Vlog: My Biggest Challenge

I have begun a weekly vlog on Youtube. This is my third vlog. Hope you enjoy it.

NYT excerpt on Iranian protests

Source: The Lede Blog, New York Times
Writer: Nazila Fathi (Tehran)

It was hot in the car, so the young woman and her singing instructor got out for a breath of fresh air on a quiet side street not far from the anti-government protests they had ventured out to attend. A gunshot rang out, and the woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, fell to the ground. “It burnt me,” she said before she died.

The bloody video of her death on Saturday –circulated in Iran and around the world — has made Ms. Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old whom her relatives said was not political, an instant symbol of the anti-government movement. Her death is stirring wide outrage in a society that is infused with the culture of martyrdom — although the word itself has become discredited because the government has pointed to the martyrs’ death of Iranian soldiers to justify repressive measures.

Ms. Agha-Soltan’s fate resonates particularly with other women, who have been at the vanguard of many of the protests throughout Iran. “I am so worried that all the sacrifices that we made in the past week, the blood that was spilled, would be wasted,” said one woman today who came to mourn Ms. Agha-Soltan outside Niloofar mosque here. “ I cry every time I see Neda’s face on TV.”

Opposition Web sites and television channels, which Iranians view with satellite dishes, have repeatedly aired the video, which shows blood gushing from her body as she dies.

On the Web site The Daily Beast, an Iranian university student explains that, in his family, the video has exposed the deep rift in the way younger Iranians look outside the state-run media for the truth, while their parents and grandparents may not. Telmah Parsa writes:

After watching the video my brother’s eyes were full of tears. I was too incensed to cry. But not everyone was disturbed by the video.

“That’s what comes from pouring into the streets,” was my mother’s casual reaction when I showed her the clip. My mother is hardly a callous person. On Friday, when the Supreme Leader declared in his nationally broadcast sermon that he is willing to give his life for “upholding Islam,” my mother—like most people listening, including a prayer hall filled with grown men—wept.

She was not touched by the video of Neda because it was not compatible with her essential presumptions. [...] Her offhand reaction, however, offended me. She was quick to detect my indignation. “Son, you and your brother have been brainwashed by the Western media…Why do you believe everything they say?” This is our parents’ typical line when they encounter the deep chasm that separates our way of thinking. [...]

My brother and I often forget that the state-run TV is almost the only way our parents, like many Iranians of their generation, get information. The state knows this very well. [...]

As for the current protests, the state-run TV refers to the demonstrators as “mobs.” Broken shops and burned cars are the only parts of the protests the regime TV is prepared to air. Interviews show people in the street complaining that “mobs” have ruined their businesses and students who cannot study because of the noise the “mobs” make. What is never even implied in the TV is that hundreds of thousands of Iranians in major cities are marching peacefully in the streets to show their lack of trust in the state-announced election results. Nor will the clip of Neda’s murder ever make the airwaves.

Autobiography (for the Dr. Doris Brougham Scholarship)

When I look back at my life, I can hardly believe how many times I have had to literally pick myself up after a bad fall. As a child, my body was weak and fragile because of congenital muscular dystrophy. Although I could walk, I could not run, jump, or ride a bike. I fell down easily if I wasn’t watching my steps, and I needed someone to help me up after a fall.

When I was eight, I had a surgery performed near my right ankle to lengthen a contracting tendon, and that was when I got my first wheelchair, donated by the hospital. After spending two months with my leg in a cast, I was finally free of the cast and the wheelchair. The mischief of my eight-year-old mind, though, got the better of me.

One afternoon, I told my brother to tie a rope around the armrests of the wheelchair and pull me like a carriage up the road in front of our house in Nantou County. He did, but in no time we found out how dangerous our plan was. As my brother pulled me up the hill, my wheelchair suddenly tipped forward and I hit my forehead on the asphalt pavement. I started crying. Mother ran out of the house and pulled me out from between the tangled ropes, all the while scolding us for doing such a foolish thing. That incident, however, did not stop me from my experimentations.

In 1995, my family moved to Singapore because of my father's work as a church minister. By the time I entered secondary school in Singapore, muscular dystrophy had weakened my body so that I spent most of my waking hours in a wheelchair. My classmates in the girls' school took wonderful care of me--pushing me around campus, carrying books for me, and even bringing me to the bathroom. One day, a few weeks after school started, I asked my classmates to let go of my wheelchair on top of the gentle slope by the cafeteria. It was such a thrill! But a teacher saw us and informed our form teacher. During class later that day, the form teacher told us never to do that again. I sighed, and reluctantly agreed.

In those first few years of being confined to a wheelchair, I took a couple more falls before I finally gave up those thrilling rides. In 2000, when I was fourteen years old, I developed severe scoliosis that began affect my heart and lungs. The doctors said that surgery was necessary, but my congenital condition would complicate the process. After extensive research and support from family and friends, I finally had the operation in Loma Linda, California.

The surgery was a success. With two metal rods hooked around my spine, I no longer experienced back pain or breathing problems--and I was done with risky wheelchair tricks. After returning to Taiwan in 2001 and finishing my high school through distance learning, I went to Texas for my freshman year of college. The memories still bring smiles to my face.

Now in my junior year at Fu Jen University, I have grown to be a composed, studious young lady. My classmates and teachers sometimes describe me as being mature beyond my years, but I know better. Maybe I don't rush down slopes in my wheelchair anymore, but beneath the surface still lurks an insatiable desire for all things fun and crazy. After all, I've learnt this over the years: pick yourself up after a fall, and, really, it's going to be okay.

Nostalgia in "Poor Joanna" and "The Hermitage"

History comes alive through the process of remembrance. In the chapters "Poor Joanna" and "The Hermitage" in Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, the recollection of Joanna's life illustrates how nostalgia is experienced through storytelling between the women of Dunnet Landing.

There are several characteristics about nostalgia that can be gathered from the conversations between Mrs. Todd, Mrs. Fosdick, and the narrator. The most obvious is perhaps the setting where these stories were told.

The telling of the tale in "Poor Joanna" began when the narrator invited Mrs. Todd and her old friend Mrs. Fosdick into her room to keep her company. Mrs. Todd took to her knitting "because Mrs. Fosdick was busy with hers." When Mrs. Fosdick alluded to the name of Joanna for the first time, she said, "I was talking o' poor Joanna the other day… Mis’ Brayton an’ I recalled her as we sat together sewing." It seems that nostalgia and memory were evoked when women gathered in a house or a room, engaged in the quiet activity of clothe-making. It gave them the chance to talk, listen, and reminisce about the past.

Looking back together, these women might begin a conversation with a general memory of town in the past, but their retrospection often narrowed to a single focal person. In "Poor Joanna," as Mrs. Todd and Mrs. Fosdick sat knitting, each in their rocking-chairs, they began to talk about Shell-heap Island, first about the rumors of the "Old Indian times," which evoked a recollection of the day and age when whaling voyages existed and there were many "queer folks" and "a good many curiosities of human natur'" in their neighborhood. After lamenting the rise of "copy-cats" through the years, Mrs. Fosdick alluded to the name for the first time.

Both Mrs. Fosdick and Mrs. Todd knew Joanna, which gave them a deep sense of connection as they reflected on the life of this hermit. As Mrs. Fosdick puts it, "It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you know... Conversation’s got to have some root in the past." Thus, from Mrs. Fosdick's point of view, nostalgia is more than a lonely, imaginative journey to the past; it is joint visit to a historical time and place. It is as much about deepening the present relationship with each other as it is about recalling the past. As the narrator observed later, "The two women had drawn closer together, and were talking on, quite unconscious of a listener."

Talking about the past can be an emotional experience, yet the women were seldom afraid to show their feelings. The narrator noted that, at the mention of Joanna's name, Mrs. Todd lost "her sad reserve in the growing sympathy of these reminiscences." In other places, the narrator described how Mrs. Todd either "sadly shook her head as if there were things one could not speak about," was "confused by sudden affectionate feeling," or spoke "sorrowfully," "soberly," or "mournfully" about her contact with Joanna. As for Mrs. Fosdick, she fidgeted "with eagerness to speak" and "leaned back in her rocking-chair and gave a heavy sigh." Once, she asked Mrs. Todd what Joanna said, and the narrator described Mrs. Fosdick as "much moved." The visitor told her old friend: "Hearin' you tell about Joanna brings the time right back as if 't was yesterday."

Indeed, the women's conversations brought back memories of a time so long ago, but in their old age, these women have taken on new perspectives on old stories. In an earlier conversation, the narrator speculated that "by the polite absent-minded smile on Mrs. Todd’s face [the story Mrs. Fosdick was telling] was no new story." This was probably true, too, with the story of Joanna, but Mrs. Fosdick admitted a change of attitude towards Joanna: "I called her a great fool, but I pitied her then, and I pity her far more now… Her troubles hurt her more than she could bear. I see it all now as I couldn’t when I was young." Even though there were more peculiar personalities in Dunnet Landing in the past, the women were not necessarily very understanding of Joanna's situation and choice. Nevertheless, Mrs. Fosdick remarked that she could "see it all now," with a new comprehension that did not exist when she was younger.

All these features mentioned above characterize the experience of nostalgia among the women of Dunnet Landing. There are of course other aspects of nostalgia that can be explored, including the attention to details and the significance of objects and locations in evoking these memories. But they are secondary when we want to focus on how the women reminisce, rather than what. As exemplified in the entire work by Sarah Orne Jewett, human connection is at the heart of all stories. It is both the reason and the means through which we bring back the past.

A Question

Is it okay
to start the day
by crying?
For the way life is
and was
and what it may become tomorrow.

The night's sad sight
has long gone by,
but it overruns
into the sunlight.
And so I allow myself
to start the day

by crying.

Meeting Philip Glass

Last night I had the pleasure to attend the Taiwan debut of Philip Glass's work Book of Longings: Song Cycle Based on the Poetry and Artwork of Leonard Cohen at the National Concert Hall. It was a very pleasant evening, one of the most enjoyable performances I can remember, and it cast a wondrous spell on me by almost making me believe that I was watching the performance in a theater in New York City on a cold winter night.

Book of Longings is a sophisticated piece of art, featuring 22 songs in 90 minutes, integrating elements of poetry, music, visual art, and vocal performances. On the mostly darkened stage, the eight instrumentalists and a quartet resemble what you might see in a high-end bar in Chicago, New York, or Paris. Or more probably, a private performance for a group of fifty VIPs. It felt intimate, even from the 32nd row.

The first song made an especially strong impression on me. The song was called I Can't Make the Hills. The song set the tone for the rest of the night, but mostly it was Leonard Cohen's deep baritone voice reciting his poem, set to an eerily affecting music, that sent chills down my spine and made me fall in love with the work. At that instant, I felt an overwhelming gratefulness to have come to the performance. I knew I was going to enjoy the evening.

I had been looking forward to that particular evening for several weeks already ever since I listened to an interview with Philip and Leonard at the Aurora Forum at Stanford University, and became fascinated with the two men. Being a movie lover, I knew the name of Philip Glass and have heard some of his movie scores, but Leonard Cohen was a complete stranger to me. It was only through the interview that I realized how famous and prolific this Canadian singer-songwriter-poet-novelist had been all this while. The way Philip and Leonard talked in the interview---as incredibly talented collaborators would, but collaborators who respected each other so deeply they credited the success of their work on the brilliance of the other---their conversation immediately inspired in me an awe for the two men and their love of art.
At the concert, I felt like I was an ardent fan of Mr. Glass meeting him for the first time. I was so thrilled when I heard that Philip Glass was signing autographs at the ground floor after the performance. When the performers were giving their final bow before a cheering audience, my father and I slipped away to the ground floor and found ourselves in a mostly empty room in front of the ticketing booth. A lady handed us a small plastic card that read National Concert Hall, No. 1.

About 20 minutes later and with 40 more people lined up behind us, Philip Glass came out through a side door and everyone clapped. The staff ushered him to the autograph table, and another lady motioned me to come forward. I went up with my big coat on my lap and several program sheets in my left hand, and fumbled a bit as I handed him the DVD cover of the documentary about him, Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. At close range, I took in his whole wrinkled face with his big eyes and slightly crazy hair. He could very well have been a passer-by I met in Paris, or perhaps my favorite uncle in an alternate life. But he is Philip Glass, and I was star-struck.

I thanked him for signing his autograph, and told him that I love his work. He said thank you, very kindly. "This is a wonderful crowd tonight," he said.

Meeting Philip Glass was one of those moments that, for ten minutes afterwards, you couldn't stop smiling, and which you had to remind yourself to wipe the smile off your face every time you thought of it for the next 24 hours. But it was quite an odd feeling too, that the morning after an evening enjoying the collaboration between a 71-year-old composer and a 74-year-old poet, I found myself in the hospital with my grandmother, my parents, and several aunts and uncles, discussing whether my frail 83-year-old grandfather should have a bypass heart surgery.


The sum of a man's life can be expressed so beautifully in poetry and music, but it seems to require a certain number of years in a man's life to gather the wisdom to do so.