"...the wheel's still in spin..." by Liz Flaherty

From a writing blog in June of 2017.

If your time to you

Is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin'. - Bob Dylan

I blame it on my age that I don't like change. I say I am set in my ways, that I don't have enough brain cells left to learn new things. That...well, I say lots of things, I guess, with the comment at the top of the heap being, "I just don't like it, okay?"

Much of the time, I do like change. As someone who grew up without plumbing, central heating, air conditioning, or store-bought milk, believe me when I say I sometimes downright love change. I don't want to go back to manual typewriters, car window cranks, or black-and-white television. I never want to defrost a refrigerator, clean an oven, or wax a floor ever again.

However, I remember how many changes took place in the workplace because of greed, to get rid of employees, or because the change was going to cause a boon for someone high up in the good-old-boy network. The changes didn't improve the product, lower prices, or enrich life for anyone. They were just changes for the sake of change.

I remember when all the trees were removed from one side of the tree-lined road where my parents' house was--they'd already been removed from the other side--for the sake of widening the road. The road was never widened, but its sides certainly are naked.

Twenty-some years ago the corporation where my husband worked "enhanced" the retirement program. It was the first time I ever knew enhance and rape were synonymous.

Then there are self-checkouts. I avoid them when I can, but sometimes I really don't have the time to wait in line at one of the three registers out of 27 that Walmart opens on Sunday afternoon. When I say, Hey, those ones you do for yourself are a good thing, I also remind myself that, No, they're not. They took away jobs and human contact and--here's a word fast becoming obsolete--service.

Indie-publishing, electronic and digital publishing, and Amazon have made the business of writing books unrecognizable as the same one where my first publisher called and said, "I'm going to buy your book." Brick-and-mortar bookstores have become rare things.

Some of the things that haven't changed, i.e. the us vs. them finger-pointing between separate factions, where the money goes in traditional publishing, and appalling covers are ones many of us wish would go away.

But they won't.

I know I sound curmudgeonly here--remember that age I mentioned?--and maybe I am. Indie-publishing has been great for a lot of writers. Many readers (myself included) read almost exclusively on electronic devices. I buy a ton of stuff from Walmart and Amazon. Because it's easy.

I'm looking out the office window this morning. It's a view that hasn't changed, other than seasonally, for at least 30 years, and it gives me unimaginable peace. I'm so glad, even with all the changes in publishing, that I still have the best job in the world.

But I miss bookstores. And cashiers who call you by name and say thank you. And that tree-lined road.

"I'm younger than that now..."

This is from August 17, 2015. I was still so pumped when I wrote it--I got pumped again when I found it to reprint it in Window Over the Sink. I am so glad and so grateful to have come of age when I did, with the songs that were my sound track to adulthood. There are some things that no amount of revisionist history can lessen and the music of the 60s is one of them.

“I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.” ― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I was 13 when the Beatles came to America and to the Ed Sullivan Show to nestle into the hearts of so many of us. I bought all their records and tried to grow my frizzy brown hair out long, straight, and sleek. I sat through A Hard Day’s Night at least 10 times, but I never got to go to a concert. I was, in the vernacular of the day, a Beatlemaniac.
          That left me sometime after the White Album and prior to the birth of my first child, but I’m still unable to stand still or be quiet when an early Beatles’ song comes on the radio.
          Well, shake it up, baby now—twist and shout...c’mon, c’mon...
          Oh, excuse me.
          Last night, we went to see 1964 The Tribute perform. We were in

nosebleed seats and, in truth, didn’t expect all that much because, of course, we were there for the whole, real thing, so what could possibly...
          Oh, yeah, I’ll tell you something...I think you’ll understand...
          And then I did. Understand, I mean.
          Most of us in the huge crowd were baby boomers. We remembered JFK, Martin Luther King, and RFK and their lives and deaths. We remembered “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” and Peace not War...
          All we are saying is give peace a chance...
          Only they didn’t, of course, give peace a chance. We remember Vietnam, too.
          A lot of us wore flowy things in the 60s. Long floaty skirts with sandals and shawl-type things over tank tops. No bras. Last night, a lot of us still wore flowy things. Only now we do it because we’re shaped differently and flowy works well with the changes. Not only do we wear bras, many of us won’t leave the house without underwires.
          Pride can hurt you too...apologize to her...
          Oh, God, I love this music!
          Duane and I were alone at the concert, but we weren’t. Not really. All around us, everyone knew the words. When to clap. When to stand. When to laugh out loud and say...
          I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.
          Oops, those are Dylan lyrics. But they fit.
          I would have loved a Beatles concert in the 60s, but no more than I loved the Tribute concert last night. Because the mechanisms you use for thinking and feeling and listening are honed and tightened by age and the intensity of those particular processes is excruciatingly wonderful to experience. I know I talk about age too much here—that’s because I know so much about it. And because it’s such a lovely thing.
          I’m always surprised when people don’t believe in happily ever afters, when they don’t believe love ever lasts, when they don’t know what an enormous gift life is. Maybe it is because they don’t write romance or Yes I Can women’s fiction—or maybe it’s because they don’t read it.
          I hope you do one or the other or both, and that as life goes on you focus on how glorious it all is. Now to the question—I know, there’s always a question, but what musical group affects you the way the Beatles still do me? Have you seen them in concert?
          Have a great week!