The More Things Change

Seventy Thoughts on Turning Seventy

In 1967, fifteen year old me called my thirty-eight year old mother into my bedroom. I sat her down on my bed and simply said "listen to this." I walked over to my red phonograph where Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits was already on the turntable and carefully dropped the needle down to align with the third cut on side one. I don't know if this was the first time my mother heard Bob Dylan, but I do know it was the first time she listened to all of his words. I watched her face closely as she absorbed the meaning, paying specific attention to the words of this verse:

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land

And don't criticize what you can't understand

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command

Your old world is rapidly fading

So get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand,

Oh the times they are a-changing.

My mother did not look happy listening to that song. Maybe she took it personally. I don't really know because she walked out of my room and I don't recall that we had a conversation about it. Maybe that was the point. I didn't need to hear what she ha to say ... I needed her to listen to what Dylan was saying and for her to understand that he spoke for me too. .

So when Jesse Welles came through my newsfeed this morning, as he always does these days, I was taken by his cover of Dylan's anthem.

I love this artist! I follow him on Instagram and I stream his music in my car when I am on long rides and I even bought tickets to see him live at the World Cafe Live a couple of weeks ago. It was my friend Risa Yaffe's birthday and we made it a night out in the city -- something I'd missed more than I realized after living in Santa Fe, NM and Glendive, MT for the past nine years.

It wasn't lost on us that we were the oldest people in the standing room only crowd. We found a comfortable spot behind a ledge we could lean on and didn't move from there the entire concert, surrounded by gen z and millennials singing along with Jesse's songs. But instead of feeling old or sad or resentful or envious of the performer and audience's youth, we found ourselves elated! Jesse paid homage to his cultural ancestors by peppering his play list with covers of Dylan and John Prine songs, underscoring the direct line between them and his biting, witty and satiric protest songs. And these younger people rallying around this wordsmith and troubadour's message took Risa and me back to our last years in high school, when we were awakened to the injustices in the world through Dylan's music.

At 72, I am nearly twice the age my mother was when I played her "The Times They are A-Changing" as an admonition about her role in the future. I have been a parent, a teacher, a grandmother and an artist for many decades now and I have tried to listen to young people and do my best to support them in their lives and work in the world. But I also understand that my generation of post WWII white baby boomers were beneficiaries of the post war economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s and that afforded us a certain amount of freedom to engage in protests against the war, in support of civil and voting rights, gay rights and equal rights for women. For a while during the Obama administration, we felt a sense of accomplishment believing we were handing our children and grandchildren a more just and equitable country than our parents had left us.

The backlash has been brewing for a while and it's descended upon us swiftly like musk's "chain saw" with no regard for the damage it's causing to individuals, communities, science, democracy and our sense of ourselves as a leader in the world. The long arc of the moral universe has taken a detour on its road to justice.

And the young people are putting the blame squarely on us.

I've been reading alot of posts by people my age and older who are looking to become ex pats in Canada, Central America, South America and some countries in Europe to escape the chaos and pain that this administration along with a cowardly congress and corrupt courts has set loose here. They are worried about the safety of our foods, our roads, our health, our education, our infrastructure, our taxes, our rights and believe they can live out their golden years some place other than here.

While I can see where making a peaceful life in some other country could be tempting, I also see it as an abandonment of our children and grandchildren. This is the world they have inherited from us, for better or worse, with all the good and the bad and if things are heading in a dangerous direction, we owe it to young people to stay and keep fighting beside them. We owe it to them to listen to what their concerns are, what actions they can and will take, and to use our wealth, experience and wisdom to support them in what they need to do.

While they may or may not know history and while they may even see the parallels to dangerous times, they cannot afford to wallow in cynicism nor embrace despair as a way of life. They cannot just leave America for somewhere else. They have to live in the here and now and create a future that will be not only viable for their lives but generative for their children.

To my fellow septuagenarians -- look to the young people. Listen to them. Engage in dialogue and offer support. True wisdom knows its own limits yet remains open to learn and grow from the experience of others.

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway

Don't block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

The battle outside ragin'

Will soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'

Something is going to happen which will bring hundreds of thousands into the streets. Maybe millions. Some event. Some bridge too far. Then the battle outside will be raging once again. We elders will then have to get out of the new world or lend a hand to them as the times continue to change.

Fellow boomers — what do you think we should be doing to support younger people in these times?