Author Archives: Alejandra

Puppy Therapy

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Walking in the room, I will admit to initially viewing the experience as something else I had to do, something else in a crowded schedule, that quickly changed. I learned about the difficulties associated with training and raising a seeing eye dog as well as their ultimate purpose. Then I switched my full attention to the puppies. Yahtzee was her name. The one-year-old black labrador (and future seeing-eye dog) was without a doubt the best thing to happen to me all semester. We all were settled around the dogs in little circles. Yahtzee ran up to me as soon as her trainer told her “say hi!”. She licked my face with ridiculous amounts of enthusiasm and saliva. I was smiling without having to force it on my face, something that had become a rare occurrence with the stress of the ongoing semester. For a couple of hours I set aside the worries and anxieties, and allowed myself to be a girl with no concern greater than winning tug-of-war.

Race, Class, and Dope

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*Warning: Spoilers*

As soon as the movie opened I could tell it was going to be something original. The main cast of characters were loaded with quirks and the presentation of the movie simultaneously had the exaggerated scenes you would find in a cartoon yet a strange sort of honesty in the messages it was delivering. The movie was focused on a black high-schooler and his struggles to escape from and exist peacefully in a tough neighborhood. When the main character fell into drug-dealing by accident, I was very frustrated by the way his environment seemed to be pushing him to a place he couldn’t come back from– the way it seemed to be trapping him. Then, as tried to work his way out he seemed to be losing his previously held morals and standards. He became more violent, more willing to work in systems he had used to avoid. I began to become increasingly worried for his character, wondering if he would even try to escape from his world anymore or if he would remain stuck forever. The more I saw him succeed at his new business, the more scared I became. Clearly, as a capable, intelligent person, he would find success no matter which path he chose. At the end, he cleverly manipulates the situation and ends up being admitted to Harvard (his main focus throughout the movie) while receiving no consequences for the drug-dealing he was forced into. Overall, Dope was a great movie and is well-worth the watch!

The Hills are Alive…

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Sitting in the theater, watching flashes of mountains and hills on the screen, I was strangely nervous. Not only am I not much of a singer (you could see how I would be worried in a sing-a-long version of Sound of Music), but I was not entirely confident in the audience around me. What if I began singing and everybody else just muttered or hummed along? Would there be enough volume to drown out my terribly off-key voice? As it turns out, I could barely even hear myself. The audience was delightfully enthusiastic. As soon as the first song came on, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?”, people jumped right in without hesitating. The audience participation wasn’t only limited to singing. There was a running commentary throughout the entire film. When Maria came out in a wet dress, there were wolf-whistles. When the Nazis showed up on screen hisses and boos filled the air. Clearly, most people in the audience had watched the movie on repeat. I found myself laughing and shouting at the screen with the rest of them. If you ever have the opportunity to attend a similar event, I would definitely recommend the experience.

Piano Man

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Heading up the slope to Bailey Hall, the only thought in my mind was “Is this really worth the climb?” Perhaps that makes me a bit of a philistine. After all, it was a free ticket to see Emmanuel Ax– a well-known classical pianist. I’ve just never had any pull towards the sound of Mozart, Beethoven, and others. To be frank, Mozart and Beethoven are the only two composers I can name off the top of my head. My musical education may have been pretty pathetic, but I hadn’t found a reason to regret it until that Friday. Sitting in the hushed audience, I began to fidget as Emmanuel Ax laid his fingers on the keys. I could see the emotion on his face, could hear the rise and fall of the music, could appreciate the technical skill in his hand movements. However, for all the dramatic lifting of his hands before he crashed them down on the keys, for all the deep concentration in his furrowed brow, I never found myself absorbed in the actual piece. It was certainly not a reflection on his own skill–from the audience’s overly enthusiastic response, clearly the man was amazing– but it was a clear, painful image of my ignorance of all things musical. As the performance drew to a close and the audience poured out of the hall and into the darkness, I found myself strangely dazed. I had been unable to understand his art. Even when surrounded by the roar of a clapping audience, my mind was numbed and silent as it had been when Emmanuel Ax had bled music into the air.

Historical Books, Books with a History, and Occasionally Books with Bulletholes

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The lights were dim in the cramped room– “to minimize damage” the librarian said as he cradled a 15th century book in his hands.  All the items laid out on the table in front of us were precious bits of history. There was an ancient cuneiform tablet from the start of civilization, one of Shakespeare’s folios (the earliest collection of all his works), a stack of Charles Dicken’s paperbacks, and even a book with a bullet hole from the gun fight that ended Sitting Bull’s life. It was exciting to examine a letter in Ezra Cornell’s hand speaking of his visit to the White House, where he met Abraham Lincoln in person (though not quite as exciting as seeing Abraham Lincoln’s own signature on a memorial copy of the thirteenth amendment– I was truly in awe of that faded scrawl). Mark Twain’s writing also made an unexpected appearance, in the form of a recommendation letter for a German professor (who then proceeded to teach at Cornell for two years). E. B. White, a Cornell alumnus and the author of the classic children’s book Charlotte’s Web, had drafts of his work laid out on the table along with his sketches of the farm. It was amazing to see all of these precious items up close and to hear their stories.

(I have to admit, even with all the key pieces of history laid out in front of me, what thrilled me the most was seeing that Sitting Bull signed his autographs with hearts above the i’s. Even though the librarian insisted that Sitting Bull was not channeling his inner adolescent girl, I like to think the cutesy hearts were a deliberate touch.)

ELF: A Story of Eco-“Terrorism”

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Consider the following questions:

1) If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

2) If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it because the sound of sawing is so deafeningly loud, do you then set fire to the headquarters of the lumber company?

The first question has been debated time and time again, conflicting over differing points of view, having different ways of judging the same scenario. The second question seems a bit less up for debate, but surprisingly has also encountered a dangerous range of responses– as can be seen in Marshall Curry’s documentary, If A Tree Falls. The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) was an organization set on saving the environment, mostly through property destruction in the form of arson. Although this was certainly a moral and legal wrong, the term applied to the members of this group makes me feel uneasy. “Eco-terrorists” is the label they have been given. The judge may argue that everyone who inspires fear is a terrorist, but given that the word terrorist inspires a reflex of instant hatred in a post-9/11 world, it seems like a gross misrepresentation of the group’s motives and desires. They never hurt anybody physically. They never threatened human life. In fact, they actively tried to avoid harming others. Even when they were busy burning buildings to the ground, they always made sure they were empty before they begun. Not only were their methods , but the reason for the birth of the group was understandable. Police were brutalizing non-violent protestors– inevitably, some protestors reached the conclusion that another path would have to be taken to get any sort of real results.

Property destruction? Sure. Wrong? Of course. Jail-time? Makes sense.

Terrorism?

I think not. But if a tree falls in a forest…

Fame, Drugs, and Rehab: Amy Winehouse’s Short Life

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I see her stumble onto the stage, and sit down with her back to the cheering crowd while she pulls off her high heels. I see her face, tired and empty as she turns to a mic but doesn’t start singing, even as the music blares out and waits for her response. The screams and whistles turn to jeers as she stands before them, a skeletal girl with big hair and a shiny gold dress who refuses to give them even the smallest part of her. This is the point from which I can see the rest of her life. From here, I can trace the path to her ending-a red body bag shoved into an ambulance.

Walking into the theater, I had no more than a vague idea of who Amy Winehouse had been. The ‘Rehab’ girl– a bold, loud-mouthed drug addict. The documentary did not reject my assumption. However, it also revealed a vulnerable, emotionally unstable human being. She was plagued by mental illness and drug addiction, and seeing it from such a personal point of view made the media’s mocking response to her problems despicable. At the same time, seeing the addiction destroy her was frustrating and painful. When Amy finally got clean and won her Grammy, an event that should have been one of the most exciting of her entire career, she turned to her friend and told her “This is so boring without drugs”. The singer began showing up to concerts too high or drunk to perform. Her behavior was blatantly self-destructive, and her end was sadly predictable: her heart stopped after drinking too much alcohol.

But I don’t view this as her personal failure. Not only was she in the grip of addiction, but she unfortunately did not have someone to help her through it– to say ‘no’ for her, to be the willpower that serious addiction takes from a person. She was a victim of the misguided belief that addicts’ recovery should be their own responsibility and their suffering is their own fault, without even considering what drove them to drugs to begin with.

Existentialism, Absurdism, and General Confusion

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At the start of Waiting for Godot, I did a lot of waiting myself– waiting for the play to develop more action, waiting for the play to become more exciting, waiting for the play to start making more sense. I admit to being tired (initially) by the repetitive dialogue and the lack of structure. However, as the play unfolded, it started to become something more than I had expected. The two old men in ragged clothing, waiting by a lonely tree for a man called Godot, soon had their musings interrupted by the entrance of a slave and his master. The moment that Lucky and Pozzo stumbled onto the stage and into the lives of Vladimir and Estragon, things started to get more complex and more interesting. The four characters interacted with each other in hilarious and slightly horrifying ways. Lucky, the unlucky slave, was mistreated horrendously while the master Pozzo was respected and sympathized with. Vladimir and Estragon tried to hang themselves, but were short a good piece of strong rope. Every character forgot each other and the events that had taken place the previous day, except for Vladimir who was left alone in his frustrated understanding that every day was a cycle and was a cycle that would never end. Ironically, this was in large part his own doing, as he would always insist that they try again the next day, clinging on to a little bit of hope (as he insists if Godot comes they will be saved). “I can’t go on, I will go on.”

The play was inherently frustrating. It was difficult to understand all of the messages. It was tedious to hear the same lines repeated again and again. And at the ending, after waiting for Godot for an unknowable period of time– the play seems to suggest that the main characters have been waiting for him for so many days that it has become the sum of their existences– they decide to wait yet another day. It made me want to scream a little. However, for me, it was the play’s contrasting blend of absurd comedy and bleak hopelessness that made it something worth watching. And even as I experienced confusion and frustration with the shrouded meaning of the play and the cryptic dialogue, I saw my emotions reflected in the almost constant confusion and frustration of the characters, as they waited senselessly with no end in sight.

Waiting for Godot was anything but typical. It was intriguing and annoying. It was boring and yet roused my emotions. As soon as I got home I felt relief and yet while trying to fall asleep I couldn’t stop thinking about all the characters.