Author Archives: Anna Canning

Discussing science & religion

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Prof. Sloan’s talk last Wednesday about the trial of Galileo explored the question of contradictions between religion and science. I agree that in the case of Galileo it seems as much a question about the power of the church as an institution as religion in itself (although those are deeply intertwined). One point I appreciated from the talk was Prof. Sloan’s suggestion that people can commit themselves to science and the advancement of scientific research and discovery while at the same time remaining personally religious. As Prof. Sloan noted, this position is not only respectful of individuals’ differing beliefs but also constructive of an environment that enables discussion of the divergences between scientific and religious thought among people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs. A student group on campus recently was handing out free copies of a book which (I think, I haven’t read it) explores this question – religion in a scientific age. I wonder if anyone else received or read the book – it probably could add to this discussion by providing further examples of ways in which religion might coexist with, or challenge, science.

Crisis and Abstraction?

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The refugee crisis is playing out, in large part, far from the US, and given the distance it’s easy for the situation to become somewhat of an abstraction to us. Through media coverage, we understand the numbers of people moving, the dangerous and often tragic conditions of their travel, the pressure on European governments (and our own) to look for a solution, the security questions raised and debated (especially now following the Paris attacks). One small point that stood out to me in the talk was that one (or maybe more, I can’t remember) of the volunteers in Hungary that Prof. Case had spoken to felt a similar kind of abstraction. Despite having worked many long days handing out food, water, and other necessities to passing migrants – a face-to-face interaction that you might expect to concretize their understanding of the migrants and their situation – they still felt as though the migrants were kind of anonymous individuals just passing through. Part of the reason for this feeling was that they were so busy preparing and distributing the meals that they really didn’t spend any considerable time with the migrants (and even if they had, language barriers likely could have prevented them from communicating meaningfully with them). So even to those providing assistance along the migrants’ path, the migrants themselves could remain a kind of abstraction, or somehow removed. I think this is troubling. Distance from a problem only makes it easier to choose inaction in response. Maybe there is potential for media coverage of migrants’ stories to help bridge that gap.

Representations of nature

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Like just about everyone who attended Prof. Harvell’s documentary screening, I was deeply impressed by the quality, the detail, and the magnificence of the Blaschka glass pieces. They are stunning likenesses, and its amazing, inspiring, and humbling to remember that they were created in the late nineteenth century with fastidious observation and handcrafting in place of today’s more advanced technology. I was also interested by the function of the glass creatures – as teaching models. While instruction with models still persists today, I can’t imagine such fragile and unique pieces of art playing that role. Without the alternative of video footage and projector, or mass manufactured plastic model, the use of glass seems much more natural. In a sense it’s sad that the classroom functionality of these incredible artworks has become obsolete. It confines them to glass museum cases, where they will be admired, but won’t play such an integral role in the study of the life they represent.

Dr. Harvell’s search for the marine life recreated in the glass sculptures is likewise an inspiring, humbling, and, in some cases, troubling thing. Like the Blaschkas, Dr. Harvell and David O. Brown’s work harnesses the power of human technology and observation to give a wide audience a closeup look at some of the oceans’ most bizarre and beautiful life forms. For most of us (I assume) the times that we really turn our attention to these organisms are few and far between. Fragile Legacy asks us to do just that. Looking at these creatures, I am amazed by their diversity and their outlandish forms. What’s also striking is their fragility. Pollution, climate change, and disease are true threats, as certain moments of Dr. Harvell’s search (like the discovery of reefs filled with dying sea stars) remind us. Reminders alone don’t solve the problems plaguing ocean life, and the natural environment more broadly, but they’re necessary if we’re going to commit to altering our behavior to address them.

An afternoon at GIAC

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This past Saturday I participated in Into the Streets. My group volunteered with the Greater Ithaca Activities Center, raking and weeding the garden. The day was a little rainy for it (luckily we narrowly missed showers before and after our time there) and we were a little short on rakes, but overall I really enjoyed the afternoon. After we finished working, a director at the center explained to us that the everyday maintenance tasks we’d been doing were sometimes neglected at the center because they have a limited staff and other duties, like keeping the inside of the center clean, take priority. I am glad that we were able to meet a need at the center and contribute, in that small way, to the operation they are running.

I also learned a little bit about the programming that the GIAC runs – they have tutoring and mentoring programs for local kids, and a longstanding boxing program that has produced noteworthy boxers in the past. It’s great to see the center providing these services to the Ithaca community. It’s one way that people can come together and get to know and support one another. That closeness and support ties communities together. I’m grateful for Into the Streets for providing us with a way to take part in the greater Ithaca community, even if this time it was just for the afternoon. I hope there are many more afternoons to come.

Amy Winehouse – behind the name

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While watching the documentary, I was struck by how intensely personal her work was. Before seeing the film I was vaguely acquainted with Amy Winehouse – I knew a couple of songs from Back to Black (Tears Dry on Their Own, Rehab, and You Know that I’m No Good), I recognized her distinctive style in music and fashion, and, lastly, I heard about her death when it happened. Her persona, her upbringing, her journey to stardom and its impact on her life were things I had never learned about or given any thought.

When I gained insights into all of these aspects of her through the documentary, her songs (her lyrics, really) fell into a whole new light. The nonchalant defiance of Rehab is much more difficult to accept knowing the tumultuous events of Amy’s life that inspired the song, and the toll such events ultimately took on her. Lines like “if my Daddy thinks I’m fine”, which are unconcerned and almost playful at first, are painful to the listener who has watched the Amy’s father leave her when she is young, only to return to her later on when she becomes successful, more as a manager than a parent, and goad her into taking on a destructively heavy load. The intense and unstable relationship between Amy and Blake also heightens the impact of songs like Tears Dry on Their Own.

When thinking about Amy’s public persona and private life, there’s no getting around the tragedy that the former helped to cause for the latter. Amy states in the movie that she doesn’t want to be famous, it would drive her mad (or something to that effect). Unfortunately, she had less choice in the matter than that. Amy suffered a great deal on account of her celebrity; it’s sad and frustrating to watch her go down that path.

West Campus is the Best Campus!

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I was really impressed by last week’s tour of West Campus. First, it uncovered several things that I didn’t even know existed on West: a gym, a war memorial room, a secret society, a secret society headquarters, and a hidden tunnel. In addition to exposing these new places, the tour also explained some of the history of West Campus, as well as of Cornell more generally, and it’s really striking! Cornell doesn’t have the elite background you might expect given its reputation today – Ezra Cornell started out as a farmer of little means, although he ended up as a successful businessman through his involvement in the telegraph enterprise. What was more impressive to me than Cornell’s professional path was his vision for the university. Although I regularly pass beneath red banners reading “…any person… any study.” as I walk across campus, I didn’t give much thought to the radicalism of Ezra Cornell’s idea until I was reminded that the university was founded in 1865, just as the Civil War was ending. That Cornell was dedicated to providing instruction to minorities and to women in that time period is remarkable.

The tour also prompted me to reconsider the present structure of West Campus. It was an excellent reminder of the easily forgettable truth that just about every aspect of our living space is the result of a conscious decision made and carried out by someone or some group sometime in the past. The War Memorial by the flagpole is the result of the fundraising efforts of the Quill and Dagger Society, intended to commemorate those Cornell students, faculty, and alumni who gave their lives in World War 1. The secret tunnel between Rose and Becker is the result of design choices to accommodate the practical needs of the dining halls. That Rose House is named for Flora Rose and not for a donor was another conscious choice. These choices, however remote from us they may seem, have shaped the landscape we are living in, and this in turn shapes our behaviors and experiences every day we spend here on West.

In short, then, the tour opened my eyes a little wider to Cornell and to West Campus and encouraged me to have a better look around. With a little digging, I’m sure there is much, much more to learn.

Recalling tragedy

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The topic of Saturday night’s Caochangdi dance performance, the Chinese Great Famine of 1959-1961, is a brutally painful history. 36 million people starved to death in the countryside, villages were emptied, thousands turned in desperation to cannibalism, officials beat those who resisted or tried to send letters detailing their situation and asking for help, the list of horrors goes on. Unbelievably, while all of this occurred, the party’s granaries were full, and China continued to export grain abroad. Though the party still denies it today, the famine was the result of disastrous and incomprehensibly callous government policy.

Given this history, I was surprised by how apolitical much of the performance was. Though at times it was difficult to read the subtitles, from what I did read the interviews seemed to deal more with the everyday, human suffering inflicted by the famine than with the policies and the actions that caused it. The dances, likewise, seemed more concerned with individual experience than with institutional actions and their consequences. I wonder why this is. The documentarians wanted their work to shed light on the experiences of the Chinese people in the famine, so one possibility is that they were simply more concerned with getting these personal stories than with explaining political circumstances. Maybe, because the topic is still taboo in China today, it was simply too risky to ask people those sorts of questions – maybe they didn’t feel it was appropriate to put their interview subjects in a position where they had to confront them. At any rate, what stands out in my recollection of the performance is the emotional weight. It’s hard to feel that weight when you speak about tragedy in historical terms. By going to those who had lived through the famine and by incorporating their memories into the performance, the artists perhaps brought the audience a little closer.

Resourcefulness

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Much of Prof. Schwarz’s talk struck me as good advice not only for college, but in for our lives in general. His three Rs, in particular, stood out to me. Resilience is essential to moving forward – without it every failure could be the one to keep us down and could cut us off from a whole line of future successes. Resolve is likewise a crucial ingredient of success – without the commitment to see our goals through to completion, success will be, unsurprisingly, elusive. But the R that I’d like to talk most about is resourcefulness. In any environment this is an important trait to have, but this is especially true at a university like Cornell, where an inexhaustible amount of resources are packed into what in the grand scheme of things amounts to a pinhead (the campus is actually 745 acres, I googled it).

 

I once listened to a motivational speaker give a talk on public radio as part of a series they were broadcasting about success. The station had on lots of speakers and entertained questions about the definition of success and the best ways to achieve it. This speaker suggested that one of the greatest factors that keeps us from success is a lack of resourcefulness masquerading as a lack of resources. Often times, he noted, people will blame their inability to achieve a goal on their circumstances – the environment isn’t right, the timing is off, they don’t have the resources to get it done. He argued that this kind of thinking limits us – it diminishes our potential to succeed. It makes sense. When we ascribe our lack of success to outside factors, we are taking power directly out of our own hands. According to this kind of thinking, if the right resources for success don’t exist, that’s it. We can’t be expected to succeed without having the things we need to succeed, and they are simply not there. What this thinking overlooks is our own abilities to make or make do – that is, to obtain the resources we need or to figure out a solution given the ones we have. This is the kind of resourcefulness that paves the path to success, and it is a quality we need to remember and foster in ourselves moving forward. For the time being, however, we are lucky – we won’t be faced with a lack of resources. What we, as students here at Cornell, must do is remember the many resources that are available to us and make good use of them in our time here.

A Dog Came in the Kitchen

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“A dog came in the kitchen

And stole a crust of bread.

Then cook up with a ladle

And beat him till he was dead.

 

Then all the dogs came running

And dug the dog a tomb

And wrote upon the tombstone

For the eyes of dogs to come:

 

A dog came in the kitchen

And stole a crust of bread…”

One moment of the play that caught my attention was Didi’s song from the beginning of Act Two. On reflection, I think it captures many of the recurrent themes of the play.

The first thing that stands out about the rhyme is its brutality: the tyrannical cook shows no remorse for the dog, taking up his ladle not drive him away but to beat him to death. The dog, for his part, is a pitiable figure, stealing not a loaf of bread as an indulgence, but a crust, presumably out of desperation. The hunger of the dog, next to the assumed plenty of the cook, underscores the inequality of their power dynamic. The other dogs fare no better; rather than pursuing vengeance against the cook, an action that would suggest strength among the community and hope for change, they simply bury the dead dog and turn the incidence into a grim admonition for “the eyes of dogs to come.”

The circularity of the verses affirms the inevitability of the tragedy. The entrenchment of the system of oppression that gave rise to the dog and the cook dooms them to repeat the scenario again and again and there is, as Didi and Gogo suggest elsewhere in the play, “nothing to be done.”

Like the rest of the play, the song is also ahistorical and ambiguous in its origin. The cook and the dog, like Didi, Gogo, Pozzo, and Lucky, exist in a timeless and placeless setting (with the only signifying features being the kitchen, for the former, and the tree and the moon for the latter). The origins of the nursery rhyme – who made it up, why, and how Didi came to learn it – are as obscure as those of the bizarre circumstances in which he now finds himself and his companion.

What did you guys think of the song? And which other moments of the play stood out to you?