Juicy Tomatoes

APPEASING THE DISASTER GODS

2008-06-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

Tahoe was its usually lovely self. Die-hard snow streaked the mountains and daffodils shot up in front yards. The Sierra was on pause between ski weather and summer. There were no lines. No waiting. The pizza maker was overjoyed to see two customers. During mid-season all is calm. You can walk the dog along that shiny sapphire lake and barely see a boater.

How, then, could it be that at the same time in China people were desperately clawing through crushed houses and office buildings to find their babies and grandfathers? And how could it be that in Burma, homeless children were starving because one government feared losing its stranglehold on power if it allowed other governments to donate food.

On the west side of Tahoe on a balmy morning a man in shorts shoveled the last patch of snow from his garden into a wheelbarrow.
A few people took the sun outside a coffee house to read newspapers and check their email. Back home the Bay Area was dealing with record scorching temperatures. In the mountains it was 30 degrees cooler than San Francisco. We wondered how our new tomato plants were surviving.

Tomato worry seemed so trivial. As trivial as the price of gas and the drop in your home equity compared to a place where gardens, roads and houses were lost in minutes. Where normal was gone forever.

What happened to the Chinese and the Burmese were a cyclone and an earthquake, within nine days of each other. There’s no way to rationalize when and where a natural disaster strikes. The same thing could happen in this paradise. Lake Tahoe is not exempt from seismic activity; its famous beauty was created by fault shifts and landslides.

What can you do, but be grateful you’re here and not there – under water in Burma and under rubble in China. But that seems not good enough. You can promise to send a check to a relief organization. You can vow to check your earthquake supply barrel as soon as you get home and buy one of those special wrenches to turn off a gas line.

“Why are we spared” you ask and then hope you haven’t tempted the calamity forces to look your way.

By last Sunday a kindergarten class in China had been buried for 100 hours.

Havoc is happenstance. The world spins like a roulette wheel. Who knows where the ball will hit to decide who gets lucky. The day Katrina swamped New Orleans and forced people to hang onto rooftops and huddle on bridges, people in Rangoon certainly enjoyed their placid sea. People in Chengdu tended their vegetable gardens.

On the way home from Tahoe we pulled into Davis at a drive-through burger place, one where they offer whole lettuce leaves and sautéed onions on their cheeseburgers and allow you to feel less guilty for eating fast food.

On the edge of the parking lot a man in a ball cap and glasses held a sign that said he was jobless, homeless and hungry. A man having his own personal earthquake.
We could see him in our rear view mirror as we ate.

“Have any cash left,” asked my husband. “I was thinking the same thing,” I said and handed the man a $10 bill on my way to the restroom. Going back to the car I overheard him at the front of the line say “yes, please” to onions.

You do what you can to appease the gods.
SUSAN@JUICYTOMATOES.COM

ARE YOU STILL SOMEBODY?

2008-05-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

People have been asking me, “How do you like being retired?”
They’re just being friendly, not accusing. So, why is my first reaction …. “You talking to me?” like the belligerent Robert DeNiro character in “Taxi Driver.”

“Hey, Susan, how’s retirement” yells my friend George from across the street when I’m walking my dog in downtown Sebastopol.
And I’m slightly embarrassed, like he’s asked how’s the new prosthesis working out.

Retired. Me?
I rush to qualify: “Well, of course I haven’t exactly retired, you know,” I sputter. “I quit my newspaper job. But I’m not retired-retired.”
I mean, of course, I’m not playing golf, although nothing against those who do.

How’s it feel to be a lady of leisure, they ask. What leisure? Do not think of me as sitting around. I still wake up in the morning and make lists. I still carry my appointment book. I still have to make money.

Keeping busy, they say.
Filling your time? Do I look like I need time-filling?

I know why I’m so sensitive. It is because my generation basically recoils from the word retired. It makes you sound like what your father did when he quit working at his manufacturing plant and moved to a condo in Florida and tussled with all the other former executives over supervising the landscaping and swimming pool maintenance.

Retired is something you thought you wouldn’t be for a long time. But then you were surprised at turning gray. And turning 50. And 60. And have someone call you grandmother.

But retired sounds so final. Like you’re finished. Done. Wrapped up. Certainly, different.

Sara Davidson worries that retirement is “a precursor to boredom and death.”

What do you say when you no longer do what you did? Who are you when you longer are who you were?

The transition from being on the clock to off does not happen automatically.
It reminds me of the romantic get-away my husband and I planned one week summers ago. We put kids on various planes, found a house sitter to take care of the vegetable garden and feed the cat and rushed to Mexico for one week’s precious vacation . We fought for the first two days.

Baby Boomers, it is reported, have no intention of fully retiring. More than three-quarters of them plan to work long past the age their parents
got the gold watch. Part of this, I know, is because of the money.

The ads ask: can you afford retirement.
Are you kidding, I answer.

But I think we fear relinquishing the identity which comes with work.
Retirement is what normally happens at the end of your career. I still have a career. I just don’t do it for so much an hour certain days a week in an office. I am a stay-at-home writer. And I may eventually get involved in some good work. And take another French class. And do more yoga.

I bet as more Boomers advance into this period we will start to see a new competitive sport develop. Extreme retiring, we’ll call it. . I retired and became a masters swimmer. I retired and became a medical missionary. I took up the cello. I adopt feral cats.
Perfect Boomer business opportunity: Retirement boot camp.

Some of my friends compliment me on my new relatively relaxed life.
I’m more attentive says my friend Alison as we linger over lunch. “This is normally the time you’d be tapping your watch and saying ‘I have to get back to the office.’”
She tells me I look rested, even younger.

But as we start to leave the restaurant, she can’t resist, saying loudly,
“Wait. Now that you’re retired don’t you want to wrap up the bread in a napkin to take home.”

susan swartz
juicytomatoes.com

IF PREGNANT WOMEN RULED

2008-04-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

When I read about Spain’s new defense minister being seven months pregnant I started thinking what if all the leaders in the world were with child.

If all the world leaders were pregnant, what a summit meeting we might have. A regular hormonal convergence, heavy on the oxytocin, that hormone of love and bonding that comes on strong in pregnancy. Turns women into nesters.
That’s what the world needs now. More nesters at the top.

I watched Carme Chacon, the first woman to head the armed forces in Spain, her stylish white maternity top fluttering over her third trimester belly, inspecting the troops and wondered what it would be like if all the people in power were pregnant.
I think priorities would be different if those in charge had their own vested interest growing under their blouse to remind them what they’re doing to the world.
To begin with, they’d all have one major thing in common. Pregnant women, no matter where they come from, speak the same language. They pray for the same outcome. They don’t need an ingenuine lecture on family values. Their hearts and minds and aching backs all are pointed to the future.

They get very emotional over anything dealing with children. Pack the UN with pregnant leaders and show them photos of desperate toddlers scrambling for bits of rice on a dirt floor and I bet they’d come up with a way to fix world hunger.
A group of leaders, soon to produce the next generation, would not take kindly to a trumped-up war. No more mothers throwing themselves on small coffins. No more little kids caught in a firefight. Take half that military budget and shift it into health and education.

Full of hopes and dreams, they would certainly demand to know what’s wrong in a world that causes some babies to grow up to hate and kill and wrap themselves in explosives.
Were they to hear of one nation committing genocide on another maybe they would march in like mother bears and make them stop. No matter whose trade agreement it threatened.

I know. We have no proof that if women ran the world we’d not still be dealing with hunger and a poisoned environment and one senseless war after another. But with men in charge it’s pretty clear that’s what we’re getting.
If pregnant women ruled we would be baby-proofing the planet. Fixing the blackened skies and fouled rivers. The world would pay attention to a bunch of riled-up mothers saying, “Clean up this mess before I count to 10.”

Among the pregnant and powerful, negotiations would be serene and calm. No red-faced screaming, no grand-standing, no macho boasting. No late night deal-making over cigars and whiskey. Pregnant women require more sleep and maybe some ice cream to get through the day. They try to avoid stress and conflict. At the same time they are good at sticking to business and could march through an agenda as fast as they could paper over a wall with birds and butterflies.

If pregnant women ran the world there would be safer toys, better child care, mandatory paternity leave and more bathrooms. If pregnant women were in charge there’d be fewer guns lying around.

And why not? Pregnant women believe in miracles.
As for the prospect of someone waking them at 3 in the morning with a crisis?
Not a big deal.

susan swartz
www.juicytomatoes.com

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BAG THE PLASTIC

2008-04-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

Being a dog owner I say I have an excuse to collect plastic bags. Mostly I get them from the two newspapers delivered to our house, which continue to come wrapped in plastic long after the rainy season.

Like many responsible people I’ve tried to wean our household of plastic dependency, although I’m still not convinced that cloth veggie bags do as good as job keeping the broccoli crisp. Yet, I’ve seen the pictures of floating plastic sludge in the Pacific said to be twice the size of Texas, and know I’m partially to blame.

I do like the idea of toting my own reusable go-to-market shopping bag. Makes me think I’m in Europe with the little Old World string bag just the right size for a baguette, some cheese and a bottle of wine.

And we have no lack of reusable enviro-friendly shopping bags. We have shopping bags made from canvas, oil cloth, straw, burlap and what claims to be heavy duty recycled plastic with assorted store logos. In all colors, enough to go with every outfit.

But I forget to take them with me. I walk right out the door to go to the store and leave them behind. Or discover they’re in the other car. And then I’m at the store apologizing to the grocery clerk for being neglectful and spending another buck or two on one of the store’s own reusable bags that match the same ones I have at home. Or, even worse, guiltily accepting more plastic bags.

I think I’m typically American. Many people I know are bad about the bags. It takes a long time to change habits, to go from knowing to doing. And that is why they’re getting tough with us. In San Francisco there’s a ban on stores using plastic bag. Soon it may come to our part of the Bay Area, or the state will decide that if you use, you lose and make it a law that customers have to pay up to 25 cents to get a plastic bag they don’t want and know they shouldn’t have.

Why is this so difficult? We don’t leave home without our car keys and wallet. We don’t get as far beyond the front sidewalk without our cell phone and sunglasses. So why do we forget the bag?

Where I live you now can recycle plastic bags. You can take all those bags, even ones from the cleaners and gather them into big bag, tie them up and pop them into the blue recycle bin.

That eases some guilt, but I’m not sure it solves the plastic problem. The recycling people say that the bags go off to a recycling manufacturer to turn into decking and carpets. I know that repurposing can work. I have a very cute clutch bag made out of old beer can flip tops. But giving us an easy way to dispose of plastic will not end our plastic dependency.

So to celebrate Earth Day I resolve to tote that bag. Hang them by the front door, keep them in the car.

And then I have to switch from newspaper bags to biodegradable doggy-do bags. If we’re going green, the dog’s going too.

Susan Swartz
wwwjuicytomatoes.com

I WANNA BE GORDIE

2008-04-14T14:17:00.000-07:00

My husband’s Uncle Gordie turned 100 this month. You might have seen news of his birthday celebration on TV. He was the guy from Richmond California hitting the century mark by driving 105 Miles an hour in a Lexus sedan and 130.4 miles an hour in a high speed boat on the San Joaquin River Delta.

Gordie made the perfect media star. We like seeing an old guy doing something wild that makes the rest of us whoop and holler. It makes everyone 99 years old and under feel that maybe they, too, will never be over the hill. Gives you hope. All that inspiring feel good stuff.

Reporters ate it up. There was white haired grinning Gordon Miller breaking the Guinness World Records for the fastest 100 year old man. On that day’s news cycle he was the perfect antidote to sour reports about the economy, the war and the latest political sex scandal.

Gordie warmed to the cameras and microphones. When asked how he felt to be turning 100 that day, he said, “not much different than yesterday.”

Maybe it’s those healthy ions that come from being on the water all the time that’s kept him going. He’s been hooked on boats since he was a young man and he and his wife Margaret have always found a way to live on the waterfront.

Twenty years ago they sold their house on the Richmond side of San Francisco Bay where they’d raised two sons and moved to a retirement community. Worst decision of their lives, Margaret, said. They hated it. Too quiet and too far from salt water. They made their way back to the bay and moved into a condo.

Reporters always like to ask old people how they managed to live so long and so well, especially ones who look good when the cameras zoom in. “He sure doesn’t look 100,” said the CNN anchor.
There are many ways to choose to live when you’re young but when you get old, there’s not a lot of alternatives and most don’t seem very attractive.

Gordie makes living 100 years look like something you might want to do if you got the chance. He’s charming and mobile, has a lot of family and friends. He’s a little hard of hearing and doesn’t jump on and off slippery decks as ably as he used to. But he has a lot of moxie, a lifetime of bar toasts and enough boating buddies to go sailing at least once a week.

Gordie credits Margaret for keeping him going. She makes sure they eat well and take vitamins. Margaret says another secret to Gordie’s longevity is that the man is almost always happy.
I asked Gordie about that and he said that when he was a kid he saw a sign that said “keep smiling.’ And so I did,” he said.

Is it that simple? You find someone to love who makes you take your vitamins. Then you pursue a passion that keeps you wanting to get up every day and put on your windbreaker and tennis shoes. Then you just keep smiling into the sun and the wind.

Susan Swartz
www.juicytomatoes.com

NO MORE MUCK HILLARY

2008-04-05T13:04:00.000-07:00

For a while I was saying I got my split lip from being in a bar fight defending Hillary’s honor. Actually it had nothing to do with that. I fell at a friend’s house in Phoenix, but there was a political connection in that during the visit we watched an Obama-Clinton debate where I was sorely outnumbered. The best part was that the Obama supporters included a Republican and an Independent.

But there has been a lot of bloodying in this campaign and it’s starting to create some ugly scarring. Especially if you’re a concerned Democrat. As the two candidates have proven to be on the same side of many issues, they and the media have done everything possible to turn them into rivals. And we’ve wandered into the muck.

The muck is what we were supposed to avoid. The muck is what we need to get past.
One of my daughters has been an active Hillary Clinton supporter from the beginning. She wears the buttons and puts the stickers in her windows and calls foreign states, like Texas, on behalf of her candidate. She spent 45 minutes on the telephone with a man in a border town one Sunday. He told her, to “Please tell Miss Hillary” for him that he thinks the wall going up along the Texas-Mexico border is a bad idea and that the government would be better off spending the money to help war veterans.

As things got contentious between the candidates my daughter emailed the Clinton campaign headquarters of her worries. She said, “Don’t get personal. Don’t get dirty. Get out of the muck.”
But Hillary ignores her.

My daughter’s becoming disenchanted, like a lot of Democrats. Not just with Hillary but with politics and the muck.
How many more bloodied lips can we afford? We need to get over Clinton’s embellished sniper story on Bosnia. And get past Obama’s being AWOL at his early morning committee meetings.
It’s exhausting. And demeaning. And if this keeps up we’ll end up handing over the whole bloodied mess to McCain.

So, here’s my idea. Dump the muck. Right now.
Clinton and Obama start campaigning from here on out as if each one were indeed the Democratic presidential candidate. Challenge the establishment. Challenge McCain. Pledge to each other - you take the high road and I will, too.

Stop campaigning against each other like Rocky rivals and start running against McCain. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Who would be the best to take on McCain. So show us. Tell us what you’d do about the war and jobs and housing and health care. We need a leader not a street fighter.

If this were to happen the media would have nothing to report but what Obama and Clinton each believe they can do for America. Then let the best campaigner win come August. And the other one will continue as a dignified proud statesman or woman. Or maybe even a vice presidential candidate.

And we’d all feel cleaner. And we’d d all be winners. Well, some of us anyway.

Susan Swartz

ALWAYS A NEWSIE

2008-03-27T20:01:00.000-07:00

When people would ask “Are you STILL writing for the newspaper?” I’d feel like I had to come up with some explanation like, “Yessss…..Maybe I’m just not very imaginative.” After all, it is a mark of adventure and risk taking to bounce around, be flexible, try something new.

But why not stay with something you’ve loved since high school, majored in, in college and has been the only work you’ve ever been paid for except that summer in Cape Cod cleaning motels.

I’ve always been proud to say I write for a newspaper. People usually react. They know what reporters do and they have opinions. There were times when some considered it an-almost glamorous profession. But along the way writing for a newspaper got thrown into a greater slushpile of THE MEDIA. People talk about THE MEDIA and look at you like you are personally responsible for the paparazzi climbing all over Angelina and Brad and TV cameras staying too long on grieving war mothers.

It’s so hard to please the reading, viewing, listening public. But it’s sure fun to try.

Being a journalist gets you into peoples lives and homes that doesn’t happen in a lot of professions. Being a newspaper reporter allows you to know a little about a lot of subjects. It gives you maybe some fleeting celebrity, a little bit of status, although that’s declining too. People know that the news biz is struggling now and they all have an opinion on that, too.

But they care and they pay attention. Were a newspaper to close up shop I believe there would be far more people mourning it than celebrating. But maybe that’s because I believe most people recognize that they must know what’s happening in the world or downtown even if they don’t like it.

Newspapers also keep the written word alive. Even if it they appear on a website instead of a piece of newsprint, there will be words put together by people who know the craft. People who can spell and write full sentences.

I was never a fan of the politics of the late William S. Buckley but I sure admired the way he could wrap his words around his ideas. I gave a silent “good for you” when it was reported he died at his desk.

Daniel Schorr, the NPR sage, is 91 and continues to get multiple papers every day so he can add his perspective and analysis to the news. Helen Thomas continues as the queen of the White House press corps. I take heart that news people never fade away. They keep reporting and commentating and asking nosy questions.

I left my newspaper, the Santa Rosa (Ca.) Press Democrat because we have a decent union retirement and I want to do more things on my own time. You know. Like write opinions and interview people and tell stories. Same old. Same old. What else would I do?

Susan Swartz

THE WRONGED WOMAN

2008-03-21T14:11:00.000-07:00

The press has had its way with the Spitzer spectacle and now the unhappy couple belongs to the lawyers and late night comics, but I can’t let it disappear without a couple of comments.
While the latest scandal involving a thoughtless politico and wronged wife was unfolding I had a wretched cold that left me near voiceless, so all I could do was croak and wave my arms at the TV.

But, sure as there are big deal honchos who believe the fringe benefits of high office include sexual dabbling along with executive parking privileges there will be another powerful man saying to his wife, “Honey, we need to talk. And then will you put on a nice suit and hold my hand in front of the TV cameras?”

It didn’t take long. Within a couple of weeks Spitzer’s replacement, the new governor David Paterson admitted he too had committed adultery, but so had his wife. So I guess in their case it’s a draw.

But back to the shocked wife and contrite husband scene. Each time that happens you have to wonder. Would a powerful woman do this? And if the roles were reversed, would her man stand by her side?
I’ve long maintained that as adept as women are at multi-tasking, a woman governor, president or head of the school board wouldn’t naturally consider fitting into the agenda special time with her intern or the hunk who delivers bottled water. I think she’d probably use any extra time to go to the gym.
But if she did stray and was caught can you imagine the humiliated husband staring down at his shoes in front of a giddy press pack?

Dina McGreevey, who was married to the governor of New Jersey implicated in a gay affair, told NPR that even while she at first stood beside her man she really “wanted to punch him.”
Now, that would be a refreshing touch on the Nightly News. Or how about a separate press conference where the woman says she’s only going along with this humility for the sake of the kids but she really thinks he’s a louse.

Author Sue Miller writes about such a randy politician and his long suffering wife in her latest novel “The Senator’s Wife.” At a reading she talked about the legacy of famous men who fooled around but whose affairs were once done discreetly and the salacious details unknown until the men were out of office or dead. Mentioning John F. Kennedy, she said, “We couldn’t imagine that man’s appetites.”

Everyone laughed at that, even though we were mostly all women that night at the reading. It was like we accept that some men are just charming cads.
I thought about that in terms of all the jokes about the shamed Gov. Spitzer. Like he was really stupid to hire a prostitute and yet some commentators attached a stud-ly likeability to the guy. As for his wife, she got mostly pity.

In Sue Miller’s book when the senator’s wife finally gets sick of her husband’s affairs, she moves to Paris. At least she gets something out of the deal. Paris? Delivering a punch in the nose? Either one’s better than having to take it like one more mute and mortified wife.

Susan

OLDER WOMEN IN THE WORLD

2008-01-28T11:48:00.000-08:00

You know how it is when you’re vacationing in another country watching the passing parade and the women seem assured and confident? You start to think that they’re probably your age but somehow they’re doing it better. Or they at least seem to be more visible than American women.
Recently I tried this idea out on a Parisian-born woman of a certain age who lives in California and she said she’d much rather be here than there. Because even though French women continue to get appreciative looks as they age they don’t have the same opportunities we do here.

A Belgian woman I met at a book reading said the same. She said some of her European friends would never have dared to go back to school, change careers, move to another city with the ease that American women do at any age.

I love it when stereotypes come crashing down.

On my Juicy Tomatoes radio show which you can hear at http://www.juicytomatoes.com/ I talked to five women about cultural differences experienced by middle aged and older women.
Tell me what you’ve noticed.

Susan

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

2008-01-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

I can remember when I started groaning “Oh, no. I’m turning into my mother.” I think one of the first times was when I told my kids “no humming at the dinner table,” and one asked “why not?” and I had no good answer. Certainly it was better than fighting across the table. But the no-humming rule came straight out and unedited from my mother’s mouth. Maybe she got it from her mother.

And on it goes. You keep running into your mother. You catch your reflection in a window and it's your mother. You worry about the toaster catching on fire and it's your mother. The silliest things. And one cold night you feel the need to go to the kitchen door, take a gulp of freezing air and look at the stars. Wasn't she always doing that?

Women of my generation took great pride in being different from our mothers. We were better educated, had fuller careers, broke glass ceilings, ran for office. And got married and had families and became exhausted Superwomen.

And then our daughters grew into women to have careers and babies and tweak the program to do things different from us.

But sometimes you hear them groan, too, that they are turning into us. For example, one of my daughters blames me for her compulsive list-making.

On this week’s Juicy Tomatoes radio show (www.juicytomatoes.com) I talked to five women about mothers and daughters. The relationship is full of drama and difficulties but if we're lucky it mellows, even ripes as it ages.

It’s a nice thing to think about, the link from mother to daughter and so on, when you’re out looking at the stars.
Susan

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

2007-12-11T17:08:00.000-08:00

My friend Marylu Downing promised herself in her 40s that in her 50s she would become a professional artist. It gave her something to look forward to, rather than dreading that milestone birthday. And she did it. Among her painting subjects are luscious, fanciful women who look like they have a past and are not stopping now.

On my Juicy Tomatoes radio show I talked to four women over 50 who act, paint, write and contribute their own kind of magic. One followed her muse that got her to leave California and move to the high desert in Utah where she started writing mystery novels and fell in love.
One acts and writes and feeds her passion by taking assorted jobs instead of slogging for years in a career.

Then there's Marylu whose art has brought her a national following.
And another who has been acting since high school and just told me that she's decided to write a one-woman play for herself.

Creative women don't stop.

Listen to some of my favorite creative types on my radio show which you can hear at my website http://www.juicytomatoes.com/
And tell me what magic you've been up to lately.

Susan

ARE WE STILL IN THE MOVIES?

2007-12-04T19:27:00.000-08:00

When Sally Field's character on "Brothers and Sisters" had a 60th birthday party I celebrated. As did I when Helen Mirren won an Oscar for "The Queen" and when I read that Diane Keaton is coming out with a new film and so is Susan Sarandon.

And this: Jill Clayburgh could end up playing Pat Nixon in the same film that Meryl Streep plays Martha Mitchell. It makes you want to cheer.

These are my contemporaries. As long as they're still getting juicy parts, so will we all.

Meryl Streep told Entertainment Weekly that Hollywood should be grateful to women her age because they're the ones who continue to buy tickets and go to movies.
"They damn well better market to us," said Meryl. "and give us something to watch."
And she told a British reporter that she expects better parts – "roles that do not depict women of my age as either dotty or horrible."

I love it when Meryl talks like that.

On this week's Juicy Tomatoes show (www.juicytomatoes.com) I talked to Diane McCurdy who is a film reviewer and teaches film. We talked about movies that know how to treat a Tomato.
What have you been watching in the movies or on TV lately that let a 50-plus woman be herself, laugh lines and all?.

PASSING ON THE GOOD STUFF

2007-11-27T10:52:00.000-08:00

I think the word mentoring is pretty boring. I prefer to call it passing on the good stuff, which from our generation to a younger one can include everything from how to put down a sexist jokester in the office to getting rid of the guilt for hiring someone to clean your house.

And there’s all that professional wisdom. My first newspaper editor convinced me that developing a personal style of writing was better than the reporting formula I learned in journalism school. Writing style is still one of my favorite things to discuss with new writers.

It is shocking to realize how quickly you go from being the fresh-faced new talent to the wise woman with institutional memory. But it’s exciting to work with younger people because it keeps you relevant, visible and in demand.

We should be proud of all that we have taken on in our professional and personal lives as women. We’re pretty wonderful role models. Some of us can remember when high school advisors declared the most dependable career choices for women were nursing and teaching. And look at us now – rock stars and CEOs and a presidential candidate front-runner.

I talked about mentoring in my Juicy Tomatoes show (www.juicytomatoes.com) this week, discussing with a few contemporaries what we have to give and what we get back when we advise, befriend and support younger women.

It may not keep you 35, but it does keep you current. And if you’re lucky they’ll share their new playlist for your iPod.
Susan

MARVELOUS, YES. MATRONLY, NEVER.

2007-11-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

We all know women who dress to be noticed by men and women who dress to be envied by other women, but most of us after a few years on the planet start dressing for that woman in the mirror. Or that woman you suddenly come across reflected in a store window.

I have a friend who always wears red silk when she's anticipating a rough day, like going into the clinic for some scary, important exam or facing off with a difficult employee.

We all have our personal Wonder Woman apparel that we draw on for strength and security. Some women will not go anywhere, even into their own kitchen to make coffee, before they have their earrings attached. I personally believe there's nothing more all-powerful than a long, snug, butt-cupping pair of jeans.

Fashion is an art, a sport and sure, an indulgence, but it's also a way of celebrating yourself. When we get past caring how we look, it's a slippery slope to shapeless sweaters and serviceable shoes.

Brenda Kinsel and I talk about styling a Tomato in this week's Juicy Tomato radio piece at http://www.juicytomatoes.com. Brenda is an image consultant in the Bay Area and author. Her latest book is Brenda Kinsel's Fashion Makeover: 30 Days to Diva Style. Listen to her and you'll never wear that lumpy denim skirt again.

DOES THE JOB STILL WORK?

2007-11-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

I’ve been a newspaper reporter since I graduated from college and we learned our craft on typewriters. I joke that I will keep writing until I fall face down onto my laptop. I’m not sure if I simply found my career niche early or I’m just not very imaginative because I never came up with anything else I wanted to do.

But I know a growing number of women who have switched occupations, started new businesses, gone back to school at an age when others would be thinking more about early retirement than re-inventing themselves.

Ours is the first generation of American women who have made career an essential part of our lives. More than 60 percent of Boomers say they’re planning on working past the traditional retirement age. For those of us who stay in the same profession, it means keeping up with the technology and remembering the passion that got us into this field in the first place.

In this week’s Juicy Tomatoes radio show I talked to five women about career. And what keeps them packing their briefcase every morning. Tell me what about the job that still works for you.
Susan
www.juicytomatoes.com

GRAY PRIDE

2007-11-06T07:50:00.000-08:00

It’s being called the Gray Wars, although the battle is more within ourselves, rather than on the streets - that big decision to cover the gray or not. Since more than 60 percent of American women color their hair today, gray hair is actually considered the unconventional choice.

That makes rebels out of those who don’t, which is kind of a nice way to spin it. Instead of women surrendering to their destiny, they are society’s mavericks: gray and proud.

I talked to four women in their 50s and 60s about what they decided to do with their hair color and why for my Juicy Tomatoes radio show. Two of them started going prematurely gray in their 30s. One of them steadfastly colored it until she was in her 50s and then decided her natural silver was more "her."

Another stayed gray through her 30s and 40s but when she hit her late 50s, opted for some honey tones.

It’s a tough call. We will know that gray is okay when we get our first commercial with the woman looking into her mirror and exclaiming. “Oh honey, come look. My first gray hair.”
Tell me what you think.
Susan
www.juicytomatoes.com

FRIENDS FOREVER

2007-10-29T18:17:00.000-07:00

You know that scene in the movie “Evening” based on the Susan Minot novel when the Meryl Streep character crawls in bed with the dying Vanessa Redgrave character? They haven’t seen each other in years, but they still connect like they did when they were young women and when they talk about what they did then and where they’ve gone since, they’re girls again.

Old friends, the ones who knew our original hair color, our parents and first love, preserve the link to our own past. And new friends, who meet us in the middle, as career women and mothers and neighbors, keep us energized.

On this week’s Juicy Tomatoes radio show five women talk about how we need our friends – separate of family, colleagues and contacts - especially as we get older. And how we celebrate each other when we get together.

Hear the podcast on www.juicytomatoes.com
Susan

TO CUT OR NOT TO CUT

2007-10-22T17:39:00.000-07:00

I recently had lunch with a friend who announced that she was going to have some work done and I knew she didn’t mean a new kitchen. She’d come into a little extra money and decided to splurge on her face. I was stunned. I never figured her as all that vain or as one who would go under a knife voluntarily. Besides, I think she looks fine. She looks her age, which is my age.

But I encouraged her in her decision because friends do that and told her it’s her money and her choice. She said she felt guilty, considering what else she could do for the world with that money. I said write a check to your favorite non-profit and then go do what you want.

Having said all the right things, I went home, looked in the mirror and started pushing my face around.
I mean, come on, you can’t help but think … what if. We’ve been second guessing our looks since we were 12 and it doesn’t stop….even though we know that you can be lovely at any age and that we’ve earned these lines and there are more important things to value and worry about.

But it remains a tantalizing subject. Would you? Could you? This week on my Juicy Tomatoes radio show I talked to two women who made different decisions. One went ahead with full-on surgery- eyes, forehead, chin, the jigglers along the face. The other continues to resist.
I think that right now most women are letting aging come naturally, although that doesn’t mean you can’t do something about those sunspots. Right?

But I do wonder what’s going to happen in the future when our daughters are in their 50s. Will facial remodeling be as commonplace as teeth whitening and coloring the gray? And then, how much harder will the choice be?
susan

WHAT'S SO GOOD/BAD ABOUT GETTING OLDER?

2007-10-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

What did you think 50 would be when you were growing up? Or... ohmigod, 60?? For most of us there was “young” and there was “old.” In the middle was something mushy and unappealing called “middle age” which slid more into the “old” category.
But times have changed and that’s because we have changed.
Would you call Isabella Rosellini matronly? Or Diane Keaton an old lady? What about your best friend .. or yourself?
We’re not buying into that old stereotype of life being over and stuffy and stodgy and regretful because of a number.
I've also decided to stop saying “50 is the new 40," because the truth is that “50 is the new 50” and "60 the new 60" and so forth.
On my new Juicy Tomatoes show on public radio (listen on www.juicytomatoes.com)
we started out talking about what is good and bad about getting older.
Now you tell me what you think.
Susan

LOVE IT AND LEAVE IT ALONE

2007-03-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

The Dove Pro-Age campaign, with its midlife bare beauties, might be called Real Age.
These true life models are how women of a certain age really look. Not air-brushed or digitalized. Not lifted, stapled or remodeled. Just real women. Lovely in their own ways, wearing nothing but their years. Individual and imperfect.

What a relief, to see such women in fashion magazines and up on billboards. Imagine, if we saw faces and bodies like this all the time it wouldn’t be such a shock when our own faces grew lined and our bodies acquired dimples where we never had them before.

As I wrote in my newspaper column (Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 25, 2007) the very idea that a beauty product line could call itself pro-age is as rare a marketing ploy as showing mature women out of their sweatpants.

What a boost for those in the “I’ve earned my wrinkles camp,” who are constantly bombarded by cultural messages that image is everything and the younger the better and we better hurry on out and buy all the anti-aging, wrinkle-ridding potions we can.

Suddenly even that face in the mirror looks pretty darned good.

No More Wallflowers

2007-03-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

At a flamenco class I met a 55-year-old woman whose earlier teacher corrected her posture by saying, “Your breasts must be like horns of bull.” The attitude adjustment sounded great, but what, I asked, had it done for her body. She said it's helped her drop one dress size and put her in better shape than she’s been in her life.

At the same dance class I watched a woman dip and swish in a red and gold skirt and then rush out of class early...to plan her 70th birthday party. The teacher that night was a high-boned, straight-backed, elegant 60-year-old with a hibiscus in her hair.

I pass this on to any woman of a certain age who thinks that the only way to get moving is with a spinning bike or Pilates class, both of which do great things but aren't as much fun as getting out on the floor and maybe even getting to wear cool shoes.

All kinds of dancing - flamenco, clogging, salsa - work on the heart, lungs and bones. Plus, researchers say, dancing is is one of the best ways to keep your brain limber. Dancing forces the brain to rewire itself to learn new footwork and challenges it to stay alert to sudden changes when the music, or your partner, or your teacher calls for a tricky move.

Judith Hanna, University of Maryland anthropologist and dance expert, says “Dance is the body sounding off.” It’s also a great stress-reducer and cure for depression, claims Hanna, who at age 70 does Afro-Cuban dance, salsa and flamenco, only recently giving up hip hop because she had to get up and down on the floor too fast.

Queen of the Club

2007-02-19T21:24:00.000-08:00

Talking about being 61 to a reporter, Helen Mirren said, “I just think that everybody else is getting older, so you're not the only one. You're with your group - you're sharing the same experiences.”

That does makes aging easer to handle – being part of a a huge population of contemporaries to inspire and commiserate with you and, when the whining gets too much, to say “get over it.”

In “The Queen,” Mirren plays not only her royal majesty in an award-winning manner but offers a pretty familiar image of how women of a certain age used to look. Tweedy clothes, spongy shoes, tight perm and a purse by her side. Stiff, proper, pinched.

When I questioned the royal purse in a newspaper column I wrote about Mirren’s performance, a reader suggested that she probably was packing a gun. I was unable to confirm that, although it sounded tantalizing. I figured it held a lipstick or breath mints. Maybe treats for the dog.

As soon as Mirren stopped being queenly she was back to being her hip, luscious and confident self. She has a look that says, “This is me. Accept it. Enjoy it.”

I think it’s a good look for the club.

Orthopedic Stilletos

2007-02-12T15:01:00.000-08:00

I gave a talk about Boomer women with my friend, Brenda Kinsel, author of "40 Over 40: Things Every Woman Needs to Know About Getting Dressed" and a Bay Area image consultant, to a San Francisco audience and the talk got around to shoes.

Someone remarked that it would be nice if there were such a thing as "orthopedic stilletos," given the tortured conditon of many middle aged feet challenged by the desire to still wear kick-butt heels.

I offered what a woman told me for my book "The Juicy Tomatoes Guide to Ripe Living After 50."

It's in a section called "How to be a Hottie After 50" and the idea is to walk like you're IN high heels even if you're not. Try it in running shoes. Or bare feet.
We don't need the killer shoes. We can simply call up our "inner stilletos" and sass our way down the sidewalk in a pair of clogs.

Camera Ready or Not?

2006-10-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

My daughter who knows the TV biz says you should never wear white on camera, but black is okay as long as you're not in total black. Patterns and prints are problematic. No showing of cleavage or baring of toes. So when I went on Texas TV to talk about my book on women over 50 the anchor showed up in the green room to meet me and she was wearng a pastel strapless dress in a Hawaiian print and high heeled sandals. She was baring a lot. She was also tall and blonde and quite lovely and has pretty high ratings so her look must work for her. I decided that the best thing I had going for me, besides my forgettable black pants and red jacket, was to be enthusiastic and natural because that's my message to older women - be proud, be real and don't try to compete with 30-somethings.
A few years ago I appeared on camera in full TV makeup and I looked ridiculous, like my makeup had been done by a heavy-handed funeral director.
Now we have high definition TV which is forcing everyone to look like they do in the mirror. With every age spot and large pore showing. Soon there will be no faking your vintage or basic looks on camera. Bad skin and eye puffiness will be right there for all to see. Face lifts and cosmetic surgeries are also apparent with high definition.
This could be a good thing. Maye we will get used to seeing real faces and real ages on our TV screens, that look not unlike our own. It will make it easier for the rest of us.

Juicy Women Say Grrrr...

2006-08-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

You know the term cougar? It refers to an older woman who goes out with younger men. You can think of a creature on the prowl. Or you can imagine someone sleek and proud strutting her stuff. I prefer the latter which is what I told a Phoenix newspaper reporter doing a story on the once-phenomenon now growing trend of older women/younger men.
I also said that it makes sense that today a woman over 50 would not limit her partners to men of her own age or older.
Men have been doing it for as long as we can remember. Why shouldn’t we have the same variety of choices?
But the match is still noteworthy and inevitably conjures up Mrs. Robinson seduction scenes from the 1967 film “The Graduate” with Anne Bancroft playing the older woman bedding the younger Dustin Hoffman.
A trivia point: “Older woman” Bancroft was in reality only six years older than Dustin Hoffman. But that still happens with actresses. Past a certain age they have to play mothers and grandmothers and women much older than they area. Bancroft was 36 years old when she played that lovely, nasty Mrs. Robinson.
An East Coast friend recently called to say her 30-year-old son had fallen in love with the perfect woman (in his mind) who happens to be 47. I told my friend that she obviously raised her son not only to be open-minded and non-ageist but to appreciate the finer things.
About the same time I was met up with a TV personality who went to her 40th high school reunion and took along her current escort, a man 10 years her junior.
She enjoyed the eye-popping response from her old high school friends and got to be the talk of the party until she was upstaged by the homecoming queen. She had married the football hero after high school but they had long divorced. The homecoming queen's date for the reunion was her new woman partner.
The TV woman has been exploring the age differences in partners since she resumed dating in her 50s. She said that on either side, with younger or older, she only goes as far as an eight to 10 year gap. After that it’s too much of a stretch to enjoy and appreciate the generational differences.
What makes older women attractive to younger men, according to the Phoenix newspaper's research, is their experience and wisdom. And of course, women look and feel better than they used to at 50 and older. And that makes them confident. And isn't confidence a seductive thing?

2006-06-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

NO BEIGE ON US

There was a time when mothers of the bride and groom were required to wear beige lace, just in case they weren’t already feeling invisible. Who made up this rule?
I disappear in beige. It’s fine in carpets but not on me. If you’re a smashing redhead you can wear it. But I wanted something a little more exciting. At my first daughter’s wedding two years ago, I wore a white pantsuit. It was her idea. We had just all seen “Something’s Gotta Give” and she thought I should try to pull off Diane Keaton look. I didn’t exactly, but you can tell I'm there in the wedding photos.
For my second daughter’s wedding this month I wanted to be a stand-out. I scored at an Eileen Fisher store in San Francisco, accompanied by one of my oldest friends and college roommate, who actually does look good in beige because she still has red hair. Her job was not to choose a color but to convince me to spend a bunch of money on something hip and glamorous. I’m a Northern Californian who doesn’t dress up a lot. I’m most comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt.
With the assistance of Karen and a frank and helpful clerk and the woman in the next dressing room who ended up volunteering her advice, having twice been the mother of the bride, I walked out with a silvery silk fitted jacket and a matching tank top and taupe flowing pants that fit very nicely over the hips.
The mother of the bridegroom e-mailed that she was planning on wearing a black skirt with a white top which I thought sounded a little staid until I saw her. The skirt had a kind of can-can ruffled front, which showed some leg and also fit very nicely over the hips.
We looked terrific. When people look at my daughter’s and her son’s wedding album they will not wonder “Where are the mothers?”
Here’s another thing that broke the mold. Our children invited us, the mothers, to be part of the ceremony, to each give a tiny talk (3 minutes max) on what makes a marriage work. The mother of the groom, married 40-plus years, said hers is a work in progress and that it takes friends, family and patience to make a marriage work. I said that falling in love is Christmas the Fourth of July and dancing under the stars, but marriage is Tuesday morning and Thursday night, going to the hardware store, drinking coffee.
Of course, like all mothers, we cried during the ceremony and beamed during all the toasts. The groom’s mother stayed on the dance floor until the music stopped and she had to get up the next morning and go to work, being a Methodist preacher.
Nothing beige about that Tomato.

JUST SAY YES!

2006-05-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

I was standing in line to get coffee one morning at a café in Sebastopol, my California hometown, and began chatting with the woman in front of me. We didn’t know each other but had both been looking out the door at the little red headed girl in yellow boots stomping around in a mud puddle, and we went from there to talking about doing brave things.
She said that she was about to leave on a trip to the Arizona desert where she was going to lead a vision quest. It was the first time she would be in charge of a trip that she had previously attended with others, spending time in meditative walking and quiet contemplation.
She was nervous, though, about being the leader, not the follower, and had worriedly said to a friend, “I’m too OLD to do this.”
And her wise friend countered, “You’re too old NOT to do this.”
She and I shared a knowing laugh, I wished her good luck and we went our separate ways. But I thought a lot about what she said.
Age can be a big cop-out. It’s a good excuse to not do a lot. You get to a certain point in life and people start letting you off the hook. Instead of saying “Oh, come on, you can do it,” they’ll give you a pass.
Go ahead, sit out the volleyball game. No, you probably wouldn’t want to take a bus to Mexico.
It’s almost like they don’t expect as much of you anymore and don’t challenge you like they once did. Maybe in deference to your age, energy level, creaky bones. Or maybe because you’ve become an old poop.
What this woman – whose name I never dig get – took from her friend’s counsel was that now was the perfect time to accept, not decline tempting but scary challenges. She has valuable knowledge to share. Her experience counts. She gets to be the wise one.
If she didn’t lead the group now, she might never get another invite. She might lose her nerve.
Right on. We’re too old not to say, “Yes. And more yes.”
Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”

All About the Jeans

2006-05-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

May 21

I write a newspaper column and also stories on local people in the San Francisco Bay Area. In a recent story I interviewed Joan Felt who is the daughter of Deep Throat Mark Felt. The revelation of Deep Throat last year brought the world’s press knocking on the front door of the Felt’s home in Santa Rosa. My follow-up story examined how their lives had changed in that year under the spotlight.
Not surprising the story generated a lot of interest and I quickly had a box full of email comments on the story. The same day the Deep Throat and Family story ran, so did my newspaper column titled Bad Butts and Good Jeans.
This was a giddy piece on the new trend in cosmetic surgery – to add fat to bottoms in order to make them fuller and rounder. I mused on how this was all pretty ironic since most of us had spent our years since junior high asking “is my butt too big?”
That lead to reporting on my latest clothing score, what I called “miracle jeans.”
A friend and I were visiting another in Phoenix who knew a brand of jeans which claimed to lift and contour one’s own bottom. She thought she knew a local store that carried them, a boutique in a very pricey hotel.
We found the place and as I pulled on the most expensive pair of jeans I’d ever worn, and not only that, but with rhinestones running down both legs, my friends encouraged, “Do it. Do it.”
So, I wrote the column and talked about the jeans and how they were surely more practical than $20,000 worth of butt surgery. And the email requests pored in.
So, what were these jeans? And where did one find them?
In the newspaper business we try to avoid naming labels so your writing can’t be taken as free advertising.
But I can tell you here. The label is Not Your Daughter’s Jeans. They make me feel taller and take better care of the belly than most jeans, through some special stretch magic. They might not do the same for all bodies because as we all know one woman’s miracle purchase is another’s regretful splurge.
I was telling a Denver friend about my new-found jeans and she launched into a lecture on how the American woman’s sloppy reliance on jeans is another example of the nation’s cultural decline.
But she kind of brightened over the rhinestones.
In THE JUICY TOMATOES GUIDE TO RIPE LIVING AFTER 50, clothing expert Brenda Kinsel weighs in on our life-long jeans dependency. But she warns that the style requires updating to accommodate our changing derrieres. “Don’t let your ancient jeans make you look ancient, too,” she says.
By the way, the number of requests for more info on the jeans soon outnumbered those wanting more details on Deep Throat.

Tomato Talk

2006-04-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

You know the kinds of songs that make you want to dance around the living room? That suddenly make your heart happy? And your body feel like strutting? Or even doing a private bump and grind which makes the cat look at you funny?
How about, when you’re in the car and something comes on the radio and you don’t even care that you’re stuck in traffic because you are moving in ways no one could even guess.
They are often old songs. Ones for which you know the words. Ones that make you sometimes recall people who are not the father of your children. If you really thought about it, you might remember a certain place. You might even remember what color your hair was at the time.
Juicy Tomatoes like to move. We don’t even care if our kids see us on the dance floor, although I’ve gotten worried looks from my daughters when we’re walking through the grocery store and I start to rock out to really bad pretend-Dylan tunes.
I believe that we would never have been drawn so completely to health clubs had it not been for those early aerobics classes with the great music for doing the Pony and other memorable moves. We flocked to those classes, not so much to work on our abs and pecs but so we could dance and even sing along. Now we dance whenever we feel like it. No more waiting for our partner to have one more glass of wine to get the courage to join us.
When I was in the middle of writing THE JUICY TOMATOES GUIDE TO RIPE LIVING AFTER 50 I sent out an email alert to some of the women I interviewed to tell me their favorite dance-alone-who-cares-what-the-neighbors-think tunes.
One clever woman asked, “Oh, you mean those songs from our libido years?”
I like to think of them as Tomato Tunes. And here are a few.
American Woman - Lenny Kravitz
Cry Baby – Janis Joplin
Cecilia - Simon and Garfunkel
Crazy Love - Van Morrison
Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag - James Brown
Dancing Queen – Abba
Gimme Shelter – Stones
Hey Girl - Michael McDonald
Hey Ya - Outkast (Belongs to another generation but some songs become yours the longer you hear them thumping from the kid’s room.)
Love Shack - B-52s (Okay, not everyone has to agree.)
Old Time Rock n Roll - Bob Seger (But doesn’t everyone adore this one?)
Proud Mary - Tina Turner (And don’t we all know how to growl like Ms. Tina?)
Okay, now tell me your favorites – the why, the when, the where and who with?