nineties

Love Story

~ MaryG ~ 26 Comments

I attended the local NoKings3 protest yesterday and it was very cold. I helped lead the singing, but took no photos. I feel like there were not as many people as there were at NoKings2 in October and the energy was not as good. There were very few young people. Honestly, I’m feeling like it’s a very dark time for the country (and by extension, the world), even though my family and I are in no physical danger. I hope that others found yesterday energizing. From the innocent children currently being held in ICE detention centers, to the working people who can’t afford healthcare AND food, to the families of the marines currently being sent to the Middle East, there is so much anxiety, suffering, and uncertainty right now.

In other news…(lame transition!)

I feel like I would be a remiss GenXer, if I did not comment on a certain TV show that demanded watching.

Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, created by Ryan Murphy, premiered in February on FX and Hulu became a streaming hit immediately. The nine-episode series stars two unknowns (Sarah Pidgeon and Paul Anthony Kelly) as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and JFK, Jr.

If she was alive today, Carolyn would be my age exactly: 60.

I’m not going to re-tell the whole story, but I’ll just say that Ryan Murphy had to make up a LOT of stuff to create this series. All of the private moments and conversations depicted in the series are obviously unknown. But he linked in enough of the public moments and iconic photos I remember that it all seemed rather believable to me.

In my twenties, nobody was more “hunkified” by People and other magazines than JFK, Jr. And living in Massachusetts (Kennedy country), we’d have the occasional sighting or close encounter. My father (a pilot) once saw him come into the hangar after landing his plane at a small airport. My friend Katherine was at a wedding with him once. (Her sister-in-law was a classmate of his at Brown.)

So naturally, the woman he chose to marry at long last was of tremendous interest! And she was soooo cool and pretty—NYC hipness just emanated from her. Her sleek, shift wedding dress was so iconic that it’s still influencing bridal fashions to this day.

THE iconic wedding photo that all of us GenX women studied with great interest.
My nephew and his bride in 2022. She said Carolyn Bessette’s wedding look was her inspiration.

With Love Story, I came to understand the horribly sad side of her loss of anonymity. She was too famous to do literally anything. One scene I found very moving is when Carolyn learns that Princess Diana has died following a high speed car crash caused by paparazzi. The parallels to her own life were obvious and she goes into a deep depression. JFK, Jr had been living under a microscope his whole life, so he remains relatively unaffected, making Carolyn feel even more alone.

Now, who knows if that actually happened or not, but if I was upset for days about Princess Diana, it seems very likely that Carolyn would have been too.

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg (President Kennedy’s only other child) who tragically just lost her own adult daughter to cancer, is capably played by Grace Gummer. Unfortunately, I didn’t think the actress looked enough like Caroline. (Grace Gummer is the daughter of Meryl Streep, so I kept thinking about how much she looks like her mother and didn’t totally buy her as Caroline.)

Being from Massachusetts, I know a lot about the Kennedy clan and all their many tragedies. I even read the memoir “What Remains” by Carole Radziwill—the widow of JFK Jr’s best friend and cousin Anthony Radziwill. My husband, on the other hand, can’t keep all the Carols straight and doesn’t really care about the Kennedys.

So there you have it. I think Love Story is more of a woman thing. The mysterious, chic, tragic Carolyn Bessette made real, human.

Do I feel guilty about all the living people who are portrayed without their permission? A little. The actress Daryl Hannah (JFK Jr’s last girlfriend before Carolyn) is pissed over her rather unflattering portrayal in the series. And of course, I wonder how Caroline feels about the portrayal. Did she even watch it? We will probably never know because Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is a private, stoic, non-whiny person. A class act. The best kind of Kennedy.

Fortunately, Carolyn Bessette’s mother (who lost not one but TWO daughters in the tragic plane crash) is already dead, so this portrayal can’t hurt her further. But still, there’s one living Bessette sister still out there somewhere. You wonder how she feels.

Sadly, Carolyn Bessette gave herself over to the public domain the minute she married the American Prince, much like Princess Diana. Maybe our GenX “Princess Bride” fantasy should finally just be put to rest.

GenX Grandma

~ MaryG ~ 16 Comments
Someone conked out listening to GenX hits and shaking her maraca 🪇

Playlist:

When you were Mine – Prince

Alison – Elvis Costello & The Attractions

These are Days – 10,000 Maniacs

My Life – Billy Joel

REM – (forgot which song)

The Cars – (forgot which song)

Pearl Jam – Better Man

In Your Eyes – Peter Gabriel

Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac

These are songs Alexa plays for you when you start by asking for a Prince song you like to dance to.

Any other GenX Grandparents out there? What songs/bands are you gonna make sure your grandkids hear?

Beatles (obviously)

What else??

Oh Martha

~ MaryG ~ 16 Comments

If you’re an older GenX American woman like me, you have feelings about Martha Stewart.

Maybe you liked her in the 80s and had a few linen skirts that looked just like hers. In the 90s, maybe you started to find her annoying when your friends threw over-the-top wedding showers that made you feel inadequate. Then maybe you were indignant that authorities had the GALL to put Martha in JAIL in 2004 on ridiculous charges and she took it like a champ and helped the other women she met in the slammer.

And maybe after that, you found Martha & Snoop an amusing duo and realized that no matter what she does, you will pay attention because she is Martha Stewart. And you are not.

On that note, I made Martha Stewart’s Cacio E Pepe With Lemon last night. Yes, I was annoyed that the “Grana Padano” cheese she uses is not readily available in stores. The Whole Foods cheese guy hadn’t even heard of it. How very Martha! (I substituted Parmigiano-Reggiano and it was fine.) And yes, I was irritated that I had to grind 4 teaspoons of pepper by hand, because everyone knows that when Martha calls for “freshly cracked pepper” she means it. And finally, NO I did not happen to have a MEYER lemon on hand, but thankfully Martha made it clear that any lemon would do.

The result was good. Very good.

I doubled the recipe so I could use the whole package of spaghetti, rather than half.

Martha Stewart’s “Cacio e Pepe with Lemon”
“Cacio e Pepe” is simply pasta with cheese and pepper and it’s a classic Roman dish.

The Recipe

Martha on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue at age 81

Thursday Doors—Boston’s North End

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

There are many beautiful old doors in Boston’s historic North End (aka the Italian neighborhood), but 160 Endicott Street is not one of them.

It’s an old, unrenovated building…
…in a great location in Boston’s North End—just around the corner from the original Pizzeria Regina

It is, however, a meaningful door in terms of my life story. I lived there in the early 1990s with my roommate Bridget, a friend from work. It was the last place I lived as a single woman. After that, I moved in with a boyfriend who I later married.

160 Endicott was truly a dump. It was the first floor apartment over a convenience store that I think was some type of front for a low-level gambling operation. Their most popular item was lottery tickets. They had a few dusty cans of soup and literally nothing else you would ever want to buy. The irony was the hand-carved sign, “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.” They never had anything I needed. Not a tampon, not an Advil, nothing.

The apartment itself was totally unrenovated and smelled liked cats. The kitchen was horrible. The bathroom had cockroaches. The downstairs neighbors (who lived in an unfinished basement beneath the store) were always asking to borrow my car so they could drive to the dog racing track up north. But it was in a great location in the heart of old Boston and we could afford it on our art museum salaries, with absolutely no help from parents, which was my main objective in moving there. I really didn’t want to be beholden to my parents for anything. I needed some space from them and my troubled sister.

I took my kids back to visit in 2009. It looked much the same from the outside, but the store inside looked cleaner and nicer. New owners had taken over.

I didn’t ask to see the old apartment, but the green exterior bay window looked exactly the same. And the sign was still there:

“If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.”
That was the window of my “bedroom” which was actually the living room. I slept on a pullout sofa.
A return trip to 160 Endicott Street in 2009
In 2009, the humble exterior looked identical to how it looked in 1990.

The twenties are such a formative decade. So many forks in the road. Decisions made. Paths chosen. Roads not taken.

Memories of my time on Endicott Street include gaining a more visceral understanding of poverty (I thought our place was bad, until I saw how the people under the store were living); finally ending a longterm romantic relationship that had been going on and off for years; great authors—like Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou—introduced to me by my roommate Bridget (a reader and a feminist); and food smells—especially Bova’s bakery, open 24/7. Not much in Boston is open all night…but Bova’s is. There are better bakeries in Boston’s North End, but nothing smelled as good as Bova’s at 3am.

Posted for Dan’s Thursday Doors

And Just Like That

~ MaryG ~ 22 Comments

Predictably, I was a fan of Sex and the City and have eagerly watched all three seasons of the reboot—And Just Like That. (I saw both of the Sex and the City movies too.) We now know that this will be the final season of And Just Like That, so fans are getting ready to bid goodbye to Carrie Bradshaw forever.

My obvious connection to the show has been that I am the same generation as the main characters. Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristin Davis are my age exactly—sixty. They are among the group of actresses born in 1965 that I tend to keep tabs on.

I know there are plenty of haters out there, based on very legitimate criticisms of the show, but for me Sex and the City was like an alternate reality. By the time the show first aired in 1998, I was married with a three-year old, living in a somewhat dilapidated antique house in suburbia. What if I hadn’t gone that route? What if I had had the gumption to leave Boston for the real city in my twenties, like several of my friends? Would I be dashing around Manhattan in a tulle skirt, going to art openings and brunch?

The 60-year old versions of the characters in the reboot, still living in Manhattan in fabulous clothes, have been dealing with some relatable GenX problems from bouts of vertigo to ageism at work. Still, they’ve kept it mostly light and escapist. Even when Carrie’s husband (Mr. Big) drops dead in the shower, I wasn’t exactly heartbroken. The female friendships are still central. New York City is still central.

We’ll see what the final two episodes bring. How will my life in an alternate universe turn out?

SJP as Carrie Bradshaw in Season One of Sex and the City (1998)
Me hosting a rather cramped birthday party in our living room in 1998

Your tone

~ MaryG ~ 19 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Do you remember life before the internet?
View all responses

As one of the oldest GenXers, I’ve had the internet for just about half of my life, so I remember pre-internet life quite well.

The turning point was around the time I got married—in 1993. I planned the entire wedding and honeymoon without the internet. Imagine that. I had books, a work friend who loved weddings, Bride magazine, a landline, and my mother as my main resources.

As a courtesy to my mother, I called my childhood Catholic church to inquire about getting married there. At that time, my future husband and I were already living together, which is considered to be “the sin of adultery” in the Catholic Church. The fact that we were cohabitating was clear from the greeting on our answering machine.

Well, the very sound of the priest’s condescending voice on my answering machine when he returned my call sent me straight to the Unitarian church down the street. And that’s where we ended up getting married.

Before the internet, the human voice and all its various inflections, mattered more than they do now. There were no emojis, only “your tone” — and I did not like Father Sheehan’s tone.

Image from Pexels

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I’d rather laugh with the sinners