Gail's Blog

My mother, before she learned to run like a girl. My mother taught me how to run like a girl. I was outside (we were always outside) playing with girlfriends. We raced each other, and my mom came out from behind the screen door. She said, "You shouldn't run with your fists clenched! You are a girl. You should be more feminine. Here, let me show you." She demonstrated a few adorable steps with hands flapping listlessly beside her.  She stopped and glared at me. "See?" I dutifully practiced, feeling terribly frustrated. How fast can someone run if they to think about how cute they look while doing it? Not very.  I was never able to integrate that pretty, graceful girl my mom had in her mind's eye. And I suspect that those women who were raised in the days of segregated women's and men's employment newspaper ads, and women's news, mostly had difficulty with these superimposed requirements. So when I read Judith Martin's In defense

I have to admit that I have been obsessing about my age lately. I've allowed my hair to go grey because I want to dare to be myself, as God has me right now. Yet I am wondering if God cares that I look older than my peers who color. I don't think she does. Also, I am reasonably fit but I still have droopy skin and a crinkly neck. I work with people who are ALL YOUNGER THAN I, a first in my life. I feel alternately hot and over-the-hill depending on how I'm feeling at any given moment. It is unsettling to feel hot when I really am not. Gail as Older Person I simultaneously want to be as fit and up-to-date as possible to offset my age as well as to just be as I am, sinking into comfortable sloth, gluttony, and evil humor as befits my status as a senior citizen. So I'm ambivalent. My close personal friends from high school might remember that I've always been this way. In adolescence I was a hippie (not going into details) but as a performer I was glamorous.

Watching Ken Burns' "The Roosevelts" on WETA was a deep dip into the wise waters of liberal progressivism, While no one wants government to be "Big Brother", and we all have varying opinions on what Big Brotherism is, I have always had positive feelings about the New Deal. My parents' memories of their own poverty during the Depression, and their belief that FDR was responsible for their being moved to the new, clean public housing projects where they met, certainly influenced my thinking. One of FDR's signature programs in the early '30's was the Works Projects Administration. The above is one of the WPA mosaic tiles built into the walls of the North End Pavilion at Spring Lake (NJ) Beach. That pavilion was totally destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. The tiles, we heard, had been removed for safe-keeping before the storm. The new pavilion is an almost exact replica of the old one, which is such a joy to those of us who thought that a new construc