Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4140 - Letter to Dad #40 - Blog Vacation Continues
Hi Big Guy,
I dove into the box of old photos again. Starting to separate the envelopes of slides from prints. At some point, I will discover the slides you had made into prints as I suspect that's what many of these prints are. I doubt the camera with which you seemed to only take slides was designed to only take film that would be made into slides. I doubt it works like that. So I may have prints of everything. I don't know. I wish I had started sorting this with Mom on all those days of TV viewing, catalog reviewing and such and then continued with you.
This is a great picture of me and Lori. Obviously, taken around Halloween, which actually means that age for me is wrong. Around Halloween, Lori would be 10-12 weeks, but I would be 7 years and NINE MONTHS not three. Weird. The print was made in January of 1970, which was a few months later as the picture is October 1969. There's Thanksgiving decorations up, which probably means it's past Halloween.
The tables behind us are here in my office, as I adore them. Neat to see the Time-Life books stacked on one of the tables. Is that wine bottle a decoration? I like seeing what Mom has set out to adorn the tables. That's the living room of the Hazelwood house, the windows looking out on the back yard.
Not much to report this week except that I am worried about Satchel's cough and her decreased interest in food.
The other dogs are fine.
Trying to get stuff done around the house.
It's Friday as I type, so I have to go get to it.
More next week.
Love,
christopher
LOW POWER MODE: I sometimes put the blog in what I call LOW POWER MODE. If you see this note, the blog is operating like a sleeping computer, maintaining static memory, but making no new computations. If I am in low power mode, it's because I do not have time to do much that's inventive, original, or even substantive on the blog. This means I am posting straight shares, limited content posts, reprints, often something qualifying for the THAT ONE THING category and other easy to make posts to keep me daily. That's the deal. Thanks for reading.
BLOG VACATION #1 - 2026 - Taking a blog vacation for a couple of weeks, until at least June 26th, 2026. Mostly reprints. A few simple shares (not that simple shares are out of the norm) and THAT ONE THING. Need time for other things.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2606.18 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 4004 days ago & DAD = 658 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4116 - SoD Reprint of #1467 from 2019 - Two riders approaching - the wind began to HOWL - a Musical Monday mix
I am a couple of days behind. It's Wednesday the 27th.
I am working on a longer post with a new mix, but I am not done with it yet.
Instead of falling farther behind as I complete it, and I cannot spend much time on it today as I have homework due, I thought I would do something else.
I was going to post just one song out of my recent saved songs for this exact purpose, BUT then, this mix came up in my playlists queue. This rising to the top happens all the time as You Tube "updates" a playlist, which usually means deleted or no longer available videos. Such was the case. So I fixed the missing videos, replacing them, and the playlist track list is now accurate again.
Meanwhile, I listened to a lot of these songs while cooking yesterday, so it seemed fitting to reprint it, especially since I created it OVER seven years ago. So even those who check my blog often, especially the music (Hi, Jane), may have missed this original post and all its associated content as I tried to teach my students the concept of "The Personal is Political."
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1467 - Two riders approaching - the wind began to HOWL - a Musical Monday mix for "All Along the Watchtower"
The other day while teaching my Humanities class at Concordia University I was reminded of this phrase coined by feminist writer and scholar Carol Hanisch in her eponymous essay.
I had already created this mix for my other school -- Lower Columbia College -- as a riff on so much of our content, especially the use of the song "All Along the Watch Tower" in the book Watchmen.
And so I am wantonly copying from Wikipedia and various sites.
The personal is political, also termed The private is political, is a political argument used as a rallying slogan of student movement and second-wave feminism from the late 1960s. It underscored the connections between personal experience and larger social and political structures. In the context of the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, it was a challenge to the nuclear family and family values.[1] The phrase has been repeatedly described as a defining characterization of second-wave feminism, radical feminism, women's studies, or feminism in general.[2][3]
The phrase was popularized by the publication of a 1969 essay by feminist Carol Hanisch under the title "The Personal is Political" in 1970,[4] but she disavows authorship of the phrase. According to Kerry Burch, Shulamith Firestone, Robin Morgan, and other feminists given credit for originating the phrase have also declined authorship. "Instead," Burch writes, "they cite millions of women in public and private conversations as the phrase's collective authors."[5]Gloria Steinem has likened claiming authorship of the phrase to claiming authorship of "World War II."[5]
The essay first appeared under the title "The Personal is Political" in Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation (1970).
Carol Hanisch, a member of New York Radical Women and a prominent figure in the Women's Liberation Movement, drafted an article defending the political importance of consciousness-raising groups in February 1969 in Gainesville, Florida.[7] Originally addressed to the women's caucus of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, the paper was first given the title, "Some Thoughts in Response to Dottie [Zellner]'s Thoughts on a Women's Liberation Movement". Hanisch was then a New York City-based staffer of the Fund and was advocating for it to engage in dedicated organizing for women's liberation in the American South.[7] Hanisch sought to rebut the idea that sex, appearance, abortion, childcare, and the division of household labor were merely personal issues without political importance. To confront these and other issues, she urged women to overcome self-blame, discuss their situations amongst each other, and organize collectively against male domination of society.[7] Hanisch does not use the phrase "the personal is political" in the essay, but writes:
One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution.[7]
The essay was published under the title, "The Personal Is Political", in Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation in 1970. The essay's author believes that Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt, the book's editors, gave the essay its famous title.[7] It has since been reprinted in Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader.[8]
While the connection between women's personal experience and their subordination as women is highlighted by this phrase, feminists have interpreted the nature of that connection and the desired form of political action that emerges from it in widely divergent ways.
An opening of "private" or "social" matters to political analysis and discussion.
An explanation of the systematic nature of women's oppression. As summarized by Heidi Hartmann, "Women's discontent, radical feminists argued, is not the neurotic lament of the maladjusted, but a response to a social structure in which women are systematically dominated, exploited, and oppressed."[9]
Paula Rust compiled a list of interpretations of the phrase within feminist movements including the following: "The personal reflects the political status quo (with the implication that the personal should be examined to provide insight into the political); the personal serves the political status quo; one can make personal choices in response to or protest against the political status quo; ... one's personal choices reveal or reflect one's personal politics; one should make personal choices that are consistent with one's personal politics; personal life and personal politics are indistinguishable."[10]
Writing in 2006, Hanisch observed, "Like most of the theory created by the Pro-Woman Line radical feminists, these ideas have been revised or ripped off or even stood on their head and used against their original, radical intent."[7]
What first drew me to feminist Ann Snitow was the way she transcends feminism’s notorious generational divide. When we first met, I felt embraced. Later, I wondered how she did it. Ann was a founding member of New York Radical Feminists, the 1970s radical-feminist group that included Shulamith Firestone; now she’s a professor of gender studies at the New School and an activist who directs the Network of East-West Women, connecting feminists in America with those in Eastern Europe. She also sits on the editorial board of the democratic-socialist magazine Dissent. Ann has spent the last 45 years in a sort of guerrilla war with patriarchy—attacking it through organizing, then circling around and creating academic programs to explore its weaknesses; joining the fight abroad; bringing lessons learned back home. Recently, she published a book collecting four decades of essays. The title seems a wink to today’s too-certain call-out culture: It’s called The Feminism of Uncertainty.
The Personal Is Political: An interview with Wencke Mühleisen
My understanding is that you are now teaching feminist studies at universities here in Norway. Why the shift away from art towards teaching, or has your work always been about education?
Yes, I am involved in the scholarship of gender and sexuality studies. The reason for that shift was rather pragmatic in the end of the 1980’s, where nonstop traveling and performing was hard to combine with providing for two children. Besides that, I do see my work and interests in the last years as a continuation - as feminism in a broad and queer sense from youth has been my companion. My medium of choice these days is writing, which I consider a performative intervention and practice.
Bringing pro-woman people together to take a stand against misogyny and sexism, Slvt Cult is a female-run arts collective that creates subversive multimedia art for the contemporary feminist. Changing the conversation around gender, sexuality, and race with anyone who cares to listen, and plenty who don't.
Two riders approaching - the wind began to HOWL mix
[1] The Jimi Hendrix Experience - All Along The Watchtower [2] The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter (Live) [3] The Beatles - Come Together [4] BOB DYLAN -All Along The Watchtower (Live in Woodstock 1994) [5] Eddie Brickell and New Bohemians - A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall [6] Tom Waits - Make It Rain (Letterman 09.09.04) [7] Pink Floyd -"Echoes" Pompeii [8] Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne and others -- "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" [9] Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper - Shallow (Live in Las Vegas) [10] Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime (Official Video) [11] David Bowie - Cat People (Putting Out Fire) Music Video HQ [12] The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again (Live at Kilburn 1977) [13] Led Zeppelin - Black Dog (Live at Madison Square Garden 1973) (Official Video) [14] Public Enemy - He Got Game [15] The Clash - Train in Vain (Live at the Lewisham Odeon) [16] The Clash - Death Or Glory [17] PIXIES/Gouge Away (Best performance) [18] Radiohead - Ceremony (Joy Division cover) [19] Led Zeppelin - Kashmir (Live from Celebration Day) (Official Video) [20] Interpol - Obstacle 1 [21] St. Vincent - Masseduction [22] Paul Weller - Boy About Town (Live At The Royal Festival Hall) [23] The Housemartins - Flag Day [24] Small Faces - Tin Soldier (good quality) [25] The Style Council - A Stones Throw Away [26] Pete Townshend - Give Blood (featuring David Gilmour) [27] The Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil (Official Lyric Video) [28] BOB DYLAN - All Along the Watchtower [29] David Bowie - It's No Game (No's 1 & 2 ) [30] Bob Dylan A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall
We'll be fighting in the streets With our children at our feet And the morals that they worship will be gone And the men who spurred us on Sit in judgement of all wrong They decide and the shotgun sings the song
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again
The change, it had to come We knew it all along We were liberated from the fold, that's all And the world looks just the same And history ain't changed 'Cause the banners, they are flown in the next war
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again, no, no
I'll move myself and my family aside If we happen to be left half alive I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky Though I know that the hypnotized never lie Do ya?
Yeaah!
There's nothing in the streets Looks any different to me And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye And the parting on the left Is now parting on the right And the beards have all grown longer overnight
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again Don't get fooled again, no no
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin' I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin' I saw a white ladder all covered with water I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin' Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin' Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son? Who did you meet, my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony I met a white man who walked a black dog I met a young woman whose body was burning I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow I met one man who was wounded in love I met another man who was wounded with hatred And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one? I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin' I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest Where the people are many and their hands are all empty Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison Where the executioner's face is always well-hidden Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten Where black is the color, where none is the number And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin' But I'll know my song well before I start singin' And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1902.25 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1332 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2605.25 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3980 days ago & DAD = 634 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #4060 - When I am 64 - Another 1960s Mix - Musical Monday for 2603.30
This mix is not curated much at all.
And surely there are omissions given that I limited myself to 64 tracks (because that's how old I am).
Of course, I included the song "When I'm 64" by the Beatles. This was not originally in the mix as I built it when I was 63.
I put some effort into the order of tracks, though not a lot.
Seems like next year there should be a 65 track playlist, which will also mark the official start of the era known as the Sixties as a culturally unified time period.
Fifty years ago Thursday, President Lyndon B. Johnson turned on the lights of the National Christmas Tree and proclaimed, “These are the most hopeful times in all the years since Christ was born in Bethlehem.” He continued, “Today — as never before — man has in his possession the capacities to end war and preserve peace, to eradicate poverty and share abundance, to overcome the diseases that have afflicted the human race and permit all mankind to enjoy their promise in life on this Earth.”
LBJ was by no means alone at that time in predicting such a glorious future. Millions of Americans were anticipating passage of Great Society reforms that he had been promising in his super-successful presidential campaign. The economy, having advanced steadily since 1961, was booming as never before. James Reston, chief political columnist for the New York Times, wrote on Jan. 1, 1965, that the nation was entering an “Era of Good Feelings.” Time magazine gushed that America was “on the fringe of a Golden Era.” It added that “the classic conflict between parents and children is letting up.”
These sentiments make one thing clear: Hindsight is far clearer than foresight. The rosy predictions of peace and societal goodwill came on the eve of the political, social and cultural turbulence — even violence — we now think of as “the Sixties.”
The Sixties didn’t start in 1960. Rather — as the comments by LBJ, Reston, and others indicate — the years before 1965 were fairly stable. Most Americans in 1964 dressed as they had in the 1950s. Few young people sported beards or long hair. Colleges rigorously enforced parietal rules. Though the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley revealed rising restiveness among the young, the Students for a Democratic Society had only 1,365 paid-up members in December 1964. (The total rose to an estimated 80,000 by 1968.) Though white violence against civil rights advocates during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer had angered many people, supporters of racial justice hailed passage of the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act — and of the War on Poverty — and remained committed to nonviolence and interracial cooperation.
Johnson’s conviction that the nation was developing its capacity “to end war and preserve peace” seems particularly jarring, in light of both what was happening at the time and what would happen in the months following the speech. The previous August, Johnson had ordered bombing in North Vietnam following the Gulf of Tonkin “crisis,” but during his 1964 presidential campaign against Barry Goldwater, he had posed as an apostle of peace. In October, during the heat of that campaign, he promised: “We are not about to send American boys nine or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” Yet by the end of 1964, the United States had 23,000 “military advisors” in Vietnam, some 6,000 more than had been there at the time of Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.
American liberalism, the driving force behind much of what Johnson touted in his December speech, peaked in early and mid-1965. Driving a heavily Democratic Congress, the president secured a path-breaking Elementary and Secondary Education Act, expansion of the War on Poverty, and Medicare and Medicaid. Congress also approved a powerful Voting Rights Act, an innovative Higher Education Act, and long-awaited reform of America’s then-racist immigration system.
But 1965 also brought the start of the tempestuous Sixties. Following a Viet Cong raid on an American base in early February, LBJ authorized round-the-clock bombing (Operation Rolling Thunder) of North Vietnam. A month later, combat Marines landed at Da Nang. At the same time, on Bloody Sunday (March 7), white police and troopers savaged peaceful marchers in Selma, Ala., thereby enraging millions of Americans. In late July, LBJ announced a massive escalation of American forces in Vietnam. In early August, five days after he signed the Voting Rights Act, blacks in Watts erupted in violent protest. Many whites, shocked, began to wonder about civil rights activism. The movement was never the same thereafter.
During the next few months, much of the optimism that had prompted Johnson’s grandiloquent remarks in December 1964 began to fade. Political polarization was widening. Black leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee were moving toward what became known in 1966 as black power. Antiwar protesters were starting to burn their draft cards. On the right, conservatives launched increasingly vocal attacks on the War on Poverty and on Big Government. Ronald Reagan, very much in the headlines, was readying a successful run for the governorship of California in 1966.
Developments in popular music reflected this more unsettled mood. In June, the Rolling Stones released “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” whose lyrics were more sexually explicit than those of other pop hits of the day. Described by fans as “an anthem for a generation,” “Satisfaction” soared to the top of the charts. A month later, Bob Dylan “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival, thereby hastening a trend toward folk-rock. In September, Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” a raw and explicitly topical protest song, reached No. 1.
By the end of 1965, 184,000 American troops were stationed in Vietnam, and casualties were mounting. Inflation, much of it caused by the war, was worrying economists. When LBJ turned on the lights of the National Christmas Tree in December, he had nothing uplifting to say. Events in 1965 had launched a series of transformations — many of them rancorous and divisive — that sharpened during the Sixties that followed. Fifty years ago, a new era was arriving.
James T. Patterson is an emeritus professor of history at Brown University and the author of “The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America.”
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.30 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3924 days ago & DAD = 578 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
