Competitive Family Values
Even within national cultures, there are family cultures. You don’t really think about it when you are a kid, you think all families are like your family. It isn’t until you get older that you understand just how unique – even quirky – your own family is.
In our family, we were bred to be competitive. We started early, with simple card games and board games. We swam on swimming teams, we competed for grades. Doing well, doing our best was expected of us.
And then, we turned around and did it to our own children!
We used to have big family reunions in a small town along the Oregon beach. We stayed in an old complex, where there were two large units that shared a deck, and then several small cabins. The very social parts of the family shared the two large units – my mom and dad, and her brother and his wife – and the rest of us had the cabins, one to each family, althought the kids roamed from cabin to cabin – our children have always had the freedom of belonging to one great tribe!
Daytimes would be full of adventures – not everyone doing the same thing, but smaller groups having dodge-boat competitions, groups going on shopping expeditions to nearby towns, hiking in the parks, having some beach time – jumping the amazingly high waves in the amazingly cold Pacific ocean.
Around 5, people would start to gather on the big deck in preparation for dinner. Dinner might come out of the kitchens, or we might order food in, but once dinner was out of the way, the BIG competitions would begin.
Every year there was a huge hearts tournament, and a Liar’s Dice tournement. The family took these very seriously, from oldest to youngest, everyone entered, everyone competed. We took it so seriously that we had trophies that would be engraved with the winner’s names and passed along from year to year. We took it so seriously that sometimes there would be injured feelings when someone lost. Everyone wanted to be the winner, and in a family full of people used to winning, feelings ran high.
Giving up needing to win all the time has been seriously hard. There are still times when I am in a situation where I feel the adrenelin start pumping and I have to stop myself and say “Do you want to win this battle or do you want to win the war?” i.e., like chess, sometimes you have to sacrifice a pawn to achieve a greater victory down the road. Do I need to win every arguement at the cost of losing a friend? Do I need to win at the cost of my community?
I also think needing to win takes its toll in one’s health – when I allow myself NOT to need to win all the time, I feel calmer, more serene, and happier. I can’t help but think that being calm, serene and happy are probably good things to be in terms of health. Competition gets your heart beating faster, pumping through the veins, but can also take it’s toll in bad eating, bad sleeping and bad exercise habits.
My parents did a good thing encouraging us to be our best, to seek personal excellence and to strive for personal achievements; I honor them for that. When it comes to winning, however, I want to stop and count the cost before I proceed full steam ahead.
What does your family value? What attributes did they encourage you to develop?
Widad Kawar’s Passion
Many years ago, in another life, I was honored to visit the collection of Widad Kawar in Amman, Jordan. I was so young, and so completely in awe of Widad, who had made it a life mission to collect traditional clothing of the area, Palestinian, which was her own heritage, and nomadic.
It was like being a little girl and getting to play dress up as we oooohed and aahhhed over these gorgeous old dresses and head dresses. I had no idea she had become an institution, until I began to research a style of hijab I had seen there which I found very elegant.
LIttle Diamond, these are for you. They are from several sources, including The Arab Heritage site on Widad Kawar which I urge you to peruse when you have a spare hour or half a day or . . . a lifetime. She has created a monumental body of work with her passion for preserving these fabulous textiles.
From Widad Kawar’s collection: North Jordan
Shows a little of the glitz – this one is from Salt, photo from Widad Kawar’s collection:
I love this photo. The woman has a plain version of the headdress, and is wearing a double dress . . . and her husband is holding her hand!
Palestinian Embroidery
There is a richness in the textile heritage of this region, the clothing, the embellishments, the techniques . . . influences from Africa, from India, from Europe all meeting and blending in the most spectacular ways. This is textile heaven!
Today I was trying to find an example of a traditional Jordanian head-dress so I could show Little Diamond but instead I found this blog Arabesque Rhapsody and her beautiful article on everyday Palestinian embroidery. When you look at these women, wearing dresses that took hours, days and months to create, it is a feast for the eyes.
Rare Case of Lying
In today’s Kuwait Times is an article I found utterly hilarious – WHAT WAS HE THINKING????
Exam Fraud Discovered
Kuwait: The director of a secondary school in Khaitan discovered a first of a kind cheating case wehre an unidentified young man sat for a Quran exam instead of one of the school students, reported Alam Alyawm, noting that being unable to identify the young man and suspecting him, the director requested an ID to verify his true identity.
Sources said that the examined young man confusingly showed a driving license belonging to the student he had substituted. Realizing his fraud had been discovered, the young man fled the school leaving his exam paper and driving license behind.
Upon contacting the real student, he told the police that his driving license had been missing and that he had lodged a report with the police in this regard. Further investigations are in progress.
Uh . . . yeh, I bet they are. 🙂
I am sorry, this just gives me such a giggle. Cheating on a Quran exam? ? ?
Before I wrote the above, I had to do a lot of thinking . . . like the bible, our book, does not say “thou shalt not lie” as one of the 10 commandments, neither is it one of the two great commandments in our New Testament (love the one true God before all others, love your neighbor as yourself), so what does the bible say about lying? Fortuntately for us, there is Google, and the internet, and you can click on What the Bible has to say about lying if you want the specifics. It reminded me that Satan is called “The Father of All Lies.” *shiver* That’s good enough for me.
There are several places in the bible, however, when even good people lie, like because they are scared or because they don’t want to face the wrath of God. One is Sarah, when the messengers tell her she is going to have a baby and she is something like 80 or 100 years old and she laughs, she can’t help it, Sarah laughs. And God says “Sarah! Are you laughing at me! I can do anything!” and Sarah lies and says “oh no, Lord, I wasn’t laughing.”
Since the Bible and the Quran spring from the same spiritual source, I am willing to bet the Quran also has a few things to say about lying and dishonesty, and fraud, and how you can’t fool Allah or cheat him.
Anyone out there willing to step up and educate us?
Al Qaeda Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays
If I knew how to embed video replays in my blog, I wouldn’t have to make you click on Al Qaeda Fed Up with Ground Zero Construction Delay to watch a video interview with two critics of the Ground Zero construction so far, saying almost identical things, but with a twist, oh what a twist.
The video interview is hysterically funny. Give yourself a grin for the day. It’s from one of my favorite websites: The Onion.
Pope Reinstates Islam Department
According to Catholic belief, the Pope, the head of the Catholic church, is infallible. When he downgraded the Council for Interreligious dialogue, and merged it with another office last year, many people thought he had made a big mistake.
So the re-instating of this department can be seen as an admission of the mistake.
I think this is a brave move. For the head of a religion larger than most nations to make a mistake, and then acknowledge the mistake, and even better – to correct a mistake – that takes a lot of moral courage. Bravo, Pope!
Here is the story, from BBC News:
Pope reinstates Islam department
The Pope has been repairing damaged relations with Muslims
Pope Benedict XVI has reversed a controversial decision he took a year ago to downgrade the Vatican department which deals with the Islamic world.
The Council for Interreligious Dialogue will be restored to its former position as a department in its own right.
It is not clear if the department’s former head, British archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, will also be reinstated.
His removal was seen as a sign the Pope was more interested in improving ties with other Christian denominations.
The BBC’s David Willey in Rome says that by reversing his decision, which was interpreted negatively in the Muslim world, the Pope has tacitly admitted that this was a mistake.
Relations between the Vatican and Muslims have deteriorated over the past year, particularly over remarks made by the pontiff during a visit to Germany last September, in which, some thought, he appeared to equate Islam with violence.
The Pope insisted his words had been taken out of context and that he meant no offence to the Muslim religion.
Merger reversal
In a rare about face, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told the Italian newspaper, La Stampa, that the Council for Interreligious Dialogue would again become “a dicastery in its own right”.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Cat Meat Rumors Refuted (Ho ho ho ho ho)
Front page of todays Kuwait Times is this article:
KUWAIT: A ministry of Commerce official denied rumors that a local restaurant has been closed for selling cat meat. According to Ali Baghli, assistant undersecretary for commercial supervision affairs at the Ministry of Commerce, no violation has been registered against the Arabic restaurant in the Jahra governate as of yet. . . .
My comment – So here is what we know for sure:
A ministry official says the restaurant has not been closed for selling cat meat.
He says no violations has been registered AS YET.
He does not say the restaurant was not selling cat meat; he is saying the restaurant was not closed for selling cat meat.
What was interesting, is that both the Kuwait Times and Arab Times, when they reported this cat meat restaurant closing, said that because of connections in the government, this restaurant was unlikely to stay closed.
It is not unlike Make This Case Go Away where two youths are caught with a maid they have abducted and raped, they fight the arresting officer and bite him on the hand, they confess to what they have done . . . and no violation is registered, because the police officer is pressured by his superiors to drop the case.
It’s not like your next schwarma is guaranteed not to contain fresh cat meat. It’s only guaranteed not prosecuted.
If I sound angry, I am. Police and law enforcement officials are supposed to protect the public – that’s you and me. When the system is broken so badly that laws are not enforced against the transgressors, and worse, when courageous policement are punished for doing their job, it is a very very sorry state of affairs.
And I am convinced that God has a very special place in hell for those who abuse the trust the public places in them.
I sure wouldn’t eat any schwarma in Jahra.
Doha Additions
The rate of building in Doha is astounding. You have to wonder, sometimes, how the building inspectors can keep up with it all. I am guessing in Doha they lose one or two workers a week to unsafe construction practices, and I wonder at the quality of the construction . . . .
I particularly love this building, facing the Gulf. I call it the Doha twist. I think it has a spectacular look:
They have been working on the foundation for this building for years now, with nothing to show for it. The design of the building totally cracks me up.
From time to time, in both Doha and Kuwait, I have seen honest-to-God wild Parrakeets, Flamingos and Cranes. But when we say that the crane is the Qatar national bird, this is what we mean:
The Great American Library
Today there is an article in the news about a small library in Vermont that actually sits on the border and is used by both Americans and Canadians. The US government is considering changing that, as they think the unguarded entry to the US is being used by bad people.
Maybe. I don’t know. Post 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security can say or do just about anything in the name of National Security, limit or modify our consititutional rights, behave in ways contrary to everything we believe in, and no one seems to be able to stop them.
And that is not the point. The point is that at one time in our history, an industrialist, Andrew Carnegie, donated money to build libraries throughout the United States, Canada and even Scotland, over 2,000 libraries in all.
In almost every town in America, you will find a library, where you can borrow, free of charge, books on any subject.
When I was a little girl, where I lived was so safe that my mother would put me on the bus with my basket family library books and send me to the library, call the librarian to tell her I was coming, and I could spend hours there, and no-one had to worry about my safety. My Dad would pick me up on his way home from work, and I would have a basket of fresh books – the librarian would pick out books for my Mom.
One day, the desk person was sick, and the librarian let me sit at the desk, checking books ou to library patrons. I must have been six or seven years old, and could barely get on the high chair behind the library desk.
Here is what was so cool. I could read at a very early age, and my nine or ten had worked my way through most of the children’s section, and started choosing books from the adult section. The first time, the librarian called my Mom and asked if it was OK, and my Mom said “if she thinks she can read it, check it out to her.” My library card was annotated to inform all the desk people that I could read whatever I wanted, even from the adult section. Woooo Hoooooooo!
My husband has similar stories, growing up in his home town. He loved the library as I did, and one day, rode his bike to the library and then fell asleep there, hidden from view. The librarian closed the library and he woke up alone and very scared. These were pre mobil phones – I know, I know, it’s hard to believe. His family came looking for him and found his bike, called the librarian, who lived nearby, and she let him out.
We still love libraries. It’s an amazing thing, to be able to walk into a treasury of books, pick up a couple hundred dollars worth, and walk out with just your signature as pledge. The newest books on every subject are available, either in the library itself or through their inter-library loan system. Now, too, most of the libraries have a computer section, where you can check your e-mail or do research online – totally free.
Libraries are staffed mainly by females, I don’t know why, it seems to be seen as a female job. But what power these women have! They are the guardians of so much knowledge! Children and adults come to them and ask all kinds of questions, and they know where to look for the answers!
Isn’t learning how to access knowledge one of the true great secrets in life? So these librarians, the guardians of knowledge, are like Superman, holding the front lines against ignorance, promoting access to new ideas and new ways of doing things, combating the forces of darkness and superstition.
Librarians were a powerful force in my life, and in my husband’s. Has there been a powerful figure in your life who made a difference in how you saw the world, in choices you have made?
Who’s Checking Kuwait’s Toothpaste?
US checks toothpaste for toxins
Toothpaste is the latest Chinese export to raise safety concerns
Health officials in the United States say they are checking all shipments of toothpaste imported from China for contamination with toxic chemicals.
Panama and the Dominican Republic have reported finding diethylene glycol, a chemical used in engine coolants, in toothpaste from China.
The toothpaste scare is the latest involving products from China.
Earlier this year, contaminated pet food ingredients killed a number of cats and dogs in North America.
The toxic chemical, melamine, was found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands.
The tainted wheat gluten was even thought to have made its way into livestock feed.
Low-cost substitute
Cough syrup containing containing diethylene glycol originating from China killed more than 50 people in Panama last year.
The New York Times said a Chinese chemical maker had sold the industrial-grade chemical as glycerine, which is often used as a moistener in products from toothpaste to soap and cosmetics.
CHINESE FOOD SCARES
May 2007 China probes reports that contaminated toothpaste was sent to Central America
March 2007 Melamine is found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands
Nov 2006 A dye farmers fed to ducks to make their eggs look fresher is found to contain cancer-causing properties and 5,000 ducks are culled
August 2006 About 40 people in Beijing contract meningitis after eating partially cooked snails at a chain of restaurants
Diethylene glycol is sometimes used as a low-cost substitute for glycerine and Chinese toothpaste makers have said small amounts of the chemical are harmless in toothpaste.
“We are going to be sampling and testing all shipments of toothpaste that come from China,” said Doug Arbesfeld, a spokesman for the US Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA says China is the second-largest exporter of toothpaste to the US after Canada.
Food safety investigators in Panama said two brands of toothpaste were imported illegally from China through a free-trade zone.
Chinese officials say they are investigating the claims.
The Dominican Republic and Panama have pulled thousands of tubes of Chinese toothpaste brands Excel and Mr Cool from store shelves.
Beijing recently pledged to clean up its tainted food and drug industry after the series of safety scares. The subject was raised by the US in bilateral trade talks this week.
The former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration is facing trial, accused of taking large bribes to approve untested medicines.
From today’s BBC News.
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