Maggie Keating at 18: reflections on this threshold moment

This month Hazel Kahan’s guest on Tidings is her 18-year-old granddaughter Maggie Keating who lives in Long Beach, on Long Island. NY.  Maggie and her friend Issy spoke to Tidings five years ago when they were 8th graders in the middle of Covid-era lockdown, a significant marker for their generation. However,  today, Maggie reflects on what has prepared her for college, politics and the responsibilities of voting. She also talks about her relationship to AI and WPKN. (Broadcast on WPKN April 9, 2025.)

One Response

  1. ……very interesting that I don’t know where to put my response to your interview with Maggie…..and quite how to relate to it beyond being really impressed with the breadth of her perspective and her articulation of it…so unspeakably different from who I ever was and the world I was in, at her age. Uneducable but for Hampstead Secretarial College and a first job! Few options! Her many references to her parents…father particularly touched me and with it a comforting sense of her in-tactness for going out into this shifting world, so much of which it is hard to connect to thanks to my low-tech opting. ChatGBT AI etc…still shocks me and the dehumanization of it and yet there she is so engaged and necessarily accepting, Including the 24/7 access to pretty much anything she would want for the $10 a month…and her looking forward openly to a balance in medicine between body and mind to what she might do between possible lab work and within and her psych studies. I wonder if she would have read Paul Hawken’s latest book — Carbon. Maggie’s nixing of radio..another startling reminder of how dated I am! And noteworthy how…a more unifying experience listening to live or any time radio or actually watching live TV — when people do it together –rather than in the bits and pieces of podcasts, so separate…is something else that feels strange. But again her capacity to live in and to be so conscious of the as yet unknowable future ahead of her…and her open-ness to different sides of any political position….was reassuring to hear for how effectively she will keep weaving who she is as your grand-daughter…and the significant relationship you have with each other.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

About Hazel

Born to German Jewish refugee physicians in Lahore (now Pakistan, then British India) Hazel has lived, studied and worked in many places–India, England, Australia, Israel and the United States. She makes her home in the woods of the eastern end of Long Island, New York where she produces the art of leafages, the radio sounds of Tidings and writes about growing up Jewish in Lahore. Read more about Hazel…

About Leafages

"Credo" statement

Leafages by Hazel Kahan are made from real leaves, vines and tendrils interwoven with calligraphy, decorative pen and ink flourishes and imaginary Latin botanical names. Leafages contain a philosophical or inspirational thought, quotation or verse from sages, poets or religious texts. Some leafages are specially created for an individual, a couple or a family with words or leaves reflecting their personal narrative. They are available on the Leafages shop on Etsy although the supply is low right now, all my energies having been absorbed by the book I’ve been writing. Do come back soon when the shop will be full of new leafage abundance or contact me.