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As the mother of two small children, I get lots of relaxing, restorative time to myself. For example, sometimes they sleep. And most weekends I leave my husband with the kids for a few hours so that I can go somewhere to be alone and think about all the things I ought to be doing at home. But what I take for granted is that if I want some time to myself, unless my “me-time” is also “bank-robbing time,” my country’s government is not going to interfere.
Then there’s Shaima Jastaniah, the Saudi mother who has been condemned to a lashing for driving a car, even after receiving a royal pardon. Nivien Saleh has written a moving essay for The Atlantic about Shaima, who was Saleh’s university student in Houston, Texas. Saleh describes Shaima’s background – the freedom she enjoyed when she lived in Texas, and the circumscribed existence she has now that she’s back in Saudi Arabia, where driving is forbidden for women and she must go everywhere with a male chauffeur.
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* America's favorite doctor has plenty of colorful, comforting gift ideas. (O Magazine).
* Guys who love My Little Pony have a name: Bronies. They also have a convention, where they can geek out with adoration for Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy. (WSJ.com)
* From Jay Z to Novak Djokovic to . . . Kristen Wiig? GQ's Men of the Year. (GQ)
* It isn't easy looking stylish next to Kermit's signature green. Jim Henson pulls it off, and your man can too. (Nerd Boyfriend)
* "And then there were the everyday, every-stripe Americans. Like a tattooed trucker I met off I-80 in Iowa who, when he heard how many African truck drivers were infected with H.I.V., told me he’d go and drive the pills there himself."—On World AIDS Day, Bono finds reasons to be hopeful about the future of our fight against the pandemic. (NYTimes.com)
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A new book suggests that, awfully enough, my husband might be onto something. Can objects tell a story, or even the history of the world? This is the conceit behind the British bestseller called, accurately enough, A History of the World in 100 Objects, now out in the United States. The book's author, Neil MacGregor, is the director of the British Museum (where all the objects in the book currently live), and he recently spoke to Jeffery Brown at PBS News Hour about the selection of objects and what stories they tell, One of the objects they discussed was one of the oldest tools in existence, a 2-million-year-old stone chipped into a sharp edge that MacGregor said is the "kind of tool that lets us all leave Africa and live everywhere, because this lets you strip the meat off the animals to get more protein, break the bones to get the marrow...This is what lets us...become us."
From here, they discuss objects as diverse as the Rosetta Stone and a solar-powered lamp, each of which has implicit in it an entire story about a certain time and place. As MacGregor puts it, "a single object lets you explore a world that you want to know about....a thing lets you journey immediately into another world. And it's a thing made by somebody like you with hands like yours, a mind like yours. And you're on a journey of poetic imagination to a place that you could never reach otherwise."
This got me thinking about the objects with which we surround ourselves. It's that old "alien archaeologists" scenario (that's an old scenario, right?)—essentially, what is the story the aliens would construct about my life based on the objects in my home? It's the toaster oven we use to make our toast; it's the dog bed we picked out and purchased for the mutt that lives in our house. As MacGregor puts it, "if you take one object and go into it in-depth, then you learn a lot about the people that made it, why they made it, the world it was for, and what it is to be a person needing objects and making objects." It could be that my husband has a point, that our things tell the story of our world. (Which is why I'm still throwing out that old dial-up modem.)
For more, including a video of the interview and a photo essay, check out PBS NewsHour's Art Beat blog.
Read More:
Let go of an object without letting go of memories.
6 everyday objects that can save your life.
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So says Jessica Rogers, the 18 inch tall, 14-year-old swimmer who hopes to take home the 2012 Paralympic gold. And I for one believe her. This girl is amazing. First of all, will you look at her arm muscles? She is buff. Jessica was born with Caudal Regression Syndrome, which means she has no lower spine and extremely small legs. Jessica also engages in a grueling training schedule, waking up at 3:30 every morning before school to prepare for the Paralympics, according to the Daily Mail. As she told the Mail, "When I'm swimming, I feel free."
Her mother, who adopted her when she was a baby, calls Jessica, "a typical teenager," and told the Mail that she's "incredibly determined. But she sees herself as the same as everyone else." And she is. Except that she's a much, much better swimmer. And she doesn't seem to spend any time feeling sorry for herself: "I don't think I'm special—I was born like this and just get on with life. Everyone is different in their own way." We have to disagree: Jessica seems pretty special to us.
Learn more about Jessica's charity for other kids born with Caudal Regression Syndrome and see an amazing video of her swimming, at the Huffington Post.
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In Miranda July’s film The Future, the main character says something about how she wants to keep with the news, but that she's so behind she doesn't know where to start. I have to admit that I often feel this way. I also often feel like I’m so worn out from everyday life that I don’t want the dose of sadness that the news often brings.
Which is why it’s always such a relief to hear a story of people being kind and open-minded, people with what they used to call character. Take, for example, the lesbian homecoming queens of San Diego’s Patrick Henry High School. Chosen and cheered by their peers, and almost immediately flooded with anti-gay hate mail, these girls seem to be the embodiment of a “teachable moment.” The situation must have seemed that way to the school’s superintendent, Bill Kowba, too. According to this piece at Good, Kowba said at a press conference Monday that he was “furious” at the hate mail and negative backlash: “What is essentially disappointing is that adults who have contacted the school...are demonstrating such a lack of tolerance and such a negative role model for children with their hateful comments.”
After all, there’s been a lot of news lately about gay teens
being victimized and bullied, even to the point of being driven to suicide. Here are two girls who are doing a brave thing by living their truth, during high school no less, that greenhouse for conformity
and self-consciousness. And here is a school where the student body has
accepted and welcomed gay students. How
gratifying to see that here are also adults involved who, amid controversy, are backing up the kids, and respecting them as people.
How coming out set Ellen DeGeneres free.
Gay rights around the world.
* Movember is back! You don't have to be able to grow facial hair to support the charity event that raises awareness about men's health. (Movember)
* Brilliant people hanging out together: Johnny Cash and Shel Silverstein's duet. (Brainpickings)
* An Autistic teenager is manager of his high school's basketball team: Awesome. But it gets even better. (YouTube)
* "Sometimes I cried after the war, that she was not with me. Fate decided for us, but I would do the same again."—Jerzy Bielecki, who died last week, on the woman he fell in love with and helped to rescue while they were prisoners at Auschwitz. (NYTimes.com)
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Dorothy Howell Rodham, the mother of Hillary Rodham Clinton, died early Tuesday, at age 92. According to the Daily Beast, Rodham had been living with her daughter since 2006, just before Clinton launched her campaign for the presidency. Whatever you think of Clinton, can you imagine how proud her mother must have felt in those days, and how worried for her child? Rodham moved to Little Rock to be near Hillary when her marriage was in trouble; when the Clintons were in the White House Dorothy spent time there too, helping to raise Chelsea and support Hillary. (Read the original article on the Daily Beast for a heart-wrenching description of the difficult childhood Dorothy Howell Rodham overcame).
This is going to sound silly, but this article was the first
time I ever thought of the Secretary of State as being someone’s little girl,
of how hard and weird it must be to be the parent of a politician, whose life
becomes so brutally public. Isn’t it amazing, what mothers go through, and help
us through?
More about mothers:
Oprah on the value of motherhood
The truth about being a mom
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Okay, so it's a publicity stunt/art piece orchestrated by a Dutch artist (or someone) called Ego Leonard (or maybe that's the Lego man himself, no one seems quite sure). That doesn't diminish the wonderful, weird mystery of it. Imagine walking along the shore and discovering this huge Lego fellow. What a moment that would be! Someone went to a lot of trouble all so that Jeff Hindman (or whoever) could happen open this object and experience an instant of an upside-down world, a moment of magic. By turns playful and enigmatic, the Lego man, if nothing else, injects a moment of whimsy into the world.
Read the original article in the Herald-Tribune for "Ego Leonard"'s hilarious response to requests for information.
* For toy-lovers: The mother of all Hot Wheels tracks. (Devour)
* NPR investigates how we become sports fans, and even if you're consistently getting your heart broken by the team your father saddled you with as a child, take comfort in the fact that "sharing a team with your dad is a point of connection for both sons and daughters." (Krulwich Wonders)
* If sports never caught on with you, but you still want your dad—or uncle or brother or husband—to open up, here are nine easy ways to connect with the men in your life. (Oprah.com)
* "Picture the coolest brasserie in your hometown, that’s what this is. It’s the hottest-looking restaurant in this town. We have to get rid of a few stigmas attached to the word volunteering and making a difference."—Jon Bon Jovi on the pay-what-you-can restaurant his foundation has opened in Red Bank, New Jersey. (Grub Street; Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation)
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While this is undoubtedly distressing for Pascoe and Barry (her other cat, who made the trip safely), it's heartening that there's been such a grassroots response to this story. Jack's Facebook page has over 15,500 followers and is constantly being updated with possible sightings and other news. There are video tributes to the cat on YouTube. An imposter Jack was returned to the airport by some kids hoping for a reward; Jack-look-alikes have been spotted in the neighborhood near JFK.
Dozens of people showed up at JFK on Jack the Cat Awareness Day to search for the kitty and to raise publicity for their cause. While Jack hasn't been found, he is certainly becoming quite famous—his story's been covered all across the world, including UK's Daily Mail. American Airlines say they have hired a pet detective, flown Pascoe back from California to help search, and placed food, water and humane traps in the cargo area, but no one has seen head nor—sorry—tail of the feline, and Jack's supporters are threatening to boycott the airline until the cat is found. Let's hope he's found soon—and awarded lots and lots of frequent flyer miles.
We love our pets:
How to survive a lost cat
Funny animal stories
The $60,000 dog
