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What Album is “Still in Rotation” for You?

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Back in the Before Times/Ye Olden Days of Blogging/The Years of Our Lord 2013-2016, I used to have a regular feature on the Midlife Mixtape blog called “Still in Rotation”. In it, I invited writers to tell us about an album they discovered years ago that’s still in heavy rotation, and why it has such staying power.

I absolutely loved sharing these guest posts that gave a glimpse of the magical way in which music shapes and informs who we are – whether it was Shawn Colvin’s Steady On accompanying Vikki Reich as she came out, first to herself and then family and friends, the soundtrack to The Big Easy bearing proud witness to journalist Ron Thibodeaux’s Cajun culture, or Purple Rain inspiring Ann Imig to choreograph her own routine to The Bird in middle school music class. The music we were drawn to early on, and then brought with us along the ride of our lives, can help us notice the connections between who we were then and who we are now – and all the ways we’ve changed, too.

And now it’s your turn, podcast listeners.

What’s an album you bought a long time ago and still listen to now – and why did it stick with you?

Maybe it reminds you of a certain place, or time, or person. Maybe it’s comforting like a big schlubby sweater, or invigorates you back to energy levels you had before the gray hair and your kids’ tuition payments. Maybe it’s simply your favorite album of all time – that’s what I wrote about when I did my own “Still in Rotation” post (video hint below). Whatever the reason that particular album (vinyl, CD, 8-track tape) still takes us space in your soul, let us know what the album is, and why. I’ll collect up your stories and share this in a Listeners’ Still in Rotation podcast episode at the end of the month.

As usual for our listener-contributed episodes, there are lots of ways to share your thoughts:

Leave me a voice mail right from your computer! Go to www.MidlifeMixtape.com and you’ll see a blue button on the right hand side that says, “What album is Still in Rotation for you?” Just press it, and you can start recording with one click. I would LOVE for people to do this so I can incorporate your actual voice on the episode! NOTE: There’s a 90 second limit on this, but you can re-record before sending if you need to.
Record a voice memo into your phone and email it to dj@midlifemixtape.com. Again, it would be so cool to hear and share your story in your actual voice.
Leave me a comment below!
Email me the story of your album that’s Still in Rotation to dj@midlifemixtape.com.
Send me a Facebook message, tweet or Instagram comment @midlifemixtape

Start thinking about it and then send me your stories to me before April 20th! Then tune in on Tuesday, April 27th to hear the show!

The post What Album is “Still in Rotation” for You? appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                 
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Ep 93 Har Mar Superstar

“Existential homecoming”: Har Mar Superstar aka Sean Tillman on the evolution of his music career from sweaty solo act to full band bonanza, his brand new LP Roseville including two songs for Midlife Mixtape listeners, and his pandemic postal pivot.

Find Har Mar Superstar:

Website: HarMarSuperstar.com
Instagram: @harmarsuperstar
Twitter: @harmarsuperstar
Spotify: Har Mar on Spotify
Bandcamp: Har Mar on Bandcamp
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYrE-FBRjAccgk6gdrQv9jQ

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 92 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on March 16, 2021. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

Sean Tillman aka Har Mar Superstar

Making it by distance actually opened up a lot of creative space that I never would have been able to access. We definitely made an album that we would never have been able to make and I’m really proud of it and I think it’s one of the best records I’ve ever been a part of.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:18

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:42

Hi listeners, it’s me, Nancy Davis Kho, creator and host of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast and author of The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. If you ever spent an afternoon with a cassette tape and recorder hoping to hear a specific song come on the radio so you could hysterically press “Record” in the split second before it started, you’re in the right place.

This is a special episode and here’s why: I invited one of my all-time favorite live performers onto the show to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one, and he said yes. So I’m dispensing with the ads for today’s episode and we’re gonna get right to it. This, my friends, is how you handle a bucket list guest.

Today I’m talking with Har Mar Superstar, also known as Sean Tillman. Har Mar Superstar started as a solo, modern pop R&B side-project for Sean back in 1999. Hailing from the Twin Cities, Sean quickly gained notoriety worldwide for boisterous, sweaty live shows that often ended disrobed down to a pair of briefs. Him! Not the audience! I don’t know, maybe both.

He toured the world, priding himself on being an “artist’s artist,” championed by his peers like The Strokes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Faint, who were among the bands that selected him as a main-support opening act.

As time passed the shtick began to fade and gave way to more honesty in his albums & live performances, with the solo act morphing into a full band. Everything really came together with the release of Har Mar’s landmark, classic soul album Bye Bye 17 in 2013, followed by 2016’s album Best Summer Ever. By then, the band had grown into an unstoppable 7-piece behemoth, famous as much for their entertainment sweat equity as they were for their ability to seamlessly move through sets of widely varying styles, energy, and raw emotion. 2016 is, by the way, when I saw my first Har Mar show and became an instant fan. The new album, Roseville, came out in early March, and we going to hear a couple of cuts from Roseville today, some new music for your March.

After living in London, LA, and Brooklyn for 14 years, Tillmann is now back in Minneapolis and executed a pandemic pivot that may surprise you.

So hop into the recording booth with Sean Tillman and me and I promise, we’ll deliver.

[MUSIC]

I am delighted to welcome you to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Sean Tillman! Thank you so much for being here.

Sean Tillman 03:10

Hey, thanks for having me.

Nancy 03:11

Yeah, I can’t wait to talk about the new album. I got a sneak preview and Roseville is great. But we always start the Midlife Mixtape Podcast with that über-important question: What was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Sean 03:24

Okay. Well, you know, it’s hard for me to actually answer that truthfully. I’m going to say my first big concert…

But to give it a little bit of background: I grew up in a town called Owatonna, Minnesota. It’s an hour south of the Twin Cities. And we had our thriving own little art scene, our own music scene. So I went to a lot of shows put on by older high school kids when I was in junior high.

We’d go to the VFW and see the Toyota’s and the Lotus Eaters and all my favorite bands all the time, when I was little. So I was lucky to have that and become part of that scene and learn how to be a musician through that whole kind of world. I liken it to that movie Son of Rambow, if you’ve ever seen it where basically two kids in England, or maybe Wales? They are forbidden to see the movie Rambo. So they just run around with a VHS recorder, making their own version of what they think Rambo would be, before they ever get to see it. That’s basically what our music scene was in Owatonna.

Anyway, fast forward to being 13. My first real big production show that I ever to go to was Guns N’ Roses, the first Use Your Illusion tour at the Target Center in Minneapolis in 1991. So I was 13.

Nancy 4:38

Nice. Formative show, I take it?

Sean

Definitely! I still count Guns N’ Roses as… Appetite for Destruction is definitely in my top five albums of all time. Still. So yeah, I still went to see the reunion tours when they got Slash and Duff back in the band. I went three different times in the last few years. And I will keep going back because I love Guns N’ Roses.

Nancy 05:13

I love a reunion tour. I’ve got nothing against the reunion tour.

Sean 05:17

No, I mean, especially when Guns N’ Roses were going forever and Axl just came back – he’s a machine now. He sounds amazing. He looks amazing. And just to have the full force, Slash/Duff/Axl combo is a huge deal for me.

Nancy 05:36

So you and I are Gen Xers which means we grew up in the heyday of mall concerts. And I wondered if you’d ever seen a show at the Har Mar Mall for which your band is named?

Sean 05:46

I don’t know if they…did they have shows at the Har Mar Mall?

Nancy 05:51

I don’t know! You’re the expert on the Har Mar Mall.

Sean 05:52

If they did, I missed them because … Har Mar is not the caliber of mall that they would have concerts in,. I don’t think, unless they happened in the early ‘80s or the ‘70s. I always laughed about the potential of doing a show at that mall. But it’s more about me, chasing down shoppers with a speaker that’s a backpack and things like that.

I never really saw any of the mall concerts like at the Mall of America or anything. They still happen sometimes. I walked by an ad for Fifth Element signing – they’re a girl group. So that that was happening like a year or two ago?

Nancy 06:21

Well, I have to tell you, I have a really good friend who grew up in the Twin Cities. A few years back I posted on Facebook that I’d been to see a Har Mar show and how fantastic it was.

And I’d forgotten his older sister is also a friend on Facebook. She was MISS HAR MAR. She was so shooketh when she heard about your band. She’s like, “Wait a minute!” And I’m like, “I don’t know, did you ever climb on a riser wearing just leggings? I don’t think you ARE the Har Mar Superstar unless you’ve wrapped yourself in a Mexican blanket and swayed while you sang.”

Sean 07:17

Amazing. I didn’t know they had a pageant at the mall. That’s amazing.

Nancy 07:23

If you ever get rolled by a crowd of aging beauty queens, you’re going to know who it was. It was the Misses Har Mars.

Sean 07:29

Wow. I’m blown away.

Nancy 07:32

We’re gonna dive into Roseville in a minute. But I wanted to make sure listeners have a baseline of the general vibe of your music. It’s really compulsively singable beautiful soulful r&b. But it has to be said, your music has a real sense of humor. We’ve been talking on this show in the last couple of episodes about the importance, and the difficulty, in finding fun at midlife. It’s real. And in midlife during a pandemic, it’s more important than ever. And yet, it gets harder as you get older, and life just feels heavier. And that was before 2020 hit.

I just want to start by asking about that. I mean, you’re different from a lot of rock stars who take themselves super seriously. How important is that to you? And how do you keep it alive in your music?

Sean 08:23

Well, it’s it’s one of those things where it’s kind of goes both ways.

I mean, I definitely started Har Mar Superstar heavily tongue in cheek, more about fun than anything. The whole project was born 22 years ago or so, out of a distinct disdain for boring indie rock shows and people just staring at the feet and wanting to make people dance. And so I went kind of more tongue in cheek with the lyrics and everything. I think people thought that it was more tongue in cheek than I actually intended for it to be. Because I was a little chubby white boy that was known for playing punk and like kind of indie stuff. And to hear me sing r&b, it would take people back a little bit just once they saw the face that it was coming out of. And that’s totally understandable, and it was actually a lot of the part of the fun.

As my music started to get more serious, I had to figure out how to broach the aspect of making people not focus as much on the wild party underwear guy that I had been for years. Starting to be accepted as more of just a musician was a challenge. But you know, that’s one of the perks of having a 20 plus year career, is that you can go through phases like that. I can get to this point where I’m 43 and the last three albums I’ve released are fairly serious. They have a sense of humor here and there. But for the most part, I’m just relying on good music, more than the shock theatrics or anything like that.

So when it comes to having a live show, I still want the audience to have a ton of fun. I can still accomplish that while having an emotional experience here and there. And I can also share some earnest, honest moments, and still also can just make dumb jokes the whole way through. And I think people will appreciate that because I’m not taking myself amazingly seriously. But I have gone through enough in my life and had those experiences where they’re just as important to me as fun is.

Nancy 10:18

Having seen you perform live, there is just this joy and energy that I think is absent in a lot of shows that I go – that I WENT to in The Before Times. Maybe it’ll be there when I go back. But I really appreciate that. And I just want everybody in the audience is listening to get that if you see Har Mar Superstar on stage, it’s the express lane to finding that fun that we need so much.

Sean 10:32

Ah, well, thanks. And that’s exactly kind of one of the reasons I’m hesitant to go back first. When venues open up and things I want everybody that comes to my shows to feel safe, and I don’t want to have to police the fun. So I’m gonna wait till everything, all the kinks get worked out basically. Otherwise, I’m just gonna be on stage feeling awful that people are dancing too close together. Like I have to say something.

They’re very physical shows and sweaty times. I want everyone to have a chance at the vaccine and all that kind of stuff before we start, you know, doing all the close-up dances and required breathing into each other’s faces. That was a big part of the show. We can’t do the show necessarily like it was before because everyone’s required to get really close to each other’s faces and breathe.

Nancy 12:16

Check this out. I saw you in 2016, I saw you at Lincoln Hall in Chicago. I’d met up with a friend on the East Coast and we’re like, “We’re gonna have a Chicago weekend. We’re just gonna have fun.” And I was in charge of entertainment. So I’m said, “Oh, I’ve heard of this band. I know, Lincoln Hall’s cool, we’ll go there!”  And not only was it an amazing night musically, but there was a moment where I went to the bar for a drink and these two young Millennial women were standing there and they were so lovely. And I told them so. Maybe I’d had a couple margaritas. I said, “You’re just lovely. Your lipstick is so cool!” And they whipped out their makeup bag and did my makeup for me at the bar and I came back with my two drinks to my friend she said, “What the fuck happened to you at the bar? Did you have a makeover?” and I’m like, “I DID! WITH STRANGERS!”

Sean

That’s. Amazing.

Nancy

Things that may not happen in 2021 for a little while. We’ll get back to it.

Sean 13:07

We gotta hope for that. Was that the night – did I have Solid Gold with me playing that night?  I’m trying to think of what show that was … with the Virgins?

Nancy 13:17

I was thinking of that Gertrude Stein quote, “Alice heard things tonight that she won’t she won’t be able to understand for years.” [EDITORS NOTE from Nancy – I butchered the quote. It’s “It will take Alice years to understand the things she’s said tonight.” Still! You get my point] That’s the kind of night it was for me. So much was happening on stage. You probably had all of that there.

The other thing that I love about your music is that you’ve collaborated with everybody from Karen O the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to John Tillman, Father John Misty. And you gave Lizzo an early break.

Can you tell us about how you helped Lizzo early in her career?

Sean 13:00

Well, I wouldn’t say it was a break as much as a pit stop on her way to inevitable stardom. Lizzo has always been the biggest, most boisterous personality in the room. It’s always been obvious that Lizzo was on her way to being a diva that you will respect and who will dominate the globe.

Nancy

Appropriately so.

Sean

Yeah, definitely. So when Lizzo put out her first album, Lizzo Bangers, it came out on a local label in Minneapolis called Totally Gross National Product. We were hanging out a lot, ending up in bedroom studios in the middle of the night with, you know, 10 other people laying down hooks on whatever we could. We were always friends.

I had a tour coming up and I was hoping to add backup vocals and make my live show more interesting than just four dudes on stage. Lizzo’s album was just about to come out. So I came up with the idea of like, “Lizzo, if you want to open all the shows, and sing in my band, you can get paid twice and then it makes it more affordable for you to do it and for me to do it.” It just was a no brainer. So we did that. Lizzo came to New York when I was living there and then we rehearsed for a few days and just went and did a whole US tour and a whole UK tour.

And honestly, by the end of that six weeks or two months that we were touring together really heavily, Lizzo was out the gate. Already huge in the UK. And by the time our UK dates had ended, she obviously probably should have been headlining the show, which is totally something that happens all the time. And I was super proud of her and psyched. We kept doing it on and off over the next year – Lizzo would be jump on stage with me or do little tour dates and stuff like that. I mean, it was just one of those synchronicity type of things, where it was the right place at the right time for both of us.

And then, you know, just watching her career go next level, just through the stars basically, was just amazing.

And also, totally expected. There’s nobody I would have put my money on more than her to become such a huge impact on just culture and music. And she’s just so talented and great. And I couldn’t be more psyched for her.

Nancy 15:24

I see on social media that you’re always amplifying the work of other musicians. How important is that to you as part of your work?

Sean 15:32

It’s really important to help other people get heard at first. I mean, I was offered the same kind of amplification by other artists. I was lucky enough to have The Strokes take me on tour and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a bunch of people. That turned people on to my music that still listened to me,  or maybe just even heard of me that one time and then they’ll have like that memory forever.

I think it’s really important for people that have established themselves to definitely raise the profiles of those around them and people who are just starting, or people who’ve just never gotten their due. How much effort does it really take to tweet when you like a song? Why don’t you just tell everybody else you like it, and then they might too? Or just wear their t-shirt in a picture somewhere. I always love that.

I figured that out early on. I would send my first band, Calvin Crime’s shirts to people in Sonic Youth or anybody. And if they popped up in a fanzine I was reading wearing my shirt, I’d be like, “YES, it’s the greatest feeling in the world!”

Nancy

That’s awesome.

Sean

I don’t know. I just think it’s fun turning people on to stuff that’s good.

Nancy 16:46

Yeah. And I think wherever we are at this stage of our life, in whatever field we find ourselves, there’s ways we can do that. You may not be wearing somebody’s band t shirt at your accounting firm. But you know, you’ve gotten to a certain level in your industry, it’s important to give back that way and to just try to help open the door for the people coming after you.  What else you are going to do? You’re middle aged. You’ve got a lot of free time. You may as well.

Sean 17:10

Exactly. Probably your life is probably in a spot where you can afford to put the shine on somebody, right? Be generous.

Nancy 17:18

Yeah. All right. So now we’re going to talk about Roseville, your new album. Is it your seventh LP? I was trying to count.

Sean 17:22

It is. It’s the seventh Har Mar LP and probably the 15th album I’ve made in my life of some form or another.

Nancy 17:31

I had Teddy Thompson on the show last summer. And he told me that it was a mistake to think that an album is about a certain… he said most people think that it’s about a person or a certain topic, but it’s more complex than that. So at the risk of making myself sound like an ass a second time… What’s the what’s the major theme of Roseville? What the story you’re trying to tell with it?

Sean 17:52

Um, it’s really it’s hard to say. There’s not …

Nancy 17:55

Ugh, Teddy was right, and I sound dumb again. Sorry.

Sean 17:57

No, you don’t sound dumb. I just basically made this album… It comes out of a time of moving back to Minneapolis. My friend Jesse Willenbring kind of summed it up the best way in two words: “Existential Homecoming”.

I moved back to Minneapolis in 2016, after being in New York and LA cumulatively for about 12 or 13 years. It’s a lot about the joy of coming back and finding my footing, and also like the hardships I found. I also quit drinking a couple years ago, which is a huge part of that story. And I also fell in love and let myself explore our relationship enough to trust somebody so completely that now we are engaged and fully in love.

So it’s kind of all the ups and downs associated with all of those things. And I think for the most part, it’s wildly positive, and there’s some definite down moments, which I address, but I don’t play up. It kind of just comes from a place of…I felt like heavy expectation at the beginning of this pandemic to have a lot of output. Because I think a lot of people were like, Artists are gonna have all this time to make all this new output, it’s gonna be great! And I think that was the opposite effect for pretty much anyone I know that that makes records or does anything like this. At first, it was just like, I am so heavily affected by the weird nothingness. It’s not even depression, it might even be a boost up from depression. But this weird nothingness is so hard to navigate, because there are no highs or lows. So there was that.

And then obviously, the uprising in Minneapolis, which then followed the whole fall into the whole world, rightfully so, made me, as a straight white male, realize even more how much my opinions and feelings were not necessary, right then, for a long time. And I pivoted to more of a point of just listening all the time and trying to help as much as possible without imparting any of my feelings on it, because I knew they just weren’t what was needed right then. And still not. I just felt like it was a heavy learning time for everyone. So that even extended my hiatus from writing for another four months after June or so.  I wasn’t even really comfortable finishing a song or even approaching a song until maybe October.

I was just kind of in a creative black hole for a long time. And then, starting in about late September/ early October 2020, I really felt like, I need to do something. And I’m about to start working at the Post Office in a month, but I’m going to use this time to fully just write this entire album that I have maybe a couple songs up right now.

And that’s how it worked. I just threw myself in there and just wrote it. That’s how it’s always been with every album I’ve ever made. Once there’s two or three songs, the rest come really easily. It’s just taking those two or three, takes maybe years.

Nancy 21:23

So it took a month, once you got started?

Sean 21:26

About. Yeah, I had a bunch of starts and then I just knew where it needed to go. And then once that train leaves the station…I made a schedule with all my bandmates about how I needed everything distance recorded by New Year’s Eve or day or something. And everybody’s like, “Cool. Yeah, we can do that.”

Nancy 21:47

I wondered about that, from the production side. How does that work during a pandemic, if you can’t all be in studio together?

Sean 21:53

Everybody’s luckily figured out how to, or already known but if they didn’t, figured out how to record at home really well. And with apps and plugins and all that kind of stuff, it’s really easy to make any recording sound pretty good, or usable as you need it to. And I’m lucky enough to have two of my bandmates produce the album, Ryan Mach and Aaron Baum. So I would go in on one-on- one sessions with them after we’d get a test or something here and there. But for the most part everybody just recorded separately. And then we just passed around mixes and stuff.

I think the hardest part was finishing because you get everybody’s opinions and everyone’s performances at the end. And then all of a sudden you’re like, “Okay, this is the mix,” because we had to cut down tons of different performances and ideas and nobody got to be in the room together to discuss things. So people would get attached to certain things and all this really understandable stuff. The starting and finishing is always the hardest part of any creative process. It was just a little bit doubled for this one.

But I think the fact that people had time and so much passion for the project made it so much better. And I think making it by distance actually opened up a lot of creative space that I never would have been able to access. We definitely made an album that we would never have been able to make and I’m really proud of it and I think it’s one of the best records I’ve ever been a part of or written myself.

Nancy 23:22

Let’s hear track from Roseville. We’re going to listen to “Where We Began” by Har Mar Superstar

23:29

[“Where We Began,” from Roseville, by Har Mar Superstar]

Nancy 26:00

Alright, we’re back with Sean Tillman of Har Mar Superstar. That was “Where We Began”. I love that song.

Sean 26:08

Aw thanks! That one was written before the whole pandemic, before everything. We were on tour with Afghan Whigs and took a night in the studio at Sonic Ranch in Torneo, Texas on a day off, and Jake Baldwin, the trumpet player from my band, came up with that chord progression. Then I came up with the melody and all of a sudden there was a song. That was one we’ve been playing live for a couple years now and, I think people felt comforted that there was something new that would lead to an album eventually. Which it did.

Nancy 26:48

So that was one of your anchor songs that got you going.

Sean

Definitely.

Nancy 26:52

Sean, what’s the best way for people to keep up with the news about when you will be doing that safe touring – where we can all dance up on each other again? What’s the best place for them to go to get the music and keep up with what you’re doing?

Sean 27:07

Well, you know HarMarSuperstar.com is always a safe bet for having tour dates and my web store is there if you want to preorder the vinyl or…

Nancy 27:18

Yeah, act fast if you want to preorder the vinyl because I’ve already lost out on the orange vinyl and the red vinyl. I finally got the clear vinyl because it sells out like that! But I’m excited, I got the clear vinyl!

Sean 27:34

Sweet.

There’s always going to be black vinyl. And as a bonus, we’re putting out 500 clear pink with opaque red swirl in it in addition – that is going to be at indie stores on May 21.

Nancy

Is that Record Store Day?

Sean 27:53

It’s not Record Store Day, but it’s my own personal little Record Store Day that I’m sending people out to go get that version. Fat Beats distributes that, so if you ask your record store in town that carries vinyl to put in an order from Fat Beats and get that special edition, they should be able to. And there will always be black vinyl available. So you’ll be able to get it on vinyl.

Nancy 28:13

Nice. And I’ll include links to all of the Har Mar Superstar sites in the show notes, so you guys can find them really easily.

Sean 28:21

Bandcamp is always good.

Nancy 28:23

Yeah. All that. Stream it wherever you listen.

Sean

Yeah.

Nancy 28:25

So you mentioned this as kind of a throwaway, as we were talking… people in midlife, they LOVE a good reinvention story, because it tells us that A.) we’re not stuck doing the thing we’re doing now forever. And B.) a lot of us during the pandemic have had to get very creative. So I follow you on Instagram and one day in November. up pops a picture of you in a US Postal Service vest.

Sean

Yeah.

Nancy

You became a mailman in Minneapolis.

Sean

I did!

Nancy 28:51

How did that happen?

Sean 28:53

I was going to the post office so much because I was shipping out records. People were really great in the pandemic about supporting artists and just using that Bandcamp Day platform where they – they still are doing the first Friday of every month, not taking a commission at all. And so the money just goes directly to the artist. So I was shipping a lot of records, going to the post office, which I was really, really staunch in supporting. Because, you know, I just I love it.

Nancy 29:22

Who doesn’t love getting mail?

Sean 29:24

I like how their system works. It’s just, for me, better than UPS, better than all that stuff. It gets the job done, and it’s just such a staple in life. And when it was threatened there for a while politically and everything I was buying merch from them. I was making sure that everything I shipped out, the money was going directly to them. And it was just a time when I just felt like God, I love the post office. This is great.

And I was in there so much that the cashiers are like, “You might as well just work here, you’re here so much,” and I was like, “You know, it’s not a bad idea.”

So, as I was walking home, and I ran into our mail carrier Tracy, who is a badass. And I was like, “What’s going on? Is the post office gonna exist in four months if I apply right now?” And she was like, “Oh, my God, you want to apply? That’s amazing. I have a special card. If you apply through me and through that, then you will be in at this location of the Post Office and you’ll get to work here.” And I was like, “Oh my God, that’s exactly what I was hoping, I don’t want to get shuffled off to some other station where I don’t know anybody or the neighborhood or anything.” And so I did that. And I’m lucky I did that, because a lot of people don’t know that.

Nancy 30:39

It seems like it would be the best job. I’ve always thought, that because you’re outdoors checking in with nice people, I hope. You get to see dogs. You get to show off your legs, although maybe you’re not doing that in the Minnesota winter.

Sean 30:52

Yeah, well, it is the best. It’s hardcore work, though. It’s like one of those things where for the first year you are doing everything that everybody else can’t or isn’t around for. So it’s 12 hour days, sometimes thirteen hours, and six days a week, just out there. And you get so much good exercise; I average 30,000 steps a shift, and you’re carrying stuff around. You’re the only person a lot of people see. People are really excited that you’re there. Everybody’s so nice to the mail carrier.

Nancy 31:23

Do your customers know that they’re getting their mail delivered by a rock star?

Sean 31:26

Some people do. Some people know. I don’t have one particular route I do. So it’s more fun to be like kind of elusive right now and just show up randomly at people’s doors once in a while. So a lot of people are like, “Oh my God, I’ve been waiting for this day!” It’s kind of like being like the mayor of your neighborhood

Nancy 31:48

Yeah! Honestly, during the pandemic, if my mail carrier rolls up, I’m like, “Peter’s here! It’s a person I’m not related to! Fantastic!”

Sean 32:00

Yeah, exactly. It’s good that way. And it’s just good to keep my mind off other things not happening and to actually have an income and not have to worry about it. For me, it’s a totally different feeling. I’ve been working my ass off for 25 years, but not knowing if I’m going to make three cents an hour or $3,000 an hour… it’s you just never know. Just putting in these hours and knowing how much I’m going to get two weeks later is like a real novelty at first, and then just kind of a lifesaver as far as stress and tension go.  I’m looking forward to being a valuable part of the system enough where hopefully in a year or two, I’ll get my own route. And then I can hopefully tour for a couple months a year and I don’t think I need more than that.

Now that I’m entering my mid 40s… the pandemic was definitely a midlife crisis I needed to be fast forwarded through, and it did the job there. So I feel really grateful for that, and the fact that I still have the get up and go, and the back that is necessary to do this job. I really do love it. I do love it. It’s a great thing.

Nancy 33:18

You know, I wrote a book about encouraging people to write letters.

Sean

Oh, really?

Nancy 33:22

Yeah, it’s called The Thank-You Project and it’s about sending out letters to people who have helped, shaped, or inspired you. And I do say, don’t email it. It’s got to go in the mail. Because when you get something like that in your post box, you can hold on to it, you can reread it…it’s meaningful.

Sean 33:39

I started collecting all the letters from my parents and cards I get. It’s one of those things that you know, there’s a point in your life when you’re like, “Why would I ever need this crap?” And then you’re like, “You know, these people aren’t going to be around forever.” I can’t wait to just be able to relive memories of people.

I think a lot of that is very inherent in the way people write. And even their handwriting and the way…my mom, when she writes a card, she starts on the right hand of the card, and then does *continued* with an arrow and for some reason it goes to the left. And I’m like, “That’s a very interesting brain thing that probably was taught to her by her mom.” And sometimes I find myself doing it, like “What this is, this goes against my whole brain makeup, but I do it because my mom did.”

Nancy 34:27

I’m actually looking at that that same box of letters I have here in my office for my parents. I lost my mom in December, my dad died in 2016. I keep thinking at some point, I will sit down with this box and start reading Mom’s letters from the most recent – she had dementia. So going down in the box is going to bring me back to who she was 10 years ago. And I’m not ready for that emotional journey during the pandemic. But someday, I’m really grateful that I’m going to have the opportunity to do that. So I just keep it in a corner. And I try not to make eye contact with it.

Sean 35:00

Yeah, it’s just one of those things. That stuff’s important. I used to keep a big box of all my press and all that stuff, before the internet when you’d actually make clippings. And there was one day I just threw that away in a dumpster and was like, “You know what, this the dumbest thing to keep. I should be keeping letters people send to me, I should be keeping documentation of good people that aren’t myself.” You know? That’s a whole headspace flip that that’s been very important to me. People do love to receive a letter in the mail.

Nancy 35:34

Especially when it’s delivered by Har Mar Superstar.

Okay, I didn’t know where to put this observation, so I’m just putting it here. You are such a good dancer. I always include a video with the show notes for every episode, so I’m putting in your Minnesota Timberwolves halftime show.

Sean

Oh, yeah.

Nancy

Oh, my God, you and the Timberwolves dancers and these super talented child hip hoppers raise the roof. How are you able to keep up with your dance moves at all during the pandemic?

Sean 36:03

I mean, you know, they’re all pretty like naturally instilled.

Nancy 36:10

He’s just got it, you guys, he’s just got it.

Sean 36:12

I’ve been mimicking dance moves on TV since I was about three years old.

Nancy

Did you also go to the Solid Gold School of dancing like I did, on Saturday afternoons?

Sean 36:23

Pretty much. I saved up my allowance money in order to buy the Alfonso Ribeiro Breakdance video. You know, when he was still on Silver Spoons or whatever, and it came with a fake autographed piece of cardboard to do back spins on in the living room. His breakdance tape. So I was in from that moment on, but I’m just enamored by Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and all that stuff.

Nancy 36:51

I have a friend who dated The Glove on the Boogaloo set.

Sean

WHAT

Nancy

She was in with The Glove. That’s all I’m going to tell you.

Sean 37:01

Dang, that sounds almost repulsive in a way.

Nancy 37:05

It would be worse if it were the other way around.

Alright, we’re running out of time. I know you’re super busy with everything you’ve got going on. But we always ask one final question, which is: what is one piece of advice you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Sean 37:21

I wish I could go back and tell myself – and I think younger generations are more in tune with this already anyway, I don’t think they drink as much. But I think drinking to blackout isn’t as funny as you think it is. At first you’re like, “Oh, this is hilarious!” And then it becomes a pattern. And then it becomes very embarrassing. And all of a sudden, you’re a 40-year-old guy. And like, I can’t do that anymore. I’ve got to know what went on and where it was and then be responsible for those around me.

So be careful when experimenting with anything that is out of your depth. Don’t go too far with anything like that. Or you’ll just have to quit and then you won’t be able to do that.

Nancy 38:05

Well congratulations on your sobriety. No, I’m serious, because I know a lot of people in the program and that is hard work. So that’s really an amazing change.

Sean 38:14

It’s especially hard with booze being the main form of payment in a lot of early music careers and stuff like that. Just drink tickets and things. I quit long before the pandemic so that helped me stay sane through this.

Nancy 38:30

Alright, Sean Tillman of Har Mar Superstar: It’s been so great to talk with you. Cannot wait to see you in concert. Maybe you’ll come to The Chapel in San Francisco again, that’s where I saw you last.

Sean 38:40

Oh I LOVE The Chapel, I really hope that’s still there a year from now! You think it will be, right?

Nancy 38:44

Yeah, I do. I think they’re doing a lot, they’re actually doing some outdoor concerts – with obviously really limited audiences. I have to tell you that when I saw you there last it was the night before the 2016 election. My friends and I went in early celebration of the win we would have the next day.

Sean 39:04

Oh my god we were all in that same boat. We played down by Santa Cruz that night and as the results came in, it was so awful. The next day felt as eerie and weird as 9/11 did, just like looking at other people in California and being like how the fuck did this happen?

Nancy 39:18

I know, I know. At least we had one good night before the next four years began.

Sean 39:25

Damn! That was a super fun show. I love The Chapel and thanks for coming to that. Yeah, we’ll be playing there again.

Nancy 39:33

All right, well, I will be there and I’ll bring all my people with me.

Sean 39:37

It’ll either be The Chapel or three nights at Bottom of the Hill just to extend our San Francisco time, you know what I mean?

Nancy 39:44

Yeah! Or The Independent!

Sean

Love The Independent. Great American Music Hall. There’s so many good ones!

Nancy 39:55

Great American… Oh, no, they’re still around. It’s Slim’s that closed. Support your local venues, people! Go make a donation, go by some merch!

Sean 40:04

Tell the government to help, too.

Nancy 40:07

Alright, let’s hear one more song from Roseville. This is Dealer’s Choice. What do you want to play us?

Sean 40:11

Oh, man. So here’s one that people might not have heard. It’s kind of on the more mellow side. But we’re doing a midlife mixtape right now. This jam will take you straight into the sweet sound. Let’s do “Hello Mr. Sandman.”

Nancy 40:28

I actually toyed with making that my choice, because at midlife you’re tired all the time.

Sean 40:33

This is like welcoming Mr. Sandman. And then some backup vocal and trumpet odyssey at the end that will just take you into a good place. It’s one of my favorites on the album that’ll probably never be a single because it’s not that kind of song.

Nancy 40:46

It’ll be a single on this show. Let’s hear “Hello Mr. Sandman”. You guys check out Roseville, Har Mar Superstar. Sean thank you so much for being here!

Sean 40:53

Thanks for having me. Let’s do it again sometime.

Nancy

Okay, cool!

40:56

[“Hello Mr. Sandman” from Roseville, by Har Mar Superstar]

46:50

Time to wake up! Goodbye Mr. Sandman! Wake up! I didn’t think you feel asleep during that. That’s a great song, isn’t it?

You know what? In lieu of supporting the podcast by listening to a sponsor’s ad today – the money from which helps me just about cover the costs of creating the show – I’m going to ask you do something different if you want to support the Midlife Mixtape Podcast and all we’re about.  That is to consider making a donation to a music venue near you where you’d like to see a live show in the coming year. Let’s give Har Mar Superstar lots of choices of places to play all over the country. Support your local music venues!

Let me know what you thought of the episode – drop me a line at dj@midlifemixtape.com, or send me a message via Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter @midlifemixtape. And in honor of today’s episode, I am also giving you my snail mail address! Buy some stamps and send me a letter to 4200 Park Blvd, PO Box #639, Oakland California 94602.

Sean mentioned how the new album is “wildly positive, with definite down moments to be addressed” – if that isn’t a definition of GenX midlife I don’t know what is. So in that spirit, I’m inviting you to join me for the next episode with geriatrician Dr. Leslie Kernisan, who has a new book out about the best way to care for our aging parents. She’ll be answering a lot of listener questions about how to care for our aging parents with compassion without losing our minds. In other words, a potentially down moment to be addressed…It’s an important conversation and I hope you’ll be a part of it.

And remember, every rating and review makes it easier for other listeners to find me, and hey, it cheers me up when I see a happy review. So I’m grateful to you for adding your thoughts, wherever you listen! Catch you again in two weeks!

48:45

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

 

The post Ep 93 Har Mar Superstar appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                Related StoriesEp 87 Potentialist Joanna BloorEp 92 Play Expert Jeff HarryEp 91 “Share Your Stuff” Author Laura Tremaine 

Humanity Hotline

 

“I’m calling to check in on you. Do you have power?”

“We have power, thank goodness, but still no water. Our whole downstairs is flooded, but we’re ok.”

“That’s terrible, Barbara, I’m so sorry! What about food, are you ok for food?”

“Yes, we’re fine for a few more days, and we still have our bottled water. Listen, it could have been worse, I can’t complain.”

“Barbara, you absolutely can complain! I’m here to listen – you go ahead and vent, and I’ll absorb it all.”

I don’t know Barbara, in Katy, Texas. But that’s the conversation she and I had last week, thanks to Beto O’Rourke’s “Powered by the People” organization. It had pivoted its GOTV phone bank infrastructure to do welfare checks on Texans impacted by the winter storms. Anyone, anywhere could join by Zoom for a short training session and then jump right on the auto-dialer and start checking in on folks all over the Lone Star State, to suss out needs and connect them to local resources, thanks to an easy-to-follow script customized for location of the person being called.

I would like to formally request that we make this a permanent, nationwide, non-crisis program. If what this country needs most right now is a boost in compassion and unity, I can’t think of a faster way to get there.

I can’t speak for Barbara in Texas, but Nancy in California rarely encounters people with widely differing views. Not that I know where Barbara lands on the political spectrum, because that didn’t come up in the conversation. What mattered was whether her basic needs were met. Whether she was safe. Whether there was something I could do to help.

After we talked a bit longer, I let her know that I was calling from Northern California, and the conversation immediately shifted. Now she was worried about ME, and whether the fires last fall had impacted us. I reassured her that we had been spared (except for the unbreathable orange air day), and that with the winter rains here, we’re fine for now. We closed our conversation by telling one another to stay safe, stay healthy, that better days are ahead.

What would it be like to have those kinds of conversations taking place, all the time? I’m picturing a 24/7 hotline where anyone can request or place a call to someone in another part of the country, and just have a chat, maybe using some question prompts provided in advance. Think “Request Line”, where instead of talking to one of The Dynamic Three, you talk to Charlie in Iowa or Tonya in Georgia. Think 867-5309, but with more people than just Jenny on the other end. Think “Psychic Network,” but instead of predictions, you talk about traits you inherited from your grandparents. (Dionne Warwick just followed me on Twitter and I’m willing to pitch her to be the spokeperson, if this gets off the ground.)

When I interviewed Reconciliation Activist J. Christopher Collins on the podcast a few weeks back about his new book “Mending Our Union: Healing Our Communities Through Courageous Conversation”, he talked about how having conversations about difficult topics with strangers is preferable to taking those ticking time bombs to family gatherings first. It is a lot easier to practice navigating hard topics, absent all the family dynamics and history.

A national “Humanity Hotline” would give us all practice in listening, in sharing our own stories, in understanding what it is like for people in very different circumstances from ours. Also, it would give us much-needed practice in talking to people who aren’t in our pod, which will come in handy whenever we’re finally sprung later this year. And a great distraction, when you’ve finished watching Netflix in its entirety.

I enjoyed my conversations with Texans so much last week that I signed up again yesterday to do follow-up calls with people who had, in the course of those first conversations, indicated a need for help. Yesterday’s calls were designed to just make sure everyone who needed help had received it.

They hadn’t.

Resources are still very thin on the ground in some parts of Texas and even if the local organizations know someone needs help, they may not be able to provide it. If my conversation with Barbara and others last week made me feel useful, yesterday’s calls made me feel powerless.

I reached one woman living in an Extended Stay America hotel, with her disabled mother. Their home had been destroyed by Hurricane Harvey and they’d been in the hotel for months, along with other hurricane refugees. Their hotel was without water and power for days. The power had been restored by the time I reached them, but they were almost out of food and water, and while the residents were sharing with one another, there simply wasn’t enough to go around.

Then I spoke to a disabled woman who lived alone and had no food or water. We were both crying by the end of the call as I reassured her that help was coming, help was coming, help was coming. I have no idea whether help was coming – I filled out all the boxes and forwarded the information via the phone dialer system, but was there even someone where she lived to give her help? I don’t know.

When Barbara and I were almost done talking last week, she said this: “Know you are making a difference with these calls. It means so much to know people care.”

She was right. Carlota and Dora and the others at the hotel, Dyree alone in her room. Orlando, who had food and water but whose niece had moved out, leaving him unable to cover the rent anymore … I went to bed last night thinking of them, worrying about them, praying they’ll all be ok. I feel responsible in a way I didn’t before those calls. It feels heavy, but I think that’s how insight is supposed to feel sometimes.

Those calls had made a difference. In me.

Here’s a list of resources to help people in Texas.
Here’s a link to Powered By the People – they’re doing welfare checks again today if you want to get involved.

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Ep 90 Reconciliation Activist J. Christopher Collins

“A sense of endless possibility”: Different Together founder J. Christopher Collins on his new book, “Mending Our Union,” why face-to-face conversation by people with differing viewpoints can foster hope, and practical tips for tense talks.

J Christopher Collins’ website
Mending Our Union
Different Together
Glide Memorial Church
Living Room Conversations
Braver Angels

I could be wrong. I suppose it’s possible. (I could be right)

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 90 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on February 2, 2021. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

 

J Christopher Collins 00:00

I’ve asked some of the Different Together participants, why do you keep on coming back here? And I commonly hear that, “it’s because I’m more hopeful. I’m less dismissive of people’s opinions.” And that is a starting point that is hopeful.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:16

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent].

Nancy Davis Kho 00:38

Hi listeners – This is Nancy Davis Kho, host of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, and author of The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. Valentine’s Day is coming and if you’re thinking, “Oh great, yet another holiday in captivity,” may I suggest a way to make it stand out from every other Sunday since last March? Write your Valentine, your Galentine or your Bacchanal-entine a gratitude letter for all the ways they’ve improved your life, and hand it over along with a copy of my book! You can find The Thank-You Project in bookstores, online, or for audio download and here’s some incentive – if you buy the book and you’re planning to give it to your Valentine, email me at dj@midlifemixtape.com tell me who you’ll gift the book and letter to and I’ll mail you a personalized bookplate to stick inside! Valentine’s Day SOLVED. Now let’s get back to real romance by which I mean, rewatching Bridgerton.

[MUSIC]

Hi everyone, and Happy 2021! You know if you listened to Episode 89 at the end of last year that I needed to take a bit of personal time off after the death of my mom in December. And I just wanted to start off this episode in this year by thanking all of you who reached out to check in on me and express condolences. It was a rough go as, frankly, was appropriate, and even once I started feeling better, I really couldn’t really exhale until after Inauguration Day.

But I found once January 20th was behind me, I was actually feeling inspired and excited about the chance to talk to someone for the podcast and in particular today’s guest, J. Christopher Collins.

Chris is a native Texan and the founder of the Different Together Project at GLIDE Memorial Church in San Francisco. He’s also the author of the new book, Mending Our Union: Healing Our Communities Through Courageous Conversations. Upon graduating from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, Chris was recognized with the Presidential Award, which the highest honor given to students who have demonstrated excellence in leadership, academics, and service to the community. After 27 years in Texas, Chris moved to New York and earned his Masters of Public Administration and Public Policy Analysis at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and he now lives in San Francisco with his wife.

Let’s settle in for a courageous conversation with Chris.

[MUSIC]

Welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, J. Christopher Collins. I’m so pleased to have you here today!

Chris 03:11

Hi, Nancy. Thanks so much for having me.

Nancy 03:13

Well, listeners will know that I have taken a bit of a pause in doing this show. I lost my mom in December and if anybody’s gone through a loss like that, you know that it takes a little while for you to feel like yourself again. I’m not quite back yet, but I was kind of trusting that the Universe would put a guest in front of me who would make me want to put the headphones back on and have another conversation. So when I read about your book, Chris, I was like, “That’s it. That is the energy I want to start 2021 with.” I’m excited to talk about your book, Mending Our Union: Healing Our Communities Through Courageous Conversations because that is top of mind right now.

But first, Chris, the question we always ask on this show, what was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Chris 03:55

My first concert was Willie Nelson.

Nancy 03:58

I love Willie.

Chris 03:59

Willie Nelson at Stubb’s BBQ in Austin, Texas.

Nancy 04:03

You’re from Austin, right?

Chris 04:04

Yeah, I’m from Texas, went to college in Austin and Stubb’s BBQ is in downtown and it’s a great music venue. My dad, at a young age, introduced me to old country like Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash, so I definitely grew up with that old steel guitar country sound. While I was in college at St. Edward’s University in Austin – Willie plays in Austin all the time – I called my dad and said, “Hey. Willie is playing. Won’t you come down and we’ll go see him?” He said, “Okay” and came down. We went to the concert together. It was the first time I had been around any of my parents with the smell of marijuana in the air.

Nancy 04:52

How did that go?

Chris 04:53

It was good. It was fine. It was another step into adulthood, I think.

Nancy 04:58

That’s right.

Willie is great. One of the things I love about him is that it’s obviously a family employment situation. He’s got all his family members up there playing with him and I think it’s so sweet. I think that might be a very big part of the reason he makes music.

Chris 05:12

There is a strong sense of joy you can see in his eyes and his face when he’s up there. He’s one of the great legends of our time and everyone in Texas loves Willie and somehow he’s been able to be this progressive voice in a very conservative state, supporting Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders for President. Yet everyone across the political spectrum loves him and he somehow figured out something I think we need to tap into, something we can learn from.

Nancy 05:42

We’re going to talk more about the way that people can bridge the gap that way. Bbut you do your work under the affiliation of GLIDE Memorial Church, which is a nationally recognized center for social justice, and it’s dedicated to fighting systemic injustice, creating pathways out of poverty and crisis, and transforming lives. What I love about GLIDE, though, is it’s the only church I know that has conducted a U2-charist, which is based on the music of U2. Have you ever gone to that service?

Chris 06:09

No, that was before my time. But I know that Bono is a big fan of GLIDE and Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani, the founders and I’ve heard people reflect on those days. But unfortunately, that was before I came around to GLIDE.

Nancy 06:27

Well, when concerts starts again, when bands start touring again, if U2 comes to town I’m guessing they’ll come by GLIDE and do another U2-charist.

So your book came out in January. It’s called Mending Our Union: Healing Our Communities Through Courageous Conversations and it’s based on the work that you’ve done through a program called Different Together as I mentioned. It’s part of the programming at GLIDE Memorial Church. So let’s just start by hearing about Different Together: what is it, and why did you decide to start it?

Chris 06:56

I will take you back to the days following the 2016 presidential election.

Nancy 07:02

Must you start that way? Actually, it was better than the 2020 election. Go ahead.

Chris 07:07

Donald Trump had just been elected and I was shocked by the outcome and also really realizing that I was out of touch with tens of millions of people, with Americans who voted for him, despite all of the red flags that came up during his campaign. And in those days following the election, I wanted to do something. I knew I needed to do something, but I didn’t know what that was.

I was standing on the street in San Francisco one afternoon and an older white woman approached me and said, kind of under her breath, “I do not say anything in this town. But I’m glad that he won.” I resisted the temptation to be dismissive but I chose to go into this conversation.

I said, “Well, why is that?” She said that the election wasn’t about race, that the race issue isn’t as bad as it was in the 1960s. And I said, “Well, it’s not really up to us as white people to decide whether it’s better or worse. We need to listen to the people who experience it and see what they have to say.” The conversation went back and forth for just a few moments and we parted ways and we wished each other well and it was really a pleasant conversation considering the topic.

But I walked away realizing that there is power in these connections and that there is power in disagreement and sharing different perspectives and challenging each other. I felt relieved that I was able to communicate with someone that I strongly disagreed with and wanted to do more of this.

So from that interaction was born the Different Together Project at GLIDE and we’ve been meeting regularly with conservatives, both in the Bay Area and across the country, since the beginning of 2017. It has transformed me the way that I view this topic, the way I view other people, as well as the people who participate regularly in it.

Nancy 09:15

Now, I want to ground this in the fact that you are a straight, cisgender white man and I am a straight, cisgender white woman and we both operate from a baseline of privilege even as we’re here talking about reconciliation and mending. What would you say to someone who says, “These are two privileged white folks telling us how to fix disunity in this country when so much of the disunity is sowed by people who look just like us?” Like, “Here comes some white folks again to tell us how to make things better”?

Chris 09:45

I would completely agree with that. I think that bridge building is a hobby for people that are not discriminated against. It’s a luxury to be able to do bridge building work because I don’t have as much at stake in these difficult conversations as, say, a black person does, or another person of color, or a trans person, or a gay person. Disagreements might hurt my ego, but they don’t hurt my soul like it would be, if someone were to challenge an immutable characteristic of my skin color or who I love.

So what I think that the bridge building work can do for white, straight cisgender people is to develop the skills to open our hearts to people who don’t have the luxury or are more hesitant to join into bridge building conversations. I talk about in the book, Mending Our Union, I bring up the Plato’s Parable of the Cave, where people are chained up in a cave and they can see shadows on the wall.  One person breaks free and actually goes out of the cave and explores the world and sees what these images are, these things that were creating the shadows on the wall, and how that just completely transforms you into seeing the world as it is, rather than just seeing the shadows. I challenge the readers to evaluate whether we are seeing the shadows on the wall, or we are breaking free from these narratives that we live and going out and exploring the world with curiosity and trying to understand people and understand their stories, understand their values, how they came to the beliefs that they now hold. I think that there’s a big opportunity for the white, straight cisgender community to really begin to make some headway on this.

Nancy 11:55

Not necessarily just an opportunity, but an obligation, I would say. I mean, the fact that we can treat it as a situation or a conversation that we opt into by choice says everything. In reading the book, I mean, I’ve had this feeling before, but it just solidified this feeling for me that it’s work that needs to be done precisely because it doesn’t impact us as much.

I have to say coming into this, obviously, the 2016 election was terrible. I would say 2020 was even worse, even if the outcome made me happy. I think part of why this book appealed to me is because I do feel so angry. I do feel so angry at what I saw on January 6th and the fact that there are so many people who are on the other side of this divide, and I know that anger isn’t productive. I know anger isn’t going to fix things.

In reading the book, I mean, I felt so skeptical, honestly, Chris. I was like, “How could I have a conversation with somebody who voted to take away marriage rights for people who I care deeply about who happened to be gay, or are elevating a leader who is clearly racist and why do I have to have a conversation with that person?” After reading your book, I thought, first of all, it made me feel, “wow, maybe there could be change.” It also comes from a place of wanting to be a compassionate person and wanting to be someone who is willing to listen. I think I’ve gotten worse at that in four years, I really do. I’ve been guilty of putting people in boxes and putting labels on people, as much as anyone. So I really appreciated that your book gave very actionable ways to unlock ourselves from those kinds of limitations.

I would say your mom was right. It was good that you put in a lot of stories. In the book, Chris talks about how his mom read the first draft and she said, “You’ve got to put in more stories of how it worked.” But actually, Bruce Feiler was one of my guests in Episode 88 of the podcast and this is what we talked about, how the proper response to a setback is a story and how telling a story about what we go through gives us power over it and kind of helps us through it. I really felt like the stories are what made your book sing.

So what I would want to know, if I hadn’t read the book yet, is how it is Different Together actually works. Walk me through how the program works so that people can understand where this possibility is.

Chris 14:36

I want to go back to just one thing that you said.

Nancy 14:40

Because that was a RAMBLE. You can tell I haven’t been on the podcast for six weeks. I’m like “Oh, words! They all want to come out all at once!” Sorry.

Chris 14:49

You mentioned being angry and that’s certainly something that is felt universally, I think, across the political spectrum right now and something that I feel very strongly as well. Anger is a source of energy and I think that we can tap into it for productive purposes.

For me, practicing mindful self-compassion has been transformative in allowing me to tap into that. No longer am I a prisoner to the anger that previously simmered in my body. I now can use anger to fuel my desire to build peace and to make valuable change in my community. And not only does that connect me with other people of goodwill, it grants me the opportunity to challenge beliefs that I oppose and do so in a way that leaves a conversation open for future conversations. That is how the process of a Different Together meeting works.

We start every meeting going through a list of group agreements, like be sure to listen, speak respectfully, it’s okay to show emotions, just not to do so in a way that diminishes somebody else, speak from your own experience, don’t use broad generalizations of other people, things like that.

We focus on exploring a topic, rather than debating a topic. Debate is a concept that humans have used for thousands of years to talk about the tough questions of our day, but that has been the only thing that we have been using. I think that we are missing opportunities to explore deeper, because debate is about winners and losers. Debate is a performance. It’s a tactical game that we play where we’re not necessarily exploring truth when we debate, we are looking to be victorious and win. That winning might mean dismissing the truth. It also might mean character assassination. So Different Together works to not debate but to explore and to try to find a deeper sense of truth. We try to incorporate stories and values to help accomplish that goal.

Nancy 17:26

One of the stories in the book that really stuck with me was a conversation you talked about through the program where in one of the small groups that were meeting, there was a Trump supporter and there was a trans woman named Meredith. On the surface of it, that conversation did not go well. The small group came back to the larger Different Together conversation and it didn’t appear that the conservative person had really heard what Meredith was trying to share. Meredith felt like she had not been heard. I guess what struck me was that the impact of that conversation wasn’t immediate, but it might have been the first step toward real learning.

Meredith talked about the fact that she recognized through that conversation that she needed to present her story differently that she could strengthen the way she shared her story, so that other people could relate to it more.  I wondered whether the conservative guy – I think his name was Dan, right? – whether the next time Dan meets a trans woman, and he said he had never had before…maybe next time he will think of this conversation he had with Meredith and be more open. It just reinforced for me how some of these… I mean, it’s a long game. It has taken a long time for us to get this divided. These conversations, each one, is just a little ripple in the pond, but you don’t know where that ripple can go and what good that ripple can do. So it’s kind of a plea for patience and perseverance in having these tough conversations.

Chris 19:07

Yes, I was concerned about that conversation. I go into detail about the book of what was going on in my head as the moderator of this conversation thinking, “Oh, my God.”

Nancy 19:20

You really have to think on your feet. I mean, Holy smokes.

Chris 19:24

Yeah.

Nancy 19:25

Everything is shifting around you, as you’re moderating these conversations.

Chris 19:29

It can be tough. But I think that we’re all going through this and trying to learn how to do it. This is not something that we, as a society, have as a skill set. I think that at that moment, I told the group, “I don’t really know what to do here!”

But the words of Dr. King came to mind. The words he wrote in the letter from Birmingham Jail, he said, “I’m not afraid of the word ‘tension’. There is a tension that is necessary for growth.” I reminded the group of that concept, that if we are meeting and we sense the tension, we see the tension, we pull back the curtain of our society, then that alone is doing the work.

Now whether we leave all feeling good and happy, well, that’s not necessarily going to happen at all of these meetings, because we’re divided and we have a lot of work to do. I think that the courage that Meredith had to share her story, and to do so in an environment where she knew that she was not among like-minded people, I think is incredible.  I don’t think that Meredith will necessarily see the impact that she has made.

Nancy 20:54

Right.

Chris 20:55

Now, what Dan experienced from that, I don’t know whether that made a lasting impact or an impression on him. I don’t know, and Meredith may never know. But it’s about not necessarily what we can see that we’re doing, but are we moving the ball? Are we advancing compassion?

Are we at least pulling back the curtain and sitting with the tension that exists in our society? Or do we sweep it under the rug and ignore it like we have for centuries? So I think what Meredith did and allowed us to do is to experience the discomfort that she must live with every day.

Nancy 21:40

I talked about how the first half of Mending Our Union has a lot of stories about how this program has worked in practice. Also, how you started it, when you kind of said, “I’m going to do this thing. Oh, no, I just said I was going to do this thing!” Which I love. It’s relatable. Yay! Take a big step that you have no idea what you’re doing! We all know that that can work out great.

But the back half of the book has really practical steps and you talk about four steps to healing division. Could you talk just fairly quickly about what those four steps are?

Chris 22:14

Well, I think that before we really start to think of building bridges, it really starts within. So the first couple of steps are, “What are we doing for ourselves? What are we doing to build ourselves up to having conversations?” Because the bridge building process doesn’t start with going and talking to your brother, or an uncle, or an aunt, or someone you’re close to, or best friend about the division. There’s too much at stake in those conversations.

We start to work within, and it can start by listening to podcasts that have different perspectives, reading books. On my website, I list many of the books that I’ve read to help me with that process of opening up and exploring different ideas that are not a part of my living experience. Then to get engaged with people to start practicing the skills of talking, but do that with strangers. There are organizations out there that are ready to help you do that, like Different Together, or Living Room Conversations, Braver Angels. Then begin to bring these conversations face to face, not online, not through texting or social media, but where you can see a person, either through video or in person.

Nancy 23:39

Yeah, I love the idea of starting to have these difficult conversations with strangers because you think of Thanksgiving and how fraught –  I mean, maybe it was always fraught –  but it’s really bad in an election year. To have had some of those practice conversations first so that you can go in with a sense of confidence and a sense of “I know how this might go”, that’s a relief. I think would allow people to actually digest their Thanksgiving dinner instead of being sick about it the whole month of November. It’s January, you guys. We can work on this as we roll up and maybe we can even be there in person, without masks! A girl can hope.

Chris 24:16

One day.

Nancy 24:18

Yeah, your website jchristophercollins.com and the book both include great resource lists of books and podcasts. I definitely skew towards never listening to conservative media. There were some on there I’m like, “Hmm. I’ve never heard of that. I should check that out.” So that is the challenge for myself, to try to listen to some of those shows and read some of those.

Chris 24:41

Also, while listening, noticing what’s happening in your body. Noticing the reaction that your physical body has to hearing something that you find objectionable. That is another one of these aspects of preparing yourself for these conversations that is important, that noticing.

Nancy 24:59

When you said the phrase, because this is how my brain is wired,  I thought, “Anger is an energy?” Well, yes! That’s a Public Image Limited song featuring Johnny Lydon, and that’s how I feel.

In a moment, we’re going to come back with J. Christopher Collins to talk about his own midlife reconciliation. But first a break for our sponsor.

Hey there! Join me this coming Thursday, February 4th at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern Time for a Zoom conversation with my dear friend and past Midlife Mixtape guest, author KJ Dell’Antonia. I should say, my dear friend BESTSELLING NEW YORK TIMES AUTHOR KJ, because her debut novel, The Chicken Sisters, which came out in December went immediately to the top of the best fiction seller list. Reese Witherspoon selected it for her book club the same month! I am pretty sure Reese also optioned it for a movie but that’s a question I’ll ask KJ on Thursday. Thanks to A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, I’ll be interviewing KJ via Zoom and you can join in for free wherever you’re sitting on the globe. Look for the link under the Events tab on the Midlife Mixtape FB page, or go to Great Good Place for Books – that’s www.ggpbooks.com/event ! Three generations. Two chicken shacks. One recipe for disaster….Booklist called The Chicken Sisters “An utter delight from start to finish!” I hope you’ll tune in for the discussion on Thursday Feb 4 at 6 pm Pacific!

[MUSIC]

Nancy 26:29

We’re back with J. Christopher Collins, author of Mending Our Union: Healing Our Communities Through Courageous Conversations and I want to talk to you, Chris, about your own midlife reconciliation.

By that I mean, I was struck in reading the book by the fact that you’re old enough to have spent formative time on both sides of the political divide. You were a young Texas Republican working for Rick Perry and then later you were a slightly older Democrat working for House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer. I’m wondering how you think that being what we call “in the years between being hip and breaking one” that made it possible for you to reimagine yourself as a Reconciliation Activist? Because I’m guessing that’s a new job title. I don’t think there’s a huge section on LinkedIn for Reconciliation Activist job listings.

Chris 27:17

I don’t know anyone else that has that title. I think that’s a good observation.

Nancy 27:22

Trademark.

Chris 27:24

Starting something new, I think, is surrounded by, for me, the strong sense of failure. For me, it’s not about what I can accomplish in my life. It’s about how far I can carry the ball down the field before it’s time to pass it off to the next generation. As I said earlier, we may never see the fruits of our labor when it comes to something like healing division. In Mending Our Union I talk about how it may take hundreds of years for this process to bear fruit.

Nancy 28:05

You talk about the Sri Lankan example, which I thought was so interesting. Do you mind sharing that?

Chris 28:10

There is a Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka that put together a 500 Year Peace Plan. And the leader of this movement said, “It took 500 years for us to become mired in a bloody civil war and it’s going to take at least that much time to come out of it.” That 500 Year Peace Plan talks about economic development, it talks about cross cultural conversations.

I look at the United States and how long it has taken for us to be this divided. So maybe we need our own 500 Year Peace Plan. And that sounds really daunting. But maybe we are 150 years into it, from the beginning of Reconstruction after our own Civil War. Yes, the pendulum has swung back and forth and sometimes it feels like we’re going backwards.

But it’s about, in my lifetime, how much can I do to advance the ball, to move the cause down the field. Not to, whenever I’m in my 70s or 80s, look back and say, “Wow! Look, we did it!” But getting it to the point where it’s ready to pass off to the next generation.

So with that perspective, it helps me to reassess what I can do in my lifetime to promote healing and promote peace and that if we stick with this work, we may make a meaningful impact.

Nancy 29:35

It’s almost like being in midlife, you have a little bit more realistic goal setting. When you’re in your 20s and you think everything is open, every avenue is open, “I can do everything I want to do!” Then by the time you you’ve made it to your 40s and 50s and you’re banged up a little bit, you think, “I’m going to make some progress and I’m going to feel good about that and I’m probably not getting to the finish line. But still it’s progress.” Would you say that’s true?

Chris 30:02

Yes, and I also say in the book that I think we can see that Dr. King, in his last speech, knew that he was not going to see the fruits of his labor. I think that he knew that the end was near for him. Yet he kept on doing what he knew he needed to do.

Nancy 30:24

A friend of mine was recently talking about hope. He was referring to Amanda Gorman’s speech at the inauguration, which… that elevated me. That was my church service for the month of January.

But he was talking about how hope, when it’s expressed by young people, is especially powerful.  I wondered if you think midlife hope has any special magic. Is there anything special about people in their 40s and 50s taking a run at this work, of mending our communities and believing that that’s possible, has anything magical to it?

Because we could be jaded.

Chris 30:59

Yes, I do hear a lot of jaded commentary around this work from people at midlife, like, “What is the point of all of this? I’m not talking to those people.” Those people – from both sides of the spectrum.

I think that the reason to do it is to be face to face with these opinions and beliefs that we find objectionable, because it puts a human face to it. And whenever there’s a human face to it, we psychologically experience that differently than whenever we read it on a page or hear someone, an elected official, speak of it on TV. Having a one on one personal connection with that connects us as humans, and it makes us more likely to see that person as a human, rather than an idiot or an enemy.

That’s not a solution. That’s the beginning of a process. I think that it awakens a youthful sense of hope that something big is possible with this. I’ve asked some of the Different Together participants, why do you keep on coming back here? And I commonly hear that, “it’s because I’m more hopeful. I’m less dismissive of people’s opinions.” And that is a starting point that is hopeful.

Nancy 32:30

That’s great. If you guys are all full up on hope in January 2021, good on you. But if not, Chris, where can people find your book and become engaged in the work that you’re promoting?

Chris 32:43

Mending Our Union is available just about anywhere you can buy a book, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, if you want to go the local bookstore route.

Nancy 32:52

We love our local bookstores. Just call them up and tell them to order it.

Chris 32:57

Different Together, we meet monthly online. The Coronavirus has taken us to zoom which is something we’ve wanted to do before the Coronavirus. It just forced our hand to do it now. We can include anybody across the country who wants to do this work. Sign up by going to glide.org/church/different-together/ or just sending me an email at collinsjchristopher@gmail.com.

Nancy 33:28

I’ll include links to all of these in the show notes so you guys can check it out there as well.

Chris, we always ask one last question: what one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Chris 33:43

To be curious. I look at how much good has come in my life because of curiosity. The constant drive to learn to grow and to absorb knowledge, how curiosity also fuels the desire to heal division to learn about someone else’s story. One of my favorite quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt is, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” I’ve started Different Together. I’ve written Mending Our Union. Behind this, there’s a lot of fear, and maybe something you know about? You’ve written a book, you’ve started a podcast.

Nancy 34:21

It’s terrifying.

Chris 34:22

It is.

Nancy 34:23

We’re crazy. What were we thinking?

Chris 34:24

At each phase, I found that my fears were unfounded and then it’s on to the next stage of fears and those fears are unfounded and each time my comfort zone increases. And that has awakened a sense of endless possibility. I just feel if we approach life with curiosity and leaning into discomfort and fear, it’s pretty amazing what can happen in our lives.

Nancy 34:54

If only we’d all known that earlier, right?

Chris 34:57

Yes, I could have used this advice few years ago.

Nancy 35:01

I know. But this is the good stuff about getting older, you get the keys to the kingdom of wisdom, right?

Chris 35:06

That’s absolutely true.

Nancy 35:07

Well, J. Christopher Collins author of Mending Our Union: Healing Our Communities Through Courageous Conversations, you can find it online at your local bookstores. Thank you so much for coming on this show. It’s really important work and I hope as we go into 2021, we all recognize the steps that we can take to advance the ball down the field for a more just and fair society and a less stressful next presidential election. That’s just me. That’s my wish. Thank you so much for being on the show, Chris.

Chris 35:36

Thank you, Nancy. I’ve really enjoyed this.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 35:42

I hope Chris’ encouragement to stay curious resonates with you. We can all play some part, large or small, in moving the ball down the field and fixing all the things that are broken in this country. I would say it’s not that we can, but we’re just obligated to. I hope this conversation at least makes you hopeful that those small, healing conversations might add up over time.

Speaking of healing conversations – I wondered if you listeners ever think, well after a year of the pandemic, that’s it, I’m ruined for public circulation. Is that just me?

I really think that sometimes. My entire wardrobe these days is adult onesies from the Gap and then over that I put long sweaters like Bea Arthur on Maude. I mean, it’s not my best look and yet I go out in public like that all the time with my masks because I figure nobody knows who I am anyway. But in all seriousness, I wonder sometimes if we’ve been at this shelter in place so long that we may have gotten out of the habit of interacting even with the people we know and love. So I’m excited to talk to my guest for the next show, Laura Tremaine, who’s written a book called “Share Your Stuff: 10 Questions to Take Your Friendships to the Next Level”. I need some new questions for my friends besides, “Do you know if CVS has gotten a restock of toilet paper? Do you have a mask that you don’t hate? What is time?” Join me next time and Laura and I will talk about what questions we can ask that will make us sound functional again. Until then, stay healthy!

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

 

The post Ep 90 Reconciliation Activist J. Christopher Collins appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                  Related StoriesEp 85 Community Organizer Angela LangEp 89 Listeners’ 2020 Grief and GratitudeEp 88 “Life Is in the Transitions” Author Bruce Feiler 

Happy New Year

View from Slacker Hill toward SF Bay, December 18 2020

Check, check. Is this thing on?

It’s been a minute since I’ve written a blog post, or anything that wasn’t a thank-you note for the condolences we received for my mom’s death in December. Does leaving instructions for the Instacart driver, because growing paranoia about getting COVID on everyday errands has finally driven me to online grocery shopping, count as writing? Does signing petition after petition after online petition related to insurrections and #BLM and second impeachments count as writing?

I don’t think so. But the truth is, the soft pillowy surfaces of imagination and creativity, the will for expression that has come so easily to me since I started writing, have been absent for these past couple of months. It wasn’t a question of letting my mind lie fallow while good stuff percolated, it wasn’t a deliberate absence designed to provide objectivity, so that I could edit with a cold eye. I haven’t been staring into space getting ideas. I’ve just been staring into space.

It has been an accumulation of sadness over my children’s young adult lives interrupted by COVID. The loss of even the comfort of visiting with friends on the front yard patio, as the weather turned cold and rumors of this even-more-contagious virus variant scared us back to Zoom. The fear of another four years of terror, followed by the terror of a free and fair election being somehow overturned through courts or violence.

And above all, it’s been the natural grief of the process of losing my mom. Her decline went slowly, until it went very quickly, too quickly for me to get back East to say goodbye. It’s been five weeks since I watched her burial via webcam. You don’t recover from losing a cherished mom who was always your best cheerleader. You just adapt.

Luckily (luckily?) this isn’t my first time at the parental loss rodeo. So I know it’s just a question of time. When my dad died in 2016 it took three months before I could form a clear thought. That thought: “I should take a class in how to make a podcast.”

But it’s been compounded, this second time around. My personal grief joined with that of every other one of you who had a countdown clock set for January 20, 2021 12:01 pm ET. Has time ever moved so slowly?

I have had more vivid, crazy dreams than ever in the past five weeks – and I’ve had weird ones throughout the pandemic. A few days after the coup attempt, I dreamed there were bombs landing all around us here in Oakland, and a fiery black flag was thrown ominously out of helicopter onto my lawn. Robert Pattinson (Hey, look, I don’t do casting in my dreams, he wouldn’t have been my choice either) and I went to investigate. There were a series of sinister symbols on the flag which I recognized as domestic terrorism signs, and underneath…the name of my graduate school? WTAF. We Thunderbirds usually come in peace! I suppose that’s what you get after lights out, when you spend six hours a day scrolling multiple news sources trying to stay up with the final days of desecration done in the name of previous administration.

Last night I dreamed that I was at an in-ground pool with my parents, and while the pool water looked warm and inviting, the surface around the pool was slick with ice. I was moving gingerly but quickly between my parents, trying to prevent them from slipping as they skidded around the pool edge, slipping myself, frantically signaling the shadowy crowd of people at a far-off distance for help. Finally, Mom dove into the pool, right over my encircled arms trying to hold her back.

After the inauguration ended yesterday, I felt the strangest sense: an absence of dread. I refreshed Twitter and the news a few times but then realized I didn’t really have to. The adults are back in charge. We may have days where there is (sit down before you read this) – no real news about the federal government.

I supposed it will take time to adjust to this phantom limb of worry. Just as it will take time to open my arms and let my graceful mom go.

And there’s still plenty to anxiety to go around, of course; the seeming inability of California to get its act together and get vaccines into arms is the tip of the iceberg. Anyone who feels exhausted from the work done in the past four years to elevate issues of racial justice and immigration reform and voter rights – I regret to inform you that the battle is not over. In fact, now’s your time to shine, because there’s an administration at 1600 Pennsylvania that is actually inclined to listen. No rest for the weary.

But I woke up today and I felt like writing something. That’s a start. Not promising it will continue or anything crazy like that, because I’m trying to be easy on myself for now. I recommend trying it.

Happy New Year, finally. I wish you peace.

Listening to a lot of Phoebe Bridgers these days. (Also thinking about getting another dog. Also, why couldn’t Paul Mescal have helped me with the flag instead of Robert Pattinson?)

The post Happy New Year appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                   
CommentsIn reply to Síle Convery. Hahahaha yeah I guess I did that. ... by Nancy Davis KhoIn reply to Sylvia. No way! I graduated '91, the husband ... by Nancy Davis KhoTalk about burying the lead. A dog. You are “ thinking” ... by Síle Converyhey! When were you at Thunderbird? I don't even recall how I ... by SylviaIn reply to Jennifer Turner. xoxox Thanks Jenn by Nancy Davis KhoPlus 3 more...Related StoriesZero For FivePandemic Punch DownDefault 

Ep 89 Listeners’ 2020 Grief and Gratitude

“I grieve and thank Time for all of these reasons”: In this special year-end episode, a compendium of listeners’ stories of the losses they’re grieving and something they’re grateful for in 2020, and a tribute to the most wonderful mom in the world.

Midlife Mixtape End of Year Virtual Dance Party with DJ Damon – Dec 22 at 6 pm PT
Wendi Aarons’ humor writing on McSweeneys
Wendi Aarons’ humor writing on the New Yorker

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 89 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on December 22, 2020. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

Nancy Davis Kho 00:00

I have more memories of this year than most. I understand how life can change in an instant and I will always be thankful for 2020, for it has truly made me stop and smell the roses.

00:12

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:37

If you’re hearing this episode on the day it publishes – that is, Tuesday, December 22, 2020 – I’d like to invite you to a celebration of the final Midlife Mixtape Podcast episode of the longest year in the history of print calendars. I’ve asked my friend DJ Damon, who in normal times spins ‘80s alternative dance music at the Cat Club in San Francisco, to host Midlife Mixtape listeners on his Twitch channel tonight for two hours, starting at 6 pm Pacific, 7 Mountain, 8 Central, and  9 pm Eastern. All you have to do at the appointed time is go to https://www.twitch.tv/dj_damon – that’s https://www.twitch.tv/dj_damon – don’t worry, I’ll leave a link in the show notes – and you’ll be at the party along with Prince, Bronski Beat, Depeche Mode and more.

Obviously NOT like an in-person dance party but you can still turn your computer speakers all the way up to 11 and dance around your living room. There’s a chat function on Twitch and I’ll be hanging out there so I hope you’ll drop in and say hello.

As you’re going to hear at the end of the episode, I’m haven’t been able to put together my normal OCD playlist for this one, so I’m relying on you guys to add your requests to the chat tonight and Damon will get them spinning. No matter how you’re feeling today -sad, angry, disappointed, grateful, optimistic, lucky – dancing is always the right answer. I mean, we’ve all seen the solo Kevin Bacon anger dance scene in Footloose, right? Dance out those feelings. I hope you’ll join in for a single song or for a couple of hours tonight, Dec 22 at 6 pm PT at https://www.twitch.tv/dj_damon. I’ll buy the first round!

[MUSIC]

Nancy

Welcome to the final episode of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast of 2020. I’m the host and creator of the show, Nancy Davis Kho, and I’m so glad you’re joining us.

I hope if this show has brought you laughter, good memories, or food for thought this year that you’ll consider leaving a review wherever you listen, to help other folks decide whether there’s any there, there. (Shoutout to Gertrude Stein talking about Oakland where I live, though I have to follow up with a disclaimer that she wasn’t being dismissive, it was really written with a lens of nostalgia for her hometown, but it’s a long disclaimer best shared over coffee.) Anyway – here are a couple recent 5 star reviews that warmed the proverbial cockles of my heart:

“Midlife Mixtape Hallelujah” – Maleza says it’s the first time she’s heard something so relevant to her.

And Amber said, “Like being invited to the Cool Kids’ table, Nancy makes aging feel like a gratifying rite of passage – funny, inspiring, and heart-warming.”

Believe me I would have LOVED to have been invited to the cool kids’ table in high school so that one really landed for me. Thanks so much for the kind words.

My plan for today’s episode HAD been to re-air the most popular episode of the year – which was, by the way, the very first episode of the year, Episode 69 with Ada Calhoun, author of the book “Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis.” Boy if you thought we weren’t sleeping in January of 2020 – little did we know what was going to happen next.

But then I realized that what felt more appropriate to close out this cruel, grueling year was to hear from you. You have me in your ear all the time, or at least every other week. I wanted to hear how guys are doing. When I say that my favorite episodes of this show are the Listener-Contributed ones where you send in your stories, I’m not exaggerating. I feel like we’ve built some community here, together, of people in the years between being hip and breaking one. We’re a group of proverbial middle kids, generationally speaking, overlooked everywhere else, but celebrated on this podcast.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to invite you to my Mastermind group or make us go on a team-building retreat, but I do think there’s something cool about knowing that there’s a group of folks out there who also listen to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast and care about first concerts and recognize the greatness inherent in Generation X.

One of the things that I really do value about us as a generation is our clear-eyed take on the world. A little bit of cynicism on the part of the slackers isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it means we see problems for what they are, which is a critical first step to solving them. But we also believe in happy endings, Jake Ryan showing up in a red Porsche, Ethan Hawke figuring out his shit so he could end up with Winona in Seattle, Split Enz breaking up, but Crowded House arising from the ashes.

We know good things and bad things can and do exist side by side, never more than in 2020. As summarized so beautifully by my guest for Ep 84, Therapist Mazi Robinson:

Mazi Robinson 05:20

In reality, what is actually helpful thinking, and healthy thinking, and what actually does build resilience is learning to live in that duality. “I am grateful that I am healthy, I am grateful that I have a roof over my head and food in my pantry AND I miss going into my office and I don’t like homeschooling, virtual teaching my kids and I’m ready for my kids to come back to school and I’m ready to have my freedom of movement.” This is an opportunity for us to learn to live in both of those realities because they are both real.

Nancy 06:01

So to mark the end of 2020, I invited you to share a loss you’re grieving, and something for which you are grateful from this year.

I heard from you via Facebook, Instagram, emails, blog comments, and voicemails. Having previewed all of these reflections, I will let you know that as you listen to these stories, the grief is big. You may tear up – have some tissues ready. But then, I promise promise promise, that every single person who shared a deep grief followed it with the good things that came along to lessen the pain of those hardships. When I was making this episode, I looked like one of those freakin’ Greek double tragedy/comedy masks – Sad/happy! Sad/happy! And you may too. In the end I hope that this episode will help you think deeply about your own year-end summary of grief and gratitude.

So buckle up, buttercups, and keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle. Here comes the last Midlife Mixtape Podcast Episode of 2020.

[MUSIC]

Nancy

Normally when I ask for reader stories, they sort themselves naturally into 5-6 categories. Not this time. There were only two major categories, and technically, they both concerned losses sustained by other people: our kids, and our older loved ones. I’ll have humor writer Wendi Aarons start us off the first category.

Wendi Aarons 07:21

Hi, this is Wendi Aarons and I am sharing my one grief for this year – while there were many, of varying degrees. But one was that my son graduated from high school and we had no graduation ceremony or parties or anything like that. And then he was headed off to college in California, but the pandemic put a stop to that too.

So, he’s been attending freshman year from his bedroom here in Texas and not too thrilled that the weird people in his dorm are his parents. So that’s been disappointing to say the least…and let’s hope he can finally get on campus somewhere next year.

My one bit of gratitude is all of the humor that’s come out of this year. I’m a big fan of dark and gallows humor and we’re having a heyday. Gallows humor is having a moment in 2020! But there’s so much shared experiences and humor and relatable jokes right now born out of the election and the craziness happening in the world. And I think that brings everybody together more in some respects. I appreciate that and I tried to share some myself, but I really like that. It keeps people’s spirits up and it’s brought out a lot of creativity. Not saying that I would rather have another pandemic so the humor is there…but you get my drift.

Nancy 09:03

Seriously, you guys, she’s not jinxing us and asking for another pandemic, just for the glory of the comedy that arises from the ashes. I will say that Wendi has done some of her most amazing humor writing this year, and that’s saying something. She’s had pieces in the New Yorker and McSweeney’s and I’ll leave a link to those in the show notes. For instance, her latest on McSweeney’s was Musk: The Mask for Men and here’s a snippet:

Our masks aren’t made out of SOFT FABRICS. None of that BREATHABLE DAINTY ASS COTTON for us, Jack. OUR masks are made from material that’s as TOUGH and unyielding and as uncomfortable as the comments you leave on Barstool Sports’ articles about how lady sports commentators SUCK.

Over on Instagram Alexander Rosas said that she too is grieving for missing two of her son’s graduations. But, she says, “I’m so grateful that we are physically well.” And that’s really what it comes down to, the simplest things.

This is what Karen wrote in to say:

“I’m grieving for and grateful for time. Time has marched headlong this year and left in its wake: a senior prom, high school graduation, gap year in Africa, Grand Canyon rafting trip, freshman quarter in college, 50th birthday celebration. Worst of all, time recklessly dealt the news of an estimated two years left on this planet with my mom.

Time also gave us many meals at home crafted with care, reading the entire Sunday New York Times in one sitting, never sitting in traffic, more exercise and more podcasts, watching some excellent shows and movies, more reading, space in closets, hiking the Tahoe Rim Trail with my teenager, long carefree summer days in Oregon. The end of the time of Trump. I grieve and thank Time for all of these reasons.”

There were a lot of home-grown graduation parties this year – we did one for our daughter in our garage, with drive-bys, and we all agreed it was a lot more memorable than sitting in a folding chair on a hot football field for four hours so that was some compensation.

But even if they’re not graduating – the parents among us are feeling their kids’ pain. Audrey wrote in to say, “I’m grieving my son not playing water polo with the team he loves,” and she’s celebrating so much time being present with her family this year.

Aaron Wright experienced the pain of his children’s loss as his own too. He says, “I’m grieving how much my children are missing because of COVID, particularly my son who is a senior in high school,” but he’s celebrating and is grateful for his family’s health and the re-launch of his book.

I really feel for all these athletes and performers who had to take such an unfair pause on their lives this year. Oh, have you guys seen that Amazon ad? Did I already talk about this? Maybe I did. That Amazon ad where the ballerina has to do her Nutcracker performance out on a rooftop? Oh my God, it kills me every time.

In a similar vein, Ann Imig wrote in and said, “A grief for this year is watching my teens lives become so small and they’re developing lives outside the home almost grind to a halt. No concerts, no sports, no sleepovers, no camping, no trips, no poker night. Man, I miss having my boys’ friend’s over here.”

Ann, side note, I’m going to replay this to you sometime in late 2021 when the detritus of a thousand frozen pizzas is on your kitchen counter and someone to whom you did not give birth has clogged your toilet.

But Ann goes on to say, “A gratitude for this year is mostly – ha!” We get it. It’s not always peaceful. She says “It’s mostly peaceful family time together, especially exploring beautiful parks around town and appreciating how my sons have risen to this occasion in so many ways. It’s not an original pandemic thought but I think it’s the most important. Instead of a non-stop life, we get a full stop life. And considering all the hardship, loss, and suffering, I feel beyond lucky and grateful. “

Elizabeth McGuire has been on the roller coaster for sure. She writes, “My oldest child is a high school senior and the past nine months have been a grief/gratitude roller coaster with her particularly when it comes to the college application process. We had to cancel several out of state college visits and instead tour campuses virtually from the sofa. We are having to make big decisions based on limited information and shifting sands.

But on the upside, we have spent more time with her this year than we normally would have. We regularly have lunch together and take impromptu walks. This is not the senior year any of us imagined for her, but in many ways it feels like a wonderful gift before she leaves the nest.

Nancy 13:20

And finally, Deanna Chrisman, I think, sums it up for all of us.

On the grief side of the balance, Deanna writes, “2020 was the year I didn’t get to watch my son graduate from high school with all the pomp and circumstance he deserved. I didn’t get to see one last spring performance with my two older kids. I didn’t get senior ball and junior formal photos for my two high school seniors. And finally, I didn’t get to watch my daughter begin her senior year with all the bells and whistles. My youngest, who is on the spectrum, had several setbacks this year.”

But on the gratitude side of the scale, Deanna says, “I did get a bonus here with my oldest. He’s taking his freshman classes with us at home. I got months and months of time with all three kids and my husband that I will never get back. I got hours of conversation, some deep and meaningful, some light and humorous. I have more memories of this year than most. I understand how life can change in an instant. And I will always be thankful for 2020, for it has truly made me stop and smell the roses.” That is just beautiful, Deanna.

Of course, it’s not just the impact on our children we’re worried about; we’re monitoring our family members wherever they are. And here’s Laura Ward Collins to share more on that.

Laura Ward Collins 14:30

My grief is that my oldest brother continues to decline in ways that, truly, the older brother I know is gone. He is just a shell of himself and it breaks my heart that much of his self-destruction has been self-chosen.

But my gratitude is that I took this pandemic and more time, including introspection, to take a huge risk in my life. I had a voice performance minor and undergrad and I’ve sung throughout the years on and off, for example in the Bay Area in a chamber group at Grace Cathedral. But my younger years of being onstage and letting my voice soar? Well, something in my middle age bones said, “uh, it’s not over yet.”

So in July, I reached out to a Broadway star. I still can’t believe I did this. Since then I had the opportunity to take a lesson and sing with him. He’s actually a pretty big name, who I have a lot of respect for and look up to for the quality of his voice and ability to convey some meaning. Lo and behold! Now, five months and 16 weekly lessons later via Zoom, we are getting me ready to sing a cabaret show once this pandemic is over. Now, it’s not exactly like Broadway is my next stop nor do I want it to be as I have a rewarding career in philanthropy and nonprofit management.

But as a side gig, sure. In fact, I’ve realized this is the type of singing I want to do – intimate personal stories and lessons from my life live now with much to share, including my overseas adventures.

Nancy 16:02

I am sending so much love to all of you who are listening as you try to support the important people in your lives through this year and I’m so inspired by the way you’ve managed to carve out some growth and goodness from all that heaviness.

And, you know, it occurred to me as I was compiling all these responses, how much proof this is that Gen X is really the glue trying to hold things together during a global pandemic. I mean, we experience the losses of the younger generation as our own. And if you’re like me, you’re spinning plates madly trying to compensate and make things okay anyway and it’s just hard.

Before I get to the second big category, I wanted to make it clear that many of us have absolutely suffered direct losses and we’re using it to spur some brave changes.

Like Anjanette, who says, “I’m grieving the loss of my daycare business due to COVID and our property due to fires here in California. But at the same time, I’m grateful they caused me to reevaluate things and change my focus. I’m committed to growing my side gig and serving our nonprofit.” You know, Anjanette, will you reach out to me on Instagram and let me know what your nonprofit is? I would love to follow along as you grow it – and kudos to you for following this new path.

Michelle Fishburne says, “I’m grieving the partial loss of my hearing and balance, but I am grateful I lost my job during COVID because I’ve now created my own job and I love it.” I’m gonna read that again. “I’m grateful I lost my job during COVID because now I’ve created my own job and I love it.” Sometimes that kick out the door is all you need and I am crossing my fingers for you, Michelle. Go get it, girl. Get it done. Get it done.

This one is a little bit harrowing from Erica Bachman. She says, “I’m grieving that my dad had a cardiac incident and laid on the floor of his home for two days before we figured out something was wrong. But I’m grateful that my sisters and I took him back to his home for rehab, rather than to a skilled nursing facility where we wouldn’t have been able to visit him, and that we take turns staying with him while he gets stronger and more motivated every day. What a gift to spend so much time with my father.”

Hard story. Happy ending. Thank you, Erica.

And finally, this story from Donna. She wrote in to say, “I’m grieving the loss of our lovely Irish setter mix. She was 12 years old and we adopted her at 11 months. Making the decision to put her down was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. And even though I know she isn’t suffering anymore, it broke my heart to watch her leave us. I miss her so much.”

Oh, puppers. Two dogs close to my heart died in the past six months and it’s such a sad thing to go through. But I know my late great dog Achilles shows every newcomer to dog Heaven where to find the rotisserie chicken on an unguarded kitchen counter. I am certain that was the first thing he figured out when he got there. I know he’s telling everybody else how to do it too.

Then Donna adds, “I’m grateful that after seven months out of work, I found a job. So many people are struggling more than I am during the pandemic so I’ve decided to do what I can to help others by donating to my local food pantry and adopting a child for Christmas gift giving. I’m so grateful to finally be in a position to help others.”

[MUSIC]

Nancy 19:08

And now we come to the second final and hardest category, the deaths of people we love. I want you to listen to these. I want you to try to hold on through these stories because I promise each one does end with gratitude. And if people who have suffered losses like these can still find something to be grateful for, I know you can too.

We’ll start with my college friend Shira who moved to Holland after graduation and never came home again. I miss her terribly and we stay connected via social media but it took the pandemic for Shira and I to actually schedule video calls to check in. And that is one of the things I am most grateful for this year, that I’m reconnected with my dear friend Shira. She’s going to take it from here.

Shira 19:47

Hey, Nance. I am mourning losing my mother-in-law Dien, or Dinie. She died of euthanasia. And she had the most dignified, beautiful and sad death this year. The death was sad, but just not having her in my life, you know how bad it is. It’s just really hard because she was someone I always had in the back of my mind. Like, “I’ll just write her an email or give her a call, she would just love this, she would laugh.” She’s very warm and always ready to laugh even though she was in tremendous pain for the past 10 years. I just miss having her in my life so I’m mourning her passing away.

And I’m grateful for the world slowing down this year. It’s one of those “be careful what you wish for” years because I always thought, I love my life, but it’s all going too fast. And I never have time to enjoy my surroundings or just be bored.

I’m grateful for being bored. Maybe that’s a good way of putting it.

It’s something I’ve been longing for so long, so I’m enjoying it. I have moments and hours at a time where I don’t know what to do with myself and it reminds me of when I was in my 20s, where I can lie on the couch and read or draw or do nothing, stare into space and think that I should be being creative and just accept that I’m not. It’s been really nice. So those are the things and of course, being in touch more and more with you is wonderful too.

But my two things are a mourning my mother-in-law who is just a sparkle of light in my life, and I’m grateful for boredom.

Nancy 21:44

Sara says, “After surgery and almost a year of cancer treatments, my little sister died. I’m grateful she is no longer in pain, but I will miss her smile, her laugh and her can do attitude forever. She was a mother who learned unconditional love in reaction to our own mother.”

And here is Sarah’s gratitude, “I’m so grateful for video calls we had for cards, letters, calls and emails from friends who have dug out old pictures and their own memories of my sister to share. Their own gratitude for knowing her has enlarged my understanding of who she was soothes my anger at her suffering and passing and directed me toward a gratitude outreach to others.”

Michelle Springer wrote in to say, “Of the several reasons I have to grieve, the biggest one is the sudden loss of my cousin last month who died while giving birth to her son who was an unexpected but very welcome surprise for her. My cousin’s loss has been a big one for my family.”

Michelle says the biggest reason for gratitude is my job. “The library that I work at has been closed twice this year. We’re currently in a month-long closure, but we have all gotten paid during the closures and no one has lost their job. I know how extremely rare that is, especially during this crazy year and I’m extremely grateful for that.”

I want to share two more stories of beloved people whose loss was the darkness against which something brighter could be seen. And the first comes from Marci.

Marci Cohen 23:08

This is Marci Cohen. My grief of 2020 is that my father-in-law passed away in March of non-COVID causes, but he died out of town. Although my husband was by his side, the rest of the family could not gather to grieve. We could not hold a funeral. We still have not been able to hold a memorial service and I don’t know when that will happen.

On the plus side, my gratitude is that amount of time that I’ve spent with my husband this year. Normally, he travels very heavily for work. He’s been doing this for the last 15 years and it’s been really wonderful to wake up next to him every morning. And we’ve been biking on our tandem almost every weekend more than we have since our kids were born.

Nancy 23:53

If you have to work out your grief, there are worse places to do it than on a bicycle built for two.

And one final reader story. This one is from Charlene.

Charlene 24:02

Hey, Nancy. This is Charlene Ross from Southern California. I was born and raised here. And about nine years ago, my dad and stepmom moved to Austin, Texas to retire. My sister had married a Texan and had settled out there. So they followed because of the lower cost of living.

So my grief and my gratitude are this. My grief is that my family had never been able to make it out there for a vacation and we had finally planned a vacation to Austin this April. We were supposed to visit and of course, COVID happened and so we were unable to. My grief is actually twofold because in June my father passed away unexpectedly. So not only did we miss our vacation, but we missed visiting my dad before he died.

My gratitude, which is actually also twofold, is that my dad did not die of COVID. So my stepmother was in the hospital with him before he died, and my sister, and he actually called me that the night before he died. I feel like he kind of knew. So I was able to talk to him one last time, which I’m truly grateful for.

But also because of COVID, we’re stuck at home. My kids are in college. I’m working from home and so since we’re all stuck at home, we decided to head out to Austin in October where we could work and school from my dad and stepmom’s house. And we were able to spend some time with my stepmom and just kind of all go through the grieving process together.

Oooph. It’s been a rough year. Like many people, I’m really ready for 2020 to be over. Thank you for letting me share my story.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 25:41

So now, I guess it’s time for my own grief and gratitude.

This is pretty raw and I’m in the very earliest stages of processing it. But my wonderful, loving mom Laura passed away one week ago. She was at home in upstate New York with my sister and surrounded in so much love and she passed peacefully. My siblings cared for her in her final weeks and days in amazing ways, but I couldn’t be there due to COVID travel restrictions. It all went so quickly at the end that I couldn’t have gotten out of quarantine in time to be helpful so I opted to stay here in California. And I had to watch my mom be buried over a webcam broadcast for the same reason.

So even though Mom didn’t die of COVID, COVID made everything so much worse, and the pain of my sorrow over my mom feels pretty overwhelming right now.

But of course, there’s compensatory gratitude. And the first is that it was due to COVID concerns that my sister pulled my mom out of her assisted living place to live with her last March and gave my mom the most beautiful final months of her life. And it was also due to COVID that when I went to visit them in August, I stayed for three whole weeks. We all knew that something like this could happen and we figured we shouldn’t skimp on time. I haven’t had that much uninterrupted time with my mom since before I went to grad school in my 20s and it was wonderful. We drove around the Finger Lakes region for hours. We had ice cream, we watched Andy Griffith and M*A*S*H and, you know we sang John Denver songs. That time together with my mom was a gift.

But the biggest piece of gratitude of all is the luck that landed me as her third kid. I thought the best way I could share that gratitude with you was simply to read you the gratitude letter I wrote her four years ago that became the basis for my Thank-You Project and eventually, the basis for The Thank-You Project book. I didn’t include this letter in the book because at the time I was writing it, I was thinking so much about my dad who had recently died. But you can bet, in fact, this was the very first letter I wrote and I can’t think of a better way to share my wonderful mom Laura with you than this.

January 7, 2016

Dear Mom,

As you probably know better than anyone since you were there, 2016 is the year I turn 50. I have had such a lucky, blessed life that I decided the best way to commemorate this milestone year is to write thank you notes to the people who have enriched my life along the way, and this week it’s your turn. The minute I thought of this project, in fact, I knew you would be the first person I’d write to.

Thank you, Mom. Thank you for being such a warm, affectionate, supportive, funny mother, someone who pulled off the deceptively simple trick of creating a home that served as both a sanctuary and a launch pad for Sally, Larry, and me. I joke about it with my writer friends – “my damn parents were so nice, they didn’t give me any material to write a memoir about!” – but they know, I know, and you know that our family life was the best gift you could ever give me.

And also, I’m sorry, Mom. While I tend to romanticize the ease of our relationship (“I was the third kid who rode around on her hip all day! I was her little buddy!”) my guess is that I was actually as big a pain in your ass as the other two, if not bigger. I say this with confidence because I am a mother myself, and I now understand how much of ourselves we subjugate to our children’s needs, how sturdy we have to be in the face of their drama and emotion, how much we are treated as background noise when in fact, it’s us all along keeping the whole enterprise afloat. I think of an essay I read a couple of years ago about a woman who feels herself becoming invisible to her family, and realizing that she’s like air – who thinks about air? But then again, what would you do without it?

I’m saying now what I was too young and dumb to understand then: you are the root source of the happiness and stability of my life.

I have so many sharp memories of you that it would take a whole book to write them down: our “naps” together when I was a toddler, where I would carefully study your face to make sure you were asleep before climbing off the bed and exploring the otherwise-empty house, free at last, free at last, thank god almighty I was free at last! The school mornings when I sat on the cedar chest in your bedroom so you could do my hair, from a menu with two hairstyles: ponytail, or ponytail and a braid, and always finished off with a ribbon to match my outfit. Your visits to me wherever I was living, and your sense of enthusiasm about each new place. You leaving the delivery room when I got the epidural when I was in labor with Maddy, saying, “I can’t watch them do this to her.” The art projects you always had ready for the girls when they visited. I don’t know how to end this paragraph, because – lucky for me – the list of stories is infinite.

But there is one memory that I will never, ever cease to astound me about you: when I called you from Penn to tell you I got a job in Germany after college. You said, “That’s great! I’m going to call you back.” And you hung up on me, something you’d never done before. Even at 22 I realized what you were doing: gathering yourself so you could really rejoice at my news. A few minutes later you called me back and did just that. Here I am at 50, already a little freaked out about Maddy moving to the East Coast for college, and I. Do. Not. Know. How. You. Handled. That. So. Gracefully.

You have always taught me so much – from the flash cards that made me an early reader, to that moment when I called you about Germany, to last week when you and Dad took Noonie to the doctor and showed me, once again, what familial love and devotion should look like.

I love you, Mom. I’m just so incredibly lucky to be your daughter.

Okay, everyone. That’s today’s show and that’s this year’s season and that’s me signing off for a little while, or at least I’ll be doing that after tonight’s Twitch dance party. Now you know why I’m going to rely on you to make the song requests to Damon and why I’m really glad it’s a virtual not in person event. Music heals and I’m counting on it tonight.

As for the show, I’ll be back when I can think straight again. In the meantime, I’m going to try to show myself some compassion and I really hope you’ll all do the same for yourselves after this hard year.

Keep looking for good things to be grateful for, keep telling the people you love that you’re thankful they are in your lives and we’ll get through.

Wishing you and all the people you love brighter days ahead.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 89 Listeners’ 2020 Grief and Gratitude appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

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The Thank-You Project Turns One!

December 3, 2020

Dear Readers of The Thank-You Project,

Today marks exactly a year since my book hit the shelves, and I wanted to mark the milestone with a thank-you note to the people who made the whole endeavor worthwhile. This is a first for me, actually; a repeat thank-you letter. There’s one to readers in the book itself, but I wrote that before I knew any of you. While I stand by every word in that original letter, I wanted to send an updated one. You know, now that we’ve actually met.

I remember the very first person to buy the book: during Thanksgiving weekend last year, my publisher arranged a pre-release signing at Book Passage in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. A young woman walked up to the table where I was rearranging my pens nervously, and told me that she was undergoing cancer treatment and wanted to write thank-you letters to the doctors and nurses who were caring for her. We both cried a little as we talked, and we hugged, and that’s the day I learned to pack tissues along with the pens when I went to signings. I have thought of this beautiful young woman many times since and hope that she has made it through the pandemic safe and sound so far. I hope her doctors and nurses are hanging in there, too.

In the weeks and months that followed, I had the chance to talk about gratitude letters with so many kinds of people, in so many settings – from bookstores to living rooms to Zoom calls, from Oakland to Massachusetts to Hong Kong, from schoolkids to business people to church groups and book clubs. Whether in person or virtually, I have had the delight of hearing about so many wonderful people to whom readers are thinking of writing their letters. I stand by my decision not to write a true crime book because this is so much nicer than hearing reader stories about murder!

I’m grateful for the way you’ve taken the ideas I’ve shared in the book and made them your own – handing over your letters in person, tucked into the front flap of the book, doing the hard work of feeling your way through pain to forgiveness and on into gratitude. To know that this book launched a bunch of gratitude letters out into the wild will always be the biggest reward that this author could ever hope for.

I’m even grateful for the Goodreads and Amazon reviewers who left the 1- and 2-star reviews because I am notoriously thin-skinned – it was my husband’s main fear when I announced that I was going to be a writer all those years ago, because he knew he was going to have to pick up the pieces. (For the record: he was not wrong.) Their reviews have been helpful practice in the long-overdue lesson that everything is subjective, the praise and the criticism, and to treat it all accordingly. (I do laugh every time I see the lady who hated The Thank-You Project because it included playlists, and right beneath her review the lady who loved it. Because it included playlists.)

I learned so much about publishing since I signed my contract in August 2018 and I’m grateful for that, too. It’s like a door opened into a new country that I knew about vaguely, but now understand in depth. Not bad to be a 50-something dog still learning new tricks. Wouldn’t have happened if my wonderful publisher Running Press didn’t believe you readers were out there.

So I just want to take a moment to thank you for all you’ve brought into my life in the past year, and hope that you receive support and encouragement for your own goals in equal measure. Thank you again!

 

 

 

 

 

PS: Want me to sign a bookplate to stick into the front of The Thank-You Project when you give it as a gift? Just email me at info@daviskho.com with a photo proof of purchase, include your mailing address and tell me who I’m signing for. I’ll send as many as I can before I run out of bookplates!

How cool was this? Real Simple asked readers to send in their favorite books to give as gifts, for their December print issue, and someone suggested The Thank-You Project! Thanks Liana in West Islip!

And when the Washington Post asked authors to recommend books to give as gifts, the unparalleled R. Eric Thomas suggested The Thank-You Project! If you haven’t read them already, I highly recommend Eric’s book Here for It, ,and I just finished reading Reclaiming Her Time: The Power of Maxine Waters – both great reads to slip under the Christmas tree or Hanukkah bush or Festivus pole.

And one bonus book recommendation: my friend, the very talented writer KJ Dell’Antonia, released her debut novel this week called The Chicken Sisters, and Reese has already chosen it for her December Book Club. I got an early peek at this funny, poignant, relatable story of sibling rivalry that plays out against the backdrop of two Kansas fried chicken restaurants and it’s great – perfect for the novel reader on your shopping list. I’m giving away a copy of The Chicken Sisters on Instagram this week if you want to enter! And to celebrate KJ’s big launch day I made her a playlist – because how could I not? Check it out on Spotify at https://bit.ly/ChickenSistersPlaylist.

The post The Thank-You Project Turns One! appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                   
CommentsThank YOU for writing such an amazing book and showing the rest ... by Esther GulliRelated StoriesEp 68 Author/Podcaster Nancy Davis KhoOf Book Babies and GratitudeEarly Peek at The Thank-You Project 

Share One Grief and One Gratitude for 2020

Handing you the mic for the last episode of 2020

As I look toward the end of 2020, I want to squeeze in just one more Listener-Contributed podcast episode. These episodes are some of my absolute favorites to compile and produce. So far this year you’ve told your stories of youthful shenanigans and your GenX Summer Stories, and I’d like to do just one more to close out the year. Here’s the challenge:

Share one grief and one gratitude from 2020

It has been an absolute crap year, but I know that each of us still has experienced some unexpected silver lining. In the spirit of my conversation in Ep 84 with Therapist Mazi Robinson, I want us to acknowledge the duality of what we’ve come through, the bad and the good. So I’m inviting you to share a loss you’re grieving, and something for which you are grateful.

Were you to pose this question to me, I would give a different answer each time you ask. For today I would say that I’m grieving my inability to visit my New York family as much as usual this year. But I’m grateful for the way my siblings came together to care for my mom during this difficult time, and made me feel like I was still doing my part from afar.

How about you? What is one thing you are mourning? Let’s crowd-source an episode that acknowledges and honors the hits we’ve taken in 2020 – they are myriad and they are real. As Mazi said in our discussion,

This experience is different in that we can’t stuff our feelings and take the attitude of “Oh, I’ll just figure all that out later. I’ll process that later.” This is an experience where we must feel as we go. And so part of what is helpful in allowing us to feel as we go is to name what we’re experiencing, to name that this is hard, and it feels hard because it is hard. It’s not hard because we’re weak. It’s not hard because we’re doing something wrong. It’s not hard because we’re not disciplined enough in our new routines. It’s hard because it’s hard.

But of course I want you, and this year’s podcast season, to end on a note of hope, so please share one thing that’s been unexpectedly good, too. The thing you’re grateful for? Someone else might need a reminder not to take it for granted – and there may be a few things you’re overlooking that listening to this episode will help uncover.

As usual for one of these episodes, there are lots of ways to share your thoughts:

Leave me a voice mail right from your computer! Go to www.MidlifeMixtape.com and you’ll see a blue button on the right hand side that says, “Share one grief and one gratitude for 2020” Just press it, and you can start recording with one click. I would LOVE for people to do this so I can incorporate your actual voice on the episode! There’s a 90 second limit and you can re-record before sending if you need to.
Record a voice memo into your phone and email it to dj@midlifemixtape.com. Again, it would be so cool to hear and share your story in your actual voice.
Leave me a comment below!
Email me your grief and gratitude in 2020 to dj@midlifemixtape.com
Send me a Facebook message, tweet or Instagram comment @midlifemixtape

Start thinking about it and then send me your stories to me before Dec 11! Then tune in on Tuesday, Dec 22 to hear the show!

ICYMI on the @midlifemixtape socials over Thanksgiving weekend – I asked an absolute’ ’80s ICON to help me extend my deepest thanks to Midlife Mixtape Podcast listeners for all your support – check it out here!

The post Share One Grief and One Gratitude for 2020 appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

                  Related StoriesYour Favorite GenX Summer Childhood Memories?Ep 71 Listeners’ Youthful ShenanigansWhen Negative Recall Bias Starts to Win 

Default

Last Saturday night was the first time I slept 8 full hours and woke up feeling refreshed since *checks calendar* November 2016. Sure, it could have resulted from the celebratory champagne that started flowing at breakfast time in California, fifteen minutes after a friend in Germany texted “Welcome back to the civilized nations!”

But like 78 million other Americans, it was more likely the unimaginable relief that came from seeing the election results go our way. (My older sister and I were at odds on this: she refused to entertain the possibility of a second term, whereas I didn’t allow myself to hope he would be denied. The Baby Boomer/GenX divide never felt so real.) Even if it won’t be quite real until January 21, a yuuuge weight had been lifted, and it was apparently the one that had squashed my ability to sleep.

But here’s the truth: one week later, it’s already high time to get back to work.

Because that gauntlet  of engagement in the political process we just survived – the one that saw us donating to GOTV efforts in our own communities and elsewhere, text banking in states we’ve never visited, phone banking in states whose pronunciation we need to be coached on (trust me, it’s NeVAAAAda and OR-i-gen to natives, and they’ll know you’re from Away if you botch it) – that is our new default. That’s the baseline of your required involvement in the democratic process, though you’re always free to level up.

Why? Because we now know from direct experience what it looks like when we don’t.

I’m not saying people didn’t work hard in the 2016 election. I am saying each of us has been touched personally in the past four years by what it means to have an incompetent administration elected by a minority of the voting populace. Public health, racial justice, immigration policy, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, climate crisis – the impact of failed leadership in these arenas will never be theoretical again, for anyone alive in the country today.

But the good news is that holding ourselves to a higher standard of knowledge and activism about democracy isn’t bad news. I mean, you have to find humor in the fact that on a Zoom call this week with college friends I met thirty years ago, we spent as much time dissecting the Twitter feud between the Lieutenant Governors of Texas and Pennsylvania as we did talking about what our kids are up to. (Pay up, Lt. Gov. Patrick, and Lt. Gov Fetterman would like his reward in Sheetz gift cards.) Or that my brother and I, whose only shared memory of Georgia was when we were packed into the backseat of a woody paneled station wagon circa 1974 on a family drive from Florida to New York, had an in-depth discussion of electoral college votes and recounts in the Peach State on Tuesday. After eight months of sheltering-at-home, it’s actually been nice to have something new to talk about.

The new default is to recognize that democracy is a full contact sport, played year-round, in your neighborhood, city, state, and country. And you are ALWAYS the snack mom. There’s no getting out of it.

Wherever this man goes in January, it’s not to an isolation booth. He’s going to keep stirring shit up, more than ever because he’ll have none of the constraints of public office (not that he ever thought much about them in the first place.) He’s wounded, he’s a bottomless abyss of self-pity, and he’s ready to amp up the 72 MILLION people who still thought he’d make a swell leader for another term, primed to encourage their anger and paranoia.

Our only real hope is to make things better for everyone, and quickly, before he decides to try for another round at the pinata of our national dignity in 2024.

That’s a shit-ton of pressure for this administration to shoulder, though if anyone can handle it, it’s Joe and Kamala. But that job gets infinitely easier when it’s spread out to all of us. Stay involved. Be vocal. Reach out to understand the needs of your community. Keep fighting back against the disinformation, the cynicism, the hatred. All of us have time, talent, and/or treasure in some combination. Figure out what you can contribute to making sure that this election was the inflection point that saw us finally start solving hard problems., instead of a dead cat bounce.

If you’re sleeping better, may as well make it count, right?

Of all the songs crowd-sourced on the fly during our impromptu front-yard/masked/distanced dance party last Saturday, this was probably my favorite.

“Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night…”

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                  Related StoriesLoads of DistractionsPodcast of the Year!Zero For Five 

Ep 86 Epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford

“The responsible thing to do”: In this special episode, UCSF public health specialist Dr. George Rutherford MD answers Midlife Mixtape listeners’ questions about COVID, vaccine development, and how to stay safe in the months ahead.

Fresh Garbage but ain’t no spinach

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 86 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on November 10, 2020. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

Dr. George Rutherford, MD 00:00

It’s unfortunate, but this is a moment in time. This time next year this problem will hopefully be solved.

00:08

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:33

This year’s Thanksgiving celebrations may be the strangest on record – between the hardships of 2020 and the fear of COVID spread, it’s unlikely we’re celebrating the holiday as usual. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to be grateful, or ways to find more thankfulness in our lives. And to make it easier, I’m giving away ten signed copies of my book, The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time, on Goodreads. Just head over to Goodsreads.com and search for the book or for my name, and you’ll find the page that lets you enter to win. Of course, you can also find the book in bookstores, online, and for audio download – all the details at www.DavisKho.com. And hey, the holidays are coming…how about writing a thank-you letter to someone and tucking it inside my very pretty little blue book? It’s a double whammy – science shows that both you and the letter recipient will feel better! Then you can just sit back and tuck YOURSELF into some eggnog and sugar cookies?

It’s a thought.

Hey people, we’re back! I’m Nancy Davis Kho and I want to thank you for tuning in. How’s your stress level? I’m recording this episode on the fourth day of November 3,  three days AFTER the election, so while I’m optimistic about the outcome of the presidential race and hoping not to be dropping an episode during a civil war, I have to assume it could happen? In which case, may your toilet paper supplies be robust, your reflexes sharp, and your battle hymns ready. That’s gallows humor, I don’t know what we’re supposed to be thinking or doing right now. I look forward to the day that I can go 24 hours in a row without thinking about the president.

Today’s episode is a bit different than normal, but given the circumstances, I figured you wouldn’t mind. The deal is that I know an epidemiologist, and in 2020, that’s quite a useful connection to have. So, I asked if he would come on the show and talk not about midlife, but about COVID: where we are, where we’re going, what we need to know right now. (Of course, I asked him about his first concert, I’m not a barbarian.) You all sent in some questions, I had some of my own, and the result is today’s interview, with Dr. George W. Rutherford, M.D. Dr. Rutherford is the Salvatore Pablo Lucia Professor of Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine, Pediatrics and History and Head of the Division of Infectious Disease and Global Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco.

His expertise is in the epidemiology and control of communicable diseases of public health significance with a focus on HIV, Ebola virus and Zika virus infection in low- and middle-income countries. Dr. Rutherford serves as an advisor to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. He has been involved in the public health response to SARS-CoV-2 since the earliest days of the pandemic.

I’m going to be upfront with you guys: because this is not a fiction podcast, you’re not going to hear that everything is great. However, because I respect you and believe in your ability to remain calm and plan accordingly, I’m hoping this interview will help you take steps to safeguard yourselves, your families, and your communities and finally, finally put this stuff behind us.

Let’s hop up on the exam table and have the doctor give it to us straight.

[MUSIC]

Nancy Davis Kho

I’m here today with Dr. George Rutherford. George, thank you so much for coming on the program today.

Dr. George Rutherford

Of course, my pleasure.

Nancy

Now, I don’t know if you know this, but regardless of what the situation is with the pandemic outside the larger world, we always start the Midlife Mixtape Podcast with the most important question, which is: what was your first concert, and what were the circumstances?

George 04:17

I’m trying to remember the name of the band. It was either… it was like Ultimate Spinach or Fresh Spinach or some stoner thing. This was in 1968.

Nancy

Where was it?

George

Cal Western, which is now called Point Loma Nazarene College. It was in San Diego. I want to say “Fresh Garbage” was one of their songs. Dada, dada, dada dada. Yeah, well, whatever.

Nancy 04:40

Yeah, it’s not coming to me, but I’ll look it up after. If I can find a video for Fresh Spinach’s song “Fresh Garbage”, we’ll put that with the episode. How about that?

George 04:50

I can remember my father asking me what band I’d seen and then him rolling his eyes.

Nancy 04:56

Then it worked. That’s the whole point. I feel like we have to make the formal ask: Is it okay if we ask you to be The Midlife Mixtape Official Epidemiologist? And in return for you agreeing to do that I was going to offer to make you a mixtape.

George

Sounds great.

Nancy

Do you have favorite songs about medicine? Are there any that you know really speak to you?

George 05:19

About medicine? Yeah, “Doctor, Doctor, give me the news, I got a bad case of loving you,”  or the Doctor John one: “I was feeling so bad, I asked my family doctor just what I had.”

Nancy 05:29

We’ll put that in there. Listeners, if you’ve got any songs about doctors or medicine or health, send in your suggestions to me, because, you know, I love nothing more than a themed mixtape challenge. George, I’m gonna put something together that, you know, hopefully we will crowdsource and give you something new to listen to and in gratitude for the service you’re providing us today.

George 05:53

How kind of you, thank you.

Nancy 05:54

Well, every time I open the San Francisco Chronicle and look at an article about COVID and the pandemic, you are one of the experts who is cited. I really am grateful to have your expertise here on the show. And listeners – most of the listeners to the show are what I call in “the years between being hip and breaking one”, in midlife, which means we’re not just thinking about COVID as it relates to ourselves, which is plenty worrisome. But also, we’re worried about aging parents, and the younger people in our lives. And you know, we can be worried in 17 different directions over stuff we can’t control, before we ever get out of bed in the morning.

I’m going to start by casting the question net wide with some really general stuff. And then we’ll narrow in, to questions sent in by Midlife Mixtape listeners.

You and I are talking in the end of October. What’s the state of play in the end of October? Can you talk about trends that you’re seeing that are concerning? And are there any that are hopeful? Let’s get a level set of where we are with COVID right now. And you obviously are in the Bay Area, but you have worked globally. We can be as broad in this as you’d like to be.

George 07:03

There’s very little that’s encouraging, let me be frank.

Europe is in the midst of a second wave of a pandemic that’s much worse than their first wave. Although it’s spread fairly broadly across the continent, so you’re not seeing the very localized outbreaks, like in Milano and parts of Spain, it’s much more generalized so that the hospitals aren’t getting killed yet.

In the United States, we’ve clearly entered the third wave of an epidemic. Our epidemic cases are increasing across the country, although on a per capita basis, there are astoundingly bad in places like North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, places like that through the upper Midwest. And in terms of total cases, Texas now dominates the largest amount of all cases, then Illinois, which really is kind of part of this upper Midwest cluster.

And then California, just because our population so large. So that’s what’s going on in California. However, the signs as of right now, today, is that we’re in a plateau, we’re still at the tail end of the second wave of the epidemic, without a lot of new evidence of a third wave starting, although there have been some worrisome spikes in a few places. But we’ll have to see how those shake out over the next couple of days, whether those are just artifacts of people all showing up at the same time to get diagnosed, or whether they really are the start of a large upsurge. California has done really quite well, compared to the other states for sure, in terms of being able to stabilize infection rate, stabilize hospitalization rates, and stabilize the test positivity.

It’s a big complex thing, trying to understand what’s going on in California. What goes on in Imperial County, and what goes on in Del Norte county could not be more diametrically opposed. So, it’s big, it’s complicated. There’s infinite amount of detail. I mean, we obviously closed down really early and there’s other states that did as well. We’re just seeing those policies play out now.

Nancy

With the upper Midwest stuff, those are states that didn’t have masking, didn’t have the kind of shutdowns that we have gone through.

George


The Wisconsin Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional and void in one evening in May, you know, they’re now just being slammed. Right? So, our early shutdown, that’s kind of long ago and far away at this point in time, there’s essentially no residual from it except economic. In terms of disease transmission, that’s long gone.

The second phase, the second wave of the epidemic was quite generalized. It involved disproportionately the Latino population of the state, both in urban areas like the Fruitvale district in Oakland and the mission in San Francisco, but also in agricultural areas, and we’re still seeing high rates in Sonoma, Monterey, Imperial, Riverside counties, which I think are probably kind of the tail end of the agricultural harvesting season, where we’re still seeing a farm workers who are being disproportionately affected. And that’s kind of coming down, but that’s coming down and as a natural phenomenon, because the people are going to go back to their regular houses and not be living in you know, marginal housing near the fields. I would hope that that dissipates over time.

Now, the other thing that’s going on are schools. School reopening is a real thing. It’s going on in much of the state, slowly, we’re opening the elementary schools first, which is the prudent thing to do. And we have not seen any school outbreaks yet. We’ve seen college outbreaks, and but most of the colleges are pretty much shut down right now. So that’s. I mean, it’s unfortunate if you’re a college student. It’s fortunate for from a disease control standpoint, right?

Nancy 10:53

And how are you feeling about the vaccine research, where we are with the development of a vaccine?  I mean, the picture is loud and clear. We’re not nearly to the end of the road here. And we’ve got some rough months ahead of us. But obviously, I keep thinking that if there’s a vaccine, this is when things are really going to change. I don’t know if that’s even true. So how are you feeling about the state of vaccine research? And what does it look like when that is available?

George 11:18

I’m feeling quite confident about the state of vaccine research. Although there was a problem today in Brazil that needs to be figured out. But the two mRNA vaccines, the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines, I think are going we’re gonna start seeing data from those very quickly, and we’ll be able to move ahead with them.

There are not going to be very many doses to start with. And these are all two-dose vaccine schedule. You need to get one dose and then a second dose, either 21 or 28 days later. There should be something like 100 million doses available nationwide, say by the end of December, guessing.  That hundred million doses translate to 50 million people to get vaccinated. In California, as 15% of the population of the population of the country, that’s seven and a half million here now.

They’re gonna try and distribute it a little bit more evenly across the states. But in California, I think we’re going to have enough to vaccinate some healthcare workers, the ones who are working in ICUs and emergency departments and are really forward-facing, the ones who are going to see patients.

If I had my way, the first people I vaccinate are nursing home attendants and congregate living facility attendants. Those are the people who experience has said can be big amplifiers, often because they’re not the world’s greatest jobs. And so, people often work in more than one facility. And so there can be a real kind of crossbreeding of outbreaks. We’ve not had a nursing home outbreak in quite a while, except for one in Santa Cruz, about four weeks ago and one recently in Shasta County. But early on, 50% of the mortality was in nursing homes. So that’s one thing we’re trying to, I mean, those are groups I would give precedence to.

The federal government’s gonna rake it off the top for its own purposes, you can well imagine that the Navy who has had big outbreaks on big ships, big important ships, like nuclear aircraft carriers, doesn’t want to be screwing around with us any more than they have to be. Right? I think that that’s gonna kind of come off the top, you know, then you have people about people who actually live in nursing homes, you know how well their immune systems can respond to this, we’re not quite sure. But hopefully the day there will be sufficient data on immunization of older people, as these trial data come out, they may well be at the top of the list.

And then we have this sort of amorphous category of essential workers, whatever that means. I think the guys picking the fruit in the fields are essential workers. That’s my list of essential workers, plus they’re the ones with all the infection right now. But you’ll be pressured that, “Oh, it’s got to be the prison guards” or “it’s got to be the police” or “it’s got to be the fire department.” The EMTs will probably get it right off the bat.

Nancy 14:00

And who gets to make those decisions?

George 14:03

The governor. The CDC is trying to make recommendations for the nation for the first round, but then it’s going to come down to the states and the states are going to have to decide what they’re going to do.

Nancy 14:17

So, it’s going to be different in all 50 states.

George

Of course. That’s how we’ve done all this.

Nancy

Sure, because it’s been so effective. I hadn’t even factored in that it’s a two-dose vaccine. When you hear people saying they’re going to be X number of doses available, you need to cut that number in half. Right?

George

Exactly.

Nancy

Ay yai yai.

George

You can imagine the data complications, that that engenders as well. You’re gonna have to really keep track of who’s gotten vaccinated.

Nancy 14:43

Right. And that doesn’t even touch on the question of how many people are skeptical of a vaccine, whether it’s because they’re anti vaxxers, or because Trump said it was okay and they don’t want to get his vaccines.

George

So I don’t know if you see if you’ve seen this but [California] Governor Newsom appointed a committee of people who’ve been on basically the big CDC immunizations committees in the past, to do an independent review of the data before offering the vaccine in California.

Nancy

I did see that.

George

California is putting in this second level of security, basically to make sure that the vaccine does what we hope it will do.

Nancy 15:22

And I guess other states will or will not, depending on who’s in charge.

George

Well, New York did it already. New York broke the ice on this one. But I think it gives people greater confidence that the vaccines effective and more importantly safe. If we can push vaccine coverage from 40% to 60%, or even higher, I think it’s an effort well spent.

Nancy 15:42

Right. What’s a realistic timeline, do you think, before Joe Blow on the street is going to be able to get a vaccine? Or Nancy Kho sitting in her podcast studios? Forget Joe Blow. I just want to know when my kids can go in and get theirs.

George

July.

Nancy

July, okay.

George

And they won’t give it to kids, by the way.

Nancy

Mine are grown up… but ok, they’re not going to give it kids?

George 16:05

They may not they may not give it to them right away. Because younger kids are not… They do get infected. They do get complications. They can die. But it happens SO much less frequently than in older people or even adolescents. And if you’re in a vaccine sparing mode, there’s some suggestion about not vaccinating kids right off the bat.

Nancy 16:29

And the hope is that as a vaccine gets more widespread, the risk to kids will get even lower.

George

Just because they’re less likely to be infected. Yeah.

Nancy 16:39

Right. You know, I heard you tell a story I wanted to ask you to share for this audience. I heard you talking about the impact of the motorcycle rally in Sturgis. Can you tell that story again, please, because I couldn’t believe it.

George 16:52

Sturgis, South Dakota is a little town in western South Dakota, that has a big motorcycle rally every year. And by big, I mean 460,000 people come into Sturgis, South Dakota for a 10-day event. I’ve seen all the pictures and I’ve seen maybe one or two masks out of this whole crowd. And it’s cheek by jowl. you know, bars everywhere. It’s a perfect incubation model.

In early September…this occurred from August, I want to say 6th to 15th. But it’s something like that. By early September, there was an estimate that there had been 266,000 secondary cases from Sturgis:  either people who got infected there, or people who got infected there and came back and infected other people in their home counties. That accounted for 19% of all cases in the US between August 2 and September 2. The estimated cost of medical care for this population of infected people was $12.2 billion. Which means you could have paid everybody $26,000 not to come and you would have come out ahead.

Nancy 18:09

I’m hearing it a second time and I’m still just as stunned. 460,000 people cause 266,000 cases.

George 18:16

That was as of the beginning of September.

Nancy 18:21

Right, which leads to my next question. Given the lack of cohesive national response, and with colder months looming, what are the most important things that people can do in the coming weeks to keep themselves in their communities safe? And I guess the short answer is don’t pull a Sturgis.

George 18:38

Well, the Big Ten’s coming back with football games this this Saturday. I don’t think you’re gonna have people in the stands. And if they do, that’s going to be at minimal capacity. But those are the big crowd events that you worry about. Or we get to the Rose Parade and stuff. You don’t want to pull any kind of mass thing like that.

But the real question is about smaller family gatherings. As you know, we have everything from Halloween to Dia de los Muertos to Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Year’s coming up. And there are all sorts of opportunities for small family gatherings, which Dr. Redfield at CDC has specifically started to warn people about, and I think those could potentially be large amplifying events. And, you know, I am eyeing this fat capon, instead of a turkey, my wife and I can split for Thanksgiving and have everybody else on Zoom.

Nancy 19:30

Is that what you’re gonna do?

George 19:32

I haven’t told her this bit of news yet.

Nancy 19:35

I’m not breaking it to her.

George 19:37

Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the responsible thing to do.

Nancy 19:40

We’re gonna get to listener questions, but that absolutely was one of the questions that came in from Ellen, who said, basically, she’s got college kids coming home, her kids were able to go live on campus, although it’s not the kind of semester that any of us have ever had on campus, or envisioned for our children. But they’re going to be coming back home. They always go see the grandmother two states away. It’s a drive. The grandmother has been by herself for months and months and months. You’re saying call her on Zoom, everybody stays home?

George 20:11

Yep. That’s what I’m saying. I mean, this is exactly the sort of stuff I’m talking about. Exactly. And it’s, you know, it’s unfortunate. But this is a moment in time. This time next year, this problem will hopefully be solved.

Nancy 20:25

Yep. I mean, I’m totally with you. I was trying to figure out if there’s another family, because we’re all here, not mixing with anybody, really. And I was trying to think if there’s another family that we could invite over just so we’re looking at somebody besides the four of us, and I had a friend who said, “You know what, let’s make a turkey sandwich and meet out somewhere for a hike.” And I’m like, “That sounds like a great Thanksgiving to me for 2020.”  Why even bother pretending that it’s going to be the same holiday? And like you said, it’s a moment in time. It’s one year.

George 20:56

If you if you insist on having another family over, have two tables and have them outside. And you know, stay away from each other.

Nancy 21:07

Yeah, we’ve got more questions from Midlife Mixtape listeners, but we’re going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor.

The presenting sponsor of The Midlife Mixtape Podcast is the Amateur Music Network.

On this podcast, and in my life, I try–I really try! –to accentuate the positive. But sometimes I get just a little bummed out thinking about everything we’re missing out on because of the COVID pandemic.

Take singing. Maybe you used to sing in a church choir. Or in a community chorus, or just along with the crowd at a concert, like I did. Not happening now. No rehearsals, no group practice. Needless to say, no performances … unless you count singing in the shower.

That’s why I was happy to learn about Amateur Music Network, a Bay Area nonprofit that connects dedicated amateur musicians like me with professional mentors. And I am especially happy about Amateur Music Network’s new series, Singing Saturdays with Ragnar Bohlin, which takes place over six Saturdays from November 14 through December 19.

Ragnar Bohlin is the world-renowned director of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, which has thrilled many audiences and made many glorious recordings. Ragnar has spent the pandemic in his native Sweden. But through the magic of Amateur Music Network and Zoom, he’ll be in your living room or your backyard, leading you and hundreds of other singers from around the world in an hour of focused singing every week. You’ll start with vocal warmups and then sing some of the most beautiful choral music ever written, with works by Beethoven, Mozart, and more.

OK, it can’t replace an in-person choir, and on Zoom nobody can hear you singing. But Ragnar’s unique ability to connect through the screen will have you feeling like you’re getting personal coaching from one of the very best. And with Amateur Music Network the focus is always on being together in a community of music-makers, even while we’re apart.

Sign up for Singing Saturdays by going to amateurmusic dot org slash workshops, that’s https://amateurmusic.org/info/workshops/. And if you don’t sing, but do play a musical instrument, check out Amateur Music Network’s other online workshops. There’s something there for everyone who loves making music.

[MUSIC]

Nancy

Alright, we’re back with Dr. George Rutherford. And we had some questions come in from you guys that I’m hoping George will answer for us. Chris wrote in to say, “What care should we be taking with stuff coming into our house like groceries and packages?”

George 23:26

Nothing?

Nancy

Nothing?

George

Nothing. Unless it’s glistening, there’s not going to be fomites on it.

Nancy 23:31

UGH do you have to put it that way? “Glistening.” So basically, we don’t need to be using the Clorox wipes on the packages anymore?

George

The fomite transmission is pretty low. Pretty low.

Nancy

“Fomite” is a word I learned in 2020. That’s one positive, I guess.

George 23:48

Okay, so if you’re on the New York City subway, and there’s a pole, and somebody’s been hanging on it who has been sneezing into their hand, yeah, you can get fomite transmission from that. But aside from stainless steel and glass surfaces, it’s pretty unlikely.

Nancy 24:04

It’s funny, because if you were to ask me, “What is a surface that might actually be glistening, thanks to a stranger?” “New York City subway pole” would be my first response. So that lines up.

Chris also wondered whether he needs to wear a mask all the time when he walks outside, or only when he’s near other people. I have that question, too. Because I take a mask with me to walk. I put it on when I see people coming. But do I have to have it on all the time?

George 24:27

You should. You should. Just because people come up from behind and all that stuff. I think. at some level, it’s easier to just put it on and keep it on than not.

Nancy 24:35

Okay, well, my daughter pointed out to me that it’s actually helpful for building lung capacity because you have to work harder to breathe. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can use it at least to rationalize.

George

Do you want me to answer that question? The answer is no. Doesn’t increase the work of breathing. It increases the smells of breathing, but not the work of breathing.

Nancy 24:54

All right, well, keep the mask on then. Put it on outside the front door and don’t take it off till you get back inside.

George

Keep it on. It’s just easier.

Nancy

All right, Jennifer wrote in and said, “Are you able to estimate average immunity conferred from a COVID infection?” She had COVID back in April. And she’s wondering if she still has any protection now?

George 25:13

I don’t know.

Yeah, I don’t know, probably about somewhere between 85 and 90% of people develop measurable antibody, but only about 15% of people develop high levels of measurable antibody. And these are the right kinds of antibodies, neutralizing antibodies that are directed to the protein on the SARS COVID-2 virus that actually binds to the cell wall. Basically, it’s the key that goes into the lock. Those antibodies wane over time. But all antibodies wane over time. And the question is, if you get rechallenged, will you have an immune response where you can recall this immunity and start making antibodies so fast that you don’t get sick?

There are a number of other coronaviruses we deal with. There are four that are of a different lineage, the Alfa coronaviruses, for you virologists out there. And they are the ones that cause common colds, upper respiratory infections. The immunity to them wanes over about four months. The concern is that maybe this is really not long-lasting immunity. Plus, we now have about a half dozen cases of clearly documented reinfection, a second infection. But that’s out of 40 million cases worldwide. So how much does six make? You know, is it like, “Who cares?” But the concern is, is that the naturally acquired immunity may not be as long lived as we would hope that it is.

Nancy 26:42

Does that just mean we get our double COVID shots every year along with our flu shots?

George 26:45

Actually, the way the shots will work is that we’ll set up a little protein workshop in your cells that will spit out these spike proteins. You’ll be continuously exposed, and you’ll have continuous high levels of antibody. So that’s the plan.

The issue that’s come up here recently is the whole notion of herd immunity. And if we just let everybody get infected, which also means letting tens of thousands of peoples get dead, we would have naturally acquired immunity, and everything would be hunky dory. And then we wouldn’t have to wait for a vaccine, which oh, by the way, is coming in about three weeks, you know, Land of Short Attention Span Theater. But you know, there’s no guarantee that that’s going to happen, right, that it’s actually going to be able to protect people.

Sweden went down this path to have pretty much an open economy which crashed anyway. And they basically ended up with 10 times the mortality of Norway and five times the mortality of Denmark and managed to get maybe 7.5% of its population with measurable antibody levels. Now they’re having a second wave of infection just as bad as the rest of Europe. I don’t think there’s any real merit to just saying that “Oh, yeah, I had it. I have antibodies, therefore, I’m immune.” Although somebody said this last week…

Nancy 28:09

Who was that? I cannot recall.

George 28:12

If I were in your shoes, I get vaccinated for sure.

Nancy 28:18

Well, it’s funny you bring up Sweden. Murray had written in and asked about how it was that Sweden’s positive cases per capita were only a little bit more than a third of ours when they never wore masks or did a shutdown. But it sounds like we may not be looking at that the right way.

George 28:33

Yeah, well, they haven’t looked recently, you know, in terms of numbers of cases. And they had exceptionally high mortality.

Nancy 28:40

Hmm. Okay. Tim wondered what you think some of the long-term ramifications will be for those who recover from COVID. And whether there’s data on the percentage of cases that will have those long-term consequences, the long haulers?

George 28:54

Yeah, that’s a great question. Unfortunately, the studies are just getting put together now to try and understand what the risk is, this longer-term risk, and what it’s associated with, and what its manifestations are. For right now what I can tell you is, yes, there is a risk of long-term complications. There are a whole variety of them that have been described, everything from myocarditis of the heart muscle, to blood clots, to neurologic disease. Without following a cohort of 100,000 patients forward over time, you know, we’re not going to know what percentage is this and what percentage is that and what may contribute to this or what may contribute to that. Those studies are being put together now. It’s not risk free. Once you get it, you don’t walk away and dust off your knees and get up and go right back to where you were. Not necessarily.

Nancy 29:47

That’s the thing that’s so crazy about this herd immunity theory, is you don’t know which category you’re in before you get it. I have a friend whose daughter is a long hauler, and she’s 12 years old, and it’s a really challenging situation to be in and you don’t want to mess around with it.

George 30:06

There’s one bit of information to walk away with today. It’s “Don’t get infected.”

Nancy 30:12

And the way to not get infected is to wear your masks and do your social distancing. And don’t have company over for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sorry, but not sorry.

George

And especially avoid crowds indoors.

Nancy

Okay, because that was my question that I sent in to myself. George, when will it be safe to go to a concert again?

George

Indoors or outdoors?

Nancy

Indoors? At the Fox Theater in Oakland, specifically,

George 30:38

That broken down old…?

Nancy 30:41

Get the name of The Fox out of your mouth! Don’t talk about my favorite theater that way!

George 30:45

Well, it all depends on what the state-of-the-art air handling units can do. We’ve been trying to help the Opera in San Francisco, some of us from UCSF, and we’re dealing with state-of-the-art 1930s ventilation systems. “Can’t you crank it up a little bit more?”

What I fear will happen is that there’ll be a lot of hesitancy about vaccination, and there’ll be a lot of outright resistance about vaccination, and only a certain proportion of the population will get vaccinated. Like half. And those people will have some magic button on their cell phone that says they’ve been vaccinated, and therefore they can go to the Fox Theater, or they can go into a restaurant for dinner. Or they can go to a basketball game, or they can do this, or they can do that. That’s what I’m worried about. That’s why I’m worried we’re going to have a tiered…unless people really get vaccinated in to a level where you can achieve artificial herd immunity, which is probably on the order of 70-ish percent, we’re going to end up with a society that’s going to be segregated by whether your phone has a green bar on it or a red bar.

Nancy 31:55

That’s a terrifying dystopian future. But that’s what public health workers and the CDC, if you let them do their job, that’s the kind of stuff they can work on.

George 32:05

You can avoid it if you just get vaccinated.

Nancy 32:06

Right? Well, we’re coming to the end of my time with you. But I will ask you the question that Diane sent in: If you could get everyone in the world to cooperate, what could we do to eradicate the disease? And how long would it take?

George 32:21

Well, this is a disease that occurs in nature, and so it will likely crossover again, so we’re not going to be able to eradicate it. So just put that out of your mind.

To control it, though, what we need to be able to do, in the absence of vaccine, is to have aggressive screening, and aggressive quarantine and isolation. And by an aggressive isolation, I mean, making it worth people’s while to be isolated for 10 days after they’re diagnosed. And that means if you’re a guy standing in front of Home Depot looking for day labor, somebody’s got to be paying your wages, have a place for you to live, and give your family food. Okay, that’s what happens in San Francisco. And that’s not what’s happening in other places.

That’s what makes successful isolation and quarantine, there’s no point in testing people unless you’re going to isolate people who are infectious until they are no longer infectious. Now, this is a fairly crude way of doing this. But that’s what that’s what testing is all about. It’s for the purposes of isolation. Or if you’ve been exposed and are not infectious yet, quarantine. And societies that have done a good job of this, like Taiwan, do this very aggressively, and don’t screw around with it. I would also say that the this is a bit of a theoretical discussion, where it’s Short Attention Span Theater. I mean, this is what we’ve been doing, obviously.

But you know, when the vaccine comes, people got to get vaccinated. And hopefully, we’ll have a convincing solid vaccine with that has very low levels of side effects and is highly effective. But you know, no vaccine is 100%. We’re gonna end up with, you know, a 90% effective vaccine. To get to a 70% herd immunity means we’re gonna have to vaccinate 77% of people. That’s a huge, tall order. And the other thing about these two vaccines is that they have to be stored at minus 70 degrees. Centigrade. There’s a huge logistical challenge with these things as well,

Nancy 34:25

Okay, did not know that either. Divide the number of vaccines by two and stick them in your coldest freezer.

George 34:33

Not YOUR coldest.

Nancy 34:35

The Universe’s coldest freezer.

George 34:38

There you go.

Nancy 34:40

Is there a question that people should ask you and don’t?

George 34:43

I mean, I get asked a thousand questions a day, I don’t think so.

I mean, basically all the knowledge is out there. It’s a question of synthesizing it. You know, I think we have to really see how the vaccine plays out, what the trials look like, what the data look like, and then we’ll be able to really enter this next phase of disease control.

But I mean, make no mistake about it, there were 100 mistakes made by the federal government, specifically, in January, February and March, and they continue to go on. And the one thing I would like to be able to come away from this with is a really clear plan, with clear lines of authority and the right kinds of warning systems to catch the next one of these before it goes down. I don’t know if people know this, but USAID had an early warning system, specifically for these kinds things, and one branch of which was specifically in Wuhan in China. And it was closed down in October, because USAID decided it wasn’t worth it. Okay. That’s the kind of nonsense that just absolutely has to stop.

Nancy 35:50

Amen to that. All right, Dr. George Rutherford, we’re so grateful you shared your expertise today. Now, we always like to wrap up our reflections on “the years between being hip and breaking one” by asking this final question: What one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

George 36:08

Oh, that’s an interesting question. I did see a great t-shirt the other day, it said, “You know you’re old when happy hour means naptime.”

Nancy 36:22

I’m old.

George 36:23

I love that. So anyway, so you want you want a real answer?

Nancy 36:28

I want a real one! I mean, that’s a good one, too. But what if you could go back and tell younger George Rutherford or somebody younger than you? What would your piece of advice be?

George 36:37

You know, I think that you have to find something you like, do and get well trained. And do it.

I think that we’re citizens of the world. And I think we should act that way and be responsible on a worldwide stage. I actually do business in five languages. I would encourage people to learn languages. It’s good for your memory, you know. Yeah, you can learn the piano. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But unless it’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that doesn’t really count as a foreign language.

And I guess my advice is, don’t be insular. If you’re going to pick large, kind of overriding themes, you know, don’t be insular. There’s lots of parts of the world. And if we’re going to be able to survive as a species for more than a few hundred, few thousand years more, we’re going to have to take much better care of the Earth. And that means finding solutions and being able to cooperate with people and not go it alone.

Nancy 37:32

That’s very good advice. Is one of your languages German?

George

Nein.

Nancy

Ach, I was gonna say, “Vielen Dank für Ihre Zeit! Das war toll!” I’m not going to embarrass myself with my French.

George 37:45

I was in a line… I shouldn’t tell this story on the radio.

Nancy 37:48

Oh, well now you have to.

George 37:50

I was in Paris one day… my daughter had gone over from London for a long weekend and had bought me tickets to the French Open, to the French Tennis Open. And we go in…it’s a Wednesday afternoon. And it’s the most complicated security, you have to show your passport twice, and they’ve got the paramilitary police there. And it’s also French School Children’s Day so it’s just outta control.

And there’s this guy behind me who’s pushing in line. And it’s a long line. He’s, like, my age. I finally said to him in French, “You’re so important. Go ahead.” “Vous et trés important. Passez.” Of course, he goes ahead of me. Then he turns around and looks at me and says, “You Canadians think you’re so perfect.”

And I wanted to say, “If we weren’t us ‘Canadians’, Jacque, you’d be speaking German.” But it would involve a conditional and a subjunctive and I would never get it right in a million years.

Nancy 38:49

Oh, that’s awesome. That is an excellent story. We’re gonna close on that. Thank you so much for being on the show. George. I really appreciate your time and we’ll talk to you soon.

George 38:59

Okay, thanks.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 39:04

Okay, hope that conversation was useful to you listeners. I’d love to hear what you thought of it. Thanks to everyone who sent in a question and apologies. I didn’t have time to get to all of them. But there was a lot to discuss.

I seriously want to make Dr. Rutherford a medically themed mixtape so please be sure to send me your song ideas. “I Want To Be Sedated” feels right to me about now, but maybe there will be better news by the time the episode airs. Email your suggestions of songs to me at dj@midlifemixtape.com, or find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @midlifemixtape. I couldn’t find any Fresh Garbage songs about spinach, but I found one about spirits, so check out the show notes for a taste of the band that made Dr. Rutherford’s father roll his eyes.

I wanted to mention that I’m still adding transcripts to every episode in case you prefer to read rather than listen and now I’ve started the project to go back and add transcripts to older episodes. So, let me know if you’re finding that to be helpful. It’s a big job. I hope it’s adding some value. I think it’s a good thing to do. But this week, I have to say, I was kind of cry laughing because I was cleaning up the transcript for Episode 71, the fantastic “Listener Shenanigans” episode, which is so funny. But it was from back in late March 2020, when we were baby hunker downers, and I was making jokes about having to be inside for A WHOLE WEEK. Oh my gosh, that’s a long time ago.

Anyway, join me next time when I interview Fairy Godmother Joanna Bloor. That’s all I’m saying about Joanna. I know you’re intrigued. Come back. All right take good care, all of you!

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 86 Epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .

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