An Early Lesson From My Mom

Hey Raven,

Sorry for the days of radio silence. We have been on vacation (you were super sick so I forgive you for missing a blog post!)

Tonight we watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and it got me thinking. About a lot of things. Mostly how our society deals (or more frequently doesn't deal) with its oldest members. In the US and in many other similarly "modern"  countries we can easily forget the elderly or pidgeon-hole them into a comfortable role. An older woman is a grandmother, an older man is a grandfather - nothing more. They are no longer autonomous beings. They belong to a younger member of society  in the same way a very young child belongs to its parents. We, as a society, forget that they aren't just that and sometimes they aren't that at all (not all older people are grandparents, after all). We forget that they are a unique individual. We forget that they are still adults with their own desires, traditions, rituals, experiences, and desires. They are not living for us, nor are they waiting around to die. I have my mother to thank for teaching me this early in my life. My mother is an extraordinarily talented therapist who has worked for more than 20 years with elderly. Her stories and her understanding of her patients as people first and patients second gave me my first view of the elderly as they truly are, not as they are so often seen.

Hollywood often deals poorly with this reality. Most older actors and actresses are sent off to the kindly grandmother, wise grandfather, or society recluse as soon as a sufficient portion of hair has turned gray.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel resists this temptation and instead builds a rich story centered around an almost entirely older cast. The youngest member of the main cast is 59 at the movie's shooting time (hardly what I would consider the "Golden Years" though Hollywood's perception of age is very skewed to say the least). I'm not sure how old they are all meant to be, but clearly of retirement age and beyond. They are at the point where society is starting to see them as a burden: a point made clear early in the movie when Judi Dench's character Evelyn is trying to decide how to proceed with her life after her husband's death. There is little conversation - only her son telling her how things will be. Even after she decides she will not move in with him and will instead head to India he doubts her all the way - assuming she can't do it. Dev Patel's character makes it even clearer later in the movie when he is arguing with his mother about where he will get clients from and he tells her there are plenty of countries where they hate the elderly. And while I don't think hate is precisely the right term, I do think the elderly make many of us uncomfortable or unsure how to act. We tend to ignore them, infantilize them, or fear them.

The movie does an excellent job setting up the way these characters are seen and then does an equally splendid job of challenging our first impressions (and society's view) of these characters throughout. There are many lovely plot lines including one of a gay man returning to India to seek out the lover he feels he wronged many years ago. There is a woman searching for her next rich husband. A woman learning how to be independent after her husband's death. And a particularly unlikable character, at first glance, who works to get over some severe racism and bigotry throughout the movie. The plots are rife with adult (not elderly) content. There is love, sex, discovery, forgiveness, loss, and yes a few very wise words. No character is forgotten or pushed aside and though there are no shortage of jokes on the subject of age they are all made in good taste, but the characters themselves. A notable one comes when one of the men is going out on a date that will clearly end in sex and he is warned of the dangers of having sex at his age. His response? "If she dies, she dies." This one joke is a great summation of how the movie gives viewers the familiar picture of the elderly and then turns it on its ear.

We are people at any age is the take away message of the movie. And it is never too late to live a full life. As a young person I think it is important to remember that and remember that everyone will one day grow old. No one wants to be condescended to, ignored, or seen as a burden after a life of self reliance. In other words we all want to grow old with a little dignity and respect. To get there ourselves we have to start giving dignity and respect now. Seeing each person we meet as an individual with a past and a future.

Best wishes,
Owl

Happy Purim!

Happy Purim Raven!

For those following at home who don't know. Today is Purim, a Jewish holiday commemorating a time when we Jews were almost wiped out, but then we weren't. And there was much rejoicing. It is a very fun, festive holiday. We (that is Raven and I) went to Raven's childhood synagogue to celebrate. We dressed up as Flame Princess and Fiona from Adventure Time (it's customary to go to Purim celebrations in costume because... reasons?) It's like a second Halloween and I do love Halloween!

Purim happens every year in late winter or early spring (14th of Adar for the Jewish calendar) and focuses on Esther and Mordecai's efforts and eventual foiling of Haman's plot to wipe out Jews everywhere (specifically the Jews of Shushan). The short story is this: King Ahasueres (of Shushan) commanded his wife and queen Vashti to come before him and she disobeyed the king basically nullifies their marriage and sends Vashti away. Nice guy, right

Meanwhile there is some fighting between Ahasueres' leading advisor, Haman, and Mordecai, a well-known Jew and respected councilor to the king. Haman does not like that Mordecai will bow only before his God and not before Haman so he decides he wants to destroy not only Mordecai, but his people as well. Not an overreaction at all.

Ahasueres is pretty oblivious to this and mostly just misses having a wife. So he calls the women of his kingdom before him and chooses a new bride from among them. He chooses Esther, unbeknownst to him the niece of Mordecai and also a Jew.

Mordecai and Esther get wind of Haman's evil plot and Mordecai urges Esther to go before the king and reveal her identity and win the king over so she and her people will live. But even a queen must be called before the king. To do otherwise would risk death. But Esther does just that and the king, impressed with her bravery, pardons her barging in without his say so. She gathers the king and Haman and tells the king both of Haman's plot and her Jewish ancestry. Since Mordecai earlier saved the king's life and the king loves his new wife he's pretty annoyed to find out that his trusted advisor is trying to kill them both and also wipe out their people. So he hangs Haman, honors Mordecai, and keeps Esther as his queen. A very happy ending as far as most Jewish holidays are concerned.

So, pardon the late post as Raven and I are still in her first nest (that is, her childhood hometown) and will be for the rest of the week, ostensibly to watch her parents kittens, who are just such adorable troublemakers. They are half of the reason for my late and hasty post. The other half is a fascinating anthropological discovery that may change the way we see ourselves in the great chain of evolution. However, I will let Raven share that discovery with you tomorrow as she is much more an expert than I.

I hope you are as excited by it as we were!

Best wishes,
Owl

I Love Lucy

Think back. Remember your childhood heroes? I do. I had plenty. Writers, activists, scientists, even fictional characters. Over the years I have had a few opportunities to meet some of these heroes, or at least to hear them speak. Tonight I  had one such opportunity, and it was incredible.

My mother was kind enough to buy tickets for Owl and I to go to an event hosted by National Geographic. Donald Johanson*, the paleoanthropologist who discovered Lucy, came to our city, where he gave an hour-and-a-half presentation on "Becoming Human". His presentation was amazing; he is a wonderful public speaker, and an absolutely brilliant scientist. He is also incredibly funny, and the audience was laughing hard enough that a passer-by might assume Johanson to be a stand-up comedian, only his jokes were actually funny**. The highlight for me was when he explained that sapiens "supposedly means sentient, but I read the same newspapers you do." He then went on to suggest that any species that might let Scott Walker run for President was not, perhaps, as wise as the species name suggested. (At another dig to Scott Walker later on, he also marveled at how Kentucky funneled $25,000 into building the Creation Museum, while certain states were taking money away from education.)

As an undergraduate I studied anthropology with a focus on archaeology, and since childhood I have also cultivated a fascination with geology and paleontology.  Basically, if I can dig for it and then poke it in a lab, I'm interested. As a child I was in awe of people like Donald Johanson, people who help to piece together the puzzle of human origin and our common ancestry.

Tonight's talk was part an explanation of Johanson's research, part an explanation of broader paleoanthropological principals, and part a call to global consciousness. In other words, while the science was important, what Johanson was ultimately stressing was that in studying early hominids like Lucy, we should be made aware a) that all of humankind is very closely related and we should treat each other accordingly, and that b) we are as much a part of nature as any other animal and it is our duty as well as our imperative to preserve the world.

Johanson also mentioned something that has kept me on the edge of my seat with excitement (even while walking back to the car, which was impressive, since I had no seat!): Tomorrow, March 4th, a major discovery will be revealed. Johanson would not say much about it, only that it would affect some of what he was talking about tonight. He gave a few more small hints, but I don't want to spoil the surprise for you any, dear readers. He urged us to check the news tomorrow night, and I will urge you to do the same. In light of this announcement, I will wait until my post on Thursday to talk in any detail about Lucy herself and what her discovery means for the scientific community. Though I went to the lecture primarily to hear Johanson speak about his discovery and the science behind it, his social messages also left a deep impression, and that is what I wanted to talk about tonight.

"We are united by our past...we share more than many of us are willing to expect."

We all share common ancestry. This is scientific fact. And if you (along with Johanson and the majority of the anthropological community) ascribe to the "Out of Africa" (OOA) theory, that anatomically modern humans evolved as a whole species in what is now Africa, and later began to migrate outwards, then not only do we all have a common ancestry, but a common origin as well.

For homo sapiens, alienation is unnatural. We evolved as a cooperative species; this is part of what differentiates us from other animals. No other species has the same level of codependency and familiarity that the modern human has. We are designed to live in social units, develop tight bonds with one another, and protect our kin. While competition for land and resources might drive homo sapiens to violence against one another as it would any other animal, there is nothing natural about the way modern human society isolates and ostracizes members of the species, how social groups are segregated to the point of baseless violence, or how we have developed cultures of hate based around artificial or superficial dichotomies. Johanson urged us to remember our shared past, the uniting factor that, quite simply, makes us all human.

"We are a part of the natural world."

 Johanson also urged us to remember that we are a part of nature. Homo sapiens might be the most universally successful, the most creative, the most dominant species on Earth, but we are also the most destructive. No other species has single-handedly done as much damage to the Earth as we have, and in the towers of glass and steel we have built it is easy to distance ourselves from the natural world. We are very much dependent on it, however, and no matter how much we try to bend nature to our will we will never truly be outside of its control. Nor should we be. Lucy is a reminder that having opposable thumbs, bipedalism, and larger cranial cavities does not mean that we get a "Get Out of Extinction Free Card". If we like living on this wonderful little sphere quietly orbiting the sun, we had better stop ruining it, was his ultimate message, though I may be paraphrasing slightly.

*That's right, linking to Wikipedia! Ahh, the beauty of non-academic writing.
**Sorry, Owl! I swear, I don't dislike all stand-up comedy. Just most of the parts where there's talking.

Dinner for Breakfast and Other Perks of Being a "Grown Up"

Hey Raven,

I'm looking forward to memorizing some of your favorite poems. And thanks for going easy on me and not making me memorize your namesake poem!

It's going to be a short update tonight because I am exhausted and I have more work early tomorrow. Raven and I (together) will post more on this later, but something we both share and enjoy doing when we have the time is cooking (or baking). This weekend and this evening were excellent cooking days. On Sunday Raven, Magpie, Pidge, and I went for a walk across a frozen lake near our house. It's been below freezing for a while so we figured it was pretty safe (also there were tons of other people out there and the local ice report estimated a car could drive across the lake with no difficulty). It was a glorious walk. We found a half-built ice igloo, frozen waves, and a very funny gentleman kite skiing. Pidge also found the water under the ice. With her foot. On literally the last step she took on the ice. Worst luck!

Then we all rushed home to warm Pidge's ice foot, drink hot cocoa, eat breakfast for dinner, and play MarioKart. I got to make pancakes and waffles for everyone and those are two of my favorite things to make. It reminds me of special Saturday breakfasts with my mother and sister. Pancakes were almost an event in my house. For a while I thought they were hard to make and that's why we never had them. I was surprised to find out later in life that they were simple to make (my sister's diabetes was probably the real reason we had them so seldom). Anyways, I made a new recipe to satisfy Raven's new dietary needs and I may not go back to my old recipe. It was so delicious.

Tonight, though I was exhausted and basically just wanted to sit in front of my computer and play Dragon Age (I'm a bit obsessed with Origins at the moment) I finally made a recipe I have been wanting to make all week (all of last week that is). Raven and I will post about it later, but suffice to say I feel full, happy, and accomplished this evening.

I've always thought of cooking full meals and sitting at an actual set table to eat with another human being while you chat about your day was the true sign of adulthood. Well world, for this week I was an adult. And it was actually pretty great. Let's see if it continues...

Best wishes,
Owl

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair

Hi Owl,

Yesterday you took some time to write about one of my very favorite topics: poetry. I could talk for hours upon hours about poetry, and I often do. (Our three-hour discussion that went late into the night a few nights ago was what inspired your blog post, after all.)

I would struggle greatly were I to try to fit all that I wanted to say about poetry into one blog post, so I won't endeavor to do so. This will be a topic that I will come back to time and again I am sure. I am embarrassed to admit, however, that tonight I find myself quite worn down from writing already. Friday's post was surprisingly draining for me to write, and on top of that I have been struggling to put together a short story that refuses to coalesce into something meaningful, and just today finally finished the latest rounds of edits (!!!) for the project I have been working on for over a year now. And while I am relieved beyond measure to be done for the time being, the process was grueling and has left me with little energy left tonight for being a coherent person.

Excuses, excuses, I know. Do not think, dear friends, that I am scorning you. I will muster my energy to speak more eloquently about poetry soon, but for tonight, I will give Owl the homework she requested. (So industrious of her!) Memorizing and reciting poetry is one of my very favorite past-times. I find it incredibly calming and meditative, and it helps me to better understand the piece that I am reading when I take the time to learn it by heart. So getting to help somebody else pick out some poems to memorize is incredibly exciting for me!

5 Poems for Owl to Memorize

1. "When I have fears that I may cease to be" - John Keats

2. "Ozymandias" - Percy Bysshe Shelley

3. "Poem on the Wandering Immortal" - Kuo P'u

4. "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" - Dylan Thomas

5. "Readers" - Jose Luis Borges

Hope you enjoy these, Owl. I look forward to hearing you recite some of these poems soon!

-Raven

A Brief Detour Into A Yellow Wood

Hey Raven,

I promised a post on more political history, but we had a discussion last night about poetry that I felt merited a blog post and wider feedback.

I mentioned to Raven last night that there is a poem in Russia that most everyone knows and memorizes in school. Ask someone raised in the Russian school system to recite "I Loved You Once" by Alexander Pushkin and I bet most of them will be able to. In fact, after 4 years of Russian myself, I can still recite the poem from memory 3 years after my last Russian class ended. Then we got to talking about English language poetry - were there any poems we thought most English speakers (or even most US or British or Canadian raised folks) could recite from memory. We came up with mostly nursery rhymes, proverbs, prayers, or patriotic anthems. But no poems on par with Pushkin's. 

I adore poetry - I think that sentiment came across pretty well in my earlier post about spoken word poetry. But I'm awful at memorization. I have never had a great capacity to commit words on a page to memory, though when something is spoken I can often remember it for years. In fact, the only reason I can still recite Alexander Pushkin's poem is that for some time Russian class began with a recitation of the poem. I have heard it more often than I have read it.

I don't know that memorization increases the power or the impact of a poem, but I do wish I knew more poetry by heart and could recite it at will. I wish I didn't have to reach for a smart phone when I want to know all the other stanzas to Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" or when I want to know when exactly Annabel Lee's highborn kinsman come to steal her away from the speaker. 

I'm going to set myself a goal today - memorize 10 poems. 5 will be of my own choosing, 5 will of Raven's choosing (please no epic poems!) I'd like to memorize poems by different authors. I urge anyone reading this to think of at least one poem they love and think about committing it to memory. Maybe it won't change how you feel about the poem, or deepen your enjoyment of it. It probably won't change your life and I don't you'll feel the poem's presence cropping up more in your everyday life. But just think how cool (and smart) you'll feel at your ability to recite poetry on command.

5 Poems Owl Will (Try To) Commit To Memory

1. Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe (I've been working on this one for years already)

2. Because I Could Not Stop For Death by Emily Dickinson

3. Saturday's Child by Countee Cullen (if you don't know Cullen's work - you should, he is one of my favorite Harlem Renaissance poets)

4. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost (I should really know this one by now, but it's so much longer than I remember it being...)

5. somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond by e.e. cummings 

So there you have it - 5 poems I will memorize by 5 US poets I greatly admire. I'd like to do 5 more poets of foreign extraction. Raven - I leave those poets and poems to your discretion.

Since this post focused exclusively on domestic poets (and Alexander Pushkin) I wanted to add a list of some of my favorite non-US born poets.

Non-US Poets:

1. Pablo Neruda

2. Seamus Heaney

3. Octavio Paz

4. Eavan Boland

5. Anna Akhmatova

6. William Wordsworth

7. William Shakespeare

8. W.B. Yeats

9. William Blake

10. Oscar Wilde

11. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

12. Andrew Marvell

13. Samuel Coleridge

14. Dylan Thomas

15. Alexander Pushkin (obviously)

There are so many more poets, both from my home country and beyond that speak to me and who I love dearly, but time grows short and I want to leave Raven something to talk about! This is her area of love even more than mine. 

Hope you have fun giving me a reading/memorizing assignment, my dear!

Live Long and Prosper

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP

This is the last tweet of Leonard Nimoy, who passed away today at the age of 83 from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. 

I will be perfectly honest here: words failed me when I first read this news. At a later date (this is quickly becoming my catch phrase...) I want to talk more about the curious thing that is mourning a celebrity. I did not know Mr. Nimoy, not personally, and yet his loss hurts. I am mourning for a legacy and an abstraction at the same time as I mourn for an actual human being. And yet, my sorrow is still sincere.

 For now, I want to share with you some thoughts on Leonard Nimoy's legacy, and how it has affected me personally.

He will, of course, be remembered most notably for his role as Mr. Spock, one of television's greatest icons. And it is only natural that this is my strongest association with him, and what I want to talk most about. However, it would do a great disservice to his long and illustrious career and an even greater disservice to the man himself if I were to ignore the rest of his myriad accomplishments.

Nimoy was not just an actor. Far from it. In his 83 years, he was also a director, a writer, a musician, and a photographer, as well as philanthropist and, by all accounts, an all-around decent human being. His immense talent could not be contained to the screen. He has published two autobiographies, entitled I Am Not Spock and I Am Spock, showing both humor and self-awareness, in which he discusses not only his own life, but the life of his iconic character, how he build the character, and how the character stayed with him throughout his life. His photography explored Jewish tradition and scripture as seen through the identities of Jewish women, in his book Shekhina, the acceptance of nontraditional standards of beauty in The Full Body Project, and the duality between the public image an individual portrays and their "alternate ego", in Secret Selves. He is the author of seven books of poetry and three screenplays, including Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. He has an impressive discography that is perhaps best encapsulated in "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins", composed by Charles Randolph Grean, which spawned a letter-writing campaign to create a live-action Lord of the Rings film with Nimoy as Aragorn. He was also active in the Jewish community, spoke Yiddish as his first language, and often used his Orthodox Jewish upbringing as inspiration. In fact, the Vulcan hand gesture that accompanied the immortal phrase "Live long and prosper" was included at Nimoy's suggestion, and was inspired by his Orthodox Jewish heritage.

This guy has done some pretty cool stuff, in other words. 

And his career as an actor is far from limited to Star Trek. From Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in The Pagemaster to Mustafa Mond in the 1998 adaptation Brave New World  to the narrator for Sid Meier's Civilization IV, he was a versatile and dedicated performer. 

More than that, he was enthusiastic about his what he did. Warm and welcoming to fans, he actively seemed to enjoy being a part of the science fiction fandom, and was a common sight at conventions and gatherings for much of his career. 

But, there is no doubt about it, Spock was the crowning achievement of his career.

Mr. Spock, the half human, half Vulcan first officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise, at first does not seem like a particularly relatable character. Distanced from "illogical" emotions by his Vulcan heritage, he appeared often to be cold and calculating. But it is in his struggle to reconcile his logical Vulcan mind with his emotional human heart that the character becomes real, relatable, and infinitely endearing. In so many ways, Spock is all too human, and Nimoy brought to life his constant internal conflict so beautifully that it was almost impossible to dislike him.

Spock is an outcast, a misfit, a literal alien on a ship full of humans. He struggles with his own identity just as he struggles with being accepted among his peers. To the lonely, the awkward, the misunderstood, he was a hero, and a much-needed role model.

I grew up well after the original series aired, but by then Spock was immortal. For a nerdy kid with cable TV it wasn't hard to find an all-you-can-eat buffet of old science fiction, and Star Trek was the frontrunner of sci-fi reruns in the 90s. 

Let's not beat around the bus here: I was an awkward kid. I was painfully shy, I talked funny, and I never quite mastered that whole "eye contact" thing. I was Jewish in an overwhelmingly Christian area, I was nerdy back when it still wasn't really all that "cool", and by the time I really got into Star Trek, I was only a few years off from the time I would begin to question why it was that both cute boys and cute girls gave me butterflies in my stomach. I was a tomboy, a book worm, and a teachers' pet. 

Basically, I felt different. I was a kid. Everybody felt that way. Whether or not it was true, I often felt like I didn't "fit in". 

And then, there was Spock. If a half Vulcan scientist could become first officer (and at times commanding officer) of a human spacecraft, ease tensions between the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, and (sort of) save Romulus, what the hell did I have stopping me? Spock was a badass who didn't let the fact that he was different from everybody else stand in the way of achieving whatever he wanted to achieve. Neither would I. It was the encouragement I needed, and though it came from an unlikely place, it made a big difference. 

And Nimoy understood Spock's struggle, and understood its real-world parallels. In 1968, a teenage girl wrote a letter to Spock in the magazine FaVE, describing the struggle she faced being half-black and half-white. Nimoy responded to her in a long letter, telling her how Spock dealt with not being accepted as a child growing up among the Vulcans:

Most of the Vulcan kids didn't like Spock because he was half human. So they wouldn't include him in all the things they did. He was very lonely and no one understood hum. And Spock was heartbroken because he wasn't popular. But it was only the need for popularity that was ruining his happiness. The question was: which was more important, being 'popular' with the pack who might turn against him at any minute or being true to himself?...

Spock decided he would live up to his own personal value and uniqueness. He'd do whatever made him feel best about himself. He decided to listen to that little voice inside him and not to the people around him...

He said to himself, 'Not everyone will like me. But here will be those who will accept me just for who I am. I will develop myself to such a point of excellence, intelligence and brilliance that I can see through any problem and deal with any crisis. I will become such a master of my own abilities and career that there will be a place for me. People of all races will need me and not be able to do without me.' And that's just what he did. And when I see him standing there on the bridge of the Enterprise, facing danger and life-and-death problems so cooly and with so much intelligence, I'm sure he made the right decision.

If you have a chance, I recommend you read the full letter.

 

Of course, Spock wasn't the only lovable misfit on TV at the time, or even necessarily the most relatable. But the depth, vivacity, and gentle humor Nimoy brought to the role made Spock real for me.

Mr. Nimoy, rest in peace, and thank you. I may be just another fan, and I'm certainly not saying anything new, but I mean it all the same. You were, and continue to be, an inspiration. 

Live long and prosper. 

-Raven