1. What creation or accomplishment makes you proud of mankind, womankind, humankind, animalkind? (Note: has to have been in your lifetime, doesn't have to be earthshattering, but made you stop and take notice.)
It's tough for me to answer this one, because I'm not very good at recognizing Defining Big Moments in real life. I think the birth of a child can be like that, and not nearly so me-and-mine focused an experience as you might think. Other than that, mostly the things that make me feel grateful and proud to be human are the "little things"--ongoing and "everyday" displays of fortitude, dedication and compassion from "ordinary" people doing "ordinary" things.
2. Favorite Grimms fairy tale (or other dark children's story)
Probably Baba Yaga--not really a story, but the main character in a series of Slavic folktales--a witch who kidnaps and enslaves children, ages a year every time she's asked a question, can sometimes help people out if they're not put off by making a deal with the Devil, so to speak...standard witchy stuff like that.
3. What quality associated with the opposite sex do you most envy? Or what freedom?
None really. Generally I find that once you really get to know someone, these kinds of collective assumptions turn out to not hold much water, and what looks at first glance like an enviable freedom or strength often turns out on closer examination to be a double-edged sword, or worse. Although this probably sounds pat, I think it's often just confining and difficult to be human, period.
4. What singers do you think have the most compelling or haunting voices and what effect do they have on you? (As always, Bono excluded)
Cesaria Evora, Tom Waits, Billie Holiday, Johnny Cash all come to mind...I don't really tend to favor particular artists, though. It would be hard to identify any common "effect" they have, other than that I immediately forget everything else when I put one of their songs on.
5. What dream(s) do you regret not having pursued?
Hundreds of them, but most of these regrets aren't serious I guess, as they visit me only occasionally and not for very long. At the moment I frequently find myself regretting that I never got around to taking any courses in Islam as a student, since I often teach Indian Muslim politics
. ( Fortunately, the class always attracts some Indian Muslim students, who've been very gracious and generous in filling in some of the gaps I cannot; I've learned much from them already.) But this much I can change, and I plan to, if/when I come up for sabbatical.
I live to travel, always have, and would need five lifetimes to visit all the places I dream of seeing, but considering the wealth of opportunities my career provides for partially-expenses-paid travel, I hardly feel that I can complain.
6. What about you would surprise everyone on this forum?
Hmmm. I don't know that I'm clear enough on what exactly my FYM reputation might be (probably better off not knowing some days?
) to answer that. Being a mod is sometimes rewarding and sometimes not--in many ways it makes me more reticent about contradicting or objecting to certain types of things, as it can add a dimension of "official" reproval whose implications I'm not always comfortable with. And it reduces the time available for posting--though considering how much else I have to do, like the stack of term papers currently sitting by my elbow awaiting grades
, that might well be a net time-management benefit.
Perhaps one "surprise" might(?) be that in real life, I'm generally quite taciturn and my participation in conversations is typically limited to one-line observations, more often than not wisecracks--in other words, I'm not nearly so much of a windbag in person.
It's really only through writing that I realize the extent of my own opinions about things, and it's been that way for as long as I can remember.
7. On a whole, do you practice what you preach in your day to day life? What do you preach (in a nontheological sense)?
Well I'm not much of a preacher, and I arrive at final convictions on things only rarely and with great difficulty. Parenting entails a bit of preaching I guess, but mostly it's about taking situations as they came; spouting abstracts at children is pretty worthless. I aspire (in no particular order) to be a good parent, a good citizen, a good teacher and a good Jew, but I can't say I have a clear-cut formula for how to be any of these things. "Always try to keep the long-term best interests of all involved first in mind", perhaps--I guess I'd say I generally do a decent enough job, not a stellar one, of following that maxim.
8. What truism did you once believe, but no longer do?
"Do what you love and the money will follow"?
9. What's your pet(s)' name(s) and what was your absolute favorite pet?
We have two cats named Sammy and Lucia, a fish named Algernon, a guinea pig named Hirokazu (one of my oldest son's karate heroes), and "my" dog, a now-blind,-crippled-and-toothless 16-year-old black pug named Falstaff, who I've had since college. I must admit I love Falstaff more dearly than the other four
--"favorite" would probably be a tossup between him and a childhood collie named Argos.
10. Do you cry easily?
No, generally those kinds of feelings slide quickly for me into depression, and depression paradoxically numbs you, unpleasant though it is.
11. Do you find you are more intrigued by an artist's work if you are intrigued by the artist?
That certainly enhances my appreciation, however, I can't think of an instance where I became enthusiastic about an artist I hadn't already been been interested in after reading their biography or whatever.
12. Are you a collector? If so, what do you collect?
Maps and cookbooks primarily; I have embarrassingly large collections of both. If I had the money for it, I'd probably also collect Indian folk art, and add to my stockpile every time I go back; the few pieces I do have are among my most cherished possessions. I generally run a marathon every couple years, which is in a sense a form of collecting, of the experiential variety.
Thanks for doing this, BonosSaint--reading people's responses to these types of threads is always so interesting, and you really do excel at creating them.