Worth it....

Nobody's making any comments on my blog so I guess I'm in an 'unknown zone' as the computer sometimes likes to say. We just got back from a six-day trip to Scarsdale and, even though I got sick with flu-like symptoms (chills and congestion), it was worth it. My grandchildren are very funny! At a tot shabbat as soon as the 'rabbi' started talking about shabbat candles my 1 1/2 tear old granddaughter held up the index fingers on her right and left hands. She's had no training yet but it was funny to see how fast she's catching on. After a 'playdate' with one of her friends the 3 1/2 year old was driven home by me as both she and my granddaughter of the same age sat in car seats behind me. I looked in the curved rear-view mirror and saw that they were holding hands! I was in awe at the 'beauty' of the moment and these memory images are still with me.

Past 'tense'

I just finished reading Philip Roth's latest book Indignation. It's a wonderfully revealing book about, who else?, Philip Roth aka Marcus Messner, the son of a Newark kosher butcher breaking away from 'old world' ethnic Jewry into the new world of waspish private college during the Korean War. Not only is the book full and frank about the sexual mores of the early fifties, it is pitch perfect in describing first love and the inabiltiy of an ethical Jewish boy to adapt to the ways of the broader world: get along by going along. The plot is thrilling, the dialogue rivetting and, even though the book ends in tragedy, deeply satisfying. It got me to thinking about my own college experience and what I regard as the single most significant cultural event of my time: the sexual revolution which began with the advent of the birth control pill in 1965. This changed everything - even the way movies would be made from then on. I wonder what it would have been like to live in a coed dormitory...