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How We Survive

November 11, 2016 in Age Matters, Country Matters, Feminist Matters, Queer Matters, Spirit Matters

indian polish scottish jewI am the descendent of Pogrom and Holocaust survivors, Jews who came to this country as refugees from a Europe torn up by xenophobic dictators. When people on my father’s side arrived at Ellis Island, the United States was their safe space, their beacon, their golden land of opportunities. Until this week, I’d never shed their optimism no matter how much others legitimately complained about America. I knew that many people of color and indigent people never had that glow about this nation. I knew their ancestors did not arrive here with the same triumph. They were dragged here in chains, or already had been here, only to be robbed, tortured, serially murdered. My mother’s people said Sioux Nation members in our line had experienced such horrors. I knew all too well that this country was as founded on blood as it was on hope. Continue Reading →

Age and ‘Aquarius’

November 5, 2016 in Age Matters, Feminist Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

claraOne of my favorite freelance gigs is giving talks to local cinema clubs. The groups mostly are comprised of people over 50, which is my preferred demographic of human beings. As Louis CK once said, “Even the dumbest seventy-year-old is going to have seen more than the smartest twenty-year-old.” The following is a lecture I gave to a Westchester club about “Aquarius,” a long, demanding film that nonetheless held us rapt.

“Aquarius,” a film about Clara (Sonia Braga), a retired Brazilian music critic’s battle to keep her apartment despite pressure from real estate developers and her own family, is about so many things at once. It is a revenge thriller of sorts. It is a treatise on real estate development, greed, and the politics of housing, an issue we also are confronting here in the United States. It is is a rallying point for the Brazilian left, as many citizens in that country identify Clara with the Brazilian president impeached earlier this year in what many describe as a right-wing legislative coup d’état. But most importantly, at least to me, “Aquarius” is an unhurried, almost luxuriant portrayal of a complex sixtysomething woman who has led a very full life, and is still healthy and engaged enough to have many more years of joy and pains ahead of her. Continue Reading →

Nasty Woman Home Network

October 26, 2016 in Age Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Feminist Matters

nasty womanThis morning I set up a new wireless network for Gracie Rosmansion. My Internet had been acting funky and after protracted wrangling with Time Warner Spectrum Whatever, it became apparent my router had punked out for good. Setting up a new one is the easiest thing in the world, but I confess I still felt a nutty sense of accomplishment. It wasn’t until middle age that I became a woman who did home repair and solved her own tech problems. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy