What a difference a mile makes

We just got back from a long weekend in New England. The impetus for the trip was the 30^th anniversary of a graduate program where my partner used to teach. The bonus (or, alternatively, the real reason for the trip, with the anniversary simply an excuse) was an opportunity to visit friends from our years in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Due to radical changes in the available flights to our old stomping grounds, we ended up driving a lot, which also gave us a chance to remember how lovely spring in New England can be. Like Colorado, New England has four actual, more or less distinct seasons. But given its lower elevation (a mile, give or take a few hundred feet), springtime in New England was in beautiful, glorious bloom.

Here’s a peek at the contrast between late April in New England and late April here. What a difference a mile makes!

April 28 in Western Massachusetts, with bushes and trees decked out in bright spring blossoms:

April 29 in Colorado, with spring just barely beginning to peek out of buds:

 

It’s always a bit disconcerting to come back from the lush, heavily forested East to the dry, open West. I can see, in these moments, why visitors and newcomers to Colorado—today or back during pioneer days—might see it as barren and harsh. But a glimpse of the white, white 1400’ mountains standing against the blue, blue Colorado sky eases any ambivalence in this old Western heart.

I love spring, wherever it is, blossoming or barely budding.

Such a world!

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of little reminders that time is streaming, rushing past. Things like the announcement I got in the mail recently inviting me to my 50^th (!) high school reunion. My first thought was, “OMG, has it really been that long?” My second was, “OMG², this means I was born in the middle of the last century!” That sounds so like something you’d read about in a history book.

Not long after, we got a message reminding us that the car should be brought in for service. It hadn’t been serviced since August, said the message. “Nonsense!” said I. “I remember sitting in the waiting area, and that sure wasn’t six months ago.” So I looked it up. August. Six months ago. Half a year had passed.

Then a friend was telling me about someone who periodically says to her partner, “We have 20 good years left.” (You can fill in your own numbers.) “We wasted last year, didn’t do the things we wanted to do. Now we have 19 good years left. We’re letting this year slip away. Now we’ll have 18 good years left.”

Thinking of these things calls to mind an icicle we saw last week, hanging from a cornice at the roof's edge, draining the moisture from the snow above. Life is like that. The days just drip, falling away. If you don’t pay attention, they’re gone, and you didn’t get to see them.

All of these moments merge today with my reflections on the Resonance concert I heard last weekend. I've written about Resonance before, and this concert was, as always, wonderful: the rich sound of 130 women’s voices and the singers’ (and the director’s) obvious connection with the music creating the perfect setting for the concert's message. Or messages. I can only speak to the message I took from it, framed by what’s on my mind at the moment. And you know what that is from the paragraphs above.

The concert spoke—whether it was meant to or not—to my current ruminations on the meaning and experience of aging. It pondered with me, it seemed, this realization that time is growing shorter, and that the wealth of it all could slip away while I’m not paying attention. This concert was a celebration of the chorus' tenth anniversary, and former singers were invited to join for a few songs. So I suspect thoughts of aging, change, and the passage of time weren't far from many minds.

The concert was called “Imagine Such a World,” the title taken from one of the pieces. I loved this song. The words are a poem written by a member of the chorus, and the piece was commissioned for Resonance by a member of the chorus in honor of her late partner. The song reminded me, in spirit, of “Praises for the World,” which, as you probably know by now (since I've written about it over and over and over again), may be my favorite piece of music in the world. “Imagine Such a World,” has some of the same feel: This is such an astonishing world. Look! Are we not blessed to have time with it? Listen:

Imagine Such a World (excerpts from the concert program)

by Linda Millemann

Imagine a world where water falls,

just falls,

out of the sky.

A world that offers the soft arm of sleep

to follow every bursting day. . .

A world so longing to be heard

it blooms a meadow full of birds,

so longing for the dance

it sends a pulse of river over rock

of wind  between the  trees

and sways to its own joy

in rippled grassy fields…

Oh, world, almost too much to be imagined

only asking to be met

with our most keenly joyous vow

of yes.
No more.

No less.

Imagine such a world.

This wasn’t the only piece in the concert that evoked this sense of both the depth and the impermanence of life. “Somehow” (from the anti-war piece “Brave Souls and Dreamers”), “Under the Harvest Moon,” “Kinder,” “Love After Love”—all invited reflection on impermanence, joy, nature, sadness, finding yourself, the paradoxical connection between great love (of people, of nature, of life) and great loss. And in the midst of all this, the great grand privilege of being alive, of embracing it all, wrapping our arms around such a world.

I’m framing this all as a reflection on aging—and it is that, for me. But that’s not all it is. This awareness of the simultaneous transience and richness of life may become more poignant, more distilled with age, but the message is no less true in youth. Life is wondrous and short. Don’t wait to notice, because it all passes. Imagine such a world!

Hear for yourself. Resonance will perform this concert again twice next weekend, on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Check out the “Performances” page on their website for more information.

Then get out there and see those icicles before they drip away!

P.S. to "Aridity and the West"

Speaking of aridity, drought, and over-use of water in the West …

Just after I sent out yesterday’s blog, my partner passed on this article about the Colorado River, which has achieved an ignoble position atop the 2013 endangered waterways list. “Drought and demand are pushing the Colorado River beyond its limits,” the article tells us, “with the needs of more than 40 million people in seven Western states projected to outstrip dwindling supply over the next 50 years.” Not to mention the needs of the plants and non-human animals. 

And that reminded me of New York Times article I read earlier in the week about the Colorado. This one speaks especially to the total depletion of the river before it reaches the ocean. The article focuses on projects to restore life in the parched delta—a discussion that’s enlivened by a great embedded video.

The Colorado is just one huge, fragile river, of course. But its fate is absolutely tied up with those of the people, the creatures, and the plants that make their home in the Southwest. Absolutely tied up with the issues I mentioned yesterday—our collective denial that we are living in a semi-arid land, expecting it to provide us with the comforts and amenities of a lush, moist climate. Whimpering at the inconveniences caused by snow, so easily forgetting that it’s all that stands between us and drought.

So that’s why those of us who love the West are actually, deep down, loving this snow. We need the moisture. 

Besides, how can you not feel your breath catch at the sight of this morning, with yesterday's snow brilliant white against the blue, blue Colorado sky. 

"We need the moisture." Snow, aridity, and the West

We’re getting close to the end of the semester, and my American West class, which I mentioned before, is winding down. At some point, I’ll tell you all about it … well, maybe not all, but lots. But for the moment, one particular theme is on my mind: aridity. The defining feature of the West, it seems, is aridity. High desert dryness. A pitiful lack of water. Aridity, it turns out, has shaped the history, the economics, the culture, and the character of the West. 

Now, it may be hard to believe we have a problem with water in Colorado when you look out the window today. Here’s the view I awoke to this morning. 

 My first impulse was to groan; my next was to say, “It’s good. We need the moisture.” 

You might also find it hard to believe that we need moisture if you recall that just a week ago, the CU campus looked like this:

But ironically, these storms are precisely why water is on my mind. 

A little background ...

Early in this class, the professor, Dr. Patty Limerick, challenged us to define what counted as “the American West.” After considerable discussion, Patty suggested that the West can be defined by water—or, more accurately, its scarcity. Geographically, the West begins roughly at the 100th meridian, the “boundary between the moist east and the arid west.” The imaginary line that runs north and south through the country at roughly the Missouri River. Here’s a map so you can see what I mean.

The 100th meridian runs almost exactly along the right-hand edge of that bright yellow section in the map. To the west of that line is the “arid West,” where the annual precipitation is less than 20” per year; to the East is the “moist East,” where it’s over 20”. That matters because 20” of annual rainfall is the requirement for things to grow without irrigation.

A bit of history (it’s fun history, so stay with me here). When European invaders of this continent began to move west from their initial settlements along the east coast, they expected that the lush landscape of the east would continue indefinitely. And for a while, that’s just what they found. But when Lewis and Clark’s explorations and then the California gold rush encouraged folks to light out across lands farther north and west, they were startled to find that the land was far from lush. In fact, they found it dry and, from their perspective, barren, foreboding, foreign, frightening.

The problem was that 20” thing. Back east, growing things was never an issue. You could plant crops for food or raise livestock feed without worrying about water. There were also plenty of trees for lumber—heck, you had to cut down forests to make room for your cabin. But beyond that mythic 100th meridian, it was a different story. Almost nothing grew without the help of extra water—and water was exceedingly scarce. So they saw the whole center of the nation—from the Missouri across the plains and over the Rockies—as useless and miserable. A place to get through rather than a place to go to.

When folks finally came here to stay, they brought along an ideal for the life that they wanted to create here on the semi-arid high plains: a home just like the one they’d left in the East, where water was abundant. That meant trees, landscaping, and lawns; later, it would also mean water features, swimming pools, and golf courses. All of which require water. Lots of water. And that’s before we even talk about drinking, cooking, and bathing water. Look again at the map. Folks wanted (still want) the water-sucking lifestyle of those lush green areas even though they were (are) now living in the semi-arid to arid yellow and orange parts of the country. Not surprisingly, the 100th meridian also marks a line where population density drops dramatically. Except maybe where water has been somehow corralled (like in large cities), it’s still hard for most people to believe that the West—the plains and desert (too dry) and the mountains (too rugged)—can be a place to live rather than a place to visit on vacation.

Wallace Stegner, a famous historian of the American West, has said that people who choose to live in the West have to deal with its aridity. We have two choices: adapt to it or engineer it out of existence. During carefully circumscribed wilderness adventures, we adapt. The rest of the time, we rely on engineering.

As I've learned about water and its discontents in the West, I’ve become really aware of our disregard for the reality of the aridity of this place. Yesterday, we had a guest speaker, the head of Denver Water, the agency that provides water to about 1.3 million people in the city of Denver. His discussion of this topic was really sobering. Among other things, he talked about the now-two-year-long drought that has left the state parched. You may recall that I whimpered about this in my first-day-of-spring blog and even provided photographic evidence. This picture is also a reminder of what most of our winter has looked like—and a hint at how remarkable the recent storms have seemed in contrast. 

With this drought, the water storage levels are at historic lows, as anyone who has recently driven past Dillon Reservoir (or probably others) can attest. It’s so low, he said, that before the storms of the last two weeks, folks at Denver Water were looking at being down to the “strategic reserve” by this fall—that’s the amount of water you need to meet the city’s minimal needs for a year. The amount you never drop below. The amount you absolutely must keep in case of a catastrophe. Put into perspective, the message is clear: a two-year drought amounts to a catastrophe for our water supply. That’s a pretty thin line.

Our recent snowstorms have made a huge difference. In fact, the storms of the past two weeks have raised the snowpack from 72% of average to 93% of average. (For folks who may not know these things, the snowpack is the depth of the mountain snow that will provide water for the coming year when it melts in the spring.) Not that our average is exactly bountiful, but this is nonetheless very good news. Still, how scary is it that a week of snow storms amounts to about 20% of our total snowpack for the year? Not a lot of moisture, eh? And not a great margin of safety.

Given this dilemma—anyone who’s halfway sane wants to live here, but there is really not enough water—the history of the West has been the history of efforts to, in Stegner’s words, engineer aridity out of existence. Turn the desert into an oasis. We have dams and channels and tunnels and pumps that store water and then send it hundreds of miles away, where it’s used for agriculture, drinking water, and Water World. Some of it gets returned to the system, but lots doesn’t. So much gets used up, in fact, that the Colorado River, the largest river in the West, one that drains seven states and waters countless farms and cities, dries up before it ever reaches the Gulf of California, where its delta has long since turned into a broad, flat, dry desert in its own right.

So now, in addition to thinking snow is beautiful, I’ve gained another level of appreciation for it during these past weeks. The phrase, “We need the moisture” is such a mantra in the West. You hear it every time people start to complain about snow or rain. In fact, I overheard it at my coffee shop earlier today as folks were gazing nostalgically at this scene:

We all say it. I’ve said it all my life. It’s a kind of throw-away comment, a way to bond over shared misery and still make everything be alright. But from now on, I think I’ll be hearing it in a different way. Because I realize that we can’t actually engineer aridity out of existence.

We really do need the moisture.

Wondrous weather and world affairs

I spent most of this week at CU’s 65th annual Conference on World Affairs (a.k.a., CWA), which I also wrote about last year. Over 200 talks and panels by over 100 experts from a variety of fields, with topics ranging from "Perpetual War" to "My Most Disturbing Thought," from "Hamlet" to "The Evolution and Devolution of TV," from "Break out the Cheetos! Pot's Legal" to "Confessions of a Bibliophile." With overlapping sessions, its often hard to decide where to go when, for instance, "Why Lincoln, Why Now?" conflicts with "My Life as a Spy and My Betrayal by the White House" (Valerie Plame Wilson). All free and open to the public.

To add to the excitement, we also had a snowstorm of record proportions. The week provided a classic example of spring storms in Colorado: a gorgeous, sunny spring day on Monday, 14" of snow by Wednesday morning, blue skies and green grass by Friday. Have I mentioned that I love Colorado weather?

[So, I just realized that this got pretty long. It’s just that there’s so much to say about the Conference on World Affairs and so many pictures to share of the weather!  If it seems like too much, you can just go for the pictures and consider those the visual Cliff Notes.]

Folks come to CWA from the Boulder area and beyond to hang out on campus for a week, just learning. There are scores of grey-haired folks toting their knapsacks loaded with jackets, lunch, and water. They ride the bus or park off campus and walk, carrying everything they’ll need for the day. They sit in clutches in the student center in the morning, poring over the day’s schedule, planning what sessions they’ll attend. They eat their lunch during sessions or in the hallways between—and so do the presenters. Students come, too, sometimes singly out of sheer interest in a topic and sometimes in groups as a class assignment. And there I was, in the midst of it all.

I couldn't seem to constrain my lifelong habit of taking notes during these talks. So, although I could go on and on about most any of the 20 or so sessions I attended, I won't. Instead, here’s my log for the week along with some highlights, to tempt you to join me next year—all wrapped in photos of the week’s wonderful, wacky, changeable Colorado weather.

Monday

Opening day of the conference. I arrived for the first talk, walking past this new pedestrian underpass with its strikingly appropriate underground artwork. I love it.

Then I spotted this sidewalk chalk notice alerting (warning?) the campus community that thousands of spare folks would be cluttering the sidewalks, the student center, and assorted venues around campus for the week.

En route to the opening plenary, I joined the crowd along a walkway lined with flags of the world—the iconic image of CWA, shown every year on the cover of the program. Sunny, warm. Students were running around in shorts.

Over the course on Monday, I went to the following sessions. I’ll give very quick crib notes on particular favorites, but if you want to know more about any of these, I have notes. Call me. How about lunch, if you're in the neighborhood? Or email and I'll send a copy of my scribblings. This offer holds for all days. 

Immigration: My Land or Our Land? Ours. It has to be ours.

Who Stole the American Dream?  The growing income gap (we have a “geyser up” rather than a “trickle down” economy) has shrunk the middle class and virtually destroyed the “dream” that went with it. Who stole that dream? The “Powell memo” of the early 1970s, which set business on a path toward greater domination of the political process.

Why Universities Won't Teach Virtue. 

Bipartisanship, Civility, and Dialogue. We need to talk to each other.

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (the movie): I saw this movie decades ago, and it was to be carefully dissected during the week, so I went to see it anew on Monday. Each day for the rest of the week, they show the same movie again, and any audience member can shout “stop” at any point to make a comment or ask a question. The idea is to run through the whole movie in this detailed way by the end of the week. This part, called “Interruptus,” would begin on Tuesday. This is a model created by Roger Ebert, the noted film critic, who died last week. He came to CWA every year for over 40 years, and he provided what has become the conference's tag line, describing CWA as “The conference on everything conceivable.”

Tuesday, snowy Tuesday

The snow started Monday night, and things on campus were sloppy and dreary Tuesday. But loving weather, I actually enjoyed it. The community folks showed up despite the slimy weather, still with knapsacks, but now in winter wear. The flags were beautiful even as the snow kept falling.

My Tuesday sessions:

Belief. Wonderful discussion ranging from “Do I really believe what I appear to believe judging from my practices?” to “If you doubt all the things you believe about who you are, maybe you'll find who you are.”

 Earth from Space: Altering Our Views. Maybe seeing earth from space (the “blue marble”) doesn’t just make us realize that we are all one family, that borders are totally imaginary (the idealistic view). More to the point, it shows us how dreadfully isolated we are, how responsible for this tiny speck in space, and how morally compromised we are as we continue to live as if we weren't responsible.

Junk Science Policy

Sino Spring: Social Media in China

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (Interruptus). I was curious about this process—besides, it’s a shrink movie! So I skipped out on my “American West” class to check out interruptus. Maybe not a good choice for an impatient person with little movie savvy. I found the (very) frequent interruptions more than a little distracting. And as it turned out, most of the comments weren’t about story content but about technicalities (framing, lighting, etc.) and film-buff curiosities (others who were considered for this part, how the protagonist is paired with signs of nature, etc.). Great for real movie freaks. Not so fun for me. So I considered my interruptus experience complete after Tuesday.

Wednesday

It snowed through Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning, we had a record snowfall for this date. The scene was magnificent. The flatirons were gorgeous, dusted like powdered sugar with snow. It was a bit sloppy and sometimes slick walking on campus, and some older folks came with their walking sticks for safety. But come they did—the sessions were packed all day. Sunshine, blue skies, and fresh snow made for a gorgeous morning.

               

        

I went to a few sessions before heading home at midday to do obligatory life-maintenance chores.

The Geopolitics of Energy

My Most Disturbing Thought. This remarkable discussion began with witticisms (realization that 80% of my pillow is skin and mites; fear of Muppets), moved to politics (faulty assumptions about geopolitics; inability of people to empathize with others they don’t know), and then dwelt at length on the fear of dying. A woman with recurrent cancer is disturbed by the thought “I’m not ready. It may all end, and soon.” And a man who worked on Robert Kennedy’s campaign and was there when Kennedy died reported that his most disturbing thought is that loss is inevitable and unpredictable. Time, he said, is all we have. Spend it well, be present in your life, because time will pass.

What the Frack! Bottom line: we have moved too far, too fast without knowing what we’re doing. The discussion that should have happened before fracking was allowed to begin is only now starting. The industry has already become entrenched and refuses to be forthcoming in providing the information that we need to assess the risks to water and air quality, and the risk of triggering earthquakes. Unfortunately, fracking is exempt from clean air and clean water laws, a concession to the oil and gas industry many years ago. Gee, I wonder how that happened ...


When I left around noon, the sidewalks were clear (OK, wet and sloppy, but not icy), the snow was settling, and spring was in the air. 

Thursday

By Thursday morning, the snow that had seemed a nuisance—if a beautiful one—on Wednesday had been shaped into a playful "receiving line" of snow people, welcoming CWA participants to the flag walk.

The mountains had lost most of their snow to the Colorado sun. The fountain was running again, and Wednesday’s buried tables and chairs would be used by students at lunchtime.

On Thursday, I went to ...

Obama's Foreign Policy: Audacity or Hope. He has no actual policy, because most attention has been devoted to domestic issues. His report card in this domain was decidedly varied.

 Nuclear Nightmares. It’s worse than we think, Obama knows it’s important, and we need to goad him to action.

 Security and Resilience in a Black Scan World. The “black swan” refers to the unpredictable events that we are not prepared to confront but that can change everything. So titled because we believe that swans are white … until a black swan appears. The possible black swans include things like the transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, the increasing income gap, unseen implications of foreign policy choices (e.g., drone attacks), the possibility of nuclear micro-attacks (dirty bombs) or “rogue nations” with nuclear capability. And, especially, the precise speed and precise consequences of climate change.

And then, to escape from this environmental mayhem, I went to my “American West” class, which I had missed on Tuesday. We talked about water use and water scarcity. So much for that escape thing.

Friday

On Friday, I nearly didn't go to the conference. I was tired, and I felt a bit saturated with it all. But then I checked the schedule and decided to go to at least a couple of sessions. As I walked onto the campus, I was welcomed by the total turnaround that is the hallmark of Colorado's weather: the record snow was virtually gone, the grass was greened by the moisture, and daffodils greeted me at the entrance to the campus.

Beside the flag walk, the line of snow people had gathered in a cluster to bid the conference participants farewell. On the lawn, CU students played Frisbee and soaked up the springtime sunshine. 

I finished a great week with these sessions:

Supreme Court: Tyranny of the Third Branch. Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, and “activist judges," oh my!

 Droning On and On. Total agreement across panel members, including an army colonel, that the current use of drones is illegal, immoral, and maybe unconstitutional. They cited issues like national sovereignty, civilian deaths, and the dehumanization of both targets and drone operators. One panelist, who described himself as a supporter of Obama in general, said outright that Obama’s actions in this regard are impeachable. No one—on the panel or in the audience—took exception to his assertion.

 Molly Ivins Freedom Fightin' Memorial Plenary:  This talk is named after Molly Ivins, a brilliant, witty, irreverent, and incisive journalist from Texas, who, prior to her death, was a long-time, frequent participant in CWA. This year, the Molly Ivins plenary, “Truth in Journalism in the Digital Age,” was given by David Corn, the Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones. He's the guy who broke the 47% story that may have derailed Romney’s hopes for the presidency. Great set-up, mediocre talk about the impact of digital media on what we take as “the news.”

As I left the plenary, I snapped one more photo of the flag walkway. The weather had done a 180 since Wednesday, back to the sunny skies and green grass of Monday. Hard to believe we had over a foot of snow just two days before.

Heading off campus, I spotted a new sidewalk sign near where Monday's notice announced the impending arrival of CWA. Time keeps on moving. CWA is so over ... International Fest is coming!

I missed hearing about so many interesting topics. Heck, I only went to 19 out of 200 talks! But I can’t imagine sitting through many more sessions. My brain is on overload as it is.

Maybe I should lobby for shorter days, spread over two weeks. Think of the weather tales I could tell then!

Feminism in process … still

My blog muse has been on leave lately. Vanished. Gone missing. And this despite the large pile on my desk marked “blog ideas.” For some reason, I just haven’t felt like writing about anything. Hence, the long (for me) drought in what should be springtime stream of blog entries. In the last few days, though, an idea has begun to germinate, something I need to think more about. It all has to do with the state of feminism these days—in the world and in me. The ah ha moment, the final nudge for me to write about it, came when I made a totally sexist assumption this morning. Here’s the backstory:

First, I’ve been thinking lately a fair amount about the impact of feminism on the world. I thought about it recently when I cruised past Target’s toy department en route to the doormats and was struck by the frank stereotyping—the colors, the toy selections, the virtual absence of any non-gendered toys. And then I thought about it as I read Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography (more on that another time), which talks at length about her dual battle with racism and sexism and the historical shifts she’s seen in both. And I thought about it again when I read about Obama’s recent “slip” in describing California’s attorney general in terms of her appearance. On the flip side, I thought about it as I read recently about the growth of women’s opportunities in sports—for the first time ever, every country in the Olympics had a women’s team. And I thought about it as I read about Sotomayor’s joining two other women on the Supreme Court—up to three from zero in the '70s. And I think about it every time I see another story about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Then, a second tweak came at a party we went to last weekend. This comes against the background of the not-uncommon complaint from old-time feminists that “young women these days” don’t appreciate all we did for them, don’t realize how well off they are compared to the barriers earlier generations faced. True, perhaps, but you could argue that this is good news. Feminists worked so hard precisely so that women wouldn’t have to worry about the barriers we faced. So at this party last weekend, this topic came up. The “young women don’t appreciate…” line was raised, and someone—an old-time feminist herself—pointed out how wonderful this is. It got me thinking about this other aspect of feminism—the who claims it, who benefits, who pays aspect.

A third piece came from a recent conversation with my partner. She’s been invited to speak on a panel on “Feminism Today,” and we were talking about that. As I’ve reflected more on that panel topic, I’ve started wondering, why now? What’s leading a major professional organization—not a women’s organization—to highlight “feminism today,” today? What does “feminism” mean to folks these days? What does “sexism” mean these days? How does the challenge to sexism mesh with, say, the push for same-sex marriage (remember the feminist critiques of marriage as an inherently sexist institution)? And how does it mesh with dismantling the gender binary—academic lingo for questioning what “male” and “female,” masculine” and “feminine” really mean anyway? How does it mesh with our barely emerging attention to transgender and intersex issues?

Then, the fourth piece: I’m giving myself the gift of a week off work to attend the Conference on World Affairs, where one of the sessions I plan to attend is called “The Women’s Movement Stalled.” What does that mean? Stalled how? And when? And in who’s mind? Who are these panelists and what will they say? Will they clarify or muddy these questions? Will they be old ‘70s feminists, “young women today” who don’t appreciate, both, neither? How do they know what happened (or what’s happening) to the women’s movement? And why don’t I?

And then, for the final piece, the real corker: not to be outdone by our President, I made a monumental slip myself this morning. A sexist assumption of monstrous proportions, enough to have me voted instantly off the feminist island. It was so regressive, so egregious that it would even get me voted off the ‘70s feminist island … never mind the contemporary island where folks are attuned to implicit attitudes, modern sexism, and subtle bias. Oh, no. This was flat-out blatant. Here’s what happened:

I am considering (actually, I’m pretty much planning on) going to a weeklong Smithsonian-sponsored old-fashioned-style Chautauqua “athenaeum” this summer. A week studying astronomy—I have to assume this is the layperson’s version of astronomy, or I’ll die—with an astrophysicist who is an astronomer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. How does this sound: “Immersed in the inquisitive nature of Chautauqua, you’ll learn how scientists are discovering new planets and considering the feasibility of other planets with life. Explore the Milky Way galaxy and discover how mysterious clouds of dust and gas are giving birth to thousands of stars.” I was so excited, I sent the link to my partner and said something bland like, “I really, really want to go to this!” She came into my study to learn more, and I started telling her about it—including about its being taught by this star astrophysicist. “He’s at Goddard,” I enthused, skimming the description in the text. “Wait,” she said, “Michelle Thaller ... Don’t you think that could be a woman?” Nailed.

I sort of love these moments because they remind me how much there still is to learn—always. They’re humbling, in a good way, because they remind me to be less critical of other folks’ slips. And they remind me how super well we all learned these lessons. Forty years of feminist consciousness-raising and countless lectures and talks on the evils of sexism haven’t erased it from this old head.

This little incident is a great example of the implicit attitudes I’ve mentioned before—but in those earlier posts, I was grousing about people’s implicit attitudes toward me as an old women. This time the shoe is on the other foot: I’m the one revealing my implicit assumptions. Surely, my well-learned stereotypes told me, a great Smithsonian-selected, Chautauqua-sponsored, NASA-employed astrophysicist is a man. The worst part is that it wasn’t even a question I asked … because I knew. I knew so deeply that I read right past her name. “Michelle,” I mumbled to my partner, “could be a man’s name.” Right.

So, I ask myself, is feminism dead? Well, I hope not, because the work sure isn’t done yet. And I don’t just mean the “Lean In” work to help women get a larger share of the power pie. I don’t even mean work against the lingering biases that continue to limit girls and women and hem in boys and men—although I know those need work, too. I mean the homework, the inside work. My own work.

And aren’t I lucky: this morning, I got a private tutorial in sexism 101. Next week, wisdom from the Conference on World Affairs. In June, the Goddard astrophysicist. And who knows what lies beyond. My lessons stretch out before me.