Category Archives: retirees

Mr. Trump, meet Aunt Helen

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Gulp! I’m going to confess. No, it’s too embarrassing. Yes, I’m going to.

I’m of Donald Trump’s generation.

It’s like admitting to Europeans that I’m from the country that elected Trump. Until he became president, I was not ashamed of being an American or of being a septuagenarian.

Contrary to the fact that we old people (and I deliberately use the word “old”) defy stereotypes, they persist. Grandpa, who dominates the conversation at the Thanksgiving dinner table with harangues against gay marriage and immigrants. Aunt Helen, who can’t follow a train of thought and free associates her way through every conversation. Media often portray us as narrow-minded and critical. We’ve lost our mental acuity and wouldn’t know how to run a lemonade stand.

Donald Trump perpetuates such stereotypes.

Most of the people I know, who are my age, are thoughtful. They read books with multi-syllabic words and complex sentences. The books cover topics like climate change and history and politics. Retirees I know take classes at area universities; they don’t let their minds become stagnant. If pensions and mobility allow, they travel with Road Scholar and return home knowledgeable about distant countries. They do not mock other people and cultures. They do not abandon peers forced to live solely on Social Security or on minimum wage, but volunteer for Meals on Wheels, Habitat for Humanity, and the local food bank.

Trump’s presidency, on the other hand, contributes to negative images of aging.

And I resent it.

 

Nancy Werking Poling is author of Before It Was Legal: a black-white marriage (1945-1987) and Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman.

Hillary Clinton and the advent of email

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With Hillary Clinton being criticized over inaccessibility to her email, I’m left wondering if, under similar circumstances, my reputation would be in jeopardy. I depend on email for nearly all personal and professional communications.

The National Archives and presidential libraries contain hand-written letters of former government officials. The British Museum has hand-written manuscripts by famous authors who wrote a draft, then scratched out and added words to produce a masterpiece. Letters and manuscripts were painstakingly written in the cursive style formerly taught and admired, in many cases so pretty that it’s illegible today. With no access to whiteout or ink erasures, people gave thought to most every word they wrote.

The advent of email brought with it a carelessness. At first we were told it wasn’t necessary to worry about capitalization or grammar; just get that message out there. Email invites hurried responses, spur-of-the moment thoughts. Not infrequently do we post curt messages with the potential of hurting someone’s feelings; spout off words we’d never say face to face; write something mean-spirited, because that’s the way we feel at the moment. Sarcasm and irony don’t necessarily come through.

I’d be humiliated were all my emails scrutinized and exposed: a jealous comment to a friend about M’s appearance; a complaint that all R can do is brag about himself. A grammatical mistake here, a word of profanity there. I probably write more messages/letters in a week than my literary forebears wrote in a lifetime.

So I take issue with the assumption that all email messages sent by public officials are the property of the people. Though I disagree with John Boehner on most issues, I want to allow him some privacy when it comes to his email. Surely he has expressed frustration, anger, snide observations, private, spur-of-the-minute thoughts he doesn’t want on the public record. A word of affection to his wife back in Ohio is none of my business.

The Clinton’s no less than Obama have been targets of the opposition’s scrutiny ever since they appeared on the national scene. Surely Hillary was aware early on that she needed to keep tight control over what Republicans were certain to expose. This is not secretive; it’s savvy.

Sure, many of us older citizens wish for a return to civility and care in communications. It’s time we accept that it’s not going to happen.

Change that scares the dickens out of me

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Growing up in the segregated South of the 1950s, I lived in an insulated world where everyone in my circle of influence was white, working class, and, as far as I knew, heterosexual. A “good” black man stayed on his side of town. A “good” white woman bought the best detergent for her family. Girls who got pregnant suddenly disappeared. Aspirin was the drug of choice.

Change we can believe in? How about change that scares the dickens out of me? For I’m part of the Silent generation, Americans between the ages of 66 and 83 who need a map to navigate this new world. OK, not a map: a GPS. My identity can be stolen, my whereabouts tracked, my private conversations monitored. And there’s all that technology I don’t know how to manage: the DVR, features on my cell phone, having to plan my own itinerary on the internet.

But equally disconcerting for me and my generation is the change in values. Teens and young adults engage in sexting and get hooked on drugs. Children are murdered at school. Sex and violence permeate TV programming. It’s little surprise that my generation, which has witnessed such enormous change, tends to hold conservative positions on social issues and is either angry or frustrated with government (http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/).  We fear for the future of our families, our country, and our world.

What do frightened people do? They place blame. It’s the government, It’s the schools. It’s the parents. It’s Obama’s fault. Behind the blame is a yearning for simple solutions. If we just allowed prayer in the schools. If young women would just say no to premarital sex. If poor people would just go out and find a job. If the government would just quit interfering.

But to stay stuck in simple solutions perpetuates stereotypes of—yes, I’ll say the words—old people as complainers. It also makes us irrelevant.

An alternative is to live in the NOW. That is, we can seek opportunities to be with people who represent our changing society: those who are younger, of a different race, ethnic group, or sexual orientation. Not to preach or speak fondly of the past, but to listen and withhold judgment. Standing with them rather than against them might just make a heap of difference.

 

An older woman looks at sex and a changing world

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Sex. The subject excites us; it scares us.

Sex is everywhere. Turn on the TV, and you see people casually sleeping with a colleague, a neighbor, a stranger even. Ads for Viagra promise meaningful relationships, not necessarily with a spouse. Crime shows deal with rape and sexual abuse. Sex sells cars, shampoo—you name it.

Homosexuality is no longer whispered about. People actually let it be known that they are gay. And they’re asking for equal rights under the law, even the right to marry.

Those of us who grew up in earlier eras feel out of sync with a culture so different from the one of our youth. Parents and church taught a moral code of restraint. Sex was not treated casually. Meanwhile, we forget that young people were made to feel guilty for their sexual urges (the harm eloquently portrayed in the old movie Splendor in the Grass). We also now see that homosexuals were forced to live a lie.

How do we deal with this disconnect between the values of our youth and the cultural climate of today? I’ve seen two alternatives at work.

1)     We can try to bring back the values of the past by teaching chastity and quoting the Bible. We can apply scare tactics, like condemning people to hell, warning about pregnancy, pronouncing doom for the American family (in truth, not always the harmonious, healthy environment for raising children we imagine it to be).

2)     Or we can open our hearts and minds to a morality that makes us uncomfortable. We can listen to young people talk about the sexual pressures on them. To single adults speak of their wishes for intimacy. To gays and lesbians witness to their experiences of coming to terms with their sexual orientation.

I’m reminded of the late Virginia Davidson, of Rochester, NY. In 1976, the year she turned 60, she was asked to chair the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Task Force on Homosexuality and the Church. As she listened to gay and lesbian Christians, she recognized the injustice of exclusion and worked for the rest of her life to bring them into full participation in the church.

Yes, my sentiments gravitate toward the second alternative. Which doesn’t mean I condone all that goes on today. But life will not return to the way it was when I was growing up—not that I really want it to.