Author: Nanette

Hopefully I’m not the only one who drops in at the trib and catches a brief glimpse of this or that happening… while mostly not having any idea at all of what it is about. Probably there are others with even less of an idea than I have (please, say it’s so!), because they have less time to peruse the site.

Anyway, I mentioned this in an earlier Alito diary… what do you guys think of having a diary just about goings on? Action projects, special events (boobooks and art fairs) and so on. A running calendar/action items type diary, under a multiple user login with people adding their events (even offsite one’s that they may want to coordinate with the trib) in comments and so on? It can just be updated daily (or however often needed) and rerun from time to time. Informational only, with links to the diaries that give details about whatever project, and that contains the discussions.

I thought of naming it the froggyhotaction center… but that may have been because I had read anna’s toy diary not too long before… (wowee!). Add your thoughts and stop me before I embarrass us all!

What do you think… good idea? (I would do a poll but I always mess those up).

[From the diaries by susanhu.]

“One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head.” …is how the Los Angeles Times article on the death of Col. Westhusing begins. The rest is a sad journey through one man’s life and death – from his early idealism about the military  and its conduct, to his quite swift (relatively) disillusionment once he arrived in Iraq.

Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army’s leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.

So it was only natural that Westhusing acted when he learned of possible corruption by U.S. contractors in Iraq. A few weeks before he died, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that a private security company he oversaw had cheated the U.S. government and committed human rights violations. Westhusing confronted the contractor and reported the concerns to superiors, who launched an investigation.

In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military.

There are questions about his death, both overt and between the lines of this article… but there seems to be little dispute as to Westhusing’s disgust and distress over the changes he saw in the military he obviously loved, faults and all.  In reading the article, you get the impression that, to the last, his concern was for the culture of the military, for the men and women he helped train, the code of honor he obviously believed was more than just words and the ethical considerations involved not only in any war/conflict… but in this one especially.

(more on the flip)

A note found in his trailer seemed to offer clues. Written in what the Army determined was his handwriting, the colonel appeared to be struggling with a final question.

How is honor possible in a war like the one in Iraq?
….
Cadets are taught to value duty, honor and country, and are drilled in West Point’s strict moral code: A cadet will not lie, cheat or steal — or tolerate those who do.

Westhusing embraced it. He was selected as honor captain for the entire academy his senior year. Col. Tim Trainor, a classmate and currently a West Point professor, said Westhusing was strict but sympathetic to cadets’ problems. He remembered him as “introspective.”
….
In his 352-page dissertation, Westhusing discussed the ethics of war, focusing on examples of military honor from Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to the Israeli army. It is a dense, searching and sometimes personal effort to define what, exactly, constitutes virtuous conduct in the context of the modern U.S. military.

“Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge,” he wrote in the opening pages
…..
But amid the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he told friends that he felt experience in Iraq would help him in teaching cadets. In the fall of 2004, he volunteered for duty.

A few months later, he was dead. By his own hand, the investigation showed. So, what happened?

Westhusing’s task was to oversee a private security company, Virginia-based USIS, which had contracts worth $79 million to train a corps of Iraqi police to conduct special operations.
…..
[I]n May, Westhusing received an anonymous four-page letter that contained detailed allegations of wrongdoing by USIS.

The writer accused USIS of deliberately shorting the government on the number of trainers to increase its profit margin. More seriously, the writer detailed two incidents in which USIS contractors allegedly had witnessed or participated in the killing of Iraqis.
….
Uncharacteristically, he lashed out at the contractors in attendance, according to the Army Corps official. In three months, the official had never seen Westhusing upset.

“He was sick of money-grubbing contractors,” the official recounted. Westhusing said that “he had not come over to Iraq for this.”

Most of the [apparent suicide] letter is a wrenching account of a struggle for honor in a strange land.

“I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied,” it says. “I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.

Hopefully, this will be just the beginning of not only questions about the death of Colonel Westhusing, but about the use of contractors, what limits – if any – there are on them, and the direction of the military in the future. This is something that we’ll all need to answer, whether we are military personnel or affiliated, or otherwise… because stuffing genies back into bottles is a pretty difficult thing to do. And the genie of war for open profit is well and truly out.

Oh, and the title of this post? That came from here…

A psychologist reviewed Westhusing’s e-mails and interviewed colleagues. She concluded that the anonymous letter had been the “most difficult and probably most painful stressor.”

She said that Westhusing had placed too much pressure on himself to succeed and that he was unusually rigid in his thinking. Westhusing struggled with the idea that monetary values could outweigh moral ones in war. This, she said, was a flaw.

“Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people working in the private sector was surprisingly limited,” wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach. “He could not shift his mind-set from the military notion of completing a mission irrespective of cost, nor could he change his belief that doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do should be the sole motivator for businesses.”

Silly man, doing the right thing is for suckers, don’t ya know.  Ye gods.

I’ve asked this question a couple of times in comments of other diaries… I’ll get an occasional “4”, but no answers. I think people think it’s a rhetorical question, but it’s not. I’d really like to know the answer, and since this seems to be Democratic Party issues day here, I thought I’d go ahead and ask it in a diary.

Follow me over the flip and I’ll explain my reasoning.
I have not been (and am still not, really) all that political traditionally. My interests lie more in the people affected by the political decisions than in the horse races, or nominations and all that. But still… the political is personal, as they say, and the decisions made by the politicians we elect can have very far reaching consequences. Anyway though, this diary is not about that… it’s about the question:

Who is the Democratic Party representing?

When you speak to individuals and listen to their concerns, or read blogs by various authors who have different outlooks on economic, social, environmental and other issues… you sort of get the impression that no one at all feels that the Democratic Party is representing them.

Let’s take just a few:

Ethnic Minorities – while most vote for Democrats to a greater or lesser degree, quite a few people acknowledge that the Democratic party has a tendency to take these votes for granted, and for the most part don’t actually fight for the issues that affect all, but affect many in these groups more.

Labor/Unions – well, beyond the fact that they are just  a shadow of their former selves, many still vote for the Democratic party, but they also feel that their concerns have been ignored, with NAFTA, huge CEO salaries and relatively puny worker salaries, Walmart, etc.

Women – it’s acknowledged by many that the Democratic Party is so far the safest vehicle for the protection of reproductive rights – or was, until all the talk of it being a burden and so on. Its’ also mentioned that Democrats have just not gone to the wall on many issues that disproportionately affect women… funded childcare, women’s health care access (and men’s too, of course), educational issues and many other things.

White males – tied in with the unions issue is also the thought that their concerns have been thrown over the side in favor of ethnic minorities, environmentalists and women.

Environmentalists – lots of really terrible legislation has been allowed to pass that give some who previously felt that the Democrats were the champions of environmental rights pause. Also, some feel their issues have been passed over in favor of any of the above groups.

Let’s see… who else? Educators – not nearly enough people (including party leaders) have stood up to the “let’s hate the public schools and the teachers” campaigns conducted not only by the right (but primarily).

So, are they representing Big Business? Well, while most corps give to both parties, they seem to give the majority of their money to the Republicans (except for some few that give most or all to the Democrats, or do a 50/50 thing).

I’m trying to be uncharacteristically concise here so will not list all the various groups and interests in this loose coalition we call Democrats… but the question still remains. And it’s not to further denigrate the Democrats… much… but I think it’s a question we really need to be addressing as, as Janet puts it, WE are the Democratic Party.

Maybe someone can answer it for me…

Which constituency does unequivocally believe that the Democrats are looking out for their interests and representing them?

I wrote this (slightly edited) during this past winter, and after days of triple digit temperatures here, with no relief in sight, was moved to drag it out again because for some reason it makes me feel cooler, probably because I remember this morning so clearly. As I’ve had little to say lately, due to other pressures, I figured others may be a bit warm as well, and won’t mind a little off season meander.

I opened the door of my apartment this morning to go for a walk, and stepped into a cushion of tiny pink and white petals that had been cast off from the fruit trees during the night.  California `snow’.  

(more)
I stood in the soft, feathery puddle and peered, not all that hopefully, up at the sky, seeing what I’ve come to expect lately… yet more clouds. I’ve gotten pretty good at telling which ones are full of rain that is just waiting for a signal to fall and drench us yet again, and which are just hovering there as a menacing reminder of what could be (will whoever borrowed our sunny California please return it now? Thanks).  

Feeling a little like I should be writing for the Farmer’s Almanac, or one of those people who live in places that have weather, I judged that we would have a day of reprieve from the rain. For the morning, anyway.  It was going to be a cloudy but fairly clear and dry day, in my estimation.

The courtyard of my building was clear so it wasn’t until I got nearer to the street, and couldn’t see the other side, that I realized that I’d made a slight miscalculation. While the dreary rain was gone for a time, we’d exchanged it for a nice, thick fog.

And that was just what I needed. Really.

Do you think in pictures, and sounds? I do, quite often. Mornings are my time and I find myself taking my cue for the day from their sights and sounds. Clear, sunny mornings are like tinkling wind chimes. Rainy mornings – drums and cymbals and tap dances. And foggy mornings… a cocoon. As an introvert, I am right at home in the last.

Walking in thick fog is different from other weather because you can –almost– make the real world disappear and create your own.  You know the same buildings are there that were there yesterday, but until you get close enough for them to take on form, you can imagine them to be … well, whatever you want.  A pillow, a cloud, a Stonehenge-like structure on a foggy moor, a castle or the seashore. Whatever strikes your fancy at the moment.

What I find most alluring about walking in fog, however, is that while oftentimes everything around me is covered in a heavy, impenetrable mist, where I am it is clear.  I move forward with the haze opening up before me, and closing again behind me, surrounded, enveloped, but not consumed. I look far ahead and feel like I am heading towards a deliciously mysterious unknown, but by the time I get there the familiar, solid shapes are right where they are supposed to be.

Once in a while things take over your whole world, and you are completely immersed in being and feeling and interacting, and that’s okay. Sometimes. At other times everything seems to just step lightly around you, leaving your world untouched.

That’s how it was this particular morning.

I find it distressingly easy to get fanciful when cocooned like this. Harsh edges and sounds are gone, and what I can see and hear is softened, once removed. The sounds of the cars on the pavement, the shouts of the children on their way to school are all still there… but muted. I hear a hum and look down the street, seeing nothing except a slight lightening of the air. Soon headlights appear, growing larger and brighter as they come towards me, the car an explosion of sound and metal for a few moments as it enters my bubble of clearness before it whooshes on past, and I am left watching its tail-lights slowly fade back into the mist.

Across the four lanes, on the opposite walkway, I can make out vague movements, becoming occasionally defined as a person fading in and out through denser or lighter mists, never quite taking on substance or recognition before they move on and are once again outside my view. I see an arm moving back and forth – someone waving at me… who are they and am I who they think I am? Does it matter, on a day like this? I wave back at the blurry figure.

On my side of the street others pass right through my cocoon but don’t stay long. I hear their footsteps long before their bodies begin to take on substance… usually an almost disembodied head first, then gradually the rest until they eventually enter fully formed into my unclouded area, passing close enough for an exchange of smiles and greetings before they walk past and disappear again into their own cocoons.

When I get to the overpass of the still unfinished freeway, I look down at the beginning and I can see only a very short distance before it too disappears into the fog. It’s not until my return trip that I have a different perspective and notice a long, squiggly crack that meanders into the nothingness, on the as yet untried highway. I can’t tell how bad it is, maybe it stops just beyond where I can see, and will be easily repaired. Nicks and dings and puttied over cracks don’t ruin an object for me. I frequently find greater beauty in something that has once been broken and has been restored to continue on doing what it’s meant to do, than in something that radiates perfection. Still, this crack in the highway obviously is a structural problem that doesn’t bode well for the long term. I hope they fix it soon.

Over on the other side, where I can usually see the end of the highway before it curves around, there is nothing. A completely blank shroud of mist, giving no indication that there is even a continuation of the highway there. This would be a bit disconcerting except that I know that this is perfectly normal behavior for a cocoon. A suspension of time and place and cares, for a short while.

Cocoons, after all, don’t eliminate confusion, or grief, or wars, or politics or anything else that is going on in your world. They just hold them at bay for a time, allowing you to rest a moment in the clarity of your little protected space, which gradually expands as the sun returns to burn away the layers of fog.

Caught in the spotlight of history, set on the stage of a very public event, Marie Fatayi-Williams, the mother of Anthony Fatayi-Williams, 26 and missing since Thursday, appeals for news of her son. Her words are a mixture of stirring rhetoric, heartfelt appeal and a stateswoman-like vision, and so speak on many levels to the nation and the world. Her appeal is a simple one – where is my son? If he has been killed, then why? Who has gained?

Guardian UK

This is a speech given by Marie Fatayi-Williams near Tavistock Square, in Britain, 5 days after the bombings. Her son is almost certainly dead – I wish I could change that part of the story, but I cant.

In her words I hear the voices of all mothers, all parents whose children, sons and daughters, have been lost… some for just being in the way. In the way of a bomb on the next seat, or one coming from 30,000 miles up above. In the way of a stray bullet from a gang altercation or of someone  who felt that they were not too impaired to drive a vehicle or in the way of a political ideology.

And, in the midst of her tragedy, and that of others, I hear hope.

Here is her speech:

“This is Anthony, Anthony Fatayi -Williams, 26 years old, he’s missing and we fear that he was in the bus explosion … on Thursday. We don’t know. We do know from the witnesses that he left the Northern line in Euston. We know he made a call to his office at Amec at 9.41 from the NW1 area to say he could not make [it] by the tube but he would find alternative means to work.

Since then he has not made any contact with any single person. Now New York, now Madrid, now London. There has been widespread slaughter of innocent people. There have been streams of tears, innocent tears. There have been rivers of blood, innocent blood. Death in the morning, people going to find their livelihood, death in the noontime on the highways and streets.

They are not warriors. Which cause has been served? Certainly not the cause of God, not the cause of Allah because God Almighty only gives life and is full of mercy. Anyone who has been misled, or is being misled to believe that by killing innocent people he or she is serving God should think again because it’s not true.Terrorism is not the way, terrorism is not the way. It doesn’t beget peace. We can’t deliver peace by terrorism, never can we deliver peace by killing people. Throughout history, those people who have changed the world have done so without violence, they have [won] people to their cause through peaceful protest. Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, their discipline, their self-sacrifice, their conviction made people turn towards them, to follow them. What inspiration can senseless slaughter provide? Death and destruction of young people in their prime as well as old and helpless can never be the foundations for building society.

My son Anthony is my first son, my only son, the head of my family. In African society, we hold on to sons. He has dreams and hopes and I, his mother, must fight to protect them. This is now the fifth day, five days on, and we are waiting to know what happened to him and I, his mother, I need to know what happened to Anthony. His young sisters need to know what happened, his uncles and aunties need to know what happened to Anthony, his father needs to know what happened to Anthony. Millions of my friends back home in Nigeria need to know what happened to Anthony. His friends surrounding me here, who have put this together, need to know what has happened to Anthony. I need to know, I want to protect him. I’m his mother, I will fight till I die to protect him. To protect his values and to protect his memory.

Innocent blood will always cry to God Almighty for reparation. How much blood must be spilled? How many tears shall we cry? How many mothers’ hearts must be maimed? My heart is maimed. I pray I will see my son, Anthony. Why? I need to know, Anthony needs to know, Anthony needs to know, so do many others unaccounted for innocent victims, they need to know.

It’s time to stop and think. We cannot live in fear because we are surrounded by hatred. Look around us today. Anthony is a Nigerian, born in London, worked in London, he is a world citizen. Here today we have Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, all of us united in love for Anthony. Hatred begets only hatred. It is time to stop this vicious cycle of killing. We must all stand together, for our common humanity. I need to know what happened to my Anthony. He’s the love of my life. My first son, my first son, 26. He tells me one day, “Mummy, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die. I want to live, I want to take care of you, I will do great things for you, I will look after you, you will see what I will achieve for you. I will make you happy.’ And he was making me happy. I am proud of him, I am still very proud of him but I need to now where he is, I need to know what happened to him. I grieve, I am sad, I am distraught, I am destroyed.

He didn’t do anything to anybody, he loved everybody so much. If what I hear is true, even when he came out of the underground he was directing people to take buses, to be sure that they were OK. Then he called his office at the same time to tell them he was running late. He was a multi-purpose person, trying to save people, trying to call his office, trying to meet his appointments. What did he then do to deserve this. Where is he, someone tell me, where is he?”

[Also posted in Human Beams – Our Society]

shade

An area or a space
partial darkness.
in obscurity.
Dark shadows gathering at dusk.
The abode of the dead;
the underworld.
Part of a picture
depicting darkness
a shadow.

The degree to which a color is mixed
with black
decreasingly illuminated;
gradation of darkness.
A slight difference
a nuance:
shades of meaning.
A small amount;
a trace
A disembodied spirit

a ghost.

(definition of “shade” from the Free Online Dictionary… slightly modified)

There is a saying that I have been thinking about lately: old sins cast long shadows. Old mistakes, events, crimes… even those not committed by us, have a way of leaving droppings along the way, which we sometimes stumble over later in life. Ill-begotten things, some of them – filled with the stench of past hatreds, gleaming wetly with avarice, or spread out wide, in the comfort of complacency.
None of us is exempt from this. As a society, we bear one another’s sins, and the burdens of our ancestors are on all of us, whether they were the criminal or those who had crimes committed against them. All is not dour, however… we bear one another’s triumphs as well.

All this, and the`accidental poem’ up above, comes from thinking a bit about history. There has been a lot of talk about that here, lately. If we could be born over and over again in the same time period, what would we choose and what history would we change. What history are we allowed to know. Where families were from, and how far you’ve been able to trace them back.

It’s the last that moved me from thinking about something, to writing about it, as a way of talking out an issue that has been at the back of my mind for a long time, in my own scattered way.

For many Black Americans, our history is only as old as the history of America is. The lucky ones can trace their families back at least that far, through census records and the bills of sale people made out to buy and sell human beings.

Others have no real interest in that. For a variety of reasons, no doubt. Sometimes it’s hard enough living the life you’ve got, without seeking out stories of the life you might have had, had you been born 200 years ago. And what’s there, anyway? Rarely stories of individuals, unless they are passed down from family to family. Not stories of who they loved, what songs they sang to their babies at night, what their family rituals were, their favorite colors, or how proud their daddy was of them. No, nothing like that.

But even for those who look, they can only go so far… and then they have to stop, at the water’s edge. Of all of the consequences of the sin of enslaving human beings, I think one of the ones that casts the longest shadow is that the door to the past was clanged shut.

Locked, bolted… erased.

“There was nothing there before we (Westerners) got there” was the most frequent answer given me as a child in school, when I asked about Africa… after I realized that some part of me had origins there. “No culture, no language… just grunts and hoots. And drums. How lucky they were that we came along and brought civilization.”

It’s possible that they too believed this, as pre-colonial history had been thoroughly scrubbed and made non-existent. Eventually, of course, there came those historians and researchers from all over the world, including African countries, who were unwilling to let the disappearance of a people stand, and who wrote of cultures and kingdoms, and universities and councils and so on that existed, pre-colonialism, attempting to correct the record. And now, even though African history is still not widely taught in US public schools, at least the young can usually get a better answer than, “There was nothing there.”

However, even with that, there is another problem with looking back. Where to look?

Africa. Big place. Many countries… many cultures and tribes and families within the countries. Many different traditions and languages and art and historical events. The vast majority of Black Americans couldn’t “go back where you came from’ – as racists suggest from time to time – if they wanted to… because they don’t know where that is.  That, too, was erased… from records, and from memory.

Another crime, another long shadow.    

I am not sure I can explain the feeling of the lack of historical anchoring, and its consequences. I am not even sure I know what they are, although I can look around me and speculate. You’ll have noticed that Americans of African descent in the US sometimes cobble together rituals and traditions from many African countries… harvest festivals and naming ceremonies and words here and there, in an attempt to fill that void that some are not even consciously aware of.

I think probably adopted children may come closest to knowing, because they too often wonder…”Who’s back there? What are they to me?”  Even if the answers are not always good, some just have a need to know.

There are DNA tests now that people can take, which will tell them pretty much which part of Africa their ancestors were from and sometimes even which tribe. Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts took one and found he was of the Songhay people in Niger. Oprah took one too and apparently announced, “I am Zulu!” I believe there are some who have been trying to cast a little doubt on Oprah’s new heritage, but in spite of all her millions (or maybe because of them) I dare anyone to successfully take her “I am Zulu!” away from her.

An anchor was discovered… it will not be let go.

The test costs over $300 for one line, maternal or paternal. That sets it right out of the ballpark for many just struggling to pay their monthly bills. Maybe one day.

Me… I’m lucky in that my father was an African national, and so even though he and my mom divorced when I was young, I knew where he was from. I didn’t want to know much more than that, though.

Now that I am older and finally past the “There was nothing there but grunts and drums” slander, I have been looking around various places, from time to time, for the history of what being of African descent actually means. Maybe one day I’ll find out. For now, though it is enough to know…

I am Yoruba.

… of this past week.

This isn’t a poll or even suggestions (although I will add my own in comments), because I realize that everyone has their own idea of “important”.

In glancing through some of the diaries earlier, I noticed comments from a few regarding smart, generally informed people they know who had never heard of some of the biggest (to us) news stories of the past cycles, such as Bolton. They aren’t the only ones; I’ve noticed that even among people who are journalists… a complete blank on some of the things we (bloggers, news hounds, etc) know well.

So, I was wondering…

If you had to choose the most important stories of this past week, that you think people should be aware of, which would be your choice(s)?

[From the diaries by susanhbu.] [This is part of Susan’s challenge, to cover the 10 Most Ignored News Stories. There are still some uncovered ones to sign up for 🙂 ]

I had a hard time writing this article because, while I could give chapter and verse on the horrors of fistula, I couldn’t picture the women who are burdened with this dreadful, but entirely preventable and curable, medical condition. In my mind these women remained nameless and faceless, people to feel pity for, but still in an abstract way. I knew I needed more than that, however, because the tendency (including mine) when hearing the term “fistula” is to look away. I needed to be able to look straight on to do this story, so I decided to look at someone I know well, and imagine her somewhere else. .

Come with me now, and you can look too… I promise that while I hope to make you (and me) uncomfortable, I won’t gross you out. I just want to introduce you to someone special, and let you know how you can feel ten feet tall in a matter of minutes. Ready? Here’s a peek.

She is 26 years old, a mother, a daughter, a wife. Her name is Hadiya…”the gift”.

I can see her face, now, you know… her big brown eyes that usually glint with laughter and good humor, but which can become piercing and direct when she’s trying to encourage someone to can the BS and get to the point. Oh, and she’s unmatched at the “eye roll” when someone says or does something stupid or silly… but then she usually winds up laughing at that too.

I can see her smile… big as the sky, one that draws you in and bids you smile with her. And her laugh… I dare anyone to refrain from at least having their lips start to twitch when she gets the giggles… a more likely scene is people around breaking into laughter as well, even if they don’t know what they are laughing at. She’s just infectious that way, inviting you to share in her joy in life, and to make it yours.

I can even see her in the midst of her family, when things were good… joining the women, young and old, in the kitchen, as is their way, catching up on all the family news… maybe they are preparing a holiday meal, while her husband and the other men sit outside and smoke, swapping their own tall stories. Or I can see her sitting in the shade of a tree, cradling her youngest close to her chest as she watches the village children play kickball in the dusty street. At the end of a long, hard day, I can see her giving her children a goodnight kiss as they snuggle into bed, ready to dream of big adventures after the nightly story telling.

But now everything is quiet… the only sounds that of her breathing, or maybe it’s the barely heard rustle of a nocturnal animal moving through the brush… she sits and stares at a place that she needs no light to see, because it is far beyond anything that can be touched with the hands or examined with the eyes… it’s then that I can see her best.

She is 26 years old and she knows she is dying. She is 26 years old, has fistula, and her life is leaking out of her, a little at a time; the baby she should have been showering with joy is buried down the road, dead before it had a chance to live. She is 26 years old, she is dying, and she is maybe my daughter (or yours), had she been born in a different place or time.

While my California daughter, Mindi, zips around in her little car, to and from work, now off to the mall or the theater, maybe popping into the grocery store for something for dinner … my Ethiopian daughter, Hadiya, drags herself along in the shadows, as ashamed to be seen as others are ashamed to be seen with her. Her husband is gone. She sometimes has to beg for food to feed herself and her living children; on occasion someone will toss her a little something, with averted eyes, and move on quickly. Sort of like we do.

When Mindi travels through the city, she might pass 2 or 3 hospitals and any number of clinics. Childbirth has its share of dangers, no matter where you are, but should Mindi go through a difficult pregnancy, any one of those medical centers could at least stabilize her and most could help her deliver her baby safely.

Hadiya can travel the length and breadth of her rural village, but she won’t find even one small clinic, let alone a large hospital. Had it been just a few years earlier that she had her troubled pregnancy and childbirth, she could have gone to the Planned Parenthood clinic that was located within her village, and been under the care of qualified obstetricians, possibly saving her baby, but definitely saving her from the horrors of fistula, a condition that has been eliminated in Western countries due to improved obstetric care.

The clinic is closed now, though, due to a lack of funding, mandated by the US “global gag rule”.

So many problems we come across in various countries just seem intractable and impossible to surmount, leading us to despair of ever making a difference, but you know what? This isn’t one of them. This… this is something we can do. This is something that can be cured with little effort. What would it take to give Hadiya her life back? To allow her to walk with dignity again, in the light, instead of skulk in the shadows? To allow her to laugh again, and play with her children? To close up her wounds, to cleanse her of the imposed shame of this condition, and to allow her to be a part of her society again?

$300.00.

Yes, that’s right. Three hundred dollars. See? Didn’t I tell you this was doable? Thank goodness we are liberal elites, sipping Starbuck’s every morning, and having dinner out and attending the theater every night, because that means we’ve got money, honey. Okay, well so some of us are poor as church mice, but we still have a voice. Or a pen or a fax machine, and we can still make noise. Think of your daughter, mother, sister, friend… or mine, if it helps, and realize that this is not something that has to be, that can’t be helped without UN intervention or an act of Congress.

This is something we can do. So, let’s do it.

How you can help today:

Campaign to end fistula – UNFPA

Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia.(*photos used in this article are from this site) — Profiled on Oprah’s Angel Network

Engender Health

Or just go down the google search list and pick one that appeals to you (and that checks out as a legitimate option).

Thanks.

I confess to not knowing nearly as much as I should about either topic. And, of course, environmental issues and priorties differ by region.I have noticed, however, is that oftentimes the interests of labor and those of environmentalists seem to be at odds, mostly because of jobs and those jobs polluting and so on. And that both movements are often described as “diminished” or “dying” lately. Me, I think the one thing has quite a bit to do with the other. Divide and conquer and all that.

So, I have a two-fold purpose to this diary.

1. To start a discussion on the labor/unions and environmentalist movements (hopefully joined by people who know way more than I do), and ways in which working together are only possible, but desirable, and would benefit both. To have a true progressive movement, I would think that there is a necessity for the revitalization of both, as wherever unions lose ground, wages tend to stagnate and democracy seems to as well.  And, of course, we still all have to breathe and drink water.
2. As some of you may recall, I am attempting an on-going project between the BooTrib and my online magazine, trying to draw what are usually non-blog readers to blogs. My original idea was to publish a special issue, but I think possibly that I have a better way.

Come to the other side, and I’ll tell you.
The first discussion was in this diary, which started off being about Religions and Women, and if you’ll notice, the comments are the best part of it, and the interaction. And that’s really the best part of blogs in general.

So, I’m working on how to put it up as a conversation, showing the give and take, and how one comment leads to another thought, and more discussion. Also leading to practical suggestions for action. I will be putting a link from the conversation piece, and from the front page of the mag leading to this diary discussion while it is in progress (and to future ones). Hopefully people will click on it, sign up and join in, and also join in future action type things. The front page link will be up Monday, the other when I figure out how best to present the conversation article.

So… better together? And if so, how? If not, why not? Are labor/environmental relations better in countries outside the US? How do they combine sometimes competing interests? Discuss! (Please, and thank you.)

I found this through athenae at First-Draft,  and am posting it without comment, as nothing I can say would add anything to it.
Chicago Sun Times
Some gaze at viaduct Virgin but forget concrete world

*

It appears as if someone has recently scrubbed the walls around the supposed image of the Virgin Mary. She is flanked by Christian-themed flags and signs and posters. At her “feet” are dozens of flickering candles and several bouquets of flowers.

The impromptu shrine is larger than the one that appeared near the entrance to Holy Name Cathedral in the days following the death of John Paul II. Yet those two shrines combined would be about 1/50th the size of the flower-candle-card mountain that grew outside the British Embassy on Michigan Avenue after Princess Diana’s death.

I stop taking digital photos and observing the crowd for a few moments, and I focus on the image itself. Sure, it sorta-kinda looks like the Virgin Mary. At any given moment, there are about 100 million stains forming on walls and on shower floors and in refrigerators. Occasionally you’ll get one that looks like Jesus or the Virgin Mary; just as often, you’ll get one that looks like Cedric the Entertainer or Kelly Clarkson.

Just a few steps west of the holy image, leaning against a streetlight pole on Fullerton, there is a homeless man, holding up a small cardboard sign that says:

HELP

I’M HUNGRY

You’d chastise a screenwriter for such easy symbolism, but there the man sits, squinting against the sun and holding up his sign.

In clusters of two and three and four, the faithful who are flocking to and from the image of the Virgin Mary — they walk right past the homeless man. They walk right past him, as if he’s not even there.