“Is Your Cat Always Fractious?”
“Fractious” isn’t a word you often hear. Clearly the veterinary tech had just read the word off the record, perhaps there is some warning in there about the Qatari Cat.
The Qatari Cat was born on the streets of Qatar, and had a bumpy start with another owner. While the man and his daughter liked him just fine, the wife and her mother did not. When the Qatari cat came to live with us, he was very wary of me. It took a couple years for him to fully trust me. He watched my feet all the time. He quailed in fear, ears back, if I used a loud voice. He was terrified of the sound of plastic bags.
Slowly, slowly, we built a relationship. Today, ten years later, he is a sweet cat.
He is a sweet cat every single day of the year, but he still has his street instincts. AdventureMan has learned that you can’t play rough with the Qatari Cat; you play rough, you lose. I never speak loudly to him; it just won’t work, it just gets his back up. Because he knows I am the boss, I speak sternly, but softly to him and he will do just what I ask him to do.
Our first visit to the vet went badly. You can read about it here. He was fine until the buzzing razor hit his bottom and then all his survival instincts kicked in. He’s been back twice, and he has been as good as gold, but somehow . . . that notation has stuck.
“No!” I replied, maybe a little bit too loudly.”No! He is a sweet kitty! He is snuggly and loving and quiet and good! But if he is scared, he wants to defend himself.” I told the tech about the Italian vet the Qatari Cat fell in love with in Kuwait, she snuggled him and told him how beautiful he was and how much she loved him and he was putty in her hands. I was almost jealous. I thought maybe she distilled some catnip and mixed it with her perfume or something, Qatari Cat’s eyes glazed a little in sheer adoration when he was around her, and he even drooled a little. She could take his temperature, give him a shot and check his innards and he never complained, just looked at her adoringly.
The tech shot a skeptical look at me and exited the room. I could hear her repeat this to the vet, and muffled laughter before she entered the room again.
So the vet came in and snuggled Qatari Cat, and told him he was pretty, and while she did not say it with an Italian accent, Qatari Cat was clearly intrigued – and on his best behavior. It doesn’t take much . . . he’s a male. Snuggle him a little, rub his fur the right way, chat him up . . . it doesn’t have to be rational, it’s all in the tone of voice and the flirtation. He totally digs it, he eats it up. A little grope here, a quick look at the teeth, a quick injection and he’s finished, not a fractious moment in the entire visit.
On the way home, we laughed thinking of our sensitivity at having our cat called “fractious.” We remember the indignant response of friends whose cat was annotated as “vicious” by a German vet. The cat was diabetic and objected to the roughness with which the vet wanted to take his blood. I think if you are a veterinarian, you might have an understanding that a sick animal, or a scared animal, might act unpredictably or defensively, there are big thick gloves you can wear if an animal seems wired up.
Does this look like a fractious cat to you?
Every Day Sadists Walk Among Us
“Trust your feelings,” my friend told me when I was telling her about a person who seemed so nice, but made me uncomfortable. This article says the same thing; if you feel like a person takes pleasure from humiliating or hurting others, stay far far away. It’s only a matter of time before they turn on you.
Everyday Sadists Walk Among Us, Study Says
(From AOL News/Every Day Health)
Although we may think of sadism in a sexual or criminal context, sadistic tendencies are common in everyday life.
By Laurie Sue Brockway, Everyday Health Staff Writer
Whether it’s the Marquis de Sade, the evil stepmother from Snow White, or Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, all sadists take great pleasure in inflicting pain on others. Fortunately, you are unlikely to meet those particular three anytime soon, but according to an unusual duo of studies conducted in Vancouver, British Columbia, and published in Psychological Science this week, it is very possible you will bump into a boss, a colleague, or even a family member who may be considered an “everyday sadist.”
While most people try to avoid hurting others — and will feel guilty, remorseful, and distressed if they do hurt someone intentionally or unintentionally — an everyday sadist enjoys being cruel and may find it exciting.
“We have probably all encountered people in our daily lives who — at least seem to — enjoy hurting others,” said lead researcher Erin Buckels, MA, who conducted this work as part of her master’s thesis in Social-Personality Psychology at the University of British Columbia. She is now a doctoral student at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.
“Everyday sadists lack empathy, and they possess an internal motivation to hurt others. However, they are unlikely to act in a way that would be criminal or dangerous — at least in most contexts, where such behavior is met with social disapproval or punishment,” Buckels said.
Everyday sadists may be cousins to classic sociopaths in their lack of empathy, but they are not considered a danger to society in the same way. “It is only in situations where cruelty is encouraged or socially acceptable that dangerous behavior might enter the equation,” said Buckels. “Both sadistic personality and situational pressures are necessary for sadism to manifest with everyday people. War is one example of this confluence — we have all seen the images of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. All forms of cruel behavior have the potential to be motivated by sadistic pleasure, including bullying and abuse by others. If it were done purely for pleasure, then it would be sadism.”
If You Like to Hurt Bugs, You May Be a Sadist
It’s one thing to take an empty mayonnaise jar to catch fireflies when you are a kid and accidentally forget to poke holes in it, causing the fireflies to die. It’s another thing to enjoy harming bugs (or animals). Buckels used a bug-crushing exercise to draw the everyday sadists out in a controlled laboratory environment. For the experiment, she defined sadists in two ways: Their cruel behavior and felt pleasure in the lab, and personality characteristics consistent with sadism. A group of 71 participants were asked to fill out a sadism personality questionnaire and also given a list of four tasks they could choose from:
Killing bugs
Helping the experimenter kill bugs
Cleaning dirty toilets
Enduring pain from ice water
A bug-crunching machine fashioned out of a coffee grinder made distinct crunching sounds. Placed close to this machine were cups containing live pill bugs that were labeled with names like Muffin, Ike, and Tootsie. Those who selected bug-crushing were told to put the bugs into the machine and grind them up. Unbeknownst to them, there was a barrier that prevented the bugs from being dropped into the grinder. No bugs were killed for this experiment, but it brought the sadists out of the closet. Of 71 participants, nearly 28 percent chose to kill bugs.
What Exactly Is a Sadist?
Sadistic personality disorder was once defined as a mental illness, but over time sadism has been considered more of a lifestyle choice or a personality quirk or trait. The new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), does include sexual sadism disorder. “This is marked by recurrent and intense sexual arousal from the suffering of others as manifested by fantasies, urges, and behaviors,” said Wilfried Busse, PhD, a psychotherapist based in Bethesda, Md. “To meet full criteria for the disorder, an individual also has to act on such urges by inflicting harm on a non-consenting individual, or must experience such uncontrollable urges to cause significant social and occupational impairment.”
“The central feature of sadism is deriving pleasure from watching or inflicting physical or psychological harm on others,” added Dr. Busse. “In the extreme form a sadist will seek to inflict suffering on another for the psychological gratification derived from such an action.”
Buckel’s study did not use classic criteria to define sadism – most widely known as sexual or criminal behavior – and instead explored sadism as it exists in the “subclinical” range of personality, an aspect of sadism not considered a mental illness.
“There is clearly a difference between a person who gets pleasure from killing bugs and a person who kills other humans for pleasure,” said Buckels. “That being said, the core experience of sadism is probably pretty similar for both of them. Our research has also revealed both similarities and differences between people who enjoy acting cruelly, or direct sadists, and those who simply enjoy watching cruelty, or vicarious sadists.Regardless of whom the victim is, direct aggression requires a certain amount of callousness and a lack of distress towards the suffering of another living creature.”
How to Spot a Sadist
There is a big difference between the kind of evil sadists we know from history and movies and people with sadistic impulses, who fall into a category of sadism that is considered a personality trait rather than a personality disorder.
“It is very important to differentiate between an antisocial, or sadistic, personality disorder and sadistic impulses,” said psychologist Fran Walfish, Psy.D., a family therapist and author in Beverly Hills, Calif.
“Antisocial personality disorder is very rare,” Walfish said, offering examples such as Hitler, murderers who enjoy torturing their victims and watching them suffer, and, possibly, Syrian President Bashar Assad. “But the rest of us have unconscious sadistic impulses. Even the kindest, most loving person, when terribly mistreated, can feel an impulse of hate very strong,” she added.
Walfish explained that there are several sub-types of sadists:
Explosive sadist. When disappointed and/or frustrated with their lives, humiliated or hopeless, they lose control and seek revenge for the mistreatment to which they feel subjected. They are known for being unpredictably violent. This manifests through tantrums, fearsome attacks on others, especially family members, and uncontrollable rage.
Tyrannical sadist. They are frightening and cruel because they appear to relish the act of menacing and brutalizing others; forcing their victims to cower and submit gives them satisfaction.
Enforcing sadist. They tend to be military sergeants, deans of universities, prison overseers, police officers or people with other authoritative functions who feel they should be the ones controlling and punishing people who have broken rules, regulations or laws.
Spineless sadist. They are typically deeply insecure and act like cowards. In anticipation of real danger, they project their hostile fantasies and strike first, hoping thereby to forestall their antagonist and ask questions later. They use aggressive hostility to send the message to others that they aren’t intimidated or fearful, so that they can control their inner feelings and display the exact opposite of how they actually feel. They seek out scapegoats to gang up on, which allows them to assault the exact things that exist within themselves that they want to deny.
Everyday sadist. There is a renewed interest in studying subclinical sadism as a personality trait, said Walfish. Subclinical psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and everyday sadism form the so-called “Dark Tetrad” of personality.
“These people aren’t necessarily serial killers or sexual deviants but they gain some emotional benefit in causing or simply observing others’ suffering,” said Walfish. “The type of person the study is referring to are, for instance, the co-worker who repeatedly humiliates you and smiles or appears to reap pleasure from hurting you. If you self-advocate and say something that inflames your co-worker, she retaliates with evil revenge, further humiliating you.”
Exercise Caution Around Everyday Sadists
The British Columbia researchers surmised that everyday sadists are not the most popular people.“A person who has a high score on a sadism personality questionnaire is unlikely to be regarded as a nice and loving person,” said Buckels. “That is not to say that they are always nasty or that they can’t love others; but in general, high scorers tend to be less nice than average.”
How does someone become an everyday sadist? “In general, the cause or reason someone wants to go the extra effort to hurt another is because someone terribly mistreated them,” said Walfish. “That someone is usually their mother, father, or an older sibling. The sadist was a receptacle, or container, for hostility and evil meanness. These toxic feelings become too much for one to bear. They have no choice but to find a weaker victim and spew their venom onto the other.”
“Within their own families and in the workplace these people cannot be trusted,” Walfish observed. “No one can ever feel safe with them. Therefore, they do not have real relationships. They engage by exploiting, manipulating, and using other people as a means to their own end. The best thing to do is keep reasonable distance from these people. Always be pleasant so you don’t become their target. This does not mean to kiss up. It just means you present yourself as a benign nice guy. Never do business or get close to one of these people. They will always take you down.”
Buckels said she was surprised to find such a low baseline of positive emotions reported by sadists. “They are not just acting out to compensate for deep-rooted insecurity or low self-esteem,” she said. “Interestingly, after an act of cruelty, their moods seemed to lighten, suggesting instead that the sadist’s appetite for cruelty derives from some diabolical need. Although speculative, our hypothesis is that sadists have an underlying deficit that is sated through cruelty’s rewards.”
Kuwait Marriage and Divorce 2013
The presentation is a little confusing, but I have to guess that if 19% of the divorces are “non-Kuwaiti” by which they mean that one member of the marriage is not Kuwaiti. So what they are not saying is that 80% of the divorces are Kuwaitis married to Kuwaitis.
They also did not say how long marriages lasted – how many of those marriages were divorced in the first year, how many after many years? If the statistics are accurate, Kuwait is doing OK – more than half the marriages are succeeding.
OOps – found second report in the same Kuwait Times! See below
9,404 Kuwaiti marriages, 4,067 divorces in 2012
KUWAIT: More than 9,000 Kuwaiti couples married last year and more than 4,000 marriages ended in divorce the same year, a local daily reported yesterday quoting official statistics.
The statistics released by the Ministry of Justice and published by Al-Qabas daily indicate that 9,404 marriages between Kuwaitis took place last year compared to 4,067 divorces, or 43.3 percent.
The same statistics also indicated that 4,910 marriages took place between a Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti spouse in 2012, compared to 2,605 divorces in the same category. In detail, the statistics show that 814 Kuwaiti men married non-Kuwaiti women in 2012, while 648 Kuwaiti women married non-Kuwaiti men the same year.
The percentage of Kuwait couples in the total number of marriages last year reached 65 percent, according to the statistics, while 19 percent took place between non-Kuwaiti couples. 10 percent of marriages took place between a Kuwaiti man and a non-Kuwaiti woman, while marriages between a non-Kuwaiti man and a Kuwaiti woman also reach 10 percent.
Regarding divorce percentages, the statistics show that 19 percent of divorce cases happened between non-Kuwaiti couples; 12 percent between couples in which the husband is Kuwaiti and the wife is non-Kuwaiti, and 7 percent between couples in which the husband is non-Kuwaiti and the wife is Kuwaiti.
Regarding academic qualifications, the statistics show that 35 percent of women married last year have university degrees, 30 percent have high school degrees, and 19 percent have diplomas, whereas 29 percent of men have university degrees, 24 percent have high school degrees, 21 percent have middle school qualifications and 20 percent have diplomas. On the other hand, the statistics show that the majority of women divorced last year have university degrees (29 percent), while the majority percentage of divorced men have middle school qualifications (29 percent).
55% couples married in last 4 years seek divorce
KUWAIT: Almost 55 percent of couples filing for divorce in Kuwait have been married for four years only, including 25 percent who are yet to celebrate the first anniversary of their wedding, a local daily reported yesterday quoting official statistics. The statistical report released by the Research and Statistics Department in the Ministry of Justice and obtained by Al- Qabas daily further indicates that out of 5,662 couples who sought marriage counseling, only 20 percent had their issue successfully resolved.
Lack of willingness to coexist was identified as the primary cause for divorce requests, with 32 percent of the requests made by husbands and 23 percent by wives.
The statistics further indicate that 77 percent of couples who attended marriage counseling were Kuwaitis compared to 22 percent non-Kuwaitis.
Meanwhile, 62 percent of those couples do not have children, 34 percent have one to three children, and 2.7 percent have between four and six children.
Regarding age groups, the statistics show that 42 percent of couples seeking marriage counseling are aged between 25 and 34, 22 percent aged between 35 and 44, and 20 percent aged between 15 and 25. And according to the couples’ academic levels, the statistics indicate that 28 percent of husbands have middle school degrees, 22 percent have high school degrees and 21 percent have university degrees, whereas 27 percent of wives have high school degrees, 23 percent have university degree, 22 percent have diploma and 20 percent have middle school
One Thing Leads to Another
“I’m afraid to go home,” AdventureMan told our son. “She’s moving the furniture.”
“She can do that without consulting?” our son asked.
“Yeh, she can,” AdventureMan responded, “And I count myself lucky that she hasn’t bought another house and said we’re moving.”
Moving furniture is one of those things I do. I get tired of everything the same-old same-old. If I’m not moving, it gives me a chance to re-think things, and try something else to see if that works better.
We have a dining room we hardly ever use. We have never eaten a meal in there. We had too much furniture, and besides, in the family room we have a huge circular teak table that seats eight. It’s less formal and a lot more fun. The dining room is in a very quiet part of the house, so we talked about turning it into a library (see! we talked!) and that is what I did. But when you move a piece of furniture, or get rid of another, or both, you end up also having to evaluate all the things inside that piece of furniture, and having to think through where things need to go.
Life is so different. As an Army wife, we entertained all the time. I hit the sales in Czechoslovakia and have bar ware and wine glasses for our 48 closest friends, and we just don’t entertain like that any more. We don’t even drink like that!
We do entertain; we host the monthly book club some months, I have my quilting group in frequently, and we have dinners for family and dinners for visiting IVLP delegates. We entertain people we like. It’s a whole different world when it’s a choice. I’m getting rid of a lot of pieces I’ll never use again and I’ll never miss once they’re gone.
I’m getting rid a lot of irrelevant things, including an old TV cabinet, you remember them? They enclosed an old fashioned TV, had shelves for videos (remember them?) and little drawers for CDs? I’ve been using it as storage for art work and a thing that plays music from an iPod or two. I’ll hang some of the art work, get rid of some, and find another place for the MP3 player.
Yesterday was the big work, the figuring out how to change furniture and carpets into new positions. Of course, once you move something, you have to clean the places no one ever sees, so it takes more time, but you’ve got to do it right.
Today was the small but time-consuming work of getting things put away in a kind of order so that they can be found again. When I put books on the shelves three years ago, it was like fiction here and non-fiction there, and I never went back. Now, I have them sorted into subjects and country, art related, or religious. Got rid of about half my CD’s but still have too many.
It’s a messy process; you take something fixed, turn it into chaos and slowly, slowly, bring a new pattern into being. Tomorrow I need to hang some more art work. It’s been three years.
Then we live with the changes and see if they work for us. If not . . . the process starts over, but in the meanwhile, got rid of some stuff! One of these days, need to tackle the closets . . . Have an entire closed full of evening clothes I never wear, and can’t bear to part with . . . yet.
Recipe For Life
Thank you, Renee, for sending this lovely little reminder of how to lead a happy life:
Great Recipe (one of the best that you will ever read)
1. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate antidepressant.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
Talk to God about what is going on in your life.
3. When you wake up in the morning complete the following
statement, ‘My purpose is to__________ today. I am thankful for______________’
4. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
5. Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild
Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds & walnuts.
6. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
7. Don’t waste your precious energy on gossip, issues of the
past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead
invest your energy in the positive present moment.
8. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.
9. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
10. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
11. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
12. You are not so important that you have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
13. Make peace with your past so it won’t spoil the present.
14. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about
.
15. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
16. Frame every snowballed disaster with these words: ‘In five years, will this matter?’
17. Forgive everyone for everything.
18. What other people think of you is none of your business.
19. GOD heals everything – but you have to ask Him.
20. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
21. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your
friends will. Stay in touch!!!
22. Envy is a waste of time. You have everything you need.
23. Each night before you go to bed, complete the following statements: I am thankful for__________.
Today I accomplished_________.
24. Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.
25. When you are feeling down, start listing your many blessings. You’ll be smiling before you know it.
26. Send this to everyone you care about.
“);
Homecoming and Judgement
Home again, home again and the daily grind recommences. Giving up a vacation is hard for me. Part of it is my compulsiveness; my mind whirls with my must-do’s and almost all the things I really like to do are not on the must-do’s list. Must do’s include things like laundry and dishes, tasks which are mindless and I don’t really mind too much, but they get in the way of what I want to do, which is to tell you about our Alaska adventure 🙂 Before I can do that, in addition to the must do’s, I also have to transfer all my photos from my iPad to my computer, which makes blogging so much easier, so once again – something hard before something fun.
Am I grumbling? Sorry if it sounds that way. I love vacations. I love other people doing the cooking and cleaning and me just responsible for putting clothes on and figuring out what I want from the menu. I love the stimulation of seeing new things, smelling new smells, walking new paths.
As soon as we got home, we dropped our bags and zipped as fast as we could over to our son’s house to visit with him and his family. I got to hold my new little granddaughter for the entire visit – oh, so such a sweet tiny baby.
Yesterday, I hit the early service, hit the commissary, put all the groceries away and then AdventureMan and I took our little grandson to Red Robin, where . . . . in a momentary loss of my senses, I ordered a hamburger, my second of the year. It didn’t taste as good as my 4th of July hamburger, serves me right. But we had such a fun time, and here is the grand triumph – our grandson is using a napkin! He is wiping his hands and mouth with a napkin, not with his hand or arm! Wooooo HOOOOOO! He chats and makes conversations, oh, he is so much fun.
So today, on! On! Get that laundry done! Get those files transferred!
Yesterday’s sermon was on the tendency of the most Christian of Christians to want to sit in the highest seats, and Jesus’ words to choose the lower seat and allow the host to move you up, giving you honor, rather than choosing a high seat and being asked to move lower so that someone of higher distinction can have your seat. Father Neal Goldsborough mentioned that he sees the saving-of-the-seats, the tipped chairs, the stretched out handbags all the time, and we were all squirming. We’re all guilty. It was a great sermon.
From today’s Forward Day by Day readings on the daily lectionary:
James 2:1-13. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
It’s easy to pass judgment—she’s too liberal or too conservative, his clothes are too cheap or too rich, she doesn’t believe the “right” theology, his values aren’t properly aligned, etc. As easy as passing judgment is, it can do a lot of damage.
All too often, this judgment happens in churches. Comparisons and assessments pop up, and the pews that should be a safe haven for all people become trial benches. A 2007 Barna Group survey found that 87 percent of young non-Christians perceive present-day Christianity as judgmental—and half of their churchgoing counterparts answered the same. I’d be surprised by these numbers if they didn’t ring so true with perceptions among my own friends and acquaintances.
Putting mercy above judgment does not mean moving into a slippery relativism. It means embracing the radical Good News of Jesus and living as a conduit of Christ’s love to the world. Today’s passage from the book of James precedes tomorrow’s familiar proclamation, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (2:17). An act of mercy is a work of faith, a witness putting Christianity in its rightful place.
God Laughs; Life’s Craziness
One of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 2, which advises us to humbly submit to the will of Almighty God or suffer the consequences of our own actions. I’ve heard God laughing all week, sometimes at me, sometimes with me.
Psalm 2
1 Why do the nations conspire,
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and his anointed, saying,
3 ‘Let us burst their bonds asunder,
and cast their cords from us.’
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord has them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6 ‘I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’
7 I will tell of the decree of the Lord:
He said to me, ‘You are my son;
today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron,
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’
10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear,
with trembling 12kiss his feet,*
or he will be angry, and you will perish in the way;
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Happy are all who take refuge in him.
I’m a planner. I figure out what I want, and then I figure out how to get it. When we decided we wanted to take a trip to Alaska, we booked – and paid – a year in advance to get the kind of room we wanted. We also planned to buy a new car, and started saving for that, being pay-cash kind of people.
Then, early in the year we discovered we were going to become grandparents to a granddaughter! She would arrive shortly after we get back from our Alaska trip.
This week, God laughed. The doctors told our son and his wife that she needed to go on bedrest, and that this baby will be coming early. All the grandparents have been helping with childcare through the summer, now we just ratcheted it up a notch.
Do you know why God gives children to YOUNG parents? LOL, a three year old has SO much energy! So much curiousity! We have such a good time with him and when at the end of the day, we return him to his parents – we need a nap!
We are also trying to pack and prepare for our trip, get the Qatari Cat prepared for the cat hotel, get the guest suite prepared for the people who will stay while we are gone, and oh yes, finish up the purchase of that new car.
I had thought the first week in August would be a snooze, isn’t it always? Those long, hot humid days hit Pensacola, often one of those violent and emotional thunderstorms that clears the air in the late afternoon, lazy day after lazy day, right?
Not this year. This year was fly to Seattle for my Mom’s 90th birthday celebration, fly back, take care of our grandson for a week, do whatever we can to help out our son and his wife while she is on bed rest, buy and sell two cars, do our normal volunteer work – oh, and we had scheduled two meetings at our house, so we had to be presentable, and have some delicious things available. I could hear God laughing.
In the midst of all this, we are healthy. We have a good roof over our heads. We have the means to get a new car and travel to Seattle for Mom’s birthday. We pre-paid much of the Alaska vacation. Our little grandson is happy, and strong, and articulate, and fun to be around. Our son and his wife are wonderful, loving parents, and hard workers, and are preparing for this sweet new arrival. God laughs, and we thank him for his abundant blessings, and his abundant patience with us thinking we have any control over the months that come. We pray for the safe and healthy arrival of this little granddaughter who may arrive while we are gone, for a safe delivery, and a speedy recovery for her mother, and for strength and courage for her father, our son, who is a valiant man. We welcome your prayers.
Breath of Fresh Air in Seattle
Miss me?
I’ve been in Seattle for a truly grand event, my Mother’s 90th Birthday. She was queen for almost a week, with visitors and well wishers and a smashing party with friends and family and faces she has known and loved for years – many many people.
When I arrived in Seattle it was cool and cloudy and everyone told me how sad it was that I had missed the glorious weather they have had for weeks. Coming in from the airport I was shocked to see all the scorched grass; it looked more like California than green green Seattle.
I wasn’t sad to miss the warm sunshine at all. I have all of that I need in Pensacola. What I loved, from the moment I arrived, was the fresh air.
Seattle smells good. Seattle smells like mown grass, and flowers, lush flowers everywhere. Youcan drive with your windows open. I slept with my window open, and when it got COLD in the middle of the night, I used a BLANKET! This is the best luxury for me, cool weather, fresh air, cool breezes, even a little thunder and lightning and rain.
The days were warm and sunny, and the nights were cool and fresh. I was in heaven.
It wasn’t that I forgot about you – I have all kinds of material – but blogging with the iPad just doesn’t work for me. It’s fine for picking up e-mail and checking the news and playing a game or two, but it isn’t a real computer, with real capabilities. If blogging gets to technical, I’m not going to do it, life is too short. I love WordPress for making life so easy, making it so easy to put in all the photos I want, easy easy easy. I just had too much going on, and didn’t have time to fiddle. The iPad just doesn’t do it for me. I wish I had a computer small enough to just stuff in my purse like the iPad, I wish I didn’t have to pull the computer out of my purse, like the iPad. The iPad is convenient, better than slogging a lot of books on the plane with me, but . . . What I really want is an iPad sized computer . . .
Home again, on the flight in the pilots must have mentioned the heat and humidity in Pensacola six times. Ahhh . . . .for those sweet cool breezes and cool nights . . .
Pakistan’s Swat Valley Women Fight Back with Jirga
I love this. Women are using technology – and the traditional system – to persist in seeking justice for women who are often little more than slaves to their husband.
Tahira
Women in Pakistan’s Swat valley are making history, and perhaps some powerful enemies, by convening an all-female jirga, a forum for resolving disputes usually reserved for men. Some readers may find details of this report by the BBC’s Orla Guerin disturbing.
Tahira was denied justice in life, but she continues to plead for it in death – thanks to a grainy recording on a mobile phone.
As she lay dying last year the young Pakistan wife and mother made a statement for use in court.
In the shaky amateur video, she named her tormentors, and said they should burn like she did.
Tahira was married off at the age of 12 and died last year following a suspected acid attack
Tahira’s flesh was singed on 35% of her body, following a suspected acid attack. Her speech was laboured and her voice was hoarse, but she was determined to give her account of the attack, even as her flesh was falling off her bones.
“I told her you must speak up and tell us what happened,” her mother Jan Bano said, dabbed her tears with her white headscarf. “And she was talking until her last breath.”
Tahira’s husband, mother-in-law, and father-in-law were acquitted this month of attacking her with acid. Her mother plans to appeal against that verdict, with help from a new ally – Pakistan’s first female jirga.
Under the traditional – and controversial – jirga system, elders gather to settle disputes. Until now this parallel justice system has been men-only, and rulings have often discriminated against women. The new all-women jirga, which has about 25 members, aims to deliver its own brand of justice.
It has been established in an unlikely setting – the scenic but conservative Swat valley, formerly under the control of the Pakistan Taliban. We sat in on one of its sessions in a sparsely furnished front room. Women crowded in, sitting in a circle on the floor, many with children at their feet. Most wore headscarves, and a few were concealed in burqas.
Probing injustice
For more than an hour they discussed a land dispute, problems with the water supply, unpaid salaries, and murder. The only man in the room was a local lawyer, Suhail Sultan. He was giving legal advice to jirga members including Jan Bano who he represents.
“In your case the police is the bad guy,” he told her. “They are the biggest enemy. ” He claims the police were bribed by the accused, and were reluctant to investigate the case properly.
The jirga tackled land disputes, water supplies, and murder
The jirga is making history, and perhaps making enemies. In Swat, as in many parts of Pakistan, men make the key decisions – like whether or not their daughters go to school, when they marry, and who they marry. And oppression starts early. Tahira was married off at just 12 years old, to a middle-aged man.
“Our society is a male-dominated society, and our men treat our women like slaves,” said the jirga founder, Tabassum Adnan. “They don’t give them their rights and they consider them their property. Our society doesn’t think we have the right to live our own lives.”
This chatty social activist, and mother of four, knows that challenging culture and tradition comes with risks. “Maybe I could be killed,” she said, “anything could happen. But I have to fight. I am not going to stop.”
They glued [my daughter’s] mouth and eyes closed. Just her face was left, the rest was flesh and broken bones”
Taj Mehal
As we spoke in a sun-baked courtyard Tabassum got a disturbing phone call. “I have just been told that the body of another girl has been found, ” she said. ” Her husband shot her.” She plans to investigate the case, and push the authorities to act.
“Before my jirga women have always been ignored by the police and by justice, but not now. My jirga has done a lot for women,” she said.
There was agreement from Taj Mehal, a bereaved mother with a careworn face, sitting across the courtyard on a woven bed.
Her beloved daughter Nurina was tortured to death in May.
“They broke her arm in three places, and they strangled her,” she told me, putting her hands to her own throat to mimic the action. “They broke her collarbone. They glued her mouth and eyes closed. Just her face was left, the rest was flesh and broken bones.”
She speaks of her daughter’s suffering with a steady voice, but grief is wrapped around her, like a heavy shawl.
“When I looked at her, it was like a piece was pulled out of my heart,” she said. “I was turned to stone. I see her face in front of my eyes. I miss her laughter.”
Women are a rare sight on the streets of Mingora
Nurina’s husband, and his parents, have now been charged with her murder, but her mother says that initially the courts took no interest.
“Whenever we brought applications to the judge he would tear them up and throw them away,” she said. “Now our voice is being heard, because of the jirga. Now we will get justice. Before the jirga husbands could do whatever they wanted to their wives.”
Women are little seen or heard on the bustling streets of Mingora, the biggest city in Swat. Rickshaw taxis dart past small shops selling medicines, and hardware supplies.
There are stalls weighed down with mangoes, and vendors dropping dough into boiling oil to make sugar-laden treats. Most of the shoppers are men.
‘No justice’ at jirgas
When we asked some of the local men their views on the women’s jirga, the results were surprising. Most backed the women.
“It’s a very good thing,” said one fruit seller, “women should know about their rights like men do, and they should be given their rights.”
Another said: “The jirga is good because now finally women have someone to champion their cause.”
The response from the local male jirga was less surprising. They were dismissive, saying the women have no power to enforce their decisions.
Most local men who spoke to the BBC expressed support for the women’s initiative
That view was echoed by the prominent Pakistani human rights activist Tahira Abdullah. “I don’t see it as more than a gimmick,” she said. “Who is going to listen to these women? The men with the Kalashnikovs? The Taliban who are anti-women? The patriarchal culture that we have?”
Ms Abdullah wants jirgas stopped whether male or female. “The jirga system is totally illegal, and has been declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It can never be just. There are several extremely notorious cases where we have noticed that women do not get justice from jirgas, neither do non-Muslims.”
One of those cases took place last year in a remote region of northern Pakistan where a jirga allegedly ordered the killing of five women – and two men – for defying local customs by singing and dancing together at a wedding.
And there are regular reports of jirgas decreeing that women and young girls be handed over from one family to another to settle disputes.
But for some, like Jan Bano, the women’s jirga is bringing hope. Every day she climbs a steep hill to visit Tahira’s grave, and pray for the daughter whose voice has still not her heard. Her video recording was not played in court.
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