Ken Follett and World Without End
Oprah has just chosen the predecessor to this book, Pillars of the Earth, as her monthly book club choice. I am so glad! Ken Follett and I have a very mixed relationship; I used to think he was brilliant, and then he wrote one book that just disgusted me so much I stopped reading him altogether until he wrote Pillars of the Earth, which has to do with the building of the very first cathedrals in Europe. It was one of those books that you hated to have it end, and you remember years later.
World Without End follows up Pillars of the Earth. We follow the lives of several people we meet as they are children, and we discover that their lives are intertwined in intricate ways. Two of the characters, Caris and Merthin, love one another from childhood, and we wonder throughout the book if they will ever find a way to be together. Merthin is a builder, descending from the main character of Pillars of the Earth, and shares his way of being able to look at problems from a new perspective and build in new ways based on stepping outside the box to solve problems.
Ken Follett is good at describing the lives of his characters in the 1300s, as farmers try to survive the rainy summers and crop damage, as laborors become independant from the abuses of feudal overlords, as the plague strikes rich and poor alike, as spiritual leaders cope with the demands of daily life and needs. We learn about the living conditions in England in the 1300’s, we learn about the early trade guilds and merchant guilds, we learn how disasters can be an impetus for social and political change, we learn how women used what little control they had over their own lives to their advantage. World Without End is a book rich in texture, sensually layered and visually vivid.
I have a strong feeling that people are pretty much people, and that we haven’t changed too much over the centuries. We HAVE made some advances, we have carved out rule of law, and ways for communities and nations to function together in relative peace, but I still feel that some of the interactions between men and women have a feeling that is too modern. I could be wrong. A few of the the scenes just didn’t ring true to me; it was as if modern people were transposed back to the 1300’s and thinking in modern ways, and it just seemed . . . well, I guess anachronistic!
Small Waist, Big Bum
Some of these studies are just too much. This study claims the results show that the curvier a woman is, the smarter she, and her children, are. From today’s BBC Health News.
Women with curvy figures are likely to be brighter than waif-like counterparts and may well produce more intelligent offspring, a US study suggests.
Researchers studied 16,000 women and girls and found the more voluptuous performed better on cognitive tests – as did their children.
The bigger the difference between a woman’s waist and hips the better.
Researchers writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour speculated this was to do with fatty acids found on the hips.
In this area, the fat is likely to be the much touted Omega-3, which could improve the woman’s own mental abilities as well as those of her child during pregnancy.
You can read the entire article HERE.
Accident Aftermath
This time the crunch was different. This time, the initial BLAM crunch was followed by a heart-sickening series of crunches. I was on the phone dialing 777 even before I got to the window.
They have lovely women working for emergency services now, women who can stay calm and switch languages easily. Just hearing her voice calms me down as I report the accident, tell them to send an ambulance. The upside down car door is flipping open, and people are running to help the victim out. It’s a woman, and she is beautiful. She is also bleeding, and once they get her out, she is very still, too still.
The traffic police call me back and I tell them where the accident is, but thank God the woman is still on the phone and when he doesn’t understand, she fills in efficiently and accurately.
It takes them 21 minutes to arrive. The traffic police send one car, and on a busy street, they all gather around the woman and stare. The MOI also send a car. Not one of these police set up any kind of traffic control, cars on both sides of the road are stopping, people come running, just to look.
The ambulances take 22 minutes. When they leave, there are no sirens. I don’t think she survived. The medics appeared knowledgeable and efficient.
It’s the aftermath that bothers me now. On the ground, they left all the medical waste.
The last thing the medic did as he got into the ambulance was to throw his bloodied gloves on the ground:
And then . . .the traffic cops left! There are two wrecks on one of the busiest thoroughfares in town, and no protection from the next speeding car! The wrecks are in the fast lane!
Don’t get me wrong. You know how I feel – police, ambulance medics, firemen – they are all heroes in my book. They risk their lives every day for the common good. The save lives, and they take pride in what they do.
They need a little training in accident management. When there is an accident, there needs to be a priority on getting there fast, and controlling the crowd, and routing traffic by efficiently. The medics need to pick up their waste.
There needs to be after-accident care, ensuring that someone stays until the wreckage is removed.
I had a house guest once who sat in my window and said “Oh my God. Oh my God! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
There are three separate u-turns we can see. Each one is another accident just waiting to happen. When the turn lanes back up, sometimes some people start honking, putting pressure on the lead person to make an unsafe turn. Please – resist the pressure. Take your time. Wait for a safe, truly safe interval.
Please, my friends, do one thing for me. Please, buckle your seat belts. And please, buckle up your children, put them in car-seats made to protect them, teach them from an early age to buckle-up, help it become so automatic they don’t even think about it.
Picoult and My Sister’s Keeper
I don’t know where I got the idea that Jodi Picoult wrote girly books, maybe because when you go to a bookstore there are so many of them? I just assumed they were romance and passed right by until several months ago, in a small used book store, I found one that was in the book club section, and those are usually pretty good reads. I bought it, but put off reading it, assuming it was an easy read, maybe I would read it on an airplane one day.
For some reason I moved it up, maybe I had heard a review or something. It moved to the bedside group, the “in line for immediate reading” group. At a time when we were particularly busy, I finished my other book and this was next, and I thought “Oh well, yes we are busy, but this will be light reading.”
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
This book, My Sister’s Keeper, is not light reading. It is a book a lot like We Need To Talk About Kevin one of the most terrifying and unforgettable books I have ever read. It is a book about motherhood, and parenting and tough choices. It is a book about how sometimes your entire life is yanked, and all the focus is on one area, to the detriment of others. It is a particularly tough book if you are a mother.
The main character, Anna, was conceived so that her stem cells, from the umbilical cord, will be used to help her sister, Kate, who has leukemia. Family life is chaotic, to say the least, as the vigilant parents’ attention is constantly on Kate, who suffers frequent relapses.
Picoult uses the voices of Anna, Kate, Jessie – the brother, a pyromaniac, Brian (the father), Sara (the mother), Campbell (Anna’s lawyer) and Jesse (Anna’s guardian ad litem) to tell the story.
Anna has approached Campbell, a lawyer, to achieve medical emancipation. She loves her sister, she has shared a room and her entire life with her sister, she has given stem cells, she has given bone marrow, she has been through several medical procedures to keep her sister’s cancer in remission, but at 13, she balks when expected to give one of her kidneys is a last ditch attempt that even the doctors have little expectation will succeed. She hires a lawyer.
Sara is a mother you would love to hate. You would love to grab her by the shoulders and say “Pay attention! You have THREE children, and two of them need your attention, too!” but something holds you back, and that something is the serious doubt you have about how you would handle the same situation. In extreme circumstances, people make the best choices they can, and when you are in extreme circumstances day after day, things start to fray, and then they start to fall apart. This family is past the fraying part, and we hold our breaths hoping they won’t fall apart.
It’s not a hard read because of the technical terms; this is a book where a 13 year old knows all the vocabulary of cancer, and we learn it, too. It flows naturally in the book.
Kate has acute promyelocytic leukemia. Actually, that’s not quite true – right now she doesn’t have it, but it’s hibernating under her skin like a bear, until it decides to roar again. She was diagnosed when she was two; she’s sixteen now. Molecular relapse and granulocyte and portacath – these words are part of my vocabulary, even though I’ll never find them on any SAT. I’m an allogeneic donor – a perfect sibling match. When Kate needs leukocytes or stem cells or bone marrow to fool her body into thinking it’s healthy, I’m the one who provides them. Nearly every time Kate’s been hospitalized, I wind up there, too.
None of which means anything except that you shouldn’t believe what you hear about me, least of all that which I tell you about myself.
Aha! We are reading a book with an unreliable main character!
It is a hard read because we all have families, and we all face tough decisions. There is a part of us that says “thank God we are not in this situation” and another part that says “there but for the grace of God . . . ” It is a tough book because we don’t know who we will become when life-changing circumstances hit us, we don’t know what choices we would make, because we are afraid, and because we don’t want to find out.
There are some surprises, though, and you will want to keep reading. There is a lot of love here, in the cracks between the tragedies. My Sister’s Keeper has three sets of sisters, and a lot of focus on that very special relationship. The men, too, come off well at the end.
Not an easy read, but a book that will stay in your heart for a long time.
Post Warrior Thank You
This falls under “Go figure.”
On September 3, I wrote a post called Levantine/Gulf/Persial Warrior Women because I had just finished a section in Sarum that featured a warrior woman, and I asked if there were women warriors in this culture.
I owe huge thanks to:
Kinan
N.
Magical Droplest (whose blog appears to have been hijacked so I won’t put in the connection)
forzaq8
Because their answers to the questions generated a huge response. This is one of those toss-off posts, where an idle question on my part brought forth an undeserved wealth of information (follow their references and you will see!) Sometimes you can get a little cynical about the shallowness of the internet, and then you get such a treasury of information that it blows you away.
Bloggers, it wasn’t my question – it was YOUR answers. In the WordPress seven day summary, it ranked number one, even though it was written weeks ago. In the 30 day summary, it ranked number two, just after Ramadan for Non Muslims. Whoda thunk?
Motherhood in 2:55
I saw this on Good Morning America, and then my oldest, dearest friend sent me the same in an e-mail. Motherhood condensed into 2 minutes and 55 seconds. Very original.
Every time I listened to it I understood it better! Adventure Man is rolling on the floor!
Kuwait Infant Mortality Rate
This very sad little item is from last week’s Kuwait Times:
Officials at the Ministry of Health disclosed that deaths among newborn infants were increasing at an alarming rate in Kuwait due to premature births and delayed deliveries over the past couple of years. The rate they said, touched 17.9 per thousand during the year 2006, in addition to the drastic decline in the quality of healthcare accorded to newborn infants. They called for urgent decisions to be taken to improve the healthcare for newborn infants.
Deaths among infants increased from 8.4 per thousand in the year 2005 to 9.1 per thousand during 2006.
The Jahra Governorate reported the highest rate of deaths among infants. Statistics indicated that 28.9 percent of the infants’ deaths were caused due to the short pregnancy period and inadequate weight of the infants when born and 17.2 percent were caused by various congenital deficiencies.
Breast Cancer Risk Increases with Age
From BBC Health:
60% ‘unaware of cancer age link’
Most British women are unaware that breast cancer risk increases with age, a poll suggests. A survey of 1,000 people by charity Breast Cancer Care found nearly six out of 10 women did not know getting older was a strong risk factor.
More than 44,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the UK and 80% of all cases occur in over-50s.
Experts said many young women can worry unnecessarily while older women do not realise they are at risk.
The poll found that 58% did not know that the older they get, the higher their risk of breast cancer.
It’s extremely alarming that most women over 70 do not take up breast screening, as this increases the likelihood that any breast cancer they may develop is found at a later stage
Women aged 18-24 were better informed. But 65% of women aged 45-54 knew there was a strong link between getting older and risk of the disease.
You can read the rest of the article on BBC Health.
I have to admit, I am one of those who thought that if you didn’t get it like in your 40’s or 50’s, you weren’t likely to get it. I don’t know why I thought that – maybe because there is so much horror in women getting breast cancer young, and we are more aware of the loss. I was shocked to learn that the older we get, the higher the risk. Aaarrgh.
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Comment on Obesity Post
I normally won’t post a comment as a new post unless it meets two criteria – the author has a blog that is legitimate and the post is so well written that I don’t want it buried in the comments. This response to the Obesity Fuels Cancer in Women Post only meets the well written rule, but the reference blog was non-existent. Too bad – the comment is so full of good information that this commenter should be writing her own blog, and I hope she is.
Guess the link between obesity and breast cancer is significantly higher in comparison to other cancers because fat has an oestrogenic effect, which stimulates the lining epithelium of the mammary glands. The more stimulated the gland the greater are the chances of spontaneous mutations happening which could result in cancer.
By that metric, women with rather large breasts could also be at risk. Suddenly, breast augmentation doesn’t sound like a brilliant idea anymore.
My prof. would insist you could cut your breast cancer risk in half simply by taking a brisk walk daily for 45 mins and cutting back on red meat, smoking, alcohol and spicy food.
This after undergoing molecular testing for BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation analysis if a first degree relative suffers early onset breast or ovarian cancer ( before age 45) so that you can begin annual screening by mammography alternating with an ultra-sound, a full 10 years ahead of the rest of the population starting at 30.
What’s useful to know is that you should not change your radiologist or the mammography machine as there can be wide variation in result interpretation with different machines and/or operators.
A final word of caution – ladies, don’t let’s apply deodorants under our armpits. Studies claim a higher incidence of cancers in the left upper quadrant of the breast due to such an application in mostly, right handed women. It is a truism – every little helps; baby steps can go a long way.
Monthly self-examination of both the breasts with flat of the palm; taking care to avoid the time of monthly periods can enable the detection of small pea sized cancerous lumps.
It is a step in the right direction that Q8 is slowly but surely awakening to the need of mass public education on breast cancer through TV and print ads, as well as through sharing space with commercial ads in cinemas and the distribution of flyers and brochures with the testing of perfumes and cosmetics in malls and shopping arcades across Kuwait.
It is unfortunate that similar campaigns are not being directed at men for lung and prostate cancer as well as to raise the awareness of the rare breast cancer happening in men with a far worse prognosis.
November 10, 2007 Posted by intlxpatr | Blogging, ExPat Life, Health Issues, Living Conditions, Women's Issues | blog comments, cancer, Obesity | 11 Comments