A few days ago I wrote to some friends of fifty years' standing. They have answered fewer and fewer of my letters in the fifteen years since I moved to Ukraine. Unable to confidently locate telephone numbers or emails, I also sent postal mail to a woman whom I really liked when I tutored her kids two decades ago and a distant cousin. The latter two are long shots. She is married to a high-powered Democrat lawyer and he divorced from a San Francisco lawyer dedicated to lesbian and trans causes. I suspect none of them want to hear from a straight guy leading a normal life with three normal kids, however interesting that life may be.
I write "suspect" because nobody will say. I used to hear accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and the like from my now grown kids, but never anything specific, pertinent to our relationships.
The real reasons they don’t answer are probably quite simple. They have nothing to say. Their woke philosophy has led to dead ends. Their parents are gone, their friends are dying, and they have no children. Whatever effort they may have invested in attempting to make the world a better place has come to naught. Climate hasn't changed. Race relations haven't improved. Women and sexual minorities continue to clamor, never content with what they have achieved.
Living in places like Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland these friends and family have supported Black Lives Matter, laxity with regard to street people, taxing the rich, reduced incarceration and so on. What do they have to show for it? Sexual and ethnic minority populations that don't like them anyhow, who are contemptuous of their pusillanimity, and who make the streets unsafe, or at least unpleasant to walk on.
There are certainly other factors. In the letters I wrote: "Losing friends is a natural consequence of aging. People lose their ability for and interest in communicating. They become more inwardly focused. They move to retirement homes, then assisted living, and then they pass away." I know that several subscribers to this blog are having issues with bodily infirmities and dementia. Only a few of them have spouses who will let me know when it is time to drop them from the distribution.
I reflected on this as Zoriana and I bicycled a mile through the rain to her kindergarten this morning. Though I have every reason in the world to be happy, the melancholy oozing into my life through every pore of my online existence seems to get to me.
The bright spot is my children. On Tuesday I mentioned that I had gotten to know Miroslav and his parents Vlad and Marianna. Since he is an only child and Marianna is out of town, Vlad was more than happy to spend an hour and a half in conversation Wednesday night as the children played. What a pleasure to listen to them! Running around the house like wild Indians, shrieking in joy, playfully hitting and calling each other names. Two-year-old Marianna doing her best to keep up, and 11-year-old Eddie being gentle so as not to hurt the two five-year-olds.
I pulled out our double 12 dominoes set, the best gift ever – thank you Gary and Maryna. Each kid grabbed a handful of dominoes and started building things.
Among those brilliant if dour souls I follow on the Internet is Toby Rogers, who posts as uTobian. In today's post he made a polite, not pushy plea for people to convert free subscriptions to paid. I posted a comment to the effect that I had recently decided to do exactly that. I think my dialogue with him is worth reposting here:
I recently mentioned uTobian's citation of C. J. Hopkins' profound take on today's state of the world. This morning I reflected on what it means for me, raising three kids. Probably not much. If it took me a few times through to appreciate Hopkins, there is no way of formulating anything I could pass on to the kids.
John Steinbeck wrote about his Russian translator/tour guide Svetlana in 1947. Talking of Sweet Lana, he wrote
"…she was vehement on most subjects. It was through her that we learned of the wave of morality that is upon the young people of the Soviet Union. It is somewhat like the morality of an American small town a generation ago. Nice girls are not seen in nightclubs. Nice girls do not smoke. Nice girls do not use lipstick or nail polish. Nice girls dress very conservatively. Nice girls do not drink. And nice girls are very circumspect with their boyfriends. Sweet Lana was so moral that she made us, who had never thought of ourselves as being very immoral, feel rather bawdy. We like a well made up woman, and we have a critical eye for a well turned ankle. We leaned toward mascara and eye shadow. We like music and scat singing, and love the pretty legs in a chorus line. These were all decadent things to Sweet Lana. These were the products of decadent capitalism. And this attitude was not limited to Sweet Lana. It was true of most of the young people we met. And it was interesting to us that the attitudes of our most conservative and old-fashioned groups are found in the attitudes of the young people of the Soviet Union.
In this vignette Steinbeck captures what I like about my Oksana and her family. They were formed in simple times. Oksana dresses simply and does not wear makeup. She has a deeply ingrained, small town moral sense. In talking about other people's lapses – divorces and infidelities – it is clear that she simply never had any inclinations in those directions herself. Though I know nothing of her brief first marriage, I am quite sure she handled herself honorably while it lasted as well as in concluding it.
So far as I can tell – admitting that a foreign guy of a different generation would not be the first to know – the young mothers who flow in and out of our house have the same attitudes about fidelity and divorce. As a fly on the wall, I hear quite a bit said about their husbands' shortcomings – could work harder, not imaginative, likes to drink – but not much about divorce. Our former babysitter Anna took a decade to get rid of a husband who was afflicted with all of these named shortcomings.
Steinbeck observed that the Communists and Catholics alike claimed “give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.” The Fourth Turning writes about the zeitgeist in which each successive generation is immersed, and how they differ. I have written about how the cultural Marxism my first family encountered in the schools, in the neighborhood and among their playmates shaped their lives.
While it would not be possible to explain Toby Rogers and C.J. Hopkins' observations to my kids, I don't need to. Just like my wife Oksana and Sweet Lana in Steinbeck's day, they are absorbing a solid sense of morality from the world around them.
Back to Substack, Naomi Wolf made a very personal post last week on her husband's Brian's 49th birthday. He is everything she is not. She is a mercurial, passionate, brilliant Jewish lady of 60. He is an extremely manly, martial, practical, even-tempered, hyper-goyish Irishman. She liked my comment praising her openness about this aspect of her private life.
I have seen this form of opposites attracting myself. In my college days at Reed I had a couple of Jewish girlfriends. Adrianne is long dead, and I suspect Phyllis likewise. They were zaftig (German, saftig, Ukrainian соковитий, Russian сочный) and attracted to the virtues of this white goy. Back when they were still celebrated. I mentioned such an attraction recently in connection with a less auspicious, if nonetheless amusing chapter in my history in Ukraine.
On the subject of social generations, this chart showed up today, copied from Wikipedia. Click on the chart to find a broad-brush description of each. It departs from the naming scheme proposed by The Fourth Turning authors, notably by dividing in the year 2010 between Generation Z and Generation Alpha.
I don't have a clue what Generation Alpha will be like in the United States, but I am very sure that it will be different here in Ukraine, just as my Silent Generation differed from Sweet Lana's.
My to-do list includes three books to read and review and my web site to update. The hosting service has been sold three times, after each of which it has become more unwieldy. I have not therefore not updated it for several years. Time to do so.
Next week I will deliver a speech on how evolution is to blame for a lot of what is wrong with the world today. In an attempt to learn more about Substack’s features, I’m posting my draft as it stands today in this pdf for your comment.
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That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the bus to town is still not working. Every outing is thus an expedition. Oksana is having a music lesson tomorrow for the two-year-old set, during which Eddie, Zoriana and I will do her a favor by taking an expedition to go clothes shopping and get some frozen veggies.
"Though I have every reason in the world to be happy, the melancholy oozing into my life through every pore of my online existence seems to get to me" - this is [one of the many] problems with the internet. Time to kick the habit and spend less online and more in the happy world that you live! In 2020, I ditched my smart phone, facebook, instagram and twitter. I'm SO MUCH HAPPIER! An occasional read on substack keeps me informed and the rest of the time that I've regained is lived in the real world.
There are so many lost souls out there and I don’t think we realize how everything we do, say, and write affects them. I know I need to be more vigilant. Although I yearn to change this careening world it is the simple graces I need to focus on every day. The gratitude you have for your children is lovely and so needed. And you demonstrate the core - a mother and father who love and respect each other can work miracles. Blessings to you, Graham.