I’m in Santa Barbara staying with my friends Jane and Ron Olson who have a beautiful, welcoming home right on the beach. The weather is sparkling, the flowers abundant. Life couldn’t be better.

Yesterday I interviewed my friends Dick and Mickey Flacks who live in Santa Barbara. I got to know them when I married Tom. They were all part of the early SDS at the University of Michigan. Dick is now retired from being a tenured professor of Sociology and she was a professor of Biology at university of California, Santa Barbara. They are celebrating their 50th Wedding anniversary which for me, with my history, seems a miracle. I wanted to talk to them about how they managed to stay together, happily and productively for so long. I am writing about marriage and relationships in general in my book about aging. They are another proof that the most successful marriages occur in the absence of rigid gender stereotypes…”you are the woman and should be doing this and I’m the man and I should be doing this…”

Dick and Mickey Flacks

My old roommate, Carol Kurtz drove me up here from L.A. And it was fun to spend time with her and do some catching up. She and her husband, Jack, and son, Cory, lived downstairs from me and Tom (and Troy and Vanessa) in Ocean Park, CA for a number of years during the Vietnam War and in the tumult and controversy of those years I always knew Carol had my back.

In the midst of post surgery I am falling in love and it’s a splendid way to hasten recovery and I highly recommend it. Who would have thought at 71–and on crutches, no less. Actually, I am just now walking without crutch or cane. Slowly, but still.

Bridget

I am about to go to my niece Bridget Fonda and her husband, Danny Elfman’s home for a party. I’ve never been there but Troy tells me the home is amazing as is their home in Hancock Park, L.A. They were at my closing night of “33 Variations” and I haven’t seen them since then. Danny is one of the most successful and respected composers for films. For you older folk he was the lead in the band Oingo Boingo back in the day. Remember? I will take pictures.

Danny and Bridget

Stay tuned.

This is the longest I’ve gone without blogging for some time. But sometimes you just have to let life play itself out without comment. Like so many people, I have been in a wash of images and feelings about Michael Jackson. I knew him as well as one could know him during the time before he did “The Wiz” and up through “Thriller.” I couldn’t pretend to understand him. There were so many complicated signals. Did he want me to be his ‘older women’ friend. He gravitated to older women. For solace? Succor? A beard? Did he want me to teach him the ropes? I never could quite figure it out. But I remember one day he was visiting me at my ranch north of Santa Barbara. It was the first time he had been in that region but he must have liked it because later he bought his ranch in that same area. Anyway, as we walked around the ranch which was perched right at the edge of the mountain overlooking Goleta, I pointed to a spot where I told him I wanted to be buried. Michael had a melt down right then and there when he heard this. He shrieked and bent over and said “no, no, no!” “ What’s the matter,” I asked. “Don’t ever talk about your dying,” he answered. “Don’t ever think about it.”

I think about death all the time. I rehearse my death. I think that’s a healthy thing to do. Death, after all, is what gives life meaning the way noise gives meaning to silence. Ooooh, I thought to myself, Michael will have a hard time of it as he ages. He will spend all his energy trying to flee what is inevitable. And now it’s happened. I like the fact that it was quick. Massive heart attacks that you don’t recover from are quick. You don’t know what hit you. That’s probably the kindest death for Michael. It’s hard to imagine him being happy as he aged. One more demon to try and evade. I like to think he’s happy now, free of his demons. Free and floating and knowing how his art continues to be revered and celebrated by all of us all over the world. It will continue.