GOOD-BYE MACHO: God isn't dead, but the gender is all wrong. God is actually a woman and thus most of the world has been worshipping the wrong gender for the past couple of millenniums. However, the computer may well turn things around and get us back on track.
So postulates Dr. Leonard Shlain, author of the book The Alphabet Versus the Goddesses: The Conflict Between Word and Image, in a video presented at the Foothill Club recently. In the myths of primitive cultures, women are the life force, the symbol of fertility and rebirth.
In those societies women hold more power, more equity than later on down the road to civilization. Introduce the alphabet, and the balance of power shifts to the male. Shlain's premise is that the alphabet uses male traits—abstract, logical, linear thinking—and women lose ground.
The wise women, the shamans of primitive cultures, are demonized and labeled witches in later, alphabet-based cultures. The witch hunts of the 15th and 16th centuries were the most devastating mass murders of any in the history of the world, he says.
An unlikely culprit, the alphabet, but it's clearly associated with left-brain male traits. On the other hand, the computer, more image-oriented, requiring the use of both hands and more imagination, leads to more equitable gender roles. Men today are better fathers than their fathers (pre-computer) were.
Shlain, a surgeon at California Medical Center in SF, notes the split in the brain hemispheres, which correspond to gender traits. Right hands are used for striking out, left hands for protection.
A scheduling snafu produced the doctor's wife, Ina Gyemant, a retired Superior Court judge, in his stead, bearing the video. Shlain's first book was Art and Physics, in which he maintains that advances in art foretell advances in physics, another startling hypothesis.
BOOK BUNCH: The AAUW Author's Benefit brought forth a diverse trio: Bo Caldwell, The Distant Land of My Father; Firoozeh Dumas, Funny in Farsi: a Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America; and Los Gatan Diane Dreher, Inner Gardening.
Caldwell's book is the fictionalized story of her uncle, estranged from the rest of the family, but very attached to Caldwell in his later years. A very wealthy man in Shanghai, he lost it all when he was imprisoned first by the Japanese and later by the Communists.
At his death a few years ago, Caldwell, his executor, found 50 typed pages, transcribed from notes written during his imprisonment, and realized she had a gold mine. Caldwell, awarded a Stegner Fellowship, taught fiction writing at Stanford.
Dreher fell in love with Betty Johnson's garden in Los Gatos when she was house-hunting. She's been maintaining and enhancing that garden ever since. Dreher's book is a compendium of personal experiences with a spiritual overtone, plus recipes, history and practical advice.
Gardens and gardening are an extension of God's grace, the key to health and wholeness, she affirms. Dreher is a medieval scholar who teaches at Santa Clara U. and whose books include The Tao of Inner Peace. The word garden means "paradise" in Persian.
Dumas' memoir is laced with humor: She came to this country as a 7-year-old and was confounded that nobody here knew where Iran was. Then, in college, rooming with a woman from Delaware, she realized nobody knew where Delaware was either.
With the Iranian Revolution came hatred toward Iranians, and the events of 9-11 brought another round of hatred—a hatred rooted in ignorance. Her book stresses the universality that binds us all, which far outweighs the differences, she says.
For years, agents turned a deaf ear to the memoir until one day she returned $300 she had found at an ATM machine. A Los Angeles agent somehow heard about this return, asked for the manuscript, and shortly thereafter sold it. So she advises returning found money as the way to sell a book.
LOCAL GUYS & DOLLS: Saratogan Shawn Platzker plays gambler Nathan Detroit, host of the largest floating craps game in New York, in the Children's Musical Theater production of Guys & Dolls, Feb. 2629 at the Montgomery Theater. Tickets are priced at $15 for adults, $11 for children 12 and under. Call the box office at 408.288.5437.
Other Saratoga youths in the cast are Kylie Brunngraber, Caroline Rotherman, Sanjana Shukla and Nicole Speicher. Los Gatan Catherine Stevenson plays gambler Big Jule. Other Los Gatans in the cast are Julia Curtis, Ty Doughty, Sydney Duncheon, Ryan Kwasney, Aaron DiNapoli, Kristie Eline, Carina Lukas, Bryan Rose, Adam Rose and Sarah Tilton.
SOLOIST: Saratogan Catherine Chiu will be a featured soloist in a concert Feb. 14, 7:30 p.m., at Cubberley Theatre in Palo Alto. The concert is presented by the El Camino Youth Symphony. Chiu was a winner of the ECYS Concerto Competition in 2003, has performed with ECYS for three years.
She will play "Romanza Anduluza" by Sarasate.
Got a tip for Saratoga Sampler? Send email to
maryanncook@earthlink.net.
By Mary Ann Cook