Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Fresca "7 Up" x 9

At sixty-three, this is my ninth "7-Up" year.
You know the British "Up" series of documentaries, where people are interviewed/filmed from age seven (in 1964) and every seven years afterward?
I love this sort of time-lapse / before-and-after/ behind the scenes thing.

63 Up was released in 2019.
Director Michael Apted died in 2021, and there are no plans for a "70 Up" installment.
Two of the participants have died too. Lynn Johnson, children's librarian, died at 57, in 2013. Nick Hitchon, scientist, died at 65, in 2023 (Guardian obit).

Today I'm posting photos and abbreviated text from my first Up collages, which I put together when I was 49, in 2010; then 56 in 2017.
(A lot more people were blogging in 2010, and that post is worth visiting for the fun comments:
gugeo.blogspot.com/2010/03/fresca-7-up.html)

I find these fun and also really helpful--an Anchor and a Mirror of the self in time... It'd be great to add historic (impersonal) photos of each year, but not today!

Fresca's Seven Up

YEAR ZERO,
Christmas 1960

My parents at my mother's family home, in southern Missouri.

My mother, Lytton Virginia Davis, 26, is seven months pregnant with me.
My father, Daniele, 30, is finishing his PhD in political science.

_________________

1) Spring 1967
"7 Up"

My first-grade school photo, in Madison, Wisconsin.
I am six.

I'm reading Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss, and Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak.

___________________

2) 1974, "14 Up"

I'm 13 here, (in my 14th year), right before I go to high school.

The last photo of my childhood.
My mother had left the family that spring;
my father spends the summer watching Watergate hearings. (Nixon resigns in August.)

___________________

3) 1983, "21 Up"
... Or thereabouts: first at 20; then 23 years old.

I'm living in Minneapolis, working as a cook, then a nursing assistant, and--bottom photo--have taken a 10-day solo bike trip.

Times feel rather grim:
John Lennon has been murdered; Ronald Reagan [hearts] Margaret Thatcher; U.S. Marines are killed in Beirut and invade Grenada; a toxic gas leak at Bhopal, India, kills thousands of people.

Still, Lech Walesa, glasnost, and the Sony Walkman give us hope.

___________________________

4) 1989, "28 Up"

George H. W. Bush is prez;
the Soviets leave Afghanistan, a country many Americans have barely heard of; Tiananmen Square demonstrations end in violence;
Berlin Wall falls.

I'm living for a year with bink in New Bedford, MA, (the port Ishmael ships out of in Moby Dick), while bink teaches illustration.
I worked as a janitor at the YW and worked out there to the soundtrack of Dirty Dancing (1987).

Bonus "Up", below:
bink at Seven Up and 28 Up:

_________________

5) 1996, "35 Up"

Nelson Mandela is president of South Africa; massacre in Rwanda; Dolly the sheep is cloned; Bill Clinton reelected.

Having gone back to college, I graduate with my B.A. in Classics.
When people ask me what I want to do with my degree, I say,
"I want to lead a life of conversation."
Mostly this means I write volumes of e-mails during my evening shift at the art college library.
(Blogger dot com won't be launched for three more years, in 1999.)

_____________________

6) 2003, "42 Up"

Post-September 11, 2001:
George W. Bush is prez; the US & allies are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan; Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize; people line up at midnight to buy the new Harry Potter;
Google buys Blogger.

Left: Me, at a hostel in New York City.
My mother had taken her life around winter solstice, 2002.
I've begun to edit and write world geography reference books for teens, which will over the next dozen years span from Finland to Zimbabwe.
I buy my first Apple laptop and begin my first blog, flightless parrots, which I delete two years later, realizing with a shock that the Internet isn't kidding.

_____________________
7) 2010, "49 Up"

Above--Me at my 49th birthday party, wearing mittens knitted by Poodletail.

Barak Obama is US president (term will run 2009-2017).
Instagram launches.

Rediscovered Star Trek, a couple years earlier and having made my peace with the bright lights of the 'net, I've been blogging again for a couple years, which comes pretty close to fulfilling my desire for a life of conversation.
I meet Marz through a William Shatner (Captain Kirk) online fan site.

_______________________
8) 2017: 56 Up

Red Hair Girl, the first of the girlettes, comes with me when I am on a panel in Dallas for children's nonfiction. The book I wrote on creative fandom is my last project in publishing.

If a film crew showed up to depict my life, they'd show me looking at open water, not sure which way to row or where the currents will take me next. Once again.
This seems to be my return-to position. :)
I mean that mostly in relation to [paid] work, not self. At this age, I feel centered in who I am, like a person sitting in a boat is stable, and that's nice.

Volunteering at thrift stores, I have also started doing SNARP: Stuffed Needy Animal Rescue Project.
Flying Monkey is my favorite rescue story:

Still, I can feel soggy with seriousness sometimes. "Especially now," as I keep hearing people say since January 20, when Trump was inaugurated as president of the US.

And we were right.
Still to come: worldwide Coronavirus (COVID 19) pandemic; police murder of George Floyd, May 25, 2020, leads to protests for justice, and riots; and January 6 (2021) attack on the US Capitol by a mob of supporters of Trump.
_____________________

9) 2024: "63 Up"

US presidential election coming up between prosecutor Vice President Kamala Harris & felon Trump.
War and more war. (Ukraine/Russia, Hamas(Palestine)/Israel, Sudan...)