![]() Only my mother was home, in her bedroom with the door uncommonly locked. Neither of my two older brothers or I recall where they were at the time. On that early evening in 1968, I watched television in the family room of our house. ![]() These networks aired live news only at 6pm and 11pm nightly. During my childhood, there were three television channels-ABC, NBC, and CBS. It was late afternoon when the reporting and film footage of the action reached Baltimore’s news stations. Scores of agents searched and seized boxes they suspected held obscene and pornographic material, all of it for distribution domestically and abroad. Late that same year, my father’s pornography warehouse in Baltimore was raided by the FBI. The FDA had approved The Pill in 1960, the same year the Supreme Court determined Lady Chatterley’s Lover was protected by the First Amendment. In its first three weeks of publication, two million people bought copies of Sex and the Single Woman with its then-unspeakable content. “Hippie” counterculture critiques of commercialism and societal norms. Nationwide protests and movements affected every aspect of our culture. ![]() That’s what brimming is, isn’t it? Too much. I put down my fork and was swept decades from my salad, back to a time brimming with…well, with too much. I know the kind of storm for which she was claiming responsibility, the one for which she was needlessly repenting, the shame for the actions of another. I heard little else of the story after that. She did not want to believe, she told my friend, that her child could do such a thing. The groom’s mother was mortified, overwhelmed with shame, and could hardly bear the embarrassment. Six weeks later, the neighbor announced he was leaving the marriage for a woman he’d been dating secretly for 18 months. Families were elated, story book wedding, playful honeymoon. AT A LUNCH last summer, my friend told a story about her neighbor, a young man who had married his longtime girlfriend a few months before.
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