Oh the Places You Will Go!

Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words and in this case it's a good thing. Check back later for a commentary. For now I'm all "computered" out. In the meantime, enjoy the picture stories.

A Sobering Moment

I wanted to put this on my blog for my own future reference and I didn't initially want to make a whole separate blog post.  But in the end, I decided: why not? This is my journal anyway.  

I just watched the horrific youtube video of the Iranian woman named Neda who was shot on her way to a Tehran protest. She did nothing more than get out of her car and she was brutally murdered by paramilitary figures. The following are quotes from this article that I wanted to remember. If you feel like reading it, you can too: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,528441,00.html.

Her family scheduled a memorial service to be held in a mosque in northern Tehran, but the government forbade ceremony. She was buried quietly at Tehran's Behesht Zahra cemetery on Sunday with only her family present, says Soona Samsami, executive director of the Women's Freedom Forum, who has been relaying information about protests inside Iran to international media.

All mosques were given a direct order from the government barring them from holding any memorial services for Neda, and her family was threatened with grave consequences if anyone gathered to mourn her, said Samsami.

Soltan's loved ones were outraged by the authorities' order not to eulogize her.

"They were threatened that if people wanted to gather there the family would be charged and punished," Samsami told FOXnews.com.

Much of the attention and blame for Neda's apparent murder is now being focused on Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose threatening speech Friday preceded the violent protests Saturday at which apparently Neda lost her life. Khamenei is now the prime target for protesters' outrage, Khalaji said.

I just wanted to comment on how tragic it is that an innocent woman's family is now denied the ability to mourn her in their traditional way because of governmental fear that she will become a martyr and add fuel to the ongoing protests. She is not the first to lose her life in this struggle, nor is this struggle the only tragic event occurring right now, but it struck a chord with me tonight. It's a very sobering moment to read about.

Sorry. I promise to bring back happy postings soon! I just had to make mention of my thoughts this evening.

The Renegades Return

I don't know how many of you have been following the state of unrest in Iran right now over the reelection of Ahmadinejad, but it brings back some very specific memories for me.  In an earlier post I talked about a book called Iran Awakening and it's inspiration, Shirin Ebadi.  If you missed that post, you can find it here.  The reason that I am reminded so much of this book as I read of the continuing protests and riots is that they are so reminiscent of the ones that occurred in the 1979 revolution Ebadi speaks of in detail in her autobiography.  I knew nothing about Iran before reading this book and have since become very interested in the country's history.

Thirty years ago, Iran was a much more modern country.  Students in college in the 60's and early 70's dressed in mini-skirts, just like in the U.S., women were welcomed in college classrooms and Ebadi, herself, was once a very prominent judge in the judicial system.  However, when the U.S.-backed government was toppled by the revolution at the close of the 70's, many unintended consequences rocked the country.  Women were suddenly required again to wear the burqa, and Ebadi and her female colleagues were demoted to secretarial positions within the judicial system.  

Now, I'm not a feminist, but I used these examples to show just how far regressive the new government was as far as modern progression goes.  For more about Ebadi and her book, you can read the Wikipedia article on her.  In any case, I think Iran Awakening is a fabulously enlightening read that everyone should pick up, especially because the woman won the Nobel Prize for her lifelong work and dedication to pursuing justice.

I digress.  In my enthusiasm for the book, I forget what I began writing for.  I write because today marks the fifth day of protest in Iran over the election results that many in the country believe were rigged.  There are many articles on the subject, but one in particular caught my attention: 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aSstOZioMQ30.   

This is big--especially if the riots at the university and in the cities are as much like those of the 1979 revolution as many experts have expressed.   There are at least fifteen people who have died in the protests since last week's election.

I don't know much about the opposing candidate, Mousavi, but I liked that he was straightforward enough to say to Ahmadinejad in a public debate on June 3rd, "I don't think you're a dictator but your attitude will lead to dictatorship."

By the 15th Mousavi claimed he was under house arrest.  I tend to think that something was going on under the tables here, especially since days after the protests began the Iranian government began to forbid foreign journalists to leave their offices to report on the events. Anytime there is a banning on reporting, you know the country is afraid of something.  And in this case it is almost surely afraid of the world opinion. 

 

But more than anything I wonder what will happen--if the rioting will quiet or if the protests will turn into something more like a revolution.  Seems far-fetched to turn the protests into that at this point, but I would so love to see the Iranian people take back some of the freedoms they once had.  Then again I have been brought up on American ideals and principles.  

Perhaps I'm just like Thomas Jefferson who had so much faith in the perseverance of democracy and the rights of man that during the first few months of the French Revolution he continually assumed each disturbance was the last and that the French monarch and aristocracy were taking heed.  I tend to believe, perhaps naively most of the time, that the people in Iran want out of this rigid form of government in their country, but it appears that many Iranians also support and wish Ahmadinejad well.  It is probably a waste of time to speculate, but I still wonder.  

Well, what do you think?  Talk to me.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Thursday, May 14, 2009

I arrived in Paris on my birthday, a rainy, slightly cloudy, but still beautiful day. It was only a light misting, so I didn’t need an umbrella most of the time. A couple funny things happened to me upon my arrival which were almost comical. First, Air France seemed to have lost my bag. It wasn’t until I had been waiting an hour and that I realized that they had probably booked my bag all the way to Tel Aviv. After waiting in line to talk to someone, my recent suspicions were confirmed. It might have been nice to know that important piece of information, but no matter. Soon I was off into the city—sans bag. It was okay though because I didn’t really need anything from out of it. I was only going to be in Paris one day anyway, and didn’t want to worry about lugging it to my hostel and back.

I decided to take a taxi downtown because I had already wasted so much time in the airport waiting for the bag that was not coming. After informing the driver that I needed to pass by an atm to pay him, we set off. It was a relief to find that the French really does come back, even if a little rusty. As French was the only language that the Cambodian driver and I had in common, it was a perfect way to exercise the long untested effort! All went well until we stopped at the atm near my hostel: it wouldn’t give me any money. So we tried another. And another. By this point I had an inkling I knew what was wrong. I had forgotten to tell my bank that I was going to be out of the country and was sure that was the problem. This is where speaking French really came in handy. I can’t imagine trying to explain to a cabbie, “Hey I have money, just can’t get it from the atm,” using only awkward gestures and earnest expressions. Luckily I managed to convince the French boy at the hostel to overcharge the bill in exchange for money from his till.

First crisis averted.

Should be smooth sailing from here, right? Well now I needed to call home to the bank and tell them to put a note in my account and then I’d be set to go. No problem. It was still early in the States, but the banks would open in an hour, so I’d go out and find a calling card in the meantime. All over the place there are little café-like establishments called Tebacs where they also sell tobacco (obviously), calling cards, along with the regular staples of coffee and a morning newspaper. I walk in, I pick up a cheap calling card, and voilà! Problem solved, yes? No. I hold out my credit card to the gruff man behind the counter who says, “espèces.” Or cash only. Well, that’s the problem in the first place, right? I can use my credit card as credit, but I can’t pull money from the atm.

Okay, not solved. This does create something of a pickle, though. If I can’t buy a calling card, I can’t call my bank to make sure they change my account, and I am still without money.

Let’s put this into perspective: I am now in a foreign country (granted one I am comfortable in), and I am without money. Hahaha. Far from being scared or worried, I was actually very amused at the situation I had put myself in. I was never in any real danger, fear not, but in a strange way I was delighted to be truly living the bohemian lifestyle Paris is famous for in the form of its starving, penniless artists. Okay, I was neither an artist, nor about to starve, but it was kind of fun to figure out my current crisis. 

Here’s where serendipity comes in: I never carry cash. Ever. It seems so pointless and it bulks up your wallet, so I just don’t. However, I remembered just then that my friend Matt, who had owed me $30 for about six months, had finally ponied up the dough just before I left and it was currently in my possession. Oh, Matt would gloat for months and feel justified and probably tell me that I owed him for saving my butt in this situation if he knew. No matter. He’s good at weaseling his way out of guilt and I had $30, so who cares? 

Well, a Tebac is not a bank and they certainly don’t consider doing favors if it isn’t in their job description to exchange money, so the search for a bank to exchange the money was on. There are non-bank institutions that specialize in exchanges all over the place, but there were only two problems: they charge an insane fee sometimes, and I couldn’t even buy a pass for the metro to get to the areas where they were in great abundance. Again, you need money to exchange money, it would seem. What an interesting conundrum this day was turning out to be. Luckily, I was enjoying the challenge and the creative thinking this problem was forcing me to use.

Thirty dollars in hand and a bunch of different banks to try in the somewhat near vicinity, I set out walking and taking pictures along the way. I was out to solve a problem, but there was no reason not to enjoy myself on the way. Plus, this is my birthday. And everyone knows you’re obligated to have a fabulous day on your birthday. Oddly enough, I wouldn’t have wanted to spend the day any other way. I was currently without means, but I in Paris!

Well, I found a bank on my first try that would exchange the money and voilà: I’m out on the town again. Back to the Tebac to buy the calling card so I can call my bank, so they can change my account, so I can get money from the foreign atm, so I can have money to pay for my life. 

Sigh, it was almost a shame when all of this was taken care of. It was fun to run around Paris never knowing what would happen next and when I would have to start begging on street corners for my sustenance. Okay, not really. But wouldn’t that have been fun? A true bohemian experience in Paris!

Second crisis averted, and almost as easily as the first.

But wait—there’s more. (Which phrase always makes me think of an obnoxious announcer on an infomercial for a product that you don’t really need, but that will totally change your life and make all your dreams come true.) An hour after I talked to the bank in the States and they claimed to have fixed the problem, I walked up to an atm at random, stuck my card in and waited for it to spit out the desired denominations of bills that I had asked for, only to have the automatic machine tell me, “Nope. Sorry. No way, no how. You can’t have any money.” WHAT? After all that effort, and nothing?

In the spirit of true bohemian desperation, I tried another. Slightly different message, “Not enough funds in the account requested.” Yeah, okay.

Back to square one: calling card, call to the bank, bank tells me the information has already been added to my account. So why, one might ask, am I not able to get any from my account? Again: hahaha. Turns out in the four—or is it five—years since I lived overseas the banks have changed the default of their atm requests from checking (as it makes sense) to savings! Ha! All this time, all this truly bohemian effort, my pains and toils (okay not really) were for naught. The whole time, all I needed to do was to transfer money back into my savings account because that is where the foreign atms wanted to draw it from! Funny that just before I left I transferred all my savings into my checking to avoid just this problem.

Third crisis averted.

Back to hostel, transfer funds into savings, try the atm once more and quite a different message: “Mais oui! We’d love to give you money. Here, take what you want. Have a nice day.” Ah, the joys of having money to spend. Now I was able to buy a metro ticket—in fact several metro tickets, eat a fabulous lunch of jambon au buerre (which is ham and butter on a baguette, which may sound odd, but it seriously amazing), buy a couple pain au chocolat (pronounced pan oh chocolah), and enjoy the sights and sounds of the city I love and miss so much.

So there I was, remembering how much I loved being there and yet also realizing how much I love the States. What a strange patriotic feeling to be having at the same time I was missing living in France. Hard to explain, but I guess what that means is that I used to yearn to live there, but am now content to visit and enjoy without staying long enough to get sick of it.

I spent the rest of the day pretending I was a photographer, making friends with interesting French men who were probably twice my age and hitting on me as I’m crossing the street, telling people, “No, I am not British, I am American” and, “Yes, some Americans do speak French.” I always forget how everyone automatically assumes I am from the United Kingdom. They have such interesting stereotypes and one of them is that no American speaks any language besides English. I love it also, when they assume one doesn’t understand what they are saying and are surprised when they receive a reply in French. Especially when they are talking about you. That’s the best because I love seeing their shamefaced expressions when they realize how tactless they were.   But despite their faults, they really can be a friendly people and they definitely live in a beautiful place!

Further, but probably less detailed, commentaries of the rest of my trip to Israel are pending.  Check back for that, but enjoy Paris for now:

For the Love of Adrienne

I got the following in an email and I'm not going to lie, I enjoy reading these random surveys, but I never forward them on. But because I love Adrienne so much (and because I was her answer to #19 and it made me feel guilty to not respond after that) I decided to post some responses here instead and anyone who wants to be tagged can put it on theirs. Capisce?

Instructions: Welcome to the new 2009 edition of getting to know your family and friends. Here is what you are supposed to do, and try not to be lame and spoil the fun. Change the answers so that they apply to you, then send this to a bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person who sent it to you. Some of you may get this several times, that means you have lots of friends. The easiest way to do it is to hit forward so you can change the answers. Have fun and be truthful!

1. What color are your socks right now? Do nylons count? I haven't changed out of the church attire yet.

2. What are you listening to right now? Loud airplane sounds from the tv in the room next to me. My niece and nephews are watching a cartoon.

3. What was the last thing that you ate? Yoplait yogurt, cherry flavor. To tide me over until dinner.

4. Can you drive a stick shift? Do it every day. I even try to drive stick in an automatic, that's how used to it I have become.

5. Last person you spoke to on the phone? Let's see...probably Megan.

6. Do you like the person who sent this to you? What kind of question is this? Who would say no and send it back? But to answer the question, please refer to the prologue to this survey.

7. How old are you today? 24, but only for another week and a half. Wow, I'm in my mid-twenties now. Weird.

8. What is your favorite sport to watch on TV? Basketball. I used to not like watching any sport on tv, but I enjoy a good Jazz game--even more in person.



9. What is your favorite drink? I really like orange flavored Italian sodas. As in the color of the syrup is orange--mango, apricot, peach, or even orange!

10. Have you ever dyed your hair? Not in totality, but I start to feel mousy without "stripes" in my hair, as my niece refers to my highlights.



11. Favorite food? Pastries? I can't get enough of them. And fresh bread.

12. What is the last movie you watched? Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Loved it.

13. Favorite day of the year? The first day that feels like Spring after a long winter. I always feel so uplifted and happy that day.



14. How do you vent anger? I'm going to leave this answer just as Adrienne wrote it: Talk way too much. Me too, babe.

15. What was your favorite toy as a child? My imagination. I can't remember being extremely attached to any particular toy, but I remember loving to play house.

16. What is your favorite season? Spring

17. Cherries or blueberries? Cherries


18. Do you want your friends to email you back? Well, I don't think it will be by email if they decide to do it.

19. Who is the most likely to respond? The person who likes surveys the most.

20. Who is the least likely to respond? The person who likes surveys the least.

21. Living arrangements? Haha. With my parents. Don't get me wrong, though, it's a great setup. I might never leave.

22. When was the last time you cried? Tuesday night.

23. What is on the floor of your closet? Way too many shoes which I never manage to kick off near each other and thus end up digging to find the match. Sigh. I need to be more conservative. No person needs as many shoes as I have.

24. Who is the friend you have had the longest that you are sending this to? Well, I don't know. I'm not sending this.

25. What did you do last night? Went to Keys on Main with some friends to listen to the dueling pianos.

26. What are you most afraid of? Myself.

27. Plain, cheese, or spicy hamburgers? Plain or cheese. Either way. But I really dig pineapple. Can that be an option?

28. Favorite dog breed? Anyone know the RCA dog? I love that dog...or maybe I just love the iconic pose. Either way, it's cute.


29. Favorite day of the week? Depends on the week. I don't mind weekdays. I feel like I get more done than I do during the weekends even though I'm not working.



30. How many states have you lived in? Just one. This one.

31. Diamonds or Pearls? Honestly? Pearls. I like stones with color. But I think I still want a diamond someday, if ya know what I mean.

32. What is your favorite flower? Easy. Lilies. Orange lilies.


33. What is your occupation right now? Legal assistant. Though they say four years on the job constitutes a paralegal. That's this year, baby! Thanks Adrienne for getting me the job! :)

My Latest Addiction

While on vacation with my good friend, Adrienne, I happened to find a bargain of a buy in the clearance section of Borders. I'm now convinced that it was fate that this book and I should meet. I have always loved movies, but recently I have grown tired of the lack of quality movies actually coming out in the theaters. So I've gone retro-active! 

The book is organized by genre ranging from Comedy to Mysterey & Thriller, Science Fiction & Fantasy and everywhere in between. For each genre there are about fifty films which also range from early silent films to more recent films such as Meet the Parents. I don't know that that particular movie would make it to my own personal must-see movies list, but it is a great place to start. Overall? If I were actually giving this book a review, I would definitely give it high marks. 

This also happens to be where I discovered the film Raise the Red Lantern, which I wrote about below. There is nothing quite like discovering something new and that film was everything I was looking for by way of new and different. Granted, it was sad, but it opened my eyes to a way of life so far removed from the experiences I have. It wasn't until taking a couple film classes in college that I actually started to appreciate films that were artistic or that were less about entertaining than they were about painting a picture of any given experience. 

Since then I am continually amazed by the different techniques and themes that filmmakers artfully employ. I'm not going to lie, it makes me want to run around with a camera, only my efforts would likely turn out the equivalent of a child running around with a disposable camera. Well, at least those who can't do, can watch! 

The Red Menagerie

The solitude induced by the purity of sound and the poetic cohesion of vivid images in the film Raise the Red Lantern are moving in a way that is difficult to express, and yet entrancingly alluring to watch.  

In the film we see all that is lovely and beautiful in the idyllic setting of a palatial-like estate where the relationships between women are explored carefully and perhaps too adequately for our liking in the form of four concubines.  We view this estate through the eyes of a young girl of nineteen, who chooses to be married to a rich man as his fourth mistress when her father dies, leaving her no more money to attend university.  In this glass menagerie of a household, the young girl must learn to keep her friends close and enemies even closer as it becomes evident that each woman must, by necessity, be in competition with the others for the attentions of their shared master.





Traditions and rules are important in this household and the film revolves around them, starting with the symbolic lighting of red lanterns at the house of whichever wife the master chooses to spend his evening.  This tradition of lighting the lanterns is an honor that only one woman receives at a time and becomes a status symbol, not only elevating her above the other concubines, but also giving her more prestige in the eyes of the servants who show more respect to she who has lastly received the honor.





As young Songlian struggles to find her own place within the already destabilized feminine hierarchy, she exhibits a full range of human emotions and traits from rough arrogance to pained empathy and every pithy characteristic in between.  We see in her a girl who learns too quickly the ways of viciousness and vindictiveness, possessiveness and spite. Yet in perhaps the most unlikely source she finds validation through realization of shared sorrows and apprehensions.  In many ways we might see ourselves in her knee-jerk reactions to events, which she does not learn to curb easily.  





In overall theme the film is disturbing and melancholy, not to be undertaken with the hopes of lively entertainment, but an attitude of retrospection and contemplation.  For in the characters and their actions a pattern begins to emerge, suggesting a larger social commentary about the effects of a life of confinement, even one as prettily decorated and disguised.  It is a none-too-gentle reminder that we each may carry around our own prisons instead of being locked inside of them.  

The colors and composition of this film alone make it worth viewing as it captures all that is lovely about the art of cinematography.

An Ode to Brie

I rediscovered Brie this weekend. Strange how a piece of cheese could make me so nostalgic for a time and place in my life long since past. But it did. One wiff of that distinctive and somewhat stinky smell and I became wistful for the days of real French baguettes and supermarchés with aisle after aisle of fromage: Chamembert de Normandie, Beaufort, Neufchâtel, Roquefort, Le Vache qui Rit. Yes, I am actually waxing poetic about cheese. Yet it's not just cheese to the French, it is almost an identity all it's own, if you will. Indeed, I rather wonder if it is not sacrilege to not like cheese in France. It gives new meaning to the phrase, "You are what you eat." And if that phrase is true, I am most certainly a little moldy around the edges.

Well, I feel like my relationship with cheese closely mirrors my experience of France in general. I started out just as any other American girl unaccustomed to such overabundance of choice and eventually acquired the taste for most of what I tried. Minus goat cheese. I still think goat cheese is something someone came up with to frighten small children into behaving and grown adults into penitence. But the point is that experiencing the important parts of a culture so apart from my own changed me in ways I can't explain. And somewhere along the way I came to associate all those small, but significant changes with the things that were closest at hand: the things that I ate, the things that I saw, and even the people I was with.

So thank goodness for a dear friend who shares my love of all things French and reintroduced me to all the culinary joys that are out there if you're only willing to spend a little time discovering them. Over the years I've gotten progressively more and more "busy" to the point that I've abandoned many of the things I always loved to do. This blog is an effort to regain the artistic outlet that I lost when I stopped writing. With any luck I will also rediscover my long lost pastime of culinary creativity.

It occurs to me that what I write in this forum really isn't very interesting or clever and I doubt many people will read it. But as stated above, it really is a simple catalogue of my daily thoughts for my own amusement, and as such will likely be a continually random enumeration of my random musings.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Well, against all reason, or perhaps with only a very little of it, I have decided to start a blog. [Insert facetious gasp from anyone reading this at the obviousness of my opening statement--my apologies.] What a single gal like me has to blog about, I'm not yet quite sure, but I do love to write. Is that the same thing?

I have lamented recently on the rusting of my writing skills (if, indeed, I ever had them) and the decided lack of venues in which to exercise those skills now that I'm finished with school. I never thought I would regret the end of staying up until four in the morning developing a thesis and weaving together a persuasive argument right before a deadline, but in spite of the suffering caused by my penchant for procrastination (that's when I did my best work) I was always secretly pleased with the finished product. Don't get me wrong: graduation is still too fresh an event for me to want to go back, but while I love the fact that I have no idea when midterm is approaching or what week Spring Break falls on this year, I have felt like something has been missing. Then it dawned on me: I wasn't writing anymore...in any setting at all.

Cue search for new writing venue: I tried my journal. Turns out I hate journal writing. Yet I strangely feel guilt over not keeping one, considering the huge gaps of my life that will and already have gone missing as I can barely remember what I did yesterday, let alone two years ago. To appease my conscience, not to mention my future curiosity at what it is I've done with my life, I will keep a journal of sorts here with a running commentary of my thoughts instead. I always said I'd never be a blogger (I'd rather call this a journal instead), but a funny thing happened in my search for a new place to write and I found that elusive forum I was looking for in the form of a blog.