the cassandra pages

A View from the UK

I was very happy to discover that an interesting and sympathetic review of Going to Heaven: The Life and Election of Bishop Gene Robinson appeared in the January 26th issue of Church Times, the leading worldwide Anglican newsweekly (published in London, but independent of the Church of England hierarchy.) Thank you to Leigh Hatts for such a careful reading and thoughtful discussion of my book.

Living in A True Human Context

Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and “one body,” will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from the failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another’s achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above all, in my integration in the mystery of Christ.

Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island

Received, with much quiet gratitude, in today's mail from a steady spiritual friend in England. Thank you, M.

Name the Baby Panda

A few days ago I noticed this page in China Daily, requesting names for 18 baby pandas about to be moved out of their nursery. Over 30,000 entries were received prior to today's naming ceremony at a nature preserve in China's Sichuan Province. The BBC has a photo gallery of the event, and the eighteen five-to-seven-month-old panda cubs.

I've always had a sort of emotional reaction to pandas, maybe because I was very fond of a large stuffed toy panda that I had when I was little - it was about the same size I was, and I used to dance with it; I can remember exactly how its fuzzy "fur" felt. As a grown-up, visiting Washington D.C., I once begged my brother-in-law to take me to the Washington Zoo to see the giant pandas that have been part of the zoo's endangered-species breeding program since the first pair arrived in 1972, after Richard Nixon's visit to China. I have a love-hate relationship with zoos - I can't stand the idea of animals being taken out of their habitats, confined, and displayed -- and yet I am fascinated to see them; I'm appalled by extinction and glad that there are breeding programs designed to return animals to the wild, though I find it terribly sad that these programs, and captivity, are necessary for the preservation of species.

I had never seen a giant panda, and just wanted to. It was feeding time when we arrived, and we could only catch glimpses of the panda, working its way through a pile of green bamboo, but I would swear to you that it looked as much like a man in a panda-bear costume as a real animal - it was uncanny.

Addendum, Sunday morning: I'm really unsure how I feel about all of this. I've just been viewing the current Washington, D.C. pandas - mother Mei Xiang and her young cub, Tai Shan, on the "Animal Planet" webcam, in their enclosure at the "Fujifilm Panda Habitat" at the zoo. There are cute pictures of the cub, and information that ranges from the scientific and educational to the totally commercial. Pandas raise money for the zoo, and also for panda preservation. The popularity and commercialization of all the "guest" pandas since Ling-Ling go hand-in-hand (the giant pandas are on loan to America from China; they are here for study and as part of the effort to breed giant pandas for return to the wild), but I had no idea how out-of-hand the economic exploitation and apologetics seem to have gotten. Humans think pandas are cute: bears remind us of ourselves - it's a natural money-maker. I'm sure the pandas have done a great deal for the Washington Zoo - and, of course, in addition to the obvious "Save the Giant Panda!"message, the animals are also being used as symbols of cooperation and good will between our two governments in the absence of effective long-term environmental policies. What I need to read up on is how successful the breeding program has actually been, and what the chances are of these animals ever becoming unendangered, as China's natural habitat shrinks even further.

FACTS: (from a BBC article last summer stating that there may be as many as 3,000 wild pandas - twice as many as previously thought)

- Half of the panda's mountainous bamboo habitat was lost between 1974 and 1988

- Agriculture, logging and China's huge population rise have all played a role in the panda's downfall

- There are now 40 panda reserves in China compared to 13 two decades ago
- and this big fact: American zoos "rent" their pandas from China to the tune of $1,000,000/year per breeding pair. When the cub was born this past year in washington, the zoo paid China $600,000.

What is the right thing to do? I am all for conservation and efforts to preserve species, but if wild habitat preservation is not an intrinsic part of the effort, how can it possibly succeed? Will we end up with the Fujifilm Panda Park, a fenced enclosure somewhere with the last remaining "wild" pandas living in it, followed by 24-hour webcams, and surrounded by souvenir stands selling t-shirts? There is something incredibly sad and exploitative about all of this, beyond the  potential for extinction itself. Do any readers have more information? Opinions?

Cairo

A cafe in Old Cairo, from a photo essay by Patrick Donovan (thanks, Patrick!) at UrbanPhoto

When J. was in Damascus with his father some years ago, he wrote me letters every night. One of the things he described most vividly were his visits to cafes like this, where the patrons - almost entirely men - go to drink strong Arab coffee, talk, and smoke narghilas (sheeshas, hookahs) - the water pipes my father-in-law calls "hubble-bubbles." J. brought one back with him -  of blue glass with gold designs on the surface - and once in a long while we used to set it up in the late afternoon on our back porch in Vermont and lazily smoke the sticky apple-soaked tobacco while gazing out at the garden. We never quite got the proper hang of keeping the fire going so the pastime was not as relaxing as it was supposed to be. In a cafe like the one shown above, you order the kind of tobacco you want and the narghila is brought to your table; the attendants periodically come around with fresh hunks of charcoal that they manipulate with little silver-colored tongs, fiddling with the fire in each narghila, while the patrons drink endless little cups of thick coffee and discuss their world...

There are a few authentic Middle Eastern cafes like this in Montreal, but so far we haven't visited one, probably because neither one of us really likes smoking or being in smoky atmospheres, but they are an intrinsic part of the fabric of all Middle Eastern cities - as Patrick's beautiful photographs show so well.

Al-Ahram Weekly, from Cairo, has always been one of the best Middle Eastern newspapers, and I like reading it online, for its cultural articles as well as its political reporting. The last issue had two pieces I wanted to pass along here - a first-person account by Hadeel Al-Shalchi of her first-ever visit to the Cairo Book Fair - the largest event of its kind in the Middle East, and a review of a new book by Zahi Hawass, Mountains of the Pharaohs: The untold story of the Pyramid Builders, from The American University in Cairo Press (2006) that I thought looked like a fascinating and new discussion of a very old topic.

But the book in review that appealed to me most was Other Routes: 1500 years of African and Asian Travel Writing, by Tabish Khair, Justin Edwards, Martin Leer & Hanna Ziadeh, eds., from Oxford: Signal Books, 2006. The review suggests that the book is too long and would have benefited by sharper editing shears, but the idea of a volume aimed at a non-European view of world travel seems very appealing to me. This one apparently ranges from the Arab journals of Ibn Battuta and the wandering Japanese poet Basho to many lesser-known travelers. The review itself is quite interesting, and begins with this poem, attributed to Imam al-Shafi:

Travel! Set out for pastures new
Life tastes richer when you have road-worn feet.
No water that stagnates is fit to drink,
For only that which flows is truly sweet.

Being an Author

As I browse blogs, and go to parties where creative types gather, and talk to a lot of the people I already know, it's clear that the web hasn't tarnished the patina of that holy grail of literary desire: the published book of one's own. I am here to tell you, lustful ones: if you get what you want, you will also get a lot of things you don't want and never anticipated.

Thinking back, my own naiveté embarrasses me. Having spent three years researching and writing a book, never knowing if it would be published but fervently hoping so, I dreamt all kinds of dreams. Even when I caught myself doing that, and really looked at what I was imagining might happen if the book got published - and then reigned myself in, laughing at my fantasies - I still didn't predict the eventual reality with any sort of accuracy.

I was right that Going to Heaven would find a publisher who believed in it, and readers who appreciated it. I was wrong about the publisher's ability to control what happens after the book gets onto the shelves and online: I had no idea whatsoever about the market forces, political decisions, and personal relationships that determine what gets reviewed where, and why; what gets talked up; which books are considered hot and what makes them so. I had no idea about the sums of money that exchange hands in this business, or the schmoozing that goes on, or how much small presses are at the mercy of capitalist pressures from the big companies above them, and their own tenuous cash flows.

My publisher, Soft Skull, is a star in the world of independent publishing; the man at the helm, Richard Nash, is a winner of the Miriam Bass Award for creativity in marketing, and he is a tireless champion of independent publishing and the edgy, often controversial titles he chooses to bring out not because they are going to make anyone, including himself, rich, but because they deserve to be published. Small publishers typically have press runs of a few thousand; I found out the other day, to my surprise, that a lot of university presses often are happy to sell 500 copies of a given book. Authors and publishers have to work together to sell the books, drum up press stories and reviews, and work on unconventional ways of getting the word out about a given title. The books are often distributed through consortiums, since most of these publishers are not large enough to have their own distribution. And while I knew that there had been a lot of consolidation in the publishing world, I didn't know that this was happening to distribution companies too.

So it came as a shock to me to hear, some weeks ago, that the parent company of our own distributor had filed for Chapter 11 - and then as a worse shock that our distributor, the largest and most reputable for independent publishers in America, was thus tied up in a huge bankruptcy as well. The fate of thousands and thousands of warehoused books by scores of authors, as well as months of royalty checks, is up in the air - and, of course, with them, hangs the fate of many independent publishers as well. My book is still selling, and still available, thankfully. I hope I'll see a check one of these days, but I'm not holding my breath.

The other thing I didn't anticipate was the bizarreness of some of the reviews. You, as the author, have no control over how people read your book either - and it's quite astonishing what people find, or don't find, inside it -- and how uncaringly they sometimes express their opinions. I've learned a lot about reading from being a published author; I don't think I will ever read a book, or comment on a book, in quite the same way again, but I hope I've always been aware of the incredible risk any artist takes when they put their work out there in front of the public. That act alone deserves respect. On the other hand, some commenters have thoughtfully disagreed with decisions about what I followed and expanded upon, and what I merely sketched; others have complained of the reverse - that there was too much detail. I anticipated those sorts of comments, and have appreciated them, actually, especially when the critic has acknowledged that an author has to make those decisions based on who the intended audience is. In a complicated work, you can't possibly please everyone, or follow every thread to its full extent; you have to choose, and know you'll be criticized. And even people who were critical about content-decisions have said the book was well written - thank God for that!

But the somewhat negative or ambivalent experiences must be held up alongside the positive ones: the thoughtful, careful, often glowing reviews and responses from many friends and fellow bloggers as well as strangers, and the surprising letters and stories from readers for whom the book opened a door, or eased some pain, or became a way of saying to someone they loved, "Here, this will help you understand how it has been for me." I've been grateful for the  stories told to me second-hand, and especially for the occasional phone call or letter from someone I've never met.

The other night I got a call from an Episcopal priest who lived across the street from us when I was three; that family moved away before I can really remember, but kept in touch with my parents at Christmastime. The man on the phone said, "You won't remember me, but I've been so happy to read your book..." and I was able to immediately reassure him that I knew exactly who he was. He is, like my own father, in his early 80s now; his first wife had died; his sons are middle-aged like me. We had a wonderful visit, connected by that brief intersection fifty years ago, but also by a shared love not only of the church, but of a vision for what it can mean, and our two different ways of living that out: he in ordained ministry, and myself as a lay person. He didn't have to find me, and call me, but he did; I won't forget it.

Instead of feeling exalted by all of this, as I suppose I anticipated in my wild moments, I am quite humbled. And, I hope, a little bit wiser.

Women in Architecture

An article in the prominent Israeli newpaper Ha'aretz, "A Skirt of Concrete and Cement," about Israeli female architects, notes that while 52% of the students in Israeli architecture programs are female, "the average salary of a female architect in the public sector is 10 percent lower than that of a man in a similar position. And among the 14 largest architectural firms, which employ 40 managers, only five are women." It went on to state:

Things are not so different in other parts of the world. It is therefore not surprising that among all the active female architects in the world, there is only one super-star: British architect Zaha Hadid (whom they always refer to as "a great man"). She once explained in a newspaper interview why she thought there were no outstanding female architects in the world. "There were some well-known female architects," she said, "but they were always part of a man-wife team. Architecture demands dedication 24 hours a day. When women take a break to have children, it is hard for them to go back to it."

 

It's a curious thing, and I can only speculate on the reasons  - architecture is certainly a macho profession, with the largest and most prestigious buildings commanding huge sums of money and having design committees controlled both fiscally and stylistically by men.

Zaha Hadid, the exception, was born in Baghdad in 1950, studied in Switzerland, England, and Beirut, and now lives and works in London. I have known about her quite fascinating work before, mostly because of publicity about a Guggenheim Museum exhibition of her designs earlier in 2006. An interview by Teri Gross with Hadid, after she won the prestigious Pritzker Prize, is in the NPR archives.

Amahl

In today's news, I saw that opera composer Gian Carlo Menotti has died, at age 95, and it made me think back to my childhood, when watching his best-known opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, was a big part of our family Christmas tradition. The television opera was shown on The Alcoa Hour every year between 1951 and 1966 - which certainly coincides with my growing-up years. I'm not sure we watched every single year, but it has to have been close. We never owned a recording, but I find I can recall many of the arias and remember a lot of the visual settings and movements of the actors, from the mother chastising Amahl for telling fibs, to the arrival of the three kings ( "This is my box! this is my box! I never travel without my box!"...."and in the third drawer I keep...licorice!!") to the sentimental ending when Amahl goes off with the kings to Bethlehem.

It's odd, how ingrained memories like this become, and how you don't even consider them again until something reminds you. I never realized it, but whenever I think of "the star in the east" my mental picture comes from the opening scene of that television special, as old now as I am. I had no idea that I'd internalized that music so much, nor had I ever thought, at the time or since, about the loosely-Arab setting of the opera itself. I remember some protests by my father in later years, when he really thought he'd like to watch something else, and I remember how some of the lines became a joke between my mother and me - she had a funny, somewhat sick sense of humor that she kept mostly under wraps, but we'd look at each other at certain moments and one of us would mime, "I can walk! I can walk!": Amahl's cry when offers his only possession, his crutch, to the kings to take to the Christ Child, and is miraculously healed.

Amahl was so 50s, wasn't it? But that's what I grew up on: musical comedies, black and white television, Ed Sullivan. Gian Carlo Menotti was criticized for his sentimentality, even schlockiness - the comments made it into his obituary. What I never realized until right now is that it was Amahl that first made me appreciate opera, growing up in a culture where that art form was not even on the radar. But my father was a fine singer, as was his sister, and he always remarked on the better voices we'd hear on the television or the radio. I learned to listen and to think about the differences, and eventually to start to try to see what it was about certain music - especially vocal music - that moved me so deeply. That very eclectic musical background, gratefully, also kept me from becoming a musical snob: I enjoyed hearing Leslie Uggams as much as Mario Lanza or Beverly Sills, and still do.

There was a long hiatus without any performances after 1966, and later on, a new version of Amahl was released starring Teresa Stratas, set in the Holy Land. We watched it and didn't like it; it felt too forced, too produced; too contrived. There was something perfect about the original cast. And other people must have agreed: the new production never became popular like the first one had. I hope Gian Carlo Menotti wasn't hurt by the criticism, and knew how much pleasure he had given to families like ours, but I wonder: I think he wanted to be considered a top-flight opera composer, and he never really made it. He inhabited a strange place in-between musical comedy and opera, perhaps, during a time in American history that was receptive. I'm sure I'd find Amahl embarrassingly sentimental now, but it might not keep me from getting weepy at the same moments, when people at the extremes of poverty and wealth are both transformed by revealing their humanity to each other. It's sad that we've become so cynical.