President Obama and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on Ending Rape in the Military

“Never forget that honor, like character, is what you do when nobody is looking.”

For all its life-wisdom and creative inspiration, commencement season could use an adjustment of the reality radar and address some of our time’s most uncomfortable yet pressing issues in those speeches designed to send graduating seniors off into the real world they are about to reshape. Though integrity is a common theme in such messages — curiously, especially in decades-old ones like those by Richard Feynman and Bill Watterson — integrity’s most gruesome failures are rarely discussed. But that’s precisely what President Obama, who is no stranger to inspirational graduation speeches, did in his 2013 U.S. Naval Academy commencement address when he brought into the limelight the devastating epidemic of rape in the military — a military in which 26,000 sexual assaults were reported last year, a female soldier in a combat zone is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire, and those who have the power to change things fail to do so; a military whose willingness to curtail such dehumanizing violence has not evolved but dramatically devolved since the Civil War.

Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime — they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong. That’s why we have to be determined to stop these crimes, because they have no place in the greatest military on earth. So, class of 2013, I say all this because you are about to assume the burden of leadership. … And those of us in leadership, myself included, have to constantly strive to remain worthy of the public trust. As you carry forth … we need your honor — that inner compass that guides you not when the path is easy and obvious, but when it’s hard and uncertain; that tells you the difference between that which is right and that which is wrong. Perhaps it’ll be the moment when you think nobody is watching — but never forget that honor, like character, is what you do when nobody is looking.

(Nearly half a century ago, Joan Didion wrote, “Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”)

Graduates toss hats in the air at conclusion of U.S. Naval Academy commencement at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland, May 24, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

A mere day later, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel took the podium at West Point and echoed President Obama in addressing the 215th graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy:

You will need to not just deal with these debilitating, insidious, and destructive forces but, rather, you must be the generation of leaders that stop it. This will require a commitment to building a culture of respect and dignity for every member of the military and society. Sexual harassment and sexual assault in the military are a profound betrayal of sacred oaths and sacred trust. This scourge must be stamped out. We’re all accountable and responsible for ensuring that this happens. … These crimes have no place — NO PLACE — in the greatest military on earth.

But more than a decade before Obama and Hagel, long before the full devastating scale of the problem was known, Terri Spahr Nelson — a decorated United States Army veteran and psychotherapist specializing in sexual trauma recovery — writes in For Love of Country: Confronting Rape and Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military, a series of stirring interviews with assault survivors:

We can and should learn from the insight of those who experienced sexual assault and sexual harassment by military personnel. Maybe then we will fully learn what needs to be done to improve the military’s response to the victims, to the offenders, and to this issue. We might also learn how to put a stop to this cycle of abuse. As one veteran and rape victim asked, “Hasn’t this gone on long enough?”

Indeed, it has gone on long enough. This enduring problem has cost lives and careers. We cannot afford to lose another life at the hands of continued indifference or power failure. These stories need to be told not to degrade the military, but as a step toward addressing the problem and restoring honor and integrity within the Armed Forces. After all, there is no honor without truth.

She cites a nineteen-year-old female soldier raped while on active duty:

I was prepared to be a prisoner of war or worse for my country. I wasn’t prepared to have my superiors and comrades sexually abuse me. I must admit that a chaplain I told my story to in 1996 said something I had not realized. He said, “Your comrades were your enemy and you were in a combat zone.”

Nelson adds:

Sexual assault and harassment are deeply rooted in today’s armed forces. The problem is further complicated by a system that has been unable or unwilling to effectively address this issue over the years. Far too many military leaders have turned their heads to the ongoing abuses and far too many victims have been further harmed by a culture that perpetuates and minimizes the abuse. These types of response represent a breakdown of values, a disconnection from the military’s true mission, and a loss of honor for those involved.

So, why now? How come this deeply rooted malady is only reaching critical cultural awareness and eliciting a call of action, from the President no less, now? It is, no doubt, in large part thanks to the remarkable film The Invisible War (watch online), which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and which exposed, with heartbreaking humanity, the military’s most disgraceful cover-up as a problem that isn’t just a military problem:

The film has sprouted the sister nonprofit Not Invisible, which empowers all of us to take action and demand, at last, change. You can join me in donating to the Not Invisible Coalition here.

Thanks, Sue

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Italo Calvino on Abortion and the Meaning of Life

“A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people.”

“In the current abortion debate, there is no talk of children. … They never talk about nineteen-year-old fetuses,” lamented SNL’s Nora Dunn in a recent anthology of women writers and entertainers on the choice not to have children. But this sensitive subject was addressed even more eloquently and timelessly by beloved Italian writer, cultural critic, and literary jukeboxer Italo Calvino nearly three decades earlier, just as the second wave of feminism was gathering momentum. In a letter to Professor Claudio Magris from early February of 1975, found in the altogether fantastic newly released tome Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985 (public library), Calvino responds in outrage to Magris’s pro-life article titled “The Deluded,” published in Italy’s premier newspaper, Corriere della sera, on February 3 that year. With a broader meditation on the meaning of life, Calvino makes a passionate yet crisply lucid case for abortion as respect rather than disrespect for life:

Bringing a child into the world makes sense only if this child is wanted consciously and freely by its two parents. If it is not, then it is simply animal and criminal behavior. A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people. If this is not the case, then humanity becomes — as it is already to a large extent — no more than a rabbit-warren. But this is no longer a “free-range” warren but a “battery” one, in the conditions of artificiality in which it lives, with artificial light and chemical feed.

Only those people … who are a hundred percent convinced that they possess the moral and physical possibility not only of rearing a child but of welcoming it as a welcome and beloved presence, have the right to procreate. If this is not the case, they must first of all do everything not to conceive, and if they do conceive (given that the margin for unpredictability continues to be high) abortion is not only a sad necessity, but a highly moral decision to be taken with full freedom of conscience. I do not understand how you can associate abortion with an idea of hedonism or the good life. Abortion is a terrifying thing…

In abortion the person who is massacred, physically and morally, is the woman. Also for any man with a conscience every abortion is a moral ordeal that leaves a mark, but certainly here the fate of the woman is in such a disproportionate condition of unfairness compared with the man’s, that every male should bite his tongue three times before speaking about such things. Just at the moment when we are trying to make less barbarous a situation which for the woman is truly terrifying, an intellectual uses his authority so that women have to stay in this hell. Let me tell you, you are really irresponsible, to say the least. I would not mock the “hygienic-prophylactic measures” so much; certainly you will never have to undergo a scraping of your womb. But I’d like to see your face if they forced you to have an operation in the filth and without any recourse to hospitals under pain of imprisonment.

Calvino ends the letter by making his convictions actionably clear:

I am sorry that such a radical divergence of opinion on these basic ethical questions has interrupted our friendship.

Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985 is indispensable in its entirety, a treasure trove of timeless insight on literature and life.

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Coffee, It’s a Man’s Drink: Esquire’s Vintage Rules for Brewing the Perfect Cup

“No aspect of your cooking skill will bring you greater or more lasting pleasure than the ability to prepare the drink that stimulates wit and digestion.”

We’ve seen how coffee changed the world, inspired Bach cantatas, became 20th-century art, and came to dominate many writers’ daily routines. But how, exactly, does one brew the perfect cup? After George Orwell’s 11 golden rules for the perfect cup of tea, it’s time for a vintage guide to coffee bliss. From a section titled “Coffee: The Cup That Cheers” in Esquire’s Handbook for Hosts: A Time-Honored Guide to the Perfect Party (public library) — the same 1949 time-capsule of the era’s gender stereotypes that gave us this amusingly appalling questionnaire to determine your attractiveness to the opposite sex — comes Esquire’s guide to the art of coffee. The magazine, of course being in the business of selling men their masculinity and assuaging their gender-role dissonance over mastering the domestic sphere of cooking and entertaining, makes no apologies for depicting this as a decidedly man’s art. Imbibe and chuckle.

When coffee was introduced in Europe in the 16th century, people thought that it rendered women frigid and even barren; a law was promptly passed in Constantinople giving husbands the right to prevent the use of coffee by their wives. Maybe that’s why the average woman, to this day, can’t make a good cup of coffee. It must be that, basically, coffee is a man’s drink. When subjected to the economies of drugstore waitresses or the casual inattention of wives, the cup that cheers but does not inebriate is apt to become a mean, thin liquid with almost unlimited capacities for discouraging real coffee lovers.

So know ye this: no aspect of your cooking skill will bring you greater or more lasting pleasure than the ability to prepare the drink that stimulates wit and digestion. Coffee splices all loose ends, greets the cheese gladly, and spreads a mantle of aromatic warmth.

Here are some of the basic rules for making it properly:

1. Use only freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee.
2. Start with cold, fresh water — and if it is to be poured over the coffee when boiling be sure to pour it as soon as it boils, lest the oxygen be dispelled and the water be made tasteless by long boiling.
3. Make sure your equipment is spotlessly clean.
4. Always measure ingredients carefully and time the brewing-period exactly — so you can be sure to duplicate your method time after time once you have settled on the proper combination of water, coffee and time.

Beyond that, your own taste is boss.

The guide then outlines four types of coffee to play with preparing:

Using one of the following systems, experiment until you’ve reached coffee of the proper strength to match your memory of the best cup of coffee you ever sipped. The proportion usually recommended is 1 tablespoon of coffee to each cup of water, with an extra tablespoon of coffee “for the pot.” With men who ken coffee, 2 tablespoons to 1 cup is a more favored strength. And some, to avoid long perking or simmering and the consequent bitter taste, use even a greater proportion of coffee. But there’s as much variation in the strength of different coffee blends as there is in the tastes of coffee-drinkers, so suit yourself.

DRIP COFFEE
Coffee is put into the top part of the drip coffeemaker. Water is brought to a boil separately, then poured over the coffee — to drip through to the bottom part of the coffeemaker. Some fanatics insist that the water be poured over the coffee a mere spoonful at a time; others run the water through the coffee 2 or 3 times for added strength. The only certain rules are: preheat the coffee pot with hot water; use drip-grind coffee; stand pot in a warm place so coffee won’t cool during the drip process.

GLASSMAKER COFFEE
Water is put into the lower bowl, upper bowl is fitted in, complete with filter or rod, then coffee is placed in the upper bowl. When water is hot, it rises through the tube into the upper bowl. Then as soon as stream comes up through the tube and agitates the mixture, the fire is turned off. Gradually, then, the coffee filters into the lower bowl — from which you serve it. Or — you may prefer to allow the coffee to simmer in the upper bowl for 2 to 5 minutes, for a stronger brew. Or — you may put only an inch or so of the water in the lower bowl (enough to create a vacuum when it boils) and heat the remainder of the required water separately, to be poured over the coffee grounds as for drip coffee. In any case, pulverized coffee is used.

OLD FASHIONED COFFEE POT
For this method, favored of our forebears, coffee should be coarsely ground. Dry coffee goes into the pot (or ordinary saucepan) first, then cold water. Bring to a boil, simmer 5-8 minutes, then take it off the stove. A dash of cold water will settle the grounds — or an eggshell thrown into the brew at the outset will have the same effect. Even so, you need a strainer for pouring.

PERCOLATOR COFFEE
Use same proportions as for pot coffee, but use medium-ground coffee — halfway between drip grind and pot grind. Coffee goes into the basket in the percolator, water into the pot; then the water “perks” through the coffee until it is the strength you like: about 8 minutes. With a glass percolator, you can see how you’re doing throughout the process; others have a glass piece on top so you can get a glimpse of the brew as it perks.

Whatever the method used, coffee is best when freshly made. ONce you’ve got your own coffeemaking timed, you’ll know just when to fade from your dinner table in order to have fresh coffee ready by dessert-time or maybe you’ll latch onto an electric coffeemaker that can do its fragrant work right at the table. Ben Jonson said, “as he brews, so shall he drink.” Good drinking!

Esquire’s Handbook for Hosts: A Time-Honored Guide to the Perfect Party goes on to offer a toolkit for entertaining spanning from the fine points of sauces to the art of conversation to after-dinner dirty tricks.

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Arianna Huffington on Redefining Success: 2013 Smith College Commencement Address

“Money and power by themselves are a two-legged stool — you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you’re going to topple over.”

At the zenith of commencement season and its treasure trove of timeless advice — including Debbie Millman on courage and the creative life, Greil Marcus on “high” and “low” culture, Neil Gaiman on making good art, and Bill Watterson on creative integrity — Arianna Huffington shares her wisdom with the young women of the 2013 Smith College graduating class, expounding on the message of her 2007 semi-memoir, On Becoming Fearless…in Love, Work, and Life (public library). Like some of history’s most memorable commencement addresses, the import at the heart of hers calls for redefining our notion of success by doing away with the treacherous idols of money and power, and instead focusing on the three W’s — well-being, wonder, and wisdom — with an eye toward the next wave of feminism. Transcript highlights and discussion below.

At the center of her argument is a call to challenge our fetishism of money and instead focus on meaning:

Commencement speakers are traditionally expected to tell graduates how to go out there and climb the ladder of success, but I want to ask you, instead, to redefine success.

[…]

At the moment, our society’s notion of success is largely composed of two parts: money and power. In fact, success, money and power have practically become synonymous.

But it’s time for a third metric, beyond money and power — one founded on well-being, wisdom, our ability to wonder, and to give back. Money and power by themselves are a two-legged stool — you can balance on them for a while, but eventually you’re going to topple over. And more and more people, very successful people, are toppling over. Basically, success the way we’ve defined it is no longer sustainable. It’s no longer sustainable for human beings or for societies. To live the lives we want, and not just the ones we settle for, the ones society defines as successful, we need to include the third metric.

Irreverently riffing off 1954 Smith graduation speaker Alistair Cooke’s notorious counsel that women’s way to the top would be determined by whom they marry, Huffington advises graduates to “sleep their way to the top” — in the literal sense. Like another wise woman, who knows that sleep is “the greatest creative aphrodisiac,” Huffington emphasizes how profoundly sleep impacts your every waking moment, from your creativity to your mood to your risk of obesity, smoking, and heart disease:

In 2007, sleep deprived and exhausted, I fainted, hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone and got four stitches on my right eye. And even as it’s affecting our health, sleep deprivation will also profoundly affect your creativity, your productivity, and your decision-making. The Exxon Valdez wreck, the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle, and the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island — all were at least partially the result of decisions made on too little sleep.

[…]

We have to change workplace culture so that it’s walking around drained and exhausted that’s stigmatized. … What adding well-being to our definition of success means is that, in addition to looking after our financial capital, we need to do everything we can to protect and nurture our human capital.

Huffington goes on to note that the Huffington Post newsroom, like in Thomas Edison’s lab and library, is equipped with nap rooms to boost productivity. Echoing Bertrand Russell’s timeless meditation on education and the good life, in which he rhetorically asked, “What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them?,” she points to the essential gift of which the money-mill robs us:

The problem is that as long as success is defined by just money and power, climbing and burnout, we are never going to be able to enjoy that other aspect of the third metric: wonder.

I was blessed with a mother who was in a constant state of wonder. Whether she was washing dishes or feeding seagulls at the beach or reprimanding overworking businessmen, she maintained her sense of wonder, delighted at both the mysteries of the universe and the everyday little things that fill our lives.

Huffington adds to other cultural icons’ collected wisdom on the meaning of life:

I’m convinced about two fundamental truths about human beings. The first truth is that we all have within us a centered place of wisdom, harmony, and strength. This is a truth that all the world’s religions — whether Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or Buddhism — and many of its philosophies, hold true in one form or another. . . . The second truth is that we’re all going to veer away from that place again and again and again. That’s the nature of life. In fact, we may be off-course more often than we are on-course. . . . When we’re in that centered place of wisdom, harmony and strength, life is transformed from struggle to grace and we are suddenly filled with trust — no matter the obstacles, challenges and disappointments. Because there is a purpose to our lives, even if it is sometimes hidden from us, and even if the biggest turning points and heartbreaks only make sense as we look back, not as we are experiencing them. So we might as well live life as if, as the poet Rumi put it, “Everything is rigged in our favor.”

She concludes by asking this next generation of reconstructionists to conceive of a new way to think about success, particularly in the context of the question of how to be a woman in the world today, by seeking greater access to ourselves first and foremost, rather than greater access to power and its proxies:

So please don’t settle for just breaking through glass ceilings in a broken corporate system or in a broken political system, where so many leaders are so disconnected from their own wisdom that we are careening from one self-inflicted crisis to another. Change much more than the M to a W at the top of the corporate flowchart. Change it by going to the root of what’s wrong and redefining what we value and what we consider success.

And remember that while there will be plenty of signposts along your path directing you to make money and climb up the ladder, there will be almost no signposts reminding you to stay connected to the essence of who you are, to take care of yourself along the way, to reach out to others, to pause to wonder, and to connect to that place from which everything is possible. “Give me a place to stand,” my Greek compatriot Archimedes said, “and I will move the world.”

So find your place to stand — your place of wisdom and peace and strength. And from that place, lead the third women’s revolution and remake the world in your own image, according to your own definition of success, so that all of us — women and men — can live our lives with more grace, more joy, more empathy, more gratitude and, yes, more love.

Pair with Huffington’s On Becoming Fearless…in Love, Work, and Life, then complement with other fantastic commencement addresses by Bill Watterson, Debbie Millman, Neil Gaiman, Greil Marcus, David Foster Wallace, Jacqueline Novogratz, Ellen DeGeneres, Aaron Sorkin, Barack Obama, Ray Bradbury, J. K. Rowling, Steve Jobs, Robert Krulwich, Meryl Streep, and Jeff Bezos.

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