Ellen Goodman---Moving on

As of January 1, 2010, Columnist Ellen Goodman will end her syndicated column. Her last column focuses on the changes she has seen for women in her nearly forty years of reporting and writing.

Ellen Goodman has been my favorite columnist and I have read her columns for almost her entire career. I have often referred to her columns in this blog and will miss her wit, intellect and analysis of events along with her ability to apply what is happening to the individual as well as the world.

I may have posted about this column by Ellen Goodman in this blog earlier. It was published in Reader's Digest many years ago and I have the original clipping on my bulletin board. It appears from her last column above that she has followed her own advice on moving on. We can only hope that she will find another entry after making this exit.

This is the clipping...

There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over--and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives.

It involves a sense of future, a belieft that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out.

The trick of retiring well may be the trick of living well. It's hard to recognize that life isn't a holding action, but a process. It's hard to learn that we don't leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the dugout or the office. We own what we learned back there. The experiences and the growth are grafted onto our lives. And when we exit, we can take ourselves along---quite gracefully.

Washington Post Writers Group

NOTE ADDED January 1, 2010: I had thought that the article mentioned above was Ellen Goodman's last column. As it turned out, her last column is today. You can read it here. As you can see from my post above and from reading her column today, the words from the clipping that I referred to must have had a great effect on many others. The Graceful Exit clipping has been with me for many years. I know it has seen me through two divorces, a major illness, a career change and the loss of many important family members and friends. It helps one move on.

The climate for family planning

Ellen Goodman wrote a column about family planning and it is one of the best I have read in a long time. I will not take the time to provide an overview. So go and read the column. I am sure you will come away with a new perspective on the issue of overpopulation, carbon offsets and a little on climate change.

Overpopulation seems to be the elephant in the room. Even little is said about it when we discuss the overburdening of our planet's resources, climate change and the quality of life for all. At the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, I did not hear of any commitment to address overpopulation.

There is a series of articles in the News and Observer that addresses the plight of young girls pressured to marry at a young age, poor access to educational opportunities and lack of family planning in Africa. There has been an explosion of the population in much of Africa. The article mentions several obstacles of promoting birth control. They include patriarchal customs, religious taboos, ill-equipped public health systems---but experts also blame a powerful distant force. Under President George W. Bush, the U.S. withdrew from its decades-long role as a global leader in supporting family planning, driven by a conservative ideology that favored abstinence and shied away from providing contraceptives to developing countries even to married women.

I do not think that it is only our former president who created the population explosion in Africa, but I do believe that he could have made a major difference when he was in office if he had chosen to do so. As it was, he just added to the problem.

Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins, one of the more vocal female columnists, has written her last column. This is what she wrote in the last paragraph. "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

If I could design a tribute to her, I would ask every female in the U.S. who is against this war to take to the streets with their pots and pans and bang them non-stop until President Bush listens and makes calculated steps that will end this war and bring all the troops home.

I'm somewhat of a columnist junkie. I read the newspaper, but I pay special attention to commentary whether a column or political cartoon that makes it to the editorial pages or opinion pages. So along with Maureen Dowd and Ellen Goodman, Signe Wilkinson, Molly Ivins was a must-read. I will miss her.

Here's to you, Molly. clangclang clangclangclang
P. S. President Bush actually had some good things to say about you.