Elizabeth’s Journal

Musings on the Good Life

This evening was the second of seven meetings for the Plan II Perspectives seminar (I know I never did put up thoughts from the first one—they’re all getting lumped in together here). the topic of which this time is Elements of the Good Life. For some reason on the way home, I got all riled up thinking about what I consider to be the evil influence of chains (as in restaurants, not ones that go clank-clank on ghosts in the attic). I think the way that local character is being slowly eliminated in the world today is truly awful. I hate it that I can go to Dallas, Houston, or Kansas City and walk into a Chili’s and not be able to know where I am. Even hotels pop up everywhere—Marriotts, Holiday Inns, Radissons, etc. While it is nice sometimes to find some comfort food when on a trip, frankly all those people that want nothing but familiar things around them should save their money and stay at home.

Why I starting thinking about that, I have no idea—can’t quite see how it was connected to the discussions this evening. Which I tremendously enjoyed! I nearly didn’t go as I had a headache most of the day as well as last evening (foolishly had a lunch yesterday that had approximately 1 whole gram of protein in it, and I paid the price—pregnant women need their protein, I have discovered in this pregnancy), but I’m so glad I did drag myself out. This is the 3rd of these seminars I’ve attended, and so far I think I’m enjoying this one the most. Unfortunately I’ll miss next week b/c of my birthday, but I shouldn’t have to miss any others.

The two members of the panel who “spoke” this evening were Larry Speck (you have to scroll nearly all the way to the bottom to read his bio), an architect, and Nancy Schiesari, a film professor. I put “spoke” in quotes because Nancy didn’t actually speak, per se—she presented different film clips and let them do the speaking for her. It’s the first time she’s been on a panel for these seminars, and she’s very interesting. She was certainly much more comfortable speaking through her clips! One interesting snippet she showed was from a documentary that Martin Scorsese did about his parents; another was from an astonishingly agonizing film called Family Life, made by British director Ken Loach in 1971. (She also had clips from The Ice Storm and Meet the Parents.)

Some interesting points raised:

—Larry discussed how one’s home—environment—in modern society is inextricably linked to one’s notion of well-being (not all societies were like this—the Greeks, for one, put more focus on their public spaces than we do). He dealt with the question of how a home helps us actualize our lives in the fullest way, how it helps us have a dialog with ourselves about who we are and how we communicate that to our friends and family, those people that we invite into our home. He offered two very different examples of homes—Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden—the point being that what you have to determine for yourself is what is the physical environment that will enable you to have a fuller life, not that there is one specific type of home everyone should be going for. Even in the smallest spaces that aren’t even ours, we alter it to make a difference. He said when he was in college and living in dorm rooms, he always got ones with big windows and he always took the curtains down because he needed to have as much natural light as he could get. Most college students decorate their living space in some way, whether it’s with posters on the walls, rugs on the floors, etc. Recently in our own house I took off nearly all the window screens in the back of the house, and what a difference it has made to my feeling of well-being and relaxation when I walk out into the kitchen/den area! Now I can clearly see the different shades of green in the leaves, the red of the berries on the yaupon holly, the colors on the birds’ feathers at the bird feeders. I no longer feel I’m living in a cave or that I’m looking out through a veil.

—The astronomer on the panel, Neal Evans, commented that he has some ambivalence towards the idea of needing a home in the traditional sense. As a child he moved every couple of years, and he learned to make wherever he was into home. That’s turned out useful in his career too, as he often visits telescope sites for a week or more at a time, and he says when he gets there he makes a point of putting all this clothes away in whatever closet is serving for a room (he actually said they’re usually more like monks’ cells), and then that’s it—that’s his home until he leaves. Even for his vacations, he and his wife like to get away from their domicile and backpack, and he loves the feeling that everything he needs he is carrying on his back. He (as well as the mathematician on the panel, Mike Starbird) finds that for him, home is more of a spiritual concept, something that travels with you wherever you go. Mike & his wife recently remodeled their home, and he said it was the first time it had ever occurred to him that his home might enable his interests and reflect his life (it wouldn’t have occurred to him without the help of the architects that Larry Speck had sent his way either).

—To close, an interesting story that Nancy shared was visiting her childhood home as an adult. It was in an area that was being gentrified, and the house was in the process of being remodeled—the carpets had been taken up and the hardwood floors were being refinished and polished. She said she was peeking in through the front door, which was standing open (no one was living there at the time), and it just hit her with great force that a home is like a theatre stage—it had served its purpose as a backdrop for her family, and now it was having the set changed to play another role for a different family. I thought that was kind of a neat concept.

Posted by elizabeth at February 4, 2004 11:25 PM