I’m thinking we can enjoy the rest of the visit in Iran, now that Habib is out of jail. Nasser’s wedding has been rescheduled and the family is happy. I feel more relief than joy though I do allow myself to fill intermittent cracks with happy feelings. Still, I’m guarded. Still, I’m nervous though it […]
I hang on to my emotions and, I guess, my sanity by a very fine thread. Days, weeks at this point have gone by after Habib was arrested, after the books’ removal, after meeting the innocuous former Savak detainee held for three years. Still no Habib! The energy around the whole thing, whatever all that […]
1977 Tehran, IRAN—As far away from my world, further than the 10,000 miles suggest. The first 48 hours after Habib is arrested I’m still in a sort of shock-yet-arrogantly-pissed-off state. It becomes clearer however, that there’s little I can do to impact the situation. I am a stranger in a strange land after all. POWERLESS […]
WHAT PLACE IS THIS? We arrive at Mehrabad Airport after hours and hours in the air. It’s sweltering hot, I don’t know, maybe 100 degrees or more? We walk from the plane, down stairs and into the terminal and get into a queue for passport and visa checks. Even inside it’s hot! All the smells […]
Good Lord. We’re living longing and surviving better in the 21st Century than ever before. But Lordy it is not always so easy for folks with disabilities and questionable financial resources. A Hymn to Being Old Now, in no way is this any sort of complaint. Rather, it is a kind of hymn to those […]
I ran away from home to find myself! At 71 years of age. In full possession of my faculties though not much grace in the action. For several years now, I’ve needed to make a different decision about how I was living as an independent woman, one who has needed assistance from time to time, […]
The concept of Parallel Process is much like what you think it is—the idea that one idea, thing or event mirrors another reflecting back and forth making their concepts similarly obvious and relatable. This is how I’ve come to view the physical “heating up” of the earth’s atmosphere parallel to so many political and societal […]
One just can’t know the loss of personal freedom, how it feels, what it lives like until you get older and feel the slow leak of capabilities shrink. I sure didn’t. I watched my own mother’s loss and instead of looking closer at what was going on (or God forbid, asking her) I got frustrated […]
I am a direct descendant of Robert Cushman, the principal financier of the Mayflower. This essentially means that he gathered investors to support the endeavor to sail for freedom to worship in the Puritans self-proclaimed tradition. It was the Americas they spied: an untamed large hunk of geography that promised opportunity—-Freedom to live and worship […]
No one ever believes they’ll only have today as their last day of life on the planet. Instead, while clearly knowing we don’t live forever, it’s a concept that is only that: a concept. Until of course, it isn’t! FROM WAR TO WONDER AND BACK I heard a TV host (Nicole Wallace) when describing Brad […]