Donna Leon: Suffer the Little Children
After reading Zanzibar Chest I decided it was time to give myself a break, and I allowed myself another Donna Leon book, this one Suffer the Little Children. I am currently reading another detective series, recommended by my sister, set in China. What they all seem to have in common is a very tired, sad, jaded view of corruption in society, and particularly among the poorly paid police. Sigh.
In this book, a Doctor and his wife are invaded in the middle of the night by the carabinieri, a kind of police in Venice. I am not sure how the two agencies differ, maybe it is like the difference between state police and local police in the US, but when the paper was faxed over coordinating with Brunetti’s office, it got lost somewhere, and the action was never coordinated, and Brunetti gets a call in the middle of the night.
The doctor and his wife have adopted a child illegally. They bought an unwanted child from an Albanian woman, paid for her pregnancy expenses, paid a huge fee to her, and then had the child taken from them. Here is the saddest part of the story – the child’s mother doesn’t want the child, the illegally adopting parents want him back desperately, but the child is sent to a state orphanage, because of the illegal adoption.
It is a very sad book.
Here is why I read Donna Leon – some of her paragraphs are just brilliant. Memorable. Unforgettable.
“Brunetti’s profession had made him a master of pauses: he could distinguish them in the way a concert-master could distinguish the tones of the various strings. There was the absolute, almost belligerent pause, after which nothing would come unless in response to questions or threats. There was the attentive pause, after which the speaker measured the effect on the listener of what had just been said. And there was the exhausted pause, after which the speaker needed to be left undistrubed until emotional control returned.
Judging that he was listening to the third, Brunetti remained silent, certain that she would eventually continue. A sound came down the corridor: a moan or the cry of a sleeping person. When it stoped, the silence seemed to expand to fill the place.”
When you read Donna Leon, you forget you live anywhere else. For one brief moment, you become Venetian, you live in Guido Brunetti’s shoes. The speak the Venetian dialect, you think like a Venetian. What an escape!
The paperback edition will be out in April for $7.99 at Amazon.com for $7.99 plus shipping.
Leap Year Reversals
Here it is, gals, a chance that only comes up once every four years – and only one day – February 29.
In Western culture, it is the day that women can propose to men!
I don’t know anyone who has actually done this, proposed on February 29, but it’s an old legend.
The below is from About.com: Leap Year Traditions where you can read all kinds of information about today’s uniqueness.
Leap Year has been the traditional time that women can propose marriage. In many of today’s cultures, it is okay for a woman to propose marriage to a man. Society doesn’t look down on such women. However, that hasn’t always been the case. When the rules of courtship were stricter, women were only allowed to pop the question on one day every four years. That day was February 29th.
Stealing My Ideas?
Yesterday I was happily working in the project room. The Qatteri Cat, feeling neglected, came yowling back a few times, then went and got his baby and came back to be with me, and went to sleep. He looked so sweet. We don’t know what the baby is all about. Maybe he is lonely? Maybe we all need something small to comfort us when we are feeling neglected? All we know is that wherever we are, the QC will bring his baby back to be with us – and then, often he will leave it, as if we are the baby sitters or something.
So here is the Qatteri Cat and his baby:
You know when your cat – or your child – does something so sweet, you kind of think he’s the only one in the world that has ever done something that cute?
When I checked in with I Can Haz Cheezburger? this morning, I found this:
Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!
I think they must have plucked the thoughts out of my brain. 
Saudi Men Arrested for Flirting
This is in today’s BBC News.
Saudi men arrested for ‘flirting’
Relations between the sexes outside marriage is against the law
Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.
The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.
They were arrested following a request of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The mutaween enforce Saudi Arabia’s conservative brand of Islam, Wahhabism.
Earlier in the month, the authorities enforced a ban on the sale of red roses and other symbols used in many countries to mark Valentine’s Day.
The ban is partly because of the connection with a “pagan Christian holiday”, and also because the festival itself is seen as encouraging relations between the sexes outside marriage, punishable by law in the kingdom.
You can read the whole article HERE.
I wonder . . . is this what is going to happen in Kuwait? So like they segregate the university. . . then they segregate all the schools, EVEN THE PRIVATE SCHOOLS, so there is no choice. . . then they start patrolling the malls?
I lived in Saudi Arabia, and I remember the mutawaaeen were NOT police, but sometimes they took on the prerogatives of the police. So I have to wonder, like who made the arrest in the malls? Was it the police? Was it the mutawa hitting the boys with their little sticks? Did they call the boys parents? I have SO many questions!
How Decisions are Made in Kuwait
Here is the problem expats have in any country: you don’t know what you don’t know.
If you know you don’t know something, you can learn it. If you don’t know that you don’t know, there is this huge void in your understanding. Many times you can suspect there is a void, and if you ask, people will look at you like you are a little odd, and they will tell you there is no difference.
There IS a difference.
Working together with people of different nationalities, I have learned that some nationalities just forge on ahead and do things. Some nationalities use a more consultative process. Some nationalities expect to be told what to do and don’t do what they are not told to do.
In Friday’s Kuwait Times (February 21) is a column by Shamael Al-Sharikh, called The red, white, green and black. She talks about Kuwait National and Liberation Days, she talks about the shared heritage of all Kuwaitis (honestly, I would love to link you directly to this article but the website is still down) and then – I got a huge “AHA!” She talks about how decisions are made in Kuwait. I will quote a brief section, but I urge you all to find this column and read it in it’s entirety.
“. . . it has become painfully clear that there are nationals of this country who have no sense of belonging to it whatsoever.
However, the storm is about to subside. In a move that shows just how ready Kuwaitis are to mobilize for the sake of their national pride, a few diwaniyas in Kuwait signed a petition and sent it to the Takatul Shaabi political alliance at the National Assembly. It stated that unless MPs Adnan Abdulsamad and Ahmad Lari are asked to withdraw their membership from the Takatul Shaabi, none of it’s members will be welcome in Kuwait’s diwaniyas nor at weddings and funerals.
The move worked: the MPs have been asked to leave. . . the petitions included diwaniyas from all corners of the Kuwaiti society, both Sunni and Shiite, and it covered all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. . . I have never been more proud to support the red, white, green and black than I have now, and I am so proud to be a Kuwaiti.”
Not being welcome in diwaniyas, at weddings or at funerals is not something I would have considered political pressure. It matters here. It mattered enough that when diverse communities within Kuwait made the threat, it was effective. Who knew? Thanks to this column, I learned something I didn’t even know I didn’t know.
Sunrise 19 Feb 2008
“Not with a bang, but a whimper. . . ”
That tiny tiny bright speck you see is the sun fighting to shine through the clouds. It was only there for one brief moment – then gone! Maybe we will have rain today?
The gasp of brightness brought to mind T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men (by clicking on the blue hypertext, you can go to a great website where it explains all the references in the poem.) Although it was written in 1925 – almost a century ago – it has a very modern feel to it. Your challenge for today – read the poem. Those with more time or interest – go to the website and read the references.:
The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Date Night Sparks
This is the #1 most e-mailed article from the New York Times, and you can read the entire article by clicking HERE:
Reinventing Date Night for Long-Married Couples
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: February 12, 2008
Long-married couples often schedule a weekly “date night” — a regular evening out with friends or at a favorite restaurant to strengthen their marital bond.
But brain and behavior researchers say many couples are going about date night all wrong. Simply spending quality time together is probably not enough to prevent a relationship from getting stale.
Using laboratory studies, real-world experiments and even brain-scan data, scientists can now offer long-married couples a simple prescription for rekindling the romantic love that brought them together in the first place. The solution? Reinventing date night.
Rather than visiting the same familiar haunts and dining with the same old friends, couples need to tailor their date nights around new and different activities that they both enjoy, says Arthur Aron, a professor of social psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The goal is to find ways to keep injecting novelty into the relationship. The activity can be as simple as trying a new restaurant or something a little more unusual or thrilling — like taking an art class or going to an amusement park.
The theory is based on brain science. New experiences activate the brain’s reward system, flooding it with dopamine and norepinephrine. These are the same brain circuits that are ignited in early romantic love, a time of exhilaration and obsessive thoughts about a new partner. (They are also the brain chemicals involved in drug addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder.)
Most studies of love and marriage show that the decline of romantic love over time is inevitable. The butterflies of early romance quickly flutter away and are replaced by familiar, predictable feelings of long-term attachment.
But several experiments show that novelty — simply doing new things together as a couple — may help bring the butterflies back, recreating the chemical surges of early courtship.
Sex Chemistry Lasts Two Years
From BBC Health News (you can read the entire article by clicking on the blue type) It makes me smile to note that both of the studies mentioned are conducted by the Italians. 🙂
Sex chemistry ‘lasts two years’
Certain hormones are active during the ‘acute love’ phase
Couples should not worry when the first flush of passion dims – scientists have identified the hormone changes which cause the switch from lust to cuddles.
A team from the University of Pisa in Italy found the bodily chemistry which makes people sexually attractive to new partners lasts, at most, two years.
When couples move into a “stable relationship” phase, other hormones take over, Chemistry World reports.
But one psychologist warned the hormone shift is wrongly seen as negative.
Dr Petra Boynton, of the British Psychological Society, said there was a danger people might feel they should take hormone supplements to make them feel the initial rush of lust once more.
‘Not ever-lasting’
The Italian researchers tested the levels of the hormones called neutrophins in the blood of volunteers who were rated on a passionate love scale.
Levels of these chemical messengers were much higher in those who were in the early stages of romance.
Testosterone was also found to increase in love-struck women, but to reduce in men when they are in love.
But in people who had been with their partners for between one and two years these so-called “love molecules” had gone, even though the relationship had survived.
The scientists found that the lust molecule was replaced by the so-called “cuddle hormone” – oxytocin – in couples who had been together for several years.
Oxytocin, is a chemical that induces labour and milk-production in new and pregnant mothers.
Donatella Marazziti, who led the research team, said: “If lovers swear their feelings to be ever-lasting, the hormones tell a different story.”
Similar research conducted by Enzo Emanuele at the University of Pavia found that levels of a chemical messenger called nerve growth factor (NGF) increased with romantic intensity.
After one to two years, NGF levels had reduced to normal.
So Oxycontin, when it kicks in, is more like the commitment glue, and the earlier chemicals are more like lust?
Exercise to Counter Mild Depression
Today in BBC Health News something we all knew intuitively, but studies are showing it to be true – if you are depressed, exercise can help deal with the symptoms.
Exercise aids depression, say GPs
Doctors are increasingly prescribing exercise for people with depression, mental health campaigners have found. In a survey of 200 English GPs, the Mental Health Foundation found 22% suggest exercise to help people with milder forms of the condition.
This compares with just 5% in a similar survey three years ago.
The foundation said it was important that doctors did not just prescribe antidepressants for patients, and looked for other options.
Tackling isolation
Research has shown that exercise can help people with mild forms of depression by improving self-esteem – through better body image or achieving goals, and by relieving feelings of isolation which can fuel their depression.
It also releases feel-good brain chemicals such as endorphins.
You can read the entire article HERE>
Qatteri Cat Enjoys Winter Sunlight
Nothing like a snooze in the winter sunlight for the Qatteri Cat. He keeps track of everything going on in the neighborhood until the sleep waves overcome him, and then he just kicks back a little. It’s a great life, being an indoor cat.
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