By the way, don’t miss the film Tiger Within (listed below). So worth watching and a film perfect for our times.

three things we love

Poem by Astrophysicist Katie Mack

Katie Mack’s Astrophysics Lesson. Click on image to hear her lecture FYI I probably understood about 1 percent of.

Click image to see how tiny we are in the universe…

Click here to have Katie read her poem to you or read it yourself below

Disorientation
by Katie Mack

I want to make you dizzy.

I want to make you look up into the sky and comprehend, maybe for the first time, the darkness that lies beyond the evanescent wisp of the atmosphere, the endless depths of the cosmos, a desolation by degrees.

I want the Earth to turn beneath you and knock your balance off, carry you eastward at a thousand miles an hour, into the light, and the dark, and the light again. I want you to watch the Earth rising you up to meet the rays of the morning sun.

I want the sky to stop you dead in your tracks on your walk home tonight, because you happened to glance up and among all the shining pinpricks you recognized one as of the light of an alien world.

I want you to taste the iron in your blood and see its likeness in the rust-red sands on the long dry dunes of Mars, born of the same nebular dust that coalesced random flotsam of stellar debris into rocks, oceans, your own beating heart.

I want to reach into your consciousness and cast it outward, beyond the light of other suns, to expand it like the universe, not encroaching on some envelope of emptiness, but growing larger, unfolding inside itself.

I want you to see your world from four billion miles away, a tiny glint of blue in the sharp white light of an ordinary star in the darkness. I want you to try to make out the boundaries of your nation from that vantage point, and fail.

I want you to feel it, in your bones, in your breath, when two black holes colliding a billion light years away sends a tremor through spacetime that makes every cell in your body stretch, and strain.

I want to make you nurse nostalgia for the stars long dead, the ones that fused your carbon nuclei and the ones whose last thermonuclear death throes outshined the entire galaxy to send a single photon into your eye.

I want you to live forward but see backward, farther and deeper into the past, because in a relativistic universe you don’t have any other choice. I want the stale billion-year-old starlight of a distant galaxy to be your reward.

I want to utterly disorient you and let you navigate back by the stars. I want you to lose yourself, and find it again, not just here, but everywhere, in everything.

I want you to believe that the universe is a vast, random, uncaring place, in which our species, our world, has absolutely no significance. And I want you to believe that the only response is to make our own beauty and meaning and to share it while we can.

I want to make you wonder what is out there. What dreams may come in waves of radiation across the breadth of an endless expanse. What we may know, given time, and what splendors might never, ever reach us.

I want to make it mean something to you. That you are in the cosmos. That you are of the cosmos. That you are born from stardust and to stardust you will return. That you are a way for the universe to be in awe of itself.

No-Cal Pancakes for Breakfast

I always add fruit and a little maple syrup to these pancakes.

Here's a trick I learned from a fellow Weight Watchers member that has been my go to for a no-cal pancake breakfast. It might not be exactly the real thing but pretty close (and you don't think bananas when you eat it). Here is the simple delicious recipe:

Pancakes

Ingredients
1 Banana
2 Eggs
big dash of Cinnamon
splash of Vanilla

Instructions

Beat two eggs together. Mash the banana (the more ripe the better) and mix into the egg mixture. Add vanilla and cinnamon. Spray a skillet with Pam or other 0 Point spray. (or add a bit of oil or butter if you must) Pour batter in. Let it cook on one side. Flip and cook the other side. Serve with maple syrup, fresh fruit, yogurt or whatever you choose.

Film: The Tiger Within

I am always on the lookout for interesting things to include on this blog--television shows, recipes, short poems and whatever catches my fancy and my eye for the week. Some of it comes from memory and some of it comes from recent discoveries...

This week I received an email about a virtual showing of a film and my eyes fell on the name Ed Asner. Readers of my blog will know he has been one of my heroes for a long time now. The film is called The Tiger Within, where Asner plays a starring role alongside a brilliant performance by an unknown 14-year old named Margot Josefsohn. And although not totally brand new, I had never heard of this movie. It is especially significant now since it was one of Asner's last roles before he recently passed away...

The word TOUCHING doesn’t begin to do justice to this beautiful gem of a film with a huge heart and even bigger lessons about love and hate, the dangers of ignorance, and possibilities of redemption. Writer Gina Wendkos (she also wrote The Princess Diaries among other films) weaves a story where two diametrically opposed and unlikely people manage to connect and as a result, find a way to heal. Wendkos has a special talent for authentic and sensitive dialogue, making the characters come alive in such poetic ways...

Drop everything and watch it. I got special permission to share this private link with you so you can see this even though it is not publicly available (it was only a five day run at Film at Lincoln Center). The link is as follows:

https://vimeo.com/444445735

Password : Embrace_the_Tiger

And then I would appreciate so much your getting back to me through the comment section or via email or phone, to let me know your thoughts.

My thoughts are that I want to help make this film known to a bigger population of people and perhaps help reach youth that might be flirting with anti-semitism, racism, white supremacy and hate. I think it is such an important film and comes at such a crucial time in our history and I believe it could serve as a tool to fight hatred.

If you want to hear more from the filmmakers themselves, there are several Q & A sessions including this one from the Miami Film Festival in April 2021 and another at the Austin Film Festival from three months ago.

Charity of the Week:
Southern Poverty Law Center

Please donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has been on the forefront of fighting hate and white supremacy for many years.

Product of the Week
New Yoga Mats

New ! Yoga Mats—$80. Contact me directly to purchase: pamsmilow@me.com

About The Author

New York City based contemporary artist, Pam Smilow created the creative lifestyle blog “things we love” in an effort to foster a sense of community during times of isolation and reflection. To read more about her and her art, visit her website and check out the essay written by the Hammond Museum's Frank Matheis entitled The Sophisticated Innocence of Pam Smilow.. And by the way, let me know in the comment section what you think of the new haircut...