Ella Sykes: Why no Bio-Pic?

Stella Atrium 12/12/11
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Why am I surprised that on the same day I stumbled across two women who are ignored for developing bio-pics about their adventures? 

Ella Sykes traveled widely with her brother, Sir Percy Sykes, on his diplomatic missions in central Asia. She was the first western woman known to have ridden from the Caspian Sea to India, and published five books on the topic. 

Ella Sykes paid two visits to Persia, spending nearly three years there in all. The first took place in October 1894, when Percy Sykes invited her to accompany him on his trip to the districts of Kerman and Baluchistan, where he was being sent to establish British consulates. She spent two years in the interior of Persia and was one of the first European women to visit these parts. Ella also traveled with her brother on his subsequent missions along the Persian Gulf, visiting the major coastal settlements on the way, and spent the winter of 1896-97 with him in Tehran before returning to England at the end of February 1897. She paid her second visit to Iran some ten years later when she stayed with her brother in Mashad.

Ella shared her brother's interest in and affection for Iran and its people. This is evident in her three books about the country. In, Through Persia on a side-saddle (1898),she vividly describes her first visit, her long horseback travels and life in Kerman where she was probably the first European woman ever seen. The book received favorable reviews as "a very readable narrative" (The Times, p. 7) The Story Book of the Shah (1901), intended for young readers, recounts some of the legends in the Shah-nama. The book is well illustrated and has decorated chapter headings by her sister Ethel. Persia and its People (1910), was written after Ella's visit to Mashad and is a useful, though dated, introduction to the country, with chapters on its history, government, religion, antiquities, flora and fauna, Mashad, etc. Subsequently, she published several articles and lectures including "Persian family life" in the Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society for 1914, where she had been a founder member since 1905 and was twice elected to its council, in 1916 and 1921.

In 1911, wishing to discover what opportunities there might be in Canada for Britain's "surplus" of educated women, she worked there as a home-help for six months. In the spring of 1915, she again accompanied her brother, this time to Chinese Turkestan where for six months he was in charge of the British Consulate-General in Kashgar. Ella did not marry or have children and towards the end of her life gave much time to volunteer work with girls, primarily as honorary secretary of the Girls' Friendly Society in South Kensington. She died at her home in London on 23 March 1939.

SOURCE: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/sykes-ella-constance



Through Persia on a Side-Saddle is a notable travelogue of the first recorded land journey of a western woman from the Caspian Sea to India. With a keen eye toward the lives of women she encountered on her way, Sykes wrote a detailed account of an adventure that no other woman had experienced. The freshness of her observations comes through in her fluid and empathetic style. Starting her observations with the preparations in London, Sykes takes the reader on a lavishly descriptive journey of a world that no longer exists. Tracing her route to Tehran, she offers a full disclosure of her experiences in the capital of Persian. From there the reader is taken along to India and back to Tehran, and eventually, London. Giving a woman's perspective on an ancient center civilization, this volume proudly joins the Gorgias Historic Travels in the Cradle of Civilization series.

Ella Constance Sykes (d. 1939) was a world traveler and the first female member of the Geographical Society. She was also a member of the Central Asian Society and served as secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society.

Mildred Cable: Why no Bio-Pic?

Stella Atrium 12/12/11
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And here's another adventurer who was overlooked for a bio-pic because she was a woman -- actually three women who explored China and the Gobi Desert for 20 years and wrote extensively about what they learned there as missionaries.

Midred Cable, Eva French and Francesca French worked together as  missionaries with an inspiring story largely related in Cable's book "The Gobi Desert".

From an early age Mildred wanted to be a missionary in India. However in 1902 she went to China . Eva French was already there, she had joined the China Inland Mission before the Boxer rising of 1900 in which many Christians were killed. Her sister, Francesca joined them later on.

The three women worked in China for nearly twenty years, setting up schools and a rehabilitation centre for opium abusers. But they began to feel the need to take the Gospel to new areas where the missionaries had not been to.

In 1923 the three women went to Kanchow, traveling on the Silk Road and evangelizing as they went. There they trained Christians and traveled throughout the region holding tent meetings. But they knew that their destination would be the Gobi desert, a most inhospitable place with few inhabitants who were scattered throughout the area.

In 1926 they returned to England and their story caught the public imagination. Less than two years later they returned to the Gobi desert and stayed until they were forced to leave in 1936 during a time of political uprising. They had survived in a hostile environment and successfully proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the region.

The three women returned to England after 36 years in China and worked for the British and Foreign Bible society for the rest of their lives.

SOURCE: http://www.christianheroes.com/people/christian_heroes_mildred_cable.asp


Learn more by following a group of today's adventurers who are undertaking a similar journey. 

Threads in the Sand

http://www.greenkiwi.co.nz/footprints/frames/ts.htm

Anticipating the January 2012 launch of SufferStone, Book 1 of the Dolvia Saga, author Stella Atrium sat down with Marc Roster, a Chicago radio personality from the public access channel.


Marc Roster: So, you have an interesting premise here; space travel and women living under the veil.

Stella Atrium: Over the decades, sci-fi fans have seen many cultures depicted in stories about offworld adventures. But I have not seen an alien culture where women struggle against the burka.

Marc: Are the female characters also Muslim?

Stella: Desert garb with flowing robes and headgear pre-dates the birth of Mohammad. In the story, the sisters of Arim live on a savannah with a long dry season.

Marc: But the story is meant to reflect issues of global women's rights?

Stella: The cultures for the four tribes are unique to the story with their own languages, along with standards of dress, local animals, gestures of power for the men.

Marc: Of the four sisters, Kyle Le is the youngest, but she's the leader?

Stella: Kyle Le is troubled with the gift of second sight, like flashes of insight for events in the near future. She's an orphan, and her sisters clings to the land her father owned. They have no status in community, only the service of her gift to a tribal leader.

Marc: So Kyle Le takes work at the mill where she meets the story's hero Brian Miller. They fall in love and live happily ever after?

Stella: Not likely. Brian Miller can only run the mill because he doesn't abuse native women. The differences between their cultures are too great.

Marc: In the story's plot, what is the purpose of the Brittany Mill?

Stella: The savannah on Dolvia has what we call a Third World economy. Corporations from Earth have come adventuring through the wormhole to take advantage of the mineral wealth and the cheap labor market. But the tribes are protective, and their women are mostly illiterate. Brittany Mill is where these disparate groups begin to mingle.

Marc: That premise sounds like what happens in many countries here on Earth.

Stella: The dichotomy is delicious. Inside the fantasy genre, I try to present women who need to solve real problems like having no voice in community, or no right to work; no access to capital to start a business. No reinforcement for talent.

My intent was to pry open the archetypes of alien women in sci-fi who are, shall we say, sexually available to the story's hero. You know the types — warrior, witch, street urchin, unavailable princess who sneaks around, armless mermaid. Let's present a few female characters who drive the story and solve problems using the tools at hand.

Marc: You mentioned unique animals. Any dragons?

Stella: (chuckle) No dragons; no fairies. One sister named Terry befriends a wild ketiwhelp, which is similar to an oversized fox. She's later martyred in prison and a tribal myth about her is told in chants.

Marc: So what are the elements of fantasy in the story?

Stella: The savannah is being settled, unevenly, by offworlders who seek fortunes by mining the mineral wealth. They have a network for supply lines through the worm hole to Earth, and introduce futuristic gadgets to indigenous cultures, changing the balance.

Marc: What kind of gadgets?

Stella: Brian Miller communicates offworld using an EAM, or extra atmosphere modem. He shows Kyle Le how to access the transport's library where they call up an image of Dolvia, a blue and green planet with atmosphere and clouds. Kyle Le is very impressed with seeing the whole face of Dolvia.

Marc: So, the story is about culture shock?

Stella: For several cultures, yes. The reader also meets indentured colonists and military personnel stationed on the orbiting transport. Some characters are from a nearby planet and compete for work with the corporations to get ahead. They even adopt English over their own languages and shorten their names for advancement.

Marc: You mean, like people changed their names when they came to America through Ellis Island?

Stella: Examples from our history are illustrative. The pressure to fit in is universal, such as Jews in Spain in the fourteenth century who pretended to practice Catholicism. Or tribal people in South Africa who lived under Western names. Power structures exist everywhere, and the people from the subservient culture use similar strategies to get by and put food on the table.

Marc: So, what's the story's outcome.? Do Kyle Le and Brian Miller hook up?

Stella: Kyle Le is promised for the warrior Cyrus, even though she doesn't like the idea. She's motivated to resist the future planned for her by others. That's why she's open to new ideas like working for wages, and traveling offworld with soldiers.

Marc: Well, we certainly look forward to reading reviews for this unique story. Our time is up now, but I enjoyed the talk.

Stella: Thank you.

Frame the Debate: a year of mud slinging

by Stella Atrium
12/1/11
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Pres. Obama has a jobs plan, a student loan plan, a new mortgage plan, a loan modification plan (but no guest worker plan).  In the true spirit of community organizing, the president brings a targeted proposal to each voting group to solve local issues.

In the meantime, no federal budget has been proposed by the ruling party in the Senate for THREE YEARS. Instead taxpayers get continuing resolutions to open the paymaster's door, and debt ceiling hikes to the $4 billion A DAY increase on the debt.

The voting public can look forward to 12 more months of empty plans that won't move in congress until election day comes, after which we get more of the same. What inspired plan to solve issues will Pres. Obama proposed in his second term that he did not already try?  Is he saving the tough choices for when he feels secure in his job?  Or is he unable to address tough choices, relying on "hope" the the Gang of Six is effective, and "great hope" that the Supercommittee can face the fire.

At a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Milford NH, Candidate Mitt Romney said Pres. Obama's stewardship has created a "'Where's Waldo?' economy," referring to the children's books in which the challenge is to hunt for a small, hard-to-find man on a crowded page. In Romney's analogy, the jobs are Waldo.

He also accused Obama of fostering "class warfare" that Romney said demonized groups of people unfairly. "I've been really disappointed -- and, in some respects, a little frightened -- by the president's rhetoric -- this class warfare, trying to find someone to blame," Romney said. (Bloomberg Businessweek 10/11/11)

Each party tries to frame the debate for what issues will drive the election season.  However, just like the last election season, none of the talk includes reality.

Reality has overtaken the European Union, and we chuckle at them for austerity measures, rigid job markets, hat-in-hand begging for better interest rates.  They are facing a "lost decade" similar to what Japan knew when their housing market crashed in the late 1980s. The USA is next, you know.

In the meantime, we play this trivia game to frame the debate.

Elected officials in Washington ignore the need to restructure Social Security, Medicare, a health care mandate, SEC corruption that allowed crooks on Wall Street to dirty the play pen, and more. 

I'm not much for demonstrations (since Kent State in 1968 — go figure), and I'm not a liberal.  But I can understand the anger that prompted the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

The Hope and Change framework was inspiring, but those who had a warm feeling down their legs on election night in 2008 are feeling a pinch in their wallets now.

The framework of "He's worse than me" to argue issues without addressing Obama's record as president is already in place.  Meanwhile, Rome is burning...

I know I sound cynical today. Get ready for the year of mud slinging.

Henrietta Lacks’ ‘Immortal’ Cells 
Journalist Rebecca Skloot’s new book investigates how a poor black tobacco farmer had a groundbreaking impact on modern medicine
 
By Sarah Zielinski, Smithsonian.com, January 22, 2010
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Henrietta Lacks was a black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who got cervical cancer when she was 30. A doctor at Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without telling her and sent it down the hall to scientists there who had been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades without success. No one knows why, but her cells never died.

Henrietta’s cells were the first immortal human cells ever grown in culture. They were essential to developing the polio vaccine. They went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to cells in zero gravity. Many scientific landmarks since then have used her cells, including cloning, gene mapping and in vitro fertilization.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Henrietta-Lacks-Immortal-Cells.html#ixzz1edMd82nX

My note:  Here's a story that begs for a bio-pic.  Why another sports movie when these stories beg to be told? 

Blogging Changes Writing

11/22/11 by Stella Atrium
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I just opened a Twitter account @SAtrium and poked around for what's trending.  Jennifer Hudson attended the music award wearing a short dress made of clinging silver, so her name was trending for an hour or so...

Now I can think only in 140 characters, or less.  

A student asked how she should go about publishing her poetry and early journals. I bit my lip to hold back a giggle.  Join the world; start a blog.

The most popular blogs are about how to write in blogs. 

 
A student recommended blogging because she has no fear online. 
In her comfort zone she can express ideas about gender preferences, hating her brother, wanting to leave home, and finding a simpatico follower.

Confessions are common on blogs, right after birth announcements.   

We're born, we confess, we follow, we get mentioned.

 
Popular blogs have made-up personalities.  Many famous bloggers don't blog at all; rather, staff members do all the writing.

A narrative builds when others join into the ideas (read: #OWS), even if the narrative is not productive like the senate Gang of Six or the Super Committee.  In fact, the less truth, the better the popularity.

Can you say "Hope and Change"?

The public discourse is no longer about engagement, but entrenchment. I will hold my position and solicit followers. I will not give an inch, no matter the impact on my children or grandchildren.


Criticism is the work of the day.  Opinion trumps the facts in the news.  Don't bother me with the facts; I know what I know.  

I cannot form a sentence that's more than twelve words.

Just ran across a blog titled "How to Write Your Life". I remember when Madonna wanted to live on—camera.  What purpose to actions when the camera was not there? She was ahead of her time.

The Appeal of Thelma & Louise; a buddy movie about two women on the run

Stella Atrium 11.11.11
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The 20th anniversary of Thelma & Louise was in February 2011.

Critics claimed the movie directed by Ridley Scott broke stereotypes and allowed female characters to step out of a corseted past into liberated action.  Never mind the movie presents women acting like men would act.  Never mind that Thelma robs a store only after she receives instruction from a drifter.

Once again, the characters we love don't solve problems the way women solve them, but rather ape the actions of the men. Where are their mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, best friends, daughters?

Movies about women must appeal to men, even when the male characters are secondary, as with a sympathetic policeman played by Harvey Keitel and ex-boyfriend played by Michael Madsen. The movie audience was mostly men, and they liked the idea of women on a lark with 2% body fat and oversized handguns.  We still have the standard scenes for car chases, gun violence, fiery explosions, and a hero's ending.  The twist is that women get to blow up stuff.

Except are they liberated? Or... are they just acting like a guy would act in similar situation?  Maybe a woman would find other ways to hide by changing her looks and blending in, or entering a brothel where the police never investigate.

In Thelma & Louise a struggling waitress and repressed housewife take off one day while the husband is fishing.  They stop to cat-around at a dance hall, and Thelma (Geena Davis) is pressured by a drunken cowboy who Louise (Susan Sarandon) shoots with her Texas-purchased gun. Adventures on the run after the feminist statement include picking up a drifter, scaring a truck driver, packing a cop into his car trunk, calling home to bring down the police, and sprinting toward the Mexican border.

The 1974 movie Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges) depicted drifters in a similar socio-economic strata.
Lightfoot is beaten by bad guys who pursue them, and the tension between Lightfoot and Thunderbolt is tentative friendship built on a common need to escape jeopardy.  They end badly, too, when Lightfoot dies of injuries from the beating.  We expect less of this movie, though, and treasure it for the performances.

What social wrong was righted in Thelma & Louise?  Besides the eye-candy, what did we learn about ourselves? I'm reminded of the old adage that "she acted like a man because she was treated like a woman".

The scenes are well played, especially when Thelma says, "Something broke inside me," but Thelma & Louise is ultimately unsatisfying.

I object mostly to the ending when the pair drive over a cliff rather than return to society and face jail time.

Many have claimed this ending shows that there's no place in real life for rogue women; except Thelma and Louise aren't acting like women.  The pair is acting like they think the men would act, all the way to driving off into the sunset.  

Young women today mention Thelma & Louise as a shining example of liberated acts, of improvising, of getting a little of her own back.  I despair for our young girls who have few role models and must fit behavior into unnatural patterns to find acceptance among peers who believe that women should act like the guys.