SOLSC March 15: Fifty Years Ago Today...

           In the late summer of 1963 I bought a datebook. It was the Week at a Glance. Every year since then I’ve bought a new one, mostly the Week at a Glance or Exacompta’s Space 17. And in summer 1971 I started keeping a journal.

            Whenever it’s been 50 years since something in my life coincided with something happening in the world or seemed worth noting on its own, I’ve written something about it either on Facebook or here, on the blog. So here’s my #FiftyYearsAgoToday to remember and pass on, from my March 15, 1973, journal.

“What I’ve been doing for the past three to four years is just bouncing along, marking time, and waiting for it all to start over again. What? Well, protest, revolution, the whole happy we’re-about-to-change-the-world scene. Only now, three months into Nixon’s second term, does it finally become solidly real that all that is over. The women’s movement has peaked and now sliding down into hard work for everyone. I am actually over 30, and my next birthday will make me 31, not 30 again. The fifties are a heavy nostalgia number—and when your very own adolescence becomes some other adolescent’s ancient history-nostalgia, it’s time — to what? Grow up? No, not that yet. Take stock? I do that all the time. Well, what? Start looking ahead, that’s what. Stop waiting for the sixties problems and solutions to come around. Keep on top of what is happening now. The way to stop getting old is not to be old. Stop thinking, ‘back when I was 25’ because you’re not anymore and it’s not anymore. The seventies are going to become history pretty soon, and you might as well know what they were about when they happened. Looking backward with your eyes shut won’t keep them from happening. If all you know is the fifties and sixties, you’ll become obsolescent in no time. So the war in Vietnam, as we knew it, is over. What’s next? What is going to happen next?”

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 15 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!

FiftyYearsAgoToday: Norman Vincent Peale in My Life

A temp agency sent me to work one day a week at the Marble Collegiate Church, at 29th Street and Fifth Avenue. (This was my deal with Jack when I quit my job at Bantam Books and went back to school full-time, that I would work part-time so I would never have to ask him for cigarette money.) Marble Collegiate Church was the home of Norman Vincent Peale, who for those of you too young to remember, became famous for writing a self-help book, “The Power of Positive Thinking” (a forerunner of “The Secret”?), which was widely criticized by mental health practitioners and theologians.

            I worked for an assistant minister—I think it was Arthur Caliandro, who followed Peale as minister, but can’t be sure—who liked to have long conversations with me after I made it clear that I was an atheist. I think ihe was first interested in my being Jewish, wondered whether that would be a problem for me working at the church, and when I said no, I wasn’t religious in any way, he was even more intrigued. I think he wanted to persuade me to become religious, and I didn’t mind these conversations because it was more interesting than the secretarial work I was being paid for.

            There was no smoking in the office, so if I wanted a cigarette, I had to go to the ladies’ room and smoke in a stall. Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to do that either, but I don’t remember being chided for it. I worked there for several months, but by the following spring, I was temping elsewhere.

            You may remember during last year’s campaign mention of Trump’s attendence at Marble Collegiate Church. The current minister says he was never an active member, but he did marry his first two wives there. Here’s a Washington Post article from almost two years ago about Trump and Peale.

            Side note on Norman Vincent Peale: My senior year in high school, I took a class called Social Problems. The teacher, Mr. Wilcox, was primarily the football coach. One of our assignments was to read Peale’s column in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer every week and discuss it in class. He was also against alcohol and maintained that when the Bible referred to “wine,” it really meant “grape juice.” (My yearbook tells me that he graduated from Swarthmore College, which surprises me, and the Internet informs me that he was president of his freshman class in 1923-1924.) #52essays2017