Blog Posts

Refugee, Immigrant, or Exile? A Look at Language on the Go

2/9/2016

By Lisa Houston

                        “Tell me, is love still a popular suggestion
                        Or merely an obsolete art?
                        Forgive me for asking this simple question.
                        I’m unfamiliar with this part,
                        I’m a stranger here myself.”

                                                          Ogden Nash (Lyrics to “Stranger Here Myself”, music by Kurt Weill)

As journalists struggle to describe vast numbers of people moving across Europe, a panoply of labels decorates the headlines. Many of these words leave behind monochromatic impressions which are inherently false when applied to a such a large group of people, whose intentions and situations are often quite disparate.

As always, word choice is playing a large part in our perceptions. Language has the power to direct our emotions, sculpt our opinions. And once language takes hold, it becomes a frame for our understanding, leaving things that lie outside its borders neglected or even denied.

Consider Germany, which last year accepted about a million refugees (Flüchtlinge). Even as the chancellor wins international praise for this policy, a strong anti-immigrant movement is on the rise and some interesting German words are attaching themselves to the situation. Many of them, not surprisingly, are compound words.

Fremdhass
This word translates literally as a hatred of strangers, though it is often translated as xenophobia, which is a fear (phobia) of strangers.

Fremdfeindlichkeit
This means hostility to strangers, though it is also often translated as xenophobia.

Überfremdung
This is a rightwing word meaning “over-foreignization.”

Side note: Spellcheck does not think that foreignization is a word. Actually, it is, but it refers to linguistic practices in translation. Namely: incorporating elements of the language of origin into a translation. Foreignization contrasts with domesticization. In the latter case, the translation adheres strictly to the secondary language. (Fortunately, language doesn’t respect national boundaries, and so-called "foreignization" is more or less the norm.)

Cesar Chavez: American Farm Worker and Activist, helped win rights for "migrant" workers.

It is always the writer’s responsibility to consider what will be evoked in the mind of the reader. I don’t want to write about a “riot” when it was a “tussle.” But if I don’t know if it was a riot or a tussle, I might say it was a “disturbance,” even though that doesn’t convey much. Writers also have to keep an eye on word count, trying to cram as much information as possible into each word. If you can cram two facts into one word, even better. But which word? Which of these labels does the job best to describe these diverse masses?

Before we pin down our thinking, let’s take a look at some of the most popular contenders.

Some Definitions

(Source: the oldest, hardest-to-lift dictionary I could get my hands on.)

Refugee
This noun comes from the French, refugie, which was first applied to the Huguenots, who migrated to Flanders and America. In 1685, the Edict of Nantes was revoked. Protestantism was, once again, illegal, and the Huguenots fled to avoid persecution. The first definition of refugee is “One who flees to a shelter or place of safety.” The second definition is more specific to its origins: “one who in times of war, political or religious persecution, etc. flees to a foreign power or country for safety.”

Emigrant
Noun. One who emigrates. From the Latin verb, emigrare, meaning to move away. To emigrate is to leave one country, state or region, and settle in another. The French noun émigré was used to describe the nobles who fled France after the revolution.

Immigrant
Immigrant is from the past participle of the Latin verb immigrare meaning to go into, or remove into. Specifically, it means to come into a new country, or region or environment in order to settle there. An immigrant is a person who immigrates.

The word immigrant is being misused quite often in the news lately, or at least it’s being used prematurely. When someone is attempting to leave a region, he or she is an emigrant. Once they are in a new country, then he or she is an immigrant of that country. The choice between emigrant and immigrant has mainly to do with the point of reference. If you are speaking mostly about the country of origin, then you might use emigrant. If your point of reference is the new country, you might use immigrant.
            He is a French emigrant. (He left France.)
            She is an American immigrant. (She came to America.)

Andrew Carnegie, Scottish "emigrant", American "immigrant", Industrialist and Philanthropist.

Migrate (and migrant) are from the Latin verb, migrare, meaning to move, but there is no inclusion in that word of an intention to settle. For some time “Migrant” was rarely if ever used in these news reports, perhaps because it is assumed that the people fleeing do not intend to return to their native countries. But was that a reasonable assumption? I would imagine many of these people are in crisis situations, and their choices are more based on immediate safety than long-term intentions. And now, certain news outlets seem to be favoring the word migrant, perhaps because it is relatively denuded of political implication.

Asylum
Asylum, for our purposes, means refuge granted by a sovereign nation, whether given temporarily or permanently. There’s a big argument going on in Germany, as some voices want to curtail the three years of asylum offered to just one year, (and other extreme voices have more violent suggestions.) It is from the Latin, Asylum, meaning sanctuary, and the Greek, Asylon, meaning refuge. Both have the meaning of protection. An asylum is an inviolate space. Its previous use for institutions of mentally ill people held that meaning as well, since the stated purpose of such places was to shelter those people from harm. I include it here because many news outlets are referring to people as "Asylum-seekers."

Levantine.
This word probably would have been ubiquitous had this crisis taken place a century ago, but these days is nowhere to be seen in the media.

This word refers to someone from the Levant, meaning the east. One of the reasons the word “Orientals” went out of use is because it assumes a perspective. Its translations, “Easterners” implied a central point somewhere to the west. It came to be understood that the word was Euro-centric. That is my guess why we no longer use the word Levantine. Specifically, it refers to people from the regions of the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean seas, including Greece, and Egypt, as well as Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, which now includes Israel. It may also refer to a black twill cloth, or a ship from that region, the Levant.
Mark Twain used the word Levantine in his travel writings and Somerset Maugham uses it in his short story, Mr. Know-All. I first became aware of the root of this word because of a bread I like, called a Levant, which goes to the word’s origin: the Latin verb levare, to rise up. That’s how the word came to mean the Orient, because the sun “rises up” in the east.

Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if we referred to these people as Riser Uppers. We would at least be more aware of their incredible bravery and strength, instead of focusing solely on what we think (or fear) they want from us. Even the more accurate compound words that many media outlets have settled on, like “asylum-seekers” or “would-be immigrants” define the people by what they want instead of what they’ve been through, and the heroism many of them have shown in the face of terrible conditions.

There is a host of other words that are for the most part not being used, perhaps because they are not descriptive enough. But they are not inaccurate, and I want to list them here, so you can read them and just feel how differently they land on your mind, compared with some of the words we’ve been talking about. We’ve been so inundated by the media’s preferred choices, we may not even be aware how those choices have been erecting frames of understanding in our mind’s eye. Consider this little exercise deprogramming.

OK. Here we go. Forget everything you’ve heard or read, and just imagine…

A stranger

Foreigner

Newcomer

Visitor

Guest

Traveler...

"Exile" His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, which is still under Chinese governance. His Holiness left Tibet in 1959, and runs the Tibetan Government in Exile from India.

I believe we are asking more of our media these days, and that’s a good thing. We want them (us?) to be accurate, but we also want them to be humane. (Humane. Adjective. Having what are considered the best qualities of mankind; kind, tender, merciful, considerate, etc.) This is why I bristle when I hear the term “economic refugees.” It’s not compassionate to my ears. It makes it sound like a budgeting choice. And just what is a “political refugee” anyway? If someone is in fear for his or her life at the hands of a government, surely this is not about governance or political control of that person any more. It is a deeply personal, life-or-death issue and to be accurate, one must call that person persecuted or threatened.

Questions:
When my Jewish ancestors fled what is now Lithuania in the 1880's because Jews in that region were experiencing massive, organized brutality, were they “political refugees?”

When people in Ireland fled The Hunger more than a century ago, were they “economic refugees?”

And did you feel differently reading that last sentence because I called it “The Hunger” which was the name used by those who suffered through it, versus calling it “The Great Famine” or the “Irish Potato Famine” which were names assigned to it by historians?

This brings us to what may be the most important part of the discussion: the right for human beings to define themselves. In modern usage, to “self-identify.” More and more we recognize this as an important right.

The anti-immigrant demonstrators in Dresden gather right outside of the opera house, which has beautifully decorated itself with banners and video messages of tolerance and inclusion. Even the inside of the program there is the message: Refugees are welcome here. On a recent visit, I attended a performance there and heard the quintessential German romantic opera, Der Freischütz.

The conflict in this morality tale is resolved by the appearance of the Hermit. This enigmatic character is similar to the Wanderer in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. He is a stranger who keeps himself apart. In Der Freischütz, he appears only in the final act, when someone is about to be punished. As an outsider to the group, it is agreed that his presence as “the far and wide” honors them, and they agree to respect his judgment, which is one of forgiveness and inclusion. It is a beautiful moment in opera, the healing of a community by the forgiving wisdom of a broader perspective.

In contrast, the demonstrators outside the opera house rail against “Überfremdung” while carrying flowers and chanting, “Wir sind das Volk!” We are the people. Its the usurping of a phrase that once carried a beautiful, peaceful message also on Monday nights in Dresden. In 1989, peaceful protesters chanted it as they gathered to topple the brutal East German regime. Now, those same words resonate on a different frequency, as the phrase is attached to anti-refugee, anti-immigrant, anti-other rhetoric that continues to escalate in violence.

We are the people, they chant now. We. Implying, I suppose, that you are something else.

That’s the word we’ve been looking for, by the way, the one that fits every single one of these refugees, emigrants, immigrants, and asylum-seekers. People.

At a rally I attended this autumn in Berlin, this point was made poignantly by one of the speakers. All the major parties had a presence that night, which was the same night the anti-immigrant party had hoped to take its march through the historic Brandenburg Gate. The organized coalition (picture democrats and republicans sharing a stage!) prevented the anti-immigrant group from passing, and our shouts and whistles followed them as they were forced to take the long way around. As the sun set over the podium, an illuminated message appeared on the Gate: “Für ein Weltoffenes Berlin,” For a Berlin open to the world.
            Back to our choice of words:
The speaker that night told the story of a young boy, who was asked by a reporter, “bist du ein Flüchtling?”
  Are you a refugee?
            “Nein,” the child answered, “Ich bin nur ein Kind.”
            No, he answered, I am only a child.

Downton Abbey Literary References: Season 6, Episodes 1-5

2/2/2016

Writer and creator Julian Fellowes has chosen a helluva year in which to set the final season of Downton Abbey, at least from a literary perspective.
            1925 saw the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.
            The New Yorker was founded in this year, which also gave us DuBose Heyward’s Porgy and Bess and Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera. Though not of literary importance, it would prove critical to world history that Hitler’s Mein Kampf was also published in this year.             George Bernard Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and authors such as T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, and Ernest Hemingway practiced their craft as well.
            Also in 1925, the Paris Exposition introduced the Art Deco style to the world, and silent film captured the world’s attention with Chaplin’s the Little Tramp and stars such as Rudolph Valentino and Mary Pickford, and directors like D.W. Griffith and Erich Von Stroheim.             Meanwhile, in Tennessee, a high school biology teacher was on trial for suggesting that humans were evolved from other primates, to which Mary makes an oblique reference in episode four, saying, “a monkey will type the bible if you leave it long enough,” meaning she was bound to say something nice to Edith eventually, but only by chance. Kandinsky and O’Keeffe changed painting forever and Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Louis Armstrong did the same for music.
            In episode two, when Mary tells a visitor who asks to see the agent, that she is the new agent for the estate, he replies, “Well it’s a changing world.”
            One is tempted to say, “no kidding!”

I’m going to try to get caught up on the first five episodes at once, so here, grouped by type of reference rather than the chronology of episodes, are some literary and cultural references, along with some fun vocabulary and phraseology.

Drinks before dinner.
The Lord’s remark to Carson about his before dinner drink, “I know you don’t approve,” he says, “but it’s quite ordinary in London now,” reflects the fact that alcohol consumption habits changed in the early 20’s in Britain as American style cocktails became popular. Prohibition prompted the emigration of a gifted bartender by the name of Harry Craddock, who began his reign at the American Bar at the Savoy.

Riding astride.
Mary continues to be the proponent of current fashions as she sports handsome jodpurs to ride astride instead of sidesaddle on the hunt. Several years before, Coco Chanel (to whom we must attribute Mary’s hairdo, unless you prefer giving the nod to actress Louise Brooks) anyway, Coco made waves designing her own jodpurs. Mary remarks to her father that riding astride is less dangerous, and then takes a tumble (thanks to the blackmailing former hotel employee, boo hiss). We should all be grateful that she was not riding side saddle, as Mary’s comment was correct. Women who fell from their mounts while riding sidesaddle were often dragged to their deaths when their dresses became tangled.
            I for one am wondering if Mary will continue in Coco’s footsteps and show up from her summer vacation with a suntan.

A direct reference is made to the Bloomsbury Group, or “Set” as Rosamund calls it when she visits the apartment that once belonged to Mr. Gregson. “I met Virginia Woolf in this room,” Edith says, “and Lytton Strachey.” Strachey was author of The Eminent Victorians.

“Sic transit Gloria mundi” is a comment made on the visit of the estate sale of the neighbors, who have fallen on hard times. Translation: Thus pass the glories of the world.

Britain’s longest running women’s magazine, The Lady receives a mention, when Spratt gloats over Denker, perhaps suggesting that she’ll need the want ads soon enough. The Lady was first published in 1885.

Mary’s new beau speaks often of Brooklands, which was the home of British auto racing, but is also an important cite for British aviation, and now houses the Brooklands Museum. The first British Gran Prix took place in 1926, so perhaps the handsome Mr. Henry Talbot has a chance. Whether he has a chance with Mary or not, who can say?

Hillcroft College, which boasts Aunt Rosamund for its board member, is still in existence, as a residential college exclusively for women.

As the issue of Health Care Reform plays prominently this season, it is fitting that Neville Chamberlain showed up. Most famous for his role as prime minister (1937-1940), he signed the Munich Agreement in 1938, ceding a portion of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, part of a policy of “Appeasement” which obviously didn’t work. Chamberlain declared war on Germany after their invasion of Poland, but resigned in 1940. Though he had lost popularity, he remained a part of Winston Churchill’s cabinet, however he died of cancer in November of that year.

Back to the Health Care debate. Chamberlain’s time as Minister of Health (1923, 1924-1929, and 1931) was a time of reconsidering the effectiveness of the 1911 Health Insurance Act. A Royal Commission on National Health Insurance was appointed in 1924 and minor reforms were made under Chamberlain, but were mostly not effective. In 1926 a bill reduced the government’s contribution to insurance.
            Britain’s current National Health Service was founded in 1948.
            Opinion: The decentralization of medical authority is still a relevant topic, and though Lady Violet is somewhat vilified in this debate, she does make a good point about the importance of choice in personal health.

Vocabulary:

Almoner.
The word seems to be important this season, with Mrs. Crawley and Granny feuding about the possible changes for the local hospital. If you remember the word “alms” you will see that the meaning of “Almoner” is “one responsible for the distribution of alms,” though in this case the alms are services for the poor rather than simple monetary donations.

Scarpered.
Barrows uses this word contemptuously referring to the former housemaid, Gwen. “I dedicated my life to service and I’m about to be thrown out on my ear,” he says, “when she scarpered away first chance she got and now she’s lunching in the dining room.”

Wrong-foot.
To put someone in an embarrassing or difficult situation.
The rest of the staff try warn Barrows about revealing Gwen’s identity, suggesting, “His lordship won’t like it, your trying to wrong-foot her.”

Sawbones.
“Jumped up little sawbones” is how Denker refers to Dr. Clarkson. The term is slang for doctor, usually a surgeon who, well, saws bones. (I guess they had a skilled sawbones on hand for when the Lord’s stomach exploded. Crikey.)

Sayings, Quips and Quotations:

“All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.” This is the line Mr. Molesley uses to try to persuade Miss Baxter to testify against the man who inspired her to commit theft. It is most often attributed to Irish orator and statesman, Edmund Burke, (1729-1797).

“Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.” Said in context of putting on a boutonnière for Carson’s wedding, meaning, “go for it!”

“All right, Madame Defarge, calm down and finish that mash.” Mrs. Padmore, referring to Daisy as Dickens’s famous French revolutionary character in A Tale of Two Cities. Mrs. Padmore also teases Daisy for her anti-classist views, asking, “I wonder if Karl Marx might finish the liver pate?”

Eating out casually was becoming more common in the 20’s, but previously health reasons were given often cited as grounds for preferring to dine at home. The Lord shows this attitude in his remark to Tom, who has eaten sandwiches at the station after dropping Mary and Anna off for their off-hours trip to London. The Lord says to Tom, “You’re a braver man than I am, Gunga Din,” slightly misquoting the last line of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, which reads, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”

In episode five, Mary is referred to as “La Belle Dame sans Merci” which is a famous lyrical poem by John Keats. Keats wrote the poem while deeply in love, and having lost both his mother and brother to tuberculosis, which would kill the poet two years later. It is Mary’s lack of romantic interest in Evelyn Napier that earns her this label.

Mary enjoys a date with Mr. Talbot at the Café de Paris, which had opened in 1924 and become a place to be seen when the Prince of Wales chose it as one of his preferred haunts. Badly bombed during the blitz in 1941, it reopened after the war and is a trendy nightspot to this day.

Bright Young Things.
It’s the visit to the Café de Paris and watching the race at Brooklands that inspires the comment that Mary and Tom are “all members of the Bright Young Things.”
            The Bright Young Things was a social set of decadent bohemians in London in the 20’s, and included many writers, such as Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh, and Edith Sitwell. It was famously photographed by one of its members, Cecil Beaton, who began photographing for Vogue in 1927 and went on to win two academy awards for costume design (Gigi 1958 and My Fair Lady 1964). He also won the academy award for best art direction for My Fair Lady. The genius behind the hats at the Ascot racing scene, Beaton was also a noted diarist.
            It was Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel, Vile Bodies that served as the basis for the film Bright Young Things (2003, dir. Stephen Fry).

Jane Eyre.
Mary makes a reference to Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre, saying, “’Mrs. Carson.’ It’s like Jane Eyre asking to be called Mrs. Rochester.” Jane Eyre was a governess who married her master and I thought perhaps the comment was meant to reveal some jealousy on the part of Mary, losing her beloved Carson to Mrs. Hughes, as the comment does have an implication that Mrs. Hughes has married above her station.

Dogs of War.
Doctor Clarkson informed Lady Violette of Denker’s ill-manneredness on the street, prompting Lady Violette to give Denker her notice. When Mrs. Crawley suggests that Dr. Clarkson wouldn’t have wanted her to lose her position, and Lady Violette says that he shouldn’t have sent the letter if that were the case. I believe it was Mrs. Crawley who replied, “When we unleash the dogs of war, we must go where they take us.”
            The popular expression “the dogs of war” has its origin in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Brutus has just instructed Antony that in his upcoming eulogy, Anthony should praise Caesar, and not blame his murderers. Left alone, Antony ponders the horror of the murder, and bemoans the fact that he is “meek and gentle with these butchers.” He then gives a prophecy that “a curse shall light upon the limbs of men.” It is Caesar’s voice, looming over the earth which will, in a sense, supervise these horrors. As Anthony wraps up the monologue:
            “In a monarch’s voice,
            Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”
            Anthony doesn’t comply with Brutus’s instruction in the following scene, using sarcasm to undercut his line “and Brutus is an honorable man” in his famous “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears” oration.

A few more good lines:

“A problem shared is a problem halved.”

“A peer in favor of reform. It’s like a turkey in favor of Christmas.”

As usual, my favorite lines have been from Lady Violette, who urged Spratt to get to the point by saying, “If you were talking in Urdu, I couldn’t understand you less.” And when Denker says that she shouldn’t be friends with Dr. Clarkson now that “he’s turned against you!” Lady Violette replies: “If I withdrew my friendship from everyone who had spoken ill of me, my address book would be empty.”

More fun stuff:

Brooklands Museum

Side saddle costume demonstration Video

Cecil Beaton Slideshow

Brando as Marc Anthony Video

Thanksgiving Post: Vegan Etiquette

11/23/2015

Photo Lisa Houston

Want to get along with everybody at Thanksgiving? Good luck.

Chances are better than ever that there will be a vegan at the table, or that you yourself have some dietary restriction or preference that may raise an eyebrow or two. I’ve put together some etiquette tips for both sides of the unspoken war of dietary differences.
        I’m not seriously trying to tell you how to behave. But maybe hearing these “rules” will turn some assumptions around for you, or find a softer spot in your heart for those “picky eaters.” It’s a two-parter, first part for vegans, second part for carnivores. No fair skipping the part that’s for you. I didn’t write this to give fuel to the fire of people’s prejudices.

Part I

How Not to be a Rude Vegan

1. Have a one or two sentence answer ready for the question, “Why are you vegan?”

            How about “Because it’s better for my health, and I believe it’s better for the planet.”

            Or, “Because it just feels right for me. I enjoy it.”

            Those are both nicer than, “Because if we all don’t stop eating beef, the world will be over by next Tuesday.”

            Be truthful. But be kind as well. Being vegan does not make it OK to tell long, terrifying stories to people who have shown only a modest interest in you. All the usual rules of politeness, about not talking about subject matters that don’t interest your audience, apply to vegans.

            If somebody is defensive, or even rude in their questioning or comments, you could try keeping it light. Tell them you’re like a carbon offset for their hamburgers. If that doesn’t work, use whatever other techniques you have for dealing with rude people. You must have discovered some tricks by now.

2. Hungry? Too bad.

            Nobody made you be vegan. It’s nobody else’s fault that you’re vegan. It’s nobody else’s responsibility to make sure there’s something vegan for you to eat. Get your head around the fact that there isn’t always going to be something for you to eat, and also get your head around the fact that you aren’t the only one who’s going to feel bad about that. Your host, hostess, or even your fellow diners if you are eating out, will likely feel badly if there isn’t something for you to eat, and you have a choice: you can make them feel worse and spoil the evening, or you can explain why eating a meal of nothing but olives is your favorite thing to do. In fact, it’s exactly what you are in the mood for. And then move on and enjoy the company.

            This may require that you develop some ability to tolerate being hungry. It might help at such times to remember that most of humanity has been hungry for most of our existence. Unlike proponents of the new word “hangry,” it seems to me that even if you’re hungry, you still gotta be polite. And maybe more. Maybe if you truly believe in veganism, than consider yourself a Vegan Goodwill Ambassador, and don’t be a drag. If you can’t be hungry without being “hangry,” being vegan might not be the right choice for you, at least not if you ever want to leave the house.

            It might also help to take some of the perfectionism out of your veganism by realizing that you can make up certain nutritional deficits later. Maybe when you go to a restaurant with friends, all you can eat is bread without anything on it. So? Not to sound like an old-fashioned parent, but there are kids starving in…well, there are kids starving everywhere, actually. So enjoy the bread, or water, or olives, and when you get home, eat a pound of cauliflower.

3. Help others help you.

            Make it easy for wait staff or hostess to help you by making specific requests. Often, if you ask the chef to cook some vegetables in olive oil, guess what? They’ll do it, if you ask nicely. Don’t assume that telling someone you’re vegan is enough. You may need to tell them that you you’re vegan, which means that you don’t eat butter, or cheese, or eggs, or milk. That about covers it. When traveling in foreign countries, I always try to learn the words for fish, eggs, meat, poultry, and dairy products, so I can say, “I don’t eat that, I don’t eat that, I don’t eat that.” Don’t expect someone to know what vegan means. Or what gluten-free means, or any of that. If your dietary choices vary from the norm, education is part of the gig.

            Offer to bring a vegan dish, or pick a vegan-friendly restaurant. Familiarize yourself with cuisines of the world to hunt for vegan options within them.

            The point is, don’t expect someone with twenty guests or a restaurant full of tables to come up with creative solutions for you on the spot. You can think ahead to strategize. Personally, I don’t always know what’s the best thing for me to eat. Why should I expect somebody else to have all the answers for me when we just met?

4.        One of the greatest surprises to me about becoming vegan, after decades as a vegetarian, is how much of a spiritual practice I find it to be, in large part because of the situations above, but also because I relate differently to satisfying my hunger. A lot of my old eating patterns look to me now like they are less about hunger or nutrition, and more in the family of craving and satisfying, even to the point of being pretty far along on the spectrum of addiction behaviors. I think this may be because it’s more of a slow burn to eat a vegan meal or snack. Less of a slam of energy.

            In that way, for now, it is a good choice for me, and part of what I enjoy about being vegan. So, if being vegan is a spiritual practice for you, then take those opportunities when there’s nothing to eat, or when someone seems a bit defensive or judgmental about your being vegan, as part of the practice.

             So don’t tell other people they should be vegan. How the heck do you know what other people should eat? Are you their nutritionist? Are you their mother? Don’t be a vegan bully. Talk about your own experiences if people are interested, otherwise, talk about an area of common interest.

Biblical Wars (Photo Lisa Houston)

Part II
How Not To Be Rude to Vegans

If you’re a true bigot in all regards, the following won’t be much help to you. But if you are generally a tolerant and forward-thinking person, but you just aren’t buying the whole vegan thing, do the following:

     Take the word “vegan” and replace it in your mind with some noun describing someone you would never, in a million years discriminate against. I realize that being vegan is different than being gay, or black, or Muslim. But, just as an exercise, if you’re someone who has a negative reaction to vegans, take one of your favorite anti-vegan arguments, and replace the word “vegan” with “gay.” Talk about how being straight is so much better, how you just don’t get being gay, how you don’t really feel comfortable having dinner around gays.

            Done?

            The point of that little exercise is simply to say that there is a prejudice. A bigotry even, that many people have against vegans. Because vegans are different. (And because you think we want to take away your hamburgers.)

            So, for non-vegans:

1.         Be courteous to vegans. A vegan person is entitled to the same courtesies you afford other people. I know some really nice people who would never attack somebody for being catholic, or wiccan, or for smoking, or being addicted to America’s Next Top Model. But that same person will be quite aggressive about demanding to know why I’m vegan. It should go without saying, but it doesn’t: don’t attack vegans for being vegan. Really. It’s not nice. Bigotry. Discrimination. Lack of understanding. It’s not funny. It’s not OK.

            It’s very hip to add bacon to everything. Maybe you love meat, but don’t be like the alcoholic who tells people who don’t drink that they’re no fun. As with religion, sexuality, politics, being tolerant of one another's differences is the only way to have a decent relationship. Don’t make an exception in your manners for dealing with vegans.

2.        If you ask someone, “why are you vegan?” be aware that it is an intrusive question. Any question about someone’s personal habits is.

            “Why do you wear your hair like that?”

            “Why do you drive instead of walk?”

            “Why don’t you drink?”

            If you’re going to ask this personal question, don’t ask it like “why the hell are you vegan,” and then interrupt the response to talk about how great spare ribs taste in barbeque sauce. If you ask, ask nicely. This means ask out of sincere interest, and with a willingness to listen to the answer.

3. Don’t pity vegans.

            I have some friends who are very concerned that I do not recognize Jesus Christ as my one true savior. That’s a problem for me, and I have to admit they’re not really close friends because it never feels good to me to have my important life choices second-guessed, or to feel like somebody thinks they know better for me than I do for myself.

            Don’t tell a vegan that you could never be vegan because you “don’t want to give up the sensuality of enjoying food.” Or that you “can’t imagine life without meat.” If you met someone from Tucson, would you say out loud, “Jesus, I could never in a million years imagine living in Tucson?” But I’ve had many people say say those things to me about being vegan, or respond to learning I’m vegan by saying, “Jesus, I could never in a million years be vegan." I'll admit, such comments don't bring out the best in me. It makes me want to reply, "well, I'd never wear that shirt, so I guess we're even."

            If you’re close to that person, then have the honest conversation, because maybe you’ll want to take the trouble to truly understand, and maybe they’d like to talk with you about it, but if you’re not that interested, and just don’t like the idea of being vegan, then here’s the solution: Don’t be vegan.

4.        Unless you’re the kind of person who goes around critiquing parents for their childrearing skills in general, don’t critique vegan parents, or parents of vegans.

            And if a young person is vegan by their own choice, be especially kind, and take an interest. It is an opportunity to encourage that young person in making their own choices.

Final thoughts for Vegans:

If there is a single cause to the current, ongoing destruction of our planet, it is human entitlement. We, and our ancestors before us, tore up the planet because we felt we had a right to do so. And we continue to believe that we have a right to the luxuries we enjoy, at the expense of the planet. So, if veganism is to be part of the solution, we can’t, as vegans, behave as part of the problem. We are not entitled to something to eat at all times. Nobody is. And we’re not entitled to have everybody around us understand and sympathize with what we’re doing. It’s nice when they do, but it’s not a right.

            Entitled behavior on the part of vegans will not defeat its larger purpose, because it usually is less costly in environmental terms to eat vegan than not to eat vegan. Vegans are not making that part up. But if we, as vegans, put our best foot forward, then by principles of attraction as well as necessity, more people in the world will become vegan, and everybody, meat eaters and vegans alike, will win. I first became a vegetarian because my big sister stopped eating meat, and I just wanted to be like her, because she was (and is) so super-cool. If vegans are obnoxious, fewer people will want to be vegan.

Final thoughts for Non-Vegans:

Get used to vegans. I first became vegetarian in 1977. Over the years, I got my share of dirty looks, confused expressions, and long lectures about the glories of meat, but look where we are now. Many people eat vegetarian some percentage of the time. Almost all restaurants have vegetarian options. I’d say veganism now is about where vegetarianism was in the late eighties, give or take. The time when veganism is considered utterly mainstream is coming, rapidly. Not because evil vegans are going to take over the world and force everyone to wear yoga pants and express gratitude for each and every moment, by law. But because people on the whole understand that we need as a species to change our eating habits, both for reasons of personal health and for environmental survival.

            So you may as well be nice to vegans because you’re going to have to deal with a lot more of them in the future. And none of us want to end up like that county clerk who cried on TV, distraught and confused because she just doesn’t want to give marriage licenses to gay people. So very sad to be behind the times.

            Beyond that practicality, you’re a nice person, you don’t want to hurt anyone. Consider that the vegan at the table (or the gluten-free person, or the paleo dieter) may have had health problems you know nothing about. They may have struggled for months or years with digestive pain, poor energy, debilitating allergies or depression. There may be a spiritual component to their choices that they are just catching the thread of. They know the desire to change their diet is something to honor, but maybe they can't explain it fully to themselves yet, much less explain it to your satisfaction. For all of us: Erring on the side of compassion is never a bad idea. It's actually a pain in the ass to be vegan. Generally speaking, people don't do it without good reason.

Conclusions: We’re all in this together.

            The eating habits of the world are changing for the same reasons they have changed over millennia: so that we can adapt to the circumstances we find ourselves in, and evolve in the healthiest ways we can.

            The story of Thanksgiving is one of people from completely different cultures coming together to appreciate one another. We may not understand why someone is vegan, or why someone seems to react strongly, or negatively when they learn someone is vegan or has a dietary restriction. But unless we’re pronouncing judgment on one another, we don’t have to have all the facts. Did those gathered at the first thanksgiving fully understand one another's traditions? Of course not.

            I realize that we talk about Thanksgiving being mostly about gratitude, and I suppose it is. But the beauty of the story is to be found in the celebration of differences, and above all the celebration of the fact that the Native Americans welcomed and helped these newly arrived refugees, instead of killing them. It was a wondrous event, when people who were very, some would even say intrinsically different from one another, found ways to communicate with

        kindness,

                     acceptance,

                           generosity,

                             and gratitude

                                                                           for one another,

                                              instead of with hostility.

            We would all do well to remember the history of the holiday, and the fact that differences when tolerated, and especially when celebrated, have the potential to bring us closer together, as a human family.

            Wishing you and your family and friends, the vegans, vegetarians, carnivores, and omnivores among them...

                                                A Happy and Tolerant Thanksgiving!

Love,
Lisa

Violinist Leonidas Kavakos

11/5/2015

What a treat it was to interview this amazing musician. His thoughts on the world today, and the role of the artist were quite inspiring. This week, I'll leave the talking to him:

Leonidas Kavakos: Thoughtful Virtuoso

Aria to match the word of the day: Recondita armoni

11/5/2015

Dictionary.com's word of the day is the fabulous but underused "recondite," meaning, briefly, profound or esoteric.

I can't hear the word without thinking of one of my favorite arias:

"Recondita armonia" from Puccini's Tosca.

The tenor aria is sung by the character of the artist Maria Cavaradossi, who is pondering the difference between the beauty of his beloved, the brunette Tosca, and the blond woman he is painting.

The full line: "recondita armonia di bellezza diversa"

"Profound harmonies of diverse beauties."

When Tosca makes her entrance a bit later, she doesn't find the fact that he's painting a blond harmonious at all. In fact, she is doubtful that the woman is as "ignota" unknown, to him as he says. Or perhaps she's just playing jealous, so that the two can have a fabulous row, and then make up.

As she exits, Tosca gets the last word in, adding
"ma falle gli'occhi neri."

But let her eyes be black.

Here, a Cavaradossi for the ages, Luciano Pavarotti.

The Cup and the Song

11/2/2015

Dmitri Hvorostovsky as di Luna in Verdi's Il Trovatore. Photo by Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera.

I am so excited about my new series La tazza e il cantico. I'm co-writing it with award-winning wine writer Meg Houston Maker, and we're exploring matching up the great operas with wine, so you'll have a chance to learn a bit about both.

Over the past years, the response people have when I tell them I'm an opera singer has changed. The kind of person who used to respond by saying "I've never been to the opera," now sometimes says instead, "oh, I go to the Met HD series, and I love it!" Their tone is often surprised, as if they never thought of going, but now that they are, they love it.

That's a pretty exciting shift, and this series is, in part, inspired by that greater access to these great works, so we'll be syncing up our choices with operas featured in this season's choices in theaters.

We start with Il trovatore. 

For those of us who love opera, it stands at the center of our lives, it's a big part of what we use to sustain and enrich our lives. And I imagine the same is true for wine and wine lovers. I never like the idea of the arts as a side dish, the first thing on the chopping block when budgets are tightened. And I loved thinking about this series. It felt like moving opera into a more central conversation. Wine played a big role in the lives of the great composers, and the audiences they wrote for. I enjoyed learning more about that for this Overview Essay.

The stories of opera are our stories, and I will really try to convey the essence of those stories in a short essay, and Meg will pick the wine, giving us the low-down on it, and how it fits the bill. I'm looking forward to being educated by her.

Tannhäuser is in the pipeline and I can't wait to see what she picks.

Photo Lisa Houston

The language of "Skincare": for Women, and Writers, (and women writers)

10/21/2015

Recently, while watching TV, I was asked point blank by the star of a popular night time drama if I have been waking up with “fatigued” skin. I am accustomed to these odd, almost metaphysical questions, which are often posed in tones of serious concern by a woman who appears to be too young to vote or drink alcohol in most States in the Union.

But this time, I was truly perplexed. In my many decades on earth, my skin has been dry, cracked, scratched, torn, cut, burned and occasionally decorated with warts, pimples, moles, and bug bites. To my knowledge, it has never been fatigued.

The moment gave rise to a feeling of nausea, anger, and, oddly enough, fatigue! After years of being marketed to in this alarmist, condescending, idiotic way, I’d had enough. This was the straw.
(If someone would please provide me with a camel’s back, or a less-overused metaphor, I’d appreciate it.)

I’ll put aside for the moment, the meta-issue here, which is the implication that the perfection of our skin is (or should be) a priority for women. Instead, let’s get right to the grammar of it.

I don’t want “less dark spots” on my skin. If anything, I want fewer dark spots on my skin. (And I’m not even so sure about that.)

Next, I do not think it is possible to “hydrate dryness.” If you hydrated dryness, wouldn’t it be…wetness?

Moving on: Being your best beautiful.

Where do I begin? “Best” is an adjective and should not be used to modify or describe another adjective. And “beautiful” is an adjective. To use it as a noun implies that it is an object, a discreet thing, or perhaps that it is an intention you can realize. Even its relative, “beauty,” is not to be possessed or achieved in the way these ads suggest.

Next, I do not believe in Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, or the Easter Bunny.
Nor do I believe in “A New Day for Skin.”

Moving on, “Volumizing” is not a word.

Getting down to the real issue: the term “skincare” is a misnomer. Caring for your skin is not about putting stuff on it, aside from sunscreen. It’s about being as healthy as you can and not abusing it. If you want to try to slow some inevitable change in it, OK, good. Go ahead and try. But let’s not call it “skincare.” That’s not a real thing.

There are real maladies of the skin, and people suffer terribly because of these, both physically and socially. One of the greatest risks to skin is sun exposure. Wearing sunscreen and preventing sunburn are important. Having bad acne is nothing to laugh about. And serious diseases often have concomitant skin problems. Even in the healthiest person, as the skin ages, a layer of fat diminishes and the skin becomes more fragile. I’m not talking about any of those real concerns.

I’m talking about purely invented problems, like “uneven skin tone,” “loss of firmness,” and, the most humiliating of all, “lack of radiance.”

The language of “skincare” offers expensive solutions for these cooked-up problems, as we are told that we need to “trap moisture,” “replenish”, “renew”, “correct” or even “repair damage.” For those who have lost all respect for the English language, there is even a brand “Revitalift.”

Along these lines, we have phrases like…

“Plumps skin cells.”

“Hydroboost.”

“Ageless skin.”

The most recent piece of disturbing news these nonsense speakers are broadcasting is that my lips are aging more rapidly than the rest of my skin. This disparity, unnoticed by me before I was so informed, can be addressed by a new kind of lip stuff. Thank goodness.

And that’s the point of all this. If there’s no problem, then there’s no market for a solution to that problem. No illness, no need for a cure. Though it’s done with a bit more subtlety than the man-in-the-lab-coat-ads of the 70’s, the industry devoted to selling women products to change their skin is still largely built on a medical model, albeit with a more holistic, alternative-medicine aesthetic. Ironically, these ads capitalize on the fact of our growing health-consciousness. The yoga mat is a popular accessory prop in these ads, though the advertisers fail to point out that a woman’s skin is more likely to glow from yoga than it is from their expensive goo.

And for those of you out there thinking, “what’s the harm?” Why is she bothering to take the time to attack the lousy, incorrect, sloppy, misleading language that these unethical fear mongers use to get us to buy their crappy little bottles of goo?

Because it is harmful. The images are harmful. The implications are harmful. The distraction from things that really can improve our lives and the lives of those around us is harmful. And these days, quite often, the goo itself is harmful.

Many, many items on this loosely-regulated market are using hormones. Specifically, they contain phytoestrogens that mimic the body’s own hormones and can wreak havoc on the thyroid gland, in a world where various kinds of thyroid diseases are already on the rise due to environmental pollution. (Insert second rant about estrogens in plastics here.) As one endocrinologist told me recently, he now has to add a question when speaking with his patients: What are you putting on your skin?

Also, if you read the very fine print on many of those “anti-aging” elixirs, you’ll see that in many cases you are not supposed to use them before you go out in the sun. So not only are they not helping, they’re increasing the very real risk of sun damage. Lovely.

That these products are marketed to women at an age of increased risk of thyroid disease, namely menopause, and in a world where the ozone is thinning, leaving us at potentially greater risk for sun damage including cancer, it is all so unethical that I need to take a deep breath before I continue.

Ah. (Unlike these products, oxygen is good for the skin:)

Disclaimer: I’m not saying don’t have fun with your toilette. I’m just saying, don’t be a sucker.

I remember the moment I first felt excited about these sorts of products. I was on vacation the summer I turned 13. I walked in to a drug store. It was the same drug store I’d been to on many previous summer vacations, usually to buy candy. That summer, I came upon the aisle filed with lotions, face creams, and cleansers. I remember thinking: all of these things have been here every summer, my whole life. How is it I never noticed them before now? They seemed to me edible, delicious, inviting me to womanhood.

It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with my skin. Or hair. Or body. But I felt like a wizard’s apprentice, ready to begin my experiments. Transformation was what the products offered. It seemed to me self-evidently desirable.

Better than candy.

Now, I’m saddened that I have to tell that young girl inside of me that there’s a man behind the curtain who made the whole thing up. And worse. Knowing as we do that most of these companies engage in torturing animals, it becomes even more difficult to take any part in keeping them in business.

I say torturing, not “testing on” animals because “Animal Testing” evokes an image of a bunch of cartoon horses, sitting at desks with Number 2 pencils ready to take the SATs, or maybe anima-tronic cats punching holes in multiple choice forms. Let’s put the misnomer “Animal Testing” out to pasture, along with “Skincare.”

So what’s the truth of the matter?

Even if you accept the premise that not all of us have skin as lovely as we’d like to have, and that we want, of all the problems in the world, to address this one. Or that caring for our skin, even pampering it is enjoyable and nurturing and good for us. Or that looking our best helps us show a positive face to the world. Even if all that is so, and I believe it is, these companies do not deliver anything close to what they promise.

A few years back, I ran into an old college friend on the street in New York. Since our time as undergrads, he’d gone on to a successful career as a fashion photographer. He was just heading to his studio to work on some photos he’d taken of Miss Universe. As he put it: “Even Miss Universe needs Photoshop.”

We all know it. The women in these ads, don’t really look like that!

In 2011, an ad by Lancôme featuring Julia Roberts was banned in the UK, after a group called the Advertising Standards Authority ruled against the company in a complaint filed by a British MP, who accused the ad of being misleading. The heavily-retouched ad was for a product called “Teint Miracle.” An ad for a product from Maybelline called “The Eraser” featuring Christy Turlington was also banned. Lancôme and Maybelline are both part of L’Oréal, as is the formerly-progressive company, The Body Shop.

If there were any truth in advertising to be had, all of these companies would have to include in their ads the suggestions that we reorder our lives so that we…

            Make sure to get enough sleep,

            Take plenty of exercise,

            Drink lots of water,

            And, importantly, do some research and trial and error to make sure that our diet does not include items to which we are sensitive or allergic.

They might even suggest that we do more to be of service, or that we don’t hang around people who stress us out, or stay in jobs we hate, or spend too much time in the car, watching TV, or on the computer, or reading ads about “skincare” with completely unattainable standards of beauty.

For those who were hoping for some “skincare” tips in this post, I apologize. Of course I have my own tricks. I will tell you that there is very little that cannot be accomplished, whether moisturizing, shaving, or makeup removal, with a run-of-the-mill, organic hair conditioner, which will run you about seven bucks for eighteen-ounces. And I love essential oils...

See how easy it is to sidetracked? It’s not so easy to opt out of this how-you-look is how-you-are assumption that is so prevalent in our culture. It’s a moral code that equates appearance with value, and it’s got its hooks in.

Personally, I wish I’d opted out of it more, and sooner. Over the years I’ve spent hundreds, or maybe even thousands of dollars on products I’ve used three times and then thrown away. Not because of a feminist principle I hold, but because they don’t work. They don’t improve my skin. And they don’t fulfill the promise behind the promise: they don’t improve my life.

What might you do with 144 dollars and fifty cents?

That’s what Clinique, one of the most medical-aesthetic “Skin Care” companies wants from you for 3.4 ounces of its “clinical dark spot corrector,” which you should not use before you go out in the sun, by the way. For its “Custom-repair serum”, it asks 154 dollars, but that’s because it’s a serum, which implies that it fights pathogens of some kind. Maybe it fights gullibility pathogens.

Or maybe it fights racism. I’m not hearing a lot of language from Clinique about the fact that if its product removes dark spots, it likely also makes you look whiter. How long do you think these companies could get away with what they do if they were required to use plain, or even accurate language?

“Our cream removes a layer of skin and bleaches the raw skin underneath, making you more prone to sun cancer while looking whiter!” Uh, could somebody get the FTC on the phone? How are they allowed to sell this s#@t!

Think of what a hundred and fifty bucks would buy in fruits and vegetables. You could get a massage for that, or buy a dozen books on your favorite subject. Or a month pass for yoga classes. You could become a sustaining member at any number of wildlife refuges. You could put it in a retirement account, and by the time you’re eighty, it might pay your rent for a couple of days.

Conclusion:

In his book, Walden, Henry David Thorough tells us to “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Taken out of context, it sounds as if he is knocking variety, or extravagance. But the essence of the paragraph is that our focus should be on the person within the suit of clothes, the part of us that “cannot be removed.” Thoreau suggests that a person should live in such a way that “if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.”

Of the outfit itself, the shoes, the jacket, etc., Thoreau says simply that if they are fit to worship God in, “they will do.”

Taking the skin as a metaphor, it is in some ways like our clothes, our layer of protection from the world, and also our first point of contact. But it is also something that reveals, and perhaps is meant to reveal, who we are. To show the world nott only our heritage, but what we have been through in life. To show our age.

Thoreau also points to self-acceptance in that paragraph, and that is the question we skip when we are drowning under waves of self-improvement. Do we accept ourselves as of value, as we are? Put another way, given whatever we believe to be holy, is our face fit to worship?

I dare say it is.

And I’ll dare a step further, and paraphrase Thoreau:

            Beware of all enterprises that require you to wish for a new kind of skin.

The End of the End: Right-to-Die Legislation Passes in CA

10/15/2015

Last week here in California, Governor Jerry Brown signed an important piece of legislation. The law, entitled the “End of Life Option Act,” gives physicians the right to prescribe lethal medication to patients at the end of their lives. The patients must be mentally competent, two physicians must agree, and the dosage must be self-administered, which is what makes this “Physician Assisted Suicide” as opposed to “euthanasia,” at least by legal definitions of those terms.

It seems an amazing coincidence that a day or so after the legislation was passed I came upon a very old box of papers that needed sorting. In it, I found this essay. (See below.) It begins with the topic of being kept alive without brain function, but eventually gets to the heart of what many people these days call “death-with-dignity” issues.

It also so happens, that just a few days before the governor signed the legislation, I took my old cat to the vet, to be euthanized.

It was an emotional, heart-wrenching few weeks, as it was with the two other animals I have had euthanized in my life. One cat I had for eighteen years. My dog Sammy, an overgrown lab mix I had from the time he was a nine-week-old puppy until he was fourteen and a half. Old Grey was somewhere around twenty-years-old when he died. On all three occasions, I was immensely grateful for their long lives, and for the care and assistance of the vets at the end of those lives.

Some time before Sammy passed away, I asked his vet how she felt about the fact that people don’t have the right to make the same choice at the end of life for ourselves, as we make for our animals. She and I had seen a lot of one another over Sammy’s lifetime, this doctor and I, because of Sammy’s severe epilepsy. I respected her enormously, and still do. I will never forget her answer, which she offered not only for her self, but for her profession.

She said that she didn’t know any vet, whatever their religious beliefs might be, who did not believe that humans should have the same right to a humane death an animal has. Not one.

Roots of the word “euthanasia.”

There is a lot of language around this issue, and you’ll see that my essay includes some questionable word choice. One common translation of euthanasia, as “mercy killing”, is certainly incorrect. Or at least it’s not a literal translation, because mercy killing refers to the person administering the medication and their intentions. But the Greek prefix “Eu” means well, or good. Euthanasia means, simply, a good death.

Old Grey’s behavior changed in the last weeks of his life. He wanted to be outside all the time. And once outside, he would wander in different directions than his previous patterns, to the point where I didn’t let him out on his own any more, afraid he would wander into the street, or just wander off. In the house, he kept finding new and strange places to hunker down. Various closets. Behind a hole in the paneling under the sink. Every time I came home, I had to play “find the cat.” Once, I came home and found most of my china shattered across the kitchen floor. Old Grey had climbed up onto the counter, and into the back of the cupboard, moving aside the heavy buffalo china in the process. He couldn’t have made it any clearer: he was looking for a way out.

Looking back at the final photos of Old Grey, I am shocked by his condition, and realize how much denial was still swimming around in me, even though I was doing my very best to face the fact that he was dying. Now that he’s been gone more than a week, when I come home, I still open the door just a crack and angle my foot there, as if to prevent a kitty escape. I forget he’s gone a dozen times a day.

I think this kind of denial is one reason the legal battles around this legislation have taken as long as they have. We’re all in denial about death, most of the time. That’s the way we’re wired.

From that place of denial, part of us thinks that the conversation about end of life issues is actually a conversation about whether or not we’re going to die. That part of us believes that if we support this legislation, we’re saying we’re going to die, and if we don’t support this legislation, then we’re not going to die.

Do we really believe that, intellectually? No. But somehow the whole issue triggers something in us, as if it’s a big flashing sign that reads: DYING! And then evolution goes to work. We check what we think is the other box: NOT DYING!

Fortunately, there are people among us brave enough to have realized that is not the choice we are confronting. Some of those people, my friend Katharine among them, paid the emotional price of watching a loved one suffer and then took the time to fight this legislative battle on all our behalves. We owe them an enormous debt, as we do to those who will continue the fight in the 45 states in the U.S. that have not fully approved such legislations.

I remember writing this essay when I was thirteen or fourteen. I am including it here in the original form even though it may be a bit difficult to make out in this picture. Something about the girlish handwriting seems to me indivisible from the teenage mind that created it. It reminds me how small we all are in the face of this issue.

And despite outdated word choice, and a touch of grandiosity that makes me cringe, I stand by it.

Author’s note: the teacher’s comments at the end about "wordiness" are, unfortunately, still quite fair and common critiques of my writing style:)

P.S.

In case the teacher’s remarks at the end are not legible, they read as follows: “some wordiness. Sometimes idea gets hazy from perhaps too many words-but essay is good.”

I can’t take this adolescent essay at face value entirely. At that age, when we thought something was really funny, my friends and I used to say dramatically, “that kills me!” That’s how little we knew of death. We could make a joke of it.

But there is one thing I like about the essay. It’s the willingness to admit that I don’t really know how I would feel until I’m in that situation. Looking at it that way, it becomes self-evident that we should leave the choice to the person in that situation, or, if they are unable, to the person who knows them best.

I’m not making an argument. The argument makes itself. I think those who have the experience, like hospice workers, or the vet, or my friend Katharine, they already know the sense of this. All we can do is take their wisdom to heart. Or we can absorb the lessons of death that all our loved ones, animals or otherwise, bring us so generously at the end of their lives. Or we can wait and see for ourselves.

Or all of the above.

But I like that part of the essay, the way it hovers over the issue, my young mind trying to decide, but then admitting that I don’t really have the answers. As an older person, it’s a habit I’ve gotten out of, saying, “I don’t know.”

I don't know...

I’m making a mental note to myself to admit that more often, that I just don't know. Especially when it comes to second-guessing other people’s choices, both big and small.

In Kitty Heaven (Poem & Slideshow)

10/5/2015

In Kitty Heaven

For Old Grey
199? - October 1st, 2015

In Kitty Heaven, butter sits unwrapped on the counter all day long, getting smellier and smellier. And when you climb up to lick it- the only natural thing to do- nobody yells at you to get down. Later, fresh glasses of water stand on every night table, unattended.

Surfaces are arranged at a gradient in Kitty Heaven so that everything is mountable. A footstool leads to a sofa leads to a bookshelf leads to the top of the fridge. There is no vantage point denied you.

There is always a fresh supply of cardboard boxes in Kitty Heaven, of varying sizes and strengths. Sometimes, they fit just right. Other times, they are too big, or too small, or collapse if you climb on them. This is all part of the fun.

There is always a lap available in Kitty Heaven when you want one, because people who live in Kitty Heaven are not allowed to leave. There are no office jobs, day trips, vacations or weekends away. People in Kitty Heaven remain in Kitty Heaven, to serve.

Clearly spelled instructions are posted in all rooms for humans, delineating preferences. Scratch under the chin, counter-clockwise, but only in the evenings. Leave the bedroom closet door open, just a crack. Mornings, move around that fake mouse on the string, at dawn. I said dawn.

Even though people in Kitty Heaven are not permitted to leave, there are plenty of strange bags, and suitcases in Kitty Heaven. They arrive unexpectedly, sometimes full of smelly laundry. Then, they are left open, available for exploring. The laundry taken out of them is not washed. Oh no. It is left in a pile on the floor, for siesta.

All furniture in Kitty Heaven has rounded, upholstered edges. Even the stove, and those ugly chairs in the dining room.

When you want to go outside, you go outside.

What you do outside, where you go, who you see, is nobody’s business but your own.

The menu in Kitty Heaven varies. At least once a week there is something really smelly, like tripe, or something alive, like a mouse. Occasionally the sound of dry food being poured into a bowl is piped in through a sound system, so you can ignore it.

Similarly, there are lots of soft, expensive cat beds around, but you only use them when the people aren’t looking. Then, like when you died, the people go to throw them out and notice they’re covered with cat hair. The people are astonished, and you laugh at them, from Kitty Heaven.

There’s a lot of paperwork to do in Kitty Heaven, but it never gets done because you sit on top of the papers. For as long as you want.

In Kitty Heaven, Bella, (the calico bombshell from next door who thinks she’s all that), is not allowed over the fence. Likewise, the scrawny orange tabby is not free to wander down the middle of the friggin’ street like he owns the place. They have their own Kitty Heaven, somewhere else.

Dogs are allowed in Kitty Heaven. Surpised? Yeah, they are. Their stupidity is entertaining, plus they make the house smellier, and raise the median temperature a noticeable half a degree. These are basic quality of life issues for you. Plus sometimes, when they’re asleep, you can lie down on them and take a nap and they don’t even care. Truth is, dogs are nice to have around.
And if anybody quotes you on that, you’ll bite them in the calf until they bleed.

There are lots of kids in Kitty Heaven, way more than grown-ups. Kids in heaven want to be around cats, that's part of the reason. But it's also because kids have their priorities straight. Think about it. What’s the first thing a grown-up says when they visit the house? “Uh, I brought you this bottle of wine,” or “Hey, I like your haircut.” What’s the first thing a kid says? “Where’s the cat?” And, “Can I pet him?”

It’s sunny in Kitty Heaven.

Kitty Heaven is not such a dramatic a transition from life on earth, not like for humans. Because even on your worst day, you were already half made of light.

Lastly, Kitty Heaven is not eternal. It’s like that box the toaster-oven came in, or those little pouches of chicken in gravy. It suits your taste for a while. It’s enjoyable until it isn’t. And then you abandon it for something better. Something new. Because unlike in life on earth, curiosity is rewarded, in Kitty Heaven.

Slideshow

Book of Spies: some reading and films to catch up on before the movie opens and changes our minds forever.

9/29/2015

What’s the first thing you think of when you think of the Cold War? If you’re American, chances are good that your first thought is an image provided by the media, whether film, television, or newspapers. Depending on your age and political orientation, you might flash on Kennedy standing on the steps of city hall in Schöneberg in ’63 saying “Ich bin ein Berliner,” or Reagan at Brandenburg Gate in ’87 saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Or you might remember newsreel footage of the Cuban missile crisis, or Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
   As of next week, we’ll have another image for the pile. A blockbuster starring Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg, titled Bridge of Spies.
   One nice thing about being a movie fan these days, is that we can see how movies have lives over time. As they stay the same, we watch and re-watch them, seeing how we change around them. Eventually, they may look dated, silly, or even offensive. Alternately, they may point so directly to something we have continued to ignore, we are shamed by their prescience.
   Where Bridge of Spies will fall, time will tell.
   About a year ago, I began researching a novel that I intend to set in East Berlin in the 1980’s. But I soon found that to understand Berlin in the 80’s, one must understand Berlin in the 70’s, and the 60’s, and that, in fact, if you want to understand the Cold War, you need to understand the hot ones that preceded it. This is a zone writers can get stuck in, as researching becomes its own, fascinating form of procrastination. I finally have made it back to the 80’s, but on the way there, I read a few books that circle the subject matter of an upcoming blockbuster film, Bridge of Spies, so it seemed like a good time to discuss them, almost as a prophylactic, before the film takes its place in your mind as a definitive image of these events. It is not a matter of how much one loves books, or how much one loves movies. It’s just how it is. Once you’ve seen the movie, it becomes very difficult to dislodge the images. I read all the Harry Potter books, but now, Daniel Radcliff’s is the face I see when I think of Harry.
   The plot of the upcoming film deals with the downing of a U2 spy plane over Russia, the subsequent capture of its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, and his exchange for a prisoner held in the States, a Russian operative working in the U.S. under multiple aliases, one of which was Rudolf Abel. Hanks plays American lawyer James Donovan, who helped negotiate the exchange. Publicity for the film, with script by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen, does not credit the first book on my list as a source, though it shares the same title, and subject matter.
   Giles Whittell’s non-fiction book, Bridge of Spies A True Story of the Cold War tells the twin tales of Powers and Abel leading to one of the most iconic events of the Cold War, when the two were traded for one another at a popular locale for such swaps, the Glienicke Bridge, which spans the Havel river and connects the Wannsee district of Berlin (under western control during the cold war) with Potsdam (under the control of Eastern Germany at the time.)
   Mr. Whittell is Washington correspondent for The Times, and this book is written in straightforward, journalistic prose that reads like a thriller because it is one. If you read on of the three on this list, this is the one.
   One of the most troubling points in my research was interviewing a man who had been a high-ranking police officer in East Berlin during the 70’s and 80’s. A criminal investigator for the Volkspolizei. One point he made repeatedly when we spoke was that in the 80’s, they closed all of their cases. All of them, he emphasized proudly. Well, they had informants, both paid and coerced by other means, in every building, pub, workplace and neighborhood in Berlin. They could arrest anyone they wanted for any reason at any time. Of course they closed their cases! But the man, now around seventy, wasn’t exactly boasting. What I came to realize was that he was trying to convey to me that the department was an efficient one. I was an author, asking specific questions about training, development, and execution of the law in practical terms. And he was a professional, proud of the work he did. Of course I empathize with the oppression that was endemic at this time, and we all know of people imprisoned for their beliefs or opposing the government. But human beings commit all kinds of crimes, and there’s no reason to believe that rapists and murderers and thieves disappeared during the Cold War. I had never given much thought to this man, and others like him, who were the ones tracking those people down, facing all the usual difficulties and dangers of police work as the war raged on. Yes, they were an arm of the MfS (Ministry for State Security, or Stasi) but they also had a job to do- or try to do- within their own oppressive system.
   The man I spoke with seemed to me somewhat heartbroken that this work had not, in the end, meant, in the end, what he’d hoped it would mean for him. He was strapped financially, had lost his sense of position almost entirely. Twenty-five years after the fact, I think he was still confused by it all, disoriented even. Meeting him was a great reminder to me that important players in history are still human beings. Complex, often conflicted, not easily summarized or pigeon-holed.
   One such complicated character, a looming presence in East Germany during the Cold War, and perhaps the best subject of study for those who want a comprehensive sense of the swapping of prisoners throughout the entirety of the era, was Wolfgang Vogel, the East German attorney who brokered most of the important prisoner exchanges, including that of Powers and Abel. (He’ll be played by Sebastian Koch, a German film star American audiences may remember from the film Das Leben des Anderes.) Vogel, like my Policeman, was vilified when the wall came down, but his day-to-day life seems mostly to have been that of a hardworking advocate, capitalizing on the East German government’s poverty to negotiate freedom for some of its most coveted prisoners, which is to say, some of its most oppressed citizens. Spy Trader: Germany’s Devil’s Advocate and the Darkest Secrets of the Cold War by Craig R. Whitney is absolutely crammed with dangerous close calls, nefarious political maneuvers, and nuts and bolts of thousands of exchanges that kept the nearly bankrupt regime from crumbling sooner than it might otherwise have done. Vogel is the main character study, and his counterpart, Donovan, also figures prominently. For a lawyer, or anybody interested in the law, this is a fascinating book.
   During the Cold War, information was closely guarded on both sides. In London in the 80’s, underground booksellers would sidle up to someone and whisper: “Spycatcher,” because the book had been banned in the U.K. Even though these days we are overloaded with information, then as now, there are moments that rise to the top as real news. They are usually stories that are both political, historical, and personal at a life-or-death nexus, and we gather around them, compelled to watch ourselves be defined and changed by them. One such moment in American history was this capture, trial, incarceration, and release of Gary Powers. As a result, there are many, many books about him. But why not go to the source? Operation Overflight: The U-2 Spy Pilot Tells His Story for the First Time by Francis Gary Powers with Curt Gentry, introduces us to a young man who is too antsy to follow his coal-miner father’s wish for him to be a doctor, so he becomes a pilot, who ends up being recruited by the CIA, essentially being snatched away from his wife for secret training on a brand new, almost invisible plane in the remotest portion of Southern Nevada. From there we follow him to the strange culture of a pilots’ base in Adana, in southern Turkey for illicit, though president-approved overflights of the U.S.S.R. We get the first person account of his capture, imprisonment and release. There is little analysis here, just what happened, how it happened. It’s a picture of the storm, told from the perspective of the eye. Good stuff.
   If you want to research further, you’ll have no shortage of material. Currently making the rounds is a lengthy, multi-episode documentary on the Cold War by CNN. One thing the series was critiqued for was the episode that paired McCarthyism and Stalinism. Some argued that in attempting to appear even-handed, it downplayed some of the horrors of the Eastern regimes, equating them with the U.S.’s actions at that time. (People still argue over the numbers, but Stalin killed many, many millions of his own people.) And having been born in San Francisco in the sixties, I know that the liberties I enjoyed were not the same as those enjoyed by my contemporaries in the Eastern Bloc. Both governments did horrible things. But different, horrible things.
   This documentary, along with other images, books, and movies on the subject, even when accurate, are, by matter of quantity, inaccurate, because they are brief glimpses of something that spanned decades and continents. From midcentury when the Allies began parceling out bits of Berlin at the end of the second World War, to the day in the late 80’s when the protesters streamed peacefully out of Leipzig and Dresden in a wave that would crest the Wall and lead to its destruction, the Cold War was nothing if not a massive, diverse, and global exercise in the human capacity for duplicitous aggression.
   As for whether it matters or not that after next week our first thought of the Cold War may be an image of Tom Hanks looking earnest in a retro hat, maybe all we can do is realize that that space in our minds is precious real estate. And whatever occupies it, we should not confuse the image with the thing itself. As the saying goes, a picture of tree is not a tree.
   And how a story is told matters as much as what is told. Not only is a picture of a tree not a tree, but poet Mary Oliver, in her recent book A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide To Understanding and Writing Poetry tells us that a “rock” is not a “stone.” Choice of words, and in cinema, images, is crucial to story telling. And whether it is told with a single perspective, as with Powers’ book, or the policeman looking back on his own life, or with many crafted hands such as the Coen brothers, or CNN’s big budgeted crews, these choices affect us. And if I remember the text books of my childhood, the ones that glorified Columbus and had picturesque sidebars of Native Americans without any pesky details about their annihilation, I’m inclined to take it all with a grain of salt, and a half. I don’t know if those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, or not. But I do think that those who oversimplify the past are condemned to misunderstand that.
   I’m hoping this’ll be a great movie. Some movies, even after all of my research still ring true and help me reflect on the era that predates me by just a bit. Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain, (1966), for example, has an escape sequence that looks like I pictured from my reading. After reading some of Kennedy and Khruschev’s dilemma’s, Failsafe, (1964), with Henry Fonda as a president with his finger on the button, also seems fairly on point, and still gives me the chills. And Das Leben des Anderes is a terrific film. Artfully done, with characters I will never forget. I’ve lived in Berlin and can’t help wishing I could’ve seen it how it was, just for a moment. That film is as close as I will come.
   A few books slightly broaden the film’s topic, but I found them of value and recommend them here.
   For first-hand, personal interviews, I recommend The Firm: the Inside Story of the Stasi by Gary Bruce, and Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall by Anna Funder.
   For an in-depth global and German/American analysis of the minute by minute tipping point during the year the Wall went up, I recommend Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khruschev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Frederick

More Blog Posts from Lisa

<<Previous

Forward>>