Woodstock at 40

Unlike many of my friends (one of whom still has the tickets he bought and never had to use), I did not go to the Woodstock Music Festival, August 15-17, 1969. That was the summer I was 17 and I spent it in England, primarily London. I watched the televised moon landing in a local pub, where, as Neil Armstrong set down his famous foot for man and mankind, the bartender said to me, “Well, you Yanks have made it!” and gave me a free beer. I left England before the fairly-as-famous Isle of Wight festival (that Bob Dylan did participate in, unlike Woodstock), thereby missing the two key pop-culture events of my generation. But even if I’d been here (or there), I wouldn’t have attended, because I was a hippie in spirit only, not in the physical sleep-on-the-ground, frolic-in-the-rain-&-mud kind of way. I loved the creed and music of the 60s, but I saw no reason to give up my bed and air conditioner in their name.

I did, however, get to visit The Beatles’ Apple Records and meet Derek Taylor, their longtime publicist, to whom I’d been given entrée by a popular young folksinger who was a close friend at the time. The Beatles were in the process of breaking up like a bad marriage and the Apple offices looked like they were under siege, with lots of boxes being packed and young assistants literally running around in a dizzy panic. The tall, slim Derek sat serenely cross-legged in his tall, round-backed Panama chair and said calmly, “This is what the end looks like.” I never got to meet a Beatle, but Derek gave me a 45 of Give Peace a Chance autographed by John and Yoko, the first joint I’d smoked in weeks, and a pass to a recording session at Abbey Road Studios (it was either Johnny Mathis or a symphony, I don’t remember which).

When I think of Woodstock now – the festival, not the town – I think of it as the last gasp of 60s sensibility, which struggled to be seen and heard through the Disco 70s and truly died with John Lennon in 1980. The 60s were the original days of “yes we can,” audacious hope, and change we not only believed in, but genuinely made. We kinda changed the world, but not in the ongoing way we thought we would. My generation – now aging, preoccupied with its waning health and wealth and doting on its grandchildren – has come to be reviled for our youthful excess and envied for the fact that we got to have loose, crazy sex in the last era before AIDS. We had faith and we had fun and we took action, and we were cool and looked cool before what we were got mainstreamed and diluted.

Remembering Woodstock – the era, not the festival – makes me sad now, because it turns out we were more wrong than right. Love is not all we need, nobody is willing to give peace a chance, one’s body can’t handle LSD after the age of 40 (and who in their right mind wants to trip now?), and we can’t stop the current wars which, like the one we fought against, are bleeding us dry for no good reason. A lot of us died young and most of the rest of us are deeply, deeply tired.

From 1981-2001, my family owned a rustic little condo in West Hurley, New York, which is just a few miles from Woodstock – the town, not the phenomenon. In order to survive economically, Woodstock evolved from a quiet artists’ community into a tourist monument to an event that took its name, but was held 50 miles and light years away. I loved the town of Woodstock and I miss it. I’m sure things are hoppin’ up there this weekend – to their relief and dismay. It’s not easy being the keeper of a flame you never lit. For the rest of us, it’s business as usual – or whatever it’s become since the Crash of 2008. For me, today is a wistful memory of my youth, the tenth anniversary of my father’s death, and time to clean up the kitchen. Time marches on.

Anniversary Greetings From the Tower

This blog is two years old today. If it were a person, it would just be learning to walk and talk. I know that feeling. I’ve been writing since I learned how to “letter,” in fact I clearly remember learning how to print and then how to write in script and finally how to type, not in the proper “asdf–jkl;” way, but in my own haphazard combination of touch-typing and looking down at the keyboard, which is what I still do, at about 60 wpm – as fast as a sentence needs to go. I used to walk better than I do now, but I’m working on it. And I talk just fine; some would say too much, too directly, but I ignore them. I have learned to listen – and also how to tune out when necessary.

I began this blog because I wanted to express my opinions about…everything; to write for myself, which in my 35+ year professional writing career I had done too little of; and to speak out on behalf of Smokers’ Rights and Fat Acceptance.

I still believe in Smokers’ Rights, but I’ve thrown in the towel on that one. Smokers have no rights and never will again. Not in the foreseeable future, anyway. I also still believe in the FA movement, but I haven’t made any friends within it, because I have this silly idea that being fat is often connected to what and how much one eats. Those aren’t the only reasons, but they play a big role; just ask anyone who starves on a regular basis in order to not be fat. But my sister and fellow FA-ers choose to focus on the genetic and other legitimate physiological factors that cause/maintain obesity, because they think that “it’s not our fault we’re fat” is the only pathway to Fat Acceptance.

I disagree. I consider “size-ism” to be a legitimate social- and civil-rights issue, regardless of how and why fat people are fat. Human beings come in all shapes and sizes and this should just be accepted as fact, but it isn’t. Many people who are not fat regularly discriminate against people who are, and they’re often downright hateful about it. But I no longer believe there is a pathway to Fat Acceptance. Those of us who are fat are going to have to fight this battle forever while knowing we can’t win. It’s about having self-respect and self-esteem in the face of rejection/recrimination and standing up for oneself instead of apologizing for who and what one is. I think that pretty much defines life for people of all sizes. And while I still see the need for/value in pointing out discrimination and ugly attitudes toward fat people, I no longer believe it’s going to result in Acceptance. People who are not fat will always think that people who are fat and are not doing everything possible to change, are crazy. Like I said, I’ve learned to tune out when necessary.

So now, as MizB VIEWS FROM THE TOWER enters its third year, I’m more interested in and concerned about the broader social and political issues – local, national and global – that have a genuine chance in hell of resulting in change for the better.

These issues include: racism, what and why and how it’s still a very real part of the American psyche and needs to be examined and changed; feminism, what it is and what it means in the 21st century and how modern feminism should be an integral part of larger social struggles (and vice versa); poverty and homelessness, which are increasing in fact but decreasing in public awareness and concern; American politics and economics, both of which are in trouble, outmoded, and fail to serve the common good; climate change and the environment, because the upheaval in nature has been stupidly politicized and insufficiently addressed; immigration and our collective failure to recognize the karmic legitimacy of the changes in our population; religion, its dangers and its blessings, and the inability of those who rightly reject those dangers to recognize the existence and value of a more peaceful, loving, less structured and essentially generic kind of spirituality; the gifts and thefts of technology, which are creating a more interconnected world but, ironically, are also resulting in less real communication; and contemporary culture, its banality, ignorance, aliteracy, social amnesia, tawdry values, and descent into barbarism.

If there’s time, I may also add beauty and decorating tips.

Risky Business

Do you know what “risk avoidance” is? According to BusinessDictionary.com, it is a “technique of risk management that involves (1) taking steps to remove a hazard, (2) engage in alternative activity, or (3) otherwise end a specific exposure.” English translation: it means what business does to cover its own ass, even if that entails screwing their clients, their employees, their customers, and/or the public at large. When companies lay off hundreds, if not thousands, of employees in order to decrease costs and increase profits, that’s risk avoidance. When health insurance companies reject legitimate claims, discontinue the coverage of individuals or companies who file too many claims, or deny coverage to persons with pre-existing conditions, that’s risk avoidance.

And when stores and banks cancel your credit card, decrease your credit line, or increase your interest rate – even if there is no balance due, or you’ve been making your payments on time – that, too, is risk avoidance, and it’s going on right now at an alarming (and what should be an illegal) rate. Banks, in particular, are taking these measures now to “protect” themselves before the new federal banking regulations take effect next year – and the health insurance companies are following suit, post haste.

I found this out first hand last week when my elderly living room air conditioner breathed its last cool breath and died. I’ve had a Sears account since 1981 that had a $7,000 credit line and a zero-balance-due. I hadn’t used the card in nearly two years and in the past 10-15 years had hardly used it at all. But I held on to it, and kept it clean, because I own my apartment and am therefore responsible for the maintenance and replacement of all major appliances. I have no cash reserves or other credit resources – but I felt “protected” in the event of a household emergency, because I had my Sears card.

So, imagine my surprise when I got on the phone to Sears to place an order for a new air conditioner, only to discover that the order would not go through because my account had been closed in June due to “lack of use” – and, that Sears no longer owned and managed my account; that privilege had been turned over to Citibank, minions of which explained in no uncertain terms that once an account is closed, for whatever reason they see fit, there is no way to reactivate it and my only option is to reapply for a new account. I told them that I had not been informed that Citibank now owned my Sears account, or that my account was in danger of being closed unless I used it, or that it had in fact been closed when it was. They didn’t respond. I told them what I just detailed above, also explaining that I’m single, disabled, have no living relatives, live on a fixed income, and have a poor credit rating. I told them, “I know, and I’m sure your company knows, that if I reapply, I’ll be denied.” They didn’t respond. I did reapply. But it will be a month before I receive their inevitable rejection.

In the end, I sold some belongings I did not want to sell. Nothing fancy or particularly expensive – but put all together, it was enough to buy a new air conditioner (which I did not buy from Sears). I did what I had to do. What I’ll do if my stove or refrigerator go, both of which are 32 years old, I don’t know.

What I do know is that Citibank could care less and the reason they “can’t” reactivate a closed account is because they choose not to. Sears could also care less. As far as they’re concerned, it’s all about “what have you bought from us lately?” and if the answer is “little or nothing,” the fact that I started shopping at Sears in the 1970s, spent quite a bit of money with them, and paid off my account in a timely and proper manner throughout the 80s and 90s means nothing, because they no longer have personal business relationships with customers. Almost no one does. In America’s “mall culture,” relationships have been replaced with anonymity and discount bargains created by exploitive labor practices.

I also know that mine is an increasingly common, important story. Everyone I’ve spoken to about this has had their own story in reply. People I know whose affairs are in good standing have had credit card limits reduced, accounts canceled, home equity loans rescinded, interest rates raised to three, four and more times the previous rate, and in general, have been the consumer victims of companies (banks!) practicing “risk avoidance.” The irony, of course, is that they are not really risking much of anything, since their losses are largely tax deductible. But they’re unwilling to take manageable risk and reasonable loss or even endure the possibility of it. To them, all loss is unacceptable; profit is the only game they’re willing to play.

We have allowed ourselves to become a nation of faceless consumers instead of recognized citizens, loners instead of members of a community – big or small, real or symbolic. People made fun of Hillary Clinton when she cited the African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child.” But it does take a village, not only to raise children but to sustain us all. Only we don’t have villages anymore. We have cities and gated housing “sub-divisions” and wild, rural country – all of it territory where it’s every man for himself (as we used to say…). A friend of mine from Nigeria tells me there’s an expression in his country that translates as: “the people in your life are your garments.” But we don’t cover each other here.

This all feels especially pertinent right now, because while I support President Obama’s well-meaning determination to reform health care and rein in the banks, I don’t believe that banks, insurance companies, health care providers, major corporations, or any profit-based enterprise will allow themselves to be controlled. They’ll find loopholes in any law or just flaunt whatever law interferes with their prime directive: make money by any means possible, any means necessary, at the cost of anyone or anything that isn’t them.

So, I’m writing this to give you a heads up. If your credit rating is good, don’t assume that this will protect you, or that it will stay good, despite your best efforts. If you have access to ample credit, don’t assume that will continue to be the case. Don’t let your cards lay dormant and don’t pay them off in full on a regular basis; that doesn’t make you a good profit center – it makes you a risk. And we are, all of us, living without garments in a cold climate of risk avoidance that is riddled with what criminal law defines as “depraved indifference.” Personally, I’m planning on saving cash in a coffee can and flying as low beneath the corporate/financial radar as I can. As long as the powers that be are indifferent to my well being, I’d prefer that they not know I’m here.

Filling the Emptiness of August

August begins today and it seems that everyone and everything that’s able to, is going on hiatus. Even if they can’t go anywhere, people are finally using their vacation days. Shrinks all over Manhattan are packing late into the night. And Congress is heading out of Washington next week faster than you can say “campaign fund raising.” Even President Obama will soon join his Mrs. and the girls, who are currently staying at Caroline Kennedy’s in Martha’s Vineyard (or so I hear).

But for many of us, life will go on as usual – and for all of us, health care reform is still hanging in the balance. Earlier this evening, the news reported that a few improvements were made to the battered 1,000-page bill before it was kicked out of committee today. That’s good to hear, but I’m relieved that this process will be forced to slow down for a month, because nobody, including the President, appears to have read this tome in its entirety – and who can blame them? With the bill in its current verbose form, our elected leaders are being asked to vote on poorly and confusingly-written fine print, rather than on an inspiring proposal of sweeping concepts, clear intentions, specific policy parameters, and freedom from extraneous, unrelated crap.

The writer/editor in me is confident that this could (and should) be about 100 pages prefaced by a well-worded, ten-page executive summary, a document that any Rep. or Sen. could read at poolside anywhere in the world. Instead, they’re going back home (or wherever) with only whichever party line they’re tied to wrapped around their heads. And not for nothing: I have so had it up to here with the fractured, bickering Democrats; will they please stop trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

I’m hoping (forgive me for my naivety) that all of them (on both teams) will fill at least some of the emptiness of August with generous, big-picture contemplation of what health care reform really means: ensuring that all 300+ million Americans have ready access to quality and need-specific medical treatment, care that they can either afford or will receive free of charge.

Among the things I’d like them to consider is that the United States is the only country in the world where health care is a profit-making enterprise – a great big fat profit-making enterprise for health insurance and pharmaceutical companies; medical equipment manufacturers and retailers; hospitals, clinics, doctors, and home health care agencies – a major money-maker for everybody except patients and employers.

The Republicans/Conservatives and their fellow travelers have very successfully convinced a lot of Americans that any government health plan would be an administrative disaster and a shortcut to socialism, thanks to their many-multi-million dollar smear campaign, aided (it shames me to say) by their p.r. and advertising minions – the same message that warns we’ll be forced to give up the doctors we have and like, the coverage we have and are satisfied with, and that medical decisions will be made by government bureaucrats instead of patients and their doctors.

If this weren’t such a serious issue, their propoganda would crack me up, but it’s very serious and their campaign is working. It’s working because nobody is even suggesting that health care should not be a profit-driven business. Americans are generally ignorant about the health care programs in other countries and they've simply bought into lies about their rules, options, procedures and effectiveness. And of course, my favorite lie: that the patient/doctor relationship will be sullied – when in fact, for most people, there are no meaningful patient/doctor relationships, and care decisions are made by insurance companies, not doctors or patients. Indeed, denying legitimate, necessary care is often standard operating procedure, even to the point of causing the death of patients, because keeping people healthy costs insurance companies too much, which angers their stockholders.

The anti-reform advocates never point out that Medicare, for all its high cost and inefficiency, is still run substantially more effectively and much more cheaply than private companies. Ditto for the Veterans Administration’s medical services, which are eons away from any sort of medical utopia – but both offer more bang for the buck than the profit makers.

I also fervently hope that all Americans, whether they’re luxuriating in the emptiness of August, or are so busy, worried, tired, and heat-frazzled that they feel they just can’t cope with this awesome, cumbersome problem, will find the time and strength to do a little research as well as contact their Reps. and Sens. and tell them what you need, what you want, and what you expect of them if they expect your vote in 2010 (or any other time).

You may also wish to contact President Obama and let him know what you think and how you feel. As I’ve said before on this blog, I think he’s overly concerned with trying to garner bipartisan support, too willing to compromise on the health care plan (in the quest for that support) and too eager to get something passed because he believes something is better than nothing. I disagree. I say a new but weak/confusing plan is worse than the status quo. The health care industrial complex is out to get Obama and he should use the power he has to fight back hard. The man who says Lincoln is his hero should know that you can’t please all of the people all of the time – so don’t even try; just do the right, progressive, all-encompassing, full-throated thing: craft and get the Democrat-dominated Congress and Senate to pass nationalized, non-profit health care.

For your information and convenience, click on and read one or more of the following from PBS programs: program transcripts and special online articles about health care from Bill Moyers Journal, particularly the interview with Aetna’s former VP of Communications, Wendell Potter. A Frontline report on health insurance companies dropping customers who dare to file claims. Health Care Crisis, an online site and TV program of facts and resources. A report on health care from the news program Now. And program information plus online extras from these programs, too: Remaking American Medicine, Second Opinion, and Who Cares: Chronic Illness in America.

I couldn’t copy the link to the full text of the bill (my browser’s too old…), but you can find it at opencongress.org; just search for Health Care Bill HR3200. Also, here’s the site for a fairly cogent short summary of same: Real Clear Politics.

If you’re sick of bad health care in America, make use of August by making lots of noise!

The Fragility of Hope

I’ve been very sad this weekend, because of a synchronistic series of events that clarified my growing sense of dismay about Barack Obama’s approach to some major issues, and the promise of a unique, new, young president that is beginning to feel broken.

Friday afternoon, I gave a little editorial counsel to a friend in p.r. who’s working with a conservationist client, which naturally brought the many environmental problems that besiege us to the forefront of my mind. Then Friday night, I watched Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. His guests included two “radical” environmen-talists: Mary Sweeters, organizing manager of the controversial Greenpeace USA and Erich Pica, director of domestic programs at Friends of the Earth, an influential organization with 77 chapters worldwide.

Greenpeace USA recently staged a dramatic act of civil disobedience by scaling Mt. Rushmore and unfurling a massive banner from its famous presidential heads that said "America honors leaders, not politicians. Stop global warming." When asked to explain their purpose for the demonstration, Sweeters said, “Here you have four great presidents who really stepped up when they were faced with some of the biggest challenges that our nation has seen. And we felt like we wanted to send President Obama the same message. That we want him to step up in a similar manner and really lead the country the way that it needs to be led.”

Erich Pica seconded the emotion by explaining that the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, which recently squeaked through Congress and will soon be further eviscerated in the Senate, is toothless and totally devoid of American global leadership, because it sorely lags behind the rest of the industrial world. He said: “The bill doesn't reduce global warming emissions in the United States fast enough…[and] the emission reduction targets are just inadequate… It strips away the EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions…which is a key tool that environmentalists have been using to shut down coal plants. …It gives away a tremendous amount of money. Hundreds of billions of dollars to the polluting industries that have, essentially, caused the problem of global warming. The Duke Energies, Shells, Conocos of the world. Gives a lot of free giveaways in terms of permits…and…this is kind of overwhelming the entire system: it relies on Wall Street to help solve the problem of global warming…by allowing them to manage the trading system that's created underneath this bill.”

I’ve certainly known that there was grumbling in many quarters about the inadequacy of the bill, but I didn’t know any of the specifics until I saw this program, and I didn’t realize the extent to which the president has been actively advocating for [debilitating] compromise. Indeed, in his prelude to the interview, Moyers quoted a recent piece in The Economist that said of Obama, "Rather than shaping public opinion, he is running scared of it. And so, even more, is Congress."

On Saturday, I got a panicky e-mail from Planned Parenthood explaining that the Health Care Reform Bill currently being crafted in Congress is being lobbied against by literally dozens of anti-choice groups who want to see shocking restrictions on women’s health care (not just decreased access to abortion, but a lessening of basic, routine, women’s health care, including contraception) built into the program; in other words, giving more women even less than they’re getting now. I was naturally incensed. At Planned Parenthood's request, I sent letters to my congressman and senators. And I always use my legal Reverend title on such letters and petitions, to give the appearance that this is the sound of the status quo clapping...

Then Saturday night, I saw Anderson Cooper’s pretty-good CNN report on the president’s recent trip to Africa, during which he and his family visited Cape Ghost Castle in Ghana: a fortress, a port, an underground city of indescribable slave dungeons where, over several hundred years, literally millions of Africans were brought and gruesomely imprisoned and tortured before being stacked and stored like cargo on slave ships that took them to the Caribbean and The New World.

This is not part of the president’s personal history, but it is for the First Lady, a direct descendant of slaves and slave owners. The president spoke poignantly about the eerie horror that still lingers like a mist over the place, and what a powerful impact the visit had on him, his wife and their daughters – whom he told to try and imagine what it must have been like for the millions of free humans who were captured, torn away from everything they knew, were treated like beasts and transported like inanimate objects to a life of brutal slavery in a far away land. He also told them to imagine what it was like to be in the slave business or a slave owner, to have complete and ruthless power over the lives of others -- not to sympathize with them, but to better understand the human capacity for inhuman behavior.

Barack Obama is a man who understands pain and injustice and suffering and bondage. He’s a man with affection and respect for the earth. And, I still believe he’s a very smart politician who wants to be an effective and meaningful president, to do good, to do right. I believe he wants this just as much as he wants to make history with a magnificent legacy. You can’t be a shrinking violet and become president. You have to crave power and want to use it.

Which is why I, like a growing number of other Americans, am feeling disappointed, confused, even betrayed. In his effort to transform Washington into a place where law and policy are made in a spirit of unity and cooperation, with everyone having a place at the table where they can sit with dignity and feel they’re being heard, he’s losing sight of something important: he won! He has the power to make the kinds of changes he believes in and that he made us believe in.

But he may blow it, because he’s trying to show that he can play the game better and in a new way. How he achieves what he wants to achieve seems to be as important to him as the goal itself. I think that was a marvelous idea. I don’t think it’s going to work. I think the time has come for him to do the right things by (you should excuse the expression…) any means necessary. Force it down the opposition’s throats. That’s the power of power!

I got addicted to the NBC-TV series The West Wing (pictured above) when it went into syndication on Bravo a few years back. I watched it avidly, repeatedly. It was like comfort food. In the midst of the George W. Bush administration, the idea of an educated, eloquent, caring president surrounded by a staff of bright idealists was enchanting. Interestingly, after Obama was elected, when I watched The West Wing, the dream seemed to pale against the reality.

The series’ President Bartlett was also a liberal who wanted to play the political game smartly – and as a result, as the series progressed, he didn’t accomplish most of what he wanted. In a pivotal episode, “Let Bartlett Be Bartlett,” the president is chastised by his chief of staff for playing it safe, and for being more concerned with winning a second term than getting the job done. By the end of the episode, the president confesses to being weary of a sense of pointlessness and failure, and vows to do what’s needed, even if it means he doesn’t get re-elected (which, by the way, he does, of course).

I say it’s time to Let Obama Be Obama. Be the firebrand, the shaman, the Minister of Hope you were during the campaign. Don’t sell your constituency of believers down the river in an effort to win the support of those who will never be on your side. We need new climate policy. We need new health care policy. But they have to be good, meaty, make-real-change policies. We need to put people ahead of banks and corporations, to put Main Street ahead of Wall Street.

Let Obama Be Obama. Let the revolution begin.