Breaking the Long Silence

You may have guessed from the context of said silence that I found a real keeper in my new boyfriend.

Now that I have a stolen moment to update my blog (according to time stamp you know I should be sleeping,) here goes:


"Grease" sure blossomed into a cultural phenomenon. Anwar and I watched it a couple of times and I said, "Of all the pieces of Americana to be shipped all over the world, I'm glad 'Grease' was one of them." It really shows the world where America is coming from.


John had said that Russians had little wealth but hardly any homeless people. Anwar said that Egyptians had a robust sense of community. Seattle is certainly a step up from some other places I have been in the U.S., but that's not saying much. To John and Anwar and others, Seattle seems cold and fragmented. I related this to Russ, who expressed some surprise that I allowed John's claim that there were few homeless people in Russia, whereupon I challenged him to Google the Russian almanac, which he didn't do. Be that as it may, Russ indicated a direct relationship between wealth and snobbery. Still, when I challenged him to connect the dots he came up empty handed.

I am reminded of high society. Some kids at my school were preparing to be debutantes. One teacher declared that she hoped nobody in the class she was addressing would ever become involved in such a thing. Then I read an article by a debutante which said, in essence, this is what we do in our community; it almost certainly has its analog in your community.

It took me a long time to realize that she was implicating everybody, which doesn't excuse anybody. When cliques form in high school we tell our kids that it's wrong to form exclusive social groups. But all too often we grownups turn around and set our own bad example. Some people don't talk to strangers. Sometimes the neighbors downstairs are the "strangers!" I heard (anonymously, from my landlord) of a man who complained to the landlord about another tenant (noise complaint) without speaking directly to the tenant because he just didn't want to associate with the latter. That person just wasn't on the list of those, as they say, "with whom [he] *chose* to associate!"

Should we still tell kids that it's wrong to hang with cliques? Certainly, but let's set a better example than some of the socially immature adults around us. Should we discourage young people of wealth and privilege from becoming "debutantes?" Absolutely, but let's not embarrass our own community with analogous institutions.