Alan Rabinowitz: A Twitterscript

by Anne Breckbill, associate web developer

Alan Rabinowitz Rides an ElephantOn June 30, Krista interviewed Alan Rabinowitz for this week’s show “A Voice for the Animals” — discussing topics ranging from his severe stutter, Dawi (the last pure Mongoloid pygmy), large wild cats, genetic corridors, and his recent cancer diagnosis. We live-tweet (SOFtweets) all of our interviews now. Here is the Twitterscript of that interview:

  1. In 10 minutes, we’ll be live-tweeting Krista’s interview with Alan Rabinowitz, dubbed the “Indiana Jones” of wildlife science.
  2. As Alan Rabinowitz sits in his chair, he says, “Grabbing a taxi on 5th Avenue is much more challenging that tracking a tiger in Bhutan.”
  3. Rabinowitz — “What turned me away from religion is what people were saying or reading did not go along with their actions.”
  4. Rabinowitz on his childhood stuttering — “Most stutterers can do two things: sing, and you can speak to animals.”
  5. Rabinowitz — “Over and over, I swore to myself as a child if I ever found my voice that I’d be there for them [animals].”
  6. Rabinowitz — “…[I found that] when I could speak fluidly, most people didn’t have that much to say that’s interesting.”
  7. Rabinowitz — “I associate myself with those who pit themselves against environmental hardships than I do with pure scientists.”
  8. Rabinowitz — “Science is a language of truths that would be there whether humans would be there or not.”
  9. Alan Rabinowitz is talking about a pivotal moment of his life when he found the Taron in the Himalayan foothills.
  10. Dawi, a Taron tribal elder asking Alan Rabinowitz why isn’t a father — “You act like a man who still has this deep, deep hole inside of him.”
  11. Rabinowitz — “We had to save the last tigers. Tigers are just plummeting.”
  12. Rabinowitz — “The dictatorship in Burma consists of several dozen generals. The one man on top is the controlling influence.”
  13. Rabinowitz — “Being among these remote communities showed me a model how people can live w/ their environment and can move forward.”
  14. Rabinowitz — “You can tell a person from Churchill because they’re always looking around the corner.”
  15. Rabinowitz — “You can tell a person from Churchill because they’re always looking around the corner.”
  16. Rabinowitz — “I rarely meet a Mayan now carrying a gun..’if we see a jaguar we stop on our bicycle and watch it now.’”
  17. Engineer Chris Heagle summarizing Alan Rabinowitz talking with Krista Tippett — “Marriage is like confronting a wild leopard”
  18. Rabinowitz — Genetic corridors for large cats vital to saving them - more than conservation parks http://is.gd/daooj
  19. Rabinowitz — “Stuttering gave me my life. I’m so pleased to be born a stutterer, because that’s how I got to where I am.”
  20. Rabinowitz — “As I get older and have thoughts of slowing down, I get told ‘I have cancer” and that has the opposite effect.”
  21. Rabinowitz — “I don’t see myself as a hero..I see myself as lucky for being able to..pursue the things I love that made me feel whole.”
  22. Rabinowitz on his son’s stuttering — “Seeing my son sad is painful. Although stuttering gave me my life it’s not something I wish on anyone else.”
  23. Rabinowitz on continuing adventures despite having cancer — “I had to live the life that defined me the best, both to myself and to my family”
  24. Rabinowitz — “I truly believe when you attempt to do good things for good reasons a lot of positive energy gets out there in the world.”
  25. Rabinowitz — “It doesn’t matter if life is short or long, it matters if there’s meaning for you personally.”
I tell the women how deeply I believe there’s no such thing as false hope: all hope is valid, even for people like us, even when hope would no longer appear to be sensible.

Life itself isn’t sensible, I say. No one can say with ultimate authority what will happen — with cancer, with a job that appears shaky, with all reversed fortunes — so you may as well seize all glimmers that appear. …

One thing I don’t ever think to say: When I was told I had a year or two, I didn’t want anything one might expect: no blow-out trip to the Galápagos, no perfect meal at Alain Ducasse, no defiant red Maserati. All I wanted was ordinary life back, for ordinary life, it became utterly clear, is more valuable than anything else.

— Katherine Russell Rich, from her article “17 Years Later, Stage 4 Survivor Is Savoring a Life Well Lived” in today’s New York Times. She is the author of Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language and The Red Devil: To Hell With Cancer — and Back.

Trent Gilliss, online editor

Roger Ebert’s Buddha SmileAndy Dayton, associate web producer Like many, for most of my life Roger Ebert has been a vaguely familiar and pleasant face — paired with Gene Siskel and opining with his thumbs. And, like many, I was captivated by Chris Jones’ profile of Ebert in a recent issue of Esquire. As a necessary preface to his story, Jones describes how in 2006, after a series of surgeries battling thyroid cancer, Ebert’s jaw was removed — also removing his ability to eat solid foods and talk. What may sound like a tragedy reads in many ways as a rebirth. The challenges of his new life are very clear, but Ebert seems to have rediscovered himself in a way that he’s made public on his blog and even through his Twitter account. One of the more striking aspects of the Esquire article is a full-page portrait of Ebert that made no attempt to conceal his face, post-jaw removal. Jones describes one aspect of Ebert’s new face in detail: “… because he’s missing sections of his jaw, and because he’s lost some of the engineering behind his face, Ebert can’t really do anything but smile. It really does take more muscles to frown, and he doesn’t have those muscles anymore. […] Anger isn’t as easy for him as it used to be. Now his anger rarely lasts long enough for him to write it down.” I was reminded, in a way, of an essay by our recent guest, E. Ethelbert Miller, called “Langston’s Buddha Smile”: “For me, looking at Langston, with his Buddha smile and easy laugh, makes me think about what it means to possess a poet’s heart. I too have known rivers.” Obviously, there’s a world of difference between these two smiles in terms of circumstances, but something resonates here with me. Jones’ description of Ebert’s new life seems to hint at spiritual transformation, although perhaps as a self-declared atheist Ebert wouldn’t feel comfortable with that language. Maybe it’s a “poet’s heart” then, but it’s evident in his honest and gracious response to Jones’ profile: “I mentioned that it was sort of a relief to have that full-page photo of my face. Yes, I winced. What I hated most was that my hair was so neatly combed. Running it that big was good journalism. It made you want to read the article.” And perhaps moreso in his words on “dying in increments”: “I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.” (photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
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Roger Ebert’s Buddha Smile
Andy Dayton, associate web producer

Like many, for most of my life Roger Ebert has been a vaguely familiar and pleasant face — paired with Gene Siskel and opining with his thumbs. And, like many, I was captivated by Chris Jones’ profile of Ebert in a recent issue of Esquire. As a necessary preface to his story, Jones describes how in 2006, after a series of surgeries battling thyroid cancer, Ebert’s jaw was removed — also removing his ability to eat solid foods and talk.

What may sound like a tragedy reads in many ways as a rebirth. The challenges of his new life are very clear, but Ebert seems to have rediscovered himself in a way that he’s made public on his blog and even through his Twitter account. One of the more striking aspects of the Esquire article is a full-page portrait of Ebert that made no attempt to conceal his face, post-jaw removal. Jones describes one aspect of Ebert’s new face in detail:

“… because he’s missing sections of his jaw, and because he’s lost some of the engineering behind his face, Ebert can’t really do anything but smile. It really does take more muscles to frown, and he doesn’t have those muscles anymore. […] Anger isn’t as easy for him as it used to be. Now his anger rarely lasts long enough for him to write it down.”

I was reminded, in a way, of an essay by our recent guest, E. Ethelbert Miller, called “Langston’s Buddha Smile”:

“For me, looking at Langston, with his Buddha smile and easy laugh, makes me think about what it means to possess a poet’s heart. I too have known rivers.”

Obviously, there’s a world of difference between these two smiles in terms of circumstances, but something resonates here with me. Jones’ description of Ebert’s new life seems to hint at spiritual transformation, although perhaps as a self-declared atheist Ebert wouldn’t feel comfortable with that language. Maybe it’s a “poet’s heart” then, but it’s evident in his honest and gracious response to Jones’ profile:

“I mentioned that it was sort of a relief to have that full-page photo of my face. Yes, I winced. What I hated most was that my hair was so neatly combed. Running it that big was good journalism. It made you want to read the article.”

And perhaps moreso in his words on “dying in increments”:

“I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.”

(photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)