Kerry Donovan of http://donovanmediastrategies.com rapidly and very professionally prepared the folowing three-minute video for us about my writing Ting and I: A Memoir of Love, Courage, and Devotion:
http://tinyurl.com/4yag4oc
We thank him for his generous contribution of his time and skills. The Orange County (NY) Chamber of Commerce was instrumental in connecting us.
My mother really liked this, and so did my wife and my sister. So did I, in fact.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Monday, October 3, 2011
MY FRESHMAN YEAR AT CORNELL, 1960–61
from Ting and I: A Memoir
.... Cornell accepted me, and I received a full-tuition scholarship, based on my very high score in the NYS Regents Scholarship Exam. Cornell it would be. The classy Ivy League, I hoped. Not quite, as I will explain.
In September 1960, after a summer as head counselor at a small local summer camp, and a very pleasant romance with Rhoda, my co-counselor, I entered Cornell.
I love to joke. One person described me as a child as being “ebullient.” My motto is from Horace Walpole, “The world is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.” Mostly, I find life funny. My first year at Cornell was anything but funny.
When I first arrived at 5406 University Halls (building #5, 4th floor, room 06), my roommate had preceded me. Jerry was stereotypical New York City, regardless of where he actually came from. He was NYC in speech, manner, dress. In his closet were a dozen, perhaps even two dozen suits. I had, at most, one. There was an income/wealth disparity.
For many of the students, including me, Cornell had not been their first choice. They may not have respected it the way those would who had aspired to go there. They were noisy, especially at night, often crude. I was disillusioned, depressed, sometimes angry. My fight record that year was two wins, no losses, against bigger opponents, as usual.
To cover living expenses I worked cleaning tables and washing dishes eight to twelve hours a week at Willard Straight Dining Hall. Boring and definitely not classy. Kind of thing to build character or at least a great familiarity with the tunes on the jukebox, including “Moon River,” “Warsaw Concerto” and “Scotch and Soda.” It helped pay the bills, as I was on my own.
Athletics for me that first year included intramural basketball and preparation for and participation in the freshman boxing tournament. Boxing was very tiring, even when the rounds were short, maybe two minutes each. Three rounds to the fight. By the third round, the fighters were exhausted. My record: one win, one draw. Good enough, and I had enough.
Physics, easy for me in high school, was hard: my first mid-term exam performance earned me 17 out of a possible 100 points. I jokingly asked the teaching assistant, “Is this my grade or my seat number?” Even graded “on a curve,” it was a relatively poor performance. In preparing for the exam, I had not worked on enough problems, having been satisfied to have understood the general principles, the big picture, or so I thought.
I had lost my religious faith and yet had retained conservative political views that put me in the minority at Cornell. The horror of the Nazi treatment of the Jews, as described in Erich Maria Remarque’s Spark of Life, shocked me. How could God let such a thing happen? Without God, unfortunately, there seemed little on which to base moral choices. Eventually I came to “Do onto others,” echoing Christ and, essentially, Kant.
Albert Camus and existentialism influenced me, too: one should make of one’s life a canvas, a work of art, one of which you could be pleased or proud. My mother’s advice was along the lines of “Don’t do anything you would need to keep a secret.” Of course, more easily said than done.
Not misbehaving was made easier by the paucity of those of the female persuasion. The ratio of men to women was high, perhaps four-to-one, and a freshman had little chance when compared to an upperclassman. With so many more guys than girls on campus, I rarely had a date.
I do remember going out with Judy, a pleasant, rather plain fellow frosh I had met during Freshman Orientation. We had a nice enough date, but we did not follow up. Sophomore year, Judy returned after summer vacation, transformed. She had undergone rhinoplasty (“nose job” in Cornellese), bleached her hair blond, and dressed very well. She had become a real knockout, with lots of suitors. It must have been more attention than she could handle, though, because by senior year, she had stopped bleaching her hair and stopped dressing up, looking more like the girl I had dated originally. Thoreau summed up such a situation thus: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Robert Frost entitled one of his poems, “The Lovely Shall Be Choosers,” in which the choices often turn to have unpleasant, unexpected consequences.
Academically, as well as socially, I was just getting by in my freshman year. After only one semester, I wanted out. My parents convinced me to give it another semester.
.... Cornell accepted me, and I received a full-tuition scholarship, based on my very high score in the NYS Regents Scholarship Exam. Cornell it would be. The classy Ivy League, I hoped. Not quite, as I will explain.
In September 1960, after a summer as head counselor at a small local summer camp, and a very pleasant romance with Rhoda, my co-counselor, I entered Cornell.
I love to joke. One person described me as a child as being “ebullient.” My motto is from Horace Walpole, “The world is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy to those who think.” Mostly, I find life funny. My first year at Cornell was anything but funny.
When I first arrived at 5406 University Halls (building #5, 4th floor, room 06), my roommate had preceded me. Jerry was stereotypical New York City, regardless of where he actually came from. He was NYC in speech, manner, dress. In his closet were a dozen, perhaps even two dozen suits. I had, at most, one. There was an income/wealth disparity.
For many of the students, including me, Cornell had not been their first choice. They may not have respected it the way those would who had aspired to go there. They were noisy, especially at night, often crude. I was disillusioned, depressed, sometimes angry. My fight record that year was two wins, no losses, against bigger opponents, as usual.
To cover living expenses I worked cleaning tables and washing dishes eight to twelve hours a week at Willard Straight Dining Hall. Boring and definitely not classy. Kind of thing to build character or at least a great familiarity with the tunes on the jukebox, including “Moon River,” “Warsaw Concerto” and “Scotch and Soda.” It helped pay the bills, as I was on my own.
Athletics for me that first year included intramural basketball and preparation for and participation in the freshman boxing tournament. Boxing was very tiring, even when the rounds were short, maybe two minutes each. Three rounds to the fight. By the third round, the fighters were exhausted. My record: one win, one draw. Good enough, and I had enough.
Physics, easy for me in high school, was hard: my first mid-term exam performance earned me 17 out of a possible 100 points. I jokingly asked the teaching assistant, “Is this my grade or my seat number?” Even graded “on a curve,” it was a relatively poor performance. In preparing for the exam, I had not worked on enough problems, having been satisfied to have understood the general principles, the big picture, or so I thought.
I had lost my religious faith and yet had retained conservative political views that put me in the minority at Cornell. The horror of the Nazi treatment of the Jews, as described in Erich Maria Remarque’s Spark of Life, shocked me. How could God let such a thing happen? Without God, unfortunately, there seemed little on which to base moral choices. Eventually I came to “Do onto others,” echoing Christ and, essentially, Kant.
Albert Camus and existentialism influenced me, too: one should make of one’s life a canvas, a work of art, one of which you could be pleased or proud. My mother’s advice was along the lines of “Don’t do anything you would need to keep a secret.” Of course, more easily said than done.
Not misbehaving was made easier by the paucity of those of the female persuasion. The ratio of men to women was high, perhaps four-to-one, and a freshman had little chance when compared to an upperclassman. With so many more guys than girls on campus, I rarely had a date.
I do remember going out with Judy, a pleasant, rather plain fellow frosh I had met during Freshman Orientation. We had a nice enough date, but we did not follow up. Sophomore year, Judy returned after summer vacation, transformed. She had undergone rhinoplasty (“nose job” in Cornellese), bleached her hair blond, and dressed very well. She had become a real knockout, with lots of suitors. It must have been more attention than she could handle, though, because by senior year, she had stopped bleaching her hair and stopped dressing up, looking more like the girl I had dated originally. Thoreau summed up such a situation thus: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Robert Frost entitled one of his poems, “The Lovely Shall Be Choosers,” in which the choices often turn to have unpleasant, unexpected consequences.
Academically, as well as socially, I was just getting by in my freshman year. After only one semester, I wanted out. My parents convinced me to give it another semester.
WILL TO LIVE - DO RESUSCITATE!
from Ting and I: A Memoir
I’ve learned of patients who have refused treatment and died. Keeping Tina from getting discouraged has been a priority, as has not misleading her with false hope. I summed up what I asked our nurses to do as “keep her safe, healthy, and content.”
Since her near-death experience, she has shown a continuing will to live.
My love for her and her love for me is part of what keeps her going. She loves Phil and Ted and some of the other members of our families. She loves, or nearly loves, some of our nurses and they reciprocate much of that affection. She enjoys what entertainment we can arrange for her TV screen.
When I hear discussion of “quality of life” as a characteristic, a “metric,” to be evaluated for access to medical care, I am uneasy. Before you are ill, you have one opinion of what you would want done for you. When ill, a different opinion is likely. When recovered, your evaluation will probably be different still. Even less well informed are the opinions of those who would judge your situation. Given the problem of perspective and given the shifting degrees of mental clarity, one must be very careful about the issue of “informed consent” for various proposed options.
In the hospital, I was asked several times to sign a DNR [Do Not Resuscitate] order for Tina. If her heart were to stop, a DNR order would limit the efforts taken to revive her. I refused to sign, believing she would come to want all efforts attempted, as I did. I have learned that sometimes the very existence of DNR orders suggest to the staff that little more need be done for the patient, who then becomes second-class, lower-priority. The institutions would deny this, of course, but the eagerness for having DNR orders suggests otherwise. At the least, they may serve to shield staff from liability in the case of premature death.
I have been told of a beautiful woman who suddenly became permanently bedridden. She told the staff to close the blinds on the window, to leave her alone, and she refused treatment until she died.
The will to live is necessary, even if not sufficient.
I’ve learned of patients who have refused treatment and died. Keeping Tina from getting discouraged has been a priority, as has not misleading her with false hope. I summed up what I asked our nurses to do as “keep her safe, healthy, and content.”
Since her near-death experience, she has shown a continuing will to live.
My love for her and her love for me is part of what keeps her going. She loves Phil and Ted and some of the other members of our families. She loves, or nearly loves, some of our nurses and they reciprocate much of that affection. She enjoys what entertainment we can arrange for her TV screen.
When I hear discussion of “quality of life” as a characteristic, a “metric,” to be evaluated for access to medical care, I am uneasy. Before you are ill, you have one opinion of what you would want done for you. When ill, a different opinion is likely. When recovered, your evaluation will probably be different still. Even less well informed are the opinions of those who would judge your situation. Given the problem of perspective and given the shifting degrees of mental clarity, one must be very careful about the issue of “informed consent” for various proposed options.
In the hospital, I was asked several times to sign a DNR [Do Not Resuscitate] order for Tina. If her heart were to stop, a DNR order would limit the efforts taken to revive her. I refused to sign, believing she would come to want all efforts attempted, as I did. I have learned that sometimes the very existence of DNR orders suggest to the staff that little more need be done for the patient, who then becomes second-class, lower-priority. The institutions would deny this, of course, but the eagerness for having DNR orders suggests otherwise. At the least, they may serve to shield staff from liability in the case of premature death.
I have been told of a beautiful woman who suddenly became permanently bedridden. She told the staff to close the blinds on the window, to leave her alone, and she refused treatment until she died.
The will to live is necessary, even if not sufficient.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
TALK
from Ting and I: A Memoir
I married a quiet woman. It’s a blessing. “Talk is cheap” and “silence is Golden.” Usually.
Why do some people talk so much? Some are nervous, filling the pauses with their noise. Some are so self-absorbed, they do not realize we are just not all that interested. Too much information, “TMI.” Often the patter is like that of the stage magician, designed to distract: Ignore what I’m doing; listen to what I am saying. As the man said when his wife caught him in bed with another woman: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
Manipulation is the goal of another type of talker, who argues, persuades, nudges, suggests, pleads, berates, wheedles, to name a few. Leave me alone!
Conversation is a form of exchange, a trade. If one party is lying or deceptive, he is exchanging counterfeit words for honest words of the person he is talking to. In economics, Gresham’s Law, an economic principle, is that cheap money drives out dear; in other words, debased coins and currency tend to proliferate, while valuable coins and currency are withdrawn from circulation, hoarded. Similarly, lying becomes endemic. The honest people no longer want to tell what they are thinking. “Political correctness” drives out candor.
If we are to count to ten before speaking in anger, the quiet person is doing that already. If a soft response turns away anger, a quiet response is softer still.
Granted, virtues can be overdone, becoming vices. Too little talk could make us mysteries to one another. Misunderstandings may more easily arise. Sometimes we must speak up or ask others to do so. With a quiet person, we may not know what we are missing.
President Theodore Roosevelt advised, “Speak softly, but carry a big stick.” Yes.
I married a quiet woman. It’s a blessing. “Talk is cheap” and “silence is Golden.” Usually.
Why do some people talk so much? Some are nervous, filling the pauses with their noise. Some are so self-absorbed, they do not realize we are just not all that interested. Too much information, “TMI.” Often the patter is like that of the stage magician, designed to distract: Ignore what I’m doing; listen to what I am saying. As the man said when his wife caught him in bed with another woman: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
Manipulation is the goal of another type of talker, who argues, persuades, nudges, suggests, pleads, berates, wheedles, to name a few. Leave me alone!
Conversation is a form of exchange, a trade. If one party is lying or deceptive, he is exchanging counterfeit words for honest words of the person he is talking to. In economics, Gresham’s Law, an economic principle, is that cheap money drives out dear; in other words, debased coins and currency tend to proliferate, while valuable coins and currency are withdrawn from circulation, hoarded. Similarly, lying becomes endemic. The honest people no longer want to tell what they are thinking. “Political correctness” drives out candor.
If we are to count to ten before speaking in anger, the quiet person is doing that already. If a soft response turns away anger, a quiet response is softer still.
Granted, virtues can be overdone, becoming vices. Too little talk could make us mysteries to one another. Misunderstandings may more easily arise. Sometimes we must speak up or ask others to do so. With a quiet person, we may not know what we are missing.
President Theodore Roosevelt advised, “Speak softly, but carry a big stick.” Yes.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
OUR AT-HOME NURSING COSTS $1000/DAY
We pay the nurses weekly, then fortnightly bill the insurance company my former employer, IBM, uses to handle retiree medical benefits. The last shift we were reimbursed for was July 31. Today is October 1. That means we have paid our nurses for 60 days of nursing without yet getting repaid. This delay is about twice the usual delay.
We pay the nurses a gross wage of $38 per hour, whether Registered Nurses (RNs) or Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs), who have less training than RNs. The work is essentially the same for both types of nurses. The RN wage is about average for our area, from which most of our RNs come. The wage is high for LPNs, and we attract them from as far away as an hour’s drive, which we need to do in order to fill our ten-nurse roster here in the exurbs.
The $38/hour becomes $40/hour with employer-paid Social Security and Medicare taxes, and balloons to $43/hour after including 2-3% bonus pay given near Christmas plus state and federal unemployment taxes (SUTA and FUTA). So, 24 hours/day times $43/hour equals $1043/day, approximately $1000 per day.
Sixty days un-repaid means $60,000 out of our piggy bank. Earlier this year I cashed in my IRA to help cover this cash flow. We will eventually get paid, but the wait is inconvenient.
The title of a Robert Frost poem is “Provide, Provide.” Our situation is unusual, but it should alert our readers to the perils of aging.
If Obamacare is instituted and our ex-employer pushes us onto the public plan, as some companies have done already, we will not get such nursing reimbursed.
INTERRACIAL DATING: BEWARE
for asiancemagazine.com, October 2011
http://tinyurl.com/3zbcv48
Dr. Stephen R. Covey, in his The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, advised us: “Begin with the end in mind.” Make your initial choices align with your final goals. Beware of interracial dating: you might fall in love, not marry, never forget.
Knowing that you will not be able to marry a person of another race, religion, or nationality, does it make sense to date that person? You might both enjoy it or both learn something from it. You might even fall in love. There’s the problem. Where marriage is impossible, being in love is tantalizing. You are going to part. You are not going to forget. Depending on how deep that love is, your future relationships could be jeopardized by it.
I fell in love with Tina Su at Cornell University in 1963, when interracial dating and interracial marriage were much rarer than they are today. We were well matched in our tastes and values and in that we came from families of roughly equal financial and educational attainments. Tina’s highly educated parents came from China to America right after World War II, and her father, Dr. G.J. Su, had a long and distinguished career as a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Rochester. Her mother, S.T.C. Su, had earned a chemistry degree and had exerted her independence from her wealthy merchant family in China, but she applied her talents to home-making, child-rearing, and the painting of lovely watercolors, some of which adorn our walls.
Tina’s family, outside and above most of their neighbors in Rochester, NY, were among only a handful of Chinese families near that city during Tina’s childhood in the 1940‘s and 1950‘s. Any racial slights they experienced could be dismissed by the Su family as the bad behavior of lower-class individuals, thus less hurtful. Their situation was a far different starting point from those Chinese who arrived here as laborers, whose children stereotypically ran Chinese laundries and restaurants, often subsequently sending their children to medical, law, and engineering schools. [Far different, too, was the experience of Japanese Americans in internal exile here during World War II.] Tina’s parents expected each of the three children to marry a Chinese and the two daughters did, but the son did not. Of those three marriages, only one survives, the interracial marriage that withstood parental opposition.
My parents were both college educated; and my father became a lawyer of modest success. Like Tina’s two siblings, my four sibs went on to professions requiring college degrees. They, and I, eventually married within our race and religion, as expected. Of those five first marriages, only one survives. Education and similarity of background did not guarantee successful marriage.
In 1963 Tina Han Su and I met in the Cornell University language course Chinese 102 and fell in love,. We had to part when I graduated, in 1964, and we did not marry each other until 1984. Some of that delay was due to parental ethnocentrism. Meanwhile, she married a Chinese scientist from Taiwan and subsequently I married a Caucasian young woman who reminded me of Tina. [My wife, I later learned, was “rebounding” from a failed romance of her own.] Tina’s first marriage and mine eventually failed, quite possibly due in part to the love that Tina and I still had for each other. When Tina and I finally married, in 1984, twenty years after separating, both families approved. Time had made race seem less important than other considerations..
Tina’s elder sister’s first marriage was, like Tina’s, to a man of Chinese ancestry. Her second marriage, like Tina’s, is to a Caucasian. Tina’s younger brother married a Caucasian, a successful marriage that took years to win his parents’ acceptance. I have read that now in America roughly half of second-generation and later-generation Asians marry Caucasians. Time will tell whether such marriages are more or less successful than most.
Centuries ago, most people lived in their home towns all their lives, meeting and marrying local people, not so different from themselves --- though still as different as women and men are from each other. Now, children often move far away to take jobs for which they have trained that are not available nearby, meeting others also from distant places, marrying them, and creating new unions of types of people rarely paired in prior eras. In biology, the mixing of somewhat dissimilar stock can produce “hybrid vigor,” arguably true for humans, as well.
Prosperity produces jobs that lure us from where we are to where the jobs are. Prosperity allows us to move to a nicer neighborhood because we can afford to do so, getting a better house or a better school system for our children, hopefully getting both. This movement produces small-sale mixing, where we find ourselves next door, or in adjacent cubicles at work, to people from widely different origins from our own, though often of a similar economic class. This kind of person-to-person closeness is, I believe, a beneficial result of a drive toward greater “diversity.”
When adding my powdered Instant Breakfast to milk, I note that pouring the powder in very rapidly can lead to poor dispersal. Some things should not be hurried. Occasionally, too, clumps of powder come out of the package that are hard to get to dissolve. Certain groups, such as the Amish or the Jewish Hassidim, do not want to disaggregate. Their tight bonds with each other have value, too. Dating such people, as an “outsider” is likely to produce heartache, however.
We think we chose even when we did not. I fell in love with Tina almost at first sight, in our Chinese language course. An adorable and brilliant co-worker of mine, J.J. Wu, shared an office with a handsome Jewish scientist of comparable intellect and similar interests. They fell in love. His parents forbid their marrying. They separated permanently. I doubt their story had a happy ending. One of our friends still nurses a love for a man of a different religion who was forbidden from marrying her --- twenty-five years ago. She’s married and reasonably happy, but “what if…” crosses her mind occasionally.
So, if you are going to date across racial, ethnic, national, or religious lines, beware: You might fall in love. You might not marry. You might never forget.
It could be worse. As Shakespeare wrote,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That I scorn to change my state with kings.
Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph.D., is a freelance writer, a retired physicist. His book, Ting and I: A Memoir of Love, Courage, and Devotion, was published in September 2011 by Outskirts Press (Parker, CO) and is available through amazon.com, Barnes and Noble [bn.com], or tingandi.com .
http://tinyurl.com/3zbcv48
Dr. Stephen R. Covey, in his The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, advised us: “Begin with the end in mind.” Make your initial choices align with your final goals. Beware of interracial dating: you might fall in love, not marry, never forget.
Knowing that you will not be able to marry a person of another race, religion, or nationality, does it make sense to date that person? You might both enjoy it or both learn something from it. You might even fall in love. There’s the problem. Where marriage is impossible, being in love is tantalizing. You are going to part. You are not going to forget. Depending on how deep that love is, your future relationships could be jeopardized by it.
I fell in love with Tina Su at Cornell University in 1963, when interracial dating and interracial marriage were much rarer than they are today. We were well matched in our tastes and values and in that we came from families of roughly equal financial and educational attainments. Tina’s highly educated parents came from China to America right after World War II, and her father, Dr. G.J. Su, had a long and distinguished career as a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Rochester. Her mother, S.T.C. Su, had earned a chemistry degree and had exerted her independence from her wealthy merchant family in China, but she applied her talents to home-making, child-rearing, and the painting of lovely watercolors, some of which adorn our walls.
Tina’s family, outside and above most of their neighbors in Rochester, NY, were among only a handful of Chinese families near that city during Tina’s childhood in the 1940‘s and 1950‘s. Any racial slights they experienced could be dismissed by the Su family as the bad behavior of lower-class individuals, thus less hurtful. Their situation was a far different starting point from those Chinese who arrived here as laborers, whose children stereotypically ran Chinese laundries and restaurants, often subsequently sending their children to medical, law, and engineering schools. [Far different, too, was the experience of Japanese Americans in internal exile here during World War II.] Tina’s parents expected each of the three children to marry a Chinese and the two daughters did, but the son did not. Of those three marriages, only one survives, the interracial marriage that withstood parental opposition.
My parents were both college educated; and my father became a lawyer of modest success. Like Tina’s two siblings, my four sibs went on to professions requiring college degrees. They, and I, eventually married within our race and religion, as expected. Of those five first marriages, only one survives. Education and similarity of background did not guarantee successful marriage.
In 1963 Tina Han Su and I met in the Cornell University language course Chinese 102 and fell in love,. We had to part when I graduated, in 1964, and we did not marry each other until 1984. Some of that delay was due to parental ethnocentrism. Meanwhile, she married a Chinese scientist from Taiwan and subsequently I married a Caucasian young woman who reminded me of Tina. [My wife, I later learned, was “rebounding” from a failed romance of her own.] Tina’s first marriage and mine eventually failed, quite possibly due in part to the love that Tina and I still had for each other. When Tina and I finally married, in 1984, twenty years after separating, both families approved. Time had made race seem less important than other considerations..
Tina’s elder sister’s first marriage was, like Tina’s, to a man of Chinese ancestry. Her second marriage, like Tina’s, is to a Caucasian. Tina’s younger brother married a Caucasian, a successful marriage that took years to win his parents’ acceptance. I have read that now in America roughly half of second-generation and later-generation Asians marry Caucasians. Time will tell whether such marriages are more or less successful than most.
Centuries ago, most people lived in their home towns all their lives, meeting and marrying local people, not so different from themselves --- though still as different as women and men are from each other. Now, children often move far away to take jobs for which they have trained that are not available nearby, meeting others also from distant places, marrying them, and creating new unions of types of people rarely paired in prior eras. In biology, the mixing of somewhat dissimilar stock can produce “hybrid vigor,” arguably true for humans, as well.
Prosperity produces jobs that lure us from where we are to where the jobs are. Prosperity allows us to move to a nicer neighborhood because we can afford to do so, getting a better house or a better school system for our children, hopefully getting both. This movement produces small-sale mixing, where we find ourselves next door, or in adjacent cubicles at work, to people from widely different origins from our own, though often of a similar economic class. This kind of person-to-person closeness is, I believe, a beneficial result of a drive toward greater “diversity.”
When adding my powdered Instant Breakfast to milk, I note that pouring the powder in very rapidly can lead to poor dispersal. Some things should not be hurried. Occasionally, too, clumps of powder come out of the package that are hard to get to dissolve. Certain groups, such as the Amish or the Jewish Hassidim, do not want to disaggregate. Their tight bonds with each other have value, too. Dating such people, as an “outsider” is likely to produce heartache, however.
We think we chose even when we did not. I fell in love with Tina almost at first sight, in our Chinese language course. An adorable and brilliant co-worker of mine, J.J. Wu, shared an office with a handsome Jewish scientist of comparable intellect and similar interests. They fell in love. His parents forbid their marrying. They separated permanently. I doubt their story had a happy ending. One of our friends still nurses a love for a man of a different religion who was forbidden from marrying her --- twenty-five years ago. She’s married and reasonably happy, but “what if…” crosses her mind occasionally.
So, if you are going to date across racial, ethnic, national, or religious lines, beware: You might fall in love. You might not marry. You might never forget.
It could be worse. As Shakespeare wrote,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That I scorn to change my state with kings.
Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph.D., is a freelance writer, a retired physicist. His book, Ting and I: A Memoir of Love, Courage, and Devotion, was published in September 2011 by Outskirts Press (Parker, CO) and is available through amazon.com, Barnes and Noble [bn.com], or tingandi.com .
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