Sharon Dukett

No Rules Playlist Decoded

by Sharon Dukett | Oct 21, 2020 | 2 comments

In the 1970s, music was our connectivity to one another in a world without smart phones. It both influenced and reflected our shared experiences. Concerts were abundant and inexpensive. When a song from the 70s is played now, nearly everyone who was young at that time can tell you a story about it, recall a special memory, or describe a concert they attended where they heard that band. It was integral part of our youth culture.

In my memoir No Rules there are eleven songs mentioned by name in the text, and four more that are described. There are eleven others on my playlist that may or may not be obvious to the reader as to why they are included. In this article, I provide the reference for each piece of music, including why those not in the book were selected. Each song does not completely describe my personal experience, so don’t be concerned if it deviates from my story. As much as possible I have tried not to include spoilers, but sometimes the selected paragraph gives out hints, and you can sometimes tell where something takes place. This is why I don’t explain who ‘we’ is below. If possible spoilers concern you, don’t continue reading this until you have read the book.

Enjoy while you listen and read.

She’s Leaving Home (The Beatles) – This one is not in the book, but you can probably guess that it relates to the opening chapter where I am leaving home, although not meeting a man from the motor trade.

Norturne No.2 in E Flat, Op. 9 No.2 (composer Chopin) – From Chapter 2, this music is described in this paragraph about my mother who wanted to be a concert pianist. Chopin was her favorite composer.

Another time, she was playing a difficult Chopin piece and was getting frustrated, replaying the same section over and over, until she finally stopped, looking defeated. “All I ever wanted to be was a concert pianist, but my piano teacher told me I wasn’t strong enough,” she said. She turned her hands to look at them as she spoke. “He said a woman’s hands aren’t big enough, which is why there are no women concert pianists.” She looked at her hands a moment longer before rising from the piano stool.

California Girls (The Beach Boys) – Also in Chapter 2, this song is implied by this paragraph when my sister Anne and I are younger in the 1960s.

That summer, when the Beach Boys became popular, Anne and I fantasized we were surfer girls with boys dropping at our feet.

We pretended we lived on a beach in California where we hung around with surfer boys as we lounged on chairs in the backyard and listened to the transistor radio she’d bought with babysitting money. We put on sunglasses and pretended to be sunbathing, though we were actually sitting in the shade so our pale skin wouldn’t get burned.

Mama Told Me (Not To Come) (Three Dog Night) – In Chapter 4, Anne and I have our first encounter with Eddie, which sets off a chain of events.

I wished I was old enough for Eddie to like me but knew he probably thought I was a kid. Anne put a quarter in the jukebox at our table and “Mama Told Me Not to Come” by Three Dog Night began to play.

Still Raining, Still Dreaming (Jimi Hendrix) – In Chapter 5, the first person we meet is Ed. I wasn’t familiar with the music of Jimi Hendrix, but Electric Ladyland was one of his favorite albums to play.

We entered his living room, where a huge American flag with a peace sign in place of the stars hung across one wall; on another was a psychedelic poster of a couple sitting in a tantric sex embrace, facing each other, arms and legs encircling one another. Peter Max posters of each of the Beatles hung in rainbow hues along the side wall. I was awestruck.

As we walked across the room, my feet sank into the wall-to-wall carpeting. It felt like I was walking on pillows; I wondered what was underneath.

Ed switched on the stereo, then the TV, leaving it silent. The first guitar riffs of Jimmy Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland blasted as colorful electrical streaks pulsed through an attached globe in time to the music.

Your Song (Elton John) – In Chapter 7, the one I love is singing. To me?

Music had returned to the transistor radio, and Elton John’s love song, “This Is Your Song,” played. Bob sat across the room, watching me, and began singing along to the words as if he was singing them to me. His eyes looked full of emotion, telling me things I longed to hear him speak. Is he telling me he loves me with these lyrics? I wondered.

Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young) – Later in Chapter 7, he is definitely singing to me.

We spent the next few days together sharing greeting card experiences.

We rode through the canyon and stopped at another beach, watched sunsets from the rock jetty near our house, and stayed up together until dawn. We sat on our rooftop eating spaghetti for breakfast and watching the sun rise. One afternoon as we lay together with our bodies intertwined, listening to the Crosby, Stills and Nash album, he looked into my green eyes and sang along with the haunting song “Guinnevere.” The intimacy between us was growing.

What’s Going On (Marvin Gaye) – From Chapter 8 at night.

During one ride, the opening notes of Marvin Gaye’s new song “What’s Going On” came over the radio followed by his haunting voice—and a chill shot through me; it was as though I was feeling his song in my body. I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes, dreaming awake, wondering how life would ever feel right again.

Me and Bobby McGee (Janis Joplin) – Also in Chapter 8.

I had never known pain like this before, pain that crept into my dreams and got under my skin. There was a new hit Janis Joplin song called “Me and Bobby Magee” that was on the radio constantly. I cried along with her every time she wailed about how much she missed holding Bobby, and I felt like I too had nothing left to lose.

Wild Horses (The Rolling Stones) – In Chapter 9, we attend a party where this song is described.

He walked in without knocking, and we squeezed our way past people standing in the hall and into the overcrowded living room. The sweet aroma of pot and incense flooded the air, and Mick Jagger’s voice wailed about wild horses from the stereo speakers, mixing with the loud drone of conversation.

Wild World (Cat Stevens) – Chapter 10, listening to music with a friend.

He removed the headphones from his neck and placed the pillow-like plastic cups over my ears. The music vibrated through my bones as though I were directly plugged into an amplifier. I closed my eyes and listened to Cat Stevens singing “Wild World” and I felt like the refrain could be about me. It made me sad.

California (Joni Mitchell) – Chapter 11. This song is not in the book, but in Chapter 11 as a result of what occurs, all I want to do it to get back to California.

Funk #49 (James Gang) – While this song is not specifically mentioned in Chapter 11, I attend a James Gang concert where they play this song. Attending the concert has unexpected results.

Maggie May (Rod Stewart) – In Chapter 14, I attend a concert that included Rod Stewart as the warm up band for Deep Purple.

“Yeah, England,” Rod screamed into the microphone, staggering across the stage, as the predominantly French audience booed. “Maggie Mae” was a hit song, but Rod Stewart was making no fans with his obnoxious remarks. He appeared to be drunk and the crowd began chanting, “Deep Purple, Deep Purple, Deep Purple.”

Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan) – Later in Chapter 14, musicians are playing at the youth hostel.

At last the musicians stooped to crawl into an arch-shaped stone dungeon lit by one red light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Those still with us followed, crouching into the space and sitting cross-legged on the icy stone floor. They began singing a Bob Dylan song, “Like a Rolling Stone.” It had been a hit when I was younger, but now I felt like it was my song, a story of homelessness and life on the road, of being lost and searching.

Bitch (The Rolling Stones) – When the Rolling Stones went on tour in 1972, it was their first tour in the United States since the Altamont concert in 1969. Meanwhile, their album Sticky Fingers had been released in the years in between. It was their first album to hit number 1 on nearly every chart around the world. They had now advanced to super stardom. People were trading motorcycles for tickets which were nearly impossible to get. Truman Capote covered the tour as a travelogue for Rolling Stone magazine. Stones mania was everywhere and the tour was labeled a “rock and roll legend” by critic Dave Marsh.

In Chapter 16, a friend of mine scores tickets in another city. Road Trip! This is a classic song from that time that was often on the radio.

Street Fighting Man (The Rolling Stones) – In Chapter 17, we attend the concert and this is their final song of the set.

Before their final song, the house lights came on and the riot squad linked arms, standing shoulder to shoulder and boot to boot across the front of the stage in defiance of the crowd, as Mick screamed out the lyrics to “Street Fighting Man.” The song had been banned from Chicago radio stations in 1968 following the violence during the Democratic National Convention, where thousands of police and National Guardsmen had clashed with half as many anti-war demonstrators and hundreds had been injured. It had been released a week after the event. Now the Stones sang it like an anthem for the Chicago protestors, and the crowd responded.

Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce) – In Chapter 18, this popular song from that summer plays at a party we hear about.

“Chicks! All right! Come on in.” A guy with light brown hair in a ponytail and wire-rimmed sunglasses motioned for us to enter as we stood in the doorway. He handed Joanne the bottle of vodka from the table.

“Here, have some juice. Not much else left, but you can get a good buzz with this shit.”

The song “Leroy Brown” was playing on the stereo; our host proceeded to dance around the room to the tune while Joanne took a swig of vodka and then passed it to me.

Welcome to Goose Creek (Goose Creek Symphony) – Although not in the book, we traveled with a group of people from Hope in two large vans to attend a free concert to see Goose Creek Symphony. Bluegrass music was becoming very popular as the back-to-nature trend was growing. This corresponds with the timeframe of Chapter 20.

In The Beginning (Emerson, Lake, and Palmer) – Also not in the book, but this was our song circa Chapter 21.

Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young) – Another song not in the book, but in Chapter 22 its relevance is clear.

Black Water (Doobie Brothers) – At Hubbard Hill, we used a car battery connected to a radio and an 8-track player to hear music, considered a necessity. We played this song often although it isn’t mentioned in the book. Timeframe of Chapter 23.

Dancing in the Moonlight (King Harvest) This song was written by King Harvest about the people living with nature in the community surrounding Ithaca. While at Hubbard Hill, we attended a party with a band that played under the full moon, and of course they played this song and we all danced. Timeframe of Chapters 23 – 24.

The Corn Won’t Grow So Rock ‘n Roll (Goose Creek Symphony) – This song well describes how life typically transpired at Hubbard Hill. All types of people would drive up for conversations. Some nights you could find us all dancing around the cabin with whoever else was visiting. Everyone was invited for dinner. Timeframe of Chapters 23 – 25.

The Boxer (Simon and Garfunkel) – In Chapter 27, it’s the night before Christmas Eve.

We finished our dinner and talked on into the night. After a while, Mike brought out his guitar and his new book of Paul Simon songs, and the three of us sat around singing “Lincoln Duncan,” “The Boxer,” and “America.”

I Am Woman (Helen Reddy) – No song expresses better the spirit of how woman felt in the 1970s as they awakened to feminism and abandoned the rules designed to keep women in their place. It’s not listed in the book but you can sign along while in Chapter 28 and during the Epilogue.

If you have any questions about this playlist, or would like more information around it, please contact me at [email protected]. I will be happy to answer.

Peace.

The Older I Get The More I See

by Sharon Dukett | Mar 12, 2020 | 14 comments

The older I get, the more I see the beauty I never recognized in my youth.

I was at a baby shower on Sunday, and the mother-to-be was a gorgeous woman in an off the shoulder tight fitted dress. All the words that have been used many times for a woman close to giving birth applied to her. But there were others I hadn’t thought about before:

how soft her skin looked
how her eyes seemed to radiate peace
how her calm demeanor made me feel more comfortable about the state of the world, even though it is about as uncertain a time as I can remember.

The older I get, the more I see the beauty that comes with age. My husband’s wrinkled face has the most contagious smile. I once saw his now shrinking arm muscles lift the front end of a pickup truck away from the edge of a dirt road. I caressed those strong muscles with their pleasing allure when he was younger. They still hold me in a most tough and tender way.

The older I get, the more I see how little it takes to influence a child’s life. Yesterday we took our five year old grandson on a hike through the woods. It is one of his favorite activities and we can finally enjoy it again with spring temperatures. He has developed a fascination with animals and all living creatures. My husband showed him how to find insects by stripping bark from dead trees. They uncovered an ant’s nest where the queen scurried out and the other ants all picked up the eggs and began to sprint off in random directions. They watched the ant’s activity, then replaced the bark and made sure the queen was back in the nest so the ants could continue to turn the tree into dirt for the forest. We looked at lichen and discussed how they eat rocks. At the end of the trail, our grandson picked fresh green grass and fed it to the Shetland pony on the other side of a fence, stretching his hand out flat so the pony wouldn’t bite his fingers. We see our grandson is learning a love of nature, and understanding the cycle of life.

The older I get, the more I see how my priorities change about what matters most. I used to think that when older people stopped worrying about how they looked, it meant they were losing touch with reality. Now I know it means they have freed themselves from the need to impress anyone. I still like to look my best at times, but I’ve come to realize that it’s not worth shortening the experience to spend more time preparing for it in superficial ways.

The older I get, the more I see how I am less attached to material possessions. I shop less because I don’t need more. I seldom think of a material gift I need. The weight of my possessions feels more like a burden than a blessing. It’s not like I feel I will die soon and not need them. It’s more like I want life to be simple and flexible. I care about love, writing, reading and all things involving movement. I care about music and art and sunny days. Malls are annoying and stores seem like a waste of time.

The older I get, the more I see how time is shrinking. When you are a child, and you have only lived a few years, a year feels like an eternity, because it is. It may be one-fifth of your life. As you age, a year is merely one-sixtieth or one-seventieth of your life. A much shorter period of all you know of the world. As a result, you pack on years like calories at Thanksgiving, and before you know it, the years have altered your shape.

The older I get, the more I see how your shape is formed by all you have been throughout your life. We carry that inside us and it adds up to the essence of our spirit. What we have made of our lives from the pieces given to us is our creation. We can turn it to beauty or we can let it languish in an unfinished pile of possibilities.

The older I get, the more I see that everyone I have ever been still lives within me. I have grown. Sometimes I’ve shrunk. I have made mistakes and had regrets. I have been mean and lazy and selfish. I have also been kind and caring and giving. I have forged paths in new ways that needed to happen. I have tripped over old paths and cursed their creators. I have given birth and witnessed death. I have been a true friend and a spiteful bitch. I have been judgmental, forgiving and opportunistic. I have been so poor I stole food to eat. I have dined at exquisite restaurants. I have been a vegetarian and a carnivore. I have been desperate to be loved, and cruel in breaking a heart.

The older I get, the more I see that I am human— completely imperfect, utterly vulnerable, strong as a rock, and just like everyone else.

Sharon Dukett

Author

Sharon Dukett is the author of the award-winning memoir No Rules: A Memoir. It is the story of her counterculture journey in the 1970s when she ran away from home to join the hippies at age 16, and how the women's movement awakened her to feminism.

Sharon writes a blog, and has been a technology and project manager, as well as a computer programmer.

What If Your Life Had a Sensational Soundtrack?

by Sharon Dukett | Feb 25, 2020 | 5 comments

There was a time when it seemed my life had a soundtrack. It was fluid and rich and it drowned out all the other noise going on. Music could make me feel connected to those around me as much as my phone sometimes makes me feel disconnected from my surroundings now.

When I wrapped myself into a cocoon of sound, music sent emotions through me like waves. It could have been my youth, or the times, but it felt contagious.

That’s what drove me to create a play list of the music I mention in my upcoming memoir, No Rules. The book takes place in the early ‘70s when music seeped into every moment of my life. FM radio that played rock had just begun to take off. It replaced the ‘60s style of AM radio jocks who chattered as they spun top 40 songs in between dazzling commercials. The FM radio announcers all sounded stoned as they spoke thoughtful descriptions of the bands or the music they were sharing and explored album cuts beyond hit singles.

This music was inspiring. It was experimental—bluesy, folksy, or jazzy, sometimes all at once. At times it sounded like it came from outer space. There was hard rock with pounding guitars, soft rock with melodic harmonies, and acid rock meant to be listened to while tripping. There were protest songs, stories, wailing harmonicas, music sung from the gut and lyrics of poetry. It became the elastic that pulled us close to one another in ways that transcended our differences and emphasized our commonality. Our origins, race, gender, and economic background became meaningless.

With no internet or smart phones, music was our communication and musicians became our gods. There was always a radio or a stereo and in some cases, speakers as large as a pair of doors. That stereo was the center of focus in a room and we played it with the television picture on and the sound shut off. I have no memory of what was on TV at those times, but the songs I heard work like an index for thousands of my memories. I know I can conjure up those moments into vivid images because they are tied to the music that is embedded within me.

A few years ago, my mother lay in the hospital dying. She faded in and out of consciousness, her eyes sometimes open slits, and other times fully shut as she gradually moved away from life. I wanted to give her some moments of joy as she transitioned, and I had to think about what that might be.

In her youth, she wanted to be a concert pianist, and she studied the piano for several years. Her favorite composer was Chopin. I had heard her play his music frequently in our house while I was growing up, as though she was still living a bit of that dream. I decided I would download some Chopin Sonatas and Nocturnes I remembered her playing, and I took them with me to the hospital on my phone.

As I stood beside her bed stroking her hair, I started the music. Her eyelids flickered open and her breathing took on a different pace after a few minutes, a pace of calm. I wondered if she was reliving her fingers gliding across the piano keys, sensing their movement as she tapped out the notes that sometimes came in rapid succession. I couldn’t tell if she was enjoying it, but it felt to me like an essential component of her life—one of her happier ones.

Chopin is also part of my life’s soundtrack. When I hear his compositions, it connects me to my mother. I can feel her in the room. Both piano classics and classic rock make up the music that plays inside me.

The piano she played now sits in my living room, aging and worn, and in need of tuning. I’ve been promising myself to get that done. I want to start taking piano lessons. I did play for some time as a child, but never well enough to play classics. Am I too old to do that now? I don’t care what else I learn to play on the piano, except to play Chopin. Maybe one or two pieces will be enough, so I can understand what it feels like to make those beautiful sounds flow from my fingers and run through my body like waves as I feel my mother live on beside me.

Sharon Dukett

Author

Sharon writes a blog, and has been a technology and project manager, as well as a computer programmer.

Summon The Courage To Be Heard

by Sharon Dukett | Jan 27, 2020 | 2 comments

When I was in high school, I used to sit in history class in the back row next to a friend who was a boy. I was afraid to speak up for fear of being wrong, so when the teacher asked a question, I would whisper the answer to him. He would raise his hand and speak my words. It turned out I was nearly always right, but only he knew that.

People who know me now will be surprised by this admission. I’ve spoken in front of groups. I’ve volunteered to go first, announced guests at conferences, started conversations with strangers, and advocated for myself and my family. I’ve asked to be promoted, run complex projects, reached out to superiors and authorities. Now with my memoir and blogs, I’ve written personal truths about myself that I’ve long kept secret and exposed my inner feelings to the public.

Some see me as brave. Perhaps they also see me as foolish, but I ignore that. Inside, I still need to summon up courage every time I put myself out there. It’s always an effort. I feel that anxiety I had raising my hand in high school with warning signs flashing in my mind: What if I’m wrong? What if I get hurt? What if I hurt someone else?

A thousand fears conspire to keep me silent.

I don’t think this is just me. I believe most of us cower at the thought of exposing our vulnerabilities.

This hit home for me in a big way last week when reading about the testimonies of women against Harvey Weinstein. Imagine the bravery needed to face him and the press in court, to raise their hands and be called upon to speak about graphic personal details they have likely worked hard to forget. How much courage did it take each of them to face the criticisms, denials, insinuations and public scrutiny that they knew they would confront? Their strength is inspiring.

Most of us won’t be faced with something so extreme. But even smaller challenges can feel huge when we lack the confidence to power through them.

That’s why we need to remember that we are always in the process of learning. We may have become experts in one area, but we’ll be complete novices in another. Don’t let that dissuade you from moving forward in your life in new ways. No matter your age or background, the world around you is always morphing into something else, so we are in a constant state of discovery. Why not use that understanding to allow yourself to make mistakes, to try again, to grow?

Seek out those who support your efforts and will lift you up—the ones who will catch you if you fall. And most importantly, make sure you lift up others along with you, using an open mind and an open heart. That fear you’ve felt exists in all of us, and may be even greater in those who have struggled against barriers beyond our personal understanding.

This is how we build our base of courage: by creating a web of strength we share with each other, a resilient space to hold us up despite our fear of speaking our truth. Then when we raise our hands, our voices will be loud and we will make sure everyone knows who spoke.

Sharon Dukett

Author

Sharon writes a blog, and has been a technology and project manager, as well as a computer programmer.

Do You Have The Guts To Love?

by Sharon Dukett | Jan 13, 2020 | 2 comments

I was born to parents who loved me. That made me lucky right out of the gate. I have heard many stories told by those who did not share this luxury.

They also loved each other, but it was complicated.

My mother grew up in pre-WWII England where she lived a comfortable life as the daughter of a bank manager. She watched her parents engage in an active social life as a result of her father’s position.

My father grew up as the child of non-English speaking Lithuanian immigrants who worked in a textile mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts. His parents worked hard and drank hard with the other immigrants in their neighborhood.

Neither of them strayed outside of their well defined social circles until war made it necessary. They met on a train while dressed in their respective nation’s uniforms, each returning to their military base in England.

My future parents had one face-to-face date, then wrote letters for a few years before my father asked my mother to marry him and come to America. She said yes.

That took guts. Imagine letting go of everything you know about the world and taking a chance on love. Just saying “yes” and diving in. It wasn’t a fairy tale ending, but their marriage lasted for thirty-five years until my father’s death.

I’m not recommending that people give up their lives and fall in love with strangers. At least I don’t think I am. We have far more opportunity now to know everything about someone before we jump into a relationship. You would think this would make it easier to find a life partner or even a friend, but I suspect it is more difficult. Is it best to consider everything you discover about someone over social media or from web searches? Should you do a criminal and financial background check before you consider dating someone? Or do so later if you start to grow serious?

With so much gossip, random facts, awkward moments and sensitive data floating around in the digital universe, it is possible to form a strong opinion about a person without ever talking to them. Is that an accurate assessment, or has something important been overlooked? How many flaws does it take to eliminate a person who hasn’t even entered your life? Five? One?

While our shortcomings and mistakes are on display for the world, studies are popping up in developed countries exposing the growing loneliness of people of all ages.

Loneliness. An epidemic on the rise. Humans unable to connect with one another but aching to do so. How do we transcend this gap that keeps us apart?

We are bombarded with information: warnings about scams, news of tragedies, articles about how to stay safe, exposés of individuals that have deluded trusting people, rapes, murders, drug deaths, child molesting, human trafficking—an onslaught of the worst that people can be. We’ve become socialized to trust no one and fear everyone.

It’s not that we don’t know how to love. Just look at how many people love their pets. We hold them in our hearts, hug them, play with them, care for them, organize our lives around them, treat them with dignity and respect, all the while knowing the day will come when we will outlive them and we will have to let them go. That takes guts.

Love and guts go together. Letting another human into our lives—whether it is our own child or another’s, a new lover, a potential friend—letting that human touch our hearts and touching their hearts back, without knowing where it will lead or what we may gain or lose, that takes guts.

We could all use more love. What if we each took a step forward and reached out to someone to see how that goes? And tried again with another even if the first time failed? We could make new connections in person, and by doing so make the world a smaller, kinder, more human place.

It’s scary.

Do you have the guts?

Sharon Dukett

Author

Sharon writes a blog, and has been a technology and project manager, as well as a computer programmer.

Are You A Lazy Ass Daydreamer?

by Sharon Dukett | Dec 14, 2019 | 2 comments

When I was a little girl, my mother would walk into my room and ask me what I was doing while I sat on my bed staring into space.

“Thinking,” I would answer.

While I was thinking, my mind was churning out stories of characters encountering monsters in castles or outrunning them on horseback through forests in faraway places. I was the princess, or the girl jockey, or the lost adventurer hiding in the woods from the wicked witch.

“You have a vivid imagination,” my mother would say if I told her what was on my mind. “While you’re thinking, you should clean your room.”

The problem with cleaning my room was that it interrupted my thoughts and put a halt to the stories parading through my brain. I didn’t know how to explain it then, but now I do. Creativity requires focus. And mundane activities like housework require attention to the details of the activity. The two don’t play well together.

To create art in whatever form speaks to you, you need to daydream. You need to free your mind to loosen the flow of thoughts, words, and images, then pluck out the best ones and nurture them.

With writing, you can sometimes indulge your imagination while running your fingers over a keyboard, if you know that keyboard well enough. It had better feel like an extension of your hands, where touching the keys is mindless and you could even drift off to sleep doing it. Otherwise, you’ll need a pen and paper in hand, perhaps even a pencil to let those thoughts lead you on a journey.

But while you and your creative mind are busy searching for the right phrase to convey a complex image, those around you may see you as lazy. At the end of the day, what have you accomplished? You probably piled up some more papers on top of the papers you already had in a pile, or wore down the battery on your phone doing research or checking on your social media platform. At best, you increased your word count.

Does anyone besides you care about your word count? Probably not. When I glance at my to-do list, I realize it’s as long as it was that morning, or longer, and meanwhile those around me are stacking up check marks next to their completed tasks like Santa Clause on Christmas Eve. Perhaps I can count finishing my tea as an accomplishment.

This is the dilemma of trying to live a creative life, especially now when lack of free time carries bragging rights. People are expected to exceed last year’s levels of productivity, not spend time staring at a blank page in a trance. So where can you find the space to sit alone and just think?

Here’s a suggestion: if you keep your fingers moving over your keyboard, no one will know your mind is off wandering through an unexplored landscape. Keep typing keep typing keep typing keep typing—you will look productive instead of like a lazy ass daydreamer. And the words will form thoughts, and the thoughts will start to speak to you, and a world will begin to form in those empty spaces you left for them.

Let’s keep this a secret just between us creative types.

Sharon Dukett

Author

Sharon writes a blog, and has been a technology and project manager, as well as a computer programmer.

Women Are Fed Up With Waiting to be Equal

by Sharon Dukett | Dec 9, 2019 | 2 comments

In December of 2017, I visited the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York. It wasn’t until that year that I knew such a place existed. In that location, the first Women’s Rights Convention was held in 1848.

Just a short distance away is the north end of Cayuga Lake, one of the finger lakes of New York. On the south end of Cayuga Lake is Ithaca. At the Ithaca Women’s Center in 1973, I learned to recognize my own oppression as a result of being a woman, which changed my life. I hadn’t realized how close I was to where the movement for women’s freedom began.

In the Declaration of Sentiments, an eye-opening and radical document signed by those at the convention, they stated:

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.

It goes on to list the many ways this was demonstrated. A great many of those grievances have been addressed and resolved, but not to the extent you would expect considering it was written nearly 170 years ago.

At the Ithaca Women’s Center, I frequently attended a pot luck dinner that was followed by discussion. Many of the attendees were students at Cornell and some of them were law students. I lived south of Ithaca on a commune that was based on equality and rejected gender roles, which gave me the ability to explore this new freedom and understand how the rules and restrictions for women had impacted my life.

I now wonder how many of the law students were familiar with this line from the Declaration that had been written just north of Ithaca:

He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.

There are those who would say women did have a voice in forming the laws in 1973 because they could vote. But if you’ve ever had a job in leadership or you’ve ever had a boss, you know that creating policies versus having one voice out of many to influence those policies is vastly different. The leadership decides what they will hear or not hear, and what they choose to implement and not implement. If you are not the leader, your voice is but a raindrop in a puddle in the office. Do you believe your voice is heard by your government? I believe that depends on the leaders.

That’s why the women from Cornell Law School in 1973 sat in a room one night and explained to all of us that we were at a moment in time when law schools were finally being forced to admit more women, and how that would change our country. Hillary Clinton, a name none of us knew, had just graduated from law school a few months earlier.

“Men aren’t going to give up control voluntarily,” one of them said. She went on to declare that only by women becoming feminist lawyers could they litigate cases, set precedents, then go on to run for office and change the laws. This was the only way we would find a path to equality.

When my friend and I left the center that evening, we discussed our future on the drive home, and wondered what it would take for us to become feminist lawyers. She was a high school dropout and I had just graduated from high school a few months before. We lived on a commune making crafts to sell and growing food. Neither of us had jobs. The following month she enrolled in the local high school and graduated the following year. We each went on to pursue education and careers, although not as lawyers.

That evening was only one part of my awaking, but it was a big one. I thought of it later while working for the state courts in the technology department. I became a leader there, and participated in improving and replacing the outdated systems and processes in the court houses along with women who were judges and lawyers. These were the women who heeded that call to become lawyers and were using their knowledge to change people’s lives.

In 1972, the year before I sat in that room in Ithaca, the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution had been passed in both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate and was sent to the states for ratification. My friend and I who attended the Ithaca talk bought bracelets with the letters ERA on them and wore them for years. I think I had to remove mine during childbirth. The first version of that amendment was introduced in Seneca Falls in 1923 on the 75th anniversary of the Woman’s Rights Convention, nearly a hundred years ago.

We are still waiting.

Sharon Dukett

Author

Sharon writes a blog, and has been a technology and project manager, as well as a computer programmer.

Finding Freedom From the Clutter in Life

by Sharon Dukett | Oct 7, 2019 | 4 comments

Nothing frees me like getting rid of stuff. My house, like my life, is always cluttered. Right now as I sit here with my laptop, on my kitchen table there are three electricity bills: one for this house, one for the alarm system in a three family house we own, and one for an apartment that was vacant for ten days. There are also containers of vitamins, one for my husband and one for me. There are three silver bracelets I took off when I got home last night, along with several pads of papers with notes on them, a 20% off coupon from Kohl’s, an ATM receipt, a container with napkins, salt and pepper shakers, two pairs of sunglasses and three magazines. I didn’t include my water bottle, a cup of tea and my cell phone as I will take those with me when I get up.

This is a good day. It’s usually much worse.

My cabinets just about close, I have a junk drawer in every room, closet doors barely shut, and framed photographs cover every table top. To make matters worse, my sister moved in over my garage last week and we finally cleared out the house where she has been living for years. It was our parent’s house until our mother died six years ago. The last boxes of photos, books, tools, and other items I couldn’t part with arrived here over the last couple of weeks, including a piano and a lifetime’s worth of sheet music collected by my mother.

I tend to be a pack rat. This came from my father’s side, not my mother’s. My mother loved to get rid of things, and through her I learned to love it too. It was how she de-stressed. But since she barely owned anything, the things she liked to get rid of were mostly my father’s.

My father had a drawer of Look magazines, trinkets from the war, and other stuff I can’t recall. What I do recall is that when my mother hounded him to clean out this drawer, his solution was to pick out his favorite items and walk them into my room, asking me if I would like them. I always did. That’s how I ended up with his most prized possession: a Look magazine about Flying Saucers from 1967. Of all the clutter I have cleared from my life, this part of my father has stayed with me. Besides winning the lottery, his strongest wish was to know the truth about UFO’s before he died. Neither came to fruition.

I seldom clean out clutter. I manage the everyday stuff enough to keep it from turning into “Hoarders,” but it nags at me. And the more it accumulates, the more stressed and disorganized I feel. There are times when I am paralyzed by inaction and overwhelmed by a lack of control. When this happens, attacking the source gets me motivated again.

Once the urge strikes, I try to take advantage of it before my hoarder self regains control. I feel as though I am shape shifting between being my mother the disposer and my father the collector until I lose the ability to continue. I must devote myself completely to the task and not get distracted.

This year in particular, my husband and I developed reoccurring piles heading to Goodwill, or the library, or the coat drive. And our recycle bin has to be emptied several times a week.

Still there is more that needs to go. I have folders full of feedback from writers groups for the memoir I finally finished this year, some dating back to the 1990s. I just discovered stacks of information from technical schools and colleges my son had considered fifteen years ago. I recently tossed out my thirteen years worth of performance reviews from my last job. I retired two years ago. They seemed important when I walked out the door, but not now.

Clearing out my belongings makes space not only in my house, but in my life. Those old memoir reviews need to disappear so I can move on to my new work. I held onto my resumes and performance reviews from my job because the day I left, I didn’t know who I would be when I wasn’t a Deputy Director of Information Technology anymore.

Now I do.

I am an author who needs room to stack boxes of books. And a traveler who needs a location for suitcases. And a grandmother who needs space for her grandchildren’s toys. And a follower of yoga who lays her mat alongside her husband’s mat in the morning and does downward dogs. I am a woman who needs a clear mind and a clear space to continue to become the person still in progress and forever changing.

Sharon Dukett

Author

Sharon writes a blog, and has been a technology and project manager, as well as a computer programmer.

10 Secrets to a Loving Relationship That Lasts

by Sharon Dukett | Sep 19, 2019 | 2 comments

My husband and I have been a couple for nearly forty years. In my younger days before we met, I had doubts that any relationship could last this long. Mine typically ended after painful experiences. My current husband and I were both married before, and our first marriages were riddled with mistakes.

Fortunately, we each grew from those mistakes, and avoided many of the same pitfalls as we built our lives together.

Trial and error overshadowed my earlier alliances, but I discovered what worked for me and what didn’t, and enjoyed the differences in my second marriage.

Here are some lessons that I learned. Perhaps you, or someone close to you, can use these to avoid the pain that I felt while learning them, and experience the joy that I finally found in a loving, lasting relationship.

Be friends. Good friends enjoy each other’s company, play together, help one another, offer comfort and build each other up.
Be lovers. Sex needs to be on your agenda forever. Regardless of your busy lives and conflicting demands, prioritize this time together and set up an agreeable schedule. If you feel desire fading away, work to reawaken it before you feel like strangers. But don’t place pressure on your partner. Be there for each other without being demanding. If you have physical or emotional health issues, explore ways you can pleasure one another while maintaining physical closeness. And above all, be loving.
Have your own money. There may be times in a relationship when this is not always possible, but don’t let that continue indefinitely. You each need the satisfaction of earning your own money, and the freedom of spending it without asking for permission. But always pay the bills first.
Don’t run yourselves into debt. Nothing ends relationships faster than financial problems. When money is tight, you each need to sacrifice for both of you to survive. Too many people waste money on possessions they don’t need and jeopardize their finances to pay for them. Don’t make it tougher by taking on debt unless it will educate you and improve your circumstances, or create financial security.
Drop old baggage. Forget about your parent’s marriage, your previous marriage, or your partner from the past. That relationship isn’t this one. Make sure you discuss any assumptions you each have about being a couple, then throw out the old junk and build a new, healthy relationship.
Ignore imperfections. Everyone has something you don’t like about them including your partner. Accept that no one is perfect and leave those flaws alone as long as they aren’t serious. Focus on the characteristics you love and overlook the ones you don’t.
Respect each other. When in public or among friends, don’t put each other down, criticize, belittle, or embarrass your partner. If you have an argument, have it privately without demeaning one another and keep it fair. Your goal is to resolve your differences, not to win.
Assume trust. This can be difficult, and who hasn’t been burned before this? But to commit to one another, you need a trusting heart and mind. If one day that trust is broken, deal with it then, but don’t destroy your love by imagining what hasn’t happened.
Support each other’s dreams. They may not all blossom, but encouraging each other to grow and become your best selves will not cause your partner to outgrow you; rather it will strengthen the bond between you by lifting each other up. Plus you will always have something interesting to discuss at the end of the day.
Work as a team. Here is a powerful exercise that taught my husband and me this in our early days as a couple. The two of you step into a single canoe and begin paddling down a river through small, then larger rapids. You are each responsible for either steering the canoe or pushing it away from the rocks, and you must coordinate these activities as the current rushes you forward. You may find yourselves panicking as you scream at one another and blame each other for mishaps. Eventually you must stop this and focus on working together to be successful. Once you do, it’s magic.

Sharon Dukett

Author

Sharon writes a blog, and has been a technology and project manager, as well as a computer programmer.

Are There Secrets Between Best Friends?

by Sharon Dukett | Oct 2, 2018 | 3 comments

When I was eighteen in 1973, I lived on a commune in upstate New York outside of Ithaca. There I met Patty, not her real name. Our birthdays were exactly one month apart. We were younger than the others who were in their mid to late twenties or more, and we were outnumbered by the men.

Patty and I bonded immediately, and over the months we lived together at the commune, and later in a rental house, we became inseparable. We went to pot luck dinners at the Ithaca Women’s Center where we shared stories with other women about our experiences and feelings as we explored our new feminism. We filled out a lengthy detailed survey about our sexuality from a researcher named Shere Hite, which later became part of the famous Hite Report, considered the most extensive study ever done on women’s sexuality. We read our answers out loud to each other which included our sexual fantasies, and what we had and had not done. We told each other about our “first time,” then laughed together as we made a list of our sexual partners and rated each of them. She was hesitant at first to tell me one of them was my then boyfriend, but it was before we met so I didn’t mind.

We discussed having children one day, and what we would name them. Patty, who was white, imagined having a daughter who was biracial that she would name Fantasia. Her daughter would be like the Disney movie that blended music and animation together. I wasn’t sure yet about children. My boyfriend at the time made it clear he wanted none.

We sang songs together while walking through the fields on our commune property. We felled trees with a chainsaw and chopped the wood into pieces. We snuck off to drink milkshakes in town while we went to the laundromat. She told me about her young marriage and divorce and the day she almost killed her husband. She explained the scars on her body and the glass that sometimes emerged from her forehead resulting from a terrible car accident. When she was fourteen, the first time she drove, she slammed into a telephone pole and was thrown through the windshield. She had been in a coma afterwards.

We wore each other’s clothes, read the same books, and loved the same music. We even hitched hiked together to Ohio to see Leon Russell in concert.

Over time we moved away from each other, her to Florida and me to Connecticut, but our first babies were born less than a year apart. She shipped me her maternity clothes when she was done with them. We kept in touch for many years, and saw each other occasionally. I still have many of her letters.

As time went by, we became busy with our lives. Sometimes a few years went by with nothing but a note around Christmas. Then email came along and we started communicating more often again. She was in graduate school and had an award winning photography project on a website. I was able to view it and share the excitement with her. She sent me photos of her son sky diving and her daughter’s first child – Patty’s first grandchild. After one Christmas I sent her some family photos and didn’t hear back.

Several months later, there was an email from her son in my inbox. I froze, terrified to open it. I was shaking when I clicked on it and it turned out to be as bad as I feared. She had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer only months before and had passed away. I am crying now while writing this and remembering that moment. How I long to share my recent experiences with her that only she would understand, like how I met the editor of Ms. Magazine, a new publication we both cherished that first summer we met as we were discovering how to become stronger women.

After she passed, I googled her name on the internet hoping for more artwork and made a startling discovery. She was creating a work of photography she called A Show Of Hands, dedicated to child sexual abuse survivors, and she was one of them. She was collecting hand prints of survivors which she planned to turn into an ocean of blue to exhibit. My first reaction was shock, and then I experienced hurt, thinking how she never trusted me enough to share this with me.

As I thought through our old conversations, I started to make sense of things she had said and I had not understood. I recalled having a discussion with her and another woman who was talking about being a virgin, and Patty said, “I wish I could be a virgin again.” I had thought that was an odd thing to wish for. It was critical to her to be a strong woman. She brought this up frequently. When her son was born, she discussed how she wanted him to understand that women are strong, and she would need to show him that strength. Years later she shared that she was a recovering alcoholic, which took me by surprise since neither of us drank when I knew her best, and I wondered what had brought her to that point.

Then I read these words about her own handprint on her photography blog:

“I choose to do mine as a reverse shadow because I wanted the effect of being tattooed. What was done to me one summer when I was a child forever altered my life, it is permanent and can never be removed. It left scars that went unnoticed or ignored for many years. But once my denial was too painful to continue, my healing finally began.”

In 1973, she and I were living in an age of sexual liberation and she was doing her best to join in that parade. How painful it must have been for her to carry that inside, unable to share that with anyone.

It was only this week that I realized it wasn’t only she who didn’t share everything. I never told her about that time on the Boston Common. I never told her about leaving the James Gang concert with a group of guys I thought were my friends. Because I never told anyone. Because in a way nothing really happened, or so I convinced myself. It just almost happened, so that didn’t warrant even thinking about it, much less telling anyone. I could pretend it never happened at all. Telling someone would make it too real. Even though it was forty-seven years ago, like another woman recently shared, I can still hear the laughter, the talking to one another like I wasn’t even there. Why would you tell anyone about that when you don’t want to even think about it?

I never even told my best friend.

Sharon Dukett

Author

Sharon writes a blog, and has been a technology and project manager, as well as a computer programmer.

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