The Dish – Page 315

Creating Art, One Single Cell At A Time

Klaus Kemp, featured in the above short documentary, The Diatomist, carries on a Victorian tradition that marries art and science to beautiful effect:

Few did obsessive nature handicrafts like the Victorians, whether it was seaweed scrapbooking or shell arranging, something of the salon repression boiling over into insanely labored DIY arts. One of the fascinations was with the newly accessible microscopes, which showed previously invisible specimens such as the single cell algae diatoms, of which there are hundreds of different types in the world. With a single hair, practitioners would scoot the diatoms, encircled by iridescent glass-like silica cell walls, into kaleidoscope patterns only viewable beneath a lens. …

In the short documentary The Diatomist … [filmmaker Matthew] Killip visits Kemp at the work he’s perfected over years of research, showing some of the gorgeous miniature art, as well as expeditions to the water the diatoms call home. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s a horse trough, or a ditch, gutters, you name it, where there is water it’s worth having a look,” Kemp says in the film.

Chris Higgins spoke to Kemp about his work:

“As a youngster of 16 I had a great passion for natural history and came across a collection of sample tubes of diatoms from the Victorian era,” Klaus told Wired.co.uk. “I was immediately struck by the beauty and symmetry of diatoms. The symmetry and sculpturing on an organism that one cannot see with the naked eye astonished me, and after 60 years of following this passion I can still get excited from the next sample I receive or collect.”

Klaus is inspired by the original diatomists from the Victorian era whose works are well sought-after by collectors. Names such as Johann Diedrich Möller and R. I. Firth have inspired him so much that Klaus is planning to recreate some of their original exhibition slides himself. Finding those initial tubes while working for a Manchester biological supply company was just the first step of Klaus’ adventure in microscopy. He has since collected thousands of samples from many different sites, with each location having its own specific type or structure of diatom.

Writing About Death For A Living

Alex Ronan interviews Margalit Fox, who has written obituaries for the New York Times for nearly twenty years. Fox poignantly describes how she approaches cases of suicide:

One of the most heart-wrenching interviews I’d ever have to do was for a poet. I have maybe one suicide a year and they all seem to be poets. If I were an insurance company, I’d never write a policy for poets. This particular poet had shot himself, which I knew from other sources. … I knew I’d have to call this poet’s wife and ask her to confirm the cause of death. There is nothing in Emily Post on making that call. It’s bizarre and horrific that as a stranger you’re calling someone cold and saying, Hello, you don’t know me, but I’m going to ask about the most painful thing in your life, which just happened yesterday, and I’m going to publish it where millions of people can see it. I called up, I took a deep, silent breath, I introduced myself and then—I’d normally never be this familiar with a source—I said, Honey, what the hell happened? God bless her, she told me. It was New York, in the summer, they had a bedroom air conditioner that was very noisy and, as his last act of tenderness to her, he made sure it was on, knowing the noise of the AC would cover the sound of the shot.

She continues:

Suicides, particularly young suicides, are very, very painful. You can’t not be affected by having a story on your desk about someone in their twenties or thirties who has just shot himself. Very rarely is there an emotional toll, maybe once or twice a year. Happily, the vast majority of people we write about are people who’ve died in their beds in their eighties, having lived long, fruitful lives.

Why Was Jesus Really Crucified?

Douglas Main details a new paper from Yale University’s Dale Martin suggesting that it might have been because his disciples were carrying weapons:

The biblical books of Mark and Luke both state that at least one (and probably two or more) of Jesus’s followers was carrying a sword when Jesus was arrested shortly after the Last Supper, at the time of the Jewish festival of Passover. One disciple, Simon Peter, even used his sword to cut off the ear of one of those arresting Jesus, according to the Gospel of John. This militant behavior almost certainly wouldn’t have been tolerated by the Romans, led by the prefect Pontius Pilate, Martin tells Newsweek. For example, historical documents show that it was illegal at the time to walk about armed in Rome and in some other Roman cities. Although no legal records survive from Jerusalem, it stands to reason, based on a knowledge of Roman history, that the region’s rulers would have frowned upon the carrying of swords, and especially wouldn’t have tolerated an armed band of Jews roaming the city during Passover, an often turbulent festival, Martin says.

“Just as you could be arrested in Rome for even having a dagger, if Jesus’s followers were armed, that would be reason enough to crucify him,” says Martin, whose analysis was published this month in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament.

Reactions to the paper have been mixed. Bart Ehrman told Main that “it’s making me rethink my view that Jesus was a complete pacifist.” But not everyone is convinced:

Paula Fredriksen, a historian of ancient Christianity at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, says Martin’s paper has several holes “that you could drive trucks through.” For one, she doesn’t think it’s legitimate to assume that since carrying arms was illegal in the city of Rome, the same laws necessarily applied in Jerusalem. Control of the city wasn’t too tight, she argues, and the Roman prefect visited only during Passover, to help keep the peace. And during this time it probably would’ve been impossible to police the thousands of Jews that spilled into Jerusalem.

“I can’t even imagine what a mess it was,” she says. Furthermore, she says, the Greek word used in the Gospels that Martin interprets as sword really means something more akin to knife. And these could be easily concealed, she adds. “Only professionals,” like soldiers, “carried swords,” she says.

(Image: Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ, 1602, via Wikimedia Commons)

“I Cannot Imagine My Freedom Without Women”

Richard Rodriguez recently sat down with “On Being” host Krista Tippett for a conversation about “The Fabric of Our Identity.” The entire exchange is worth listening to, but this passage from Rodriguez about women and religion, and their influence on his life as a gay Catholic, stands out:

[A]s a Catholic, I was surrounded by an iconography, which was luscious and physical, and there was the bleeding Christ on every cross that I ever saw. And the eroticism of the religion was, to my imagination, very, very rich from an early age. At some level, this church which denied me also gave me a great deal. I want to be clear about that. Um, I do not want to present myself in any way as oppressed. It did teach me, and this is the point of Darling. I’m — Darling in the book is not Richard Rodriguez. Darling in the book is a woman, a friend of mine, who has lunch with me in Malibu, California, on the day her divorce was finalized. She has since died of cancer. The chapter really is about women and religion. And I think that I came upon that theme, that subject, because I am gay.

Uh, I don’t want to talk about myself. But all I want to say to the Christian churches, is that the man that I’m with, I will say not even — I won’t even give myself the grandeur of this word. But his achievement and his importance to me is that he has loved me. And he has taught me the import of that word. The church will not give us that word. I date my emancipation as a homosexual man with the women’s movement. And I notice that Susan B. Anthony came to this place to argue for the vote for women. When women begin to call for the vote, it is a revolutionary act, and it liberates me.

And I’ll tell you how. For the first time, women are saying I don’t want to be identified merely with what I am at the house. In civic society, I don’t have to be somebody’s mother, or wife, or grandmother. I want to be judged equally with any man in the voting booth. And when women get the vote, they move out of the kitchen in something like the way that they allowed me several decades later, to move out of the closet. These movements are related to each other. I cannot imagine my freedom without women.

Listen to our Deep Dish podcast with Rodriguez here.

A Cloud Of Unknowing

Sociologist Jay Livingston recently took the Pew quiz on religious knowledge, which led him to the results of their survey of Americans’ religious literacy. He tries to explain the above findings, which show nonbelievers, Jews, and Mormons scoring the best:

Jews and Mormons have to explain to the flock how their ideas are different from those of the majority. Atheists and agnostics too, in their questioning and even rejecting, have probably devoted more thought to religion, or more accurately, religions. On the questions about Shiva and Nirvana, they leave even the Jews and Mormons far behind.

For Protestants and Catholics, by contrast, learning detailed information about their religion is not as crucial. Just as White people in the US rarely ask what it means to be White, Christians need not worry about their differences from the mainstream. They are the mainstream. So going to church or praying can be much more about feelings – solidarity, transcendence, peace, etc. That variety of religious experience need not include learning the history or even the tenets of the religion itself. As Durkheim said, the central element in religion is ritual – especially the feelings a ritual generates in the group. Knowing the actual beliefs might be a nice addition, but it’s not crucial.

More Than A Feeling

Claude S. Fischer points to the limits of empathy when it comes to helping others:

Relying on empathy to motivate charity means that it is not enough that the needy are humans, but they must also be lucky, like the children who happened to live near a Google mogul and got needed dental treatment as a Christmas present; children living further away did not. The needy must also not be repulsive, but preferably be adorable. That is why relief organizations try to show individual, attractive victims who are suffering but not suffering so much as to turn viewers away (see this earlier post on “ugly” laws to bar the poor from city streets). The latest development to mobilize empathy for altruism is “a crowdfunding website for homeless people, where the needy can post photos, videos, tell their story, and request donations for the things that might help them take the next step.” So, the homeless who can best display their empathy-worthiness get personal help from the homelessness-kickstarter audience.

The Abrahamic tradition has a different approach to altruism. The New and Old Testaments largely command people who are comfortable to give to people who aren’t—unconditionally (discussed here). Feeling empathetic has nothing to do with it. Nor does the recipients’ deservingness. (Even the president’s spokesman goofed in attributing the Greek saying about helping “those who help themselves” to the Bible.) In this tradition, God wills, commands that we help those who need help, with no qualification tests. On a comparable subject, rendering justice in disputes, the Bible enjoins that “You shall not favor the wretched and you shall not defer to the rich” (Lev. 19:15; Alter trans.)—that is, a judge should not let empathy guide justice in either direction.

A Short Film For Saturday

Greg Jardin’s short film Floating follows the urban adventures of a figure made entirely of balloons:

Floating once again proves our remarkable human ability to discover empathy for abstract non-humans. Known for his high-concept stop-motion music videos, Jardin, in a new passion project, displays remarkable adeptness at CG in crafting his remarkable protagonist. A bare-bones production, shot on public streets, Jardin puts in extra work in handling Edit/Sound Design and VFX in addition to writing/directing. The result is a film that looks much more lush and expensive than it probably was. … [T]he remarkable “performance” of his animated lead hits the right spots in enabling an audience to experience his crushing loneliness.

Jardin explained his inspiration in a recent interview:

I really liked the idea of crafting an emotional narrative around something that you would normally not have any real emotional connection to, in this case, balloons. When I started discussing the idea with my friend Matthew Beans, who ended up co-writing it with me, we started discussing the notion that giving the balloon person a kindred spirit and separating the two could give it more of an emotional impact that a balloon person alone for the duration of the film.

Just Browsing

Marisa Meltzer contemplates the “vicarious Tinder fantasies” of the settled-down:

“They want to save you, the married friends,” said Karen Luh, who is a lawyer in Los Angeles. She sighed audibly. “I was having dinner with a friend and talking about losers I was dating. She said, ‘You should use this thing Tinder.’ She had seen it at a baby shower. She presented it like she wished she could use it, too.” …

Perhaps, at least in part, the envy isn’t even about wishing they were single and seeing what’s on the menu out there, but about fear of being left out by new technology — or way of life. “It’s America, so people are always worried about getting old and out of touch and obsolete,” said Emily Witt, who profiled Tinder in GQ earlier this year and whose forthcoming book, Future Sex, is on women and sexuality. Married people feel like they’re “missing out on this new kind of socialization, which isn’t to say they should be jealous of us,” she said.

Or for some would-be Tinder voyeurs, maybe it’s simply a way to get their significant other a little bit jealous. One night last winter Gio Muniz and Ruth Reader were at a bar in Brooklyn, and the topic of Tinder came up. “We were talking to a friend who had just started messing around with it and telling us how someone finally figured out a hookup app for straight people,” she said. So they downloaded it on his phone and started browsing. “It lasted 22 minutes or so,” said Muniz. Then, “Ruth was like, ‘You’re gonna delete that, right?’”

Leonard Cohen On Love

Ezra Glinter looks at sex and intimacy in the work of Leonard Cohen:

Cohen’s rawness, and the honesty with which he displays his own vulnerabilities, sometimes leads him to extreme positions, granting sex a primacy that it doesn’t deserve. In his view “there is a war between the man and the woman” as well as “a war between those who say there is a war and those who say that there isn’t” (“There Is a War”). He has written, “a friendship between a man and a woman which is not based on sex is either hypocrisy or masochism.” And he has concluded, “when I see a woman’s face transformed by the orgasm we have reached together, then I know we’ve met. Anything else is fiction.”

For me, that’s the voice of a less mature self, for whom deprivation is not just the mother of poetry but of exaggeration.

… Usually those emotions, even when we can admit them to ourselves or share them with our closest friends, have to be covered up in polite society. We can’t walk around constantly in the throes of our own private maelstroms. More important, maturity—and good sense—demands that we view each other as human beings who suffer from basically the same problems, not as enemies in a never-ending war of the sexes. We are the perpetrators of pain as well as its victims, we reject and are rejected, desire and are desired. But that knowledge doesn’t lessen the joy and suffering of our innermost selves. It doesn’t diminish the feelings of delight and anger that seem as though they had never been felt before. Only time diminishes them, along with experience, repetition and age.

Except, it seems, for Leonard Cohen. In his work, the bite of those feelings is still sharp. In his albums and novels, memories of love and heartbreak stay on the surface, bobbing up and down. In his poems and songs there is always, as Wordsworth put it, “The glory and the freshness of a dream.” Reading and listening to Leonard Cohen it is always, and forever, the first time.

A Story About Leaving The Dreamhouse Behind

Ophira Eisenberg survived a car accident when she was eight years old. Here she tells the poignant, bittersweet story of how her recovery gave her the perspective that comes with growing up:

Eisenberg is a comedian, writer, and a regular host of Moth storySLAMs, as well as of the NPR quiz show Ask Me Another. Previous storytelling on the Dish here.