Meals From The Marketplace

            I turned 65 last week.  For many years in my youth, I never thought that day would come.  Not that I had some morbid thought that I would die young—nothing like that.  I just didn’t think I would be 65 one day.  That was the age my maternal grandmother was when she died.  I was just eight years old at the time, and I thought she was very, very old.

            Even as I grew older, 65 seemed too far away to imagine that I would actually be that age one day.  If you got to be 65, it meant that you were retired and were either confined to a rocking chair or a wheel chair.  People who were 65 had lived forever, or so it seemed. 

            But now I am that age, and since I am not retired nor confined to any kind of a chair, I am trying to understand whether the definition of 65 has changed or whether I just never really understood it.

            There is an aging process; that much I’m clear on.  You can’t do things physically at 65 that you can do at 25 or 45.  And you can’t think as quickly or recall as easily at 65 as you can at those earlier ages.  So, in those respects, older is not as good as younger. 

            There’s a reason great ballplayers reach their peaks at around age 30 and are pretty much finished by the time they are 40.  There’s a reason great artists produce more prolifically in their youth and more sporadically in their gray years.  There’s a reason retirement seems more attractive at 65 than at 55, and will probably seem more attractive still at 75.

            Maybe 75 is the new 65.  Maybe I’ll really feel old when I’m 75.  I certainly don’t now. 

            I don’t even really feel different, except for the aches and pains that I experience much more frequently after a strenuous workout or after a round of golf.  But in my head, my brain, my mind, I still feel, well, younger than 65, more like, maybe 45, even 25, sometimes.

            I recall a photo of Leonid Brezhnev, the ancient leader of the USSR in the 1970s.  He was old in this photo, certainly looking deep into his 70s.  The photo shows him standing with President Richard Nixon at a poolside reception when the actress Jill St. John walks by.  At the time, Ms. St. John was, shall we say, an eyeful (Google her, those who aren’t aware of what I’m referring to), and there’s old Brezhnev, googling her in the very same way I did when I saw the photo, and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t feeling very old at that moment.

            I get that.  There’s a part of aging that doesn’t correlate to what we feel.  The mind seems eternally young.  Or maybe it’s just more content thinking that it’s still young.  But things like libido and sexual energy seem just as intense, even if they aren’t experienced nearly as frequently.

            “How often do you think about sex,” my wife once asked me.  “Constantly,” was my immediate response.  Now, if she were to ask me again, I think I’d say “often, but it seems like constantly.”  So there’s a difference, I suppose.  (Of course, thinking about it and taking it to the next step are two decidedly different things, which is another difference, to be sure.)

            But I digress.  I was talking about aging, and then that image of Jill St. John popped into my head. 

            Another memory I have is of a good friend of my Aunt Stella, whose name was also Ed.  I was visiting with her once when she got a call from Ed’s wife, Dorothy.  At the end of the phone call, my aunt explained to me that Dorothy was concerned because Ed was very angry.  “What’s he angry about?” I asked.  “Getting old,” she replied.  I laughed: the laugh of a naïve 23 year old. 

            Why would anyone, I wondered, be angry at the thought of getting old?  I think I understand that reaction a lot better now, although, happily, I haven’t reached that stage of bitterness.  But losing the vitality and energy of youth is certainly not something to be happy about.

            But I think Ed was reacting to the awareness of getting old, not to the reality of what it means.  There is an innocence of youth that is akin to a feeling of immortality.  It’s that feeling that made me think I’d never be 65.  It just doesn’t occur to us when we are young that we’ll age just like everyone else, and that those in the wheelchairs with the stooped shoulders and the lost hearing and the dimmed eyesight were once young and vibrant, just like us.

            And yet, with all of that said, I still don’t really understand this whole thing about aging.  I mean I do understand the physical reality of it, and that it is the way of life that leads, ultimately, to death.  But how I’m experiencing it and what it means to be me at the age of 65, those are things I truly don’t understand.

            Except that it is absolutely evidence of the ever constant passage of time.  “That year went so fast” is just another way of acknowledging how time works.  It doesn’t take any breaks; it just keeps on marching on; and it takes us right along with it.  We’re born young, and, if we’re lucky, we die old.  In between, we live as best we can.  That’s the best I can come up with at this exalted age of 65.

            Of course, the easy cop-out is to say you’re as young as you feel.  In that case, put me down for 45 most of the time, 25 some of the time, and maybe 55 the rest of the time.  But my sons both think I act like an old person.  In fact, they’ve thought that for years.  So maybe I need to change my tune. 

            Now I can tell them I am an old person; maybe they’ll give me a break.

            There was a veritable buzz in the air in the minutes leading up to the beginning of the season-opening concert at the Mondavi Center (on the campus of U.C. Davis) last week.  The occasion was the reunion tour of Return to Forever, in its fourth incarnation and therefore labeled RTF IV.

            Jackson Hall was packed as we’ve never seen it packed before, with nary an empty seat and with lots of folks in attendance for whom this concert was their first visit to the beautiful hall.  What everyone had come to see was the first and still probably best of the jazz-rock fusion bands of the 1970s.  And they got their money’s worth, in a concert that lasted well over three hours (including intermission) and that also featured as good an opening act band as most in the audience could have hoped to see.

            That band was the eight-member group that Dweezil Zappa has been touring with as a tribute to his late father, Frank, who was also a pretty big deal in the world of music back in the heyday of RTF.  Dweezil’s band played a rock-solid 70-minute set that consisted of six of Frank’s best tunes.  And they were all performed flawlessly by the excellent musicians his son has gathered.

            Highlights of the set were “Don’t You Ever Wash that Thing,” with excellent vocals by trumpet player Ben Thomas; “Dancin’ Fool,” with a member of the audience playing the part perfectly in front of the stage (until he was escorted back to his seat by a friendly usher); and “Big Swifty,” which gave all of the musicians a chance to show their stuff in extended solos.

            Those musicians, in addition to Mr. Thomas, all deserve mention, because they were all excellent.  Scheila Gonzalez played alto and tenor sax and added back-up vocals; Billy Hulting handled all manner of percussion instruments, including a terrific turn on the marimba on “Wash that Thing”; Joe Travers banged some mean drums; Chris Norton played keyboards and sang backup on several songs; Jamie Kime played rhythm guitar; and Pete Griffin had some standout moments on bass.

            And leading them all was Dweezil on lead guitar.  His solos showed a real flair for both the instrument and the music.  Although he doesn’t sing and doesn’t look particularly like his dad, his chops are definitely inherited.  And his obvious love and respect for the consistently interesting music his iconoclastic father created made this opening set one to remember.

            When keyboard master Chick Corea originally formed Return to Forever in the early 1970s he had in mind a distinctly Brazilian sound.  That concept didn’t last very long.  With co-founder Stanley Clarke’s brilliant bass playing as an impetus, the band soon began to incorporate solid rock rhythms into its repertoire.  When drummer Lenny White joined up in 1973, the soul of the band took root.  For the rest of the decade, the band turned out a succession of great fusion albums and became one of the most respected and revered musical groups of its era.

            So it was no surprise that the tickets for this concert sold out quickly and that that buzz throughout the audience before the concert began was so palpable.  When the five members of the current group took the stage they received an immediate standing ovation.

            Joining Corea, Clarke and White for the one hour and forty minute set were violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and guitarist Frank Gambale.  All five had extended solos during the set, and all but Gambale (who wore his signature hat throughout the set) addressed the audience at various points.

            Among the set’s highlights were “Renaissance” a Ponty composition that gave Clarke a chance to show why he is justifiably considered one of the greatest bass players the jazz scene has ever produced.  On both stand up bass and electric, he carried the melody line for long stretches while performing some absolutely mind-blowing virtuosic picking.  He was a show onto himself.

            Returning the favor, a Clarke composition, “Mamma Music,” gave Mr. Ponty a chance to put his electric violin to work.  At one point he literally made it screech (to the displeasure of more than a few in the audience).  Monsieur Ponty (from Paris, France, not Paris, Texas as Mr. White jokingly suggested at one point) had earlier appeared for one tune during the Zappa set, having once been a member of the Mothers of Invention.

            Another highlight was Mr. Corea’s “Spain,” (from the original ground-breaking RTF album, “Light as a Feather”) which also gave all five members a chance to solo.  Even the audience got into the act, as Corea at one point turned and motioned for the crowd to follow his lead by singing the notes he played.  Surprisingly, the audience was more than up to the task, possibly because this is a standard bit in all of Corea’s concerts where he plays the tune. 

            Suffice to say, as talented as all five musicians in this iteration of the group are, Mr. Corea is the genius behind it all. He is, as Stanley Clarke said in introducing him, “the maestro.”

            And so the new Mondavi season is off and running.  If the rest of the concerts on the schedule come anywhere near as close to this one in terms of musical excellence and audience satisfaction, the season will be as good as any in the history of this great venue.

            Should any political party attempt to abolish social security … and eliminate labor laws, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.  There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things.  Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower (1954)

            Chuck Percy died last week.  He was 91 and had been suffering with Alzheimer’s disease for some time.  The New York Times obituary described the former senator from Illinois (he served from 1966 to 1984) as a “Rockefeller Republican,” which it identified as the “liberal wing of the party.”

            That wing was sizeable in the years following World War II, comprising a significant minority of the party’s rank and file until the early 1980s.  It followed the proud tradition of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and influenced the more conservative members of the party in keeping them from going too far to the right.

            Indeed, when the far right of the party, that “stupid” splinter group, rallied behind a presidential candidate named Barry Goldwater in 1964, members of the liberal wing walked out of the nominating convention and then sat on their hands as Goldwater took his party to the largest defeat it had ever experienced.  The Great Society, featuring Medicare, the Civil Rights Act and the War on Poverty, followed in the remaining years of the decade.

            Those years also featured the Viet Nam War, which allowed Richard Nixon to win a narrow presidential election in 1968.  But Nixon, while no liberal, was also not a far-right conservative.  He was a moderate Republican, as his endorsement of several liberal initiatives (the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts; wage and price controls to combat inflation, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty) substantiated.

            Nixon’s criminal complicity in the Watergate scandal allowed Gerald Ford, also a mainstream Republican, to assume the presidency, and he beat back an attempt by the far-right (in the person of Ronald Reagan) to secure the presidential nomination in 1976 (only to lose a squeaker to Jimmy Carter in the general election).

            But Reagan had built a political following that would not be denied in 1980.  In that campaign he defeated another moderate (George H.W. Bush) for the nomination and then swamped Jimmy Carter (plagued by a weak economy and the Iran-hostage crisis) in the general election.

            Reagan made far-right conservatism acceptable.  Where Goldwater had been scary, Reagan was reassuring. 

            Yes, he would condemn communism, but he would also talk to the Soviets and seek mutual disarmament treaties (“negotiate but verify”); he would seek to reduce government “handouts” but would maintain “the safety net” for those who faced insurmountable hurdles; he would seek a more conservative Republican Party but would welcome all political viewpoints (in the “big tent,” where no Republican was ever to speak ill of another).

            As the country’s president, Reagan was a great actor.  He had a winning personality, the kind that had even the likes of Tip O’Neill, the crusty liberal Speaker of the House, enjoying his company.  And, by his second term, when he had lost control of his administration (Iran-Contra was as close as the country has probably ever come to having a rogue underground government) and may well have been suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s, his legacy was secure.

            He succeeded in emboldening his base, although his successor, the first Bush, was far less conservative than he had been, and that base coalesced in its antagonism to Bill Clinton in the 1990s.  The anti-Clinton hysteria from the growing majority of far right Republicans was tempered only by the robust economy that Clinton enjoyed during his presidency.  The Reagan disciples argued vehemently that Clinton was enjoying the fruits of Reagan’s laissez-faire policies, but most Americans credit or charge a sitting president with the economy that exists during that president’s tenure in office, as Barack Obama will probably discover in next year’s presidential election.

            In any event, by 2000, the far right wing of the party had gained power.  When it found its candidate in the person of the Texas governor who also happened to be the son of Reagan’s successor, it pushed hard against the remnants of a liberal wing (in the form of the “maverick” John McCain) and secured the nomination for George W. Bush.  When Bush was finally declared the victor by the Supreme Court, after a prolonged six-week recount period, whatever was left of the liberal wing of the party was pretty much demoralized into non-existence.

            Shortly after Bush announced his first gigantic tax cut (thereby depleting the budget surpluses Clinton had left him with), Senator Jim Jeffords, one of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate, switched his allegiance, declaring himself an independent and caucusing with the Democrats.  Six years later, Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania’s senior senator, followed suit.

            Their defections essentially marked the end of the “liberal wing” of the party.  By then it was hardly liberal in any event.  Jeffords and Specter (like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, the two Maine Republican Senators who remain in office) were hardly true liberals.  They were more properly characterized as moderate conservatives (maybe around a 4.5 on a scale of one to ten, with one being far right and ten being far left).

            The last factor to complete the move of the party to the far right was the election of Barack Obama.  Obama was a black man who had been raised out of the country, who had a background in community organizing, with ties to radicals like Bill Ayres (a former domestic terrorist) and Jeremiah Wright (the “damn America” preacher from Obama’s home church), and who just sounded radical with his “change” campaign theme.

            When Obama then pushed universal medical care as the cornerstone of his first term and added trillions in debt to save the country from an economic calamity, he gave the far right (now represented by the Fox News-created Tea Party) all it needed to gain control of the party of Lincoln. 

            Their number is no longer negligible, but Eisenhower was half right.  They are still stupid.

            It didn’t take Rick Perry, the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, long to back away from his first comments on Social Security.  After he boldly called it a Ponzi scheme in a debate last week, suggesting it was an unconstitutional government sham, he tactfully reversed himself over the weekend by claiming that all he wants to do is “fix” the program.

            Perry is no fool, at least not as a politician.  He wants to be seen as a straight shooter (which, for a Texas governor, is no pun), but he also wants to be his country’s next president.  And while you can say a lot of things about how bad the federal government is, and can even get away with attacking certain programs (welfare is always an easy target), you get dumped from the ranks of a serious contender real fast when you start suggesting that the country might be better off without Social Security.

            So Perry did the political thing and backed away decisively from what he really believes, assuming that his true beliefs are best represented in the book he released last year.  In “Fed Up” (Little, Brown and Company, 2010), Perry wrote that “by any measure, Social Security is a failure” that exists “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

            In last week’s debate, he came even closer to calling the program unconstitutional by saying, “It’s time for us to get back to the Constitution.”  That line is code for the ideological belief long held by staunch conservatives.  It goes something like this: the federal government was not established by the founders to engage in social welfare or social engineering.  Any government welfare program, the argument goes, if a need exists for it at all, should be a decision of the individual states and should not be imposed by lawmakers in Washington, DC.

            This line of thinking is linked to the view that all government social programs are anti-American, because, dammit, we should be able to take care of ourselves, and if we have to take care of each other, we can do it much better on our own without dictates from government officials who are nothing but do-gooder bureaucrats seeking to make the world a better place while they actually mess everything up.

            Most hard-line conservatives, if subjected to a lie detector test, would acknowledge that they hate any and all government intrusion into their private lives.  They only want their governments to protect their property from theft, their bodies from criminal assault, and their land from trespass. Providing those protections is what justifies a strong military force, since foreign invaders would presumably take their property, assault their bodies, and trespass on their land.

            Some, perhaps even many, hard-right conservatives also believe there is a role for governments in areas like police and fire protection (although some would just as soon have those functions privatized so that market forces could bring about what they are convinced would be greater efficiencies, and certainly hefty profits for the owners of those companies). 

            And a smaller percentage, but perhaps still a majority, sees a role for government in education.  (Here, however, things get a little dicey, with many supporting voucher programs that would effectively destroy public education in favor of private schools that would again score nice profits for their owners.) 

            Beyond those “essential services,” however, most conservatives with ideological beliefs like Rick Perry’s, oppose anything that smacks of robbing Peter to pay Paul, which is why they hate things like the graduated income tax (taking from the wealthy to support programs that the wealthy don’t need), and Social Security and Medicare (providing for the needs of the masses when they should be taking care of themselves).

            Are these the views of the majority of Americans?  That may be the critical question in an Obama versus Perry presidential campaign.  At least that should be the question that Obama presses in a variety of forms, because the likely answer, as Perry himself implicitly acknowledged with his quick retreat on Social Security this week, is that most Americans want more from their government.

            The current political climate is murky at best on this question.  The Tea Party movement has been commanding most of the attention for almost the entire period of Obama’s presidency, but few would claim that it represents the views of the majority of Americans.  That movement has come to dominate, if not overwhelm the Republican Party, but even with the sweeping victories in 2010, many of the best known Tea Party candidates lost their Congressional bids.

            And, if anything, some of the luster for the movement has been tarnished by the outrageousness of the debt ceiling debate earlier this summer.  That fiasco revealed to many Americans just how extreme the die-hards in this movement are.  It also gave Obama an opening for the fiery speech he delivered to Congress last week.

            If the Republicans nominate Rick Perry, and the early line strongly favors that likelihood, Obama may be able to pivot the focus away from the economy (which is a guaranteed loser for him) and towards the issue of just what kind of government the majority of Americans wants.  That’s a debate Obama could actually win, assuming the Obama we’d see would be the one who delivered that speech last week and not the one who has occupied the White House for most of his term.

            And, of course, it is still pretty early, albeit not as early as some of the pundits would have you believe.  As opposed to generations past, when the real campaigns didn’t start until Labor Day (of the election year), now they start around Labor Day of the prior year.  Hence, voter attitudes get formed much earlier.  That’s why Obama is taking to the stump this month.  It isn’t just to get his American Jobs Act passed. It’s to get Americans reacquainted with the guy they thought they were electing back in ’08.

            That guy disappeared once he took office.  Now that he’s running again, and very likely will be running against an ideology that wants to reverse all the gains his party has brought to America for almost one hundred years, the Obama the electorate loved is resurfacing. 

            Whether that Obama can defeat the ideology of a Rick Perry will define the country for the next decade, if not the next generation.