In 1904, Florence Breed and Ali-Kuli Khan married in Boston. Breed was American and Khan was Iranian; their union symbolized East and West uniting in the Bahá’í Faith. When ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, son of the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, visited the US in 1912, the Khans hosted a luncheon for him in Washington, D. C. There, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá defied social convention by giving Louis Gregory, an African-American Bahá’í, the seat of honor.
Continue reading“You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women.” These are reputed to be among the last words of Táhirih before her executioner strangled her in 1852.
Continue readingRey’s ambiguous head bobbling mirrors my ambivalence toward questions I have about my life in academia.
I should explain that Rey is a bobblehead of a character from Star Wars Episode VII who stands watch over my desk. I acquired her recently at a conference on digital communication technology and college writing. A keynote speaker, Allen Brizee, used Star Wars as the theme of his talk on community engagement. He has led university programs to help community members cross the “digital divide” between those with access to digital tech and those without. At the end of his speech, he had us check under our seats for a coupon for a bobblehead Rey or Finn. To my surprise, I had the coupon for Rey!
Continue readingI have been, most of the days of My life,
Bahá’u’lláh, Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, in a letter to the Persian Shah (1868)
even as a slave, sitting under a sword hanging on a thread,
knowing not whether it would fall soon or late upon him.
Recently, my husband and I sat spellbound by The Prophet, a gorgeous film adaptation of the 1923 book of poems by Kahlil Gibran. In the film, the prophetic writer and artist, Almustafa (aka Mustafa), is a prisoner of an oppressive government, confined on a Mediterranean island called Orphalese. While the government is not named, various clues point to the Ottoman Empire. The only crime Almustafa has committed is using his faculty for words to advocate for the common folk—which endangers the authorities’ power.
Continue readingAs evidenced by my prolonged absence, it has been a rough semester! I wrote 65 pages of final papers, and I just submitted my very last assignment–actually, not a paper, but a comic. I made this for a seminar on “graphic medicine,” a field that studies comics about health and medical experiences. Check out the Graphic Medicine website for more information. Hope you enjoy this creation! (You should be able to click on each image for a closer look.)
Recently, the interfaith center at my university invited religious groups to use the lobby’s display case to feature their ceremonial items for one month each. For the Bahá’í Campus Association, the project posed a perplexing challenge, because Bahá’ís don’t have ceremonial items. We avoid ritual; each Bahá’í individual, each family, each local community, can develop their own traditions to beautify and symbolize the Holy Days. But those traditions should remain flexible and never ossify.
Continue readingWhat better time to recount a pleasant vacation than when it is a fond memory of a month past–the balmy days of mid-December?
The Statue of Liberty with Ellis Island in the middle-ground and the Manhattan skyline in the background.
As a belated celebration of our first wedding anniversary and Sergey’s thirtieth birthday, we went on a trip to Philadelphia and New York City, and afterward went to Wisconsin. Our itinerary was packed. In Philly, we visited Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell, the National Constitution Center, the Museum of Art, the Independence Seaport Museum (first time on a submarine), Eyes Gallery (where I found more Mexican ceramic birds to add to my collection), the Reading Terminal and Italian Markets (where we sampled cheesesteaks). And we attended the Nutcracker Ballet where we sampled sugarplums (figuratively).
William Penn stands atop the Philadelphia City Hall.
Perhaps the most momentous occasion was our room service breakfast, Sergey’s first and my second, paid for by our neighbor’s dogs. We were surprised to hear yapping on the other side of our room’s wall when we arrived. I didn’t recall ever staying in a hotel that permitted canine residents, but apparently Philadelphia is also Philadogia. Optimistically, we figured that since the dogs had barked the whole afternoon and evening, they would exhaust themselves, fall asleep at night, and leave us to snooze in peace. We were incorrect, and the next day raised the issue with the front desk staff, who apologized—we were apparently not on a dog-friendly floor—and gave us credit for breakfast. And that is how yappy dogs financed the pastries and coffee delivered to our door.
Statue of Diana at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
In New York, we spent seven days in the thick of the madding holiday crowds. I had not expected so many tourists to be hardy enough to confront the city in the dead of winter, but sure enough—our first day there, the coldest of our visit, our ferry to the Statue of Libery was packed with fellow tourists despite our faces being whipped numb by the harbor’s icy winds. It was a reminder of the difficulty of the transatlantic voyage many European immigrants made, passing through Ellis Island, where we walked through the great hall where thousands of new arrivals had been processed. How different that scene was from Sergey’s arrival in an airport the previous month!
The processing hall at Ellis Island
Over our remaining days, we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the City Museum, the Museo del Barrio, the Intrepid Air and Space Museum (second time on a submarine), the Empire State Building observation deck, and Ulysses S. Grant’s tomb (we were actually looking for a coffee shop). And we went to a Broadway show, the Phantom of the Opera! We wandered the streets of areas like Little Italy, Chinatown, Morningside Heights, Greenwich Village, Soho, and Chelsea. We were also able to meet up with two of my friends from Mount Holyoke. One of them suggested we visit the highline, an old elevated train track recently renovated into a city park. That day, Christmas Eve, the temperature had reached an uncanny seventy degrees, and on the highline above Chelsea we found trees in bloom and bees pollinating them. It was strange, perhaps a glimpse into the northern state’s future as our climate changes.
Blossoms and a bee on Christmas Eve.
Of course, some places still conform to December norms….
Sergey partakes in a traditional Wisconsin hobby.
The other day, I was organizing the bedroom closet to make space for Sergey’s clothes. In the course of digging through the piles of clothes that have accumulated over the past few months, I rediscovered my flannel pajamas and my sweatpants. Needless to say, fashionista that I am, these are among my favorite clothes, and since it’s break, the next morning I donned my pajamas and donned my fuzzy pink fleece pullover on top, which makes me look like a cousin of Elmo or Grover. Later in the day, I decided to switch from pajama pants to sweatpants…you know, to feel more professional. It turned out to be a fortuitous decision, because I felt mildly less ridiculous when I had to answer the door. It was the mailman, a very friendly man, who had Sergey’s giant box of possessions sent from Israel. That box seems to weigh about sixty pounds. At first, I asked the mailman to set the box inside my door, but then discovered I couldn’t close the door, and with my scholarly (feeble) physique, there was no way I could get the box upstairs into my apartment by myself. So, I asked the mailman if he could please carry the box up, and he assented, remarking jovially, “Now I don’t have to go the gym tonight!”
I’m grateful to the friendly mailman who went beyond the call of duty to help out a frail Muppet. Living alone is hard for multiple reasons related to muscles—especially that one muscle, my heart. Like many Americans, I’ve been thinking about gratitude this Thanksgiving season—and also ingratitude. Feeling debased by the immigration process, I found myself turning bitter. For instance, I’ve been resenting every couple who crosses my path. I see happy couples and I think, “They don’t know how lucky they are to never think about words like ‘CR-1’ and ‘NVC.’” I see grumpy couples and I think, “Why should they have the right to live side by side when they don’t even appreciate it?”
There’s an aphorism that used to confuse me: count your blessings. It befuddled me because I conflated it with a similar aphorism: don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Don’t count your blessings before they hatch?
Well, there is something to be said for counting blessings, even those that are only semi-hatched, or even still devloping in the egg. I read an article called, “Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier” by Arthur Brooks, which I would recommend. Brooks inspired me to do an exercise: counting my blessings. Let’s start with friendly mailmen, flannel pajamas, and sweatpants. And add…
Soon, Sergey will be here. I am cooking Thanksgiving foods—the green bean casserole, stuffing (Mommy’s recipe, of course), and butternut squash soup. Soon I will be doing a joyful thanksgiving, counting the blessings right in front of me, so clear,
no more pixilation to disguise
every eyelash around his eyes
every line on his palms
every whisker on his chin.
My favorite tricenarian
I haven’t been able to touch Sergey’s hands for four months. But I can picture them: strong, gentle, scarred. The thick scars run down the fingers of one hand, the result of a woodcutting accident at work when he was a teenager.
Sergey’s hands are gentle despite the wound. They delicately peel mangoes and pomelos for us to share. They write loving messages. They hold my hands, keeping them warm, keeping me steady.
Over the thirty years of his life, Sergey has sustained many wounds deeper than the cuts on his hand: the adversities that have beset him from infancy. I marvel at his strength, his early maturity. Photos of Sergey from his teenage years show a mature man with a set jaw and prominent cheekbones, as though in his desire to support his family, he skipped boyish adolescence to grow up faster.
When Sergey finished high school, he started working full-time and attending university, where he graduated at the top of his class. Besides working constantly, he also made time to serve his community. At age twenty-six, he was elected to the national administrative body of the Bahá’ís of Moldova—and later that year, he started his term of service at the Bahá’í World Centre, to which he has dedicated three years. (He also met and married me, but that’s another story.)
My Siryojka has transcended mere perseverance. He has taken his afflictions, and instead of letting them scar him with bitterness, he has transmuted them into compassion, kindness, and commitment. There is a line in the Bahá’í prayer for husbands that says, “make him one of Thy angels whose feet walk upon this earth even as their souls are soaring through the high heavens.” If you ask me, I think my earthbound angel’s soul is already soaring pretty high.
Today, Sergey is in the midst of his latest test, the immigration process, which relegates him to “alien spouse” status and has forced us to live thousands of miles apart. But, in his typically selfless manner, he takes on the role of the comforter, reassuring me in our daily calls that it is just a matter of time.
How I wish I could envelop my beloved husband in a warm hug today, when he enters a new decade of his life, a hug that would tell him how much I value him, how abysmally painful every day of separation has been. How I know we’ll be together in all the worlds of God, for all eternity, but how badly I want to be with him right now.
Since I cannot hug him, I offer this story, a small birthday gift to remind him of what he has accomplished, and who he has become: a gentle, loving man purified through adversity.
To my husband, my partner, my soulmate—happy birthday, and congratulations on all you have achieved in your first three decades! I look forward to seeing what we can do together in the years to come. But most of all, I (desperately) look forward to seeing you!
Ah, beautiful autumn palette!
Every time I emerge from my hermitage, wan and disoriented from hours and days of reading and writing for my seminars, I find my neighborhood increasingly colorful. Fall in central Pennsylvania has turned the landscape into a moving painting in hues of red, yellow, orange, and brown–sometimes all those colors in a single leaf. Along with the leaves that come pinwheeling down, glinting like gold, seedpods and acorns plummet earthward. The squirrels grow increasingly squirrelly; whenever I cross paths with one, it glares at me accusatively, as if I had demanded it relinquish a precious acorn.
Even the groundhogs are active, their lumpen brown bodies reminding me of the hyraxes I saw in northern Israel. I spotted one foraging in the vacant field next to my apartment complex, visible as a bump in the grass in the above photo. While it didn’t seem to notice when I watched it trundling around, once I brought my camera, it proved to be shy and headed for cover. I looked up “groundhog” and found that besides the synonym woodchuck, they are also called whistlepigs, which is a pretty great name.
The camera-shy whistlepig lollops toward cover.
My classes have been intellectually stimulating, but in terms of emotional sustenance in these lonesome Sergeyless months, I have been blessed with several visitors. First, Deanna, my friend and former flatmate, and her sister, Debby, made the long road trip to State College. We explored the area together, from downtown and campus, to a lake-filled cave. On campus, we paid a visit to the Palmer Art Museum, which has a diverse collection of paintings and sculptures. I was especially tickled by an ancient Chinese camel statue that appears to have ferocious fangs–perhaps China was plagued by vampire camels in olden times? Outside of State College, we drove through the bucolic countryside to Penn’s Cave, where we took a boat tour of the cavern, replete with your usual cave décor–stalagmites, stalactites, flows, drippings, exhaust fumes, etc. Since I’m a poor swimmer, I was nervous about sitting trapped underground in a boat weighted down by a score of other people. The guide pointed out the lifesaver and assured us she had never needed to use it. Because of the dark, the water looked bottomless. I had a mini panic attack when I thought the guide said it was 30-60 feet deep–that’s a long way to sink!–but then realized she said inches. Ok, I could handle wading if we capsized.
Spelunking around.
About a month later, Jasmine came to visit, inspiring me to once again depart my desk and explore the area. Unfortunately, early October unleashed its worst possible weather upon her arrival, with the entire weekend dismally wet and cold. But we didn’t let that keep us confined–no, we decided to climb Mount Nittany in the drizzle. Mount Nittany seems to have a similar relationship with Penn State as Mount Holyoke does with Mount Holyoke College, although as far as I’m aware, there is no Mountain Day at Penn State when classes are cancelled and students climb the mountain to eat ice cream at the peak. Oh well, not all universities can sound like fairy tales! What I meant to be a brief hike turned into a several hour long sojourn on the mountain thanks to a wrong turn. On the descent, over rather slippery, sharp rocks, I finally did capsize, but righted myself with Jasmine’s assistance. We were filled with relief to return to the car.
One of our discoveries on Mount Nittany: a slug moth larva, resplendently leaf-like. Someday it will metamorphose into a rather boring moth. Photo credit: Jasmine.
After a day of recovery, we went on a jaunt to historical Bellefonte, which boasts a variety of Victorian buildings, some dilapidated, looking ready to serve as haunted houses for Halloween, others sprightly and brightly painted. From the small downtown, we walked to the central park, which is charmingly duck-infested. Somewhere around there, a historical railroad operates a few times a year, providing a quaint ride through the colorful hills in fall–on my Centre County bucket list for sure. We continued our wandering, down streets lined with big Victorians and old trees, and then we went for a literal Sunday drive through the picturesque hills, near little towns with names like Snowshoe and Yarnell, and past lanes like Swamp Poodle Road. I kid you not! In some places, we drove above valleys where mist hung, a romantic Pennsylvanian panorama.
Well, it is time for me to hit the books again, or more precisely, to let the books hit me. Next time you hear from me, I’ll probably have grown a long beard and found a gnarled walking stick, real hermit style.
Layli Maria Miron 