Growing Old

I'm learning something new this week about growing old. And please, no e-mails assuring me that at 69 I am not old. I'm proud of these years, and I've earned them. Although we live in a country that glorifies youth and denigrates age, I've always preferred being around older people than younger. But the older I get there will be fewer and fewer people older than me, and with that comes a psychic cost.

On Sunday someone I've known for more than 40 years died. David Gahr was an extraordinary photographer who took the photographs of me on the cover of the two albums I did for Vanguard as well as the jacket photographs of me on a number of my books. He was primarily known as a photographer of musicians - folk, jazz, rock - and if you go through you album/cd collections and look at who took the photographs, I can almost guarantee that you'll see his name.

David was 16 years older than I am and was like my older brother. He was the one who helped me buy my first camera, who let me go with him through the streets of New York when he went out to photograph. If not for David I would not be a photographer now.

A photograph is actually the picture of the relationship of the photographer to the person or object being photographed. A photograph does not tell you as much as about the subject as it does about how the photographer feels about the subject. It was through David's photographs that I learned joy and something about what it is to love. In the early 70's I put together a book of his photographs (and a few of mine)along with poems I wrote based on the photographs. The book is called Who I Am. It has been out of print for decades but I see copies on line. If you want to experience the depth of one man's humanity, look at David's photographs in that book.

But with his death at age 85 I am experiencing not only the loss of an important person in my life but more, I am experiencing the loss of sharing memories that belonged only to the two of us. At age 69 the generation before me is beginning to die, as well as my contemporaries. And with these deaths there comes an increasing loneliness. The older you become the more memories you have, paradoxically, the fewer with whom you can share those memories.

But then I must stop and smile because the older I get, the less I remember, and maybe that's how Nature gently balances the losses we experience in the deaths of those with whom whom we've shared a lifetime.

As much as I will miss David, my gratitude for having him as a friend for so many years is far, far greater.

© 2008 by Julius Lester

“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

Anais Nin

TODAY'S WORD

Heart-quake: A trembling of the heart.

How many times a day do you have a heart-quake?

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions.”

Pascal

TODAY'S WORD

Coup de Soleil: A disease produced by the exposure of the head to the rays of the sun.

So that's what the Texas sun did to George Bush!

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

Winston Churchill

TODAY'S WORD

Chicken-pecked: Under the rule of a child.

Watching parents with their children, a lot of mothers and fathers I see are chicken-pecked.

“There have been many studies of elite performers — international violinists, chess grand masters, professional ice-skaters, mathematicians, and so forth — and the biggest difference researchers find between them and lesser performers is the cumulative amount of deliberative practice they’ve had. Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself...the most important way in which innate factors play a role may be in one’s willingness to engage in sustained training...top performers dislike practicing just as much as others do. (That’s why, for example, athletes and musicians usually quit practicing when they retire.) But more than others, they have the will to keep at it anyway.”


Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes On An Imperfect Science

TODAY'S WORD

Bouffage: A satisfying meal; from Old French bouffer to swell. Any meat that, eaten greedily, fills the mouth, and makes the cheeks swell.

Tonight my wife cooked lamb in a mustard sauce. It was quite a bouffage!

How to Apologize

During an interview Friday with the editorial board of a South Dakota newspaper, Hillary Clinton justified staying in the race because “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

One of Clinton's rationales for remaining in the race has been that Obama might make a colossal mistake or something might happen. I guess we know now what she unconsciously wishes to happen. Or, maybe not so unconsciously.

When she became aware of the outrage being expressed on websites across the internet as well as by some pundits, she "apologized", saying, in part, "And I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever."

You do not begin an apology with "if". When people are expressing outrage about something you've said, it is obvious that they are offended. And saying your intention was not to hurt anyone is not taking responsibility for what you said.

But, in general, people seem to feel that if they did not intend to hurt someone, then they didn't. But someone was hurt, and it is that hurt that should be addressed, not the intention. Sometimes being so clueless that you don't stop and think that what you're about to say or just said hurt someone is worse than intentionally inflicting a hurt.

But Hillary Clinton is incapable of taking responsibility for anything, it seems. We know that if Barack Obama had made the same statement, she would be screaming that he was unfit to be president of the United States and would be rallying her supporters to demand that he drop out of the race.

If she understood what it means to apologize she would have said something like this: "I am very, very sorry for my remark. It was wrong; it was beyond insensitive. Those people who are outraged by my remark are justified in their outrage. Regardless of my intention in making an analogy, my reference to the assassination of Robert Kennedy was wrong and could only evoke painful memories for the Kennedy family and all Americans who lived through that tragedy. My reference to his assassination could only evoke fears in all Americans regarding the safety of Senator Obama, as well as anyone who seeks high office, including Senator McCain and myself. I have no explanation for why I said what I did. I can only ask that people forgive me. I am deeply ashamed. I am going to suspend my campaign and take this holiday weekend to make a decision about the future."

To apologize is to take responsibility for having hurt another, regardless of intention. To apologize is to feel the hurt you've caused another and make that hurt a part of yourself. Apologies on this level are difficult to offer because to apologize is to acknowledge that I was wrong, and no one likes to be in the wrong. But all of us are from time to time.

This is one bruzzle Clinton cannot overcome.

©2008 by Julius Lester

TODAY'S WORD

Bruzzle: To make a great ado, or stir.

Hillary's Hypocrisy

This week Hillary Clinton and many of her supporters claimed that misogyny is the reason behind the failure of her candidacy, that people prefer to vote for a black man instead of a woman. Yes, this is true of some people, but, hypocrite that she is, Clinton does not acknowledge that some people prefer to vote for a white woman instead of a black man, like the 20% of voters in Kentucky who told pollsters they could not vote for a black man. More hypocritical yet, Clinton has made overt and covert appeals to the racism of white people. But she dares now to play the woman-as-victim card.

If she were honest she would look at herself and her campaign to see what went wrong. She entered the primaries thinking her nomination was inevitable and would lead to her being crowned the First Woman President, a distinction that seems incredibly important to her. By the time she figured out that Obama's people had out-organized the vaunted Clinton organization, it was almost too late.

Equally as important, Obama did not make the mistake Al Gore made in 2000 by beginning every paragraph with "I have a plan...." He did not make the mistake John Kerry made in 2004 by beginning every other paragraph with "I have a plan...."People do not give a damn about plans. They want someone who will speak to their hearts, and this is what the Republicans have been doing.

As much as I loathe their politics, the Republican Party cares deeply and passionately about their issues. Obama is the first Democrat since John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson who is not afraid to be passionate about being liberal. He is not afraid to speak to people's hearts about the issues that matter to him. Clinton tries but her language is hackneyed and, somehow, I, for one, just don't find her believable. I can't shake the feeling that she says what she thinks people want to hear.

Of course there were people who didn't like a woman running for president just as there were people like seeing a black man run for president. This is America! Did anyone expect that misogynists and racists would stop being misogynists ad racists?

But misogyny isn't the reason your campaign failed, Hillary. The sad truth is that the more many of us listened to you say whatever you thought you needed to say to get votes, the more we listened to you pander to the so-called white working class, the more we disliked you.

Now your hypocrisy has reached heights rivaling Mt. Everest. You are threatening to take your insane ambition to the convention to force a fight over the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegates. We know that if Obama had campaigned in Florida and "won," if Obama had kept his name on the Michigan ballot and "won" while you had removed yours, you would be screaming that to award those delegates to him would be unfair and unjust to you who observed the rules. Awarding him those delegates would be just more "proof" of how much men wanted to keep a woman from being the nominee.

Hillary Clinton is showing herself to be as crass a politician as there is in America today. And I thought feminists were supposed to bring a new sensibility and different values into the political arena.

Ironically, the candidate exemplifying the more so-called feminine values is not a woman. That probably begrumples Hillary most of all.

© 2008 by Julius Lester


TODAY'S WORD

Begrumpled: Displeased