Three’s a magic number, and I’m all for making magic.
And so on with the Sorority Saga of the adventuresome fourteen.
We all wondered if we would recognize each other after more than forty years. All of us had been married; four of us are no longer, and of those four, one is a widow. Almost all of us have kids, and, of those, as far as I could tell, all have grandkids; at least one had a child who died; almost all of us had taught at least for a while. An alarming number are breast cancer survivors. We all have a few extra pounds — some more, some less. Five do not color their hair, and three of those are wonderfully white. (I made sure I touched mine up the week before the reunion.) The years showed on all of our faces and our bodies — some more, some less.
What was funny was that one of the sisters admitted that as she walked into the bar and looked around for the others, she found herself searching the faces of the twenty-something females who were there. That’s how she was remembering us all — as we were the last time she saw us.
How did we recognize each other? Mostly BY OUR VOICES — both the actual physical voice and the “selves” that we revealed in WHAT we voiced. We all (aurally) sound the same as we did when we called to each other up and down the stairs of the sorority house. As we had a chance to chat and catch up and reminisce, it became apparent that those of us who were more conservative back then, still are — some even moreseo. And on the other end of the spectrum are one of my apartment roommates and, heh, me.
And our eyes are still the same — not the skin around them, but the souls they reflect. We also recognized each other by our eyes.
No one passed around photos of their kids and grandkids (well, I admit I did whip out a goofy photo of my grandson to show two of my ol’ roommates). Instead, we spent our time together remembering and laughing (loud and long), and adding to the legends and lore of our girly days.

In between, we caught up on where we were in our lives, chatting in small groups or one-on-one with those to whom we were closest.
Who says you can’t time travel! We did. We took ourselves back more than forty years and, for one night, we were carefree, fun-loving girls again.
OK. So you want to see “then” and “now” photos, right?
Well, here are three of us hanging around the sorority house in our pajamas in 1960. (Somewhere I have a photo of the four of us and when I find it, I’ll replace this one.)

And here we are as we are, at least on the outside. On the inside, where our true voices begin, we are as we were as we are.

And so, as way to keep sharing our voices, I’ve begun setting up a gangblog for us, since we all have computers (although some are more adept at using them than others). And so Beta Zeta (which no longer exists at our college) will move into the virtual 21st century, laughing all the way.

Hats off to thee, BZ!

I’m interrupting my sorority saga to point out some of the good, bad, and ugly in today’s news. And I do this recognizing that a couple of my “sisters” who will probably be checking out this blog when they get back home do not agree with my politics:
First, the good: Bloggers offer inside view to convention
Delegate bloggers play a different role than traditional media or even other bloggers, said New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, who is covering the convention for his blog.
“You can’t apply to it the criteria of news or even punditry,” Rosen said. “One shouldn’t expect startling new information because that’s not the point. The point is to share the experience.”
Many delegate bloggers supported Howard Dean, whose Internet-based, grass-roots campaign set fund-raising records and attracted a large following. Some say they want to keep that online effort alive even as they transfer their loyalty to John Kerry, the party’s presumed nominee

Second the bad. Well, it’s bad for the current administration but good for everyone who believes in truth and honesty:

Setting the Sept. 11 record straight
At the time, it was understood that all of the hijackers had entered the country legally and done nothing to draw attention to themselves; Osama bin Laden had underwritten the plot with his personal fortune but had left the details to others; U.S. intelligence agencies had no warning that al-Qaida was considering suicide missions using planes; President Bush had received a special intelligence briefing weeks before Sept. 11 about al-Qaida that focused on past, not current, threats
But 19 months later, the commission released a final, unanimous book-length report Thursday that, in calling for an overhaul of the way the government collects and shares intelligence, showed that much of what had been common wisdom about the Sept. 11 attacks at the start of the panel’s investigation was wrong.
Third, the ugly. The uninformed thinking of people like this 77-year old American woman really scares me. I couldn’t find a link to this brief piece that appeared today in my local newspaper:
from Voters voice
…I’m sorry that this cournty has to be the policeman throughout the world, but somebody’s got to do it…What we’ve got over there is a volunteer army, and there’s no drafting. These men and women signed up, and they’re getting paid. I’m sorry they have to be over there, beause they’re volunteers…but we’ve still got to do it.
…I’d like to see every child that can do it get a quality education but..I don’t thinkwe can realistically afford it for everyone.
…I’m concerned about Medicare and prescription drugs even though I don’t have a problem gettng insurance myself..but sometimes people abuse drugs when they’re free. They take them just because they’re there. It’s like Medicare: Some people go to the emergency room just because it’s a place to go.
When the revolution comes, I know what side I’m going to be on.

He remembers dancing with me, he says — the guy who ultimately married one of my roommates. I certainly remember him, too. He was one of the best Lindy dancers around — easy to follow, smooth and sassy. He says that what he remembers about me was that I always wore bright colors and make-up to match. Remembers that, in terms of whatever boyfriends I had, I was known to be “flighty.” A “free-spirit.”
Free spirit.
That word comes up often when my long-time friends say what they remember about me. Free Spirit. And Beatnik. That’s who I was, or at least what I aspired to. No wonder I am who I am now.
The three husbands who joined us after our dinner were all from the same fraternity. There were lots of pairings between their fraternity and our sorority over the years. If we were sisters, they were our brothers-in-law. I liked these three then and I still do. Good guys, these guys.

I liked hanging around with guys back in college in the late fifties because they had so much more freedom than we girls did. And flirting was an art we all enjoyed. But it was innocent flirting. It was all before drugs seeped onto campuses; it was when guys (at least the guys we knew) understood and accepted that No means No.
So now they all tease me about my tendency to push the envelope of expected female behavior. It was, after all, just about the timeframe of Mona Lisa Smile. I guess I was just born to be a feminine feminist.
The memories that spill out of our aging brains complement each other, fill in some blanks that we each have.
I had forgotten that I used to sit by myself and play my aunt’s old guitar. I only knew three chords but could play just about all the old Everly Brothers songs. And Web Pierce’s “There Stands the Glass.” I’m sure now that my rudimentary attempts at guitar playing were as much for effect as for any great desire on my part to actually learn to play well. Beatniks, after all, sit alone in a corner and play the guitar. We become what we imagine.
I had forgotten that, in grad school when I lived in an apartment on an inner city side street with three other sorority sisters, I was the one who called the police because we had a prowler on the roof. We lived in a three story building owned by “Aunt Liz,” an Irish washerwoman who did the laundry of others in her basement. Our shared bedroom was the attic that had a big skylight, and we would lie in our beds and night and tell each other our dreams and share dirty jokes. One night we heard footsteps on the roof. I don’t remember calling the police and laughing so hard about the whole thing on the phone that the cops thought I was joking. But my roommates remember. They also remember that, when the cops finally arrived, they found a ladder against the side of the building and someone’s sneaker left behind on the roof. They remember the cop pulling out a gun. I just remember my annoyance at having our privacy invaded and my surprise that my roommates were as upset as they were. I guess I should have felt more violated than I did, but back then, in my own mind I was invincible, untouchable, immortal.
Enough about me. What follows will be more about them, those golden girls who, I think, glow more compellingly now — and for some it’s 44 years later — than they even did in what we all remember as our sweet golden glory days.

“Beta Zeta hats off to thee. To our colors true we will ever be. Young and strong united are we………”
We did sing it, but not in the bar or in the restaurant. We sang it in a cirlce, just as we used to do forty years ago. We sang it at about midnight in one of the hotel rooms as we ended an evening of boisterous and loving reminiscences.
I couldn’t help notice that we sang it a lot slower than we did forty years ago. But it probably meant even more to us now then it did then.
There are stories to be told about this reunion of what turned out to be fourteen women and the husbands of three of them who remember the same time of innocence, that time of boundless energies. A time when we were all learning together how to figure out who we wanted to be. A time when draft beer was 10 cents and girls would be confined to their dorms at night for a week if they stayed out later than 1 a.m. (midnight if you were a freshman).
I want to get up early enough to meet them for breakfast before they leave the hotel and the past behind. But for now, I sit here grateful for all of their reminders of that girl that I was, for remembering me as I remember me. For reminding me that I am still that girl.

I worry about terrorists. I don’t obsess, and it’s not on my mind every minute. But I think the Bush administration has set up a self-fulfilling prophesy.
So when I read Ann Jacobsen’s article in the Women’s Wall Street Journal last week, it made me nervous. Because, given the tenor of the times, I probably would have been seeing and feeling what she was seeing and feeling:
After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together, eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned, and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified.
Jacobsen’s tale is long but compelling and worth reading.
Even more worth reading (and a lot shorter) is lawyer and Stanford Ph.D. candidate Clinton Taylor’s research and analysis of the happening.
It used to be easy to tell books by their covers. Sometimes you still can. You just know that this one is sure to be a bodice-ripper.
This one is too, in it’s own way, but it’s harder to tell. (This new “romance” category with strong, brave kick-ass females and strong, brave, tender males is one I plan on writing more about.)
I’ve had doors held open for me by Goth-garbed kids and have been given the finger by guys in suits driving SUVs. You can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys any more. Or gals either for that matter.
Who knows what wickedness lurks behind the pleasant facade of a little ol’ granny.
UPDATE: For more on the fall-out from the airplane story, go here and scroll down.
UPDATE: I like Betsy Devine’s take on the whole thing, that ends with:
So, taking my own advice, I think that prosthetic shoes, etc. should not be off-limits to airport security searches. I think the rule that you can’t question more than two people of any ethnic group, if such a rule exists, is dangerous hooey. I think that questioning people about their flight plans, etc. does not violate their civil liberties. I think that people who do weird stuff on airliners should be told by flight attendants to behave themselves. I think that airline passengers who intentionally scare other airline passengers should be charged with assault.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Alexander. Now, Alexander was a very special little boy, especially to his Grammy, who loved him so much that she wanted to do something very very special for his second birthday

It hit me thirty years ago as a newly single mom. And it seems like it

ACLU Says White House Is Engaged in Patriot Act Misinformation Campaign; Releases Point-By-Point Response to Bush Falsehoods

It’s Freedom Friday, and I’m wearing a red T-shirt. I don’t think it’s going to make a hoot of difference. But I try to practice what I preach.
I’m also eating the reddest most delicious tomatoes that I’ve ever grown. They’re the first of my crop, and I’m not even sharing them with my mother. Today, on Red Friday, I’m the Little Red Hen.
And, finally, red is for all the Rage.
no conscience
when there are no shoulders
left for tears
no firm hands to touch
all there is left
is to scream
into the heartless void
and shit your losses
where you sleep