Apple iPad

I have no opinion whatsoever on the iPad, but I do love David Pogue!  Here's his review.

Ode to cherry blossoms

Cherry blossoms are magical.
Even you are not immune to their gorgeousness.

(Photo cribbed from the Internet)

Scenes from a (ex) Marriage

Today, Dear ex-Husband and I told daughter G about the changes in his life.  See "Postcard from Wisteria Lane" entry from February for an an idea of what that guy is up, too.   It's a bit of a struggle to keep things on the smooth side - but for the kid, we try.  A united front.  Here's the transcript.

Read for Peace

I'm a total sucker for a good story about books, health care reform, Iowa and Obama! 

The link to the entire Publisher's Weekly article is above, but the exceprt here says it all....

...During his speech, Obama gave a shout-out to Prairie Lights, celebrating them for being a local small business that has offered health care coverage to its full-time employees for 20 years.

After Obama's noontime speech, Prairie Lights co-owner Jan Weissmiller reports that "someone in a suit" came into the store and asked to speak to her. When she told the man she was on the phone with a Washington Post reporter and he would have to wait, he responded that she'd better hang up the phone because, "I'm from the White House and you're going to have a visitor." She told PW she knew instantly he was referring to the president.

Emphasis added - warms my heart!

World Poetry Day - March 21

In honor of World Poetry Day, here are some of my favorite poets:

• Mary Oliver, a wonderful poet who captures nature, New England, and love so perfectly (what more can you ask for in a poet? Thoreau?)
• Pablo Neruda, such Latin passion and romanticism, such a Communist, such a Revolutionary - literary and political
• Billy Collins, so wry, so accessible, so simply spectacular, and yet, no less a poet
• Margaret Atwood, better known for her gorgeous novels (I'm a fan, too), this Canadian poet is deep, dark...and beautiful

And a wonderful Collin's poem to better enjoy this great literary art. :-)

Introduction to Poetry 

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

The Earth's a big blue (white) marble....

WOW!

Such incredible satellite shots of February's historic and massive snowstorm.  And some of the Big Meltdown

When I look at this, I am awed by satellite technology, the weather, and our planet.  And then I think,  I am but so small roaming around my little block of DC - and yet so wrapped up in my personal universe.  And yet, each person roaming around the earth has such a huge butterfly wing effect on each other and on a global scale.

Thanks to JS for the DC-ist links.

Paris, je t'aime

Fabulous and funny installation in the Paris metro!

Can't wait to go next month!

Mommy Wars

This is an interesting NYTimes blog, "Room for Debate"  that teases out the impossibility of being a good mom, and the divisiveness it creates.  Of the blogs, I found Ayelet Waldman's and Judith Warner's words particularly resonant.


From Ayelet Waldman.... 

The vast majority of mothers find themselves forced to make professional sacrifices. Even if they work full time, their careers are often on trajectories very different from what they’d imagined. And if one is forced by circumstance to sacrifice an ambition that one has nurtured, if one is forced to see oneself in a completely different way, then by God it had all better be worth it. 

This means that our children have not only to be happy, but to do well, to be successful, to reflect the value of our sacrifice. That also means that our decisions about our children take on fraught meaning.

Someone else’s choice becomes, at times, not just another way to do things, but an attack on us, on our choices. We can’t disagree, because disagreement means that our choices are not merely different, but wrong. And we have far too much at stake to allow that possibility. So we go on the attack, we paint one another as bad mothers, when what we are really afraid of is that we might be one ourselves. 

 And from Judith Warner...

It seems to me that this posture comes out of insecurity and an over-investment in the choices we make as mothers. It’s as though, in making decisions about vaccinations, or preschools, or the permissibility of dessert, our identities are on the line each time.

Are our identities this unstable? Perhaps this isn’t surprising at a time when many of the old certainties are gone.We’ve been liberated from the narrow life paths that mothers were expected to assume in generations past. But we don’t particularly embrace this liberation. Unlike the baby boomers before us, we don’t revel in the new possibilities of motherhood today, largely because the promises of feminism have time and again come up against a wall of political impossibility.

Our much-vaunted “choices,” in an absence of family-friendly social policies, have largely proven hollow. For most mothers, the real freedom to choose how they live their lives remains a distant dream. Many blame themselves for falling short and then buttress themselves against self-criticism by critiquing other mothers’ so-called choices. 

There would be great relief - and much greater solidarity - for mothers in realizing that just about everyone, in one way or another, is struggling to keep her head above water.

Beirut Grocery Shopping List

Hummos (tinned)
Baba Ghanouj (tinned)
Tahini
Bottle of red (Bekka Valley, Liban)
Sesame candy
Date cookies
Sumac
Honey with pistachios
Olive oil
Licorice candy

I think I might have overdone it, but it was all local!  And irresistible...(Ummm...maybe I have food issues?!?!).

I go home tomorrow, and after all these feasts (coming home from the most recent 3-hour dinner at 11:30pm),  I'm actually looking forward to a little de-tox fast from overindulgence.  It was quite a wonderful visit (and business trip).

Midday in Beirut

After a short, but deep and heavy, nap at midday, I went to do some chawarma research.  A walk up, down and around the hilly streets of my hotel neighborhood, Achrafieh, I found myself at the highly recommended (by two trusted and independent chawarma sources), Boubouffe.

The sandwich was excellent - hot and succulent.  My Pepsi hit the spot.  When traveling  - tired, hot and jet lagged - nothing beats the Pepsi/Coca-Cola combination of cold, sugar, and caffeine in the mid afternoon.  Together, with a cup of strong coffee in the morning, and a glass of wine with dinner, it's my secret jet lag remedy.

I found myself wishing again that I could flow as effortlessly between French, English, and Arabic, as so many people here seem to.  I must say, I love the way ink flows from a pen in Arabic - all right to left, curly and beautiful.  It is not as easy on the ears as it is on the eyes - it sounds a bit harsh and guttural.  That said, having witnessed a few traffic confrontations, it seems to me it would be immensely colorful and satisfying to tell someone off in Arabic.  As in, "You can take your chawarma and stick it up your butt.  And while you're at it pour some Pepsi on it so it's nice and fizzy."

Charmed, I'm sure

This evening, at the invitation of Amal, I took a short trip, 26 miles up the coast to the ancient city of Byblos.  There, we strolled in the souk - the labyrinth, lantern-lit streets, quiet and empty. Later, past the Citadel, my footsteps echoed on the cobblestones of the still and silent courtyard of the mediaeval Church of St. John.  Wandering down to the small port, blue and white fishing boats were docked for the night in the protected harbor.  Walking out and looking back from the jetty, the lights of the seaside restaurants, nestled into the hillside, glowed from the mainland.  Then, as we climbed the winding, narrow road of blind corners, my French phrases of delight, curiosity and observation were interspersed with my slight breathlessness.    A shrine was set back along a path just in sight of the road.  There, an ages-old shelter housed a statue of the Virgin Mary lit by the candles left behind by her pilgrims.  Two simple wooden benches provided a moment of meditation, mindfulness and prayer.

At several times over the hours, I had to pinch myself.  I'm in Byblos.  In Lebanon.  This is my charmed life, as if I had a genie in a bottle.

Stand on the Side of Love (5)

Today a historic wedding took place at All Souls Church!

Ladies' Lunch in 3 Acts (and one seduction)

Scene: La Plage restaurant
On La Corniche, in Beirut, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea

















Characters: Seven women
5 Lebanese, 1 Eritrean, 1 American; ages 24 to 75

















Act I: Eight+ mezze 
Hommos, moutabaal, fatoush, halloumi, kibbeh, and more

Act II: A giant platter of brochettes 
Lamb, chicken, kibbeh with french fries

Act III: Two extravagant desserts
Ice cream with cotton candy, and crushed pistachios

Our protagonist with hookah pipe

La femme fatale 
Amal (purple) kept winking at me

Domestic Goddess

Nigella Lawson - domestic goddess - is my alter ego.   A British food writer, journalist, and broadcaster, she holds an MA in medieval and modern languages.   She cooks and eats with gusto (and banks a living on it).  While stunningly beautiful at 50 years young, she also has managed to gracefully embrace and inhabit her healthy, curvy figure.  A refreshing change from the skinny, sharp models that the media and the general public exalt.

Here's a Nigella quote from a 2007 article in the Times Online.

“I think it is a fear of flesh,” says Nigella, “maybe of vulnerability and softness.” Is that ultimately a fear of sex? “I don’t know. But I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in.”

Dispatch from LHR

Landed at half-7, and began the 8-hours of layover limbo here at Heathrow.  I considered going into London - but the immigration agents strike slowing the queue, the rush hour commute to the city on a Monday morning, and having to be back by 2pm for my international departure only to go through security once again were formidible-enough deterrents. After transiting from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1, and wandering around Hamley's and Boots (why do I love Boots so much?), I found the airline lounge.

This was a good move.  For $25 (and for the remaining 6 hours or so of waiting), I have wi-fi, breakfast snacks (cheese, biscuits, croissants, and nice strong coffee), a comfy perch (I'm spread out on a little sofa), and a clean loo.   All complimentary (well, for my entry fee)!  There's even a full bar, though not too appealing at the moment.

Lovely indeed.

Stand on the Side of Love (4)

It may be cloudy, raining, damp, and cold, but...

Today is a beautiful day here in Washington, DC!

Are Metrics Blinding our Perception?

These days, I eat, sleep, and breathe metrics.  As part of the "metrics movement" in philanthropy and social change, I'm fascinated by trying to measure this stuff, demonstrate effect, and provide evidence for program investors and stakeholders.  (Speaking of movements, there was even talk last week about a metrics index of social movements.  Very cool, but good lord, I can't take another index!  Have fun, guys.)

So while I am a professed metrics maniac, I can't help but remark that the tail is wagging the dog.  The expectation that metrics will save the world, as some seem to believe, is just unrealistic  Behind every metric are assumptions, trade-offs, dirty data, and variables that compromise it. Frankly, this makes quantitative data as guilty of malleability and elasticity, as the much maligned qualitative data.    No numbers without stories, no stories without numbers. 

Yet, far too many people "ooh and ah" just to have a number attached - whether that number has any meaning whatsoever.  Read the footnotes, people! - the ones that say what this number does, and more importantly does not, tell us. Or learn a bit about the methodology used to obtain that number to really understand it.  (Ooops, I'm sorry your eyes are glazing over.  This is one of the problems). 

Sadly, some evaluation methodology and quantitative research and data has corrupted expectations.  Certainly, business has been spoiled by its metrics simplicity - profits and loss, return on investment.  Yet let the fates of Enron and Lehman Brothers be a reminder that these derivatives are stranger than fiction, too! And dollars are just plain more countable than the messy, complicated lives of actual human beings. 

Other areas like clinical trials and operations research have helped set an unrealistic and unattainable bar for social programs metrics.   Even they struggle with the messy trade-offs.  Recent clincial trials for HIV prevention methods - such as an HIV vaccine or a microbicide - grapple with the question is 60% effective good enough for market?  These trials have exorbidant costs and inordinate time investment.  The same bar is not appropriate for small grants, general philanthropy, and your typical social prorgam.

Metrics is an art, as much as a mathematical formula.  So are social programs, for sure.  At some level, there is trusting your gut.  I might be a metrics maniac, but I have much greater faith in my intuition.

Aftershock

"The massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile may have changed the entire Earth's rotation and shortened the length of days on our planet, a NASA scientist said Monday."

Wow!  I'm not sure whether to be concerned or not about a shorter day by 1.26 milliseconds (though really, I need longer days for a bit more sleep, not shorter ones).  But the idea of a massive earthquake shifting the earth's axis and rotation totally rocks my world.

Match.com

Here's a doozy of an introduction from a potential online suitor...

Hi Angel,
It really beats my imagination to see such a pretty angel like you online i must confess you are amongs the wonders of God beauty,let me not be carried away by your beauty,ohh sorry i ought to introduce my self

My name is Eric and I really enjoyed reading your profile. You are very pretty, obviously smart, and I would love the chance to get to know you better.

...and it (unfortunately) continues, but I'll spare you.

Now, barring prison inmates and/or teenage hackers trying to have fun by mind-f***-ing divorced, "desperate," single moms  (I've got my radar on for both kinds of trolls), I really do give human beings the benefit of the doubt for all our respective flaws.  And I do recognize that we are all just plain searching for a soul with whom to connect, to love and be loved.

However,...

Bless thy heart, Eric...but I'm afraid, I would rather be single until hell freezes over than go here.

*sigh*

Lebanese Taverna

"Following her lead, I took a corner of warm bread, rolled it into a cone (a nifty trick for scooping up dips) and tasted. It was excellent: lush, mouth-filling, creamy and flavorful — like an earthy milkshake."

I can't help but smile here at this description of eating hummus in Beirut.  I'm preparing for my own trip there, leaving this weekend.  I enjoyed a tasty dinner at the local Lebanese Taverna with JS yesterday evening. And this appeals to all my senses.

Here's the food porn link.

Yay.