I’m still a bad, bad blogger it seems. Something is seriously going down if I can’t find the time to write. All I know is that for 2 weeks now I’ve been officially starting my days at 4:30 a.m. in order to get everything squished in. And still, I can’t find the time to write. So let me share instead…
I don’t know how I missed this neat entry into that (old) Muslim film contest (onenationforall.org/LinkTV) but I did. I like it because it resonates if you’re a-pray-any/everywhere-kind-of-muslim. And ain’t the ending just the nicest thing?
Since I’ve been a bad, bad blogger for a while now (only blogged twice in April?), I’m going to try to be a superblogger and blog every___! (If we were playing hangman, you would be really wrong if you guessed the letters D, A, Y.)
‘kay, it’s spring and what am I thinking of? I’m thinking of all the times my former would pull the car over from wherever we were headed if I spied FLOWERS (wild) anywhere. Like anywhere (legit). I’m thinking of that scene in Sense and Sensibility where the younger sister, recovering from an injury, gets that wildflower bouquet from the wrong guy and how she’s so swoony about it (he picked it himself) vs. the wrinkled nose she gives the haute purchased bouquet from the (legit) guy. I don’t know if the two thoughts are related in anyway except that they both involve flowers. And guys?
Flowers. How can you not believe in a beautiful, benevolent God when you see such creations? Like the afterthoughts, embellishments that make the raison d’etre of a work of art truly reach hearts.
I was an active flower child - my mother would plan in advance to shield my sight from them if she saw flowers before I did; otherwise I would be in the midst of a field, lot, jungle, bull-grazing ground etc gathering them. I’ll never forget the day my grandfather’s mighty strong bull decided to give my flower-love a test run. I’ve never run so fast in my life and don’t think I ever will again. And all for a single vivid exotica-specimena of the type-I-don’t-knowus.
Since I’m not good with the holding-memory (i.e. I can’t remember boring detailed stuff), I often never knew what the names of my favorite flowers were. I just knew I loved the full-beautiful-rose-looking-ones-with-a-million-soft-petals; you only needed ONE of those to gaze at and be happy. So what a gift from God when at a very sad time in my life, I discovered, in the garden of the house we bought in the fall…poking their strong green foliage up from the ground in May (and every May after), bushes and bushes and bushes of…my favorite flowers. I decided then and there to become better at remembering boring detailed stuff (become a gardener) and found out it was peonies (paeony) that I had loved for so long.
Taking part in the work of planting and tending to of flowers brought me to a new space in terms of enjoying their beauty. Now I’m okay if I’m not trying to reach for that tiny lily-looking flower in a shallow swamp while swatting at the leeches crawling up my legs. Just because something is utterly beautiful doesn’t mean you need to hold it or have it or have your blood sucked out for it. Somehow that last statement didn’t sound as Zen as I wanted it to sound.
If you wanna know, some of the best flower shops in Toronto (in terms of price, variety) are on Avenue road. I discovered this when I was in charge of making the table arrangements for a friend’s wedding. He was on a tight budget and yet wanted something artsy, different. I worked all night to deliver something different and because I forgot that I was allergic to a certain type of different flower (that holding-memory problem again), I was shocked when my sister woke up to look at my handiwork and instead of ooohing and aaahing, looked alarmed. I had to go to the wedding armed with artsy, different table arrangements and an artsy,different face - one decorated with hives and the biggest-puffiest (anjelina jolie-ish?) lips. But, yeah, stop by the Avenue road shops if you’re thrifty and love flowers.
And, I leave you with that important reminder: just because something is utterly beautiful doesn’t mean you need to hold it or have it or have your blood sucked out for it.
Omar Khadr: how to explain, convey the multitudes of stories, emotions, takes… on Canada’s forgotten one?
While I don’t think I’ll be able to read Michelle Shephard’s new book, GUANTANAMO’S CHILD: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr - emotionally, I can’t handle detailed accounts of American duplicity (I’m STILL recovering from Abu Ghraib) - I’m hoping that it will generate more interest (leading to action) into the case of what essentially is the plight of a boy whose parents made the decision to transplant their family into the thick of things. How does a child pay for the decisions of his parents?
And perhaps more pressingly, how can Guantanamo be justified by anyone who claims to be a proponent of a way of life that upholds justice for all? There’s some noise made about how Khadr is the only Westerner left at Guantanamo; while it is true that this is pointed out to put pressure on the Canadian government, I wonder about all the other forgotten souls who weren’t so fortunate to be born on Western soil.
There’s a great review of Shephard’s book by Ziyaad Mia in the Globe and Mail which brings up some of the multitudes of stories, emotions, takes on Omar Khadr, his family and Guantanamo. I read it on the weekend and was shaken by how easy it is for us to forget “yesterday’s” injustice.
‘We’ve got to spend time in the shadows. … It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. … We need to make certain that we have not tied the hands … of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission.” That was U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney on Sept. 16, 2001, explaining what visiting the “dark side” would involve. One manifestation of Cheney’s ominous prediction is the Guantanamo Bay naval base-cum-detention centre, which has been called a “legal black hole” by Lord Johan Steyn of Britain’s House of Lords.
Guantanamo has been famous for decades as a U.S. military base in Fidel Castro’s heartland. Today, it is emblematic of all that is wrong with President George W. Bush’s war on terror: It is the most famous node in a global torture network, and it is an affront to the rule of law.
Guantanamo’s Child tells the story of Canadian Omar Khadr, the sole Westerner remaining in Guantanamo. The book wrestles with contradictions and absurdities. The base is home to iguanas protected by law from molestation. However, the human detainees are less fortunate than the reptiles; it is a place where, according to one of Khadr’s military lawyers, “there are no rules.”
I spent earth hour at the home of the high mistress of candles: my sister. Sure enough we were bathed in the light of numerous wax creations - which still wasn’t enough light for my sister. So she periodically made quick forays into the kitchen to furtively open the fridge door to bask in its eerie unearth-houry glow. For tsk-tsking her breaching of the sacred earthing hour rules, I got called an Earth-Hour Nazi.
We were both supposed to be spending the evening at a get-together for a friend getting married soon but exhaustion got in the way. So it was nice to spend some time relaxing in the dark - me curled on my sister’s couch, her cat (Luna Kukaracha) curled on an opposite chair lazily watching my daughter trying to hypnotize her with a fake plastic candle and my sister in the kitchen sneaking gulps of fridge light. The rest of the fam were all out for dinner. It was prime re-coup time and worth every minute of that 59 minutes of power-free time. Yes, my sister put the lights on 1 minute early.
I’m a jumble of random, eclectic interests so I will succumb to myself and write about…
1. I didn’t think Maclean’s had it in them… but having given up on getting any sense of balanced news from the mag for a long while now, I was surprised when a brother from work indicated there was something worthy in the Feb 25th issue. Page 16 features an interview with ex-CIA spy Graham Fuller which tells it like it is. Apparently Fuller has an article in Foreign Policy under the provocative title: A World Without Islam which further describes his views.
2. Wilson Bentley. He spent his adult life taking pictures of snowflakes using a special microscopic camera. His work helped show that no two snowflakes - because of moisture, temperature, wind differences - were ever alike. “I found that snowflakes were masterpieces of design. No one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted…just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.” His work - painstakingly photographing snowflakes in the late 1800’s - was an attempt to capture a record of the Divinely designed.
Wilson Bentley
a modern interpretation
3. I smiled a tiny smile to myself today at school. We’d been studying black civil rights leaders and how they held on to their dreams for a better world. The students worked on imagining and recording what these dreams must have been on a sheet that had pictures of the leaders as youngsters in one corner and then them as adults in the opposite corner (all smiling because some of their dreams had come true!) As a follow up, the students were to record their own aspirations for the world on a sheet with actual photos of them now and imagined, drawn pictures of them as adults. One of the girls came up to me and asked me how do you draw a hijab? I showed her and then asked her why? Because, she said, I’m going to wear one when I’m an adult so I need to draw it on my later picture. I smiled into my dark blue hijab.
One of the March Break Madness events we took part in was Visiting Friends’ Houses. VFH is a big deal for my daughter because of the H part. We are among the few she knows who live in a non-House. She always makes it a point to go up to the VFH host and say, “I really like your house.” What she means is “I really like ANY house.”
She was too young to remember that we lived in a house once a long time ago. A house in a very nice part of Ottawa with a swing set in the backyard and an old piano in the dining room. With pick up baseball games in the park nearby, family biking trails right beside the house and neighbors who had cute little dogs. And white peonies, white lily of the valleys and white sweet peas in the garden (beauty: white flowers on dark green foliage).
That white-picket experience was one of the many diverse home situations I’ve experienced in my life and at the end of it all, I like the simplest home experience of all. I like not having to feel that I need a new this or that - besides saving money, it saves valuable energy and head-space trying to keep up with the Hassans (with apologies to all the Hassans out there). And I find it exhilaratingly challenging to my interior-design loving brain to make the things I have look good together somehow. As a good friend who came by and looked around yesterday said: only you artsy types can put together stuff like this (stuff like what? un-cookie-cutter, mismatched, weird? fusion, that must be it) and make it work.
Now I finally get to try to put William Morris’ rule to use: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. It’s been a LONG LONG time since I bought anything for the condo. As for near future plans: a coat of white paint and 2 chairs re-covered and I’m done.
It’s only when we’ve been VFHing that my daughter starts wistfully talking about a white picket life. At all other times, she’s grateful for the making-art space I set up in the corner of the living room and most especially, for the sunlight which always visits and crowds our condo - the most beautiful interior design of all.
As I’m sitting here, I’m listening to the Awakenings. Slowly, the stirrings of six girls waking up are filtering into my firmly closed bedroom. THEY are waking up - whimper…the BFF girls are waking up in my living room after sleeping for exactly five hours and 30 minutes.
Can you be exhausted from March Break? I have dark circles under my eyes which rival my exam-cramming days. Yet I know I’ll be sadly missing all this action when my kids go to their dad’s for the next four days.
Yesterday night (8 hours ago), I told the BFF what was supposed to be a goodNIGHT story. They were all spread there in their sleeping bags clutching various dolls, teddy bears and in my daughter’s case, a big Buddhist panda named Stillwater. The story was typically absurd, involving:
* a niqabi woman (the thief of a faberge hijab) with the longest eyelashes in the world
* a fourteen year old boy with a full beard and a full colorful superhero outfit under his slick black clothes
* a girl dedicated to finding a cure for boils (they made her boiling mad)
* a newly married Praying Mantis researcher with a husband who curiously resembled her favorite insect…yes, he spent his nights in Tahajjud …you get the absurd picture…
and was too scary for the youngest girl who would periodically say “can this story end right here?” and hauntingly right for the others. Every time the story was requested to be ended right there, I had to think of a hugely funny thing to throw it off its gothic route (”can this story never end?”). I was so exhausted from thinking up all the up and down drama that I couldn’t wait for the Praying Mantis husband to speak the final and best line in the whole tale: (after missing all the action including his wife being narrowly killed by a brain-numbing poisoned arrow [this was a PG-13 story]): “Darling, I’ve been praying for you the whole night.”
The Awakening is in full swing now. I’d better go and tend to the BFF before I get too cozy in my BFS - Bedroom Firmly Shut.
Insha’Allah, I hope to be blogging more this week - I was on a roll last week and have all my work planned/done until March Break (which begins after school this coming Thursday.) I’m feeling totally unlike myself, totally like a real boy scout: prepared alhamdulillah.
Speaking of boy scouts, boys have really got my attention these last few weeks. I had a couple over today - they were working on a project with my son which involved making a prototype for a totally innovative tech product for the future. Somehow, this project was for Geography. Huh? That’s what the salesperson at staples said too when she helped us find innovative project materials.
So while they’re working in H’s room, once in a while I’m hearing loud thumps and swooshing and slamming noises and during those whiles, I’m thinking, but I know for sure the mock basket/backboard we were working on putting up over his hamper last night didn’t stay up (note to all women on their own: keep a drill at home) so what were they swooshing their slam dunks through? I didn’t want to find out so I stayed put watching my daughter set up a tea party with a very politically correct ensemble of dolls: besides the requisite various ethnicities, there was also a few with arms, legs, necks in casts and in one case, arm and leg-less (just head and torso) guests at this very interesting tea party. At a young age, she had learned the lesson that just as we don’t cast aside people without limbs, why treat dolls differently? She’s very p.c.
The pattern of loud thumps, swooshes and slams was an interesting soundtrack to the tea party scene. And it underlined the very current topic that is all the rage in education right now: boys are different than girls. Since it’s finally being accepted that boy brains and girl brains are different, it’s ok now to say things like “boys like to move around more and touch stuff while girls like to listen to each other and interact socially. Boys like cars and girls like dolls.” I’m increasingly hearing this more and more nowadays.
And it’s true for the most part.
Like on Friday, my class was almost totally empty of girls (except for one) because they were all involved in a school production. So I had all my boys (except for one) to myself. Was it ever fun! They were working on their good copies of their imagined diaries of a chosen animal (excerpt from The Diary of a Lion: “When my friend Snake grows up he wants to be a worm. When Elephant grows up he wants to be a scientist. When I grow up I want to be a hunter. So I can hunt my big brother.” ) and because I was using the book binding machine while they were working, I saw the boy-brain in action. Every time the machine went creawk to punch and then snaaaap to bind, the boys looked up from their work fascinated. When they visited me at my binding place to show me their work, they discussed and debated among themselves how the machine worked. Soon they had it all figured out.
I’m not saying that girls couldn’t or wouldn’t have been as fascinated or interested in the know-how. I’m saying I don’t think the binding machine would have been so unanimously captivating.
I also know from my two children that the norms are not always so norm. As my son was the only grandchild in both his parents’ families for a long time and actually the only child in our circle of friends for a long time (being born to a youngy mummy), he was used to interacting at a more mature social level so, he could sit still long enough to be considered a very “good boy” at school. My daughter was born (5 years later) into a gaggle of cousins and friends’ kids and was itching to be on the go from the get-go. But still. She doesn’t feel the need to suddenly jump in the air somewhere to swoosh something like her brother does. Nor will she spent almost a whole day trying to perfect an ollie. Perfecting the bandage on her favorite porcelain doll’s torso, yes maybe.
And when I was young, I know I loved playing lego and taking apart radios with my little brother. My knees were always skinned from biking tricks and trees meant only one thing: climb now. But I know even more that I loved Annie, my one-armed doll, my frilly pretend ballet tutu, my sewing machine, my one container of pink nailpolish and made-up scenarios of beautiful-secretaries (barbies)-taking-a-break-from-their-jobs-to-complain-about-their-busy-social-lives game with my friends at the mosque after sunday school more than legos, radios, bikes and trees. I’m sure the book binding machine would have only interested me if it could have made something for one-armed Annie.
Boys and girls are different. As different as tea parties and basket-less swooshes. (Mental note: check the condition of H’s room. Tomorrow.)
These accounts of a man and two women who came to her defense were among a tiny minority:
Back in the bakery, the next customers had a very different answer to the question of American identity. First we met a man who angrily refused to buy anything when the sales clerk refused to serve Sabina. When our actor chastised him for being a “bad American,” he begged to differ. “I believe I am a good American,” he said. “My son just came back from serving in the army for over a year in Iraq and that has nothing to do with her [Sabina's] rights. I am deeply offended by this.”
…
We also met two young women who refused to let our sales clerk’s hateful words go unchecked. “Sir, we are not buying our kolaches because you are really offensive and disgusting,” one said. “Just because she’s dressed like that doesn’t mean anything,” said the other, a Muslim-American woman herself. Rather than simply taking their business elsewhere, the young women demanded to speak to the manager, and they also challenged our sales clerk’s definition of “American.” “She’s American. She’s American. I’m American. You’re the one that’s anti-American right now,” one said to the sales clerk.
When he refused to budge and our actress turned to leave, the two women walked out with her in a show of support.
But at least there was a tiny minority, right? God bless the real Americans.
My closet is all trim and organized - 3 bags sit on the floor headed to charity. All the laundry is done (well, almost all). The kitchen is sparkling - the tupperware cupboard looks like a display in a store.
It’s report card time. Oh, the powers of procrastination…
And oh again, here’s Labbayk by Native Deen…brings back umrah memories.
I snatched some time from this unbelievably busy month to moon-gaze tonight from my uncurtained living room window so high up close to the sky and this is what I found:
“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart…” Helen Keller
The moon was almost full. The clouds were busily rushing past - they had places to go and rain upon. And the moon shone on… only it appeared sometimes to be dull behind the rush of clouds sweeping by…but it still shone on.
I thought of the moon and the Prophet’s face of light (peace be upon him). I thought of the moon amidst the incredibly environmental and profoundly important messages in the Qur’an. I realized that the moon was a signifier of God’s immense mercy to us humans - a means by which to measure the time He granted each one of us to use in the pursuit of the good, of His pleasure.
The time He granted us to shine on - even when dulled by the rush.
And only He allows us to feel these beautiful things in the heart. That is a great mercy indeed.
Here’s what Superbowl Sunday looked like for 1 male (a boy-male) living with 2 females (his mom and sister) in a PBS-supporting (i.e. no cable TV), granola-crunching (i.e. junk food-free) home: It being a special day, the male will get to eat dinner (whole wheat al dente pasta with mustard-seed infused sauce and melted cheese) in his room while LISTENING to the game on radio - having learned the fine art of listening to sports on the radio from his uncle (another firm believer in tv-less/tv-reduced existences), the male is actually excited about the prospect. He decides to gather snacks (dried fruit) to really enliven the experience. As he is in hunting and gathering mode, he notices the 13-inch almost black and white TV in the sparse living room. Could it work to bring in fare other than wholesome and educational programming? He gives it a try - and scores! The dried snacks and wholesome dinner are moved onto a quilt spread over the sisal rug and he is in superbowl heaven.
Now at all other times/sports, I’d be there with my boy-male (we’ve cheered hockey play-offs, soccer cups, baseball, basketball), but I am useless as a football watching buddy. I’m resigned to the fact that a. I will never understand football (and I’m okay!) and b. I will never be a skateboarder (he tried to teach me one summer… and to get him to stop I bought him a really cool and expensive backpack with straps to carry his skateboard along with him everywhere. It worked.)
I went to bed early and was woken up to be informed that the Patriots had lost to the Giants and all because of somebody named Eli Manning. I patted him on the arm (he was a Patriot fan) and mumbled “next time the Patriots will get more baskets in, I’m sure” and turned over and went back to sleep.
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Today I was a spectator sport for a small group of pressed-nose children. One of my students - who has a Muslim mother and a non-Muslim father - gave me a beautiful prayer rug as a holiday gift. He’s become fascinated with the “hidden” Muslim part of him ever since - as his mother had kept her religion out of the picture since she got married. At the end of almost every day he asks, are you going to pray on my prayer mat now? I’d nod yes and after all the students had left, I’d do just that.
Today he lingered longer and asked why he would see me heading down the hall before I prayed. I explained I had to make wudu in the washroom down the hall. He asked if it was ok if he watched me from the hall window while I prayed today. I said sure.
I forgot to tell him that I don’t speak while I’m in prayer. So after a while I hear him waving another student down the hall. “Come see Ms. K praying!”
I hear the girl asking “are you sure it’s ok with Ms. K if I’m watching?” Student number one opens the classroom door, “Ms. K, is it ok if S watches too? Is it? Ms K? Maybe Ms. K will tell us when she gets up from the floor.”
I broke my prayer at this point (laughing and praying don’t go together) and turned around and said yes, S, you can watch. They politely close the door and press themselves to prime spots on the window.
I start again and then I hear student number one telling an older student who asked what they were doing, “It’s Ms. K, she’s praying.” “Praying for what?” “Praying, like talking to God. You wanna watch?” “Ok” “But you have to ask first.”
The door opens again. “Ms. K, is it ok if this guy watches too? Ms. K? Wait, Ms. K will tell you after she’s gone down to the ground.”
This time I decide to ignore the requests for more tickets. They wait quietly with the door open and I hear additional boots stopping by my door. When I finish my salaams, I almost expect a round of applause but I’m just met with a circle of interested faces. I wave goodbye to each one and thank God again I get to work amongst such souls.
“Though a living cannot be made at art, art makes life worth living. It makes living, living. It makes starving, living. It makes worry, it makes trouble, it makes a life that would be barren of everything — living. It brings life to life.“
“Art is the response of the living to life. It is therefore the record left behind by civilization”
-John Sloan
I came by my parents after attending an arts conference today and asked my dad a question: what’s the background of why so many Muslims are averse or have a deep fear/suspicion of the arts - especially of what they consider “Western” arts? Why did my daughter’s class at the Islamic school she attends have to cancel their field trip to see a play because some parents were concerned about the music/singing in it? Isn’t singing and the seeking of ways to communicate via rhythms an inherent part of the human psyche - so evident is it in every indigenous culture?
My poor dad, nursing his thigh - bruised from playing an over-excited game of floor hockey with my son, began listing all the great achievements of Muslims in the field of the arts from the golden era of Islam. I, so bubbly from being around other artsy people all day, pressed further: but what about now? Why is there a virtual slugfest in the comments section of too many online clips featuring artistic Muslims? Isn’t the seeking of ways to communicate via visual means also an inherent part of the human psyche - so evident is it in the cave paintings of Lascaux?
My poorer dad, shifting his weight in the sofa, began reviewing some of the protectionist thinking that began to infiltrate after the golden era of Islam. I, fidgety to get started on writing for a performance project for school now after getting inspiration from the conference, kept on: but why is this protectionist thinking so prevalent here and now? Why is it that Muslim artistic efforts are too often evaluated for how “western” or that other dreaded word, “modern” or sometimes conversely, how backwardly “pagan” they are? Isn’t it natural to communicate via the cultural currency one’s human psyche grows up in - so evident is it from the development of Muslim music such as qawwalis…and, yes, rap and, yes, country and, yes, alternative/indie (er, no, for that particular genre, we’re still in the early development stages)?
My now suffering dad, suddenly stood up and hobbled up the stairs…to get me an answer to my questions? He came back down surprisingly fast (I guess he was inspired himself by all the artsy talk - I know my dad’s a poet at heart) and pointed to something he had said in an article years and years ago: Muslims have been stuck in the unfortunate mode of defining themselves by how different they are from those around them for too long now. So, too many things are filtered through the lens of if it’s part of this culture, then it’s not part of our culture.
I was satisfied - for now. I decided to spare my dad my final question: why did some parents at an Islamic School protest the reading aloud of The Three Little Pigs because pork is haram? Isn’t it normal to read a book not eat it?
1. I’m pretty sure SEVEN year old boys are the only ones who are ok with breakdancing to a Water Cycle rap song. If only you could have seen them helicopter to the refrain “evaporation, condensation, precipitation means rain, rain, rain, yah” you would get why I think grade 2’s the best.
2. Their sense of humor is intactly pure and right between the illogical giggling of 6 year olds and the dryish humor that begins to creep in at 9. We’ve had days when we can’t stop laughing the whole day because of something that happened in the morning.
3. They love books. So far in my years teaching my favorite grade, I haven’t met one who doesn’t love a good book.
I’ll leave it at 3 - though there are lots more of course…
Do you remember the moments you learned something so new, your eyes involuntarily widened? Sometimes I think I live for these moments. Actually, a lot of these moments have to do with our ways of seeing - so yes, your eyes are voluntarily involved.
Like in painting class in University, when we had to take apart the colors we literally saw in our surroundings and identify and replicate them and you discover the green of the grass on a late March day was not green. It was grayish blueish brown. And so you discover that your brain tells your eyes to see what it wants to/been trained to - not what is there.
In my art period on Thursday, as I was showing the students how to train their eyes to see negative spaces in an image or a scene, I saw eyes widening with new learning. There is another way of looking at things they discovered. The picture of a cat did not only hold the cat but the space around it was a shape as well.
Those moments can feel refreshing or quieting. To know the palette you have envisioned needs to be mixed anew is interesting. To know how to break apart the spaces in a picture and see the “unimportant” shapes was stimulating. But to know, with a sudden realization, that a situation is not what you “see” is strangely stilling.
In the Qur’an, we are told over and over to look about us and see. See the ruins of past civilizations, the evidence of His presence, the splendors of nature, the plotting of humans, the miracles of faith…so much to see, be stimulated, be still and with widening eyes, accept a new awareness…
This is a mountain…or is it a zebra? And do you see the blue negative space? Or is it the brown and white negative space? And are you sure that it’s WHITE, that snow? If you asked what snow, your eyes are probably wide right now.
…and in other news, I had a wonderful day today. I spent most of it with someone I had baby-sat frequently as a teenager - fully grown now. We went to a get-together to support a mutual friend who followed her passion and went from engineer to jewelery designer. Check her stuff out at Etsy (Pepperberry Jewelry).
About my former baby-sat friend - she’s a volunteering dynamo alhamdulillah (the causes she works with are many, diverse and mainstream) with a grounded sense of her purpose in life. And today she picked up a new cause from hanging around with my sister and I - more information to come on that insha’Allah. May Allah grant her all the best in this world and the next.
And here’s a site (blog): Stop the Siege on Gaza with more information. I haven’t checked it all out but at the same time, I’m pretty sure I’m not getting all the information from the mainstream news media. Earlier this week, in my local newspaper, I saw a tiny little blurb under the negligible section entitled News Briefs with the incredulous facts that over a million Palestinians are in the beginnings of a humanitarian crisis - due to imposed blackouts in addition to medical aid and food being stopped at the border by Israel for months. This is news you can lose?
2. Non-fiction: somehow over time, without realizing it, I’ve ditched reading fiction. And presently I read none. Right now I’m reading an interesting book on brain plasticity (neuroplasticity). Yes I, who almost came too close to failing biology over and over again, is reading about the brain. I credit my sister (a very scientific person) for introducing me into this mysterious world called the science of life. She said the book, The Brain That Changes Itself reminded her of certain things she’s read from Al-Ghazali - which intrigued me. Anything linking the said-before-years-ago with the-just-discovered-now intrigues me.
3. Soccer Motherhood: One day, these two “hip” 30-something hijabis looked at each other over their steaming coffees by the sidelines of an intensive soccer game and sighed, “we’ve. become. soccer. moms.” It didn’t matter that I was wearing my old punky bracelets or that she had on really cool jeans…we had still become soccer moms: the shuttlers of children to all their diverse interests. It’s quite intensive but well worth it as the Islamic School (like most) my children attend don’t have well-developed arts and sports programs. And the yoga, pilates and swimming I get to shuttle myself to makes it all the more manageable.
4. Native Deen: their new CD, Not Afraid to Stand Alone, is really good. I love their version of Tala’al Badru, plus the songs, Hold the Line, Rain Song, Zamilooni, Labbayk and Life’s Worth. The rapping Abdul Malik does in Labbayk is the type I - a very wet-behind-ears person when it comes to rap music - like (I like the slight patois in it). Pardon me if I speak with no knowledge.
Ahem… this blog is just over a year old now. I first officially began it in December, 2006 but then revamped it and launched it again in January 2007. So I’m trying to think of something to say on my blog’s first anniversary…and I’m coming up empty-inked.
I could tell you why I began it: 1. I’m always writing things down all over the place anyways and here was a central, environmental way to do it. 2. By pressing the publish button, I get to say things about our world without appealing to media gatekeepers to allow me to say it. 3. A friend told me if you (Muslims) don’t tell your own stories, the empty pages will always get filled with skewed impressions and/or forged “facts” constructed by others.
I chose the name CommonPlacer because I actually had a nice old black leather book called S.K’s CommonPlace Book which was filled with all sorts of stuff I’d collected over time - info stapled in, glued in, tucked in, drawn in, scribbled in. (Did you know the Mediterranean food pyramid says to eat meat only once monthly? And that Maya Angelou said “we may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated?” and that, in Canada , it’s possible to be sentenced to over a year in jail for promoting hate through the internet? These are some of the things that I noted I had noted previously. Sounds a lot like my blog.) Plus, if I had my glasses on now, I would reach up to push them back on my nose as I told you that Klaus Baudelaire is my greatest commonplacing hero, even before Emerson or Hardy. Plus, I would also tie my hair up with a ribbon like Violet Baudelaire as I told you that wiki says “some modern writers see blogs as an analogy to commonplace books.”
When I began this blog, I just wanted a “spot to place things that came my way.” But after a while my desire to become a “prolific” writer made me try to write almost 3 or 4 times a week. I quickly discovered it’s hard to be a prolific anything when you’re working full-time as a single parent and teacher. So I settled for whenever I had a spot of time. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts with me over the course of this year. I’ve met some wonderful people through CommonPlacer - for whom I actually have 1 question: is facebook slowly killing blogs? We all need to update, friends (and rockstars)!
#22 - Most Discussed (This Week) - Music
#65 - Most Viewed (This Week) - Music
#26 - Top Favorites (This Week) - Music
#33 - Top Rated (This Week) - Music
If you think it’s the right message we need to get out, please tag 5 others to post it on their blogs…
I tag asmaa, proggiemuslima, hadeel, noha and margari (i kinda only tag sisters, but brothers you can play tag if you want to as well …) I also tag the sister I always wish I could link to but can’t - you know who you are. Oh yeah, and I tag my real brother!
(Of course, mona beat everyone to it - but still I’d love it if you tag 5 more of your friends out there, mona!)
If you live in the U.S., you can vote for it (for the onenationforall.org film contest) here.
And please try to to go to Youtube and give it a rating there. I hope the director of this awesome video, Lena Khan, continues with her amazing work.
"Commonplace books (or commonplaces) emerged in the 15th century with the availability of cheap paper for writing, mainly in England. They were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests.
By the 1600s, commonplacing had become a recognized practice that was formally taught to college students in such institutions as Oxford. The commonplace tradition in which Bacon and Milton were educated had its roots in the pedagogy of classical rhetoric and “commonplacing” persisted as a popular study technique until the early twentieth century. Both Emerson and Thoreau were taught to keep commonplace books at Harvard (their commonplace books survive in published form). Commonplacing was particularly attractive to authors. Some, such as Coleridge and Mark Twain, kept messy reading notes that were intermixed with other quite various material; others, such as Thomas Hardy, followed a more formal reading-notes method that mirrored the original Renaissance practice more closely. The older, "clearinghouse" function of the commonplace book, to condense and centralize useful and even "model" ideas and expressions, became less popular over time.
"Commonplace" is a translation of the Latin term locus communis which means "a theme or argument of general application", such as a statement of proverbial wisdom. In this original sense, commonplace books were collections of such sayings, such as Milton's commonplace book. Scholars have expanded this usage to include any manuscript that collects material along a common theme by an individual.
Critically, many of these works are not seen to have literary value to modern editors. However, the value of such collections is the insights they offer into the tastes, interests, personalities and concerns of their individual compilers.
Producing a commonplace is known as commonplacing.
The books series A Series of Unfortunate Events features commonplace books as a place to gather information about various mysteries.
Some modern writers see blogs as an analogy to commonplace books."
~ wikipedia
