Category Archives: Greatest Generation, Boomers, Millennials, Alphabets

What the Empty Crib Means to Us

 In P.D. James’ novel, The Children of Men, couples are no longer able to conceive children. The novel introduces us to a society that lost the ability to produce offspring after the current generation of young adults. A wistful, lonely, alienated people remain in this childless world.

Though it is doubtful we will ever reach the circumstances portrayed in this book, some developed nations (Japan and Italy, for example) are seriously concerned about enough children not only to support the elderly but also to supply enough citizens to assure a vibrant society.

Parenthood is the unsupported career. Though an emotionally involved parent is in a sense always attached to a child, the most physically taxing part of the career is over with by the time the child is five or six. By the time the child reaches ten or so, the parents have shaped most of his or her character.

Back when families had five or ten or more children, parents spent the majority of their lives at the job of parenthood. Nowadays, birth control allows most adults to have children only if they’ve chosen to—at least, if they recognize the responsibility procreation requires.

We don’t support parenthood like we used to, for various reasons. Many choose not to be parents, a responsible decision. However, for those who do choose or who want to be parents, society is geared toward discouraging them at every turn.

Since most young adults require full-time jobs to meet financial needs, adding children to the picture is challenging to say the least. And in an age when money assumes the most important means to the good life, raising a child bites a chunk out of that.

Cheers to the last person in America in hopes they will have fun with their selfies.

 

Service: The Rent We Pay for Living

 The speaker at this graduation stressed paying back more than your student loan:

“When I was growing up, service was as essential a part of my upbringing as eating and sleeping and going to school and to church. I was taught that service is the rent that each of us pays for living, the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time or after you’ve reached your personal goals.”

–Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children’s Defense Fund; Seattle Pacific University, June 14, 2014

Daughter of a Baptist preacher in Bennettsville, South Carolina, Ms. Edelman says her parents modeled a Christ-likeness throughout her childhood. Anyone in need was a neighbor.

In her adult life, Ms. Edelman has been a voice for the nation’s children. According to an article in Seattle Pacific University’s Response magazine, she has supported programs to prevent childhood abuse and teen pregnancy, advocated for enrichment programs that encourage a love of reading, and engaged political leaders to support health care, early education, and increased aid for low-income families.

Ms. Edelman admits she is “totally inflexible about children going hungry in the richest nation on earth . . . about children being homeless, about children being in schools that don’t teach them how to learn.”

How about a few more such “inflexible” servants?

 

Celebration, Pot, and Old Buildings

Our small town held a celebration/ribbon cutting for our newly reconstructed Second Street. The project provides widened sidewalks, new landscaping, and people friendly paths and gathering places.

The mayor spoke. Our city planner spoke. The officials and community leaders who birthed and shepherded the project were honored. The designers and construction crew received awards. The merchants who endured the five-month construction and frequent closing of the street were applauded. Local restaurants provided free food to the neighbors who chatted and celebrated.

Our town of a few square blocks is crammed with a city hall, library, grocery store, liquor stores, post office, three churches, restaurants, book shops, artist studios, medical offices, non profits, a public school, plus residences (single home and multiple), along with other stores and services. It reminds citizens and the tourists who flock here of small town America a century or so ago.

In fact, we are not an early twentieth century village. Current trends wash our shores, too. A business near our town was recently awarded one of the pot shops now allowed by Washington State’s new marijuana laws. We also are considering whether to replace one of our most historic buildings with a modern structure or let it stand, perhaps calling for expensive restoration.

I may agree or not with some of those trends, but that is not the issue here. The issue is how to live successfully in this age, not one of a century ago. If we live in harmony with our neighbors, some of whom we agree with and some of whom we don’t, then we will not only muddle through but enjoy the experience.

It takes a community.

 

Setting Up Households Versus Forming Communities

Tender Shadows Cover“Back then marriage was two families coming together in a kind of joyous celebration, at least in our case. Nowadays a couple of kids meet at a party and set up housekeeping together. Maybe we didn’t prepare our daughter for that kind of world.”

–Joe Harlan in Tender Shadows

 

Parents may experience a disconnect with their children during the teenage years. Some of the disconnect is healthy. The passage into adulthood requires a measure of independence and the ability to think for oneself. But for some the passage is traumatic and even tragic.

A few parents give up on their children, even before the teenage years. In some cases, they never took responsibility for the children they created. In others, parents are besieged with other problems (loss of job, single parenthood, aging parents, and so own) and cannot cope with everything life tosses their way.

For whatever reason, not all of us are gifted with caring families. Yet most of us crave community. If we don’t find healthy communities, we will find unhealthy ones—drug gangs, those based on dysfunctional relationships, even terrorist groups.

A few days ago, I saw several women walking together down my street. Two were pushing baby strollers. Young mothers sharing exercise and conversation? Non-Facebook friending? I bet the children in those strollers have a good chance to live successful lives, especially if their families continue to share friendship with other families. Forming communities doesn’t have to be complicated. Simple friendship goes a long way

 

How A Death Led to a Few Books Becoming Many

Anne Smedinghoff’s colleagues wanted to mark the one year anniversary of her death. Anne, a twenty-five-year-old diplomat, was killed with several other Americans, in 2013 by a car bomb while delivering books to a school in Afghanistan.

The colleagues and their friends, stationed in various U.S. missions all over the world, did the following:

—In Islamabad, Pakistan, they raised $1,300 to buy books for a local non profit that educates street children.

—In Prague, Czech Republic, they collected over 100 books for a university library.

—From the U.S. mission in Jerusalem, they visited a West Bank school and donated sets of English and Arabic books to children there.

—In Lima, Peru, volunteers collected dozens of books to start a library in a daycare center and shelter.

—In Abu Dhabi, they donated over 200 books to a rural school.

—In Riga, Latvia, they gave books to an alternative family home that supports children in need.

—in Arlington, Virginia, USA, they established a scholarship fund in her name.

—in Sáo Paulo, Brazil, they donated funds to establish a library in a low income school.

—In two missions in Mexico, they held a reading series in a local school and helped build a home for a mother and her three children.

Hate-filled people killed Anne and destroyed the books bound for the school in Afghanistan, but more books are now in the hands of those who lacked them than were ever destroyed by that car bomb.

Wrongs cannot be undone. But wrongs may be overcome, not by revenge, but by acts of compassion.

 

Dealing with Bodily Fluids, or How I Learned To Speed Read

 

I suppose it’s healthier that we reflect our angst in our literature rather than repressing it and pretending all is well. I’m not sure about all of the trends, though. Our plunge into pessimism is mirrored by a plunge into the four-letter morass of bodily excretion in all its forms. Words that appeared in mainstream writing only for a bit of spice are now as common as allergies in the spring.

Along with the old four letter words, casual sex proliferates. In our work-a-day world, such casual sex now is common, along with obesity, possibly not a coincidence. Ours is not an age known for self-discipline.

I began reading one of our postmodern novels for a book club and found myself skimming along, just to understand enough of the plot for discussion. It wasn’t just the language. The protagonists were about as attractive as piranhas, mirroring, I suppose, our disillusion with cardboard heroes and heroines. Surely, fiction can be realistic without deleting all hope?

What came at me was not so much the words as the anger. I don’t mean anger at obvious wrong. This anger seemed to come from lack of purpose.

Maybe that’s the foundation for much of our current writing: unresolved anger. We are geared to find purpose and meaning. When we find that the objects we pursue only for pleasure turn out to be meaningless, anger overwhelms us.

The One Commitment We Can’t Change

 

Ross Douthat, New York Times columnist, quoted from Jennifer Senior’s new book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood in a recent column: Parenthood is “the last binding obligation in a culture that asks for almost no other permanent commitments at all.”

In this sense, Douthat says, it isn’t necessarily that family life has changed so dramatically in the last few generations. Rather, family life “stayed the same in crucial ways —because babies still need what babies need—while outside the domestic sphere there’s been an expansion of opportunities, a proliferation of choices and entertainments and immediately available gratifications, that make child rearing seem much more burdensome by comparison.”

What has changed are the choices: “between the lifestyles and choices available to nonparents and the irreducible burdens still involved in raising children.”

We change marriage partners, or don’t bother to commit to marriage in the first place. However, babies call for commitment unlike any other task in our world today. Children who lack committed parents or who don’t find parent figures are less likely to handle life successfully. In contrast, those with committed parents greatly increase their chances for a meaningful life.

We often lack the community support enjoyed earlier. Incomes may have to be adjusted also. The disparity between the lifestyle of DINCs—double incomes, no children—and those of married couples with children, much less a single parent with a child—are documented.

We take our careers more seriously than ever before. Parenthood is a career that requires as much commitment as any other.  Children may fail or not, but so may any career. Most children born today live after us, unlike the average career.

What Do I Know About Drugs, Anyway?

 

My state, Washington, is one of two states (Colorado is the other) that has legalized marijuana for recreational use. For some, pot has joined beer, wine, and other alcoholic drinks as a leisure pleasure.

Caveat: I remain one of those increasingly rare creatures, a teetotaler. I’m also a Christian. I’m not, however, an abstainer because I’m a Christian. Nor do I expect most others to be abstainers.

As a young person in a conservative church, I was influenced in my teen years by religious arguments. In examining my Christian Bible, however, I can’t see that it forbids alcohol as long as imbibing it is done responsibly. Jesus, after all, turned water into wine at a wedding celebration.

I think the fact that neither my family nor my close friends drank influenced me more than religious teachings. We had lots of fun without it. And as a woman with a history of breast cancer in my family, those articles about alcohol consumption and a higher incidence of breast cancer always get my attention.

Then, too, I wonder sometimes that my tendency to depression might lead me to over indulge during a down time. All in all, maybe it’s better if I stay in my abstainer mode. I also save money that way.

I accept the fact, however, that I live in a world where most folks will choose to use some types of drugs. I’ve come to understand that I don’t know enough about those drugs. Obviously, overindulgence leads to things like the horrible loss of life in automobile accidents. It contributes to domestic violence. It would seem that certain people are alcoholics and must learn to do without alcohol to avoid destruction. I’ve read that alcohol and drug use at an early age can lead to harmful brain changes.

Then, of course, there is Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died so tragically in a drug overdose. Articles after his death mentioned that once you’ve become a heroin addict, the brain changes, even in an adult, so that you will always crave it.

So I’d like an honest, comprehensive assessment of drugs, including alcohol, and their effects on different kinds of people. In this postmodern world, our moral behavior is increasingly a personal choice, not bound by cultural norms. I’d like those choices to be responsible and disciplined, based on knowledge rather than instant gratification or peer pressure.

What’s This New Domesticity Movement?

 

Emily Matchar in her book Homeward Bound: Why Women are Embracing the New Domesticity says this movement “relates to our growing disenchantment with the mainstream workplace, which has failed young people, mothers, and families in so many ways.”

Complaints about “work/life balance” and “antifamily policies” surfaced after women entered the workforce in large numbers. Matcher’s book addresses these issues. As I read her book, I asked: What was so great about the workplace for men before women joined it? Isn’t it important for men to have a work/life balance, too? Singles as well as marrieds? Families and also childless couples? What about the retired, with more relaxed schedules but still with skills to share?

Matchar calls on men as well as women to change. “We need to make sure that the rallying cry of ‘take back the home’ is shouted just as loudly by men as by women.”

Should a career dictate our consuming interest in life?  Men and women live longer than in generations past. We have more years for both careers and other pursuits. Why should all our years from young adulthood to sixty-five be given over to careers? Why should the population then be divided into “career” and “retired”? Why does consumption so rule our lives, guaranteeing that most adults must work full-time to sustain it?

Perhaps we could encourage a less materialistic model which allows dropping out occasionally to focus on children or schooling or creative pursuits or civic work or taking a sabbatical in a monastery or the deliberate choice of part time work for several years.

How about a new dialog blending domesticity (community?) and career for all of us?

Genreless Genres?

 

Genre, so my Oxford English Dictionary defines it, is “a style or category of art or literature.” Genre novels are classified as romance, mystery, science fiction, suspense, crime, political, and so on.

A number of acclaimed authors write novels not easily categorized as to genre, like Jodi Picoult.  In an article in Writer’s Digest, Picoult said her genre is the very lack of one. She writes on diverse subjects. Often the subjects have to do with social or moral problems.

Piccoult is tagged by some as a “commercial” writer, by others as a “literary” writer. Supposedly, commercial writing is more dependent on plot and easily fits into a genre category, while literary writing is more dependent on character.

Some authors now write novels that classify in more than one genre: romance/mystery or political/suspense. Some go even further, mixing genre and literary, like a novel I saw tagged as a “literary mystery.” The phrase “upmarket fiction” has been coined to describe character-driven fiction that appeals to a large audience.

What about “Christian” fiction? Obviously, it isn’t itself a genre since it includes many genres: romance, science fiction, mystery, crime and others. What qualifies a book as Christian? Is it a story in which one or more of the protagonists self-designates himself or herself as a Christian? Does it, then, include classics like The Brothers Karamazov?

While the whole publishing industry is roiled by ebooks and digital formats, the genre category also is up for grabs.

Saving Mr. Banks, Fiction But Real

 

The movie Saving Mr. Banks isn’t your typical Hollywood movie of recent times. The movie has no violence or explicit sexual scenes. No one is tortured or blown up or chased by bad people.

It even begins with a flashback. The flashback has no exciting “inciting incidents,” merely a little girl and her father playing an imaginary game in an Australian park.

Saving Mr. Banks is loosely based on the making of the popular movie Mary Poppins by Walt Disney. That movie, in turn, was based on books by Pamela Lyndon Travers. According to accounts of Travers’ actual relationship with the making of the movie, she remained disappointed with Mary Poppins. Thus, a great part of Saving Mr. Banks, it would seem, is fiction. Nevertheless, like all good fiction, it draws us in and gives us insight.

As movies go these days, it begins slowly. We are taken in by the characters and the choices they make, some heartbreaking. We see Travers’ father, a bank employee, unable to overcome his alcoholism, humiliating his family, finally dying too young and unable to keep his promise to his daughter to “never leave her.”

Walt Disney’s own severe childhood is counterpart to the tragedy of the author. His playful films are his answer. He overcame severity by clinging to his gift of whimsy and using it to bring a bit of fun to the world. Suffering is redeemed in part.

Seemingly unsuccessful people may do good things for their children that live on.The work-driven Mr. Banks of Mary Poppins, the audience is given to understand, carries a piece of Travers’ father. Mr. Banks does love his children. This Victorian father is even capable, finally, of flying kites with them.

Big Boxless Theater

 

Before we moved to our small town, I thought all movies were now the big box kind. You buy your ticket from a nameless receptionist and find your way to the slice of the box for the movie you have chosen. You stumble among the seats in the three-quarter darkness to an empty one, trying to avoid stepping on toes. You listen to screen advertisements for ten minutes or so, depending on how early you made it to the show.

Then we moved here and discovered the leftover, pre-World War II theater on our town’s main street. It was built in 1937. In spite of resembling something a Soviet collective might have created, it’s one of the community’s beloved icons.

Before the show, we line up outside and take our place, carrying on conversations with those we know. We greet the ticket seller and perhaps nod to the movie’s owners, who often stand by to open the door. We might buy refreshments from the stand squeezed into an alcove just before we enter the viewing area.

Since we have only one movie, the lights remain on until show time. We greet friends and neighbors, maybe carrying around our popcorn to walk the aisle and check on who’s here. A few people stare at cells or tablets but most talk or observe. No reason to shush anyone. As the proprietors of the theater point out, it’s noisy, a community kind of noise. If somebody is celebrating a birthday, friends make it known with the appropriate song.

Once in a while, the owners invite a local musician to play a violin or to sing before the movie begins.

The lights dim. We hush. The previews flash by, then the movie. When it’s over, we may stay and watch the credits, discussing the story. Then we slowly line up and crowd out, still talking with friends.

Some of us living close by walk home. The line of cars for everyone else lets those checking the streets from a window to pretty much guess what time it is. The movie’s over for another evening.

That’s community in a big boxless society.

Homeless Diversity

 
Several years ago I saw a play about homelessness—produced by homeless individuals. Listening to them speak, I realized “the homeless” are a diverse population, no more the same than all teenagers or college students or senior citizens are the same.

The play revealed at least four reasons people are homeless, though the list isn’t exhaustive. It was meant to start us thinking.

Some homeless people abuse alcohol and other drugs, which prevent them from finding and holding jobs and becoming responsible members of society.

Some are hard working but make poor decisions. They spend salaries too freely and don’t save when they earn money beyond the essentials. They fall prey to shysters who promise easy money. They buy housing beyond what they can afford, then can’t keep up payments—especially when caught in a recession not of their own making.

Some manage their lives and income fairly well but can’t find low cost housing to match their minimum wage jobs, especially if they have families.

Others become homeless through circumstances beyond anyone’s control, like an illness or accident or disappearing jobs in a recession.

Obviously, different reasons for homelessness call for different solutions: low cost housing; substance abuse programs; counseling for those who abuse money rather than drugs; jobs that pay adequately—to scratch the surface.

The homeless are us, making choices any of us might make given certain circumstances: abusive homes, irresponsible families, lost jobs, medical illness, physical or mental handicaps, inadequate education, terrible personal adversity. Some will always struggle, requiring tough love and continuing commitment from those who would help them. Others can find their own way if given better housing or job training or decent wages or medical attention. We don’t all have to be social workers to help. A responsive, caring community does require us to be aware of the need, willing to give even a small boost to those community programs which we judge most helpful.

Marriage? Who Would Have Thought?

Kathleen Parker, in a column for The Washington Post, (“To Defeat Poverty, Look to Marriage,” January 14, 2014) points to marriage as a poverty fighting measure.

Others weigh in. Jerry Z. Muller in his article “Capitalism and Inequality; What the Right and the Left Get Wrong” (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2013) writes: “Abundant research shows that children raised by two parents in an ongoing union are more likely to develop the self-discipline and self-confidence that make for success in life . . .” He cites quickness of mind, character, social skills, and knowledge as products of such upbringing. All, Muller says, “are increasingly crucial for success in the postindustrial marketplace.”

Children as emotional capital? Have we returned to a model recently ignored in our modernizing West?

We should not down play measures that improve schools and encourage jobs that pay a living wage. Such programs, however, require political agreement and compromise. Marriage is a personal choice.

The bottom line for those who think in terms of dollars and cents: Successful families strengthen society; dysfunctional families weaken it.

Why Do Older Adults Read Young Adult Books?

 
Young adult books have seen phenomenal growth since the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. These books aren’t just read by young adults but older adults as well. Analysts are asking why.

One reason, they say, is to read them along with their children.

Other reasons? Maybe some crave a literature that doesn’t include the explicit sexual scenes found increasingly in “adult” fiction. Maybe they wish to escape the darker novels that predominate today.

Is such reading an escape from reality? We all know, surely, that the good guys don’t always win in this world. We know the innocent sometimes suffer and end their lives still suffering.

Fairy tales don’t happen in real life, we say. And so they don’t, but sometimes the lessons found in them do. People like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. and multitudes of others not so well known show us the necessity for hope in a less than perfect world. We need hope as well as reality, perhaps a little “redeeming” value.

Sanity in a Connected World

 

Cell phones, email, and constant news updates proclaim the digital world. In contrast, a farmer in rural Tennessee in the early part of the twentieth century recalled hearing of President McKinley’s assassination weeks after it happened.

In this second decade of the twenty-first century we are instantly bombarded with the tragedy of tornadoes, hurricanes, and volcano eruptions as well as terrorist attacks, mall shootings, and the actions of drunken drivers. If we do not exercise control over this deluge, it will control us. On one hand, we may become despondent and feel hopeless. Or we may become so used to suffering, that it no longer bothers us.

How control? Basically, by controlling the time we spend on them. An article in The Seattle Times by Ricardo Gomez, a professor at the University of Washington, and a recent graduate, Stacey Morrison, suggested that some are pushing back against the technology that binds them.

They state: “If we fail to make our own informed choices about use of technology, technology will make the decisions for us. . . . We can each take a stance. There’s no need to go cold turkey and drop out entirely . . . we can all do a better job at managing our use of technology to reclaim control over our time, our relationships and our daily lives.”

Boomer Recessional

 

The baby boom changed every age group it passed through because it was so large. Now the last baby boomers are passing through their forties, and the vanguard are retiring. Social services for the elderly are a major topic in analytical articles. How will we pay for their medical needs? How much of the national budget will go for social security?

Other issues relate to the gap in experience left by the Boomers’ retirement. Much expertise will walk out the door when they leave. Boomer numbers insure that they will be a force to be reckoned with for a while longer.

However, the current age that includes the Arab Spring, Wikipedia, and Facebook tinges the decades of the sixties and seventies with a sepia patina of nostalgia. In comparison with the changes since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the baby boomers’ time on stage appears almost innocent.

The Soviet empire, so easily identified as our enemy, is gone, replaced by an amorphous al-Qaeda and its offshoots. Organized religion is challenged by the “nones.” The booming suburbs are replaced by underwater mortgages and the resurgence of downtown living.

The children of the Boomers are not as child centered. Some wonder if they will even replace themselves.

The Boomer generation, so confident that their numbers would prevail in the ideological struggle with their parents’ world, is fading. We are still assessing the confused times they leave behind.

Hanging on to the Weird

 

Francis Spufford’s book, Unapologetic, isn’t the type one might review for a Christmas gift. He begins: “My daughter has just turned six. Some time over the next year or so, she will discover that her parents are weird. We’re weird because we go to church.”

spufford coverThis book is not the sort of writing expected of Christians. It isn’t just that the book contains a lot of four letter words not usually found in books written by Christians. It’s also, as Spufford says, not an “apologia,” a defense of Christian ideas. It’s a defense of Christian emotions “of their intelligibility, of their grown-up dignity.”

Older Christians may look askance at Spufford’s unorthodox treatment of Christianity. Younger Christians on the verge of giving up Christianity may find it refreshing.

Christianity calls for perfection, Spufford says. Since none of us is perfect, we are all failures. The flip side of this belief is that it’s very realistic. Any brand of Christianity that attempts to “circle the wagons of virtue” against the others has it wrong. We are the others. We’re all messed up. (He uses another word.)

From the beginning of Jesus’ group of disciples, Christians are a community of the messed up. The one hope is that Jesus really is a God of love like he said, who’s willing to work with his people, comfort them, lead them. It makes perfect sense that messed up people go to him.

Doubt is accepted as normal in today’s mixed mash of competing cultures and religions and no religion. Spufford emphasizes the Jesus who remains as he has always remained throughout Christianity’s spread through diverse cultures and ages. The Anointed One, God in his creature’s image, come to live among the creatures. The one we begin to know by faith.

American Idol Politics

 

Americans tend to judge their leaders like they judge contestants on American Idol—spur of the moment. I thought about this when I read an article in Parade Magazine (November 2, 2013) about former President Jimmy Carter.

Carter left office in disgrace, haunted in the last year of his Presidency by Islamist students’ seizure of the U.S. embassy in Iran and the taking of hostages. Forgotten was his work with Egypt and Israel, leading to Egypt’s diplomatic recognition of Israel, the first by an Arab nation.

Today, Carter is one of the most respected of living presidents. According to the interview, Carter is enjoying the longest post-presidency in history and one of the most productive.

He began the Carter Center, which “wages peace” through various initiatives, many of them dealing with the eradication of diseases that so plague poorer nations. He won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” He is often called on by world leaders for his opinion. He teaches once a month at Emory University in Atlanta. He writes books. His wife, Rosalynn, is involved in mental health issues. Their marriage has lasted sixty-seven years.

You can do worse than that. May all our presidents be this successful.

 

WikiLeaks and the 24-hour News Cycle in the Digital Age

 

In the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, certain records remained sealed for years. Researchers are only now combing them for insight into the tragedy. It’s hard to imagine the information remaining unavailable for that long today. No doubt Julian Assange would have released it the next day on Wikileaks if he and the Internet were around then.

Formerly, a memoir at the end of one’s life or the discovery of letters after a death allowed time for passions to cool and a more balanced view of an event to emerge before background revelations. Today, what is whispered between two people is shouted from the housetops on the next hour’s newscast. Classified emails, texts, and top secret communications become entertainment on our tablets or phones as we munch breakfast.

News of thousands killed in a storm passes off the radar like a dream on awakening. A terrorist incident is old news the next day, eclipsed by the latest celebrity scandal.

We have gigabytes of information but a scarcity of wisdom. Wisdom requires time for reflection.