It’s hard not to look back with a jaundiced eye on 2019, but as Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New Mexican reminded me yesterday morning, even that clouded year brought a continuation of decades-long improvements: a huge decrease in global poverty and illiteracy; a radical reduction in the deaths of children—historically half of the world’s children died before the age of fifteen, but now the figure stands at four percent; large gains in education for girls and women and the resulting empowerment; eradication of diseases like polio that were still a terror even in my childhood, and amelioration if not cure for AIDs; and fewer famines worldwide.
I add to this the fact that the out-of-control birth rate in the U.S. has started to decline, with many young women avoiding the too-complicated issue of raising children and pursuing a career, or even a calling, with no affordable childcare and fathers often absent through desertion or a failure to understand the importance of their role. (More on that later.)
Meanwhile, life expectancy here in the U.S. has declined for the past three years after steadily increasing for decades. This is largely due to the deaths of young men, which one research group calls “deaths of despair“: suicide and drug addiction. Since I lost my youngest son nearly three years ago to a death of despair, I know the meaning of this statistic. As a country, we are still unable or unwilling to devote our imaginations and our resources to chronic social problems like homelessness and mental illness. The one psychiatric clinic in the hospital here, with only a dozen beds, closed down several years ago, with no replacement, while a vast new hospital offering expensive private rooms and an even bigger and more luxurious addition to what used to be called an old age home are nearing completion and will be rapidly filled. But old age, at least for well-off white people, is respectable in a way that mental illness and homelessness never will be.
Many large new houses here in Santa Fe remain empty ten months out of the year while their well-heeled owners go to their other “homes.” Meanwhile, rentals in this town are so high that the community shelter can’t find anywhere affordable for previously homeless clients to live.
This brings me to my decision to go on dancing.
We are fortunate to have a small dance studio here where I and others can practice our passion for Argentine Tango, Salsa, and the big ballroom dances: Foxtrot, Waltz and Quickstep. For me, Foxtrot with is enchanting old-time pop ballads is my cup of tea. I’ll be dancing next month in our annual showcase with my teacher, Lawrence Black, to the wry lyrics and pulsing rhythms of the old Cole Porter tune, “It was just one of those things…Just one of those crazy flings, one of those bells that now and then rings, just one of those things…”
The ballad goes on,
“If we’d thought a bit before the end of it
When we started painting the town
We’d have been aware that our love affair was much too hot
Not to cool down…”
(More on that later, too)
And so I’ll be dancing in the New Year—out with the old, in with the new, and hope springing eternal.
https://youtu.be/5L9Ln8Cp4pQ
Dawn Glankoff says
I always look forward to reading your thoughtful posts Sallie.
Keep on dancing it’s good for the soul.
Bob Silver says
The link to Ella singing Cole Porter is wonderful, but I’d hoped the video would include at least a glimpse of you dancing. In any event, the old saw about dancing being the most fun you can have with your clothes on still seems too hold.