Google Doodle: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

I awoke today to a brand new Google Doodle, which warmed my heart and gladdened my eyes. It is a Treasure Island themed vignette celebrating the 160th birthday of the book's author: Robert Louis Stevenson.

I love Robert Louis Stevenson's writing. I am not sure what Virginia Woolf, whose work I also admire, found wrong with it, but frankly I don't care. He is a huge inspiration.
I recently re-discovered "Treasure Island" as I was reading it to my English-speaking 7-year old. I'd read the book as a child in Russian (and a good translation it was) and never forgot the thrill it gave me. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the original version is a hundred times more thrilling! Even though I knew the story very well, the way it was written totally captivated me. An avowed Anglophile copycat, I can't help using expressions from the book at the smallest provocation, pirate talk especially, which, as per literary convention already in place when Stevenson wrote the book, is mostly based on the West Country dialect and Devonshire accent. 

Most of the sayings I like belong to Long John Silver, one of the most memorable literary characters ever created.

They include things like: "Think on it, boys",  "Care killed a cat. Fetch ahead for the doubloons", "Latin by the bucket" and countless other gems. Here is the hilarious tirade directed at his chief accomplice, Israel Hands:

"Israel," said Silver, "your head ain't much account, nor ever was. But you're able to hear, I reckon; leastways, your ears is big enough. Now, here's what I say: you'll berth forward, and you'll live hard, and you'll speak soft, and you'll keep sober till I give the word; and you may lay to that, my son."

Earlier this year I spent a month in bed, recovering from a surgery. I did not feel like doing much of anything, nor could I do much, but reading and re-reading Treasure Island and then watching every film and TV adaptation of it I could find made me forget my troubles. 

The first screen version of Treasure Island  made in color, 1950's classic Disney adaptation, has a cartoonish feel to it (to be fair, it is Disney's first completely live-action film), but Robert Newton is superb. 

The 1990's TV version with Charlton Heston as Long John Silver, Christian Bale as Jim Hawkins, and Oliver Reed as Billy Bones, is an action-packed thriller and a cinematic treat of high production value.The film is well paced, is fairly close to the book, and has one of the most dynamic and beautifully choreographed fighting scenes I've ever seen on big or small screen (Episode: The Stockade).

The 1982 Soviet Russian screen version of Treasure Island  with  then childhood idol Fedor Stukov  (Jim Hawkins) and inimitable Oleg Borisov (Long John Silver) is fairly good too. It's a lot more light-hearted than the later 1990 British version and is touchingly inventive in its attempts to recreate 18th century England on location in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). Check out this episode in which Squire Trelawney arrives in Bristol and is introduced to Long John Silver at his tavern.

Thank you, Google, for using your awesome power for paying such a well-deserved tribute to Robert Louis Stevenson and his timeless masterpiece.

Cat Stevens and freedom

I'd started writing about Cat Stevens yesterday, but then had to stop, because my son was taking the break as a licence to be the laziest kid in the entire world, so I had to intervene.

I say, for the better. As they say in Russia: "The morning is wiser than the evening."

Why was I writing about Cat Stevens? I have to admit that I only recently found out that the author of such amazing songs as "Wild World", "First Cut is the Deepest", "Father and Son", etc, and Yusuf Islam are one and the same person. (Yes, I know that everyone knows this, but I grew up in the Soviet Union, where listening to any Western music, except the transcendent ones, the Beatles, was strongly discouraged and pretty much impossible)

My interest was peaked. Of course, Yusuf Islam also just recently performed at Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which some in the media humorously dubbed "Rally to Restore the Reputation of Yusuf Islam". With that in mind, I started digging up some facts on Yusuf Islam, slightly torn between my distrust of what I perceived as a bit of a provocative stance and my admiration for his songwriting abilities and also, quite frankly, his electrifying voice. I found out that he was a Londoner, a Brit of Greek and Swedish background, and that he was a talented loner, who often sat on the rooftop of his parents' restaurant listening to the sounds of musicals being performed nearby in London's theater district. He was also very cute.

I ended up establishing so much for myself: as sensitive as the topic of Islam is in the West right now, Cat Stevens converted years ago, so this has nothing to do with trying to pick anybody's wounds or giving anyone the finger. This calmed me down.

I am all for freedom, but one of the reasons I started this blog is to look at different expressions of freedom and try to pinpoint the moment where one's freedom to do whatever one likes with one's life starts intefering with other people's freedoms to do or to be whatever they like, with all the ensuing consequences. Wow! A long sentence! Must remember not to emulate Tolstoy. (As if I could).

Being a very visual person, I think in images, so images are a big source of information for me.

What I noticed, looking at all the current images of Yusuf Islam I could find on the net including on his own website is that he looks really happy. So does his wife.

Islam's reasoning for quitting the music business twenty seven years ago supports this visual point . He says that up to his decision he had been looking for his path in life and once he found it, his search was finished and he had to simply get down to the business of living his life. Which is not the same thing as "carving out a life", "striving for a better life", "building a life", etc. He had built his life and now he wanted live it.

Living his life obviously worked out really well for him. The royalties from his songs had something to do with it, I suppose, in so far as allowing him to do a lot of charitable work, but he would have done something along those lines anyway, since charity is a fundamental part of being a Muslim.

Despite being high-profile and all, Cat Stevens' example is illuminating on the point of freedom. By quitting the life style that wasn't making him happy, he made use of the freedom to live one's life as one sees fit. The contradictory nature of this is that freedom does have limitations. And everyone is free to accept them or not. If you don't accept them, you keep on working on the project of your life. Luckily for Cat Stevens, he was able to move on a long time ago.

Thumper is thumpin'

This post is a first one of what I imagine will be a long string of posts born from my passionate love affair with the English language. I am a collector, a savourer, an ESL nerd, whatever you like to call me. I am always expanding my English vocabulary, which is like the ocean - inexhaustible. 

The latest treat comes right out of the US midterm elections media extravaganza.

While President Obama chose "shellacking" to describe the recent Democratic defeat in the House of Congress, former President George W. Bush is often quoted these days referring to the 2006 Republican loss of seats as a "thumpin'". Political analysts and news people are also using the term "drubbing" a lot.

Political issues aside (this blog will not get partisan), I celebrate the creative use of the English language in the American public discourse. For us, non-native speakers/copycats, it's invaluable. One thing is to come across a word like that in a book, first try to extract its meaning from the context, and then, still not quite getting a good grasp of it, look it up online (or in an actual paper dictionary), but quite another is to hear it directed at and understood by such a large pool of people. No longer am I limited to "beating" and "thrashing". Three fresh synonyms is one swat. Just watch me use them now!

A Family Affair

My first post was a submission for the contest launched by Templeton Press, the publisher of a collection of essays edited by Adam Bellow, currently vice president/executive editor at HarperCollins. It's titled New Threats to Freedom. I genuinely believe in what I wrote and am not bummed out at all that I was not picked. Thank you to Templeton Press for motivating me to finally start this blog.

Now it's time to actually blog. What to blog about? Obviously, my themes are freedom, books, and flowers, as per title. Myriad of things fall under these topics, so my entries will vary greatly, I suspect.

I am new to the blogging business, but I've been following a blog for almost two years now that I really like and whose writer I hugely admire. It's called familyaffairsandothermatters and it has its own website. The blogger, Lulu, has risen to prominence as a mommy blogger in the UK and her blog is not only entertaining and funny, but hugely informative and sets a remarkable example when it comes to charitable campaigns. It also makes me cry at times, like the last two entries, for example. One is about the mother-daughter bond and the very last one is about Lulu's father gently fading surrounded by his best friends: his wife of over forty years and his three children.  In moments of sadness, the little community of regular commenters serves as a support network not only to Lulu, but to the commenters themselves. 

Lulu is related to my husband and has taken to referring to me (she posted a few things that I wrote on the blog) as her lovely cousin from Canada. I can now reciprocate and call her my lovely cousin from the UK.

Thank you, Lulu. My family and I love you and we love your father. His valor and grace are humbling. I am proud to be able to call him family.

The Art of Conversation

When was the last time you had a good conversation? The monologue you delivered to your mother about how unfair your ex-husband’s treatment of you was does not count, just as her upbraiding you for not following a stricter parenting course with your children. Your best friend used to be a great conversation partner, only she has two children, a demanding job, and a new boyfriend.

Sometimes you manage to have really good conversations with your children. Those are the best, but they are rare, because there is very little time. Somehow the pace of life has become staggering. Both children and parents have so much on “the agenda” that there are not enough hours in the day to fulfill the most pressing engagements and obligations, let alone have time to sit down and talk about things. Children love to talk. They long for a conversation. But the art of conversation has to be taught. How can we teach the art of conversation if we ourselves forgot how to practice it? The literature is full of satirical portrayals of ladies and gentlemen idling away time talking nonsense and gossip over tea or wine. By focusing on these, however, we forget to take into account how many intelligent conversations must have taken place between people. Their regulated routines included time for that. Intelligent, well-honed conversation is vital for exercising our intellectual abilities. Where does one learn? At parties, for example, where conversation is required. It would be interesting to find out what percentage of the population still throws house parties. In the developed world, leisure is mostly spent being physically active or engaged in virtual social networking. A conversation cannot flourish via Facebook or Twitter. If anything, the level of discourse tends to get lower and lower, discouraging many from participating. And then there is the lack of physical reality and accountability for what one says - main factors in a conversation. When people do face one another at a party, another problem is common: the growing inability to accept a difference in opinion. For all the celebrated experience in diversity, there is a surprisingly low level of tolerance for the dissenters from the main “party line” - views borrowed from a relatively small group of opinion makers. The latter dedicate their professional lives to creating and promoting the “narrative”, a storyline for educated people who do not make time for serious reflection on current topics, to use in social settings.
Outside the Western world, conversation still lives, since large swathes of the population have no incentive to submit themselves to grueling schedules. Once they catch up, the same scarcity of real conversation will probably occur. Conversation requires investment of time and resources. If regarded as luxury, it becomes meaningless. Free thinking is inconceivable without good conversation. Totalitarian regimes spy on people’s conversations and punish the participants because they feel threatened by it. Tyrants are afraid of conversations. That alone should inspire us to keep it up.

This post is an entry in the blog contest responding to the new book, New Threats to Freedom edited by Adam Bellow. The contest is open to all and further information can be found here.