Celebrating Five Years of Same Sex Marriages in Iowa

This map is slightly behind the times, but I still love it. The federal district courts are starting to play havoc with states where the legislative agenda would never allow this to happen (Utah, did you see that coming?), but in any case, it has been an eventful five years since the first couples in Iowa who share not just love but also a gender could become not just happily but also legally married.

In many ways the title says it all--at this point marriage equality is becoming a part of the fabric of the state, and remarkably, the same thing is happening in almost domino like fashion around the country.  When talking about change within an organization it is said that when 15% of the workplace share something--a race, a gender, an idea for change, whatever it might be--that then they have the power to be heard.  Since 2009 marriage equality has been legalized in enough states that it has the power to be heard.  Unfortunately, the South is nowhere to be found in thiscascadeof change.  They remain first in poverty and last in civil rights.  The only hope is that companies in the future will seek out states where civil rights are clebrated rather than reviled.  I also hope that the reprisals against judges who uphold constitutional rights are not successful in the future.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Once again this semester I find myself reading a book that I have read twice before, and once again I see that I am approaching the book in a way that I had not previously.  Part of it is the familiarity with the story that I have, which allows me to notice other details in a light that I hadn't previously and to think about characters in a different light, knowing what is to come.  The other influence for me was the 2013 movie with Leonardo Dicaprio portraying a strikingly different interpretation of Gatsby from that of Robert Redford's.  Di Caprio's Gatsby is clearly a gangster who is depserately clinging to his ill gotten gains because they are what allow him to compete for Daisy's affection.  Without them he is nothing--both in her eyes and in his own, but the fear that he will lose them both--Daisy and the money--makes him irritable and edgy.  His final act of protecting Daisy makes his life and his death all the more tragic.

This time around I noticed immediately the significance of the opening lines, where Nick quotes his father who said that you have to be generous with people because not everyone had the same advantages in life.  Then the book launches into a character assault on Tom Buchanan, a man who has had every adavantage in life--tremendous family wealth, a Yale education, athletic prowess to name a few--and yet he has squandered it.  He is painted as the villain whereas Gatsby is the anti-hero. 

I wish that I could say that I will take this lesson learned and go back to read some of the classics from my youth to see if I find them altogether different, but somehow I doubt it. There is so much that I have never read and so little that I get read that I just don't see it happening in the near future.  But it would be a great idea.

Donald Sterling Isn't Very--But Then, It Isn't Actually His Name Either

I really have nothing to say that isn't obvious and doesn't go without saying, but I am so incensed that I feel compelled to say it anyway.  First of all, if Donald Sterling doesn't bring any black people to the game, there is no game.  He has no team.  So he is both a racist and not very bright.  Or maybe, at 81, he is cognitively impaired and disinhibited.  Or intoxicated.  Or does this reflect the trend of open disdain that the super rich feel for those who are not? Whatever the reason, may he reap what he sowed.  Sell the Clippers, change Sterling back to it's original Tokowitz, and get out of LA, a city known for its multiethnic culture.

The New York Times today reports that Sterling is well known for his racial intolerance.  In 2009, Sterling paid a $2.725 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department accusing him of systematically driving African-Americans, Latinos and families with children out of apartment buildings he owned.  He has been sued by two former coaches, one of whom declared that Sterling strived for a "Southern plantation style" organization. 

In the 21st century, where everyone's phone is a video recorder and there is a 24/7 news cycle to fill, you have to know that what you say publicly is just that.  Public information.  You have no expectation of privacy in a basketball arena even if you feel that you own the place.  The man is an attorney, after all.  No excuses to be had, and no excuses for being bad.

The worst part is that I am not impressed with professional sports holding players responsible for their actions, so I am not holding my breath that there will be any higher standard for the owners, but here's to hoping that I am wrong, wrong, wrong about that.

Berber Rugs

The Berber people have been weaving rugs since the Paleolithic era and that tradition continues to this day--the rugs are made largely for personal use, but also for sale. 

Morocco's history, and the story of Moroccan weaving begins with the Berbers, the indigenous people of North Africa who had inhabited Morocco for centuries before the first Arab invasion in the seventh century. Today, the major weaving groups of the Middle Atlas and High Atlas mountains are Berber tribes, many of whom still live much as they did centuries earlier.
There are around forty-five different tribal groups, each of which has distinctive designs and sometimes varying weaving and embroidery styles.  While remarkably diverse, Moroccan flatwoven and knotted pile rugs are almost without exception bold in color and lively in pattern. Designs are made up of geometric motifs arranged in seemingly endless variations. Each tribe has its own distinct repertoire of designs and colors significant to the ceremonial and day to day life of the group. These same patterns can be seen in the art forms relating to other areas of tribal life such as in ceramics, architectural decoration, and tattoos worn by Berber women. Although a weaver draws from the vocabulary of designs particular to her tribe, she works at her loom without a diagram or pattern to guide her. As a result, each rug is a unique creation, a celebration both of her tribal identity and her own artistic imagination.

The rugs pictured above have been washed with water and are drying in the sun--they are stunning to look at, and wonderful to walk on.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1599)

Two of my four sons read Hamlet this semester, so I too returned to the play.  The last time that I read it we watched all the readily available film productions at the time, and I was struck by two things.  The first was the depiction of Hamlet's state of mind--mad or not mad, that is the question?  The second was that they all omitted scenes.  'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' was eye opening because their scenes get eliminated routinely, and without having read the play recently you might miss that (I know that I did).

This time around the first act struck me.  Hamlet is by all accounts taking the death of his father very hard, and then his mother, Gertrude, marries his father's brother, Claudius, who becomes king. I am exceptionally poorly schooled in royal ascention, but suffice is to say that the Scandanavian countries shared kings at various times in the centuries leading up to the time of Hamlet, and Denmark had a charter (a sort of constitution along the lines of the Magna Carta) and kingships were appointed rather than inherited.  Hamlet is morose and it could be solely because of his father's death and it could be over the whole family situation.  When he hears the ghost of his father tell him  that Claudius and Gertrude colluded to poison him and requires that Hamlet avenge his death his behavior becomes noticably more erratic.  Crazy or crazy like a fox, that is the question.  Also, did the ghost appear to Hamlet or was it his imagination?  Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo also caught glimpses of the ghost on more that one occasion, but after Hamlet's encounter we don't hear from it again--a clue about how to exact revenge would have been useful, especially as Hamlet does a very poor job of it when all is said and done.  The older I get the more Shakespearean tragedies seem to be about parents screwing up the lives of their children.

Rome--The Series (2005-2007)

This series is great, and it represents the convergence of two things that were working for my youngest son this semester--the saw the first episode in his class on Film Sounds of the Past.  Another of his classes is about the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Republic, which is right about where this movie starts  (ok, it actually starts with the rivalry between Sulla and Marius, which predates Julius Caesar, but not by a long shot.  Caesar was a young soldier at the peak of their power struggle).

The series opens with the end of the Gallic Wars.  Caesar and his men have been in France for 7 years and they are about to ride into Rome victorious.  The first season covers the reign of Caesar, up to his death at the hands of Brutus and Cassius.  There are a few details that do not quite match what the historians say (which is apparently why historians hate historical films--they would rather that people remain completely ignorant rather than that they learn a largely realistic rendition of what happened.  Weird.  Because the more people crave history, the more historians we will need, and not all historians can agree, so why be so uptight about it?  Well, it is posited that they are).  The second season delves into the struggle for power that happens after Caesar's death and ends with Mark Anthony and Cleopatra's suicide and Octavian beginning a long and stable reign in Rome.  Since we have four more emperors to study, we are sad to see the series ended, and that we are left to learn history without visual aids.

Reflections on Earth Day

I have sifted through all the postings of my friends for Earth Day this week, and there are some remarkably beautiful pictures of profound natural beauty on our amazing planet.  That is my usual approach to the remembrance day as well, to focus on the grandeur that is ours.  But not this year. 

This year I am using the post from my friend David Grinspoon, the first Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Astrobiology chair and all around well educated schience guy.  I have always said that the truth is stranger than fiction--as a psychiatrist, I have reason to know that humans often do things that make no sense.  But as conspiracy theories go, does this particular one ring true?  Not for me, because the incedulous things that people do that are hard to beleive are against their own self interests--that is what makes them sound fictional.  In this case, the entities that directly profit from business as usual are the ones who are climate change deniers.  Already we are past the point to respond, so we are reaping the consequences of inaction and will continue to do so for the forseeable future, while these guys are most likely busily buying up water rights around the world.

I just finished reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's book that focuses in part on the role that progressive journalists played in unmasking the corporate corruption at the beginning of the 20th century that led to profound differences between the rich and the poor.  They mobilized public opinion for change that mattered.  Who are the Ida Tarbells and Sam McClures of our age?  We need them ASAP.

The Fes Medina, Morocco

The medina in Fes has two areas--a 9th century area and a 14th century area. The old part is entered through these magnificent blue gates.
The other side of the gate is done in green tiles.  Why?  Blue is the color of Fes and green is the color of Islam and of peace.  It is a wonderful way to start an adventure in the narrow crowded medina, which houses thousands of people as well as hundreds of businesses.  Our guide told us that if we got separated from the group that we were to stand still.  They would find us.  If we kept moving it would be impossible to decipher where we might end up and we would be on our own.  "Does everyone have cab fare and the name of the hotel?"

This is the clock house, which is where Maimonides lived when he was a student in Fes after fleeing his home in Cordoba after the Spanish Inquisition.  It is just one of many cool architectural structures that the Fes medina contains. 

Frozen (2013)

This movie won best Animated Film for 2013 and the song 'Let it Go' won best song.  In addition, I heard all sorts of film people talk about just how fabulous this movie was, I real return to the old halcyon days of Disney animation with a strong plot and music that supported the plot and propelled it forward.

I heard the song writers, Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez talk with Terry Gross on Fresh Air and I really liked them.  They were writing songs that break free of the princess waiting to be rescued by a prince and into the realm of controlling your own destiny.  Bobby did songs for 'The Book of Mormon', so they are not mono dimensional composers, and they had a good sense of humor about the whole Oscar event, describing in hilarious detail what it is like to be walking behind a big name star on the red carpet, like Sandra Bullock, and when she stops at the appointed 'X' stops the cameras  are going crazy for her, and then you stop, and one guy takes pity on you and clicks one photo.

The problem I had with the movie was the parents.  They have a daughter who has special winterizing talents which she is ill equipped to control and one night while playing with her sister, she almost gets her killed.  So the parents decide that the family should hide themselves away from the world and that the sisters should have no contact with each other.  Not a very empowering approach to a problem, and not one that teaches the sisters how to deal with life once their parents die.  So as a parent I thought it was a terrible story, and even good music and an exotic setting could rescue it for me.

The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin

When I turned 50 and started realizing that I had been out of school for a very long time indeed and that it might be prudent to do something about my education that went beyond reading the paper and a good magazine or two, I started to pick up non-fiction books, mostly things that were recommended by people who actually like non-fiction.  In the handful of years since that started, the one person I have read more about than anyone else is Teddy Roosevelt.  But this book is not so much about him but about his role in the time that he lived.

The subtitle of the book is 'Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism'.  I knew little about Taft and absolutely nothing about the journalists that wrote at the time they were rising to their respective golden ages, and it is a very good story that is well told here. The thing that is best about the book is that it reminds the reader that there was a time in the not so distant past that public opinion about social injustices perpetrated by companies who owned politicians could change the way those industries wer regulated.  The change agent in Roosevelt and Taft's time was a combination of the President and investigative journalists.  The catuionary tale here is that it appears that the hey day of investigative journalism is well behind us.  The advent of the internet and with it people who write content at no charge has led to the decline of people who write content for a living, and those are the people we need on the job in order to uncover irregularites.  Now that the Supreme Court has lifted any cap on how much a company can openly contribute to a Congressional candidate (not to mention what they get behind closed doors), we are going to need investigations into accountability.