Disability Awareness Day at Fenway
What a way to start your day. Watch what happens in Boston when the singer of the National Anthem gets the giggles:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Kingsolver
A friend passed along a fascinating book by one of my favorite fiction authors, Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote the cross-culturally unforgetable Poisonwood Bible, and many other very readable books. This book is about how her family vowed to eat locally for one year. I haven’t finished it yet, this is not a book review, but I am trying to think how eating locally would apply in Kuwait.
We would have a year-round supply of fish, which I love. We would have spinach in December and January, and those wonderful Kuwaiti tomatoes in the Spring. Cilantro, green onions and mint are grown year round, too, I think, and we would have chickens and eggs and maybe some sheep – or does most of the sheep in Kuwait come from elsewhere? Pomgranates? Pistacios?
I need YOUR help. What would our diet look like in Kuwait if everything we ate were local? Which month would we be able to eat what? What could we preserve in some way – drying, canning, freezing – for future months?
What grain would we have? Let’s say keep the food “local” and give ourselves a 100 mile radius. What would we eat?
A Stroke of Luck
I have the most amazing friend. She thinks WAY outside the box. You would never know it to look at her, she looks just like you and me, but when she hands you a book, it turns out to be a book you will never forget. She forwarded me this yesterday, and I happened to get it at a time when I could take 20 minutes of my life to watch it.
This video from TED talks features brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor, who describes having her own stroke, and observing herself, as a scientist, from the inside, as she experiences the stroke. It changed how I see things, in fact, it turned how I see strokes upside-down.
I hope you will take a few minutes to watch:
Hold Your Calls, Save Your Life
Actually – not a bad slogan. Pithy, personal, memorable.
Found this in yesterday’s Kuwait Times. Was it also in the Arabic language newspapers? Doesn’t say anything about the fine . . . . the newspaper announcement leads us to believe they are serious. The fine of 5KD (about $20) remains laughable. Nonetheless – if you use a mobile phone while driving, you will become a CRIMINAL after May 1! 😉
No one is going to hate this law more than AdventureMan. Sometimes he calls me when he is driving just to see if I will hang up on him. He tries to talk me into talking with him. I have always said I don’t want to hear his last words being “Oh ____!”
Travel Nerds
We are a bunch of travel and geography nerds in my family. Nothing makes us happier than jumping in a airplane, reaching an exotic location and driving, getting our feet on new ground, seeing new things, learning new ways. We all have cameras glued to our hands and laptops stuffed in backpacks.
All my married life, people have looked at me with pity and tole me how they can’t believe I live with such uncertainty, never knowing where I will be in the next year – even the next few months. What I tell them is this – the truth is, we ALL never know. We ALL never know when something will happen that will change our lives dramatically, forever. We live day to day, not thinking about all the things that can happen. If we think too much about them, we might go crazy.
I consider myself blessed. I was created with a restless spirit, a spirit for new experiences and new ways of thinking. I was given a life where all those things became my daily bread.
What is fun for me is watching the next generation of young adults discovering their own lives, who they are meant to be.
My nephew, at Google Earth took his love of geography to new heights. He works in a place he loves, doing work he loves. He wrote to me yesterday, to tell me about a new game being played, a grown-up version of the old “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.” (one of the earliest computer games for kids) He has published a really really hard one on the Google team LatLong blog (as he says, he has the home court advantage in this game!) and he refers us to another blog, Where on GoogleEarth? where there are a series of contests to see if you can identify landmarks, special places, from the sky.
Here, for example, is the photo from contest #22 – and people have to write in telling what it is. Can YOU tell what it is? 🙂
Bullying and 19 Minutes; Jodi Picoult
When my blogging friend Chirp makes a recommendation, I have learned to order the book and read it. She reads books that make you think! The latest book is Jodi Picoult’s 19 Minutes, a book about a kid who is sensitive and kind and funny, and plays by the rules – he is good at sharing, and listening and all the things we try to teach our children to be good at.
He gets bullied. From the time he starts school, he is bullied physically and mentally and emotionally. He does the right thing – he reports it. The schools do nothing, or so little that it only makes things worse for him. Pushed too far, one day snaps, he goes ballistic. He walks into the school and shoots 19 of his classmates.
One problem is access to weapons. Literally, physically teenagers have not yet developed the judgement areas of the brain. I am guessing in males it takes even longer, and I only guess that because of all the traffic fatalities and physical damage adolescent boys inflict upon themselves – and their victims. Maybe it is that fatal combination of poor judgement and testosterone that pushes them too far. Access to weapons – guns, knives, fast cars – makes them even more lethal.
Before I wrote this review, however, I had to do a lot of thinking. This book is about bullying, and even as adults we come across bullies. Our household helpers are terrified of the police – those who are here to protect us. The police use their position to try to bully phone numbers out of pretty Kuwaiti girls, and to exact sexual favors from the Asian domestics. Not all police are bullies, but if a person has that tendency, the position allows him/her to use that power wrongly.
And bullying doesn’t stop with graduation from high school. We are seeing the same kinds of behavior at universities – Virginia Tech – and in the workplace – “going postal” and GMAC just to name two. People who are bullied sometimes turn, they go out in a blaze of glory.
I’ve been bullied. People who are raised to have good manners are often victims of those who are willing to overstep the boundaries. We make excuses for them – we say they are oblivious. I am beginning to think that many a bully is NOT oblivious, but has learned to push to get his or her own way.
With men, the bullying is more physical, and it’s all about jockying for position – number one in the pecking order, the next promotion, the boss’s golf partner, etc. If you think women are gossips – you oughta hear the men! When I hear men “bantering” it’s all about who’s got the “biggest.” Or maybe, the devil whispers in my ear, it’s about who can make you THINK his is the biggest.
With women, in my experience, most of the bullies are physically bigger. They are women who – literally – throw their weight around. They are women who will interrupt anyone and override their suggestion with a loud voice. They are women who have temper tantrums, and hurt feelings, who go from person to person forming alliances that dissolve with the next disagreement. That’s the sad truth – a bully wants his or her own way – all the time. Once you go against them, you have to watch your back.
Picoult has done her homework. Bullies are often likeable enough people! A bully carries his/own burden, however – and that is a desperate need for popularity. You can see this in animal behavior; once a creature has achieved dominance, it takes enormous energy to maintain that position, so much energy that the rest of your life shrinks as your focus must be on maintaining dominance.
The UK, Canada, and the US all have websites about bullying, trying to put a stop to it in the schools. What do they define as bullying?
People calling you names
Making things up to get you into trouble
Hitting, pinching, biting, pushing and shoving
Taking things away from you
Damaging your belongings
Stealing your money
Taking your friends away from you
Posting insulting messages on the internet or by IM (cyberbullying)
Spreading rumours
Threats and intimidation
Making silent or abusive phone calls
Sending you offensive phone texts
Bullies can also frighten you so that you don’t want to go to school, so that you pretend to be ill to avoid them
What can people with manners do against a bully?
In general, the first thing to do is tell an adult – it doesn’t have to be your parents. Additonal suggestions suggest creating your own support network – create a wide network of friends. Join interest groups, in our out of school.
When our son was bullied in school, he worked hard and earned a black belt in karate, and then went on to earn further degrees, and to teach karate – while still in high school. Just knowing that he had a lethal skill made him walk differently, made the bullies afraid to target him. He went to a magnet school, where there was a high degree of chaos, and he sought out and made friends with the biggest people he could find. He used his head. He made it through. Of all his accomplishments, one of the things that made us most proud of him was his ability to stick it out and to prevail.
I worked in a high school. My office was a safe haven for many kids, kids who found high school dynamics pure hell. Most of them were emotionally years ahead of the crowds roaming the hallways, the cruel kids, for whom high school will probably be the highlight of their lives.
“You’re going to love being an adult,” I would tell them. “Hang in there. For them, this may be as good as it gets, but your life is going to get better and better.”
Geeks don’t always get a lot of respect. The two guys that graduated high school at the bottom of the class with my son already had a flourishing computer networking business going. If you haven’t noticed, most of the people who are making it big financially are people who have learned how to use their heads.
I have learned something else. You can beat a bully at his or her own game. Bullies usually rely on instilling fear in others, but rarely do they do their homework.
Choose your battles. Bullying hurts everyone. If you see someone being bullied and you can do something about it then and there, stand up for the person being bullied. All you have to do is say “that’s not funny, just stop.” Many times bullies are so shocked at being challenged, they will stop! If your judgement tells you it would be unsafe to say anything, quickly tell an adult, a supervisor, a manager, what you have seen.
If a bully is trying to push through something you believe is wrong, you can quietly discuss things one on one with others, and make a plan. You can call for a vote! You can quietly stand up to a bully. You can tell a bully “it’s my turn to talk” and they have to shut up! (When you do this, you have to be very careful to listen when the bully is speaking so that everyone knows it really IS your turn to talk.) You can use a little gentle humor – bullies usually only like humor when it is aimed at someone else. They haven’t a clue what to do when it is aimed at them!
If it is annoying, but not something worth fighting over, let the bully get his or her own way. They usually end up shooting themselves in the foot, self-destructing. The adult bully ends up driving people away, and then wondering why he/she has no friends?
Living your own life well is your best revenge!
Thank you, Chirp, for another book that really made me think!
No Whining!
The other day AdventureMan and I happened to be in the same room and the TV happened to be on and a woman on one of the morning shows (shown in the afternoon in Kuwait) was talking about how to make your kids stop whining.
“I don’t remember (our son) ever whining,” I said, “do you remember him whining?”
“When he was very little, sometimes he would get fussy,” AdventureMan replied.
“Yeh, but fussy is different, when you are little and overtired, or have an ear infection or are hungry – even we get fussy!” I laughed.
I do remember a few awful times when, after standing in a long line in the military commissary on a payday I finally got to the checkout stand just as my son was totally losing it, having to get a month’s worth of groceries paid for and packed while he was screaming bloody murder and the groceries are being packed and people are looking at me like I am a criminal because I can’t feed him there in front of everyone. As soon as I could get him to the car, I could nurse him, but meanwhile, I was hostage to his relentless desparate wailing. Is their any sound as compelling as a wailing baby?
But that is to be expected when you have a baby; babies sometimes have to wail.
But whining?
I was lucky, I was able to be a stay-at-home mom when my son was little. We spent a lot of time together. I could usually distract him, I could usually put him down for a nap if he was tired, I could usually schedule myself to be around to feed him when he needed feeding. I remember ear-infection fussing, and teething fussing, but I don’t remember any whining.
AdventureMan said I wouldn’t put up with whining, not from him, not from our son.
Our son had a lot of expectations on him. AdventureMan was an officer, and we had obligations. (What? You thought only Kuwaitis had expectations and obligations?) Sometimes, when our son would rather be playing, he had to attend an event, or an official function, and he had to behave, because he was his father’s son, and his behavior would reflect on his father. When he would rather be wearing a sweatsuit and trainers, he had to wear dress pants and a dress shirt and tie, and dress shoes. If he complained, I would say “you don’t have to like it, you just have to do it. I don’t like it either!”
I had two tools.
First, as soon as he could talk, I taught him to say “can we negotiate?”
Most of the time, we can find a way to make a bad situation better. Often, he had great suggestions, like “can we go to La Gondola and have a pizza afterwards, and can I invite Michael to go with us?” Whatever gets you through what you don’t want to do, I would think to myself, and agree. Occasionally, but not often, there were non-negotiables, like moves, and then, you just have to grit your teeth and get through it.
Second, I used incentives. Some people might call them bribes, but here is how it worked.
I knew it was in his best interest to get good grades, and that it was my responsibility to help him learn how to get those grades. On the first day of school, I would take him to the toy store and he could pick out what he wanted to work for. We would set goals for each class; we would write down those goals and post them on the refrigerator. At the end of the semester, when those goals were met, he got his prize. The hardest hardest part for me was NOT giving him a prize when the goal was not met, but encouraging him that I know he will get the prize next time. I think it was harder on me NOT giving in than on him, not getting the reward.
My Mother thought I was spoiling him because we would negociate. “You are the mother,” she would say. “You are the boss.”
“Yes, Mom,” I would respond, “but I NEED for him to cooperate. I need for him to feel like he has some choice.” It was just a generational difference.
Now I am getting to see a new generation having their babies. My niece taught her baby basic sign language, and continues to teach him more as time goes on. Even pre-verbal, he has ways of telling her he is hungry, thirsty, wants to be picked up, etc. What an amazing and wonderful idea, what control it gives a baby to be able to express these basic desires, to communicate needs and wants. I am in awe of these young mothers and the care with which they are raising their babies.
Kuwait is blessed to have a blog written by young mothers for other young mothers, full of great ideas. Many of the ideas I THINK are great, but because some are written in Arabic, and my vocabulary and grammar are not that strong, i can’t really read them. That blog is Organic Kuwait; they even have books published for children explaining Ramadan and Hajj in age-appropriate language. Makes me wish I were a young mother again! 🙂
Minarets
You’d think I would pick up on things sooner, but here’s the problem. When you don’t know something, you often don’t even know you don’t know. In a recent post on an Al Ahmadi minaret one of my commenters asked if I couldn’t tell it was a Shiite minaret. At first, I thought he was being funny, but it nagged at me, so I started asking around.
It turns out almost everone except me can tell the difference. Most say, as I would, “oh you just kind of know, it looks more Iranian” but occasionally someone will say something concrete, like “if it has a green roof on the minaret, it is Shiite” or “if the windows look like keyholes, it is Shiite.”
Who would know? Not me! But I am learning.
So, help me out here. This mosque near City Center on 5th ring. Definitely Shiite?
This mosque is in Qurain – I love the very purpleness of it. Is this a Sunni mosque? I ask because the windows look kind of like keyholes.
Now – services. I’m an Episcopalian, a sub-sect of Christianity, and I can walk into almost any Anglican/ Lutheran/ Catholic church in the world and even if it is in another language, I have a pretty good idea what is going on, because we are liturgical, we follow a pattern of worship, and the three services are very similar, with very subtle difference. In fact so subtle I probably couldn’t even tell you what the differences are. Islamic services are also considered liturgical – having a set pattern of worship.
So if you were Sunni or Shiia, and walked into a service, could you tell a Sunni service from a Shiia service? Are there differences?
I am sorry to be so ignorant; help me be less so!
Home Schooling Muslims in America
The New York Times has this fascinating article:
LODI, Calif. — Like dozens of other Pakistani-American girls here, Hajra Bibi stopped attending the local public school when she reached puberty, and began studying at home.
Her family wanted her to clean and cook for her male relatives, and had also worried that other American children would mock both her Muslim religion and her traditional clothes.
“Some men don’t like it when you wear American clothes — they don’t think it is a good thing for girls,” said Miss Bibi, 17, now studying at the 12th-grade level in this agricultural center some 70 miles east of San Francisco. “You have to be respectable.”
Across the United States, Muslims who find that a public school education clashes with their religious or cultural traditions have turned to home schooling. That choice is intended partly as a way to build a solid Muslim identity away from the prejudices that their children, boys and girls alike, can face in schoolyards. But in some cases, as in Ms. Bibi’s, the intent is also to isolate their adolescent and teenage daughters from the corrupting influences that they see in much of American life.
About 40 percent of the Pakistani and other Southeast Asian girls of high school age who are enrolled in the district here are home-schooled, though broader statistics on the number of Muslim children being home-schooled, and how well they do academically, are elusive. Even estimates on the number of all American children being taught at home swing broadly, from one million to two million.
No matter what the faith, parents who make the choice are often inspired by a belief that public schools are havens for social ills like drugs and that they can do better with their children at home.
“I don’t want the behavior,” said Aya Ismael, a Muslim mother home-schooling four children near San Jose. “Little girls are walking around dressing like hoochies, cursing and swearing and showing disrespect toward their elders. In Islam we believe in respect and dignity and honor.”
Still, the subject of home schooling is a contentious one in various Muslim communities, with opponents arguing that Muslim children are better off staying in the system and, if need be, fighting for their rights.
Robina Asghar, a Muslim who does social work in Stockton, Calif., says the fact that her son was repeatedly branded a “terrorist” in school hallways sharpened his interest in civil rights and inspired a dream to become a lawyer. He now attends a Catholic high school.
“My son had a hard time in school, but every time something happened it was a learning moment for him,” Mrs. Asghar said. “He learned how to cope. A lot of people were discriminated against in this country, but the only thing that brings change is education.”
Many parents, however, would rather their children learn in a less difficult environment, and opt to keep them home.
You can read the rest of the article HERE
Calendar Cat?
I’ve been talking to the Qatteri Cat, asking him if he would like to be a calendar cat for the Animal Welfare League. So far, not much response . . . he’s too busy sleeping.
Maybe your cats or dogs will be more cooperative. You have until May 31 to submit your photo! It’s a worthy cause.
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