Live Smart, Die Old

Live Smart, Die Old

Younger siblings all around the world will surely understand the experience of having to ride on their older sibling’s reputations, as they followed in their footsteps through school. And if the discourse with teachers wasn’t “why can’t you be more like them”, then it was just a battle to prove that; no, our family name isn’t cursed.

 That said, I think I may be one of the few who ended up going to the same tiny university as their older sibling, which is a whole new can of worms, Especially when it’s the exact same major… 

So for my first few months at Webster, I was mostly referred to as “Nadia’s Brother.” Apparently she had left quite an impression, which is fair, seeing as she had won Geneva’s edition of Webster’s Got Talent.  It also helps that she was the youngest competing rower at the 2016 Rio Olympics at the age of 18. Now she’s 22 and her repertoire of crazy cool shit hasn’t stopped ballooning. 

Needless to say, there’s a lot to live up to. Nadia’s in bed with a nasty flu on the other side of the planet. So, in true younger sibling fashion, I decided to call her up and pester her a little about her very exciting life. 

Nadia transferred out of Webster to go to row on the UC Berkeley team, which she says is one of her proudest moments. 

“Webster was very good preparation for me, because I became very independent when I was there. It really provided me with a lot of tools to be ready for the states.”  At Berkeley,  she studied Film & Media. Nadia points out that in an alternative life,

“I probably would have studied environmental law because now I’m more interested in the logistical and legal side of fighting for the environment. but I still love the arts.”

These days, my darling sister is living it up in the San Francisco Bay Area as a UC Berkeley Graduate, working to save the wilderness, and teaching girls how to row a boat in the midst of a pandemic, and wildfires raging next door. I still distinctly remember how rowing took over Nadia’s life for about 10 years (and consequently our family’s,) but she embraced it. It consisted mostly of early morning trainings and late drives home from race events.

All the work paid off in the end when she found herself representing Egypt at the Olympics, and 

years after the fact, the hype lives on. 

“It’s more than I give myself credit for. People think I’m way cooler than I actually am. Everyone’s like “Wow you went to the Olympics” I’m like yeah I did and it’s cool but it’s not like I cured cancer. There’s still so much to be done” As I pointed out, she has done just that.

“Yeah I guess so. Sorry I’m so emo”, she jokes

“I’m working to help organizations advocate for the end of wildlife crime and environmental causes. So right now I’m  working with ADMCF,  an organization in Hong Kong. I work with their wildlife team, and make videos for them and highlight policies they want to change. They get pitched to governments and CITES, (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) and hopefully change comes from that.” 

The next day, she announced to me that one of her videos was shown to the Chinese supreme court, and now the trafficking of wildlife is going to be outlawed in Hong Kong. Sibling rivalries are never easy, are they…

Personally, I can’t recall a moment in my life where Nadia wasn’t obsessed with animals, so the trajectory she’s taken in life is pretty on-brand. This is the same girl who once bit me so hard when we were kids that I bled because she was pretending to be a lion. Typical Leo. 

Along with that, she has also been working with Richard Blair, a photographer and nature advocate, digitizing his photographs from the ‘70s and running his Instagram pages, along with completing numerous other errands. She recalls: 

“I spent three days a week sleeping up in Point Reyes (a national park in Northern California) two kilometers from the fire. I had to pack up cars with my boss’s stuff and drive them up and down to a downtown center where we had storage. I had to help him prepare for fire, there was ash raining on me and I was basically inhaling smoke and ash for three weeks. Almost lost my workplace, but the firefighters came through and saved the day“ 

It’s safe to say that along with a  recent job she picked up  as an assistant coach at a rowing club,  Nadia needed a break. Unfortunately, the one she got hasn’t been the one she was envisioning, semi casually mentioning how I’m interviewing her on her “covid deathbed.” Although it didn’t seem like that at all when she video-called me wearing a bucket hat and basking in the sun.

“I have Covid and it really sucks so please wear a mask” 

I guess nobody is truly unstoppable, but that doesn’t stop her from seeming like she is. 

At this point, besting my sister in our little rivalry feels a little like trying to dig an elephant’s grave with a spoon. While my sister was sweeping wins at races and competing at the Olympics, I was busy doing absolutely nothing notable. What did I do at the age of 18?  I don’t know, probably vibing or something. The only thing I have on her is that I was objectively easier to deal with for my parents. So what’s the secret to her iconic determination?

She explains: “Live smart, die old. Do what you want because you’re the only one that knows how much you want it, and regret nothing because at the time you did it it made you happiest. That’s my last quote.. I’m gonna go have risotto and sleep”

The Rabbit Hole of Words

The Rabbit Hole of Words

The Rabbit Hole of Words 

An Interview with Amanda Callendrier

“I don’t care what anybody thinks about my writing, but my shoes, that’s really nice,” Amanda laughs at herself. 

Amanda Callendrier is an academic advisor as well as composition and creative writing professor at Webster Geneva. She’s also working towards a doctorate and is a published author. In 2017 she released her debut novel Camino Beach. She studied English and French before ending up at Webster, almost accidentally, after falling in love with a French man. “Life happens and you just have to go with it, but you also have to be open to it,” she adds. 

Amanda is inarguably one of the coolest professors on campus. She sits down for the interview rocking Puma sneakers, skinny jeans, and a bright red fluffy jacket. It’s very bold, and I’m a little jealous. She turns in her chair and chuckles, the wall of books behind her in the Webster learning center is composed almost entirely of her own collection. She even grabs one to take back home with her. For Amanda, creativity and storytelling, in all its forms, is everything. 

“I think people who write or do creative things just always did. You don’t know when you started because you just always do it,” she says, reminiscing on childhood. Writing her own stories came as naturally as reading or writing, she doesn’t remember ever learning because that’s the way it always was. Inspiration came from everywhere; from watching way too much television to reading Roald Dahl, Stephen King, and Agatha Christie, even from a young age. 

So how does she manage to balance everything in her life with creative writing? “The short answer is I don’t,” she sighs, “And it weighs on you to have the things you want to work on that you can’t, but it’s really just finding a moment in between projects and deadlines where you can work.” Yet, writing finds a way to make time for itself. Amanda explains that even when she’s not actively working on a project, she’s still making progress. Just by existing, going places, and listening to people talk you can get inspired. Now she’s working on her second manuscript and wondering how COVID-19 will impact the future of writing. Will stories now have to be set in a post COVID world, or will we get tired of that? 

The labor of love that was Camino Beach took three years from idea to publication. After bringing a first page to a Meet the Agents event held at Webster, Amanda realized she was onto something. The agents loved the page and so she wrote the first chapter. The main writing took nine months and by the end neither the original first page or the first chapter had made it in. It then took months to get an agent who wanted to publish the book, but eventually she found one.

“Meanwhile, I decided I hated it and I rewrote the whole thing,” Amanda says. Like most writers she is never fully satisfied with her work. “Usually you go through and think, how could I have written this garbage? Then you get back to a point where you’re okay with it. You kind of have to find yourself on a good day and force yourself to stop. The good thing is I had a team who directed me. I admire someone who self publishes, and especially someone who self publishes and is successful. I don’t know how they do it because I needed a village.” 

For a lot of writers getting published is the ultimate goal. It’s the mark of success, ultimate validation, and proof to others that your little hobby can pay off. For Amanda, it was different. She quotes Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, “If you weren’t enough before publication, you won’t be enough after publication.” Getting published was only ever secondary to the work itself. “It’s about the story and the work. The work has to be enough on its own,” Amanda explains, “but publication is great if it lets you do the work or helps you feel justified in doing it.” 

Though she remains proud of herself and her work, Amanda finds no validation in how well her novel was received. “I’m completely ambivalent of anybody’s opinion about the work,” she says. “It feels like it has no connection to me whatsoever. It leaves me absolutely cold.” She stays away from reading any reviews, and hasn’t even read the book herself. “I’ll talk about the story writing process for days, that’s tremendously rewarding. But the book itself? Those characters are dead to me, it’s done.” 

Writing is a hobby for some and a part of life for others. For Amanda it is clearly the latter. So, why does she write? “I have to,” she responds, without a second of hesitation. “If I could choose not to, I would choose not to. I think it would be better for me to spend more time at the gym or making new recipes. But I have to. There’s something interesting about going down the rabbit hole of words. I used to think you have to do it all the time. I think that there are points in time where you write a lot and times when you’re not going to write, but you’ll come back to it because one day the story will come up and you’ll have to.” 

Bee-ware of the Consequences…

Bee-ware of the Consequences…

Bees are dying, climate change is happening, and we’re still polluting. These may seem like separate issues, however, there all linked to one problem, us. Imagine a world without bees. No more honey, perhaps a few less allergic reactions, and a little less buzzing here and there. Sounds good right? Well…that’s not all that bees are good for, because when you delve deeper into how bees affect the world around us from their tiny backs, you realize that they leave behind a lasting impact on our environment. To help imagine what a world without bees would look like, Melissa Petruzzello from Britannica Encyclopedia tries to answer the question, “What Would Happen If All the Bees Died?” Ms. Petruzzello points out that ecosystems around the world would begin to deteriorate as many of them depend on bees for pollination, food webs, habitats, and agriculture.

There are about 20,000 species of bees in the world, and over 600 species in Switzerland that are on the endangered list. Less bees would mean that less plants and flowers would be pollinated, which could lead to a change in food webs. Since less pollination could lead to fewer seeds to be spread by bees it creates a decline in reproductive success for both bees, flowers, and other creatures. There are also certain flowers that have coevolved with particular bees who fly in different flight patterns and have different floral preferences, which are almost impossible to replace. Most bees live close to commercial farms. Those farms use herbicides and insecticides to ensure crop survival, however, these killing chemicals also destroy beehives.

So, what’re we gonna do about it? How are we as Webster University students going to take action against the loss of bees? What can be done? To make a start on this global issue let’s start locally. There is a swiss company called “Wilde Biene + Partner” or WBP for simplicity’s sake, that aims to provide bee conscious consumers the opportunity to contribute to their local communities! A finished hive is fitted with “Mauerbienen”, otherwise known as Mason Bees. Mason bees happen to be a Swiss farmers best friend since they are known to be crazy pollinators that don’t require much to live within a hive. These types of bees are well suited to the swiss climate and come in hives of 25 mason bee cocoon eggs. They happen to be active from March to June where they gather nectar to feed baby bees in the nest while they build their bee house. During the colder fall and winter months you can send the box back to the WBP and they will clean out the hive, remove the baby bees, and prepare a new set of bees for the upcoming pollinating seasons. They tend to stay within 300m of their bee home, and the best place to put one of these mason bee hives would be near the LLC building in the front lawn. This is not only to pollinate the plants nearby, but also to encourage more wildflower growth. Keep in mind that these types of bees aren’t as aggressive as their distant wasp cousins but are actually quite tame with little risk of stinging people. 

It’s important for us to start small to create a greener campus for students to be aware of the consequences that the loss of ecosystems are adding to the declining bee populations. This project idea is to inspire students about what can be done. These balcony bees are a great way to raise awareness because they’re small, easy to place, and affordable. The vision for the WBP is that there is no food without bees, and they want aim to ensure safe pollination with their bee colonies. The WBP understands that there are many different types of consumers that want to help and provide different sized bee colonies accordingly ranging from 120 CHF to 500 CHF depending on how big and experienced a bee owner is. Providing also smaller flowerpots and hives for those who live in more urbanized environments. These bees require little attention since they are self-reliant and keep to themselves.

Creating a space for these mason bees to thrive near campus would be a great opportunity for potential Webster students to be aware of what is happening to bees everywhere. It acts as a springboard into other sustainable projects that combines urban living with nature. It’s also a realization that humans and nature don’t live in separate spheres, rather we humans need to reintegrate with the environment that we’re destroying. Part of this reintegration process is ensuring that bees also share a place in that future home.

Meditation

Meditation

This is a short student interview video exploring the theme of meditation. Firstly the students are asked if they have ever meditated and if they have to expand on their experience. There are several different types of meditation yet many aren’t aware of it due to social media’s portrayal. This leads to the final question, how do you think social media portrays meditation?

Enjoy!

Online Learning

Online Learning

Online learning has been a difficult transition. Many students have found online learning challenging change from being physically present at school to studying virtually. But how do our professors feel?

Dune (2021) Review

Dune (2021) Review

Dune has for years been called an “unfilmable” story due to its complexity and the depth required. The restrictions of only a few hours of screen time has taken its toll on many directors who have tried in the past. At first there was David Lynch’s 1984 attempt to put the whole book in one film. That fell flat with its bloat and incoherent plot. Then there was a multi part TV special in the 2000’s, which gave it depth but lacked the budget to truly make the world alive.

That leads us to today.

Denis Villeneuve (of Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 fame) has stepped into the ring. His approach split the book in two parts to make it one hell of a cinema epic that stays faithful to the source material. It’s in that second part, the faithfulness to the story, I am most glad to report Villeneuve has gone above and beyond.

Dune, to the uninitiated, was the story that has defined modern Science fiction. You don’t have to look far in the world of our most popular sci-fi films to see its impact. Alien and its title monster share a striking resemblance in form and habit to a creature in Dune. Blade Runner, with its detailed depth of a cyberpunk dystopian future, is lifted almost verbatim from the imperial ruling houses in Dune’s universe.

Even the most famous movie spoiler of all time, “Luke I am your father,” was a story beat taken directly from Dune. With the gravity of what Dune’s legacy has inspired, the story of bringing this to the silver screen properly has been a fraught with challenges and adversity.

With so much pressure on Denis Villeneuve I can say that he has, in his efforts, put his heart in the right place. The film is a cinematic masterpiece with sweeping landscapes and epic wide shots that demand every inch of screen real estate in your cinema. Its striking in its beauty and the world it builds is a character unto itself. This character is by far the biggest star in the movie. For better or for worse.

The actors in this movie were cast brilliantly. Timothée Chalamet is captivating as Paul, a young man thrown into a house of cards with powers he didn’t ask for and visions that slowly chill his soul through the progression of the film. Oscar Isaac as the Lord Duke Leto plays the compassionate but firm ruler, to a fault. And Stellan Skarsgård plays the unsettlingly disturbing Baron Harkonnen with his brief but memorable appearances. All of these actors played the part perfectly.

This is where I have my biggest critique of the film. Even with the captivating slow burn moments given to each character, I am left wanting more. More development and more time with them before your camera view gets pulled back out and the world takes over again. The world is greedy with its time in the spotlight.

It’s in this sense I feel Denis Villeneuve has put too much weight on making the audience fall in love with the unique universe as much as he has. But then again, I feel it was intentional. This movie is the first half of a two-part epic, and it doesn’t wrap up as neatly in the end as I would have hoped. With our scene set and our protagonist ready to come into his own, it stops, clearly leaving that extra development and a climatic finale for the second half, which I am left in great anticipation for. I think back to movies like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 which on its own is an ok movie, however, when watched back to back with Part 2 it becomes a far more fleshed out and enjoyable experience.

For those of us who have read and know what is to come, we could not be more excited. For those just being introduced to this world with this movie, I pray the world is captivating enough to bring them back around for another go.

This movie is by far the best version of the legendarily difficult-to-adapt book. Great things are here in this film, and if this makes enough money even greater things lie ahead. I just hope its magic can get enough folks to come see it and have producers greenlight it’s finale it has rightfully earned. 

4.5/5 stars