them because of their desire to appear resplendent with plenty – is now called “recycling” and is very much in favor.

Like I say, I’ve got a book’s worth of opinion, theory, and anecdotes on this subject – with a surprising pile of little victories along the way. By telling you about Comcast today, I hope I’m pushing myself into documenting these experiences, because often such a coup is the only scrap of good news I can possibly dig out of this crappy period we’re living in. The justice of being able to return an item despite misplacing the receipt is one level of asking and getting. But sometimes we can really make a point, like the time, earlier in my ask/get career, when my posse and I were in Amsterdam during EuroPride week in 1994. At the entrance to Rijksmuseum there was a pricing sign with a special low charge for families. “This is my family,” I said, pointing to my girlfriend, my best friend and his boyfriend, and three assorted dyke friends. It worked.

Before the last presidential elections, in the 60 days between Sarah Palin’s elevation to vice-presidential candidate and the elections themselves, I wrote a book called Thanks But No Thanks: The Voters Guide to Sarah Palin. I spent 28 days and nights researching and writing it, while my editor Barry Hock edited it as I went, and my publisher Harvard Perspectives Press prepared it chapter-by-chapter for publication. We then had just a few weeks in which to promote and sell it before the elections. It was such an intense experience for all of us and such an immersion in all things Palin for me, that I never wanted to write about her again.

Tomorrow night is the much-touted HBO movie “Game Change” in which Julianne Moore and her make-up people play Palin. For some reason I want to see it but, try as I might, I have failed to get myself invited over to any friend’s house with HBO.

So I called Comcast and befriended the woman on the other end of the line. This is not hard to do – and is one of the secrets of getting what you ask. I told her I had a crazy request but that I’d bet it wouldn’t be the craziest she got today – which is why she gets paid the “big bucks.” She laughed and when I told her I needed HBO for tomorrow – and I told her why – she dug around until she found a three-month freebie and gave it to me. She wasn’t able to find me a freebie for HD (which I refuse to pay for), but she said to try back in a month to see if something pops up.

These rapacious companies have all sorts of freebies and usually they only offer them to you if they’ve screwed up (like a technician arriving late for an appointment or your shows have been pixilating for a week) or if you’re in a lather about something (a rude call center operator or your cable failed during the Super Bowl) and they want to make nice. But the call center people have the option of offering it whenever they feel it is appropriate to make a gesture – and being charmed by them and interested in them often constitutes a good reason.

It probably helps if you have a good record of paying your bills and have been with them for any length of time. Several times over the years I have had my cell phone service through Verizon, I’ve passed my minute limit close to the end of the month. I’ve called them and each time I was able to establish a rapport – and these call center folks take so much abuse that a nice word is a major thrill – they would find a little courtesy package that allowed them to give me some free minutes – 100, maybe 200.

So if you don’t ask, you won’t get, but if you are intending to ask, do it with candor and good humor to increase your chances of success. And now I must interrupt this blog to go check out what HBO daytime TV looks like. I will probably rue the day I gained this bauble.

Thank You for Saving 2011

A man performed a random act of generosity for me today, saving this putrid year from going out in an unmitigated stink. It was a simple experience, but it is this kind of rare moment that allows me to breathe in a life that is too often pressing down on me. I am usually thinking about the state of the economy in general – and in particular how nastily it is impacting on my own peeps; about the pandemic of cancer among women while those in power wage a war on women and our bodies; about the difficulty in distinguishing between Democrats and Repuglicans. I’ll stop there.

Today I went out grocery shopping. I parked in Davis Square (Somerville, MA) to pick up some meat at McKinnons. I keep a roll of quarters in my car for the meters and I took out two. Somehow, though, I clutched the quarters in my hand as I started to cross the street to the grocery shop.

Behind me I heard someone say “She forgot to put money in the meter,” and I stopped in the middle of the street and turned around. There’s a guy who occupies a bench on that street pretty regularly. He is homeless and he quietly holds out an empty paper cup in case anyone wants to help him out. He had jumped up and I watched him dig a quarter out of his cup and start to put it in my meter.

I rushed back and tossed both of my quarters in, instead, thanking him almost inarticulately for his bigheartedness. As I set out again for the store, he said, “Look, they come around constantly, so I try to keep my eye on these two meters here, ‘cause I sit right here and I can help. If the meter runs out while you’re shopping, I’ll take care of it. ”

When I returned to my car with my bag, I pressed a couple of bills in his hand and wished him a warm and safe New Year. He didn’t have to make a sweet gesture to a stranger, but it is my experience in life that those who don’t have share, and those that do have try to get some more. In my mind he (and the Occupy movement, of course) has single-handedly rescued the reputation of 2011.

Occupy Boston Moves: Eviction Eve

The Occupy Boston camp is gone, replaced very quickly with a little used park in the middle of the financial district. The old neighborhood had been blown away by skyscrapers years ago. Occupy Boston was the liveliest thing to ever happen in this drab glass and concrete home of Boston’s 1%.

The creativity! The imagination! The practical achievements! The mind boggles at how much was accomplished in two-plus months. There were the inventions: The pedal-powered generator (see pic) used to charge cell phones and laptops was exported to other Occupy camps, including Occupy Wall Street. The battery-operated grey-water sink (pic) specially created by some MIT engineers to meet city standards whose installation was prevented by city police. The human services – from medical to literary – that were an oasis to many and kept the camp a humane, livable community.

But it is now gone. On Thursday morning December 8th, a judge lifted her injunction which Occupy Boston had requested to prevent their expulsion. The Mayor right away announced that they would be evicted that night at midnight. A camp that has been running – and quite brilliantly so – since September has to be dismantled in a matter of hours. Barry receives a call for help from one of the key activists, Rita, who has been his main contact in his work as a member of our National Writers Union and as Massachusetts UAW’s liaison to Occupy Boston. Rita was, incidentally, also my contact when I organized a demonstration entitled “Occupy Boston, Not Palestine” a month ago or so (see pic).

At first Barry suggests that the National Writers Union offer to take responsibility for dismantling and storing the Library. Who can forget the way the NY police ravaged Occupy Wall Street’s beloved Library (see pic)? We had been in the OWS Library just days before Occupy Wall Street was trampled, and the aftermath photos of the books torn and wet and violated still stick in our minds.

But there isn’t time on our side to organize trucks, storage and folks. And besides, the Occupy Boston people have long had their plans in place. By the evening the main tents housing the core services – food, medical, library, media, spiritual – have already been taken down and transported to the garage of a volunteer.

Occupy Boston asks people to come to the camp Thursday night as the midnight deadline approaches. We are there from around 10:00pm to 2:00am, together with about 2,000 others. I am surprised at how few people I run into that I know – just three or four from the Middle East justice movement, a few Union sisters (see pic) and brother, and one of my niece Oona’s best friends, Jenn, who organizes around economic justice.

Many of the smaller, individual – shall we say, residential tents - are still up in the camp at midnight. People have intelligence that a great force of riot police is staged nearby but out of sight in Chinatown, while the friendly, community-oriented older cops are at Occupy Boston itself. The joyful and angry energy is intense and I am sorry that the idea of a massive dance party had been “blocked” in the GA (General Assembly) earlier that evening.

Luckily Cambridge’s Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band (see pic) turns up with their powerful mix of New Orleans and New Left and people sing and dance along. It is freezing as we stand on both sides of Atlantic Avenue chanting, although I am bundled up in countless layers and winter accessories in a way that is very rare for me, being an “indoors” kind of girl. At a certain point people pour into the street and close it down. Someone later describes to me how the cops had to back out the cars and trucks that were caught by the sudden change from a major road to a dance floor.

The chants and the profoundly democratic “mic checks!” go on way past midnight, past 1:00am, as we wait for the arrival of the cops to clear us out. Anyone who feels like it can yell “mic check!” and instantly have dozens of surrounding demonstrators repeating anything she wants to say so that dozens more are able to hear her message. Many young people express their love (see pic) for Occupy Boston, taking turns, until they are too hoarse. I’m flagging, my feet hurt, and I’m shivering, but it’s good to be here.

Around 2:00am a TV reporter tells us that there will be no bust tonight. Immediately the different media teams pack up to take their equipment back to the trucks, and the supporters of Occupy Boston stream towards their homes in different directions. My feet are frozen dead as we limp to the parking lot many blocks away, but I’m glad I didn’t miss it.

Barry’s phone rings at 5:49am two mornings later. It is Rita. A few dozen people have stayed these last 48 hours and the eviction is now taking place. It is all very “civilized” – probably because so many of the Boston occupiers are students and suburbanites and because of the respect that has developed between the occupiers and police who were thrown together in daily contact these many weeks. Mayor Menino was heavily criticized a few years ago after his police killed a student while quelling a sports riot. White middle class folks are not supposed to get hurt around here. He is more cautious about the targets of police actions ever since. People who wanted to leave were free to do so. Those who wanted to be arrested were also accommodated. It was all so collaborative that when three women who insisted on being arrested changed their minds once they were seated in the police van for awhile– or so the rumor goes – the police let them get out.

I miss the Occupy Boston camp already, perhaps because I was only an occasional visitor. I wouldn’t wish a Boston winter inside a tent in the windy financial district near the sea on anyone. But the clever signs, the good will, the innocence and the sophistication, the mixing of people in their 20s and Boomers (those appeared to be the two main groups), the spawning of a new language and an invented set of rituals (mic check!) – all of these will continue as the Occupy movement searches out its new forms.

All photos (except "Mic Check") from Barry Hock

Rick Perry: It's not how he talks, it's what he says

This is the comment I made on Facebook about Rick Perry's debate fumble: "This is the least of problems I have with Perry. It's not his abysmal presentation problem; it's the content of what he does and does not remember. It's his arrogance and profound wrongness."

Last night we had yet another Republican debate, in which these people seem to compete with each other for taking the most outlandish, repulsive positions. I only turned it on just minutes before Rick Perry couldn't remember the third of three agencies he promised to get rid of. It was excruciating, and his fellow campaigners even tried to help him out with suggestions. He stumbled for awhile and then had to say "oops" - that he didn't remember.

Anyone who has done public speaking knows that such a thing can happen. Anyone whose memory isn't all they'd like has experienced a similar embarrassment. Anyone can blank. It really isn't the end of the world and in of itself does not disqualify a candidate.

Here is a man who has done his best to ruin Texas, who has nasty positions on women's health, on gay rights, on social programs, on education, a guy who is anti-Union and, probably at the bottom of it all, wants to establish this country as a Christian state run by his sense of fundamentalist rules.

But what are the pundits and columnists pointing to as his downfall? The fact that he couldn't remember a fact. He "stumbled badly" and it's the "end of his campaign." It's all about meltdown and gaffe. Forbes.com goes so far as to declare: "Why Rick Perry's Debate Flub/Fail Will End His Campaign."

For gawd's sake, this guy wants to end three important departments: Commerce, Education, and (the one he couldn't remember but which is especially dear to his Texan oil heart) Energy. Why aren't we upset about that?!

 

 

 

The Day My Ass Cheek Grew an Ass Cheek

I went to see my seamstress to get a zipper fixed. I’ve known her for about a decade, seen her and her partner struggle to hang onto their house and raise their son. She works several part-time low-wage jobs while he has been out of work. When I told her I was meeting some friends down at Occupy Boston later, she asked me, “What’s that?” She had no clue.

She and her partner are so heads-down trying to survive that they are taking the economic collapse personally. They think it is their own bad luck and he’s starting to feel that he’s being punished for his sins. They have run into bureaucratic obstacles but it didn’t occur to her to turn to her State Representative for help; she didn’t know there are non-profit groups who will guide people in their attempts to modify their mortgages; a drunken neighbor has become threatening; her talented son’s after-school art classes are starting to cost more than she can scrape together. She has only the vaguest sense that something global is going on and she seems to have picked up that sense from the Fox News ether. Their isolation jarred me.

I did make it down to Occupy Boston yesterday to see Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a long-time activist and scholar, who was giving the Occupy Boston "Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture." This is something organized by academics who are involved with Occupy Boston and attracts other academics and students and visitors to the camp. The folks who actually live in the camp aren’t generally interested in such things – they’re just busy keeping the camp livable. There were about 30 of us standing around, most of whom came quite specifically for Roxanne.

Back in the day, Roxanne started the first women's liberation group in Boston and organized me into it. It was feeling its way into an analysis and gathered together perhaps the most disparate group ever contained in one collective. When I say disparate, I’m talking about Betsy Warrior on one hand, the first woman to talk openly about being a “welfare mother” and a battered woman; and on the other hand, Abby Rockefeller, as in Abby Rockefeller.

Although I haven't seen her for many decades, we’ve been Facebook friends so I feel reconnected. After her speech I went up to her and said, “Sue Katz.” She looked into my mid 60s face – last seen in its mid 20s incarnation – and I watched her suddenly find “Sue Katz” in it. Hugs and hand-holdings followed and then we both parted for our next obligation.

But something very weird happened while I listened to her speech about activism and history. I was bit on the ass. Not once, but several times. I could feel it when it happened, me in jeans and a bulky down coat, and it was disconcerting to realize that something was in my pants uninvited. By the time I got home I had a red hot inflamed swelling that made my ass cheek look like it had sprouted an ass cheek.

I barely had time to gobble down something before I switched to a nice pink jacket and made my way to Lesley University for a showing of “Left on Pearl,” the amazing documentary-in-the-making of the 10-day occupation of a Harvard building in 1971 that resulted in the Cambridge Women’s Center. Lesley University was sponsoring a conference of college women’s centers’ staff, so it was a perfect audience. We had a small panel afterwards including Susan and Rochelle (from the film collective) and my fellow occupiers from those days, Sara and Eleanor, and me (shifting uncomfortably on my painful butt).

If there’s one thing that the Occupy movement has made clear, the young people do not know the history of revolt, even of modern revolt – like the anti-war or Panther or women’s movements. Not even of contemporary struggles like the long, persistent, creative work in Wisconsin against foul attacks on unions and state workers. These young women at the film showing identified as feminist but had never heard of this action. The film is rather brilliant, as I have written here many times, and once it is completed (it needs a music score), it is going to be mind-blowing. It is so different to see it today than it was say prior to two months ago, when Occupy Wall Street began. Times have changed – a bit at least. And this from a woman who grew a third ass cheek.