inkbluesky

very fresh peaches

Happily Hitched - In a new book and documentary, 250 long-married couples tell how they make it work

Boggs enlisted the help of childhood friend and fellow bachelor Jason Miller, a self-proclaimed commitment-phobe who agreed to go along for the ride. Both say they hope the book shines some light on marriage for people their own age, a generation Miller describes as “jaded by marital failure.”

With a video camera in tow, the two recorded hundreds of interviews. One of their favorite couples was Eddie and Ruth Elcott of Los Angeles, who were separated for the first two years of their 63-year marriage when he went to fight in World War II. They wrote more than 2,000 love letters to each other during their separation. Those letters remained in an old suitcase until recently, when they took them out and began reading one each night to each other.

Commitment, they told the writers, is a key to an enduring marriage. Other “marriage masters” told them some couples don’t last because they are too focused on instant gratification and others need to learn that love is not as much an emotion as a decision.

While the divorce rate has dropped off, many people are also marrying later. I tend to think that has something to do with first marriages lasting longer. I think the authors have a glossy overly sentimental view for people that claim to be afraid of commitment.  “love is not as much an emotion as a decision” sounds like a Hallmark card and one of those phrases like “love means never having to say you’re sorry”, destined for satire. When we get into discussions about love, marriage and commitment and what it all means… well if you have fifty people in the room you’re going to get a hundred answers. That couple is right though many people don’t understand how much work it takes to make a relationship work once that initial infatuation wears off. I think I posted the story because it is nice that some couples, despite the odds manage to stay together as friends and lovers over a lifetime . We all like happy endings.

coquille river lighthouse

coquille river lighthouse slightly gothic version

Another General Speaks: The War is Lost

“I think if we do the right things politically and economically with the right Iraqi leadership we could still salvage at least a stalemate, if you will — not a stalemate but at least stave off defeat,” Sanchez told the San Antonio Express-News. “It’s also kind of important for us to answer the question, ‘What is victory?’, and at this point I’m not sure America really knows what victory is.” [...]

“I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time and we’ve got to do whatever we can to help the next generation of leaders do better than we have done over the past five years,” Sanchez said, “better than what this cohort of political and military leaders have done.”

In my lifetime that bumper sticker that reads “Question Authority” has never been truer. If Dubya and Cheney pulled up in their truck and were soliciting for yard work I wouldn’t trust either of them, yet people look up to both these civil service workers with free health-care courtesy working actual Americans as idols. There is that thirty percent of the public that would follow these two incompetent clowns no matter what. I can’t begin to relate to that kind of submissive behavior much less explain it.