Cotton-Pickin’ Days

What’s going on in Iraq? Do you know? Yeah, I lived in blissful ignorance too.

Yesterday, top U.S. military commanders recommended an increase in U.S. troops. Wonder if any of them have read What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It by Trish Woods. I read the book this past week and was sickened, heart broken, and very disturbed by the stories shared by marines and soldiers.

Up till now, I’d chosen not to pay much attention to the war in Iraq except for the headlines. But the nitty gritty everyday experiences of the people there are what matter the most. Luckily for me, Renee Supriano of Hachette Book Group sent me a copy of What Was Asked of Us and I took it as a sign that I could no longer pretend the entire world was happily celebrating the holidays with shopping and eggnog lattes at Starbucks. And I don’t think you should continue pretending either.

Learn more at the What Was Asked of Us MySpace.

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Starting a couple of weeks ago, I began to see people in London wearing artificial red poppies similar to the ones pictured here. I had no idea what they symbolized. I eventually learned they were for Remembrance Day otherwise known as Veteran’s Day in the U.S.

Ilona Meagher of PTSD Combat (who I featured earlier this year at Genetics and Health) wrote me today to share her book review of
What Was Asked of Us: An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It by Trisha Wood.

In What Was Asked of Us, author and award-winning investigative reporter Trish Wood lets 29 young men and women who fought in and returned from the Iraq War speak without anyone spinning, packaging, cherry-picking, or pre-digesting their words. Some of the voices are convinced of America’s rightness to be in Iraq; others are less sure. Some are angry; some feel guilt. And chillingly, others admit to missing the adrenaline rush of the fire fights, the “fun” of posing dead bodies for photographs–and even the killing.

I want to read more but a part of me would rather stick my head under the warm blankets. Not everyone has the luxury of doing so. The rest of us should at least have the courtesy of listening to those who’ve been involved in the messier, more brutal side of human life.

NB: Ilona has her own book coming out next year - Moving A Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America’s Returning Troops.

Photo credit: gnb

Technorati Tags: ptsd, veterans day, remembrance day, post traumatic stress disorder

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Marv isn’t feeling well today and I ain’t doing so hot either. Was wallowing in my misery until Kerri told me about Atomictumor. His 29-year-old wife is in critical condition in the ICU. She got sick on October 30th and became critical on November 3rd. From today:

She cried through her eyebrows. I whispered to her, and her face smoothed.

She wants to stay.

She never believed in an afterlife. I did, to an extent, but we never talked about it. I wish now that we had agreed on a place to meet, just in case.

Life sucks and yet I wish everyone could stay right here.

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The history of women in science has always fascinated me for obvious reasons. As much as we would all like to believe that sexism doesn’t exist anymore, it’s still a daily experience for women around the world. I doubt anyone will forget the remarks made by Harvard President Larry Summers on women and science last year (he later apologized).

Dr. Paul Greengard is of a different breed. After winning the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, he used his award to create the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize in honor of his mother.

From his New York Times interview:

Q. In a recent article in Nature, the Stanford neurobiologist Ben Barres complained that male scientists rarely speak out against antiwoman bias when they see it. Would you agree?

A. Whenever I’ve seen it, I’ve spoken up.

One of the most outrageous things I ever saw was at an Ivy League university. A faculty couple were divorcing. The husband told his male colleagues it upset him to see his ex when she went to the ladies’ room, near his laboratory. So this female scientist was ordered to take this circuitous route to the washroom — up a set of stairs, over a hallway and down another staircase — to protect the husband’s sensibilities. I said, “If you don’t change this, I will report it and we’ll all lose our grants.”

I hope Dr. Greengard and others like him continue speaking out.

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Chinese for “naughty child.”
Pronunciation: yeh hai tz

On our last trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, my mom was none too happy that I hadn’t been more diligent in teaching Stephen more Chinese. I can speak and read Chinese fairly well (writing is another story) and Marv is even more fluent than I am, but neither of us has done much to give Stephen a head start in the language. For shame!

Primarily, it’s because we’re more comfortable talking to each other in English; better able to express our feelings or crack jokes. And, it’s also because we’re lazy. I figured we weren’t alone but I was wrong.

Most of the Chinese-American parents we got together with were speaking some or all Chinese to their children. Enoch Choi and his wife send their older daughter to a Chinese immersion school. Other mothers talk to their children almost completely in Chinese. The only mother who didn’t make a strong attempt to use Chinese with her kids was deliberately easygoing about it because she didn’t want to exclude her non-Chinese speaking husband. But, she had a live-in Chinese nanny.

In yesterday’s Scotsman.com News:

THE US is experiencing a boom in demand for Chinese au pairs as middle class parents aim to give their children a head start in what they believe will be the most important business language of the future.

I’m still not convinced that China’s going to dominate the world landscape in the future, but I agree that it’s critical for everyone to know more than one language. In my own personal experience, being able to converse in my culture’s language has enriched my life and made it easier to learn additional languages, such as Japanese.

For Stephen, it would be natural to make Chinese his secondary language especially because we’ll eventually live in Singapore where Chinese and English dominate. When I’ve tried speaking in Chinese to him before, he has insisted, “No Chinese. English!!” I think I’ll have to be even more insistent than he is and start repeating myself in both English and Chinese from now on.

Let’s hope I’m as good as a Chinese au pair or else I’ll have to ask the grandmas to take their turn.

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Yet another reason why I’ll never get hair extensions.

Trade in hair forces India’s children to pay the price

Away from the crowd sits 19-year-old Uma, one of dozens of girls living close to Chennai’s [India] main Egmore suburban rail-line, who have had nastier experiences with more unscrupulous hair collectors. ‘I was held down by a gang of men who hacked at my hair,’ she says. ‘I’m not the only one who has been attacked. I know other women who have been blackmailed and threatened to shave their own heads, in some cases their husbands have received money for their hair and ordered their wives to have their heads shaved. There is a lot of money to be made from hair not just from temples but from villages like ours, the police don’t care, they will do nothing to protect women.’

Is there nothing we won’t exploit? This makes me feel sick.

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In memory of Katie McCarron -
a beautiful, precious, and happy little girl.
Learn more about her at Autism Vox.

I’m so grateful to have my Stephen with me today.

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After our spirited discussion regarding Paris Hilton’s apparent cluelessness about world society, I was gratified to see Jamie Johnson, heir of the Johnson & Johnson fortune, talking about his films on Oprah - Born Rich and The One Percent.

I’d known so many people in my situation at 20, who were going to inherit a great deal of money at age 21, but somehow managed to live unproductive and tragic—and even in some cases miserable—lives.

What a strange paradox—You have access to something that almost every person in this world wants—and yet so many people manage to really screw it all up.

I think the most important thing I learned is that when you’re born rich, you have to really create your own life for yourself. You have to go it your own way, create your own identity. It’s tempting to fall back on your family name and your family wealth, but you have to do something different from your family that you have created for yourself.

Now to do some research on the Johnson & Johnson family to discover their parenting secrets. (Although I think they’re not without some dirty laundry.)
~~~~~
It has been two months and five days since I lost Wanadoo Wireless & Talk broadband.

Technorati Tags: wanadoo, wireless and talk, orange, broadband

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The illustrious writer Kate Baggott has featured my mom and me in her article on women and technology for the Globe and Mail.

Check it out! –> You’ve come a long way, mommy

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HAPPY NEW YEAR!
May 2006 be full of happiness and good health
for you and yours.

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