Category: Uncategorized

Here’s how I feel tonight.

I feel like it’s 1955. The polio vaccine has just been invented. People are dying from polio. Kids are in iron lungs. My sister is upstairs in her bedroom and the doctor keeps coming and going and my parents won’t let me go up there.

I feel like the United States government knows there is a polio vaccine but it won’t do anything to help people get it. It won’t help manufacture it. It won’t educate people about it. It won’t do anything to save people from dying and being in iron lungs even though it could.

That’s how I feel tonight. Our government is just abandoning us. Even though it has the power to save us.

When polio threatened to kill and cripple us, the government acted in all our interests. The public health departments of every city swung into action finding common cause…

I have woken up to the first of December here on a bright, sunny day in Sydney (blue skies without a hint of cloud), and for the past few days I’ve had one song on my mind. Put a little love in your heart!

 

Think of your fellow man, lend him a helping hand

Put a little love in your heart
You see, it’s getting late, oh, please don’t hesitate
Put a little love in your heart

And the world will be a better place
And the world will be a better place for you and me
You just wait and see

Another day goes by, and still the children cry
Put a little love in your heart
If you want the world to know, we won’t let hatred grow
Put a little love in your heart

And the world will be a better place
And the world will…

If you need a case

To demonstrated the wisdom

Of separation

Of religion from the state

Ashraf Fayadh serves quite well.
No one should face death

For daring to speak their mind!

What truth do they fear?
Pete Seger’s Version–
“Die Gedanken Sind Frei”

If I was Donald Trump’s mother and I witnessed him jerking his arms in the air in mockery of New York Times reporter Serge Koveleski, I would have slapped him across the face. In front of God and everybody.

Never mind that he is running for President which, as his mother, I would know he has no business doing. How his horrible behavior reflected on me would trump, as it were, any other prevailing interests, including his misbegotten notion that he should be the leader of the free world.

I will not countenance a child of mine being a complete and utter asshole. Trust me, this isn’t hypothetical tough talk here.  I’m no travel writer talking  about places I’ve never visited.

What I learned long ago, not quite soon enough but in time, was that my disapproval as a mother is power-packed and toxic like the poison on an arrow piercing through…

 

My doctor is a Muslim

my dentist is as well

as is the man running the corner shop

who cares for his clientele

The bloke next door he’s one too

his missus gives us dishes

traditional Bangladesh cuisine

gifted to us with her best wishes

He also owns a restaurant

he serves the best curry money can buy

always stops to have chat

you couldn’t meet a nicer guy

Oh yes, and there’s the car wash bloke

he cracks a joke or two

when hosing down my motor

with the rest of his rag tag crew

The midwife, such a lovely girl

all those years ago

helped bring our son into this world

a Muslim compassion cameo

I’ve played cricket against Muslim sides

fine sportsmen, honest men

so what is all this ignorant vitriol

I note by spoken word and pen

For each and every one I know

all…

My granddaughter’s mother was a refugee from Laos. Once, on Thanksgiving, I started a conversation asking everyone’s earliest memories. She spoke last.

She remembered eating at a table at a refugee camp in Thailand when a stray dog ran up to her and stole the food off her plate.

She said this in the most deadpan way. The conversation was over. She had no interest in entertaining us with her family’s refugee story. Only the one image of being in a camp and having a dog steal her food.

My granddaughter’s father is a Nicaraguan who became a naturalized U.S. citizen when he was in his teens. He is our son, brought to the U.S. when he was 21 months old.

My husband’s family emigrated from Ukraine in the early 20th century to escape the pogroms. His grandfather and his great uncle walked to Palestine where his uncle stayed and…