You can't go home again
or maybe...you can? A bittersweet, nostalgia post
Last week I was on the road in New York City and Connecticut. Like a lot of suburban kids, I used to tell people I was from “near New York City” since I did spend a lot of time walking around downtown buying CDs in high school. But the reality is, I’m from Stamford.
If you’ve ever seen “Scenes from a Mall” by Woody Allen, that’s my hometown. It’s not the greatest movie, and for a long time, I didn’t really appreciate Stamford. And since my mom passed away a long time ago and my father left Stamford in 2004, I didn’t have many reasons to go back. Now I can see some of the amazing things about it. I was exposed to so many languages growing up. I knew families with roots all over the world. I learned to take public transit including heading to downtown NYC. I worked in the library as a “page” shelving books but also reading on the job.
Last week, after speaking at some Manhattan schools, I headed out to Stamford to stay in a hotel downtown so I could spend a couple of days working at St. Luke’s school in New Canaan. It was…surprisingly emotional to walk around downtown even though I didn’t even go further into town to visit either of the houses we lived in.
I didn’t stop by my old high school or middle school. I didn’t visit the cemetery where my mother is buried. But I did go to the library!
Not the branch near our house where I worked is now a Chabad center. But the main library where I once did a massive school research project that Google and Chat GPT would render meaningless. The rug smelled the same.
I met one of my still amazing friends at the downtown library because she was photocopying MS Magazine and I went up to her and said “I read Ms. too!” In fact, I shared a subscription with another friend and we all got to be friends after that. Teenage feminist solidarity!
(Check out this Barbara Kruger cover from 1992…wish I’d saved that month’s edition)
When I visited Stamford’s Ferguson Library, I stopped by right after school. The library was hopping! Diverse and engaged kids were talking, studying and hanging out. There were so many queer YA books on display. Not hidden in the stacks. I remember sneaking into the stacks to read books like Annie on My Mind or Mercedes Lackey’s book, Magic’s Pawn.
What would it be like to grow up here now with all the LGBTQIA books on display?
I don’t take it for granted. Are the book banners coming to your town?
I had a pro-censorship parent show up at one of my parent talks recently. He was trying to claim that a puberty book used by their school district was a problem.
I think he’d been coached with talking points about opposing sex-ed in schools.
His tirade wasn’t really connected with what I was speaking about. But I did find myself wondering what any adult who opposes things like puberty books is hoping for in relation to the Internet.
For my part, I’d rather have a teenager read a book like The Joy of Sex then look at Internet porn. But we know kids are seeing pornography and we need to educate them against the violence that porn can normalize.
Culture Reframed is a great organization helping parents respond to porn culture. I cited their work and their COMPOSE model for responding to kids who have seen pornography in my upcoming book and really appreciated their guidance.
Anyway, back to nostalgia. Where is your “hometown”?
Do you go back? What’s it like?
Next time you're in southern CT, drop me a line, we'll get some tea! (I'm half an hour from Stamford.)