Culture

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Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, and Vicki Barr

Nancy Drew figured in the recent hearings for Sonia Sotomayor to become a judge.  It seems that Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ruth Ginsberg, and Sonia Sotomayor all read the series when they were growing up.  I have to say that I hated the Nancy Drew books.  Oh, I’ve read one or two when they were there and there was nothing else to read, but I much preferred Cherry Ames (the nurse who solved mysteries) or Vicki Barr (the flight attendant who did the same).

In her article in the New York Times, Jan Hoffman recounts the many successful women who read, enjoyed and consider Nancy Drew a role model.

Touchstone, pole star, reflecting pool. Often what women remember about the books speaks to who they were — shy girls seeking inspiration; smart girls seeking affirmation. The series even gave voice to girls who rebelled against the Girl Sleuth’s pearl-necklace perfection.

All told, the women’s recollections capture the impact of a formulaic, ghostwritten series approaching its 80th year.

…

Since its debut in 1930, the series has thrived in a germ-free bubble, scarcely brushed by time and social upheaval. Nancy Drew, 16 or 18, depending on the edition, is a daddy’s girl, living with her father, Carson, a lawyer — her mother conveniently died when she was 3 — and housekeeper, Hannah Gruen, in a comfortable home in River Heights where the words “Amber Alert” have never been heard.

With curiosity and confidence, she attacks mysteries and solves them, helped by her friends Bess, who is always “pleasingly plump,” and George, a slim tomboy. There’s a harmless boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, about whom the actress Ellen Barkin once snickered, “He was like her driver to me.”

But others feel the way I do about Nancy

“Nancy is too perfect,” said Laura Lippman, 50, who writes a popular series about Tess Monaghan, a detective with questionable taste in boyfriends and an aversion to rules. Even Nancy’s father “is helpless in front of her perfection. She requires Bess and George to constantly talk about her perfection. Bess is fat and George is unfeminine and they are not as fabulous as Nancy.”

In the very early days of the internet and email, I participated in a discussion group with a number of women.  The topic of Nancy Drew came up and I famously wrote that I didn’t like her because you never felt she ever used the bathroom.  This is the perfection Lippman is speaking about.

Vicki Barr and Cherry Ames were also mid-westerners with supportive families but they left those families to pursue their professions and dreams.  They had interesting friends and were not the center of their own universe although they were the center of their cicles. 

Cherry Ames became a nurse to serve during World War II.  The first six books, Student Nurse, Senior Nurse, Army Nurse, Chief Nurse, Flight Nurse, and Veterans’ Nurse specifically discuss the war, the war effort, and her role.  Her brother went to fight in the war.  I liked her because she actually did stuff. Instead of Ned Nickerson, Cherry had doctors and other professional men hanging around.  But Cherry also taught us that one has to study to achieve our goals.  The first two books are set during her nurse training days.

But my favorite is Vicki Barr.  The books are set just after the end of World War II when passenger flights were becoming more popular and less of a novelty.

She reads this ad and talks her way into the class as she in not quite old enough.  In fact, she has to get a letter from her parents giving permission.

“If you are twenty-one to twenty-eight, and single – if you are a registered nurse, or if you have at least two years of college or of business experience in dealing with people – then here’s the most appealing job in the world!  Apply tomorrow!”

 

Vicki Barr, like Cherry Ames. had a profession for which she had to be trained.  She lived in an apartment in New York City with other stewardesses as they were then called.  The first book is about their training which was quite extensive and talked about responsibility for passenger safety.  The women who were Vicki’s frends and roommates were diverse, if not racially than in background and even age.  She flew a lot of different routes and involved herself in the lives of her passengers which is how she came to solve mysteries.  Like Cherry, Vicki had cool boyfriends like the pilot, Dean, and newspaper man, Pete.  The boyfriends were always enlisted to help her solve the case, but not to rescue her.

I still read mysteries and I still prefer women sluths, but in response to Jan Hoffman’s question,  “And who was your Nancy Drew?”  I have to say Vicki Barr.  Besides, the first one was published the year I was born.

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Obama and the All-Stars

The President is a White Sox fan to which I say, “wrong color sox, Mr. President.”  But leaving partisanship aside, it appears that he was the first President to be at an All-Star game since 1978 – when I think the President was Jimmy Carter.

Obama Throws First Pitch

We already knew that basketball and not baseball was Obama’s game so we shouldn’t be surprised when

Obama, who warmed up with Pujols in the batting cage, threw a pitch that was a lot slower than one of Tim Wakefield’s knuckleballs.

Jack Curry  goes on in the New York Times Bats blog

Before Obama tossed the first pitch, he stopped to shake hands with Stan Musial, a Hall of Famer for the Cardinals, who was sitting in a red golf cart. After Obama’s pitch, he shook hands with Bob Gibson, Ozzie Smith, Bruce Sutter, Red Schoendienst and Lou Brock, the other living Cardinals who are in the Hall. Brock saluted Obama, who saluted back.

…

When Obama visited the National League clubhouse before the game, Shane Victorino of the Philadelphia Phillies, a fellow Hawaiian, gave the president some macadamia nuts. The players had been advised not to give Obama anything, but Victorino did anyway, and his teammates howled.

…

Witnesses said Obama glided from player to player before the game, shaking hands and exchanging small talk. Obama spent the most time with Pujols. He also teased Pujols, who plays here, and Ryan Howard, who is from here, about losing the Home Run Derby to Prince Fielder on their home turf.

The last time Obama threw out the first pitch was before Game 2 of the 2005 American League Championship Series, so he was pitching on 1,371 days’ rest. Those White Sox won eight consecutive postseason games and a World Series title. After Obama noted how he brought his favorite team some luck, he added, “Any of these teams need a lefty

Interestingly, Obama also visited the umpires before the game and signed things for them and for a charity auction. Alan Schwartz  wrote in Bats

So 40 players and staff on each All-Star team got 15-minute clubhouse drop-ins from the president? Big deal. The six umpires got 10 minutes all to themselves.

“For the leader of the free world to take the time to talk to us lowly umpires was just incredible,” the left-field ump Tim Timmons said. “I barely remember it, I was just in awe.”

Don’t think that has happened before.

And finally there is this.  Alan Schwartz asked some players –  no Red or White Sox – what they would ask the President.

— Miguel Tejada, Astros: “How does it feel to have all that power?
— Prince Fielder, Brewers: “When do you get to just watch TV? When can you just sit and not talk to nobody?”
— Trevor Hoffman, Brewers: “Did you think that things would slow down once you got into the White House?”
— Zach Duke, Pirates: “What’s the highest bowling score you’ve gotten down there?”
— David Wright, Mets: “Something about A.C.C. basketball. I know he hooped it up with the Tar Heels.”
— Adrian Gonzalez, Padres: “Can you get us a college football playoff?
— Brian McCann, Braves: “When’s the economy going to turn around?”
— Carlos Pena, Rays: “Are you a see-it-to-believe-it person or a believe-it-to-see-it person?”
— Mark Teixeira, Yankees: “Who was your favorite athlete growing up, when you were just a kid enjoying sports?”
— Curtis Granderson, Tigers: “Are you tired? Do you get stressed?”
— Michael Young: “How can I help?”

And about the game:  The American League won.  Beckett and Wakefield did not pitch.  Youk and Bay each had a hit and Pap had a one-two-three inning but one of his high wire performances.

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Michael Jackson and Race

It has been more than a week since Michael Jackson was found near death in his rented home in Los Angeles and was pronounced dead at the emergency roon. I haven’t written about Jackson because I couldn’t quite figure out an approach. I have to admit that I liked the Jackson 5, admired “Thriller” and “We are the World”, but never really got into his post-Thriller music. And like everyone else, I spent years watching the horror show that was his life.  Now we are all picking though the comments and observations of everyone who can get air time.

I don’t know for sure if he was physically abused or not. His father says not, but some of his brothers say otherwise and I’m sure they are right. He was clearly psychologically abused.  Jackson used to say he had no childhood because he had to work all the time but I heard Barry Gordy describe pick-up basketball and baseball games with the Jackson kids, his kids and other children of the Motown family. I’m not sure we will ever know the truth. But we did watch him have extensive facial surgery so that his nose almost disappeared and we watched his skin turn paler and paler. (I don’t believe anyone who says he had a skin condition – no one else in his family seems to have a similar problem.) He tried to make himself Caucasian.  I couldn’t look at him anymore.

I heard someone say he sheltered his kids so they would not have a public upbringing. They point to Diana Ross as his role model – she raised kids and few people knew she had them. But he didn’t “shelter” them. He exploited them. The famous balcony scene with the baby, “Blanket”, being held over the edge; the kids – all white, by the way – being dressed up and paraded around. No one can tell me he was trying to shelter them. And now we learn that none of the three have any of Jackson’s DNA.

Patricia Williams  has put this all together for me.  In her column in the Nation, Williams writes

To me, the most arresting image of Michael Jackson was President George H.W. Bush citing him as a role model for young black men. It was 1990 and Jackson was at the height of his fame. “Man in the Mirror” had been released two years earlier. Jackson had not yet gone into full white-face disguise, but the handsome little brown boy of his first album had long since entered the bizarro phase of rhinestone gloves. I wondered then what on earth about Jackson could ever be a role model for anyone. Musical savant though he was, Jackson was, almost from the beginning, a tragic figure–so obviously trapped in that mirror, forever reflecting what others wanted him to be.

In the wake of his death, many have hailed his “crossover appeal.” There is no doubt that his musical acumen led to the integration of MTV; but that “appeal” had a more sinister undertone. If Elvis was “the White Negro,” so Michael fashioned himself into “the Negro Caucasian.” He literally erased himself before our eyes, his nose slowly disappearing, his skin fading to ghostly pallor, his voice growing higher and whispier, his body evaporating to a dry husk of barely a hundred pounds at the time of his death. It was hard not to be fascinated by him as he molted through all possible confusions of gender, race and sexuality. But his transgressivity was more than just theater; he mimed a narrative of constant paradox and infinite suffering.

I can understand the need to appear “lighter”, “whiter”.   I had one grandmother who despaired every summer when my sister and I turned browner and browner.  She believed, as many Japaneses did, that pale skin was a sign of upper classeness and dark skin of being a peasant.

Williams again

But in the longer term, the question of Michael Jackson’s children is challenging in other ways. Like his demands for plastic surgery or painkillers, their conception was accomplished as a made-to-order, cash-on-the-barrelhead commercial transaction. According to TMZ.com and other entertainment news sites, Jackson is not biologically related to any of his three children. Reportedly, the women who gestated them carried anonymously donated eggs fertilized by sperm from secret donors. Apparently the children were all crafted to be “white” enough to match Jackson’s artfully devised if pathetically alienated image of himself. Deborah Rowe, Jackson’s ex-wife and the surrogate who carried his oldest two children to term, describes being inseminated “like a horse”; she then received around $9 million to give up any claim to them. On the birth certificate of Jackson’s youngest child, the space for “mother” is left blank.

It’s hard to imagine that Jackson would have been found fit if he had attempted to adopt children. It is interesting to contemplate the eugenic ends to which in vitro fertilization and surrogate birth are being put these days, often as a kind of end run around the formal inspection of the adoption process. How much more common will the purchase of “the perfect child” become when bioengineering for specific physical traits becomes easier and less costly? It’s not a new problem: “colorism” (preference for lighter skin) is an old problem within the African-American community. Choosing trophy spouses is a cruder version of the same game. Nevertheless, it is troubling that the law of sales is about the only context for debating this rapidly developing area. Shouldn’t we think harder about the degree to which a free market for eugenics is enabled by easy-payment contract clauses conferring parenthood through the immaculate conception of biotechnology?

We can only hope that Michael Jackson leaves a legacy that is more than his music and that through his children we can begin a serious dialogue about genetic engineering.  This would be a very positive thing to leave behind.

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The Top Ten things I hate about riding the T

I ride the Boston subway system regularly.  It is relatively inexpensive, and is generally efficient.  But is can also drive one crazy.  So here is my Top Ten of things I hate about riding the MBTA:

10.  The new cloth seatcovers that make it difficult to tell if the seat is wet.

9.   People who take up more than one seat because, hey, their package  (or briefcase or backpack) needs a seat also.

8.   Men who take up more than one seat because they insist on spreading their legs.

7.  People who stand in front of empty seats.

6.  The conductor who has never figured out how to use the mike to announce stops so you can understand them which is closely related to

5.  The  T management which has taken the individuality out of the annoucements (I used to have one who sang the stops and another who annouced the historic sites at each stop.)

4.  People who can’t converse without being loud and using excessive profanity.

3.  People who play their music so loudly I can hear it from across the aisle and down the car – and they are using ear phones.

2.  People who have loud cell phone conversations – especially when they are personal.

1.  People who insist on standing in front of the door and seem to not understand that they need to move so you can get off. 

I’m not David Letterman, but I do my best.

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Hypocracy about marriage

It is 40 years now since the Stonewall Riots first brought gay and lesbian civil rights into the public spotlight.  People who are gay or lesbian still can marry only in New England (except for Rhode Island) and Iowa.  They can’t serve in the miliary if they are openly expressing their sexuality.  The issue of ordination of homosexuals is spliting the Methodist and Episcopal churches.  And it appears that those leaders who are most vocal about the scanctity of marriage being only between a man and a woman are the most likely to divorce and the most likely to be as Jon Stewart put it “…just another politician with a conservative mind and a liberal penis.”

This is the graphic from Charles M. Blow’s op ed in the New York Times on Mark Sanford.

Blow writes

Sanford voted to impeach Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky saga. According to The Post and Courier of Charleston, Sanford called Clinton’s behavior “reprehensible” and said, “I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally” to resign. “I come from the business side. … If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he’d be gone.” Remember that Mr. Sanford?

And this kind of hypocrisy isn’t confined to the politicians. It permeates the electorate. While conservatives fight to “defend” marriage from gays, they can’t keep theirs together. According to the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract, states that went Republican in November accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 2006.

Conservatives touted abstinence-only education, which was a flop, when real sex education was needed, most desperately in red states. According to 2006 data from the Guttmacher Institute, those red states accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest teenage birthrates.

A little bragging here:  Massachusetts was the first to legalize gay marriage and we are at the bottom of the list in divorce and teen pregancy. 

So we need less hypocacry from the conservative camp and a lot more reality.  I really don’t think anyone, except the politician’s family, cares about them having an affair as long as other laws (Spitzer and Vitter engaging prostitutes which is still illegal or Ensign and potential conflict of interest) are not also broken.  But please, practice what you preach or shut-up and don’t interfere with legal abortions or birth control or with the right of homosexuals to get married. 

As Maureen Dowd put it

Sanford can be truly humble only if he stops dictating to others, who also have desires and weaknesses, how to behave in their private lives.

The Republican Party will never revive itself until its sanctimonious pantheon — Sanford, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Palin, Ensign, Vitter and hypocrites yet to be exposed — stop being two-faced.

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Rafael Nadal as a role model for young athletes

I’ve just come back from visiting my mother a 90 year old tennis fanantic.  I picked up last week’s New York Times Magazine and there, on the cover, is Rafael Nadal, the curremt number one in men’s tennis and as well as the current heartthrob for women.  I look at Nadal and Federer as Borg and McEnroe:  Borg was the pin-up but they could both play tennis.

What really stood out for me in the Times article by Cynthia Gorney is the discussion of Rafael Nadal’s character. Like many professional tennis players,  he has little formal education but he is educated in ways that are perhaps more important.

He signs the balls and the bare arms and the T-shirts. He rumples small boys’ hair. He waits while people press up alongside him to pose for snapshots. The Nadal personality stories that circulate among tournament fans are all variations on a single theme: the young man is educado, as they say in Spanish, not so much educated in the formal sense (Nadal left conventional schooling after he turned pro at 15), but courteous, respectful, raised by a family with its priorities in order. Nadal may have the on-court demeanor of a hit man, as far as the party across the net is concerned, but you will never see this champion hurl his racket during a match.

Nadal is coached by his uncle, Toni Nadal,  and still lives in Majorca in a small town surrounded by relatives.

“It’s about respect,” Toni told me. “It’s really easy for these guys to start thinking the world revolves around them. I never could have tolerated it if Rafael had become a good player and a bad example of a human being. I was at a symposium recently and a trainer said to me, ‘Look, if you ask a young player’s father which he’d rather get at the end of this process — a courteous person or the French Open champion — you know what that father is going to say.’ And I said: ‘No, that’s all wrong. Because if that player is brought up courteous, brought up as a respectful person, he’s got a better chance to reach the championship of the French Open — because it’s going to be easier for him to accomplish the hard work.’ ”

This is what is missing in someone like Kobe Bryant  who appears to think that live evolves around him.  It is not missing – although I think it came close to be missing – in Paul Pierce.  People talk about the current Red Sox team and call people like Jason Bay, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Dustin Pedroia boring, but they appear to have the sense of self that is missing in so many “stars”. 

Rafael Nadal spent three year ranked second in the world with only Roger Federer ahead of him. 

Nadal was a phenomenal No. 2. His No. 2-ness was heroic and inspirational, and he was known to mention it quite cheerfully in press conferences: “I’m not the best, but I am a very good No. 2 in the world.”

The world needs more of this kind of attitude from both the talented kids – and from their parents.

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The Obama Date Nights

So what is the big flap about Michelle and Barack going out on dates?  My husband and I do it.  Maybe not flying to New York or to Paris but we try to go to concerts or for a walk at one of the local parks at least once a week.  It is fun and we try to make it stress free.  It gives one a new perspective on the relationship and on everything else going on in our lives and in the world.

The best take on the Obamas I’ve seen so far is Maureen Dowd’s Column today in the New York Times, “Can the One Have Fun?”

The fun police are patrolling Pennsylvania Avenue.

Given the serious times, the chatter goes, should Barack Obama be allowed to enjoy date night with Michelle in New York, sightseeing in Paris, golf outings in D.C., not to mention doing a promotion for Conan O’Brien and a video cameo for Stephen Colbert’s first comedy show from Iraq?

With two wars and G.M. in bankruptcy proceedings, shouldn’t the president be glued to the grindstone, emulating W.’s gravity when he sacrificed golf in 2003 as the Iraq insurgency spread?

So begins Dowd.

As a taxpayer, I am most happy to contribute to domestic and international date nights. As Arthur Schlesinger noted in his diaries, the White House tends to drive its occupants nuts. So some respite from the pressure is clearly a healthy thing. Not as much respite as W. took, bicycling and vacationing through all the disasters that President Obama is now stuck fixing — spending a total of 490 days in the tumbleweed isolation of Crawford and rarely deigning to sightsee as he traveled the world.

I agree.  Too much work is bad – and too much mindless brush cutting signaled inattention to the mess that was being created.  The Obamas are curious people and like to meet all kinds of people.  This can only be a good thing.

Interestingly, Dr. No, Dick Cheney, declined to tut-tut with other Republicans, saying “I don’t know why not,” when he was asked about the propriety of the president’s getaway to Broadway. A far more mature response than Senator Chuck Grassley’s nit-twit tweets grumbling about the president urging progress on health care “while u sightseeing in Paris.”

I loved the “Pretty Woman” romance of the New York tableau, the president, who had not lived an entitled life where he could afford such lavish gestures, throwing off his tie and whisking his wife, in a flirty black cocktail dress, to sip martinis in Manhattan, as Sasha hung over a White House balcony and called out goodbye.

When the president and first lady walked to their seats in the Belasco for “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” the theater-goers went nuts. And why not?

What a relief to have an urbane, cultivated, curious president who’s out and about, engaged in the world. Not dangerously detached, as W. was, or darkly stewing like Cheney. Not hanging with the Rat Pack like J.F.K. or getting bored and up to mischief like Bill Clinton.

What a relief change is.

Michelle and Barack Obama

The Obamas leaving for their date in New York.

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Some thoughts about Sonia Sotomayor and Race

Charles Blow has an interesting column in the New York Times about the Republican claims that Supreme Court nominee , Sonia Sotomayor would be a racist and rule consistently against anyone who isn’t a “minority”.   Those who call her racist generally only cite the New Haven firefighters case in which she joined the opinion of two other justices.  (No one ever talks about them, but given the composition of the judiciary, I presume both are probably white and at least one is male.)

Furthermore, the picture that those Republicans painted of Sotomayor doesn’t seem to be supported by her actions. The Scotusblog examined her court of appeals decisions in race-related cases and found that she rejected claims of discrimination 80 percent of the time.

Blow attached a nifty chart.  The chart shows that of the 96 cases involving discrimination she has heard on the Court of Appeals, in 78 she found no discrimination.  But, as Blow points out, the Republicans don’t want to apologize for calling her biased and racist.

Is such a stubborn stance good for the Republican Party?

No. Racial wounds are deeply felt and slowly healed. Having Hispanics feel racially slighted by the Republicans is suicidal. Hispanics are 15 percent of the nation’s population, and, unlike blacks, they’re not so monolithically democratic, at least not yet.

And here’s another take on the nonimation from Calvin Trillin.

The nominee’s Sotomayor,
Whom all good Latinos adore
But right-wingers tend to deplore.
They’d like to show Sonia the door.
Her record, they say, heretofore
Reveals that beliefs at her core
Would favor minorities more:
She’d hand them decisions galore,
Because of the racial rapport.

Whereas white male judges are, as everyone knows, totally neutral.

While I’m thrilled that President Obama has nominated a woman and a Latina, I worry that she is going to turn out to be more moderate than I would like.

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New Hampshire Makes Six

Six states now recognize gay marriage:  Massachusett, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Iowa.  I’m not surprised at Vermont and Massachusetts, but never thought New Hampshire and Iowa would be among the early states.

Governor John Lynch made a great statement when signing the bill.  His own thinking has evolved from thinking only in terms of civil unions to recognizing the right to marry.  According to the story just posted on the Boston Globe 

Lynch said at the bill signing ceremony that he hoped that despite passionate debate about the issue, citizens would respect each other as they had after the civil union law was passed.

“It is my hope and my belief that New Hampshire will once again come together to embrace tolerance and respect and to stand against discrimination,” he said.

“Today is a victory for all the people of New Hampshire who, I believe, in our own independent way, want tolerance for all. That’s truly the New Hampshire way,” he said.

N.H. approves gay marriage

New Hampshire Episcopal Rev. Gene Robinson, the church’s only openly gay bishop, said the law is about being recognized as whole people and whole citizens.

But the real celebration will come when we hit 50.