My Gift to You

I recently had a devastating experience. It haunts me still. I am a member of AARP (Okay, 1 – stop your snickering, and 2 – no that’s not the disturbing experience. Sheesh.) and so receive AARP’s monthly magazine. The front cover of the September/October issue of the AARP magazine (“World’s Largest Circulation Magazine” – Don’t Fuck with the Boomers) features a photo of Bruce Springsteen at full throttle and the appalling headline “The Boss Turns 60.”

Painters turn 60. Opera singers turn 60. Investment Bankers turn 60. Rock gods do not turn 60. Especially not my personal rock god. I first saw Bruce Springsteen in a concert at Memorial Gymnasium at the University of Virginia in October 1974. Memory has tended to embellish that night. I’m sure he didn’t actually play for six days and six nights. Perhaps he didn’t play all of The White Album, Electric Ladyland, Quadrophenia, and Tannhäuser. He did play all of an as yet unreleased album called Born to Run. This is not hyperbole, if someone hadn’t lead me out I would still be standing on the floor of Mem Gym too stunned to move. Which might, I will grant you, have posed laundry issues.

I had never been so glad not to have been high on a Sunday night.

On the walk home I proposed marriage to the senior RA in my dorm. She was from the Jersey Shore and had seen Springsteen back in New Jersey, in the environs of Asbury Park. She went pretty much door to door in our dorm urging us to buy tickets for this concert that wasn’t selling well and featured this guy none of us had ever heard of. She actually said to me, “You will thank me for the rest of your life.” You were right, Cindy, thank you. Thanks too for not marrying me.

Bruce is not the only boomer of some accomplishment, of course. I’d like to give a shout out to two of my acquaintance. (“Shout out!” Who says I can’t keep up with the young people?) Each has a book coming out this fall. (A book! I’m over a year into the same short story.)

I commend to you Denis Lipman’s A Yank Back to England: The Prodigal Tourist Returns (http://www.amazon.com/Yank-Back-England-Prodigal-Tourist/dp/1934848247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247347401&sr=1-1). Denis is insane. But I mean that in the best possible way and in the he has produced a really great quirky read way.

Stephenie Overman’s Next-Generation Wellness at Work is as a little bit less light-hearted and would be well-served if you would recommend it to your local public and/or university librarian. Those of you who are employed could also recommend it to your human resources department. I hope to. Some day.

And now for the gift. This is a rule I devised for myself that I am pleased to share with you. If enough of us adhere to it, it could become a national and international phenomenon. Reaching fifty is a significant accomplishment, a cause for gratitude and celebration, but it is also enough. To go any further would seem greedy. I determined that I would reach 50 and stop. Then, with each subsequent birthday I am reversing field. Hence 48-49-50-49-48 … My favorite part of this system is that this year I will be the same age as my baby sister and ever after I will be younger.

Opening Salvo.

The whole St. Ted issue has started to get under my skin. "Lion of Senate." Oh absolutely. Has contributed more to the life and welfare of our nation than anyone might have predicted in 1962, or 1969, or even 1980. Without question. In a lawless society, Roger Mudd would have disappeared without a trace.
But his salad days are behind Senator Kennedy, along with his single malt scotch days and his recognizing the legions of fawning courtiers pressing around him without the slightest concern for his welfare days. It is horrifying that this great man is combating a malignant brain tumor and his struggle has been, and I offer this without a trace of irony, a profile in courage. But he has been incapacitated. He is no longer able to serve the interests of the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. When commentators speak of a 60 seat Democratic majority in the Senate, who doesn't think "59-1/2"? At best. Perhaps the United States Senate is not the place to test the outer reaches of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The oath of office taken by members of the United States Senate includes the phrase: "I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter." Is there anyone? What's left of Senator Kennedy? Any of the hordes of sycophantic toadies (including those family members not named Caroline or Victoria) who sully his sickroom? Who may seriously claim that Senator Kennedy has the capacity to "well and faithfully discharge" a walk around his room, never mind the duties of a United States Senator?
The graceful thing for a man of honor to do as he enters his waning hours is to resign a Senate seat in which he is no longer capable of serving. It suggest an unfortunate narcissism to refuse to accept this reality. Yes, Senator Thurmond held on well past a vegetative state. And Senator Byrd is headed that way. And there have certainly been others. But Senator Kennedy, do you want your final legacy to be that you held on as long and as hard and to as unseemly a degree as Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd?