Things stay the same. Things change.
I swung by Whole Foods tonight to pick up coffee beans. Dr. Bronner's wacky-but-wonderful soap was on sale, so I picked up a giant bottle. The last time I bought a bottle of that stuff was decades ago in college, upstate New York. A crunchier place and a crunchier time.
Came home and called my aunt in New York City. She's a trip. 89, still driving. Driving in NYC. Yikes.
She spent her career working in a gynecology office at one of the local teaching hospitals, she was involved in administering studies around new diagnoses and procedures. When I was a kid, nobody would give me a straight answer about what she did. I guess that saying "vagina" and whatnot to anyone not yet of college age was verboten*. Tonight we bantered on about a cornucopia of women's naughty bits as we discussed the research her old lab is doing.
When I was a kid, even in NYC (although it was the Archie Bunker part not any of the fabulous parts), nobody spoke about homosexuality. Yesterday, my 13-year-old was excited to tell me that gay marriage is finally a settled issue in NJ. He's into social justice big time, and watches the Young Turks.
Somehow, I had this expansive feeling tonight that even with all of our woes from 30 years of a withering siege by the 1%, we have moved very far forward in our ability to handle sex stuff in a much more open and healthy way. Hiding things, being scared of certain subjects is not good.
Now, let's go take our country back so we can talk about sex stuff while not living in our cars.
Regards,
Circumspect Manny
*if I use a German word, will this automatically be vacuumed up by the NSA? If so, say "hi" to General Alexander, tell him I love his Starship bridge.
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