By Sandi Page, Member of the FAU LLS Jupiter Marketing Committee

The warm nostalgia of my childhood Christmases fills me with joy as each holiday season approaches.   My Proustian memory of tastes and smells needs no nudging as I recall perfumed Decembers filled with spices in the air……the byproduct of the gingerbread men, frosty fruit bars, waffle cookies, ginger cookies, macaroons, mince pies and other baked delights that my mother would make for the festivities.  Our home was filled with Christmas songs that she played on the piano or the radio throughout the day.  We knew all the words.   I and my siblings would sit at the dining room table with mountains of construction paper, paste, scissors, cookie cutters in the shape of trees, angels, bells, wreaths, candy canes, and candles which served as templates, all instrumental in the making of Christmas tree ornaments which were cherished and used for decades.  I still have two of them.   We would then bundle up and race out into the snow to build a big snowman complete with coal for eyes, a carrot for a nose, a scarf around his neck, and real buttons on his chest from my mother’s fascinating button box.  Hot cocoa awaited us inside afterwards. There would be visits to the department store for the yearly photo with Santa and the Christmas pageant to participate in at the perfect little Norman Rockwell whitewashed Presbyterian church we attended.  One Christmas Eve stands out as not quite fitting this idyllic mode.   I was 4 years old and quite ill.   My parents decided, in an attempt not to have my brother and sister also sick for Christmas, that instead of my sleeping upstairs where all the family bedrooms were, I would spend the night on the daybed in my mother’s sewing room which was separated by glass French doors from the formal living room, a room that was only used for company.  The Christmas tree and all the decorations were in the family living room on the other side of the house.  The isolation felt complete.   The clock ticked loudly but time stood still. My fever would allow no sleep.  Miserable, I lay there and waited for morning.  Sometime after midnight, the door opened and I heard the crinkly sounds of the long cotton stocking filled with gifts and Christmas fruit that Santa would place on the foot of each child’s bed on Christmas Eve as we slept.   Ah, but that was the problem.   I wasn’t asleep and, much to my panic, the words of my daytime Christmas song about the all-knowing Santa suddenly filled my head…..
He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad
or good, so be good for goodness sake……
I closed my eyes as tightly as I could and didn’t move a muscle, simulating sleep.  There was no doubt in my mind that Santa would know I was pretending and there would be no Christmas stocking for me that year. Much to my shock, he placed the overflowing stocking on my bed and tiptoed out.  My disillusionment was immediate, the fever forgotten.  I contemplated the first
great disappointment of my life….Santa could be fooled.  He wasn’t that smart after all.
I thought about that for the rest of the interminable night.  Christmas morning finally came and was, as always, magical.  That was the year Santa left us a big fully furnished dollhouse under the tree, a Betsy Wetsy doll, a make-your-own-perfume kit, an electric football game and a parking garage with a real elevator, toys which we all joyfully shared, for that morning at least.  I kept my newfound knowledge about Santa to myself.  The disillusionment came full circle a few years later when Miss “Jones”, my elderly elementary school teacher, with her yellowish-gray hair braided in ever-smaller concentric circles in a coronet atop her head, stopped us in the middle of our reading a Christmas story about Santa in class to exclaim coldly, “You all know, of course, that Santa doesn’t exist!  It is really your parents.”   No, we did NOT know and the silence was total in that classroom as rows of shocked little faces tried to absorb this shattering news.  Conversation at my dinner table that night was illuminating…..”So,” I said, “Santa doesn’t exist.  That means that the Tooth Fairy doesn’t exist, the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist either and God doesn’t exist.”   My parents hurried to reassure me that although Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy indeed did not exist, God did!  The seeds of doubt had been sown, however, and it was many years before I would regain my faith.  It also marked the beginning of my lifelong strong intellectual curiosity about the true nature of everything, and where the reason behind my being asked a question was, and still is, more interesting to me than the question itself.

I asked fellow students, faculty and staff to share a memory of a past holiday and the fascinating recollections they generously sent me took place in different parts of the U.S. as well as in Mexico, England, Finland, France and Switzerland.  We start off with Ginny Higgins and her wonderfully inclusive family holiday traditions and we finish with a contribution from Dr. Taylor Hagood, an additional gift to all of us and especially those of us who are going through withdrawal now that his magnificent series of lectures about Sherlock Holmes has just finished.

We wish you all a joyful holiday season and a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Ginny Higgins – Student
Our family has the best of all possible worlds – we are diverse and celebrate EVERYTHING!
This year, Hanukkah starts Dec. 24th, Christmas is Dec. 25th and Kwanzaa starts Dec. 26th.
We light the menorah, we have lights on the house and the tree, and we light the Kwanzaa candles.  Our decorating theme consists of snowmen EVERYWHERE. In this day and age, with such uncertainty and intolerance, this is an opportunity to celebrate our oneness as a family and our diversity as individuals.  We are thankful each and every day. This year, I am adding a rainbow of lights to celebrate our LGBTQ members, too!  May you all have a happy, healthy 2017.

Paul Newton – Student
Triple Treat
When I was young, I always loved Christmas Day since we would open presents at my father’s house early Christmas morning.  After playing with my new toys a bit, my father, sister, and I would walk next door to my grandparents’ house where my uncle and aunt would also be.  We would all have a nice breakfast together and then open more gifts.  After this fun visit, my sister and I were off to my mother, younger brother, and stepfather’s home (only a mile away) where we would open more presents and then have a wonderful Christmas meal.  Three Christmases in one day.  A young boy’s version of paradise.

Barbara DePalma – Student
Looking back over our past Christmases, I realize they were all special. To me, it is all about sharing love with family, great food, and keeping family traditions alive. Now that we spend Christmas in Florida, we miss our family and family traditions. This year, I am trying to restore some of the magic. Unbeknownst to my son, we brought some of his favorite Christmas decorations to Florida. He is arriving late Christmas Eve. We are so excited to see his face when he walks in the door and sees so many familiar mementos. Hopefully, this will bring back some of those warm, fuzzy feelings.

Jean Dessoffy – Student
Boxing Day
I lived in England the first half of my life.  There, the day after Christmas is Boxing Day, a national holiday going back to the 17^th century.  A Christmas Box was given the day after Christmas by the land owner, or lord of the mansion, to the employees who worked for him.  The box usually contained left-over food, money, etc.  December 26 is still celebrated today in England and the Commonwealth Countries.  People have friends over to finish off the Christmas food and enjoy a party.

Editor’s Note: Over the years, I have attended many of Jean’s Boxing Day parties, both up north and here in Florida. I can attest to the fact that they are magnificent fun, full of great cheer, wonderful food and sparkling company, the perfect antidote to that post-Christmas letdown!

Suzanna (Suzie) Wells – Staff
The Big Bluff
On a cold winter’s morning in the year 2002, I happened to see an advert on television for a day trip to Lapland, the home of Father Christmas.  My twin daughters, who were 9 at the time, had just started doubting the existence of Santa Claus. So, my plan to meet the great man himself and extend their belief was hatched.  On the day before Christmas, we were up at the crack of dawn and, after a short flight, landed in the barren, snow-covered tundra of Lapland, Finland. It was most mysterious. We were met by an elf and issued snow suits and boots to wear as temperatures could drop to -40, though we were fortunate as it stayed around a comfortable -4, brrrrrr. We had a fantastic day, husky sledging, reindeer sleigh rides and snowmobiles.  Plenty of hot chocolate and mulled wine served all day and a lovely winter’s feast in a snowy log cabin.  After a fun-packed day of activities, the time had come to meet the man himself. He didn’t disappoint, either.  Honestly, I even believed by this point! The girls had their photos taken and gave him their lists, both got lovely wooden traditional gifts and we headed home.  It truly was a magical day and for the next 2 years or so, they were as excited as ever to write their lists in the knowledge that Santa, along with his 7 reindeer, would be visiting our house.

Emily Morton – Staff
My best Christmas memory was at my grandmother’s house in France when I was five or six years old. My grandmother, my mother and I spent the day preparing for Christmas Eve because the whole family was coming to celebrate with us. We made fun, crafty Christmas decorations and prepared a ‘Buche de Noel’ log cake. We also made gnocchi from scratch which was a lot of fun. I remember balling up little pieces of the dough and trying to keep up with my mother and grandmother (two forces to be reckoned with in the kitchen). The reason I am so fond of this memory is because there we were, three generations, in one small kitchen. We sang, we laughed and truly had a blast together! I hope to continue those traditions someday.

Wendi Geller – Staff
As a kid, we lived in Carmel, Indiana.  Our neighbors were the Murphys, a nice Irish Catholic family. We had the distinction of being the only Jewish family on the block, heck, probably in the neighborhood. Our families got along well and we all became great friends. It was fun having the family over to light the menorah. I can still hear the girls saying “Clanika”, trying to duplicate the way we said Chanukah.  One year, my Dad brought home a gift he had received at work; a beautiful set of Christmas china. Needless to say, we didn’t have a use for these dishes, so Mom gave them to Mrs. Murphy. Those dishes had a place on her holiday table for many, many years. She told me it made her happy to set the table with them and remember our family.

Kimberly Bowman – Staff
The one certainty we have in life is that life changes. This Christmas will mark the first in almost twenty years that we will not be anxiously and excitedly awaiting Santa on Christmas morning.  What will now be the new normal seems to have come all too suddenly, despite a year’s worth of forewarning. It brings to mind the most wonderful Christmas traditions of my childhood, and how Mom brought the magic of Santa to life. I vividly remember my family celebrating Christmas Eve with music, dancing, an abundance of dishes from Ecuador and Peru, and an even greater abundance of presents that seemed to magically multiply from under the tree and spill halfway across the living room. Most years, they would even make their way onto the sofas. You see, our family was not just family.  It was families and friends who would all come together at that time of year to celebrate, laugh and reminisce about the year that had passed. Dinner was served around 8 o’clock, then came dancing and finally my favorite part of the night – the opening of gifts at midnight. The passing out of gifts from Mom, Dad, aunts and uncles, and family, was an annual ritual that seemed to go on for hours, until finally Mom would take us up to bed, get us into our Christmas PJs and remind us that Santa would be coming soon. My sister and I would try our best to fall asleep as we looked forward to the next morning.  As Christmas morning came, it was an absolute joy to wake up, lean over the edge of my bed and peer down to see all the toys Santa had left there. They were all unwrapped, because Santa doesn’t wrap presents, he makes them, takes your list out of your most special shoe which you’ve left on the windowsill of your bedroom window, and leaves all your toys right next to your bed; and what child wouldn’t believe in a Santa like that?!

Dr. Benito Rakower – Faculty
Christmas in Mexico
I was four.  It was Christmas.  There was a piñata party for children on our block in Mexico City.  A decorated clay jar filled with small toys and candy was suspended from the ceiling.  It was a blind-folded girl who wielded the wooden stick that smashed the jar.  Children rushed in to gather the prizes fallen to the floor.  But the triumphant girl lost her balance and fell, cutting both her knees badly on sharp pieces of broken clay.  We were horrified and none of us picked up anything.

Myrna Goldberger – Faculty
It’s the time of year for a little levity and humor. Here is my contribution which I have used in my classes to note the coming of Chanukah:

A Jewish grandmother walks into the post office to buy stamps for Chanukah cards she wishes to send. “I want 20 stamps,” she says. The clerk responds, “What denomination?”
“Oy, vey”, she mutters. “I guess it will be 6 orthodox, 10 conservative and 4 reform!”

……and now for a true anecdote:
Montgomery Ward was holding a sales meeting right before Christmas and the group was asked for some holiday ideas that would stimulate sales and call attention to their merchandise. A salesman, fighting to stay awake, was busy doodling on a pad and not really listening to the speaker. He was drawing a reindeer and, nonchalantly, picked up a red pencil that was sitting on the table and colored in the reindeer’s nose. The person sitting next to him noticed what he was doing and thus was born Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The creation became the store’s holiday recognition, boosted customer interest and resulted in a highly successful marketing technique.

Dr. Kurt F. Stone – Faculty
A Most Profitable New Year’s Eve
Back in the mid-1960s, a couple of friends and I spent several New Year’s Eves hanging out and shivering – alongside a vast throng – on the Rose Bowl Parade route on Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard. One year, we got my father’s permission to stay overnight in a warm office building he owned on a street paralleling the parade route, a mere block to the south.  Dad gladly provided us with a key to both the building and parking lot. We decided to rent spaces in his parking lot – at $5.00 a car. (In those days, minimum wage was a mere $1.25).  We rented out the entire lot within twenty minutes, pocketing a minor fortune. When Dad found out, he laughed and reminded us that since he owned the property, we owed him a percentage of the take. Indeed, Dad had a great head for business!

René Silvin – Faculty
My earliest Christmas memories are of the small Bernese mountain town of Gstaad, Switzerland, where I grew up. Fifty years later, Gstaad is much the same as it was then.
At Christmas time, the pristine, snow-covered, pedestrian streets are full of children singing. They hold candles while the distant sounds of Swiss horns can be heard emanating from the surrounding mountain tops, and the beautiful Palace Hotel completes the iconic picture.
The wooden chalets are all immaculately maintained and painted with alpine detail. Many of these have 2/3 scale doors conjuring up fairytale-like scenes.
Most windows have exchanged the summer-time flower-filled window boxes with candles. It is a heartwarming sight I hope your readers will experience.
Happy Holidays!

Dr. Taylor Hagood – Faculty
I’ve had Sherlock Holmes on the brain the past four weeks, so the Christmas memory I would like to share is Holmesian. I had the pleasure of being in London during the Christmas season about six years ago and doing a number of Christmas-touristy things. I visited the Dickens House and Museum on Doughty Street, which was done up in Victorian holiday style. I loved seeing the original serial installments of Dickens’s novels on display under glass. The animated version of A Christmas Carol featuring Jim Carrey as many of the characters was on the screen and there were huge lit-up signs advertising it in Piccadilly Circus. I had just been to Salzburg to see a marionette rendition of The Nutcracker as well as its Christkindlmarkt, and it was fascinating to see a Christkindlmarkt also in London.
The most memorable touristy thing, though, was visiting Baker Street, for emerging from Baker Street station revealed a scene of big wet flakes of snow falling white against the darkening sky and buildings. My understanding is that even though Dickens’s Christmas novella has fixed a romantic image of a London white Christmas, snow at that time is actually rare, but here it was! The Sherlock Holmes Museum was great, but while going through it several times, I looked out the windows to see the snow drifting down in insouciant steadiness, as if it knew full well plenty of people wanted it there and was glad to use its leverage. Inside, orange flames grousing and kicking in the fireplaces lent their cast to the warm glow of the wood and leather furniture while outside, the gloaming’s peaceful blue spread softly and quietly. There was something both light-hearted and profound in seeing the domicile of Holmes, Watson, and Mrs. Hudson in real life.
The snow had quit falling by the time the museum tour was over, but on the way there I had noticed a store just down the street that specialized in Elvis Presley memorabilia. I’ve seen plenty of fans massed together to see Graceland in Memphis, and I’ve seen ardent followers pondering Elvis in the chapel on the grounds of his birthplace in Tupelo, which is not far from the town where I was born. But now here I was in London, on the street and in the house where lived someone I had read about but who had never existed, only to see, on the very same street, a store dedicated to someone from my part of the world whose larger-than-life image often hid from view a complex and shy individual. Walking through that little store and seeing all the different items with Elvis’s image on them, I thought about this unexpected blending of the familiar and the foreign, of the real and the imagined. I thought also about home and its interconnections with places such as this one so far away from home and how they could suddenly seem to be the same thing. Many times when I was a kid reading about Holmes, he seemed to me to exist in a quasi-American space, since I had no real conception of London, while, at the same time, living in different places away from the South altogether, I had encountered Elvis music, films, and photos and felt that deep familiarity of his accent, the songs from my family’s original Sun Records, and my mother’s stories about seeing Elvis perform in Tupelo. Both Elvis and Holmes I had known first on television screens—Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett as Holmes and Elvis Presley as, well, Elvis Presley—and here they were together, two people who were part of my growing up.
It didn’t snow anymore during that trip, but that was ok. As Dickens wrote in his seasonal tale of the ghost-haunted Ebenezer Scrooge, the snow “came down handsomely.” Then it took its bow and moved on with brief but memorable exquisite taste, making just enough of an appearance to remind someone—at least this someone—that there are wonderful, magical links between myth and reality, and that imagination is not simply something unreal, stuck only in a person’s mind. 221B Baker Street might not be a real address nor its inhabitants real people, and maybe Ebenezer Scrooge never lived in a London that sees snow every Christmas, and maybe even the Elvis Presley the world has known and celebrated may not have much in common with the drug-addicted man who slept all day and watched movies all night. But for a moment, I was able to see them all in the same place and feel the many layers of existence.

By Suzanna Wells, FAU LLS Jupiter Facilities Manager

The trouble with living on an Island and having a good deal of access to the sea is that you often find yourself staring across the water wondering what’s really out there. I’ve always encouraged my girls (twins, now aged 23) to travel, telling them stories when they were small of my trips to India, Australia, Europe and much of America (I’m from the UK).  I got the travel bug from my father, who was adventurous and who always took our family on some wonderful holidays.  I remember one trip to Romania when I was 7, and my mother leaving her nylon stockings to the hotel staff as they couldn’t buy such exotic items there in the early 1970s.  In 1979, my dad eventually persuaded my mum to travel to America! None of their friends or family had ever ventured that far afield, most just doing the typical holidays to seaside towns within the UK or, for the more daring, the coast of Spain.

My dad worked in Fleet Street, London for the Evening News newspaper and one evening they had a supplement in there about house swapping all over the world!  After writing to many families from far flung reaches of the globe, he finally wrote to Bob. Bob and Sandra Weigle lived in Orange County, Los Angeles and after 6 months of writing back and forth (no emails in those days), we jetted off on Laker Airlines and made the 14-hour trip to Los Angeles.

We had decided we would not only swap houses and cars for the summer of ’79 but also stay with Bob, Sandra and their two daughters – who were close in age to my sister and me – for the first week and get to know them better.  “WOW” was my first impression when we arrived at their house. There was so much space compared to our 1920’s London 3-bedroom house. I think their kitchen was bigger than the whole of our ground floor! They had a microwave oven and a video recorder. All the mod cons English families wouldn’t get for a few years yet!

On arrival, the neighbors threw us a big house warming party. Amongst the guests was the cousin of Ritchie Valens, and a man who worked for NASA and had worked on the space mission team to the moon, and of course a few Hollywood script writers, including Bob!

So having followed in my father’s footsteps, taking my daughters on lots of trips and encouraging them to travel when they were younger, it shouldn’t have surprised me when last year the girls ventured out and trekked across the Mongolian steppe on horseback. Of course, I was worried but at least they were together.

They made it back safely, with only a few bruises and an entirely new taste for adventure. Then, this year, Jo, my eldest twin, announced she was going off to South East Asia on her own! What could I say!  I know she is streetwise and strong, and being a keen kick boxer could handle herself. So March 2016 comes around and off she goes.

Having recently graduated in Zoology, Jo is a keen conservationist and headed to Vietnam to work with the organization Save Vietnam’s Wildlife, and the ever elusive Pangolin. “What?”, you may ask, just as I did.  Well, Asian pangolins are like small anteaters and are hunted illegally for their meat and scales that are made into Chinese medicine with the belief that they have properties that will cure cancer and help breast-feeding mothers!  Jo writes regularly and has her own website – SKIN and BONES – if you want to find out more about pangolins and other endangered species. It’s quite an interesting read and she would love more people to add their comments. http://www.skinandbones.info/

Once Jo had finished in Vietnam, she moved on to Cambodia to sightsee and work with Sun Bears. From there, she went for a well-earned rest at Vagabond Temple yoga retreat, where she called me late one night from suffering from big skin blisters which she was very concerned about! After a tearful conversation and a heart-wrenching decision to put her Australian part of the trip on hold, I managed to persuade her to fly home and get urgent medical advice and treatment, as the nearest hospital was a 6-hour bus trip away from where Jo was.

I booked her on the next flight back to the UK and the next morning she went straight to the doctor who, thinking it was an auto-immune disease, put her on antibiotics and sent her for an emergency dermatology appointment. As it turns out, it was Phytophotodermatitis, also known as “lime disease, a chemical reaction which makes skin hypersensitive to ultraviolet light when handling certain plants or fruits.” I am happy to report that her scarring is almost all gone now, but it is useful information to know, especially living in a hot place such as South Florida.

Not one to sit about for too long, Jo, feeling recovered, then went off to a week-long conference called Conservation Asia held in Singapore.  After that, she met up with her father and sister for an amazing trip around Indonesia.  After living under the stars and on a boat for a few days, trekking up volcanoes, meeting the local monkeys and swimming with wild Manta Rays, the hotel comforts were much appreciated.

As soon as she was back in the UK, she was off again, this time to South Africa where Jo was honored to have been chosen earlier this year by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) based in Massachusetts, as a Young Conservationist to travel to Johannesburg to be part of their Youth Forum where she met the 33 other delegates chosen for this event from all over the globe. The forum took place the week before CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), where, this year, international laws were passed protecting all eight species of pangolin and other endangered species threatened by wildlife trafficking.

The inspiring work these young conservationists do all over the world ranges from saving helmeted hornbills in Indonesia to protecting public lands in the USA and research on saiga antelopes in Uzbekistan.   In South Africa, together they discussed and developed innovative solutions to the problems faced by the world’s wildlife and local communities that live with them, as well as spotting the odd rhino in Pilanesberg National Park. There is no stopping them now as, since the forum, they have started their own organization called ‘Youth for Wildlife Conservation’ aimed to promote best conservation practices and support youth-led environmental conservation projects.

http://www.youthforwildlife.org/

Please take a few moments to watch this Video of the group in South Africa

Jo is off to Mexico next for the Convention of Biological Diversity to spread the word far and wide about ‘Youth for Wildlife Conservation’ and the need to engage youth in international conservation policy and decision making.

I don’t know what the future has in store for Jo but I certainly know it won’t be boring!

By Sandi Page, Member of the FAU LLS Jupiter Marketing Committee

The Fall Semester at FAU LLS Jupiter is in full swing and we hope you are enjoying your classes!   The LLS Staff has been working hard behind the scenes to ensure that your Winter Semester is chock full of Winter Wonders: interesting Opening Week events, lectures and courses! The Winter 2017 class catalog was mailed out on November 1 and many of you have already registered for classes.  To encourage you to expand your fields of interest, I have asked some of our wonderful LLS professors to write a short paragraph on the subject they will be presenting.  Surprise them by being a new face in their class or make them happy as they recognize familiar students from past years!  Register!  Learn!  Grow!

Some FAU LLS Winter 2017 Opening Week Events

Aaron Kula, Music Director, KCJO
The Great American Dance Band: 1920 – 1950
Tuesday, January 3, 2017 – 7:30-9:15 p.m.

The Jazz band has been at the center of all dance music from the beginning of the American Jazz era beginning around 1920.  These bands evolved and found their way into the hearts of millions of Americans through records, radio, and dance halls of the Harlem Renaissance era.  Most bands traveled from city to city on a bus, playing one-night stands, and many had their own arranger and composer that played with the band as well.  The music of that era is so sweet and almost innocent as the jazz combos or dance bands had a mission; to bring people together, forget their troubles, and dance to the most popular jazz tunes of the time.   Perhaps the last surviving band that reflects the style and still plays the repertoire of this era is the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans.  Many of these original “charts” (music scores) are one-of-a-kind manuscripts and reflect the sounds performed by the jazz combo dance bands of that time. The music will make you feel like you have stepped back into the 1940s and beyond with music by Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and even Sholom Secunda. You may even want to dance!

Myrna Goldberger
What’s Up, Doc?  The Lives and Careers of Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz
Wednesday, January 4, 2017 – 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

They were both made popular by Oprah. They both became television stars! Were they miracle workers or providers of “daytime entertainment”? There were individuals who hung onto their every word and there were those who criticized them, challenged them, and even called them “Quacks.” What are the stories of these two men, one with a medical degree and one with a Ph.D. in psychology, who have advised their audiences of what to eat, what medicines to accept, how to fire up a marriage, how to combat depression and how to resolve life’s problems? Has their information proved valid and what has been the result of the presentations of Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz? My course, What’s Up, Doc?, will focus on these questions and analyze the techniques and strategies used by both men.

Sofiya Uryvayeva, D.M.A.
Russian Piano Fireworks – Music by Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky
Wednesday, January 4, 2017 – 2-3:30 p.m.

At this lecture-recital, you will hear two of the most famous and captivating piano suites ever written: Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” and Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker.” These two suites are filled with dazzling fireworks and breathtaking displays of piano wizardry.

The composer Mussorgsky was born into a military family and became an Army officer. Surprisingly, he had no formal musical education. He was also terribly afflicted by alcoholism, a proclivity that led to a rapid decline in his health and social standing. He was evicted from his flat for not paying the rent, and subsequently lived like a bum. He was hospitalized, and his health continued to spiral downward. During his time in the hospital, he reportedly bribed an orderly to bring him cognac, a claim supported by the famous “red-nose portrait” of Mussorgsky, depicting him as a disheveled boozer. He died in the throes of alcoholic delirium tremens at the young age of 42. It is hard to conceptualize how such a brilliant composer could at the same time lead such a dreadful and unhappy life. Mussorgsky’s masterpiece, “Pictures at an Exhibition,” was written in honor of his close friend Victor Hartmann, who was a renowned artist and architect, and whose death at only 39 shook the composer deeply. In his music, Mussorgsky revealed the wonderful harmony of simple things that surround every human being.

Virginia W. Newmyer
World War I: Never the Same Again
Friday, January 6, 2017 – 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Was World War I inevitable? The question has dogged scholars for a hundred years, since the famous assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.  Historians have weighed in on one side or another. Some contend that the War was, oddly, the result of the century-long European peace since Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815.  Others point out that the so-called Pax Britannica was a troubled period, punctuated by conflicts: from unsuccessful liberal demonstrations in Europe in 1830 and 1848 to actual wars, involving Prussia against Austria in 1866 and Prussia against France, in 1870. On January 6^th, listen to the lecture, watch the vast array of slides, and come to your own conclusion.

Elizabeth Sharland
The History of British Theater: Love from Shakespeare to Coward
Friday, January 6, 2017 – 2-3:30 p.m.

Today, not many people remember the witty and delightful songs Noel Coward wrote, including
Why Do the Wrong People Travel?, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs. Worthington!  They have become classics to most British theatre people and the American actress Elaine Stritch made several of the songs famous in the U.S. In this presentation, we will discover some of the sacrifices that the legendary stars had to make in their private lives, also a wonderful view of Coward’s last home in Jamaica.
It would be interesting to know what Shakespeare would have thought of Sir Noel Coward.

Robert Milne
Blues, Barrelhouse and Ragtime
Saturday, January 7, 2017 – 1-2:30 p.m.

Barrelhouses, shady backwoods dives, and juke joints, featuring 24-hour moonshine and lowdown music.   This is where the good stuff was, that high society never even heard about.  Over the roar of an unquenchable crowd, boogie-woogie was born and ragtime maestros held forth.  Stavin’ Chain was his name; piano was his game.

Some FAU LLS Jupiter Winter 2017 Lectures

Steven Caras
Staying Power: A Balanchine Dancer’s Story of Survival
Thursday, January 12, 2017 – 11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

Yin and yang can define complementary forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts (Thank you, Wikipedia).  New York City Ballet enjoyed the fruits of one such combination — George Balanchine, founding artistic director and, in most opinions, the world’s greatest ballet choreographer, and Jerome Robbins, a mega-name synonymous with Broadway and ballet.

Among other topics, I’ll share my personal yin yang experience after fourteen years of daily scrutiny under two artistic giants during a most impressive period for them as choreographers, if not men.  Sink or swim, indeed.  The personal and professional advantages I continue to gain from the influence of two such opposing examples in humanity remain paramount, and I’m hard pressed to imagine any university able to impart such invaluable insight.

Separate and apart from, I’ll dispel the misconception that all over-the-hill dancers have only teaching careers as an option.  I’ll also disprove a (still) surprising number of otherwise intelligent people’s generalized theories regarding ballet dancers — from ladies starving themselves to men living solely as homosexuals to the lot of us being utterly vacuous.

Tom Poulson, Ph.D.
For Everglades! Forever Glades?
Thursday, January 19, 2017 – 9-10:30 a.m.

Mark Twain wrote that whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting.  He was prescient about worldwide and Greater Everglades Ecosystem problems with freshwater.  We have too much being released from Lake Okeechobee to our St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries where the lowered salinity kills sea grasses and oysters that are the basis for natural food chains and fisheries.  We do not have enough to flow south where our coastal waters are becoming too salty.  Sea level rise is contaminating our major drinking water aquifers.  And the high productivity natural communities and fisheries of Biscayne Bay and Florida Bay are dying.  Our mantra for Everglades revitalization is to get the water right:  quantity, quality, distribution, and timing.

Ralph Nurnberger, Ph.D.
How the Golem of Prague Inspired the Creation of “Superman”
Tuesday, February 7, 2017 – 7-8:30 p.m.

This presentation will begin by focusing on two concepts. There will first be a discussion of how people have defined “Golems” since Biblical times. Second, there will be an overview of Anti-Semitism in Europe in the Middle Ages.

Violence against Jews was common throughout Europe, but suddenly there was a period when such attacks virtually stopped in Bohemia.  We will discuss the mystery of why this happened. Some believe that the reason was that a famous Rabbi by the name of Judah Loew ben Bezalel created a Golem to defend the Prague ghetto from anti-Semitic attacks in the late 16th century. Did this really happen or was there another cause?

Visitors to Prague can still see a towering monument in front of the City Hall erected in 1915 in Rabbi Loew’s honor. There are also statues of the Golem in Prague. So did the Golem protect the Jews? Stories about the Golem were included in the Grimm brothers’ collection of folktales, which, in turn influenced Mary Shelley when she wrote Frankenstein.
Finally, did Golem stories influence two Cleveland high school students in the 1930s when they created the comic book superhero Superman? In fact, what is the “true story” behind Superman?

Ronald Feinman, Ph.D.
The Life and Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
Thursday, February 9, 2017 – 9-10:30 a.m.

Dwight D. Eisenhower is often portrayed as the last truly bipartisan President who united the nation, and who was able to work well with opposition Democrats from 1953 to 1961.
Eisenhower, offered a chance to be the Democratic nominee for President in 1948, declined, and then ran for the Presidency as a Republican, after being “drafted” to run, in 1952.
Eisenhower helped to create a significant Vice Presidency, by allowing Richard Nixon to take on greater responsibilities and involvement than any previous Vice President.
Eisenhower showed great courage in his intervention on the issue of civil rights in 1957 in the federal enforcement of racial integration in Little Rock, Arkansas, against the wishes of the Governor of the state, Orval Faubus.
Eisenhower warned Americans of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” in his Farewell Address in January 1961, the second most significant Farewell Address after that of George Washington.
Eisenhower left office as the oldest President ever in office, being 70 years and 3 months old at the end of his term, since then surpassed by Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, with Trump being the oldest first term inaugurated President.

Richard René Silvin
From Necessity to Glamour: The Evolution of Transatlantic Travel
Thursday, February 9, 2017 – 11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

My love for ships began when I was a child because my parents lived on opposite sides of the Atlantic. When I travelled to visit one of my parents, it was always aboard one of the great liners that survived the Second World War. This created a life-long passion and study of the lost era.

My presentation takes you aboard these magnificent ships through a mélange of historic facts, stories about the rich and famous who frequently “crossed” and the artwork which decorated the great lines. The presentation includes an insider’s description of liner accidents, including Lusitania, Titanic, Britannic and Andrea Doria as well as glamorous, amusing anecdotes which took place aboard these and other ships.

Please join me on a memorable journey and revel in “the only way to cross.”

Robert Milne
Ragtime and the American Folk Music Culture
Saturday, February 11, 2017 – 1-2:30 p.m.

With nothing but guitars or banjos slung over their shoulders, ragtime musicians wandered from town to town, seeking a meager living. Writing songs as they traveled, they captured both the moods and the events of the locales they visited. Stories of train wrecks, exploding river boats, and love gone awry were only a few of the countless mournful topics to be immortalized in song. Many of their names are forgotten by history, but their music lives on.

Megan Davis, Ph.D.
Ocean Entrées – Cooking with a Caribbean Flair
Thursday, February 16, 2017 – 3:45-5:15 p.m.

It was 1975 and I was 16 years old … and fell in love, madly in love, with the queen of the sea. The colorful, magnificent queen conch. I was with my family at the time and we were sailing in the Bahamas. It was that year that began my lifelong journey and pioneering dedication to find a solution to grow millions of conch to seed the waters of the Caribbean. I spent ten years in the Turks and Caicos, first living in a tent and then a house boat. It was this island experience that led me as a conch farmer to learn about how to grow seafood, where seafood comes from and how to choose sustainable sources of seafood to eat. My LLS lecture will be about two important sea creatures of the Caribbean – the queen conch and spiny lobsters – along with learning about their biology, you will also learn how to cook a delicious and nutritious Caribbean seafood meal.

Annie Page-Karjian, D.V.M., Ph.D.
Wildlife Disease in Marine Mammals and Turtles
Thursday, March 2, 2017 – 3:45-5:15 p.m.

One topic in my lecture is fibropapillomatosis, a tumor-causing viral disease of sea turtles. My interest in fibropapillomatosis stems from a veterinary preceptorship that I completed at the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, where I helped treat turtles with this devastating disease. Noteworthy cases included a turtle with boat strike wounds who was rehabilitated for over a year and was ready to be released when animal care staff noticed a big bulge in the turtle’s shell that turned out to be a large internal tumor.  The turtle had to be euthanized. Another memorable case was a turtle that presented with multiple large facial tumors; the tumors were successfully removed using laser surgery, and the turtle was released tumor-free and in good health. The fact that tumor development is likely related to environmental parameters such as water quality makes fibropapillomatosis a great sentinel disease for monitoring ecosystem health.

Myrna Goldberger
Court Cases Involving Sex
Saturday, February 25, 2017 – 1-2:30 p.m.

We have all heard of Fatty Arbuckle, Claus von Bulow, Roxanne Pulitzer. But do we know about Vera Stretz, Thomas Massie, Ruth Snyder, Candace Mossler and Carrie Buck? What is the connecting link among them and how have their court cases stirred emotions, aroused protest and provided legal legacy? Can a woman justifiably kill her abusive lover? How did involuntary sterilization become of paramount interest in our country? Was there more than racism involved in the story of Lieutenant Massie? Why is the case of Ruth Snyder considered one of the dumbest ever made public? Put it all together as I present Court Cases Involving Sex — and sex is considered one of the basic American food groups along with pizza and protein!

Stephen Kowel, Ph.D.
ZAPP! Electricity in Your Body and Your Home
Thursday, March 2, 2017 – 11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

Have you seen the ads for electrical brain stimulators? Well, don’t try this at home, but serious Olympic athletes are training right now to increase physical performance using scalp electrodes connected to computers to obtain undetectable “brain doping.” Engineers are building systems that can already read brain electricity to empower physically impaired people to operate robots just by thinking.  Come to my ZAPP! lecture to learn more about electricity in your body and your home.

Some FAU LLS Jupiter Winter 2017 Courses

Taylor Hagood, Ph.D.
Shakespeare Retold
Mondays, January 9 – March 6, 2017 (no class on January 16) – 1:45-3:15 p.m.

I got the idea for this lecture series on Shakespeare last spring when I saw a production of King Lear, my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, in Boca Raton. The director made a number of cuts and maneuvers in the staging that changed the nature of the relationships among the characters from how I typically understand them. Although these staging decisions were intriguing and definitely made me think about latent readings of the play, I found myself talking about the characters and their interrelationships as if I knew them. I wanted to talk about how they really were! I then remembered the wonderful documentary Looking for Richard that follows Al Pacino’s development of a staging of Richard III, and I thought of all the time Pacino and the other actors took talking about the characters and their motivations, making that complex and historically distant play immediate. I decided that I would like to do the same with a selection of Shakespeare’s plays—to provide an experience of them that blends performance with interpretation and criticism, preserving the power of their language while also opening a window onto the timeless dynamics Shakespeare deals with. My goal is to achieve a kind of translation of Shakespeare that highlights the fact that his characters and their situations are just as current as the events recorded in this morning’s newspaper.

Joan Lipton, Ph.D.
Paintings and Sculpture that Survey the Black Experience in America from Slavery through the 21^st Century, Part I
Mondays, February 13 – March 6, 2017 – 4-5:30 p.m.

At this time in my life, as well as in the lives of my fellow Americans, I believe more than ever that significant art produced by minorities can be enjoyed per se AND can open the doors to a better understanding of their contributions to our country. For that reason, I am presenting my fall FAU course on Prominent (Past) Jewish Artists from Europe and America, and I announce here my winter course on Paintings and Sculpture that Survey the Black Experience (from its beginnings) in America. In addition, there is so much more current material available that I hope to further address both topics soon as Part II re. later 20th and current 21st century art.

Kurt F. Stone, D.D.
Dickens, Twain & Hemingway Go Hollywood: Turning Classic Literature into Classic Cinema
Mondays, January 9 – March 6, 2017 (no class on January 16) – 7-9 p.m.

Classic literature has long provided fodder for film. Indeed, the first of 1,193 known films based on Shakespeare was an 1898 version of Macbeth. The first talking version of Shakespeare was 1929’s The Taming of the Shrew, starring the husband-wife team Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. The film was such a stinker that shortly after wrapping, the two called it quits and got divorced. Unbelievably, the film’s opening credits read: The Taming of the Shrew: Written by William Shakespeare with Additional Dialogue by Sam Taylor.” Talk about chutzpah! Luckily, the 2004 version of The Merchant of Venice, which we will be viewing, contains no such nonsense: its title card simply reads: “The Merchant of Venice: By William Shakespeare, Screenplay by Michael Radford.”

Do yourself a favor: sign up and enjoy eight films based on works of some of history’s greatest literary lights.

James B. Bruce, Ph.D.
The Greatest Cold War Spies – The Impact of Espionage on the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Balance
Tuesdays, January 10 – February 21, 2017 (no class on February 14) – 11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

The secret war:  An American sailor who was spying for the Soviet Union sold the KGB classified information that revealed the hidden locations of U.S. submarines carrying nuclear missiles and the ability to track them.  An American soldier sold the KGB classified U.S. and NATO war plans explaining Western strategy and tactics in case of possible military conflict with the Soviet Union.  Still other American spies helped the Soviet Union better understand and counter how U.S. intelligence collects and analyzes secret information on Soviet military intentions and capabilities.  These American spies helped the Soviet leaders and hurt the United States.
About the same time, Soviet spies were helping America (sometimes working with our NATO partners) by handing over sensitive Soviet information, for example, that helped President Kennedy successfully manage the Cuban Missile Crisis, forcing the Soviets to withdraw their covertly installed nuclear missiles in Cuba that were pointed at the United States.  Others gave information that helped President Reagan curtail massive Soviet theft of sensitive U.S. technologies, and also helped to reduce Cold War tensions, easing the possibility of a Soviet-American nuclear conflict.
Still other Soviet and American spies betrayed their own countries to provide highly classified and significant information to the opposite side that also proved enormously helpful for each nation that got the hard-won information that supported their opposing Cold War ambitions.
Which side benefited the most?  How did spying and intelligence operations help each side, and which one was more successful in attaining their national security objectives and managing the Cold War conflict?  This course seeks to answer this question through an examination of significant spy cases that provided decision advantage to the other side’s policymakers through the work of the KGB and CIA, the respective Soviet and U.S. intelligence services where much of the hidden Cold War conflict raged with little public knowledge or publicity.

Katie Muldoon
Marketing Rules the World
Tuesdays, January 10-31, 2017 – 1:30-3:00 p.m. (1:30-4:00 p.m. on January 31)

Why did you buy that car, walk into that restaurant, take that trip, vote for that person?  All your life, clever triggers have been designed to anticipate what you want even before you know you want it, then design messages to entice and direct you to action. This 4-week class has been divided into several parts, allowing us to review both established print/TV and evolving social media techniques.  The philosophy behind marketing as an influencer will be intertwined with as many examples as time allows.
We’ll cover products/non-profit/politics and more, including product legends, and presidents from Ike to Obama and touch on the way-too-effective methods used by ISIS.  Week four will show/discuss the film “NO” that illustrates the marketing campaign that overthrew the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Burton Atkins, Ph.D.
The 1950s: How Movies Document Cultural and Political Transitions in the Mid-20^th Century
Wednesdays, January 11-March 1, 2017 – 3-4:30 p.m.

My course about the decade of the 1950s as told largely through the movies of that time, visual texts as I like to call them, will be an eclectic look at America at the mid-point of the 20^th century. Much had changed in the wake of World War II, although it seemed at first that the cultural mood of the 1950s would reflect past decades. Popular music in 1950, for example, followed trends set in the 1940s with songs like Mona Lisa, Goodnight Irene and Rag Mop topping the Billboard charts.  But a jolt would come, sort of cultural shots across the bow, just four years later, first with Bill Haley and His Comets’ Rock Around the Clock in 1954 followed by a young man from Memphis via Mississippi named Elvis who would break the musical mold with songs like Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock.  In 1950, President Truman sent American troops to South Korea to protect the country from communist aggression (and more than 30,000 still remain), but international turmoil didn’t keep countless Americans from watching Milton Berle‘s “Texaco Star Theater” or Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” as television sets proliferated in living rooms across the United States.   Movies in 1950, like Sunset Boulevard with William Holden and Gloria Swanson, seemed traditional, too. But, by 1960, another film, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, would set a fundamentally different tone for another decade, a turbulent and distinctive one that, while so much at odds with the mood of the 1950s, nevertheless was a reaction to what had just come before.
This course will be a blend of history, popular culture and politics. Think of it as either an eclectic history lesson or a chance to relive the past through movies and music.

Benito Rakower, Ed.D.
The World, Wide and Close – in Eight Films
Fridays, January 13 – March 3, 2017 – 1:30-4:00 p.m.

 I was seven years old when I went to see a movie by myself.  It was John Ford’s classic Western Stagecoach.  The film gave me a sense of America I did not have before entering the theater.  Watching the movie, I understood every adult emotion portrayed by the characters.  Most intense was the scene in which the shunned and disreputable Dallas (Claire Trevor) holds another woman’s newborn baby in her arms.  Ringo (John Wayne) stares at her with fixed and silent attention.  That moment was my first presentiment of love between a man and a woman.

By Kami Barrett-Batchelder, LLS Associate Director

Ambassador Ken Adelman

For the past two years, Ken Adelman, Ph.D., author, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Arms Control Director for Ronald Reagan, has delivered multi-media presentations to LLS audiences giving them an up-close and personal story of his time in the White House under President Reagan. On Wednesday, December 6 at 2:30 p.m., Ambassador Adelman will once again give LLS a peek into the White House to see how Presidents made historic decisions and how incoming President-Elect Trump can learn from those decisions to become more successful in office.

I contacted Ambassador Adelman to give me his thoughts on the recent presidential election. Below is a summary from him.

“How did this happen? Will the new Administration be a Trump-ageddon? Or, a needed corrective to government gridlock and relief for the neglected? 

The last Republican revolution to stun the Nation came in 1980, when Washington-outsider Ronald Reagan won 44 states and carried the Senate for his party. Lessons learned after that stunner can guide the new GOP team after this stunner.  I was honored to be part of the Reagan revolution then and for the following seven years. Examining those pivotal decisions, and some by other Presidents in history, can prepare the Trump team for the pivotal decisions it will face.

These “lessons learned” will be told through stories, as we learn best through stories rather than lists of do’s and don’ts.  Many of these stories are personal, based on my dozen-plus years in government.  Most are fun, even funny. These stories will be enhanced with photos and videos, which make the presentation, as well as the audience, come alive. 

This is fitting at FAU.  Over the past three years, I’ve learned that participants in the Lifelong Learning Society are keenly curious and highly intelligent.  They ask the best questions and give their own views in the most appealing manner. That’s why coming to Jupiter has become a highlight of the year for me, my wife Carol, my brother Jim and sister-in-law Ellen.  Appearances at FAU are a treasured family affair.”  

~Ken Adelman

Many describe Ambassador Adelman as a Renaissance man, having been not only a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Arms Control Director for President Reagan, but also a translator for Muhammad Ali during “The Rumble in the Jungle” in Africa, a professor of Shakespeare at Georgetown University, and an author of six books, most recently the critically-acclaimed Reagan at Reykjavik: Forty-Eight Hours that Ended the Cold War.  That story, of the historic superpower summit in Iceland in 1986, is being turned into an HBO feature film starring Michael Douglas as President Reagan. Adelman graduated from Grinnell College in Iowa, majoring in philosophy and religion. He received his master’s degree in Foreign Service studies and doctorate degree in political theory from Georgetown University.

His presentations contain anecdotes, sincerity, and respect. He vividly describes the setting, the back story and the cast that took part in his stories in the White House. His insightful and colorful multi-media presentation will have you laughing and analyzing at the same time. You do not want to miss out on this lecture!

“Leadership Lessons for the New President: From the Forty-Four Before” will be held on Tuesday, December 6 at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $45/members and $55 for non-members. A book signing and light reception will follow the lecture.

By Terryl Lawrence, Ed.D.

The great painter Pierre Bonnard said, “One can find beauty in everything.” While this is true, the artist must be inspired as to how to represent the beauty one sees. When asking most artists about what has inspired them, be it a person or the power of their own work, you will get very similar responses:  it could be another’s technique, choice of materials, subject matter, etc. But when it comes down to day-to-day inspiration, the answers are all similar – artists are influenced primarily by other artists – by work that they have admired, or simply chanced upon. It can be from an impression that has worked its way into the subconscious, or a dream remembered. There are times when an artist is actively looking, perhaps trying to break out of a blocked period, or just hoping to move in a new direction.

Inspiration comes unannounced – one can be moved by the serenity and glory of nature – or taken with the tilt of a friend’s head, the peacefulness of a sleeping child, the colors experienced at sunset. Any occurrence can inspire any artist.

Recognizing that moment of epiphany is necessary. The artist must be open to the new insight and grab it with mind and heart, aware that such moments are elusive and can be lost. Most books, most music, and most art come to us in a spontaneous instant of inspiration – when the mind is open and flexible to new ideas.

Having an open mind is the key. When we analyze genius, we discover that there is a flexibility of thought. Typically, a brilliant mind is not full of all kinds of distractions – but is ready for a higher calling – and receptive to new ideas. Often a new discovery can occur during meditation, or more commonly, in sleep. The musician Billy Joel says that his music comes to him in his dreams. When he wakes, he puts that music into tangible form.

Paul Cezanne was a hardworking artist whose early paintings touched on a variety of themes: portraits, still life and imagined scenarios.  It wasn’t until his friend and mentor, Camille Pissarro, encouraged him to paint out of doors that Cezanne became inspired to replicate nature. From this example, we have tangible proof that the decision of where and how to work definitely has a profound impact on what an artist is inspired to create.

Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo – “I think a painter is happy because he is in harmony with nature…if he can reproduce what he sees…every day I am more convinced that people who do not first wrestle with nature do not succeed.” Pierre-Auguste Renoir on the same subject said, “A painter…must have confidence in himself. And listen only to his real master: Nature.”

When Henri Matisse was asked why he paints, he answered: “To translate my emotions, my feelings and the reactions of my sensibility into color and design, something that neither the most perfect camera, even in colors, nor the cinema can do.”

Matisse was born in 1869 into a family of shopkeepers in the dreary northern French town of Bohain-en-Vermandois. The town’s major industry was weaving sumptuous silk fabrics for the high fashion couture houses of Paris. These glorious silk brocades offered Matisse his first glimpse of the brilliant color and design that would later come to life in his paintings. All of his life, Matisse remembered and searched for the glowing blue color of the sulphur smoke emanating from these textile factories, and his search to recreate that hue ultimately became part of his palette.

In the early twentieth century, very few artists were immune to the influence of Japanese art. Among these were Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard, Vuillard and Picasso. This phenomenon completely transformed painting and the decorative arts in the Western World. The compositional devices of the Japanese, with their strong diagonals and flat, simplified, and saturated areas of color, demonstrate how entire bodies of art can impact another culture. We have seen this happen again and again. Think of Picasso with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon inspired by African art.

The contemporary artist searches in much the same manner as those who came before him. Remembering a color, a shape, an image, a sound, a feeling, another work of art, they use the idea for inspiration. Willem de Kooning admitted he could open almost any book and find an image that he would be inspired by. Jackson Pollock could only paint to American jazz, and on and on.

In the work of many of our greatest artists, one often finds the figure of the Muse. Whether spouses or lovers, protectors or tormentors, models, patrons or artists themselves, Muses are always a main source of inspiration. Every art, from painting to writing to filmmaking to music, has a rich history of these inspired pairings. Today, we speak of a Muse as the spark or perfect model for the creation of a master work. In most cases,  these muses are not marginal figures but are talented, willful, and complementary characters in their own right.

Muses are extraordinary, either for who they were, or what they did, or solely for the heroic qualities with which the artist endowed them.

Two famous muses deserve recognition:

Most biographies of Botticelli stress his delight when he first saw Simonetta. She appeared to him as the ideal of feminine beauty for which he had searched all of his life – “a combination of chastity and sensuality, physical beauty and ethereal radiance.”  She possessed an unworldly innocence and inspired his most famous works Primavera, and the Birth of Venus. It seems that they had a purely spiritual affair; Botticelli knew no romance in his life other than Simonetta. She was the 16-year-old wife of Marco Vespucci and the darling of intellectuals, poets, scientists, and navigators who associated with the powerful Vespucci family. Writings speak of her goodness and beauty. Poets wrote odes to her, artists painted her, knights jousted for her, but, as far as we know, she never did or said anything, or went anywhere, noteworthy.

Giuliano de Medici fell in love with Simonetta, and it is with him that her name is usually linked, though always in a highly respectable way. The romantic trend of chivalry made it possible and quite permissible to carry on a platonic love without causing a scandal. When Giuliano chose Simonetta as the lady he would champion at the Courts of Love, her husband felt no resentment at all. In fact, it was his idea to commission Botticelli, already famous for his portraits of beautiful women, as the suitable artist to paint the standard for Giuliano to carry. The Courts of Love was an annual event. The whole population turned out and there was great excitement when each knight entered the arena carrying a banner on which was painted the portrait of his beloved. The winner of the joust established his lady as “Beauty Queen of Florence for a year.”

The gown chosen by Simonetta for her banner picture was a long gold tissue tunic which, with her shining blonde hair, gave the effect of gold from head to toe. In Sandro Botticelli’s study, she appears as Pallas Athena, the Goddess of War and Wisdom, a symphony in gold. (The banner has since been lost). On January 25th, 1475, Giuliano won the jousting event firmly establishing Simonetta as the most beautiful woman in Florence. That day, Botticelli made scores of sketches of her and of Giuliano which he used as notes ten years later when both of them were gone. We see them now as Mars and Venus (London’s National Gallery). Mars is sleeping exhausted after his battle; Simonetta, as Venus, is draped in a tunic – this is one of the rare paintings in which the Goddess of Love wears any clothes.

Simonetta Vespucci typifies the Age of Chivalry and became a cult figure who was celebrated as late as 1904, about 450 years after she lived. In Botticelli’s portrait, her partly braided golden hair, creamy skin, and arched brows are similar to Petrarch’s description in his famous poem Laura. Her hair is adorned with a net of pearls called a vespaio, or wasp’s nest, probably a pun on her surname.  The work is evocative of a Petrarchan sonnet written in the 1300s:

Breeze that surrounds those blond and curling locks, that makes them move and which is moved by them in softness, and that  scatters the sweet gold, then gathers it in lovely knots recurling, you linger in the eyes whence wasps of love sting me…..

Simonetta died at 23 – no pregnancy, no illness, no accident – she just died; and her early death only increased the adulation of her admirers.

Virginie Amélie Avegno (known as Amélie) was born in January of 1859 in the French quarter of New Orleans. She had copper red hair, pale, creamy skin, and a distinctive upturned Roman nose. When her father died during the Civil War, her mother chose to make a new start in France. In 1867, mother and daughter arrived in Paris. Amélie made a good marriage to Pierre Gautreau and became a darling of society.

Artists were eager to paint or sculpt her, but she realized that she must select the painter of her first major portrait with great care. She would not entrust her image to anyone until she was certain that he could create a masterpiece. That painter was John Singer Sargent who found her beauty intoxicating.

At that time, the French were passionate about art and the Annual Salon, like today’s Cannes Film Festival, was a monumental event replete with press coverage and publicity. The Salon always opened on May 1st, and artists worked toward acceptance by the prestigious jury. The year before, Sargent’s first foray into that arena brought him both fame and derision. Some felt that the French were too liberal welcoming an American into their circle. The same type of bias was exhibited towards Amélie Gautreau making them the most visible American imports of their day.

After much indecision, Sargent finally decided on a pose and thus condemned Amélie, who hated to remain motionless, to one of the most tortuous poses in art history. She had to stand with her right arm leaning tensely on a table that was a little too short to be a comfortable source of support.

At the Salon of 1884, anyone who entered Salle (Room) 31 had a single purpose; to see Sargent’s Madame X – or the Gautreau as it was often called, as she was more famous than the painter. Public reaction was:  “What a horror.”  Some said, “She looked decomposed and monstrous…The painting was indecent…And that fallen strap! Was it a prelude to – or the aftermath of sex? The fact that she was looking away made her appear blithely indifferent to her shocking careless appearance.”

Even in Sargent’s darkest and most insecure moments, he had never imagined a reaction so overwhelmingly negative. Amélie also had not expected the negative reaction and acted swiftly to repair the damage caused by Madame X– the painting would have to disappear. Negative criticism continued in one publication after another. Sargent asked for permission to remove the painting and retouch the fallen strap. The request was denied. Both painter and model were humiliated by the riotous uproar.

Twenty years later, Sargent was persuaded to show the painting in London. British critic Roger Fry called the portrait a masterpiece and Kaiser Wilhelm pronounced it his favorite painting.  As for Amélie, she realized that the now acclaimed work was in great demand, and not purchasing it in 1884 had been a mistake. With each exhibition, the portrait was winning more support while Amelie saw herself fading. She almost never received anyone, rarely emerged from her self-imposed prison, and ventured out only under cover of darkness. Late at night, swathed in white veils, she would walk the beach at St. Malo (in France).

Both woman and painting were works of art, but Madame X, not Amélie, proved the real and enduring masterpiece.

Therefore, artists must look, see, and translate their vision or their muse, into their own vocabulary.French novelist and art historian, André Malraux, wrote, “If the great artist’s way of seeing is quite different than that of the ordinary man, the reason is that his faculty of sight has been educated, from its earliest days, by paintings and statues; by the world of art.”

In conclusion, inspiration can come from anywhere or anything. The artist must face life with eyes wide open –because one can never predict when that spark will occur to light the way!

Terryl Lawrence, Ed.D., is currently teaching an eight-week course,”Artistic Inspiration,” on Fridays at 11:15 a.m. She will be teaching an eight-week course,”Exotic Art, Fantasy and Politics,” for the winter semester starting on Friday, Jan. 13 at 11:15 a.m.

By Benito Rakower, Ph.D.

Had Shakespeare never written a single play, his sonnets would have established him as the greatest of English poets.  They have fascinated, thrilled and perplexed readers for centuries.  Wherein lies their astonishing power to enchant?

Aside from the imagery, it is through poetic pitch that the sonnets rise to the level of music.  It was John Ruskin who noted that all art aspires constantly to the condition of music.  In his sonnets, Shakespeare achieved that rare feat.  Among prose writers, one would have to accord that tribute to Marcel Proust.

But even the beauty of Shakespeare’s sonnets alone would not suffice to explain their power.  Perhaps unique in poetry, the sonnets are addressed to a particular and unidentified man who is handsome, unmarried and childless.  Shakespeare remarks this as though it were a calamity and fault against nature.

The strongest impulse in the sonnets is to defy oblivion.  One of the most piercing lines appears in Sonnet 12, “That thou among the wastes of time must go.”  There are ways to defeat time and death.  One way is to write prophetic sonnets.  Another is to have children.  Or as Shakespeare notes, in Sonnet 2, “And see thy blood warm, when thou feel’st it cold.” Immortality through progeny or poetry was what Shakespeare seems to extol in the sonnets.

However, none of this fully explains the tremendous force one feels in the sonnets.  It is rather what one critic termed their “intense psychomachia.”  Reading them, one can feel the struggle of an individual to conquer the soul of another human being.  For all their formal discipline, the note that Shakespeare expresses repeatedly is desperation.  This desperation weaves and eddies through almost the entire sequence.  And it is not limited to the theme of childlessness alone.  It becomes an abstract theme – aspiring to the condition of music.

Desperation may have been something Shakespeare did not actually feel in himself.  It is consistent with what we know that he was singularly immune from psychological aberration or malady.  Perhaps his greatest gift was to understand the essence of desperation without experiencing it!  Shakespeare was the supreme artist who could understand everything without feeling anything.  He was never “passion’s slave.”

Dr. Rakower currently teaches an eight-week course, “A Culture War Conducted Through Film,” on Fridays from 1:30 – 4 p.m. The remaining class dates are November 18; December 2, 9 and 16. Dr. Rakower will be teaching an eight-week course for the winter semester. “The World, Wide and Close – in Eight Films,” will be taught on Fridays from 1:30 – 4 p.m. The dates are January 13, 20, 27; February 3, 10, 17, 24; March 3.

Read more ›

By Irving Labovitz, J.D.

In high school civics class most Americans learn that Article V of the United States Constitution permits its amendment only after the laborious process of obtaining consent of 2/3 of both houses of Congress and then also succeeding in the torturous process of thereafter securing approbation by 2/3 of the states…a lengthy and formidable task, as had been fully intended by our Founding Fathers.

During the current presidential election cycle, and to the date of this modest essay as we approach election day, a singular accusation, inter alia, continues to enjoy a modicum of political “traction”, namely, that an opposing candidate if elected would somehow enjoy the capacity to unilaterally “take away your Second Amendment rights”, either by direct executive action, or by appointing Supreme Court justices who would interpret its meaning to constrict the otherwise unfettered right of citizens to carry arms outside their homes without measurable constraint.

As to the former, such a postulate totally ignores the Constitutional reality of Article V.  Regarding the latter, a modicum of legal history is in order. Until 2008, the Supreme Court had uniformly interpreted Amendment II to allow states and municipalities to impose reasonable constraints on gun ownership whether at home or in the public domain.  However, in that year a Supreme Court decision commonly known as Heller, first interpreted Amendment II to permit retention of firearms at home for self-protection, without restraint or qualification.  Moreover, from 1994 to 2004 Congress also was successful in resisting Constitutional challenges to its legislation banning possession of assault-type weapons. This law thereafter expired by its terms and was never extended.

Since 2008, proponents of expanded gun rights have sought to overturn multiple state and local laws curbing both the carrying of weapons outside the home as well as the kinds of weapons to be allowed.  Both trial, as well as appellate courts construing the Constitutionality of such circumscriptions, have overwhelmingly found them to be constitutionally compatible with Amendment II, and that Heller remains limited to only home possession of firearms for self defense.  Moreover, in multiple attempts to seek Supreme Court review of these limiting decisions, the Court has declined to do so in all instances.

Assuredly, one may likely anticipate a future appellate decision that indeed grants the “wish list” of the NRA, wholly or in part.  So doing would give rise to a Constitutional controversy likely sufficient to warrant interjection and resolution by the Supreme Court…but do not anticipate that a successful victor in the race for the presidency next month having claimed an ability to “preserve your Constitutional rights” will be able to individually assure other than an altered Constitutionally flawed perception of Amendment II.

Irving Labovitz, J.D. is currently teaching “OBJECTION! Current, Contentious and Confusing Legal Battles” on Thursdays-Oct, 13, 20, 27; Nov. 3, 10, 17; Dec. 1, 8; No class on Nov. 24. The class starts at 12 p.m. 

By Katie Muldoon

Watching a film from another country can seduce you into beyond simply following a story.  You can immerse yourself into another way of life, and for a time, draw in the essence of a different way of being, similar but wonderfully different from your own. International films, I believe, can, not unlike actual travel, allow added depth to a new experience.

Before I lecture on a film, just like before I leave for a foreign country, I research the area hoping to find tidbits that add texture and authenticity to the visit.  As a photographer, I “hunt” for those out of the ordinary photos opportunities as these often have the story behind them.  That is exactly what happened on our recent visit to Llandudno, Wales.

Why was a large statue of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland not just along the magnificent bayside promenade but also as part of the Wonderland grouping in a park at the foot of the Great Orme Mountain? Who would expect that this small resort town would have an Alice walking trail with key places of interest?  Why Llandudno? Well, Alice Liddell, the inspiration for the famous book, has connections to Llandudno. Her family not only summered here, but her parents chose beautiful Llandudno for their honeymoon so she is critically important to the charming town.

Just as interesting and another tie-in, Wales is where the long-fought Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) finally ended.  There’s an extensive, complicated story about that – just know that Richard III’s reign ended and Henry VII married Elizabeth of York, uniting the two houses, ending that bloody war.  Some feel that Through the Looking Glass was a sly echo of that Civil War between The House of York and The House of Lancaster, especially the part where the Red Queen commands the famous ”Off with his Head!” referring to the captive Duke of York’s head.

One more thing about this fascinating town concerned World War I – the Great Orme which overlooks and connects the east and west bays around Llandudno didn’t really look like a mountain to my eyes though many think of it as one.  It’s kind of a big hill that played an essential role in WWI.  At the very beginning of the war, planes flew over the mountain, heading, it turned out, to London and suddenly smoke and such were seen. It didn’t take the Welsh long to realize that London had been bombed and to quickly get telegraph equipment to the top of their beautiful hill to do their bit to end all that nonsense.

Even more, fathers and brothers quickly volunteered as one to serve in the war.  Sadly, entire families were in the same trenches and were lost together.  The promenade recognizes this slaughter with a handsome memorial made of red poppies, inspired by the WWI poem Flanders Field that honors all the many who died from this small town and around the world in WWI and other wars.

Travel gives you an opportunity to delve into another world.  But we have a similar chance here too. I love researching the backgrounds behind the international films at Lifelong Learning.  Every film I teach has at least one story within the main story to unearth for the little known details that enhance and personalize the experience so that it becomes something memorable and truly educational.