Transcription of Cultural Divide #130
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to the ‘Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast’ show number 130, ‘Cultural Divide’, airing for the first time on Sunday, March ninth, 2014. Today’s guest includes Sara Corbett, author of ‘A House in the Sky’, and Eleanor Morse, author of ‘White Dog Fell from the Sky’.
How do we understand those who are different from ourselves, particularly when these are people we may have never met? Maine authors of both fiction and non-fiction can help us bridge cultural divides. Today, we speak with journalist and Telling Room cofounder, Sara Corbett who writes the true story of Amanda Lindhout, another journalist who was held in captivity for more than a year by Somali extremists in the book, ‘A House in the Sky’.
We also spend time with Eleanor Morse who explores her own experience with South African apartheid in the novel, ‘White Dog Fell from the Sky’. Thank you for joining us.
As listeners of the program now, I very much enjoy having authors, writers in the studio to talk about the books that I have read because I love reading. It’s one of my favorite activities maybe in the world, at least favorite solo activities I guess. The individual that’s come in today is this a long time and coming, I read her book last fall. I was very excited to speak with her husband, Mike Paterniti who’s also an author. This is Sara Corbett. She’s a contributing writer to ‘The New York Times Magazine’. Her work has appeared in ‘National Geographic’, ‘Elle’, ‘Outside’, ‘O, The Oprah Magazine’, ‘Esquire’ and ‘Mother Jones’.
She and her husband, Mike Peterniti settled in Portland after living in a number of places around the states, and she most recently co-wrote ‘A House in the Sky’, a memoire with Amanda Lindhout who lived out her dreams to travel the world but was tragically abducted in Somalia. The story is about her struggles as she converts to Islam as a survival tactic, receives life lessons from one of her captors and risks a daring escape. Thanks so much for coming in, Sara.
Sara: Thanks for having me, Lisa.
Dr. Lisa: Now, you’ve written for a lot of different magazines, but this book was somehow different for you I think.
Sara: It was. I made a choice. I went to meet Amanda Lindhout in 2010. She had been released from captivity in Somalia only a few months earlier, and a colleague of mine at ‘The New York Times’ had suggested that the two of us meet. He had a connection to her. I went to meet her thinking that I would do what I always do as a journalist which is get her to tell me her story so I could then contextualize the story, I could organize it and interpret it for people. I recognized that she had a great story to tell and it would be a book. I thought it could be a book, but I wanted to write the book.
After spending a few days with Amanda, and again, just even the sight of her, she’s a very striking looking young woman but she had lost teeth while she was held captive, she was malnourished. Even in the comfort of her home in Canada, the effects of captivity on her were evident. Once I heard her story and realized how much she had lost in terms of her freedom, her dignity, her ability to voice herself, she had even lost her name in captivity, her Somali captors had renamed her, ‘Amina’.
Once I realized how much she had lost, I realized that my job as a journalist had to shift, and that really the greatest service I could give, not just her but to her experience was to let her tell the story and to usher that into the world using my skills as a writer, but not owning it, not putting my name up top, not trying to put my voice in the book, but really just humble myself to her voice. That was the choice we made.
Dr. Lisa: There was for Amanda it seems almost a cling to self. In the beginning of the book, there’s I guess a reproduction of notes that she took while she was being held captive in very, very small writing, but this effort to normalize or somehow just hold on to who she was as a person.
Sara: Right. She was held hostage for 460 days. For much of it, she had nothing. I mean really, she had nothing. Her story is an exercise in the power of the mind, really trying to figure out how to not go insane. For example, how to transcend your circumstances, how to hold on to hope, how to view the people who are harming you, do you hate them, do you try to find some compassion for them …? I think she had a mix of both.
Toward the end, she was given … As you mentioned, she had converted to Islam as a survival tactic, and they gave her a Koran and a small notebook where she was supposed to keep notes on her studies. What she did instead was write a letter to her mother that went on for pages and pages and pages. We have reproduced it at the beginning of the book because to me, it’s this incredible document. It’s this cramped, cramped handwriting.
When I first saw it, I thought it reminded me of … I had seen an art exhibit years ago that was asylum writing, stuff that had come out of asylums in the 1920s. It looks mad. What you realize is there’s this ferocious and I think deeply human need to give testimony to one’s experience.
When I was researching the book, I read a lot of holocaust literature. I think survival narratives are part of something that extends way back in time, and that people who endure something really have an impulse to record it, for whatever reason that might be, whether it’s just to dignify what happened, whether it’s just sort of assert that very primal thing. I made it. I live to tell, and also I think to document what the capacity for human cruelty looks like, and on the flipside, what the capacity for human strength and resilience looks like.
Dr. Lisa: There is something that happens also between people who are held captive and the people who are holding them captive. There’s actually a shift that happens in the mind. There have been … I think it’s called the ‘Stockholm effect’ in which there is a cross identification that happens. That gets to be very confusing for people. I think that this did happen with Amanda.
Sara: I think so. I mean, if she were here, she would say, “Stockholm syndrome is what it’s called. It is not a psychological diagnosis. It is not in the DSM. It is not recognized by this psychological profession.” It really isn’t. It’s something that has been lumped on to survivors.
However, I do think you’re right. I think that when people are put into an extreme environment and forced to live together as often prisoners and their captors are, you can’t help but see them as human beings. I think Amanda’s story is an interesting dance between her captors who were a group of mostly teenage boys who had never been in close proximity with a woman who is not in their family before, who were intrigued, scared of her, and also had power over her.
On the flipside, she’s looking at them and she had to be dependent on them for food, for kindness which wasn’t a given every day. Yes, at some point, I think she made a choice which was we write about it in the book. She could either swim inside of real hatred or she could try to understand who these people were. One of the things that she realized was the world that they came from. Somalia hasn’t had peace in 30 years. It hasn’t had a stable government. The schools don’t function. Families are torn apart. People are displaced. Neighborhoods are torn apart.
When she was able to communicate with these young men, she heard really devastating stories. Many of them had seen their parents shot and killed in front of them. It doesn’t for one second forgive the way they went on to treat her. She suffered all sorts of horrific abuses at their hands, but it did I think allow her not to lose faith in humanity in a really utter way and a deep way that she might have taken her own life I think, but I think in seeing them and their circumstances, she was able to hold on to her worldview that made her want to get through.
Dr. Lisa: You have children yourself. You have two boys and a girl. Your oldest is 14. That really is right around the age of some of the captors. As you’re writing this, how did this make you feel as a parent?
Sara: It’s a good question. I have to say that I think that the young men in the book, their circumstances and their backgrounds are so vastly different than my three fairly privileged kids growing up in Portland, Maine are that I didn’t … I don’t think I was making those connections. However, I think anybody and I hear this a lot from people who read ‘A House in the Sky’, a lot of people watch Amanda’s trajectory because the book begins with her childhood and follows her through her teens and into her 20s, and she was raised in a very poor family, she never went to college, she is very intelligent and also has always been very ambitious. That ambition led her to start saving her money. She was working as a waitress, and go often see the world, so she would waitress for six months and then she would go off and travel for three months. She was fearless in that travelling.
I think for me, that parental wire gets tripped and it’s a really interesting thing. She was backpacking by herself around the world, she crossed Sudan, she crossed Syria, she went in to Pakistan, she went to Afghanistan as a tourist. She was making decisions that I think a lot of people would question. For me as a parent, I think about that a lot because I think it’s actually what drew me to Amanda’s story because I really admire risk takers, I want to raise children who question authority, who aren’t … they don’t live in fear.
Amanda’s story, it takes place during the George Bush years, the decade post 9/11. I remember so acutely, I was a younger woman then, and I have because of my job travelled quite a bit and I travel mostly by myself when I’m on assignment, and I hated how the U.S. was hunched down in fear during that time. I look at Amanda’s freedom in her travels with some envy for sure with some hope like, “I hope someday my kids are out and they see the world and they meet people in these environments and they take them on their own terms.”
There’s a big but because every time something went well for her, it drove her deeper into the world, and eventually she tried to become a journalist, she had mixed success as a journalist, and she landed in Somalia. As a parent, you can’t read what happened to her and think you would ever encourage your child or anybody you love anywhere near that situation.
It’s complicated and I think it’s provocative. I think that that is a really great piece of the story because she’s not trying to say what she did was right, but she’s trying to help people see how it happened. For me as both as a parent who wants to raise exuberant free children and as a journalist who really has appreciated and learned a lot from world travel, I can see how one gets there.
Dr. Lisa: Here on the ‘Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast’, you’ve long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
Tom: Sometimes, I meet with married or partnered clients. When we get to talking about their financial lives, a cultural divide bubbles to the surface. One person feels one way about their money, and the other seems to be on their own financial island with a set of beliefs and rules that have created unnecessary boarders and boundaries.
It’s not an uncommon thing. When I hit those situations, I do my best to help both people understand that neither is a hundred percent right or wrong, that they simply have to take a step back and look at their own financial life in a new light. It is also true in politics and economics. What we need to do is see money as a living thing that can be used to grow our lives together without disagreement or so called ‘Boarder issues’. It’s a great feeling for me. It’s like I’m helping people negotiate peace treaties with their money.
Be in touch if you want to know more, ‘Tom@ShepardFinancialMaine’. We’ll help you evolve with your money.
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Dr. Lisa: It is interesting because you have two boys and a girl, 14, 11, nine. I’m wondering how … I mean, I have a boy and two girls. I know that the way that I see my children even though I make an effort not to see things based on gender. I can’t really help but do that.
My older child went to Guatemala and worked in Guatemala City for a year at just the age of 18. My now 18-year old daughter, I worry more about her. I think there was some gender … there were some gender issues that came in when it came to Amanda as well.
Sara: Yes. It’s interesting. She says in the book that people would say to her “It must be so hard to travel alone as a woman.” Her answer always was, “It’s actually not. I think it might even be easier,” because she felt like if she was open to the world, people went out of their way to help her. Really, I mean, the thing to keep in mind is she had many years of really great experiences as a traveler.
Again, when I put on my mom hat, I know exactly what you’re talking about and yes. I think it’s something we need to strive for is to not worry more about our daughters than we do our sons because truly, the world’s dangers are the world’s dangers and yes, women are more at risk for physical assault. I just don’t think it should stop. I don’t think we should keep our girls home. I don’t think we should keep ourselves home. I think it’s an unfortunate thing. I also feel like the more women who are out travelling, the more possibilities for understanding culturally come about, and maybe someday that will help. Maybe that will change some of the attitudes.
Mike and I were reading last night an item in the newspaper about the violence against women in India. I’ve travelled by myself to India a few times, and I love it there. Had I read the horror stories? I might have stayed home and I’m so glad I didn’t. I don’t know. I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I totally know what you’re voicing and I think it’s a reality and I don’t think there’s an easy answer to it.
Dr. Lisa: That is part of what you and I had talked about before which is that the further you get into this, the fewer easy answers you find, and this ongoing back and forth and sense that maybe there isn’t a right …
Sara: Right.
Dr. Lisa: … and even having to live within that yourself and having to live within that and subsequently raise children who are still looking still at this age need easier answers, at least initially.
Sara: Yes. I think the world is a really complex place. I think that one interesting vein of Amanda’s story for me was her exposure to radical Islam which is inarguably one of the giant forces shaping our world today for better or worse, mostly for worse. She had a front row seat on fundamentalism. To me, I think what she learned from that is really instructive. She was able to see in these young men gradually over the year or plus she was held hostage.
The first couple of months, they wanted to ask her questions about where she came from and where she had travelled, and they wanted to practice English and they talked about wanting to study abroad. What had happened was this was a cell. It was basically a criminal cell, and so they had been isolated from their families, if they have any jobs or hope of jobs of schooling, they disappeared as this kidnapping ordeal dragged on. What they were being fed was this really steady diet interestingly enough, largely through cell phones of fundamentalist teachings.
As time went by, instead of family, instead of community, instead of peace or warmth, they were told that heaven came in the form of the afterlife, and that their devotion now, their devotion to Jihad would all pay off someday, and she got to watch them embrace this. Again, there’s no moral to the story, but I think that I really appreciate people who are out in the world who are bearing witness to this and bring it back and relay it because there is something helpful and instructive in that. I feel like I understand the world a little bit more. Does that make the world any less complicated, scary or mystifying? No. It doesn’t, but I’m really glad to know what I know because of it.
Dr. Lisa: That brings up another word which is ‘Translator’. This is you’ve been a journalist for many years now in many different places covering many different stories. The common theme for you is translation.
Sara: Yes. I love my job. I’ll start by saying that. It never gets old. I have worked for ‘The New York Times’ for 13, 14 years now. I work for the magazine so I do long form stories. They take always months, sometimes I’ve spent a couple of years working on several stories, but sometimes it takes a long time for them to come to fruition. I never meet somebody once, I always meet somebody several times. I try not to do phone interviews if I can help it. I’m very lucky to work for an organization that will put me in a plane and send me places to meet people, and I really try to listen.
I listen and I listen and I listen, and I go in to every story having done my homework but without judgment. I think that that’s something that I’ve learned over the years because when you’re a journalist, your job is to translate. It really is. If you go in with your opinions and your worldview, you’re not going to do a good job that way. The best thing you can do is try to understand where people are coming from, why they say the things they say, why they do the things they do, and what context they’re operating in. It doesn’t always work, but when it works, it’s a really great feeling.
Dr. Lisa: You and Mike were part of a group of people who founded ‘The Telling Room’ here in Portland, which is of course all about stories. We’ve talked about ‘The Telling Room’ before on the show, and it remained something that you both are very interested in is the story at a very fundamental level.
Sara: We are. Again, getting back to being a journalist, my job is to listen to people’s stories. Somebody asked me recently. They said, “Have you ever not liked anybody when you go out and you write about them?” I really did think about it. I was like, “I don’t think so.” I think like every … Again, I don’t think I would have done my job if I just flat out didn’t like somebody because I feel like everybody has something of real value to say and it can take a long time to get it out of them, it can be a confusing message or something that maybe I hadn’t thought about or maybe wouldn’t be inclined to agree with.
Here in Portland, when we started ‘The Telling Room’ 10 years ago, where this is we’re so excited. This is our 10th … We’re about to celebrate the 10th anniversary, we turned that framework on to the kids in the community and this idea that if we can empower them and their voices, we adults, we people in Maine can learn a whole lot from the kids here.
One of our first projects was we worked with immigrant and refugee children in Maine and they told they’re coming to America’s stories and we published the anthology containing the stories, and it became a teaching tool around the State of Maine. One of the most wonderful days was this group of kids went to Yarmouth High School and did a reading. Yarmouth students asked these Portland students all sorts of questions and they dignified them as authors, I think everybody learned a lot, and it was just this wonderful day of seeing kids hearing each other and responding to each other in a really genuine, rich way.
I think as adults, any time we can mediate that without getting in the way, but creating those opportunities, it’s just really fun and it’s really humbling. Any time I go into ‘The Telling Room’, there’s some little experience that makes me walk out an inch taller like, “Look what they’re doing. It has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with there’s a space where these kids can tell stories.”
Dr. Lisa: I think that’s the type of thing that it’s so important to hold on to because one of the things that struck me the most in ‘A House in the Sky’ was when Amanda was trying to get out of captivity, everybody had given up. The governments have given up and it was essentially her family and the family of the man that was also captured with her that were negotiating with these guys on their cell phones. It just struck me. It’s so lonely, and to be out there and be like, “Who cares about me?”
Sara: Yes. Yes.
Dr. Lisa: On the other side, foster the sense of community and story and that ‘The Telling Room’ brings up, that must be very important to you to be able to have those counterbalances.
Sara: I think that personally, I get a lot out of community. That’s why I love Maine. I love living in Portland because it’s a small city and we all know this every … I’m sure all of your listeners know this. There is this intimacy that is really special here, really, really special. Then there’s this creativity here that’s also special. Much of the time with my job, I have to go away to do it. I go away to do my reporting, and there’s nothing that makes me happier when I’m here and I’m writing which can be very isolating and lonely to be out in the community whether it’s through working with ‘The Telling Room’, whether it’s being in the playground where my kids go to school or walking the dog, or walking up exchange street.
Whatever it is, there is this sociability and community connection that I think is incredibly sustaining regardless of what you do for a living. I think it’s really, really special in Maine.
Dr. Lisa: What’s next for you?
Sara: I’m back at work at ‘The New York Times Magazine’. I’m leaving next week. I’m doing a story now about surveillance. I’m about to spend a week in the Dominican Republic with a bunch of Russian code breakers. That’s my next adventure. It’s starting … This is what I love. It’s a blank slate every time, and I’m about to dive into something that I know absolutely nothing about and hopefully will come out the other side having learned.
Dr. Lisa: How can people find out about the work that may be coming up in the future, the work that you’ve done in the past and ‘A House in the Sky’?
Sara: Most of my work is listed on a website called ‘Byliner.com’ which aggregates long form writers work. I’m also on Twitter and Facebook.
Dr. Lisa: Sara, we’ve really appreciated your coming in and talking to us today. I can’t recommend more highly the book, ‘A House in the Sky’ that you co-wrote with Amanda Lindhout. I also encourage our listeners to go out and spend some time looking at some of the other things that you’ve written about. Thanks for coming in.
Sara: Thanks so much, Lisa.
Dr. Lisa: As a physician and a small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully.
Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: When was the last time you took a break from what you were doing, from the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up? I know that during the course of my days, I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream, terrible that I have to remind myself to breathe. When I do, I feel energized because in those moments, I’m able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to accomplish, how I want my business to grow.
Sometimes, those are the, “Ah-huh” moments. If we all took a few moments out each day to stop what we are doing and dream a little about our business futures, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can in fact come true.
I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need, ‘Boothmaine.com’.
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Dr. Lisa: Eleanor Morse is the author of three novels. Her first, ‘Chopin’s Garden’ was published in 2006, ‘An Unexpected Forest’ her second won the 2008 ‘Independent Book Publishers Award’ for the best regional fiction in the northeast region, and the 2008 ‘Maine Literary Award’ from the ‘Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance’ for best published fiction. Most recently, Eleanor published ‘White Dog Fell from the Sky’ her third novel.
I’m going to read to you a little bit from Eleanor’s book, but first, thanks for coming in and talking with us today.
Eleanor: Thank you, Lisa.
Dr. Lisa: The point is people have lost their courage. They’ve gone for safety. No one wants to be reminded what a tiny spec in the universe we are, but knowing that is the key to everything. We’re afraid of big spaces. We heard for safety, and before you know it, you’ve got civilization. In the wild, look what happens. Which animals do lions choose to prey upon, zebra and wildebeest, animals that travel in herds? The herd feels like safety, but it only makes us more vulnerable.
That’s an interesting commentary based on what I know of your life because you’re actually someone who hasn’t really travelled as much with the herd so much as following your own path.
Eleanor: Yes. It’s true, and we all heard animals to some extent. At a fairly early age, I met a man who had grown up in Botswana which is how I happen to be there. We ended up marrying. Back when I met him, it was still pretty unusual to travel that far and especially to live in Africa. It’s much less unusual now, but I think it started a lot earlier than that with my family who I’m thankful that they are in many ways a bunch of odd balls, not only my family of origin, my most immediate family but the larger, larger family. There are lot of scientists and mathematicians and people who are interested in why things happen.
When I think of what drives my own writing, it’s what the engine is really curiosity. If I weren’t curious, I don’t know what life would be like. I can’t imagine it, but I’m grateful to have grown up with people around me who had curiosity, who wondered why this has happened and why does it happen the way it is.
While I’m not a mathematician or a scientist or a research person, I do bring that to my world, and it’s caused me to choose things that are off the beaten path. It’s probably what’s caused me to live on Peaks Island which is full of people who have made similar choices in their lives.
Dr. Lisa: ‘White Dog Fell from the Sky’ is as you’ve alluded to based in Botswana, where you were when you were younger, but many years intervene between being in Botswana, actually living there and writing this book. Why is that?
Eleanor: Yes. You’re not the first person to ask me. Most people say, “Why did it take you so long to write this book?”, because I did leave Botswana when I was in my late 20s and I’m not anything like that anymore.
I think that it’s a book that required a particular emotional vocabulary that was pretty deep, and I think that I needed to live and experience life and have my own sorrows and joys, and breadth of experience in order to fully embrace what I needed to in this book. I didn’t realize it at a conscious level, but at an unconscious level, I did.
The landscape of Botswana haunted me and stayed with me in a very rich, complex way. I don’t think I fully realized that until I started working in this book. In the process of writing it, I evoked that landscape in some part of me that had been dormant and I evoked the language and the people and images, they came back stronger and stronger as I wrote. It was a really interesting book to write because all my memories are those memories from being in my late 20s, so it was kind of a double focus, double layering of time as I wrote the book.
I think that at first, I didn’t know how to handle that, but as the book progressed, it became clear how I was to do that. It was a really interesting book to write for that reason, and also really interesting to know that there are hidden parts or dormant parts in us. I think all of us have more than one lifetime, and my life is no different than other peoples in that way, and that life that I had left behind many years before was still very much alive in me.
In this book, even though it’s not autobiographical is as close to historically accurate as I could make it, and close to that period of what it was like to be in Botswana in the mid 1970s with apartheid in South Africa very much a fact of life right next door to this African country, Botswana which was independent, democratic, multiracial. It’s a fascinating time to be there.
Dr. Lisa: The 1970s weren’t that long ago for many of us. It is interesting to think about the notion of apartheid as being something that is real, that actually existed and existed pretty late into the last century. It’s not as simple as just saying, “Blacks go over here and whites go over here.” There was imprisonment and there was people being treated like animals, and in fact, Isaac, the main character in your book is one of those individuals. He was a young black man who’s actually a medical student, who was imprisoned by the South African government. Reading about this was challenging for me, because it’s hard to believe that this existed in not so long ago.
Eleanor: Yes. It was challenging. Parts of it were very challenging to write for that same reason. I was aware in the writing that I couldn’t overload the book without side of it. There’s only so much you can expect a reader to tolerate and bear, and apartheid was unbearable for so many people living it. I wanted to capture that and I also wanted to make it bearable for a reader to apprehend what that was like, so there was more than one storyline during the book partly for that reason.
I think as a young woman, I was certainly aware of apartheid next door. I was aware of people being thrown out of ten-story windows as part of police “investigations”. In actually travelling to South Africa, much of that was hidden and I mostly only rub shoulders with white people when I travel there and I didn’t spend a lot of time in South Africa, but enough to know that whites were anxious to rationalize a system or at least the people that I met.
It seemed pointless to argue but it was terribly upsetting to be there. I was often held up at the boarder because I had a radio program there and I was an educator and I was an American, and those were three strikes against me. I often spend time at the boarder waiting for clearance when I went through one way or the other from Botswana or back into Botswana.
I don’t think I was fully aware of … I didn’t allow myself to feel right down deep into the fact of apartheid and what it would be like to live within that system. That’s one of the things in the writing this book that I had to come face to face with through research through my own imagination part of why It was hard to write.
Dr. Lisa: We live now in a society that is increasingly I believe more accepting of people of different skin colors, different religions, of different spiritual inclinations. That’s on the surface. There are still some people who have deeply held beliefs about separation and about superiority. What was it like to be in a country or next to a country that was entirely of that belief or at least the laws were structured in a way so that people were separated and there was a class system, and to know that this was so against what you yourself believed in?
Eleanor: As I’ve said, it was horrifying and I have the experience of being in a Mafikeng train station and dashing up to the black stairway and being shouted at. If I’d been a black person running up a white staircase, I’ve probably would have been shot or put in prison. Who knows what would have happen to me.
I had those small experiences. As I said, I didn’t live in South Africa. I was living in Botswana, so my experience day to day was quite the reverse of that. I had the experience of being a white person for the first time, being a minority person and occasionally felt the brunt of that in my work and outside work, not strongly because Botswana was a … It felt like a very kind, multiracial country at the very top of the country. Seretse Khama was a very enlightened statesman like black president. His wife was white, a white British person. That multiracialism filtered down through the country and it was a very strong part of what I felt that I belong to.
My husband was white, but he was a citizen of Botswana. We were minority and sometimes, that minority felt privileged but sometimes it felt the reverse. I feel grateful to be a white person to have had that experience of being sometimes in a very unprivileged position which is what black people in this country have experienced for hundreds of years now.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Eleanor Morse, author of ‘White Dog Fell from the Sky’. For more information on Eleanor, visit ‘Eleanormorse.com’. Thank you for bringing your writing to the world and for speaking with us today, Eleanor.
Eleanor: Thank you, Lisa.
Dr. Lisa: The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community.
The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.
Ted: On April, 22nd which is Earth Day this year, my new book ‘Earth Calling’ is being released co-written by my co-author, Ellen Gunter. It is really a handbook on climate change for the 21st century. This is something that is going to affect every single one of us. It doesn’t matter where you live or what socioeconomic brackets you’re in. Every single piece of the human spirit will be touched by the changes going on in the environment.
This has been something that’s been going on a long time, and we keep putting solutions off, we keep putting things off to the future and hoping that maybe another generation can handle this, but it’s really up to us. We’re the stewards. We’re the ones that are being called to handle this now. It’s not about giving up everything you have. I think people are terrified thinking that, “Oh my gosh. I can’t have a nice house or drive a nice car, or have my things” I guess. That’s not the case at all.
I think it’s about both, and about walking between our worlds and trying to come up with solutions that are really helpful to everybody, and get out of ourselves for a minute and start to see the world around us with a much more holistic perspective.
I’m Ted Carter. If you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at ‘Tedcarterdesign.com’.
Dr. Lisa: The ‘Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast’ understands the importance of the health of the body, mind and spirit. Here to talk about the health of the body is Travis Beaulieu of Premier Sports, a division of Black Bear Medical.
Travis: Let’s talk about the cultural divide we sometimes have going on in our bodies. Our bodies are wonderful and sometimes unexplainable forms. We often find ourselves overcompensating for our injuries with the strong and healthy parts of our bodies only to put the balance further out of control.
Keeping your body in line always begins with rest and relaxation. Beyond this, there are so many things you can do to keep your body more symmetrical. From the right pillow to the proper shoe orthotics, to products that help strength and stability, there are so many things to keep your body in balance.
Ask our staff at Black Bear Medical about the things you can do on a daily basis, and when injury strikes to keep your body in balance and help bridge the gap of the cultural divide. Visit us at ‘Blackbearmedical.com’ for more.
Male: Experience chef and owner, Harding Lee Smith’s newest hit restaurant, Boone’s Fish House and Oyster Room, Maine seafood at its finest. Joining sister restaurants the front room, the grill room and the corner room, this newly renovated, two-story restaurant at 86 Commercial Street on Custom House Wharf overlook scenic Portland Harbor, watch lobsterman bring in the daily catch as you enjoy baked stuffed lobster, raw bar, and wood fired flatbreads.
For more information, visit ‘www.theroomsportland.com’.
Dr. Lisa: Now in its 17th year, the ‘Maine Jewish Film Festival’ has presented over 300 domestic and foreign films and sold over 32,000 tickets to both Jewish and non-Jewish attendees. This year, the ‘Maine Jewish Film Festival’ will be held on March 22nd to 29th in venues throughout greater Portland, as well as selected sites throughout the state.
Here’s an excerpt from next week’s show on the ‘Maine Jewish Film Festival’. Today, we’re speaking with film festival executive director, Louise Rosen and filmmaker, Richard Kane.
It is interesting that the same time, you’re celebrating diversity, you’re also celebrating connections so that people will see films that are put out as ‘Maine Jewish Film Festival’ films, and yet there’s a universality about them. I know, Richard, this is something that you are very aware of because you’ve done work not only on artists but you did work with … One of your pieces was called, ‘In These Times’ and another was called ‘Turning Clothing into Food’. Those were two short documentaries hunger which is something that impacts all of us in one way or another.
Richard: Right. I guess I’m very interested in community and in issues that impact people. It’s hard to realize that when you’re living in an affluent place, that there are people who are falling to cracks and we’re very interested in … and my partner, Melody Lewis came was very interested in the local food pantry and how can we help.
We collaborated with them to create a film that is about hunger and about how food pantries can be of a great help in helping those people who do fall to the cracks, and people with two jobs working minimum wage can’t make it with a couple of children. They need something like a food pantry to be of … It’s a supplement, their diet.
Now, the films have been showing and many of the places around, many of the theaters around Maine, we had the great fortune of having Noel Paul Stookey contribute the music and the title in these times to the film. He’s a great member of the community that I live in in Blue Hill.
That film as well as the film that we made for the ‘Natural Resources Council of Maine’, I’m very interested in our environment, and I think the NRCM does an amazing job to really protect the nature of Maine, so I became involved in that project. I’m also doing commercials and politicals, as well as commercials on different products.
I just like to be involved in a visual medium like film which is what perhaps attracted me to making films about art in Maine. That really has become my life’s work. For that, I’m very grateful to have that opportunity. Many of the artists happen to be Jewish.
When I started this project on Jon Imber, it wasn’t about a Jewish artist, and it’s knowing that the film is part of the ‘Jewish Film Festival’ to ‘Maine Jewish Film Festival’ has made me begun to think about my own Judaism. Jon’s wife, Jill Hoy who’s a really accomplished artist herself and has had a long history of being in Maine, she talked about how Jon’s Judaism was really deeply rooted and who he is. In the film, when they’re looking through old family photos, they come across a photograph of Jon nine years old at a family Passover where there’s uncle Isaac and uncle Herman and his grandmother, Michael Abbey, and Jon is like a peacock in a way. He’s hamming it up. He’s stretching out his neck to be photographed.
Hamming it up is who Jon is in part. Jill descries Jon as … his Judaism being deeply rooted in who he is. Let me just quote what she says. Jon asks, “How so?” She says, “Your delivery, your being, your responsibility, your search, your quest for the integrity of what you do, I think there’s a very deep root there.” It made me think about, “Who am I as a Jew?” Both of us, Jon and myself, we always thought about ourselves as being secular Jews. Maybe we’re both Bar Mitzvahed but it was almost more of a social event than it was a religious event.
It’s something that the film begins to deal with. Jon actually has a very long history of having a very significant ancestor by the name of Naftali Herz Imber who was the author of the ‘Israeli National Anthem’. He wrote a poem, ‘Hatikvah’ which means hope. It became the words to the Israeli National Anthem.
Dr. Lisa: I do think that this is something that I find very interesting and something I think you and I talked about on the phone, Louise. It’s this idea of documenting of really making sure that things are not forgotten. This is a big piece of what you’re doing as you’re bringing some of these films like the ‘Jon Imber’ film to Maine for the ‘Maine Jewish Film Festival’. Tell me about some of your favorite films.
Louise: I think it’s important to bear in mind that all of these films come from what I would refer to as ‘Independent Sources’. In other words, these are not being made by a studio system. They represent a kind of independent spirit and from a huge range of countries. We’ve got certainly Israeli films, France, Germany … these countries are represented. We’re really curating a collection that reflects an international sensibility.
In terms of favorites, it’s a tough question. I mean, we’ve certainly got edgy films, a film called ‘The Gatekeepers’ which was nominated for an Oscar last year which is a very, very tough look at Israeli approach to dealing with terrorism. It features the heads of the Israeli intelligence agency called ‘Shin Bet’. They talk about their careers as the head of that agency and reflecting back on whether their approaches ultimately made sense in terms of peace and the world peace for Israel. It’s a tough film and very similar in style to ‘Fog of War’, and as much as it uses interviews combined with archive material.
In relation to what you were just saying, yes, that’s a document. We have cultural documents, a very Indie and very fun film that touches on music called ‘Awake Zion’ that makes the connection between a reggae and Jewish music, and explores the new reggae movement that exists in Israel where there’s a very vibrant reggae scene, but also connects with Crown Heights and of course a period of time when the Caribbean community in Crown Heights and the Orthodox community clashed, but then, looking at the fact that there’s now this inspired fertilization between the two communities and musically speaking. Great film.
We’ve got a German film called ‘An Apartment in Berlin’ that looks at the immigration of young Israelis to Germany which for a lot of the older generation is really a bit of a taboo idea and yet, Israelis are drawn, these 20 somethings, 30 somethings are drawn to a place like Berlin for all the reasons anyone would be. It’s a cosmopolitan city, it’s got wonderful quality of life, very lively, active place. Dealing with Berlin as having been the center for the extermination programs during the holocaust, there’s a big push pull there.
It’s exciting to learn about, “What are these young people thinking, and what are their experiences being there and how are their families responding to them?”
Dr. Lisa: You have been listening to the ‘Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast’, show number 130, ‘Cultural Divide’. Our guests have included Eleanor Morse and Sara Corbett. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit ‘Doctorlisa.org’. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes.
For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for a newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Follow me, ‘Bountiful One’ on Instagram and read my take on health and well being on the Bountiful blog. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of the ‘Dr. Lisa Radio Hour’. We welcome your suggestions for future shows.
Also, let our sponsors know that you’ve heard about them here. We are privileged. They enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our ‘Cultural Divide Show’. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Male: The ‘Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast’ is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors; ‘Maine Magazine’, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary by Design, Premiere Sports Health a division of Black Bear Medical, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Ted Carter, Inspired Landscapes, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial, Dream Kitchen Studios, Harding Lee Smith of the Rooms, and Bangor Savings Bank.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in the studio of ‘Maine Magazine’ at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Susan Grisanti and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Our assistant producer is Leanne Ouimet. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our online producer is Kelly Clinton.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is available for download free on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.