Enter, curiously, Orson Scott Card. I have long celebrated science-fiction as a medium for re-presenting real, present problems in an unfamiliar context (a thought recently echoed on NPR in an interview that I cannot seem to find). Card made a name for himself upon publishing the phenomenally successful Ender’s Game, the story of a genius child who is selected to attend the prestigious “Battle School” and, ultimately, to lead a team of other children into battle against the Earth’s alien invaders. After spinning Ender’s Game out into a quartet of novels, the latter three of which follow the details of Ender’s life in space thousands of years after the battle is over, Card produced another quartet —the Ender’s Shadow quartet— which follows the life of Bean, one of the graduates of Ender’s army, on Earth in the years immediately following Ender’s victory.²

As blurbs on back covers would have it, the three latter books in the Bean quartet tell the story of the ascent of Peter, Ender’s brother, as the “Hegemon” who will unite a fractured world populated by battle-trained genius children. Bean comes to his aid, along with a number of other Battle School graduates, by taking command of Peter’s army. Together these characters work to eliminate those who profit from the uncertainty that threatens to splinter the nations of the world into warring factions, to take on those who would unseat Peter as Hegemon (or nullify his influence), to predict what will happen as events unfold, and to do their best to steer and alter the course of world events. And this, essentially, is what the books are about.

That and, you know, sex.

But wait! Not the kind of hot, steamy, consequence-free sex we have come to expect from books that labor under the (often unfortunate) epithet “fantasy/sci-fi.” Indeed, at bottom, the latter three books of the Ender’s Shadow quartet detail the shockingly prosaic story of two people trying, despite all odds, to have babies.

Granted, these people are geniuses who spent their childhoods playing war games in a desperate attempt to save the Earth from alien invasion, only to return to the Earth they saved and spend their adolescence trying to avoid being drafted or forced into military service at the behest of whatever country claims to be their “home.” Granted also, the human-engineered genetic illness that they are laboring to eliminate causes Bean to grow disproportionately quickly, acquire disproportionate intelligence at a disproportionately young age, and die disproportionately early. Granted, finally, that of the ten viable blastocysts created by Bean’s mad scientist endocrinologist and embryologist are stolen by an evil genius trying to take over the world.

But let’s back up for a moment, because the story that underlies these extraordinary circumstances is profoundly ordinary. Upon returning to Earth, Bean is convinced, against his better judgment, to reconsider his decision not to have children. What he does not reconsider —and what most poignantly parallels the situation I am familiar with— is his unwillingness to pass his genetic condition on to his progeny. In order to have his way, he enlists a battery of medical techniques that seem like science-fiction, but which (I assure you) are very real. They all fall under the umbrella of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), but we prefer to call it, affectionately, “having babies the hard way.” First, Bean and Petra must find a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility (REI) specialist who can harvest a number of Petra’s eggs. The is the first step of the more well-known process of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Because they are not dealing with infertility, but rather are trying to screen out a genetic condition, each egg must be fertilized with a single sperm injected directly inside its cellular wall. Genetic screening is a precise science, and one cannot run the risk that another, less successful sperm cell gets accidentally tested and throws off the results. This process of direct injection is called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Some three days after fertilization, allowing enough time for the blastocysts to divide up to three or four times (for a total of 8 or 16 cells), one cell is carefully extracted, and run through any requisite genetic testing, a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) or pre-implantation genetic screening (PGS). Statistically speaking, 50% of the fertilized eggs will carry the genetic condition and will be discarded. The remaining few will either be injected into the would-be mother’s uterus, or frozen for potential future use. After all that, the chances that the egg will implant and be carried to term are approximately 30%.³

Bean and Petra have literary necessity and science-fiction on their side. Upon realizing that their REI doctor is in fact an evil madman, they escape with all 10 fertilized eggs, but no idea which ones carry the genetic condition and which don’t. Petra, nonplussed, has one injected into her before the remaining nine are kidnapped and injected into other women. Miraculously, all ten implant and are carried to term.⁴ The remainder of the quartet, on some level, is about Bean and Petra struggling to recover their nine missing children, determine which ones carry the genetic mutation, and figure how to keep them alive until a cure can be manufactured.

Broken people saving a broken world, trying to keep each other whole. We should all be so lucky.

Footnotes

1. Forget about all the other terrifying conditions that one isn’t testing for. ↩
2. The first book of the quartet, Ender’s Shadow, is a brilliant narration of Ender’s Game as it unfolds from the perspective of Bean. ↩
3. Realistically, the process of viable egg attrition is much harsher. Many extracted eggs will not be mature enough to fertilize. A certain percentage of the remaining fertilized eggs will not survive to day 3. Of those that do, some will not survive the cell extraction process. Of those that do, some will not survive the extra 1-2 days it takes to perform the tests. Most couples are lucky to be left with a mere one or two viable, healthy fertilized eggs by the time the process is over. ↩
4. Parenthetically, Petra never considered one other procedure that could have alerted her as to whether the fetus she carried was affected by Bean’s genetic condition. The procedure, called chorionic villus sampling (CVS), involves extracting a cell from the placenta after 11-12 weeks of gestation. Since the DNA of the placenta are genetically identical to the DNA of the fetus, this allows one to test for genetic irregularities while posing minimal risk to the fetus. ↩

One month ago today, I married the girl of my dreams.

Despite a little bit of rain, the weekend came off spectacularly. None of the preparations went awry at the last minute (at least, none that didn’t fall under the heading “Acts of god”). Favors were made. Vows were written (and rewritten). Tables were assigned (and reassigned). The Van Dyck proved, as we hoped it would, to be a lovely space for an indoor-or-outdoor wedding. Rabbi Matt Cutler of Congregation Gates of Heaven said many beautiful things, and truly made the ceremony a spectacular event. Tears were shed. We served delicious food, what we’re told was the best wedding cake people had ever had (Bravo, Villa Italia!), and everyone seemed to have a delightful afternoon. By the end of the day, we were married. All told, a very successful wedding.

But, in the charming words of my beloved wife, all of this “wow” would have been merely “w–” without the extraordinary talent and dedication of Mr. Collin Morgan, who graciously agreed to do all of the design work we required for our book-themed wedding, and inventively realized most of our design ideas beyond anything we imagined. We were also fortunate enough to be blessed with the creations of an assortment of other artists, whose works are also included in this post. All the artifacts pictured below are entirely of Collin’s design, except where otherwise noted. All photos are hosted in high-resolution on Flickr. All rights to the photos belong to the photographer as noted in the photo description; all rights to stationery designs belong to Collin Morgan.

Save the Dates

The idea for our save-the-dates —one of few design ideas that was not book-themed— was L’s. The photo was taken by her brother A with a Nikon D60, and subsequently edited by Collin. Trust us, our hands do not look this lovely.

Invitations

Our invitations came in five parts. The invitation itself is an old-school book slip. Guest’s names were hand-written under “Borrower.” The date of the wedding —June 6 2010— was listed as the call number to avoid any confusion about response card due dates.

Response Cards

The response card was, of course, a library card application. The “Clayman Matthews Library” logo in the upper left hand corner makes several other appearances throughout this collection of wedding paraphernalia. Each guest was assigned a unique number in the patron ID field, just in case any cards were sent back nameless. Several couples/families objected to the “I”, and obligingly crossed it out and wrote “We” instead.

Information cards

To remind people of the existence of our wedding web site, we included an information card in the form of a card-catalog entry with some important information. We manually punched a hole in each of these for authenticity. Note the finely-realized water stains in the background!

Barbecue invitations

Finally, we asked Collin to create an invitation to the barbecue we held the day before our wedding. Our specifications included only light text on a dark blue background for a 5×7 card. Hours later, it became clear what was taking so long, for this is what Collin delivered. And this is why we love him. We were delighted that this invitation to a casual barbecue was far fancier and more elegant than the invitation to the wedding itself. We reused this design for our guest book, below.

Central Park maps

L, intrepid mapmaker that she is, drew this map to help people find the pavilion in Schenectady’s Central Park, where the barbecue was held. Note that this map is decidedly not to scale.

Escort Cards

Once it was revealed that L’s mother had an old card catalog drawer tucked away somewhere (to store her old cassette tapes), and her father revealed his portable typewriter, this was an obvious choice. Turns out it’s pretty hard to find anyone who can do typewriter repairs these days, but we managed to find a place not far from Providence. We picked up the repaired typewriter on our way to Schenectady, and L finished typing these up less than 24 hours before the ceremony, with help from her brother’s girlfriends. What you can’t see is that each card is typed up individually with the guest’s name and table assignment.

Guest Book

A guest book is, of course, already a book. But a book about books seemed fitting. Among the awards garnered, one finds “Best Book of the Millennium”, “Best wedding ever!”, “Pulitzer Prize”, “Nobel Prize”, and “Academy Award”, not to mention first edition copies of books such as Yaaaa buddy!!! and Observations of Permanent Human Mating.

Not wanting to impose on Collin’s good graces any more than we already had, we reused the barbecue invitation design to invite people to sign.

Card Drop Box

L’s mother contributed this idea. These hollowed-out books were a fortuitous find; our work was limited to carving a card-sized hole in the top, and finding the “A” and “Z” bookends to hold them up. We put our pens inside mugs labeled “K” and “L,” not pictured here.

Program

The length of this program speaks, I think, for itself. L and I put a tremendous amount of work into writing and formatting the text. The book jacket design is based on an early invitation design mock-up Collin had done for us. This seemed like the perfect manner to put his valuable work to good use. The text of the jacket (and any typos) were supplied by us. Collin realized this design in about 4 days, and we managed to finish affixing the book jackets to the programs the day before the wedding.

Rings

We always planned for the rings to be delivered in a hollowed-out book. Initially, we considered using The Princess Bride or Through the Looking Glass and carving the pages out ourselves. L’s mother’s hollowed-out books worked even better. L superglued ribbon inside to secure the rings, though not before supergluing the ribbon to her fingers first. Luckily, this was our only wedding-related injury.

Favors

Easily the most frequently brought up wedding-related conversation, and most frequently changed wedding-related idea. Of course we ultimately decided on books. The notebooks are from Moleskin, and the names stamped on by hand. The first page of each booklet is embossed with the official seal of the Clayman Matthews Library.

Ketubah

This beautiful ketubah —the Jewish marriage license— was painted for us by L’s aunt Claire. It features two intertwining trees as pictured in all four seasons. It is both gorgeous and meaningful, and L and I couldn’t be more excited about how it turned out! The text in the center, in Hebrew and English, contains legal (i.e. halachic) information about the marriage, as well as some of our promises to each other.

Huppah

Our huppah was created in part by each and every member of our immediate families. Each family member received a square and instructions to decorate it however they pleased. L’s mother and grandmother quilted the squares together to create the canopy. Like the ketubah, we are absolutely thrilled to hang such a beautiful, tangible work of art and reminder of our wedding in the new home we’re creating.

Beginning from the top left, the squares were created by my mother, my brother Scott, L’s brother Ben, L’s grandparents, L (in memory of her paternal grandparents), my grandmother, L’s father, L and me, L’s mother, my father and his wife, my brother Brian, my sister Morgan, L’s brother Andrew, my sister Shannon, and my maternal grandparents.

Thank You Cards

Like our Save-the-Dates, but with the appropriate alterations.

In conclusion…

Many many thanks to Collin, Claire, and our families for their endless patience, and the tremendous work they did for us. We owe them cookies, beer, and eternal gratitude.

If you’ve happened on this post and are in the midst of planning your own wedding, we wish only to leave you with these words: Remember that the details make it special, because they’re yours, but the most important thing is that they be a source of fun, not stress. If any of these images or designs spark your creativity, we are delighted to have helped. If you wish to use any of the images pictured here wholesale, please do, but remember to give credit where credit is due (i.e., mostly to Collin; a note on Flickr and short line in a wedding program will suffice).

More wedding photos will be arriving soon on Flickr! Check back soon! Did you take pictures at our wedding that you would like included on Flickr? Drop me a line!

(And a final parenthetical about Diana and Scott: We jest, of course, and mean no disrespect. In fact, we adore what they did, and were quite inspired by some of their design ideas and decisions, as you can plainly see if you glance at their images.)

Does society need a mandatory time-out? We have weekends and vacations, sure, but even those are increasingly bent toward structured pursuits. Our leisure is often as scheduled and hectic as our work—and is, consequently, just as stressful. Sabbath, with its myriad proscriptions, offers what might be the only authentic form of leisure: the act and fulfillment of doing absolutely nothing productive. If that sounds like modern-day blasphemy, it’s because it is.

—Menachem Kaiser, The Case for the Sabbath, Even if You’re Not Religious”

I am drawn to this notion for a number of reasons, not just thanks to my recent conversion to Judaism. To be sure, Sabbath observance, lax though it may be in our household (thanks in part to an imminent wedding), is also a mainstay of our observance. Gathering together to light candles, drink wine, and eat challah was the first tradition we incorporated into our weekly lives even before I began the official process of conversion. It has become not just a regularly-occuring period to put work aside and let the brain relax, work through, and return with renewed vigor, but a ready-made reason to spend time together, to be casually (if ceremonially) among friends we respect, and to dedicate quality time to extracurricular projects that are important to us.

I am inclined to agree with Rachel, who told me once that she located religion’s importance in the way it structures life, makes it cyclical, provides spaces and rituals to manage certain inevitabilities. I get the sense that she was speaking of yearly cycles as well as life cycles. Religions help people understand and deal with “blessings” and “catastrophes,” mainly the latter: death, loss, bereavement. Sabbath observance, taking time out for its own sake, seems much less consequential, but is potentially a great deal more gratifying, and not just thanks to its frequency or its spiritual foundation. Indeed, most of the rituals religions provide can be made meaningful regardless of the observer’s belief in a god or gods; the question of the connection between meaning and belief at the heart of The Atlantic‘s article is, I think, quite subordinate to the importance of structuring in unstructured time.

I will note in conclusion and in passing how curious I find it that Sabbath observance, at least in modern American culture, has come to refer specifically to Jewish observance of Shabbat. The article I quoted above was written by a reformed Orthodox Jew, and is ostensibly a review of two books by a secular Jewish author. No one asks Christian politicians —or atheist politicians, as though there were such a thing!— if Sabbath prohibitions will affect their capacity to respond to catastrophes on Sundays, but the first question on everyone’s lips when Joe Lieberman became a vice-presidential candidate was whether he would be able to work on Saturdays.¹ And I suspect that the loss of widespread Sunday Christian Sabbath observance (now largely spatially and temporally confined to church services expected to end by noon) and its status as a de facto secular Sabbath, is at least part of the reason for publishing an article like this one.

Footnotes

1. The irony is of course that Judaism provides numerous built-in contingencies for which it is acceptable to break Sabbath laws, particularly in cases where human lives are involved. ↩

A little meme I picked up from Rachel yesterday. I’ve had this post ready since yesterday (because I love to talk about music), but am only posting it now because YOU CAN LOSE A LOT OF POTENTIALLY OTHERWISE MORE PRODUCTIVE TIME LISTENING TO EVERYTHING ON THIS LIST. Be careful. You’ve been warned.

I have complex systems for randomizing my music and making sure I don’t listen to the same albums over and over again (not inherently bad, but I have 35-and-a-half days of music in iTunes, and I start to feel guilty), so here is a selection of the last 10 albums I’ve listened to on purpose. As Rachel said, this is in no way complete or necessarily “top”. The artists in parentheses are the artists on the recordings I have, not the artists you’ll see in the linked videos.

• Lonely Runs Both Ways (If I Didn’t Know Any Better) and New Favorite (New Favorite) by Alison Krauss & Union Station. Seriously lovely bluegrass, though they haven’t done videos of my favorites: “Borderline” and “Crazy Faith” (heh). Along with some others, this groups tends to top my play count when it comes to popular music.
• The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky (Seiji Ozawa with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) (Ritual of the Ancients). I’m sure there are better recordings (and I’d love to know what they are). Many of the students in my Spanish class didn’t know what La consagración de la primavera was, so I played this (album, not video) during class a few days ago.
• Bajofondo Tango Club (video). I love concert-hall tango. I love fusion. I love electronic concert-hall tango fusion. I could easily replace this with anything by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (Outbound) is a few albums down, as a matter of fact). In summary, fusion makes me drool.
• Don Juan by Richard Strauss (Herbert von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic). Strauss is up there with Mahler as one of the culminating points of the German Romantic orchestral tradition. Also sprach Zarathustra is a few albums down. Salomé and Don Quixote belong on this list as well, not to mention Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks) 1 2.
• Daphnis et Chloé by Maurice Ravel (Sir Simon Rattle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra). Oh god, the harmonies!
• Symphony No. 3 in Eb, ‘Eroica’ by Ludwig van Beethoven (Leonard Bernstein with the Berlin Philharmonic) 1 2. Probably the most adventurous symphony ever written, for its time, and easily my favorite Beethoven symphony. The first movement is glorious. Hemiola galore, serious metric instability, the famous Db/C# in the primary theme, bold chromatic shifting. The transition to the E minor section in the development (Neapolitan minor!) from D minor (minor leading tone!) is PERFECTLY EXECUTED. Stepwise bass line (D C B A# A G A B E), and some *very* unexpected harmonies for 1804 (FMM to B b9?). The resolution to E minor has to be the most perfect resolution in the history of Western music. Edit: Apparently the videos I originally linked to were Karajan’s arrangements of Beethoven symphonies, a practice I find “mildly offensive,” despite having been done by illustrious composers and conductors throughout history. This is what happens when you link to things without watching them. I may link to new recordings when I get the chance.
• Violin Concerto in d by Sibelius (Maxim Vengerov, violin with Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) I II III. I saw nearly this exact setup live (different violinist, I believe) on my first trip to Chicago, the first time I ever heard the Sibelius Violin Concerto. The first chord in the orchestra is wondrous. Tchaikovsky’s own Violin Concerto in D (Ia Ib. II III) also belongs on this list. The whole first movement makes me hot.
• Mass in B Minor by Bach (Robert Shaw with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra). Need I say more (except that the Atlanta SO is one of the most underrated orchestras in America)?
• Don Giovanni (Mozart) and Tosca (Puccini) both show up, but I would prefer they were Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro or Die Zauberflöte and Turandot or La Bohème. But what can you do?
• My Spanish Heart by Chick Corea. I can’t decide if I like Native Sense (with Gary Burton) better. But Chick Corea definitely rocks my jazz world (like a hurricane).

I honestly cannot believe Mahler doesn’t appear on this list anywhere. It may be for the best, as he tends to dominate my musical world. The fifth (Yoel Levi with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra), the second, fourth, and sixth (Sir Georg Solti, Chicago Symphony Orchestra), the ninth (Leonard Bernstein, Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam), or the tenth (Sir Simon Rattle, Berlin Philharmonic). Yes, please. Rachmaninoff also tends to dominate: the All Night Vigil, the Preludes, the Piano Concerti 2 & 3 (though I tend to be more a fan of the first and third movements than the very famous second movements), and of course the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (wow) 1 2 3.

This list does reflect very well the predominance of classical music in my life and listening schedule. Of the roughly two days of music I listen to in any given seven-day period (a number which excludes podcasts and anything else I delete once I’ve listened to it), generally over 90% of it is classical¹.

I would love to see Collin do this one.

Footnotes

1. There is a decent chance this is somewhat skewed, since I tend to listen to the *same* popular music (and jazz albums) over and over again, and iTunes reasonably only counts the *last* time I listened to any given song. So, the count is probably well over 2 days of music, with a significantly higher percentage of popular music and jazz. ↩