Toni Morrison on Work, AstroSamantha and Movies from 2004
Three interesting essays that I came across last week:
I believe quite a few of us have read Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which is a beautiful piece of writing. If you want to revisit her writing again then this essay written in 2017 makes for a fantastic read. She starts the essay by recalling the time when she worked as a house-help, and how being so helped her support her family. “In those days, the forties, children were not just loved or liked; they were needed," she writes. It’s a very short article, however, worth every word for the advice it’s filled with. The advice is about work, and the place it should deserve in our lives. I can’t help but recount the following: whatever the work is, do it well, and another one was, you make the job, it doesn’t make you.
I knew little about the astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti before I read this piece in Lunch with FT. AstroSamantha, as she is popularly known, is an Italian astronaut who made news for spending 200 days in the International Space Station (ISS). It’s a long form interview and covers the interesting bits about life in zero gravity. However, for me the interesting takeaway was her life journey — how she grew up in a small Italian village, studied aeronautical sciences and mechanical engineering, and then applied to become a European Space Agency astronaut. “I was very demanding . . . and I didn’t sugarcoat anything. People either loved me or hated me,” she says about herself. Her book — Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut — is now available in English and after reading this interview I have added that book to my reading list. By the way, a new word that I ended up learning from this article: noctilucent clouds. These are ‘wispy clouds that form high in the atmosphere and that the sun illuminates from below,' which Cristoforetti always wanted to see and saw her on the last day of her stay at the ISS.
Finally, this fun piece on why 2004 was arguably the most interesting year for the movies came out last week. When I read the piece about the original ideas that came out that year, I could almost feel my head nod in affirmation. This was the year which saw some of the most original movies come out — Collateral and The Village among others. 2004 is “appealing because it’s among the last to feature a strong mix of original ideas, major directors and stars we still wanted to see,” Wesley Morris, the writer of the essay believes. Good piece to read if you want to refresh your memory about some of the Neo-classics from that year.
A quote that I read last week:
“As a species, we’re so temporary, transient — we could be gone and the Earth would just keep on moving. There’s nothing permanent or inevitable about us.”
— Samantha Cristoforetti
