Scanning Obituaries
Who knew? I certainly didn’t, and yet I find that I’m not alone. AdventureMan does it, too, and other friends. One friend says she thinks she scans the obituaries to celebrate the fact that she is still alive. That may be it for most of us, but in addition, I find that there are people living among us with amazing histories, and we don’t even know. Sometimes when you read an obit, you can tell that the person wrote it himself or herself, and what that person considered important in his/her life. Sometimes the obituary is not very loving.
Southern newspapers, in my experience, are much richer in extraordinary detail that newspapers in bigger cities, like Seattle. In bigger cities, only the rich and famous or notorious get much space; it may be that the space is far more expensive in the bigger cities, or that families are less willing to shell out from the estate for the bigger coverage. Southerners value family, and history; it’s a part of the culture.
Yesterday, when I took the Pensacola News Journal in to AdventureMan, I had circled something in one of the obituaries, knowing that he, like me, only reads them now and then. I didn’t want him to miss this line:
(Name) was a Past Mighty Chosen One of the Zelica Daughters of Mokanna, Ladies Auxiliary to the Grotto.
Holy smokes! I thought it might be one of the Mardi Gras Krewe things, but AdventureMan googled, and discovered that is a Masonic offshoot, and their larger groups are called Cauldrons. (!)
In America of the early 1900’s, social affiliation groups were important. People belonged to religious groups like Knights of Columbus, Ladies of the Church, etc, quasi-religious groups like Masons and Shriners, and social groups like the Elks and Moose and Lions Club. Some groups still exist, and are still going strong, like Rotary Club, and special interest groups. In Pensacola, there is a Tea Party AND a Coffee Party. There is a Philipino-American Republican Club. When people gather together regularly to share something in common, they can form a group. All of these groups help people be connected in their communities and in their lives, and help people to look after one another.
I belonged to a group once that called ourselves the Aqua-Babes. To be perfectly honest, we might not be total babes, but hey – it’s our group, we can call ourselves what we want, right?
But oh, my, to be a Mighty Chosen One . . .
RealAge Test
Have you taken the RealAge Test?
I took it five years ago, when one of the Kuwait bloggers published the link and we all tried it to see how we measured up. I was shocked to learn that because I was not exercising enough, nor seeing a doctor regularly, I was actually OLDER than my age. It shocked me enough to see a doctor and take her advice.
Today I took it, and now, with regular exercise, I came out eight years younger than my age, and younger than I was the first time I took the test, Woooo HOOOOO!
The test has changed, but only updated by the newest findings. It now measures social factors, like how many people you are close to, how many you help, etc. You learn a lot about what is important just by taking the test.
I challenge you. Take the test, and tell me how you did.
Canadian Family Found Guilt of Honor Killing
From today’s AOL / Huffington Post: World:
KINGSTON, Ontario — A jury on Sunday found an Afghan father, his wife and their son guilty of killing three teenage sisters and a co-wife in what the judge described as “cold-blooded, shameful murders” resulting from a “twisted concept of honor.”
The jury took 15 hours to find Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in a case that shocked and riveted Canadians from coast to coast. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
After the verdict was read, the three defendants again declared their innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia’s childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.
Their bodies were found June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home to Montreal from Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and going online. Shafia’s first wife was living with him and his second wife. The polygamous relationship, if revealed, could have resulted in their deportation.
The prosecution alleged it was a case of premeditated murder, staged to look like an accident after it was carried out. Prosecutors said the defendants drowned their victims elsewhere on the site, placed their bodies in the car and pushed it into the canal.
Defense lawyers said the deaths were accidental. They said the Nissan car accidentally plunged into the canal after the eldest daughter, Zainab, took it for a joy ride with her sisters and her father’s first wife. Hamed said he watched the accident, although he didn’t call police from the scene.
After the jury returned the verdicts, Mohammad Shafia, speaking through a translator, said, “We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn’t commit the murder and this is unjust.”
His weeping wife, Tooba, also declared the verdict unjust, saying, “I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother.”
Their son, Hamed, speaking in English said, “I did not drown my sisters anywhere.”
But Judge Robert Maranger was unmoved, saying the evidence clearly supported their conviction for “the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family.”
“It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime … the apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honor … that has absolutely no place in any civilized society.”
Hamed’s lawyer, Patrick McCann, said he was disappointed with the verdict, but said his client will appeal and he believes the other two defendants will as well.
But prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis welcomed the verdict.
“This jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances,” Laarhuis said outside court.
“This verdict sends a very clear message about our Canadian values and the core principles in a free and democratic society that all Canadians enjoy and even visitors to Canada enjoy,” he said to cheers of approval from onlookers.
The family had left Afghanistan in 1992 and lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai before settling in Canada in 2007. Shafia, a wealthy businessman, married Yahya because his first wife could not have children.
The prosecution painted a picture of a household controlled by a domineering Shafia, with Hamed keeping his sisters in line and doling out discipline when his father was away on frequent business trips to Dubai.
The months leading up to the deaths were not happy ones in the Shafia household, according to evidence presented at trial. Zainab, the oldest daughter, was forbidden to attend school for a year because she had a young Pakistani-Canadian boyfriend, and she fled to a shelter, terrified of her father, the court was told.
The prosecution said her parents found condoms in Sahar’s room as well as photos of her wearing short skirts and hugging her Christian boyfriend, a relationship she had kept secret. Geeti was becoming almost impossible to control: skipping school, failing classes, being sent home for wearing revealing clothes and stealing, while declaring to authority figures that she wanted to be placed in foster care, according to the prosecution.
Shafia’s first wife wrote in a diary that her husband beat her and “made life a torture,” while his second wife called her a servant.
The prosecution presented wire taps and cell phone records from the Shafia family in court to support their honor killing theory. The wiretaps, which capture Shafia spewing vitriol about his dead daughters, calling them treacherous and whores and invoking the devil to defecate on their graves, were a focal point of the trial.
“There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this,” Shafia said on one recording. “Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows … nothing is more dear to me than my honor.”
Defense lawyers argued that at no point in the intercepts do the accused say they drowned the victims.
Shafia’s lawyer, Peter Kemp, said after the verdicts that he believes the comments his client made on the wiretaps may have weighed more heavily on the jury’s minds than the physical evidence in the case.
“He wasn’t convicted for what he did,” Kemp said. “He was convicted for what he said.”
Doha Reunion and Marching Madness
We just finished a five day Doha reunion, a group of us who used to gather frequently in Doha, ironically most of us introverts, but who found gathering together forced us to exercise regularly, helped us to run our errands downtown, and helped us laugh a lot at our own foibles in a strange land. It’s not all that often you can find four women who all get along equally well with one another, but this group was that rarity, and having them in my house was a joy. We were together in worship and in friendship for several years, so having another opportunity to gather was just magical. (We also gathered in May, for a wedding.)
Yes, for those of you who are wondering, AdventureMan was here, and what a blessing he was. He cooked dinner and cleaned up two of the nights, after days when we had been out exploring all day. We could not have had so much fun without his help. I think the other husbands were jealous; they like to be a part of the conversations, too. We always have so much fun together, and such great issues to cover, big topics, small topics, family issues, political issues, fund raising, social and cultural challenges. We share frustrations and experiences, we share resources and brain-storm solutions. For us, it doesn’t get any better, these gatherings feed our souls.
Cat-like women, they all arrived on their own time and schedule, as it would fit, so there was a couple days of total overlap, and some days with fewer. The day the first visitor arrived was also the day of Pensacola’s newest parade, Marching Madness.
“Want to see it?” I asked her? They were going to try to set a new record for the largest number of people in the world doing a line dance.
“Sure!” she said, always a good sport.
This parade was hilarious. First, it was a daytime parade, and most of the parades I have been to in Pensacola have been night parades. There were like fourteen marching bands and many floats, so it was LOUD! The Happy Toddler would have loved it. Lastly, they were generous with the beads, people were loaded with beads, and some of the beads were special!
“I’ve never seen anything like this!” shouted my friend, over the bedlam of trumpets and drums in a compelling jungle rhythm. She was dancing and waving her hands madly at the passing Krewe, hoping for a strand or two to come her way. She ended up with a LOT of beads.
It was so much fun!
This isn’t New Orleans. This was a family parade, lots of babies, lots of children, lots of grandparents, so no one was underdressed, or showing off the wares, if you catch my drift. The people throwing beads were generous across the board, especially to the babies. 🙂
Pensacola is amazing. As we walked back to the car, the street cleaners were standing by, and the street was cleaned and re-opened to traffic within an hour. How amazing is that?
Social Network Interactions
I do go to FaceBook now and then, and I have connected with old friends, college friends, high school friends, and people from the many ‘places I remember’ in my life . . .
It’s pretty public, don’t you think? And you do one little thing, and it’s like glue, you’re stuck with that relationship. I am now careful who I ‘like’, because I seem to end up linked to them, and honestly, I try to be careful to limit my connections to people I know, or have known, people I have something in common with, like a family member, etc.
It’s like if you indicate any interest at all, you get linked. Is it just me? I don’t think of myself as isolationist, but time is precious, and I try to spend it wisely, focusing on genuine long term relationships, family relationships and people with whom I have commonalities.
I find that magazines who which I subscribe, cultural organizations, charitable organizations are all sending me surveys; they want to get to know me better. (? ? ? )
It’s too much relationship for me. I know there are people who can handle a huge number of social acquaintances . . . that’s not me. I am civil, even cordial. I don’t want to get to know organizations through surveys, nor businesses, relationships take TIME. So many of the ‘relationships’ make me feel rushed, and when I feel rushed, or pushed, my reaction tends to be to drop the relationship; it just doesn’t work for me.
I do believe we are all supposed to be connected, to be kind to one another, to care about one another. It’s asking too much of me to expect it to happen quickly. Am I the only one? Does anyone else have any problems with the instant sort of intimacy that seems to spring up so commonly on the social networks?
Martin Luther King Day
From A Word a Day, in honor of Martin Luther King Day:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. -Frederick Douglass, Former slave, abolitionist, editor, and orator (1817-1895)
Grandparents Move Near Children and Grandchildren
Fascinating article published this week in the AOL News Huffpost section on Life and Style on a growing trend for people in the grandparent stage of their lives to uproot, sell the family home and move to be near their children and grandchildren while the grandchildren are little.
Karin Kasdin, Author, ‘Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy: Confronting Motherhood, Womanhood and Selfhood in a Household of Boys’
Grandparents Uprooting Their Lives to Move Near Grandchildren
Edye was the first to leave. In her late 50s, she sold her home, packed her belongings and her cats, and left her close circle of friends to pursue a relationship and a job three states away from those who love her most. My inelegant and somewhat selfish response was, “Seriously? In late middle age you’re going to LEAVE ME AND START ALL OVER?”
Apparently her answer was “yes,” because she lives in Chicago, and I live near Philadelphia. She owns a house that she renovated from the floorboards up, and she has meaningful work she loves. It’s been a decade since the big move, so it’s almost time for me to accept the fact that this could be a permanent situation. And I would accept it, if it weren’t for another fact … the fact that she now has a grandson on the East Coast. She’s talking about how nice it would be to live near him. Grandchildren trump everything else, even best friends.
I know this because Elayne moved next. She moved to California permanently in order to enjoy her grandchildren’s formative years. After managing a bicoastal relationship with the kids for nine years, she simply could not bear the distance any longer. So off she went, leaving me bereft and confused.
“I suddenly realized I have very few years to spend with the kids before they become teenagers,” she explained to me one day as I sat in her kitchen crying into my tea. “When that day comes, they will prefer to spend time with their friends and I will become irrelevant.”
She was right. The frequency of her grandchildren’s visits had dwindled considerably over the years as the kids became engaged in school and neighborhood activities.
Gathering the fragments and memories of one’s entire adult life to begin anew in an unfamiliar place is not on most middle-agers’ to-do lists. But those lists were most likely compiled before we thought about grandchildren, and today baby boomer grandparents are moving in droves.
A recent AARP study revealed that 80 percent of adults 45 and older believe it is important to live near their children and grandchildren.
Nancy and Harm Radcliffe are among this number. After spending much of their adult lives living abroad, they returned to the United States and established a happy home in Bethesda, Maryland. In the 13 years they resided in Bethesda they made lifelong friends, became very involved in their church, and looked forward to spending their retirement years there.
Their plans were discarded in the blink of an eye when their daughter and son-in-law called from Philadelphia and hinted that they could use some help with their 7-year-old special needs son and his two siblings.
For Nancy, the decision was a no-brainer. She said, “As soon as I was off the phone, I asked myself, ‘Why am I here in Maryland when my daughter and three kids need me in Philadelphia?'”
Convincing her husband, Harm, to leave the Washington, DC area, was a bit challenging. He was retired and had fashioned a contented life for himself in Bethesda. Reluctantly, he agreed to the move and now says he has no regrets.
For the first two months the Radcliffes babysat 12 hours a day, five days a week. Their daughter, Laurel, works fulltime as a doctor. Today the Radcliffes spend three days a week engaged with their grandchildren. They like to give each child one full day alone with them.
Friends have been plentiful in their new neighborhood. “I don’t wait for people to come to me,” Nancy said. “I extend invitations to the neighbors. You have to be proactive with regard to making new friends.”
Sally Fedorchek followed her grandchild from Yardley, Pennsylvania to Austin, Texas when her son-in-law’s job took him there. It was a move she never expected to make, and it happened so quickly that she and her husband had little time to find a house.
“We found something reasonable. It’s not the perfect house, but the longer I’m in it, the more I like it,” she said. “At first it felt like this was just an extended visit. I had to keep reminding myself that I’m here permanently. I miss my friends back home, but not as much as I missed the kids when I was living in Yardley. I’m not worried about a new life. So far the kids have included us in everything. I’m well aware that won’t last and I’ve already made a list of activities I’d like to try.”
We boomers encouraged our kids to be independent. In many cases we sent them to college far from home. Our children have traveled more than we ever did at their age. Cellphones, Skype and email have made it possible for them to feel close to us even when they live a continent or two away. Sometimes the price we pay for the independence we granted our children is the disappointment we feel when they decide to leave the homestead for other adventures. If we want major roles rather than cameo appearances in our grandchildren’s lives, it becomes our burden to make that happen. Some of us choose to move. Others practically live on airplanes and manage their lives around their frequent flyer miles.
Susan Newman, PhD, a social psychologist and author of 13 books about family life, asks grandparents to consider the following questions before making the big move:
Is your child or his/her spouse likely to relocate in a year or two? Will you continue to follow them if their careers involve living in several different places?
How jarring would it be for you to move in terms of your own social network? Do you make friends easily? Can you give up the friends you already have?
Remember your adult children will have lives of their own. When they have commitments that don’t include you, will you feel cut off?
If you’re still working, what does the employment picture look like in the new location?
If you’re single, what activities will be available to you?
I am no longer confused by Elayne’s move. Still sad, but not confused. I know exactly why she did it. At the moment, I have a 6-month-old granddaughter and a one-month lease on an apartment in California. We’ll see how it goes.
We did this. After carefully planning our retirement, when our son told us they were going to have a baby, suddenly all our former plans paled in comparison to being near our son, his wife and coming baby. Within months, we had bought a house in an area we had never considered living, and had begun a life totally different from that we had envisioned.
There are risks. Especially in this economy, things can change. For us, it was a calculated risk – we kept our house in Seattle, because it’s there, if we ever want to live in Seattle, and meanwhile brings in income as a rental house. We calculated that while our son and his wife have adventuresome spirits, that she also has a lot of family in this area, and the odds are, at least in the early years of marriage and child-bearing, that they will stay put long enough for our investment in living here to pay off in terms of growing a solid relationship with our son as an adult, his wife, and our grandchild(ren), before he/they hit(s) those independent pre-teen and teenage years.
We had actually spent some time in Pensacola, through the last five years, visiting our son. We knew there was a church here we liked, and I knew there was a quilting group. We knew the cost of living was within our means, and that there were military resources nearby. There were a lot of factors to consider, which we did, but the deciding factor was our commitment to being a part of an extended family.
My next younger sister and her husband recently made a similar decision, and I know they are as happy with their decision as we are with ours. Time passes so quickly, and we want to know our grandchildren, and to be a part of their lives. We are thankful that they feel the same way. 🙂 I find it interesting to know that we are part of a growing trend; we thought it was the influence of the Arab world on us, but it appears to be a part of a generational shift in paradigm.
Making Way for the Devil
Today’s reading sounds like it could have been written yesterday, about the climate of self-indulgence we face today. Then I have to laugh, and to remember, that I am one of those Gentiles!
All our feuding about who has a piece of doctrine ‘right.’ God looks at our hearts, and does not say “You are saved because you are a good Catholic/Sunni/Mormon/Klingon . . . No. He looks at our heart and sees the darkness there. If we seek his forgiveness, and repent our wrong-headed misdoings, he forgives us and welcomes us home. Thanks be to God; he is merciful. From the Lectionary:
Ephesians 4:17-32
17 Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. 19 They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practise every kind of impurity. 20 That is not the way you learned Christ! 21 For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. 22 You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labour and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up,* as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.*
Kisses From Katie by Katie Davis
This is a photo from Katie’s blog: Kisses From Katie.
Do you believe in God? Do you believe that God believes in you? Then how do you live your life? Do you commit 100% to God and trust him to provide as you leave all your riches behind and follow him, serving the poorest of the poor, speaking for those who have no voices?
I will warn you, this unforgettable book has a lot of talk about God in it. A part of me watches in horror, wondering how long Katie can continue to serve God with all her heart, with all her soul, and with all her mind? How long she can work against all odds, trusting in God to lift her and provide for her and her children. This is a true story, an ongoing life. A part of me fears a terrible crash, but the greater part of me prays for Katie, and stands in awe of her courage and her commitment.
I don’t know who told me about Kisses for Katie, the blog. As soon as I started reading it, I was addicted.
Now for the shocker: Katie is only 23 years old. A year before she graduated from high school, she felt an undeniable call to do a 6 week mission teaching in a school in one of the poorest parts of Uganda. At the end of her six weeks, she couldn’t bear to leave. She returned, finished out her senior year in high school (HIGH SCHOOL!) but she never felt entirely ‘home,’ her heart was with the children of Uganda, the poorest of the poor.
Although her parents had her doubts, the strength and consistency of Katie’s belief that she was called to serve in Africa brought them around, and they agreed she could go work for a year in this small, poor village, before starting university. At eighteen, Katie was teaching, raising money for food, tuition and uniforms for over 100 children, and working to prepare all the meals, bathe all the children, and teach them about the love of Jesus.
When I saw, a month ago, that Katie had a book published, I had to buy it. Kisses from Katie is inspirational and unforgettable. Her story continues on her blog, but the book lays all the groundwork, the heartaches and the joys, the delights of her 13 adopted daughters, the horrors of the Ugandan bureaucracy, Katie’s dogged day-by-day fight to claim and save lives. She is a remarkable young woman, powered by an awesome God.
If Katie were going to burn out, I think it would have happened earlier, as she suffered terrible disappointments, and made truly amazing sacrifices to raise her girls, to be their “mommy” and to insure the educations of over a hundred children. With a growing foundation, Amazina, and a growing group of contributors, she carries on, and the miracle of this book is that she doesn’t seem to sense the amazing woman that she is at all, she seems to believe that she is a simple woman following God’s will for her life, and reveling in it, joyfully surrounded by her 13 adopted daughters and frequent foster babies. She feels blessed to have the life that God created her to live.
I stand in awe.
You can order this book from Amazon.com for $12.49 plus shipping. It might even change your life, or how you view your life. Yes, I own stock in Amazon.com. No, I make no money from recommending this book. 🙂
Thought for the Day from A.W.A.D.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order. But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)
Recent Comments
intlxpatr on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Michelle on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Cathy on No Grown-Ups in Charge intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 