“Brandon was inspired first by a relative and then by me to build that in,” said Feder, who suffers from bipolar disorder, as did his mother Anne Rubin Feder.
“My mom was a high-functioning bipolar with more mild mania and rare but severe depressions. We accepted that as ‘just the way she is,’ and didn't understand it in terms of disease. Then, in late middle age, it got worse and finally she got diagnosed and medicated.”
“Bipolar disorder typically shows up in one's 20s. However it was only then, in my late 30s that a lightbulb went on and I realized that obviously, I had it too. Previously I’d just been BLAMING MYSELF* for shameful weakness. It had been holding me back in my life and career and I hadn’t even realized it.”
(Interviewer’s note: Bipolar disorder can be caused by genetic factors)
Mental health awareness not being what they are today, Feder had perceived his erratic mood swings as something to be ashamed of. “Of course I know better now, but how could I have known then? It was liberating to realize it was a disease and not a character flaw. I probably first had symptoms toward the end of college but didn’t understand what it was.”
Feder paused to consider: “Looking back, it might even have begun in high school. I already had a pattern of inaction followed by bursts of energy to solve the problem I’d made for myself. But I thought it was just typical teenage procrastination followed by panic. But later it got worse, with the down times meaning not wanting to get out of bed at all and sleeping 12 hours a day and the up periods being dangerously impulsive, shopping and spending irresponsibly, being irritable and getting into arguments or even fights, and so on.”
Feder then ruefully recounted a shopping experience from over 20 years ago: “I’ve also trained myself to notice when I'm shopping impulsively and direct it to actually useful stuff. It’s really stupidly annoying when you come down a bit and realize you bought something useless. Like the time I bought Windows software even though I owned a Mac. How did I rationalize that? Mania doesn't care.”
Feder chose not to return the software for a refund despite having paid around $100 for it. “I still have it. It’s now a valuable reminder to stay in control. Still shrink wrapped. I was CRAZY*. Yes, it was painful when I realized it had made no sense.”
Feder knew it could have been a lot worse. "Fortunately for me, as someone with Bipolar II, I never experienced full blown mania, which is just as scary and dangerous as extreme psychosis, which causes delusions and hallucinations."
"Rather, the 'up' part of my cycles was characterized by hypomania which, if you're careful and sufficiently self-conscious, can be productively harnessed. Unfortunately, 'up' periods are becoming less frequent as I age."
"When I'm hypomanic, I just generally feel more positive and energetic, not at all euphoric, which for me would be a danger sign, but just pain free and content, the way I imagine 'normal' people feel most of the time. But in addition, one of the delights is the sudden realization that the oppressive sense of impossibility is gone. What prodigies I might accomplish if that were always true! I'm grateful to have mostly had hypomania, which can be fun. Well, fun while it lasts, until it’s over and you crash.”
“And now you know why it’s taken me so long to get my roof fixed, and also why I'm not too hard on myself about it, much though I regret the attendant damage,” said Feder, referring to his still-leaking roof. Plans have been made to have it fully fixed by the end of September.
“It’s like having cats; you just accept that sometimes stuff is going to get knocked over.” Feder currently lives with Flushing, New York with his two cats, Destry and Nemo.
When asked, Feder asserted that these memories were not painful for him to recall.
As for his reasons for sharing, he had this to say: “It’s a duty to help fellow sufferers and to work on reducing stigma. When I was guest of honor at Corflu 19, it was a major part of my speech.”
Caption: Feder wearing a guest of honor hat that was a visor in the shape of a red foam crab with dangling legs and claws at Corflu 19 on February 17, 2002, at the Radisson Hotel in Annapolis, Maryland. Photo credit: Moshe Feder.
(Interviewer’s note: Corflu is fanzine fan convention and the word Corflu is short for “mimeograph stencil correction fluid”, which is used in a mimeograph to produce fanzines back before they could be produced digitally. The Guest of Honors at Corflu conventions are chosen randomly.)
Being able to read about such characters proved to be quite the cathartic experience for a Sanderfan who suffers from depression.
“I struggle with depression, and reading the characters in Stormlight Archive just makes me believe again,” said Hannah, a 29-year-old Santa Clara resident who went to Worldcon 76 just to see Sanderson.
While she identified with all three major POV characters, Kaladin was who she identified with the most. “Kaladin’s chapters are the ones I identify with the most when it comes to descriptions and the way he constantly berates and second guesses himself. At the end of Oathbringer when Syl says the bit about it being time for someone to save HIM*, I cried for like an hour the first time I read that.”
“It's hard to explain, but I have always been the person that is there to save all of my friends and those around me. I am terrible at asking for help when it is needed, just like Kaladin, and when I am feeling lost I am lucky to have people around me that will notice and come to my rescue."
In particular, Hannah deeply appreciated just how nuanced Sanderson's depiction of mental illness was: “I love the fact that Brandon changes the way he writes his characters' perceptions and thoughts and motivations based on their current feelings or mental state. When Kaladin is feeling okay for once, he makes this observation:
‘The truth was he was feeling pretty good these days. yes there was a war, and yes the city was seriously stressed but ever since he'd found his parents alive and well he'd been feeling better.
That wasn't so uncommon a feeling for him. He felt good lots of days. Trouble was, on the bad days, that was hard to remember. At those times, for some reason, he felt like he had always been in darkness and always would be.
Why was it so hard to remember? Did he have to keep slipping back down? Why couldn't he stay up here in the sunlight where everyone else lived?’" (Oathbringer, page 690)
At the signing, Hannah asked Sanderson to personalize her copy of Oathbringer with the second Ideal Teft spoke: “I will protect those I hate...even if the one I hate most is myself.”
After asking Sanderson a few questions, a grateful Hannah capped her brief interaction with her favorite author by thanking him “for writing the characters that you write.”
Feder warns that, especially for people in their 20s, sudden unexpected changes in one’s energy level, enthusiasm and sleep should be taken seriously, as they may be symptomatic of mental health issues.
“Just see a doctor and if he or she suggests it, a shrink. People can be depressed without being manic, but they rarely are manic without eventually being depressed. If you haven’t experienced that yet, that's no guarantee you eventually won't. Try to imagine being as low as you currently are high. ‘Miserable’ just doesn’t begin to convey it. If it is bipolar disorder, lithium would immediately correct the problem. It requires a prescription and regular blood tests. It’s cheap, because it’s a natural mineral salt, lithium carbonate, but too much is toxic. So you have to be monitored regularly. But it SAVES LIVES* when used properly."
Feder emphatically warned people against self-medicating.
“Again, I'm an amateur, but the two likeliest explanations of such symptoms are mania or an endocrine problem like hyperthyroidism. Anyway, it’s IMPORTANT* to find out now. The sooner the better, whenever it is. If you are still at school, your school probably has a student health office. They could refer you to someone. But if it IS* bipolar, the lithium would fix that in days or a couple of weeks. But if you get that, the there's no question you MUST* seek help before it gets dangerously worse. Please don't put if off.”
For California residents, Feder offered this resource as an alternate option. “I don't know the regulations, but chances are you should qualify for help. Improving your mental state is a key step toward solving other problems. You are smart and will find a way.”
(Interviewer's note: For residents living in the other 49 states, you can look up the link to the Health Department websites of your respective states here. For residents outside of the U.S.A., you can use this Google search query to find the department of public health services closest to you.)
Such is the way of such kings of fantasy fiction, to pave the way for greater awareness, understanding and acceptance of mental illness.
For readers' comments to the article, please check out Scroll 7.
*Interviewer’s note: All capitalizations are an emphasis used by the interviewees themselves and not an emphasis made by the interviewer.
The interviewer would like to express her special thanks to Valerie Estelle Frankel, the author of many books on pop culture, who kindly agreed to give this article a last-minute proofread before it was posted here. All the English/structural/formatting mistakes still present in the article belong solely to the interviewer and the interviewer alone.
If you have any questions or comments regarding the contents of this scroll, please feel free to send a message to her at https://www.facebook.com/shaz.ron.12.
If you have any questions or comments regarding the contents of this scroll, please feel free to send a message to Sharon Hooper at https://www.facebook.com/shaz.ron.12.
Rumpelstiltskin has always been a problematic and fairy tale absolutely rift with Antisemitism...child stealing/eating stolen babies...In Naomi Novik's retelling of Rumplestiltskin, she turns the entire fairy tale on its head...instead of antagonist Rumpelstiltskin being Jewish...protagonist is a the daughter of a Jewish moneylender.
Now anyone who knows me knows that for the past few years, my best friend and I have been on an exotic food crawl around San Francisco, meaning that when we dine out, we only try unfamiliar dishes, often from cuisines that are unfamiliar to us. Now in deference to the fact that I had my aunt with me the last two times we dined out, we decided to dine at Chinese restaurants, seeing as how my aunt simply detests the unfamiliar. Even so, I wasn't going to make myself go for mainstream dishes, so needless to say, both meals ended up being a failure with my aunt.
The first Chinese restaurant we went to Dumpling Kitchen in the Sunset area. My aunt actually seemed to like the restaurant well enough but was very put off by what we ordered. I decided to get the shen jian bao, which is basically xiaolongbao (a type of Shanghai soup dumpling made famous by Taiwanese restaurant chain Ding Tai Fung) but fried, which was something I've never had before. The second dish we got was lion's head, a dish I wanted to try mainly because of its unique name, and also because according to Wikipedia, it is one of the notable dishes of Huaiyang cuisine. And no, lion's head does not have lion's meat in it, just as no bunnies are harmed in the making of bunny chow (a South African curry dish), or there being any dog meat in a hot dog.
Lion's head
Lion's head is basically a Chinese version of meatballs, so named because it supposedly resembles the head of a Chinese guardian lion. When the lion's head came, my aunt was utterly disgusted by the sight of it. "It looks horrible. Why are they so big? Just looking at it makes me feel full," she complained. "They are supposed to be as big as you can make them," I tried to explain to no avail.
A Chinese guardian lion
"What meat is in this?" she accosted one of the hapless waiters, who mumbled that there was only pork meat in it.
The lion's head was pretty heavily-seasoned with Chinese five-spice. I am not sure how authentic that was. My friend wasn't a fan. Edible was how she described it, and not something she would order again in the future. It tasted alright, but I wasn't too fond of it either.
The next dish that came was the shen jian bao. It was decent, and according to my friend, the best shen jian bao she ever had. The previous versions she had actually still had soup in the filling, whereas there wasn't any in this version. The dumpling skin was pleasantly chewy and the meat filling nicely flavored. Adding vinegar sauce to the dumplings greatly enhanced the taste, which both of us did liberally. My aunt nibbled a piece and declared that she liked the xiaolongbao at Yank Sing (a posh dim sum place located downtown) better.
Shen Jian Bao
She refused to order anything for herself and spent all evening covetously sneaking glances at the other tables where people ordered Chinese dishes that she was accustomed to eating. She vowed that if we ever went back to dine there again, she would get carte blanche on ordering the food.
"Look, every table is ordering the shen jian bao we ordered," I said, trying to placate her. "Yes, but I haven't seen a single table order this disgusting lion's head dish," she retorted.
In all honesty, the lion's head wasn't all that great, but in my mind it was worth ordering the dish, if only because my friend and I had the biggest laugh we had in ages from witnessing my aunt's very visceral reaction to it.
The next time we ended up at a Chinese restaurant again, only this time it was just my aunt and I. We had gone to the North Beach Festival in downtown San Francisco, and on the way back, had stumbled upon Spicy King, a Szechuan restaurant in Chinatown. I wanted to dine there because the restaurant had this dish named Crossing The Bridge noodles, which was something I had always wanted to try ever since I heard someone mention it as their favorite Chinese dish.
"Why would you want to get such a boring-looking dish?" my aunt asked. I told her that I wanted to get it because of the interesting history behind the dish. She couldn't fathom why anyone would want to order a dish simply because it had an interesting backstory. "Wife biscuits have an interesting origin story too, and I happen to like eating them as well," I said, but she clearly wasn't interested.
When the dish came, she was very baffled. "Why is the meat served raw?" she asked the server. "That's why it's called Crossing The Bridge Noodles," I tried to explain, as the server started pushing a plate of raw beef slices, quail eggs, shrimp and vegetables into a steaming bowl of broth and noodles, before covering the bowl with the plate. "Give it a few minutes for the food to cook before you start eating," she explained, before leaving us to our meal.
Crossing The Bridge Noodles
The story behind the origin of this dish is thus: a wife, whose husband was studying on an island for the Chinese imperial exams, found that by the time she crossed the bridge to bring him his meals, the soup would be cold and the noodles soggy. One day, she decided to keep the noodles and other ingredients in a separate container from the soup, while adding a layer of oil on top of the broth to keep it hot. When she got to the island, she was able to mix the ingredients together so she could serve her husband a hot meal. Apparently, it is one of Yunnan's cuisine most iconic dishes.
My aunt did unbend enough to try the food, and her only complaint was that it reminded her of Vietnamese pho (which is not surprising, seeing as Yunnan shares a border with Vietnam), and that the dishes that the other customers had ordered looked far more appetizing.
True, the dish turned out to be nothing special, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The chicken broth was comforting, the mixian noodles (a type of rice noodle from the Yunnan province) nicely al dente, and the restaurant was quite generous with the meat. The only odd ingredient in it was spam, which I am pretty sure never existed in the original version. Then again, I was having an iconic Yunnan dish at a Szechaun restaurant, so the odds of it being 100% authentic was minimal at best.
Still, I now know better than to try and take my aunt to dine at Chinese restaurants if I am not going to order dishes that she is familiar with. What are we going to do if she decides to tag along with us the next time we venture out on our exotic food crawl? I'm sure we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Best Tales of protagonist in Yuri Lowell. Wonderful storyline. Awesome characters that share great chemistry together. Hilarious skits. What's not to like?
2. Tales of Eternia
First Tales game played. I have such fond memories of this game. Also only Tales game I have replayed. Twice. For a total of three complete playthroughs.
3. Tales of Xillia
Less stellar than Tales of Vesperia, but nevertheless pretty good all the same. Decent characters, story and skits.
4: Tales of The Abyss
Was not enamored of the whiny protagonist, but otherwise the story and characters were alright.
5. Tales of Legendia
The black sheep of the Tales of series. Personally don't understand why myself, as I enjoyed playing it.
6. Tales of Xillia 2
A mute protagonist who plays second fiddle to the main cast of Tales of Xillia, an idiotic plot contrivance in the form of a crazy debt you are saddled with early on in the game that you have to work towards paying off at various points in the game before you can proceed with the plot, which is thin enough as it is. Nevertheless, it was fun reuniting with characters from the original game.
7. Tales of Graces F
Urgh, where do I even begin? Terrible English voice acting in Ashbel Lhant, a stupid plot, a fighting system I greatly dislike, idiotic characters who annoyingly expound the theme of "Friendship!" in every other sentence. Things improve after the main storyline ends, but by then it comes too little, too late.
8. Tales of Beseria
Prequel to Tales of Zestiria. Marginally better than Tales of Zestiria, but only just. Weak worldbuilding, bland landscapes that you have to traverse through and backtrack through several times, characters I don't care about, rubbish villains and a storyline I am not too fond of.
9. Tales of Zestiria
Surprised to find a Tales of game I dislike more than Graces, but Tales of Zestiria somehow manages to attain this dubious honor. Plays like a half-baked game, with bland characters that I cannot make myself care about, and a storyline with plot holes the size of craters.
My friend and I have never had Filipino cuisine before, so we decided to try this place out. It is basically a hole-in-the-wall, not somewhere you would dine at for the ambiance or the decor. Kusina Ni Tess can be translated to mean Kusina's Kitchen.
I had longsilog, a breakfast dish consisting of garlic rice, Filipino sausage, a fried egg, as well as a small bowl of chicken adobo, while my friend had bangusilog, which came with fried bangus (milkfish), Philippines' national fish, garlic rice and a fried egg.
Longsilog
The portions were generous and the food was really tasty, if a little too greasy for my liking. My best friend was totally in love with my adobo and kept on sneaking spoonfuls of the sauce. Adobo was created during the days before refrigeration existed and it was difficult to preserve food in warmer climates. Marinating and cooking meat in vinegar adobo-style helped to preserve the meat, although today adobo is cooked with vinegar primarily to enhance its flavor.
Adobo
We also had the Bibingka and the Halo Halo dessert to go. Halo Halo is pronounced as it is spelled and not at all pronounced like the Halo video game series. The Bibingka was underwhelming while the Halo Halo dessert had an interesting and somewhat weird taste amidst the ice and fruit.
Bibingka is a rice cake cooked in banana leaves that is usually eaten during Christmas in the Philippines, while Halo Halo is a type of shaved ice dessert mixed with evaporated milk, fruits and other assorted ingredients, which tends to differ depending on who is making it.
Bibingka
Halo Halo
Would definitely come back here again for affordable authentic Filipino cuisine.
It is one of the most persistent Thanksgiving myths: the turkey that you ingest during your Thanksgiving dinner is the reason why you feel so sleepy afterwards. This myth is so popular that it has even appeared (and gets further perpetuated) in television shows like Seinfeld.
The reason given is that turkey meat contains tryptophan, an amino acid that the body uses to produce serotonin, which in turn leads to the production of melatonin, which helps you sleep.
It all sounds so logical and scientific, but the truth is, turkey actually doesn’t have any more tryptophan than other poultry like chicken (it actually has slightly less).
In fact, ounce for ounce, cheese actually has more tryptophan than turkey does, yet it doesn’t get the same reputation that turkey does for causing sleepiness. (Instead, cheese get blamed for giving you nightmares, but that is another story altogether)
The real culprit is the stuffing, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and other carbohydrate-heavy sides, along with the alcohol you drink, which makes you sleepy.
Consuming carbohydrates triggers the release of insulin, which removes most of the amino acids in your bloodstream except tryptophan. This allows tryptophan to make its way to your brain to eventually produce the sleep-inducing melatonin.
So next time you feel sleepy after a Thanksgiving meal, don’t blame your turkey; blame the alcohol and the sides that you eat along with it.
Sure, Dr. Strange has some trippy visuals and sure it features my favorite actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role, with Cumberbatch being reliably excellent in it, but the storyline is as pedestrian as can be. The script was really weak and predictable and that, coupled with a lackluster villain plus woefully undeveloped romantic interest in Rachel Adam's Christine Palmer (basically a staple in Marvel movies) didn't help matters. What a disappointment.
It’s that time of the year again for us to fall back an hour when daylight saving time ends this Sunday November 6 at 2am.
Depending on your views on daylight saving, Benjamin Franklin can take either the blame or the credit for coming up with the idea.
Franklin introduced the idea of daylight saving in 1784, when he wrote a satirical letter to The Journal of Paris arguing that people will save money on candles if people rose earlier and turned in earlier at night.
Knowing that many people would oppose the idea, he jokingly proposed measures such as a window shutters tax, candle rationing enforced by the law and the firing of cannons every morning to get people to wake up earlier.
He assured readers that the difficulty in doing so would only last the first few days. All in all, it was a subtle (or perhaps not-so-subtle?) dig at the French for being lazy, but over a hundred years later, his idea came to be implemented by whole nations.
Germany was the first country to start implementing daylight saving in 1916 during WWI to save on fuel. America followed suit during WWI and WWII,
It is popularly believed that farmers supported daylight saving, in truth; they bitterly opposed it because it disrupted their schedules.
Today, Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states in America that do not observe daylight saving. California may soon join them; a bill to scrap daylight saving recently passed a Senate committee; if approved by both the Senate and California Governor Jerry Brown, the bill appear on the ballot for California voters no later than 2018.
If there is anything daylight saving can tell us though, it is just how important sleep is. Sleep deprivation caused by losing just one hour of sleep from daylight saving has been shown to increase U.S. traffic accidents by 6 percent for 6 days after we spring forward.
A 2015 University of Colorado study found that daylight saving time may have caused 302 fatal road accidents over 10-year period. Workplace injuries also increase on the Monday after daylight saving begins.
The good news? Daylight saving is finally ending, for this year at least. If you don’t live in either Hawaii or Arizona, you can enjoy an extra hour of sleep this coming Monday.
I sat down to ask Luke McDevitt of San Francisco to ask about his catnapping habits
How many hours of sleep do you get in a day?
About 20 hours a day. I am not getting any younger; I need my beauty sleep!
Where do you like to sleep?
Mostly on the bed. I prefer to sleep on my human’s pillow, blanket or on her clothes when she leaves them lying around the bed like she is wont to do. I also like to sleep on top of her laptop and her keyboard, especially when she is trying to use them. Sometimes when I feel like it, I sleep on top of her too. It’s really comfy; my human functions perfectly as my personal sleep heater.
What’s your favorite sleeping position?
It depends on my mood. Sometimes I like to curl up into a ball. Other times I love a spread eagle sleeping position where I can take up half the bed despite my diminutive size.
What do you dream about?
Cat treats, cat treats and more cat treats. You can never have enough of them. My favorite dreams are where I am practically swimming in cat treats.
How do you best show your appreciation for your human?
When I feel particularly affectionate, which is rare, I knead her with my very sharp claws when she is sound asleep. Judging from the high-pitched appreciative-sounding yelps she makes, she seems to enjoy this particularly affectionate gesture of mine.
What’s your pre-bedtime prep?
I make my human give me a good scratch behind the ears. It makes me feel relaxed and ready for a good night’s sleep.
Any tips for a great night’s sleep?
Drink lots of water, have your human turn off all the lights and if possible, turn off your human’s alarms on her phone. I hate it when I am enjoying my beauty sleep and my human wakes me up with her annoying alarms that seem to rattle off at random times each day.
What is your perfect start to the day?
Seeing my human frantically running around trying to get her day started while I continue to snuggle on the bed that she has left toasty warm for me.
National Cat Day (Oct. 29th) is the official global holiday to celebrate cats for all the wonderful love they give us and to encourage adoption.
