'We didn't sit around looking at screens.'
Have you read Ariel Levy's stuff in the New Yorker lately? I can't really offer a better critique of her work than Emily Gould's assessment earlier this year: "Ariel Levy is completely taking the New Yorker to school and using it
to clean the blackboard and then writing some new stuff on the
blackboard which is awesome."
Levy's article this week is centered largely around her interview with Lamar Van Dyke, a truly free-living Vietnam War era radical feminist lesbian who is now a grandmother in her 60's (but still really bad ass.) Although you really should just pick up the March 2nd issue and read the article-- you can't find it online-- I thought the last couple of paragraphs were especially worth sharing.
Regardless of the different people of different genders she has chosen over the years as her comrades, Van Dyke's primary loyalty has always been to her own adventure. A woman in her sixties who has been resolutely doing as she pleases for as long as she can remember is not easy to come by, in movies or in books, or in life.
"Your generation wants to fit in," she told me, for the second time. "Gays in the military and gay marriage? This is what you guys have come up with?" There was no contempt in her voice; it was something else-- an almost incredulous maternal disappointment. "We didn't sit around looking at our phone or looking at our computer or looking at the television-- we didn't sit around looking at screens," she said. "We didn't wait for a screen to give us a signal to do something. We were off doing whatever we wanted."
And, I know this is my second "Remind me why we are on the Internet, anyway?" post in as many days. I'm not sure what that says.
Levy's article this week is centered largely around her interview with Lamar Van Dyke, a truly free-living Vietnam War era radical feminist lesbian who is now a grandmother in her 60's (but still really bad ass.) Although you really should just pick up the March 2nd issue and read the article-- you can't find it online-- I thought the last couple of paragraphs were especially worth sharing.
Regardless of the different people of different genders she has chosen over the years as her comrades, Van Dyke's primary loyalty has always been to her own adventure. A woman in her sixties who has been resolutely doing as she pleases for as long as she can remember is not easy to come by, in movies or in books, or in life.
"Your generation wants to fit in," she told me, for the second time. "Gays in the military and gay marriage? This is what you guys have come up with?" There was no contempt in her voice; it was something else-- an almost incredulous maternal disappointment. "We didn't sit around looking at our phone or looking at our computer or looking at the television-- we didn't sit around looking at screens," she said. "We didn't wait for a screen to give us a signal to do something. We were off doing whatever we wanted."
And, I know this is my second "Remind me why we are on the Internet, anyway?" post in as many days. I'm not sure what that says.
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