Last Wednesday, I went to a Mohja Kahf poetry reading at Mudraker’s in Berkeley (it was rocking, by the way!), and ended up seeing some old buddies and making a couple of new friends. One guy I shook hands with towards the end of the evening exclaimed, “You have a really firm handshake!”
“Here, I’ll shake your hand, too, so you can see.” So, I did.
“Really strong!”
“I have to compensate for my short height in some way, you know,” I joked. “At least I have strong handshakes.”
A few minutes later, the first hand-shaker asked curiously, “How old are you?”
“How old do you think I am?”
He thought about it for a minute, then confessed, “I can’t really tell. You’re short.”
SIGH. As my friend, Hashim, says of my photography, “You seem to be looking up a lot (trees towards sky) - or down (at grates or odd pink cemented things). This implies you are short…”
Someday, I will grow up to be tall, and Hashim will stop making basketball-related jokes at my expense, bastid. One can only hope. Meanwhile, I’m content with lots of fist-shaking.
Yasmine: dude, not at all, hope i helped in some way
M: I need some crack
Yasmine: crack is always good
just stay away from the real deal crazy estuff
i don’t want to have to tell your ummy i introduced you to that
M: No way, I already know that and tried that
Kidding
Actually, I didn’t know that and I was a shareef bacha
And you introduced crack to me through your weblog
I will sue you now
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Dude, who knew I’d have to deal with liability issues related to “the Yasmine Vocabulary,” i.e. stalking, stabbing, and crack? If this continues, I just might wake up one morning wishing I had gone to law suckool after all. Vat drama!
Also, I have recently expanded my Pukhto vocabulary to include crack references as well. (My father will be so proud, I know.) I’ve learned that charsi means “crackhead.” And charsi janan means the beloved who is on crack (welcome to Pukhto songs and literature).
I’ve also learned that there is a restaurant in Peshawar called Charsi Tikka Shop. In deference to my love for food and crack, I must eat there. Someday. Soon.
I’ve spent the last month or so on what we flickr rockstars have all, in regards to our respective deadlines and dramas and to-do lists, been referring to as Getting Important Things DONE. What this means, of course, is that I’ve been distracting myself by spending far too much time browsing the internetS and overburdening my firefox browser with the number of tabs I keep open at one time. (The other day, I had 86 tabs open in one window. It was slightly ridiculous.)
I would share all those links and things with you here on the weblog - as I do once in a while - except I’m half-afraid Ayan will come along and call it “fake updates,” as he is wont to do. Plus, I don’t like cluttering the main column with links (that’s what the writing’s for), and I can’t figure out a way to properly share it all on the sidebar without jacking up the careful placement of everything else that’s already there.
SO. I’ve created an account for sweepthesunshine on tumblr, which shall be my repository for rockstar links&things. Go check it out! It’s linked right at the top of this website, so you can find it again. There’s an RSS feed for it, too, so you can keep track of the mish-mash I’m keeping track of. So far, there are lots of images and quotes and music, and things that intrigue me and make me happy. It’s all shiny and glittery and colorful. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. This thing is quite addictive, dude.
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(Post title is a line from Leslie Harpold’s piece on California, some of my most favorite writing. Check out more about that here.)
Back in mid-January, my friend A sent me a very short, simple note with the subject line reading, Salaam, crackstar, telling me his father had recently died.
Doomed to be forever affiliated with my disgruntled, fist-shaking references to “that poetry slam we never went to,” A is one of my favorite people in the world - one of the very few whom I always felt comfortable picking up the phone and calling at any hour of the day or night - time difference be damned - laughing at all his voicemails and text messages that started off with some variation of, Salaam, cracker!
It made me sad to think of my friend being sad. And - although this should not have been about me - it made me feel like a shitty friend to think that, nearly five months later, the item he had requested I buy for him in Chicago still leaned against the side of my bed, the side I’ve usually looked at only when shoving my suitcase against it to pack for trips in the past few months - Chicago again, Ottawa, Toronto. I think nothing of paying exhorbitant fees for last-minute flights, picking up and jet-setting cross-country, but I could not, for the life of me, package A’s gift and get my sorry ass to the post office. [CONTINUE READING the rest of this entry →]
Last June, my buddy A left me a voicemessage late one night after having watched the film, Paris je t’aime, which actually consists of eighteen short films by 21 directors, each of the stories taking place in different arrondissements (municipal boroughs) of Paris. Walking home through downtown San Jose, he talked into the phone about the short film with the Muslim girl - she trips and falls, her headscarf flies off, and a nice young guy runs over to assist her. “He tries to help her put her hijab back on, but he wraps it around her head like a bandanna.” Retelling the story, A started laughing. “Yaz, if your hijab fell off, I don’t think I would ever be able to help you. Probably, no one would.”
Listening to A’s voicemessage later, I laughed, too. And replayed the message a few times. And retold the story to several friends. My coworker-in-crime, B, pointed out, “Yasmine, your hijab’s pinned so tightly, I don’t think that thing could EVER fall off.” I ending up watching Paris je t’aime three times - once with A, the second time with N and AyeshaZ and B, and finally just last week with my sister, who had heard me mention this film often over the past year. Every single time, I have laughed my way through the short film about the Muslim girl and her hijab.
B is right - my hijab is its own free-standing structure. It has stayed put through running and rain storms and lecture-hall naps while slumped in my seat and roller-coaster rides at amusement parks and hiking (and hitchhikes) and skipping down the street and crackstar nieces crawling all over me while bombarding me with their botanical carnage.
HijabMan has harassed me for a long time about collaborating on a headwrap-how-to video. We briefly talked about it over IM during the last year or two, and in Philadelphia and DC in July, and in Chicago in August. I just kind of nodded along vaguely. “Yeah, okay, sounds like a plan.” But when I was stranded in Philadelphia for the night last December, on the way to DC after Ottawa, HMan and I hung out with his friends, then pulled J into being my model for a headwrapping session.
I was drunk off boulani and gelato and the incredibly rich drinking-chocolate from Naked Chocolate Cafe, apparently the best dessert place in Philly, J off her bowlful of chocolate chip cookies & milk; HMan was his usual hyperactive self. It made perfect sense to create videos past midnight. I was groggy and tired from what had been a sh*tty day of travel involving many expletives, but when rockstars come along and pick you up from the airport and take you out to dinner and made you laugh and open up their homes to you, you too would do whatever they want you to.
So, the headwrapping video that came out of that night is sort of a thank-you to HMan and Philadelphia for their rockstar hospitality and open-hearted lowve. It’s also a thank-you to every single person who ever stopped me and asked with genuine curiosity, “How do you do your hijab like that?” I’m honored they took the time to ask. The question came up at an ice cream shop in Washington, DC, last summer; at a conference in Chicago last October and at December hanging-out sessions in Ottawa and Toronto; and at a friend’s wedding just last week. Not to mention the grocery store, the sidewalk outside my workplace, places I stop by for lunch, and all kinds of events and gatherings I attend, as well as questions on flickr and facebook. Since I’m pretty ridiculous about properly responding to compliments or any sort of warm comments regarding the way I dress, I usually just laugh a bit and shuffle my feet a little and toss off my twenty-second explanation of how the headwrap stays in place. Then, I smile brightly and run away, usually to find food.
This, in contrast, is a much better explanation. HMan has posted the video HERE. Check it out:
I’ve already watched it about three times because:
1. I’m surprised I managed a pretty smooth explanation while doing J’s headwrap. Multitasking is usually not my forte, and the fact that I spent six minutes explaining headwrapping techniques while actually implementing them on someone else is slightly mind-boggling.
2. All the references to “stabbing” amuse me. J was so patient with me. I would have been freaked out if someone kept wielding safety pins near my head and cackling gleefully about stabbing.
3. My laugh makes me laugh.
4. My favorite part is my verbal smackdown of HMan.
Highfive to HMan’s camerawork!
Let us know what you think.
PS: If my hijab ever fell off, I now hope you would know how to help me with it, if necessary.
The past couple of months, I kept getting emails reminding me that the sweepthesunshine.com domain needed to be renewed by February 17. So, I took care of that - on Valentine’s Day, no less, because I really do lowve you, internetS, and especially Blogistan - and we’re covered all through 2009 now. So, I guess this would be a good time to update, yes?
I’ve missed you, Blogistan, but I’m a fickle one and have been spending too much time hitting “refresh” on flickr. (I really should stop with that. It’s killing off my productivity.)
I’m back now, though, and will get started on publishing all those posts sitting around in my Drafts folder. I should tell you about Ottawa (and Philadelphia and DC, and those blue slurpees I found at the airport in Dallas), and Toronto, and why I hated January, and what I’m doing with my life these days. So much to catch you up on, Blogistan. Seriously, you’re totally outta the loop.
First, a couple of things to get out of the way:
1. For the person who found my weblog through a Google search for jussmeen, you make me upset. Why’d you have to go and spell it with a J? Only one beautiful person was ever allowed to pronounce my name like that. She’s not around anymore, and I miss her dearly, but that doesn’t mean you can step into her shoes. Stop it. (Also, it’s pronounced like this: yahss-MEEN. With a Y. I won’t mind too much if you mess up the rest of it, as long as you start it off with a Y. The J is blasphemous. I’m just sayin’.)
2. For the person who found this weblog through a Google search for utilizing nap time, you made me laugh. You might appreciate this old post about my undergrad days. I would have graduated with a degree in napping, if I could have. If you want to get all technical about it, I followed that Google search and found an article entitled, How To Design The Perfect Nap. The author takes six well-timed naps per day, can you believe it?
There were a bunch of other things I was going to discuss with you, but it takes a lot of effort to get back into the swing of updating a weblog after two months of being away. This is tiring stuff, Blogistan. I think I need a nap now.
I’m en route to Toronto for the RIS conference, wasting time in Charlotte, NC, during my little (5 hours long!!!! multiple exclamation points!!!!) layover, thanks to a delayed flight. Canada, why must all travel to/from your frozen tundra drive me insane?
We haven’t talked about hair in a while, so this would probably be a good time to tell you how, a couple of weeks ago, I decided my sideswept bangs needed to be trimmed. What I had forgotten, unfortunately, was that - as I was explaining to Iffat recently - I should never be trusted with scissors and self-haircut jobs. [Iffat has a great post about hair, too, by the way.]
I sent out an email to some girlfriends. Subject line: My crazy bangs, via Photobooth.
ahhhh, look what i did, yaars!
i was trying to keep my bangs sideswept, but shorter, so i trimmed, but trimmed too fast and cut off a chunk at once, much shorter than i had meant for it to be. so then i had to cut everything the same length. so much for sideswept. HAHAHA now i look *SO EMO*!
good thing my hairS grown back hella fast.
thought you guys could use some laughs, especially those of you who are stuDYING for finals.
hijab was invented for crackheads like me. it is a fact.
-yazzO
My email spawned a GMail thread with 56 replies, many of which were hilarious.
Ayesha1: Yaz, wow. Yeah hijab definitely works for you! =)
rehes: aaaahhahah :) really just laughing cuz i see you about to bust out at yourself in the last photo… your bangs themselves look nice and neat!!
Ayesha2: DUDE! I love you so much!!!
I really didn’t expect you’ll send me not just one, not two but THREE pictures of THE BANGS. haha, AWESOME yaaaar!
you should print and keep it under your yearly album kinda thing (if you don’t have one, make one) and then show it your kids - they’ll certainly enjoy more than you :D
and I love your bluish-black hair colour, it reminded of the time when I tried purplish-black, which looked really nice.
Thanks much for laugh, rockstar!
B: It looks sultry, I say. Now you’re gonna have to pin or gel your bangs back so you don’t have little pokers on your forehead. But then again, your wrap is on so tight, it might just do the job.
Somayya: YAZ! i like them! i think you look fabulous! :) i say, let the bangs out! :)
rehes again: oooh bangs hanging outta the hee-jab….now that is scandal in a box!!!! :D me like. hahahah
The Sister: I love it! You look like you’re 3 or 4 again! When I get home I’m pulling out your baby pics so we can compare! haha
EMO!!!!
Straighten the longer bangs on the side and then it’ll look even cooler!
B again: Bangs out? NO, NO!! Then I will have to declare you a hojabi.
Ayesha2: HOJABI! hahahhaha - what a blasphemous oxymoron. Be a sport, B, her bangs would be like tiny tassles of her scarf ;)
B: No, I can’t allow her to let her bangs out… It would ruin her [professional] reputation.
H: She has a reputation???
Anjum: Giiirl, you should not be allowed near scissors again. Thank God for your hijab. I’m sure you’ve heard all this before.
Zana: hahahahahahaha i love you!!!!
your facial expression is a killer! i was laughing so hard and i’m not allowed to laugh hard at the moment in case my ear drum perforates but yaar it was worth it!
you’re so cute and you look so adorable.
Zana again: this fringe (bang) is really ‘in’ in London, hun, seriously. I think it looks so funky. I can’t believe how different you look minus hijaab, i always wondered what your hair would be like under those gorgeous cheereh you wear…. and it’s kinky shinky hawt!
A few days later, I sent Somayya an email with a couple of more photos: This is what it looks like these days. [After a morning spent listening to the brother tease me for looking like the Beatles.]
The response: “You look like SPOCK!!! from Star Wars!”
I think the Spock look was because of the crazy eyebrow action. I have awesome eyebrows, in case you didn’t know. They’re also supposedly fierce and tyrannical. Must be the Pukhtun in me.
And, then, a [guy] friend caught my bangs references on facebook and messaged me, all amused, with: Did you give yourself a Betty Page hairstyle?
The hell is Betty Page? So I did some research. Err, yeah, they kinda are like Betty Page’s bangs. Good to know.
Moral of the story: Keep scissors away from kids. Especially those who are left-handed.
The end.
"Akhtar de umbarak sha!" as we say in Pukhtu.
And "Eidi ni umbarak hoviya!" as we say in Hindko.
And I’m not quite sure what the Urdu-speakers say. Probably something simple and formal like, "Eid mubarak!"
Oh, wait, that’s Arabic.
Can’t say it any better than I did last year: May we accept the challenges that come our way with just as much fortitude and patience and willingness for personal sacrifice as that displayed by the prophet Abraham. May this Eid, as well as the upcoming New Year, be a beautiful and blessed time for you and yours. Amen to that.
Last night, the Pakistani satellite channel, ARY-Digital, showed the Hajj pilgrims, a sea of white, at Arafat and Muzdalifah. I watched the television while eating dinner, the volume turned up loudly so that the pilgrims’ invocation echoed throughout the house:
Labayk Allahumma labayk, labayka la shareeka laka labayk. Innal-hamda, wa’naimata, laka wal-mulk, la shareeka lak.
—
“Here I am at Your service, O Lord, here I am. Here I am at Your service and You have no partners. Yours alone is All Praise and All Bounty, and Yours alone is The Sovereignty. You have no partners.”
For the first time, I felt a little bit of a loss, a sense of regret that I didn’t make it there this year, that I didn’t push to go after all - or, to be honest, even care to - that I ultimately didn’t end up in either of the two places I thought most deeply about this year, neither Sarghodah nor Saudi.
Inspiration for the following post comes from two entries Baraka posted recently - one on authentic prayer - hers is intimate, raw, and powerful - and the other on Mary Oliver’s poem about praying (from which comes my post title). These first ten days of the month of Dhul Hijjah, and particularly the day of Arafat, are about reflection and prayer, so I thought I should work on addressing God less like my co-worker/gossip buddy/He Who Can’t Get the Weather Right and more like, well, God. Serious stuff. Here we go.
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Dear God, most Merciful, most Compassionate -
On this weblog, I mostly address You as if You’re the rockstar next door, or the buddy I’m planning on hanging out with after work. And the reason for that is because when I think about who You really are - the vast, timeless expanse of Your Being - it hurts my head to reflect on it for too long. I am short, Lord, You know this: Instead of straining my eyes and my mind, I look up only as far as I can crane my neck, look down only as low as I can bend my head, in hopes of remembering You through the things within my limited reach. Let me feel Your presence with clarity, even in the midst of this world that distracts me from worship and remembrance of You, and especially in the midst of the distractions I deliberately create in order to distance myself from you.
Those whom we’ve loved, and lost to death: grant them - grant us all, when our time comes - light and spaciousness in the grave, and another fulfilling life in the Hereafter. May their memories live on within us, and around us. Grant me a reunion, someday, with the grandfathers I never knew and the grandmothers that I only knew in those painful, ailing last years of their lives. Let me find them vibrant and whole, glowing with love and good health. Let me find my ancestors singing those songs and reciting those poems, some of which I heard with my own ears, most of which I didn’t, all of which we never got to write or remember. How is it that You sent us to be born into a tradition of farmers who lived rough lives of poverty and disease, yet sang songs and wrote poetry effortlessly? Let their wisdom and endurance be an example for us.
Give my salaam to Imran. Tell him I said, I thought of you today in the midst of this Hajj season, and I miss you, my friend, even though you’ve now been gone for nearly as long as I knew you. But it feels like longer, and your photos still make my throat tighten, make me catch my breath, remind me of a life lived fully in the service of others, as every life - as my life - should be.
Teach me to be a joy to my parents. No other people probably love me as much as they do; no other people make me gnash my teeth as much as they. For all my frustrations, though, I realize how shattered my life would be without them. Grant me the grace and patience to be the daughter they need me to be. Grant me the wisdom to be the sister I should be. Let us continue forgiving, even after we hurt each other over and over. Instead of silence and tension, may we always find joy with one another.
When the time is right, grant us partners and significant others who are good for us, who are a mercy to us, who are loving and tolerant of our flaws and imperfections. All that is noble in my father (the hugs, the highfives, the singing, the exuberant culinary experiments, the boundless generosity) without the negative (the sulking, the silence, the unyielding “my way or the highway” approach). I ask not for perfection, but for patience, for compromise and compassion, for mutual respect.
I am grateful to have finally found, in these last several years, a Muslim community to belong to - the two masajid I love for different reasons, the people and prayers that make those spaces sacred to me. Thank You for blessing me with halaqa sisters who understand the benefits and struggles of being an American Muslim, who love ice-skating (they drag me along) and synchronized-jumping on the beach (they let me take dozens of photos) and scouting for the next meal while leaving “I <3 FOOD" scribbles in their wake. Every bite is a shared blessing, each milestone is something to celebrate together. I pray they remain in my life forever, and that we hold halaqas in Jannat al-Firdaus.
I am sometimes accused of being aloof and reserved - more often than I would like. It is shyness more than anything else. But allow me to understand and be comfortable with my own vulnerabilities. There is no shame in sharing sadness, a broken heart, tears in front of people, laughing at myself, acknowledging my difficulties, asking for help.
Please teach me to be okay with asking for help.
Often, I nonchalantly shrug off the need for remorse, repentance: I’m not a bad person. I forget the myriad ways in which I have wronged You, others, myself. In my pride, I tell myself I have no regrets. But I do have two. Remind me of them constantly, so that I may learn from them to appreciate the generosity, kindness, and open-hearted forgiveness that has been granted me when I least deserved or reciprocated it.
Grant me focus. I fumble and stumble in decision-making. I make up my mind one day; mutter, “F*ck it,” the next; abandon my plans and curve around into another direction on the third. I start too many things I don’t finish. Worse yet, I stick to things nearly to the finish-line, then abandon them at the last minute.
Help me to pay attention when people are conversing with me. Open not only my ears - and You know my ears need help! - but also my heart. And let words come easily to me, so that I may write about You and myself and people I know - and those I don’t - without fearing I will do us an injustice.
Help me to be just, always.
I thank You for the sunshine, for California, for my beautiful, beloved, open-armed Bay Area - my first home, and now, after all those years of packing and moving, still my favorite home. I think “they’ve” got it all wrong; there must be some mistake - Hell must be icy cold, bone-chilling cold, not fire and flames. I would rather not be in a hell of ice. If heaven has snow, let me, at least, feel like it’s 70F. This weather thing - I just can’t stop bothering You about it, I know. I’m not a bossy person, but weather always brings out the dictator in me. You know how the hills and the sky looked on this day? Something like that would be nice.
Thank You for good health, for feet that enjoy meandering walks lacking destination, for eyes that crinkle when they smile. Let my hearing remain stable. More than blindness, I fear complete deafness, but I would preferably have neither. Yet I thank You for the humility and empathy - and the rockstar-red hearing aids and superhero lip-reading skills! - that the moderately severe loss has given me. If there is one thing I am to be tested by in life, this one is easy - let this remain it.
Teach me to be comfortable with who I am. Compliments catch me off guard. Who are they talking to? I duck my head, shuffle my feet, change the subject. You, of anyone, remember who I used to be, who I still am. Years later, it’s the same shyness, awkwardness, and insecurity, just hidden under a more stylish wardrobe and straighter teeth. There are days I feel like a fraud. I am not as pretty, smart, sociable, accomplished as people think I am. But I thank You for always reminding me where I come from, who I come from, who I used to be.
What I am so far, let that be good enough.
And then let me seek to improve myself in the things that matter. Make it easier for me to read the Quran regularly and to perform the prayers on time and with concentration. Grant us all the best of this world and the next, and keep from us all things which will not benefit us. On the Day of Reckoning, let the Prophet recognize us as part of his Ummah, his community, and the general community of Believers. May our parched mouths drink water from his hands.
I thank You, over and over, for the beautiful people You have allowed me to know, the smiling strangers with whom I’ve momentarily crossed paths, the individuals who have moved me through unexpected conversations, those who have trusted me with their stories, the friends You have brought into my life, the family and relatives with which You have blessed me. Be compassionate and loving to them as they have been to me, be merciful to them as You have shown mercy to me.
Hold us all in Your Hands. Permit us to sit at the foot of Your throne. Let the light of Your presence blaze in our eyes, cleanse our hearts, purify our souls.
Help us see in one another what we see in You - perfection and beauty beyond telling.
Sometimes when I am bored or tired or stressed, I hit “compose” on a new email window and type nonsense. Like this one at work today:
This is one example of the ways in which we can collaborate on projects based around shared issues and common concerns. There are a multitude of ways in which we can work together to further the scope of such efforts across the Bay Area. This decreases significant misunderstandings and combines our emerging efforts with existing ones, so as not to ‘reinvent the wheel.’ What is wonderful to witness is the emergence of a new movement that finalizes the —
What the hell that means, I have absolutely no idea. It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s a complete free-flow thing, so get off me.
Today was a typical Monday - the kind of day that makes you disgusted that the week has only just begun, with no end in sight. I’m still trying to catch up on the hundreds of work-related emails that piled up while I was off on vacation, gallivanting around in the cold [more photos to add, and I will write about the trip, too, I promise], so I rescheduled this morning’s meeting to tomorrow instead, and breathed a sigh of relief. And then I remembered a conference call I have on Wednesday. I don’t understand why we can’t just conduct business through text-messaging, dammit. Is that really too much to ask?
These days are all about drama and stress, but it shall all be over by early January. Or, at least, that’s the way it plays out in my head. For some reason, Desi music cheers me up, so I was good to go after a lunch break spent listening to Kawan, Ali Zafar’s Sajania, Do Anjaane Ajnabi [from the Vivah soundtrack], and this one, which I know only as Track05. Anyone familiar with who that is? [I’m the only person I know who is so “Ehh, vatewer” about YouTube; I rarely ever click over to the website when people share links with me, and I can’t believe I just spent so much time looking up all those songs for you all. Geez freakin’ louise, yaars.]
Speaking of lunch, I bought a sandwich from the deli at the grocery store (and two jars of gelatin-free marshmallow cream! and cinnamon rolls with frosting!) and then, after waiting in line for an interminable amount of time while impatiently shuffling my feet, I realized that I had already paid for my items. I’m losing it, yaars. LOSING IT.
I came back to the office to find a package from someone I had met at a conference in Chicago, back in October. He sent me dark roast Ugandan coffee, organic and fair trade - “Not Just a Cup, But a Just Cup” - from the Thanksgiving Coffee Company. They are rockstars, and you should buy coffee from them. I love the wonderfully-written, conversational bio of the CEO, Paul Katzeff, here [you have to keep clicking through; there are several pages]. The coffee they sent me is called Mirembe Kawomera:
Mirembe Kawomera (mir´em bay cow o mare´a) means “delicious peace” in the Ugandan language Luganda. It is the name of a Ugandan cooperative of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian coffee farmers.
You can read more about the coffee cooperative on their own website, where Paul also shares the story of how the Thanksgiving Coffee Company agreed to become the buyer/roaster for Mirembe Kawomera:
I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I was the recipient of this call because 40 coffee roasters heard this story and declined to purchase before tasting samples. They were focusing on the product so they missed the story. For me the story was inspiring at minimum. People of faith finding hope through coffee. Choosing cooperation in a world torn up by intolerance. I said, “OK, I’ll buy it.” “How many sacks do you want?” she asked. I could hear in her voice her plea, her compassion, her fear, her innocence, and her dedication, all born from what was much much more than the experience of the starry-eyed girl I had assumed she was when I first picked up the phone.
[…]
On the plane I remember thinking how 40 coffee roasters had to miss the significance of what these people had done and were doing in order for Thanksgiving Coffee to get this opportunity to support what in our time could become one of the greatest stories ever told - and through the selling of the coffee, to strengthen and build a cooperative that could become a shining light of beauty for all to see and be inspired by.
On July 12, 2005 the coffee arrived in the US after six weeks “on the water.” An arrival sample was sent to us. We “cupped it” and it is good, real good, and it fills my heart with hope.
Did I mention you should support this effort? Buy some coffee, rockstars.
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Update: I asked a friend, who knows his Desi songs, about the Track05 referenced above. Because he likes to push his luck in not getting fired from work, he downloaded the song right then and there, and checked it out for me. Verdict: “It’s a remix of Channa Ve, sung by Kunal Ganjawala, but originally a Pakistani song.” So, there you have it. Get yer own YouTube links!
I need to clear up all the tabs I have open in my laptop window, so I’ve decided to share with you all the things I’ve been viewing and reading today (this is, of course, just a sneaky way to use this as a placeholder post of sorts and bookmark all my new favorite links).
Enjoy!
- You Don’t Mess With the Zohan: A Mossad agent fakes his own death so he can move to New York and become a hair stylist. [Am I the only crackhead who really wants to see this movie?]
- A weblog dedicated to photos of Abandoned Couches: Such a simple and lovely concept
- Somehow, I came across Imran Malik, who goes by Rockistani on flickr. Of course I had to click over! I followed the profile link to his band, the Fatsumas. My favorite bit was the weblog post entitled, A New Member [no permanent links; scroll down to the November 5, 2007, post, currently third down from the top], where Imran talks about the vintage combo-organ he found in Islamabad. I smiled so much (and bounced up and down in my chair a little, fine, I admit it) when I realized that Imran’s YouTube link to the previous owner of the organ was none other than Sardar Ali Takkar. I love Takkar [YouTube doesn’t have a link to one of my favorite Takkar songs, Lakha Wakhte De, stupid YouTube], and that link, among other things, just made my day.
- The Fatsumas’ website led me to their MySpace, and then somehow to the MySpace page for Arif Husain/Brewnote. I first discovered Arif’s music through the Sepia Mutiny post last year, and loved his cover of the Smiths’ There is a Light (you can download mp3s through his MySpace page as well as his website). He also has an introspective and thought-provoking weblog, which I’ve spent too much time reading this evening - including this post about his music teachers, and this one entitled Behind Dumpsters. Check out the photos on Tuesday Afternoon Snack, with its reassuring caption that translates to, Mother, see, I am eating well.
The free courses, funded by the British Government, proved so popular trainers had to turn away up to 15,000 women. Even so, at current capacity (teaching 18 women at each location in three batches of six, limited by the number of laptops) more than 2,000 illiterate women will become literate each month.
[…]
The experiences of the women provide a vivid argument for the importance of literacy. Asha is married and in her twenties with a two-year-old son. She was completely illiterate. At the end of the 30-day course, she said: “My husband used to consider me good-for-nothing because I was illiterate. He would never include me in taking decisions. But now that I can read, our whole relationship has changed. My husband treats me with respect. I am now for the first time a part of the decision making in our house.”
When I wrote an article for this website a few months ago called On Muslim Antisemitism, a Muslim friend of mine remarked, “What you say is true, but why do you have to air our dirty laundry?”
I stared at her in disbelief. Did she really think that the world was unaware of our dirty laundry?
The sad truth is that too many people think it’s the only kind of laundry Muslims have.
[…]
A lesson for mainstream Muslims: Whenever you don’t offer a theory of the problem, someone else will. When there is a vacuum of information about a hot topic and you don’t fill it, other people will aggressively move in.
Too many mainstream Muslims believe they have only two options in the face of the current discourse on Islam: angry indignation or stony silence.
I believe there is a third way. It is what University of Michigan Professor Sherman Jackson, one of America’s leading scholars of Islam, calls ‘Islamic literacy’.
[…]
To mainstream Muslims everywhere: When we act and speak with compassion and conviction and knowledge, even about our ‘dirty laundry’, we are following the straight path of our faith, educating those with genuine questions about Islam, marginalizing people with destructive agendas, and doing our part to build a world based on understanding and respect.
- xvm’s photo, Welcoming the new year on Lac Poisson, has been my favorite one today. The experience sounds so beautifully, mind-clearingly awesome, although my little Californian self is shrinking in dismay from that vast expanse of snow and ice.
- And, finally, two heartwarming articles to round it off all rockingly:
1. Karma Kitchen’s Stories of Raw Generosity, from the CharityFocus weblog (because I haven’t mentioned lately how much I lowve these folks)
2. The ACTS OF KINDNESS section of the Toronto Star
I’m in the midst of making lists and running errands, and my brother just sent me a text-message:
Keep the twenty dollars, I’m taking your sunglasses. :) muahaha!
He’s referring to the orange-brown aviator sunglasses that the Lovely L Lady convinced to buy (for eight dollars, for the record) from an accessories stand on Durant, in Berkeley. It’s always difficult for me to find sunglasses I like, but it made me smile to know we have the same taste, and so I’m letting him keep them. While oversized on my face, they fit him perfectly.
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I fly out tomorrow night for my Hindku-speaking love N’s wedding in Ottawa, where I get to meet the rockstar Maha on Sunday, too! And then, a quick swing by DC to stalk the DC contingent of the All-Star Crackstar Squad, Baji and SI and 2Scoops, for a couple of days.
It shall be grand - except for that little thing called WINTER in Places Where it Snows. My little California self cannot bear to wear shoes (or boots!) for prolonged periods of time, and so this entire trip worries me a bit. But, I figure if I can manage to survive December in Ottawa and DC, I can do anything.
Meanwhile, if you have any tips and tricks for How to Be a Rockstar & Navigate Cold Places Without Catching Hypothermia, please do let me know. I need all the help I can get. So far, my little post-it list contains things like:
Of, course, I could always go with Hashim’s advice: Personally, yaar, just stay indoors when you are there.
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I am looking out the front window while typing this post. A UPS truck just parked at the foot of our driveway. A man got down from the truck, reached over the black wrought-iron gate, picked a persimmon or two off our brilliantly-colored tree, then got back in the truck and drove away. My neighborhood makes me smile so much, and so do my parents, who have cultivated this open-handed generosity for decades, so that all who pass by know they are welcome to the ripe fruit off our trees, without needing to formally ask.
It’s so beautifully sunny here. Lovely California, what ever will I do without you for nearly a week?
NEW YORK—In what is being called a seminal moment in Internet history, a rare weekend post by 25-year-old blogger Ben Tiedemann on his website bentiedemanntellsall.blogspot.com rocked the 50 million-member blogosphere this Saturday. […]
“Wow, what a special treat this was for all of us,” said Talking Points Memo head blogger Joshua Micah Marshal, who, along with all other bloggers, checks Tiedemann’s site every day just in case something monumental occurs. “I thought I was going to have to wait until Monday to find out if Ben decided to put [the shelf] in his bedroom or the living room. The pictures were great, too.”
