WHAT IS A CRONE, ANYWAY?

Almost a year ago, in October ‘08, I launched this blog, saying: “I will try to address issues and events that are of interest to crones over sixty, who are definitely under-served in the media. Yet we are, as a friend remarked, the pig in the python—the huge population of women who are still tuned in and creating despite (or because of) our age.”

It was daughter Eleni who came up with the inspired name “A Rolling Crone” for the blog after I had discovered that “Crone Chronicles” was already taken.

I e-mailed my friends and colleagues announcing the blog, and was surprised when I heard from several friends that they found the word “Crone” offensive and insulting to women. (Some of them added that they also were offended by being referred to as “Ladies”, when they were, in fact, women, not ladies.)

I noticed that most of the objections to the word “Crone” came from the Midwestern states—where I grew up—while friends on both coasts, in Europe and in Israel generally loved the blog’s title.

One reason I used the word “crone” was that, when I lived in Manhattan, about five of us, er, women friends, started calling ourselves the Crones back when we were in our early fifties. (Our husbands, naturally, were the Geezers.) The Crones did fun things --some athletic, like hiking or kayaking, but most of which involved sitting in a restaurant laughing so loudly that we were sometimes asked to leave.

The most fun thing we did, in my opinion was a Crone Walk from the top of Manhattan (Fort Tryon Park) to the bottom (Battery Park). Husbands were allowed to meet us for dinner on the last day. The walk took three days and involved staying in hotels (where martinis were consumed) eating in restaurants, and visiting stores, art exhibits and historic spots. Our first lunch—in Spanish Harlem—was in a restaurant where no one spoke English, only Spanish. Our last lunch was in a dim sum restaurant in Chinatown, where no one spoke English, only Chinese. (Just one of the reasons why Manhattan is my favorite city ever.)

After hearing complaints from my friends about the word Crone, I decided to research it. I was vaguely aware that some indigenous peoples considered Cronehood to be the honorable third stage of a woman’s life (Maiden, Mother, Crone) and that entry into cronehood—and menopause—was celebrated with rituals, because the crones were revered as wise women who could impart their knowledge to the tribe.

When I started researching “Crone” and “What is a crone?” on Google, I quickly realized that this is a topic for a Phd. thesis, not a single blog posting.

If you would like academic insights into the various historic personifications of the wise crone, check out a site by Kathleen Jenks, PhD, called “mythinglinks.org”, especially an essay called “Common Themes, East & West: Crones & Sages”.
She refers to Eve, the Mother of All, (holding in her hands an opened pomegranate, whose Hebrew name, rimmon, comes from the word rim, to bear a child.) She also mentions Hecate, Baba Yaga, native American rituals , tales from India’s Crone shamans—it’s a treasure chest of crone facts including a bibliography.

That led me to a lyrical and eloquent essay by a woman called “Z Budapest”-- “Crone Genesis” --that begins, “I am in my first year of Cronehood. In my sixtieth year.” Near the end of her essay she writes “We are one block of herstory, one savvy chain of generations, one strong and active generation that is going to continue to change the world. When we are done, being old will be fashionable, stories and movies about old people will be normal, and we will live a long time.”

I also discovered that women who celebrate their cronehood, especially with rituals, are often Wiccans—followers of paganism as a religion. This is not true of me and the Manhattan crones—who each probably have our own brand of religion or spirituality, although we’ve never discussed it. What joins us, I think is laughter, not a particular political or religious agenda.

But there is, I quickly learned, a growing Crone movement in this country —probably multiplying in strength as more and more women reach cronehood.

If you look up cronescounsel.org, you will see that the upcoming Fall 2009 Gathering, Crones Counsel XVII is happening Oct. 21-25 in Atlanta, GA.

That site says that the mythological Crone comes from the mists of ancient times, in the Middle East, Greece and the Balkans (30,000-10,000 BCE)… “The goddess was revered as one all-encompassing mother goddess who controlled birth, death and rebirth. This concept began to change as women themselves became increasingly under the dominion of men…Crone, hag and witch once were positive words for old women. Crone comes from Crown, indicating wisdom emanating from the head; hag comes from hagio meaning holy; and witch comes from wit meaning wise. The Crone began re-emerging into our consciousness in the early 1980’s and today many older women are embracing this connection. We are tapping into the ancient crone’s attributes of wisdom, compassion, transformation, healing laughter and bawdiness.”

So I submit that calling myself a crone and my blog “A Rolling Crone” is not insulting to my age group.

I’ve noticed, among my friends, that when a woman turns sixty, she often throws a birthday that basically is a celebration of herself, although previous birthdays and most of her party-giving efforts might have been devoted to celebrating her husband or children or parents.

I think at sixty a woman tends to step back and think “I’ve done pretty well so far, so I’m going to give myself something I’ve always wanted—a trip to Europe-- or enroll in a class to learn tap dancing or piano—or just throw a party that’s all about me and invite all my friends. (One of the New York crones rented a chateau in Tuscany and invited her friends.)

Here are some thoughts I came across from Linda Lowen who writes a blog about women’s issues. In an essay called “The Crone Movement -- Empowering Older Women”, she quotes a past member of the Crones Counsel Board who said “A Crone is a woman who has moved past mid-life and who acknowledges her survivorship, embraces her age, learns from the examined experience of her life, and, most likely, appreciates the wrinkles on her face…A Crone is a woman who is comfortable with her spiritual self, her intuition, and her creative power.”

Linda Lowen comments: “Wonderful qualities for a woman to possess at any age, but especially significant for a demographic that often feels bypassed by a society that has little use for women once they reach menopause. This Halloween, if you’re a woman 45 or older, instead of feeling tricked by the process of aging, consider the treat of making peace with yourself as you appreciate this phase of your life. Embrace your inner Crone.”

(That’s easy—Every Halloween as I wait on the porch for the influx of trick-or-treaters, I’m always dressed as a witch!)

I would like to hear from you how you feel about the word “Crone”.

Michelle Obama's Arms--Can a Crone Get Them?

Remember about thirty years ago when everyone wanted Farrah Fawcett’s hair? (R.I.P. Farrah.) Then about 15 years ago, it was Jennifer Anniston’s hair that everyone wanted. Around the millennium it was Angelina Jolie’s full lips, leading to a lot of ill-conceived lip-plumping inoculations. Now everyone wants Michelle Obama’s sculpted arms. (While some hyper-critical folks say she should hide those muscular arms—they aren’t lady-like. That’s ridiculous! It’s not as if she’s so ripped that the veins are popping our of her arms, the way they do on Madonna.)

Yesterday’s big news story was that Mrs. Obama’s personal trainer, Cornell McClellan, has revealed how she gets those arms. It seems that Michelle, like her husband, tends to get up about 5:30 in the morning for a grueling workout that ends with her “arm-shaping superset” of tricep pushdowns (that means pulling a straight metal bar down against the resistance of a pulley—on a machine) followed without resting by a set of hammer curls using dumbbells. Fifteen of each make a set, then do it all over again two more times.

Was it Oscar Wilde who said “Never wave good-bye after forty.”? He was right. There comes a time in nearly every woman’s life when she realizes that sleeveless dresses are no longer appropriate for her wardrobe because sleeves are necessary to hide whatever that is hanging down from her upper arms. (Evidently it’s called “Bat wings.” As in “Old Bat”, I presume.)

When I was in my 30’s, I wrote an article for Ladies Home Journal that involved interviewing the “Dancing Grannies.” These were a group of women--all over 55 years old and living in a retirement community in Arizona—who had formed a dance troupe similar to the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, and traveled around performing high kicks and other dance routines not usually considered appropriate for grandmothers. They looked great. One of the grannies, I remember, told me that her upper arms had started to look crepey, but she countered that by doing arm curls with weights as she sat watching television.

At 68, I’m 13 years past the minimum age to join the Dancing Grannies. (I wonder if they’re still around?) A year ago, when I started taking pilates classes, I was flat on the floor struggling through the push-ups that always end the session (as a novice I get to do them while braced on my knees, not on my toes) and I looked at my upper arms and sure enough—major creping. Crepe paper was smoother than the flesh of my upper arms. When did that happen, I wondered?

(And whatever happened to crepe paper, I also wondered. When I was small, my mother would sew Halloween costumes for me out of crepe paper every year.)

Today, I’m exactly one month away from going back to Minnesota for the 50th reunion of my high school graduating class of 1959 from Edina Morningside High School. This will probably require a cocktail dress for one of the nights. And a cocktail dress might reveal some things I’d rather keep hidden about my upper arms.

(Speaking of 50th high school reunions, yesterday at the supermarket I was paging through the latest National Enquirer, as is my wont, and there was a photo of actor Nick Nolte being pushed in a wheelchair through an airport and the caption said that he was headed for HIS 50th high school reunion. He looked gaunt and old. At least I can walk through the airport to get to mine, I thought, feeling thankful for that.)

So starting yesterday, because I do have five-pound hand weights—I’ve instituted an “arm sculpting” routine inspired by Michelle Obama. Of course I don’t have that handy machine with the metal bar that you push down, but I know a maneuver with the weights that’s supposed to exercise the right muscles. (Hold your arms straight over your head clutching the weights, hands facing. Then bend your elbows so that the weights drop behind your head, somewhere at the back of your neck. Then straighten up the arms again, weights reaching toward the ceiling. Repeat 15 times.) Then do 15 arm curls with the weights extended out to the sides.

We’ll see, if I do three sets of 15 each in the morning and again in the evening, perhaps the firmness and flopping of my upper arms will be improved by the time I go to the reunion on Oct. 9. I’ll let you know. Or maybe I can just find a cocktail dress with nice long sleeves.

Dukakis At Eleni's Memorial, Lia Greece

Michael Dukakis, who ran for the presidency of the United States in 1988 and was the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history, arrived in the small northern Greek village of Lia last week on Aug. 24, causing great excitement throughout the country, and especially in Lia, where the village had been spruced up, pot holes filled, foliage pruned, and a heliport repaved to receive Dukakis' entourage, (although the man himself chose to drive up the vertiginous mountain roads so he could see the countryside on the way.)

Dukakis' maternal grandparents came from Vrisohori, another small and, until recently, isolated village not far from Lia. Although Mike and Kitty have visited Greece many times, they had never visited Northern Greece and his grandparents' village. The couple, along with Kitty's sister Ginnie and Ginnie's husband, Al, used the Grand Serai Hotel in Ioannnina as a base. After a lavish dinner hosted by the Mayor of Ioannina, they left the next day to see Vrisohori where Sen. Dukakis, with tears in his eyes, lauded the village which had produced his mother Euterpe, who became one of the the first Greek-American women to earn a college degree. (The small village also produced the father of film director John Cassavetes.)

The next day, Monday, Aug. 24, the Dukakis group arrived in Lia to attend a memorial service for Eleni Gatzoyiannis, my mother-in-law and the mother of my husband Nicholas Gage

Eleni Gatzoyiannis was executed by a firing squad of Communist guerrillas in Aug. 1948-- her body left in a ravine along with 12 other murdered civilians. Before that day, she was imprisoned, crowded along with 31 other prisoners into the tiny basement of her own house--which had been taken over as guerrilla headquarters.

When the guerrillas, who occupied the village in the last months of the Greek Civil War, started collecting children to take them behind the Iron Curtain, Eleni began to plan a nighttime escape for her own children. (In the end 28,000 children were kidnapped in the pedomasoma.) The escape succeeded after two abortive tries--but on the third try, she was forced to stay behind, to provide two women from her household to harvest wheat for the guerrillas. She chose herself and her 15-year-old daughter Glykeria, and said goodbye to her nine-year-old son, Nicholas and three older daughters. After her children disappeared, Eleni was questioned, tortured,imprisoned and ultimately executed on Aug. 28, 1948.

Nick's book about his mother, «Eleni», has told her story around the world in 34 languages. It was followed by the film Eleni. Her sacrifice to gain freedom for her children was cited on national television by President Ronald Reagan.

Last week, 61 years after Eleni’s execution, Michael and Kitty Dukakis attended a memorial service in her honor in Aghios Demetrios Church, where she worshipped, and where her remains were placed in the ossuary after her body was recovered from the ravine where she fell.

Also at the church last week were survivors and descendents of the 12 other civilians who died that day. After the service, mourners were given the traditional kollyva to eat--a sweet combination of boiled wheat, pomegranate seeds, almonds, sugar and raisins-- to symbolize the resurrection and immortality of the soul.

From the church, Mike and Kitty Dukakis came up the mountain to see Eleni's house as it is now--rebuilt from ruins in 2002 by our daughter and Eleni's granddaughter, author Eleni Gage. (She spent a year in the village restoring the house and writing a travel memoir "North of Ithaka" about the experience.) The house has been decorated to look just as it did before the Civil War. On the mantle is a photograph of Eleni Gatzoyiannis and her husband Christos--who was working as a produce seller in Worcester when war broke out in 1939, preventing him from returniing to Greece for the next decade.

Nick then showed the Dukakises his grandfather's house, lower on the mountain, and the path that the children took when they escaped down through the minefields at night, until they reached the Nationalist soldiers on the other side. They were sent to a refugee camp where they lived until their father was able to bring them to the United States a year later.

Finally, the villagers of Lia gathered with Mike and Kitty Dukakis in the village Inn for a celebratory meal, including the traditional local pita pies. There were tears as well as smiles as Mike and Kitty greeted and hugged the villagers, old and young, who had lost loved ones and grandparents on that day in 1948.

Nick welcomed the visitors, saying in part «I’m very moved that Mike and Kitty Dukakis have come here to remember the fate of Eleni and to recall how she suffered and from whom.»

In turn Gov. Dukakis, also speaking in Greek, said «Having read several times the powerful work of Nicholas Gage about his mother, we are are very moved to come to Lia and see the places of her martyrdom.»

This celebration of her legacy--the legacy of a simple Greek peasant woman who died to save her children--was something that Eleni Gatzoyiannis, murdered at 41, could never have imagined happening 61 years after her death. Hundreds gathered in her village as she was honored by the only Greek-American to run for the presidency of the United States--the country she longed to see, but never did. (After Nick's father Christos died in 1985, Nick brought his mother's bones to Worcester, MA to be buried next to her husband, in Hope Cemetery)

It was an honor that Eleni Gatzoyiannis could not have imagined when she was alive --but the spirit of Eleni has often been felt in the village over the years since her death, as people from around the world have made the pilgrimage to see where she lived and died.

I think she knew.

THE GREAT PITA PIE FESTIVAL IN LIA, GREECE

(Please click on the photos to enlarge)

Last week, when we drove up the winding mountain road in northern Greece and arrived at Nick’s native village of Lia, just below the Albanian border, we were thrilled to learn that the famous “Yiorti tis Pitas”—or “Festival of Pita Pies” was happening the very next day—Saturday Aug. 22.

The Greek calendar is full of religious holidays—like the August 15 festival of the Virgin Mary, which is second only to Easter in importance—but each village also has its own Saint’s Day (Lia celebrates July 21—the feast day of the Prophet Elias.)

But we had never been lucky enough to be present at the “Festival of Pita Pies” which, as far as I know, is unique to Lia.

Our neighbor in the village—Dina Petsis –was elected Lia’s first female president in 2006 and she brought to the village the Festival of Pita Pies—a kind of harvest festival—now in its third year. Pita pies are the traditional delicacy of this area of northern Greece. The pitas are not desserts, but savory pies with all manner of good things baked between layers of phyllo dough. (But Dina also cooked a sweet apple and cinnamon pita as well—because I asked for it.)

In 2002—when daughter Eleni spent a year living in Lia, rebuilding the ruined family home and writing her travel memoir “North of Ithaka”, Dina introduced her to the secrets of pita making,including a pita made with 13 kinds of wild greens including nettles, and another cheese-y pie called “dish rag pie”. Eleni even learned to make a sweet cake that a single girl can bake and take to church, which she called in her book “Get a Man” pie.

Last Saturday, Dina, who is not only village president but also the finest cook in Lia, let Eleni help her make 5 different kinds of pitas. All the village women from miles around were cooking their specialities. Dina’s contributions included a pita full of various greens, a quiche-like pita featuring zucchini (everything from her garden, of course) another pita with macaroni and cheese in it, and my personal favorite—a pita filled with chicken and rice. (The secret ingredients, Eleni told me, were mint and grated carrots.)

Dina had been so busy getting ready for the Pita Festival that she cheated this time and used store-bought phyllo dough for her pitas, although most of the village women proudly make their own homemade phyllo dough, which is rolled out on a board with a stick that resembles a broom handle.

A large, level area in the village, shaded by plane trees and called the Goura, was strung with lights and Greek flags. The ladies contributing pitas came early. There were 76 pitas in all, cooked by more than 30 women. Notis, who runs the one village store and coffee shop in Lia with his wife Stella, had been roasting lambs on spits all day for those who were not satisfied with pita alone. He and his helpers also sold beer and local wines. Notis would hack meat off the lambs with his cleaver, fill a plate and weigh it to know what to charge.

But the pitas were free. Daughter Eleni and Dina and her helpers cut the pitas into squares and brought each table a plate filled with a variety. There were no prizes—for no one could taste every pita and decide which was the winner. (Our table, however, unofficially awarded first prize to Dina’s Cotopita—the chicken pie.)

Then Dina, in her role as president, gave a speech of welcome and the orchestra began to play. The clarinet player, as usual, was the star, assisted by a fiddler, a bouzouki player, a singer and a young boy on the tamborine.

Our village priest, Father Procopi, along with Dina, started the dancing and the lady cantor from the church joined in. (In the photos Dina is wearing a black and white blouse and Eleni a turquoise dress.) Then, as the high spirits (kefi) increased, more pita-baking women and exuberant young people joined in the dance. The older men mostly watched and drank and devoured the 76 pitas donated by the expert cooks.

We went to bed around midnight, but Dina and her husband Andreas didn’t stop dancing until 2:30 in the morning.

We’ve already marked next year’s calendar for August 22-- the fourth annual Yiorti tis Pitas in Lia.

ALI PASHA & THE BLOODY HISTORY of IOANNINA

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On our first evening back in Greece, last week, a stroll down the main street of Ioannina took us past reminders of the cataclysms that have racked this area for the past 200 years. The entire population of the city seemed to be outside, enjoying the perfect weather. Ioannina (also spelled Yannina) is the provincial capital of Epiros and the stepping-off place for my husband Nick’s village—about an hour’s drive farther north on a mountain just below the Albanian border.

I often remind myself, when I’m in Greece, that any Greek my age—old enough to remember World War II—is a survivor of the Italian and Nazi occupations, the terrible starvation that followed, and the bloody Civil War that rent the country after that. The Civil War still splits the populace along political lines when you bring up stories like that of my mother-in-law Eleni Gatzoyiannis, who was imprisoned, tortured and killed in 1948 for engineering her children’s’ escape from their occupied village. She began planning the escape when the Communist guerrillas started collecting children to send to re-education camps behind the Iron Curtain. (This was called the pedomasoma, and while many claim it never happened—like Holocaust deniers— in fact 28,000 children were taken from their parents and reared in communist countries.)

In Ioannina, as elsewhere, Greeks traditionally take an evening stroll—the peripato-- families walking together, pushing baby strollers, the youth checking each other’s fashion statements. Everyone eventually sits at an outdoor cafe to enjoy an iced coffee or a glass of wine or ouzo and watch the passing parade. (Dinner doesn’t start until ten p.m.). The peripato is especially popular in towns on the sea or on a lakeside harbor like Ioannina.

Tourists have not yet discovered this city, which is little changed from the days when Lord Byron visited the notorious tyrant Ali Pasha in the walled Turkish Kastro which still stands—its walls intact, its minarets and palaces now turned into museums.

In Ioannina we stayed in the new Grand Serai hotel, ornately decorated with marble, crystal chandeliers and copies of paintings showing Lord Byron and Ali Pasha—the Albanian vizier who tried to seize control of the area from the Turkish Sultan in Constantinople.

Ali Pasha had 300 women in his harem and 300 boys in his seraglio, so they say in Ioannina. Most of them were kidnapped from the neighboring Greek villages—pretty girls for the harem, promising boys to be trained as soldiers in the Janissary corps. Turkish rule ended in Northern Greece in 1913, but even after that, village women like Nick’s mother Eleni, warned their daughters to cover their faces with their kerchiefs to avoid being kidnapped for their beauty. Nick’s father, who was born in 1891, wasn’t sure of his exact birth date because his mother, like everyone else, lied about the age of the boys, making them younger so they wouldn’t be taken as Turkish soldiers.

Ali Pasha had a habit of drowning individuals who displeased him by sealing them in sacks weighted with stones and dropping them into the bottomless Lake Pamvotis below the walls of the Turkish Kastro. They say that in the morning mists over the lake you can see the ghosts of the women who died there, including Kyria Efrosini, the lover of one of Ali Pasha’s sons, who tried to sell her expensive ring in the marketplace. A famous painting portrays her and her maids, who were drowned with her, being rowed to their death by grinning evil Turks.

Today the lakefront is the scene of excellent restaurants and nightclubs which are filled to overflowing with the youth of the city, partying late into the night. Even at midnight, families are out, dining al fresco as children enjoy a Lunar Park of carnival rides and outdoor shows of traditional Greek shadow puppets. There are the gypsies, selling everything from mixed nuts to cheap Chinese electronics, and the little ferryboats, chugging to and from the island in the middle of the lake. Day or night the lakeside is a happening scene,

Ali Pasha was assassinated in 1822 in his summer home on the large island in the middle of the lake (which has many tavernas featuring freshwater fish like trout, plus eels and frogs legs.)

Ali’s wife was Kyria Vassiliki, who was kidnapped (if I remember correctly) from her village of Plessio at the age of 15. The old man trusted the lovely Vassiliki, but she learned of his plan to torch Greek villages and she abetted assassins sent by the Sultan in Constantinople—giving a signal which allowed the killers entrance to Ali Pasha’s island home, where they shot him from the floor below.

The Turks cut off Ali Pasha’s head and carted it to the Sultan in Constantinople, along with Vassilki as a witness—to prove that the tyrant was dead. His headless body was buried under an elaborate wrought- iron cage in Ioannina, still standing near the mosque that is now a museum.

In gratitude for saving her fellow Greeks, Kyria Vassiliki was returned to her village and became the first Greek woman to receive social security.

As we walked down the main street--Averoff— toward the lake front, we passed the entrance to the Turkish Kastro, and a shrine to two local Greek warriors who were hanged by the Turks from a nearby plane tree. They are now saints.

Then we passed a monument to the Jews of Ioannina, who lived mostly within the Kastro—near the ancient synagogue which still survives (although there are rarely enough men to make a minion.) A sign says in both Greek and English, “In memory of our 1,850 Jewish cohabitants who were arrested on March 25th, 1944, and executed in the Nazi concentration camps”. That is another story in Ioannina’s bloody history and one that is still being written about.

As we approached the lake, we passed a warren of shops featuring wares of hammered copper and brass as well as silver filigree: traditional handicrafts of Ioannina. Some of the objects are made from mortar shells left from the war.

Then we reached the lakeside, where the music was blaring and the populace was eating and drinking and admiring the view. Aside from some lakeside statues of veiled women, representing the victims of Ali Pasha, there was no sign of the city’s tragic history, only merriment and music on a balmy summer night.

HAIR in the Park--Forty Years Later

The Age of Aquarius Re-Visited

The first time I saw the rock musical “Hair” in 1968 in London, I had left my job and my boyfriend in Manhattan to work for a British magazine, arriving just in time to enjoy two years of swinging London. “Hair” was a scandal (the cast famously got naked at the end of the first act.) It was no coincidence that it opened in London one day after the abolishment of the Theatre Acts which had given the Lord Chamberlain the power of censorship since 1737. I was thrilled by my first look at the theater of the streets—the music of a new anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-everything generation: my own.

When I learned, last summer that a revival of “Hair “ was being staged at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, that the tickets were free and there was a special line for senior citizens, I drove from home in Grafton, MA. , listening, on the way, to the original cast album and getting a little misty at the thought of how young and optimistic we were in 1968, protesting a misguided war and believing we could make a difference. I slept on my daughter’s couch and set out early for the Park.

I reached the Delacorte box office at 8:15 a.m. and joined the seniors’ line – thirty-some individuals sitting patiently on three very long benches. The other line stretched out of sight into the park—young people sprawled on the ground, some in sleeping bags.

I sat next to Ivan, a lawyer smartly dressed in a dark blue suit and black tie who was fielding clients’ calls on his cell phone. Soon all three benches for our line were filled and there was no more room to sit. A newcomer passed by muttering “Bunch of hippies!” and we chuckled. But we were a bunch of hippies….grown up. When Lorraine, a striking woman with her English spaniel on a leash, mentioned her recent trip to India—floating down the Ganges and sleeping on the riverbank in tents—she collected a handful of retirement-age listeners, including me, all of us planning trips to India and eager for advice.

Our five-hour wait was eased by nearby bathroom facilities, a hot-dog cart, and menus from Andy’s Deli on Columbus, which delivers to the line. We did the Times crossword, read, debated politics and exchanged life stories. Lorraine related her years of struggle to protect her rent-controlled apartment which ended in a settlement and a new home.

“I used to be all about work,” Ivan mused, “But now I think it’s more important to enjoy life.” He fished out a photo of his grandson whom he frequently flies cross country to visit.

At 1 p.m. Curt returned with a handful of tickets. “One ticket or two?” he asked each of us, then checked proof of age. Triumphantly, Lorraine, Ivan and I all scored two. Then, right after me, I heard Curt say, “I’m sorry folks. That’s the last one.”

At 8 p.m. we gathered with our guests on a perfect summer evening, under the “brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,” as Shakespeare and the tribe members of “Hair” described it. The first six rows of one section were for us. The rest were filled with hundreds of people who, like the cast, had not been born when “Hair” premiered.

The performance was just as electrifying as when I saw it in London, only this time I kept turning around to look at the beaming faces of my generation —singing along and remembering. The lithe young cast members displayed better abs than I recalled from the original production and at the end of the first act they shed their clothes and ran off stage.

During the intermission, my daughter pondered the changes in bikini waxing since 1968. Lorraine and I exclaimed in unison that no one had heard of bikini waxing back then. The conversation turned to pot smoking and a stately woman sitting nearby chimed in—“I started late. I was stoned for most of the summer of ‘73. That was after my ex-husband came out of the closet and before people started dying of AIDs.”

As we reminisced, I realized that for most of the audience, like my daughter, this performance was a time capsule—an entertaining look into an era long gone. But for us it was a chance to revisit our youth and reflect on how things had changed. It wasn’t depressing, although we were no longer young and optimistic and our country was once more fighting an unpopular war. At least we were still here. Some among us could no longer sing “I got my hair”, but like the kids on stage, we could belt out “I got life” without it being a lie.

As the second act began, Lorraine asked me, “Are you going to go up on the stage and dance at the end?”

I thought about it. “I didn’t forty years ago.”

Lorraine leaned forward. “Joan, I think this time you should.”

As the Tribe danced to “Let the Sunshine In”, she ran down to the stage. So did most of our age group. I didn’t dance and I didn’t smoke pot that night, but I left Central Park on a contact high of pride. Maybe my generation didn’t end war, eliminate racism, and create universal tolerance— despite all the anthems about peace, love and freedom now. But we tried. And we still had the motivation to try… to sit for half a day in the hope --but not the certainty-- of getting free tickets to revisit the first ever “American tribal love rock musical.”

(A few days later, Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton attended—although I suspect they didn’t have to wait in line.)

Leaving the park, we caught up with Ivan, who remarked that forty years ago, a woman alone could not be walking here alone at night without fear, but now there were several visible ahead of us, leaving the concert.

As we passed the Temple of Dendur, I was struck by a variation on that ubiquitous Mastercard slogan: “Cost of tickets to ‘Hair’: zero dollars. Time spent to get tickets: five hours. Watching your generation let down their ‘Hair’ 40 years after the first time: priceless.”

(The reception to Hair in Central Park was so good last summer that the same cast is now performing it on Broadway and the tickets will cost you from $37 to $122!)

OBAMA'S MAMA WAS A TEXTILE ARTIST AND COLLECTOR (LIKE ME!)

(please click on the photos to enlarge)


Reading my weekly Antiques and The Arts newspaper, dated July 17, I came across a small item that thrilled me. It said that Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, wove textiles for wall hangings early in her life and when she moved to Indonesia with her son in the 1960’s, she began to amass a collection of the vibrant batik textiles of the country.

She had married an Indonesian after Obama’s father left Hawaii to return to Africa, and her daughter, Maya Soetoro Ng –Obama’s half sister—has loaned her late mother’s collection of batik textiles for an exhibition in Washington D.C. from August 9-23 in the Textile Museum there. (www.textilemuseum.org ): “A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth: Barack Obama’s Mother and Indonesian Batiks.” “She did not acquire rare or expensive pieces, but rather contemporary examples that were an expression of a living tradition, patterned with both classic designs and those of passing fashion” according to the press release.

Later, when Ann was studying anthropology at the University of Hawaii, she tried to find ways to help craftspeople. She worked with the Ford Foundation in Jakarta and with USAID and the World Bank, and set up micro-credit projects in Indonesia, Pakistan and Kenya to benefit poor women making textiles.

I have always considered textile making (weaving and embroidery) a fascinating art form. In many countries this the only medium of artistic expression available to women and the only way they can earn money. Whenever I travel, I buy textiles –ideally from the women who created them. Now my walls are covered with antique American quilts, Mexican huipils, Haitian voodoo flags and Greek embroidered table runners. Most pieces cost under $100 but they’re priceless, because they embody the maker’s artistic talent as well as (in some cases) their religious or political beliefs and their dreams ,(the embroidered wedding couples worked into a Greek tablecloth as part of a dowry.)

Around 1970 I got interested in antique American quilts. On our second floor stair landing I hung a “Tumbling Blocks” quilt behind a sea captain’s chest full of teddy bears. (The worn teddy with wings on the wall is my childhood friend who has passed on to his reward.) The section from an unfinished velvet and silk Victorian quilt is called “Windmill Blades” and the large “Barn Raising” quilt is from a very old variation on the Log Cabin pattern.

Mexican and Guatelmalan embroideries fascinate me with their sophisticated and wild use of color. I’ve decorated the wall of my studio with antique Mexican huipils that indicate the native village of the woman who wears them. The lady on the right is Maria, whom we met in the marketplace of San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico. She was the best among the many women weavers and embroiderers who crowded the marketplace. (San Cristobal is heaven for the collector of textiles.) Near the border of Guatemala I found the embroidery made by a Zapatista woman who was also selling dolls with faces masked like Commandante Marcos. The pillow that was made in Guatemala looks to me like a happy man walking in a graveyard. Could this be a memorial or something to do with the Day of the Dead?

Daughter Eleni, who studied folklore and mythology, introduced me to the sequined voodoo flags made in Haiti and used in the religious rites. These are usually made (and signed) by men and they represent the gods who take possession of the worshiper. These sequin flags and the artists who make them are taken very seriously as art now, which means they can be very expensive. The two large ones represent La Sirene—-The Enchantress—and Baron Samedi—who mitigates between life and death.

Textile artists reflect the life they see around them—the Greek wall hanging is an island scene with table, chairs and cat; the festive wedding scene (brought from Pakistan by Eleni) shows a wedding party celebrating beneath an umbrella. The exquisite antique Chinese embroidery was in a box of textiles I bought for $75. The incredible detailed work and the wonderful reproduction of all those birds, animals and flowers make it beyond price. ( The knots are so small I think it must include the “forbidden knot” that would render the sewers blind.)

Finally there is lace: a simple lace handkerchief and a lace runner that I’m told represents French cathedrals. It may sound silly to buy pieces for a few dollars and then spend much more to frame them, but I do. Last Monday, at the Antique Textiles Vintage Fashions Show and Sale in Sturbridge, which kicks off Brimfield week three times a year, I photographed that lace runner with the deer.—The price tag says $950.00.

I always go to the “Vintage Clothing Show” in Sturbridge, as I call it (The next one is Sept. 3) partly to gape at the celebrities and crazily dressed fashionistas talking into their cell phones in French or Japanese, but I also go to educate my eye and find the rare bargain, and when I go home I enjoy my own collection all the more.

*(To all my English major friends—don’t write to tell me that ‘Like me’ is bad grammar. I know it but used it anyway!)