Alexis Rankin Popik's Blog, page 5

HAPPIER NEW YEAR!

Photo by Vernon Rainiel Cenzon via Unsplash

Thank you, Dear Readers, for reading, commenting on, and continuing to follow this blog. I will “see” you here next Monday. Meanwhile, how do you plan to make this year happier than the last?

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!

WHAT I’M READING FOR COMFORT

The comfort of books

In times of stress, some people turn to comfort food; I turn to books. Books don’t have any calories and they give us comfort food for thought.  I belong to an excellent book club and we are reading The Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead.  It is a great and great big book.  Its span includes Amelia Earhart’s flights, a modern Hollywood actress’s quest for stardom and the life story of a young woman flyer.  I can’t describe in one sentence all that this big novel encompasses.  You can read two reviews here and here, and then settle in with this fascinating story.

I recently purchased The Comfort Book by Matt Haig. I enjoyed Haig’s The Midnight Library and was lured into buying his new book by this description:

“The Comfort Book is a collection of little parcels of hope.  Gathering notes, proverbs and stories, it gifts us with new ways of seeing ourselves, the world, and ourselves in the world.”  This is right up my alley—a page here, a page there, and I feel comforted.  Haig’s book is  set up to be read that way.  This morning I opened to a random page:  “Other people are other people.”  Well, yeah; I don’t need to be told that.  But this sentence (a quotation of Ayishat Akanbi)is a reminder and a comfort:  “If you’ve decided your healing is dependent on other people acknowledging their faults you’ll still be waiting in your grave.”

This holiday season, I bought myself a gift—Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land.  I can’t tell you about it from personal experience since I haven’t had time to read it yet, but its reviews promise “a soul-piercing masterpiece that examines what it means to be human with profound empathy.”  And…”It is a book about books, a story about stories.  It is tragedy and comedy and myth and fable and a warning and a comfort all at the same time.”

HAVE A COMFORTING WEEK!

HOPE IN HARD TIMES

Sculpture in Mt. View Cemetery*

“Hope is the thing with feathers,” Emily Dickinson wrote, and I have been thinking about hope—why, how and where to find it— a great deal.  These are hard times all over the world, probably  more so than ever in my lifetime and I’m not sure there will be much improvement in the foreseeable future.

That has led me to thinking about hope—where to find it and how to sustain it.  Yesterday I took a long walk in Mountain View Cemetery with my good friend Heidi.  A cemetery may be an odd choice of recreation for a person looking for hope, but this particular place is spectacular—designed by the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted—with beautiful sculptures, meandering paths and roads beneath specimen oaks, redwoods and other old trees, a lake and an unparalleled view of the San Francisco Bay area from Marin County to the north and Santa Clara County to the south.  At one point we stopped to enjoy the view and talk about what we do to keep our spirits up and, as if on cue, a Scrub Jay hopped out from beneath a bush.  There we were, talking about what gives us hope, standing among trees that have survived for centuries—in the company of an ordinary local bird whose main concern is finding enough food to get through the day.

I like birds and consider myself to be reasonably knowledgeable but during a  recent visit with my daughter-in-law Joanna I realized how much I was missing.  Jo is a serious bird watcher and during her visit added 40 Bay Area birds to her “life list.” The birds Jo spotted were a reminder that if you pay attention and look closely enough, you can find beauty all around and that is a good source of hope.  For some useful information about ways to find hope, I recommend Elizabeth Bernstein’s columns in The Wall Street Journal.  They are full of good advice and leads to other sources.  And meanwhile…

HAVE A HOPEFUL WEEK!

*Photo by me.

RIP, STEPHEN SONDHEIM

Photo by Gwen King via Unsplash

Stephen Sondheim, age 91, died at his home this past Friday morning, the day after celebrating Thanksgiving with dinner at the home of friends.  That seems like a pretty darn good way to leave this earth.  Sondheim was a Broadway composer-lyricist, not a well known performer, but the outpouring of laudatory remembrances of the man and his work indicates how many generations he influenced—often for very different reasons—over his long, productive life.

It seems as if I have known Stephen Sondheim’s works forever.  His was one of those names that was synonymous with Broadway.  A few months ago, I happened upon a documentary about Sondheim and was taken by his obvious appreciation for aspiring performers.  He was so attentive, intelligent and keen that that particular memory of him stayed with me.

Now, the weekend after Stephen Sondheim’s death, there is a feast of appreciative memories:   Michael Schulman wrote in The New Yorker of his high school years:  “Stephen Sondheim taught me how to be a person.”  He quotes these lines from  Into The Woods, “How can you know/Who you are till you know/What you want?”  On Saturday, Adam Gopnik posted another remembrance on The New Yorker website, observing that “no songwriter—not Rodgers, not Schubert—has ever written so many great songs of longing and wanting.” On a personal note, I went to “A Little Night Music” in New York when I was in the midst of a divorce and “Send in the Clowns” nearly did me in. 

Stephen Sondheim understood a whole range of human emotion. It seems fitting that after exploring the many conflicts one may suffer in a life, his departure seems to have been an appropriately gentle conclusion for a thoughtful man.

A REAL TURKEY OF A YEAR

This Thanksgiving comes after a year full of turkeys—and not the feathered kind.  Rather then further depress myself and you by enumerating a whole flock of social, political, pandemical and climatological turkeys, I am going to look back at what now seems a simpler, happier time (even if it wasn’t)—my childhood Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving in my family was always—like Halloween—a truly fun holiday.  In our small house in Stockton, California, where my mother single-handedly turned out a delicious traditional meal while worrying about what her mother (my “Gammy”) would find lacking, we had a good time.  

There were bumps:  my grandmother and her third husband usually arrived hours early—right after visiting the grave of her second husband on the way to our house.  Every few hours, Gammy would sneak into the bathroom and smoke while my dad handed out bourbon-and-sevens to the arriving aunts and uncles.  My three-year-old sister Liz enlivened the party one year by asking my obese Aunt Addie, “Why are you so fat?”  

The crisis of the meal prep was always the gravy.  Heaven forbid if it was lumpy.  It wasn’t until I was married and making gravy myself that I learned it wasn’t worth all that agony.  Had they never heard of a whisk?  

My grandma’s masterpiece was pumpkin pie.  We all looked forward to it.  I thought my Gammy was the best pie-maker in the world.  Unfortunately, she refused to share her recipe and instead took it to her grave. Now, instead of thinking of her fondly every Thanksgiving, we remember what a turkey she was not to share.  

Here’s hoping that by next Thanksgiving we will all be in a better state of mind, body and body politic.

HAVE A HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

MORE RICHES OF COSTA RICA

Costa Rica is blessed with natural riches, from cloud forests to rain forests to beaches and wildlife. In October I spent 10 days there with photographer Juan Pons visiting different areas to photograph Costa Rica’s spectacular wildlife. All of the photos below were taken by Bill Popik.

This little beauty is an Eyelash Pit Viper. Those little bumps are the “eyelashes” and are thought to be useful by breaking up the outline of the viper when it is hiding in foliage. The “eyelashes are easier to see in the photo below.

This Red-Eyed Tree Frog isn’t venomous. These cute little frogs are common in the lowland forests of Costa Rica and the rest of Central America.

[image error]

I assume these turtles know what they’re doing.

We were in a small boat on a river when we spotted this Capuchin Monkey in the trees. He did his very best to look threatening but mostly he looked ridiculous. We wouldn’t have felt that way if we had been close to him on land.

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!

MORE RICHES OF COSTA RICA

THE RICHES OF COSTA RICA

A male Quetzal (photo by Bill Popik)

Costa Rica is a country blessed with natural riches. Last month my husband and I spent ten days in Costa Rica with Juan Pons Nature Photogaphy Workshop taking photos of some of the beautiful, unusual wildlife of that wonderful country. In the next couple of weeks I plan to share some of our photos. The photo above, of a Quetzal, may be my favorite. I visited Costa Rica a few decades ago and all I really, really wanted to see was a Quetzal. I spent hours in the cold and damp cloud forest hoping for a glimpse of one of these punk-haired dudes to no avail. On this recent trip, we were lucky to see several. It was a thrill. Costa Rica is the home of 903 bird species as well as numerous weird reptiles. Here are photos of a few them, with more to come next week.

Photo by moi

I this is a green iguana. I was too busy admiring him/her to get the scientific name.

Sloth photo by Bill Popik

And if you are a photographer who tends to rush taking a picture rather than wait for the right shot, this is the critter for you. You can set up a tripod, recheck your camera settings, comb your hair, refresh your lipstick–take all the time you want! Come back an hour later and the sloth will still be there, most likely not having moved an inch. Most often, sloths look like large hairballs near the tops of trees. We were lucky to be able to see this one’s face. They always look slightly amused.

Next time: more about Costa Rica wildlife and a photography lesson.

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!

A note from subscriber Shirley M. V. regarding whether to quit Facebook or stay with it for now:

Hi Alexis, I read the article. It warmed my heart. I have the same philosophy regarding FB. I have relatives who are way over the top with political posts. I love their posts about family. So I scroll past the negative posts and enjoy the pictures and comments that are positive. I also love the page re: the Giants; the Neighborhood Watch page; the community events page and more. I have connected with family and friends on FB. I’m going to stay and enjoy what I like. 

SHOULD WE ALL QUIT FACEBOOK?

Photo of Facebook phone screen by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Facebook is my way of keeping in touch with old friends and making new friends.  This week, the believable congressional testimony of a former Facebook employee has made me rethink my use of the app.

I very rarely see content on my Facebook page that is hateful or promotes bizarre conspiracies.  This is likely because, as a Left/Liberal, if I post anything political it is not ultra conservative or conspiratorial.  This creates a different algorithm for me than others whose pages indicate a different bent. The point is, you receive and share certain types of postings and Facebook continues to send you more of what you’re drawn to:  the good, the bad or the ugly—and makes a lot of money doing that. 

If I quit Facebook, I will miss my Facebook friends.  I have lived in four different states and six different towns in the past 25 years and I don’t like talking on the phone, so Facebook helps me connect to folks I’ve met along the way.  Whether my friends from those places were people I saw nearly every day (like Linda B.K.) or who lived a few doors down (Sharon G., Brenda M.) or met by chance and immediately connected (Joy T., Joan R.), I like being able to check in every so often.  Thanks to some of Facebook’s algorithms, I’ve even been met some of my husband’s high school friends online (Shirley V., Marcia F.R.). 

For now, I’m going to stay with Facebook to see if much-needed changes occur.  We don’t need more hate in this world.  I don’t think it’s too late to improve the ways we talk about and treat each other.  This week I came across the following posting (on Facebook!).  It lifted my spirits, even as I wondered if it were true or just one more made-up story, though an uplifting one.  I hope you read it (click here). 

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!

BEAUTIFUL SENTENCES

From the Archive:

Beautiful sentences are a pleasure to read and remember. Daniel Dalton of BuzzFeed Books solicited reader opinions on the most beautiful sentences they had read. Here are some of their favorites (and mine), with attribution of the “suggesters” where known.

“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe…”
-Lewis Carroll, The Jabberwocky
-Sentence suggested by @HannahBurden

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
-Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
Sentence suggested by @elizabethmoya

“She lay in the dark and knew everything.” -Ian McEwan, Atonement

“You’re just in time for a little smackerel of something.” –A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Fortitude. … It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you.” –Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.” –A.S. Byatt, Possession

“She wasn’t a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.” –Muriel Spark, Aiding and Abetting

“What is pertinent is the calmness of beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it.”

–Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“And then he told her. Told her that it was as before, that he still loved her, he could never stop loving her, that he’d love her until death.”–Marguerite Duras, The Lover

           

NOTE:  My favorite reader response to the question I posed in a previous blog:   “If you could change a key incident in your life, a situation in which you took one path rather than another, what would it be?  What do you imagine the outcome of a different choice would have been?”

The answer:  “One clear / simple response to your main question:
If I hadn’t married J., my life might have been simpler but far drier / shallow. And our 3 terrific kids and their offspring would have lacked some spunky genes.”

And what about you?  In this time when we are all considering what lies ahead and what we would have done differently if our lives had not been so rudely interrupted by COVID–what would you have done a different way?

HAVE A HEALTHY WEEK!

Note:  all photos taken by me.

GEORGE WILL AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

PHOTO BY DENISE JONES VIA UNSPLASH

I think about happiness a great deal of the time but I don’t think about George Will very often.  To me, he’s a smart old guy who opines in print (Washington Post) every week and on news shows occasionally…and maybe he isn’t all that old.

In a recent column, George Will quotes Fred Allen as saying that television enables us to have in our living room people we wouldn’t want in our living room.  That’s not only funny—it’s also true.  Much of the time the news features people furiously screaming (usually at a school board or town hall) about one of the issues of the day; the amount of anger out there is deeply distressing.

With no clear path to decrease the problems of our divided country— a worldwide pandemic, homelessness, hunger and global warming to name a few—happiness can be a scarce commodity.  At least, it is for some of us.  In our house, we watch too much news and it does nothing to increase happiness.

 George Will says our current national discontents will diminish if, but only if, Americans adhere to two categorical imperatives: “They should behave as intelligently as they can, and should be as cheerful as is reasonable.” He concludes that, for Americans, the pursuit of happiness is happiness. I tend to disagree, but as I write this my spouse is pursuing happiness by turning off the news and instead watching Young Frankenstein down the hall. I guess he is pursuing happiness. From the sound of things, George Will has a point.

HAVE A GOOD WEEK!