Christine's Summer Reading List

Summer has arrived and has brought with it iced tea, fireworks and an increased number of sandals around the office. Summer also means that Congress is winding down and the interns have a little extra time to curl up with a good book.

So, for the next few weeks we'll be posting some samples of what we've been reading lately. Feel free to comment and add to our summer reading lists!

Summer Reading List 1
Christine Haider, Field Program Assistant

The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear
by Paul Rogat Loeb (Editor)
A collection of articles, short stories, and poems by world-famous peace activists that celebrates the sense of hope that keeps us working toward a better world. When you feel overwhelmed by all the work left to be done, a story from this book and a tall glass of lemonade can be just the thing to raise your spirits.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
by Marjane Satrapi
A simple and beautiful graphic novel about Satrapi’s experience growing up during the Iranian Revolution. This book is impossible to not fall in love with.

Wall Tappings: Women's Prison Writings, 200 A.D. to the Present
by Judith A. Scheffler (Editor)
An incredibly diverse and moving collection that gives testament to both the dehumanizing nature of the prison system and the empowering nature of the written word.

Well Mr. Hersh, What Have You Left Me With?

You've probably heard about the article by Seymour Hersh in this week's New Yorker. It's on Iran, and is written in a surprisingly straightforward journalistic style not usually found in the magazine.

Hersh presents us with evidence that the Administration is operating "covert activities" in Iran. Even more than before in fact.

This article brought up more questions for me than it gave me answers. I am a long time New Yorker subscriber, and I have to admit that Hersh has never been my favorite writer. I find his style confusing, more wrapped up in his anonymous sources and insider access than in clear writing. Nevertheless, this is a huge revelation if it is accurate, which I'm inclined to think that it is. But again, it brought up many questions, among them:

Is Hersh being alarmist?

Skewed to the left? Right on?

Can we trust Hersch's sources?

Is it stuff we knew all along?

Does it surprise us?

What should we do?

Let me repeat this last one: What should we do? I'm not entirely sure. The most frightening thing about Hersh's attitude in this piece, which is echoed in this interview with Terry Gross, is that there's nothing we can do. This administration is hell bent on war, and they've got the tools to make it happen. Perhaps that's what bothers me about Seymour Hersh - he leaves me with a feeling of despair. All his inside information doesn't leave us with solutions.

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook

Last Day

As it's my last day and I may never have another chance to post on the beloved intern blog, I thought I'd write one last hurrah! And what could be better than directing everyone's attention to this hilariously fitting honor to be bestowed on everyone's favorite president-- good ol' W. The story of those feisty little San Francisco-ans quickly rose to the nation's attention when it appeared on Salon.com . Now it's even made it to the heavyweights.

This administration's last day could not come soon enough and I often find myself daydreaming about the absolute joy I'll experience seeing Bush go, which is hardly a partisan statement since apparently 77% of Americans agree with me. So today, on my own last day, let's all raise our glasses and celebrate, only 207 days left before it's Bush's time to go.

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook

Rumsfeld and the Commute

Let me paint a little picture of my morning commute for you: I'm late, listening to the soundtrack from "South Pacific" on my headphones, and speed walking down Connecticut Avenue to the Dupont Circle Metro. I'm not hyper alert to my surroundings, but am instead focused on whether I can catch the right traffic lights to optimize my commute time. It's hard to break that focus.

But broken it was today by one Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense. Was he in a car? No. Was he surrounded by a lot of people? No, only one tan-suited man. Was I about to brush past him and his friend just as another person coming up the hill said "Good morning Mr. Rumsfeld"? Yes.

Then I turned to look, and indeed it was Donald Rumsfeld. I wasn't starstuck. He's not Madeline Albright for heavens sake, or even Hilary Clinton (not endorsing or apologizing for her, but I'm just saying...she has her moments of greatness, and I still haven't seen her... maybe now that she'll be back in town). No, The incident wasn't exciting exactly, it was just... strange.

I've lived in D.C for almost a year now (it will be exactly a year on the 29th of June), and I've gotten used to government celebrity sightings. Dick Cheney, his Secret Service detail, and his 28 car entourage regularly cross my path on the way home from work, George Bush seems to think the Hilton by my house is the greatest place to have breakfast meetings, and walking past members of Congress is not all that surprising in the hallways of Senate and House office buildings (although it still does get me a little excited!). But this was the most affecting sighting yet. It's strange almost not recognizing someone who is so present in history, and especially someone who is vilified like Rumsfeld is. Perhaps my reaction was magnified because I'm currently reading a book about the horrible mess in Iraq.

In any case, if you are in D.C. watch out: Donald Rumsfeld is walking the streets without a security detail, and you might just run over him on the way to metro.

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook

Theatre of the Washington Absurd

I was groggy-eyed and sipping my coffee yesterday morning when I opened by Washington Post, only to be confronted by this image in the Outlook section:


Coffee spewed from my mouth and I ran to forcibly wake up my roomie and have him confirm I wasn't crazy. The photo was above a serious article about life, murder, and policing in Putin's Russia. Was the Outlook editor on vacation and the stringers decided to play a joke? In the Post's defense, however, when I went looking for this photo on the internet (oddly, it is not included with the web version of the article) I found that there were many photos from the same fishing trip and this was the least salacious. Kudos, I guess? Can you imagine if George Bush went traipsing about his ranch sans shirt and then released the photos? Sometimes I am glad to be an American.

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook

For the Record

For anyone who might doubt that sexism still plays a role in who represents this country:

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook

What was that country like before the U.S. started bombing?

A couple of months ago Christine asked us to share books with her for a "summer reading list.". She said that the books should have something to do with social justice or our work at FCNL. Because I didn't think that the general public would be interested in a study I just read about the effectiveness of email subject lines, I instead racked my brain for what vaguely social justice related books I had read lately. I ended up having to define "lately" in broad terms, because the books that I enjoyed in the past couple of months ranged from a history of American consumer imperialism to a discussion of memory in Germany.

In identifying my books I stumbled upon a forgotten author who I enjoyed in high school. I was amazed how much more relevant Elizabeth Warnock Ferna's books on the Middle East seemed to me now. Fernea, now a retired professor of English and Middle East studies at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote about the years she spent living Iraq, Morocco, and Egypt while her husband conducted anthropological research.

Fernea wrote three books of this sort, each telling of her stay in a different country. The later two, A View of the Nile and A Street in Marrakech, are both very good. But the one I suggested to Christine was Fernea's first, and is set in 1957 Iraq. Guests of the Sheik takes place in a small tribal town in southern Iraq called El Nahra. As you may have surmised from the title, Fernea and her husband Bob stay in the village as guests of the Sheik, Hamid. They live in a small mud house and live according to the traditions of El Nahra, Fernea donning the abayah and observing the strict purdah that her neighbors do.

Some (or maybe just my classmates in senior seminar after we read Orientalism) may argue that it would be better to read a book by an Iraqi woman to learn about Iraqi women. Fernea's description of life in a mid-century Iraqi village could be full of omissions and misperceptions. I think, however, that it's helpful in overcoming the (forgive me) "otherness" of people in Iraq by discovering the society along with a fellow outsider. It helps that Fernea and her husband try their very hardest to be respectful and unobtrusive of the hosts and their lifestyle. Besides teaching you indelibly the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, this book also paints a picture of an Iraq before Sadaam Hussein and before the 2003 U.S. invasion. It also opens up a discussion of how to approach and learn about other cultures without imposing your own values on them.

So go out and get it! You won't be sorry.

Email the Author | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook