William Shatner Mourns

After awhile, you get to thinking you know everything you need to know about a given person or subject. Having grown up watching Star Trek, I studied all aspects of the program, and followed the actors. From innumerable magazine articles, to books like I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek Memories by William Shatner, I felt as if I knew everything about my first beloved Sci-Fi TV series. And yet, there's always more to learn.

And, given the inconstancy of memory, there's always more to learn again. So when I saw Leonard by William Shatner on the sale rack, I said "Why not?"

All too often, books get purchased, stored away somewhere, and don't get read for months or years, if ever. I picked up Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation by Yvonne Fern several years ago, but didn't read it until recently. But something called to me about William Shatner's book, so I started reading it almost straight away. 

Despite differences in where they grew up, Shatner looks back on his friend and sees all the similarities, from the era of their births, to the economic and social situations in which they were raised. For example, both men were raised Jewish, and their families immigrated to the United States to seek better lives. Obviously, they both grew up with a love of acting, and took up smoking, a socially acceptable vice that, at the time, seemed fairly harmless to most people. When Star Trek finally came along, and offered them other opportunities, they both grabbed at them. So both became singers and released albums. Both took up writing, and performed one-man plays. Both championed causes, and gave back to their communities.

I realize I'm being vague here, but the details of their separate lives really aren't important. What's underlying Shatner's book is a yearning for his friend. He's looking back, and thinking about how much they had in common, and how it united them in life and friendship. Ironically, despite both actors' uneasy relationship with the science fiction conventions, and the ongoing role of Star Trek in their lives, neither man considered the other a friend until after the TV series ended, and they started attending conventions together. It was only then, when they weren't competing with each other in the high pressure environment of the TV studio, that they began to sense a commonality, and build a real relationship together. 

Shatner is strikingly, even brutally honest in this book. He describes himself as a man with many casual acquaintances, but few real friends. He also admits that he and Nimoy stopped talking with each other, toward the end. Friendships are hard, and Nimoy was a far more private man than Shatner. Nimoy was far less easygoing, and felt things more deeply. So Shatner grieves not only for his loss, but for whatever he said or did that made Nimoy turn away from him, and refuse to speak with him, or answer his letters.

It's hard to believe that five years have passed since Leonard Nimoy's death. For most of us, even the more fervent Star Trek fans, life goes on. But after reading William Shatner's book, I suspect that, for him, that time has passed far more slowly.

Dragon Dave

A Sketch from Richardson Beach

Since I started sketching, I take fewer photographs. Instead of trying to capture every interesting camera angle, I spend more time looking for something interesting to draw. 

When visiting new places, I sketch as often as I can. While my wife captures her watercolor visions relatively quickly, it takes awhile for me to complete the linework on a sketch. The process of building up color takes infinitely longer. 

Last year, on our trip to Colorado, I started lots of sketches. While I completed the linework on all of them, I only started coloring a few, and completed just one. So on our latest trip to Hawaii, I decided I just wanted to do one or two sketches, and make sure I completed them.

We returned several times to this little parking lot. We sat in the car, and I gradually added to my sketch. I found it helpful to inhabit the same place, to see the trees, rocks, and sea before me. When we returned home, I used the above photo on my computer as a reference. After several more coloring sessions, I completed it.

It may not be exactly what I saw, but it's what I could draw.

As it turned out, I started three sketches in Hawaii. There's another one I really want to work on, of the nearby Japanese Gardens. I'm not sure when, or if, I'll get around to the third. But if all I ever finish is this one sketch from our recent visit, I'll be happy. 

Dragon Dave

Rick Riordan and Socrates Part 4

The head of the Greek god Pan at the British Museum

After reading Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels about the Greek and Roman gods, as well as Plato's stories Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, I wondered if Socrates' teachings might actually have been radical for his time. At one point, he talks in Phaedo about the world being round, not flat. While Pythagorus, an earlier Greek philosopher, argued that the Earth was spherical, most philosophers before Socrates still held that the world was flat. So when Plato writes about Socrates believing in a spherical Earth, that could be every bit as radical as Galileo claiming the solar system didn't revolve around the Earth. And we all know what happened to Galileo, don't we?

Furthermore, while Socrates regularly mentions demigods and gods, he usually refers to God in the singular. One time, he even invoked Jupiter, the Roman version of Zeus. Did Socrates sees the Roman depiction of the gods as superior to that of his traditional Greeks? Or was he teaching that the ultimate form of religion should be monotheistic? 

Interestingly, the word monotheism is itself derived from Greek, and Socrates appears to have held beliefs similar to modern monotheists. Socrates seems to equate God with goodness, thus a believer should cultivate goodness in his or her character. Even if he didn't believe in one God like the Jews and later Christians, did he buy into the whole Greek pantheon, make sacrifices at their temples, and worship all the gods for their individual qualities.

As Pan was the god of theatrical criticism, did Socrates invoke Pan when he discussed a play he had attended? As Dionysus was the god of wine, did he honor Dionysus by pouring a little wine onto an altar, like Percy and the demigods give a portion of each meal to their divine parents? People are always watching you, and with someone like Socrates, who spent his days with his thoughts, perhaps he didn't pay respect to the gods in all the little ways everyone else did.

People are always concerned when philosophers and religious teachers preach a different message from everyone else. People want their children to hold the same values and ideals that they prize. Someone who teaches a radically different message, or even appears to, could be labeled a danger to society.

A drinking cup devoted to Dionysus, the god of wine, in the British Museum.

In any case, whether the leaders of Athens saw him as a bothersome old man, or a dangerous radical, why the need to kill him? Couldn't they just send him away? That was an option they extended to Socrates. But the philosopher rarely if ever left his beloved Athens. While he might praise aspects of other Greek city-states, moving to another town would be like moving to another country today. Suppose someone was kind enough to take him in, give him free room and board, attend his physical needs, and pay for his doctors' visits. The city's style of government would be different. Its cultural and religious festivals would clash with what he was used to. The cultural lens--formed by that city's unique history, government, and religious beliefs--would be completely different from the one through which he saw the world. 

Most old people want to die where they feel like they belong: in their homes. Socrates wouldn't want to be exiled to a foreign city-state. So whether his teachings were really subversive, or his physical needs and/or societal views just got on people's nerves, he opted to take the poison and die surrounded by his followers and friends. What old person, faced with the choice of dying in their own home, or being sent off to a sanatorium (or nursing home) wouldn't make the same choice?

In Rick Riordan's novels, the demigods live in cabins dedicated to their parents. As a child of Poseidon, Percy finds himself bunking alone at Camp Half-Blood. He can visit the cabin dedicated to another god, but he couldn't spend the night in one. Regardless of how lonely he felt, he just wouldn't belong in a cabin dedicated to another god. While modern readers might feel this is unfair, if Rick Riordan had written these stories in Socrates' time, I suspect people would have seen this treatment as right and proper.

Of course, they probably would have seen Rick Riordan's stories as disrespectful in any number of other ways. They might not have liked that Grover, a satyr who dreams of finding the lost god Pan, eats aluminum cans. Or they might objected to seeing the god Dionysus, who runs the camp, as disconsolate because Zeus always prevents him from drinking wine. People always find reasons to brand something they dislike as wrong, regardless of what age they inhabit, or whom they hurt as a result.

Dragon Dave