65

I'm sixty-five now. I keep having to repeat that. Soon I will believe it. On my actual birthday, I taught a class to people over fifty (mostly over seventy) about the music of the British invasion of the Sixties. This week was 1968. I played music and videos from The Beatles, "Hey Jude" and The Beatles (aka "The White Album"). I played The Rolling Stones singing "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and some excerpts from Beggars Banquet. I lost them with a video of Cream playing "White Room" and excerpts from Wheels of Fire. A woman I'm friendly with raised her hand and asked "Why are we listening to this noise?"

I tried to explain, as I did to family and sometimes friends in 1968, "This isn't 'Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I've Got Love In My Tummy.' It's not aimed at ten-year-old girls like most Top 40 music. You have to listen more intently. It might take time to get used to it." So I guess I haven't learned anything in the last forty-seven years. I got the same blank look I got in 1968. Someone in the class brought cookies because they knew it was my birthday.

I had lunch at Subway with a seventy-five year old man in the class. He grew up in New York, and although not Jewish, he knew lots of Jews then and even now in Morgantown. His wife died some time ago, and he asked me "Are there available women at your temple?" I mentioned two widows in their sixties who might be available. "I know them. I don't want anyone like that. Look at me. I'm in great shape for my age." (He's not.) " Isn't there anyone younger?"

At that point, I silently thanked God for sending me Joe, gray-haired, balding (not as bald as I am) and only seven years younger than I am. Old enough that we have things to talk about, and young enough to be my "young man."

There was a class about Yiddish theater with a movie in the afternoon, then I ran some errands and went home to crash. Tappuz the cat slept with me.

Joe thought we should go someplace fancy for dinner. We did, although I wasn't hungry after all the cookies, and I was tired. There was one other occupied table with an older couple and a young woman. I didn't know them. At least that's what I thought, but the older woman said "Hi, Barry. Happy birthday!" I couldn't place her, but it turns out she is in my class. She couldn't come that day. I should have remembered her.

Some of the food was good. My entrée was just average. Everything was expensive. I couldn't wait to leave. I'm always glad to go out, but I was tired and not feeling that well. I was reminded of my mother insisting we go out someplace fancy for my twenty-first birthday. I was a hippie college student then, a senior, and seriously depressed. Depressed enough that I wouldn't go to a shrink because I was afraid they would hospitalize me. The thought of getting dressed up enough to go to a nice restaurant sent my stomach into spasms. I hadn't eaten much that day, and I was in pain. I barely got through dinner then. An allergist years later explained that my stomach ailments, always around my birthday, were a seasonal allergy. Now you tell me.

I look at now and I have to do the Jewish thing. I have to be grateful for all the gifts in my life. I have a handsome, good, hard-working man at home who loves me. The times have changed enough that I can thank the waiter for not asking if we want separate checks and he'll answer "I'm young, but I'm not that young." I'll introduce my husband to a male-female couple, and they'll say to him "We've heard so much about you from members of your congregation. They just love you." As of two weeks ago, the state accepts our marriage. Most of the people aren't happy about it, but we've already changed people's minds about same-gender marriage, even here.

I have a body that works, with a little pharmaceutical help. I've dodged polio, teenage drivers, Vietnam and AIDS. I survived a heart attack, and done many dangerous things I hope no one finds out about. I'm still here. Sounds like a Sondheim song :" I've lived through George and George W., Nixon-Agnew. " I should leave lyric writing to Mr. Sondheim.

I understand mortality. I'm four years younger than my father when he died, and ten years younger than my mother. I get it. Still, I look in the mirror and say "Not bad." I remember and study the past, live in the present, and still have plans for the future. Joe is throwing me a dinner and dance party this weekend.

1966

I'm teaching a class at Osher Life-Long Learning about the British Invasion, the music that hit America in 1964 with the arrival of The Beatles. My students are all over fifty, and most are over seventy. The class is six weeks, and I've been covering one year per week from 1964 to 1969. On October 7, I covered 1966. I play records and CDs, but mostly show videos from You Tube.

The people in the class loved the early Beatles, all the other boy groups in long hair and skinny suits, the glamour girls like Petula Clark and Dusty Springfield, and even the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger too pretty by half, his pants tight enough to allow your imagination to wander.

Things changed in 1966. I started the class by telling them that the Beatles best music was on albums, and with the release of Rubber Soul at the end of 1965, the Beatles challenged their audience by not releasing any singles and not touring.

I played some songs from Rubber Soul in beautiful "Duophonic" stereo. Only the vocals, all in one channel, didn't come out clearly. This wasn't the first time I've had equipment problems at OLLI. I sang the six songs I played, from "Norwegian Wood" to "Wait."

I had the CD of Revolver, and the sound was fine for that. I played "Eleanor Rigby" and "Here, There and Everywhere." Pretty music. Then George Harrison sang "Love You To" in a classic Indian style with Indian instruments. I made the group sing along to  "Yellow Submarine." When it came to the end of the album and "Tomorrow Never Knows," with the guitar tracks played backwards, lots of unusual instruments and altered vocals, I was just grooving.

I noticed my crew wasn't with me. So I asked them "How many of you thought that was the best thing you've heard in this class so far?" No hands. "How many of you had no idea what that was about or just hated it?" Most of them raised their hands. I guess I was disappointed. I told people who couldn't come last week that they could listen to Rubber Soul and Revolver and watch a live performance of "Paint It, Black" on YouTube and they would get all they needed of 1966. Everything else was boring. Only my group liked the boring stuff. We saw videos from Herman's Hermits, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, and, yes, The Monkees. They loved it.

I remember 1966. I was a junior and senior in high school. Baltimore, my hometown, was still living in the fifties, for  a short time longer. Among my friends, some were horrified by The Beatles' turn to "arty" music, and the darkness of The Rolling Stones. I was on the line. I liked music I could dance to, so I was more likely to listen to Motown and other "soul" music than Brit rock. But I could see that change was coming, and maybe it's just my memory today, but I think I was ready for something different in life.

For many people who were already married in 1966, working their way through community college or back from 'Nam, the changes in music and the larger culture were frightening and unwelcome.

This was the beginning of the "culture wars," started by Roger Ailes for the Nixon-Agnew campaign in 1968, and continued by Ailes and his successor, Karl Rove. Blame "elites," college students in the late '60s, get the government to try to deport John Lennon, decry the obscenity of the Rolling Stones, all to get working class white people to turn against their own economic interests. Rove brilliantly brought up "gay marriage" after 1990 to rile religious people, particularly those in rural areas and dying towns where no self-respecting gay person would live. That emphasis has now come back to bite him with the Supreme Court's decision not to take a same-gender marriage case this term, leaving most states obligated to recognize same-gender marriages, including West Virginia, which has a few weeks to continue this futile battle.

I don't blame the folks in my class for not following me into the new music of the late '60s. Julie Andrews, Herman's Hermits on one side and The Beatles and Rolling Stones on the other were not looking to start a culture war. And taste in music has a lot to do with when one came of age. I was sixteen in 1965 and 1966, just coming into my own, and this music was my soundtrack. I find lots of today's music unlistenable, but that won't start a war between me and the young generation. And I don't take it personally that my class won't follow me through The Who and Cream, that they won't like "Sympathy For The Devil" or "Sunshine of Your Love." All I can do is put it out there and hope someone gets it.