Celebrating World Space Week

World Space Week is an international holiday celebrated every year from October 4 to 10 in nearly 100 countries across the globe. World Space Week is the largest space event yet, put in place to celebrate the benefits of science and technology to human society. 

The 2022 World Space Week theme, “Space and Sustainability” allows World Space Week to address sustainability from two angles: (1) how space benefits society and contributes to sustainable development on Earth and (2) what are the challenges ahead of us to keep space activities and the space environment safe and sustainable.

Some Space Fun For World Space Week

Space Rock Songs

A Trip to the Moon - the 1902 Science Fiction Film by Georges Méliès

A Grand Day Out - Landing on the Moon - Wallace and Gromit

The Magic School Bus - Gets Lost in Space - Ep. 1

Coin Operated - Animated Short Film

Space Walkies | A Mickey Mouse Cartoon | Disney Shorts

Animated Short Film: "One Small Step" by TAIKO Studios

Photos Of Fall

Today's blog post is a photo dump of assorted cool photos I took this fall.

Most of them highlight how amazing mother nature can look at this time of year.

Review Of IVP 2022 Festival

 

I was able to attend all 6 readings that were part of IVP 2022. 

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IVP brings global voices to Chicago stages through commissions, translations and production. We collaborate with consulates, cultural partners and universities throughout the Chicagoland area and collaborate with national and international theatres to promote global playwrights at the national level. A global city demands global art.

Sept 12: The Mapmaker | Spain

Summary:

In present-day Warsaw, Blanca hears the legend of the ghetto cartographer. According to that legend, an old cartographer was determined, while everything was dying around him, to draw the map of that world in danger; but since his legs no longer supported him, since he couldn't look for the data he needed, it was a girl who went out to look for them for him. Blanca will take the legend for truth and she will launch herself, obsessively, in search of the old map and, without knowing it, in search of herself. The cartographer is a work -a map- about that search and about that legend.

My Review:

This was a play where I liked the concept more than the execution. Personally I got lost in the wibbly wobbly time travel that occurred. I also had trouble connecting to Blanca's story and the trauma she experienced felt like an after thought. I will note that the reading was very long (over 2 hours which is long for a stage reading) and the room was very cold so I may not have been in the right mindset to be able to follow and enjoy the reading.

Sept 14: The Shroud Maker | Palestine

Summary:

From the critically acclaimed Palestinian writer Ahmed Masoud, who was born and raised in Gaza. Hajja Souad, an 80-year old Palestinian woman living on the besieged Gaza Strip, knows about business. She has survived decades of wars and oppression through making shrouds for the dead. A compelling black comedy, The Shroud Maker delves deep into the intimate life of ordinary Palestinians to weave a highly distinctive path through Palestine’s turbulent past and present. Loosely based on a real-life character still living in Gaza, this one-woman comedy weaves comic fantasy and satire with true stories told first hand to the writer and offers a vivid portrait of Palestinian life in Gaza underscored with humor.

My Review:

I really enjoyed this moving and meaningful comedy. The suffering of the Palestinians, the day to day lives of the Palestinians, and the hopefulness of the Palestinians despite it all are not typically expressed nearly enough. This was an important play. In addition this play had been performed before in England which meant that it felt more polished than some of the other readings. 

Sept 19: Give Me A Happily Ever After | Norway

Summary:

Welcome to Life! Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride! Living is scary, will we be okay in the end?

My Review:

This was a fun comedy looking at our interactions with anxiety and how both anxiety challenges us and makes us better people. 

Sept 21: Turks, Fire | Germany

Summary:

When a residential house is engulfed in flames five people are killed, three children and two women. The perpetrators are youths from the neighbourhood. The name of the small town is soon known nationwide thanks to a flurry of media reports. But the nation’s attention soon turns elsewhere to other, more pressing issues. Yet for the survivors and victims of the arson attack that fateful night will never end. The mother who leapt from a window cradling her child trying to protect the baby with her own body tells her story over and over, detailing the moment of her death. The mother of one of the perpetrators talks about the silence that enveloped her home, of her inkling that something had happened, of her doubts about her son’s guilt. A female relative who survived the fire sees the flames every day, feels the heat and smells the smoke. Each person is trapped in their memory and pain yet searches for a way to talk about what happened, yearns to meet other people and find a way to communicate.

My Review:

I am not sure how I feel about this reading. I liked some of the exploration of what it means to die for different people but had trouble following who was which character which meant it was harder for me to connect to the struggles of the characters. This was a play where we were told in the talk back that it did not have any punctuation which probably added to my struggle to feel like it was a cohesive whole. 

Sept 26: A Dictionary of Emotions in War Time, Call Them By Their Names,

The Peed-Upon Armored Personnel | Ukraine

Summary:

Three voices from the War in Ukraine meld together chronicling thoughts, emotions, and horror from the war in Ukraine as it begins and changes the world. Call Them By Their Names by Tetyan Kitsenko, The Peed Upon Armored Personnel Carrier by Oskana Gritsenko, and A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War by Elena Astasyeva immediately transport us to the moments that changed their world and ours in an instant and presage a rupture that will take generations to heal.

My Review:

This was an fascinating combination of 3 works by Ukrainians about the current Russian invasion. It was filled with hope, resilience, and strength. 

Sept 28: Totentanz: Black Night, Black Death | Poland

Summary:

March of 2020, Bergamo, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Francesca, a former model and her husband, Luca, a television host, have invited some neighbours to an illegal dinner. This innocent social evening gradually turns into a quarrel over the pandemic, Italy, European values, social solidarity, and political and ideological views in the crisis situation.

My Review:

I first want to say I had an exam to go to afterwards so my mind was not totally focused on the play. I also only had the above summary and know I did not understand many of the references that were being made which made the reading feel long. 

As I looked up more info I found this expanded summary which would have been useful to know beforehand. 

The play is built on structures drawn from commedia dell’arte: the protagonists come from various regions of Italy and personify the stereotypical attributes associated with dell’arte characters, yet the conflict rests on twenty-first-century divisions. Venetian wealth and Sicilian poverty, the refugee crisis in Lampedusa, immigrant labour, the breakdown of the health system during the pandemic, the collapse of faith in European solidarity—these are only some of the subjects the drama raises. The story of the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975 hovers over everything like a sinister omen—this was a homophobic and political crime that smacked of wild capitalism and the fascist history of Italy and Europe.

Yet two characters seem to belong to another world entirely. These are Salvatore, the equivalent of the dell’arte Dottore and his helper, Chiara, a young girl, a character who seems to be a mix of Arlecchino and perhaps an Italian Lisbeth Salander. It is they who ultimately take one of the guests into the underworld. Who are they? Etruscan gods? Messengers of Hades? A delirious dream of Claudia, who turns out to be a doctor in a Covid unit?

The play makes a wide range of references to Italian, European, and world culture. We encounter Pier Paolo Pasolini, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Tarkovsky, Tarantino, even the opening words of the Comendatore from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and allusions to the Aeneid. The action is broken up by intermezzi—some take the form of television shows, others resemble musicals. There is also a grotesque parody of Wheel of Fortune, ending with the prize of a luxury coffin, and the performance of a medieval song that is an ode to Pluto, lord of the underworld.

In the finale the violinist dies, the bourgeoisie are ridiculed, the helpless doctors await international aid, and Chiara performs her contemporary song, which might be read as the triumph of death.

Comedy mixes with tragedy, mythology with the global problems of the twenty-first century. The Italian context turns out to be merely a costume for the challenges standing before most of the societies of the West.

Finding Joy Where You Are

 

As part of the month of Elul I have been getting daily prompts via The Jewish Studio Project.

One recent one that stood out to me went in part:

Marie Kondo became famous a few years back asking people to pick up their belongings in order to determine if they sparked joy. The question that I ask when I pick up a piece of junk is a little bit more open-ended, “could you foresee any circumstances in which using these objects would be enjoyable?” The best part is that the answer is almost always, yes.

We are surrounded by stuff. Instead of hating on it and hauling it off so that, inevitably, we can buy more stuff, what if we just made use of it. I am all for letting go of what we no longer need, but I’m also equally in favor of recognizing how much we already have and how much joy can be derived from making use of it.

Tonight, in an act of radical, spiritual hoarding before the new year begins, I invite you to make a list of things that you already have and aren’t using that you could find a way to derive pleasure from in the year to come. Maybe it’s the items that are pouring out from your arts and crafts cabinet, maybe it’s the snowshoes in the basement, maybe it’s an established friendship that you’ve been neglecting, or maybe it’s just the liquid aminos that could be used to make your famous gluten-free fried rice.

I really like the idea of finding joy where we are. Feels very Hob Gadling. Feels very love life no matter what it sends your way. I know I have lots of items around my home that I should actually use or put another way drink the tea, use the lotion, create with the art supplies. I really enjoy this idea of instead of focusing on letting go we focus more on using what we have. What we have physically, what we have emotionally, what we have spirituality, and what we have creatively. 

9/20/22 a 

Elul journal prompt which goes in part

“I invite you to make a list of things that you

already have and aren’t using that you could

find a way to derive pleasure from in the year

to come” feels meaningful right now, feels like

One way to live life more like Hob Gadling

We all have so many things already

Physical things, Mental things, Emotional things

We all have so many things already

Spiritual things, Dream things, Creative things

We all have so many things already

Neurodivergent things, Wondrous Amazing things

We all have so many things already

How can we all find joy in each of these things?

How can we all find joy in life itself? The universe?

How can we all find joy in those we see everyday

And those who we only see once every 100 years?

How can we all find joy in each of these things?

How can we all find joy in each of these things?

Celebrate Banned Books Week

 

This is Banned Books Week when we celebrate books that have been banned and we focus on the importance of reading banned books. The theme of this year's event is “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular. (via bannedbooksweek.org)

So what banned books are you going to read this week? If you need inspiration here is collection of banned book lists compiled by The Children 's Book Council. No matter what type of stories you enjoy you will be able to find a book that has been banned. 

Book Lists: Children’s, Middle Grade, and Young Adult

Frequently Challenged Children’s Books & Frequently Challenged Young Adult Books — ALA: Banned & Challenged Books
Banned Comics — Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF)
The Ultimate List of Banned Books — Scholastic
Banned & Challenged Books Every Tween and Teen Should Read — Brightly
Banned and Challenged Picture Books — Edmonton Public Library (EPL)
16 Banned Books to Read Before 12th Grade — We Are Teachers
28 Banned Books That Every Kid Needs to Read — Tiny Beans
Banned or Challenged Books, Grades Pre-K–4 — TeacherVision
NCAC, A Kids Co., Release New Kids Book About Banned Books — National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC)

Practicing Seeing "No" As A Success

 

I have been doing a good amount of virtual volunteering with nonprofits this year. The site I use has two main types of opportunities:

• 1 hour phone calls where a nonprofit gets to pick my brain 
• Long term projects that vary in length and last from weeks to months depending on the project

I have been doing a bunch of the phone calls around how to work with social media. 

• What a good post looks like
• Helping brainstorm content
• Basic strategy (getting them to think about what they hope to achieve using social media etc.)

Today I had another call but clearly they were looking for something beyond the scope of an hour call. While they posted asking for help with "standard steps/recipe for how, in a very basic approach, to be more strategic and thoughtful about our approach to social media." 

• They already had content
• They knew their audience
• They knew what they wanted to use social media for
• They already were using a social media calendar 
• They already had social media strategy
• They wanted to go even deeper over 3-4 meetings over the next month. 

I talked with them, explained how what they wanted was outside the scope of the one hour calls and outside my specialty and that they should post again under long term projects and how to tweak their ask so they match with a better fit. 

The person said they were happy I was upfront and said this was not a good fit BUT I still found myself feeling like a failure because I had to say No. It took some consideration before I decided that even though I had to say No, I did prep for and complete the call so I am counting it as a call I have done this year. 

And while how successful the call was depends on how you look at it in the end I did point them in the direction they would need to go in order to get the volunteer help they want. But this highlighted how much I have to practice seeing saying no as a success. I find it way to easy to fall into the pattern where saying no means I failed.

Don't Police Female Identified Bodies In The Name Of Health

There has been a recent recommendation in the news that "Primary care doctors are advised to talk to women between 40 to 60 who have a normal or overweight body mass index, or BMI, about maintaining their weight or limiting it to prevent obesity." 

This recommendation bugs me for a whole host of reasons:

• This recommendation is unnecessarily gendered. If this was really about health and not just policing female identified bodies the recommendation would be for all people not just women.

• This recommendation minimizing female identified bodies' agency. This recommendation suggests that women are not aware of their own bodies and have no idea of their own weight.

• This recommendation is for all female identified bodies disregarding if the person is actually considered overweight or is in anyway actually suffering from a health issue. 

• This recommendation is based on BMI which has been shown to be problematic for a long time. BMI is not an all encompassing indicator of health. While it can be useful in a big picture way there is a lot of variability in body composition. 

• This recommendation makes it even more likely that doctors will be judgmental of anyone who happens to have a different body shape. 

Personal example of why all this matters:

Last fall I went to a new doctor for an annual physical because I had different insurance. 

I had gained a few pounds between about 9 months before COVID (and before I left a job where I was on my feet for 8 hours a day to now being a freelance writer which involves more sitting) to last fall and my BMI now was considered overweight. 

While I had not gotten to a primary care doctor in a few years I had gotten to several health clinics over the 3-6 months before my new primary care doctor's visit. These clinics had included blood pressure, full cholesterol panels, fasting blood sugar, A1C etc. which all came back fine so I had a basic understanding of where I was health wise. I also brought all this data to the new doctor for their reference.

Instead of actually listening to me the doctor started diagnosing me with a wide range of issues right off the bat, which she even listed in my chart, everything from hormonal imbalances (which she even said what she was seeing was not actually in line with but was the only possible reason I had gained any weight during COVID), to calling in prescriptions to the local pharmacy I would need to take. 

This was all before she did any blood work of her own and while totally dismissing all the other results because she did not think those tests were as good as her test. (Again I can understand some tests might be more sensitive than others so doing your own makes sense, having blood work done was not an issue for me, but assuming my numbers would be horrible and tell me thus despite the others being fine feels like a leap) 

This was also without me having any symptoms so I was not sure why she was so determined that I was sick. In the moment I was overwhelmed at being diagnosed with various lifelong conditions but after both all my blood work came back fine and some time had passed I realized part of the doctor's sureness I had tons of aliments was probably because my BMI was slightly high. 

This whole situation taught me that doctors can end up being intentionally or not, very judgmental when it comes to weight and health especially in women. I was seen as a woman with slightly high BMI and therefore seen as someone clearly with a whole host of health issues without having to check if I actually had those health issues. 

And this all meant I felt even less willing to ever go back and see a doctor again for a physical (I found someone new who hopefully will be better this year.) This is why the recommendation that all women's weight be talked about by doctors feels like it could both go wrong and could keep women away from the doctor's even if they do have health issues because they don't want to deal with the judgment.