Aunt Janet

My Aunt Janet died earlier this month at the age of 90.  She was my dad's younger sister, and the last of the generation that we kids called "the Bigs."  She was the most eccentric and most accomplished of my relatives, and her death leaves a vacant spot in the lives of those of us who now step into "Bigdom" ourselves.

Aunt Janet was born in Westport, Washington, and graduated from Washington State College, as it was then known.  She married a classmate, Uncle Carl. The couple immediately fled the chilly Palouse and set off for Southern California, where they spent the rest of their lives.  Uncle Carl was a veterinarian and eventually owned his own pet hospital.  Aunt Janet became a model and a movie and TV actress.  She appeared in the 1958 Western "Fort Bowie," and appeared frequently in the 1950s  television series "Gunsmoke" and "Sea Hunt."

For a time, she was married to a well-known race car driver and designer, before returning to and remarrying her first husband, Uncle Carl.  Her various professional credits appear on her IMDb website.

These were her professional and public accomplishments.  To our family, however, she was our beloved if rather eccentric aunt.  We jokingly -- not to her face -- called her "Auntie Mame."

Aunt Janet always seemed surrounded by an aura of glamor and exoticism -- only partly attributable to her life in glamorous and exotic Los Angeles.  She was our only relative who would have dressed my brother and me in hula skirts that she had constructed out of the colored Sunday comics, pursuing some Hawaiian theme she had in mind.  She -- joined by one of her college friends -- was the only relative who would have obeyed a cartoon's injunction to "follow the bouncing ball," and sing loudly and alone in a crowded movie theater in my small Washington home town (embarrassing her 12-year-old nephew almost to tears).  She was the only adult relative to profess herself fascinated by a primitive neighborhood newspaper that I published, and to buy an advertisement in it. 

When I graduated from high school, and was headed off to an expensive college on extremely limited funds, she sent me a letter of congratulations, together with a sizable check with which to build a wardrobe.  Unfortunately, I now recall little about her letter, other than her strong recommendation that I learn the art of "small talk" -- an art with which she admitted she still struggled.  (I never did, but would have been better off if I had!)  She appeared unexpectedly at my dormitory room one day when I was a sophomore, having used all her natural attributes and acquired skills to appear as though she were still a college student.  My all-male dorm-mates took some time to recover from the shock to their nervous systems.  She decided that I needed a bike to get around campus, and bought one for me on the spot.

She and Uncle Carl took me, at the age of 18, to my first piece of professional theater -- two short plays by Tennessee Williams, performed in Hollywood under the title of Garden District.  

During spring break of my senior year, a group of four friends and I traveled south to Los Angeles.  She greeted our entire motley bunch, insisted that we stay at her home, fed us, and obviously had as much fun with us and we did with her. 

Years later, when I began a new job at a new law firm, Aunt Janet wrote me a moving letter of congratulations, telling me how proud my dad -- who had died shortly before -- would have been.  Even later, she insisted that I send her a copy of every journal I wrote while traveling.  She always made me feel that she found my every thought a matter of great interest.

As Aunt Janet grew older, however, her eccentricities became less endearing and a bit colder.  Her relations with her own children became problematic.  She may have developed some form of mental illness, or she may have simply suffered -- as many do -- from the growing knowledge that she could no longer fully control the world about her, or even (and especially) her own family. 

I talked to her often by phone, and my siblings saw her more often in person.  Although she seemed a bit paranoid, I doubt that she was "crazy."  I think life just became harder and harder for her as she grew older.  She had been an actress and a model, and she had kept herself looking preternaturally young.  At 85, she could easily have passed for a woman thirty or even forty years younger.  But there is no medical procedure that can alter your inner feelings or the pains (physical and mental) of advanced age.

But until maybe five years ago, she remained one of the most interesting, funny, and attractive women I knew.  When she talked to you, you had her entire attention.  She was interested, seemingly fascinated, almost to a scary degree, by your own activities and opinions.  While the conversation continued, you truly felt like a more interesting person.  She may, in fact, despite what she claimed, have mastered her own form of "small talk."

At her own request, there was to be no funeral or memorial service following her death.  I think we, her family, needed such a service. We would have benefitted from an opportunity to discuss, among ourselves, her life and how her life had affected our own.

And I know she deserved a eulogy.

This is mine.

To be or not to be

Despite the usual teenager's angst and twenties' panic, I never attempted suicide.  Or even considered it, or daydreamed about it.  However miserable I might have felt at any given time, being miserable always seemed preferable to not being.

On the contrary, my aim was always directed toward living to be 120.

But suicide is a problem among certain groups of young people -- especially, according to an article in this month's Atlantic,* among high school students of the upper middle class.  A study of Palo Alto high schools -- especially Henry M. Gunn high school, a school filled with the children of Silicon Valley techies -- show levels of substance abuse and depression equal to those of the most underprivileged kids, with suicide as a frequent culmination.  Palo Alto schools in general have a suicide rate four or five times higher than the national average.  And Palo Alto young people themselves call Gunn "the suicide school."

Why suicide -- in Palo Alto?  The article points out that Gunn's student population is over 40 percent Asian, with the competitive nature of Asian parents adding pressure to their lives.  The kids live in the shadow of Stanford University.  Admission to that school is offered to many Gunn students -- but obviously, despite strong parental pressure, falls just beyond the reach of most of their equally bright and motivated peers.  Another factor, a macabre factor, is the proximity of the CalTrain commuter tracks, with trains whizzing by at high speed several times an hour.  Most of the suicides discussed in the article resulted from students throwing themselves in front of a Caltrain engine.

The author has interviewed students, and sat in on meetings of concerned parents.  Everyone is concerned.  For parents, the difficulty is in finding the right balance between encouraging their kids to "succeed," and pressuring them into unwanted stress.  And the kids themselves have often internalized their parents' goals, resisting efforts to make their lives simpler and less complex.

The question in my own mind -- to which the article alludes briefly in passing -- is why some commit suicide while the vast majority of their equally stressed classmates do not.  Clearly, pressure to get into "the right school" is unusually strong at Gunn.  Most students respond by multiplying AP courses and extracurricular activities to the point of being totally frazzled.  But being totally frazzled during high school -- while undesirable in itself -- generally leads most of them to highly successful and satisfying careers. 

But for a few, it leads to suicide.  The article points out how arbitrary and unpredictable suicide can be.  The death with which the article led off was that of a highly popular, straight-A, Asian-American student.  He was funny and had close friends.  Everyone liked him.  His closest friends saw no signs of depression, or excessive stress, or unhappiness.  And yet, he deliberately stepped into the path of a Caltrain commuter train.

The article offers no solutions, except to suggest that less pressure on kids would statistically result in fewer suicides.  Beyond statistics, however, why a few children find life not worth living remains a mystery.  Two people, unlike two computers, don't react predictably to the input of the same data.

In general, I find that fact reassuring.  But it complicates the task of keeping kids alive throughout their adolescence.
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* Hanna Rosin, "The Silicon Valley Suicides," The Atlantic, December 2015.

Liberal bastion

Ohio votes against legalization of medical marijuana.  Not the recreational use of  marijuana, but its medical use.  Houston repeals its anti-discrimination ordinance.  Kentucky continues its gradual conversion to Republicanism by electing a GOP governor. 

Here in Washington, even Federal Way turns conservative as it defeats a Democratic incumbent legislator.

To paraphrase a British prime minister at the start of World War I, the lights are going out all over America.  We may not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Well, maybe I'm exaggerating.  Here in Seattle -- perhaps the only American city with a statue of Lenin displayed in public -- we passed a $930 million public transportation levy, to the displeasure of our civic nanny, the Seattle Times.  We passed an initiative to provide government funding for political campaigns, in return for various commitments from recipient candidates.  We again elected a city council whose ideological split is between the progressives and the even-more-progressives, and re-elected an avowedly socialist councilman.

But the trend nationwide was decidedly conservative -- both in terms of partisan politics and in citizens' voting on issues. 

As I pointed out on Facebook, unless liberals and moderates do a lot of work during the coming year, Seattle will find itself a small blue island of progressive ideals and rational thought, surrounded by a vast sea of red, a sea churned by deep currents of visceral and atavistic emotions.

Oh boy!

I saw a revival of the musical Annie in Hollywood over the weekend, while visiting relatives in Glendale.  My family was celebrating the fifth birthday of my younger great niece Hayden, and observing the sacred rituals of Halloween.

I first saw Annie in Seattle, not long after its first appearance on Broadway in 1977.  That seems like yesterday, but we took my very young niece to that first showing; on Sunday we took her daughter Hayden.  Time flies.

I remember enjoying Annie the first time, and I recalled a few of the songs -- mainly its most famous number, "Tomorrow."  What I didn't remember were the strong political overtones to the musical, a leftist political emphasis almost as pronounced as that in the 2008 Broadway production (2005 in the West End) of Billy Elliot.

The musical is based on the comic strip -- beloved by all of us of a certain age -- "Little Orphan Annie."  As I recall the strip, it was something of an adventure series with Annie rushing around the world, together with her trusty dog Sandy -- and backed up when necessary by the somewhat shadowy figures of Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks and the Sikh bodyguard Punjab. 

According to Wikipedia -- whose entry matches my recollection -- the cartoonist's politics which

seem to have been broadly conservative and libertarian with a decided populist streak, introduced some of his more controversial storylines. He would look into the darker aspects of human nature, such as greed and treachery. The gap between rich and poor was an important theme. His hostility toward labor unions was dramatized in the 1935 story "Tonite". Other targets were the New Deal, communism, and corrupt businessmen.

The musical shows how Annie was first rescued from her Dickensian orphanage and its sadistic manager, and was subsequently adopted by Daddy Warbucks.  Warbucks was a billionaire (back when a billion meant something, to paraphrase the musical), and had the FBI, the police, and virtually everyone else at his beck and call.  Rather than being hostile to FDR, he patronized him as a somewhat ineffectual cripple who just needed to be given a little backbone.

As a result, rather than "targeting" the New Deal -- Daddy Warbucks in the musical  actually originates the New Deal.  He tells Roosevelt, in so many words, to quit sitting around in his wheelchair making fireside speeches, for god's sake, and DO SOMETHING!!  There are bridges to be built -- highways, housing, etc.  Spend some money, hire folks who need jobs, build the country.  Use government spending to make the country prosperous -- not only to make people's lives tolerable, but to make America strong enough to meet the coming war with Germany.

FDR perks up from his depression, and all sing together that we'll have "A New Deal for Christmas":

[WARBUCKS]
And all through the land folks are bawling

 

[GRACE]
And filled with despair
'Cause cupboards are bare

 

[WARBUCKS]
 But Santa's got brand new assistants
There's nothing to fear
They're bringing a New Deal for Christmas
This year.

Now that's the kind of Daddy Warbucks I like to see!

Today's Republicans are, bit by bit, detaching themselves from their support of Big Business.  Fine!  Let's see if the Warbucks theory works -- that the interests of business can be made to coincide, or at least overlap in places, with the interests of the common man.  Let's see if the slogan by a "Daddy Warbucks" figure of the 1950s, "What's Good for General Motors is Good for the USA," really might have some validity today. 

And above all, let's stop trembling with fear at the idea of government deficit spending, when that spending is an investment in the capital goods and infrastructure of America, as well as in the economic survival of its workers.

"Leapin' Lizards, Sandy!"

"Arf!"