The Golden Times

When I was in college, a group of close friends and I spent a weekend at a cabin in the mountains.  Before you ask -- yes, alcohol was involved, but not an inordinate amount.  There was an old jeep in the shed, and we all piled in and took a slow drive down a long country road canopied with trees.  I can still remember leaning back with the sun dappling my face through the leaves, a soft warm wind blowing, looking up at the blue sky, listening to stories being told and the answering laughter of friends.

That was one of what I like to call the “Golden Times.”   Those moments -- or if we’re lucky, longer – that somehow attain a sort of perfection.   I knew it was special, but I had no idea that over thirty years later, I would still remember exactly how it felt. 

Sometimes they’re happy accidents.  For our wedding day, barefoot on the beach, Robert and I hoped to be in some privacy with our small group of family and friends at the water’s edge at sunset.  But at the last minute our pastor said it would be too difficult for some elderly relatives to make it down the long stretch of sand. 

Robert turned to me and smiled, and said he would marry me anywhere.  So we stood on Venice Beach (not in Italy, sadly, but it’s lovely in Los Angeles, too) in full view of all the balconies of a busy hotel, and within earshot of the many people enjoying the last of the spring sunshine by biking, rollerblading, jogging or strolling on the walkway. 

What we hadn’t counted on was the respectful silence of the crowd drawn to the ceremony – and after being in our own world until we kissed and turned around, we’d had no idea that the hotel balconies had gradually filled, and the walkway was nearly choked with people who had stopped to watch.  They now raised glasses, waved, smiled broadly, and gave us a smattering of applause.

When we went to get in our car after the reception, two women stopped us enthusiastically. “You’re the bride and groom! We watched you get married!!” 

Strangers being touched by strangers.  A Golden Time.

At a Rick Springfield concert a few years ago, the man himself walked down the middle of the seats in the audience and ended up standing on my chair to finish the song, giving Robert the opportunity to play air guitar only inches away from him, and as for me… well, what would you do if you were that close and had listened to “Jessie’s Girl” about a million times? 

Golden.

Other times sparkle in my memory.  Holding Thomas as a baby.  Watching the first snow fall on Thanksgiving Day.  Reaching out to take Robert’s hand in a peaceful silence on a long drive from Idaho to Los Angeles.  Kicking chunks of ice at twilight on a frozen lake with friends, watching the irridescence skitter along as the moon rose.  Listening to Andrea Bocelli sing arias from “La Boheme” with my mother, tears glistening in her eyes and mine.

By definition, a Golden Time has an end.  It can’t be sustained.  Otherwise it becomes day-to-day life, which can be very, very good, but simply isn’t that diamond that stands out among the lesser stones.

How do we know when it’s over?  I’m afraid the answer is that most of the time, we don’t.  When is the last hug, the last kiss, the last time of making love, the last goodbye when we hang up the phone, never to hear that person’s voice again?

After 9/11, there were so many stories about husbands and wives pecking each other on the cheek in the morning, casually saying, “See you tonight,” or “Pick up some milk on your way home,” or similar banalities.  If they’d only known.

I never say goodbye to Robert without telling him I love him.  I try to leave places and people without “if onlys”…”if only I’d hugged him”, ”if only I’d told her how pretty she looked”, ”if only I’d said what he means to me…”

And now, why is this all on my mind today?

Two and a half years ago, I started on Twitter in a unique way, centered around creativity and play with a group of people that came together organically and naturally, acting out characters from a television show.  We made ourselves and lots of other people laugh, and created relationships across oceans and time zones that could never have happened otherwise.  There were misunderstandings and dramas, fallings out and comings together, and some friendships forged that I hope will never end.

My world opened up in wonderful ways, and remains open.  I still love Twitter, but I’m myself now, a writer reading other writers, enjoying the postings of artists, a few celebrities, and plenty of quirky individualists.

So today, I say goodbye, mindfully, and acknowledge that it was, indeed, a Golden Time, but it’s over.  It was one of the diamonds that stands out among the stones. 

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TED Talk: Half a Million Secrets

Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret.com got the idea to have people send him something they'd never told anyone on a postcard.  Half a million secrets later, he looks at some of the lessons that can be learned from the things people wanted to share. 


This entertaining and fascinating talk is funny, emotional, and a couple of times, left me wide-mouthed with wonder.


Hope you enjoy...

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On My Bookshelf: “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life”

A simple Google search will quickly bring up multiple reviews of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Franklin, and certainly in more informative and insightful prose than I could offer.  But this book touched me, and because of that, I think I’d rather speak to how it made me feel as an American. 

And yes, that sounds a bit corny, which is, if the internet is to be believed, a word with its origins in America, like me.

Benjamin Franklin has been given the title “The First American,” but in fact, he was born to an American mother and a father whose roots were in Northamptonshire, England.  This duality would follow Franklin throughout his eighty-four years, as he traveled the Atlantic between the two, asking for peace, supporting one and then the other, and finally falling on the side of the Colonies in their desire for independence.

His ability to see all sides of an argument was often called “waffling,” and was cited as a sign that he had no convictions.  In truth, Franklin knew that if you had a room full of men who were unwilling to compromise -- those men would walk out of that room with little or nothing accomplished.  And Franklin was a man who liked to get things done.

Over 230 years later, it’s no secret that Americans aren’t the most popular people on the planet.  The internet has given me a much more international life than many of the neighbors, friends and co-workers in my town of 45,000 in Northern Idaho.  Among some here, there can be an insular nature to patriotism, in the vein of “Love It, Or Leave It.”

With friends in England, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada – and the many other countries represented on Twitter by people that I don’t know well but read often – I get a good cross-section of the world’s view of Americans.  Some of the harsher critics see us as arrogant, fat and irresponsible at the same time we have the hubris to call ourselves the leaders of the free world.  I can’t fully disagree with them.

Seeing my own country as I do, from two perspectives -- not only from inside it, but also through the eyes of my international friends – I can also hear, and believe, that we’re an adventurous and pioneering sort of people: innovative and bright, exploring the vast, wide open spaces this country has to offer.

My great-grandmother came across the plains of America in a covered wagon, and I’ve been told all my life that the women in our family are of strong, opinionated, hardy “pioneer stock.”  I’ve been proud of that label, and the philosophy behind it has helped me to steer my own sometimes rickety wagon through the upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s in California; the early 1980s in New York City; the financial downturn that started in the late 1990s and continues still; and the monumental social sea-change that allowed us, finally, miraculously, to elect a black President.

Benjamin Franklin was a man who saw serious issues, and dealt with them with humor.  He was highly intelligent, but wanted to speak and write in a manner that allowed everyone to be able to hear him and understand.  He was very much loved as a “man of the people” of the Colonies, at the same time he was celebrated as one of the higher echelon of the New World, and was present at the signing of every critically important document that shaped the United States of America.

So the theme emerges – duality.  And as a textbook Libra, I can relate.

Like Franklin, I love the spirit of the people of this country.   But as he did, I dislike a lot of its politics.  For him, that was typified by people who so refused to move off of their positions that they essentially threatened to freeze the government.  I worry, in 2012, about the same thing.

I’ve loved the culture, literature and rich history of Britain for as long as I can remember, even back to the age of eleven, reading Jane Eyre in the attic, out loud in what I hoped was Julie Andrews’ voice.

So I suppose in addition to helping me feel an affinity with someone who lived so long ago, Isaacson’s book left me asking questions about my own duality: with my love for foreign lands, people and sensibilities; and my pride and connection to America.

Which is something Benjamin Franklin, I suspect, would appreciate.

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TED Talks: Why Videos Go Viral on YouTube

There are over 48 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. 

Who among us hasn’t gone there to see one video, and ended up spending far longer than we thought we would, just watching people be people?

This TEDTalk is only seven-and-a-half minutes long, but in it, Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s trends manager, gets to the bottom of how we connect to each other in what has become our video community.

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A Mixed Marriage

My husband and I, after fifteen primarily blissful years together, have suddenly found ourselves on either side of the Great Decision of the age:  Twitter or Facebook.

Yes, I know, there are legions of people who manage to straddle the line and do both, but I’m sort of an “all or nothing” person, and with only so much disposable time at hand, I found I had to make a firm decision.  Twitter won out. 

And so, one night, with the compassionate support of a good friend on MSN I managed to “unfriend” or ignore all those who had requested the pleasure of my company, and I shut down my Facebook account.  It required a rather largish glass of wine for courage, but afterwards, I’ll admit I slept like a baby.

Please remember that I’m the type of person who has to turn out all the lights in the house when I run out of Halloween candy -– guiltily flinching in the dark as the laughing voices, in Doppler fashion, move toward the front door and away.  When the FedEx man comes to the door and I don’t want to stop writing (or even comb my hair), I sort of hold my breath, not wanting to hurt his feelings, until I hear the package drop on the front stoop, and the truck gears up and drives down the street.

The process on Facebook was simply too difficult for me.  I’m aware this is a failing of mine, not of the 250 million other people in this big world of ours whose days begin and end with it.  I’ve been told I took it all much too seriously –- which I’m certain is true. 

When I got a birthday wish from a friend of a cousin of an acquaintance, I felt I had to answer it with, at the very least, a short thank you.  I’m not inordinately popular, but when you multiply that by thirty or more, there goes my birthday wish of a day of peace, writing at my computer.  When a newborn’s picture is posted, aren’t we required, as members of the human race, to send a message back saying the baby is adorable?  And now that I know about said child, is a gift expected?

I’m sure if I asked these questions of the internet, I’d get 250 million answers –- most giving me the one my friends gave me:  “If you don’t want to answer, then don’t.”  But there I was again in the back bedroom, hiding from the laughing children dressed as Hello Kitty and Harry Potter, wishing I’d bought more candy. 

So, the final exercise of rejecting my nephew’s best friend, or ignoring a person I went to junior high school with and haven’t spoken to in 25 years, or of not answering a note put on my wall by a dear friend of my late brother Kim –- required an actual, human friend online giving me permission, and the glass of wine referred to earlier.  Once it was done, I vowed never again to open the silly thing.

Enter my wonderful, practical, not-always-good-at-staying-in-touch husband.  I’ve been on Twitter since February of 2009, and have tried in vain to get him hooked.  Suddenly, he announces that he’s starting a Facebook account, and my reaction surprises me so much, I actually laugh out loud.  He may as well have told me he’s embarking on an affair.

But, as usual, he’s right about this being the perfect forum for his way of staying in touch.  He can post his ongoing study of sunsets, which he loves to photograph, so that instead of just describing them to his mother, he can say, “go to my Facebook page and look.”  He can, as he did yesterday, share the joy of an exciting San Francisco 49er’s win with friends from work.   A old girlfriend from high school posts pictures of her husband and children, and he smiles while he sips his coffee, telling me long-ago stories.

So I suppose, in a way, we have the best of both worlds.  I scroll happily through my timeline on Twitter, reading tips on writing to him, sharing useless but endlessly interesting trivia, telling him news of friends from the UK and Paris, or what @StephenFry or @WilliamShatner are up to, and reading bits of blogs from around the world. 

He, in turn, lets his family know that I’m still alive, but no, I’m not on Facebook any more.

The perfect mixed marriage.

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