Recovering Catholics?

With parents who were raised in fundamentalist churches in the South, my earliest knowledge about religion was confusing and contradictory. You see, my parents abandoned their churches and any discussion of religious principles when they left Mississippi for the North.

There was a church bus which came through our rural Michigan neighborhood and picked up children who were bound for the Methodist church quite a few miles away. I asked if I could join, thinking that it must be something fun if so many kids were going. My parents weren’t enthusiastic, but allowed it.

All I can remember is that there was a Sunday school class after the main prayers which were said by what seemed like old, old men. Also, there were presents when you came for the first and third times to the church.

Well, this made my mother crazy. “Giving gifts for attending church is outrageous!” I heard her complain. To me, it made all kinds of sense. The gifts were real cool, and the only real fun was riding on the bus and seeing kids all dressed up. Oh, and I loved to dress up. Suddenly, I had what other kids called their “Sunday” dress.

My next church experience happened when I spent a Saturday night with my friend Kay, and asked if I could go to Catholic mass with her family on Sunday. Again, my parents relented, and off I went to this very unusual ceremony. It was nothing like those earlier Methodist forays.

Fact is, that Catholic gathering scared the daylights out of me. I already knew that they had some strange habits like having to cover the head, not eating meat on Friday, and wearing a big black blotch on their forehead once a year. It was all very arcane and even scary to me, especially when they seriously told me about the array of sins to be avoided. One of the biggest was missing mass on Sunday. I’ll just finish that story with the truth that that big Catholic church was the creepiest place I had ever been in. I can still remember my mother’s face when I asked her about holy water.

Depending on what article you come across these days, it seems that we baby boomers turned away from our religions of origin largely because of our distrust in institutions. Now statistics are showing that as we age and see the mortality of our parents and others around us, we may be giving organized religion a second chance. To quote 17^th Century philosopher, Pascal, ”There is a god-shaped emptiness in each of us.”

Using myself as an example, I will attest to the above. After my mother’s death in the 90’s, for the first time ever, I began to explore religion, largely to know more about “the other side” as some call it. I also felt a strong desire to be less self-centered, and more like my mother. It was a wish to honor her goodness and generosity even though she rarely spoke of religion.

I do recall her saying “There but for the grace of God go I.” when she would see people in dire situations, or overhear me making fun of someone. I admit that that verse/phrase comes to me at times when I see the victims of recent bombings and the persecution of gays and others outside what we call the norm.

I’ve spent many years trying to overcome my prejudice against the Catholic church. You see, my first husband was Catholic, and even though he never attended mass, the hard and fast rules of married behavior as he saw it were part of the demise of our marriage.

Through the years, I have had many friends and acquaintances who described themselves as “recovering Catholics” because of the ill treatment they experienced from nuns and priests when they were young.

Conversely, I know some folks who find great comfort in attending mass and partaking of the rituals that have brought them peace and a sense of belonging. They feel that the man-made rules and human failings of the church leaders don’t diminish the good that they found in a lifetime of faith.

As for me, this baby boomer is still searching, still researching – and praying daily.

•By the way: A survey conducted by Gallup in 2010 found that people ages 50 to 64 were more likely to say they frequently went to church, temple or mosque than those 18 to 29 did. The figures were 43 percent versus 35 percent, and for the group containing the oldest segment of the baby boom population – 65 and up – the figure was 53 percent.

Storytelling for Posterity

If I asked you to tell me a true story from your life, what comes immediately to your mind? Whatever that story is, you have my permission to share it with your children and grandchildren, no matter how much they would rather look at their IPhone.

I have a quote taped up on my wall where I can see it each time I sit at my computer. It reads, “The future belongs to storytellers.” Sorry that I can’t remember where I read or heard that, but I’m certain it was from a reliable source.

If I didn’t believe it before, I sure do now since seeing National Public Radio personality Ira Glass. He appeared at Barbara Mann Hall last week and simply talked with us for a while and played stories from his popular program, “This American Life.”  I was mesmerized, just as I am when I listen to his show on WGCU, FM 90.1 on Saturday from 1-2 and Sunday from Noon to 1 PM.

Glass says the show got off the ground when he and some others posited that public radio didn’t always have to have the aroma of broccoli – that is, didn’t always have to be elevating ones intellect.

“We sometimes think of our program as a documentary show for people who normally hate documentaries. A public radio show for people who don't necessarily care for public radio.”  Their web page explains.

The stories are about every day people who have encountered unusual circumstances, and they tell their stories with Ira adding his slant and asking the subjects what they think about what has happened. There’s nothing else quite like it.

Take the young doctor who took over for a small town GP who was in prison for murdering his father. Coincidentally, they had the same last name, and the doctor in prison was beloved by his community. This sent his replacement on a quest to find out just what happened to cause this man to snap and commit such a crime. We are taken by the hand through this small town as we meet its residents and accompany the young doctor.  Like every segment I’ve ever heard, I laughed and gasped and shook my head in wonder.

Anyway, all through Glass’s talk at Barbara Mann, I found myself fantasizing about doing what he does. Taking an idea and running with it – seeing where it goes. Or, meeting someone with an interesting story and getting all the details that only the one who experienced it can tell – while I, of course give my input.

Glass was asked if the interview subjects are coached since they are always so engaging. His answer was priceless: “The best stories seem to happen to people who are good storytellers.”

Have you come up with your story yet? While you continue thinking about it, I’ll share one that has been handed down through my mother’s side of the family. It takes place during the Civil War, and my great-grandfather is the 8-year-old star. Word had spread through his small Mississippi farm community that Union soldiers were on their way, and were taking anything they needed or wanted from the defenseless women, children and old men. My great grandfather’s mother told him to take the family’s mule into the deep woods and hide him well. The family would starve without the mule to help them plow their field and plant food. So, the 8-year-old boy did his job very well. So well that no one could find him for 3 days. You see, they had failed to explain to him that he could come home after he hid the mule. So, it took the entire community 3 days to locate the boy and mule after the Yankees had departed.

Obviously, there is no one still alive who can vouch for this story, but I think of it like one of those that is passed down through cultures without a written language. That is how they endure for generations.

So, how about the next time you’re sitting around with your family, you look up from your laptop or Smart Phone and say, “Did I ever tell you folks the story about…….

Farmers Markets

Just about everyone I know plans their Saturday around a trip to the farmer’s market. Not just here in Cape Coral where we have a fabulous one for sure, but all over the country. My friends don’t ask if I’m going to the market on Saturday, they ask me what time I’m going. If I have to miss it for some reason, I give a list to a trusted shopper who knows just which vendors I like.

Aficionados of the market know that it’s much more than picking up produce. It’s a total sensual experience. There are fruits and vegetables in every color of the rainbow. Smells from the fresh flowers and food vendors waft through the throngs of people and their dogs. Yes, dogs. Fortunately, our market is dog friendly, and we get to watch them greet each other and wag and greet us as we stop to pat their heads or join in a petting frenzy. And music. A beautiful background of steel drums or acoustic guitar or songs we love to sing along with fill the air.

My first trip to a farmers market was in the 70’s in my home town of Flint, Michigan. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were fresh eggs and home made pies and all kinds of foods cooking as this market is indoor/outdoor. The flower vendor was a bearded guy with one hooked arm. A bright posie was always in his beard and abroad smile completed the picture.

The market was a must stop when I would visit my mother in the years after I left Michigan. We would buy all the things my daddy used to grow in his garden, and go home and prepare a nostalgic dinner. Growing up with parents from Mississippi, our summer dinner table was resplendent with turnip greens, black eyed peas, fried okra and crooked neck squash, fresh bright yellow sweet corn, with  brilliant red sliced tomatoes and small scallions on the side. My mom’s hot corn bread fresh out of the iron skillet turned upside down on a plate, was a staple.

When I visited a friend in Eugene, Oregon last summer, I discovered a most unique farmers market. Every vendor had organic produce, and all meats and eggs (even those sold in the walk-up restaurants) had to be from family-owned sustainable farms. Everyone seemed so rosy cheeked and healthy in their North Face and Patagonia Saturday clothes.

Yes, it was special, but I have a deep love for my market at Club Square. It has grown from 16 vendors in 1994, to more than 85 currently. Every square inch of the huge lot is filled as the parking spaces become fewer and fewer. Claudia St. Onge of the Cape Coral Chamber of Commerce is the force behind the exponential growth of our wonderful market. She told me that they estimate that there are 5-6 thousand of us passing through every Saturday.

If you’ve been, you’ve noticed that even when there is a long line, or many people vying for a vendor’s attention, that everyone is smiling, patient and polite. Much of the trade is done on the honor system with people rattling off what is in their bag as they fumble with their money as the vendor adds it all up.

It’s about more than filling our refrigerators. I believe these trips also fill our souls. We get a little closer to the earth, to our neighbors and to our communities.

By the way:

•According to the US Dept. of Agriculture, there were 3,137 farmers markets in 2002, and 7,864 by 2012.

•There’s a vendor in the southernmost row who sells passion fruit. If you’ve never tried one, you must! You eat them seeds and all, and they are too delicious to describe.

•In the same row is a vendor who sells fabulous coffee with steamed milk and beignets. Totally worth the calories.

Why did we start smoking?

I have pack of cigarettes called Royals. It’s a flip top box, and half of the front is covered by a bold black and white box that reads “smoking kills.” On the back is a larger box that says “Smoking can cause a slow and painful death.” The pack is from the United Kingdom, and I’ve had it for at least 5 years. Can’t recall who gifted it to me, but I treasure it.

I remember thinking that maybe some day the US would adopt such warning labels. So, it was a big letdown last week when the government caved in to big tobacco, and dropped its fight to ask the Supreme Court to review efforts to block the package changes. As it now stands, the FDA will create some new “less offensive” labels, but we don’t know when.

I’ve been thinking about all of this because of New York Mayor Bloomberg’s latest effort to force his constituents toward better health. Bloomberg proposed legislation on Monday to ban all stores from publicly displaying tobacco products. “Even one new smoker is one too many,” Bloomberg said. You gotta love this guy. Discussing large sodas and cigarettes in the news is so much more fun than say, budgets or urban renewal.

According to Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), a non-profit public health group, “There is strong evidence that when tobacco is out of the sight of children, it is also out of mind. If they don’t see cigarettes, they’re much less likely to take up the habit.”

In this case, I’ll use myself as an example to possibly prove or disprove the above hypothesis. From birth, and yes, in utero, I was subjected to the smoke of my parents’ filterless Camels. I know they would both have walked a mile for them – no question. They were so frugal that we never had paper towels or Kleenex in the house. It was toilet paper or nothing. Yet, two cartons of camels were faithfully purchased every Saturday at the A&P.

As a kid, that was just the way it was in my house with yellowed walls and ashtrays everywhere. When my visiting grandmother asked me if I was going to smoke when I grew up, I promptly replied, “yes.” I thought that’s what grown-ups did. I can still conjure up the taste of the candy cigarettes we would suck on and play with. Guess no one gave that a thought either.

So, my parents had 3 children – two of us are baby boomers, one a bit older. Of the 3, only my middle brother took up the habit. He’s been smoking for 50 years without a break. My older brother began smoking when he was a paratrooper, but quit after a month or two. You see, he was a good money manager, and always had enough at the end of the month for his cigarettes. Not so his platoon mates. They would be broke by mid-month and be bumming from him. He decided not to support his or anyone else’s habit and that was that.

Now, to me. When I was a teenager my mother pleaded with me to never have that first cigarette. “It’s the most addictive drug on earth,” she said, “Once you get it in your bloodstream, you will want it forever; please don’t fall victim to it as I did.” She even suggested other ways that I could be rebellious or feel “cool.” This was just about the time that warnings had been put on cigarette packs (1966), and people were discussing the ill effects to be more than “stunting your growth.” Remember that one?

Well, approval seeker that I was, I was torn. On my senior trip a bunch of us bought cigarette holders in China town and a pack of Virginia Slims to fit into them. We just thought this was the funniest thing, going around our classmates pretending we were Bette Davis.

On my return home, I trashed the cigarette holder, and never smoked again. You see, my dad had just died of a heart attack, and I didn’t want to do anything to upset my bereft mother. So, I was spared the habit, and I am grateful.

I feel enormous compassion for those who do smoke, whether they’re trying to quit or not. Smokers know that they’re killing themselves cell by cell. That they’re contributing to an industry that brings debilitation, death and economic hardship to the poorest people on the planet. That their second hand smoke and discarded butts pollute everything around them. They know this and more, and yet many feel powerless to give them up.

When I see a smoker hiding around a corner trying to be inconspicuous, I always smile and say hello, remembering my mother’s words, and knowing that that’s what she would want me to do.

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From Fear to Compassion to Activism

I was 15 years old, and shopping in a department store with a friend when my heart went up in my throat and my pulse stared racing. I actually felt real fear. “What’s wrong?” my friend Chris asked. “Look at those two guys over there I pointed.” “They’re queers!”

It killed me to write that last sentence, but you see, that was the only word I knew at the time, and I had had no teaching about ‘alternative lifestyles.’ All I knew was that there were two men wearing makeup and stylized hair. I had heard about such individuals, but didn’t know anything more than that they were scary and threatening.

In those years, as most boomers know, sex education didn’t include any information about such things. All we really knew were whispered accounts of a teacher that disappeared following stories that he had inappropriately touched some of the boys. The word queer was bandied about as a perjorative. There was just lots of fear and confusion as I recall.

To my knowledge, there was no one in my school who was openly gay, but the effeminate boys were certainly bullied. It was still okay to be a ‘tomgirl’ back then.

Fast forward to 1978 and my airline career. As soon as I started flying, I met openly gay flight attendants and even one gay pilot. I had a crash course in what their lives were like. The men told me stories about coming from small towns in the Midwest where they were bullied and ostracized. I quickly learned that these guys were not gay by choice, but by birth. One flight attendant that I became close friends with confided in me that he thought he was the only person on earth who was made with feelings for the same sex. My heart ached for what he had endured.

Now fast forward to the mid 90’s. I am working for Barnes and Noble as their community relations manager, planning in-store events. I decided that I wanted to acknowledge Gay Pride Month, and to have some events to promote it. My store manager and district manager gave me a green light. My events included the local gay and lesbian chorus, and a panel discussion with a local gay minister, a gay female disc jockey and a couple from PFLAG, (Parents and friends of lesbians and gays.)

I had come a long way from that day in the department store. My events drew huge crowds – the most I had ever had. In addition to those seated, were people on the fringes pretending to look at books.

We did fear some backlash from the community, but received only two letters of complaint, and more than 40 thanking us for the events. One letter came from a church which later contacted me about doing an event with them. I found the irony most interesting.

The point of all this is to chronicle my evolution from fear to compassion to activism. I strongly believe that we are at a pivotal time in history when acceptance and even embracing all alternative lifestyles is coming into being.

Most of us boomers have lived long enough to have known and maybe even loved a gay person. I know that I have.

I heard a comedian recently joke that we should give gays the right to marry so they could be as miserable as the rest of us. There’s hardly a day that goes by that the gay marriage question is not in the news. To me, it is more about their human rights than it is about marriage. When my gay friends who are couples, tell me about the inheritance laws, health insurance coverage, filing joint tax returns, and even the right to visit their loved one in the hospital when “family only” is the rule, I realize that they don’t have the rights that many of us take for granted.

We boomers have seen sweeping cultural change in our lifetimes. In fact, we’ve been responsible for much of it. Our numbers are many and our voices are strong. With a demographic of 76 million, it’s safe to say that there are millions of us who are gay, whether a lifetime has been spent in the closet or not.

In a short while, the Supreme Court will act on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 from California – both of which have been stumbling blocks to gay rights.

For those of us age 46-64, this may mark a new passage in our lives that we could never have envisioned when we were confused, frightened adolescents.

Some Random Thoughts

 

It’s one of those times when there are just too many subjects on my mind to pick one. So, Here are some of my thoughts at large:

•Just when I was feeling more and more sorry for the people that are the outdoor human signs, I noticed that there are now automated signs taking their place. Now I feel sorry for those folks that are being replaced by the robots.

•I know that Billy Fucillo gets mixed reviews. He’s done a great deal for the community while making annoying Kia TV commercials. My only complaint with him really is that he needs to learn how to pronounce Florida. It’s spelled with an O Billy. It’s not Flarida.

•Do you notice that there are some restaurant locations that are just jinxed it seems? I’m thinking of one on 47^th Terrace that has had at least 5 incarnations and is now repainted readying for another. It makes me very sad.

• I know that I watch too much television, so I shouldn’t complain about the commercials. Here’s the thing. Would the stations even be able to stay on the air without the trade school and college commercials? Sometimes there are 3 different ones back to back. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know about Heritage Institute?

•I hear jokes everywhere about “mom jeans,” but I have no idea what they are. How can I be sure I don’t buy any?

•Is it just me, or do other boomers hate having attractive women labeled “hot?” It just sounds so sleazy to me. I would have never found that a compliment.

•I’ve seen most of the Oscar nominated movies, and can’t wait for the show. There were so many good performances this year, that it’s been hard for me to fill out my ballot. I will say that if you haven’t seen “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” do rent it. The two lead actors are superb and they have no previous acting experience. It’s a most unusually, wonderful movie.

• I was really encouraged when I read in USA Today that the hottest demographic in movie-going was “mature women,” – defined as women ages 30 and older. I want to believe it, but the local cinema offerings sure don’t reflect that. This mature woman doesn’t go for the supernatural.

•So the iron has been replaced by a cat in the Monopoly game. I was happy to hear that people still play board games and care about such high-touch vs high-tech items.

•I love the name for all those ads that come in the snail mail on Monday: paper spam!

• Note to newscasters: The word “absolutely” has been beaten into the ground. It’s second only to “basically.”

•One of my readers wrote to complain about the female sportscasters who he feels are hired as “eye candy.” He finds many of them totally unqualified.

• I’m not qualified to comment on the sportscasters, but as long as we’re continuing the riff on broadcasters, my complaint is with the cocktail wear, plunging necklines, and jewelry that the newswomen feel compelled to wear. I applaud Candy Crowley of CNN for her professionalism and ability to eschew all of that.

•To end on a nostalgic note, one of my readers wrote of her sadness that her grandchildren won’t know the joy she felt of going to the neighborhood roller rink. I suppose they have gone the way of the drive-in movies. She remembers the organ music, the pom poms on her skates and the friends she would make from other schools. Before the consumer craziness of the malls, the roller rink was a place away from the parents and into a parquet world of our own.

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