a penny for your thoughts

I poured 18,953 pennies out of six different containers into the counting machine at Air Academy Federal Credit Union today. Ok, so there were a few nickels and dimes, but for the most part, people did as my students asked and only put in pennies.

Back in September, my students and I began reading Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Journey to Change the World...One Child at a Time, the Young Readers edition of Greg Mortenson's bestseller. It has everything a Pre-GED diverse adult education class could ever want: perfect reading level (6/7th grade), the power of persistence, a hero, family, the value of education, religion, current events, foreign lands, guns, war, hope. We have had some amazing class discussions this semester. There were many times when I just let them go and listened....

After watching some videos, my students became ever more interested and inspired to do something. So I let them.

Pennies for Peace is deceptively simple: collect pennies and donate them to help build more schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the lessons learned by those who plan and carry out and participate in the penny collecting go deep. My students range in age from 17-54, and they are either immigrants for whom English is their second language, or native speakers for whom the system simply never worked. For most of them, philanthropic giving is the absolute last thing on their minds. Some of the other teachers were even leery of the idea of a penny drive at first, because they didn't want to impose upon the already economically fragile lives of many of our students.

What I found, however, is that having the opportunity to be the GIVER is so very empowering! Remembering that someone is struggling even more than you can be a great motivator to not give up yourself. Alone, we can't do much, but together, we can. I know it sounds cheesy, and it is, but it's REAL. Just like the Velveteen Rabbit.

And organizing a campaign is a way to learn all kinds of real-life, valuable skills (NONE of which I wrote an objective on the board for, mind you).

Tomorrow, the "Pennies for Peace Committee" will make an on-line donation to the Central Asia Institute for $189.53. A drop in the ocean. Their drop. Who knows how far the ripples will travel.

You know, sometimes it's good to question statistics. To closely examine the method behind the numbers. To be a critical thinker. But when somebody I love (Hi, Nancy!) sent me these percentages recently, I just took them on faith. Sadly enough, they just felt correct.

During my father's years on this earth, our nation was at war 13.5% of the time.

During my years on this earth, our nation has been at war 17.5% of the time.

During my son's years on this earth, our nation has been at war 37% of the time.

During my grandchild's years on this earth, our nation has been at war 63% of the time.

To think that our nation has been at war for almost two-thirds of my children's lives is just so..... so..... so..... fucking crazy! And now Obama is committing more troops to Afghanistan. Thirty billion dollars and a year and a half later, where will we be?

As many of you know, my husband spent much of his childhood in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the son of a diplomat. I love to sit at his mother's table and listen to her and John remember. I marvel at the adventures of a young family in a foreign land. Unpronounceable (to me!) names of people and places roll off their smiling tongues and then, somewhere between the first and second martini, it all turns into one gigantic sigh.

I experienced this same phenomenon last month, when my family and I went out for dinner at Rumi's Kabab to celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary. By the end of the night, Shams (the owner) had pulled up a chair, and the boys and I listened to more stories of the glory days of Afghanistan. Again that happiness, as John and Shams shared stories of markets and travels and mountains. And then, eventually, that same heaviness, the profound melancholy of something lost.

I know we can never get the Bamiyan Buddhas back, but I just hope, one day, that the people in that region will know some sort of relative peace. And when they do, I am fairly certain that it will have nothing at all to do with us.

arundhati roy

Author of one of my favorite novels, The God of Small Things, and now there's this:



and this:

vernal equinox

For some reason, it just doesn't seem right that the first day of spring should coincide with the 6th anniversary of the Iraq War. But that's how it is. Perhaps that's why, after so many days of sunshine, today finally feels like rain.

war games

So, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates resurrects a favorite phrase and now declares that the war in Afghanistan will be "a long slog".

Well, DUH!! Witness:



I just can't get enough of these VBS Videos! Go ahead, try the link. I dare you
You'll be lost for hours.......... I promise.

in between reality and fantasy

I am only slightly older than the expansion of Israel and slightly younger than the invention of the video game console.

Happy Birthday to me!

Here's to the continual evolution of video games and the eventual devolution of Israel.

wish i were here.....

sort of. The Democratic National Convention is taking place a mere hour's drive away, in Denver. Just in case you didn't know. Some people don't. A LOT of people don't. Which surprises me.

Anyway, some people I know WERE there over the weekend. Here are some pics.





More pics here

And video:

turns out there are many, many...........

Things Younger Than John McCain

(I submitted "The Atom Bomb".......)

Aaron Retka is younger than John McCain.

america vs. afghanistan: a non-survival story

I read The Sewing Circles of Herat last year. Hosted book club at my house. My husband and boys dressed up like Pashtuns and served us all tea.
At the same time, NEWSPEAK! was calling for real-life survival stories.

The confluence of those two influences led me to write the following words (with minor revisions) just over a year ago:

I have survived 12 years of marriage to a short-tempered squirrel-shooter who grew up in Afghanistan as the son of a diplomat.
I have not survived marriage to a short-tempered Afghan tribal warrior.

I survived English Lit 101, strolling through campus to class with a backpack full of books, paper, and pens.
I have not survived reading James Joyce knowing I could be hanged for doing so, having smuggled in books, paper, and pens under sewing materials in my handbag.

I survived the reelection of George Bush in 2004 when we thought the world would end.
I have not survived a military coup in which two of my cousins, my brother, and my uncle were all captured, tortured, and murdered.

I survived a body cast for four months when I was one, hot and itchy and immobile.
I have not survived years as a woman in a burqa, hot and itchy and invisible.

I survived two pregnancies and two natural childbirths.
I have not survived a bloody miscarriage in a war-torn country.

I have survived my boys playing war games with guns and swords in the backyard.
I have not survived my boys being given Kalishnikovs on their 5th birthdays.

I survived my father leaving my mother for his secretary when I was four years old.
I have not survived my father being dragged by his feet down the hallway by a dozen men with rifles, never to see him again.

Best. Parody. Ever.

My friend Johanna and I went to see the film 305 today as part of the 2008 Indie Spirit Film Festival in (gasp!) Colorado Springs. It contained every element you could possibly imagine in a hero-quest movie, and then turned them upside down and inside out, leaving no facet of the genre unmocked. It was pure brilliant absurdity: a he/she club-dancing oracle, Spartabucks, a lost dog named Zeus, sharpened carrots, reality TVesque commentary, a game of truth or dare, a book club for torturers.

My throat still hurts from laughing so hard.

But the beauty of it isn't actually the film, however, it's the story behind the story. In 2007, twin brothers (one of whom came out and answered questions after the film), graduates from Air Academy High School here in Colorado Springs, produced a short 5-minute parody of 300 with some of their friends and posted it on youtube. Called The 305, it was described as "The Office meets 300". Bloggers picked it up. Friends told friends. It circulated far and wide via the Internet highway. Fans of the short film demanded more. Eventually, an investor found them and offered them the dough to turn it into a feature-length film. It's the American Dream writ large on the movie screen.

The whole thing was filmed in three weeks with a green screen, and has been in post-production for nearly nine months. We who were at the Pikes Peak Center this afternoon were served a real treat. I'll be getting me a $50 weekend pass next year.

Even the trailer is funny.

empire lite?

Yesterday, a graphic representation of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States was published. It's called, simply, A People's History of American Empire. Real American history in comic book form! What more could we possibly ask for?!

Here is one of the most amazing 8 and a half minutes of succinct video I've ever seen. It's Howard Zinn's essay "Empire or Humanity? What The Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire", and contains images from the newly published book. Viggo Mortenson narrates. The video is worth watching, if not for the content, then for the sexy way in which the word "Louisiana" comes sensuously rolling out of Mr. Mortenson's mouth.



You can read the full text of the essay at TomDispatch.com.

today's email from john

As if Blackwater didn't make you sick enough... Check
out this link. I KNOW dad would have been disgusted
with this turn of events. He was a proud member of
the Foreign Service for thirty years. But he would
NEVER have condoned what the State Department has done
here!!! Condi is a despicable shithead bitch!
Errrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Me

Here's the link

operation homecoming

It was homecoming weekend at Colorado College. Homecoming. A time to come home. Sometimes the measures we take to get back home are drastic. Sometimes we can't figure out how we got so far away from home in the first place. Sometimes it is impossible to go home again. Sometimes we get home, only to realize it wasn't what we thought it would be. Sometimes we are homeless. Sometimes it's a three-run homer. Sometimes we think home is farther away than it really is. Sometimes home is better once we have been away for awhile. Sometimes it is worse. Sometimes we choose to try and make our home in a foreign land, wishing for two homes but finding we have none. Sometimes we have a home away from home. Sometimes there's no place like home.

Sometimes our lives are so dramatically changed by the journey that there is nothing left to do but write.

free stamp

This was the most interesting thing I saw in Cleveland when we were there visiting Aunt Sarah and Uncle John.

Well, that and the WWII submarine in which I almost puked just from imagining the stench of 50 men enclosed in tons of steel and which made me angry once again about the money and resources we squander on war. All this while my boys were having the time of their lives lining up the guns and peering through the periscope....

The free stamp just reminded me of something I wrote when I first started this blog in january....

draft college republicans

Untitled from huffpost and Vimeo.

Max Blumenthal:
On July 13, 2007, I visited Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, where the bodies of American soldiers killed in Iraq were freshly interred. Afterwards, I headed across the street to the Sheraton National Hotel, owned by right-wing Korean cult leader Sun Myung-Moon, to meet some of the war's most fervent supporters at the College Republican National Convention.

In conversations with at least twenty College Republicans about the war in Iraq, I listened as they lip-synched discredited cant about "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Many of the young GOP cadres I met described the so-called "war on terror" as nothing less than the cause of their time.

Yet when I asked these College Repulicans why they were not participating in this historical cause, they immediately went into contortions. Asthma. Bad knees from playing catcher in high school. "Medical reasons." "It's not for me." These were some of the excuses College Republicans offered for why they could not fight them "over there." Like the current Republican leaders who skipped out on Vietnam, the GOP's next generation would rather cheerlead from the sidelines for the war in Iraq while other, less privileged young men and women fight and die.

Along with videographer Thomas Shomaker, I captured a vivid portrait of the hypocritical mentality of the next generation of Republican leaders. See for yourself.

god of war, god of peace

This radio programme was produced for the BBC by my friend Kirsten Dwight. In it, John McCarthy reports from Israel, "where religion is at the heart of the conflict and is seen, rightly or wrongly, as crucial to the search for peace." Just when you thought there was nothing new to hear or read or watch or learn....
Look on the side bar under "Listen Again" for "God of War, God of Peace". It will only be available until Wednesday. Kudos to Kirs!

war and peace

We went to a peace rally and a fight broke out between my two sons....
Later we stopped at this cannon and they flashed spontaneous peace signs, unaware of the irony.
Our troops will now be sentenced to 15-month tours of Hades .
How does a boy grow into a man?

al jazeera english

I've made a pact with myself to read at least one article from here each day. You can also watch by clicking on "watch now" (duh!). I learned from Part IV of Frontline's News War last night that no American media outlet will carry Al Jazeera English, which just launched in November of 2006. Of what are people so afraid? The requiem at the end of part IV, for journalists from around the world who have been killed, imprisoned, or exiled in the past year, is especially moving.

it is what it is

Fifteen heart-breaking photos by Nina Berman have been on my mind all day, in between grocery shopping, chocolate cake, used book buying, and bed time stories. Make sure you check out the whole series.


what do you see?
anything other than
what it isn't?
it is what it is.
i may be old,
but I am not yet wise, and so
i want to know-
do you see what I see?
calling bullshit on Disney
and happily ever afters.
all the duty-love in the world cannot turn this man back into a prince
what do you see?

(via NEWSPEAK!)