OK, we’re bringing back one of our early Writing About Our Generation features, a new question for you, loyal reader:

What’s your favorite song? All right, we’ll make it easier:

What are your three favorite songs?

The songs that you still want to hear again and again. The songs that immediately conjure up distinct memories. The songs that have been the soundtrack of your life.

You’ve lived through one of the most dynamic, creative, varied periods in music history, a period that saw the birth of rock and roll, the life and death of disco, the metamorphosis of country, the dominance of hip hop. What has stayed with you? . . .

      I have always loved dancing and can honestly say I am a surprisingly good dancer. Maybe because I’ve been dancing all my life—and will continue to.

      I have learned how to do the James Brown Shuffle, the Michael Jackson Air Walk, the Tina Turner Bump and Grind and excelled at the Shimmy Shimmy Shake Shake. I grew up watching Dick Clark and his American Bandstand TV show and as a young teen would sneak off to Philadelphia to join the “Geater with the Heater”—Gerry Blavet—at his live dances.

      Our generation, I think, is the best at dancing because dancing was so important to us. We did the Twist, the Mashed Potato, the Monster Mash, the Hully Gully, the Pony, the Hitch Hike, the Swim and the Locomotion, to name just a few. . . .

My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer.

Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer.

It's not bitter, not sweet; it's the dry flavored treat.

Won't you try extra dry Rheingold beer?

For no reason at all, at least no reason I can think of, this 1950s-era beer jingle popped into my head the other day. To make matters worse, I began singing it—and immediately, my friend Mitch began singing along. Because, of course, he knew the jingle, too, and the tune, such as it was.

Without really trying to, we had dredged it up from the deep recesses of our brains. We had not known at all that we remembered the jingle, had not thought of the jingle in years, but once the first few words came, the brain went into automatic response mold and there was the entire thing. . . .

      On July 16, we celebrated—or, actually, failed to celebrate—the 79th anniversary of the beginning of the Atomic Age. Okay, a 79th birthday is not usually something to make a fuss about. However, I’m going to use this one to take stock of the Atomic Age—an age (the age?) in which all of us have lived for all or most of our lives.

       I want to make some points—including one controversial point—about nuclear weapons: about the history of employing for potential military use the vast energy derived by splitting the nuclei of uranium or plutonium (fission)—or, subsequently, the even vaster energy produced by fusing hydrogen nuclei to form helium (fusion).

      But first let me briefly commemorate the anniversary . . . .

Sunday afternoon, while most of the country—and much of the world—was reeling from the big news and madly scrolling thru social media updates, my daughter and I were laughing uproariously for about two straight hours.

No, we didn’t find news of Joe Biden stepping aside amusing and surely not guffaw-level. We were in an Off-Broadway theater watching a hilarious comedy (“The Play That Goes Wrong”), blissfully unaware of the news.

We hadn’t checked our phones en route to or on arriving at the theater, nor during intermission, and not even when we came out of the theater. Afterward, we relaxed outdoors in a little park next door, happily reliving favorite scenes from the play. . . .

My wife Kathy says I'm married to my phone. This week I won't deny it:

It's the most exciting political week I've experienced since the Watergate hearings led me to journalism as a career 50 years ago. 

Last Sunday, I was nearing despair, figuring out where to move after Donald Trump crushed Joe Biden in the presidential election. I was losing faith Biden would see the wisdom—the absolutely necessity—of his dropping out of the race. Then, just as quickly, he dropped out and passed the torch to his vice-president.

What followed was stunning. She raised $100 million in less than two days, 62 percent from first-time donors to this campaign. Her campaign signed up 28,000 new volunteers in a day. . . .

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A quick and dirty video by Mitchell Stephens

Donald Trump may literally have dodged a bullet in Pennsylvania a week ago, but there aren't enough ear bandages in the world to shield him from the sea change that just occurred in the 2024 presidential race.

Trump’s 'Go-Back-to-the-White House-Free' card—a clearly diminished Joe Biden—has wisely stepped aside, endorsing his take-no-bullshit veep Kamala Harris to be the Democrats' 2024 presidential nominee.

This changes everything, even after the GOP’s post-assassination-attempt love fest for Trump and his sycophantic mini-me, J.D. Vance. With a 59-year-old minority female as the prospective Democratic nominee, the “age question” now fails squarely back on Trump, a 78-year-old loser who fell asleep at his criminal trial in New York and at his own convention—and who cannot utter back-to-back coherent sentences, much less the truth. . . .

      So, it finally happened.

      These things move ridiculously slowly.

      Biden for weeks refused to throw in the towel:

• despite all the evidence of his growing unpopularity,

• despite all the evidence that he wasn’t the one who could fend off Donald Trump’s return to the presidency,

• despite all the evidence that he had (if you’ll forgive a flagrant mixed metaphor) lost a step mentally,

• despite the fact that he would be 86 by the end of a second term—the cause of much of that unpopularity.

      These things move ridiculously slowly until they move ridiculously fast. . . .

In case you were wondering whether we live in interesting times:

In the last six weeks or so . . . .

• On May 30, former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in his hush money/election interference trial.

• On June 11, President Joe Biden’s son was found guilty of federal gun crimes.

• On June 27, Biden debated Trump and had what was universally acknowledged to be a “disastrous” performance, one that ultimately led to him dropping out of the race.

• On July 1, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump had broad immunity for official acts as president.

• On July 13, someone tried to assassinate Trump. . . .

Aside from all we have gained as LGBT folk from 55 years of activism, we have also helped make the world a better place for everyone. From the beginning, for example, we have been allied with the women’s movement to combat toxic masculinity, so that violence and bullying and male privilege don’t go unchallenged.

Our movement is, at heart, about encouraging authenticity and openness for all people.

What helps inspire me to remain engaged is the success of the queer movement. We started with daunting odds and changed the world. As one measure, 38 countries now enjoy same-sex marriage, something that was beyond our wildest dreams. . . .

We have, of course, lived through terribly dismaying times before, times where bad news seemed to explode into a tsunami of dread. Almost the entire year of 1968 seems the exemplar, as we shuddered through assassinations, worldwide civil unrest, tanks in the streets, napalm in the air.

Nothing as cataclysmic—so far—has happened this year, but the last few weeks have felt like one sharp poke to the ribs after another. And have led—at least for some of us, at least for me—to a sense of utter despair.

That disastrous debate—the adjective seems permanently attached now—followed by the Democrats’ circular firing squad. . . .

Three Models for Active Aging

      Robert Plant, 75, Bob Dylan, 83, and Willie Nelson, 91, performed a couple of weeks ago in Bethel, New York, as part of Willie’s “Outlaw Music Festival.” These three musicians have in common being accomplished, important, very old and still active.

       So, let’s use them to consider strategies for active aging. For I think I can discern three distinct such strategies in their approaches.

Model for Active Aging # 1

“An Old Sweet Song”

       Willie Nelson took the stage last. He had recently missed a couple of shows due to illness. He now sits while he sings and picks, with his accomplished singer-guitarist son, Lucas, sitting to his left . . .

The other morning, I fell.

Isn’t that what a lot of people our age now do? Up to 35 percent of those over 65 experience a significant fall every year, according to studies. It’s nearly 45 percent among adults over the age of 70. Every year, three million older adults are treated in emergency departments for injuries related to falling. It is the most common cause of injuries among older adults.

Those injuries include stuff like hip fractures or traumatic brain damage. And the really bad news is that there’s a direct correlation between falls and increased mortality and what medical people call reduced functionality. . . .

      For those of us who were around in the 1960s 1970s and early 1980s, there was something familiar about the news on Saturday of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. Indeed, a number of us have been getting a feeling of déjà vu with some frequency in this era when partisan politics gets ever uglier and more intemperate.

       For the American political system went through some very bad times when most of us were young.

      To begin with, the country, then, was involved in a futile and terribly bloody war in Vietnam. Mass anti-war protests, of a size not seen since, filled streets and parks.

      American politics in our youth also remained debased by an enduring and omnipresent racism. And large uprisings—or, if you prefer, riots—fueled mostly by racial injustice and poverty, broke out in many major American cities. . . .

Sixty or so years from now, do you think we—that is, our children and grandchildren—will remember where they were when bullets went flying in Butler, Pennsylvania?

Will the Butler County Farm Show resonate the way the Texas Book Depository still chills after all these years? Will we still ponder the what-ifs—what if bullets had missed in 1963 but had not missed in 2024?

The Kennedy assassination was the fulcrum, the pivotal, turning-point moment of our generation, the teetering balance wheel where everything tipped in a new direction and nothing was the same as before. . . .

      When my grandkids were young, I told them I would take them anywhere in the world when they turned 16. The first grandchild to take me up on my offer was Phoebe. She chose Milos, Greece.

      My daughter, Mariah, Phoebe’s mom, was very worried about the two of us going alone, so she decided to join us as our chaperone.

       On June 13, we boarded a plane to Athens and spent three days visiting the Parthenon and various museums studying Greek history and mythology. It was hot, very hot, and I was happy to hop on a prop plane and fly the 40 minutes across the Aegean Sea to Milos, which is an island that receives very little attention or fanfare. . . .

        The above headline, appeared in the student newspaper at the University of Virginia after the university decided to admit women for the first time. It was a quote from a 4th-year male student, and it encapsulated some of the reaction to that first class of women in September 1970.

I was one of those 350 young women who, as 18-year-olds, did not fully realize obstacles and mindsets we would encounter—and the cultural change we would eventually achieve. 

        In late May this year, I attended the 50th reunion of the class of 1974, along with half of my female classmates. All the women agreed that the university experience molded us to become successful in whatever endeavors we chose. My classmates went on to become judges, prominent doctors, authors, scientists, business leaders and so on. 

        Despite their success, many women in my class have memories of inappropriate comments, outright sexual harassment or worse. . . .

Here’s a hypothetical deal only one person I know would take:

You agree to reduce the length of your life by five years. In return you get to observe—without any chance to participate in activities or interact with people—for an extra ten years.

You’d be like a ghost for those ten years: just seeing and hearing, not acting, not helping, not being able in any way to make your presence known.

High price to pay, right? . . .

PechaKucha is a visual storytelling event where participants share 20 images and speak about them for 20 seconds each. Here is my story from last month’s event in Burlington VT.

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In 1979, friends began to get sick. In 1981, The New York Times warned of a “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” By the ‘90's, my entire generation of gay men was dying of AIDS. Here are stills and excerpts from my pandemic videos.

At first, people died alone abandoned by families. Medical staff would leave food outside the room afraid to come in. Community care circles, vigils through the night and writing libretti for lost lives for operatic memorial services. . . .