By Sandi Page, LLS Jupiter Marketing Committee Member

What is it about poetry that has the power to instruct us, to transform us, to comfort us, to inspire us?  I fell in love with poetry as a very young child and it has been a lifelong love affair ever since.  Each night, my mother would read us one of the poems from each of the 88 pages of our whimsically illustrated children’s poetry book. We would never let her skip a page!

When I was 6, I received my own book of children’s poems, all new to me. I still have that book even though it is now held together with masking tape! Those poems taught me the beauty and the musical rhythm of words, how words could be put together in poetic form to delight or to make us think, and how words could be used in unexpected ways.  What child has not giggled at the wonderful silliness of Gelett Burgess’ I never saw a Purple Cow, I never hope to see one; But I can tell you, anyhow, I’d rather see than be one!  What child has not been made giddy by the permission to not like an adult “just because” after reading:
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.

In my teenage years, we had many poems to memorize for school. Other students found it an onerous task but I had been memorizing them for pleasure for years so I was delighted with the new material.  How thrilling at that age to read William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus”:
…I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Or Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”:
…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

These two lessons have indeed made all the difference to me throughout the years.

My guiding light as an adult has been the beautiful and introspective poem “Ithaka” by C. P. Cavafy.
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery…
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way…
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

A few years ago, a young friend who was too beautiful for this world departed it much too soon. My own words seemed incomplete, inadequate to offer to her grieving family so I translated into French the poem “Beannacht” (the Gaelic word for blessing) by John O’Donohue and gave it to them.  Her sister read it at her funeral:
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

That poem, along with letters of loss to her written by those of us who knew her best, were then cremated with her so that her spirit would always know how very much she was loved.

After many years of living in France, I came back to the United States to take care of a family member whom I loved fiercely and who had suffered a series of strokes.  While she was still able to, we would take a daily walk through her neighborhood.  The strokes had robbed her of much of her memory and our conversation was limited, but one day she stopped in front of an abandoned house.  She told me it reminded her of a poem she had learned in school as a young girl.  She suddenly recited the first stanza of it, a poem that was unfamiliar to me:
Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I’ve passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it…

I was stupefied. When we got home, while she took a nap, I searched through her collection of poetry books trying to find it.  After an hour of searching, there it was:  Joyce Kilmer’s “The House with Nobody In It.”  When she woke, I read it to her in its entirety. Her smile was the finest gift I have ever been given.

Two more strokes took their toll but only once did she give in to the indignity of the physical infirmities she was now facing.  I started to console her, this woman who was the strongest woman I had ever known…and then stopped abruptly as I remembered the words from a Dylan Thomas poem I had memorized years earlier:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light…

So, I put my arms around her and let her cry, as well she should.  After, I painted rosy pictures of a road trip we would take together.  Once again, her contented smile was my reward even though only I knew that she would never again leave her house except by ambulance.

She was now bedridden.  Each day, it took more and more of my strength to rip her from the greedy arms of the monster of total memory loss, a monster who was gaining ground each day. Conversation was now nigh impossible so I read to her. Our favorites were “The Reader” by Bernhard Schlink and Vicky Myron’s charming “Dewey the Library Cat: a True Story”…and, of course, her favorite poems.  I read to her until my voice gave out……then I read some more. After all, what better gift could I give to this beloved woman who had read me 88 poems every night so many years before?

I asked three of our esteemed LLS professors to share with us what poetry means to them. Here are their lyrical responses:

Dr. Benito Rakower

In the lower grades of public school, we heard rumors and had intimations of something special ahead. I learned about it from my older sister.  But all the pupils in my class also knew about it. It was famous and, to our childish understanding, magical, wonderful, and powerful. Our only and partial glimpse were the lines:

“Water, water everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.”

We memorized them and were taught by older pupils that they were “poetry.” More important, we knew immediately what the words meant and how horrible the situation described must have been. It was the first time in my life that I came under a spell. In the 7th grade, we read the entire text of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.   

From that moment, I realized that words were more important than grammar.   And that simplicity was grander than cleverness.  When I came to read Shakespeare, it was never his wit and cleverness that impressed me.  Rather, it was the force of a phrase or word that leaps off the page.   The line in Shakespeare that most affected me was Caliban saying to Prospero “wouldst give me water with berries in it.”   Explaining its wounding greatness would be futile.  In fact, explaining poetry is worse than futile.

Dr. Kurt F. Stone

Poetry: Words Suffused with Fragrance

Like my mother, who is currently in her very active 90s, my grandmother, who lived to somewhere between 96 and 103 (she lied a lot), did a bit of acting.  And like her daughter, she was immensely literate.  Perhaps that’s because she was born just a few weeks before, and in the same neighborhood as, F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Unlike most Jewish grandmothers, Anne was a really third-rate cook and not much of a housekeeper. However, what she lacked in the kitchen, she more than made up for in the salon or library, for she managed to inculcate in her grandchildren a love of Shakespeare, Tennyson, Byron, and Browning.  Even before we hit kindergarten, she had us reciting Byron (“She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies…”), Noyes (“The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees…”), Byron (“Adieu, Adieu! My native shore\ Fades o’er the waters blue …” and, of course, Shakespeare (“The quality of mercy is not strain’d; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven …”).

According to grandma, poetry was the highest form of literature – the only one in which “words are suffused with both beauty and fragrance.” And although few of our friends – many of whom were, in reality, the children of novelists and screenwriters – could quite understand why we were forever reciting poetic verse – we felt truly special. For to this very day – and I am now a grandparent myself – I can still hear, feel, and even sense the fragrance of the poetry Anne shared with us so many, many years ago. The words she read are immortal; the woman who read them is, likewise, immortal.

As a postscript, we have long possessed in our family, a leather-bound 1878 Avon edition of the complete words of Shakespeare. In every generation, it is given over to one member of the family for safekeeping; this tradition is now in its 5^th generation.  I am happy to report that since the mid-1990s, I have been the keeper of this marvelous volume, filled with the smudges, fingerprints and utter enjoyment of those literate ancestors who came before me.

Dr. Taylor Hagood

I know what you’re thinking . . . .

Not poetry!

Ugh, all those lines and that weird sing-songy way you have to read it and the rhyming. Or maybe it doesn’t rhyme—that’s even worse. You imagine people reading, in those overly tragic tones, lines that are utterly inscrutable. There may be some clever turns of phrase, but what does any of it mean?

Oh no, the HIDDEN MEANING!!! That’s the worst of all. Who can possibly figure out what the “poet” is trying to say?? Who has time to worry about it?

I feel your pain. I have myself thought the same way. I pretty much felt that way all through elementary, junior, and half of high school.
Then, one day, I was in a junior level high school English class, and, finally, we were getting away from diagramming sentences (a form of torture the millennials have no knowledge of) and reading short stories by Hawthorne and Poe. How I loved those tales with their fine romantic glow—old Feathertop being transformed from a broomstick contraption to a real man, Prince Prospero with his grand masque ball interrupted by the inexorable red death.
I was having a fine time of it, and then the day came when we had to read some poetry. I groaned inside. How could I get through this hiatus and on to the good fiction again?
The teacher was a man named Pete Caleodis. He had a way of peering down his eyes at you, and when he spoke, only the ends of his lips turned up. He had a superior kind of disdain for pretty much anybody and anything. He was about the driest of the dry. It was hard to imagine a sense of humor or a heart or much of anything alive about him.
Mr. Caleodis had assigned us Poe’s poem, “The Bells,” and, I have to say, I thought it was about the silliest thing I’d ever tried to read. Bells, bells, bells, bells, bells. No wonder Ralph Waldo Emerson called Poe “the jingle man.”
Mr. Caleodis said he was going to read this one to us aloud. I was prepared for the worst.
And, at first, it seemed like some version of the worst. He started in reading about the silver bells, and, somehow, this dry old fellow’s voice went octaves higher than I could ever imagine it as he rushed through. We all started laughing. He was like some kind of cartoon character. What was he doing?
But then he got to the wedding bells, and his voice dropped a little and he read slower, and suddenly his voice had a nice round sound to it. These were the golden bells, and he made them sound golden. And when he got to the part where he repeated the word “bells,” he didn’t do it quickly but instead read them slower, with a fine kind of tone that mimicked the sound of bells ringing.
I quit laughing. He had my attention.
I looked down at the poem in my book as he began reading about brazen bells. His voice got loud now, and I could feel how those bells were terrifying. They were angry, and I could hear the brass in his voice and the violence as he read. I was rapt now, in a different world.  Maybe I was in Notre Dame cathedral itself and it was Quasimodo himself ringing the bells. Maybe Mr. Caleodis was Quasimodo come back from the dead.
And then came the iron bells. The voice dropped in register and volume both. It wasn’t Mr. Caleodis’s voice anymore. It was a disembodied voice. The voice of the poem. The voice of bells themselves. They groaned and rung and moaned and sung. They were giant, massive, full of overwhelming pain, so heavy they could barely swing. They sounded in their hurtling monotone, and, when the last one rang, I could hear its echo vibrating around the room.
I opened my eyes. I wasn’t sure when I’d closed them. I looked at the man who’d never seemed like a real person to me. He’d transformed into something unearthly.
And so had poetry. My whole understanding of poetry and what it could be was changed right there.
I guess my life changed, too.
Mr. Caleodis went on to do other dramatic performances that semester. He read Langston Hughes’s “The Weary Blues” just like it was a blues song, and I could hear the click of those keys just like my grandmother’s old piano that drew blood when you dared do a glissando. He also read James Whitcomb Riley’s “Little Orphant Annie,” and, if the good Lord lets me live, I plan to read that one the way he did it for my little nephew come Halloween.
Because poetry is not about trying to mean something or trying to sound smart or melodramatic. In its core, it’s about sounding the music of a human’s heart and soul. Plain and simple. A literary critic can write about it and show all the different ways a poem touches different aspects of life. But when you get down to the bone with poetry, it is really about people expressing the deepest things of what people are. Sometimes it’s happy, sometimes fun, sometimes sad, sometimes broken, just like all those different kinds of bells.

But what about those HIDDEN MEANINGS???!!! Aren’t we supposed to find those in poetry?
To answer that, I would mention another great teacher I had. His name was David Noble. He was an original. Only one in the world like him. He came from way down in West Virginia; he was a southerner in the North just as I was, and he taught me how to wear that identity with pride. He had a standard uniform: a button-down, jeans, loafers, and a fly-fishing vest. I don’t think he ever did any fly-fishing, but he was always wearing that vest. He kept all kinds of packets of cigarettes in it. He also kept life-savers and, periodically throughout class, he would ask trivia questions, and if you got it right, he tossed you a life-saver as a reward. Better make sure you caught it—you didn’t get a second one.
Dr. Noble believed in moving classes along at what he called a “civilized pace.” That meant you didn’t worry too much about keeping to a schedule. He never put a calendar on the syllabus. He assigned readings, and if you got through them in the given class period, that was fine. But if things got exciting, you just kept going.
You never knew what was going to happen in his class. One time, in a course on Romantics and Victorians, it was springtime, and he went out and cut a bunch of apple blossoms on the trees outside the building. “Delve your nose in there,” he said. Literature was living. It was the written form of life just as a score was the written form of music.
My first course with him was an introduction to poetry. I was scared all over again because while Mr. Caleodis had shown me the possibilities for poetry, this was the university, and I doubted anybody would have fun with poetry here. Things were serious.
Then Dr. Noble walked in wearing that outfit. He went through the roll to see who was there. Then he said he’d had a song on his mind, “I Put a Spell on You.” Did anybody know who first wrote and recorded it? He pulled out a life-saver.
Nobody knew.
“Screamin’ Jay Hawkins,” he said with a laugh to himself and popped that life-saver into his own mouth.
Then he said, “Rule number one in this class: we’re not on the hunt for hidden meanings.”
We all looked around.
“If there are any meanings in any of this poetry,” he went on, “it will be right there, out in the open. Not hidden at all.”
He then had us read a poem entitled “The Mad Yak” in which a yak (the four-legged animal) is worried to death about his bones being turned into buttons.
“What’s the meaning here, right out in the open?” he asked.
“That if you’re a yak, you have to worry about your bones being turned into buttons?” somebody said.
I think that person got a life-saver.

What’s the moral of all of this? First, don’t be afraid of poetry. Second, don’t hesitate to take a poetry class here at LLS. We’re not searching for hidden meanings. We’re here to experience poetry being life. It’s that simple. If you like people talking, expressing, making you laugh, making you cry, then poetry’s for you. I’ll try to remember to bring life-savers. Poetry has definitely found ways to save my life; maybe you will need it to save yours, too. At the very least, it will be fun.

By Kami Barrett-Batchelder Associate Director

Katie Muldoon

1. With a background in marketing, you founded The Muldoon Agency in New York City. What inspired you to become passionate about films, especially foreign films? Why have you decided to teach in this phase of your life?

In my era, women’s career choices were generally nursing or teaching and, true to form, I planned to teach grammar school children.  While attempting to put myself through college at the University of Cincinnati (UC), I followed my artist dad’s footsteps and worked in advertising. Finding advertising a natural fit, I moved, over time, from copywriting to art direction and, finally, in New York City (having left Cincinnati), my own marketing/advertising company.

My love for art films started in Mt. Adams, the bohemian part of Cincinnati perched on one of its seven hills from where you can, literally, walk down the hill to the city. This is where I lived while going to night school at UC and working in advertising. There, a funky, art deco movie house had featured “art films” that at first drew me simply because they were different.  But after only a few tastes, my sister and I gorged ourselves on Z, 8 ½, Metropolis, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Belle De Jour, Repulsion (I had nightmares for a week), Jules and Jim, The Conformist, La Dolce Vita and every international film shown.  The dramatic, original graphics, the genuine, gritty, in-depth, fresh stories, the real, not always glamorous, but still extraordinarily appealing actors…this was a whole new level of cinema.

In the beginning, it was the graphics that garnered most of my attention.  Dad was a superb teacher of art. From the time my sister and I could talk, he explained color, balance and other aspects of art and design to us. In NYC, I had a potpourri of film events where I could find unusual films, from tiny film events where young directors presented their films, sharing the art approach behind their films, to the New York Film Festival with such luminaries as Pedro Almodovar.  Plus, there is MOMA with its regular film shows, the tiny Thalia theatre, the Bleecker Street theater – so many places where one could learn and share knowledge with friends.

Now, to keep learning, I watch the extras on the films/enclosed discs and hunt for documentaries such as “Visions of Light” that explain how light is utilized in film.  It is why, in my film classes, I try to share, in addition to information about the country and its traditions, some of the more art-oriented production aspects, such as camera angles, lighting, effects of sound and so forth with attendees, as it adds to the overall film experience.

Revisiting my desire to be a teacher, even while I was running my agency in NYC, I still, part of the time, taught marketing both for NYU and the Direct Marketing Association. Eventually, because of an ever-increasing travel schedule, I had to give up much of the teaching. But I missed it.  When we moved to the Key West area, I taught for the Literacy Coalition.  And, I might do so again in Palm Beach if time ever allows.

But right now, I have the opportunity to take another love – film – and combine it with my first love – teaching – for FAU LLS. To me, the greatest joy for a teacher is to see someone happy with shared knowledge.  Often, students tell me how much they have loved a film and what it has meant to them or what they have learned. That is pure magic.

2. This summer, you will present “Foreign Films Made Right the First Time.” Give us a glimpse as to what you will cover in this four-week course. What do you hope your students will take away from your presentation and the films?

“Foreign Films Made Right the First Time” uses the fact that superb international films have been redone by an American company, almost always in a less than stellar manner.  It is this difference between U.S. films and international films that highlights some of the reasons why my sister and I got the foreign film bug at such a young age.  This class will concentrate on the generally greatly superior foreign film but take time to examine the American “knock-off” and note what it is that specifically makes the original better.

Due to time considerations, I have constructed a comparison grid for the main class to review; the discussion group will also have clips and a trailer of the “knock-off” film to show the essence of the whole film. The discussion group will spend about a quarter of the time discussing the differences between the two films. The remainder of the time, we will talk about the main, original film as we do in all my classes.

Most of the summer films are selected in a more “summer” motif – thriller-type style rather than the more serious, heavier stories we often have in class.  Each film is highly respected, multi- award winning and a prime example of its particular genre.

3. What is your favorite foreign film? Why?

The reason I don’t have a favorite foreign film (or a favorite film of any type) is, thankfully, I keep discovering new and even more outstanding films.

Katie Muldoon will teach a four-week course, “Foreign Films Made Right the First Time,” starting on Wednesday, July 5, 2017 at 1 p.m. To register, click here.

By Sandi Page, LLS Jupiter Marketing Committee Member

Like the lyrics of a famous song, faraway places with strange-sounding names have always called to me.  The people, languages, sights, cuisines, colors and smells I encountered during my travels have made an indelible mark and constitute the rich, patchwork quilt of experiences that is my life.  Most of the memories of those trips are wonderful, many almost sublime.  Inevitably, a few near-disaster travel adventures peppered the route.  One of them took place in Greece, a country I have visited many times and that feels like a second home.

We always passed through Athens on each of our trips to Greece because I needed a few days to see the Acropolis yet again and to revisit my favorite museum exhibitions, not to mention the obligatory pilgrimages to the wonderful little non-tourist restaurants that we had discovered and where we were treated each year like returning family, in part because we took care to greet them and order our meals in Greek.

One year, we decided to finally visit Delphi to commune with the oracle and to feel the influence of the Delphic maxims “Nothing in excess” and “Know thyself”, sayings which had forever fascinated me and which seemed to be excellent words to live by.  We arrived very early in the morning at the Athens bus station, each armed with a book, and bought our reserved seat tickets.  As we climbed onto the bus, my eyes met the bus driver’s and a cold chill ran down my spine. My gift of ESP had never kicked in as strongly as it did that day.  I turned to my companion and told him that we couldn’t take the trip, that something terrible would happen if we did.    He was surprised at such an odd declaration coming from me but, nevertheless, gently said that I was being irrational.  I reluctantly tried to put my premonition aside.  We sat down and were settling in when I noticed that our seat numbers were not those marked on our tickets.   Feeling danger once again, I insisted that we switch to our assigned seats.  The bus filled with other passengers while I was filled with dread.  As the bus driver started the three-hour trip, I buried myself in my book so as not to see what I knew was impending disaster.   Halfway through the trip, our driver fell asleep at the wheel, the bus swerved and we crashed into an oncoming bus.   In my shock, I noted that the driver of the other bus, slumped over the wheel, was not moving.  The scene was horrendous, the smell of gas overpowering, the silence eerie. The people sitting in our original seats had been hurt worse than us. As we were trying to evacuate the bus, one of the passengers, an old Greek man, nervously lit a cigarette.  I broke the silence by screaming “No!”  in Greek, and although he was dazed like the rest of us, he immediately put it out.     After we were a safe distance from the bus, I realized that I had left my book on the bus and inexplicably ran back to get it!   We were transported to the hospital where I kept telling the doctor treating me that people had been killed.   The doctor kept telling me that everyone was fine.    I couldn’t understand why he switched from Greek to English to French and finally settled on speaking in Spanish to my companion who was in better shape than I was.  I spent the rest of the day hooked up to an IV.  When I was finally released, I found out that the doctor had been speaking in Spanish because he didn’t want me to know that three people had indeed been killed, including the other bus driver.  When we saw the pictures of the crash on the front page of the Athenian newspapers the next day, we couldn’t believe that we had survived.  Although we grieved for the lives lost, we felt the renewed sweetness of our own lives for years after.  My ESP powers were not put in doubt again but we never attempted another trip to Delphi.  The oracle had spoken.

Read on to discover other travel disaster stories from your fellow LLS students, staff and professors.

Barbara DePalma, Student
Our two-week trip to explore the Canadian Rockies was off to a great start. We had just landed in Calgary and were headed to Customs when a beautiful black dog bounded up to our
15-year-old son, Mike.  As Mike was petting the dog, we were suddenly surrounded by Customs officials. They quickly separated Mike from us and escorted him behind closed doors. My husband insisted on being with Mike, while I waited in confusion and shock with a Customs agent who told me that the dog had sniffed drugs on Mike. Patiently explaining that the parents are the last ones to know, she tried to convince me that it was better that we found out. It seemed forever before the agents came out and said that they could find no trace of drugs on Mike and that the dog was only interested in his sneakers. They had taken his shoes apart and found nothing. A light suddenly went on in my head! I explained that the previous weekend, we had gone to an outdoor Metallica concert where drugs were rampant. Was it possible that drug residue was on his sneakers? The agent confirmed that made sense because the soles were the only area the dog identified. Mike was released and we were again on our way. Later that night, Mike asked us if we had any doubts as the dog had been so positive. The look of gratitude on his face when we answered “No doubts at all” made the horrible ordeal almost worth it.

Paul and Christine Newton, Students
Many years ago, Paul and I were in the security line of a Central American airport on our way to a scuba trip when disaster almost struck.  We could definitely tell that we were in a Third World country.  As my carry-on bag went through security, the attendant repeatedly passed the bag through the X-ray and kept asking me if I had a knife in it.   Confidently, I denied having one.  She continued to ask and Paul wondered aloud if I had packed our dive knives in the carry-on but I knew that they were in the checked baggage.
The attendant asked a final time, as if to give me one last chance to confess, and I said no.  The attendant abruptly removed my bag from the line and started to search it.  Within 30 seconds, she removed a steak knife with a five-inch blade and a fork from one of the side pockets of my bag.  I almost fainted as my life flashed before me.  I’ve seen “Locked Up Abroad”!  I imagined Paul and me being handcuffed and separated, never to see each other or our families again.  Was there even a US embassy there??  By this time, there were several uniformed personnel inspecting my bag.  Much to our relief, they believed that I did not know that the knife and fork were in the bag and let us proceed with our trip after confiscating the utensils.  A noteworthy fact:  We had passed through security in two major US airports earlier in the day with the knife and fork undetected!

Richard René Silvin, LLS Lecturer
Some twenty years ago, I was booked on Cunard’s SS Vistafjord for a two-week “repositioning crossing” from Fort Lauderdale to Malta.

Around midnight of the first day, I noticed the engine vibration had stopped and I went out on the balcony to find the ship was dead in the water with flames flying out of the funnel. Within minutes, the alarms rang and the Captain addressed the ship, explaining that this was no drill. We were ordered to get our life preservers and proceed to our assigned “muster stations” at our designated lifeboats. There, an officer explained what we already knew: there was a fire. It had started in the engine room and the ship’s firefighters were trying to put it out.

Shortly thereafter, we were asked to get into our lifeboats, which had been lowered into boarding position. We remained in them for two hours, while news helicopters and Coast Guard planes circled the ship. Eventually, we were informed that the fire had been put out, and that we could now gather on deck (the ship was full of smoke) where hot soup and coffee would be served.

Several hours later, we were allowed to go back to our cabins, but the ship was inoperative and would be towed to Nassau. From there, we were removed from the ship, taken to the airport and flown by chartered plane to either Fort Lauderdale or London.

Sadly, one sailor was killed. The ship was rehabilitated and rechristened the Caronia.

Paul Brown, Student
It had been quite some time since we had been to London so we were very excited, especially as we were traveling on the Concorde.  Although the seats were rather narrow and the window seat had a warm wall, the meal and the service were handled quite well. The trip from JFK to Heathrow was scheduled to take only three hours and nineteen minutes.

Right on time, we touched down on a cool rainy night.  But before the plane stopped, we were informed that there was a fire in the wheel well and we would have to make an immediate emergency exit from the plane.  An announcement was made that all personal belongings should be left at the seat and would be collected in the terminal.

The exit was to be by the slides at the front of the plane.  Unfortunately, there was a problem with the slide on the right side which did not deploy.  This left the approximately 85 passengers and crew the one slide on the front left side.  Everyone was orderly and not concerned.  Why should we be?  We were already on the ground.  What could go wrong?  Regrettably, neither the cabin crew nor cockpit staff notified the women to remove their high-heeled shoes before jumping onto the slide.  Sure enough, the first woman with heels tore the slide and fell to the tarmac.  Thereafter, all passengers had to be caught before hitting the ground.

The trip to the terminal was uneventful.   We were allowed back onto the plane (which had been subsequently towed to the gate) row by row to prevent any thefts and then offered a complimentary drink in the lounge.  Interestingly, we heard no talk of suing the airline, but we were sent a complimentary round trip ticket to continue using the Concorde. This trip, when combined with others we have taken, clearly indicates that it is in your best interests not to travel with us.

Francia Trosty, Student
In the mid-nineties, the Chinese government was offering travel incentives to academics and so I went with a group of colleagues to Beijing. My friend Sally discovered upon arrival that her luggage was missing and she had absolutely nothing to wear. No problem, we thought. We were in a beautiful hotel in a downtown area with boutiques and fashionable stores nearby so we went shopping! However, it quickly became apparent, to our surprise, that all those garments made in China and mass marketed all over the world were not available to the locals. Sally, at 5’6” and a size 12, was way off the body proportion scale for local Chinese women. Nothing in her size was available anywhere at any price.  Undaunted, about 10 of us women in the group convened in Sally’s room with offerings from our personal belongings and she was able to cobble together a temporary wardrobe until her luggage arrived a few days later.

Peter Lippman, Student
It was 2012.  Our youngest son, Andrew, had been touring the world with Johnny Hallyday — the French Sinatra — and had announced two scheduled North American performances, one in New York City and one in Montreal.  Montreal made better sense for us, since a trip there would also facilitate a visit with family and friends.  We drove up to the Paris of Québec and, on the designated chilly October evening, joined the Bell Center box office line to collect the tickets that Andrew had secured for us and other family members.  It was a long line, which inched forward only laboriously, so, to pass the time, we chatted with each other.  It seemed a little peculiar that our in-line neighbors soon began to eye us somewhat quizzically, first one set, then another.  Finally, we could contain ourselves no further.  “Is there something that we can help you with?” we asked.  “Yes”, one lady responded, “We’re all wondering what you Anglophones (English-speakers) are doing at a Johnny Hallyday (i.e. French language) concert.”  We explained that a) Unlike many English-speaking Montrealers, we do speak French and b) that our son was one of the principal performers.  WOW!  We became instant heroes on both counts.  The concert volume and incessantly flashing strobe lights turned out to be less appreciable for those of us over fifty, but the preamble remains memorable.  (Incidentally, “L’homme du Train” (“Man on the Train”), a movie starring Johnny Hallyday, was included in Katie Muldoon’s LLS Spring course.)

Emily Morton, Staff
When I was about thirteen years old, my family and I took a trip to New Orleans. We spent time walking around the city, visiting the old French Quarter with its tantalizing aroma of Cajun cuisine. We also ventured into the swamp, wandering by airboat through great cypress trees on the Mississippi River. When it was time to go home, we boarded our plane. As we began to take off, the plane suddenly screeched to a halt on the runway, jolting us forward in our seats. I tried to look out the window to see what had happened but there was something red smeared on the glass. The flight attendant got on the plane’s intercom and explained that birds, which had suddenly appeared on the runway, had gotten caught in the engine during takeoff. I remember the heavy smell of burnt asphalt as we exited the plane. Aside from that experience, New Orleans remains one of my favorite cities.

Ginny Higgins, Student
I was in Nepal 3 weeks before the earthquake, was in New Zealand this past year during their earthquake (we were not too close but had just left Wellington and visited buildings where there was damage), and I slept in JFK airport one night while our Air China plane was being repaired after leaking fuel twice while we were on and off it (still can’t believe I got on it a third time the next morning). There are too many bathroom, or lack thereof, stories from my younger years that I will NOT share with anyone!

But the most ridiculous thing that happened was when Jim and I were flying to Australia with a layover in Los Angeles.  We almost ALWAYS travel with only carry-on and we are VERY used to getting off a plane, grabbing our luggage from the overhead bin, putting our backpacks on, and we are off and running.  So, naturally, when we landed in LA, we did just that.  We were so excited that we made the shuttle in record time and got to the hotel feeling terrific about our fabulous traveling expertise.  As we started to check in, we, of course, now realized that we had no luggage for a month-long trip.  So, I laughed, told the clerk we would return, and off we went back to the airport.  This time we took and PAID for a cab rather than wait for 1/2 hour for another free shuttle!  When we got to the airport, we were astonished to find that our luggage (and ONLY OUR luggage) was still circling around just waiting for us. By the way, the Australia/New Zealand trip was amazing.  If you have been there, you know.  If you haven’t, GO!!!

Benito Rakower, Professor
It was late July and we were in Lugano. I suggested to my wife that we hitch-hike back to Paris instead of taking the train.  Heike was reluctant at first, “I don’t like to entertain strange people.”

The next day, we were outside Basel, by the road to Burgundy.  A tan Citroen stopped to pick us up.  The driver was French and worked in museum painting restoration.  We got into a conversation about the asperities of Villon’s poetry.  Tall, dark-haired and handsome, Daniel had the languid calme of an aristocrat.  He wore no watch on his wrist. Daniel suggested we detour to the Loire and visit the Chateaux.  We were all game for it.  At Blois, we found a quaint hotel for the night and spent the next day visiting Chambord and Amboise.  Daniel had a Michelin Guide, which he never consulted. He knew everything.

Dinner was at an expensive restaurant seated outside.  Heike wore a dark blue skirt and matching pullover sweater – her lethal color.  All we ordered was lobster, with a rich sauce, ripe cantaloupe, and white wine.  At a certain moment, Daniel toasted Heike silently over the sparkling rim of his gleaming wine glass.  Heike toasted him back.  I had never before seen the expression on her face.

Later, in our hotel room alone, I asked, “Have you fallen in love with Daniel?”  Heike had an aversion to direct questions.  She said, “I didn’t want to hitch-hike.”  Each word hit the mark.  For the rest of the trip, Heike sat in front.  In Paris, there was a farewell drink.  Daniel gave us his business card and we parted friends.

Heike and I found a hotel on Rue Jacob and went for a stroll.  At the Café Flore, I recognized Rosemary, a once legendary English major from Radcliffe. I introduced myself and Heike.  It was odd that she was seated alone.

Twenty years later, we met again by chance in the middle of a sun-drenched road in Cambridge.  Rosemary remembered me.  We were both divorced. One night, we were walking up Avon Hill Road discussing Seventeen.  Swept up by the warm night, Rosemary’s beauty, and glimpses into homes with bookcases, I said, “Why don’t we live together?”  Rosemary responded, “I think we are.”

Suzanna (Suzie) Wells, Staff
This makes me feel anxious even now, six years on, having to write about it. In July 2011, just before I moved to Florida, my mum, my sister, my then 18-year-old twin girls and I treated ourselves to a holiday in the South of France. We had the loan of a wonderful private villa that belonged to my sister’s boss at the time, the CEO of Credit Suisse. The villa was idyllic.  Even Nicolas Sarkozy had a villa just up the street and we would see his helicopter from time to time flying over the beach which we overlooked. One day, while lying on the beach, my sister, the girls and I decided to rent some kayaks.  I went with Jo as she was the keen rower, having rowed for her school and I’m the weakest swimmer. Most of the kayaks were out that day so we ended up with only one oar each and, of course, no life jackets were offered or even thought about!  That was my naive city way of thinking in play!

We started off keeping close to the harbor, but then decided to venture beyond the small fishing boats and yachts that were docked there. It was then that the weather took a turn for the worse and the waters started to get rough. It wasn’t long before we lost sight of my sister Bee who was with my other daughter Dixie.  Little did we know that they had been knocked out of their kayak by an overly enthusiastic speedboater and were clinging on in very deep water.

By this time, the sea was so rough that we couldn’t row back so we started shouting for help. When a big wave came along, we got tipped out.  I drank more seawater than I did red wine on that trip, that’s for sure.

Jo managed to climb onto a small fishing boat that passed her. It was manned by an elderly French couple but the waters were too rough for them to reach me and, to be honest, they seemed more interested in saving the kayak! Knowing I wasn’t a great swimmer, Jo panicked and threw me a long rope that was on board.  This part would have been funny if I hadn’t felt so near death, but as I kept pulling the rope towards me, I reached the end of it. Jo hadn’t realized it wasn’t tied on anywhere!!! So, there I was in deep, deep water, no life jacket, tangled up in a rope, drinking so much sea water and getting weaker by the minute.  It was at that point I thought I was a gonna (English term here meaning done for).  If the cold water didn’t kill me off, the sharks certainly would. Meanwhile, the others had luckily been picked up by a passing boat (I’m glad they are such good swimmers).

Just as I had given up and started feeling that calmness you hear about in drowning accidents, out of nowhere this big luxury speedboat came along and scooped me out of the water (in my one and only James Bond moment). It was owned by a young German guy, which would have been romantic if I hadn’t lost my bikini top and looked like a drowned rat! Not even sure when I lost that (but I guess who cares in the South of France)!
So, this kind German wrapped me in a towel and gave me water and rushed me to the shore where the police & medics picked me up. Bee and Dixie were also there waiting with the police. I was wrapped in an aluminum blanket and given hot chocolate to drink. They wanted to take me to hospital, but now I was worried about Jo. I knew she was on a fishing boat with an elderly French couple.  I didn’t know if she had seen me get picked up or not, so a search boat was sent out for her. She was eventually found by the police running around the beach with a bag of fresh clothes and water looking for us, bless her.  We were kept with the police and medics for hours until we were all reunited, and they felt we were well enough to leave. Needless to say, we stuck to the pool for the rest of that holiday! So, lesson learnt here, never do any water sports without a life jacket! That was the last time I’ve been on a kayak! Even living in a beautiful place like Jupiter, I just break out in a cold sweat at the thought of it!

Robert Rabil, Ph.D. – Talk of the Day

Kami Barrett Batchelder Associate Director

Robert Rabil, Ph.D.

Robert Rabil, Ph.D., an internationally renowned and acclaimed scholar and LLS instructor, wrote an article, “The Syria Crisis Has Evolved into an International Power Struggle”, on April 18, 2017 for The National Interest.

To view the article, please click here.

This summer, Dr. Rabil will present a four-week course at FAU LLS Jupiter titled “Talk of the Day” which will examine the most debated cultural and political issues as related to U.S. values and foreign policy. These lectures strive to provide context and background against which these issues have become national news and seek to shed light on the implications of these conflicted issues for the collective consciousness of the American nation.

Classes will begin on Wednesday, May 17, 2017 at 10 a.m.  If a student cannot attend all four lectures of the course, an Explorer Ticket may be purchased at the door for $15. We allow this one time for a four-week course.

Dr. Rabil’s books have been highly commended and reviewed by major academic journals in the U.S., U.K., Arab world, Australia, Israel and Iran. His recent book on Salafism, based on Arabic primary sources and field research trips to the Middle East, broke new ground in the fields of Islamism, terrorism and Middle East politics. He is considered one of the leading experts on Salafism, radical Islam, U.S.-Arab and Arab-Israeli relations and terrorism. He served as Chief of Emergency for the Red Cross in Lebanon and was Project Manager of the U.S. State Department-funded Iraq Research and Documentation Project. He lectures nationally and internationally, and participates in forums and seminars sponsored by the U.S. government, including the U.S. Army and the National Intelligence Council. He holds a Masters in Government from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. In May 2012, he was conferred with an honorary Ph.D. in humanities from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He is a Professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University (FAU).

Talk of the Day
Wednesdays – May 17, May 24, May 31, June 7, 2017
10-11:30 a.m.

To register, click here.

Kami Barrett-Batchelder Associate Director

On Thursday, April 20 at 9:45 a.m., Douglas T. McGetchin, Ph.D., will present “Non-Violent Power in Action – A Better Way to Build Democracy” at FAU LLS Jupiter.  Dr. McGetchin is an Associate Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University where he specializes in the history of the international connections between modern Germany and South Asia. He is the author of “Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism: Ancient India’s Rebirth in Modern Germany” (2009) and several edited volumes (2004, 2014) on German-Indian connections. He is a recipient of a Nehru-Fulbright senior research grant to Kolkata (Calcutta), India and a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) grant to Leipzig, Germany, and has won multiple teaching awards.

Dr. McGetchin was kind enough to answer some questions regarding his education, research and travel experience. He has taught for Lifelong Learning in the past and we are excited to welcome him back next week for his one-time lecture.

 You received your Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. What inspired you to pursue a degree in history?

History has always been an adventure to me, better than fiction because it actually happened.  History provides a laboratory of human experience, a series of cases of extraordinary people facing unusual circumstances and being pushed to the edge and sometimes beyond their limits.  It is full of so many interesting people.  Reading about the past has helped me see how society, politics, and culture all work, and it has given me insight into the present.  Great teachers and school environments inspired me as I was growing up in Boston.  I had an eighth-grade teacher who not only had us read about Shakespeare and Elizabethan England but also play a naval simulation of the 1588 Spanish Armada.  I was one of two students in a history class in a public high school where we read about Richelieu’s France.

You were also a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Scholar and spent time in Kolkata (Calcutta), India. Tell us about your experience in India and what you did while there.

In India, I pursued research about Indians struggling against the British during the last few decades of the British Raj, from before the First World War to 1947.  I was looking through mostly colonial police files of surveillance on subversive Indian nationalist groups, looking for patterns of resistance to the colonial authorities.

My family, including my wife, two daughters (13, 10) and a son (4) went with me to Kolkata (Calcutta) where we lived for four months amongst people who became as close as family.  We were all impressed by the warm hospitality of everyone there and the ability to get along with each other in cramped conditions.  It was an adventure of adjustments, but we learned a tremendous amount and gained an appreciation for how much Americans can learn from India, about working together in harmony, caring for the environment, and for each other.

You have several published works and are currently working on a book examining the interconnections between the struggles for social justice, internationalist and anti-imperial politics in Great Britain and Germany, the Indian Independence movement, and the pan-African movement that included the Civil Rights struggle in the United States. What do you hope this book will convey to your readers?

I hope readers will gain an appreciation for the long dialogue between nonviolence and violence among advocates of social struggles.  For every Martin Luther King, there was a Malcolm X. For every Gandhi, there was a Surya Sen. Sen was a schoolteacher who, just a few weeks after Gandhi’s 1930 peaceful Salt March, led a guerilla raid against a British outpost in Chittagong, killing the British garrison there and capturing its armory before disappearing into the jungle.  Advocates of nonviolence have had to justify their approach and contend with those advocating the use of violent methods, those who say nonviolence is naïve, will take too long, or is not practical.

I also want readers to appreciate the international interconnections between these advocates. Most people know Dr. King drew upon ideas from Gandhi.  There is a much wider network of ideas and personal connections, including W. E. B. Dubois, who wrote about race and a “world color line” dividing Europe and the U.S. from the colonized world.  DuBois was a close friend of Indian nationalist Lala Lajpat Rai, who stayed in exile in the United States during the First World War.  I hope to help people see these connections.

During your lecture, “Non-Violent Power in Action,” on April 20 at 9:45 a.m., you will be explaining the effectiveness of non-violent resistance by examining multiple cases of nonviolence struggle with the aim of understanding the principles that led to their success. What is your opinion of the use of non-violent resistance being used in the United States today?

Nonviolence has become increasingly relevant around the world including in the United States. Nonviolence refers to actions taken outside normal institutional political channels, including boycotts, marches, and acts of civil disobedience.  There have been plenty of these actions over the past few years, including, perhaps most dramatically, the Women’s March on Washington in the aftermath of the Trump election.  Low voter turnout and interest in an authoritarian Trump and a socialist Bernie have reflected a discontent that the Occupy Wall Street movement manifested a few years earlier, revealing how the 99% of Americans experience increasing economic, political, and media alienation.  Looking at the early to mid-20th century roots of social struggle is important as there are many movements that have used non-violent approaches, including Black Lives Matter and the LGBQ community’s fight for marriage equality, Transgender rights, as well as elements of the conservative movement.  Nonviolence is a useful tool across the political spectrum, and usable by the disenfranchised as well as the powerful.  It behooves all of us to understand it.

Non-Violent Power in Action – A Better Way to Build Democracy
Thursday, April 20, 2017 – 9:45-11:15 a.m.
To register, click here.

Kami Barrett-Batchelder Associate Director

The Sleeping Beauty

“Sleeping Beauty” by Charles Perrault, or “Little Briar Rose” by the Brothers Grimm, is a classic fairy tale which involves a beautiful princess, a sleeping enchantment, and a handsome prince. It is a story that Lifelong Learning is going to present on April 19, 2017 from 3-6 p.m. in the FAU LLS Jupiter Auditorium via a National Theatre Live program.

The Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow

The Lifelong Learning Society in Jupiter is now partnering with National Theatre Live (NTL), which broadcasts world-class theatre and the Bolshoi Ballet productions to cinemas in the U.K. and internationally. The programs that LLS will show will not be live performances, but pre-recorded programs.

The first performance that LLS will present will be The Sleeping Beauty by the Bolshoi Ballet. This timeless story is a wonderful performance to highlight as the first event of this partnership.

Olga Smirnova Sleeping Beauty Photo by Pierce Jackson

The Sleeping Beauty is a ballet in a prologue and three acts, first performed in 1890. The music was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The score was completed in 1889, and is the second of his three ballets. The original scenario was conceived by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, and is based on Charles Perrault’s La Belle au Bois Dormant (Sleeping Beauty). The choreographer of the original production was Marius Petipa, a French and Russian ballet dancer, pedagogue and choreographer. Petipa is considered to be the most influential ballet master and choreographer in ballet history. The premiere performance took place at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on January 15, 1890. The work has become one of the classical repertoire’s most famous ballets.

As the first performance in a series of programs that we will share from National Theatre Live, we hope that you will be able to join us on Wednesday, April 19 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $20 for members and non-members.

 To learn more about the Bolshoi Ballet, visit http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/performances/442/

 To register for the National Theatre Live pre-recorded broadcast, The Sleeping Beauty, visit www.fau.edu/llsjupiter. This program will have an intermission.

Benito Rakower, Ph.D.

One of the biggest problems in contemporary film-making is maintaining its two most important ingredients.  Films, generally, have a happy or hopeful ending.  They must also portray characters with whom we can identify or sympathize.

The world we live in today has made this very difficult for several reasons.  Universal social disarray has created chaos and uncertainty on a scale no longer accessible to reasoned discourse or resolution.  Though films are, by their nature, driven by emotion, their structure has to be reasonable and logical.  Films are made by canny and intelligent people.  Any attempt to dismiss them as simply popular, mass entertainment is wrong.  Films are coherent attempts to deal with an irrational world.

My spring semester film course is about people in today’s world who somehow manage to endure immense physical, psychological, and moral challenges.  They emerge stronger, happier, and triumphant.

In one film, a group of energetic, ambitious, and jaunty American men find themselves participating gleefully [at first] in a financial crisis that could have ruined America.  Depicting this in a grimly dramatic manner would not have worked.  A comic approach is the only way that succeeds because the actual and historic situation in 2008 was insane to begin with.  It is through the initial jokiness of the main characters that a sense of encroaching disaster gradually emerges in the viewer’s mind. It is the same problem that faced the people who made Titanic.  The tremendous force of the film resulted from its beginning in smug glamour and luxury.

In another film, a highly attractive woman, married and with two grown children, is having lunch at a stylish restaurant with her mother-in-law.  One course is so sensuously delicious that she falls in love with the young chef who prepared it.  The theme of a married woman falling in love with another man dominates 19^th century European literature.  Depicting the situation in a contemporary film required a radical change in the concept of morality.

What makes a film aesthetically satisfying is that the unexpected is shown to have been inevitable.

The 21^st Century – A New Vision in Film-Making
Fridays, March 24 – May 5, 2017 (No class on March 31) (Full 6 weeks); 2:15-4:45 p.m.; Post-film discussion – 4:45-5:15 p.m.
March 24 – April 21, 2017 (First 4 weeks)

By Kami Barrett-Batchelder Associate Director

Each year, the FAU Lifelong Learning Society in Jupiter hosts the LUNAFEST® film festival. This event is a traveling film festival of award-winning short films by, for and about women. This season, the program of nine films – filled with stories of reflection, hope and humor – will travel to over 175 cities and screen in front of 25,000 people. Each year, various organizations bring LUNAFESTs to their communities and raise funds for their local non-profits as well as the main beneficiary – Breast Cancer Fund.

On March 16, 2017, LLS held the film festival and sold out to an audience of 600. LLS raised more than $14,000, which will go to funds for scholarships for students pursuing a degree at FAU Jupiter as well as the main beneficiary, the Breast Cancer Fund. This event, by far, is one of the most entertaining programs we have each year. Before the film showing, LLS holds a festivities hour that includes local non-profit organizations and community businesses that provide services or programs for women and children.

Once again, we had JVC Broadcasting come out to provide music during the festivities hour. We also welcomed back Berry Fresh Café and Chartwell’s to provide light bites. New this year, we had Lilly’s Catering & Events join us, as well as the Maltz Jupiter Theatre Conservatory.

Dia from 95.9 The Palm (JVC Broadcasting)

Berry Fresh Café

Maltz Jupiter Theatre Conservatory

Thank you to all of the participating organizations and businesses that provided in-kind donations and came out to support this successful event.

Thank you to all of our supporters.

Lilly’s Catering & Events

HUMANA Marketplace

FAU Pre-Medical Society

FAU CARD

Dress For Success

Healthier Jupiter

Jupiter Medical Center, Comprehensive Breast Care

FAU Lifelong Learning Society

Loggerhead MarineLife Center

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer

Planned Parenthood

Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies

Healing Touch Buddies

El Sol Neighborhood Resource Center

MorseLife

Jupiter Magazine

Nutrition S’Mart

Gimme Shelter