Then she asked me if I liked skiing. I answered honestly. I love skiing, although I’m not great at it and I haven’t been on the hill since I annihilated my knees a few years back. I’d love to get back into it, though, but haven’t so far because I hate doing things alone.

I knew as I hit the send button that I’d never hear from her again.

I’ve been a Match member on and off for maybe a year and a half and have very little nothing to show for it. I tried to play it straight, using my profile to tell the wonderful women of the 5280 who I was as best I could – what I do for a living, what I do for fun, what my interests are, and so forth. But no results to speak of past a few coffee first dates. Whatever I served up, nobody was buying.

I don’t mind admitting that it’s been frustrating. And yes, it strikes at your self-esteem. I have historically hit periods when, as a result of where I lived or the structure of my daily life, I had a hard time meeting women, but I’ve never had trouble getting dates when I was actually around eligible women. My Match.com experience, though, has begun to make me feel like an untouchable.

I’ve had plenty of time to think about what the problem might be, and a good deal of that energy focused on the perfectly valid question of “what’s wrong with me?” Back when I was more successful on the relationship scene I was, after all, a bit younger, and I’ve had to entertain the uncomfortable possibility that 50 year-old Sam is simply less marketable than 30 year-old Sam.

I concluded that the problem is multi-faceted. For one thing, I’m just not Outdoorsy Guy, but I live in the middle of Outdoorsy Nation. Also, I’m picky as hell (when you’re educated to the doctoral level, for instance, you’re going to be looking for someone with significant intelligence). And there are plenty of things about me guaranteed to cause daily match surfers to lunge for the “next” button – as in, we know that a substantial percentage of American women don’t find bald guys attractive, period. I get it. Since there’s nothing I can do about some of these things (short of leaving Denver and joining Hair Club), I decided to go straight at the issue as best I could. So about three weeks ago I changed my profile. Here’s how I began:

The great thing about Match is the chance to meet women I might never encounter otherwise. The bad thing is that somehow the place encourages us to define ourselves as a checklist of things we like to do. Shared interests and compatibility are nice, but I’ve always felt like relationships thrive on a chemistry that has very little to do with activities.

The working theory for businesses like Match and eHarmony, I suppose, is that true love is best predicted by that checklist of activities. (eHarmony may not be as bad about this as Match – I have no experience with them past filling out the application form.) You like live music? You’re the oldest child, too? We’re soulmates!

Then, yesterday, I tripped across an interesting new study headed up by Dr. Eli Finkel, a Social Psych professor at Northwestern. Finkel’s team agrees that online dating is a great way to discover people you might not meet otherwise. However:

One of the weaknesses of online dating is an overreliance on “profiles,” the researchers say. Although most dating websites feature photos and detailed, searchable profiles covering everything from personality traits to likes and dislikes, this information isn’t necessarily useful in identifying a partner, Finkel and his coauthors write.

The study suggests something that I think most of us know, even if we’ve never stopped to think about it. To wit, love is often about serendipity.

…daters don’t always know what they want in a mate—even though they generally think they do. Studies suggest that people often lack insight into what attracts them to others (and why), and therefore the characteristics they seek out in an online profile may be very different from those that will create a connection in person, the review notes.

Fight it if you like, but Marshall McLuhan’s adage applies to online dating: the medium is the message. In a format that emphasizes “things I like to do” and sorts according to activities, your viability is going to hinge on how well you conform your life to those dictates. Is the “shared interests” assumption valid? Well, it’s obviously nice if the person you’re interested in likes some of the things you do. If you have nothing in common the relationship probably has a short shelf life. But let’s be honest. There are probably lots of people out there who share nearly all my interests that I’d think are barking assholes. Some of the most compelling women I have ever met, on the other hand, had very little in common with me….at first.

See, if the click is there, people find things to do. They grow together. They shape their world to fit the emotional, spiritual and physical connection instead of robotically sorting themselves according to somebody else’s preconceived generic categories. She grows to enjoy watching games with him. He realizes how much he likes watching movies with her, even movies he wouldn’t have been caught dead watching before. She’s never had any interest in going to New Mexico until she spends a weekend in Taos with him but now she can’t wait to go back. He always thought of sushi as bait until she took him to the Sushi Den and eased him into it with a California Roll. Now he’s badgering her to go check out this new place called “Sasa” he heard about up in LoHi.

When you interpret who you are and what you have to offer another human being according to a mass market dating corporation’s categorization schemes, you place significant limitations on what you can be and on who you can discover. Homogeneity is bound to be the result.

My friends have heard me complain about this templating tendency and about the seeming sameness of the single women in town. If you believe what you see on Match 99% of single females here fall into one of two or three categories (if that). I joke that between the time they spend camping, hiking, skiing, climbing 14ers, mountain biking, laying on the beach in Mexico and volunteering with poor children in either Africa or Chile there’s simply no time left for them to actually be in Denver. They’re all in love with their careers and have great friends. Family is incredibly important to them and if they don’t have children of their own they’re okay with it if you do because they love children. At least two pictures of their dog(s). And so on.

I was deep into this rant with my buddy Mike a few months back and he was laughing at me, so I logged in and called up my daily matches to prove it. The first profile was a little off. The second was word for word, picture for picture what I just described.

I noted above that I feel a lot of frustration with the process. I try to be honest about myself. I’m 51, which means that statistically speaking I’m playing the back nine of life. I’m not a runway model. I have no hair. Like just about everybody who has lived past the age of 12 I’m broken down in some ways, both physically and emotionally. Yes, I have baggage.

That said, talk to my female friends. I’m a pretty good guy. I’m not David Beckham, no, but I’m okay looking. If you saw pictures of all the beautiful women who have been a part of my life through the years you’d have to conclude that I must got something going on. I’m smart. I’m creative. Strong and sensitive in fairly equal measures. Funny, thoughtful. As for the baggage, most of it fits in the overhead bin.

In other words, I’m not a bad catch.

But: all those gorgeous women who loved me? Almost none of them loved me on sight. Some of them disliked me at first, in fact, and others didn’t warm up to me for quite some time. I understand all this. The things that are best about me simply aren’t evident at a glance. And there is no way to communicate this dynamic in a Match.com profile. (Or speed dating environments, either, for that matter.) In an online dating context you can’t make me look terribly desirable to the female window shopper without lying.

I have no doubt in my mind that dozens of women who might like me a great deal if they knew me have zipped past my profile without a second thought.

If I sound narcissistic or self-indulgent here, stick with me for a second, because this is a sword that cuts both ways. In short, I’m guilty, too. Here’s how the story on the Finkel study concludes:

The abundance of profiles online also may make daters too picky and judgmental, the authors say. The sheer number of options can be overwhelming, and the ease with which people can sift through profiles—and click on to the next one—may lead them to “objectify” potential partners and compare them like so many pairs of shoes.

“Online dating creates a shopping mentality, and that is probably not a particularly good way to go about choosing a mate,” says Harry Reis, Ph.D., one of the review’s authors and a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, in Rochester, N.Y.

The shopping mindset may be efficient online, but when carried into face-to-face interactions it can make daters overly critical and discourage “fluid, spontaneous interaction” in what is already a charged and potentially awkward situation, Reis and his coauthors write.

How often do I find myself in that shopping mode? How often does it become about reflexively saying no instead finding a reason to say yes? I just took a quick break to review my daily matches, which refreshed as I was writing. Seven women, and I cleared the list in less than 30 seconds.

How many times in the past six months have I looked at a picture of a woman who would make me insanely happy for the rest of my life and clicked no? No telling. I do know, from personal experience, that there are women I don’t think are attractive or interesting when I first encounter them, only to later conclude that they’re stunningly compelling. (I have a friend like that in my life right now.) I’d be stupid to assume that doesn’t happen routinely on Match, wouldn’t I?

Thanks for the memories, online dating, but I’m signing off as soon as my current subscription expires. Your system may work great for some folks, but the more I think about it the more I realize how perfectly it’s engineered to fail for me. My perfect match and I are going to walk right past each other without even noticing 100 times out of 100.

And I just don’t want to be that guy. You know, the one who bitches because women don’t give him a chance while he’s not giving them a chance? You’re making me a worse person. Or rather, I’m using you to make myself a worse person, and it has to stop.

I may not find anyone at all. Who knows? But at least I can stop shelling out $30 a month for the privilege of deluding myself.

Actress and lesbian Cynthia Nixon has caused a firestorm in the gayosphere by saying that for her, sexual orientation was a choice.

Obviously, this view undermines the arguments of gay political orthodoxy, and gives the right wingnuts who run “gay rehabilitation prayer camps” support that they were right all along–”See Harold, I told you he was just doing it to be ornery.”  Of course, the truth is  probably like most things: The truth is somewhere in between. It may be for her, but it isn’t for most gay people.

At any rate, this becomes pretty scary when coupled with another news item from the week, news that conservatives are conservative because they are stupid.

Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found.

And this isn’t some progressive spoof either, it’s a peer reviewed study based on longitudinal market research in the U.K. Now on first blush, you’d think this would bring a smile to our liberal faces. And it did. I admit it. (Although I started to send it to my conservative friends, but didn’t, since I thought it might be cruel. Probably not, since they don’t believe in science and statistics anyway.)

But the more you think about it, the bigger problem it is for us. Because if people are conservative because they’re stupid, then that’s a problem because one of our core tenets is: It’s off-limits to persecute people for things they have no control over like skin color, sexual orientation, intelligence, etc. I can see it now. At some Florida supermarket somewhere, a small boy is pointing to a seventy year-old woman wearing a halter top, hot pants and a Newt Gingrich button and his mom is saying, “Shhhhh! Don’t point, Alex. She’s a Republican, but she can’t help it.”  And this means that we have to stop mocking Rush and all right-wing positions on climate, gun control, taxes and the like, because they are too dumb to understand why their ideas are bad.

Just outside Chicago, one hospital is advertising its obesity clinic with billboards that say, “It’s a disease, not a decision.”

Romney-Santorum 2012. It’s a condition, not a choice.

Is it that Newt is a fat, slimy old scoundrel with creepy teeth and Otherwise is not?

No.

So Otherwise is a fat, slimy old scoundrel with creepy teeth?

Stop it. Otherwise is not a slimy old scoundrel with creepy teeth. You know what I mean. I mean that is not the difference Otherwise is talking about. The difference is that Otherwise is accountable.

A-cow-and-a-bull? How do you spell that? What does it mean?

Ahhhh, I see you are a Republican. No matter, perhaps this post can help your understanding.

Way back at the end of March, nine long months ago, we decided to set up a bracket-like approach for determining the Republican nominee. Forget all those polls and all that insider nonsense that Chris the Fix peddles. It’s time for bracketology. Pick ‘em by the color of their uniforms and their mascots—the Fighting Missionaries, the Strident Banshees, The Sanctimonious Santorums, etc.

It was a good idea, good enough that other columnists and bloggers have now swiped it, including Joe Klein. But the bigger idea was in the way we constructed our brackets, in which we noted that the Republican candidates were all stereotypes drawn from a relatively small set of stereotypical pools. There was the fat old southern guy pool (Barbour, Gingrich, Huckabee,) the Nixon-youth pool (Thune, Santorum, Pawlenty,) the technocrat pool (Romney and Jindal,) and the pretty woman pool (Palin, Bachmann, and Haley.) We also noted in a later post that there would probably emerge a Texan pool, which proved to be the case. The only candidate that really didn’t fit a stereotype was Herman Cain.

That original slate is also noteworthy for who we explicitly left out: Donald Trump, Mitch Daniels, Jon Huntsman, John Bolton, Buddy Roemer, George Pataki and Ron Paul. All of those were considered serious potential candidates at the time. Indeed, Bolton, Roemer, and Paul had already declared. But we knew then, and we know now, that they’re not serious. Our only mistake in predicting the reject pile was to exclude Ron Paul. He’s not a real candidate for the nomination, but his campaign is constructed to survive a few rounds into the tourney—he’s sort of the Princeton of this contest (basketball folks will understand that reference.) At the time of the original post, I was trying to be funny and he did not fit a stereotype, so I left him out. I should have put him in. I knew better and added him later. Still, a miss is a miss, and Ron Paul is a miss.

A-c-c-o-u-n-t-a-b-l-e.

So how did we do in predicting the field? If you exclude the entertainers like Rush Limbaugh that we included in that first bracket in an attempt to be funny, pretty good. We predicted twelve entrants. Of those twelve, ten took some sort of shot. Of the seven we deliberately left off the list, four stayed out and three came in: Huntsman, Paul, and Bolton. So of 19 potential candidates, we called 14 correctly, or 73%. We should also get some bonus points for also predicting that some off the radar candidates would emerge and those would include a Texan and a governor.

Our only big misses were Ron Paul and Rick Perry. To be fair, we thought the “Texan” would be someone from the Bush camp, like Jeb or Mitch Daniels (an honorary Texan.) To those of us not intimately familiar with Texas, Perry seems just like W. But I am told by my Texas friends they are very different. Eskimos have twenty words for snow. Texans must have twenty different types of asshole.

But back to work. There are four rounds to the 2012 Republican tourney. In round one, candidates try to convince the money-men they can be trusted; in round two candidates try to convince the Base they can be trusted (the four January primaries and caucuses;) in round 3 the candidates try to convince the broader party they can win; and in round 4 they get their brains beat in by Obama. The first round is now complete.

So how did we do in predicting the first round? At the last debate, there were six participants: Mitt, Newt, Rick P, Rick S, Michelle, and Ron. And Huntsman says he is still running. So, let’s say those are our final seven. Our bracket predicted Mitt, Newt, Rick S, and Michelle correctly. 57%. (I’d be at 85% if I hadn’t let intellectual integrity get in the way. What was I thinking?) I also thought we’d see a slightly bigger field at this point– Jeb as the Texan, Chris Christie as the crusading governor, and Guliani for comic relief. I didn’t count on Perry hitting three quotas at once – a Texan, a governor, and a buffoon. Attaboy, Ricky.

Let me also say that predicting this looks easy after the games are played, but it wasn’t so obvious at the start. There have been lots of upsets. Three of our predictions went against conventional wisdom. We stuck with Gingrich when he was written off by the press, and predicted two upsets: Bachmann over Palin and Santorum over Pawlenty.

But what happens now? Good question. It now looks like we will see Gingrich, Romney, Paul and Perry emerge from the first round regionals, to be held in Iowa/NH/SC/Florida. There goes my bracket.

Still, unlike my basketball bracket, this time at least I still have a team in the tournament. I picked Mitt to win, and I am sticking with that call. He’s got name recognition, time in grade, truckloads of money, and, although this doesn’t appear to figure into the thinking of the party, he might actually be able to beat a centrist Democrat. But let me say I am not very comfortable with my pick. Mitt is doing his best to smile and pretend he likes the Base’s policies, but he’s no more convincing than Lucy was when she was hired to hawk Vitameatavegamin. Maybe it will get better with a few more spoonfuls, Mitt.

If I were a Democrat, I’d be pretty darn happy right now. The Republicans have set up a system where candidates must pledge fealty to a NO! agenda developed by the rabid fringe of the party. If they deviate from even one of the no’s (no taxes, no gay marriage, no abortion, nobama, no cooperation, no coloreds drinking from whites-only fountains) they are rejected. It’s a system almost guaranteed to eliminate electable candidates. Unless someone can find a way to bypass the early season primaries, and that may be Huntsman’s plan, it’s hard to see a good candidate coming out of this.

When I started the brackets nine months ago, I did not see how the Republicans could lose 2012. I should have known better.

Illustration by Paul Szep.

The question, of course, is not why Sandusky and Fine did what they are alleged to have done. We know why they did it. Why do cats chase mice? Nor is the question, really, why Penn State bureaucrats chose to cover for Sandusky. Because that’s what faceless bureaucrats get paid to do–dig holes and bury things that smell. It would not surprise me at all if the regret felt by those now-out-of-work bureaucrats is less about not stopping Sandusky, and more regret they didn’t dig the hole deeper. No, the real question is why decent people didn’t do more—McQueary, Paterno, Laurie Fine.

The simple truth is that this is a crime that until very recently was not treated as a crime. Powerful old men have been buying and bullying young boys for sex forever, and by and large people have turned their heads. Maybe those involved would have jumped if it had been stranger-on-stranger sexual assault, or if the victims had been female, or if the predators had not been at the top of the social stratum and the victims lower down. Perhaps, if this had been a man in a van cruising a wealthy suburb and pulling a young girl in, those same people would have camped out on the door step of the police department until someone listened to them. But not for a poor boy sitting on the lap of rich old Uncle Bernie.

It is only now that our society is finally starting to really treat it as the crime it is. Good. It’s about time we stopped the bastards.

When I was a paperboy in Waycross, Georgia in the late sixties, there were two houses we were not allowed to enter if invited in by the owners—both middle aged white males. If told to come in to wait for our money on collection day or if offered a Coke, we were told to get on our bikes, ride away and tell Mr. Cardinal, who ran the circulation department. The owner of one of these ran a popular vegetable stand, and always had a young boy, working alongside him. Always a different boy and always from out of town. Mr. Cardinal knew enough to tell us to steer clear of these men, so he must have known. It’s certainly reasonable to think others must have known as well, but it was not talked about.

There was also a middle aged man, Jim, who delivered papers to the rural routes in a car. He always had a helper with him, a young boy. Mr. Cardinal also told us that none of us were allowed to ride in the car with Jim under any circumstances. Later, one of those helpers and I were both eighteen and living in Atlanta. One drunken night he told me that he’d been paid to have sex with Jim, not deliver papers. He boasted that he’d never touched a rolled up newspaper in his life. And then Rob told me that he’d been a male prostitute since he was 12, standing on the street behind our only hotel, The Ware, and waiting for the town’s doctors and lawyers to pick him up in their Cadillacs and offer him for a ride. It is impossible to believe that the police, and many other people, didn’t know what was going on.

It’s not that people in Waycross approved of sexual assault. We had a boy from my high school, a prominent athlete, who “went away” my junior year, allegedly for raping young girls. But rather, the crime of older men getting sex from young men by giving them gifts and money was not seen as a crime, but rather an embarrassment. Nor were the victims seen as child victims, not really. They were seen as whores.

Partly, that is because they are male. Female school teachers who prey on their boy students typically get far lighter sentences than male teachers who prey on girl students. Society still tacitly acts as if males, whatever their age, are capable of making decisions about sex. If we believe that, then we as a society are stupid. They are children for Christ’s sake.

I know it’s easy to piss on Mike McQueary. I wasn’t there. I don’t really know what he did and didn’t do. It’s not always as easy as it seems. I once worked in oilfield construction with a man who traveled with his “step son,” a relationship that decidedly smelled and one where we all had our suspicions. Eventually I heard the man ended up in prison for child pornography. Should I have gone to the local police in Abbeville and told them that a guy I worked with had effeminate mannerisms and traveled with his step-son? Oilfield workers like me were the lowest form of trash in Abbeville, and they probably would have laughed me out of the station. Suspicion is not knowledge.

But I will tell you, looking at McQueary and Paterno and Laurie Fine, if I was in the same situation today, I think I would give it a try. Indeed, I think a lot of people who might have not done something before will do something now. Yeah, the cops are going to get flooded with false alarms. Tough. Let’s catch some of those assholes.

I am sorry for Bobby Davis and all those kids in State College, but guys, believe me: Because of you, all of us are a little more likely to pick up the phone. Thanks, man.

Though, as awful as the situation is, Penn State is not alone in revering athletics. At a lot of schools, in the Big Ten, the Big 12, the PAC 12 and so on, athletics is number one to its students, its alums and its board. The likelihood of blind eyes being turned for other matters (hopefully never sexual abuse) would not surprise me. It’s what happens when the questionable decision of elevating athletics over academics occurs.

The NCAA has slapped fines and pulled titles in its lackluster policing of schools and their behaviors. But at the same time athletics has grown more profitable and more secretive, more insular and more protective. A Code of Silence exists. It’s like the Musketeers motto of One for All and All for One has run amok.

And it’s not just about grades or cheating or selling sports gear or players involved in fights and sexual assaults. Big Ten teams, and Penn State is one of 12 teams in the league (yes, that’s 12 teams in the Big  Ten, go figure), created the Big Ten Network. The BTN is a lucrative partnership between the league and Fox Sports that controls television coverage and access to the 12 teams in the league. Want to see a Big Ten game on TV, cable or satellite? It’ll cost you. The monopolistic arrangement bans other media from doing play by play, controls press conference access and pays hefty dividends to the member schools. And with the exception of Northwestern University, the other 11 teams are all public universities funded in part by taxpayer money and the games are played on public university campuses in public football and basketball venues.

If a local sports reporter wants to cover the game in the press box for the next day’s paper or that night’s sports news, that’s okay. But tweeting play by plays, not allowed. Shoot footage for the evening news…not allowed (footage will be provided only by the Big Ten Network). Heck, even the campus newspaper’s sports reporters have to follow Big Ten Network rules.

To Tweet the game, reporters sit in the stands to avoid the Big Ten censor cops.

Want to interview players? Only with permission. Want easy access to players? Forget it. The players are even coached not to talk to media and if an interview is granted, many times coached on what to say. At Michigan State when the award winning State News wanted to do a story on a track athlete’s comeback after an injury, the interview was canceled. Injury shows vulnerability, after all.

This has become the culture of Division I high profile athletics in the big ticket sports like football and basketball.

At Penn State, football was gold. At places like the University of Kentucky and University of North Carolina (neither are Big Ten teams), it’s  basketball. Elite teams are the farm system for the NFL and the NBA.

Most coaches, their staffs and players are hard working, driven and honorable individuals. But it only takes one to stain a program. And for increasingly cash-strapped universities, greed may also be a motivator. Handle peccadilloes quietly, privately, secretly, if at all.

It takes a decades-long sex abuse scandal like Penn State’s to wake a somnolent board and hold people accountable. Every board of trustees or regents or governors across the country should learn a lesson and not be so trusting or complacent with the information being presented by their presidents. Dig deeper, look harder, ask questions, require answers. The local Patriot News originally broke the news of the grand jury investigation and then the results. The paper’s done a solid job of covering the erupting scandal.

The alleged sexual assaults of eight boys is a horrific crime. CNN did a useful timeline and so did the Penn State college newspaper, the Daily Collegian.

There are inevitably more victims. Pedophiles rarely quit. I covered a number of trials involving pedophiles in my reporting days. Jerry Sandusky fits the profile. He set himself up in the ideal situation to troll for victims with his Second Mile program. In control, an admired figure, big name university football defensive coach, and all those young boys to choose from. It turns my stomach.

But what also turns my stomach is the knowledge that others had who did nothing to protect the victims. Granted, these are allegations, at this point, and Sandusky has the right to be considered innocent until and unless proven guilty.  The heroes in this story are the boys, some now men, who came forward and had the courage to tell the truth. But the damage is life altering and permanent.

That’s not what college athletics is about.

The cold air chased me south from New York into Pennsylvania and on through Virginia into North Carolina. “We had snow here last week,” exclaimed Sarah Edwards. “We haven’t had snow in 15 years.”

Edwards was speaking from behind her desk at the Ava Gardner Museum in downtown Smithfield, a Tar Heel town of about 13,000 that’s located a few miles west of I-95. I’d pulled in once before but the museum was closed. Now I was back to get a glimpse into the life of the woman who became the flame who “taught Frank Sinatra how to sing a torch song,” as his band arranger, Nelson Riddle, once described her.

The museum attracts about 12,000 visitors a year — mostly seniors but also “a lot of younger people interested in Old Hollywood,” said Edwards. Admission is $6 and patrons can buy a variety of souvenirs from Ava Gardner post cards to five-ounce jars of regional delicacies like sweet potato butter and moonshine jelly.

Gardner was born in 1922, the youngest of seven children, to Mollie and Jonas Gardner, a tenant farmer who tilled the tobacco and cotton fields a few miles outside of town. It was at the Howell Theater on Third Street in Smithfield where Gardner fell in love with the movies when she saw Clark Gable in “Red Dawn.”

Despite her stunning looks, she may never have made it to Hollywood if not for a chance trip to New York City to visit her sister when she was 18 years old. Her brother-in-law was a photographer, and he did a portrait of Gardner that included a snapshot of her wearing a straw hat and smiling dreamily into the camera. He put it in the window of his Fifth Avenue shop where it was spotted by an MGM employee. The young suitor wanted nothing more than a date, but the encounter led to a screen test and Gardner was signed to a seven-year contract by MGM for $50 a week.

After a few bit roles and poster poses, she hit stardom in 1946 when she starred opposite Burt Lancaster in “The Killers.” Her career spanned 63 movies and she graced the covers of “Time,” “Look” and “Elle.” Born with the perfect stage name, publicists tried passing her off as having the given name of Lucy Johnson.

In some ways she was the typical Hollywood starlet. Her marriages to actor Mickey Rooney and bandleader Artie Shaw lasted only a year, and though she was married to Frank Sinatra for five years, emotionally they were hooked forever. “They couldn’t live with each other, or away from each other,” said Edwards, “and they were always making each other jealous.”

Although she stayed close to her family, Gardner never had children. “She had dogs. Those were her babies,” said Edwards. The first was named Rags, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi that was given to her by Sinatra. After Rags came Rags II, and then Morgan.

Among the memorabilia at the museum is a French silk dress that was a gift of Howard Hughes, a wristwatch she’d given to Sinatra and china place settings from her home in London.

A copy of the family Bible is near the museum’s front entrance, but Ava Gardner was no prude. At 5-foot-7 with an 18-inch waist and size-two figure, she was the pinup girl of an entire generation.

“I don’t remember how many swimsuits I wore out,” she once said. “I shot enough sultry looks to melt the North Pole.”

A lifelong smoker, she died of pneumonia in 1990 at age 67 in London. The week after her death, People Magazine put her on the cover and called her “The Last Goddess.” She’s buried in a cemetery outside of Smithfield because, said Edwards, “She always wanted to come home to Mommy and Daddy.”

The day she died, Sinatra’s daughter Tina found her father slumped in his room and crying. The woman who lit his torch was gone.

****

A few miles farther down the highway, a billboard for a different sort of museum led me to the home of the late General William C. Lee, considered the father of American Airborne. “General Lee established, deployed and trained the 101st Airborne,” said tour guide Gloria Gulledge, a retired history teacher. “The Airborne shortened World War II by at least two years.”

The Second World War was well under way and the Armed Forces had no interest in “vertical envelopment” as paratroop deployment came to be called. Lee felt otherwise after being stationed in Germany between wars and seeing Hitler’s Luftwaffe dropping paratroopers on training missions, but he had a hard time convincing his commanders. “He was told that no American soldier would ever jump out of a plane,” said Gulledge. “They told him it wasn’t necessary.”

Then came the day that Franklin Roosevelt’s military aide called and ordered the go-ahead. A highly trained tactical commander, Lee had only 27 months to get his fledgling paratroopers ready for the invasion of Europe. He accomplished the assignment but the prepping process took its toll and he suffered a heart attack weeks before the invasion. Instead of flying over France with his men, Lee was back in the United States, in bed at home listening to the broadcast from Europe on a short-wave radio. As the troops jumped out over the French countryside, they delivered a tribute to their absent commander by yelling, “Bill Lee!”

He died four years later, at age 53.

The Lee homestead is located two blocks from the center of downtown Dunn, a handsome, two-story Greek brick revival structure with sandstone steps leading up to the museum’s front entrance. Inside are World War II artifacts from all sides, including various weaponry like the German MP 40 “Schmeisser” that was capable of firing 500 rounds a minute, a Japanese 8mm Nambu handgun and the U.S. M-1 Carbine, of which over 6.25 million were produced from 1942-60.

On an upstairs wall is a white cotton Japanese scarf embroidered with the red rising sun and bordered by the handwritten prayers and well wishes of Japanese family and friends of the soldier who owned it. An American paratrooper donated the scarf to the museum. He retrieved the scarf after killing the soldier in a gunfight during which he was wounded. In another room is a Nazi infantry battle flag that was taken from a building in Waldheim, Germany, three months after D-Day by a dentist-turned-paratrooper.

There was much else to see. Museums, after all, are the closest things we have to time machines.

Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning New England sports columnist.

Anyhow, before this trip, I don’t believe I had ever heard a radio advertisement for anything testosterone related. Ever. But by golly, yesterday I heard dozens. Literally, dozens. I found a sports talk station as I was rolling out of the Hertz lot and I just left it on (because I like sports and also, it’s far less brain-damaging than music radio is these days) and honest to sweet baby Jesus, there were at least two testosterone spots in every commercial break. I am not exaggerating, not even for effect. Testosterone treatments, testosterone centers, testosterone supplements – I kept expecting an ad for a testosterone-themed water park to surge from the speakers at any second. Never happened, but I was out of the car conducting client interviews for two or three hours so it’s possible that I missed it.

Now, I’m not here to mess with Texas. I have great friends there. Truly, I love the place despite, well, everything. But yesterday gave me the willies and has me asking some hard questions. Like, why can’t Texans get it up?

I’ve heard it alleged, by those trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong with Texas, that the state suffers from a case of collective testosterone poisoning, and listening to Gov. Rick Perry swaggering around bragging about many people he has executed (a lot of them actually guilty, it turns out) sort of lends support to the theory. Listening to Texans in general lends support to the theory. Looking at the kinds of people they vote for and the policies they seem to approve of – more support still. I don’t know. But after yesterday it is abundantly clear that however much testosterone the men of the state have at the moment, they don’t believe it’s enough. Which may mean they all have low testosterone and are overcompensating in the, you know, political arena. Or it may mean that the crazy motherfuckers are in the process of mass overdosing. These may be the sorts of men who hear the warning in the Viagra commercial and say “fuck that, if I have an erection lasting more than four hours I’m a-fixin’ to take some more of them gosh-danged miracle tablets.”

No cattle, perhaps, but at least an interesting place to hang the hat.

I hate to speculate, honestly. And I’m certainly not going to go door to door asking these folks if they’d like to talk about their peckers. (I’m especially not going anywhere near the Governor’s Mansion with that question.) All I can do is report the facts as I see them. And the facts are these: I’ve been all over the US and I heard more concern about mojo levels in my first five minutes in Houston yesterday than I have in all my visits to all the other states in America combined. Whether this means they have too little testosterone, too much testosterone or are just insecure about the size of their Lyndon Johnsons I can’t say, but I’m worried for them.

Until we find out, though, I think it would be a good idea to shut down all those testosterone businesses and suspend shipments of Viagra, Cialis and Levitra. If something isn’t done, and soon, there could be a stiff price to pay.

I can think of dozens of really sexy women in music, but since it seems like sexy is a prerequisite to even get in the door, it really takes a bit extra to rise above the noise.

Enter Alison Goldfrapp. She’s not the prettiest woman in the business, but sexy and pretty aren’t the same thing, are they?

Hoo – did it just get hot in here? Tell me Marc Bolan wouldn’t be proud of this one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Heck, one more. Guys, pay close attention at about the 4:13 mark, where we meet the luckiest theremin in the world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In any case, this may be the single easiest day of either the original challenge or the sequel, because there is one CD that stands alone at the top of Make-Out Mountain: Avalon, by Roxy Music. From the first note of “More Than This” to the last echo of “Tara,” Brian Ferry & Company crafted something that was pure, unadulterated sex. Stylish, smooth, seductive, shimmering, sultry, steamy, Avalon is 37+ minutes of sheer elegance, alternating between confidence and vulnerability, control and submission.

It is the most sublime erotic achievement in rock history, period. I’m tempted to cue up every video from the CD that I can find, but I won’t. If you know Avalon you know what I mean, and if you don’t, maybe all you’ll need is a little tease…

By the way, if Roxy Music hadn’t recorded Avalon, the correct answer would be Sam Cooke’s Greatest Hits, minus the gospel stuff.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Happy Saturday. May today’s lesson come in handy for you in the near future.

The late Richard Pryor, often hailed as the greatest comic to ever take the stage, is the American Chaucer. A master storyteller in the grand tradition of West African griots, fired by passion and pain, possessed of keen insight, he was also a brilliant impersonator with amazing range, an intuitive actor who never got his due, a social critic, a writer, a folklorist, a philosopher, and, most importantly, one funny motherfucker…

[On being severely burned] “I got to the hospital—You can really tell when you’re fucked up, when the doctor goes, ‘AAAUGH! Holy shit! Why don’t we just get some cole slaw and serve this up, whattaya say?’” – Richard Pryor, ‘Live on the Sunset Strip’

Bill Cosby, Buddy Hackett and other comedy legends were renowned raconteurs, but Pryor was without parallel. In addition to his own humorous observations, cheeky sex talk and ingratiating self-deprecation, Pryor would often perform as a host of characters in continuous, nuanced dialogue, sensitive to the humanity of the souls he portrayed even while gleefully sending them up. He relished dialects, slang, cadence, street parlance, foreign accents… Pryor adored the music of language, especially in the guise of his alter ego Mudbone, whereas Pryor’s contemporary George Carlin savored the meaning of words. They complemented each other, a duopoly of comedic brilliance that reigned supreme for decades. Pryor in particular spawned legions of copycats and imitators, including a young Eddie Murphy, who in his earliest gigs would perform Pryor’s material verbatim and call it a tribute. But no one could match Pryor’s boundless wit, liberating raunchiness, and gift for connecting with the audience.

“To fully appreciate the power of Richard Pryor as a stand-up comedian, you had to follow him at the Comedy Store. I did once, and I’m lucky to be alive.” – David Letterman

Pryor was brave, too. He regularly poked fun at his own impulsive libido and temperamental persona with an unprecedented frankness, earning him deep adulation among his fellow comics as well as the devotion of women spellbound by his charismatic vulnerability. He made light of his troubles and his contradictions, exposed his pains and fears, made it okay to laugh at how hopelessly human we all are. He rarely wasted a line; no matter what he said on the stage, whether in packed clubs or sold-out arenas, there was typically a larger point to the punchline, whether to lay bare an injustice, bind us with our myriad commonalities, or even find redemption in a reflective moment.

“Richard had that thing where he could make you laugh so hard and then all of a sudden he’d break your heart.” – Robert Townsend

Times have changed since Pryor’s prime. Some say the 1970′s was a wasted decade, full of garishness, scandal and pollution. Yet heroes, icons, agents of real and lasting change, smashers of stereotypes, molders of youthful opinion, abounded: Muhammad Ali. Bruce Lee. Billie Jean King. Shirley Chisholm. Harvey Milk. Daniel Ellsberg. Gloria Steinem. César Chávez. Ralph Nader. John Denver. Carl Sagan. George Carlin. And Richard Pryor… a skinny kid from the backstreets of Peoria who lived out the American dream by parlaying his considerable talents into superstardom, and who played a part in the nation’s social progress that still has yet to be fully understood or appreciated.

Perhaps inevitably, in the ever-changing American big picture, Pryor’s image has begun to fade; history will likely render him obscure, his life story shrouded and much of his humor made anachronistic by the passage of time. But his enormous influence will reverberate among the people, as would that of any great storyteller down through the ages, for as long as America exists.

“I was leaving [Africa], and I was sitting in a hotel, and a voice said to me, said, ‘Look around, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see all colors of people doing everything, you know?’ And the voice said, ‘Do you see any niggers?’ And I said, ‘No.’ It said, ‘You know why? Cause there aren’t any.’ And it hit me like a shot! Man, I started crying and shit, I was sittin’ there, I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been here three weeks, I haven’t even said it. I haven’t even thought it!’ And it made me say, ‘Oh my God, I’ve been wrong. I’ve been wrong, I got to re-group my shit.’ I mean, I said, ‘I ain’t gonna never call another black man ‘nigger.’” – Richard Pryor, ‘Live on the Sunset Strip’

Children of the City of Certainties, part 2.

“Everything we have said about Des Moines has been found to be exactly true.”— “Des Moines the City of Certainties has Made Good.” In: The World’s Work, vol. 23, 1911.

Image to the right: “Krug’s Woe is a Tabloid Wow.” Life, August 4, 1947, pp. 26-28. Caption: “THE WHAM GIRL, Judy Cook, was employed at Lockheed Factory as a riveter during the war but also helped entertain Hughes’ guests. Company newspaper said she made ‘wham by day and trouble for the Japs by night.’

My Uncle Spike told me a joke from his college days when I was 13 years old.

There was a newlywed couple who went on an ocean cruise for their honeymoon, and the virginal bride was taking quite a conjugal pounding as they crossed the ocean. One night the groom actually left the cabin to get something to eat, and while he was on deck he discovered that Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra were the on-board entertainment. He hurried back to the room and said to his bride “Honey! Would you like to see the King of Jazz?” She rolled over wearily and said “If you pull that thing out one more time….”

My aunt Frances said “Jennie, are you old enough to know why that is funny? Louis, Jennie might be too young and hip for that joke.”

I wasn’t. I explained that the first thing I did when I got a thesaurus for my birthday was to read (and highlight) all the synonyms for sexual intercourse. And I was a librarian at heart even then, and had actually heard of Paul Whiteman. This earned me a toast and an approving ”Good baby.”

My mother lost her virginity at 15 to the janitor at her high school (She described him as beautiful but slow, and if I know my mother, he was a wiry, swarthy, heavy lidded thing) on a picnic table, on her lunch hour, at a park near the school. I am not betraying her trust or besmirching her name, as she happily betrays and besmirches herself: she views her own sexual history as the very best sort of cosmic joke, and she has never had secrets, even when I was a girl and wished with all my heart that she might. (She waited up for me after my first date already laughing at me behind the door before I made it across the threshold:

“Did he kiss you good night?”

Yeah.

“Did it make your heart go pitty pat?”

Was it supposed to?

My mother falling on my father’s neck, helpless with laughter, his face etched with the misery of a father whose girl now may be kissed.)

While I can’t guarantee anything about the picnic table itself, we went to the same school, it was the same park, and the impulse was achingly the same for me, brushing off the back of my coat and looking for splinters in my knees, birdsong sluicing through the shafts of sunlight. Save a few details, the park, the table, the God forsaken boy all happened again and again through the years, a family history writ large and repeatedly. My mother was fond of saying “The Cooks are a rather sexy bunch, God help us.”

The first clue you have that the Cooks are a sexy bunch, or to correct my mother’s jazz era grasp of the language, more interested in their own sexuality than a control group , is the fact of our continued existence. My mother’s family, the Cooks, have been roaming the new world since 1630, which you can read about here.

In 1922, my grandfather’s cousin, a missionary, self-published the genealogy of the Cooks. My mother was not included, being born in 1928, and my uncle George’s middle name is incorrect, but all in all, I want to fly across years and press the hand of one Carrie Cook Doe and praise her research skills, even if some details are wrong, the fact of our continued insistence to exist, and exist, and exist, is well documented. These are families who lived in town, who learned a trade, but still had large broods of children, not to work the farm, as was true, or more likely true, with the Ver Steegs, but simply because they just kept fucking.

When I was 15, on another trip to see Spike, we went into his office at the Detroit Free Press, where he was by that point, kicked thoroughly upstairs and was an executive editor. He took a few phone calls and then got on the teletype and wrote “Meet Jennie Ver Steeg, the teenage terror of Des Moines, driving the boys mad with desire, as is her birthright.” Unspooled from the tractor feed, he handed it to me with a flourish: “You’re famous baby.”

This nearly absurd delight with one’s own sexual prowess, and the adventures this affords a girl as she wends her way, to me is another of the certainties of Des Moines. The earliest mention of this term, certainty, attached to Des Moines that I can find is from 1910, and it appears to have been used to describe Des Moines into the early thirties, until soup lines and the Hooverville on the State Capitol made the sentiment quaint, enraging. The body who promoted it was the Greater Des Moines Committee, formed in 1907 and still existing today, who advertised a pamphlet for which young entrepreneurs could send away explaining why one would want to cast one’s lot on the prairie, settling in the crook of the Raccoon and Des Moines Rivers, sluggish, humid, promising.

My mother’s parents came to Des Moines in 1915 from Council Bluffs, which is just across the Missouri River from Omaha. They left the Loess Hills to cast their lots, both being young, bright, and ambitious. My grandfather was blessed, or with sheer force of will blessed himself, with self-confidence bordering on mania. I have no doubt that he was brilliant, and it certainly seems that his children thought so. In a letter in 1978 Spike noted “Your grandfather was a genius, but no hard worker. Your grandmother was no genius, but a hard worker.” Forgetting for a moment the likely sexism of this statement, looking at the high school yearbooks of my grandparents seems to bear this out: the class of ‘08, prophesying that Louis would be president, Louis winning esoteric speech contests, staring out like the rube in a bad movie, jug eared, while my grandmother looking like a Gibson Girl in a poet’s dream, did nearly as much, only slightly less, Latin, but no Greek, oratory, but no office.

My mother claims that her own mother, who had six children in 13 years, claimed not to know how they were made or exactly how to prevent them until her third child was born, and there is a heartbreaking story involving her discovery of condoms in her husband’s valise and not knowing what they were, being told they were something they were not, willing herself to believe it, a woman who had borne children and could figure it out herself. After my grandmother died, a few years later my grandfather showed up in his flannel suit, literally looming at the doorstep, with a darkly beautiful woman from Texas who he installed as stepmother, even though she was mad, and nearly illiterate, and one can only conclude that the curse of the Cooks and the certainty of Des Moines held sway there as well. He just could not help himself.

We gain on the story. While Des Moines has its own geography, its own mythology, I’m inclined to say “but wait… there’s more.” I grew up on the south side of Des Moines, which in the spring was in the flight path for planes landing at the airport, and in the summer often was upwind of the packing plants, and like all towns in Iowa, very few miles stretched between the city and the nearest farm or feedlot. My mother had become a southside native in 1945, after she refused to live with her father anymore, and found “a situation” living with a family there in exchange for child care so she could finish high school.

The southside was more ethnic, much less wealthy; the southeast corner started as a coal mining town named Sevastopol. In the summer, sunrises howled bright with farm chemicals, garish wrestling poster colors, and during detassling season I awoke to the smell of futility as nearly every teenager in Des Moines rolled sleepily into trucks and were driven out of town to prevent the corn from fucking itself, while the smell of pollination filled the air, banged against windows, woke the dead, fighting with the smell of the rendering plant, a smell slightly south of that of shit and grain processing. The air was full of jet fuel, vapor trails, screams of airplanes. It was home to a girl who wanted desperately to live her legacy, looking, I must admit, for my own heavy lidded janitor, splinters be damned.

And we will meet that girl again in time. First though, her worthy predecessor. My own youth made me wonder, and my middle age makes me feel protective, of my Aunt Judy. Judy was the second girl of three in my mother’s family, and it was she at age 15 who found her mother dead on the chaise that day in November 1934. Closest to her mother, she was the least bookish of her family, and the only athlete, a swimmer, specifically a back stroke champion, small framed, genuinely the least pretty of the girls, but as all Cooks, quivering from an early age with overt, athletic, cheerful sexuality.

My mother, at 82 now, last saw Judy when she was 13 years old. Judy’s high school yearbook reveals a small-framed, rabbit-toothed, hook-nosed girl entirely unremarkable, and unlike her siblings, lacking the long list of achievements and affiliations. No Latin Club, no newspaper editor, no Theodian Club, no Baccalaureate. Her story is a cautionary tale for those with ovaries and ambition, so amazing that it would make terrible fiction, too specific, unlikely. Knowing, however, what I know about the certainties of Des Moines, the inevitable sexuality of the Cooks, Judy was the great inevitability.

In the space of three summers, between 1931 and 1934, my grandparents’ house saw my uncle Spike deflowered by their maid Marie and my aunt Judy relentlessly pursuing the boy who delivered the ice, carrying it “right on his back” as my Aunt Maggie told me. “And didn’t that just do it for Judy, for heaven’s sake,” she said, sucked her bottom teeth, rolling her eyes. A boy carrying ice was enough, more than enough, and the summer was a happy one, the ice melted, the boy returned. I was surprised when I first heard these stories, believing, as one tends to, that sex just didn’t happen that way “back then” but even letters from Spike to my Aunt Maggie when she was in college reveals differently. Maggie had apparently written about a boy she fancied, or who fancied her. Spike wrote back, saying “You are a big girl and you know what you want. The rest is no one’s business.” (When my mother, unmarried, pregnant and old enough to know better, said she was born under an unlucky star, my uncle George gloomily noted “The stars had nothing to do with this.” Then took a drink, and “Well, maybe indirectly.”)

Judy first went to Chicago, or perhaps Minneapolis: the details are hazy, but the effect was the same – she began making the papers as “backstroke champ Judy Cook.” Backstroke Judy Cook appears in a blackout number at the Aqua Follies. Her one-woman Aquacade stunt performance. Backstroke champ Judy Cook testing at Warner’s. Backstroke champ Judy Cook, the Wham Girl. One letter she wrote home survives, from 1943, when she was living at the Mission Hotel on Cahuenga Boulevard, in Los Angeles. She asks for her birth certificate so she can apply at the Vega Aircraft plant and asks

What’s cooking with the Cooks? Do you miss me? Check the gossip columns! I get in them quite often!

And she did: novelty photos of her sunbathing, working out “like a prizefighter preparing for a fight,” swimming toward something nameless. In 1943, the Los Angeles Times reported that she was slated to star in a poverty row picture called Man from Monterrey, but when it came out, she was not in it. She did a USO tour with the Ritz Brothers, and in our only actual conversation, she trilled “We were all drunk as hooey on that plane!” During 1943, 1944, 1945, she was in Hollywood, swimming and riveting. Her longest screen appearance was a part with no lines in the opening scene of the 1947 The Private Affairs of Bel Ami. It was made by the director Albert Lewin, whose woozy claim to fame was the use of shocking Technicolor portraits in otherwise black and white films, just prior to Bel Ami, he had also done so in The Picture of Dorian Gray, to great effect. Though Judy’s part actually has a name, Hortense, (one can only conclude that someone somewhere was calling in a favor) she looks unhappy, unsuited, and the camera hates her; already, I see the desperation of a girl pushing 30 who will never be a star, not unless something big, something Wham, happens.

And it did happen.

Judy had an increasingly entrepreneurial bent as she approached 30, and she pitched the idea for a see-through swimming pool, portable, in which she would swim in a gold lame bikini for assembled guests at high roller parties. She constructed a model, a pool and doll in a homemade bikini, and took meetings, pitching it to investors. She also made the cover of the Vega Aircraft company magazine in her bikini, and the company saw her as a minor celeb, noting in Life magazine that she was “Wham by day and trouble for the Japs by night.”

Vega was Lockheed, and Lockheed was Hughes, and Hughes liked girls in bikinis. He began using Judy at his parties through the war, and my aunt Maggie claimed that she and Hughes ran hot and cold, with Hughes sometimes ringing her up and saying “Judy, bring that doll back over here.”

Judy did.

In 1947, Judy was a peroxide blonde, 32, and every photo of her shows a strong-legged thoroughbred, already having had too much sun, and every photo looks like a crime scene photo: overexposed, Judy almost a photonegative, hair white, face dark, every line beginning to show. That summer, Hughes was investigated by the Senate War Investigations Committee in the famous Brewster investigation, and for a month or two every day brought more details about lavish parties. Judy was subpoenaed to testify, as were other party girls, as there were receipts: $50 to Judy Cook for services rendered. What services?

The other girls demurred. The other girls disappeared. Although never actually called to testify, Judy instead decided to talk. And talk.

She said the parties were very nice. She said that it’s only natural to mix business with pleasure. She said Hughes was a good friend. She said she was paid to swim. (A cheesecake photo appeared in the Des Moines Register with just the phrase ”Paid to swim” under it, not even needing to identify the subject by this point). She said she was available for parties. “Iowa-born Miss Cook says she will travel back East if the government will buy her an airplane ticket.”

Wham stopped whamming. In 1949 she was briefly in the news suing Bing Crosby and his brother, claiming they used a photo of her from her Aqua Follies days without her consent to publicize a show in Chicago. Now mercifully a redhead, the paper reported her age as 26 on September 29, and accurately as 33 a month later when she withdrew the suit. The Crosbys were baffled, saying that they had nothing to do with the show and had never heard of her.

In the early fifties, after she had married briefly, had a child and gone to work as a television repairman, my uncle Spike was in Los Angles, and stopped by Judy’s wearing his dinner tux, along with my more practical aunt Maggie. Judy at first didn’t recognize Spike, cooing “Who is your friend?”, gliding her index finger up his sleeve, before he said “Down girl, don’t waste your best on me” while she slugged him and said “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Spikey!”

What do we learn from this delicious disaster? To a person, each of these people remained sexual, or insisting on their own sexual power, or wait, even more to the point, insisting on it to the exclusion of everything else, to the end of their days: one of the last intelligible utterances from my aunt Maggie, bedridden with Alzheimer’s, had to do with her effect on men in the glory days of her gorgeous gams. Latin club, oratory, all fall away. Only my mother, who has reduced the whole mess to a matter of plumbing and ridicule, seems to have escaped the fate, that certainty, that humid reality of the lure, the desire, the wonder of all that fucking. Why?

I wrote an essay, or tried to, about Judy when I was 20. Reading it again, it was surprisingly good, but missed the point, except for a great line that I will again use. My family, my Des Moines, I think this will always be true: in the great midnight of Des Moines, the pools are full of girls, the trees are full of boys with huge chunks of ice, and there is nothing to do in Des Moines tonight but kiss.

Of this I am certain.

I put out two or three Moments of Clarity per week. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe at www.youtube.com/LeeCamp2

Only in America can a girl who knows nothing about abstinence or going to college be paid thousands of dollars to go to a prominent college and talk about abstinence.

In other news, Washington U just raised tuition to nearly $41,000.

UPDATE: Palin and Wash U have now “mutually agreed” that she shouldn’t speak there.

by Lisa Barnard

I worry about how I’ll manage if I have kids—you know, where’s the best place to raise them, how to choose their schools, how the hell to keep such tiny people alive when I can’t even water a bamboo plant twice a week. The usual. Also, how to answer the tough life questions kids throw at you. The birds and the bees is a topic I particularly dread—I can’t exactly envision a reasonable, informative, non-awkward way to explain sex to your kid. I just can’t.

But over the holidays, an anecdote shared by my Uncle Paul gave me inspiration. He thought I should know how my grandpa explained it all to him back in the day so that I’d at least have that approach as an option. I thought I’d pass it along to you, too, in case you want to keep our tradition alive.

My uncle was not exactly the model child—he was quite the hellion, to put it mildly. (Whenever he’s within earshot of our mothers, the cousins make him tell stories about all the crazy stuff he used to do, hoping to put in perspective any minor transgressions from our youth.) My grandpa, on the other hand, was a no-nonsense kind of guy. He had no tolerance for bullshit. He ruled with an iron fist. He was a powerful guy. A busy guy. President of his company. Made it out of the bunker in WWII. Made it through the Korean War, too. Was one of twelve kids. Raised six kids of his own. He was old school and had no patience for antics. Period.

One afternoon, he ordered my uncle to get in the basement immediately. Uncle Paul was relieved, because whenever he was in BIG trouble, my grandpa would take him for four-hour drives so he could lecture him with no chance of escape. The basement was a godsend—or so he thought.

Apparently Grandpa had gotten wind that 16-year-old Paul was interested in some girl who was 14. And that’s what prompted “the talk.” It went something like this:

Grandpa sat Paul down at a table and slammed a HUGE book down in front of him, with a big marker inside it. He told Paul to flip to the marked page. “And READ what it says, the ENTIRE thing. Right now.”

Guess what the page was? No, not the human anatomy, not ‘when a man loves a woman,’ not even a working definition of sex. This was a LAW BOOK.

And the page?

The definition of “statutory rape.”

Grandpa said: “Do you understand that?” Paul said yes, and Grandpa said: “Are you sure you understand? That says that even if everyone thinks it’s a good idea, even if she thinks it’s a good idea and you think it’s good idea and ohhhhh la di da everyone’s just sooo happy and it’s such a great idea…YOU GO TO JAIL.” And he slammed the huge book shut. “You got that? You hear me? YOU…” and pointed right in Paul’s face…”YOU. Go. To. Jail.”

And he stormed upstairs.

And there you have it folks, my family’s twisted rendition of the birds and the bees. You have to hand it to him—Grandpa was nothing if not effective. Uncle Paul said he was scared to change his clothes for a month because he thought the cops might show up in his room.

————

Lisa is a social media marketer by day, but a bibliophile, karaoke addict, crossword puzzle fanatic, documentary watcher and local brew lover by night. She’d be happy to simply change the world.

But if my conscience sleeps soundly, my curiosity has a terminal case of insomnia, and last week I holed up at La Taza, fortified my flagging resolution with a large latte and two palmiers and began to read.  And read. And at last I understand, both intellectually and at a gut level, the hopes, fears and way of life of the Texas Republican. The platform is more than a statement of beliefs. It’s a signpost, a guide to the kind of life an honorable, principled Republican aspires to lead and the vices he struggles to avoid – because of course, no decent human being would hypocritically urge his beliefs upon society without striving to live them himself. The following is a small sampling of what I learned about the private lives of my neighbors of the GOP persuasion.

1. No blowjobs. No, not even from his lawfully wedded wife (who must also be a “natural woman”).  Although Section 21.06 of the Texas Penal Code banning “deviate sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex” was declared unconstitutional some years ago (despite a fierce fight from Texas conservatives), I notice that the definitions at the beginning of the statute stand unaltered and are not specific to gender. “Deviate sexual intercourse” still means any mouth-to-genital-or-anus contact, any touching of the breasts or other naughty bits to cause arousal, and nowhere does the statute say, “except between legally married spouses.”  I can’t say for certain, not being a paragon of sexual purity myself, but “deviate” sure sounds negative to me, and as a true believer would naturally wish to set an example in private life as well as public, the honorable Republican must abstain from fellatio, cunnilingus, breast fondling, non-incidental clitoral contact, ass-grabbing, recreational spanking and anything inserted anywhere other than a penis into a vagina. Oh, and no butt sex.
2. No no-fault divorce. “Better to remain married in Hell than lose the big argument in Heaven,” appears to be the reasoning here. Two people living in misery and creating a toxic environment for their children doesn’t give one partner (generally the wife, according to the father’s rights groups who equate no-fault divorce with the confiscation of their children) the right to end the marriage over the objections of the other. After all, it took two people and God to create that special sanctified Inferno; why provide an easy out for the one who cries “uncle” first? Someone needs to accept blame; someone needs to be punished for dissolving that sacred bond.  And if the corollary is that once again adultery and criminal behavior affect custodial disputes… well, she’ll have to prove it, won’t she? Good luck with that, stay-at-home Republican wife with no outside income.
3. No pornography. Not for adults, not for married couples. Not written, not filmed. Not in a box and definitely not with a fox (I totally agree with the fox part, by the way). No sex-oriented businesses – which until 2008 included the sale of vibrators, dildos and all other sex toys, those silicone sources of perversion, adultery and the breakup of marriages, according to State Attorney General and staunch Republican Greg Abbott. Since the majority of sex toys are still sold to women, a cynic might be tempted to question the motives of Mr. Abbott and his ilk… but no. If his wife is denied a quick, uncomplicated orgasm and a good night’s sleep, the honorable Republican is also certainly denying himself a beer and a wank with the help of YouPorn in the office late at night. Absolutely. No doubt about it.
4. So far, I’ve focused on the restrictions of Republican life: God-sanctioned, party-approved, but still a series of negative actions, things a good Texas conservative should not do. That may not be fair. The GOP platform, like the Bible, is not simply a series of proscriptions – it’s a manual for right thinking and a beacon in life’s darkest moments. For example, if the honorable Republican and his wife are blessed with a pregnancy, resulting of course from non-deviate sexual intercourse strictly for the sake of procreation, and if some dire medical condition should arise during that pregnancy, the 2010 State Republican Party Platform has taken all the burden of wrenching medical decisions on itself. No matter if the baby will be born to a brief life of agonizing pain and certain early death. No matter if carrying the baby to term will kill the mother or paralyze her for life. Pro-life is not only for poor people, feminazis or the immoral sluts who use baby-killing as birth control. Pro-life – pro-fetal life at all costs – is for the honorable Republican as well. After all, a wife dying ethically, if preventably, is a far, far better thing than divorce. And he can always marry again.

Then there’s raising children… but that’s another complex facet of the life of the honorable Republican.

• is an essential device to support, train and protect fragile breast tissue while slowing or preventing their eventual droop earthward;
• is a cancer-causing, lymph-node-squishing, shoulder-aching contraption which has no effect on the actual shape or condition of the breast;
• is a garment which frees women to become more active because it controls and supports those wildly-swinging protuberances on her chest;
• is a garment which has been used to once again brainwash women into believing their own bodies are unattractive, dysfunctional and in need of artificial support;
• is an important and exciting first step into womanhood for young girls;
• is an important and soul-destroying first step into the colonization of female sexuality for young girls;
• is a comfortable, convenient way to shape a part of a woman’s anatomy in whichever way she chooses;
• is yet another ill-fitting, randomly-sized torture device to ensure female conformity to social norms set by the patriarchy;
• is a fun add-on to the game console;
• is a device sure to cause heartache, mental agony and the eventual crash of the entire delicate body image operating system.

That’s a hell of a load for one little (or not so) piece of lingerie to bear.

Now imagine for a moment that you are a young woman with shaky but persistent personal ethical concerns, smack in the middle of your pheromone-spewing sexual prime, the possessor of a nice set of tatas and an instruction manual for their honorable and self-respecting use that reads like… like… THAT LIST.  Go ahead. Imagine. Wait, don’t bother, I’ll show you.

Le Soir de la Brassiére: an Interior Monologue

6:15 pm (biting the tags off the latest bra, purchased earlier that day) This is great! It’s black, it’s push-up, it fit perfectly in the dressing room… let’s see… (flurry of hooks and straps, first look in home mirror) SWEET MOTHER OF CLEAVAGE! HELLOOOOOOO, GIRLS!  Wait – is it too much? The neck on this shirt is pretty low… am I sending the wrong message? What wrong message?  Do I look like a hooker? How dare anyone assume anything about me based on what I choose to wear? But the reality of the world… but the principle of the thing… (another look in mirror) DAMN! LET’S GO, LADIES!

8:30 pm (two drinks and some very bad hot wings later) What? A drink? From who? (bartender points) Oh, that guy? The one who’s been burning laser eyeball holes in my shirt for the last two hours? I bet he doesn’t even know what color my hair is. Hell, no. Screw him. (remembers current negative bank balance) Great, now you’re going to pimp out the girls for a four-dollar cocktail? On the other hand, you put them on display, didn’t you? What exactly were you going for? (shakes faltering conscience by the collar) Buy your own damn drink, woman! Control your destiny! Own your sexuality! AnthonySangerFriedan! AnthonySangerFriedan! Germaine! Germaine!

8:55 pm (one more Cosmo down) What? Again? (bartender murmurs) I’m sure he is. Really? You went to college with him? (stares at empty glass) I guess it’s only natural. It’s not like I didn’t mean to deploy them; maybe I just looked up at the wrong times… NO! Male gaze! Male gaze – wait, is that only in the movies? Think think think… Okay, objectification! Colonization! (surreptitious glance) He is kind of cute… if I own these, don’t I get to decide when to sell ‘em? Is my brainwashing so deep I can’t even see through it?? Is it just the vodka??? Oh look – he’s smiling; that’s eye contact, right? Acknowledging my personhood, right? He is really, really cute – damn, he scoped the girls again – NO! No more! FUCK YOU NAOMI WOLF!

9:00 pm Thanks! (smile, forward lean, eyelash batting)

And so it goes.

No wonder it’s so easy to sell women on the idea of breast support. If men had to carry around that much baggage with their testicles, there’d be velvet-lined Vuitton ball attachés with convenient roller wheels.

Next and finally: practical magic with mams

Today, women around the interwebs participate in Boobquake. The brainchild of self-described “liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted atheist feminist” blogger Jen McCreight, this Commemoration of Cleavage, Festival of Funbags, Jubilee of Jugs is in actuality a double-mam slap in the face to this jackass, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, whose charmingly magical thinking runs something like this:

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader.

Wow. I knew adultery, rape, disease, societal meltdown, bastard children and plagues of locusts were the fault of my dirty pillows, but earthquakes? Damn. Tectonic plates minding their geologic business inching along beneath the earth’s surface can be suddenly and violently shifted by the sheer force of my immodestly-displayed bazoombas? I am… humbled. Ashamed. Forgive me, girls. I have apparently been wasting your mighty powers all these years on free drinks and the occasional cut in line. Let me atone. Let me now sing the praises of my constant companions these last twenty-five years: my breasts.

Advent

A classic late-maturing female, I was short, skinny and entirely unendowed for the first thirteen or fourteen (okay, fifteen) years of my long-ago youth, and a steady diet of Judy Blume books only reinforced my mammary-related fretting. This is a universal phenomenon, I believe. The earsplitting giggling, talking and shrieking of groups of early adolescent girls may in fact be nature’s way of drowning out the faint, plaintive wail unconsciously emanating from at least two-thirds of them: when? When? Wheeeennn will my breasts arriiiiive?

The answer for me was a) the summer after my sophomore year and b) seemingly overnight. I distinctly recall one of my aunts seeing me in a swimsuit that June and gasping,”Where the hell did those come from?” I didn’t know… and didn’t care. Out of seven female cousins, two of us scored genetically atypical chi-chis (C-cups on our hundred-pound frames – whoop!), and our sympathy for the others was underwhelming. “Sucks to be you, bitches,” just about summed it up. From then on, it was both cannon on board and damn the stragglers. The journey had begun.

Epiphany

Twenty years later, I know some of the home truths about breasts. For example, sheer size, while eye-catching, is never as important as artful display; artful display, while useful, is generally biologically irrelevant since straight guys and potential mates are looking anyway; and while the social, political and gender issues surrounding female anatomy and dress are infinitely complex (more about this later), the lesson learned latest is unfortunately the most important: ALL BOOBS COUNT.

Magazines, television, porn of all varieties swell with images of great big knockers. Women, trained to be hypercritically focused on their appearance, have obviously bought the message hook, line and exploding silicone. And that’s a personal choice – like working or staying home, a choice more readily available to the well-to-do, and not one for me to judge, although of course I am. Judging. Bad implants are an aesthetic travesty: half-cantaloupes glued onto a bony thoracic plain, with the flat valley of fakery giving it all away… but far, far worse is the very real danger of losing a lot of highly enjoyable nerve sensation in order to look like a physiological freak anomaly. Numb nipples? No, no, Nanette!

How I wish I could get inside those frightened, insecure, young (or not so) brains and pound into their amygdalas the simple, simple truth: to 99% of the straight men on this planet, a boob in the hand is worth a million in the imagination. Small, large, perky, floppy, looking slightly to the left or winking jauntily skywards… availability trumps any other rackular characteristic. Add in enthusiasm and NON-NUMB NIPS and in the words of the immortal Theodore Geisel: oh, the places you’ll go!

Ascension

And having now preached the Gospel of Loving The Gazongas You’ve Got, I must admit that twenty-five years and quite a few pounds later, with the girls all grown up and gravity doing its treacherous best to make me fall over forward whenever I stand up, the thought of timely alterations has occurred to me more than once. It’s tough to watch faithful friends fall away. But the process of hoisting the flags to pre-midlife levels is so invasive, so scarring, so potentially damaging… I don’t know. The experts at Wacoal and Champion keep doing their jobs, structural engineering continues to evolve; hell, I’ll probably keep ‘em natural. So what if in another twenty years it takes a winch, a net and a butter paddle to wrestle them into their daily containment devices? That’s what Lycra and Powermesh are for.

Cut them up, scoop them out and stitch them to my ears? Nah. My boobs have been good to me. They deserve better than that.

Next: the care, feeding and practical possibilities of knockers

• The civil rights movement, which had reached its zenith with Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial after the March on Washington in 1963 had seen some fruition in the passage of landmark legislation such as the Voting Rights Act. But that movement had begun to move in a more radicalized direction, partly as a result of police brutality. Even as a “loyal opponent” such as Malcolm X was assassinated by members of his own religion, younger, Boomer-aged black leaders emerged such as Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton calling for a new approach to race relations that reflected more the beliefs of Malcolm X rather than Dr. King – an approach based on a concept they called “black power.” Riots in American cities such as Los Angeles, Detroit, and Newark reflected black frustration.
• The discontents of American youth as expressed in the Port Huron Statement had led to the evolution of what would become as radicalized a political group as any in America: Students for a Democratic Society. SDS, who more than any other organization formed the backbone of the movement that became known as The New Left, reached its zenith in 1968 when members of the Columbia University SDS chapter took over the university’s administration building. The focus of SDS’s ire was the American military-industrial complex . They were joined in this protest by other youth organizations, some even more radical, including the Youth International Party, better known as the Yippies.
• The escalation of American military involvement in Vietnam (fueled by the draft which affected the poor and minorities in unfair proportions) served as a crux between these parallel movements for social change. Civil rights organizations protested the excessive numbers of young black men forced to serve in the war. Student and youth organizations protested the government’s coercion of young people to serve the aims of the military-industrial complex. The combined movements’ most powerful moment came at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 where national media showed in glaring detail the brutal treatment of the anti-war/anti-racism demonstrators by Chicago police. The subsequent trial of the “Chicago 7″ (pared down from the Chicago 8 because Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers became so disruptive in court that he was removed from the court room and tried separately) became a cause celebre as well as a media circus and was influential in turning even the most conventional Boomers against a system that constantly violated the free speech and other civil rights of any who openly protested against it.

And chronicling all this chaos for Boomers was the music.

Music, the connective tissue of the Boomer generation’s psyche, was changing rapidly. The Top Forty continued its sway over Middle America, but a whole new music scene had sprung up – a scene that was “underground” and that one learned about by word of mouth – and by trying to tune in distant (and then rare) radio stations (AM and FM) that played music by bands who did daring, avant garde, long-form experimental rock music – music that moved beyond even the masters (The Beatles and Rolling Stones). There were new English bands appearing like Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience (!), and The Who. There was the rise of the West Coast scene led by California bands like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe and the Fish, and Spirit. Hovering over all this was the spirit of Dylan.

The songs these bands wrote were not the simple love plaints of the Edenic period of Beatlemania – they were experiments in sound with lyrics that explored issues like war, drug use, sex, alternatives to Christianity, protest against social/cultural bias, and the individual’s role in the larger culture. They took Boomers a long way from “She Loves You.”

Then came the gatherings of the tribes.

Rock shows went from tight-assed, stay-in-your-seat affairs in traditional theaters policed by ushers trained by the S.A. to free-form experiences in clubs and arenas set up to maximize audience interaction – and self-expression – no matter how “eccentric.”

Advances in sound technology made it possible to have larger and larger rock shows with larger and larger audiences. From the nascent – still highly staged theater-bound – extravaganza the T.A.M.I. Show (and its relations), rock concerts made a quantum leap.

First came Monterrey – the first (and from a career making performance standpoint, the most important) of the “tribal” rock festivals in 1967. Boomer audiences of the concert film (for Boomers this kind of concert experience reflects electronic media’s ability to record and transmit experiences that Boomers accept as equivalent to being present physically) were introduced to, or became more aware of, artists who are now part of rock’s pantheon – The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin. As a festival, Monterrey was like the place where it was held – California – laid back, peaceful, totally groovy. It represented all that Boomers found attractive about the counter-culture.

Two years later came Woodstock.

There are two elements about both the actual Woodstock festival and the subsequent concert/experience film that Boomers responded to: first, the (for the time) special visual effects (slow-motion shots, split screens, over-exposures of film) accompanied by “state of the art” sound reproduction made the Woodstock experience as affecting for Boomers who only attended electronically as for those who were actually there; second, the film focused on the audience as much (perhaps more) as on the artists. And Boomers – whether present at Bethel, New York, on those three days in August 1969 or watching Wadleigh’s recording of the events on movie screens in the hinterlands months later – identified and connected to the experience – and felt themselves part of Woodstock Nation.

We were all one. We were young. We were legion. Love was our mantra. Music was our language. And we could change the world – to a fabulous soundtrack. We were, to cite Woodstock’s poet laureate, Joni Mitchell, trying “to get ourselves back to the Garden….”

(Gratuitous aside: I still keenly remember hanging out, cars all around full of friends, at the local drive-in restaurant in my home town and listening to someone’s stereo blast out the soundtrack to Woodstock and – to the horror of the drive-in’s owners – chanting along with the Fish Cheer….)

I’ve said almost nothing, of course, about the elephant in the ‘enormous room” – dope.

That’s for Part 6….

Wilson was primarily famous for two things: fucking anything he could catch, and funneling arms to the Afghani mujahedeen during the country’s war against the Soviet Union. Those of us unfortunate enough to be stuck in the room during Wilson’s speech were regaled by tales of how he ignored the law, bullied, end-ran, lied and cheated to get what he wanted, and I mean all this literally. Wilson was as proud of flaunting the law as he was of his lifelong pursuit of women with obvious esteem issues.

I desperately wanted, when the self-aggrandizement ended, to force my way to the microphone. Of course, by this point in time the recession was in full swing and it struck me that getting turfed wasn’t necessarily in my best interests. So I held fire. But here’s the comment I wanted to make:

Congressman Wilson, if I understand your remarks correctly, then I suppose we have you to blame for 9/11.

I neither advocate nor condone grave-dancing, but it is nonetheless true that there are bad human beings in the world. And the world is a better place when these people move on.

Maybe I’m going to Hell for saying so. But if I do, at least I’ll finally get a chance to talk to Charlie Wilson.

Mamasita! Mamasita! Psst! Psst! Psst!

Taunting, yet playful faces of men passed me by on uneven sidewalks, working diligently to make eye contact. I was lost, again, on a street in downtown San Jose, Costa Rica, walking quickly, head down. Only a few months in to my year-long stay as a business English teacher in the country, the unpredictability of the road and transportation systems continued to challenge even my most adventurous side. When I finally arrived at my destination, three hours into what should have been a 30-minute walk, I sat down and cried one of those long, cleansing cries. I felt dirty from a steady stream of what we North Americans might refer to as aggressive cat-calling or ogling. I was drenched in sweat and tears, and I was painfully conscious of my light skin, blue eyes. Worst of all, I was immersed in a kind of fear that most of my countrywomen never have to face here on the streets of America.

For two steady days, I analyzed it, over and over. Since I could not control them, I turned the focus on myself. Here’s how the conversation went:

Was it the way you were dressed?

Hmm. I don’t think so. I was wearing jeans, a high-cut dress shirt and shoes with no heel.

Were you making an inviting or flirtatious face?

Definitely not. I was scared and trying to act like I wasn’t.

Ahh, so they knew you were scared. That made it worse.

Yep, it’s my fault. Got to stop acting like a Gringa. Walk like a Tica.

How do Ticas walk?

Well it’s different, but I’m not sure how. I’ll have to study it more….

This is only one story. I have many others, more positive and redeeming stories about the privilege of sharing a year with some of the happiest people on earth, the Costa Ricans, or Ticos, as they call themselves. For every bad experience, like the one above, I have at least five good stories to tell of gracious families, patient bus drivers, selfless store clerks, and especially of the hard-working, intelligent students whom I came to love and respect.

But it’s human nature, a primal defense, for fearful experiences to insist on a place in the forefront of our recollections. So when I read the news of Laura Chinchilla becoming the first female president of Costa Rica, I was confronted by both joy and pain. And while I wished for the joy to be so much stronger than the pain, they were equally split. It’s wonderful that this landmark event ushers in an opportunity for Ticos and Ticas to see a woman in a position of power and leadership. But the pain persists because I understand the persistent ‘Psst’ that Ticas have tolerated. They’ve put up with it for so long, in fact, that they gave me funny looks when I mentioned it.

I pay attention to international news. I notice when women get elected into positions of authority. I celebrate to myself, maybe make a passing comment to co-workers or my students. Period. End of thought. But the more you know, the less you really know for sure.

I shut down my computer, as I do every day, but today my thoughts refuse to shut down along with it.

In the U.S. we’ve come to understand that, despite the best efforts of clever election posters and music videos, the skin color of our president still matters a great deal to a lot of people, and the same holds true for gender (just imagine if Hillary Clinton had won the election instead of Barack Obama). So please don’t read a passing headline concerning a country that most people couldn’t place on a map and assume it’s proof that women in Latin American countries are movin’ on up in the world. The fact is that they still face a climate where their worth is too often a function of sexual allure and family-making ability.

After replaying that little street incident in my head several times and coming up with no good answers, I did what I would often do when struggling with cultural differences; I talked to my students. We spoke regularly about language and behaviors in the context of their culture, U.S. culture and international business. When I related the incident and later used it as a classroom discussion topic, there were mixed reactions and nervous laughter. Some were embarrassed that their teacher felt uncomfortable for even one minute in the country they adored. They explained that it was a compliment. (This made me cringe, even though I knew it was coming.) And they pointed out that I kind of looked like a light-skinned Tica because I wear nice clothes and jewelry. They won’t say it, but Costa Ricans are like many internationals – they often think of Americans as overweight people in sneakers and sweatpants. So I received the cat-calling treatment usually reserved for Ticas. Go figure. Other students were silent for a moment, ashamed of the cultural reality and not knowing how it could be fixed (or even how to articulate their feelings on such complex subjects in their first language, let alone in their second).

That discussion paved the way to a safe place where we could openly talk about other tough subjects. Why were there job ads that openly advertised for people between the ages of 19 and 29? Why was it so hard for a woman to be hired into a professional position if she was over 35? Why did the mannequins in the clothing stores have triple-D sized breasts and a whole lot of ‘junk in the trunk’ (an American idiom they heard someone joking about in the office)? Could a woman really be effective as the president of the country? Was she in a lose/lose situation? Was she being elected just because she had the support of Oscar Arias? What if Chinchilla was unattractive? Would she have a chance at winning then?

And here is what we might have talked about today in class: Why does the most-read daily newspaper in the country announce Laura Chinchilla’s presidential victory on the cover and include at least three photos of pin-up girls on Page 3?

Slowly, a few of my students would find their voices. They knew what was happening. They felt trapped by the complexities of their own culture. They said they knew it wasn’t okay and that they were examples of men and women who didn’t believe or act that way. They were right.

So today I offer a bipartisan Salud! to Laura Chinchilla and Barack Obama for aspiring to positions of leadership despite their difficult minority status. I choose to believe still that these are important evolutionary moments in the progress of our world. There’s not a quick fix, and it certainly doesn’t mean we ignore the decisions they make – women and racial minorities make mistakes, too. But I’d like to send out an even bigger Salud! to my students, who remind me that it is still everyday folks talking about tough questions and serving as their own role models who will help us eliminate, eventually, the cat-calling, name-calling, blame-gaming and fear-mongering.

Leave it to the Ticos, a people free from a wealthy nation’s propensity for pontification, to remind us that life can be that simple even in its complexity.

Shelley Jack returned to the U.S. in August of 2009. She now works as a freelancer and adjunct professor specializing in digital marketing, her career path before the Costa Rican hiatus.