Once Upon a Country, A Palestinian Life

I finished reading Once Upon a Country by Sari Nusseibeh. I bought this book shortly after it was published in 2007. I had read a review in the Saturday CJ and it sounded interesting. I’m always interested in personal history across the context of larger world events. It resided on the stack by the door for two years. Every time I had the choice of reading it or something else, I chose something else; even reading the Pentagon book first. I started reading the first of the month because I knew it would be in my mind and not talking to anyone daily, I’d not be bringing up the latest few pages in conversation. When I started the book I had read the fly leaf and reviews on the back cover and expected something that was hate filled and of violent speech. That’s not what I found.

First is the history of a family that has lived in Israel for over 1300 years. A family that owned a lot of land and was with its extended members spread all over the area. The child Sari is educated in all the best schools in Israel and England and America. But that in itself is not remarkable. Many people are well educated and revert back to stupidity.

The Nusseibeh family are trustees, according to tradition, for the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This fact would in itself be a story, however it is presented as a fact and not discussed, except to reveal how dedicated his family has been to peace in Jerusalem.

The story was that there were many Arabs living in that country who wanted peace, and have wanted it for a long time. It seemed that every time when the moderate peace lovers made contact with people on the other side who also wanted peace, the powers in charge of each side did whatever they could to force the other to use violence and repression to keep them from making peace. People were arrested, assassinated, put out of their homes or marginalized in some way that took what influence they had away.

An example was Ariel Sharon who supported the unpopular cleric Sheik Yessin. This man was the root of Hamas. When the peace lovers wanted Yasser Arafat to endorse non-violence from Fatah, he would just let the impetus sit and not react either way creating a void and power hungry factions stepped in.

Arafat was a man who was paranoid. However he got power he lived most of his life working to keep it. He paid off each faction that would try to supplant him. Therefore he was standing on an ever moving platform whose purpose was to keep balance, and thereby no real progress was made because all effort was put into keeping balance and remaining in power.

Sharon was similar in that he supported the most violent faction and at the same time, continued to push building settlements thereby forcing the Arabs into walled off communities. The Israeli Wall is similar to the Berlin Wall and will ultimately be as ineffective. Sharon gained power from being a reactionary to Arab violence which he had stirred up in supporting violent factions. A circle without end and the same reaction to the same push.

All through the story, Sari refers to Palestine. The thing is that geographic area has been known by that name for over a thousand years. Arabs and Jews lived in the country peacefully for over a thousand years. The Crusades, the British Mandate and Zionism as well as other efforts to “capture” Jerusalem is what brought violence to the country.

I’ve thought from the beginning of my consciousness about Israel and Palestine, that the Israelites have treated the Arabs as someone they can victimize. The Arabs have spent their efforts to get power yet there is no effort to be cohesive in their debate with Israel. Why one base of power when you can have 15! Therefore nothing of a single purpose gets done. Countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey try to get factions of Arab Palestinians to working for those countries, who after all will only use them as an arm of violence to kill the Jews in Israel.

Neither side of this conflict wants peace at least not the politicians. Sari's belief, and I believe he is right, knows the real power is with the people becoming the force that makes their governments make peace.

Sari is a philosopher in thought and action. He speaks of the will of the individual and how nothing is accomplished without that will. He is right.

I wonder if he will write another book as this one does not speak about the 2006 July war, nor his mother’s death or the country now that our administration has changed.

A Day of Blessing For Memory

Today is lovely in Kentucky. This is a day you remember and bring to mind when it is February and most days are unpleasant. I admit that when it's winter here and it's the tenth day of below twenty temperatures, I start to believe it will never be fine weather again. This is not reasonable and of all things a person who is sane must be is reasonable when thinking of weather.

I was out early today and as usual when driving up the hill a bunny ran ahead of me. I see this rabbit often when I look out the back window onto the groundhog field. Is it aware of me? Does it linger on the grass there listening for the sound of my truck engine? I think it does.

Ground hogs have returned to that field again this year and they are fat. I see a small one or two also, so they have reproduced a new family. This is a hopeful thing and as I walk out to sit on my bench under the shade of trees that volunteered to grow here, I watch the skies for hawks. Those predators cleared the lot of bunnies and ground hogs two years ago.

On Sunday I also saw a yellow finch perched on a fallen limb under the large maples at the edge of the ground hog field. I never have my camera when I should.

This is a poem I wrote that my muse told me was good and I should publish. I started a folder for good poems I’d written yesterday:

I spent my day today
Filling my mind with
Stories and articles
And poems and
Conversations with
Strangers I will never meet,
And really would not want to.

All I want now is to empty
Myself at your feet and
Talk into the late late night
Over good whiskey and
Bad light, though I don’t
Mind seeing your face here.

The music of life is so much
Sweeter when entering the
Ear of a magnificent other,
Today or any day.

May 22, 2006

Forgiveness

I always forgive. Even if they haven't the sense to be sorry. I forgive because I don't want the burden of a grudge. Now that doesn't mean I'm going to put myself in their life.

There is evil in the world and if you cannot avoid it, you deal with it and move on. Revenge is a dish best served cold and sometimes a true and honest forgiveness of a person who wronged you is a kind of revenge, as they know they'd not forgive you in a similar circumstance.

I would want to be forgiven by anyone I wronged. I believe God's forgiveness is the same as the forgiveness of those people.

I came across this poem I wrote some time ago:

In that moment when I know
My death is as near as my skin,
I know I would not allow it to
Overtake me as it planned to do.

The numerical odds on death
Increase for people who live
Their lives running down
The steep grassy hill, without

Any thought that there are
Trees rocks. danger at the bottom.
The numerical odds on death
Shrink for people who take

The stone steps lined with
Hand rails, down the hill;
Who sit on a bench along the
Way to rest before continuing.

Though my belief that we are
In charge of our death has
Not a single thing to do with
The numerical odds of things.

May 31, 2009

The Every Man of Tom Joad

In an article reprinted in the Sunday edition of the Courier-Journal in Louisville Kentucky, Rich Wartzman’s Los Angeles Times’ article of the 17th “The enduring power of Steinbeck’s classic” was astute in drawing parallels between our country today and the United States during the Depression of the 1930’s. http://www.montereyherald.com/commentary/ci_10485505

To quote a couple of points: “For many, polls show it’s becoming increasingly clear that the public sector has a role – and a responsibility – to help lift up those who are being left behind, as well as to more tightly regulate the corporations that, if left unchecked, can inflict so much damage throughout the economy. Even the Bush administration has warmed up to the notion of more vigorous oversight of business.

It has been said that when Franklin Delano Roosevelt finished reading “The Grapes of Wrath” he said, “there are 500,000 Americans that live in the covers of that book.” Then he went on to work for Social Security and other programs to help these people. If you have not read the book, do so now. Today there are at least 100 times those numbers. The families may own another name but the working poor continually increase and are this week being told it is their responsibility to bail out the rich.

The Great Depression was caused by an unfettered free market and greed.

What we are experiencing now had the same cause. Whatever happens, we must demand with our vote that this does not happen again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DEtA5fhk4k

Summer is Leaving

Summer is leaving.

It is September and the air is cooling
But my mind does not grasp that we
Are running downhill now towards a
Cold hard winter while wooly worms
Are taking on that second coat of fur.

I hate winter.

Especially I hate the winter that is
After Christmas and before me now
I see a long flat stretch of snow covered
Lots and fields where even the brown
Grass is covered by wind driven drifts.

My morning started as it usually does
With a cup of coffee in my hand and
The newspaper tucked under my arm,
As I walked out over the asphalt lot
To the bench under the still leaved trees.


The sun was up and if I had not known
It was September 20th, with fall two days
Distant, I would have seen a summer day
Through the glass door as I left the house.
The air was filled with the sound of geese.


Leaving this place for another warmer one.
They flew in a familiar wing, wings outstretched
And flapping together as friends and family
Often move toward the same place in time.
Yes, summer is leaving with the geese.



September 23, 2008

Patriotism and America

When I consider the kind of citizen I have been in my life, I’d say I was the usual. I closed my eyes and ears to political parties. I chose one but I never worked for that party or even debated the pros and cons of a certain candidate. I knew in the Indiana County where I grew up there were mostly Democrats. My family had always registered Democratic. When I married my husband was a Democrat, though I am certain his party affiliation was not a factor in loving him.

For most of my working life I was too busy to really consider the ramifications of voting for this person or that one. I had no knowledge of or curiosity about how the parties mounted and ran elections. I thought my decisions were mine alone. This lazy way or being a citizen has changed.

During the 1970’s I worked for a man who supported Richard Nixon for President. He told me I was going to donate to the man’s campaign and I did. I mean this man could make my working life difficult. I got reimbursed through the company’s petty cash. I find out now that Richard Nixon with the help of Patrick Buchanan, a 27 year old erstwhile editorial writer for a St. Louis newspaper, designed what was the Southern Strategy. Their method was to delve deeply into the inherent bigotry and xenophobia in the South thereby disenfranchising Democrats. This was not an accident. This was a calculated act.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_packer

Once conservatives were Republicans, but the Republican Party became something other than conservative.

We have endured eight years in this last reincarnation of the Republican lead country. The national debt is near $10 trillion, over three times what it was in 2000. We are in the midst of a war started under the Bush Doctrine, which says in part that we have the right to invade a country that has not in any way invaded us. Iraq did not send terrorists seven years ago. In fact, no sovereign country did. The 9/11 men were Saudi’s. The leader of this band of killers fled to Afghanistan to hide. We attack Iraq, which puts us in the middle of a civil war that seven years later costs our country $10 billion a month and the lives of thousands of our children, husbands, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers.

In the next six weeks we will be harangued by special interest groups who are pushing a man and woman to lead the country from the same party that played fast and loose in the past two elections. These groups will not be working to inform us of the positive attributes of these candidates. They will spread rumors, point out foibles of the opposition and outright lie pushing us to think negatively and buy into our fears.

This is the party that used to be for a small government and conservative ideals about money and its use in the private sector. Conservatives want small government and everyone to stand on their own two feet. I don’t know what you would call the people who pushed deregulation of our financial institutions and railed against universal health care for all citizens and then gave almost a trillion dollars to corporations who played fast and loose with their depositors money.

If I am going to own a bank, mortgage company and Insurance Company, I expect some shares of stock in the mail. No. I won’t be waiting with baited breath for that to happen. What I will do is go to work, take care of my responsibilities and pay my taxes. And another thing, I will work to make certain me and mine focus on the reality of things and vote for what is good for the country not the special interests.

Vote

When the Presidential election year comes around we’ve already endured at least two years of announcements for candidates to run and then the primaries. In England an election is a choice for the party. The party then chooses the Prime Minister. This is accomplished in a fortnight or two weeks.

I’m weary of the election. I was weary of it in 2000 and also in 2004. At first I was hopeful we would choose a President who would consider his task to be accomplishing a well run country and working for the betterment of the citizens. Both times I was disappointed. Both times hate and innuendo and outright lies were told which distracted the voters and the majority voted from a position of fear.

This same kind of campaign is almost always run on the local and state level too. The national Congressional Offices are filled based more on blood in the water than fact. Voting becomes a reactionary exercise instead of a well reasoned choice based on what you learn about the candidates.

I have always voted. I started as soon as I was old enough and the activity of voting has always been very rewarding for me. I had relatives and friends who died in the nation’s wars. If I didn’t feel I could be bothered to vote as a patriotic citizen, I would vote to acknowledge their sacrifice.

The last few years I’ve worked at the polls and one year I worked driving people without transportation to vote. It’s a tiring day but I feel I am doing something to support the country. I’m not sure why more people don’t work at the polls and volunteer to help others vote, but if asked most would say they’re too busy or don’t think it has an effect on things. They would be wrong.

Encourage everyone to be certain they are registered to vote. Know where your polling place is and how to get there. You can verify you are properly registered through your board of elections or your local clerk’s office. In most cases these agencies have forms to register, available for download. Another way is this link: http://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php . Print off a few copies and put them in your purse or car to give to people you meet.

Every single vote is important. If you consider yourself a patriot, the way to prove it is to have a voice in your government by voting.