Statistics Anomaly
Yesterday, I had over two thousand hits on the blog, after a year of sliding statistics, which I attribute to being less interesting now that I no longer live in exotic locations, post the Kuwait sunrise (I used to have a loyal clientele of Kuwaiti students off at university who loved seeing the sunrise in Kuwait every day), and that blogging is not so new and exciting. I’m not blogging as conscientiously as I used to – I don’t have the time I used to have.
This morning, as I check the blog, I can see I have almost as many hits by nine this morning as I had yesterday. It makes me smile – here is what the most hit-upon posts are:
Ramadan is coming! Ramadan Mubarak, Ramadan Kareem to all those waiting so eagerly for Ramadan to begin.
Last night we had a big dinner for my Mom’s birthday, and got to hear a shred of conversation I wanted to share with you. I was sitting next to an old family friend, famous for asking questions that will start a conversation that could last the rest of the evening, and across the table was Little Diamond, my niece, actually now Professor Diamond. 🙂 If we were German, we would call her Professor Doctor Diamond 🙂
Our friend asked her what had surprised her the most about teaching on the college level and she answered that as she is teaching her culture classes, she brought up plural marriages, and it was simply a non-issue. She said there are a couple of shows, Sister-Wives and Big Love, and all the kids have seen them and know what plural marriage is all about – at least in the United States. She said it was a big change, that plural marriage used to be a hot topic, but now, not-so-much. It was fascinating.
Waking Up Cold
I shivered as I woke up; about a thousand gulls screaming past, up from the water, circling the town, loudly gossiping. It is a shiver of delight – I can sleep with the window open, no air conditioning needed, and the morning air is very cool. I am in heaven, also called Seattle.
It is so totally different coming in from Pensacola. As I showered the night before, I was thinking “about now I would be landing in Amsterdam, with several hours wait for my next flight. Being able to sleep in my own bed, get up early in the morning, five minutes to the airport, a breezy check-in and then a bare half day of traveling – so easy.”
Er . . . almost. I still trip the full inspection triggers, and got the complete pat down yesterday. The TSS lady was very professional, although much more thorough than ever before. It is annoying, but on the level of swatting a mosquito away; one minute later you’ve forgotten all about it.
Flight leaves late out of Pensacola, I have to RUN in Atlanta to make my connection, but it’s good to get some aerobic exercise in the middle of a long day of flying. 🙂 Unfortunately, my bag doesn’t make it, so when I reach Seattle they tell me it will come in on the next flight and they will deliver it. After all these years of back and forth, I have learned to have a nightgown and a change of clothes with me, and there are stores where I can pick up mascara and small things I need short-term. The bag arrives in the early evening, so all is well.
As I entered the Seattle airport from the A-concourse, I had a big grin. Where am I? This looks so much like Doha; there is a roundabout near the airport with the same collection of water gourds:
Seattle is cool and beautiful, and has rolled out a sunny day for my arrival. It’s always a thrill to see the Seattle skyline, and even more of a thrill when the roads are dry:
I pick up lunch on my way to my Mom’s, Ivar’s, as is our tradition, oh yummmm – halibut and chips for Mom, and a Salmon Ceasar for me.
I guess I’m a little more tired than I thought – it was an early flight. I grab a quick nap, and I feel like myself again. Mom and I head out shopping – we have a week of errands and appointments ahead of us, and some fun stuff too. Mom turns 88 this week – something to celebrate!
Ramadan for Non-Muslims 2011
Ramadan is coming, coming with a vengence, it is almost here. Ramadan is expected to start with the sighting of the new moon on August 1st. I am feeling happy – a friend has asked me to help her find special Eid dresses for her daughter returning to Saudi Arabia. I know what she is looking for, and I am at a loss as to where they might be found. I will check tomorrow with friends who have lived in Pensacola for a long time and see what they have to suggest.
Meanwhile, as is my annual tradition, I will reprint an article I wrote in September 2007, Ramadan for Non Muslims. Even better, go back to the original Ramadan for Non Muslims and read the comments – I’ve always learned the best information from my commenters. 🙂
Ramadan for the Non Muslim
Ramadan started last night; it means that the very thinnest of crescent moons was sighted by official astronomers, and the lunar month of Ramadan might begin. You might think it odd that people wait, with eager anticipation, for a month of daytime fasting, but the Muslims do – they wait for it eagerly.
A friend explained to me that it is a time of purification, when your prayers and supplications are doubly powerful, and when God takes extra consideration of the good that you do and the intentions of your heart. It is also a time when the devil cannot be present, so if you are tempted, it is coming from your own heart, and you battle against the temptations of your own heart. Forgiveness flows in this month, and blessings, too.
We have similar beliefs – think about it. Our holy people fast when asking a particular boon of God. We try to keep ourselves particularly holy at certain times of the year.
In Muslim countries, the state supports Ramadan, so things are a little different. Schools start later. Offices are open fewer hours. The two most dangerous times of the day are the times when schools dismiss and parents are picking up kids, and just before sunset, as everyone rushes to be home for the breaking of the fast, which occurs as the sun goes down. In olden days, there was a cannon that everyone in the town could hear, that signalled the end of the fast. There may still be a cannon today – in Doha there was, and we could hear it, but if there is a cannon in Kuwait, we are too far away, and can’t hear it.
When the fast is broken, traditionally after the evening prayer, you take two or three dates, and water or special milk drink, a meal which helps restore normal blood sugar levels and takes the edge off the fast. Shortly, you will eat a larger meal, full of special dishes eaten only during Ramadan. Families visit one another, and you will see maids carrying covered dishes to sisters houses and friends houses – everyone makes a lot of food, and shares it with one another. When we lived in Tunisia, we would get a food delivery maybe once a week – it is a holy thing to share, especially with the poor and we always wondered if we were being shared with as neighbors, or shared with as poor people! I always tried to watch what they particularly liked when they would visit me, so I could sent plates to their houses during Ramadan.
Just before the sun comes up, there is another meal, Suhoor, and for that meal, people usually eat something that will stick to your ribs, and drink extra water, because you will not eat again until the sun goes down. People who can, usually go back to bed after the Suhoor meal and morning prayers. People who can, sleep a lot during the day, during Ramadan. Especially as Ramadan moves into the hotter months, the fasting, especially from water, becomes a heavier responsibility.
And because it is a Muslim state, and to avoid burdening our brothers and sisters who are fasting, even non-Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, touching someone of the opposite sex in public, even your own husband (not having sex in the daytime is also a part of fasting), smoking is forbidden, and if you are in a car accident and you might be at fault, the person might say “I am fasting, I am fasting” which means they cannot argue with you because they are trying to maintain a purity of soul. Even chewing gum is an offense. And these offenses are punishable by a heavy fine – nearly $400 – or a stay in the local jail.
Because I am not Muslim, there may be other things of which I am not aware, and my local readers are welcome to help fill in here. As for me, I find it not such a burden; I like that there is a whole month with a focus on God. You get used to NOT drinking or eating in public during the day, it’s not that difficult. The traffic just before (sunset) Ftoor can be deadly, but during Ftoor, traffic lightens dramatically (as all the Muslims are breaking their fast) and you can get places very quickly! Stores have special foods, restaurants have special offerings, and the feeling in the air is a lot like Christmas. People are joyful!
Closer to Finding a Cause for Autism
We subscribe to Kiplinger’s Bottom Line, and they send us a Daily Health News bulletin. This was in the bulletin today:
AUTISM: CLOSER TO FINDING A CAUSE
It wasn’t so long ago that psychologists theorized that autism was caused by mothers who were unable to show affection toward their children. It’s hard to believe, but these moms were actually referred to as “refrigerator mothers.” Talk about heaping on the guilt! Well, we’ve made huge strides in terms of understanding that autism is not a result of something a parent does to a child. The condition remains a heartbreaker, however.
These days the term “autism” is applied to a range of brain disorders characterized by poor communication and interaction with others. According to the most current statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, autism now affects one out of every 110 American children between ages three and eight. (That is when the condition is typically diagnosed.) And while we still don’t know for sure what the cause is, I’m happy to report that researchers are making some impressive strides toward solving the mystery.
I recently spoke with Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, MPH, a professor at the School of Medicine at the University of California in Davis (UC Davis), to hear more about the work she’s doing. She is one of the authors of two new studies on autism, both reported in the July 2011 issue of Epidemiology. One study shows that children conceived during winter months (December through March) have an increased chance of being autistic. The other shows that women who take prenatal vitamin supplements in the three months prior to conception and the first month after conception are less likely to bear autistic children.
“The studies present us with more evidence that autism isn’t caused by a single factor,” Dr. Hertz-Picciotto said. In fact, she said there’s mounting evidence that autism is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors… which aren’t necessarily the same in each case.
In one of the studies, researchers at UC Davis looked at approximately 6.6 million birth records in California recorded from 1990 through 2002, correlating the rates of autism for children conceived in December through March with those conceived in July. The results were surprising: Children conceived in December had an 8% greater chance of being autistic than those conceived in July… and the percentage of increase over the July rate kept rising for subsequent winter months, reaching a high of 16% in March.
“We don’t believe the calendar month itself is a cause of autism, but it’s a marker for other potential causes that may vary with the season,” said Dr. Hertz-Picciotto, who is also affiliated with the UC Davis MIND Institute, a research center for the study of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. She said these other seasonal factors may include viruses that are more common in winter months or the change in the amount of daylight, which affects, among other things, the body’s production of vitamin D.
VITAMINS MAY HAVE A CRITICAL ROLE
In the second study, researchers collected data from some 700 California families who had children with autism. Results of the study, Dr. Hertz-Picciotto said, showed a reduction of about 40% in autism rates in cases in which the mother had taken prenatal vitamin supplements during the three months before conception through the first month after conception. In other words, a buildup of vitamins before the crucial first month of embryonic development seems to be key to healthy neural growth. Prenatal supplements typically contain vitamin A, niacin (vitamin B-3), folic acid (vitamin B-9), vitamin B-12, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, calcium, iron, pyridoxine, riboflavin, thiamine and zinc.
Folic acid may be the critical component, said Dr. Hertz-Picciotto, because the vitamin is known to protect against defects in the embryo’s neural tube, which develops into the brain and spinal cord. With so many factors still unknown, Dr. Hertz-Picciotto said, more studies are expected to be conducted in the near future, especially research into B and D vitamins as well as fevers, infections and exposure to pesticides during pregnancy.
In the meantime, given the vitamin study’s finding of a 40% reduction in autism rates, it’s certainly wise to take prenatal vitamin supplements three months before potential conception through the first month after conception.
Source(s):
Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, MPH, chief, division of environmental and occupational medicine, professor, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis. She is also affiliated with the UC Davis MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute in Sacramento, an interdisciplinary research center for the study and treatment of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Rebecca J. Schmidt, PhD, assistant professor, department of public health sciences, School of Medicine, University of California Davis.
Clean Produce with Vinegar; Fight ADHD
For those with children – or grandchildren 🙂 – who are concerned about the connection between pesticides and ADHD, here is a simple solution to washing your produce effectively – vinegar! I found this on EveryDay Health.
For years, researchers have noticed a gradual increase in diagnoses of ADHD. In fact, about 4.5 million kids now struggle with the condition, a 3% increase in the last 10 years.
So what’s causing this increase? A study, recently released by the University of Montreal and Harvard University, highlights a possible link from our produce. While the findings don’t yet determine a cause, the study defines an association between the disorder and pesticides. After testing and analyzing 1,139 children for one year, researchers found those who had highest exposure to organophosphates were twice as likely to have ADHD.
Organophosphates are man-made pesticides that are sprayed onto fruits and vegetables to keep insects away. While once thought harmless, some now argue children are sensitive to these pesticides. At a young age, the brain is rapidly developing, and kids possibly consume more due to their smaller body weight and size.
Frozen blueberries were found to have the highest organophosphate residue at 28%, with strawberries coming in at a close second at 25%. Celery had a 19% contamination rate.
How do we protect ourselves from pesticide contamination? Here are some helpful hints. If possible, buy local and organic. Even if you do, make sure to still peal your fruit when you have the option. For fruits and vegetables that can’t be peeled (like strawberries and celery), make sure you wash them thoroughly. Most people think running fruit under water for a few seconds gets the job done – wrong. The best cleaning method is to wash produce with a diluted vinegar solution. Here’s how to do it.
Cleaning Produce with Vinegar
Reuse an old spray bottle. For every cup of white vinegar, add three cups of water. Shake well and spray your fruits and vegetables with the solution. You should spray enough to cover their entire surface. After, wash them with cold tap water so your fruits and veggies don’t taste and smell like vinegar (I’ll pass on the vinegar-flavored strawberries, thank you).
Tests prove that the vinegar solution removes 98% of all bacteria or pesticides, compared to 80% when washing with a water and brush.
Do you have any tips to help fight pesticide contamination?
The Passage by Justin Cronin
I subscribe to GoodReads.com, and I buy books through Amazon.com, so I am not sure which one of those recommended this book for me. I held it a couple months before I read it, just wasn’t sure it was something I cared about. Once I started, however, I was hooked.
Don’t you just love summertime reading, the kind where you might even be able to grab a couple hours in a row? When you can focus like that, it’s like you are living two lives; you are in your normal existence, but a part of you is somewhere else, if the book is good enough.
Sometimes that somewhere else isn’t that great, and in The Passage, you are in a post-apocalyptic America where those military scientists have lost control of one of their experiments and life has changed forever as a result. Sorry to sound so cynical, but I started reading Sci-Fi when I was still in middle-school, so I am a little jaded about post-apocalyptic literature, but this one managed to suck me in. Also, even though you know it’s fiction, it is compelling enough to feel very real.
So before I go getting all critical about the little things, I need to tell you that when I had to put the book down, I could hardly wait to get back to it, and I probably need to look after my laundry and my floors and wash up some dishes now that I’ve finished; the book compelled my interest.
I think the author does a great job setting up the world. In order for young people to come into their own, to head out on their quest, you have to get parents out of the way, so all the young people out to solve the problems have parents who have died, or committed suicide (the living situation is a little bleak) and that kind of bugs me, even though I can see the literary usefulness of having this happen.
The survivors, 100 years after the societal meltdown, live a bleak and limited existence, mostly focused on not getting killed. (One of the very scary things is just how fast a society can melt down when faced with an overwhelming threat.)
This is a vampire-novel, but a vampire novel with a total twist, there is nothing attractive about these vampires, called virals. They are demented, and they want blood. They tear into flesh. You don’t want to be out in the open after dark, you don’t want to run into a viral. Justin Cronin makes it very very real. I’m glad my husband wasn’t traveling. I know vampires are not real, and I know there are no virals, and you know sometimes rational doesn’t matter when you hear sounds at night? These bad-guys are very very lethal and very very bad.
And here is what I like. Cronin takes you from utter fear to some compassion for the virals. I imagine this will play into the next book.
I also like his inclusion of children, and they way children perceive and the way children feel, and how those perceptions and feelings grow with the child, and, if you are very lucky or very persistent, how you can gain insights into those perceptions and understand them differently as you reach adulthood. It reminds me of another Sci-Fi author I used to read, Zenna Henderson, who wrote books about specially talented children.
Here is what I don’t like, what I find really frustrating: this is just the first volume. I am satisfied enough with this book, and I know I will have to read the next one, but I think I can see where he is going with it all. I find it frustrating; I am holding my breath for the next Game of Thrones/Fire and Ice volume to come out, and now this Passage follow up won’t be out until 2012, on AAARRGH.
It’s a dark book, but it kept me glued. The things that annoyed me didn’t annoy me enough to discourage me from reading. 🙂 It is a great summer read.
Thelma and Louise in Saudi Arabia
An editorial cartoon from my friend Grammy, in Texas, from today’s paper:
Freedom Greater Factor than Wealth in Happiness
Fascinating study, I found it today on AOL Health News
Freedom More Important to Happiness Than Wealth, Study Finds
Personal independence, autonomy trump money in data from more than 60 countries.
SUNDAY, June 19 (HealthDay News) — Personal independence and freedom are more important to people’s well-being than wealth, a new study concludes.
Researchers at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand analyzed the findings of three studies that included a total of more than 420,000 people from 63 countries and spanned nearly 40 years.
Their key finding: “Money leads to autonomy, but it does not add to well-being or happiness.”
The studies looked at data from three different psychological tests familiar to therapists:
The General Health Questionnaire, which measures distress in terms of anxiety and insomnia, social problems, severe depression and physical symptoms of mental distress, such as unexplained headaches and stomach aches.
The Spielberger anxiety inventory, which evaluates how anxious respondents feel at a particular moment.
The Maslach Burnout Inventory, which screens for emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and lack of personal accomplishment.
The analysis revealed “a very consistent and robust finding that societal values of [freedom and autonomy] were the best predictors of well-being,” wrote psychologists Ronald Fischer and Diana Boer in an American Psychological Association release.
“Furthermore, if wealth was a significant predictor alone, this effect disappeared when individualism was entered,” they added.
“Our findings provide insight into well-being at the societal level,” the researchers concluded.
The study appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Thing Around Your Neck
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has compiled a series of elegant vignettes in her most recent book, The Thing Around Your Neck. I had just read Half of a Yellow Sun, and was still wallowing in stunned admiration, when I heard an interview with the author on BBC, and learned she had written this book, The Thing Around Your Neck.
I loved Half of a Yellow Sun. I loved Purple Hibiscus. I felt I began to understand just a little bit about life in transitional Nigeria, with all the social and political forces blowing to and fro, straining the very fabric of nationhood.
In The Thing Around Your Neck, something else happens. It shares with Cutting for Stone and other books I like the impressions of those who come to live in the USA for the first time.
“Would that the wee wee giftie gi’e us, To see ourselves as others see us . . . ”
I’ve had a lot of experience going to live in foreign countries. One of the things I learned is that most of what I learn the first couple years isn’t much. You learn a lot of things wrong. You filter everything through your own cultural biases; you judge, you interpret, you try to make sense of things that just seem wrong.
I love to watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s characters do this in reverse, come to America and make judgements based on their own cultural expectations. I love to see us through these eyes.
Once, many many years ago, we entertained a Nigerian in our home, and when we served dinner, steaks, he looked at his plate and said “This would feed my family for a week.” We kind of laughed. We kind of thought he was exaggerating, or even kidding. We just didn’t know. We had never seen anyone truly hungry, we had always lived in this land of plenty. We had no idea what we didn’t know. We saw only what we knew.
Each story is a gem. Each treats the expat experience, coming here, or the reverse, coming to America and then going back and seeing Nigeria through eyes which have changed.
One story I had read before, in the New Yorker magazine and loved reading again, The Headstrong Historian. It starts with a smart woman, weaving her way among the ways of her people, whose husband’s family wants her husband to take another wife. He doesn’t want to. These two chose each other, and managed to live their lives together as best they could, by their own standards. Her son disappoints her, but her granddaughter – she sees her husband’s brave, courageous spirit in the eyes of her little grand daughter. You’ll have to read the story to find out the rest.
Other stories have to do with newlyweds, with students, with love and marriage and affairs – the full spectrum of human experience, through Nigerian expat eyes. There are settings common from all three books, the college campus at Nsukka, a prison outside of town, small villages outside the city. If you read all her books, you recognize place: “Aha! I’ve been her before, in Purple Hibiscus!” You learn how to bribe the guards so you can bring in food for your imprisoned family member, you learn to keep your eyes down to show respect, you learn how Nigeria smells when the rains come, and how dry and dusty it gets during the harmattan.
I’m just sorry there isn’t another book by this author – yet – that I can read!
I guess these books that I love deal with a theme dear to my heart – that we are culturally blind to so many things, and that as human beings we are more alike than we are different. Short of packing up all our lives and our assumptions and moving to many different countries, the best we can hope for in learning different ways of thinking is for books like these by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which show us how differently we perceive things, depending on our cultures, and how alike we are in the things that we feel, as human beings.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Purple Hibiscus
A couple of years ago, when we had a great book club in Kuwait, I read Half of a Yellow Sun, by this author, and I was blown away. Some books you just read for entertainment, and some books have such a strong, compelling voice that it comes back to you, again and again, and you think about it for a long time.
So when Amazon.com recommended Purple Hibiscus, I bought it, along with The Thing Around Your Neck. Purple Hibiscus is the author’s first book, and The Thing Around Your Neck is her most recent. In 2009, I found an interview with her online; you can watch it by clicking here: An Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is an enormously talented author.
When I read Half of a Yellow Sun, I became Igbo, growing up in Nigeria. While that story was told through many eyes, I was able to be a boy from the bush brought to the college campus to be a houseboy, I got to be a wife, her sister, her professor husband. We experienced the Biafran succession, the insanity of several regime changes in Nigeria, the total fog and waste of war, through the eyes of the Biafrans.
Reading Purple Hibiscus was a little different; the story is told through the eyes of a girl, Kambili, who lives in a very controlled environment. We know from the very beginning that things are not right in her wealthy, beautiful world. Her father and mother love her, take good care of her, feed her, clothe her – and that is just a part of a bigger picture. Her father has an idea of the way things should be; he attained his position and wealth through his education by the Catholic priests and he has a rigid idea of how everything must be done. Vary from his strictures, and you get beaten, or scalded, or you little finger is broken and disfigured.
Part of what makes this book so compelling is that while the environment is Nigeria, and, to us, exotic, the climate of abuse is the same everywhere. It’s a dirty little secret, even in the wealthiest of families, you keep your mouth shut to stay alive, and to protect your family’s image. Abuse is no stranger to rich or poor families, and can only stay alive because people stay silent.
Kambili, fifteen when we meet her, lives a tiny, small, scared life, following the weekly schedules her father prints out for her and her brother and posts over her desk. She hears her mother beaten over the smallest failure, imagined or real. Her mother miscarries twice due to these beatings, and her father tenderly cares for the mother whose miscarriage his beatings caused. It is crazy-world. Kambeli and her brother are expected to take first in every class; if they do not, they, too, pay a severe penalty.
Just as the political climate in Nigeria starts to tremble and fall apart, so, too, does Kambili’s life, and in the falling apart, comes new ways of doing things, new perspectives, new risks and even learning to run, to laugh, to be ‘normal’ as other children are. She is blessed to have an aunt at the university, no where near so wealthy as her family but able to cajole her father into letting the children visit with her. The aunt, Ifeoma, laughs, and encourages her children to challenge other’s opinions respectfully, and who grows the very rare Purple Hibiscus. Her heart aches for Kambili and her brother, and she tries to give them space to figure things out for themselves, and to chose what they want for themselves.
It is a scary time in Nigeria, a time when men can come to the door and take someone away, and you don’t know if you will ever see them again, or how damaged they will be if they return. Kambili’s own life is full of a similar terror, but the terror is inflicted by someone who she loves, and who loves her.
I love the soul of an author who can write a book like this, a book that makes me feel like in another life I was a Nigerian. I can’t begin to think I know much about Nigeria now, but having read three books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I have the broad outlines of the divisions which traumatize and fracture Nigeria to this day. Even better, I understand how very different the cultural expectations are from our own, and how very similar we are as human beings.
This is a great read. It is inspirational. You might even learn something. You can find it on Amazon.com.
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