GENERATIONS

 

Okay, I’m old by most standards. Everybody knows about old people’s puzzlement with young people. ('Twas ever thus.) Still, I look at these four and think about questions of class, culture, privilege and society. I was roughly their age in the geologic era known as the 1970s. I spent the first part of it as a cheaply dressed, if not ragged, graduate student. My three sibs did about the same. We were not wealthy but our parents insisted on education and we did what was expected, ending up with four bachelor’s degrees, a J.D., a Ph.D. and an M.B.A. 

For the rest of that decade, thanks in no small part to the woman who kept us financially afloat early on, I wore cheap suits, then better suits, and had a couple of kids. We bought a station wagon. I forgot I had read Jack Kerouac but then read Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. I would have loved to have sat down and talked to these young people about their lives, but I was out cruising for images.