The Essentials

Two family tragedies fuel a debut collection of poems, “The Second Night of the Spirit” (CavanKerry Press, 2009), by Bhisham Bherwani ’92.

Childhood encephalitis left his older brother with a severe mental handicap; years later his father’s unexpected death left a gaping emptiness in the carefully calibrated family dynamic.

Bherwani chronicles his brother’s illness and how he and family members cope with the unforgiving reality. In the poem that shares the book’s title, he imagines an attempt to enter his brother’s damaged brain, urging Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, to visit, heal, bless and weep. “Hemlock and Hellebore” honors his father’s unsettling death with references to poisons.

The world Bherwani creates “is a deeply moving place to be,” writes Chard deNiord in the foreword, “a real place as well as an internal stage on which a powerful family drama is played out in originally conceived, highly personal poems that make universal connections.”

- Susan Kelley

The fall issue of Ezra, Cornell’s quarterly magazine, is now available on campus and online.

This issue explores the creative process and the example of Cornell’s creative writing program. The creative process is essential to the development of great writers and poets, and sometimes that process includes taking courses in creative writing. But creative writing programs, while central to the humanities, also benefit those who do not aspire to become published authors, from lawyers to engineers. Even students taking a single creative writing class can find that it aids their ability to communicate across disciplines.

Also in the issue: The Africana Center turns 40, how athletes spent their summer vacations and what we can learn from hatching long-dormant eggs. Two new feature spots also debut – a New York City page and a “Cornell People” feature.

Ezra is available free in the Day Hall lobby, at the Cornell Store and Statler Hotel; complete content plus links to multimedia extras are posted on the magazine’s Web site, where you also can download a PDF version of the magazine or “flip through” a virtual paper issue in a Flash version.

Ezra is published by the Cornell Chronicle in collaboration with the Division of Alumni Affairs and Development. For subscription information, e-mail Ezra magazine.

- Joe Wilensky

The best teachers are not always the ones who teach us the most in class, or the ones we choose initially or consciously to be our mentors. Sometimes, they are simply the ones who love the thing we love, or who guide us by example.

“The Calculus of Friendship” (Princeton University Press) is the story of a student, Cornell mathematician Steve Strogatz, and his teacher, high school calculus teacher Don Joffray – and their intersection over 35 years.

For most of those years, the two corresponded sporadically, in ebbs and flows, as they each lived their own lives. “A lot has happened to us over the last 30 years,” Strogatz said at a reading Sept. 10 at Buffalo Street Books. “But in our letters to each other we don’t talk about those things. We just do math problems.”

It was enough … until an offhand comment by his wife, Carole, made him wonder.

He went back to see Joffray; and discovered that while his own math expertise had long surpassed his teacher’s, he continued to learn from the man he calls “a shining star of generosity and humility.”

“Joff is brave about change … the changes that calculus can tame, and the ones it cannot. He confronts them all, and not … with his mind alone but also with his heart,” he writes.

Strogatz will discuss “The Calculus of Friendship” with actor Alan Alda this Sunday, Sept. 13, at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

Read more about the book in Inside Higher Ed; and watch a lecture Strogatz gave in Rochester last spring.

And have a box of tissues handy.

- Lauren Gold

We heard through the Cornell grape, oops, make that ivy-vine, that some CIT staffers recently published a cookbook – “CIT Cooks” – for charity. When we asked one of the organizers, Jim Haustein, an adviser in the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, how it came about, he wrote:

“Well, a long history here. At Maple 120, there’s this table in the coffee room … It seems to have become a place where folks put stuff they don’t need any more and just want to give away. It’s sort of an unofficial custom around Maple 120! A few [people] saw some cookbooks there that a local school district did, and we said ‘Hey, we LOVE to eat, that sounds like fun!’

“Well, there was this issue of what to do with the profits … Meanwhile we’re always talking about our pets, so we said, ‘Why not the SPCA?’

“After talking to the SPCA, they were really glad to be a part of this. (Fabulous was the word they used.) So we got approval from our management and from the university to sponsor an event … and we began to collect recipes.

“Our cover is a picture of the CIT Network Operations Center at Rhodes Hall … decorated for the purposes of the picture with a distinctive Cornell theme!

“Recipes? … Well here are a few … linguine with red clam sauce, roasted asparagus, cowboy caviar, chocolate wave zucchini bread, vegetarian black bean burgers, buttermilk sugar cookies, cranberry coffee cake, amaretto fruit dip and even ‘peanut puppy poppers’ for, well, … your puppies!”

Mmmm, makes us hungry.

The cookbook costs $12 and can be ordered through Jim Haustein, Sandra Boles or Kathie Struble. All proceeds will be donated to the Tompkins County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals.

- Susan S. Lang

Professor emeritus of art Stephen Poleskie, who taught at Cornell for 33 years and was known around town for his aerial theater – creating 4-D designs in the sky with the smoke from an aerobatic biplane he piloted – has spent much of his retired life writing. The fruits of that labor include his third book, “Grater Life” (Wasteland Press), which was published earlier this year.

The book is a collection of short stories interwoven into a dialogue between a retired sculptor, who is dying of AIDS in a dreary Pennsylvania nursing home, and his only visitor, a hospital volunteer/ jingle writer who once served in the Peace Corps. With no one else to talk to, the AIDS patient increasingly opens up, revealing more and more about his difficult and sordid past – which includes struggles with academia, the art world and health care system, body searches by the Sierra Leone police, and humiliation at the hands of dominatrixes – and his visitor reciprocates.

Described as witty, eloquent, daring and irreverent by reviewers, “Grater Life” is in paperback only. Poleskie also has photographs in a three-person show at the Terrain Gallery in New York City. To see some of his photos and more information on his book, see his Web site.

- Susan Lang

Why do people get married? Policy analysis and management professor H. Elizabeth Peters explores the question in ‘Marriage and Family: Perspectives and Complexities,’ co-edited by Peters and Ohio State University sociologist Claire Kamp Dush.

The book, published by Columbia University Press, explores the motivation to marry and the role of matrimony in a diverse group of men and women from a variety of perspectives, including historical, cross-cultural, gendered, demographic, socio-biological, and social-psychological. Comparing empirical data from emerging family types (single, coparent, gay and lesbian, among others) and studies of traditional nuclear families, Peters and Kamp Dush also consider the effect of public policy and recent economic developments on the practice of marriage, and the stabilization or destabilization of family.

Cornell historian Dominick LaCapra examines the relations among intellectual history, cultural history and critical theory in his new book, “History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence”, released in May by Cornell University Press.

The book, LaCapra’s 13th, examines how historians treat and are simultaneously implicated in the traumatic processes they attempt to represent. LaCapra also investigates violence’s impact on various types of writing and establishes a distinctive role for critical theory in the face of an insufficiently discriminating aesthetic of the sublime.

“In ‘History and Its Limits,’ Dominick LaCapra addresses some of the most important issues facing intellectual and cultural historians today … and does so in a way that is provocative, engaging and instructive,” writes Wesleyan University scholar Ethan Kleinberg. “The essays are far ranging, but LaCapra’s insights are exact, and he proves a sure guide through complex ethical terrain.”

Going for a hike? Check out “Field Guide to the Cayuga Lake Region: Its Flora, Fauna, Geology, and History,” a new book by James Dake and colleagues at the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) and the Cayuga Nature Center (CNC).

The field guide focuses on the areas surrounding Cayuga Lake, with sections on local history and geology, and descriptions of plant life and wildlife found across the region.

The guide is ideal for hikers, summer camps and those who simply want to explore the area, says Paula Mikkelsen, PRI’s associate director for science and director of publications. “I’ve already used it in my own backyard,” she said.

Author Dake acts as the liaison between PRI and CNC, fostering the collaboration between the two organizations. The book was funded with a grant from the Triad Foundation and published by PRI.

“Field Guide to the Cayuga Lake Region” can be purchased online at museumoftheearth.org and at the Museum of the Earth’s gift shop.

Sociology professor Richard Swedberg writes about Alexis de Tocqueville and edits Max Weber in two new books about political economy in the 19th century.

In “Tocqueville’s Political Economy” (Princeton University Press), Swedberg “persuasively presents Tocqueville as a creative and original analyst of economic topics,” writes Tocqueville expert and author James T. Schleifer in a cover review. “Swedberg’s work focuses especially on Tocqueville’s way of thinking, and is a fresh, outstanding addition to contemporary Tocqueville scholarship an to the study of modern economic thought.”

In the new edition of “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (Norton Critical Editions), Swedberg edits four critical essays – and contributes one of his own – on Weber’s landmark 1904 tome.

“From the moment that it was published, Weber’s study has led to a stormy debate that is still going on,” Swedberg writes. “Its readers either admire the arguments in ‘The Protestant Ethic’ or dislike them.”

The summer issue of Ezra, Cornell’s quarterly magazine, is now available on campus and online.

This issue looks at how Cornell, tucked away in what some call “centrally isolated” upstate New York, reaches out to the developing world. The cover story, “Working With the World,” explores how Cornellians leverage their resources to tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems in agriculture, health and population growth. At the same time, Cornell students are being trained as global citizens, benefiting from early engagements with other countries and cultures.

Also in the issue: how the Willard Straight Hall takeover 40 years ago launched an era of change; new books from Cornell-related authors; Cornell Big Red’s record-setting winter season; and student spring break outreach efforts, from Florida to Belize.

Ezra is available in the Day Hall lobby, at the Cornell Store and Statler Hotel; complete content plus links to multimedia extras are posted on the magazine’s Web site, where you also can download a PDF version of the magazine or “flip through” a virtual paper issue in a Flash version.

Ezra is published by the Cornell Chronicle in collaboration with the Division of Alumni Affairs and Development. For subscription information, e-mail Ezra Magazine.