Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Anne Kaplan’s 100th Birthday Party

One of the perks of teaching senior fitness is all the parties we have. Yesterday we got to celebrate a student’s 100th birthday. Truthfully, Anne stopped coming to class at around age 97 after having moved into a housing complex that offered fitness right at home. We’ve never lost touch with her, however, and in fact she came to my birthday party last November. (Photo: Anne flanked by Doreen and me)

One of my students, a master baker, is the de facto social secretary of the class. Doreen invites all 30 class members to annual tea parties (8 or 10 at a time) at her home. These elegant and intimate gatherings have helped to cement friendships among classmates and those connections have served all of us well – both when it’s time to boogie and when it’s time to console. (Photo: Doreen, late 80s, and just some of her baked goodies)

It was Doreen’s idea to have this party for Anne and the planning started months ago. Many of the forty invitees kicked in with food and drink and help to pull it all together. We had 30s and 40s music in the background, sandwiches and cheese platters and then about a dozen types of cookies from Doreen’s prolific and incomparable oven. One couple brought a giant inscribed birthday cake, photographers were engaged, speeches were made and there was really something to celebrate.

Anne uses a walker, her hearing on the left side isn’t what one would wish, and her eyesight is dimming.  That doesn’t stop her from remembering everyone’s name and where they have recently moved to or what wedding or funeral just happened in their family. She was a gracious guest of honor and after her daughter and I made tribute speeches, she added a few sentences of her own, not the least the value she felt she derived by working out. Her hair, as always, was impeccably done and her outfit was immaculate. (Photo: Anne gets her hand kissed by Sheldon, a young 94)

Most of my students are in their 80s – some older and some younger. Working with them gives me a unique perspective. I am generally the baby of the group, although we have had students sign up who were younger than me. This gives me many benefits, two of which are especially useful. If my knees have a new ache or I’m skeptical about a bone strengthener my doctor wants to give me, I have 60 students (there are actually two groups) to consult. “Who’s had rotator cuff problems?” I ask and I’ll have ten people raising their hands, a font of personal wisdom for all that ails me.

Being with my students also gives me a really special wide-lens view into the future. I see their capabilities, their activism, their continued and changing cultural interests, their spontaneous mutual support arrangements and I know that things can be okay twenty years hence, or thirty-seven years forward in Anne’s case. This was my first 100th birthday party and it has pushed the goal posts of my imagination. Maybe I will have time to write all those books clawing at my overcrowded datebook to get out.

Postscript: Doreen spoke to Anne this morning who said that Saturday was the greatest day of her life. When you’ve already got 100 years of days, of parties, of celebrations under your belt, that’s high praise indeed.

Theatre Review: “Song of Songs” from Liars & Believers

If it wasn’t for my young friend Rachel Hock, the Artistic Associate of the theatre company “Liars & Believers” – (last year they were called “Performance Lab”) – I probably would not be traipsing down to the Boston Center for the Arts, where one is forced to pay a wad for parking because it is a public transportation black hole.

But I digress, Artistic Director Jason Slavick seems to enjoy taking classic texts and turn them into something you can dance to. Last year this company put on the very entertaining “Le Cabaret Grimm – a punk cabaret fairy tale (sans faires)” as their premiere production.

This season’s production is “Song of Songs: A Love Romp” based on the Biblical text. The development process of this theatre company is collaborative – they seem to build their cast and team first, throw in the fine compositions of Nathan Leigh and then all dive in with their youthful creativity. Slavick codifies and refines the work, and out comes the performance. This reminds me, in fact, of the process used by the British director Mike Leigh.

But I digress once more. Although this text is from a religious anthology (ie, the Bible), the musical is secular indeed – if love can be considered secular. An animated (and funny) young woman is talking on her cellphone to her best boy-pal about her crush on a guy at school (while her mother texts her from the living room to ask if she is doing her homework). An unexpected package arrives from the boy she likes and it is a record album called “Song of Songs.” She puts it on her phonograph and the music catapults her into a dream world of love.

First, two women work out their lover relationship. Then a straight man stomps through his romantic life. A playful guy uses a biblical-looking puppet to advance his advances. It is an opera of love, with interplay all around.

I wasn’t always certain of the narrative, not the least because the young woman at the center, the dreamer, is filled with a speechless angst and I was uncertain of the source. Her dream personality is very different than her lively excitement in the opening and closing scenes – when she finally gets together with her crush – that bracket the meat of the play.

The five young actors are each talented, skilled and appealing and their energy never flags. The score is fabulous. Dance intertwines with singing, all supported by an impressive four-piece band using guitar, cello, trumpet and percussion (not only drums, but a plastic suitcase, a typewriter and a box of elbow macaroni!) This is a fresh Boston company theatre lovers will want to keep an eye on. The show is playing until June 18th. More info here.

Dyke March 2011: Cute, but I'm Missing the Protest

I am at the Dyke March (held at the Bandstand on Boston Commons) Friday evening, June 10, with three friends. I always look forward to the lovely volunteers circulating – like the cigarette sellers of yore – with trays of stickers. In past years they have been florescent rectangles of militancy. This year they are black & white, perhaps reflecting the economic situation. Anyway, the women come by and offer us our pick of identifying labels. Geek Dyke. Bike Dyke. Single. Slut. Butch. I choose “Activist Dyke” and “Anti-Racism Queer” – and that’s about as political as it gets.

Boston has had a Dyke March on the Friday evening before Saturday’s Pride Parade since 1993. It originated from the Lesbian Avengers as a counter to the male-dominated Pride organization. The Dyke March is a funny ole event – a huge contrast with the corporate and church  dominated Pride with its company giveaways (carry bags with TJ Maxx logos, sunscreen from a health insurance company, mardi gras beads from banks), big floats, massive retail market and performance stage. The only merchandise on sale here are t-shirts with an unappealing footprint and jockey shorts and briefs with a slogan that is so forgettable that none of us can remember what it is, although we agree the word “rainbow” is involved.

In past years the Dyke March was a stitched-together, chaotic event. Everyone brought something to bang (as in drum, of course), someone led political chants and I believe there were demands. Certainly people circulated leaflets pointing out one activist campaign or another. The lesbians had a political agenda.

No more. Other than support for transgender issues – and there was a large trans presence – and a table staffed by the enduring and essential The Network / La Red (“ending partner abuse in LGBTQ, SM and polyamorous communities”), there is almost no hint that this is anything but a celebratory, sex-positive party event. There are a couple of thank-you speeches and an award-acceptance lecture from a community entrepreneur who spoke about giving “service” to the community. It was entirely out of context – no mention of gay rights or any other rights. Said my friend, “She could have been addressing her church group.” Sitting uncomfortably on the ground, we listen to the great music of the Afro-Caribbean New World Soul band Zili Misik.

Finally we set off to march in a big square of downtown that will end back here at the Boston Commons. The signs are saucy, flirtatious and devoid of political content. In fact many signs are more like personal ads (“I love fisting” and “Femme and Available”) or just plain odd (“You’re queer, but I’m even queerer” and “If Queer Power was a Robot, it Would Rule the World”). Wot?

We do see three women carrying a banner that reads something like: “Dyke Union Organizers: We Will Fuck Your Boss.” I’m not exactly sure what they are saying, but I will generally cheer on a union organizer. Our biggest giggle is for the volunteer security monitors on whose red sashes is written “Discipline Team.”

As always, the motorcycle dykes lead the march, although their contingent seems to be shrinking, and this year the bicyclists – on a variety of quirky elongated or elevated bikes, bring up the rear. In between are an awful lot of infants and toddlers – one wearing a delectable t-shirt: “Queer Spawn” – and lots of hand-holding young women. We catch sight of a small group of Roller Derby dames on skates wearing sparkly hotpants. The majority of marchers – and the crowd is large (last year it was 2,000) – is young, hip and decorative. People seem to stay within their friendship circle – screeching and hugging – and certainly no strangers talk to us (four older women) at all.

I have many thoughts. I wish I had realized when I was in my 20s that, in and of itself, youth is an attractive feature on a person. They all look great – as we did in at that age. But with the intensity of conservative homophobia and the ravages of an economy that is particularly failing the younger and older workers, where are the demands for justice? With a higher education system that is pricing itself out of mass reach, where is the anger? When women’s sexual health is under severe attack, where is the protest?

As we come down Boylston Street we hear a café calling to us. We stop by the side of the road and watch the rest of the march go by, then slip in for salads and lemonade. We have every intention of heading back to the Bandstand. An appealing after-march program is planned, including a speech by Urvashi Vaid and a set by the indie band Mrs. Danvers.

But as we stroll in that direction, the Arlington subway stop suddenly appears in our way. We think about sitting on the damp grass at the Commons, we realize that we’re quite tired, we notice that other older women are slipping down the subway steps and, depleted and a bit disappointed, we submit to temptation and head home.

Tomorrow we will find no media coverage of any sort. When a dozen tea baggers get together to crap on democracy, every news outlet sends a team. When a Congressman sends a blurry photo of his jockey shorts, wars and economic disarray disappear from the front pages. When 2,000 dykes wave signs referencing their own genitals, silence yawns.

The photos are random shots of other Dyke Marches and events.

My Toe? What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Because I work in a senior center and am over 60, I get to go to the most marvelous podiatrist who we’ll call John. Because that’s his name, actually. I went for his usual treatment (nails, dead skin, once-over) prior to my departure to London so that I’d be confident in the state of my feet.

Towards the end of my trip, the big toe on my right foot started sending out unpleasant signals. I scooped my fingers around the inside of my sneaker and thought that just maybe I detected a wrinkle in the lining and in fear of the princess and the pea syndrome, switched shoes.

It got increasingly worse, to the point where I was slopping around the streets of London in clogs that usually serve me as slippers. I worried that the source of the irritation was that I had borrowed and worn handsome leather dance shoes (my size) one evening. Dance shoes do have pointier toes than anything else I wear.

By the time I got on to the plane home, my toe was not speaking to any of my shoes. By the time I got off the plane, my toe was infected, red and full of – scuze my language – pus. The next morning I left messages for John at several different places and he called me back to beg me to stop inundating him. By then I was pretty sure that we’re talking ingrown toenail. John prescribed antibiotics (a rare ingest for me), Epsom salt soaks several times per day and antibiotic ointment. As a side dish, and against yeast infection, he suggested I have a probiotic yogurt daily.

The toe was waking me up at night. It was screaming for relief. I approached my treatment rigorously. Because I’m not in work mode yet, just in my reentry period, I was able to devote my most concentrated attention on my poor digit.

Long before my departure to London, I had planned on two dance events for this weekend: the swing evening with the women’s big band, The Mood Swings, on Saturday; and the annual LGBT Senior Pride Tea-Dance, which I never miss. I could not fit a single shoe of any sort on my foot by Saturday, although the toe was already improving, and a sandal was too dangerous for this particular venue, where the dancers know zilch about floor craft and stomp on each other’s feet with abandon.

By Sunday there still wasn’t a shoe I could stand, but I felt that I could take the chance of wearing sports sandals, especially by restricting myself to dancing with Lucky and Stephanie. However, I just couldn’t score a break.

And here’s what I really wanted to tell you about. I was all dressed up for the Tea-Dance and I was sitting in my office chair, closing up my laptop. I bent over to remove the plug from a floor extension cord and somehow the chair toppled over. I landed on my right arm (the one with the bad shoulder) and on my right toe (yes, that one). The chair landed on my back. I didn’t move for several minutes and then backed up in a crawl, causing the chair to tumble off of me so that I could get up. I was dazed but okay.

I made my way to my elevator, as the little incident had held me up. One floor down and the elevator stopped to let on a couple. She came towards me and suddenly spilled a hot cup of coffee on my foot. That foot.

My pants leg was splattered and my sock, sandal lining and gauze bandage were all soaked in hot milky liquid. I stared down at my foot. The woman was chattering – apologizing? – but I simply could not look up from my foot. The elevator door closed and I realized that the couple had fled and I was alone with this puddle.

Today I visited the podiatrist and he cut out a hunk of my nail, slathered it with iodine and said that by tomorrow it should be fine. So we ought to have a happy ending to this saga. However, he also told me something interesting. When you are on a long flight your feet swell. That means that the swollen flesh of the toe can press itself again the nail and produce a kind of ingrown toenail that is really a grown-in toe. It’s nice to learn new facts.

London Review: Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography

The Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London has magnificent collections of objects housed in an extraordinary building, but I go there rarely, as so much of their permanent collection is, in fact, colonial plunder. Too often I have left enraged at the flaunting of stolen goods or disturbed by what must have been a lifetime of work identified with its owner and not for the unrecognized craftspeople who created it.

I could not, however, forego a look at the exciting “Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography,” having seen bits and pieces of reviews and images from the collection. Using of the last decade’s work of 17 photographers – many very young, a few middle aged and perhaps just one pre-freedom veteran David Goldblatt (b. 1930) – this is a profoundly political look through lenses that are engaged and committed.

The first featured photographer is so powerful that every subsequent image I see – 150 of them by 17 photographers – has to stand in comparison. Zanele Muholi (b. 1972) has two sections. The first is a series of black and white images of lesbians, from femmes to cross-dressers, from sweet to swagger (see above). Her second set (on left), in bright colors, features gay men in costumes that transgress traditional masculinity. Although S. Africa was the first country to enshrine gay rights in its constitution, there is still tremendous, threatening bias, making the super-confidence of her subjects all that more absorbing.

Sabelo Mlangeni (b. 1980) also looks at gender rebels in his “Country Girls” (on left) series of rural male cross-dressers who pose awkwardly in the outfits they have managed to cobble together, high-heels here and ill-fitting skirt there. In the backgrounds, their settings are often painfully poor. In fact, costumes play a surprisingly large role in a number of the works in this exhibit. Mlangeni’s other series “Men Only” follows the residents of a shabby workers’ hostel in Johannesburg. It is an intimate introduction to an environment I knew less than nothing about.

The impact of poverty and tragedy on S. Africans is a recurring visual in this show. Santu Mofokeng’s (b. 1956) series “Child-Headed Households” captures the life of siblings who, having lost their parents to AIDs, are holding their families together around the vacuum.

In “Terreno Ocupado,”Jo Ractliffe (b. 1961) documents life on the border between S. Africa and Angola where the 1970s and 80s war was fought. The title of one large image  highlights the 'Woman on the footpath from Boa Vista to Roque Santeiro Market' (above left) at the bottom of the frame, but above her looms two massive mountains of garbage in the valley of which is a flimsy shanty town. The horror of it is seared into my mind’s eye and I have been unable to shake a sense of desperation that such conditions exist. Guy Tillim (b. 1962) spent a week in central Malawi photographing portraits of villagers (at left). His quiet, off-center images-in-motion seep with dusty poverty.

The body is the canvas of several of the women photographers – who are, unusually enough, probably in the majority in this group exhibition. Bernie Searle (b. 1964) is a multi-media artist who uses her own body to develop sophisticated narratives around gender, race and identity (at left).

Jodi Bieber’s (b.1966) subjects pose in their own homes, their own underwear and their own attitude. An old white woman leans against her kitchen counter, one black bra strap slipping down her shoulder, holding a cigarette to her lips, while a full-bodied young black woman struts her stuff (at left).

I believe I learned more about actual life today in S. Africa through these photographers and their contemporary visual lessons than in all the reading I have done. Kudos to the two curators Tamar Garb (Prof of Art History, University College) and Martin Barnes (V&A’s Senior Curator of Photographs). The written material accompanying each artist’s displays is comprehensive if brief, intimately detailed and quite political. The show is hung beautifully. The emphasis on these activist, young photographers makes for an emotional slap across the consciousness, an occasional giggle and a frequent sharp intake of breath.

The exhibition is open until 17 July 2011
Victoria & Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL