The Dacha of the Lost

Talking to a friend about Uncle Vanya, he asked me if it was "that one where they go to the country house".  While the answer to that is yes - as it is for basically ever Chekov play - the production from the Sidney Theater Company does it especially well.  This translation especially makes the play worth while; it's not stilted or awkward in anyway.  Andrew Upton did an excellent job of making the text seem colloquial and easy-going.
But the words are the only easy-going aspect of the play.  In reality, Uncle Vanya is about people refusing to listen to each other tripping and tumbling through a humid, heavy summer at a Dacha stirred up by the arrival of Yelena, the new, young wife of The Professor (he has a proper name in Russian, but I think it's mentioned twice, if that; so I feel safe simply calling him The Professor).  The Professor is about as old and crotchety as you can get.  He, like many of the characters, refuses to listen to others: his doctor, Astrov (played by Hugo Weaving, which was rather surprising to me because I had no idea that he was in this production) diagnoses him with one disorder and he insists its something else; his new wife, Yelena (played by Cate Blanchett), insists that she's satisfied while he complains both about making trouble for her and about not being paid enough attention.  Astrov talks to Sonya, the Professor's daughter from a previous marriage who adores him, about being unable to love while she sits and grins, remembering a moment of companionable physical contact.  Sonya makes it clear to Astrov that she loves him and he doesn't listen.  Admittedly he is hammered at the time (Astrov is an alcoholic even by Russian standards), but Sonya is obvious to the point where Yelena comments that everyone - even the servants - at the Dacha knows except Astrov.  Vanya, the Professor's brother in law, makes it clear to Yelena that he loves her; and, while she hears, she refuses to listen.

The characters stumble (and dance and run) desperately through their own little worlds, refusing to hear each other, in an incredibly physical performance.  Moments of physical contact are almost always blundering here, as if people don’t know the rules for connecting, though you never doubt that connection is what they long for more than anything. An entire complex relationship is established through the ways in which Vanya and Yelena paw at each other in irritation and affection and (in Vanya’s case only) something like love.  In contrast, when two characters are unconditionally, magnetically attracted to each other - like Yelena and Astrov are - their movements explode.  I honestly can't say I've ever seen a more passionate, immediate, and acrobatic kiss as the one they share in the final scene.  It's really quite remarkable.  

But that's all they're allowed.  Uncle Vanya is all about missed connections and cues (metaphorically speaking).  The characters are consumed by lethargy, boredom, and regret over their unsatisfactory lives. They bemoan their old age, mourn the years that they have wasted in drudgery, pine over lost loves, and muse bitterly over what might have been if their lots had been different.  They suffer from a sense of loss without knowing what they forfeited.  Mostly, they seem to think they have lost their place in the world.  They describe themselves as "strange", "eccentric", or "alien".  Astrov especially seems out of place.  His devotion to forestry and conservation would make him right at home among certain groups in modern America.

Even if they begin feeling out of place, the arrival of Yelena further unmoors the characters.  Schedules are changed, work is ignored, and habits violently displaced by the arrival of this beauty to the Dacha.  Because of her, the residents of this small town are set pacing, dancing, wrestling with the air, burying themselves under blankets, and shooing one another away like flies.  Chekov always begs the question: are these characters farcical or tragic?  The director, Tamas Ascher, seems to answer this question with a resounding both.  The play's climax features as weapons a pistol and a bouquet of "sad, autumn roses" in a scene as rowdy and demented as any Marx brothers production and as despairing as a Sophocles chorus.

Final First Visits

Today I ostensibly finished visiting the colleges and universities on my list that I'm seriously interested in.  The only two schools that remain are Reed (which I will very likely not be visiting because of the prohibitive distances between Harrison, New York and Portland, Oregon) and Columbia (which is literally 45 minutes away so I can really decide at the drop of a hat to go).

My dad and I started the day off at Skidmore in Saratoga Springs, NY.  It's waking up at 4:30 to drive upstate that reminds me that the state I live in is actually quite large.  Three hours on the dot later, I was in the middle of opening day at the Saratoga Race Track and about 15 minutes later I was at the admissions building.  Skidmore is an incredibly welcoming campus.  It says something about a school when someone tweets back at you to welcome you at 7:26 AM in the middle of summer.  Skidmore did that.  It was nice.  They also seem dedicated to bringing you resources at Skidmore.  Of course they participate in the Interlibrary Loan System (like every college), but they also make it doable to get a non-Skidmore study abroad program vetted and approved.  Our guide was working with the administration to get a U of Chicago program approved so that he could study history in Istanbul for the fall of his Junior year.  Generally speaking, they're a very encouraging and welcoming bunch.  Facilities seemed modern and clean (by contrast Colby's labs seemed a little dingy and Bowdoin reminded me of a horror movie insane asylum in its architecture) and rooms looked comfortable. Skidmore meets basically all of my criteria for a college/university.  Is it at the top of my list? Probably not.  I think I would be very happy at Skidmore, but it seems to lack some major resources.  For example: a Middle Eastern Studies professor.  Our guide said that the college was working on getting one since it's such a popular field of study, but it strikes me as odd that there wasn't already someone with that focus on the faculty.  It's little things like that.  But like I said, I think I would be very happy there.  It's very welcoming and encouraging and seems to have a good attitude toward it's students.

My dad and I also visited Williams.  These campuses could not have been more different.  We essentially made this trip out to Williams as a favor to my mother who has not been able to join us on any tours because she heard the campus was pretty.  Which it is... kind of; the Berkshires are beautiful, Williams not quite as much.  The campus gives off a cold, competitive vibe that could not have stood in starker contrast to Skidmore. Even with no people on campus in the summer, Skidmore was a more welcoming campus.  Williams still had a bunch of students, but it seemed somewhat hostile.  While I admit it might have had something to do with our catty, preppy guide, I basically stopped listening to her after 15 minutes and still felt ill at ease.  She actually described the typical Williams student as an aggressive, over-achiever.  I consider myself an achiever, but I would not consider myself an over-achiever.  I do not achieve for the sake of achieving.  I do what I do because I like it and because I am interested.  I'm not the kind of person to join 20 clubs to put them on my college app.  That's more or less how a typical Williams student was described by our tour guide.  I think that's a little unhealthy.  There's no denying the cachet of Williams.  It's a very good school.  But it's so combative.  Most of the school's I have liked have described themselves as collaboratively excellent.  Williams is cut throat.  You can feel it in the campus.

So that's it.  18 Campuses later, I get to start filling out the common app on August 1 when it opens for the 2012-2013 season.  Fun fun...

A Guest Post to Celebrate Independence Day

Note from Lauren: Today I turn over my blog to a friend of mine, Pia.  You may remember her from my last post where I linked to her tumblr.  I did so again.  I turn over my blog to her for a post because she grew up in Puerto Rico and is therefore more familiar with Puerto Rican history.  Take it away Pia:

Until now, I never thought I’d actually need any knowledge of my little island of Puerto Rico other than, “it has been invaded a lot and the mongooses are always rabid.” I think I spent most of the time in Puerto Rican History class doodling on the back of my exams and seeing how many pencils I could stick in the curly hair of the girl in the previous desk before she noticed. However, it looks like now a little bit of that knowledge would come in handy. So, in order to help me with this post, I’ve pulled out my old seventh-grade textbook. It’s called, Historia y Geografia de Puerto Rico and it’s very second-hand. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were third, fourth, fifth, or even over-nine-thousandth-hand. It’s so old that Tito Trinidad is mentioned in it as being a young, promising boxer. Yeah.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Despite the rumors, Puerto Rican history does not begin and end with Tito’s career. Instead, we must travel far back in time to find a beginning…

A long, long time ago, though quite a bit after the Big Bang, the Earth formed out of the extra gas and dust floating around our newborn Sun. (Or, if you prefer, God/s made it magically appear out of nothing, because he/she/it/they are/is awesome like that.)

The Earth turned out to be a good place for things to live, and live they did! Bacteria became worms, which became fish, which became amphibians, which became reptiles, which became dinosaurs, which died out, thus saving us from the evil reign of the hyper-intelligent lizard-men that surely would have evolved down the line. Mammals did not die out, though. They prospered in the newly dino-free world. Eventually, some of them became apes. Some of these apes became hominids. Some of these hominids became humans. Then humans, being the travel-hungry and sex-crazed parasites we are, walked around and had so many babies that we covered the globe.

Some of these fertile people ended up in Puerto Rico. Actually, several different waves of them did. According to Historia y Geografia, Puerto Rico was inhabited at different points by various native tribes such as the Arcaicos, the Igneris, and the Sub-Tainos. They treated men and women equally, made ceramic pots, smoked hallucinogenic leaves, ate roast rodents with yucca, shared everything communally, and walked around naked. In other words: they were like hippies, only a really long time ago.

The most famous and well-studied tribe of natives, though, is that of the Taino Indians. They were pretty similar to the tribes mentioned earlier. They lived in little towns called “yucayeques,” which literally means, “where yucca is grown.” They were animists, and their primary god was named “Yucahu.” He was, of course, the god of yucca. (What was it about that little root that the Tainos were so crazy about? The thing is, that stuff is DELICIOUS. Also, parts of it are terribly poisonous, adding a very worship-able life/death connection to a great meal.)

I could write about these folks for ages; they were the most friendly and relaxed natives ever. They gave the island a beautiful, fitting name: “Borinquen.” They were lovers, not fighters. Despite this, they were great at defending themselves against the nomadic Caribe tribes that would come around periodically to plunder, rape, and pillage. However, eventually they would come face to face with an enemy they couldn’t defeat: the sadistic Spaniards.

So, let’s move away from our lovely island and focus on somewhere else for a moment. Spain, in the year 1493, was a complex place. Just one year earlier, its paranoid and fanatical Queen Isabella had ordered the expulsion of all Jews and Muslims from Spain. This act left Spain devoid of doctors, teachers, architects, and other useful people. Also Portugal, Spain’s baby sister, had recently turned out to be a child prodigy at trade and conquest. Spain, ever the jealous older child, needed a new source of wealth, and it needed it fast. Luckily, the navigator Christopher Columbus had found a route across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. In 1493, he set off on his second journey across the Ocean. This time, though, he used a slightly different route, which led him – you guessed it – right to the shores of Puerto Rico.

Columbus arrived on the 16^th of November of 1493. There is a verse in our national anthem that describes that moment. It goes: (translated, of course)

“When on our beaches stepped Columbus,

He exclaimed in full admiration,

‘Oh, oh!

This is the lovely island

I’m searching for!

It’s Borinquen, the daughter;

The daughter of Sea and Sun[…]’”

LIES. Columbus probably never set foot on the island, and he certainly wasn’t impressed. He just jotted down the island’s position and name (San Juan Bautista, or St. John the Baptist) before setting off. He never even met our Tainos. He spent much more time on the Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and Dominican Republic) killing theirs.

Although there was one failed attempt at colonization, the Island wasn’t properly taken over by the Spanish until the summer of 1508. Juan Ponce de Leon, the famous nutcase who went hunting for the fountain of youth in Florida, brought 50 men over to St. John the Baptist from the Hispaniola, and they proceeded to take over. The mining town of Caparra was built near the location of the modern day city of San Juan. The natives were taken on as slaves and were used to extract gold. (The native women, of course, were mostly saved for the beds of the colonists, the original sex- tourists.)

A Taino revolt in 1511 came to nothing, but a ridiculous number of natives died in the process. After the massacre, the Spaniards found that they were running out of workers, so they began to do what everyone did back then: import African slaves! So, the three races that modern Puerto Ricans are descended from finally began to mix: the Spanish, the Taino, and the African.

While all this was going on, many new towns and cities were being founded around the Island. There was a lot of gold around in those days, and many ports grew as trading centers. Gold and ports in the Caribbean can only lead to one thing: PIRATES!

Puerto Rico was definitely a hub for pirates. There were hundreds of men running black-market connections between the local islands. However, there were also much larger-scale hijinks going on: Spanish ships were prime targets for privateers such as Sir Francis Drake and Sir George Clifford. (My old history teacher described these two especially as “filthy racist blue-blood pirates.”) At one point, Sir George actually invaded Puerto Rico and claimed it for the British. Unfortunately, we Puerto Ricans were deprived of the chance to become monocled tea-drinkers when most of his crew died of dysentery and he ran away. Stupid pirate.

When gold ran out, Puerto Rico began to be used as farmland. Many crops, especially sugar cane and, later, coffee [Lauren’s Note: the nectar of the Gods.  I happen to be a particular fan of Caribbean blends.], were grown here. Slavery continued until the 19^th century, when it was abolished without much issue. Throughout the years, Puerto Rico’s culture, social order, and lifestyle began to deviate from Spain more and more. Even the dialect of Spanish spoken on the island became very distinct from that of the old, Iberian Peninsula.

The people of Puerto Rico became very dissatisfied with Spain. Many began to collect in the town of Lares, where eventually a march known as the “Grito de Lares” or “Shout of Lares” was held. While the rebels from this event were defeated, more soon appeared. Eventually, events led to Puerto Rico receiving the “Letter of Autonomy” from Spain, which essentially granted it independence.

So, Puerto Rico was doing well for about three months with its newly democratic bi-cameral government. What could go wrong?

The Spanish-American war broke out, and America invaded Puerto Rico [Lauren’s Note:  Liberated.  America LIBERATED Puerto Rico from their independence.  It wasn’t American enough.]. Yes, you read that right. It was ridiculous, but it happened. The Americans raped and pillaged their way across an island that they mistakenly believed to be Spanish. Because, that’s how America rolls [Lauren’s Note: Damn straight.]. Puerto Rico got Teddy’s big stick up its backside, and stopped caring about who was in charge.

America built factories. The Island got poorer and lots of people moved to places like New York and Chicago. Certain governors - like Luis Muñoz Marin who is like our FDR - tried to fix things, and managed well enough. People still left the island, but no one was starving. Agriculture was pretty much abandoned, and a middle class finally truly formed. Two political parties, which are both essentially Democratic, but differ in their position on Statehood, formed. (The third, the independence party, has no influence whatsoever.) Globalization, and all the associated problems, hit.

Nowadays, the Island is an interesting mix of the old and the new. There are no real Tainos, Spaniards, or Africans remaining. Everyone’s a wonderful mix, as is our culture. Like the Tainos, we eat yucca boiled and seasoned. We are mostly Christians and speak Spanish, like the Spaniards. Most of our music and dances have distinctly African roots. We watch MTV and wear Aeropostale t-shirts and Uggs. (No, I’m not kidding. Even in this heat, Uggs abound. As does athlete’s foot, I’ve heard.)

And for the future? Well, who knows? I doubt that the question of whether the Island will become a state will be solved any time soon. Yet, it seems to me that even as we continue to assimilate global culture, we Puerto Ricans will remain connected to our own history and culture. Because, there really is a lot of it, and it is worth preserving.

Thank you, Lauren.

[Thank you Pia!]

Navigating Healthcare

Let me tell you a story:
One morning a girl named Lauren was brushing her hair as girls are wont to do.  Suddenly, something in her neck popped very loudly.  Or at least so it seemed to her.  This neck pop proved to cause such pain that she was sent to her knees immediately with a cry of pain sounding something like the first name of the author of a certain book she is required to read for her school called The Fountainhead.  Side note: I maintain that Ayn could only be the cry of pain of a woman giving birth and that inspired her parents who previously had no idea what to name a girl.  That would explain why she hates women so much.  In any event, she slowly got dressed and made her way to breakfast where her host mother took one look at her and decided that she needed to see an orthopedist.  She was quickly whisked off to the hospital.

True story.  I had to go to a hospital in Puerto Rico on Thursday the 28th of June, 2012 and let me tell you, I am so glad I did.  Other than the expected hurry up and wait of walking around a hospital, it was one of the most efficient healthcare experiences I have ever had.  We did not have to wait for bureaucracy, only for our turn in the cue (and even then my host mom somehow managed to get us to the front of the line at the orthopedist) and for x-rays to be done.  The doctor wanted a weird angle of my neck so the x-rays took a bit of doing, but we got it on the fourth try.  Then we went back to the orthopedist and he promptly told us that a muscle spasm had kicked the curvature of my cervical spine out of place.  I am now on some pretty trippy muscle relaxants and a really good pain reliever.  Somewhat hilariously one of the side effects of the pain reliever is neck stiffness, but once that wears off they work really well and for the most part don't make me feel like I'm high.  I'm in a neck brace and taking my drugs religiously and things are improving steadily.

However I would like to make the point that this is why studying a foreign language is awesome.  I take spanish and, while my parts of the body/visiting the doctor spanish is a little rusty it really helped that I knew how to piece together a sentence during the times when my host mom and my friend Pia could not be with me.

The moral of this story: the hospital in Arecibo is really efficient and speaking multiple languages is awesome.

Me in my sexy neck brace with Dylan (another friend who left on Friday) and my friend Pia with whom I'm staying.
I've linked to their tumblrs.