Author Archives: Angela

Peaceful Coexistence

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I think some of the best Rose Scholar events have been plays, and I’m surprised that more people don’t attend them. This performance was no different. The acting was good, the theme was extremely relevant, the plot was moving, and whole thing was very thought-provoking. Not only did I enjoy the performance aspect, I was happily surprised to learn certain historical things that I had just never been exposed to before in school. Now to move on from all of this vagueness, I’m going to spoil the play, and if you plan on watching it (which I definitely recommend), I wouldn’t want to spoil that moment of realization that changes the tone of the storyline.

 

The play Paloma is a tragic love story between an Islamic Moroccan American, Ibrahim, and a Catholic Puerto Rican American, Paloma. It starts out with Ibrahim talking to his Jewish friend, Jacob, who is a lawyer about his relationship with Paloma. From the very first scene, it’s clear that the playwright is trying to set up the tension between this couple in terms of religion and sex. I think what made this compelling is not only the stereotypical view of Muslim Americans, but of men taking advantage of women. As it isn’t clear why Ibrahim is on trial, when Jacob affirms that he did not force her to go with him and other such phrasings are discomforting.

Unlike the first performance I saw at the Kitchen Theatre, this play was composed of lots of flashback scenes, in which lighting changes and creative use of the staging allowed for very versatile storytelling. During admission, it was brought up that the minimal set made it harder to get immersed in the various storylines, but I thought the acting was compelling enough that it really didn’t take anything away from the story for me. I was actually really impressed with how well the whole story was able to flow with so many switches back and forth and very minimal costume changes.

While I enjoyed the overall concept of the romance, I thought the setup was very rushed (which I also understand is necessary for a play) and it was very cliché. Ibrahim and Paloma are reading Ibn Hazm’s The Ring of the Dove, a treatise on love for a class at NYU and with all of the talk about love, they fall for each other. The saving grace for me during this development was my ignorance. I don’t think I had ever heard of Ibn Hazm or knew that Spain used to be a country with peaceful coexistence of religions. I found myself thinking back to all the history I had been taught in school, and almost none of it talked about coexisting religions – most of it had been about how religious differences led to various conflicts.

As the play progresses, we see the characters deviate from the initially set up stereotypes. Ibrahim is actually a pretty devout Muslim and while Paloma thinks that he’s being coy by talking about bringing her home to “pray,” she learns that he while he’s definitely into her, he doesn’t want to have sex quite yet. While she grew up Catholic and still attended church services during holidays like Christmas, she had had her fair share of sex and seemed to not be heavily invested in religion. This conflict returns periodically throughout the play, and left me confused nearing the end.

As their relationship progresses, Ibrahim surprises her with a trip to Spain to visit historical sites that were at the core of what Ibn Hazm wrote about. While this should have been a clear sign of affection, Paloma still feels like Ibrahim might be holding out on sex because of reasons other than his faith. When they talk of possible marriage in the future, religion starts a fight that I felt conflicted about. Ibrahim mentions that if she were a truly devout Catholic or converted to Islam, his community would be more accepting of their relationship. She, not being particularly religious, thinks that either option is asking too much of her, and they fight. While I have no personal context for this, I don’t think that the request was outrageous, and would have thought that trying to be more religious when you have a positive connection to your church already wouldn’t be too difficult. Nevertheless, religion was definitely a source of conflict throughout the play.

Another major source of conflict I haven’t talked about yet is the family conflict. Ibrahim, afraid of what his parents and community will think of his relationship, keeps Paloma a secret until he is in Spain with her. Unfortunately, someone his family wanted him to end up with snitched on them and Ibrahim’s father was already mad, and refused to talk to him afterwards.

It was somewhat frustrating to sit through the first parts of the pay without knowing what Ibrahim’s trial was about, the realization that he was being blamed for being a part of terrorist attack on a train station in Spain that killed Paloma was heartbreaking. I think that I let out a barely audible gasp. The relevance of an accusation like that is so close to home that it felt too real. With this current election cycle, debates over how to treat refugees and immigrants, terrorist attacks around the world, the play, to me, became a lot more tangible. While the romance seemed like any other piece of fiction, this turning point was heartbreaking.

An honest mistake was all it took. While he was still injured, as seen through a hospital fever dream, Ibrahim had gotten up to find an available bathroom when the explosion happened. We saw the scene. They were in love, kissing each other, reading Ibn Hazm, making plans for what they were finally going to do once they got off the train. Ibrahim leaves, and the explosion happens. The verdict of the trial comes back guilty, and Ibrahim is expected to pay millions in losses to Paloma’s family. He also has a heart wrenching scene with Paloma’s mother (played by the same actor as Paloma) and finds little closure in the matter.

When he and Jacob travel back to Spain, Ibrahim is overwhelmed by his grief and wants to take his life so he and Paloma can be together in spirit, but she appears to him, talking him out it. This ending left the play open to a lot of questions about how many things. How is his relationship with his family and religious community going to play out? Will he ever be able to love someone else again? Will he end up winning the appeal against the terrorist charges? Would this happen if they weren’t an interfaith couple? How big of a role did undeserved religious stereotypes play in this whole ordeal and how can we as a society prevent rash accusations based on internal, baseless prejudices? This play definitely picks up on many contemporary issues that have been brought up a lot in the news lately, and I hope that society can move past the trivial profiling of people who are just trying to live their lives and live in peaceful coexistence.

Unexpected Discoveries

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Last Wednesday, I was waiting for the Rose Café to start, and was wondering who was sitting on the couch, as he did not look anything the posters that had been up all week. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we were surprised with Professor Andrew Mertha who gave a talk on his work in studying Cambodia. As I wasn’t familiar with Cambodian history, it was very interesting to hear him give a brief summary of the major power shifts after World War II. There were definitely surprising facts and more I want to look up when I find the time to delve into a Wikipedia spiral.

Professor Mertha spent a lot of time looking into the role China had in Cambodian development and pointed out something that I hadn’t heard put together. It is illogical for people to think that China is capable of having extreme influence and taking over the world, yet at the same time point out the deeply convoluted and possibly inefficient inner workings of their government. I don’t know if it was just in my head or if I made a slightly audibly ‘oh’ as I took time to think about this.

He talked about going to Cambodia and looking for documents citing Chinese involvement, and after being turned away from a certain location, found a wealth of top secret documents in Chinese, detailing engineering plans for Cambodian development. While I’m sure it was stressful at the time for him, it was reassuring to hear that professors go through the same struggle of trying to figure out exactly what a source has to offer. He mentioned talking to those who were proficient in Chinese and engineering, but the gap between technology now and then is so different that they could not make any sense of it. Then with one momentous encounter with an advisee, he was connected with the key to unlocking the meaning behind the documents he found.

It was definitely an entertaining and informative talk, and while I wasn’t expecting a crash course in recent Cambodian history and a lesson in patience when dealing with work, I was glad I got to hear him speak.

Stressed

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Last Rose Café, I listened to Sarah Rubenstein-Gillis and Andrea Gerding from Gannett. Their talked focused mainly on stress, how it can affect the body, and how to alleviate some of it. Having three prelims that week meant that at the time, I was definitely feeling the effects of stress. In the beginning, people listed off a few physical things they experience while stressed, and as they rattled each on off, I felt myself feeling then as well. The feeling of chest tightness, fatigue, deep breathing, shoulder ache, racing mind. I thought of everything else I could have been doing and what I could have changed about what had happened earlier in the week.

They then moved on to talk about things we can do to relieve stress. One such thing is having 9 hours of regularly scheduled sleep, something that sounds unachievable with an unpredictable workload day to day. Assignments take longer than expected, meeting pop up, someone has to reschedule. And as I thought there thinking about how far from sleep utopia I had experienced that week, we moved on. Keeping a regularly healthy eating schedule and making time for stress relievers is something that I can definitely work on. Making a routine to signal dedicated time to study and forming habits that aren’t distracting all sound ideal, but there are things that do get in the way of them. When they asked us to visualize overcoming something that causes stress, I could not shake my mental exhaustion and how nice nine hours of sleep sounded.

We were then treated with a brief guided meditation. Rubenstein-Gillis and Gerding talked about how meditation has noticeable, positive, physical effects even when participants don’t believe in its effects. While I tried to focus on various body parts and their movements during the meditation, thoughts of things I had to do were still racing through my mind, but I did feel better afterwards. I will definitely look at trying out the full guided meditations closer to finals when there are more sessions and will attempt to overcome certain stressors on my own.

Not Just About Tennis

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Last Wednesday, I listened to Coach Silviu Tanasoiu talk about tennis and life in general. Going into the talk, I wasn’t sure how the talk would resonate with someone unfamiliar with how to actually play tennis, but his talk was so much more. He was so grateful for being able to give a talk, but by the end, I was grateful for getting a chance to hear his story and perspective on college athletes.

What was most inspiring for me to hear was his own story, growing up in Romania, falling in love with tennis, being selected to represent his country but having to rely on his family’s sacrifices for him to get to America to help grow his career. Throughout the entire talk, it was resoundingly clear that he was humbled and grateful for every experience and relationship that helped him get to where he is today. As he emphasized some of his important relationships with mentors, I found myself reflecting on everyone who has helped me out.

I also learned a lot about the demands of a student athlete. Not only is the tennis team really good at playing, but the team has an impressive average GPA and has members in diverse majors. At the beginning of the semester, they practically schedule their lives with practice and estimating how much time they need for each class in addition to getting enough sleep to play and travelling and competing.

What I found really interesting was to hear about recruiting from someone who devotes so much time to it. It’s nice to hear that he really cares about the team and the type of player that would fit in. He told a couple anecdotes about looking for talented players from across the world and spending hours talking with them, their families, and their coaches to learn about what types of people they are. And it’s not limited to a one time thing, but multiple visits and observing the player in practice and in competition to help really get a full understanding of how they are. When he mentioned that many players who want to become professionals and are reluctant to even go to school, fearing that it will hinder their skill development, I thought back to how proud he must be of each of them for excelling on the tennis court and in the classroom.

I really enjoyed listening to Coach Tanasoiu talk and it was a really interesting to learn more about what goes into student athletes, being humble and grateful for the opportunities and relationships you have, and being the best person you can be.

Not Just Birdwatching

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When I heard about Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, my first thought was a zoo-like habitat with different birds that visitors could look at. I was wrong, but in a good way. I didn’t know that Cornell had a Lab of Ornithology to begin with, and I didn’t know how much it had to offer. We started the trip going on a walking tour of the grounds around the building. I felt sort of bad crashing a very small group, as it was hard to hear the tour guides, both Cornell students, with the fairly large group of people trying to walk their trails.

This also made it hard to identify the birds that they tried to point out, because either they were behind a tree from where I was standing, or they had flown away before I had a chance to try looking. The trails were really nice for walking though, and I imagine they would be even lovelier when it’s warmer outside and the trees aren’t bare. After the walking tour, we had several minutes to look at the pond area from inside the building, and it was surprisingly relaxing.

Then, we followed the tour guides on a look behind the scenes, which was unexpectedly large. They started off explaining the rationale behind the large murals on the wall. The large scale of both of them was amazing, and I was disappointed that we weren’t able to go upstairs to get a better view of them. We were then taken into the Fuertes study which had paintings of birds which were created as a present for the owner’s wife. There was also a gallery display of close-up bird nest photographs. Sadly, we didn’t get a chance to stay and look at them in more detail, but they were really interesting to look at.

We were taken to the research area of the lab which included specimen preparation and genomic studies of ancient DNA. I had also learned certain classes at Cornell will make use of the classroom there to look more closely at certain specimens. The Lab of Ornithology didn’t only have birds, but they actually look at lots of different specimens. Not only do they have a herpetological collection, but when they introduced using sounds to study environmental changes, they mentioned collecting data at sea and right whales.

We ended with a look into their library, which housed some early sound recording devices used by researchers, as well as the field notebooks certain prominent bird watchers used. I was surprised at how much the Lab or Ornithology had to offer, and would definitely like to go back when the weather is warmer to spend some more time on their trails and looking more closely at the paintings and photographs that they have on display. Since admission is free, I’d definitely recommend going to visit it at least once.

Barriers to Cleaner Technology

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Last Wednesday, I went to the Rose Café discussion led by House Professor Garrick Blalock. With the description of the topic being about technology and poverty, I thought it was interesting that he started off talking about cars. First, it was established that we all knew about the negative environmental effects of cars running on gasoline, yet only a small amount of people have cleaner options like Priuses or Teslas. It’s not because we don’t know that they are better for the environment, it’s because of a bunch of different factors from practicality to cost or style which are all unique to different individuals as well.

These same concerns were then applied to stoves in Uganda. Traditionally, a three-stone stove that burns coal is used, but since they are so inefficient and do not burn cleanly, they have not only negative environmental effects, but also negative health effects. If they are used in households, soot coats the walls, affecting both the women cooking and the children staying at home. You would think that if given the option for an affordable, cleaner alternative, people would be happy to change stoves.

This is where things got complicated. While stoves were created to be more affordable and much cleaner, people would stop using them because they weren’t as practical. The three-stone stove is adjustable in terms of heat, size, and duration of burn, while cleaner options were built around with a focus on cleanliness. While it was definitely the better option for the environment and their immediate health, people were not adopting the new technology.

As I thought about the car analogy and the stoves, I thought about how tricky it can be to predict human behavior in terms of consumer economics. It seems to me like there are so many different factors that go into the products we buy and use that every concern for every consumer can’t always be satisfied. If a stove was developed to solve the problems first brought up, there would be something else that just wouldn’t feel right. This is a challenge for any type of technology, and doesn’t seem like something that can ever be fully solved.

While technology can certainly have health and environmental benefits, it seems pretty much impossible to get everyone to change their behavior. Would it be nice if everyone who needed a car had a Tesla and the whole world used more renewable energy sources? Of course. Do I see this happening in the foreseeable future? Not really. But do I think that there can be meaningful progress in terms of adopting cleaner technology and helping developing communities in ways that fit their needs? Hopefully, yes.

A Journey Through Geological History

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Last Saturday, I had the chance to go to the Paleontological Research Institution’s Museum of the Earth. When we pulled up to the museum, I thought that the multiple building would be a part of the exhibition and was anticipating seeing a larger museum, but perhaps my expectations were too presumptuous. Growing up near DC, I’ve been to the National Museum of Natural History plenty of times, and went into the Museum of the Earth with the expectation that it would focus not only on geological history in terms of animals, but have a broader range (again, I guess I’ve been spoiled by the Smithsonian and it’s largess).

Nonetheless, it was an interesting experience. Our tour guide began talking about the history of the Paleontological Research Institution and the museum, mentioning its impressively large collection of fossils and exhibits from the Smithsonian that were newly housed in Ithaca. She handed out certain fossils, but my horn coil was gone by the first round of extinctions. The first thing that catches your eye when you walk into the museum is the large right whale skeleton – right because they were the “right” ones to be hunted – who had died from fishing lines.

After walking through the rooms with different geological time periods and seeing some sea scorpions and dinosaur models, we ended with the emergence of mammals and questions about ice ages and climate change. Glaciers that used to cover New York state were estimated to be over a mile thick over Ithaca (which is crazy to think about).

Though the tour was short and the museum was smaller than expected, I was pleasantly surprised by what was there. I had no idea a museum in Ithaca would have the resources to maintain a large collection of fossils and gain enough recognition that it would contain previous Smithsonian exhibits. If we had more time, I would have liked to take some more time to appreciate the art. The background scenes and artist depictions of animals were extremely detailed and beautiful to look at, and I would definitely go back to spend some more time to appreciate some of the finer details of the museum.

Das Freiburger Barockorchester hören

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So the preface this, I don’t really know that much about music and Mozart, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. I think this might have been my first time (or first time in a very long time) seeing a professional orchestra live, and it was an interesting experience. The orchestra was a smaller group of musicians, and at first, I thought it was a little strange how the basses looked, but I soon realized that many of them were playing historical instruments.

To some extent, the historical instruments matched really well with the individual players. Maybe it was because where we were sitting, but the violins seemed like a natural extension of the violinists. What I liked a lot, was that they were all enjoying playing the music, turning to smile at each other during certain sections and moving and reacting individually to the music. What I found interesting about this, was that the cellos did not have endpins and that the cellists were balancing the instrument with their legs. After a brief search later, I found out that the endpin wasn’t added until the 19th century and that these were really historically accurate.

Speaking of historically accurate instruments, I was surprised to see Lorenzo Coppola walk out with the historical clarinet. I had read the brief blurb about him in the program, but wasn’t aware of how different it would be from the modern clarinet. It was really interesting to see, and I don’t know when I would have been exposed to it otherwise. He introduced the instrument briefly and pointed out that a hole in the back end of could be covered up for an additional note, which Mozart was cognizant of when composing, and that we shouldn’t be surprised if we saw him play it. And thus, for most of his performance, every time he would bend his knees and bring the clarinet down slightly, I was expecting that special note. When he finally did play it, he exaggerated the motion, and the audience was audibly satisfied.

Other part of this performance I wasn’t expecting was the opera pieces. This, I know, is the first time I’ve enjoyed a live opera performance. (My first exposure was an opera in some other language as part of a class field trip in third grade, during which I fell asleep). While the music and Christian Gerhaher’s voice were great to listen to, I couldn’t help myself thinking about how strange the lyrics and the whole premise of an opera is. The translations indicated that a lot of the pieces were about loving women, fighting, or fighting for women, and the certain phrases that were repeated or especially enhanced by the operatic patterns didn’t make sense all of the time, and I just thought about how strange it would be to hear someone singing about these things in English in the same operatic manner.

Overall, I concluded that I should see more live music. Although I know of and have heard some famous composer’s works, I don’t know that much. If you had asked me after just hearing the FBO play, I wouldn’t know off the top of my head that the composer was Mozart. While I definitely recognized some parts of the Clarinet Concerto, I wouldn’t have been able to say that it resembled Die Zauberflöte. I realized that I should probably take the time to learn a little more about classical music, and I’m open to more performances (especially if they involve encores with a mandolin).

Cooking Made Easy

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Last Saturday, I went to the cooking workshop to learn some useful cooking skills for the future. I sort of wished we could have worked on more dishes, but I know there were some that were very involved. The first thing I found really useful was learning how to chop an onion. Whenever I cook for myself, I don’t particularly care what it looks like, so I just use a knife to get the food into edible pieces. Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the best way to prepare food. You want to cook food that’s about the same size, because then you’re able to get a more even cook. So Professor Gier demonstrated how she chops onions, by cutting a sort of blooming onion like lattice before chopping it into individual pieces. I actually got to try this with the dish that I made, but with a small onion, it didn’t turn out as nicely as the demonstrated onion.

When we split up into the different stations, I was immediately attracted to the chicken, broccoli and brown rice casserole, because I knew I liked all of the ingredients, and they are pretty common and inexpensive items. Looking back, I might have chosen something else just to try working with different foods I wouldn’t normally buy for myself. The recipe called for boiling brown rice in a bag and microwaving broccoli, which I had never had experience with.

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Some of my starting ingredients

 

Broccoli

My Final Product

 

After the food was cooked, the food was placed out for everyone and we all tasted the different dishes. The biggest surprise for me was the avocado omelet. I had never really liked the taste of avocado, but its fattiness worked really well with the egg. Another dish I really enjoyed was the salmon (which I guess others liked a lot as well, because it was the one dish that was completely eaten when we reconvened at the end.

Once we had a chance to taste the food, there was a brief discussion about all of the foods and some questions people had about nutrition in general. I learned that those eggs in cartons are actually real eggs, and perfectly healthy. One thing I thought about afterwards that I didn’t get to ask, was whether there was an easy dairy-free substitute for the white sauce. Overall, I had a great time cooking and enjoyed a nice meal with the other Rose Scholars. I will definitely check out some more recipes from Cooking Light magazine in the future, because they were simple and came with lots of pictures to help.

 

Leftovers

Remnants of our cooking

Operation Hot and Bothered

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Last Thursday, I went to go see Chi-raq and it was surprisingly good. From online reviews from non-critics, I went into the movie expecting it to not be very good, and some other scholars brought up some points after the movie about the absurdity, oversimplification, and breadth, but not depth, of topics presented. While I understand those viewpoints, I don’t think it did a terrible job of bringing up important topics of conversation.

 

First of all, I wasn’t too bothered by the absurdity of the movies premise because 1) it’s movie and 2) it’s supposed to be satirical based on another work of satire. I actually thought the use of a narrator and speaking in rhyme was a nod to the play the movie is based on. I think it also serves as a good reminder of how the movie isn’t an accurate reflection of reality. The whole plotline was grandiose, but I don’t think the intention of the movie was ever to be a realistic portrayal of what could happen. I mean, “Operation Hot and Bothered” is clearly not supposed to be the proper response to a group of women in a federal armory.

 

All that being said, I definitely felt weird at certain parts of the movie. I think the scene that was the most unsettling to me was actually the funeral service. I haven’t been to any large services, so I’m not sure how they normally go, but it seemed odd to have dancers and all of this upbeat music. While I don’t dispute the fact that guns played a role in the death of the child, I found it sort of disrespectful to the mother to turn the funeral service into a charged speech about gun violence. Especially during a time of mourning, the last thing I need is for someone to be yelling and everyone else around to be cheering. I don’t know why it stuck out so much to me, but the scene was definitely memorable.

 

One thing about the movie that could be considered both good and bad was the number of issues it brought up: gangs, gender, guns, race, poverty, etc. It was definitely hard to try and figure out the main point of the movie, but perhaps that was the point the whole time. Instead of focusing on one issue, it used a lot of buzzwords and names that are starting points for conversations. While the overall message of the movie was muddled, I think it got across the point that there are lots of issues facing American neighborhoods that some people don’t view as big problem, whereas we focus our attention on outside “threats” that don’t have tremendous impact on our daily lives.

 

I completely understand those who think that the movie failed to provide good solutions and a clear message for change, but I wouldn’t go as far as to discount the whole thing. If there was a definitive and relatively straightforward way to fix all of America’s problems, there would be no need for political discourse. To me, the movie simply brought up some issues, and encouraged people to look to the past and to think creatively about how to approach solutions for those issues.