90th Anniversary? But We Look So Young!

Yesterday was Women’s Equality Day, and the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage. Of course, lots of women are still suffering, but that’s not important right now…


So to celebrate this momentous occasion, the venerable Ellen Goodman emerged, if only briefly, from her retirement, to bestow the “Equal Rites Awards—Acknowledging those who have done the most to set back women’s rights over the last year.” I believe that if she sees her shadow, we will have six more weeks of absurdity.

Goodman points out that it took 90 years to get three women on the Supreme Court, but if you still count Diana Ross, that’s four. What? What’d I say?

Anyhoo, space prohibits me from telling you about all her awardees, (yeah, space and copyright laws), but here are a few of my favorites:

The International Ayatollah Award went to a senior Iranian cleric who stated that women who “do not dress modestly” cause earthquakes. Really. And oil rig explosions cause hurricanes. (Not really.)

Then she gave a Blind Justice Award to Rome’s all-male clerics who declared that ordaining women is as grave a crime in church law as pedophilia. Well, it seems to me, Ellen, that since they don’t seem to punish pedophilia much, this may have been less damning than you thought.

Mel Gibson (ah yes, he is in the news again!) got the Raging Hormonal Imbalance Award for his eight-minute audio-taped rant telling his ex-girlfriend that she needs “a bat to the head”. Gosh, like Charlie Sheen, should we just wait until they actually kill some woman? Oops, I didn’t mean to get started…

The Male-Practice Award went to Bob Marshall, a Virginia legislator who says that disabled children are God’s punishment for women who had an abortion. Really? God punishes CHILDREN for women’s abortion? That doesn’t sound like the loving God that holds us in the palm of His hand to me?

And my personal favorite, the Northern Irish, pro-family, 60-year old female politician who had an affair with a 19-year old. And unbelievably, her name is Mrs. Robinson. Iris Robinson, and like Dave Barry, I swear I am not making this up. She was given the Dubious Equality Award for the woman who has done the most to emulate the worst.

So it was nice to have Ellen Goodman back on the Op-Ed page, if only for a day. I hope she saw her shadow. We could use more laughs.

Was It a Coincidence?

People say all the time that there’s no such thing as a coincidence. Like when things happen that seem to be linked, and we want to say, “What a coincidence!” their take on it is that some giant hand of fate manipulated events to occur in that way. “That was no accident—everything happens for a reason,” they suggest. Or insist.


So I was actually writing something Friday about the new year, and the Roman god Janus, for whom January is named. Janus had two faces, and he was able to look forward and backward at the same time. The Romans held him to be the god of beginnings and endings.

I love this not only because I was really smitten with Greek and Roman mythology in college, and took an elective course on the stuff, but also because, if you look at the banner on this blog, you’ll see I’m photographing myself in the rearview (yeah, I know: sideview) mirror of my car. Even my cute little blog business cards say (below Funny Is the New Young) “Moving Forward and Looking Back.” A little bit of Janus in me, I supposed.

I started this blog thinking that it marked a bit of a turning point for me between my former self (job- and family-focused), and my newer self with no job, and family grown and gone. I could self-define and self-direct and make new choices. No clueless pointy-haired boss to kiss up to (a la Dilbert), no commuting hassles, no dry cleaning debt, no alarm clock! Yowza!

I know, I know, what’s this got to do with the whole coincidence thing I started out on? I’m getting there.

Yes. Friday. I opened my newspaper (yay, there’s still a daily paper in St. Louis, and it still carries Ellen Goodman’s column) and found to my great dismay that the venerable (no, that is NOT a synonym for old) columnist from the Boston Globe is retiring. So I guess the Post-Dispatch doesn’t exactly carry her column any more, because she just extinguished it.

Sure, she’s entitled. I can’t exactly do it myself and then get all indignant when anyone else wants to end the career. Of course she hints that she’s not completely going away, and that she’ll still be writing, just not on the same schedule or in the same format. Good for her. I’ll look forward to reading her new stuff as time goes on. She’s been a beacon for readers for decades, and a role model for writers.

But here’s (I know—FINALLY!) the coincidence: Her opening paragraph is about Janus. She mentions beginnings and endings. She points out that he looked backward and forward at the same time. (Insert theme from The Twilight Zone, or that five-note riff from Close Encounters of the Third Kind here.) It totally freaked me out.

Goodman starts out with the observation that there is something fitting about writing her last column on the first day of a new year. As usual, she does a splendid job of sharing her journey with us. She notes that there’s a trick to moving on without moving out. Good for her. I’ll miss her columns, as I do those of the late, great Molly Ivins.

But Janus and I will be watching…

Good Manners, Part Two

I can tell by the comments you all (bless you all!) have left that I touched a nerve. Let’s talk a little about what used to be called common courtesy.

This week, courtesy was the topic du jour, jour after jour. I’ll touch on a couple of my favorites.
From Amy Dickinson, who writes a syndicated advice column (replacing the late Ann Landers at the Chicago Tribune when she died), there was a discussion of “What Happened to Civility” on Thursday afternoon’s “Talk of the Nation” on NPR.

After all the obvious things were reiterated about how awful the Big Three events were (to recap: Joe Wilson yelling, “You lie!” at the President, Serena Williams harassing and threatening an official at the U.S. Open, and Kanye West rudely usurping Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMA ceremony.) In my estimation, the best point Amy made was about apologies. She cited a letter from one of her readers asking about whether an apology was called for in a certain incident. Amy’s advice? If you ever wonder whether you need to apologize, the answer is yes. Well put.

On “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” (another NPR show) the whole panel had a field day, doing riffs on each and every one of the three rudesters and their shameful behavior. My favorite was Mo Rocca recommending that the three should end up in a current-day “Breakfast Club”, and I believe he had some ideas about them force-feeding tennis balls to each other.

But the finest moment belonged to Ellen Goodman, whose column in the Boston Globe (and nationally-syndicated as well) was titled “Clinging to Civility” this week. She reminded us that as a candidate, President Obama was urged to get tough with Hillary Clinton. “He didn’t and he won.” Then he was advised to ‘duke it out’ with John McCain. “He didn’t and he won.” She notes that in the very speech that was so rudely interrupted, the President said, “I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility.” And he models that behavior. You gotta love that.

Okay, but back to our own everyday lives…

We interact with others all the time. Sometimes in person, sometimes on the phone, and more and more, we interact online. Each encounter has the potential to be positive and uplifting, to be basically a neutral outcome, or to be a bummer. For me, much of that feeling is determined not by the actual end result, but by the way it occurred. As my mother would have said, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” So if the cashier doesn’t say ‘thank you’ when I leave the supermarket, I still paid the same money and left with the same groceries, but it feels different from the times when they say ‘thank you.’

So you can let the post office door slam behind you, although I’m close behind with my arms full of packages to mail, or you can glance over your shoulder and hold the door for me. You can keep driving past my subdivision, bumper-to-bumper, and leave me waiting with my turn signal on, or you can stop and wave me out into the traffic one car ahead of you. You can let me hold the door for you, and not even mumble a thank you, or you can smile and hold the door next time for someone else. There’s that opportunity to ‘pay it forward’, as they say, and maybe we will all go back to the good old random acts of kindness.

I have a few personal favorites. One, when I’m walking into or out of the library, if I see a car pull up to the curb, I’ll walk up to the driver’s window and offer to drop off their books for them. They don’t have to get out of the car, and I feel like I did a good deed. Two, I like to let someone pull into traffic. Not twelve cars, but I can let one or two in… How much later am I going to get where I’m going? Of course, when the other driver doesn’t so much as wave a little thanks, I kind of grimace, but hey—I tried. Three, when someone even older than I am (and there are a few of them left who still go out in public) I try to make sure I get the door for them. I’m not looking for applause; chances are you do all these things, too. Most of us are courteous and thoughtful people who look for ways to be kind and pleasant. Maybe that’s why we notice when others don’t.