Pick up this book --

You may not be able to lay Barefoot in Baghdad down for a while.  This book will capture your interest.  It is a memoir that will take you to a place and time in Iraq that, for some years, was the life of Manal Oman, an American woman of Middle Eastern descent.  Actually  I had difficulty with my day to day responsibilities because it was such an intriguing read. To quote from the book's back cover, 

[she] moved to Iraq to help women as she could to rebuild their lives.  She quickly found herself drawn into the saga of a people determined to rise from the ashes of war and sanctions and rebuild their lives in the face of crushing chaos.

Written by Manal M. Omar and published just this month by Sourcebooks, the author explains in her subtitle that it is "a story of identity -- my own -- and what it means to be a woman in chaos."   And it is very timely, given that August 31, 2010 is the official end of U.S. combat in Iraq.

This new book is in paperback.  It and has exceptional readability, with an enthralling narrative style.  To quote another Iraq war writer, Christina Asquith, the book is: 

A fascinating, honest and inspiring portrait of a women's rights activist in Iraq, struggling to help local women while exploring her own identity.  Manal Omar is a skilled guide into Iraq, as she understands the region, speaks Arabic, and wears the veil. At turns funny and tragic, she carries a powerful message for women, and delivers it through beautiful storytelling.

Though I am a great deal older than this author, I found Omar's book about her work with Iraq's women oddly familiar.  The author knows both East and West because she grew up in the United States, arriving with her Saudi Arabian parents in Texas at the age of 6 months. Having spent her summers in the Middle East, she calls multiculturalism "my own secret super power." 

I have  also straddled two cultures, having grown up in a western state, and going back to visit there from Texas almost every summer.  Much of my adult life in Texas (both professionally and as a volunteer) was spent working on behalf of women's issues. My little culture shocks can never compare to the life changing experiences of Minal Omar, and the women she came to know,  and with whom she connected, as she went barefoot in Baghdad.  We all share the same gender, but  what I came to understand more deeply through this book is this.  As far as women experiencing cultural uprooting, our sisters in Iraq suffered incomparably more during the past decade than did most of us.  

Manal Omar's multicultural identity is, in my opinion, one of her key strengths as a writer.  Readers will learn immeasurably more about the country of Iraq and its wonderful people than could have been learned over the past decade from consumption of news from the mainstream media.  We now know all too well, that view can be risky.  For example, in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we took our reality from the powers that be, and we were dead wrong to do so.  

The author had a great deal of ambivalence about the invasion in 2002.  Omar said in her introduction, "As an American I was speechless.  I could neither attack nor defend my country, although I found myself desperately wanting to do both,"   But she was not deterred by her mixed feelings.  Shortly after the United States went to war in Iraq, the author went to work for a nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in London, Women for Women International (WWI).  Its CEO and founder, Zanaib Salbi, whom the author characterizes as "an adrenalin junkie," was an important mentor to Manal. Their work together began with a wild road trip to Baghdad.  To quote the head of Omar's NGO, Salbi summarized the book well: 

Manal Omar captures the complex reality of living and working in war-torn Iraq, a reality that tells the story of love and hope in the midst of bombs and explosions.

The author's time in Iraq, which she called in an opening chapter "a place of fantasies," was from 2003 to 2005; it was only rarely calm or peaceful.  Her WWI NGO work was about helping Iraqi women who had been marginalized by the Saddam Hussein regime and the subsequent U.S. occupation.  Through an amazingly courageous WWI effort in a country that eventually became too dangerous for the NGO to remain, almost 2000 women received various kinds of NGO program assistance, support and training towards self sufficiency.

The author and her WWI staff made themselves homes as best they could, and always lived out of the Green Zone. With unflagging support from her Iraqi core staff members (4 males and one female), Omar recounts a moving story of loyalty and bravery in the midst of the country's descent into full blown civil war.  It is also a wonderfully told love story.  However, my lips are sealed.  I can reveal that the mystery of how it unfolded was threaded through the book and very effectively handled by this talented author in the 245-page book's final chapters. 

I encourage you to read it all for yourself.  

Barefoot in Baghdad will not disappoint you. 

Reviewed by Carol Gee, 8/31/10.

Author of:
Southwest Postings, a political blog

Make Good Mondays

, a personal blog

Member of Twitter, a social network

Posted via email from Make Good Mondays

Confessions of a (non-nuclear) proliferator

My previous confessions have focused on my being a collector, which starts with collecting and saving stuff.  It serves the psychological purpose of avoiding the actual project, while mulling it over, organizing, and general wool-gathering.

 Proliferation is a bit different. It is an extension of collecting, which then moves into making a lot of variations of those collected items.  It involves very little discarding of material.  My favorite categories in the past when I was employed were often to-do lists, action plans and jotted-and-saved ideas.  After my retirement in 2002, some health issues intervened.  I quickly went to very little organizing or planning.  It was no longer necessary.  I could pay attention to my own needs and be more creative at the same time.  I loved being involved with the internet, with the magic of the web.  

In 2005 I went "back to work" -- as a volunteer, a blogger with two sites on Blogspot.  And the proliferation began in earnest.  I started using Internet Explorer as my browser, discovered Mozilla Firefox which then became too unwieldy for blogging.  Now I have switched to Google Chrome, which turns out to be a big improvement over Firefox.

Over the years I wrote entries at a number of blogs that were communities of progressives, Daily Kos and TPM Cafe, for example. And I started more of my own blog sites, as well.  I was invited to be a regular contribute to a couple of blogs.  I was invited to do book reviews.  I did this for several years.  Then the administration changed, and I no longer had an adversary.  After President Bush left office, the blogosphere and progressive politics had changed and I had changed.  

Despite organizing, making plans, and scheduling, it eventually became too much. The readership at my regular blogs dropped.  I was no longer doing any book reviews. And I was now involved with social networks. My writing had suffered; the job was too big to handle, and I asked myself for what was I working?  

My proliferation has had to change.  I stopped contributing to other progressive communities.  Shorter and more frequent posts are now the norm, and my long and link-filled posts that did not fit that model are now infrequent.  I am active on Twitter and Facebook.  I post original material at a few sites which then auto post to a number of my other sites.  I am micro-blogging, and I will be writing a book review by the end of the month.

"In recovery," my work is leaner and meaner.  I have avoided proliferation on social media.  My readership is up and I am less "driven."  I am trying to get back to a routine that embodies what I always loved about the blogosphere, and one that utilizes my strengths.   The themes of my day at the computer are consolidate, delete, clean, clear and organize downward.  

It seems to be working better, for the time being, at least.

 

 

 

Posted via email from Make Good Mondays

There is a bottom line here.

The following ProPublica article is something that I wanted to republish, because the principle is so very important.  The principle to which I refer is enshrined in the Bill of Rights Amendments to the U.S. Constitution:

Article I - Freedom of religion, speech, of the press and the right of petition. -- Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

**********

Experts: Argue All You Want, Mosque Project on Firm Legal Ground

by Marian Wang ProPublica, Aug. 17, 2:58 p.m.

For all the anger, political strategizing and stabs in the heart that the plans to build a Muslim community center near ground zero may have brought about, land-use and zoning experts say opponents of the project have very little legal basis on which to rest their argument.

The discussion draws in First Amendment arguments about the constitutional right to freely practice religion. But on a more basic level, the community center must adhere to zoning laws, as none other than Rush Limbaugh has noted.

On zoning, here2019s what New York University law professor Rick Hills had to say about the proposed site, 45 Park Place in lower Manhattan, two blocks from ground zero:

Focus for a moment on basic rule of law: 45 Park Place is located in a C6-4 zoning classification ("General Central Commercial") where houses of worship are allowed "as of right." Assuming that this particular proposed house of worship meets the setback, height, and bulk requirements of the Lower Manhattan special zoning district, the city's denial of a zoning compliance permit would be flagrantly ultra vires: Building inspectors, after all, cannot simply fabricate a new "honor-the-9/11-dead" zoning district on the spot.

The New York City Department of Planning confirmed with me that the proposal is 201Cas of right,201D meaning it 201Ccomplies with all applicable zoning regulations and does not require discretionary action" to get approval. (What The New York Times described as a 201Clocal zoning dispute201D was an effort by some to get the city2019s Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the building now at the site2014previously an old Burlington Coat Factory2014as a landmark, to prevent it from being torn down and replaced by the proposed Islamic center.)

Other land-use experts pointed out that if the city were to try to block the mosque based on zoning, its actions could be illegal based on a federal law that was passed unanimously by both houses of a Republican Congress in 2000.

201CIf the City of New York denies the zoning approval sought for this site, it will blatantly violate [the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act] and expose the city to one whopping lawsuit that is extremely likely to succeed,201D as Chicago attorney Dan Lauber told Chicago Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet. "A federal law adopted by a Republican Congress makes the denial the Republicans seek blatantly illegal."

Several high-profile opponents of the mosque plan2014including the American Center for Law and Justice and the Anti-Defamation League2014have in the past defended the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, arguing that it 201Cprotects religious land uses from discrimination."

Marci Hamilton, a professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, is opposed to the federal land zoning law, saying it 201Chas been a hammer that has been held by one religious developer after another.201D In her view, the First Amendment is sufficient to 201Cplainly prohibit201D such discrimination against the mosque project. She admitted, however, that if the zoning law serves to protect the project, it 201Cmight, this once, actually be doing justice."

**********

Other useful references:

• A link from my regular contributor, Jon: A Fox News co-owner funded the ‘Ground Zero mosque#, ’ according to a report at The Raw Story.  There is enough hypocrisy in this whole shameful episode to fill another Great Lake on our northern border.  The bottom line is that the New York mosque can be built on the private property of choice, as long as the owners follow the law.  No if's, and's or but's.

via ScribeFire

Posted via email from Southwest Postings

I've learned to stay inside - but I am left with questions.

Often because of inclement weather, and for other reasons, I came to prefer being inside the house to being outside.  My nickname in the family was "the houseplant." Growing up in Wyoming meant a considerable number of days in the winter when it was too cold to be outside.  Living all my adult life in Texas has meant a considerable number of days in the summer when it is too hot to be outside.  Stay by the heater or stay by the AC, those are my perceived choices over spending time out in the weather being uncomfortable.  Far too cold or far too hot, what's to do?

In Texas where we have relatively few snow storms, kids and adults alike cannot wait to get out in the snow to make snowmen, slide down hills or brave the freeways.  I do not like cold feet, stinging eyes, skidding or falling down.  I'll skip those pleasures, thanks. But what if I run out of groceries?

I will also skip swimming in the lakes, hiking in the woods or golfing on the links.  I found out about golf in the summer in Texas one August many years ago.  As a young wife of an avid golfer, I felt duty bound to learn the sport.  I was fitted with clubs, cleated shoes and my own single glove.  Off we went, for a fun day.  And I was miserable.  It only took me one day to give up the sport, and embarrassed about the waste.  This houseplant just couldn't do it.  Knowing I am un-athletic, why did I even try?

I am left with  relatively short and perfectly beautiful spring and fall seasons.  And Texas has many beautiful or interesting outdoor places, including at my own house.How can I change old habits so that I don't skip those good outside experiences?

Of late, however, I find myself occasionally outside in the hot sunshine for a bit of Vitamin D, to go with my calcium, to go with my mild osteoporosis.  And my skin gets freckles, just like when I was a kid.  Or they age spots?

Maybe there is yet hope for me.

-- Post date 8/2/10 by *Carol Gee,*

Author of:  *Southwest Postings <http://carolgee1southwest.posterous.com/>*, a political
blog.  Member of *Twitter* <http://twitter.com/GeeCarol>*,* a social network

Posted via email from Make Good Mondays