Lunations: Poems, Garrett Mostowski. Wipf and Stock; 71 pages,
2023.
Reviewed by Andrew Taylor-Troutman
Wendell Berry asked that his readers speak his Sabbath poems to the trees. I
wonder if Garrett Mostowski envisions Lunations read out loud to the
moon, his muse. Whenever and wherever this collection is read, I recommend an
atmosphere for quiet concentration.
Mostowski is a poet’s poet. He gives attention to the craft of a poem,
employing literary devices like alliteration, internal rhyme and diction
(choice of words). He cites a number of classical and modern poets, meaning he
is well-versed and generous with naming his influences. That is refreshing.
Many poems are in free-verse form and use creative line breaks, spacing and
structure. There are also prose poems, including two separate series envisioned
as a captain’s journal and comments “overheard onboard.” He writes a haibun and
several haikus. To give an idea of the range of topics, my favorite poem is a
moving reflection about the relationship between father and son in the context
of riding bikes.
Lunations, however, is aptly named. Many poems ruminate on that silent
orb in the night sky. The moon’s many phases serve as a metaphor for the
unpredictability, struggle and occasional delight of life. Poems about the moon
are grounded in Mostowski’s earthly life, especially his intimate
relationships. Though this is his first poetry collection, Mostowski avoids the
rookie mistake of trying to say too much at once.
Like the moon’s surface, many of these poems are concealed with intentional
ambiguity. Readers will have to work to interpret meaning. While a parish
pastor, Mostowski rarely references Christianity. Like the shadow of the moon,
he leaves readers to imagine the contours of their own faith.
The mark of this book is that such a reader’s effort is rewarded. Mostowski
invites us to live into the paradox: we are moved in our daily lives by higher
forces, if only we stop and look up. Slow down and notice. In “captain’s
journal: final transmission,” Mostowski writes, “Here’s why I’m slow: … It is
because I am away, / but still here with you, / just observing / everything /
in my / time/ with space.”
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Lunations by Garrett Mostowski - Reviewed by Andrew Taylor-Troutman
Monday, October 30, 2023
Ross Gay, The Book of (More) Delights - Reviewed by Andrew Taylor-Troutman
Reviewed by Andrew Taylor-Troutman
The other day, I saw a birch tree and immediately thought of its bark as “curling like pages of old books.” Reading Ross Gay will put his words in your head.
The Book of (More) Delights is the sequel to the author’s best-seller. He practiced the habit of writing about one thing that delighted him each day for an entire year. He calls them essayettes. They read to me like a hybrid between a journal entry and prose poem.
At one of his readings, I heard Gay claim that he is a “simile guy” and his latest book of prose bears this playful poetic touch. For instance, sweet potatoes are nestled under the ground “like a fluffle of bunnies.” This is delightful. Also, his description of a friend’s laugh as “like a gravelly hot air balloon … sometimes like a tire popping.”
When Gay happens upon a squirrel face first in a front porch Halloween pumpkin — “that plump butt, those long-footed rear legs, and that tail, buoyant, flamboyant” — he memorably describes the creature as devouring a seed “like me eating a little pizza.” Delight!
When reading these essayettes, I often found myself humming the Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts.” A gift to be simple, a gift to be free. In Gay’s words, “There are so many simple pleasures, simple delights, and maybe the goal, the practice, is to be delighted especially by them, the simplest of things.”
But despite what a reader might think, Gay protests that he is not “some kind of sage of delight.” He also reflects upon “un-delights” such as the Macy’s Day Parade as “a miserable advertisement for global corporate dominion.” He compiles a litany of un-delights: “being the descendent of people who were treated as property; having been driven from your land; having had your neighborhood razed for a highway or industrial park; having had the top of the mountain where you live blown off; having been disbelieved, or brutalized, in a medical setting …” Gay goes on.
The paradox about this book of delights is that Gay returns again and again to the topic of death. Anyone who has ever visited someone in Hospice will deeply resonate with the chapter “At the Door.” When Gay’s grandmother dies, he eulogizes her, in part, by delighting at the recollection of the unique way that she said his name. His writing brought tears to my eyes. Might that, too, be a delight?
Just as another of his essay collections, Inciting Joy, made clear that joy is not the absence of sorrow, reading Gay helps me realize that simple delight is found among complex realities, including struggles. He refers to a “completely unspeakable difficult time” when “the awful … was really rattling around in my mind like a maraca.” (Note another delightful simile!) Gay then describes a simple spoon, but it occasions this reflection on a profound friendship: “no small balm … to have a friend pointing out, too, what is not only un-awful, but truly beautiful, the truly beautiful human-made, the human made beautiful…”
The short chapters of this book can be read quickly. I tried to slow down and savor the words, which I suspect is also a way to look for delight in my life. This book has taught me that curiosity is a close cousin to delight. And reminds me of the deep, abiding delight to contribute to the delight of others: “It is … some delight when a kind who has a hard time becomes a kid who’s having a good time in no small part thanks to you throwing that kid in the air again and again.”
Copyright©2023 by Andrew
Taylor-Troutman. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Anne Whitehouse poetry book Steady - Reviewed by Andrew Taylor-Troutman
Anne Whitehouse, Steady. 2023. Loveland, OH. Dos Madres Press. 206 pages. $22 U.S. paperback. 978-1-953232-83-8
Though the title poem in Anne Whitehouse’s collection is offered near the end
of the book. I couldn’t help but turn to it first. “Steady” is an elegant, if
simple poem of three stanzas with four lines in each. Lovely, I thought, then returned
to the beginning of the book.
Whitehouse’s book has four sections, each titled for the first poem:
“Morning Swim,” “Signs,” “An Art Story,” and “Blue.” Readers begin this journey
with “Morning Swim,” a short poem that dives deeply into paradox: “What seems
like silence / Is full of sound.” Other poems in this section often deal with
water and death, perhaps another paradox (if one thinks of water as the
necessity of life). The last line of “Morning Swim” references “endless
waters,” which are suggestive of mystery and transcendence, that are
simultaneously (paradoxically) “cold, healing, and bitter.”
Such complexity is further explored in the second section. This opening poem,
“Signs,” suggests the COVID-19 pandemic (“The enemy is the invisible virus”)
and other poems have temporal markers as well, suggesting the poet wants to
ground us in the particular. In addition, I observe titles make direct
reference to literary giants, Auden and Dante, and one epigraph cites Psalm 23.
Though famous people and texts suggest grandiose topics, many of these poems
center on quotidian subjects (a necktie, a book case) and everyday people. The
idea seems to be that such ordinary people and things point (or signify)
greater truths and realities: “a celebration of imaginary / over the mundane.”
The third section of Steady is longer than the previous two sections
combined. These poems alternate between first- and third-person narratives of
the lives of Ruth Asawa, Leonora Carrington, Lee Miller, Iris Origo, Imogen
Cunningham, and Frida Kahlo, whose picture is the book’s cover. Whitehouse
writes a kind of historical poetry, obviously well-versed with the lives of her
subjects. Yet in another “celebration of the imaginary,” she blends the
artists’ own quotes with her own imaginative leaps about how they might have
thought and felt.
I was struck that the lives of the artists highlighted in the third section of
this book are anything but “steady”—they have health crises, accidents,
infidelities, pain, and triumphs. I went back to the title poem, “Steady,” and
its profundity became clear: “Another form of steadiness / is simply not to
fall … change happens to us all.”
If the third section shows this kind of steadiness in the lives of famous
people, then the fourth section reads as if Whitehouse has applied and played
with lessons of perseverance and paradox in her own life. This short, final
section is filled with simple delights, which remind me of poet Ross Gay. From
Gay, I learned the insight that the prefix de- can entail an absence—“de-light”
could mean the removal of light. This apophatic approach characterizes much of
the poetry of this section. My absolute favorite, “Bridge Over the Nosterkill,”
describes glimpsing a beloved person “out of the corner of my eye,” but instead
of interrupting this person’s singing, “I listen without seeming to.”
After reading and re-reading the entirety of this elegant collection, I deeply
appreciate the delight and power of Whitehouse’s poetry. Steady is
rarely preachy or didactic. Profound, paradoxical truth about the “change
(that) happens to us all” is communicated through subtle observation—the
sidelong look and overhearing of “Bridge Over the Nosterkill” may be likened to
the “slant truth” that Dickinson described.
The final poem, “Late Summer, Block Island,” includes a blessing that comes
from the “beloved haunts of my essential solitude.” Whitehouse is clear-eyed
about the difficulties of life, including suffering and grief, yet finds a
reverence and awe worthy of sharing.
- Andrew
Taylor-Troutman is pastor of Chapel in the Pines in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
and the author of seven books, including Tigers, Mice & Strawberries:
Poems.
Copyright©2023 by Andrew Taylor-Troutman. All
Rights Reserved.
Monday, February 13, 2023
Space Races by Anne Whitehouse
All this preparation for what passed in an instant. Then it was time for us to return to our scheduled lessons. Yet, during the day, my mind would drift to thoughts of the astronauts hurled into outer space and circling the earth. I was a physically fearful child, and the thought of being shot in a rocket at enormous speed past the earth into the unknown filled me with dread. At the same time, I felt excited and intensely curious. What would it feel like to be weightless? How would you sleep? Eat and drink? Pee and poop? What would it be like to look back at our earth, as if it were another planet?
Children of my generation lived vicariously through the astronauts. They represented better versions of ourselves—in superior shape and health, with agile minds to match their agile bodies. They received the best training our country could provide. They were universally admired. For children living in Florida, like my cousin who grew up in Daytona, the connection was closer. As an elementary school child, she also watched rocket launches on television, “and then we’d all run outside just in time to see the rocket over our heads.”
This January, I felt the same thrill watching the simultaneous launch of two SpaceX rockets outside our rented condo on Cocoa Beach, near Cape Canaveral. Rocket launches remain one of the area’s most popular attractions, and an hour before the launches, Jetty Park was packed, as well as the roads leading into it and lining the causeway. We were lucky we could just step outside our condo for the show. What was unusual about the launch we saw was that it was a double launch, the purpose of which, one of the locals told me, was “top-secret military.” This is how the SpaceX website described it: “On Sunday January 15 at 5:56 pm ET, the Falcon Heavy launched the USSF-67 mission to a geosynchronous Earth orbit from Launch /complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This was the second launch landing of these Falcon Heavy side boosters which previously supported USSF-44.”[1]
We looked north up the beach, beyond the low structures of the Cocoa Beach pier, and beyond it, we spotted the flares of two bursting fires climbing higher and higher in the twilit sky, leaving behind billowing trails of smoke. It was a beautiful sight. The flares burned bright yellow, tinged with iridescent green, and the clouds of smoke unfurled in huge spirals as they dissipated into the atmosphere. When I looked up, I could see the boosters uncoupling. Most astonishing was the rockets’ return, ten minutes later, after they’d discharged their mysterious payloads, right back to the launch pad. How did they land so precisely, from such terrific speeds? The show was brief, from launch to return less than half an hour accompanied by sonic booms, and it filled us with awe.
A few days later, we visited the Kennedy Space Center, where the rocket launch occurred. The United States space industry complex began operations on Merritt Island in 1950, when the government established a missile testing range on the land it owned surrounding the Cape Canaveral lighthouse. In 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) began to launch satellites at the site. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced plans to place a man on the moon before the end of the decade. To achieve this goal, the federal government acquired 140,000 acres of land north and west of the Cape on Merritt Island in 1963, where support facilities for the launch complex were established. That year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service entered into an Interagency Agreement with NASA to manage all lands within the Kennedy Space Center that are not currently being used for NASA KSC operations. These lands, known today as the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, provide habitat for more than 1,500 species of plants and wildlife.
The Visitor Complex of the Kennedy Space Center is privately operated by Delaware North Companies and welcomes visitors from all over the world with a variety of exhibits about the space program accompanied by blaring, piped-in music. The Heroes and Legends exhibits are designed to appeal to emotion. Their message, cited by a number of astronauts in video interviews, is that “nothing is impossible.” They present a hagiography of the astronauts, interspersed with videos of children expressing their own aspirations. The space program is portrayed as a quest for greater knowledge, mastery, and expansion—in short, as an idealistic venture.
That was the same message being conveyed in my childhood. But back then there was another message as well. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union threatened to break out into real war. The advent of the space race elevated the struggle between the two superpowers representing opposing ideologies and economies. The threat of war was sublimated into a higher, non-lethal quest: which of the two countries would succeed in achieving manned space flights and landing a man on the moon? In 1959, the Soviet Union’s Luna 2 on a robotic mission became the first human-made object to reach the moon. Ten years later, the United States’ Apollo Lunar Module Eagle landed on the moon, and Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon’s surface. The United States won that competition, and twenty years later, the Soviet Union collapsed.
At the Kennedy Space Center, the struggle concerning the United States and the Soviet Union is underplayed in favor of a message of cooperation between nations symbolized by the establishment of the International Space Station in 2000, a shared program between Europe, the United States, Russia, Canada, and Japan. The exhibits lead the visitors through a Rocket Garden of actual rockets that were built for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and never deployed, along with two replicas. I was struck by the rockets’ smallness. Models of the first two-men and three-men capsules reveal that there was not much more space than in an airplane economy seat. Space travel, particularly in those early flights, was a claustrophobic experience. Astronauts got their first views of the universe’s vastness cooped up in very small spaces.
In a video interview, Alan Shepard, who became the first American to orbit the earth in 1961, recollected his sense of awe at his first glimpse of the earth from space. This astonishing sight inspired him to wonder why human beings on this small planet keep on attacking one another. Astronauts that followed Shepard have echoed his thoughts. Yet these lofty sentiments, so often repeated, have not led to any lasting changes in human behavior nor altered our impulses towards destruction.
From its beginnings, the space program was not primarily an idealistic quest for greater knowledge. It originated with the military, and military purposes and defense applications have remained paramount throughout its history. Nevertheless, this history, which is crucial to understanding the space program in its entirety, goes mostly unmentioned at the Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex. For every Hubble or James Webb telescope bearing glimpses of interplanetary and interstellar worlds, there are other devices beaming back at us, used by nations to spy on each other. There would be no space program without its military necessity and justification.
On the bus ride from the Main Visitor Complex to the Apollo/Saturn V Center, visitors pass the massive Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). This building is visible from miles away, looming over the marshes, wetlands, mangroves, and inlets of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. The VAB, its attendant facilities, and the launch pads along the shore are the functioning heart of the Kennedy Space Center, and they are off limits to the public. Launch Pad 39A, where the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rockets blasted off, has a storied history. From here in July 1969, Apollo 11 sent its three-man crew to the moon, realizing President Kennedy’s goal expressed in his Rice University speech in 1962 of landing a man on the moon within the decade.
Yet it seemed it might not happen, at least not within President Kennedy’s time frame. The space program’s defining disaster of that decade was the training session fire that broke out in the Apollo 1 command module in January 1967, one month before its anticipated launch at the Kennedy Space Center. The three astronauts were trapped inside and quickly asphyxiated. The ignition source of the fire was determined to be electrical, and the fire spread rapidly due to combustible nylon material and the high-pressure pure oxygen cabin atmosphere. Rescue was prevented by the plug door hatch, which could not be opened against the internal pressure of the cabin. The astronauts had previously complained about the lack of safety standards, the shoddiness of the capsule’s construction, especially the wiring, and the possibility of fire. That this preventable tragedy occurred on the ground seemed especially terrible. Manned space flights were suspended for twenty months, while NASA identified and corrected hazards.
If Apollo 1 was the nadir, Apollo 11, just two-and-a-half years later, was the zenith. Yet it was a near failure. The margin of error came down to 17 seconds of fuel. The quick-wittedness and considerable skills of all three astronauts—Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong—as well as the essential role played by NASA’s Mission Control on the ground in Houston led to the space program’s most resounding success. That story is briefly told in a video presentation at the Kennedy Space Center. For those seeking a more in-depth exploration, I recommend Dr. Kevin Fong’s podcast, Thirteen Minutes to the Moon. It expanded my knowledge of the program and its young scientists and engineers, whose average age was 27. The moon landing was one of those rare unifying moments that brought people around the world together. In those years after the moon landing, the astronauts spoke of visiting country after country and hearing people exult, “We did it!” Not “you Americans did it,” but “we, the human race, we did it.”
Five subsequent Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the moon; the last, Apollo 17, in 1972. In all, twelve astronauts walked on the moon. Only Apollo 13 was a failure whose success consisted in narrowly avoiding a catastrophic loss of human life. Its planned moon landing was prevented by an oxygen tank explosion, crippling the command space module. The crew barely returned to Earth safely by using the lunar module as a lifeboat on the return journey.
The Apollo missions collected 842 pounds of lunar rock and soil, which were found to be far older than rocks on earth, ranging from 3.2 to 4.6 billion years, leading to the hypothesis that the moon was created from the impact of the earth with another planetary body. The space program’s next step was to reduce waste by building a reusable space shuttle with recoverable rocket boosters. After nearly ten years in development, the space shuttle Columbia, known as STS-1 (for Space Transportation System), was launched in April 1981. Manned by a crew of two astronauts, the Columbia took off like a rocket and landed like an airplane. It spent 54.5 hours in flight on its maiden voyage, orbiting the earth 36 times. Approximately 31,000 protective silicon tiles were installed to protect it from the heat of re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The space shuttle changed the way we go into space.
In its 30-year existence, the space shuttle program operated 135 space missions. All but two flights returned safely. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing its crew of seven astronauts. Seventeen years later, on February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke up on its return to earth after 17 days in space, killing all seven astronauts on board. As with Apollo 1, these two disasters prompted NASA’s intense soul-searching and detailed investigations of what went wrong. Photo evidence revealed that a fault in one of the Challenger’s solid booster rockets led to its fatal failure. With the Columbia, damaged heat resistant tiles failed to protect the shuttle upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. NASA made many changes in equipment and protocols to improve the safety of its operations. Today all of the launches at the Space Center are closely tracked and photographed, and the resulting footage is carefully studied by teams of engineers and experts seeking to discover any problematic evidence.
Daniel Tani, an engineer and retired NASA astronaut, believes that most astronauts are thinking of their predecessors when they go into space. “If you are a mountain climber scaling Mt. Everest, you will be aware of the places where previous climbers met with accidents. The two hardest feats in all of rocket science are starting and stopping. Going into full throttle up, I thought of that moment when we lost the Challenger, and on re-entry, when we hit Mach 19, I thought of the moment when we lost the Columbia. Maybe every astronaut thinks of these moments and feels an intense relief to get past them,”[2] he confessed in Dr. Kevin Fong’s excellent documentary, The Final Launch of the Space Shuttle Program, about the last flight of STS-135, the space shuttle Atlantis in 2011.
Today visitors to the Kennedy Space Center can see the actual Atlantis rotated 43.21 degrees with payload doors open and Canadarm extended, as if just undocked from the International Space Station. For a successful mission, millions of things must go right. Dr. Fong’s film is a surprisingly emotional document. He was granted close access to the astronauts and ground crew during their preparations and simulations. He was at the launch pad when the Atlantis blasted off for the last time, and he was on the tarmac filming the landing. Atlantis’s pilots trained rigorously in an especially adapted Gulfstream 2 business jet adapted to have the same flying qualities as the space shuttle. Each pilot had to complete 1,000 practice missions before operating the shuttle. The flight deck of the training aircraft was modified so that it was identical to the Atlantis.
The space shuttle was designed to travel at hypersonic speeds in the upper atmosphere. Its short wings meant that when it came down, it sank like a stone, descending at an angle seven times greater than a commercial jet, with the engines in reverse working to push the plane backwards, and the landing gear deployed at 30,000 feet. Chris Ferguson, who completed 1,400 practice runs before he piloted the Atlantis on its final flight, told Fong, “The first time I went up in a training session, and the pilot showed me the tiny strip of runway under my left arm, I said, ‘There’s no way we can land on that.’ He said, ‘I’m going to show you.’ And he did. You come downhill really fast, but it works.”
Fong accompanied Ferguson and his co-astronaut Doug Hurley on a practice run where they rapidly ascended 28,000 feet and even more rapidly descended, roaring, with the engines blasting in reverse. Just short of the runway, not ten feet from the ground, the plane, which seemed in free fall, pulled up, leveled off and began to ascend. It was an astonishing feat, like the dive of a falcon. Fong filmed himself in the plane with Ferguson, as they went down and then up again and down.
We’re falling 28,000 feet per minute [commented Fong]. I’m looking straight down at the ground. I feel the dead weight and the powerlessness of the shuttle. It feels like we’re falling out of the sky. We’ve come down 16,000 feet by the time we are lined up with the runway, dropping out of the sky like a stone. A few feet from the ground, we pull up and soar back into the sky. Up we go again, and back down. It’s an incredible ride, the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life – 28,000 to zero, 28,000 to zero, up and back for ten times in an hour and a half.
When Ferguson landed the Atlantis on her final flight, he came down as lightly as a feather.
On the launch pad before the final take-off, Fong observed, “It’s peaceful up there, and you’re 200 feet in the air off the coast. There’s some sunshine, the breeze in your hair, and then you see you’re standing next to a hydrogen bomb. And if you’re the astronaut, you’re about to get into that machine and leave the earth at 17,000 miles per hour.”
Former astronaut and NASA engineer Daniel Tani recalled, “On launch morning, I got out of the Astrovan, and I stood here and thought how incredible it is that humans could put something so complicated together. Steam was coming from it. It was like a beast awakening, and I had an awareness that this machine, now sleeping in its protective metal cocoon, was going to come alive very soon.” After he was an astronaut, Tani worked in Mission Control. During the space shuttle program, he was asked if the flights ever came to seem routine. He replied, “Putting human beings in that explosion that is going underneath them to get them into orbit is amazing and not even close to being routine. We conduct training scenarios where things go wrong, so we can learn from them. We have very difficult simulations.”
Terry White designed the shuttle’s thermal protection system in the aftermath of the Columbia disaster: “Upon re-entry into earth’s atmosphere, the shuttle must be able to withstand temperatures of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit in order for the orbiter, its payload, and the astronauts to get home safely. The polystyrene tiles on the Columbia had a coating like an eggshell. The ones on the later shuttles are so strong that you can hit them against a brick without damaging them. It takes up to two weeks to install one tile. It took two years to install the Atlantis’s 24,000 tiles.”
Each launch is photographed, and the footage is closely inspected by teams of specialists in order to ascertain if there is any damage that needs to be repaired in space. Kenny Allen was NASA’s lead instrumentation specialist in the space shuttle program. “I am in this enclosed area with the best instrumentation in the world,” he told Kevin Fong. At blast off, the sound waves come through walls and go right through my chest, while I’m tracking the duration of the flight with my joystick. Then I go to the computers and look at what we’ve done. The imagery is stunning. We look frame by frame in the minutest of detail. Photographic evidence is crucial. When foam hit the wing of the Columbia, it was seen. We’re here to say if the spacecraft is safe.”
In The Final Launch of the Space Shuttle Program, Kevin Fong noted that it took five hours to move the Atlantis with its rocker boosters and tank three miles from the Vehicle Assembly Building to historic Launch Pad 39a. Of the rituals associated with take-off, one of the most cherished came about from the discovery that a 1960s-era rotary wall phone on the bridge of the launch pad still worked, and astronauts are invited to make a last phone call to their loved ones before climbing into the shuttle. Another is the order for a sandwich to be stored under their seats before takeoff and eaten after launch. The most popular choice is peanut butter and jelly.
“One of the drawbacks of the space shuttle program was its complexity,” said Charles Bolden, the NASA Administrator who regretfully oversaw the end of the program in 2011. The government sought private partnerships to develop a future space shuttle program that would be technologically superior and simpler in design. Today NASA’s most active partnership is with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, founded in 2002.
Nine years after Atlantis’s final flight, NASA and SpaceX successfully completed its first joint space shuttle mission on the Dragon spacecraft on May 30, 2020, with a crew of two astronauts. A second mission followed on October 5, 2022,
manned by an international crew of four, comprised of NASA astronauts
Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina. NASA’s video, Expedition 68--NASA's SpaceX Crew 5 Flight Day 1 Highlights gives viewers extraordinary views of outside and inside the spacecraft as it completes its maneuvers, including docking the Endurance spacecraft to the International Space Station in preparation for the long-duration science mission. In the decade since Atlantis, space suits have evolved into sleek efficient machines that connect directly to the shuttle’s seats with an “umbilical cord,” controlling pressure, cooling, air flow, and communications. The control panel of the spacecraft is now operated by touch screens although there are still auxiliary knobs and buttons as a backup. The ambitious plans of NASA SpaceX include ventures to the moon and Mars in the next few years.
An auxiliary benefit of the space program are the inventions developed for space that have been adapted into everyday use on earth. The list includes satellite navigation, scratch-resistant lenses, cordless dust-buster vacuums, ear thermometers, shoe insoles, invisible braces for teeth, memory foam, fire retardant and heat-resistant clothing used for firefighters, space blankets, shock absorbers for buildings, improved solar cells and water filtration, semiconductor electronics, and others. Even the first computer with silicon integrated circuits was developed for the space program in the 1960s.
The Kennedy Space Center is surrounded by the vast marshlands and undeveloped beaches of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. A thirty-five-mile-long barrier island, Merritt Island, between the Banana and Indian Rivers, is on the Atlantic Flyway, a major bird migration corridor. On the day we drove the wildlife trail, we saw over a hundred species of birds, including thousands of American Coots, the resplendent Purple Gallinule, and the shy Sora. The partnership between the Wildlife Refuge and the Kennedy Space Center, is unlikely, but it works. The Wildlife Refuge is a refuge for the Space Center, too, and the Space Center is engaged in efforts to ensure that its practices do not harm the wildlife.
Former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who is also a former astronaut and a Marine Major General, expressed his view that the importance of the space program lies not only in its science and engineering advances. “It changed the way we see the universe,” he observed. “On a clear night, I can look up at the sky and watch the International Space Station fly over.”
Judy Hooper, the Manager of Crew Quarters where the astronauts are quarantined before launch, traces her career back to STS-1, the first space shuttle flight of the Columbia. “I came on board in 1979,” she recalled. “It was the most exciting thing that you could ever imagine. Everybody you ran into—every engineer, every tech, every astronaut—it didn’t matter where they worked, they would have done it for free. That’s how cool it was.” Her worst moment was the Challenger disaster in 1986. “I was up on the LCC watching it. The families were there. And I remember looking up and—somehow you know. You don't know the minute you realize it because I think you kind of go into shock. It was so sad. They were such a great crew.”
That twinned sense of excitement and danger persists in the space program today. There is perhaps no riskier job than being an astronaut, other than serving in the military in wartime. Astronauts accept the risks they are assuming, but it is harder for their spouses. Yet they consider the human costs worth the benefits. What of the social and economic costs? Is the space program an expression of human indulgence and escapism, or vital, necessary, and important exploration and discovery?
I went to the Kennedy Space Center knowing I would not be able to answer these questions. My visit gave me an opportunity to explore the origins and history of the space program, reflect on its past and current development, and learn more about the efforts of so many dedicated, skilled, intelligent, and fearless people that have resulted in its amazing accomplishments.
[2] Quoted in The Final Launch of the Space Shuttle Program, documentary film written and produced by Dr. Kevin Fong with the BBC, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yud9NHi7pQ
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Tribute to Dr. Kathryn Coe
Dr. Mary Kathryn
Coe Ph.D., aged 78, passed away on September 19, 2021 in Mesa,
Arizona. Kathryn was born at home on November
18, 1942, in Boulder City, NV. Her paternal grandfather, C.H.
Ellis, MD, delivered her at home with maternal grandmother Lizzie LouKate
Wilson Jackson RN, who assisted. Her father Percy Ellis Coe was
working as an engineer on the Boulder Dam project, and her
mother, Mary Ernest Jackson Coe, supported his efforts by creating a
loving home away from home during war time. Kathryn grew up in
Wellton, AZ as well as in Scottsdale, AZ. Attending both Antelope Union,
Camelback and Arcadia High Schools. She was the third
generation to study at Arizona State University, where she earned her
degree in English, with minors in philosophy and history, in 1965.
She married shortly after graduating and they lived
overseas and traveled the world. She had two children, Blair and
Trentham. Kathryn partook of many adventures, she studied at universities
in Colombia, Spain, and Ecuador. She studied Roman horseback riding with
the Ecuadorean military and traveled the Amazon River by dugout
with her children. She was always up for an adventure. After a divorce,
Kathryn returned to the United States with her children to
be close to family. Kathryn worked for the Heard Museum, The
Arizona Republic, COMPASS, The Arizona Health Department, and
Arizona State University. Undaunted as a single parent she
pursued her Ph.D. in Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology at Arizona
State. Her thesis was on the importance
of Ancestors, from her field research in the lowlands of Ecuador. Kathryn was
a professor at the Phoenix College, University of Missouri,
Colombia, University of Arizona, and Indianapolis University Purdue University
Indianapolis where she mentored many students in Anthropology and Public
Health. She published extensively, her CV is 24 pages long, and authored two
books, (The Ancestress Hypothesis and
another one due in March). She felt that teaching was a sacred contract with
her students and devoted as much time to them as she could. She was an
exceptional listener. Just before she retired, she met the love of her life, Al
Waitz, who cared and loved her as she so richly deserved. She and Al spent
their time at home in the foothills of Gold Canyon when they were not traveling
more of the world together.
Kathryn was a quiet yet fierce woman – holding fast to her beliefs, defending
those she loved, and always seeking to better herself and those
around her. She was an amazing listener and had immeasurable patience. She
was full of surprises and had a wide variety of talents. She loved her
family and enjoyed her close relationship with her sister, Anne Coe. Her
children and grandchildren were her greatest love, and they were extremely
fortunate to have her as their mother and grandmother.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Percy and Mary
Coe, and her brother Jack Coe. She is survived by her loving husband,
Al Waitz, her sister, Anne Coe, her daughter Blair Coe Schweiger, her son,
Trentham Coe, her son-in-law Christoph Schweiger and her grandchildren Samuel
Coe, Jacob Coe, and Josef Schweiger as well as by her cousins Judi
Adams, Bill Adams, Kim Evangelist, and Dakota Adams. She is also survived by
the students she so faithfully served over her years
of teaching; they were family too.
- Testimonial written by Blair Coe
Schweiger
Monday, November 22, 2021
Arrest Fauci? - Opinion Essay by Ryan Ritchie
Arrest Fauci?
Opinion Essay by Ryan Ritchie
It took me less than a minute to find a picture of South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace standing behind a dead fish. The shot was posted July 25 on Facebook and shows the recently elected United States Representative smiling as she looks into the camera standing behind what moments earlier was a sentient being.
This photograph matters because it proves Mace is a hypocrite, the kind who bends rules for political gain. We shouldn’t be surprised. She’s a politician.
Mace isn’t alone. The hashtag “ArrestFauci” trended Sunday on Twitter after multiple media outlets reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health provided a grant to a Tunisian lab where dogs were reportedly tortured and killed — some had their vocal cords removed so they wouldn’t bark during the testing. According to some outlets, the supposed research involved injecting beagles with parasites that cause diseases.
If you are like Mace and the thought of dogs being tortured bothers you — good. It should. But where is Mace’s consistency? Why is she smiling in a picture of a dead fish yet killing dogs is an act that caused her and 23 colleagues to pen a letter to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases? That fish didn’t want to be pulled from the water to sit for a photograph just like those beagles never volunteered to participate in something posing as scientific experimentation.
The answer to those questions is, of course, money. Specifically, the fact that American taxpayer dollars were spent to fund this supposed “research.”
Mace is correct. No government and no person should ever torture animals. The countless others who made “ArrestFauci” trend are also correct. If the allegations are true, Fauci should face serious consequences if he knew animals would be tortured (and if he didn’t know? That’s an equally serious offense.)
But Mace, her 23 colleagues and anyone else who made “ArrestFauci” trend have some explaining to do. What did Mace, her colleagues and those social media users have for Sunday breakfast? And for lunch? A snack? Dinner?
I’d love to think everyone involved in “ArrestFauci” is vegan, but they’re not. I know this because I’ve been vegan for approximately 18 years (vegetarian since Thanksgiving 1997) and can count on both hands — not including the thumbs — the amount of ethical plant-based eaters I consider close friends. I know plenty of pescatarians, vegetarians and whatever-atarians, but the number of people who intentionally forgo animal products because they know (emphasis on “know”) animal cruelty in all of its heinous forms is wrong is infinitesimal.
For years, research has suggested that one percent of the world’s population is vegan. It’s a start, but imagine would what happen if everyone upset about Fauci’s allegations today woke tomorrow and eschewed all animal products forever. Imagine if those same people tweeted about the well-known brands in their cabinets, dresser drawers and linen closets (do people still have those?) that do the exact horrible thing about which they are tweeting in regard to Fauci.
One good thing about “ArrestFauci” is that the hashtag has created a discussion regarding an often-overlooked part of the animal rights conversation. Last week Los Angeles Times ran eight stories about fake meats and how they are changing what’s on our plates. I’ve yet to find a vegan who doesn’t ethically support these food innovations, but anyone who tweeted “ArrestFauci” should be as upset about Clearasil, Clinique, Clorox and Comet are tested on animals — and that’s just a portion of the “C” category from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ “Beauty Without Bunnies” website — as they are about Fauci.
You want more? Try Kiehl’s, L’Oreál, Listerine, Pine-Sol, Prada, Revlon and Swiffer. And there are, sadly, plenty of other recognizable brands that do what Fauci is accused of doing.
This
argument isn’t a what-aboutism. Instead, let’s ask ourselves how some people
can get so upset when dogs are tortured yet days later sit in a
too-long-for-fast-food In-N-Out Burger drive-thru. If you’re mad about Fauci
and the dogs, be mad about all animal suffering. Tweet about the horrific ways
in which cows, chickens, fish, pigs and other living creatures are exploited
for human consumption, “enjoyment” and science. Look at Mace’s fish photo and
stare into the dead eyes. Now look down at your plate and envision the eyes
that used to be attached to whatever you’re calling a meal.
If you’re one of those people, it’s time to face a harsh reality — animal cruelty is always wrong. The good news is that you have an opportunity to stop engaging in deadly acts. Animal testing should bother you enough to take to social media and post about the horrors, but don’t be a hypocrite. There is a way to avoid these products. That way?
Go vegan.
- Ryan Ritchie is a writer from Lomita, CA. His work has been published in Rolling Stone, Vice and Los Angeles Times. He went vegetarian on Thanksgiving 1997 and has been vegan for approximately 18 years. Follow him at https://twitter.com/RyanLRitchie
Friday, November 19, 2021
Ghosts of America - Novel by Caroline Hagood - Reviewed by Mitch Levenberg
Ghosts of America by Caroline Hagood. Hanging Loose Press, 2021. ISBN: 978-1934909713. $18.00. 200 pages
Reviewed
by Mitch Levenberg
Caroline Hagood’s Ghosts of America is profound, witty and entertaining. I’d call it a page turner except I never wanted to turn the page. The narrator of the novel is Norman Roth III, Herzog to his friends, great American novelist, masturbator, voyeur, writer of “literary academia, the “overweight ugly balding white guy’s tenured ticket to young tail.” Herzog represents a long line of male writers, writers like the country itself, “formed from the dusk of masculine language, language that has skewered and slighted, misrepresented and misconstrued the role and importance of women since this country’s inception. Who better then to be visited one night, a la Ebenezer Scrooge, by the ghosts of Jackie Kennedy and Valerie Solanas? Herzog himself is a contradiction. He will gladly “jack off” to Marilyn Monroe but at the same time see something greater than the whole, greater than, as Jackie Kennedy later observes, the “blonde-haired breasts that launched American cinematic romance, but also “as complete as the end of something,” someone the “universe might transfigure her at any time.” Herzog can think about “the fluidity of existence” yet, at the same time admit “how solid it can get in the pants region.”
Herzog’s first visitor is Jackie Kennedy, his muse, his “pixie dream girl,” wife of JFK, president, Womanizer Laureate of the U.S., the man who, in his own words, “accompanied Jacquelyn Kennedy to Paris,” and later, of course, to his own assassination. Indeed, it is Jackie’s powerful narration of JFK’s assassination that sticks with me the most, that twists my own gut memory, that is rendered so terrifyingly beautiful, so painful yet poetic. The scene explodes in our minds like JFK’s own glorious mind “exploding onto Jackie’s skin.”
The writing here is truly “blood writing” at its best. According to Herzog, it’s the writer Denis Johnson, who believes that all writers should write in blood and that the more blood you write in, the more you put your life on the line. “What better way to build sentences,” Herzog states earlier, “than with our own “jets of blood,” again not his own idea, but one taken from Sylvia Plath, one of the greatest blood writers ever.
It’s truly amazing how in this gut-wrenching scene, one of the most beautifully gut-wrenching scenes I have ever read, Caroline Hagood becomes Jackie Kennedy, in both mind and body, as if she herself were in that car, as if her own life were on the line, her words, her incredible imagination evoking both the horrible and the exquisite. Here, Jackie Kennedy becomes the poet laureate of the great American Tragedy, the symbol of the blood-soaked American Dream, of Camelot, not only “deconstructed, (see the title of Herzog’s book on the Kennedys) but destroyed. JFK is Lancelot, his brain bleeding out in the back of that “midnight blue” limo, dripping on a pink dress which only a few hours earlier glittered with hope and promise in, of all places, Love Field. As Jackie says, “That part of his head that wasn’t blown away was so exquisite. I tried to hold it all together. If I could just reclaim the bits of him, all would suddenly be whole.”
Herzog’s next visitor is the ghost of Valerie Solanas, famous for shooting Andy Warhol, but not for killing him. “I’m going to teach you,” she says to Herzog, “how to write a woman.” For sure she is the scarier of the two ghosts, the bad one as in good ghost, bad ghost: loud, brash, unapologetic, wild-eyed, sloppy, soiled, hungry, (she raids Herzog’s fridge) a “crazy pants,” a “bimbo psychopath,” and in Norman Mailer’s words (see “Norman” as in Norman Roth III) “The Robespierre of Feminism.” She’s also the author of the SCUM Manifesto and the play “Up Your Ass,” titles that don’t exactly roll off the tongue, but who needs tongues? Solanas tells Herzog Ovid’s story of Philomela, imprisoned, raped and tortured by King Tereus who rips out her tongue so she can never tell her story, yet she does anyway by weaving it with purple yarn into a tapestry. She becomes the artist weaving her words, her actions, her very existence into the world. Tongue or no tongue, she cannot and will not be silenced.
This is not a linear book; it is not plot, but premise. It is a tapestry of plots and subplots, a concentric circle of stories within stories. Valerie Solana telling Herzog her story vis a vis Ovid’s story of Philomela and Tereus so flawlessly weaved by the author into this crazy quilt of a novel, “crazy” in this case meaning parts or isolated fragments of things comprising the whole of something. Indeed, this novel reflects the mind itself broken up into many minds. I often felt as if I were not only experiencing what was happening outside a character’s mind, that is by words and actions, but inside it as well. In Jackie’s mind, I am tormented; my heart breaks, I feel the burden of history, its violence and brutality, its poetry and beauty, its possibilities for redemption. I feel sad and frustrated. I feel beautiful and bloody. I like the feeling of haunting Herzog with dignity and class. I like this mind and want to stay for a while. I want to keep trying, haunted still by childhood memories of Humpty Dumpty, to put JFK’s brain back together again.
Inside Valerie Solanas’ mind, I feel pissed and anxious and vengeful but knowing I’m a bad shot, instead of a bullet, I try out my poor swollen tongue, my against that bastard Herzog. As for Herzog’s mind, I am in it from the very beginning of the novel. At first, I must step over empty whiskey bottles and look lustfully through women’s legs; mirrors are only to look at bodies, to pleasure myself, my mind is only to misconstrue and degrade others, especially women, my heart is to deceive, to hide, to secretly despise myself and others. I enter a room where the floors and walls are sticky, filthy and dark. There is loud, cacophonous music piercing my ear drums. There are shelves lined with decaying books, all containing distorted, misleading words about women. Then, suddenly I turn into another room, clean and bright and filled with blank canvases, with art waiting to be created, with empty shelves waiting to be lined with books dripping with truth and historical accuracy. Finally, and most refreshingly, there are new, blank notebooks waiting to be filled. I feel hopeful. I sense change, redemption.
Herzog’s is the representative mind, the Motherboard where in the end all the other minds will merge to form a new and enlightened mind. We can’t help wonder if he’s willing to take in all these other minds, to change, to experience a metamorphosis. He certainly has a long way to go but he’s willing to do it, to plunge finally into a woman’s mind rather than her body. Now in this new incarnation of his mind he has wild, uncertain dreams. He speeds through women’s bodies turned into tunnels. He goes on a Mecca to Coney Island where he rides the Wonder Wheel and observes a hungry three-legged dog, a final, symbolic descent into the underworld, perhaps before his ultimate transcendence.
For Herzog, this is not just a physical Metamorphosis where he wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into an insect, or a butterfly and still thinks like a man or a caterpillar, but it is a Metamorphosis of the mind and spirit, where Herzog must turn the world upside down, as Jove does in Ovid’s Metamorphosis, where” the Dolphins climb trees, and mermaids stare in wonder at cities now underwater.”
Indeed, Caroline Hagood’s ability to merge the
real and the imagined is remarkable. This novel is so well balanced, so
flawlessly navigated in what seems to be an unbalanceable, unnavigable world.
It is rich in language, in metaphor, it blends, mixes, merges almost
everything, the living and the dead, mythology, history, and contemporary
culture. At times it can be heavy and dark, but just as often can be funny and satirical.
And then there are the ghosts, wonderful, enlightened, beautiful ghosts I can
listen to forever. And as for the novel ending in a bang or a whimper, there is
neither, but instead there is a “sharp inhale, the heart flutter, then a shot
of warmth, then some kind of quiet.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ghosts of America: A Great American Novel. Author: Caroline Hagood. Hanging Loose Press, 2021. Paperback, $18. IBSN: 978-1-934909-71-3. 147pages.
Reviewed by Alexis Winters
Caroline Hagood’s novel Ghosts of America: A Great American Novel returns the narrative to women and in doing so gives them the chance to tell their own stories. The main character, Norman Roth III, referred to as “Herzog,” is a professor, Vietnam veteran, and a famous American author. The novel tells the story of a night wherein Herzog is visited by the ghosts of the women he writes about in his novels. Herzog is a perfect depiction of the stereotypical white male professor and author who thinks very highly of himself and doesn’t take women seriously. The two women that visit him are Jaqueline Kennedy and Valerie Solanas. Both novels received great praise and in the words of Hagood, “gotten him laid since the 1980s.” The bottom line is that Herzog is not a character that you root for, or even like.
Throughout the novel, Hagood holds a mirror up to the literary world as her female characters are able to take ownership of their stories and traumas. The weight of the stories is not lost in translation and is even emphasized in the way it’s written. When each woman visits Herzog and has a chance to tell her story it’s captivating since these points of view have largely been ignored in history.
Possibly the most frustrating aspect of Herzog’s character is that he is not misinformed or unaware of the plight of women. He’s only interested in himself and doesn’t deem the women he used in his writing as worthy of his time. He’s only interested in how they can be used to his benefit.
Jackie Kennedy is a woman who rose to power through her husband but kept her power after his death. Rather than a supporting character in her husband’s story, Jackie has a chance to share her own trials and tribulations. Jackie’s story takes up the majority of the novel unsurprisingly.
Valerie Solanas has more anger towards Herzog, as you would expect from a radical feminist. Solanas has little to no interest in helping Herzog as much as she wants to berate and punish him.
One might expect a grand transformation for Herzog or some form of redemption, and he does gain an appreciation for women and what they have dealt with. His big revelation comes from an acid trip at the Museum of Modern Art. I have to wonder if the entire experience of speaking with Jackie and Valerie was the result of a drug induced trip. Regardless, he finds comfort in the last few pages of the novel when he and Jackie Kennedy are sipping tea together. Two characters who have carried heavy weights find solace in each other.
Hagood’s novel critiques the male gaze by telling the story from a man’s point of view and writing women who take back their narrative from men. Hagood has created a novel that contains real history and tells it in a way that it hasn’t been before. Although the ending was a big dissatisfying, I was expecting a more dramatic transformation, the novel is written well, and I believe accomplishes what Hagood had in mind.
- Alexis Winters is a senior at St. Francis College majoring in English and minoring in Communications. She hopes to use her degree in the publishing or editing industry once she graduates.
Monday, August 16, 2021
Poems on Waiting by Isabel Rimanoczy
The wait
is a sacred time
magic, outside of time.
It’s a parenthesis
sketched with our hands
(the hands of the soul).
It’s funny, the wait…
Because it’s a space we fill
with void,
and it’s time we empty
of content.
It’s just that: a wait.
The silence between two events.
Certainly, sometimes
it’s anxiety, impatience,
uncertainty, angst and pain.
But this happens because
we aren’t able to see
its sacred essence.
It’s the denial
of the wait’s being:
To think that it’s the moment
that shouldn’t exist,
that should be filled
with what will come next.
But if you’re able
to listen to the wait
like you hear the voice
of silence
you will be able to enjoy it
and allow yourself to be
in the wait,
simply being.
“Waiting” By Isabel Rimanoczy
Waiting
What a wonderful state
Where one doesn’t have anything
To do
Waiting,
Is letting life low
Letting it come and find us
Surround us, lift us up
Take us along, rock us,
And then drop us
In a new place.
Ah, waiting, miracle and gift
That i sometimes misunderstand
When my ego
Thinks it has to control
Whatever happens.
A present from the skies
An allowed limbo
Time to float.
Parenthesis
That I want to learn to extend
So that my plans
And my attempts to control
Become, them,
The brief parenthesis
Between one wait and another wait.
- Isabel Rimanoczy, Ph.D. is a professor of sustainability studies and the author of The Sustainability Mindset Principles (Routledge 2021). The poems here are reprinted by permission from her book called Exploring My Soul. Visit her website, here: https://isabelrimanoczy.net/
Monday, August 9, 2021
"Digging A Moose From The Snow" by Skaidrite Stelzer - Book Review by Tija Spitsberg
Skaidrite Stelzer, Digging a Moose from the Snow. Finishing Line Press, 2021. $14.99 U.S. 38 pages, paperback. ISBN: 978-1646624553
Reviewed by Tija Spitsberg
In the poetry collection Digging a Moose from the Snow by Skaidrite Stelzer, the speaker ultimately draws the conclusion that
we are all animals participating in shaping our shared landscape and seeking
solutions to secure our survival. The opening poem serves as a preamble
introducing the speaker of the poems by recalling a warning she receives from
the “Pirushke lady” – a wise old sage who predicts the “fatal decline, spiraling
toward death...In a few years your arches will fall/your feet grow hooved/toes
become turtles/your husband will leave.”
What follows is a series of poems, each
describing the trajectory from birth to death, linking our demise to the universal
experience of all creatures; but there are glimmers of hope, especially for our
children who approach the world with optimism. In “Cicada Shells,” “the
granddaughters string them into long necklaces before they learn their fear of
bugs, predicting the inevitable end of innocence.” The closing poem, “The First
to Die,” suggests that we are losing the battle, yet also clings to possible
redemption in the next generation, our children. “The forest now a pile of
tender sticks/All color lost, white bone beneath the sea/Still children look
for stars within the rifts/The first to die will be the coral reef.” This,
however, is undercut by the final line, dictated by its form, the Villanelle,
where the repetition of the final line is determined by its form: “The first to
die will be the coral reef.”
Death comes to all of us, but we struggle to
evade and delay its reality. In the title poem “Digging a moose from the snow” the
struggle for survival is explored through the personification of the moose who
“now knows we are animal/surviving/all of us/as best we can.” A “moose in a
snowbank” emerges as the central symbol for our struggle to survive. This image
solidifies the position the speaker of the poem takes in regard to the human
condition: “the world is cruel/a world that will kill us (it’s true.)” But
like the moose, “we must move against the snow banks/dig deeper than we
believe…surviving all of us as best we can.”
These poems contemplate death and loss, as
well as displacement and the salvation and pain of memory. Stelzer nimbly
navigates this terrain as she explores these challenges through the use of
fantasy, humor and sudden bursts of surrealism to deftly explore the natural
world.
Copyright©2021 by Tija Spitsberg All
Rights Reserved.
Sunday, April 18, 2021
Tribute to Kriben Pillay by Vaneshran Arumugam
Editor’s note: What follows is a tribute to Professor Kriben Pillay, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, who passed away in December 2020, from his nephew, Royal Shakespeare Company actor and Fulbright Scholar, Vaneshran Arumugam.
▬
“I
have known Kriben Pillay my entire life. He was a storyteller through his
writing and teaching, an avid seeker through his study, research and spiritual
quest for understanding and self-mastery. He is my mother’s eldest brother and
I have watched him since my own childhood in the 70’s, when South Africa was a
battleground, as a student, as a teacher, as an activist, as a rebel. The rules
seemed to stretch to fit where he was headed. He travelled the world, met with
luminaries such as J. Krishnamurti, wrote books and songs, mounted plays and
productions, mentored artists and academics.
When days were darkest, with violence in our home, uncle Kriben made it his
responsibility to be present. He was a family man and a connector of people and
stories, which became apparent at any of the gatherings that he would
orchestrate or preside over, a master of ceremony and a Joker extraordinaire.
Articulate and intelligent, his wit belied his consummate readiness to be silly
and to enjoy above all the company of children (I was the first, and my own
daughter the last in the family to know this)
We riffed together on many ideas and worked together on writing and productions
and performances, and I feel that I had a glimpse into every facet of his
diamond personality – vast, containing multitudes. He pointed me to Whitman,
amongst many things.
Let me point you to him now, his award-winning poetry and writings, his legacy
as a teacher and learner, his indelible influence as a father, son, brother,
uncle...friend.”
▬
“Owed to uncle Kriben”
you were always there
like how the moon is
together we did not grow up
though you could play the part quite convincingly
you always let me inside the story
I feel we were always in mid-conversation, few conversations at a time
sometimes few words
looking for a laugh with no excuse
- that irresistible one -
like when a plastic patio chair breaks in super slowmo, delivering a chunky challenger to the ground
or a piece of snot pokes impertinently out of a sincere testimonial’s nose
or, indeed, when a man of esteemed physical prowess trippingly flails his arms at the edge of a wedding stage like the Warner Bros coyote, very nearly almost regaining balance
before taking an almighty backward swan-dive into the grassy deck below, feet in the air.
I wish I could see you watch that moment, because watching you really laugh was a pleasure of the most involuntary proportions and the definition of giddy
We all laughed when you laughed.
by the way, everyone is still amazed by you.
Even if they think they knew the punchline. It hasn’t quite stuck yet that you are light years inside of us now
eternally close
beyond reach
you always hinted at that
times are hard and the chocolates have gotten smaller
and we saw some of the very worst together, arm in arm
father and son sometimes brothers sometimes
but you snuck magic into the jail and it disappeared in the most impossible times
but now is a time for gratitude
as the Phoenix durga rides her tiger into victorious battle against the demon lord and all odds
as the Twofold Tamil Rule in a just world mind rises
as the Cosmic Koeksuster improbably holds to its celestial choreography
and we realise our captaincy
O
great one
you introduced me to the harmonica and telling stories and mastering the Forces
I do these things now, singing my song
they call me uncle someplaces
I was once the apprentice to your sorcery, sir
seeking and taste for truth we shared
that blossoms in me and I’m addicted to its fragrance
you still learn me to see
Like the moon
you are still here even when the sun is out, besieging
dispelling the darkness
when the cool night comes
aum namah shivaya, you’re in our songs
aum namah shivaya, you’re on your way
aum namah shivaya, your turn to play
Saturday, April 17, 2021
Review of Damian Kim's book Cherish the Invisible Mind
Cherish the Invisible Mind: A Plan to Heal Humanity by Defeating Narcissism andNeurosis. Damian B. Kim, M.D. Braugler Books. ISBN: 978-1970063837. $19.99US. Paper. 142 pages.
Dr. Damian B. Kim is a healer, and his words of
wisdom in his new book Cherish the
Invisible Mind offer sound guidance in our age of mental health crises. The
book is excellently written, engaging, and well organized. Drawing on a number
of scientific studies and psychological theories, as well as his own vast
clinical experience, Dr. Kim tackles a range of problems and offers a number of
solutions. For instance, narcissism and ego-centrism found among many younger
Americans is leading to high expectations unfulfilled, competitiveness, and
hence loneliness, depression, and even acts of suicide. Overall, Dr. Kim’s book
is a succinct but commanding appraisal of and relevant response to a host of
mental health disorders, ranging from anxiety and depression to drug abuse and
violence, plaguing the American mind today.
As a highly-trained psychiatrist, Dr. Kim sees that
some neuroses can be cultural; that is, mental health can be negatively
affected or triggered by social conditions immersing people, often unwittingly,
in a materialistic and power oriented society. This predicament is then compounded,
Dr. Kim goes on, by professionally trained counselors who miss the cues or
provide a failing treatment. With a focus on millennials, Dr. Kim’s head and
heart are in the right place: he cares about the future of Americans and the
U.S. This honest approach has not, of course, been embraced by all his peers,
as he is the first to admit.
In an age of rampant psychiatric medications, Dr.
Kim believes the source of people’s problems should be treated using
psychotherapy whenever possible. A major concern of Dr. Kim is the rise of
suicide rates in the U.S., perhaps because, not to oversimplify, the comfort of
the body (using medicines and technology) has taken pride of place over the
health of mind (using talk therapy). So Dr. Kim, as implied in the title of his
book, seeks to penetrate and renew the unconscious mind which can often take a
pernicious grip on one’s life with baneful results. This is more of a
qualitative rather than a quantitative approach and hence, today, often ignored
by many professionals though quite useful. At the same time, the unconscious
mind can be a wellspring of sustenance if properly recognized, gently cared
for, and ably negotiated. That’s the area of Dr. Kim’s expertise.
Dr. Kim rightly draws an analogy between the
deteriorating and widespread harms of neuroses to a pandemic virus spiraling
out of control, also unseen and destructive. Oddly, part of the cause for the
spread of neuroses, he suggests, is capitalistic technology meant to make life
easy and enjoyable, since it draws people apart and distracts them away from
mindfulness and empathy. This book is a profound assessment of the current and
at times superficial practices of psychiatry and yet an eloquent antidote to
this profession’s shortcomings. Dr. Kim’s emphasis on character (using theory
from Karen Horney) and interpersonal relationships correctly asks that
contemporary people, especially the younger generations who will eventually be
in control of government and the economy, engage in self-discovery. Some people
might require professional therapy to do so, but the investment in
self-understanding in a community of others is of paramount importance to Dr.
Kim.
How do we solve these individual and social
problems? There are some remedies that don’t require medication: education to
increase knowledge of neuroses; meditation to help one come to grips with the
self and comprehend the inner experience; psychotherapy, if required. In other
words, answers to these problems are not necessarily in technology, more
possessions, or competition among others but in acceptance and understanding of
the unconscious mind. I found this book easy to read, enjoyable, and
informative; it provides valuable guideposts to the future, and I recommend it
to all students of psychology.
- Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D., professor, departments of
Literature, Writing and Publishing / Interdisciplinary Studies, St. Francis
College, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Four Remembrances of Greg Trupiano
Gregory Trupiano—December 13, 1955 – February 18, 2020.
Greg Trupiano, born in Brooklyn, New York, passed away suddenly in February, 2020. He was Director of Artistic Administration at Sarasota Opera in Florida. He worked there for 33 seasons while maintaining his residence in Brooklyn. Mr. Trupiano made tremendous contributions to the arts community, especially in New York City. He assisted and consulted with several opera and theatre companies and worked various theatre jobs around the City from stage manager to producer to director. Greg’s lifelong passion for and knowledge of Walt Whitman inspired him to launch the Walt Whitman Project, devoted to the performance of Whitman’s words to the public. [Photo credit, Matthew Holler]
I
A man of contrasts. This personality trait enabled Greg intellectually and emotionally to take in Walt Whitman, the history of a nation, New York City, and particularly Brooklyn. Juggling overwhelming concepts?! No problem, Greg fearlessly rushed right into the middle and then managed to step into the light of truth. Being with Greg when he uncovered a fact that didn’t fit logically or hearing him tell stories that on the surface didn’t make sense, Greg would notice my furrowed brow. He would pause with a disarming, sly smile, eyes wide with pleasure. He radiated calmness as if to say, life is complex, it’s okay, together we move forward. He possessed clarity.
Working with Greg was a joy. He was cheerful and prepared. Everyone who associated with Greg knew about his high professional standards and formidable organization skills, skills needed to bring a new opera to life. When Greg was not immersed in American Opera Project’s risky ventures, or in a NYC theatre project, he was an expert in realistic restagings of 19th century Italian grand opera.
Greg taught me about operatically trained voices. He had a command of the technical aspects and could evaluate superior qualities in a human voice. When we finished auditions at AOP headquarters or perhaps after an evening performance, we frequently went to a diner—Greg was familiar with diners in every dark corner of the city—and it was fun and illuminating to compare notes and catch up about concerts and operas that we had attended. For hours we could discuss composers, rising vocal talents, iconoclastic productions, international opera trends, and on and on. Greg had the latest news about singers coming onto the scene, operas premiering around the country (and in Europe), and the gossip about opera powerbrokers, who was in, and who was out (in every meaning of the phrase).
Given Greg’s vast knowledge about opera’s cutting edge, to me it seemed a mistake that Greg was not employed by the big NYC opera companies. At AOP, he volunteered on projects for years, generously returning his small fees to the company. It often struck me as incongruous that his main work was at a conservative opera company in Sarasota, Florida, a “snowbird” resort town, known for programming traditional “warhorse” operas.
At AOP, Greg’s
satisfaction came from developing operas from the ground up, for example, Paula
Kimper and Wende Persons’ Patience
& Sarah, which premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival in 1998.
(Anne Whitehouse was part of our team, too.) Through The Walt Whitman Project,
which he founded with Lon Black, Greg established a successful track record of
producing poetry in outdoor settings, finding a home base at Brooklyn’s Fort
Greene Park, a landmark park that lists Walt Whitman among its founders.
Greg continued to surprise me after more than thirty years. There was always new information coming from him: deeper, more multi-layered understandings of history and tradition, which bore fruit in Sarasota Opera’s Verdi productions. Greg possessed the spirit for the clash of opposing forces and shared his passion with anyone who would listen, in a theater lobby or on a neighborhood sidewalk. His sensitivity and empathy convinced skeptics of the power of poetry and avant-garde music theatre. In casual conversations, Greg generously revealed himself to others and teased out a commonality of interests. Every day I remember and try to use this tool.
-Charles Jarden, Director of Strategic Planning, American Opera Projects
II
I’ve never known anyone like Greg Trupiano, and I don’t expect I ever shall. We met when I joined American Opera Projects in 1995. The programs Greg conceived for American Opera Projects were original, innovative, and memorable. Conversations with Greg about music—genres, compositions, composers, performers, productions—fascinated me. He helped me to become a more discerning listener.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of his character Jay Gatsby, Greg sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. Much of his learning and expertise was self-acquired. He was the most knowledgeable person about music, Walt Whitman, and the history of Brooklyn that I have ever met. He founded the Walt Whitman Project to realize his dream of awakening today’s readers to the beauty and humanity of Whitman’s writing and to connect Whitman’s New York to the current metropolis. Greg’s walking tours of Fort Greene Park and the Prison Ship Monument and Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn are the best walking tours I ever took, enriched by his encyclopedic knowledge and enlivened by the inclusion of musical performances and readings and prints and photographs depicting the sites we were visiting in times gone by. Like opera singers, Greg eschewed microphones on these tours, and for our edification and amusement, he corrected the errors on the historical plaques.
For decades, Greg kept to a set routine, dividing his year between Sarasota and New York City. At the Sarasota Opera, he nurtured many careers and was devoted to the summer opera camp he began for children. Despite his learning, Greg was never pedantic. He was modest and disinclined to talk about himself. He had a genuine interest in others. Aside from his long-distance commutes between New York City and Sarasota, he rarely traveled anywhere, and yet he was one of the most open-minded and least provincial people I have ever encountered.
He had simple tastes. He liked diners and Chinese restaurants. Other than books and music, he did not acquire possessions. His devotions were deep and sustaining. He could be counted on to be punctual. He showed up and forged connections between like-minded people in different artistic communities. His programming was diverse before diversity became a goal. In recent years, he was increasingly committed to education and young people.
As Greg nurtured the careers of many singers, he helped me become a better performer of my own work. Participating in his Walt Whitman programs, I noticed that the singers were invariably better readers than the writers. They came prepared and rehearsed, whereas the writers winged it, and the results showed. I began to understand the many connections between singing and speaking, and I tried to think as a singer when preparing for a reading of my work. When I give a reading, I think of Greg. It is a way for me to keep him with me as a sustaining spirit.
-Anne Whitehouse, writer and former Development Consultant, American Opera Projects
III
Trupiano. That’s how Greg Trupiano signed every missive to me, never Greg. As if we were on a high stakes mission together. And indeed we were. There was a lot to do and time was of the essence. Trupiano was my comrade on a trajectory to, as Whitman would say, “Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”
Trupiano was an Advisory Board member of Compagnia de’ Colombari and, signing on to that role, he became a rare friend to me, to Compagnia de’ Colombari and to all the projects including More Or Less I Am, the opera Judith, The Merchant of Venice and all the others. He listened hard to all of us at board meetings. Civility and practical wisdom marked his every contribution to the company, but nothing replaced his particular joy at witnessing the performances of the actors and singers themselves. They were the heart of the company and their presence was paramount to him.
The Whitman Project was Trupiano’s “urge and urge and urge, always the procreant urge” in which he single handedly brought Walt Whitman into the consciousness of New Yorkers as a force to be reckoned with. In a persistent grassroots movement, he led countless tours of folk around the many neighborhoods of Brooklyn, freely offering knowledge of Whitman and New York history. His lucky auditors always left these itinerant gatherings ecstatic: deepened in their knowledge and renewed in their New York citizenship. If it were up to me, I would designate Trupiano a New York landmark.
Trupiano’s other great love was the opera: he was Associate Artistic Director at the Sarasota Opera where his knowledge was indispensable and where he galvanized a great variety of singers. He was a go-to repository of all things operatic and theatrical. Yet, making connections and bringing people together to serve shared missions was of greatest delight to him. A democratic soul, he relished meeting people, more than anybody I know and, remarkably, kept everyone’s name and history perfectly unmuddled.
Words mattered to Trupiano. If we spoke of something happening, he always kept his word, a surefire bond in a slippery time. I was a beneficiary of that integrity and attention. When Greg Trupiano left us suddenly in February 2020, I was struck by the vast resounding silence his absence carved. Yet just now, now, I begin to hear him challenging and encouraging us all in this extraordinary American moment—along with his beloved Walt, “What is known I strip away….I launch all men and women forward with me into the unknown.”
-Karin Coonrod, Founding Director of Compagnia de’ Colombari
IV
Two of the most important events of my
life happened in 1981. In May, I moved to New York City. Three months later,
August 15, 1981, I met Greg Trupiano. We were at a theatre party in the East
Village. This wasn’t a love at first sight story, but within a year our
relationship evolved into something beautiful and Whitmanic that lasted 38
years. August 15 became our anniversary date. To Greg, the Ides of August.
On my first day in New York, I knew I was finally home. Then Greg appeared and
became my custom Welcome Wagon. He was a native Brooklynite, he loved his city,
and he was eager to show it to me. “He was a welcoming presence” wrote a friend
after his passing. What made him so welcoming? These other descriptors used in
tributes to Greg will explain: kind, gentle, respectful, compassionate,
trustworthy, supportive, generous, inspiring, funny, professional, organized,
smart, a treasure, a true gentleman, an incredible human, a true ray of
sunshine, a class act, one-of-a-kind.
In our early years, we were together all the time, working at the same job
during the day (William Morrow Publishers), rehearsing plays together (me
acting, Greg directing), and seeing performances together (theatre, opera,
cabaret, film). For most of the 1980s, we were in a theatre or opera house an
average of 5 times a week. Broadway, Off- and Off-Off- Broadway, The Met, New
York City Opera.
We wandered the city together. We visited the popular touristy and sought the
obscure. Many of our jaunts were in Downtown Manhattan and the West Side when
Battery Park City was just landfill.
In the late 1980s Greg started getting out-of-town jobs in opera so we’d be
apart for up to 5 months in a year. For 33 years, Greg worked at Sarasota Opera
in Florida and was a vital force there as Director of Artistic Administration.
We managed these relationship fluctuations with ease which was a testament to
the strength of our partnership.
Greg was a fervent Walt Whitman ambassador. He loved people. He created
community. He had a zest and reverence for life. He embraced Whitman’s words on
democracy and the spirit of America.
In 2000 Greg launched The Walt Whitman Project. We produced readings, tours and
related events. Greg’s specialty was Whitman during his Brooklyn years. He
created tours of Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene Park. We
commissioned composers to create music based on, or using, Whitman’s words.
Greg’s intention was to bring the words of Whitman, spoken and sung, to the
people. It was an expression of his celebration of life that he shared with
Walt.
There were some sticky years in Greg’s health story. He almost succumbed to a
subdural hematoma in 2014. In July 2017, Greg began a new chemotherapy regimen
for chronic lymphocytic leukemia that he had been managing since 2004. As a
result, he regained a vibrancy not experienced in several years. His death in
February 2020 was sudden and unexpected.
It was easy for Greg to bolster people’s spirits. He freely gave moral support
and career guidance. He was a good listener. He could make you feel safe and
quickly garner your trust. It made him a positive force for so many people. I was
a fortunate recipient…24/7.
I’m still receiving. I was always intrigued by the final, periodless line in
Song of Myself, and after Greg’s passing it has even more significance.
“I stop some where waiting for you”
-Lon Black, Greg’s life partner and
Artistic Director of The Walt Whitman Project