Hard News: Revival
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At last year's concert Sharon Robinson had more solos (only a few seconds taster on Sunday night) but someone said she has been ill. Still, what amazing stamina fthose three wonderful women had to stand, smile and harmonise, for more than three hours.
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The cartwheeeling was seriously bizarre. "Look at what I can do!" But no, really, you had me at the amazing voice and the fact that you can play the harp.
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I'm not sure I prefer him in the end to the lugubrious Cohen, as in this best-version-ever of The Partisan from French TV, 1969
He was never lugubrious - even when he was clinically depressed (he's Jewish - depression and humour run in the same vein if you're Jewish) he only seems lugubrious when he sings; he's really very funny. Canadian presenters often felt compelled to say "he's not a stand up comedian" before introducing him at poetry recitals.
Here he is, keeping the audience in stitches before a reading:
And here he is, in an excellent interview by former Moxy Fruvous singer Ghian Ghomeshi talking about the mysterious magic between audience and performer, clinical depression, how he felt he could have helped Kurt Cobain with his depression, and he admits (under pressure) how he wishes people would stop singing Halleujah -
Re: Boomers and our sense of entitlement - the babyboom in North America differed greatly from the generation that raised them because of the "permissive society" - a the result of paediatrician Benjamin Spock, and his child-centred philosophies.
Spock's book - not popular here, but literally on nearly every postwar family's shelf in Canada and the USA - coincided with a generaton of war weary parents that wanted nothing more than to lavish everything on their children, and with a level of prosperity for ordinary working folks that people from other parts of the world (here included) only associate with great wealth. So a generation of boomers grew up in a kind of golden age of endless childhood, the most indulged, least responsible generation in history. Most boomers still have trouble thinking of themselves as adults. Me included.
Our parents wished that we should have everything and should never struggle - and that's what most of us expected.The resulting generation and a half - the boomers - and their younger siblings - the Xers - were hilariously and accurately portrayed in Douglas Coupland's novel, Generation X. He has a perfect ear for the hip, ironic, self consciously cool, smart alec style of speech that typifies the North American patter; it's as if we are all in our own little personal sitcom. I'm as guilty of this as anyone.
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So a generation of boomers grew up in a kind of golden age of endless childhood, the most indulged, least responsible generation in history.
You are just talking about the US right?
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You are just talking about the US right?
The US and Canada.
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So a generation of boomers grew up in a kind of golden age of endless childhood, the most indulged, least responsible generation in history.
Oh pleeeze Hilary - the reality was that, in the US or Australia, if you were male you ran a very real risk of getting your arse shot off in Vietnam. I'm glad that Canada was able to provide a haven for so many. New Zealand, where one was at worst liable for periodic spells of compulsory military training, harboured a few Australian draft dodgers.
As for "permissive society", that was never more than a flyswatter term used by diehard conservatives for anything socially progressive, the late 60s - early 70s equivalent of "politically correct".
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Moxy Fruvous singer Ghian Ghomeshi
I do not like them Sam I am....
So a generation of boomers grew up in a kind of golden age of endless childhood, the most indulged, least responsible generation in history.
Umm, challenge. This is the generation that came of age in the 60s. There was a tremendous challenge in that and the next decade to the lack of responsibility of the earlier generation. Baby boomers are probably the politically most active and internationally focused generation of the 20th century. They famously rebelled against the indulgence of their parents.
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Oh pleeeze Hilary
Dang, sorry Hilary, don't know how I managed that. Bottomless apologies.
Now, where was I?
Jeez Dyan . . . -
(A belated thanks to the mods responsible for deletions upthread...)
One of the things that boomers grew up under was the Cold War & the possibility of the annihilation of *everything*...it made people look hard at their societies, and work for changes. So, you got the second wave of feminism, and the Peace Corps, and the growing realisation that matters were not right at all between indigenous people and later groups of settlers.
Like Joe and Kyle, I call bullshit on "the most indulged, least responsible generation in history."
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Edited, because Joe is waaay faster than self!
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And I still don't use the term. Makes me think of Roos. :)
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I think of those born 1945 & after as the Atomic Generation. The 'boomer' bit always has a tinge of the ultimate ka-blooey in it...
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Here's a gem from our history and Public Address had a role in completing the circle. So much wimmin's history in one glorious post!
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Re: Boomers and our sense of entitlement - the babyboom in North America differed greatly from the generation that raised them because of the "permissive society" - a the result of paediatrician Benjamin Spock, and his child-centred philosophies.
Spock's book - not popular here, but literally on nearly every postwar family's shelf in Canada and the USA
You're kidding! It was the Bible in our house, I gather.
- coincided with a generaton of war weary parents that wanted nothing more than to lavish everything on their children, and with a level of prosperity for ordinary working folks that people from other parts of the world (here included) only associate with great wealth. So a generation of boomers grew up in a kind of golden age of endless childhood, the most indulged, least responsible generation in history. Most boomers still have trouble thinking of themselves as adults. Me included.
I tend to take a more pragmatic view. The [insert name here] generation was bloody big. Over time you can watch social statistics (including the crime stats!) change as that cohort moves through. For their whole lives they've been a significant influence on society by sheer weight of numbers.
In a New Zealand-specific context, they were the last generation to move into adulthood via the comfort of the comprehensive welfare state. It cost them almost nothing to attend university -- a generation later kids were looking at fees and loans.
This doesn't apply to everyone -- and Joe and Islander would hardly be people to go with the crowd -- but in Auckland especially, that generation was able to buy houses cheap and gentrify inner-city suburbs in their own image. Property made many of them relatively wealthy, and political reality dictates that politicians won't take steps to change the property market and let today's twentysomethings (with their student loans) into easy home ownership.
For those people, you could talk about a sense of entitlement. And, en masse, it's that generation that has more wealth.
Personally, I suppose that with a 1962 birthdate I'm Generation Jones. I've always thought of it as an in-between generation -- although we contributed to the generational "echo" in 1990-91 that duly produced a cohort of teenagers that got everyone frantic about youth crime.
I think of it this way: I started school in the final year of the school milk programme -- and I was 19 during the Springbok Tour and 22 when Roger Douglas became a government minister. Shit changed after that.
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May I correct one thing in your post, Russell?
It actually cost quite a bit to attend university, mainly for books and sundry fees. I was a law student at Canterbury for 4 terms (1968/69) but left
because I could no longer afford to pay my way (a large number of students worked their holidays earning money for each term, but the jobs I knew - tobacco-picking, winding in a woollen mill, and fishnchip cooking - didnt pay enough.) -
Great, Hilary and yes, Islander, I was born in 1946 and saw the sky light up once from a French nuclear test in the Pacific. I was/am far more politically aware than my own sons and was certainly not spoilt. We had a hard childhood with a war damaged father ...
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Cecelia - we (there were six sibs) had good childhoods, because our mother and a large kindly caring family group, made sure we did after our father died (I was 11, and eldest.)But spoilt, we certainly were not! I can imagine -because there were 2 war-damaged men in the wider family group - just how difficult things could've got for you...
trust your son in London copes with homesickness - and many belated thanks for your comments.
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It actually cost quite a bit to attend university, mainly for books and sundry fees. I was a law student at Canterbury for 4 terms (1968/69) but left
because I could no longer afford to pay my wayFair enough. I was thinking of an interview I did with Tim Shadbolt once where he talked about what a joy going to university had been -- no pressure, few costs, you could walk onto a building site and get a job when you wanted one, etc.
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They famously rebelled against the indulgence of their parents.
Not just that.
I look back now and laugh at how damn serious I was. It was clear back then that there were real problems in the future if we(the developed world) kept on going as we were.
Deep and fundamental changes were needed.
They still are. -
Well, Tim's a bloke eh?
Back in the 1960s and '70s, women were routinely paid half a man's wage doing the same job (tobacco-picking) or could only get low-paid work, and were legally prevented from 'hazardous' work, or lucrative nightshifts.It was an eye-opener when I joined the Post Office as a postie in 1970 and got - gasp! - exactly the same wage as my male counterparts-
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"They still are."
Not wrong, andin-
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what a joy going to university had been -- no pressure, few costs, you could walk onto a building site and get a job when you wanted one, etc.
I don't think Tim did much actual university work!
And it was harder for girls I think. I went on a studentship after one poverty stricken year and was then forced to go teaching which was a bad move for a shy person like me! I like teaching NOW but back then it was agony.
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I don't believe that the generation that fought WW2 was somehow especially indulgent towards their offspring. In ANZ they were, if anything, a generation damaged by their wartime experience. If we're going to casually toss in mediaspeak terms like "permissive society", how about "generation gap"? In the early 70s the fading hours of Anzac day could be a dangerous time to be out alone with something other than a short-back-and-sides haircut. Women weren't safe either, I recall several cases of attacks and harassment by old diggers who objected to the cut of their jib. By the mid-80s everyone was pretty much over it, but for me Anzac will always have something of the tinge of a death cult.
A small recollection: I'd always stayed clear of the father of one of my schoolmates. He was rumoured to be violent towards his wife and kids when he'd been drinking, which was almost the norm back then. I pretty much dismissed him as a beady-eyed old prick. Later I discovered that, like my father, he'd been taken prisoner in Crete, and forced to take part in a gruelling march over several days. As they passed through a settlement a little girl had spontaneously offered refreshments to the suffering men. A German guard had picked her up by her plaited hair and swung her around. One of the prisoners punched the German to the ground, and was promptly shot dead. That night my schoolmate's dad crept down to the river to fetch water for the wounded, knowing that he risked being shot.
Overindulged or damaged, we're all people. As the pig in the python moves into the retirement phase there are real problems to be dealt with. Glib moralising and overgeneralisations don't help.
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As the pig in the python moves into the retirement phase there are real problems to be dealt with.
And again, that generation determines a focus of policy and resources - and of the inevitable associated politics (Winston, wherefore art thou).
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Hey Joe.Thanks for that.
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