Winter Waves

Cape Elizabeth, Maine, USA

From Winter Waves

Mom and Dad have this regular circuit they like to make with guests, a circuit of the homes of the rich (think Pebble Beach, California, with colder weather!) and the rocky beaches of Cape Elizabeth, south of Portland, Maine. Not only do they take guests, but they also go themselves to practice the delicate art of wave photography.

They've been telling me about it for more than a year, and I was even doing a little wave photography of my own in Egypt. It's a challenge to get the sense of scale, the feeling of movement, and frame it all in an interesting way. But the waves I was trying to capture on the Red Sea and the North Coast had none of the scale and excitement of the ocean swell on the Maine coast.

Not only was the swell bigger, but there was a strong wind blowing offshore. As the waves broke into the wind, the spray would curl back over the froth in a plume. It was incredible, and good quality fun with the folks! Clearly, Dad thought so, too!

Christmas In Maine

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Christmas Eve, Christmas Day

After 3 years of "celebrating" Christmas in the Middle East, I managed to make it home to my parents' house, the family home in Maine. With Grandma and Grandpa living across the road and Nana, Auntie Di and my cousin Pete up from Massachusetts, it was a full house for our annual waffles-with-raspberry-sauce-and-whipped-cream Christmas brunch.

In the afternoon, Auntie Viv and George showed up from giving Christmas Sunday services up north, and there were more gifts to open. More importantly, Auntie Viv had brought half of Christmas dinner with her, and it was soon time to sit down for more food and merriment.

Merry Christmas!

My Space

Brooklyn, NY, USA

From Brooklyn Abode

Last weekend, I went out and bought photo collage frames to fill with photos of friends and family, Thursday I finally bought the brads, and yesterday I got out the hammer and made space on my walls for my collages. So, I thought it was time to give you all a glimpse of my little Brooklyn home. And I do mean little!

This is our kitchen, and it's the only common space in our apartment! Not that I'm complaining. It's really quite perfect for Olga and I, and we hang out quite a bit in our little kitchen, but if we were ever to have company over, much less want to have a gathering of any sort, I'm not sure where we'd put people! In my office?

I was trying, with these bookshelves, to divide my bedroom into a sleeping space and a working space. In Egypt, I used my bed as a chair to sit at my desk, and that blurring of the lines between work and sleep was not always especially productive. This is somewhat of an improvement.

And that's pretty much the whole sha-bang!

Kids Say....

Brooklyn, NY, USA

Today, my student K says, "Miss Converse, can I come to your wedding?"
"Who says I'm getting married?" I reply.
"Well, of course you're getting married! We know you have a boyfriend!" she says, with that sassy slide of the head my students do so well.
"What would make you think that?" I asked, smiling inside because it's patently not true.
"Well, you always dress so nicely!" she says.
"That's called professional," I reply.
"No, that's not professional," she insists. "You dress that way cuz you're going on dates after school!"

So thank you, K. Now I know what's wrong with my personal life. I don't have a boyfriend because I dress too well. Perhaps if I dressed more like a slob, men would think I was actually single...?

America's Tahrir Moment? Well....

Manhattan, New York, USA

I woke up this morning to a call from my cousin Hannah.  She's helping to organize an Occupy Worcester movement, and wanted to know if I could translate their flier into Arabic for her. (No problem!)  I told her it was exciting to see people out in the streets, even if I wasn't sure what they were protesting for, exactly.  "I don't think it's as important what they're for," she said, "as that they're out there practicing direct democracy."

Perhaps that's why I dragged my feet this morning. The very idea of protesting for the sake of having a protest seemed so hollow to me, especially after my experiences of the last year with the Egyptian revolution. Before the April 6 and Khaled Said youth movements ever stepped out into the streets of Cairo, they had a definite plan of what they wanted and how they would get it. They studied with Velvet Revolutionary Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, and spent months deciding on their demands, their tactics, their slogans, even what they would chant in the streets was scripted in advance.

So when I got down to Zuccotti Park this afternoon, I was not impressed. After standing on Tahrir Square, shoulder to shoulder with several million Egyptians chanting "The regime must fall" and "Christian and Muslim, hand in hand," I guess my standards are unreasonably high. For me, though, the few hundred hippies, college students and veterans I saw with their cardboard boxes and dreadlocks were not as impressive as they'd been made out to be on the news.

If you add up all the protestors across the country, from Boston and Worcester to Oakland and San Fransisco, you probably have a substantial number. There's credence, too, to the stories I've heard on NPR comparing the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Tea Party. They're probably comparable in size and coherence given the number of months they've been protesting ... it's just that Occupy Wall Street made it into the national headlines within weeks of starting, and the Tea Party took months to garner national attention.

But who do they represent? Who are the 99%? I've spoken to a number of activists who work with impoverished communities of color in New York City and elsewhere, and they all voice the same frustration: The people of color who are really suffering from the failing economy are not able to "occupy Wall Street," can hardly even follow it on the news, because they're working three part-time, under-the-table jobs just to cobble together a meal every day. The people who are in Zuccotti Park may be unemployed, underemployed or frustrated with their circumstances, but they come from circumstances that allow them the luxury of coming to Zuccotti Park. This isn't Egypt, where the entire economy screeched to a halt because even the bodega owners and French fry friers were leaving their jobs to rally on Tahrir Square.

I am pleased to see the unions rallying to the cry. I saw striking Verizon workers in Zuccotti Park, and while they are fortunate to have the luxury to even be on strike, the issues that they're striking for are so similar to the Occupy Wall Street complaints that they have real legitimacy in my eyes. I was delighted that the United Federation of Teachers marched with Occupy Wall Street, because so many of our students and their parents are among the truly disenfranchised ... but here's my beef with them: Why would the UFT march on a Tuesday morning? I would have gladly marched with them, but ... I had to be at school, teaching!

So, yes, Hannah, it's important to practice direct democracy. And yes, to that guy at Occupy Boston who had the sign reading, "It's not that we're disorganized, it's just that America has so many problems!" But if this movement is going to have a real impact, it needs an agenda, a message, a unifying purpose. Within 3 days of occupying Tahrir Square, the Egyptian protestors had a list of 11 core demands, despite being a leaderless movement.  That doesn't mean that Egyptians only have 11 complaints about the way Mubarak and the National Democratic Party ran their country into the ground ... it just means they had a platform for their first steps.  Where are Occupy Wall Street's core demands?

Changed Everything

I woke up early this morning with the thought, "This is the Sunday I'm finally going to make it to All Souls UU Church and make some friends in NYC who aren't teachers." Then, I remembered that today was September 11th, and decided I didn't really want to get out of bed after all, let alone leave the house and have to face New York City in full mourning.

Maybe it's because I wasn't in New York on that day, wasn't even in the United States.
Maybe it's because of all the time I've spent in the Middle East since then and the collateral damage I've born witness to in that time.
Maybe it's because of all the harassment and difficulty my Muslim and "brown" friends across the country and the world have suffered in the interim.
Or maybe it's just because I was raised to be such a radical humanist.

I'm so tired of America putting on this big parade about how unfortunate we were to be attacked on 9/11. We've been attacked ONCE in SIXTY-FIVE years by foreign adversaries. How many nations around the world can say that? Or as my friend Ginny noted on Facebook today: 

9/11 death toll    =      2,819. 

US casualties in the wars that followed    =      6,686. 

non-US casualties in the wars that followed  =  148,000. 

It's not that I begrudge the families of the dead their mourning, their anger, their remembrance. They suffered. I would never deny them acknowledgement of that.

But I really struggle with the self-indulgence of people in Florida and California and Kansas and everywhere in between who think their lives have been irrevocably marked by what happened in New York, DC and Pennsylvania.  Did the bombing of Sarajevo change the world?  Did the fall of Mogadishu change the world?  Did the massacre on the Pearl Circle change the world?  Did the blockade of Gaza change the world?  And these are just the tragedies of the last 65 years that I can recall off the cuff.  How many hundreds more are there that we never even heard about?  It seems so arrogant to think 9/11 is so much more important.

But, of course, it's not arrogant. It's fact. 9/11 did change the world, starting a chain reaction of a magnitude we never could have imagined, which resulted directly or indirectly in massive deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, civil war in Yemen, liberation in North Africa, increased oppression in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, increased Kurdish autonomy, God-only-knows in Iran....

And maybe that's what makes me angry most of all ... that we have such overwhelming power to impose our judgements, our grief and our consequences on the rest of the world.

You're Not American

Manhattan, NY, USA

This morning, on my way back from a Pakistani wedding reception in New Jersey last night that was a delightfully glittering, delicious affair, I was doing my best to navigate through weekends on the subway. There are so many cancellations and track changes that it can be very hard to maneuver. I'm beginning to get the hang of it, but the poor Israeli tourist I met was having a much more difficult time working it out.

So there I was, trying with little success to get him to his cousin's house in Queens. "Where are you from?" he asks. "You're not American."
I protest that I am.
"But you have an accent that's not American," he insists.
"Oh, well, I've been living in Egypt and Jordan for the last few years," I offer.
He starts backing quickly away from me. "I'm your neighbor, but I speak Hebrew, not Arabic!" he calls back down the corridor at me.

I think that's the first time a complete and total stranger has ever been afraid of me!

After Irene

Fryeburg, ME, and North Conway, NH, USA

We took a ride around the area to see the hurricane-swollen rivers of New Hampshire ... already at least 7 feet down from their crest!

Recognizing White Priviledge

Bronx, NY, USA

We were just talking in class today about what Michelle Martin has been talking about all week on NPR's Tell Me More. To be honest, we've been talking about it all summer, with some in our program having to really restrain themselves not to let talk boil over into rage. Is there still racism in America? Is there racial inequality? Is there still (or again) segregation in our schools? Is it inevitable? What can we do about it?

Of course there is. More black and Latino boys are diagnosed with Emotional Disabilities and ADHD than white boys, certainly more than girls. More black and Latino boys drop out. Why? Is it because of the culture of their communities, or the culture of their schools? We used to think it was the culture of the communities. Kids in urban, ethnic, poor neighborhoods grow up with families that don't care about them, fill that gap with gangs and crime, and end up in prison or dead, right?

We watched "Waiting for Superman" today and we've been reading about the KIPP Academies and Uncommon Schools all summer long, and the reality today is that we cannot blame where they come from for the problems our kids have in schools. Schools across the country, many of them urban charters in low income, high crime neighborhoods, are proving that black and Latino boys, given the right instruction, can pass state exams at the same rate as white children. (Now, only about 20% of charter schools are more successful than your average public school, so I don't want you to think "Waiting for Superman" is right about that ... but he is right about a lot of things!)

Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, features prominently in "Waiting for Superman," and he's proven that schools and communities have to work together, from birth through college, to achieve wide-spread success. That doesn't discourage me, though. I'm more convinced than ever that there are things I can do in my classroom that will have far-reaching effects. (I'm thinking about Kawthar and her sister...)

It makes me see my own youth and young adulthood with a lot more humility. Yes, I was most definitely discriminated against in grade school because of my lack of religion and because my parents were from out of state. I thought I was such a persecuted teenager. (What teenager doesn't?) I had it so easy. I know this; I knew it before I came to New York City. I learned it in the Peace Corps, in Jordan, but all along I said, 'Being poor in those places is so different from being poor in America!' And it is. But I didn't really realize until this summer just how difficult it was to be a poor black or Latino kid in America. And I've no doubt I'm only seeing the beginning of what will be a very enlightening--and probably heart-breaking--journey.

Why Art Is Important to Education

An Example You Have To See To Believe!

Brooklyn, NY, USA

I was doing research today about some of the New York City schools I've been told have significant Arab-American and Arab immigrant populations, where I think I have particularly relevant skills to offer. One of them is William McKinley High School. I found this video on their Website, and it is simply amazing! These kids understand history, English language arts, art theory, and the way that they intersect on a level I'm just not seeing in my summer school teaching experience. That's without even mentioning the images of amazing whimsy, like the image of Phaeton in a chariot pulling the sun across the sky in which the sun is the red bell of the fire alarm system.

This is precisely why we need to fight for room in school budgets for arts education.

Another Theorist on Collaborative Teaching

Don Tapscott was speaking on NPR about re-designing the way universities deliver education, but I think this applies all the way down to pre-K. I noticed that he said again and again that our teaching methodologies are "the very best that the Industrial Revolution can offer," and are completely out-dated. Of course, this is exactly what Sir Ken Robinson has been saying for years, and I agree completely.

It's the same theory behind Karl Fisch's "Shift Happens" meme that went viral four years ago. The Fall 2009 update is equally enlightening in the age of social networking. (Amazing how 4 years just became an "age" in that sentence....) We need to start envisioning 21st Century education. I'm not sure what that means yet, but I'm on a quest to find out!

Comic Differentiation

NPR reported today on something that's been on my mind for a few days, an often overlooked tool for teaching and encouraging literacy.

One of the challenges in special education is this ubiquitous, vague term we call "differentiation." (It's funny think back to myself in Peace Corps teaching two whole Saturday seminars for the Jerash Directorate of Education on the term, and today feeling like I haven't a clue what it means.) Essentially this means varying your instruction to play to the strengths to as many students in the classroom as possible. This could be playing to the strengths of visual, aural, kinesthetic and interpersonal learners. It could mean providing support to weak readers, children who struggle to concentrate and self-regulate, students with processing disorders, as well as high-achieving students.

In our public schools, especially in high need schools like the ones where we as Teaching Fellows will be teaching, one of the biggest problems is with reading. Students in NYC schools tend to be at least 3 grade levels behind in reading. A surprisingly high number of high school students are still reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level. Add to that the significant population of English Language Learners, and you have a serious problem across the curriculum.

But more daunting than students' inability to read is their disinterest and resentment of reading. This is where I think the graphic novel could be a high quality tool, and I know that my friend Nicole Bailey and other researchers are really pushing the literary and literacy value of the graphic novel. They're not just superhero stories.

There's Maus by Art Spiegelman about his father's journey to and survival of Auschwitz, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. There's Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi about growing up in Iran during and after the Iranian Revolution. The Book of Genesis Illustrated by legendary comic book artist R. Crumb generated lots of headlines in the past year for its absolutely faithful but surprisingly unique adaptation of the first book of the Bible. In short, comic books aren't just for kids and nerds anymore, and I'd like to incorporate them into my classroom in the fall as part of that all-powerful, pervasive imperative to differentiate instruction.

Field in the Sky

Manhattan, New York, USA

Today I met up with CASA Fellow Andrew. He told me that since I "live in New York City now," I should decide where we would go. I'd recently seen this video about the founding of the High Line Park in Manhattan, and posted it to Facebook. Immediately, our mutual friend Emily had said it should be one of the first things I did in NYC, so I decided on that as our excursion for the day.

Even though it rained, it was an excellent choice. A little piece of wild 3 stories up in Manhattan. It was an excellent opportunity to walk, talk about the Egyptian Revolution and Andrew's trip to India, see some of the interesting architecture that's 5 or 6 stories up in the city, not to mention the Hudson River and the Empire State Building. There were some vendors set up along the way. We got these excellent rhubarb sno-cones and reminisced about our childhood Snoopy sno-cone makers.

I'll be going back again on a sunny day with my camera. Next year, I've decided to get there early on the morning of the 4th of July to watch the Macy's fireworks on the Hudson from there.

Holy Cleavage, Batman!

New York, NY, USA

As I've written before, reverse culture shock strikes differently every time I come home. I'd been mentally preparing for my return to the United States for months before it happened. This time I thought I was ready for American fashion, tank tops and short skirts. I'd even walked around Cairo with Mohannad in a knee-length skirt on my last night in Egypt. I was even prepped for Daisy Duke's.

What I wasn't ready for at all was cleavage! As much as 6 or 8 inches of it sticking out of necklines. Not just teenagers and young adults in full mating plumage, but professionals in pencil skirts and business-like pumps. Even my colleagues at the Teaching Fellows, where we're all on probation for the summer and "professional dress" is one of our measures of success, sometimes surprise me with the amount of cleavage they see as professional. I realize I'm not in the Middle East anymore, but we're still teaching teenagers, half of them hormonal boys, the other half girls in search of good role models.

Nor was I prepared for the prevalence of tattoos. Not just the discreet little shoulder blade or ankle tattoo, or the ubiquitous tramp stamp. I'm talking professionals on the train with tattoos on their forearms or the inside of the wrist, on the collarbone, behind the ear, curling around the bicep below the hem of a modest short sleeve.

I feel so out of touch!

"Reading Problems Are a Public Health Problem"

New York, NY, USA

We're getting to the more detailed part of our look at disability in the schools, and I found this video while working on my homework. It's an amazing look not only at what it's like to be a child with a disability, but also what it's like to be the parent or sibling of someone with a disability.

In the second half of the program, we're introduced to the tragic story a young man in Boston from whom this post gets its title. It was startling to me to hear that some states estimate the prison space to build based on third grade reading levels! It's a controversial measure, but you can imagine how it might have come into being. Imagine being 2 or 4 or 6 grade levels behind in reading, and failing all your exams, just because you're not getting the right support for an emotional or learning disability! It would be enough to anger even the most even-tempered of us!

Bronx: First Impressions

Bronx, New York, USA

This morning I went to two interviews in the South and East Bronx, both of which involved long bus rides through the borough, and I had a lot of time to think about the area.

We're all familiar with the Bronx's reputation from the 1990s. That's probably why one recruiter at a recent DOE Job Fair said, "You're willing to teach in the Bronx? We will definitely be getting in touch with you!" I must have looked surprised, because she said, "I'm serious! We have such a hard time finding teachers who are willing to work in the Bronx!" I know my father likes to tell about a story he'd heard on NPR about an experiment leaving cars broken down on the Cross-Bronx Expressway (I95), and finding them stripped of everything but the frame within 2 hours. That's not even to mention the reputation for gangs, violence and crushing poverty.

It's not like that anymore. Crime rates are way, way down all across New York City since the bad ole days of the 90s, and that goes for the Bronx, as well. In fact, there's some serious gentrification going on around here. It makes sense. No one can afford to live in Manhattan anymore, and even Harlem, Washington Heights, and Brooklyn are getting too expensive for the middle class. So people are starting to move into the Bronx.

All along the 6 line uptown to my neighborhood, for example, are these huge brick buildings that I want to know a lot more about. I think they must have been built in the early 1900s as tenements or workers' housing, because they have these really interesting sculptures on their corners, almost Socialist-Realist in style. Now, though, they're condominiums with solidly middle class restaurants and stores like UNOs and Macy's in their lowest levels.

From the bus today, I saw a wide range of homes: rowhomes, duplexes, apartment complexes, and even one small neighborhood that was all one-story ranch houses with half- or quarter-acre grassy lawns. Surreal, really.

The Bronx is also much more multi-cultural than I had expected. The small businesses in my neighborhood - restaurants, halal groceries, 99 cent stores, hair and nail salons - tend to market to a Latino, African-American or Bengali customer base. I think almost a quarter of the people in my building complex are Muslim by the women's headscarves, mostly Arabic-speaking as far as I can tell, though I've heard Turkish, lots of Spanish, and some languages I can't identify.

Actually, as I walk down the street, I'm often reminded of when I taught that course on Islam at "nerd camp." We read an essay from Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out about Hispanic women in the United States converting to Islam in significant numbers, putting on the hijab and all. When their families protested, these women said that the "uniform" that Hispanic girls have to wear to be respected - short skirts, tight shirts, teased hair, lots of make-up - was just as restrictive but far less respectful than the hijab. It was an interesting academic inquiry for me, but I didn't know how true it was. Now, though, I've noticed quite a few young Muslim women, wearing hijab and speaking fluent Spanish.

I think I'll be glad to live here!

Techniques of Teaching

Bronx, New York, USA

I've been hearing about Doug Lemov's book for more than two years, and it's been on my "to buy when I'm back in America" list since I first heard it mentioned. I almost bought it yesterday, but decided I should wait till I got my first paycheck in September ... or at least the last of my summer stipend!

It's lucky I didn't buy it yesterday, because today all 450 New York City Teaching Fellows received a copy of Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov!

Obviously, I haven't read it yet, but this is what I know about it: Doug Lemov was, by his own admission, not a great teacher. So he set out to study, in a quantitative, scientific manner, what makes a great teacher. After thousands of hours of observing teachers who just seemed to know what it took to get all students to succeed and close the dreaded achievement gap, he distilled 49 techniques. Use these techniques and know your subject matter, he says, and your students can't help but learn! Since then, his Uncommon Schools network has trained hundreds of teachers to use these techniques, and they have achieved unbelievable successes. I want to be one of those great teachers, and now I have this great tool (or 49 of them) for getting there!

Also at today's Welcoming Event we saw performances by special needs students of a variety of former Fellows, and listened to inspiring stories from city administrators and successful Fellows. One of the latter read, with tears in his eyes, one of my favorite poems by Taylor Mali, Undivided Attention: What All Teachers Want and Few of Us Ever Get:

the one where she works herself sick

Bronx, New York, USA

Well, it may have been the pollen allergies and the shock of the climate change between Cairo and Maine that actually made me sick, aggravated by the pace at which I've driven myself to complete all the prerequisites for the New York City Teaching Fellowship I began this week.

In any case, I'm now almost completely over almost two weeks of a left tonsil and ear infection (only the left!) and almost completely recovered and ready to start blogging again! (As my very busy Fellowship schedule permits, I hasten to add!)

Wish me luck!

Lobster Leavings

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Lobster Dinner by Dad

After our lobster dinner two nights ago, we left the shells of the lobsters and steamers on the back patio till we could take them out to the compost ... and then we didn't take them to the compost. Yesterday I noticed that the cats had been in the lobster shells ... but this morning it turned out not to be cats! Lots more pictures on the Web Album!
...and then I moved to the Bronx, leaving lobsters and raccoons alike behind me for awhile!

Dad Does Lobster

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Lobster Dinner by Dad

Mom had told me that Dad had become quite the professional at cooking lobster, so I asked if it was in the budget to have a lobster dinner. "Is that what you want for your birthday dinner?" asked Mom. My birthday's not for another month, but I'll be in the Bronx then, and won't have enough time to come to Maine. I said yes, and made sure to have my camera to document the process.
My brother was right when he said that Dad had an impressive apparatus for boiling lobsters. It was a fun process to watch as he steamed the clams (steamers) first, and then the lobsters themselves.

And, oh, was it yummy! Happy birthday to me!

Monson and Sturbridge Tornado

Monson & Sturbridge, Mass., USA

From Monson Tornado

Yesterday and the day before, my father and I got to see two different sites along the trail of the tornado that ripped through the greater Springfield, Mass., area this past week. There's a glare on the pictures, because they were taken through the window, but they turned out surprisingly well, catching a swath of damage, including a house in Monson with a FEMA tarp and it's roof next door.

Computers in Education

If a computer can do it better than a teacher, get rid of the teacher!

- Arthur C Clarke
to Sugata Mitra

(I don't mean to say that I agree with Mr. Clarke ... but it's an interesting idea!)

Despite the mountain of work I have left to do before I start the New York Teaching Fellowship on the 15th, I keep getting lost on TED again. It's so easy to just keep clicking on video after video. I started showing my artist mother my perennial favorite on education, Sir Ken Robinson's "Schools Kill Creativity", because I knew she'd agree totally with it.

Then I discovered an awesome guy, Salman Khan, whose Khan Academy is transforming the way kids learn math - and now other subjects - across the world, and particularly in the Oakland city schools where he's been running a fascinating experiment in teaching and tracking student understanding.

So I was telling my friend Sean about this when I surfed his couch last week, because it seemed like the perfect job for him when he said he wanted to use his computer skills to help technology do something transformative in the classroom. Sean jumped right up to grab his laptop. "You have to see this guy!" he said, and headed for TED.com to show me another visionary in technology transforming learning, Sugatra Mitra.

I know there's more of this out there. As the famous "Shift Happens" videos have been expressing for years, we are training our students for careers that haven't even been invented yet, and the old models of education aren't going to work. Moreover, we can't even begin to appreciate what education will look like in 10 years, but these and other innovative education and IT thinkers are working towards something really transformative. Getting lost on TED this week has only fed my enthusiasm about my "new" career in education...

...so I'm calling it "research" instead of "procrastination"!

Lady Slippers and Lupines

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From Lady Slippers and Gardens

I almost finished my Intro to Special Education online course today, and rewarded myself by taking my camera out in the sunshine to take pictures of butterflies and flowers, especially Grandma's pride and joy, her lady slipper orchids.

First Rain Since Cairo

South Bridgton, Maine, USA

From First Rain Since Cairo

It doesn't rain much in Cairo, and when it does, the result is more depressing than cleansing. Cairene rain just brings down the smog and dust in the air, swirls it around a little with the smog and dust already settled over everything, and leaves the city a streaky sort of smudgy. So just as I vowed back in April, when I saw that it had begun raining today, I went out and danced in it! Never mind the lightning, the tornado warnings.... I wanted to feel the rain on my face, my shoulders, my outstretched arms. I wanted to spin around under the raindrops and revel in the cleansing power of a good country rain. And so I did!
Then, because everything was so fresh and beautiful, especially in my mother's extensive flower gardens, I grabbed my camera and went out to document raindrops on leaves and flower petals.

Metro Logistics

Boston, Mass., USA

An alien, shown the ticket-taking systems of the New York or Boston subway systems versus Cairo's Metro would have to conclude that Cairo had the more efficient system. Half the ticket-taking machines in Cairo are marked as entrances, half marked as exits, and there are 2 or 3 times as many of them as in New York or Boston, where the ticket-checking machines are simultaneously both entrance and exit. Less efficient, right? Our alien would be wrong.

Put people in those machines, and the result will surprise our curious ET. In Cairo, delays and snarl-ups are common on your way in or out of the Metro, and I don't just mean the (frequent) instances of machines jamming and eating your card. But New Yorkers and Bostonians just slide right through their un-intuitive system. I didn't see a single snarl-up in more than a dozen rides on those subways in these last couple days!

Don't get me wrong. I think it's fantastic that Cairo has a Metro at all - the only subway system on the entire African continent! It was just my first real episode of culture shock on this return to the U.S.

A Different Souq

Khan al-Khalili, Cairo, Egypt

This evening, around 10pm, Mohannad and I went to Khan al-Khalili for a little last-minute souvenir shopping. Ordinarily Khan al-Khalili would be hopping. Six months ago when I was there with my cousin, the place was thronging with tourists. Two years ago when I visited as a tourist, only months after a deadly bombing right there in the market, you had to elbow your way through the crowd.

By 10:30 last night, the sidewalks were mostly rolled up. Virtually the only shops open were the ones with TVs around which Egyptians were crowded to watch Zamalek Football Club get their asses kicked.

This is the way of the world in a volatile region of absolute dictatorships and grinding oppression. Revolutions and other violence happens. Other kinds of major crime - and even most petty crime other than corruption - tend to be much lower in police states like Egypt, Jordan and Syria, but that doesn't make headlines like revolutions, terrorist attacks and American invasions. When such major events do happen, though, we have long memories.

A few months later, the tourists have begun to trickle back - probably more in the Sinai than in Egypt proper - but in such small numbers that the tourist economy is seriously suffering. Khan al-Khalili should never be so quiet that the empty alleyways fairly echo.

"The Look," But Different

Cairo, Egypt

My Egyptian friend Mohannad's been squiring me around Cairo for the last couple of weeks, and there's been a striking difference in my experience of the city. I still draw as much attention as I usually do, but it's a very different kind of attention.

When I walk alone or with other girls, we get stared at by everyone, cat-called, lots of "Welcome to Egypt!" and Borat-esque "Verrry niiice!", occasional groping, and sometimes even more explicit invitations. My favorite is the plaintive whine, "Why won't you answer me...?" which has got to be the stupidest-ever follow-up to a terrible pick-up line! (For a few precious weeks during and immediately after the revolution, we encountered almost none of that, but it was too good a utopia to last!)

In the last few days, walking around with Mohannad, I've really clued in to the differences between then and now. At first, it seemed like the harassment was gone entirely, but eventually I noticed that we were receiving just as much attention. Only this time, it wasn't just baldly appraising looks and frustrated glares at me, but also at Mohannad. What's he done to get a foreign girl like that to walk around with him? they seem to be thinking.

Back at the beginning of the year, I remember Heather and Kirsten talking about this same phenomenon, when they were seen out with their Arab husbands. If the Egyptian Revolution often felt like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s civil rights movement, Cairo sometimes feels like MLK Jr.'s South, where interracial relationships are rare, and draw a lot of uncomfortable attention.

Graffiti for Grades

Cairo, Egypt

From Art School Grafitti

Six months ago, you could be arrested and detained in Egypt for acts of graffiti. In fact, I met a guy who was. But like so many things in "the New Egypt," that's changed now. Starting with the slogans scribbled haphazardly on every conceivable surface during the revolution, and evolving to the murals painted across downtown during the post-revolutionary youth clean-up, a graffiti and street art culture is growing here in ways Egypt hasn't really seen before.

(The Arabic word for elephant is pronounced "feel.")

A wide range of graffiti has emerged, from beautiful Arabic calligraphy to simple humorous stencils.
Yasmeen introduced me to these beautiful murals painted around an art college in Zamalek. Perhaps not technically graffiti, these murals were designed, drawn to scale and then painted by groups of students. There are a lot of interesting themes and symbols here, but I'm particularly struck by the appearances of Facebook and Twitter, and the use of English.

"7rya" is SMS-speak for "freedom." Notice al-Jazeera's logo, too.

Sure, it's reductive and misleading to call the January 25th movement a social media revolution. Facebook, Twitter and the youth alone probably couldn't have toppled the regime. It does, however, reflect a reality of a certain segment of Egyptian youth who consider themselves citizens of the knowledge century, of a global marketplace of ideas and values. Where that leads them, leads Egypt ... Allahu 3alem [God knows]. All I know is that I can't wait to see where Egypt and the Middle East finds itself in ten years!

Palestinian Solidarity

Cairo, Egypt

Yesterday we received a message from the US Embassy in Cairo that included the following:

May 15 is the anniversary of the Palestinian-Israeli territorial demarcations and is considered to be a significant date in the current Palestinian political situation involving Gaza and the West Bank.

Several Egyptian political groups have announced plans to commemorate this anniversary by staging large-scale prayer and protest gatherings, characterizing Friday as Unity Day. On Friday after mid-day prayers, there are plans for a large demonstration in Tahrir Square, with a number of protesters planning to proceed to the Israeli Embassy near Cairo University and to the Israeli Ambassador’s residence in Maadi....

On Saturday, May 14, political activists plan to converge on Tahrir Square and begin a march toward Suez, where they will link with groups from other Egyptian cities and then continue their march toward the Rafah border crossing.

The embassy probably thought this rally - as opposed to the usual Friday protests - would be of particular interest to Americans in Cairo because it can be a very short couple steps from pro-Palestinian to anti-Israeli to anti-American. As Lara Logan knows well, it only takes one person shouting "Spy!" to make a whole crowd turn on you. It certainly gave me pause.

Fajr Prayers on Tahrir
I was woken up in the wee hours of this morning to the news that thousands had started a Facebook page since yesterday, planning to have pre-dawn prayers for Palestine on Tahrir Square, led by prominent Salafi sheikhs. Since it involved defying curfew, my friend didn't go, but video was on YouTube almost immediately showing at least a couple thousand praying

By the time I did go down to Tahrir Square today, it was the biggest crowds I've seen on Tahrir Square since mid-February, though I understand the crowds were as big on April 9th.

Mixed Messages
In light of the violence and church-burning on Wednesday, there had been a call to make today a rally for Egyptian unity between Christians and Muslims, and there were plenty of signs to that effect. However, calls for solidarity with Occupied Palestine largely drowned out pretty much everything else, and there were plenty of other causes, too.

"The people want the opening of the Rafah Crossing, permanently and completely."

"The people want peace and security,"
i.e. new faces in charge of the Egyptian security forces.

The flag of Bahrain on the left, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as Hitler.

This one's calling for reform of traffic laws!

...and many more!

"Egypt and Palestine, one hand."

Third Intifada?
What concerns me even more amid these protests and calls for a Third Intifada on Sunday, the 63rd anniversary of the first Palestinian refugee crisis, is the ambiguity about who is calling for these actions and why. Egyptians are calling for a Third Intifada in an excess of revolutionary zeal, and I have to admit to a wild hope that Palestinians might have their own success in the Arab Spring, but are Palestinians themselves calling for an uprising? If they are, I haven't heard.

In fact, a spokesman for Hamas said today that it was "not necessary" for Egyptians to come to Gaza. On the one hand, this could be a neat way of avoiding responsibility. On the other hand, though, Hamas has taken bold steps this month to form a coalition with Fatah and work politically and peacefully towards greater Palestinian unity. An Intifada now would undo everything that's been achieved in the last couple years.

(Thanks to Emma for the photos!)

Egyptian Sectarianism: How Bad Is It?

Cairo, Egypt

The Corniche is closed again in front of the Media Ministry because of protests, primarily by Egypt's minority Coptic Christians, in response to the worst sectarian violence in months that broke out few days ago in the working class Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba.

Word spread like wildfire in Imbaba that Abeer Talaat, a Christian woman, had converted to Islam, and when church officials found out, they had kidnapped her and held her prisoner. Angry mobs gathered, churches were burned, rocks were thrown, shots were fired, a dozen were killed, a couple hundred wounded, and all because of an unsubstantiated rumor. My colleague Andrew wrote about it in his blog immediately after, but more information is coming out every day about the incident and its causes.

I'm sorry to say, it's not an unprecedented occurrence in Egypt, but present circumstances make this particular case especially interesting and different in important ways.

History of Controversial Conversions

This image has been everywhere in Egypt in the last year. Her name is Camilla Shehata. She was born a Coptic Christian, but she famously converted to Islam last year, and was allegedly kidnapped and imprisoned in a monastery by the Coptic leadership. Hers is not the only story like this, but certainly the most famous face. During Ramadan last August, large protests were held by Islamist and/or Salafi groups outside the Husseini Mosque demanding Camilla's immediate release. They wanted her to go on state television and state personally and unequivocally her current religious preference, and to confirm or deny her incarceration by church officials. Although she posted a video on YouTube, it was not until the night of the Imbaba violence this week that she went live on television to tell her story. Throughout the intervening 9 months, the name Camilla Shehata has become a rallying cry for both Muslims and Christians, far beyond the significance of her individual story.

For Americans, it may be difficult to understand what the fuss is about. In present-day American culture is enshrined a very clear personal freedom of religious choice, and children turn away from their parents' religions all the time. In fact, for many, it's almost a right of passage. It can be a painful strain on family relationships, but it's not a matter of public scrutiny.

But imagine for a moment that you're a Native American in colonial or ante-bellum America, and your children are being lured and even kidnapped away by the government to schools where they are forced to perform the rituals and profess the beliefs of Christianity and forsake the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. You're already a tiny minority population, and shrinking, in a society that's often hostile towards you, and where there is a blatant government policy to use religious conversion to obliterate your cultural uniqueness. How far will you go to preserve your religion, your individuality, your identity? The US Government has since apologized for what is now acknowledged to be cultural genocide, but it took America centuries to reach an uneasy compromise with the Native Nations among us.

Many Egyptian Christians feel that they are under the same kind of threat, while the Muslim protesters feel that they are bringing enlightenment to the damned. But then again, if it were merely a matter of religion, this would be a different story.

Flotsam of the Former Regime
Yesterday the Supreme Military Council announced further arrests in the case of the church burnings and violence in Imbaba. They have released information that at least one but perhaps dozens of the arrested individuals, both Copts and Muslims, were members of the former ruling party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), what's become known by a revival of an antiquated phrase faloul an-nizam [flotsam of the regime]. The man who first opened fire is allegedly the Coptic owner of a cafe next to the church. The assumption is that he did so to instigate some sort of sectarian conflict.

Rumors abound that former NDP members are trying to cause a fitna (sectarian civil war) between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, presumably in order to create the kind of chaos that could bring the NDP back to power. For years, former Pres. Mubarak used fear of sectarian violence, anti-Christian attacks, fundamentalist Islamist involvement and jihadi terrorism to hold on to power. "Support me," he told the West, "or have Muslim extremists ruling Egypt!" It seems that some remnants of the former regime are hoping that the same fears might bring them back to power again.

Kul-oh waHad! / One for All!

Gazeerat ad-Dahab, Nile River, Egypt

From Island of Gold

Rachel's been doing research on some political issues on this island in the Nile in the south end of Cairo. Today she took me along to see it. It was one of the best afternoons I've had in Egypt, sipping tea with villagers. I almost felt like I was back in Peace Corps!

The Island of Gold is a strange little anomaly in the middle of Umm ad-Dunya (the Mother of the World, aka Cairo). These low-lying islands used to disappear under the yearly floods, but since the construction of the Aswan Dam, they stay above water all year, and several generations have now lived there. But the government refuses to provide them water, electricity or sewage treatment. For the most part, it seems they may be okay with that. As one woman told us today, "We grow everything we eat. Some of our neighbors don't farm, so we give them what we grow. Kul-oh waHad! [We're all one.]"

On Their Own Protest Movement
The Ring Road (Cairo's Beltway) passes over the island, but there are neither on- nor off-ramps. It's just a place to stand. At one time, there was a stairway down, but it was too often used to steal goods and livestock from the island. For that reason, and because of their lack of resources, a number of years ago the islanders finally had enough. The entire island - men, women, children - climbed up that staircase and filled the bridge. They stopped traffic in both directions on one of the most important roads in Cairo. State Security forces were sent in to disburse the crowd, but according to the woman who told us the story, they were afraid to shoot at women and small children, and refused. (After what happened at the end of January, we were a little surprised at that.)

The government removed the staircase leading down to the island. There's still no public services on the island, but there haven't been more protests on that scale.

On the January 25 Revolution
People from the island did go down to Tahrir Square for the January 25 Revolution this spring. At the time, I imagine, they were as inspired as anyone. Now, however, they're not so happy. Every time the topic came up, there was nothing but disgust for the chaos that still reigns in many parts of Egypt: crime, lawlessness, and instability.

On the other hand, as Rachel noted, they've been building like crazy across the island, since a long-standing building ban on the island isn't being enforced any more.

Flora and Fauna of the Island
The logic for the building ban is that the islands have been named as nature preserves. Rachel asked, "But where's the nature?" I was inclined to agree, since nearly every possible inch of the island is being used for agriculture. But the longer we were there, the more I began to notice the wildlife, mostly birds. I saw Hoopoes, at least two kinds of egret, Pied Kingfishers, crows, fish, and a rust-red dragonfly.

And, miraculously, I made it 6+ hours in Egyptian villages with only one person asking "Why aren't you married yet?"

More Bird Shots

Cairo, Egypt

From Springtime in the New Egypt

I think this time I got a picture of an immature egret, not a bittern.

I also caught the elusive little moorhen on land, preening, and the mature egret with a snack.

These little interludes with waterbirds and my camera are the highlight of my long walks to and from class!

Ding, dong! The Warlord's Dead!

Cairo, Egypt

"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

- Mark Twain

It's not that I'm happy Bin Laden the man is dead. I would have preferred a trial, public humiliation, and a long prison sentence in Guantanamo or some Saudi shit-hole of a prison ... but even as I write that I'm conflicted, because those words descend to a level of vindictiveness that I don't want to live by. In the words of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Standing By the Side of Love:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar,

but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.

Through violence you may murder the hater,

but you do not murder hate.

In fact, violence merely increases hate.

So it goes.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness:

only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

(Thanks to Carter for the quote.)

No, mostly I'm happy that Bin Laden the symbol and the excuse is dead. I'm listening to Talk of the Nation's coverage of Bin Laden's death on NPR, and one of their Middle East correspondents was talking about how Arabs see this as an end to a decade of collective punishments of the Arabs and other Muslims for the actions of Bin Laden and a few other fanatics. Afghanistan, Iraq, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, Pakistani drone attacks ... all of these look from the Middle East like punishment for 9/11, the USS Cole, the African embassy bombings, the first WTC bombing.... Now, finally, we've gotten rid of the man who, for the West, represents the deepest evil that Islam has to offer and too often blinds us to the great good that's present in Islam. True, Zawahiri and al-Masri are still out there, and hundreds of others bent on wreaking havoc on the West and Western installations in the East, but the biggest, baddest wolf is gone. It doesn't mean we automatically withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, close Guantanamo and put it all behind us, but it's a powerful step in the right direction.

At the same time, I think it's important to put this event into context. While Americans are making a big deal out of this attack, Arabs have other things on their minds. Hundreds are dying in Syria every day, and in Libya, standing up to mad, relentless dictators. The outlook for Yemen is not much better. Egypt and Tunisia are busy rebuilding - or, I should say, building - nations they can be proud of. Jordanians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Bahrainis, Saudis, Lebanese ... they're all busy with extremely important and emotional domestic issues.

Osama Bin Laden is barely relevant here anymore, and the single desperate act of a fruit vendor in Tunisia deserves more credit for that than a 10-year, trillions-of-dollars manhunt. The youth of the Arab Spring are disciples of Rev. King and Václav Havel of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, with whom some of the April 6 Youth studied nonviolent resistance techniques. Even when they were being attacked with horses and Molotov cocktails on Tahrir Square, Egyptian protesters were chanting "Peaceful! Peaceful!" to hold themselves and each other to a philosophy that rejects violence, even in retaliation for violence. Disciples of Osama Bin Laden still exist, but a much larger portion of Arab youth have found a far more powerful and effective means of expression.

Easter Brunch

Cairo, Egypt

From Easter Brunch

Emma and Erin gave up sweets for Lent, and Erin fasted altogether for the last two days of Lent, so by Easter Sunday morning, they were starved for sugary treats! We took advantage of that as a chance to get together. In the tradition of the Potluck Crew, we made ourselves a potluck Easter brunch, heavy on the sweet stuff: cinnabuns, Danish, fruit pizza with frosting, baked oatmeal.... It was a feast worthy of the holiday!

Some Egyptian friends of Emma and Erin joined us, too, and we had long conversations about the revolution, about Egyptian universities, about our families that tend towards the intellectual and eccentric, and all kinds of other fascinating things. Also, we had a ton of fun playing with their little cousin. Erin gave him the toy gun Andrew gave her for Christmas. First he played "shoot the girls" and then we played "hide the ammo" and "hide the gun" and ultimately, "hide and seek." Hilarity ensued!

Free Cupcakes!
Yesterday, a knock on Emma's door revealed a delivery from NOLA Bakery, the fabulous cupcake shop in Zamalek ... a delivery she hadn't ordered and wasn't expecting. This morning, she got a call from the bakery, apologizing for delivering the cupcakes a day early. A gift called in by her parents in Vermont, the cupcakes were supposed to be in lieu of an Easter basket. So, to apologize, the cupcake shop sent her another half dozen cupcakes on Easter Sunday, free of charge! Yum!