A Mother’s Story

Barbara Timm, or BT as she prefers, shook her head in disgust. “I didn’t like Jimmy Carter from the very beginning,” she said. “I didn’t vote for him. I voted for Ford. Jerry was a Michigan man and I lived then in Milwaukee. It seemed right to vote for a Midwesterner, one of our own.” President Gerald Ford, it should be noted, died on December 26, 2006 at the age of 93. Four months later, I interviewed Barbara Timm, along with her son Kevin Hermening. The interview took place at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, Arizona, BT’s city of residence since the late 1980s. Timm, Hermening and I – and some fifty thousand baseball fans – attended Opening Day of the baseball season, the Milwaukee Brewers versus the Arizona Diamondbacks>>>

McCain is right

I know that it was the US who invaded Iraq in the first place and I know that it was the US whose huge mistakes in Iraq caused the deaths of many innocent Iraqis (far fewer than those killed because of Muslim extremists), but this is also another reason why the US has the moral obligation to stay in Iraq and create a stable democracy and a prosperous society. It can be done, but it may take time. It can be done because also Iraq has oil. It is as simple as that. But without the US keeping the thugs, terrorists, and foreign troublemakers at bay, it is very possible for all the losses that have occurred so far to be in vain>>>

This is where I call home

"I don't wanna go there! It looks too ethnic. I don't like this! It tastes too strange." I have heard these sayings before and their hundreds of variations, putting down whatever that is out of the ordinary, whatever that does not line up with the mainstream. I am bored with the mainstream. It is a light cream color over white. It is lifeless. You look and probe but you find nothing to excite your senses. Boredom weighs over your entire being and you feel deader than a dead man, being busy to be dead, while you, being bored to be alive, if you catch my wandering drift>>>

Sin

I have sinned a rapturous sin
in a warm enflamed embrace,
sinned in a pair of vindictive arms,
arms violent and ablaze.
In that quiet vacant dark
I looked into his mystic eyes,
found such longing that my heart
fluttered impatient in my breast>>>

Salt of the earth

In Shidmehr’s vastly imaginative novella, Shirin and Salt Man, a modern day Iranian woman named Shirin plans to elope with the mummy of an ancient salt miner preserved in brine and discovered in 1993 in Iran. She is not as fortunate as Nezami’s Farhad. Her insanity is not from love, but from neglect. She married the abusive Khosro, and now remorse has driven her to adultery with the pile of salted bones she imagines to be Farhad. Shidmehr’s Khosro is not a king like Nezami’s Khosro. Though the romantically obsessed heroine married him for his kingly name, he really just works at the ministry of Islamic Guidance >>>

The Presence

God has no desires. I do. I, who makes love with her flesh and writes by hand so that you read me and recount the neon lights alongside Vakil Bazaar: the courtyards, old shops, and late night summer breeze through the mosquito nets. After all what is life but a wretched mirror if I don't write for you and you don't read me? Beloved! Your presence may be a swelled pulse, a modern consumption, or a collectible antique to possessive souls but to me it is the manifestation and the revealing compassion>>>

Freedom of hate speech

Hey people...you want to become famous and get attention? Well, it seems that one of the easiest way to fame in 2008 is Islam bashing. Recent attempts at fear mongering, hate, and uneducated characterizations of Islam include the newly released Dutch films, "Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders' film about the Quran" and the cartoon, "The life of Mohammad," by Iranian-Dutch politician Ehsan Jami. Both of these directors are public figures in the Netherlands. It seems that anyone who once dreamed of gaining fame can simply generalize Islam as a hateful religion and make negative and offensive comments>>>

چوب حراج بر مهمترين اثر تاريخ

به دنبال تخريب های هر دم افزاينده ی ميراث های فرهنگی، تاريخی و طبيعی ايران، و به خصوص آثار غير مذهبی آن، اکنون خبر فرود آمدن بلايی تازه بر سر اين آثار به گوش می رسد. خبر در مورد فروش و واگذاری محوطه های فرهنگي، تاريخی، و طبيعی برای استفاده هتل دارها، کارخانه دارها، و ديگر مراکز تجاری خصوصی است. در واقع روند خصوصی سازی خودسرانه ی ميراث های فرهنگي، تاريخی، و طبيعی مردمان اين سرزمين، که دير زمانی است صحبت آن اينجا و آنجا پيش می آمده اکنون شکلی واقعی به خود می گيرد.>>>

Integration

This is a view of our building which is a small part of our social housing block. The apartment where my wife Michelle and I live, is situated on the ground floor in the middle, living on our right is Shaikh Ahmed and his wife Rahima from Somalia, their son Mokri and their daughter Shokri. To our left, until 11 o'clock Friday, was A.Gabrielle, indisputably Italian. On top of him, until last Wednesday, was Tara who is (was) a Finish-Hungarian lady. Next to her, above us, is Gallagher the Scott and next to him, right above Shaikh Ahmed’s family lives Morad, his wife Amina and their children, from the former Yugoslavia. Above Morad lives Jens (chairman of the board) with his twin children and on top of Tara lives 55 years old Mo’tamed and between him and Jens, in no. 8, lives Irene a lonely divorced woman>>>