Like Shirin...

... I've been busy and not blogging. I have some pictures from last weekend but they're still in my camera. My desktop is not sending information to my monitor and so I haven't been able to upload my pictures or use that computer for nearly a week. I need help!
Saeed.......................
Gabriel.....................
Help!
As soon as someone helps me out I'll be back up.

Obama Headquarters

I was on my way to work a couple of weeks ago when I saw a new sign on an old familiar street. Senator Obama has come to town! Apparently Hillary's campaign headquarters are in downtown Rock Hill but I rarely go downtown. For those of you who remember Ebenezer Road it's near the Fire Fox apartments. This stretch has seen other campaign headquarters in years past, most noticeably John Spratt (won) and Ralph Norman (lost.)

People were bustling around inside and coming and going from their cars. With the primary in four days I'm sure the pressure's on. I enjoyed reading the variety of bumperstickers on the cars in the lot but didn't photograph them; people may not want their license plates plastered across the web. Although we'll be in Atlanta this weekend we'll get up early Saturday morning and vote before leaving town. It's been fun listening to NPR and hearing interviews from across the state and yes, from Rock Hill specifically. I even recognized one of the interviewees. Rock Hill has had her moment of fame.

Azam Ali

For those of you who don't already know about Azam Ali let me introduce you to her. She is of Persian background, raised for a time in India, and has lived in the U.S. for a while now. She creates an ethnic kind of music that's not really easy to typify. For several of her albums she worked with Greg Ellis, an American percussionist who utilizes instruments from all over the drumming world. More recently she formed a group named Niyaz with a distinctly Middle Eastern flair. I like a lot of what she does and love some of it. If you surf You Tube you can hear the variety in her work, but what I really appreciate is the creative daring of someone creating something quite new.

The video embedded below shows Azam Ali in concert with her group, Niyaz. This song is music she composed around an old Persian poem called "The Hunt" that appeals to the animal lover in me. The hunter has fallen in love. As newly smitten lovers often do, he can't stop thinking about his new sweetheart. In every animal he is about to shoot he sees her and so of course is unable to harm the animal. Each verse gets longer as the list of animals he is unable to kill gets longer and longer. :-)

Snow!

Look what we woke up to this morning! More later... gotta get ready for work. (sun's not up - still dark outside)

Ok here are a few more pics (I took them this morning at about 5:45 A.M. in my PJ'S; I don't think my neighbors saw me!) It actually rained much of the day, but strangely, the snow did not melt very much. I guess it was cold enough for the snow to stay on the ground, not cold enough for things to freeze, and warm enough that the precip was rain. Very strange!

Tomorrow morning the forecasters are saying that we may wake up to "black ice," but I think they just like to be dramatic! Although the snow remains on the ground (yards, trees, bushes, etc.) the streets are pretty clear.

If I'm Fat Blame Lupe

There's not a lot that would motivate me to put up pictures of myself exercising, but I would like some witnesses to (one of) my excuses for not being able to do a good job on my step aerobics tape. Oh it starts out alright, but pretty soon I get so much "help" I might as well get in the car and go to Dunkin' Donuts!

Here Lupe is helping me set up.
We spread out the sheet to protect the rug and set out the step.
As we're doing that I notice Layli hiding behind the end table. Being spied on by two glowing eyes kind of creeps me out so I....

.... encourage her to come sit in her usual throned seat.

She settles in and away I go.

Pretty soon Lupe sits in front of the TV. I end up having to listen to the instructor very carefully because I can't see her very well; all I can see is a big orange blob.

Next are the arm weights. I look down and Lupe is right behind my right foot. Boy is she trusting!

Lupe comes around the side and starts to talk to me....

... "Aren't you about done with this part? My favorite part is when you do the stomach crunches... C'mon mom!"

Lupe is happy I'm finally to the stomach crunches...

... and this is why. So, do you think I expend more calories trying to do sit-ups with an 18 pound weight on my chest???

I grab a kiss and remove her from my front, only to have her...

... come around the back. In addition to preventing me from being able to bring my head all the way down, Lupe likes to grab onto my hair. Then I get to pull up a cat with my head every time I raise up - how comfortable!

Finally we're done and she gets a ride on the sheet as I pull it off the floor. I may not get an uninterrupted workout (can you imagine how thin I'd be without all the interruptions?) but she sure makes it a lot more fun!

Why My Uniforms Are Wrinkled

Do you remember my excuse for not keeping up with my mail? Well, I also have an excuse for not doing my ironing. Frosty's actually lying on my lab coat, pressing new wrinkles into it. Thanks Frosty.

Look down below Obi. It looks like he actually threw my iron off the board onto the floor and then tried to hide it with the cat bed, but I doubt he's that conniving.

Frosty's favorite position for napping is on his tummy, straddling something.

Obi proudly shows off his multi-toes footsies.

A stretching cat is a work of art.

Zzzzz.... have a good nap.

No, don't worry about me. I'll just wear a wrinkled hanky to work tomorrow.

Ishmael Beah

As my kitties were taking toasty naps I was reading a book Martha sent me that I would like to write about. "A Long Way Gone" was written by Ishmael Beah, a young man from Sierra Leone who was forced to become a child soldier in order to survive. At age 11 the civil war (basically rebels against a corrupt government) came to his village to kill everybody and burn everything down. He ran into the forest to avoid being killed and some time later joined the army as a way to survive. For more than two years he was drugged and brainwashed to perform horrific violence against the rebels and anyone who stood in the army's way. Ultimately he was one of the few boys to be selected for rehabilitation through a Unicef program, where he was then selected to speak at a UN conference in NY. It was here that he met the American woman who would ultimately "adopt" him (his entire family perished in the war) and bring him to the U.S. He finished high school here and attended Oberlin College and now, at age 27, works for several organizations to bring about awareness of the plight of child soldiers.

I found his story very moving and very well written. Moreover, when I finished the book I sought out interviews to get a better feel for this young man. It is hard to imagine this quiet, gentle, soft-spoken man doing the violent acts he so eloquently describes in the book. He explains that as a boy all alone with his family dead, his very survival depended on participating in and living with an organized group. It was either that or be killed by the rebels. The army also drugged the boys to keep them revved and showed them violent movies (such as Rambo) to keep them pumped. His mission now is to help others understand that these young boys need to be helped, that through patience and compassion they can have their humanity returned to them.

If you would like to see a few of his interviews I will provide you with the links to these now. Here is a YouTube video, here is a Jon Stewart Comedy Central video, and here is a CNN video. I really enjoyed Terry Gross's interview with him on Fresh Air on NPR; she asks the best questions!

As I was reading and listening to all these things I couldn't help but remember Anahita's job with the IRC, International Rescue Committee. I seem to remember her talking mostly about refugees from Somalia, but very likely there were participants from Sierra Leone as well. It was at about this time that Saeed and I saw, "Lost Boys Of Sudan," about young men trying to make it as refugees in the U.S. It made me want to bring them all home, but this is not the solution. People should not have to be refugees to lead safe lives; the best scenario is one in which each country's government makes having a decent life possible for all its citizens.

Snoozing In Front Of The Fireplace

Although it's nice and warm again we went through a cold snap with the rest of the country. Fortunately we have a wonderful fireplace that gets to be a very popular spot with anyone who wants to take a toasty little nap.

Tippy and Obi become totally comatose in the warmth of the fire.

Uh-oh, here comes Chappu. She tries to squeeze in with Obi. The two of them sometimes do sleep together but this particular bed is too small.

Chappu's next step is to lick Obi...

... and keep licking in the hopes of getting in.

No cigar. Chappu settles nearby where it's still nice and warm.

Poor Obi, woken up from a perfectly good nap!

Another Candidate Quiz

For those of you who took the quiz on Shirin and Gabriel's blog here's another one. I was distressed by my third place match on their quiz; on this quiz I still matched with Kucinich and Gravel but replaced Guiliani with Hillary. I got this quiz from the site Gabriel used to obtain Huckabee's position points: http://www.ontheissues.org/.

I think the problem with all of these quizzes are the impossible questions (Agree or Disagree: drug use is immoral; support more funding for drug enforcement > what if you think funding drug enforcement laws is good but that drug use is not immoral? Do you choose to agree or disagree with this statement?) and the limited answers from which you must choose one answer. Often I don't like any of the answer options.

If nothing else, the quizzes have started me thinking more seriously about my position on the issues. This is a good thing because I have been so tired of the hoopla about the candidates that I've quit tuning in. Maybe it's because they've been campaigning since Bush started his second term!

My New Year's Resolution

My resolution is to work harder towards ending animal suffering. Someone once said she doesn't feel that her individual effort (in this case her vegetarian diet) makes a difference. I explained that each drop adds to others to form puddles, then lakes, then oceans, and in this way makes a difference. We may not always live to see the change, but things do change.

On this blog I've written about vegetarianism and animal testing. Another area of animal torture is in medical school labs. I've followed this issue for years and even written letters to about eight med schools encouraging their programs to go to alternatives. Now feast your eyes on the following article in today's New York Times. This came about after years of hard work by animal rights advocates. It gives me hope.

January 1, 2008

Killing Dogs in Training of Doctors Is to End

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

By next month, all American medical schools will have abandoned a time-honored method of teaching cardiology: operating on dogs to examine their beating hearts, and disposing of them after the lesson.

Case Western Reserve School of Medicine was the last to use the method, but the dean, Dr. Pamela Davis, said it would no longer do so after this month.

On Nov. 19, New York Medical College in Valhalla joined New York’s 11 other medical schools and announced that it would close its dog laboratory.

Among the 126 American medical schools, 11 still sacrifice animals for teaching, according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an advocacy group that tracks the practice. Other than Case, none of them use dogs.

Francis Belloni, a dean at New York Medical College, said his students now used echocardiograms to study heart function, and the subjects were live medical students rather than live dogs. Dr. Belloni said the use of animals was not done lightly and had value, but added that students would “become just as good doctors without it.”