A Quote by Noam Chomsky
I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.
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The picket line is the best place to train organizers. One day on the picket line is where a man makes his commitment. The longer on the picket line, the stronger the commitment. A lot of workers think they make their commitment by walking off the job when nobody sees them. But you get a guy to walk off the field when his boss is watching and, in front of the other guys, throw down his tools and march right to the picket line, that is the guy who makes our strike. The picket line is a beautiful thing because it makes a man more human.
I remember being back in Knollwood Middle School back in Piscataway. I remember waking up Saturday mornings playing with my age group and the age group above me.
I had grown up seeing people in school where I felt like I needed to keep them at arm's length, or on the picket line, where there was a tonne of hostility and no time to build rapport with people.
I've always liked older women. One sad thing about being my age is that there are no older women. I used to amuse my mother's friends even at five or six with witty turns of phrase. Somehow, I just knew how to be funny.
If you can find a group of women, any age, who are supportive and kind and love you, that's the best. I have a group of girlfriends that I would lay in front of a bus for. They've picked me up through really, really bad times and I can definitely say I've done the same for them.
My father played in high school. My uncles played. From age five or six, I remember watching all the games. And I remember saying to my mom and dad even then that I was going to play in the NFL, and buy them a house and a car.
My grandmother has dementia, and my mother is looking after her as her primary caregiver. Seeing their relationship has had a profound impact, seeing how tough it is for both of them and seeing how the roles change and how my mother has gone from being a daughter to being the mother.
Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.
I remember filling my car up in London when an 85-year-old man said to me, 'You've done our age group proud.' That made me laugh. I'm not quite there yet!
I have friends who died being successful bohemians. Today, I see people my age who are gifted but who insisted on staying in this group, and it's beaten them so bad. They have to spend so much time on ego maintenance, they can't get any work done. They'd be very happy to sell out, but there are no buyers, and that hurts.
We like to be punks. We like to still be kind of edgy and if being edgy means you might teeter on that line of being inappropriate, I'm still willing to teeter on that line, even at my age. But some of them go over that line and you've gotta draw that line somewhere.
I remember hearing myself start to whimper, a five-year-old, crouched by the side of the road, staring into my father's eyes, whimpering because it was so dark and there was no one coming to help, whimpering because my mother was back in the crushed car, not moving, and my father was lying here in the dirt, not answering me, not holding me, not comforting me, not helping my mother get out of the car, and there was blood, so much blood, and broken glass everywhere, and it was so dark and so cold and no one was coming to help.
I remember being a kid and seeing the 'National Inquirer' at the grocery store checkout line. When somebody actually picked up a copy, it was mortifying. You felt dirty for them. But now it's perfectly acceptable to read something like that. There's absolutely no taboo surrounding that kind of exploitation.
I've been travelling, returning home for promotional appearances, and juggling it all with being the mother of a five-year-old.
The reason women are always reluctant to reveal their age is because other people label them as 'past it'. In the 21st century, women over 60 are not past it - we are vital, active, sexual beings, living life to the full.
When people watch me on TV they see part of my life. I wanted to let them know the real me behind the scenes. The child who was a concert violinist from the age of six. The young woman who took on the challenge to compete in the Miss America pageant. The television journalist for twenty-five years. The mother of two who, just like most women, struggles to balance work and family.
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