Me, the New York Times and D&D

I wrote this feature story for the New York Times Books section "In a Chaotic World, Dungeons & Dragons Is Resurgent: The role-playing game has made a surprising return to mainstream culture." (published online Nov. 13, 2019; on print Nov. 15). 

The Best Cure For Fear? Maybe, A Little More Trust:

The Best Cure For Fear? Maybe, A Little More Trust

In the wake of terrorist acts, or school shootings, or other horrific acts of violence, we feel duped. How could we have missed the signs? Or have been susceptible? We remind ourselves to be vigilant. Be suspicious. If you see something, say something. In other words, mistrust thy neighbor. We look at people differently. Everyone becomes a potential enemy. We ask ourselves, how well do we know the people who live next door? What do we really think of our children’s teachers or day care workers?

I admit that after the Boston Marathon bombings, even I began to look at my neighbors with more apprehension. I didn’t like this fact. But there it was.

Perhaps at no other time in American history — at least since the Red Scare and the rise of McCarthyism — have we been more skeptical of our fellow citizens. While our inclination might be to circle the wagons and become more suspicious than ever, there is another way to combat this proclivity towards wariness.

But how?

With more openness, not less.

It may seem counterintuitive — but it’s actually quite logical. After all, many of these deplorable acts of violence arise because perpetrators feel disconnected. Their social networks decay. They develop anti-social and extremist views. When people detach, bad things are more likely to happen.

I’ve been thinking of some simple steps that, at least for me, help me feel more confident and connected. Call it intentional faith. Or, radical trust.

My five-step plan:

Read the rest of my essay for NPR's/WBUR's Cognoscenti

The Cell Phone At 40: What Have Our Devices Wrought?

The Cell Phone Turns 40: My skeptical commentary by Ethan Gilsdorf

[originally appeared in NPR/WBUR's Cognoscenti Tue, Apr 09, 2013]

The cell phone hit middle age last week.

Forty years ago, on April 3, 1973, a Motorola inventor named Martin Cooper made the first-ever call on a handheld cellular phone (curiously, to a rival employee at AT&T). When the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X finally became commercially available a decade later, the two pound device cost about $4,000. Known as “the brick,” the phone was about as smart as one, too. Then, the BlackBerry and its ilk arrived in the early 2000s, ushering in a new age of instant, on-the-go communication.

After the iPhone hit the marketplace in 2007, the smart phone soon became as indispensable as a wallet and keys, and a commonplace accessory to everyday life.

But what changes — for good or for evil — have cell phones wrought? At what cost have we invited these tools into our lives? Like with other technological innovations, from the automobile to the nuclear weapon, we embrace cell phones without much reflection or question. We embrace them because they are new and because they seem to solve problems.

To be sure, these devices come in handy, especially in emergencies. But remember, our smart phones are more than phones: They’re actually communicators, a la “Star Trek,” cross-bred with small computers. They know all. They cut across time and space. They have turned us into roving reporters and documentarians of our every move and thought and location. They give us the ability to talk and text with anyone on the planet. No longer must we wait and wonder the answer to a question or risk being wrong. With a few quick finger pecks in the Google Search app, mysteries are solvable. Evidence is found. Friends who said they can’t make the baby shower because they are “out of town” can be busted, on Facebook, anywhere, anytime. Smart phones have also ruined trivia nights in Irish bars across our fair city.

Yet, as we step off the cliff of another science fictional precipice — the possible widespread adoption of wearable devices like “smartwatches” and the Google glass head-mounted computer — it’s worth considering what questions cell phones already raise. What does it mean to be in public? What social and interpersonal obligations do we have in our interactions with each other? What does it mean to be “here” — to truly inhabit a physical space — and how do these devices blur the boundaries between presence and absence? MIT professor Sherry Turkle has documented many of these issues in her book, “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.” Her research looks at how online behavior, such as posting on Facebook and tweeting, creates an illusion of closeness and connectedness that, paradoxically, leads to the very solitude from which our technologies supposedly save us. Personally, my heart drops every time I see parents with their child on the bike path, or in the playground, not interacting, not holding their kid’s hand, but punching or jabbering into whatever device they are holding. Not to mention the endless beeps and interruptions and distractions. Or how my iPhone plays into my already challenged ability to focus. Or how I sometimes feel a phantom buzzing in my pocket. Nope, no one called. But my body has developed an almost Pavlovian response to my iPhone. Studies even suggest our cell phone buzzing activates the same part of the brain connected to feelings of love and compassion. When I’ve left my cell phone behind, I experience what can only be described as small pangs of separation anxiety. What am I missing? Who might be texting or emailing? I have taken to making rules for myself. I try not to check email or text while I walk from one neighborhood to the next. If I must take a call or write a text while I am already talking with a friend, I will acknowledge the interruption and say, “Excuse me” and leave the room. I try to “be there” when I am there. Wherever I am. I am not always successful. And yet, as a self-employed person, who works primarily from cafes and other remote locations, I enjoy the freedom my iPhone provides, liberating me from my desk and 9-to-5 environments, even if that freedom comes with a price. A recent episode helped focused these matters like a laser beam — and made me feel more profoundly how our world has been changed by cell phones. The other night, I walked to my corner bar to watch the Red Sox game. Settling in, I ordered a drink and then began my usual routine of checking email, social media feeds or texting a friend. A moment later I looked up. The bar was empty, except for the bartender, one other patron and me. All three of us were checking our phones, adopting that all-too-familiar hunched over posture, and hypnotized by our respective little windows. “Well, isn’t this funny,” I blurted out. “We’re all looking at our iPhones at the same time.” The bartender laughed, and the other guy laughed. Then, after a moment of awkwardness, we put down our phones and something miraculous happened: We had a conversation.

What's up with all those movies based on fairy tales?

PERSPECTIVE

Hollywood’s Grimm obsession:

Why grown-ups embrace the promise of happily ever after, now more than ever.

[originally appeared in the Boston Sunday Globe, MARCH 24, 2013]

Angelina Jolie in "Maleficent," due in theaters next year. (PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER KRAMER/AP/NBC)

FEE-FI-FO-FUM,I SMELL THE BLOOD OF A HOLLYWOOD TREND.

After nearly a century of fairy-tale films targeted in large part at kids — starting with Walt Disney’s 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — there’s another, edgier treatment on the rise. Last year, moviegoers saw two versions of the Grimm Brothers’ Snow White story in Mirror Mirror with Julia Roberts and Snow White and the Huntsman with Kristen Stewart. Next year, Angelina Jolie will star as Sleeping Beauty’s nemesis in Malificent, and Disney is looking to release a live-action version of Cinderella directed by Kenneth Branagh. We’ve recently seen movies like Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Jack the Giant Slayer in theaters and Grimm and Once Upon a Time on TV. The list goes on and on. What accounts for this boom in adult-sized fairy tales?

Part of the answer is that the stories and themes of the Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen never really left cineplexes — they’ve just been in better disguises. Working Girl, Pretty Woman, and Maid in Manhattan all borrowed heavily from the rags-to-riches Cinderella story. Snow White, so concerned with beauty and aging and jealousy, can be seen in countless mother/daughter rivalry plots. “We use bits and pieces of fairy tales all the time to fashion new stories, but often in ways so subtle that they escape our attention,” says Maria Tatar, chairwoman of the Program in Folklore & Mythology at Harvard University. Even Quentin Tarantino’s bloody Django Unchained, Tatar points out, draws from theSleeping Beauty tale.

The trend can be partly explained by practical concerns. After years of fantasy-themed bombs in the ’80s and ’90s (remember Legend with Tom Cruise?), the wildly successful Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies — which both started appearing in 2001 — convinced Hollywood that audiences were once again willing to suspend disbelief and embrace worlds of wizards and goblins. But with cash cows like The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien already spoken for, studios began looking to mine gold in older stories. (And since fairy tales tend to be in the public domain, they offer a bonus: no pesky author estates with which to negotiate film and toy rights.)

But I also think something deeper is going on. Maybe it’s that these sexier action-packed tales — with epic plots and gloomy themes — are finally returning to their roots.

Once thoroughly dire and dark, fairy tales were re-imagined as entertainment for kids in the 19th century. “They were moved like old furniture from the parlor into the nursery — that’s how Tolkien put it,” Tatar explains. With the arrival of the movies, the yarns became “cartoon versions of what adults once told around the fireside.” Disney, in particular, made a point of leaving out the nastiest  stuff — the child abandonment, the cannibalism, the incest. “Today,” Tatar says, “we are back in touch with the darker elements in the tales.”

And yet those terrible stories projected up on the screen can also be comforting, if only because we know their endings in our bones. The land of Real Life, located just outside the darkened theater’s doors, remains a fairly bleak place of taxes, political gridlock, and climate change. A realm of chain mail, swords, and magic spells will always be more enchanting than that.

“Fairy tales give us a burst of melodrama,” Tatar says, “confronting us with worst-case scenarios and reassuring us that there will be a happily ever after.”

In fairy tales, the evil and greedy get true punishment, not just a slap on the wrist from Congress, and the hero always overcomes his or her travails to emerge victorious, albeit a little traumatized, from the experience. With the help of his sister, Hansel managed to escape getting eaten by a witch. Compared with that, doesn’t digging out from under a mountain of credit card debt or dodging a looming foreclosure seem like child’s play?

Ethan Gilsdorf, a frequent contributor to the Globe Magazine, is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

Reconnecting separated siblings

[By Ethan Gilsdorf. This story originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 2011]

• 

Ashley Figueroa and her brother Jonathan went to Camp to Belong in Massachusetts.

[photo by Ann Hermes/Staff]

Ashley Figueroa will never forget the day in 1995 when she and her siblings were taken away from their mother and placed in foster care.

"They told us we were going to McDonald's," she says. "We were all crying. What kid doesn't want a Happy Meal? But we didn't get a Happy Meal."

Their mother struggled with substance abuse and lived with an abusive boyfriend. Their father was absent.

The children lived in a series of foster and family-based kinship homes both in their hometown of Lowell, Mass., and as far away as Ohio and New York.

Then three years ago, seven of the 10 kids came to Camp to Belong in Hinsdale, Mass. "We lost contact for six or seven years," says the bubbly Ashley, now 20. "Camp to Belong brought us together."

"We had never been to a place like that before," says her brother, Jonathan, 13. "We had never been so happy."

Now in its 17th year, Camp to Belong (CTB) has a mission to reunite siblings ages 8 to 20 separated in foster homes and other out-of-home care situations. The camp experience changes lives.

Lynn Price, founder of the camp, was herself once disconnected from a sibling due to foster care. "I didn't know I had a sister until I was 8 years old," she says. But as she began working with the homeless and children in foster care, she started to see how brothers and sisters were losing track of each other. "I realized they were going to miss out on childhood memories."

CTB has grown to nine camps in eight states – Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon,California, Washington, and, new this year, New York – plus Australia. Ms. Price's hope is to one day offer camps in each of the 50 states.

Some 550,000 children live in foster care in the United States. But even if they live in the same town or go to the same school, 75 percent of these kids live separately from a sibling. CTB gives them a chance to connect and feel empowered by that sibling connection, to read a book or eat breakfast or roughhouse together – the kinds of daily interactions most families take for granted. Thus far, the organization has forged bonds among more than 3,700 brothers and sisters.

"For the first time, we were surrounded by kids who understood," Ashley says, recalling her first summer at the week-long Massachusetts camp. "We were finally all in the same place." The Figueroa kids found themselves among peers for whom foster care was not a source of shame.

READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE

What's up with alien invasion movies?

Battlefield: Earth

When alien visitors do not come in peace

The White House was one of several iconic sites destroyed by aliens in Roland Emmerich’s 1996 film, “Independence Day.’’ (20th Century Fox via AP)

By Ethan Gilsdorf

Boston Globe Correspondent / March 11, 2011

“We’re facing an unknown enemy,’’ barks a Marine officer once the alien spacecraft have begun their assault in “Battle: Los Angeles.’’ In the film, which opens today, the attackers arrive in metallic ships. Other times, they arrive in asteroids, as in “The Day of the Triffids’’ (1962). Or they use asteroids as weapons: in “Starship Troopers’’ (1997) the Arachnids, or “Bugs,’’ from planet Klendathu launch a large space rock that flattens Buenos Aires.

But no matter the mode of transport, nothing gets our flags waving and patriotic juices flowing more than the threat of Earth’s destruction at the hands of ruthless, repugnant, anonymous aliens.

Here’s one reason: Because our angsty, modern-day wars don’t let us demonize the enemy as in decades past, it’s hard to get excited about blowing apart Iraqis and Afghans, whether in the real world or onscreen. Hence the appearance of “Battle: Los Angeles,’’ or last year’s LA-invasion “Skyline.’’ Combating hulking spacecraft and silvery foot soldiers whose weapons are surgically implanted ends up dicier than anything Al Qaeda can throw at us. In one scene, the platoon’s Nigerian medic grumbles, “[Expletive]! I’d rather be in Afghanistan.’’

Not all alien invasion movies are created equal. Earthlings might be mere bystanders in a battle between alien races: Take “Transformers’’ (2007) and its tagline “Their war. Our world.’’ Or “AVPR: Aliens vs Predator — Requiem’’ (also 2007). Watch “Invasion of the Body Snatchers’’ (1956, 1978) and you will notice the aliens don’t rub out metropolises; the Pod People colonize one citizen at a time. Or they walk unnoticed among us, as in “Men in Black’’ (1997). In the Godzilla “giant monsters’’ genre, or even “Cloverfield’’ (2008), they’re not even technically aliens, since the monsters (mostly) hatch from our atomic waste. The cartoon “Monsters vs. Aliens’’ (2009) combines these elements: A human beaned by a meteorite grows gigantic and joins forces with creatures to battle an invading alien robot.

You could argue these invasion films serve a higher cultural purpose. They can be seen as metaphors for some nameless fear — communism, viral infection, illegal immigration. Or think of these films as talismans. Directors imagine the worst, then the ruination won’t happen in real life.

But to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “War is a war is a war is a war.’’

What follows are battlefield reports from a few memorable movies where the little green men invade armada-style in a coordinated attack, unilaterally and unprovoked. They storm the beaches of, say, Santa Monica, like it’s the Normandy invasion, ray guns a-blazin’. They harvest our resources, take no prisoners, and destroy our beloved strip malls and skyscrapers. When they do, we guiltlessly circle our wagons and fight back. As in “Battle: Los Angeles,’’ there’s only one rightful response. “You kill anything that’s not human.’’

“War of the Worlds’’ (1953, 2005)

You might say H.G. Wells’s 1898 book kick-started the whole alien-invasion genre. At least two major film adaptations (and one freaky radio broadcast) have followed, transposing the battleground from London to US cities. In the 1953 film version, the setting is Southern California. A meteorite falls, and out pop the manta-like Martian ships. A friendly greeting is answered by heat rays and electro-magnetic pulses that vaporize our backyards. Even our A-bombs are useless. When all hope seems lost, it turns out the aliens have no defense against our germs. Should have had their flu shots! Weirdly, 2005 gave us three remakes: two low-budget, straight-to-video affairs, and the Spielberg-Cruise megalith that takes us on a paranoid road trip from destroyed New York through the ravaged New England countryside to Boston, all the while the tripedal aliens hot on the refugees’ tails.

“Mars Attacks!’’ (1996)

Think of “The Day the Earth Stood Still’’ (1951, remade in 2008) or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind’’ (1977). An alien ship arrives. Do we strike first or parley? Do they talk back in musical tones or English? Do they play fair? In Tim Burton’s spoof starring a Hollywood who’s-who (Jack Nicholson, Annette Bening, Glenn Close, Jack Black, Natalie Portman, and more), the conventions are overturned. When Martians surround Earth with their flying saucers, negotiations begin. But the tricksy aliens infiltrate the White House and the destruction commences. The evil invaders even redo Mount Rushmore with Martian faces. Luckily, there’s always a weakness: This time their demise is Slim Whitman, whose yodeling voice in “Indian Love Call’’ causes alien brains to explode. Makes you want to place your K-tel order today.

“Independence Day’’ (1996)

The xenophobia and hawkishness of some of these invasion dramas aside, perverse pleasure can also be found in seeing beloved cities and monuments obliterated: the Eiffel Tower, White House, Golden Gate Bridge. That’s what we get in Roland Emmerich’s alien-inundation flick. Ragtag survivors gather in the Nevada desert in a last-ditch effort — on July 4 — to plan retaliation. But first the audience is treated to the deployment of dozens of 15-mile-wide saucers whose blue energy blasts decimate some of our favorite urban vacation destinations: DC, LA, New York. Eventually, a computer virus (not the common cold) defeats the ship’s force field, and Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith prevail. Yay, Earth!

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks,’’ can be reached at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com.

How do you have a day without creativity, imagination, and thought?

Taking the time to stop WHO

Drake Patten

WHAT

Drake Patten knows what looms if arts and culture disappear. A lifelong arts advocate and former director of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, Patten is now the executive director of The Steel Yard, a Providence-based center that uses the industrial arts to foster community revitalization and workforce development. She recently co-founded Culture Stops!, a volunteer-run nationwide day of action (or rather, inaction) on Thursday, March 10, to draw attention to the impact of proposed federal budget cuts on the creative sector. Q. Your website www.culturestops.org asks people “to witness a world devoid of creativity, imagination and thought: America after culture stops.’’ How do you have a day without creativity, imagination, and thought? A. This is a day about absence. This Culture Stops! movement is about what is there when it’s not there. We want people to stop and mark the day. Q. How would it work? A. People who are performing, for example music, could stop their performance and try to educate the audience, or leave the stage and join the audience and look at the blank stage. We have talked to people who have said they would cover their works of art with a black cloth. Or simply put up the Culture Stops! logo on their website or Facebook page. Q. So you don’t necessarily want to shut down culture for the day. A. In the Culture Stops! call to action, we say “stop work for eight minutes to a full eight hours.’’ You choose. Keep your store open that sells local art but put something in the bag that says, “You just bought something on Culture Stops! day.’’ To say you should just stop working that day and alienate your clients, that’s not realistic. But the education of clients is necessary. Q. How widespread is participation so far? A. We just launched [last week]. We are hearing from every state but I think five. What is great is that people are saying that they are prepared to take on what is immediately local. Q. How did this idea originate? A. Culture Stops! began around a kitchen table in Cranston, R.I., with five people, one dog, and $87. I was speaking to my colleagues about our fears. It’s the fear about not being able to do our work, and living in a nation where arts and culture is not valued. In a human way this translates to darkness. It’s like a black stage. Q. How do you answer those who claim that, in a down economy, arts and culture are luxuries, that we all have to tighten our belts? A. When you set a budget, you are setting the program. You are saying publicly that arts and culture have value or they don’t. We have increasingly seen over the years the cultural budget line being embattled. While we’re very clear this budget will demand sacrifice across the board, we feel this is disproportionate. Q. It seems that what you call “the creative sector’’ could do a better job explaining itself. A. The cultural sector is a critical part of the national economy with big impact nationwide. The non-profit arts sector represents the equivalent of 5.7 million full-time jobs, including many in a range of related industries traditionally not thought of as part of the arts world. That’s $166.2 billion annually in economic activity and more than $12.5 billion in federal income taxes. This isn’t a niche market developed around earmarks. These are mainstream American jobs. It’s not that it’s just artists. It’s the skills that go into every sector. IBM recently put out a report that asked what does the business world really value in leadership? Creativity, innovation, imagination. Q. Let’s say you’ve paid $20 to go to a concert or play on March 10. Are you worried some people might get upset if that experience is interrupted? A. I’m sure it could make some people angry. But I do think it’s very important to be exposed to the idea that art goes away. We in this culture, we have a lot. But we don’t have the experience of taking away. If people are upset about it, that might be the best thing. I was inspired by what came out of Egypt. America knew at one point how to take to the streets. Perhaps we are at that point again. Interview was condensed and edited. Ethan Gilsdorf can be reached at www.ethangilsdorf.com.