HERE'S MY LATEST BOOK.....
This is a book of
short stories taken from the things I saw and heard in my childhood in the
factory town of Ansonia in southwestern Connecticut.
Most of these
stories, or as true as I recall them because I witnessed these events many
years ago through the eyes of child and are retold to you now with the pen and
hindsight of an older man. The only exception is the story Beat Time which is based on the disappearance of Beat poet Lew
Welch. Decades before I knew who Welch was, I was told that he had made his
from California to New Haven, Connecticut, where was an alcoholic living in a
mission. The notion fascinated me and I filed it away but never forgot
it.
The collected stories
are loosely modeled around Joyce’s novel, Dubliners
(I also borrowed from the novels character and place names. Ivy Day, my
character in “Local Orphan is Hero” is also the name of chapter in Dubliners, etc.) and like Joyce I wanted
to write about my people, the people I knew as a child, the working class in
small town America and I wanted to give a complete view of them as well. As a
result the stories are about the divorced, Gays, black people, the working
poor, the middle class, the lost and the found, the contented and the
discontented.
Conversely many of
the stories in this book are about starting life over again as a result of
suicide (The Hanging Party, Small Town
Tragedy, Beat Time) or from a near death experience (Anna Bell Lee and the Charge of the Light Brigade, A Brief Summer)
and natural occurring death. (The Best
Laid Plans, The Winter Years, Balanced and Serene)
With the exception of
Jesus Loves Shaqunda, in each story
there is a rebirth from the death. (Shaqunda is reported as having died of
pneumonia in The Winter Years)
Sal, the desperate
and depressed divorcee in Things Change,
changes his life in Lunch Hour when
asks the waitress for a date and she accepts. (Which we learn in Closing Time,
the last story in the book) In The
Arranged Time, Thisby is given the option of change and whether she takes
it or, we don’t know. The death of Greta’s husband in A Matter of Time has led her to the diner and into the waiting arms
of the outgoing and lovable Gabe.
Although the book is
based on three sets of time (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and the diner is
opened in the early morning and closed at night, time stands still inside the
Diner. The hour on the big clock on the wall never changes time and much like
my memories of that place, everything remains the same.
ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE BOOK
Sculpture this and Sculpture
that
DON’T WORRY-BE HAPPY
The unbearable loneliness of creative work
By Ruth Graham GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
CREATIVE GENIUSES SEEM to
be imbeciles when it comes to relationships. Think of Lord Byron’s disastrous
love life, or Ernest Hemingway and his four wives. Of the many complex reasons
for their troubles, it’s easy to assume there’s also just something about being
a great thinker that corresponds to being a bad partner.
But a paper forthcoming in
the Academy of Management Journal suggests an alternative explanation: People
who exercise unbounded creativity on the job, it seems, spend less time with
their spouses at home, and the time they do spend with their spouses is of
lower quality. An associate professor of management and organizing at Boston
College, Spencer Harrison, and his coauthor conclude that workers who spend the
day doing things like generating new ideas have fewer cognitive resources left
by the time they get home.
In other words, it’s not
that creative people are simply hopeless at relationships — or at least it’s
not only that. “When you read the big headlines about creativity, it’s touted
as the golden key to success for businesses, whether it’s small entrepreneurial
ventures or the big behemoths,” Harrison said. “But there’s a cost, and the
cost is that because you’re so infatuated by the limitless potential or ideas
at the beginning of development . . . you’ve chewed up a lot of brain space.”
Organizational researchers
have long been interested in studying creativity. In the early 19th century,
they focused largely on lone geniuses, trying to puzzle out the alchemy that
produced Mozart or Michelangelo. It’s only been in the last few decades that
academics have turned their interest toward how more ordinary creativity
operates in group settings.
So far, there’s been much
more research into the factors that produce creativity than on what Harrison
calls its downstream effects. But with the recent renewed attention to
work-life balance for both men and women, those effects are worth paying
attention to. “Organizations have become really good at capturing the positive
benefits of creativity at work and offloading the negative effects on families
and relationships,” Harrison said.
In the new study, Harrison
and his coauthor surveyed 108 workers and their spouses daily for up to 10
days. Workers were asked about the tasks they performed during the day, while
spouses reported how much time they spent together that day. Workers completed
surveys twice a day, and their spouses every evening. The surveys went beyond
just the job description, to include a log of daily tasks. Creative workers
aren’t creative all the time — there are still expense reports to file and
other noncreative tasks that fill working hours during the week. The study
allowed researchers to get a fuller picture of what time was actually spent on
creative tasks and how that correlated with behavior at home.
Sure enough, the more the
employee had been involved in generating new creative ideas on the job, the
less time he spent at home. This applies not only to stereotypical white-collar
cool-kid work, like editing a fashion magazine, but to anyone who uses broadly
creative skills such as identifying problems or generating solutions.
Harrison’s study, which cites Richard Florida’s research that identifies about
third of all workers as creative in some capacity, tapped employees in
industries including sales, construction, and education.
Results like this upend the
way many people glamorize creativity as a purely positive, energizing force. In
popular culture, creative workers are lionized: Steve Jobs, who is arguably the
most prominent contemporary icon of corporate creativity, is soon to be the
subject of the second movie in three years. In some academic research, too,
creativity has been viewed as an almost purely positive force, particularly for
the employers who harness it.
Yet creative workers often
have a hard time in their careers. Burnout and frustration are big issues. In a
2013 study of designers at a toy company, more of the subjects who identified
as artists left the company within three years. “There’s something to be said
for the antagonism when you have someone whose ideas might be seen as far out,”
said the study’s author, an associate dean and professor of organizational
leadership at the University of California Davis Graduate School of Management,
Kimberly Elsbach. “But so far I haven’t seen a good idea for keeping these
people in large organizations.” In the case of the toy company, some of the
ex-employees went on to become consultants, which means the company might get
access to big ideas but miss out on the kind of casual innovation that sparks
around a creative person in the office full time.
Harrison’s research
suggests one solution, and it’s a deceptively simple one. Before a creative
worker heads home, provide feedback that limits future choices and helps narrow
options going forward. It could be as simple as saying, “Ideas A and B are good
options, but C and D are probably not going to work.” It flies against the “no
bad ideas” ethos of brainstorming. But “idea validation,” as Harrison calls it,
provides some resolution for all those free-floating sparks and helps creative
types mentally leave their work at the office.
For big thinkers, criticism
and imposed limitations don’t always feel good. As Harrison puts it, “No one
likes feedback.” But if both employers and employees knew that feedback was one
key to a happier home life, it might look a lot more appealing.
Ruth Graham, a writer in New Hampshire, is a regular contributor
to Ideas.
Here's some words from Emerson
Words so vascular and alive they would bleed if you cut them words that walked and ran.
The
triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still
familiar with the sword-hilt whilst the habits of the camp were still visible
in the port and complexion of the gentleman his intellectual power culminated;
the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the
finest and softest arts and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times except
by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.
It
is One of the most beautiful compensations in life that no man can sincerely
try to help another without helping himself.
Want
is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.
Our
strength grows out of our weakness.
The
reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
The
first wealth is health.
Without
a rich heart wealth is an ugly beggar.
“Love is a temporary madness, it
erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make
a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together
that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love
is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the
promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every
second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is
kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some
truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is
what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art
and a fortunate accident.” Louis de
Bernières
“Love is not affectionate
feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it
can be obtained.” C.S. Lewis
“Sometimes love means letting go
when you want to hold on tighter.” Melissa
Marr
“The heart has its reasons which
reason knows not.” Blaise Pascal
“Anyone who falls in love is
searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets
sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you
have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time.” Haruki
Murakami
“I do not trust people who don’t
love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which
is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” Maya
Angelou
“For the two of us, home isn’t a
place. It is a person. And we are finally home.” Stephanie Perkins
“Love is a decision, it is a
judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis
for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How
can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment
and decision.” Erich Fromm
HERE'S PLEASANT POEM FOR YOU TO ENJOY................
Perfection Wasted
By John Updike
And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market --
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.
DON'T YOU JUST YOU LOVE POP ART?
Film
Snob? Is That So Wrong?
By
A. O. SCOTT
Before exploring the possible
answers — Mais non! Good riddance! Who cares? — we should perhaps define our
terms. The word “snob” has a contested etymology and an interestingly tangled
set of uses. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (no second-rate sources
here; what do you take me for?), it originated in the 18th century as a term
for a shoemaker. For much of the 19th century, it was used to refer to persons
of “no breeding.” According to the Oxford website, “in time the word came to
describe someone with an exaggerated respect for high social position or wealth
who looks down on those regarded as socially inferior.” A pretender. A poser. A
wannabe. An arriviste.
Urban Dictionary helpfully cites
Paris Hilton and the Olsen twins as examples, which may be evidence of how
trivial the idea of snobbery has become in 21st-century America. In this
country, the meaning that has long dominated has to do less with wealth or
station than with taste, and the word’s trajectory has almost completely
reversed. Americans are in general a little squeamish about money and class —
worshiping one while pretending the other doesn’t exist — and more comfortable
with hierarchies and distinctions that seem strictly cultural. A snob over here
is someone who looks contemptuously down, convinced above all of his or her
elevated powers of discernment.
Of course, we all know people
like that. There is a rich tradition, for instance, of film snobbery, or rather
of passionate cinephiles being derided as snobs because of their willingness to
read subtitles. The film industry does what it can in the autumn months to
beckon them back into theaters with promises of “seriousness,” but a true snob
will disdain obvious Oscar bait. If, that is, there are any true film snobs
left. As subtitled movies grow scarcer on American screens, the traditional
signifiers of snobbery grow scarce. Is a film snob someone who name-checks
Pedro Costa, Michael Haneke or other international auteurs? Someone who drops
the word “auteur” into a discussion of “Mad Max: Fury Road”? A person who
admires Kristen Wiig, but only in her serious roles?
You see the problem. “Snob” is a
category in which nobody would willingly, or at least unironically, claim
membership. Like the related (and similarly complicated) term “hipster,” it’s
what you call someone else. What some of my nearest and dearest, I might as
well admit, call me. When I wrinkle my nose at a restaurant or roll my eyes at
a movie that everyone else seems to be enjoying, the word comes accusatorily
tripping off my children’s tongues, and I find myself at pains to explain that
they are quite mistaken. A snob is a person who brandishes borrowed notions of
distinction, whereas I — by temperament as well as by profession a critic —
have devoted much of my life to the disinterested application of true standards
of excellence. It’s the very opposite of snobbery. The difference should be
self-evident.
Oddly enough, this argument is
rarely convincing. And I find myself lately feeling less like a caricature — a
prig in an ascot, a fuddy-duddy with a pipe or any of the other amusing types a
Google image search will yield — than like a fossil, the last devotee of an
obscure and obsolescent creed, or the only participant in an argument that has
long since been settled. It seems to be an article of modern democratic faith
that disputing taste is taboo: at best a lapse in manners, at worst an offense
against feelings or social order (which sometimes seem to amount to the same
thing). Our nation is at present riven by social inequality and polarized by
ideology, but the last thing anyone wants to be called is an elitist.
That epithet has a political
sting that the old one lacked, and “snob” is not wielded as readily as it used
to be. Instead of food snobs — or “gourmets,” as they once called themselves —
we now have foodies. Literary snobbery died when Jonathan Franzen fell out with
Oprah and conquered the best-seller list anyway. The hot narrative art form of
the moment, television, is genetically immune to snobbery. For most of modern
history, the only way to be a TV snob was not to own a set. (Or maybe to say
that you only watched PBS, not that anyone would have believed you.) The
arrival of “serious,” “difficult” cable dramas and spiky, insidery comedies has
not changed the essentially populist character of the medium. We all have our
binge watches, our guilty pleasures, and our relationship to them is less
exclusive than evangelical. Television is horizontal rather than hierarchal.
And the flowering of television
coincides with the digital transformation of cultural consumption, a great
leveling force that turns a forbidding landscape of steep crags and hidden
valleys into a sunlit plain of equivalence. The world of the Yelp score, the
Amazon algorithm and the Facebook thumb is a place of liking and
like-mindedness, of niches and coteries and shared enthusiasms, a Utopian zone
in which everyone is a critic and nobody is a snob because nobody’s taste can
be better than anyone else’s.
That’s the theory, anyway. But
permit me a moment of dissent, even if I risk looking like a reactionary
nostalgist. My meditations here are partly inspired by the current New York
Film Festival, a lively and venerable annual event whose birth, in 1963,
represented the high-water mark of film snobbery in America, both as something
to be mocked and something to be proclaimed and celebrated. Opening with Luis
Buñuel’s elegantly antibourgeois “The Exterminating Angel,” the first New York
Film Festival included work by Ozu and Bresson, Resnais and Polanski. (And also
a lot of films by lesser-known directors.) Over the rest of the decade, the
festival would become a port of entry for films from Europe and Asia, and also
an annual exposition of a vibrant and uncompromisingly — what? There’s no
neutral word: Sophisticated? Advanced? Radical? Self-regarding — film culture
in New York.
I was not around in those heady
days, but I’ve done what I can to overcome that sad accident of birth. I have
frequently fled from the vulgar amusements of the multiplex to the comfort of
the Criterion Collection. I have savored “Anticipation of La Notte,” Phillip
Lopate’s affectionately self-mocking memoir of his undergraduate infatuation
with Michelangelo Antonioni and all he represented. I have furrowed my brow
over Susan Sontag’s elegiac “A Century of Cinema,” which declared, in 1995,
that it was all over, that the ardor and conviction of midcentury movie love
would never be matched by later generations.
And I have winced at Pauline
Kael’s near-contemporary demolition of the fantasies of the art-house audience
in a famous essay of that title, first published in 1961 and reprinted a few
years later in “I Lost It at the Movies,” which skewered a certain high-minded,
right-thinking sector of the moviegoing public with such force and acuity that
I can feel the sting after more than 50 years. “For several decades now,” she
began, “educated people have been condescending toward the children, the
shopgirls, all those with ‘humdrum’ or ‘impoverished’ lives — the mass audience
— who turned to movies for ‘ready-made’ dreams. The educated might admit that
they sometimes went to the movies for the infantile mass audience,” she
allowed, then added, “but presumably they were not ‘taken in’; they went to get
away from the tensions of their complex lives and work. But of course when they
really want to enjoy movies as an art, they go to foreign films, or ‘adult’ or
unusual or experimental American films.”
No more thorough anatomy of the
cultural pretensions of the American liberal elite was ever written, and if
anything, Kael’s broadside has the authority of an inside job. She knew these
“educated” art-house customers. She had been to their houses, sampled their
cooking, surveyed the handsome books on their coffee tables and the tasteful
décor of their living rooms. She might even have been mistaken for one of them.
And of course her criticism is
unanswerable, because it is predicated on an accusation of bad faith: It seems
that her art-house patrons don’t really like what they claim to like; or else
they like the right movies for the wrong reasons, seeking affirmation of their
prejudices and assumptions rather than real challenges or true pleasures. Such
shallowness is the very definition of snobbery, but the title of the essay cuts
two ways. It may be a debunking of what certain self-deluding moviegoers think
they are doing, but it is also Kael’s own fantasy about what those people, as a
class, are really like.
In any case, broadly speaking,
Kael’s position has prevailed. Condescension to the mass audience and its
pleasures is not cool, or fashionable or politically correct. Populist
entertainment sits comfortably alongside more rarefied aesthetic pursuits, not
least at the New York Film Festival itself, which routinely makes room for big,
awards-hungry Hollywood movies.
All of which is good. But the
specter of snobbery still haunts our consumerist paradise. We have so much
stuff to choose from, but each of us knows that some of it is more worthwhile
than the rest, that there are standards and canons and serious arguments
lurking in the pleasant meadows where we graze and browse.
What I’m trying to say is: Yes,
fine, I am a snob. I revere the formal achievement of the first and most recent
“Mad Max” movies. I sneer at most biopics and costume dramas. I like my
pleasures slow and difficult. I would rather watch a mediocre film from South
America or Eastern Europe about the sufferings of poor people than a mediocre
Hollywood comedy about the inconveniences of the affluent. I look up in
admiration at models of artistic perfection, sound judgment and noble
achievement, and I look down on what I take to be the stupid, cheap and cynical
aspects of public discourse. I sit at my cobbler’s bench and hammer away. If
the words nerd and geek can be rehabilitated — if legions of misunderstood
enthusiasts can march from the margins of respectability to the heart of the
mainstream — then why not snob as well?
Who’s with me? Anyone? I’m really
not that picky.
NYT Critics’ Pick
By A. O. SCOTTOCT. 1, 2015
A section of “Taxi” is devoted to
an encounter between two Iranian filmmakers. One of them is Jafar Panahi, the
director of this movie and one of the most internationally celebrated figures
in contemporary Iranian cinema. The other is his niece Hana, a sharp-tongued
tween who must make a short movie as part of a school assignment. The teacher
has handed out a set of guidelines that are more or less consistent with the
government’s censorship rules.
Mr. Panahi is a longstanding
expert in such matters, with extensive firsthand knowledge of how Iranian
authorities deal with filmmakers who displease them. In 2010, he was officially
barred from pursuing his profession, and “Taxi” is the third feature he has
made in defiance of — and also, cleverly, in compliance with — that
prohibition.
The first, shot largely on a
mobile-phone camera when Mr. Panahi was under intense legal pressure from the
government in 2011, was“This Is Not a Film,” a meditation on cinema and freedom
as nuanced as its title is blunt. It was followed by “Closed Curtain” (2014), a
through-the-looking-glass hybrid of documentary and melodrama that explores the
porous boundary between cinema and reality.
“Taxi,” which won the top prize at the Berlin
Film Festival in February, takes up some of the same themes. It’s playful and
thoughtful, informed by the director’s affable, patient, slightly worried
demeanor. His kind face is almost always on screen, but he’s not a
self-conscious presence like, say, Woody Allen (whose name is dropped) or Nanni
Moretti. He’s a regular guy going about his day. What does it take to be a
filmmaker? Maybe just curiosity, compassion and open eyes.
A camera, too, of course. Which
hardly counts as special equipment these days. In “Taxi,” everybody has one,
and the conceit of the movie is that its auteur is a humble cabdriver with a
camera mounted on the dashboard of his car. He’s not really trying to fool
anyone. Mr. Panahi is well known enough to be recognized by some of his
passengers, most of whom may not really be passengers at all, but people he has
cajoled into playing versions of themselves. A lot of what we see seems
contrived. But then again, a lot of it seems spontaneous. It’s almost
impossible to tell the difference until the brilliant final shot. But can you
even call it a “shot” when the camera has been left running by
This kind of ambiguity is part of
the fun: “Taxi” is full of wry jokes, surprising incidents and allusions to Mr.
Panahi’s earlier work. He is a pretty bad taxi driver, unsure of the routes to
well-known Tehran landmarks and less than diligent about collecting fares and
delivering customers to their destinations. “I’ll let you out here and you can
get another cab,” he says more than once. This creates a lot of turnover, and a
series of “chance” encounters with fellow citizens, including a dealer in
pirated DVDs (Mr. Panahi used to be one of his customers) and two older women
carrying goldfish in an open glass bowl.
Those women may remind Mr.
Panahi’s fans of “The White Balloon,” his first feature, which also involved a
goldfish. “Taxi” abounds with similar reminders: anecdotes that recall episodes
in “The Circle” and “Offside”; a glimpse of a man delivering pizza brings to
mind “Crimson Gold”; Hana’s wait for her uncle to pick her up at school is an
echo of “The Mirror.” This may sound like artistic vanity, but it’s actually a
kind of humility. Mr. Panahi pulled those stories from the life that surrounded
him, and that life — the bustle and contention of Tehran; the cruelty and
hypocrisy of Iranian society; the kindness and tenacity of ordinary people —
remains an inexhaustible reservoir of narrative possibilities.
And also a fertile breeding
ground for cinema. Hana’s school project is just one of several movies tucked
inside of “Taxi.” An old friend of Mr. Panahi’s shares a security video
recording a crime committed against him. A man who has been in a motorbike
accident, his bleeding head cradled in the lap of his anguished wife, asks Mr.
Panahi to make a cellphone video of his last testament. Even the simplest, most
unmediated records of human behavior are shaped, edited and manipulated.
Everyone is a filmmaker.
“Taxi,” though, happens to be the
work of a great one, one of the most humane and imaginative practitioners of
the art currently working. “The Circle” was an unsparing look at the condition
of women under the thumb of traditional patriarchy and religious dictatorship.
“Crimson Gold” cast a harsh light on Iran’s economic inequalities and on its
neglect of its military veterans. These films are powerful pieces of social criticism,
but it is their combination of structural elegance with tough naturalism that
places them among the essential movies of our time.
The same can be said about
“Taxi,” which offers, in its unassuming way, one of the most captivating
cinematic experiences of this year. Though it is gentle and meditative rather
than confrontational, the film nonetheless bristles with topical concerns. It
begins with a tense back-seat argument about the death penalty and eventually
turns its gaze on poverty, violence, sexism and censorship. Like Mr. Panahi’s
cab, his film is equipped with both windows and mirrors. It’s reflective and
revealing, intimate and wide-ranging, compact and moving.
“Taxi” is not rated.
HERE'S SOME NICE ART FOR YOU TO LOOK AT....ENJOY!
I LOVE BLACK AND WHITE
PHOTOS FROM FILM
Alfred Eisenstaedt
WHY THE WORLD NEEDS EDITORS.....................
THE
SAUDI’S ARE OUR ALLIES….AND WE SAY THING WHILE THEY DO STUFF LIKE THIS TO
WRITERS.
Wife
of Imprisoned, Lashed Saudi Blogger Speaks Out
Raif Badawi has been publicly
flogged for running a blog that "insult[s] Islam"
By John Knefel October 1, 2015
Ensaf Haider, the wife of an
imprisoned Saudi Arabian journalist, recently visited the United States as part
of her ongoing campaign to free her husband, and to remind the world of Saudi
Arabia's crackdown on peaceful dissidents.
Raif Badawi was jailed in 2012
and later publicly flogged for running a website called Free Saudi Liberals,
and for publishing blog posts a court found to have "insulted Islam."
He was also convicted of having violated an anti-cybercrime law because his
site "infringe[d] on religious values."
Haider has for years been
speaking out against her husband's imprisonment, hoping to pressure Saudi
authorities to free him. His health is deteriorating, and without access to
medical care he will continue to suffer the effects of the flogging, she says.
Haider came to the United States, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, to speak with
the media and members of Congress – 67 of whom signed a letter in March calling
on Saudi Arabia's King Salman to release Badawi.
Haider wants President Obama to
lobby for her husband's release as well. "I definitely hope [Obama] would
have a personal conversation with King Salman and be able to persuade him to
let Raif go free," she tells Rolling Stone through an interpreter.
In 2008, after founding his
website, Badawi was detained for a day; the following year, the Saudi
government placed a travel ban on him. A month before his 2012 arrest, he
called for a "day for Saudi liberals," which his lawyer has suggested
may have made him a target for the authorities.
In 2014, he was sentenced to ten
years in prison and 1,000 lashes, to be dolled out 50 at a time. The first
round of lashes came this January, in a public square in Jeddeh following
Friday prayers. Badawi's sentence was upheld by Saudi Arabia's supreme court in
June, thus foreclosing the possibility of any further appeals.
The first set of lashings left
Badawi in such poor health that the authorities postponed a second round,
though they could restart any week. "Every Friday I think of him, and I'm
worried," says Haider. "Both physically and spiritually he's not
doing well. It's been four years since he's seen his kids." She says
Badawi is suffering from high blood pressure as a result of the lashings.
In a forward to his recently
published book, 1,000 Lashes: Because I Say What I Think – a collection of his
surviving blog posts – Badawi describes the bathroom in his prison as covered
in excrement. "Raif tries not to tell me about the conditions in the
prison, but I know cleanliness is an issue," Haider says. She says he
doesn't have access to medical care.
Haider speaks with Badawi on the
phone once or twice a week from Quebec, where she and their two children have
been granted asylum.
Haider's comments come at a
particularly sensitive time for Saudi Arabia, as the country faces increasing
scrutiny for human rights abuses carried out domestically and abroad. A
Saudi-led, U.S.-backed coalition has waged a six-month bombing campaign against
Houthi insurgents in neighboring Yemen, resulting in the deaths of at least
2,100 civilians, including 400 children, according to Amnesty International.
Internally, Saudi Arabia's human
rights abuses are just as gruesome. Much of the world has reacted in horror to
news that the country has sentenced a young activist named Ali Mohammed Al-Nimr
to death by beheading followed by crucifixion for attending a pro-democracy
protest in 2012. A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department declined to
comment to the Associated Press on that sentence, and praised Saudi's recent
appointment to chair a UN human rights panel.
"Raif's case is part of a
much larger crackdown on freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia since 2011,"
says Jasmine Heiss, a regional campaigner for Amnesty International, which
facilitated Rolling Stone's interview with Haider. "The authorities have
really intensified the arrest and repression of human rights defenders in the
name of security. We know there are at least dozens of other prisoners of
conscience; there may be up to thousands of persons in prisons and jails in
Saudi Arabia for peaceably expressing their beliefs and for their work on human
rights."
Haider says her husband never
expected to be arrested for expressing his opinions. When asked what ordinary
life was like before he was jailed, she lights up. "It's not in front of
the media – but he was really a great husband, one of the best husbands I've
known of, and also one of the best fathers," she says. "He was the
person taking care of the kids inside the house, and taking them to school, and
now suddenly he's stripped away from that, and I'm a single parent."
THE ART OF PULP
THE ART OF WAR...............................
Photographs I’ve taken
Georgetown cemetery
Ocean shore
Old Town Alexandria
The amazing power of kindness
By Greg Bell, For the Deseret
News
Kindness, courtesy and the
expression of human warmth are gifts, precious gems we too seldom meet with.
Yet they are easily bestowed.
Kindness, courtesy and the
expression of human warmth are gifts, precious gems we too seldom meet with.
Yet they are easily bestowed.
While trying to wedge my folding
canvas chair into an already full line of spectators at my grandson’s soccer
game recently, a young mother next to me kept adjusting her own chair to make
sure I got a comfortable place. Her concern was more than perfunctory. In the
next few minutes, I observed her tender kindness and affectionate gestures as
she interacted with her husband and children. The special feeling her example
left me with has endured for weeks.
Kindness, courtesy and the
expression of human warmth are gifts, precious gems we too seldom meet with.
Yet they are easily bestowed. We may not reap an immediate return from our
smile, kind word, manifest concern or sincere attention to another, but these
gestures send messages that may linger far longer and with greater impact than
we imagine. They are a welcome counterpoint to the cold, impersonal and even
rude conduct we too often encounter.
In his peerless novels, Charles
Dickens created frightfully vicious schoolmasters, industry bosses and
orphanage overseers, many of whom were based on his own dark experiences in
youth. However, he drew many kindly characters — like the incomparable debtor
Wilbur Micawber — from the kind and generous souls who helped him along the
way.
Helen Keller was rescued from a
life of ignorance and isolation by Annie Sullivan, her angelically devoted
teacher. Sullivan spent her entire subsequent life in Keller’s service. Andrew
Carnegie’s parents loved him warmly. His doting uncle became his lifelong
teacher and guide. Among his many mentors, partners and employees, Carnegie
identified many highly considerate and unselfish friends. One exceptional boss
elevated Carnegie at an unprecedented pace through the ranks of one of
America’s foremost railway companies because of his confidence and trust in the
young Scottish emigrant. On his way to fabulous success, John Jacob Astor, one
of America’s first rags-to-riches heroes, met with many men and women of notable
goodwill and kindness.
Early in the Civil War, a mere
boy named Leander Stillwell left the farm to join the Union Army. In his
fascinating personal account, "The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life
in the Civil War," he tells how the officers in his Illinois militia unit
and two very considerate doctors treated him with exceptional kindness and
consideration. His sergeant was a neighbor who watched over him with tender,
almost fatherly, concern. In foraging the countryside, Stillwell met with some
unfriendly people, but for the most part he was treated generously and
respectfully, even by many families in the Confederacy.
One gleans from their lives that
Carnegie, Astor, Keller, Stillwell and Nelson Mandela treated people, high and
low, with great respect and courtesy. Stories of Abraham Lincoln’s kindness to
all mankind are legion. The Dalai Lama acts consistently with his statement
that “my religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
Great people grasp the
quintessential importance of treating others sincerely, kindly and courteously.
This is the very core of Jesus Christ’s teachings. Christians who overlook them
ignore the powerful example of his peerless life.
Almost everyone who has ever told
me of meeting a famous or prominent person has described the encounter in terms
of how the great person treated him or her. Yet, to that celebrity, the meeting
may have been an inconsequential moment in a busy day.
The world at large rarely talks
of these simple things. They are certainly not displayed in the violent,
smart-mouthed movies and shows paraded before us as depictions of human life.
Nor are you likely to find kindness, courtesy or personal warmth in an MBA
curriculum. But in the real world, whether in business, at home, on the soccer
pitch or any place or time when one human meets another, that encounter will
often be judged as much by how they treat each other as by what they did.
President Ezra Taft Benson, the
late president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often said,
“People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” This
little couplet precisely identifies a pivotal law in human relations. Young and
old alike will profit greatly from observing this simple but enduring truth.
Greg Bell is the former lieutenant
governor of Utah and the current president and CEO of the Utah Hospital
Association.
There is
nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
Visit
our Shakespeare Blog at the address below
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
BLOGLAPEDIA’S BLOGS
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture
for the blog of it
http://architecturefortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
THE ARTS
Art
for the Blog of It
http://artfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Art
for the Pop of it
http://artforthepopofit.blogspot.com/
Photography
for the blog of it
http://photographyfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Music
for the Blog of it
http://musicfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
Sculpture
this and Sculpture that
http://sculpturethisandsculpturethat.blogspot.com/
The
art of War (Propaganda art through the ages)
http://theartofwarcleverhuh.blogspot.com/
Album
Art (Photographic arts)
http://albumartsocheesyitsgood.blogspot.com/
Pulp
Fiction Trash (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://pulpfictiontrash.blogspot.com/
Admit
it, you want to Read this Book (The art of Pulp Fiction covers)
http://goaheadadmitityouwanttoread.blogspot.com/
FILM
The
Godfather Trilogy BlogSpot
http://thegodfathertrilogyblogspot.blogspot.com/
On
the Waterfront: The Making of a great American Film
http://onthewaterfrontthefilm.blogspot.com/
FOOD
Absolutely
blogalicious
http://absolutelyblogalicious.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda (New England foods)
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes (Book support site)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams (New England foods)
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener (New England foods)
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Old
New England Recipes (New England foods)
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
FOSTER CARE
Foster Care new and Updates
Aging out of the system
Murder, Death and Abuse in the
Foster Care system
Angel and Saints in the Foster
Care System
The Foster Children’s Blogs
Foster Care Legislation
The Foster Children’s Bill of Right
Foster Kids own Story
The Adventures of Foster Kid.
HEALTH
Me
vs. Diabetes (Diabetes education site)
http://mevsdiabetes-bloglapedia.blogspot.com/
HISTORY
The
Quotable Helen Keller
http://thequotablehelenkeller.blogspot.com/
Teddy
Roosevelt's Letters to his children (Book support site)
http://teddyrooseveltsletterstohischildren.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Machiavelli (Book support site)
http://thequotablemachiavelli.blogspot.com/
HUMOR
Whatever
you do, don't laugh
http://whateveryoudodontlaugh.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Grouch Marx
http://thequotablegrouchmarx.blogspot.com/
IRISH-AMERICANA
A Big
Blog of Irish Literature
http://abigblogofirishliterature.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Jokes (Book support blog)
http://theweeblogofirishjokes.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Blog of Irish Recipes
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
The
Irish in their Own Words
http://theirishintheirownwords.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/
The
Wee Book of Irish Recipes (Book support site)
http://theweeblogofirishrecipes.blogspot.com/
LITERATURE
Following
Fitzgerald
http://followingfitzgerald.blogspot.com/
Shakespeare
http://shakespeareinamericanenglish.blogspot.com/
The
Blogable Robert Frost
http://theblogablerobertfrost.blogspot.com/
Charles
Dickens
http://charlesdickensfan.blogspot.com/
The
Beat Poets of the Forever Generation
http://thebeatspoetsoftheforevergenera.blogspot.com/
Holden
Caulfield Blog Spot
http://holdencaulfieldblogspot.blogspot.com/
The
Quotable Oscar Wilde
http://thequotableoscarwilde.blogspot.com/
NEW ENGLAND BLOGS
The
Quotable Thoreau
http://thequotablethenrydavidthoreau.blogspot.com/
Old
New England Recipes
http://oldnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Wicked
Cool New England Recipes
http://whickedcoolnewenglandrecipes.blogspot.com
Emerson
http://emersonsaidit.blogspot.com/
The
New England Mafia
http://thenewenglandmafia.blogspot.com/
And I
Love Clams
http://andiloveclams.blogspot.com/
In
Praise of the Rhode Island Wiener
http://inpraiseoftherhodeislandwiener.blogspot.com/
Watch
Hill
http://watchhillwesterly.blogspot.com/
York
Beach
http://yorkbeachfortheblogofit.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut History Blog
http://connecticuthistory.blogspot.com/
The
Connecticut Irish
http://theconnecticutirish.blogspot.com/
Good
chowda
http://goodchowda.blogspot.com/
NOSTALGIA
God,
How I hated the 70s
http://godhowihatedthe70s.blogspot.com/
Child
of the Sixties Forever
http://childofthesixtiesforeverandever.blogspot.com/
The Kennedy’s
in the 60’s
http://thekennedysinthe60s.blogspot.com/
Music
of the Sixties Forever
http://musicofthesixtiesforever.blogspot.com/
Elvis
and Nixon at the White House (Book support site)
http://elvisandnixonatthewhitehouse.blogspot.com/
Beatles
Fan Forever
http://beatlesfanforever.blogspot.com/
Year
One, 1955
http://yearone1955.blogspot.com/
Robert
Kennedy in His Own Words
The
1980s were fun
http://the1980swereokayactually.blogspot.com/
The
1990s. The last decade.
http://1990sthelastdecade.blogspot.com/
ORGANIZED CRIME
The
Russian Mafia
http://russianmafiagangster.blogspot.com/
The
American Jewish Gangster
http://theamericanjewishgangster.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Hollywood
http://themobinhollywood.blogspot.com/
We
Only Kill Each Other
http://weonlykilleachother.blogspot.com/
Early
Gangsters of New York City
http://earlygangstersofnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/
Al
Capone: Biography of a self-made Man
http://alcaponethebiographyofaselfmademan.blogspot.com/
The
Life and World of Al Capone
http://thelifeandworldofalcapone.blogspot.com/
The
Salerno Report
http://salernoreportmafiaandurderjohnkennedy.blogspot.com/
Guns
and Glamour
http://gunsandglamourthechicagomobahistory.blogspot.com/
The
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
http://thesaintvalentinesdaymassacre.blogspot.com/
Mob
Testimony
http://mobtestimony.blogspot.com/
Recipes
we would Die For
http://recipeswewoulddiefor.blogspot.com/
The
Prohibition in Pictures
http://theprohibitioninpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Pictures
http://themobinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Mob in Vegas
http://themobinvegasinpictures.blogspot.com/
The
Irish American Gangster
http://irishamericangangsters.blogspot.com
Roger
Touhy Gangster
http://rogertouhygangsters.blogspot.com/
Chicago’s
Mob Bosses
http://chicagosmobbossesfromaccardoto.blogspot.com/
Chicago
Gang Land: It Happened Here
http://chicagoganglandithappenedhere.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred years of Murder in Gangland
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
The
Mob Across America
http://themobacrossamerica.blogspot.com/
Mob
Cops, Lawyers and Front Men
http://mobcopslawyersandinformantsand.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dutch Schultz
http://shootingthemobdutchschultz.blogspot.com/
Bugsy&
His Flamingo: The Testimony of Virginia Hill
http://bugsyandvirginiahill.blogspot.com/
After
Valachi. Hearings before the US Senate on Organized Crime
http://aftervalachi.blogspot.com/
Mob
Buster: Report of Special Agent Virgil Peterson to the Kefauver Committee (Book
support site)
http://virgilpetersonmobbuster.blogspot.com/
The
US Government’s Timeline of Organized Crime (Book support site)
http://timelineoforganizedcrime.blogspot.com/
The
Kefauver Organized Crime Hearings (Book support site)
http://thekefauverorganizedcrimehearings.blogspot.com/
Joe
Valachi's testimony on the Mafia (Book support site)
http://joevalachistestimonyonthemafia.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in the News
http://mobstersinthenews.blogspot.com/
Shooting
the Mob: Dead Mobsters (Book support site)
http://deadmobsters.blogspot.com/
The
Stolen Years Full Text (Roger Touhy)
http://thestolenyearsfulltext.blogspot.com/
Mobsters
in Black and White
http://mobstersinblackandwhite.blogspot.com/
Mafia
Gangsters, Wiseguys and Goodfellas
http://mafiagangsterswiseguysandgoodfellas.blogspot.com/
Whacked:
One Hundred Years of Murder and Mayhem in the Chicago Mob (Book support site)
http://whackedonehundredyearsmurderand.blogspot.com/
Gangland
Gaslight: The Killing of Rosy Rosenthal (Book support site)
http://ganglandgaslightrosyrosenthal.blogspot.com/
The
Best of the Mob Files Series (Book support site)
http://thebestofthemobfilesseries.blogspot.com/
PHILOSOPHY
It’s
All Greek Mythology to me
http://itsallgreekmythologytome.blogspot.com/
PSYCHOLOGY
Psychologically
Relevant
http://psychologicallyrelevant.blogspot.com/
SNOBBERY
The
Rarifieid Tribe
http://therarifiedtribe.blogspot.com/
Perfect
Behavior
http://perfectbehavior.blogspot.com/
TRAVEL
The
Upscale Traveler
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
TRIVIA
The
Mish Mosh Blog
http://theupscaletraveler.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON DC
DC
Behind the Monuments
http://dcbehindthemonuments.blogspot.com/
Washington
Oddities
http://washingtonoddities.blogspot.com/
When
Washington Was Irish
http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/