“Lord, another baby?” the angel asked with a bit of incredulity.
“Yes, another,” the Lord replied.
“But, Lord, why this baby?”
“Why not this baby?” the Lord countered.
“Well, you know, Lord. The mother said that she could handle any physical problem. As long as there were no mental defects, she could manage...” The angel stopped, wondering perhaps why more needed to be said.
“She did say that, didn’t she?” The Lord was unperturbed.
“Lord, this one will have a mental deficit.”
“Yes.”
“A very serious one.”
“Yes.”
“An obviousto-everyone serious one.”
“Yes.”
“But, Lord, she said she could not cope with that.”
“She will cope. I will help.”
“But, Lord, she does not know You exist.”
“The baby does.”
God works in mysterious ways, thought the angel and put away the record book after recording: Don & Elizabeth Mahlou…baby son, Doah.
copyright 2010
---------------
Excerpted from my work in progress, Raising God's Rainbow Makers.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sabbath Sunday: The Merging
Fr. Christian Mathis (Blessed Is the Kingdom) has made the suggestion that we "rest" on the Sabbath by taking a break from our normal blogging and sharing an older post of which we are particularly fond. Rest? Gladly! I don't get to do that very often, but now, thanks to Fr. Christian, I get to do it at least once a week -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift.For this week, I went back to the firstpost of this blog, Awe, which was posted almost exactly one year ago. I hope it is enjoyable the second time around for those who have read it before and interesting the first time around for those who have not.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Poverty-Proofed
It was in college that I would first have to fight a seemingly unbeatable foe. At home, in the hands of highly abusive parents, I nonetheless knew I would ultimately win whatever battles befell me. I was small, but I was a “spitfire,” as many of my relatives called me. When I got bigger, I fought back vigorously and physically. When I was a teenager, I saw a light at the end of my tunnel: college. The foe was beatable.
Now, though, there was, indeed, an unbeatable foe: the college financial aid office. When I first applied to colleges, I knew that financing an education would be a problem. Poverty had greeted me at birth and, like a frightened but swaggering Chihuahua attempting to bolster his own self-confidence, had nipped at my heels most of my life. Nonetheless, being an incurable optimist, I assumed that college funding would appear from somewhere. It did. As a result of my SAT scores and my having been selected for Who’s Who Among American High School Students, the University of New Hampshire wrote to me and promised me four years of education, fully covered by scholarship, if I would come there. I considered that possibility, but it would keep me near home. That was not an acceptable option because it would keep me near home. More than anything else in going to college, I was looking for an escape from home. That was the reason why I had applied to Penn State University even though the entrance requirements for out-of-state students were extremely rigorous (top 10% of the incoming student body) and out-of-state tuition way out of reach. Penn State had accepted me but had not yet responded about the possibility of financial aid. At the advice of my high school guidance counselor, I sent Penn State a copy of the letter from the University of New Hampshire. Someone from the Penn State financial aid office wrote back to me and told me not to worry, that all my education would be paid through a combination of scholarships, loans, and work study. Soon thereafter, the financial aid office put together a package that took care of my first year in full, with the indication that subsequent years would be similar—but they weren’t.
From a financial aid point of view, I made the catastrophic error of getting married my sophomore year. The young and probably not highly knowledgeable financial aid officer at Penn State who told me that being married would not make a difference was wrong. It did make a difference. While my marriage has lasted 38 years, my scholarship petered out in far less than 38 weeks. “Giving scholarships to married women,” Mr. Z, the older, male financial officer who had taken over my account, said, “is a waste of money. They just sit at home, doing nothing with their lives but living off men. So, go home and take care of your husband.”
I went home all right but not to take care of Charles. He seemed to be handling that well enough on his own. Rather, I assessed my situation, looking for an out-of-the-box solution to the dilemma of having only a few weeks of financial aid left and two years of courses to complete. The answer came quickly—I have trouble thinking in the box; actually, I have trouble even finding the box!—so it did not take long to figure out that the 78 semester hours I still needed in order to graduate would break easily into 39 semester hours during each of the following two quarters, both of which were paid for by already-granted aid, That meant I had to take triple the maximum course load each quarter. Thanks to an advisor who paid little attention to students with A averages, considering them skilled enough to make their own decisions, a non-computerized course tracking system at the time, and a secretary who was willing to file my 3-page grade reports rather than turn them over to my advisor, I was able to tiptoe under and past the radar and graduate two quarters later.
My mother’s mother (my father’s mother had died when I was only six, so all I remember of her was a photograph with me on her lap as a toddler) gave me a small “loan.” With that and income from cocktail waitressing in the evening and go-go dancing at night, I even had enough money to fund the first quarter of graduate school.
“Don’t pay the loan back,” Gram said. “Pass it on.” I have done that on many occasions in my life, passing along as well the philosophy of not paying back but passing on whatever kindness is shown.
Gram was quite unlike Ma, and sadly Ma did not return Gram’s affection until a few days before Gram died many years later. A woman of hefty proportions and traditional haircut, Gram was a matriarch. There was no doubt about that. When she spoke, one obeyed. The liberating thing for me, though, was that she did not hit. Moreover, she listened, and when she spoke, she had fun ways of expressing herself, like looking for something “all over hell’s kitchen.” Throughout my preschool years, she fascinated me with nursery rhymes that she never tired of telling over and over and, when I was older, with an old gramophone that we wound up to play records that would gradually slow down, turning the singer’s peppy voice into a drawn-out wail, as the winding ran out. The games, songs, and rhymes that Gram taught me are ones that I now find myself teaching to my own grandson. When Ma would call me her “plain Jane,” Gram would respond, “Pretty is as pretty does.” During my penny-starved early college days, Gram would write to me every couple of weeks and include a package of dentyne gum under whose wrapper she had inserted a five-dollar bill. So, it was not surprising to me that Gram was the one who would come to my rescue when I had fallen on the petard of the financial aid officer. Gram came to my rescue years later, too, moving in after Shane was born and doing my housework for a month. “No one should come home from the hospital the day after a baby is born,” she scolded. “You play with the baby; that is your job now. I will take care of the house, the other kids, and your house work.” And she did.
Ironically, I might not have attended graduate school, had I not lost my undergraduate scholarship. Had I taken the slow route through school, Charles, a forestry major, would have finished significantly ahead of me and taken me to Montana from where his first job with the U. S. Forest Service beckoned. By graduating nearly a year and a half early, I had to wait for him for three quarters. During that time, I took all my master’s courses, this time only doubling the course load. My teachers, advisor, and department chair all understood my financial dilemma and did their best to help me by letting me finish as many of the requirements each quarter as I could handle. I passed the German reading exam required of German-Russian comparative literature majors the second quarter and the dreaded-by-all master’s comprehensive exams the third.
As soon as my exams were completed, I left for Montana with Charles, with only my master’s thesis left to complete. Talk about getting the last laugh on the financial aid office! I would end up paying tuition only one more time after that. That was for only one semester hour in order to be enrolled for the quarter in which I graduated. When I received my M.A. diploma, I exulted that the foe had been conquered again!
The Chihuahua had not disappeared, however. Although I did beat it from time to time, I never vanquished it. By the time I became a special needs parent for the third time — this time with Shura, the dying child artist I took in from Siberia — poverty and I had become old friends.
Poverty and I had, in fact, become sputniki (traveling companions) early in life for the 8-pack had been raised in poverty. For us, though, poverty itself was meaningless. It fell very low on the discomfort ladder, with physical beatings far outranking any other potentially significant contribution to our unhappiness. Moreover, while we did not have the brand-name clothes and the fancy “things” that our classmates from the city did, we had everything we truly needed. There was food after the move to the farm, and there was clothing because my grandparents worked at a textile mill. I, too, worked there as a teenager. We girls learned to make our own clothes, and some of our creations even became popular styles at school. Ma taught us the basics, but I especially liked to try new creations, such as patchwork dresses. All of us learned to harvest crops, preserve food, make butter and ice cream, and cook. As soon as we could reach the pedals, we learned to drive a tractor and took turns mowing and raking hay. We also learned how to yoke the oxen and use them to plough the fields in the spring. In the summer and fall, as soon as we were old enough to recognize the difference between a ripe vegetable and berry and an immature one, we were put into the fields, both our own and those of neighbors who hired us to work at three cents a pound of harvested peas, beans, blueberries. Thus, we acquired good skills and a strong work ethic.
In this respect, in spite of gifting us with a generally violent childhood, our parents did well by the 8-pack for they poverty-proofed us. One can never be truly impoverished if one has skills, talents, and diligence—and, as the Russians say, 100 friends.
As a poverty-proofed adult, I have rarely felt an overwhelming need for money. Surprisingly and heartening, however, whenever I have truly needed money, it has fallen into my lap. Even when I did not ask anyone for it, even when I did not know that there was Anyone to whom we could turn, the money to stave off potentially dire consequences has appeared from unexpected sources and often in the nick of time.
Thanks to intervention after intervention, our old foe would grow weary at times and lay down to rest, allowing us to do the same.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This excerpt is adapted from my book, Blest Atheist (MSI Press, copyright 2009).
Now, though, there was, indeed, an unbeatable foe: the college financial aid office. When I first applied to colleges, I knew that financing an education would be a problem. Poverty had greeted me at birth and, like a frightened but swaggering Chihuahua attempting to bolster his own self-confidence, had nipped at my heels most of my life. Nonetheless, being an incurable optimist, I assumed that college funding would appear from somewhere. It did. As a result of my SAT scores and my having been selected for Who’s Who Among American High School Students, the University of New Hampshire wrote to me and promised me four years of education, fully covered by scholarship, if I would come there. I considered that possibility, but it would keep me near home. That was not an acceptable option because it would keep me near home. More than anything else in going to college, I was looking for an escape from home. That was the reason why I had applied to Penn State University even though the entrance requirements for out-of-state students were extremely rigorous (top 10% of the incoming student body) and out-of-state tuition way out of reach. Penn State had accepted me but had not yet responded about the possibility of financial aid. At the advice of my high school guidance counselor, I sent Penn State a copy of the letter from the University of New Hampshire. Someone from the Penn State financial aid office wrote back to me and told me not to worry, that all my education would be paid through a combination of scholarships, loans, and work study. Soon thereafter, the financial aid office put together a package that took care of my first year in full, with the indication that subsequent years would be similar—but they weren’t.
From a financial aid point of view, I made the catastrophic error of getting married my sophomore year. The young and probably not highly knowledgeable financial aid officer at Penn State who told me that being married would not make a difference was wrong. It did make a difference. While my marriage has lasted 38 years, my scholarship petered out in far less than 38 weeks. “Giving scholarships to married women,” Mr. Z, the older, male financial officer who had taken over my account, said, “is a waste of money. They just sit at home, doing nothing with their lives but living off men. So, go home and take care of your husband.”
I went home all right but not to take care of Charles. He seemed to be handling that well enough on his own. Rather, I assessed my situation, looking for an out-of-the-box solution to the dilemma of having only a few weeks of financial aid left and two years of courses to complete. The answer came quickly—I have trouble thinking in the box; actually, I have trouble even finding the box!—so it did not take long to figure out that the 78 semester hours I still needed in order to graduate would break easily into 39 semester hours during each of the following two quarters, both of which were paid for by already-granted aid, That meant I had to take triple the maximum course load each quarter. Thanks to an advisor who paid little attention to students with A averages, considering them skilled enough to make their own decisions, a non-computerized course tracking system at the time, and a secretary who was willing to file my 3-page grade reports rather than turn them over to my advisor, I was able to tiptoe under and past the radar and graduate two quarters later.
My mother’s mother (my father’s mother had died when I was only six, so all I remember of her was a photograph with me on her lap as a toddler) gave me a small “loan.” With that and income from cocktail waitressing in the evening and go-go dancing at night, I even had enough money to fund the first quarter of graduate school.
“Don’t pay the loan back,” Gram said. “Pass it on.” I have done that on many occasions in my life, passing along as well the philosophy of not paying back but passing on whatever kindness is shown.
Gram was quite unlike Ma, and sadly Ma did not return Gram’s affection until a few days before Gram died many years later. A woman of hefty proportions and traditional haircut, Gram was a matriarch. There was no doubt about that. When she spoke, one obeyed. The liberating thing for me, though, was that she did not hit. Moreover, she listened, and when she spoke, she had fun ways of expressing herself, like looking for something “all over hell’s kitchen.” Throughout my preschool years, she fascinated me with nursery rhymes that she never tired of telling over and over and, when I was older, with an old gramophone that we wound up to play records that would gradually slow down, turning the singer’s peppy voice into a drawn-out wail, as the winding ran out. The games, songs, and rhymes that Gram taught me are ones that I now find myself teaching to my own grandson. When Ma would call me her “plain Jane,” Gram would respond, “Pretty is as pretty does.” During my penny-starved early college days, Gram would write to me every couple of weeks and include a package of dentyne gum under whose wrapper she had inserted a five-dollar bill. So, it was not surprising to me that Gram was the one who would come to my rescue when I had fallen on the petard of the financial aid officer. Gram came to my rescue years later, too, moving in after Shane was born and doing my housework for a month. “No one should come home from the hospital the day after a baby is born,” she scolded. “You play with the baby; that is your job now. I will take care of the house, the other kids, and your house work.” And she did.
Ironically, I might not have attended graduate school, had I not lost my undergraduate scholarship. Had I taken the slow route through school, Charles, a forestry major, would have finished significantly ahead of me and taken me to Montana from where his first job with the U. S. Forest Service beckoned. By graduating nearly a year and a half early, I had to wait for him for three quarters. During that time, I took all my master’s courses, this time only doubling the course load. My teachers, advisor, and department chair all understood my financial dilemma and did their best to help me by letting me finish as many of the requirements each quarter as I could handle. I passed the German reading exam required of German-Russian comparative literature majors the second quarter and the dreaded-by-all master’s comprehensive exams the third.
As soon as my exams were completed, I left for Montana with Charles, with only my master’s thesis left to complete. Talk about getting the last laugh on the financial aid office! I would end up paying tuition only one more time after that. That was for only one semester hour in order to be enrolled for the quarter in which I graduated. When I received my M.A. diploma, I exulted that the foe had been conquered again!
The Chihuahua had not disappeared, however. Although I did beat it from time to time, I never vanquished it. By the time I became a special needs parent for the third time — this time with Shura, the dying child artist I took in from Siberia — poverty and I had become old friends.
Poverty and I had, in fact, become sputniki (traveling companions) early in life for the 8-pack had been raised in poverty. For us, though, poverty itself was meaningless. It fell very low on the discomfort ladder, with physical beatings far outranking any other potentially significant contribution to our unhappiness. Moreover, while we did not have the brand-name clothes and the fancy “things” that our classmates from the city did, we had everything we truly needed. There was food after the move to the farm, and there was clothing because my grandparents worked at a textile mill. I, too, worked there as a teenager. We girls learned to make our own clothes, and some of our creations even became popular styles at school. Ma taught us the basics, but I especially liked to try new creations, such as patchwork dresses. All of us learned to harvest crops, preserve food, make butter and ice cream, and cook. As soon as we could reach the pedals, we learned to drive a tractor and took turns mowing and raking hay. We also learned how to yoke the oxen and use them to plough the fields in the spring. In the summer and fall, as soon as we were old enough to recognize the difference between a ripe vegetable and berry and an immature one, we were put into the fields, both our own and those of neighbors who hired us to work at three cents a pound of harvested peas, beans, blueberries. Thus, we acquired good skills and a strong work ethic.
In this respect, in spite of gifting us with a generally violent childhood, our parents did well by the 8-pack for they poverty-proofed us. One can never be truly impoverished if one has skills, talents, and diligence—and, as the Russians say, 100 friends.
As a poverty-proofed adult, I have rarely felt an overwhelming need for money. Surprisingly and heartening, however, whenever I have truly needed money, it has fallen into my lap. Even when I did not ask anyone for it, even when I did not know that there was Anyone to whom we could turn, the money to stave off potentially dire consequences has appeared from unexpected sources and often in the nick of time.
Thanks to intervention after intervention, our old foe would grow weary at times and lay down to rest, allowing us to do the same.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This excerpt is adapted from my book, Blest Atheist (MSI Press, copyright 2009).
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Kill Only When You Are Hungry
Okay, I admit it. I cannot resist! Here is another of the goodies that my sister sends to me from the Internet:
The law of the wild says kill only when you are hungry!!!
Photographer Michel Denis-Huot, who captured these amazing pictures on safari in Kenya 's Masai Mara in October last year, said he was astounded by what he saw:
"These three cheetah brothers have been living together since they left their mother at about 18 months old," he said. "On the morning we saw them, they seemed not to be hungry, walking quickly but stopping sometimes to play together. At one point, they met a group of impala who ran away. But one youngster was not quick enough and the brothers caught it easily".
These extraordinary scenes followed.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The Complaining Servant
In the days when servants were bought and sold, there once was a servant who had a very kind master. The master would not eat unless his servant sat and ate with him. When he wanted to rest, he would ask his servant to sit and talk to him. If the servant had nothing to say, the master would share his latest jokes and fill the air with the joyful sound of his laughter. When he purchased a new robe or a turban, he always purchased one just like it for his servant. When he asked his servant to carry a heavy object, he helped him carry it. When he asked him to cook for many people, he would take charge of the most difficult task: finding enough logs for the fire.
Nonetheless, the servant was always complaining. "I am so tired of this master," he could be heard repeating. "Sit with me and eat, sit with me and talk … do this and do that … what makes him so sure I want to sit with him? What makes him so confident that I enjoy his company?"
One day the master overheard his servant speak like this and was very hurt, and so he decided he would return him to the servants' market. There the servant was bought by another master. This new master was very different from the previous one. He would never eat with his servants. After he finished eating, the servants ate the leftovers. When his robes and turbans became old and faded, he would give them to his servants to wear. And when he asked his servants to carryout difficult tasks, it was unthinkable for him to help.
With this master, the servant complained day and night. "Eat his leftovers!! Wear his used clothes!! Who does he think he is, the Sultan himself?"
And so the master heard of the complaints of the servant and, once again, the servant found himself in the servants' market. This time, he was purchased by a master who appeared like he never smiled in his life. Not only did this master not feed his servants, not even leftovers, but he didn’t provide shelter, either.
A night arrived when the servant stood under the pouring rain, tired, hungry and cold. Suddenly, a man approached him.
"May I be of help in any way?"
The servant looked up and could not believe his eyes. It was his first master who had treated him so kindly.
"Please take me back, Master. I promise I will never take your special treatment for granted again."
And so the master purchased him again. And whenever he wanted to rest, he would ask his servant to sit with him, drink coffee drenched with cardamom, and listen to his latest jokes.
-----------------------
The above story is excerpted from a book, Metaphors of Islamic Humanism, by my dear friend, Dr. Omar Imady, copyright 2005.
Nonetheless, the servant was always complaining. "I am so tired of this master," he could be heard repeating. "Sit with me and eat, sit with me and talk … do this and do that … what makes him so sure I want to sit with him? What makes him so confident that I enjoy his company?"
One day the master overheard his servant speak like this and was very hurt, and so he decided he would return him to the servants' market. There the servant was bought by another master. This new master was very different from the previous one. He would never eat with his servants. After he finished eating, the servants ate the leftovers. When his robes and turbans became old and faded, he would give them to his servants to wear. And when he asked his servants to carryout difficult tasks, it was unthinkable for him to help.
With this master, the servant complained day and night. "Eat his leftovers!! Wear his used clothes!! Who does he think he is, the Sultan himself?"
And so the master heard of the complaints of the servant and, once again, the servant found himself in the servants' market. This time, he was purchased by a master who appeared like he never smiled in his life. Not only did this master not feed his servants, not even leftovers, but he didn’t provide shelter, either.
A night arrived when the servant stood under the pouring rain, tired, hungry and cold. Suddenly, a man approached him.
"May I be of help in any way?"
The servant looked up and could not believe his eyes. It was his first master who had treated him so kindly.
"Please take me back, Master. I promise I will never take your special treatment for granted again."
And so the master purchased him again. And whenever he wanted to rest, he would ask his servant to sit with him, drink coffee drenched with cardamom, and listen to his latest jokes.
-----------------------
The above story is excerpted from a book, Metaphors of Islamic Humanism, by my dear friend, Dr. Omar Imady, copyright 2005.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Where the Brave Dare Not Go
With my shoes winged with foreign languages, I have slipped right into the land of the enemy on multiple occasions. I did not fear to run where the brave dare not go for I was well armed. I had clearly been given the gift of words, and ultimately I could speak them in 17 languages. So, it did not matter that over time, the enemy differed. I spent the Cold War with the Russians and Czechs and the more recent hot one with the Arabs on both sides of the Persian (Arabian) Gulf and both sides of the Red Sea. I deftly intertwined myself with the culture and committed myself to helping all of them improve their educational systems. During a ten-year career stint in international educational consulting, I brought the knowledge of the Americans to Russia, the knowledge of the Russians to Brazil, the knowledge of the Brazilians to Bahrain, the knowledge of the Bahraini to Cambodia, the knowledge of the Cambodians to Austria, and so on through 24 nations.
What I brought and how I helped varied by country. In Uzbekistan, for example, I helped build a state-of-the-art English language program in Tashkent. I trained K-12 teachers in Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara, traveling across the country on the old silk route from China, a road lined with winter-bare mulberry trees, their crotches cocooned in silk. The driver assigned to me and I shared the road with camels, donkey carts, 1930-style bicycles, motorcycles, modern cars, and oil tankers. Sometimes we had right-of-way, but more often, they did. In Samarkand, I lectured to the faculties of mathematics and foreign languages at Samarkand State University. In Bukhara, I explained to a teenage tour guide with limited experience in silk processing how silk is woven (I quickly saw the parallels with weaving wool; something I was familiar with from my summers of textile-mill work). During my days in Uzbekistan, I worried along with new-found friends that the further drying up of the Aral Sea, graphically represented by the unused irrigation canals in Samarkand, would reduce the cotton harvest and undermine the Uzbek economy. On the positive side, I shared pride in the poetry of Alisher Navoi, who published his works 300 years before Shakespeare. Among my most interesting work was assisting the Ministry of Education in developing programs that would later facilitate the re-establishing of Uzbek as a national language. At a federal workshop on the topic, attended by the regional ministers of education, I was the workshop leader and, of course, conducted the sessions in Russian, with a translator standing by to translate the comments and questions of the regional ministers from Uzbek into Russian. I was expected to make a few remarks at the opening session, which was broadcast on national television. I had a friend translate my words from Russian into Uzbek, and I practiced saying them until even the Uzbek janitor could understand me. When I had finished speaking at the opening session, Dr. Yoldashev, then Minister of Education and a bear of a man, stepped over a divider, walked over to the podium, and wrapped me in a bear hug.
In Brazil, I conferred with volunteers working to get 50,000 (!) children with lost interest in school off the streets and into learner-centered programs. In this process, I met a living angel, Dagmar, who founded Casa do Zezhino (Little Joe’s House) to give an alternative future to the children of drug dealers in the favellas (Brazilian-style ghettoes). She, though, was unwilling to be called an angel. She said one had to die for that! On one of my many trips to Brazil, I commiserated with friends when they were robbed in their own home at gunpoint, an all-too-frequent occurrence in the cities that boasted millions of residents for they “boasted” a high crime rate as well. My native language served me well throughout Brazil, as did my cross-cultural flexibility, genuine interest in other ways of thinking and doing, and ability to acquire new languages quickly. I provided seminars to English language programs in a dozen cities, from the Amazon in the North to the capital city of Brasilia in the heartland to the high mountains in the South. In Belem, at the northern tip of the Rain Forest, I learned to tell time not by the clock but by minutes and hours after the daily early afternoon deluge. In exotic Bahia in the East, I wandered through the under-the-city catacombs with an interpreter who knew only one language: Portuguese. In the South, I taught Russian at the Universidad de Rio Grande do Sul. In Rio de Janeiro, I participated in discussions in Portuguese to establish a national language policy, and using both English and Portuguese, I brainstormed with the staff of the Saõ Paulo superintendent of schools on ways to reduce violence in the schools.
In most countries, I appeared on radio or television and gave interviews to newspaper reporters to help publicize the work of one local organization or government agency or another. Along the way, I developed networks of people to help each other — and often that help extended into areas unrelated to education, such as putting together a physicist from Samarkand with a White-House-sponsored organization that could help him, asking a vice-rector at a Russian university to serve as evaluator of an American government assessment of Soviet foreign-language teaching, and, of course, there was the child artist from Siberia who became part of my family.
Going where the brave dare not go was not without its disconcerting moments. I was abandoned in more than one country when plans for pick-up fell through. Always, though, an unexpected rescuer appeared, sometimes in the most unforgettable way. For example, on one flight to Sao Paolo, Brazil, I sat beside a young businessman named Eddie from Campinas, a town about an hour outside Sao Paolo and ironically the town to which I was headed. When I arrived, the embassy escort was no where to be seen. A call to the embassy’s weekend duty officer brought no elucidation or assistance. I would have to get to Campinas on my own, figure out what hotel I was supposed to be at, and track down the director of the institute I was supposed to be helping — all on a Sunday afternoon and with no contact information. I had only the office phone number of the embassy officer responsible for my trip — and Eddie’s home phone. A little reconnaissance at the airport turned up a bus service to Campinas. Upon arrival, I called Eddie, who was surprised to hear from me so soon but gamely picked me up at the bus station and brought me to his home for dinner with his wife and daughter, where I spent a more delightful evening than I would have spent alone at a hotel. Later in the evening, we called the information number at the institute where I would be working the next day and got the home phone of the director from the recording. Once we called the director, everything was back on course.
Going where the brave dare not go has also not been without moments of danger. Being mugged in Moscow and Amman and even in quiet Urabana, Illinois, where I was tazered by a purse snatcher, made that evident. Fortunately, in all cases, I was not harmed and I had almost no money in the purse — four cents is all the Illinois purse snatcher earned for his efforts. On the positive side, my traumatic experiences earned me a glimpse at police stations and police processes in Russia and Jordan — cross-cultural information I would not otherwise have learned. Interestingly, the small-town Illinois police were far less successful at tracking down the perpetrator, let alone getting my things back, than were the Moscow militsiya (police force) in a city of 13 million.
(Note: As you read this post, I am working on being prepared for my next risk, to take place in a month or so, the details of which I will share with you after the fact, for reasons of safety.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This excerpt is adapted from my book, Blest Atheist (MSI Press, copyright 2009).
What I brought and how I helped varied by country. In Uzbekistan, for example, I helped build a state-of-the-art English language program in Tashkent. I trained K-12 teachers in Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara, traveling across the country on the old silk route from China, a road lined with winter-bare mulberry trees, their crotches cocooned in silk. The driver assigned to me and I shared the road with camels, donkey carts, 1930-style bicycles, motorcycles, modern cars, and oil tankers. Sometimes we had right-of-way, but more often, they did. In Samarkand, I lectured to the faculties of mathematics and foreign languages at Samarkand State University. In Bukhara, I explained to a teenage tour guide with limited experience in silk processing how silk is woven (I quickly saw the parallels with weaving wool; something I was familiar with from my summers of textile-mill work). During my days in Uzbekistan, I worried along with new-found friends that the further drying up of the Aral Sea, graphically represented by the unused irrigation canals in Samarkand, would reduce the cotton harvest and undermine the Uzbek economy. On the positive side, I shared pride in the poetry of Alisher Navoi, who published his works 300 years before Shakespeare. Among my most interesting work was assisting the Ministry of Education in developing programs that would later facilitate the re-establishing of Uzbek as a national language. At a federal workshop on the topic, attended by the regional ministers of education, I was the workshop leader and, of course, conducted the sessions in Russian, with a translator standing by to translate the comments and questions of the regional ministers from Uzbek into Russian. I was expected to make a few remarks at the opening session, which was broadcast on national television. I had a friend translate my words from Russian into Uzbek, and I practiced saying them until even the Uzbek janitor could understand me. When I had finished speaking at the opening session, Dr. Yoldashev, then Minister of Education and a bear of a man, stepped over a divider, walked over to the podium, and wrapped me in a bear hug.
In Brazil, I conferred with volunteers working to get 50,000 (!) children with lost interest in school off the streets and into learner-centered programs. In this process, I met a living angel, Dagmar, who founded Casa do Zezhino (Little Joe’s House) to give an alternative future to the children of drug dealers in the favellas (Brazilian-style ghettoes). She, though, was unwilling to be called an angel. She said one had to die for that! On one of my many trips to Brazil, I commiserated with friends when they were robbed in their own home at gunpoint, an all-too-frequent occurrence in the cities that boasted millions of residents for they “boasted” a high crime rate as well. My native language served me well throughout Brazil, as did my cross-cultural flexibility, genuine interest in other ways of thinking and doing, and ability to acquire new languages quickly. I provided seminars to English language programs in a dozen cities, from the Amazon in the North to the capital city of Brasilia in the heartland to the high mountains in the South. In Belem, at the northern tip of the Rain Forest, I learned to tell time not by the clock but by minutes and hours after the daily early afternoon deluge. In exotic Bahia in the East, I wandered through the under-the-city catacombs with an interpreter who knew only one language: Portuguese. In the South, I taught Russian at the Universidad de Rio Grande do Sul. In Rio de Janeiro, I participated in discussions in Portuguese to establish a national language policy, and using both English and Portuguese, I brainstormed with the staff of the Saõ Paulo superintendent of schools on ways to reduce violence in the schools.
In most countries, I appeared on radio or television and gave interviews to newspaper reporters to help publicize the work of one local organization or government agency or another. Along the way, I developed networks of people to help each other — and often that help extended into areas unrelated to education, such as putting together a physicist from Samarkand with a White-House-sponsored organization that could help him, asking a vice-rector at a Russian university to serve as evaluator of an American government assessment of Soviet foreign-language teaching, and, of course, there was the child artist from Siberia who became part of my family.
Going where the brave dare not go was not without its disconcerting moments. I was abandoned in more than one country when plans for pick-up fell through. Always, though, an unexpected rescuer appeared, sometimes in the most unforgettable way. For example, on one flight to Sao Paolo, Brazil, I sat beside a young businessman named Eddie from Campinas, a town about an hour outside Sao Paolo and ironically the town to which I was headed. When I arrived, the embassy escort was no where to be seen. A call to the embassy’s weekend duty officer brought no elucidation or assistance. I would have to get to Campinas on my own, figure out what hotel I was supposed to be at, and track down the director of the institute I was supposed to be helping — all on a Sunday afternoon and with no contact information. I had only the office phone number of the embassy officer responsible for my trip — and Eddie’s home phone. A little reconnaissance at the airport turned up a bus service to Campinas. Upon arrival, I called Eddie, who was surprised to hear from me so soon but gamely picked me up at the bus station and brought me to his home for dinner with his wife and daughter, where I spent a more delightful evening than I would have spent alone at a hotel. Later in the evening, we called the information number at the institute where I would be working the next day and got the home phone of the director from the recording. Once we called the director, everything was back on course.
Going where the brave dare not go has also not been without moments of danger. Being mugged in Moscow and Amman and even in quiet Urabana, Illinois, where I was tazered by a purse snatcher, made that evident. Fortunately, in all cases, I was not harmed and I had almost no money in the purse — four cents is all the Illinois purse snatcher earned for his efforts. On the positive side, my traumatic experiences earned me a glimpse at police stations and police processes in Russia and Jordan — cross-cultural information I would not otherwise have learned. Interestingly, the small-town Illinois police were far less successful at tracking down the perpetrator, let alone getting my things back, than were the Moscow militsiya (police force) in a city of 13 million.
(Note: As you read this post, I am working on being prepared for my next risk, to take place in a month or so, the details of which I will share with you after the fact, for reasons of safety.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This excerpt is adapted from my book, Blest Atheist (MSI Press, copyright 2009).
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
There's a Stranger in Mommy's Bed
Sometimes Mommy gets really tired. She says that working mothers reach proportions of exhaustion that exceed the imagination. In such cases, what they say and do have little resemblance to common sense. I guess that must be right, if I judge by my Mommy.
For example, let me tell you what happened to her one weekend. Friday evening after a long and frustrating, to say nothing of exhausting, week at work, she fell asleep on the living room sofa. (She does that a lot. She says she is going to watch television, but she never does. She just stares at the screen for a few minutes, then topples over. I have never seen her watch a whole television show, like I do.)
Anyway, she did her frequent act of screen staring and toppling over on the Friday evening I am talking about. My Daddy, of course, could not wake her up; he never can when she topples over asleep. So, my sister found her asleep on the couch on Saturday morning.
"Mom, wake up!" she said.
"Huh?" Mommy struggled to bring herself back into the world of the living. It really is not very easy to wake up Mommy.
"Mom, Mom! You're on the couch! Why aren't you in bed?"
Mommy tried groggily to recall where she was and why. "Oh, because when I tried to go to bed, there was someone in my bed," Mommy mumbled and turned over to go back to sleep.
That was a scary thought! My sister crept cautiously into Mommy's bedroom to see who or what was in the bed.
"Mom, Mom!" My sister had come back and was shaking Mommy, trying to get her to wake up. It is very, very hard to wake up Mommy.
"That's Dad in the bed!" my sister told her.
"Oh," Mommy mumbled and turned over to go back to sleep again.
"Mom," my sister asked with a tone of great surprise. "If you thought there was a stranger in your bed, why didn't you call the police, instead of just simply choosing another place to sleep?"
Conclusion: Some Mommies get very, very tired!
------------
This story is excerpted from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah, my severely mentally challenged youngest son, to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading.
For example, let me tell you what happened to her one weekend. Friday evening after a long and frustrating, to say nothing of exhausting, week at work, she fell asleep on the living room sofa. (She does that a lot. She says she is going to watch television, but she never does. She just stares at the screen for a few minutes, then topples over. I have never seen her watch a whole television show, like I do.)
Anyway, she did her frequent act of screen staring and toppling over on the Friday evening I am talking about. My Daddy, of course, could not wake her up; he never can when she topples over asleep. So, my sister found her asleep on the couch on Saturday morning.
"Mom, wake up!" she said.
"Huh?" Mommy struggled to bring herself back into the world of the living. It really is not very easy to wake up Mommy.
"Mom, Mom! You're on the couch! Why aren't you in bed?"
Mommy tried groggily to recall where she was and why. "Oh, because when I tried to go to bed, there was someone in my bed," Mommy mumbled and turned over to go back to sleep.
That was a scary thought! My sister crept cautiously into Mommy's bedroom to see who or what was in the bed.
"Mom, Mom!" My sister had come back and was shaking Mommy, trying to get her to wake up. It is very, very hard to wake up Mommy.
"That's Dad in the bed!" my sister told her.
"Oh," Mommy mumbled and turned over to go back to sleep again.
"Mom," my sister asked with a tone of great surprise. "If you thought there was a stranger in your bed, why didn't you call the police, instead of just simply choosing another place to sleep?"
Conclusion: Some Mommies get very, very tired!
------------
This story is excerpted from a collection of vignettes that I helped Doah, my severely mentally challenged youngest son, to write and publish several years ago (copyright 2003). It was my attempt to help him understand literacy and the purpose of writing and reading.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
About Me
- Elizabeth Mahlou
- I am the mother of 4 birth children (plus 3 others who lived with us) and grandmother of 2, all of them exceptional children. Married for 42 years, I grew up in Maine, live in California, and work in many places in education, linguistics, and program management. In my spare time, I rescue and tame feral cats and have the scars to prove it. A long-time ignorantly blissful atheist converted by a theophanic experience to Catholicism, I am now a joyful catechist. Oh, I also authored a dozen books, two under my pen name of Mahlou (Blest Atheist and A Believer-in-Waiting's First Encounters with God).
Recommended Reading List
Because I am blog inept, I don't quite know how to get a reading list to stay at the end of the page and not disappear from sight. Therefore, I entered it as my first post. I suppose that is not all that bad because readers started commenting about the books, even suggesting additional readings. So, you can participate with others in my reading list by clicking here.I do post additional books as I read them and find them to be meaningful to me, and therefore, hopefully, meaningful to you. One advantage of all the plane traveling I do is that I acquire reading time that I might not otherwise take.