Getting Frank about Fistula

I played Half the Sky for the first time today on Facebook. 

I met a cheerful Indian cartoon woman whose daughter has pneumonia.  After going through several steps of decision-making with her, I ended up getting her daughter to the doctor for medical care--in virtual reality, not real life.

But the path included making a $10 donation to a charity for women, so perhaps somewhere in the world some woman was helped.

The various options include watching short explanations of nonprofit organizations.

I chose Fistula Foundation and learned the following:

Fistula Foundation works to end the suffering caused by obstetric fistula, a devastating childbirth injury that occurs when a woman’s labor becomes obstructed and she does not have access to medical help. Without emergency intervention, such as a C-section, a woman often loses her baby and is left with obstetric fistula, which renders her incontinent and uncontrollably leaking wastes – an injury that can only be repaired through surgery.

With access to a $450 fistula repair surgery that Fistula Foundation works to provide, a woman’s life is transformed; she no longer has to suffer the shame and embarrassment caused by her incontinence and can resume living a healthy and productive life.

- See more at: http://www.fistulafoundation.org/join-us/halfthegame/welcome/#sthash.rZqq1NcW.dpuf

I also invited all my FB friends to do this game.  Try it out yourself!

https://apps.facebook.com/halftheskymovement/?webcode=62806591730696

Games for Change

I heard a new term today: the gaming generation.

For these kids, there's been a new Facebook game invented: "Half the Sky."  

It's part of an effort to help women in developing countries by educating people in places like the US through online games.  http://www.gamesforchange.org/

My sister-in-law Kelly Arthur and her son Braeden got to say a few words this morning on National Public Radio about how they like the game.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/11/29/247515389/for-advocacy-groups-video-games-are-the-next-frontier

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women World-Wide is a book by Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof that has turned into a movement.  I first encountered it as an exhibit at the Skirball Center on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles.

http://www.halftheskymovement.org/pages/book

Laura Sydell reported on the games-for-change phenomemon for All Tech Considered.

I never tried to do Farmville on FB, but I'm going to try to do Half the Sky, joining the 1.1 million people already playing it.  

As Braeden explained, playing the game can trigger donations ($450,000 so far).  

Things have changed so much since I sat in second grade studying My Weekly Reader and learning about national and world news.  Now kids can jump right in to work for change. 

Here's a link to get started:

https://www.facebook.com/HalftheGame

Learning To Kill

Itzcoatl Ocampo joined the Marine Corps at age 18 "with the hope of learning to kill."

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-accused-oc-serial-killer-died-20131129,0,3412408.story?dssReturn#axzz2m4thekxa

The Marine Corps disappointed him: "during a six-month tour in Iraq he drove a water truck and never saw combat," according to LA Times writers Adolfo Flores and Hailey Branson-Potts.

After leaving the Marines, Ocampo became a free-lance killer two years ago in Orange County, according to charges for which he was arrested. 

He was charged with killing the older brother of a friend, the friend's mother, and four homeless men.  His goal was to kill sixteen people, according to prosecutors.

Instead, he ended up in jail  and was found shaking and vomiting on Wednesday afternoon.

He died in a hospital on Thanksgiving Day, yesterday, only 25 years old.  Eating the household cleanser Ajax may have been his cause of death, according to reports today.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-1130-ocampo-death-20131130,0,278031.story#axzz2m6DIMxy4

Earlier he had complained of headaches and hearing voices and also had tics.

His sad face appears in today's Los Angeles Times.

What factors led to his desire to kill and to this sad end?  Was he abused in his childhood?

Did he ever play those shoot-and-kill video games?  

How strange that our nation provides free training in how to shoot and use weapons.  

Then while being held in prison, he is given enough Ajax that he can save it up and kill himself.

A bed could not be found in any psych ward for Gus Deeds, son of Virginia state senator Creigh Deeds.

Three days later Gus stabbed his father and took his own life with a gun.

Do we need any more reminders that we as a nation have not devoted enough funding and attention to mental health care?  That guns are too easily accessible to the mentally ill?

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-va-state-senator-stabbed-by-son-released-from-hospital-20131122%2c0%2c810519.story#axzz2loYOqGDP

We're not far from Dec. 14, the one-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre. 

December 5 will mark eight months since Pastor Rick Warren's son took his own life.

Today's Boston Globe

My brother-in-law is in Boston today, where The Boston Globe is selling commemorative reprints of the front page of November 22, 1963.

50 Years of the Unexpected

I never imagined that President John Kennedy would be shot and killed.


My father had worked for the Kennedy campaign in 1960 in Boulder County, Colorado--mainly because he was unemployed at the time, and it gave him something to do.

Yet there I was, a sophomore at East Bakersfield High School on November 22, 1963, standing outside near the journalism classroom, when the announcement came over the loudspeaker.

I never imagined that I would marry someone whose mother had grown up next door to Jacqueline Bouvier in East Hampton on Long Island.  Jackie was seven years younger than Rosamond; horse-riding and participating in horseback competitions were central to their lives. 

 

Rizz never imagined that she would outlive Jackie, but Jackie died not yet 65 years old and Rizz is now 91.

I never imagined that my life would stretch out much longer than either Jack or Jackie's.  He had only 46 years on this wild, rotating planet, and I've now had nearly 66 years.

Jackie died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 1994.  Both she and Rizz had smoked cigarettes in the 1950s, but Rizz had managed to quit.

One more day I never imagined: 

Rizz and I had visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in the early 1990s.

We entered the elevator to leave and found only one person already there, Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

Rizz and Jackie recognized each other and exchanged greetings.  Their style of dress was similar--light coats in dark colors, pumps and purses, the uniform of Upper Eastside ladies.

I listened in awe, trying to be invisible.

And then a few years later, Jackie died.

Take that, you freebooters!

Take that, you freebooters!

Thanks to Megan Buerger of The Wall Street Journal for reporting on the ignominious history of the word filibuster.

Here's more proof that the Senate was right to bust the filibuster today.

Word for Pirates Morphed Into ‘Filibuster’

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The word 'filibuster' originally referred to 18th century pirates, or 'freebooters' who pillaged colonies in the Spanish West Indies, before it took on its legislative meaning.

By Megan Buerger

The word “filibuster” originally referred to 18th century pirates, or “freebooters,” who pillaged colonies in the Spanish West Indies.

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word’s roots to the Dutch term “vrijbuiter” and the Spanish term “filibustero,” both of which relate to looting. The treasure was, of course, booty.

It was more than a hundred years before filibuster took on political connotations. The term doesn’t appear anywhere in the U.S. Constitution and didn’t surface on the Senate floor until the late 19th century, when it was used to condemn legislators who talked so extensively that they obstructed progress.

Senate rules allow for unlimited debate, but filibusters gradually became notorious as a result of one strange feature: The legislator doesn’t have to actually speak about the matter at hand.

Before 1900, filibusters were a rare occurrence. At the beginning of the 20th century, filibusters increased and attempts to block them weren’t often effective.

But according to the publication Foreign Affairs, 65% of all Senate filibusters in history have been waged in recent times, since 1975.

The modern definition can be foggy—technically, it can depend on the exact intent of the stalling senator, often a tricky thing to determine. But generally, filibusters are understood to be a roadblocking move by the minority to derail a bill or a nomination.

Write to Megan Buerger at megan.buerger@wsj.com

Will the real bullies please stand up?

Hooray for Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats who threw off the shackles of the Republican filibuster today.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/21/harry-reid-likely-to-go-nuclear-today/

True, it's only President Obama's judicial nominations that have been freed.

Republicans in the House and Senate can still block immigration reform, gun control, preschool education, helpful tweaks to the Affordable Care Act, and anything else they take a fancy to oppose.

But in one small area of the Senate, work can go ahead.  Nominees for judge in the D.C. Court of Appeals can receive a vote, up or down.  Yay.

I heard Sen. Rand Paul on CNN this morning complaining that Harry Reid was acting like a bully by changing the rules so that a mere 51 votes can pass these nominations.

Excuse me, did you say BULLY?

Trying to defund Obamacare after it was passed by both houses is not bullying?

Refusing to act on immigration, a year after the Senate passed legislation, is not bullying?

Insisting on the right to carry automatic weapons and long magazines of bullets, even after children were killed at Sandy Hook, is not bullying?

It's high time the real bullies were identified and stopped.

In Harry Reid's sober comments this morning, it was clear that President Obama and his team have had enough.  They are finally standing up and saying "No more!"

Reid's contrast between use of the filibuster in the past and use during Obama's presidency was shocking.

I am so grateful for the rule change.  I've been listening to Republican House leaders block this year's last efforts to try to get some kind of immigration reform passed, and yesterday for the first time in years I felt deep partisan anger spread through my body.

Clearly the President and Democrats in Congress have concluded that any legislation they try to pass will continue to be blocked.  Efforts to compromise and win non-partisan support for any action are over.

To get anything done at all, the Dems will have to go it alone.

Stop whining, John McCain and Rand Paul.  This is the kind of game you insist on playing.  You are the real bullies.

Toni, Maya, Jhumpa, James, and E.L.

It's "the Oscars of the book world."

Last night in New York City the 2013 winners of the National Book Awards were announced at a gala banquet.

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-national-books-awards-go-to-james-mcbride-george-packer20131120,0,3706756.story#axzz2lJGEND33

Best novel was taken by James McBride for his novel about a slave in the John Brown rebellion just before the Civil War.

Jhumpa Lahiri was a finalist for her new novel The Lowland.

"Easy reading is damn hard writing," said Maya Angelou in a speech after being presented with the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.  

I can relate to that comment.

Angelou is now 85 and gets about in a wheelchair.  I had the privilege of hearing her speak  in 2009.

E. L. Doctorow also got an award and spoke of reading a book as "the essence of interactivity," even though "It's written in silence and read in silence." 

If you haven't read him yet, try "A House on the Plains," which is available in The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction.  If you like Alfred Hitchcock, you'll like this story.

Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, presented the award to Maya Angelou. 

 Wish I could have been there!  These great writers won't be with us much longer.  Morrison and Doctorow are 82.  

Happy Birthday, Joyce!

Thank you to Mary Hunt for sharing this scene of Joyce Ride's 90th birthday on the Water Voices blog.  It's fun to see Gloria Steinem in the photo.

http://watervoicesblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/happy-90th-birthday-joyce-ride.html

Joyce is a truly generous soul and the mother of astronaut Sally Ride, who died in 2012.

Ministry to persons in prison is Joyce's passion.  She came to the 2004 EEWC conference in Claremont to present on this topic.

More and more of my friends are entering their 90s.  

In 2012 I attended three 90th birthday parties: Rizz Arthur Dean (my mother-in-law) in Locust Valley, NY; Virginia Johnson (an EEWC friend) in Benecia, CA; and Ada Marie Grell (a PEO sister) in Santa Monica.

 I'm in my 60s and hope someday to become a nonagenarian!.