Author Archives: mmf228

Save a Life: CPR Training

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It’s the skill no civilian hopes to have to use. If someone needs CPR, it’s about as bad as it can get: their heart is already stopped, it isn’t properly beating and will stop, or they aren’t breathing so even a normally beating heart will stop. One of the EMS trainers told us not to be concerned when we performed the chest pumps and felt crunching under our hands – that’s just the cartilage between the ribs breaking. I’d heard of this, but the next thing he said did shock me. “What do you do if someone’s rib pokes out?” Just keep going.

Even though CPR isn’t accurately portrayed in most movies, mostly to heighten drama, it’s still a pretty drastic process. You essentially are doing the work of a beating heart through layers of skin, muscle, bone, cartilage…and that requires a lot of force, force that necessarily damages some tissues. But if someone isn’t breathing, you really can’t make them worse then they already are. As my dad said when I told him about the training experience, “You can’t kill a dead person.”

Even though, as I said, I really hope I never have to use this training – because if I ever did need to, that person would already be in pretty bad shape – but I’m very glad I got the opportunity to learn. Being prepared to help is part of being a good citizen. This goes beyond just ability to help: every student who came to those sessions was making a commitment to their communities by effectively saying, “I will reach out to my neighbor in need.” It is heartening to me to see that many of my peers came out to learn CPR and be there for the next person in need.

Give Them Back Their Rights: Kane the People’s Man

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One of the most interesting moments of Citizen Kane is the scene where Kane’s old friend Leland remarks that when Kane spoke of advocating for the common man, he always spoke in terms of “giving” the people their rights, as if that was in his power. Raised amidst great wealth, his ideas of morality and honor were centered around what money could buy, and even though “big money” was often his enemy, he saw his own wealth as the solution to everything—or at least as the key to winning the people’s admiration, which appears to be what really drove him. As Leland and Susan both note, Kane always tried to buy people’s love through benevolence (e.g. by sending Leland a fat check alongside his pink slip or “fulfilling” Susan’s dream of becoming an opera singer), though he always seemed to miss the mark of granting what his friends actually wanted, since he was only every giving what satisfied his notion of what was right.

Gaining Perspective: Saturday Sketching on the Arts Quad

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It was a stunning morning on the Hill as a small group of Rose Scholars climbed to the Arts Quad for a sketching expedition. Most of us didn’t have any real art experience, but GRF Seema gave us a crash course in perspective drawing, and we found a comfortable spot in the grass from which to sketch one of the beautiful buildings surrounding the Arts Quad.

From what little I know about sketching, the most complicated images are built of fundamental shapes. This is at least what perspective sketching is all about: giant diamonds are formed when lines connect the furthest forward part of a building with the “vanishing points” far off to the sides. In theory, every 3d object around us has an underlying geometric simplicity. But sitting in front of a building like Goldwin Smith Hall—which you don’t realize is so complicated until you try to draw it—it’s hard to see those simple diamonds behind the columns, the different shapes of windows, the trees that block parts of the building, the many different contours of the roof…

You just can’t get started if you let yourself get distracted by all of the minutia, and you can’t even depict the minutia if you don’t have a stable base. The base was the hardest for me to see, and it took me so long that I only finished half of Goldwin Smith in the time I had to sketch. It did look like Goldwin Smith in the end, though (unfortunately I don’t have a picture of my work; we turned it over to Seema when we left).

Perhaps there’s a wider lesson to be learned from sketching: the patience it takes to see the big picture is how we can perceive the details without them becoming warped. Perhaps this is what a liberal arts education is all about. In my first year and a half here at Cornell, I’ve learned about electric flux, modern Egyptian history, the energy of photons, property law, Gregorian chant, thermodynamics, and the list goes on. Yet I always find myself connecting these classes in the most unlikely of ways so that I achieve an even better understanding of the world around me than I could with full immersion into one of these fields. It’s the perspective that makes the difference.

Song of the Little Road

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Pather Panchali (1955), Bengali for “Song of the Little Road,” is an innovative and striking film by Indian director Satyajit Ray. Based on a book by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, the story of a desperately poor Indian family is reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath in its stark depiction of poverty. It differs from Steinbeck’s classic in that it centers on a child, Apu, and his older sister Durga; their lives are difficult, but they have the small joys of children: a kitten, a foil crown, sugar cane to chew. They still find ways to play and find interest in their surroundings, even when they wear rags for clothes.

The cinematography is exquisite: remarkably the work of just one amateur cinematographer, Subrata Mitra, the film features beautiful lighting and angles that bring home the deeply personal nature of the film. It seems that only half of the film consists of dialogue, its genius resting instead in the visuals. Perhaps it was precisely Mitra’s lack of experience that make this film so unique, freeing it from conventions of cinematography. In any case, the film’s portrayal of India’s strange mix of poverty and rapid modernization during the first half of the twentieth century is art at its finest.

“Ten Meter Tower”: Taking the Leap

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“Ten Meter Tower” is the epitome of Swedish film: quiet, slow-paced, and raw. One of the Sundance Shorts selected for the 2017 Sundance Film Tour, “Ten Meter Tower” places it’s “actors” – ordinary people who had never jumped off of a ten meter diving board – on a sparse set, consisting of just the diving board with unconcealed microphones recording them as they made the decision to jump, or not. The directors, Maximilien Van Aertryck and Axel Danielson, kept the focus on the diving board itself, sometimes juxtaposing two divers making the decision at different times and occasionally switching the frame to show them fall or emerge from the water.

We are used to presentations of courage in unusual situations with lots of drama, danger, and often ideals and/or lives at stake. But here was a very ordinary situation with everyday people, no dramatic lighting or music to distract from a decision that ultimately had no consequences. Here was a battle between instinct (it’s no wonder your body tells you not to drop into a ten meter free-fall) and intellect (you know it won’t hurt you, you’d be embarrassed to climb down), and even though it’s on a small scale, it’s deeply poignant. The film authentically captures what it is to be crippled by doubt and the effort it takes to overcome your fears and take the leap. Director Van Aertryck writes in a New York Times Op-Ed, “‘Ten Meter Tower’ may take place in Sweden, but we think it elucidates something essentially human, that transcends culture and origins. Overcoming our most cautious impulses with bravery unites all humankind. It’s something that has shaped us through the ages.” The film is a surprising revelation of this basic human struggle, and its quiet drama is captivating.

In the last scene, as if to say that our own private struggles are great drama in their own way, the unembellished style of the body of the film makes way for the classic drama of film: the camera follows the last diver in slow motion as she plummets to the water below, body turning over and over in her star-spangled swimsuit. “Ode to Joy” blasts triumphantly, and her feet slide smoothly into the water:

Gladly, as His heavenly bodies fly
On their courses through the heavens,
Thus, brothers, you should run your race,
As a hero going to conquest.

 

You can watch “Ten Meter Tower” and read more about it here.

The Afghanistan Problem

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16 years after the US invasion of Afghanistan, the war rages on in the deserts and cities of that distant country. 16 years and approximately $2 trillion (according to a report by CNN), and we still find ourselves asking “Why are we there? And how do we get out? Can we?” At last week’s Table Talk, a small group of us delved into some of these dilemmas.

First, the name: the “War on Terror.” Catchy, yes. It’s hard to argue with the fact that terror is bad and that we ought to combat it. But who are we fighting and what are we trying to accomplish? Do we meet Terror on the open battlefield? Once we’ve beat Terror, will we make it sign a treaty and try it in international court like the Nazis after World War II?

Before coming to Cornell, I spent a year at a German high school, where my government class spent an extensive amount of time discussing the war in Afghanistan, which Germany continues to be involved in (there are currently 950 German troops in Afghanistan,and 56 Germans have died there). One of the big takeaways I got from the discussions in that class was that the NATO coalition had gone into Afghanistan without a concrete plan, rushing in with the vague goal of “combating terror.” But not enough thought was given to what would happen after we overthrew the Taliban.

America has policed the world since the beginning, going as far back as President Monroe’s declaration of American influence over the Western hemisphere. But this policy has gotten us into many sticky situations before (e.g. Vietnam, Korea, Syria as it that situation continues to develop…), and it’s landed us in a position in Afghanistan in which we are stuck helping the current government barely hold off the Taliban by providing funds, training, and assistance (see NATO’s “Resolute Support” mission). We continue to pour in resources (and lives) with relatively little improvement, but the alternative—risking a Taliban takeover—is unacceptable to us, in terms of human rights and political concerns.

This tension between domestic and international interests, in the sense that international commitments eat up resources and energy that might be otherwise dedicated to domestic concerns, has always been an important American question. Of late, though, it’s been especially at the forefront of national discussion. As we (as a nation) continue to answer questions about Afghanistan, we may be changing our role and emphasis in international politics.

Ithaca Farmer’s Market

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For most students at Cornell, it’s only too easy to stay within the confines of Cornell’s campus. We have everything we need here (especially those of us living on-campus), and the Cornell community hosts so many events that you could fill your schedule without setting foot off of the Arts Quad. The bubble on the Hill is comfortable, and the slope down to the town is formidable—but last Saturday, a small group of Rose Scholars braved the downhill journey to mingle with community members at the Farmer’s Market.

Before we left, our guides told us that a full 30% of Farmer’s Market visitors are tourists passing through Ithaca. But if you think about it, Ithaca’s population is about 30,000; between Cornell and Ithaca College, the population swells to about 60,000 during the semester. That means that while Cornell and IC are in session, 50% of people within Ithaca city limits are not, strictly speaking, Ithacans. Compare that to the proportion of locals that frequent the Farmer’s Market (70%)—except that here we’re talking about half of an entire town that is essentially “passing through” the Ithaca Community.

So are we just “passing through” Ithaca during our 4 years here? It would seem that the purpose of a university, though primarily centered around education of its students, is also to give back to the community. If we are training our students to become productive members of the worldwide community, it only makes sense to reach out into the immediate community, too. Cornell has lots of opportunities to engage with the Ithaca community such as Into the Streets, service learning and community service projects and programs, and outreach of individual clubs (the Chorus and Glee Club, for example, do workshops with the local high school choirs). But engaging with the community can also be as simple as stepping off of the Hill and getting some fresh veggies from the lakeside. It’s a start, anyhow.

Fellow Rose Scholar Kimaya and I