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Weekend Butler: How would you teach empathy? The Elon Musk bio…killed. Morning Yoga. Talking Heads. The favorite recipe of the NYTimes.
By
Published: Sep 14, 2023
Category:
Weekend
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
I DIDN’T WRITE THIS. I FOUND IT ON FACEBOOK, which, amazingly, sometimes delivers something that isn’t advertising or an announcement of a death or a long marriage. (Yes, it’s true: Amazon is mostly for Boomers and Seniors.) I lead with it because it’s about keeping silent — and the cost of our silence. In the next piece, not from Facebook: another way to reach people.
It’s the start of a new term.
The professor enters the lecture hall.
He looks around.
“You, in the 8th row — your name, please.”
“I’m Sandra.”
“Sandra, please leave my lecture hall. I don’t want to see you here.”
Everyone is quiet. The student slowly packs her things and stands up.
“Faster, please.”
She doesn’t dare say anything. She leaves the lecture hall.
The professor keeps looking around.
“Why are there laws?” he asks..
All are quiet.
He asks again: “What are laws for?”
“Social order,” a student calls out.
Another student: “To protect a person’s personal rights.”
A third student: “So you can rely on the state.”
The professor isn’t satisfied.
A fourth student: “Justice.”
The professor smiles.
“A question for you,” he says. “ Did I behave unfairly towards your classmate earlier?”
Everyone nods.
“Indeed I did. Why didn’t anyone protest?”
No one speaks.
More silence.
“Why didn’t any of you try to stop me?”
Silence.
“Did no one want to prevent this injustice?”
Nobody answers.
“What you just learned you wouldn’t have understood in 1,000 hours of lectures if you hadn’t lived it. You didn’t say anything because you weren’t personally affected. This attitude speaks against you and against life. You think as long as it doesn’t concern you, it’s none of your business. I’m telling you, if you don’t say anything today, one day you too will experience injustice and no one will stand up for you. Justice lives through us all. We have to fight for it. In life and at work, we often live next to each other instead of with each other. We console ourselves that the problems of others are none of our business. We go home and are glad that we were spared. But it’s also about standing up for others. Every day an injustice happens in business, in sports or on the tram. Relying on someone to sort it out is not enough. It is our duty to be there for others. Speaking for others when they cannot.”
IS THAT GREAT TEACHING? I THINK NOT. THIS IS.
There’s a flaw in that example of teaching: We don’t know what the professor would do if he had to step up to a moral choice. A better teacher: Michael Sandel, Professor of Government Theory at Harvard Law School, where his course on Justice was the university’s first to be made freely available online and on television. Please please please watch the first 6 minutes of this video. [To buy his book — “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” from Amazon, click here.]
BOOK REVIEW OF THE YEAR
Gary Shteyngart guts Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk. SAMPLES:
I drove my espresso machine hard into the night to survive both craft and subject matter.
When his parents divorced, a young Musk chose to live with a father he describes as having subjected him to “mental torture” over his imperfect but loving mother. He will keep coming back to that darkness, and is likely to submerge himself into it all the more as the realities of mortality enfold him. When you are as messed up as our hero, there is a lot of psychological work to be done to stop the downward spiral, work more boring than building a rocket. Work even more boring than this book.
It is no wonder that Musk has renamed Twitter “X” after his favourite letter. X is also a crossing out, the opposite of a tick, and that is what Musk has been steadily doing to his legacy. Isaacson’s book constantly tries to build dramatic tension between the species-saving visionary and the beaten bullied boy. But we know the ending to Musk’s story before we even open it. In the end, the bullies win.
MUST-SEE MOVIE: “STOP MAKING SENSE”
Jonathan Demme’s concert film about the Talking Heads tour of 1983 may be the best of breed — even better than “The Last Waltz.” It opens in IMAX on 9/22, goes wide in theaters 9/29. (For tickets, click here.) All these years later, the Times interviewed the band. If you saw Byrne’s “American Utopia” in 2020 or just read my review, you won’t forget to put this on your “must see” calendar.
I remember a dinner with Talking Head Jerry Harrison in the mid-80s. “Beyond the music and the direction, why do you think the film is so good?” I asked. His answer: “We edited it as we shot it. We wanted to finish it before we turned against it.” Very wise — it’s how I approach collaborations.
MORNING YOGA
Gannett, which doesn’t have a local reporter in Nashville to track the crazy stuff going on in local politics, has hired a reporter to cover all things Taylor Swift. In contrast, the Times has noticed that sucking up to kids only gets you so far. Boomers, it turns out, have disposable money. Best to help them live long and well. So here are seven 5-minute yoga poses. Well worth bookmarking.
WEEKEND POEM
The lyrics to John Prine’s song, “Summer’s End.” Click here.
WEEKEND MUSIC
“Baba Yetu,” Christoher Tin. Definitely rousing!
WEEKEND RECIPE
This is the Times’ s most requested recipe. Finally, the paper told readers to clip it out of the paper and save it — it would not be printed again. All these years later, it’s knuckled under and reprinted it… online.
PLUM TORTE
8 servings
¾ to 1cup sugar
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup unbleached flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt (optional)
2 eggs
24 halves pitted purple plums
Sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon, for topping
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Cream the sugar and butter in a bowl. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and eggs and beat well.
Spoon the batter into a springform pan of 8, 9 or 10 inches.
Place the plum halves skin side up on top of the batter. Sprinkle lightly with sugar and lemon juice, depending on the sweetness of the fruit.
Sprinkle with about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, depending on how much you like cinnamon.
Bake 1 hour, approximately. Remove and cool; refrigerate or freeze if desired.
Or cool to lukewarm and serve plain or with whipped cream.
To freeze, double-wrap the torte in foil, place in a plastic bag and seal.
To serve a torte that was frozen, defrost and reheat it briefly at 300 degrees.
