Women's Voices for Change

Tipping the Scales in the Dreadful Economy

by Laura Sillerman

Well, we may be beyond the leak in the dike stage in this economy, but we’re not beyond the point where individuals can stem leaks in order to keep the flood from carrying our neighbors away.

Being grown women we have a way to not only plug a leak, but to stop new ones from developing.  Believe it or not, we can do it with dollar bills.  Or fives or tens.  By realizing that tipping-- as in being Big Tippers-- can have a significant ripple effect in these times.

Kirsten Gillibrand, Who Are You?

These are immutable facts.  Kirsten Gillibrand was born in 1966.  She graduated from Dartmouth.  She is a woman.  And one thing more: We are in a laboratory now.

This is going to be a test of walking the walk, not talking the talk.  And a test of women of a certain stripe to see if we can wait and see who the new senator from New York really is without instantly celebrating simply because of her gender.

I, for one, am dismayed that the scuttlebutt is she has gotten this appointment because she is a woman.  That is not a good enough reason.  We have a new administration that needs strong support for its programs and policies and we have a national need for transparency and honesty.  The question is what does   this senator stand for and can she live up to what many citizens want to believe she is?

From the Publisher and Editor: A 2009 Toast

All of us at Women's Voices for Change appreciate your support and send our best to you for the New Year.  We are very interested in your comments; we hope that many more of you will join us in 2009 with your voice, as we redefine not only The New Menopause, but the new world in which we are living.

We have increased our regular contributors this year, to include writers with expert knowledge about the economy, culture,  national social policies.  But we believe that every woman over forty can have a voice - one that can shape both the lives of our country's policies, and certainly the way that women over 40 will be viewed during this prolonged economic crisis. 

Holiday Thoughts from WVFC: What We're Grateful For, What We Remember

Here’s what I remember about the long ago time of being a young married person living in New York City at Christmastime.  I remember giving my heavy winter coat to the lady in the coat check room at the front of Bloomingdales then attacking the floors like a stealth shopper on a death defying mission.  I’d gather three or four Big Brown Bags worth of merchandise and then head back to the lady and check those.  Attack, check, repeat.  Attack, check, repeat.  Until I’d finally achieved my mother’s gifts for my father, my father’s gifts for my mother, my parents gifts for me, mine for them and gone on to get some for friends as well.  I’d leave the store just about wearing a wide skirt of shopping bags, feeling the ache between my shoulder blades before I got to the corner.  I’d be thinking about the books I meant to get at Brentano’s the next day.  

Tina Turner, Sexy Near Seventy

by Laura Sillerman

Blame Tina Turner.

I recently went to see her concert at Madison Square Garden.   Even as a veteran of many a rock concert, I’ve never left a performance so confused. Here are the objective realities about this Tina tour:

• Tina’s voice is as good as it ever was. 
• The staging is big and theatrical. 
• The dancing is phenomenal.
• The two guitarists who also do back up vocals are, shall we say, long in the teeth?
• Tina wears a lot of costumes.
• No one has ever sung a better version of “Help!”

“Proud Mary” brings down the house every time.  And should. Her finale in the cherry-picker over the audience is one of the unnatural wonders of the world. So what was so confusing?

 

Giving Thanks in My Milestone Year, and Ours

by Laura Sillerman

There are times when to state the obvious is the natural course of grace and gratitude.  This Thanksgiving is one of those times.  I am deeply grateful for these women of Women’s Voices for Change, who are so compelling in their morality while so different in background. (As an example:  some of us were born to families where education, though held in high regard, was unrepresented in the generations before ours, while others on our board were blessed with parents for whom book learning had been akin to breathing.)

We do not look to the precisely same political horizons for the inspiration of sunrise, but we do all appreciate the high noon aspect of these days and we mean to help change things for the better.  To work in the company of people who care deeply--about the real victories of helping individuals and about the imagined triumph of healing a nation--is to be inspired every day.  I am deeply grateful for that inspiration.

On a highly personal level:  These past months have contained an enormous gift from my friends and colleagues alike.

The only Election Day post you'll need....

A dialogue: What does today mean to you?

By any measure, today's election is unlike any in a generation. It's a very emotional moment for all of us who remember strings of events, over years, that led up to today.  As promised, below are some thoughts from some of the women who camw together, three years ago, to form Women's Voices for Change. We hope that you'll let us know, in comments, what you're thinking and feeling,  and what you hope the next stage will look like.

Faith Childs: It is said that the victor names the age.  We are standing on the edge of an era that will be named.  What that name is, none of us knows at this moment, but we will know it in our lifetimes.  Unlike other periods in American history where historians look backward to interpret and to designate, each of us will know the name of this age.   Certainly what happens tomorrow will represent a new beginning, one more representative of the values we espouse but rarely evince.                         

Laura Sillerman: Last night, a young woman whom I remember being born told me she is pregnant. 

A Quick Booknote from Laura Sillerman: Try A Short Story!

Do you sometimes feel like everything's moving way too fast these days, including you? When can we ever find time to read that novel that's been glancing mournfully from the bedside? 

Think short stories — those perfect miniatures of literature, so often overlooked in the wake of their boistrous big sister-- the novel.  Women often find themselves long on interests and short on time.  Story collections are a completely satisfying and sophisticated way to deal with that.

Finding Dulcinea, "The Librarian of The Internet" is giving us reason to think short this week. In "Fall Reading Essentials," a digest of some of the best of this season's short fiction offerings, Rachel Balik also shows us the way to free samples of exquisite short fiction available on the Web.  And if you've been wondering what all that fuss was about Alice Munro, 77 (above) and Anne Enright, 46 (right),  they're two of the form's master craftswomen: Balik makes sure to provide links to their work, along with many others.

Essay - Election 2008 Is Boom or Bust

By Laura Baudo Sillerman

At 61 years old I find myself wondering about my generation’s role in the current election and our lives’ legacy as well.  We were, many of us, student revolutionaries.  Some of us were called idealists, troublemakers, hippies, long-haired freaks and several less flattering monikers.  Still, most of us paddled straight from college into the mainstream.  My journey went from diploma through investment advising company and into advertising.  Maybe, in my marching days, I helped to stop an unjust war and maybe my presence at that first Earth Day in Boston gave rise to some of the environmental activism that is being reborn.  Maybe I tried hard to stand for women’s capabilities and rights when I was the only woman in the creative department of that first ad agency. Mostly though, like the bulk of my boomer buddies, I forgot to make good on the promises I made to myself and my country.

We said we didn’t want the smug, self-interested, materialistic values that had created gulags for the less fortunate.  We said we didn’t believe in profiteering.  We said we saw a family of humankind and kind one at that.  We said we hated war.   We paid lip service to so much and clearly it served so little purpose.

I’m calling on myself and my generation to look around at the mess we’ve participated in and to look long and hard at what this election means to the world-- and to think about what that says about those of us who meant to change things for the better.  There has never been an older generation like ours-- never been one that was born in such call for change while as steeped in peace, prosperity, technology and terror.  We are more robust with a longer life expectancy than any people our age have ever been.  We have a body of creative work that will last forever—the music, film and writing of our generation is iconic and enduring and will play on and stay on the shelves.  We will not be irrelevant unless we choose to be and this election is the one in which we can prove this. 

I call on the members of the classes of ‘66 to ’76 (and those to the north and south of those years) to stand up and be counted for what we stood for.  I want us to fight for fairness to all people and to keep democracy at the forefront of our nation.  We are not about breaks for those more fortunate and we are not about window dressing as reality.  We look for substance in statements and we understand that some sacrifice for greater good is no sacrifice at all.  What do we mean to leave here to prove the energy and principles of our younger days were the fulfilled promises of our mature years?  I, for one, will not be swayed by the maneuvers of demographers who mean to co-op my thinking.  I am a woman who sees a nation of citizens, not a citizen who merely cares about the candidacy of a woman.  I am a member of a generation that meant to make the world better and I am counting on the members of my generation to work hard to do that through an active role in the coming weeks.

Opera: Solo Encores as Metaphor

by Laura Sillerman | bio

There has been a ban on solo opera encores at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan since 1933. (That’s thirty-three). At the Metropolitan Opera they’ve been banned for the bulk of the 20th century-plus (with the exception of Pavarotti’s second act aria in “Tosca” in ’94). Let’s just say the high C was an early victim of P.C. -- a kind of sacrifice to the greater good, as it were.

Last week the tenor Juan Diego Florez scaled the heights of the high C nine times in “La Fille du Regiment” at the Met. The crowd elevated and exploded and, as had been agreed between Mr. Florez and the Met’s general manager, the will of the people was heard.

Mr. Gelb gave the stage manager a signal, the stage manager activated a podium light for the conductor, the conductor quizzed Mr. Florez by holding up two fingers and, after a smile from the tenor, the electricity flowed once more. All nine high C’s were achieved a second time.

How strange that, as celebrity has reached the level of deity, the world of opera strained to keep the individual from overshadowing the whole of the undertaking. How odd that an art form built on vocal high wire acts, with a roster of gods and goddesses, banned the moment when the audience might petition for more of a great thing.

The accepted explanation is that the practice of opera became more serious after the 19th century. Once the arias were surrounded by some gravitas, we couldn’t have the public just stopping performances willy-nilly, presumably.

But things have changed. Perhaps the public, chastened by being denied the right to demand “one more time,” can now be trusted to show enthusiasm only when it is truly deserved. More likely, as this sad old world gets sadder by the minute, we are realizing that the truly great moments don’t happen very often at all, and if we think to request a reprise out of appreciation and excitement, we deserve to have it.

Ah yes, the cynics among us can say, the more solo encores, the more people will go to see the soloists, the more profitable opera will be. Maybe so, but as Women’s Voices for Change knows, you’ve got to believe in encores to deserve them. Maybe, just maybe, the stars will strive to be deserving in new ways, maybe the audiences will as well.

Maybe all of us should consider life -- the all of it, including the parts that are abut singing a generous song, as a libretto we are writing and a score we are singing. The important part is that we decide how many high notes to hit -- and the encore is there for the taking.