Thanks, Mr. President

President Bush seems to be making my life a little easier these days. As more and more Americans find less and less to like about the president’s performance, people around here who found the political climate too cold to go out are opening up their doors.

When I first moved here in the summer of 2002, the town made it clear to me that it was not interested in hearing any progressive ideas I might have, and it took for granted that I had them. I met people who started conversations by telling me that their most prized possession was a photograph with “Daddy” Bush and understood that this was a polite Texan way of telling me that I should keep my northern liberal views to myself if I wanted to get along in this town.

It took me a year or so before I really understood that hardly anyone, liberal or conservative, Anglo, Latino or Black, male or female, thought I should be expressing political opinions. With the president’s approval rating at around 80 percent in the aftermath of Sept. 11, orthodoxy was in force.

In March 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, I attended a peace rally organized by the county chair of the Democratic Party, Barbara Effenberger. My students (who hadn’t sent anyone to cover this event that one of my colleagues called “the most exciting thing to happen here in 30 years”) published my report of the rally that included reference to “chatter” from Republicans who had gathered across the street from the non-partisan rally to support the planned attack.

I received a three-page letter denouncing me and my views that arrived at the student publications office in a manila envelope bearing an attorney’s return address.

I decided I would shut up and wait until this was all over. I don’t know exactly what I thought “this” was or what force I thought would revive a tone of civility and open-minded exchange of ideas if I clammed up.

With the president’s approval rating still high and no hope that a Democratic candidate could win in our county, my friend and colleague Reza Abbasian convinced me, nevertheless, to attend a meeting of the local Democratic Club a few months before the 2004 presidential election. There, I met the 20 or so people who were hanging on, keeping an alternative vision alive in the corners of our county. The folks who came from the western end of the county, near San Antonio, struck me as much bolder than our local folks from the county seat. But they had an advantage: San Antonio votes Democratic. Here in Seguin, these committed Democrats had been living for a long time with the pressure I had been feeling for only a couple of years.

Apparently, most of them had learned to silence themselves, just as I had done. One brave soul, Jack Linden, kept up a regular column expressing liberal views in the local newspaper through the coldest times. But as he pointed out to the rest of us in an e-mail discussion, no one wrote letters to back him up. He was right to feel alone on the glacier.

About a year after the letter from the attorney came, I decided that waiting out the ice age wasn’t going to work. But by this time I was exhausted from defending the basic premises on which my thinking is founded. I tried to avoid the conversations that required me to justify women’s capacity to lead (or learn, or ...) or to provide a rationale for my interest in traveling to France, let alone to explain that women in Iraq could get an education and participate in professions and political life (such as it was) before the U.S. Armed Forces arrived.

What’s the point of going over this territory in a town where Reza (who had invited me to the Democratic Club) told me it was too dangerous to wear my “Vote Kerry” shirt when I rode my bicycle across town? Besides, by that point, I was reacting, not responding to the people who didn’t share at least some of my core values. My voice would go up a couple of octaves and I didn’t make sense.

But President Bush’s approval rating had begun to drop. According to CBS News polls, only 49 percent of Americans thought the president was doing a good job at the beginning of the year.

As I thought about how to re-engage in political expression, I watched carefully the people who were doing it. How did people like Barbara Effenberger, Jack Linden and Reza keep talking in this climate? What could I learn from them? What could I contribute to bringing about a thaw? I have never had a problem exchanging vastly different views with people from other countries, why was I having such trouble getting to the point of exchange with people from my own?

Maybe that’s one of the things that makes it possible for Reza to engage in conversation on important issues with people he fundamentally disagrees with: he was born in Iran and came to Texas as a young adult. Although he understands us well after years of study, teaching and living in Texas, he can still shake his head and wonder why we Americans are flying off in wrong-headed directions.

I haven’t asked him if that helps, that’s just my thought, but I have observed him in conversation with some of the most conservative Republicans I know. (I get along with them, mostly, by avoiding political subjects or only expressing the parts of my thoughts that aren’t too out of sync with theirs.) Reza, however, goes right to the heart of the issues and defends his points of view. Yet, I hear a lot of laughter during these conversations. The men he’s talking to will tell me that they’ve had years and years of similar arguments. But they still get along and they still tell each other what they think.

Even with a current presidential dis-approval rating of 53 percent (40 percent think Bush is doing a good job), again according to CBS News, I’m still a bit afraid to engage in deep political discussions with my Republican neighbors, 72 percent of whom cast a vote to reelect Bush in November 2004.

I am, however, willing to insist that they acknowledge my humanity. I worked a shift at the Democratic booth at the county fair this fall (October approval rating 35 percent). Adults who walked past the booth looked away. When I could catch their eye, I said hello and smiled. Texan politeness forced them to smile back.

I’m also teaching a belly dance class here. I’m not sure if it has dawned on people that belly dance came from the Middle East, but my class was covered on the front page of a local newspaper and by the San Antonio Fox News channel. Lots of women have tried it out and about 10 keep coming regularly. We’re collecting money to donate to the Maternity Fund of Armenia to support the health care of pregnant women, and lots of people came to see the photo exhibit.

I’m glad I stopped waiting for the thaw. Smiling, dancing, being human. I can do that. Maybe later I’ll start talking politics again without squeaking.

For now, kudos to Barbara, Jack, Reza, and the others who never shut up.

And thanks, Mr. President, for making it possible for someone else to get a word in edgewise. Remember, 51 percent is not that much more than half of the electorate.

NOTE: Several people told me the comment process was confusing. I’ve changed the settings so that anyone can post a comment. Just click on comment and select the radio button “other” if you’re not a registered blogspot user.

I hope people will comment on successful strategies they use for talking about profound disagreements. We’ll need those skills to foster a climate of real communication as the veneer of political orthodoxy cracks.

On Elitism and Evil

Although he didn't address post to the blog, a reader from my town in Texas has responded passionately to what I wrote about Tom Brokaw's connection with the public outside of the political centers. I want for the sake of starting a broader conversation, that readers of this blog should have a chance to consider his ideas too. The reader had seen "To War and Back" and thought I was too hard on Tom Brokaw. "If someone wants to attack evil, insensitivity or stupidity I think Tom Brokaw is a poor target," he wrote to me.

He said he felt a much stronger connection to the soldiers after watching Brokaw's special Sunday and continued

There should be more shows like this. Flag draped caskets should be on the news. The President should have to shake every survivors hand, if they have one. We all should, lest we elect or fail to stop the election of arrogant, insensitive, impudent elitists. If someone wants to attack evil, insensitivity or stupidity maybe there are some good targets..............

My private response to the reader was to explain that I don't want to have the last word on any subject I raise on this blog. My intention in sharing my thoughts is to start a conversation. I also did not intend to suggest that Mr. Brokaw, or anyone else for that matter, is evil. In fact, I wrote that I was sure Mr. Brokaw's program would be good. I'm sorry that this reader, and I suppose many other people, equate disagreement with attack. Attack doesn't foster communication, which is my goal.

I agree with the reader that the present administration wants to keep us, all of us, in the dark about what really happens in Iraq, to soldiers or anyone else. The tone of the president's voice as he chastises members of Congress and Senators for their objection to his desire to avoid Constitutional checks and balances scares me, especially since I have just read a book about what happens when governments aren't concerned with protecting anyone's civil liberties.
Khaled Hosseini's vivid description of the stoning to death of adulterers in a stadium full of cheering spectators and of the machine-gun-armed Taliban patrols that shot un-bearded men made me fear, as I often do, where our nation may be heading.

Certainly, the moving image has a lot of power. I too wish that the television news would present images of the returning caskets. I wish viewers would have the opportunity to see the bodies of people who have been killed by bombs or in battles, not just burned cars or tanks, on U.S. news programs. Media bosses play a large part in making sure that viewers don't see the gory reality of battle. I studied with a woman who had worked as a producer at CNN during the first Gulf War. She said that the footage she was instructed to leave out of reports presented a completly different interpretation of that war.

Executive directives also tie broadcast reporters' and photojournalists' hands. I wish that the news media would defy those directives and show the public a version of events that is closer to what they are seeing in the field, but I understand what the personal consequences would be for any reporter who climbed out on that limb.

Although we don't have the strong visual images that would make it easier for the public to comprehend the human toll of war, we do have reports that describe the carnage in words. Why complain that more realistic portraits of war are unavailable when they aren't? Although many people don't look beyond television for information, I wouldn't want to consider it the only source of news.

Which brings me around again to my students. They are interested in the fate of their peers. They tell me when they see a photo of a soldier's casket that has someone slipped through to a Web site. They know what's happening to their friends. They are deeply frightened of the dangers the war presents to American bodies.

They are so afraid that when a professor tries to raise the subject, they either clam up completely or spout slogans condemning Muslims or Arabs as terrorists. These slogans stop communication and often have the result that legitimate critique of U.S. policies doesn't get aired. They know that their friends are in harm's way, but they don't know why. I want to talk about that.

The Spectre of the Baby Blue Burqa

Should I have known about the Taliban in 1990?

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003) and history tell me that I couldn’t have known yet, but in my weaker moments (or perhaps they are my moments of grandiosity) I don't agree. The Taliban movement emerged as a force in the Afghan civil war in 1994 and triumphed in 1996. I couldn't have known.

At the time I am remembering, Afghanistan had collapsed into civil war when the tormented and tattered Soviet occupation force finally abandoned the country in 1989. Suhaila had put her eggs in the Russians’ basket in 1985. She was in her last year of a five-year degree program at Leningrad State University when my neighbor in the dorm on Vasilevskii Island started telling me about her.

I liked Sveta, my neighbor. She had a well-equipped dorm room and liked to have parties.

Sveta took me with her to a university Communist Party meeting, something I would not have seen if she hadn’t taken me, a graduate student participating in a bi-lateral exchange of scholars, under her wing. Of course, in fall 1989 the CP was not the monolith it had been and by the time spring rolled around in 1990 it was pretty dilapidated.

Sveta had started remaking herself for survival in the new times by then. She understood English well and, while timid, her speech was clear and comprehensible. She was moving away from her preoccupation with politics to study management. Sveta would have been on the cutting edge wherever it led.

One of her boyfriends was American. She wanted to visit him, she said, but getting permission to travel was complicated and required an official, notarized invitation to visit from a citizen of the country. This would have taken a long time to get from the United States (where the boyfriend was), so I agreed to go to the U.S. Consulate and get one of the form-letter invitations notarized for her. The language of the invitation said that the host agreed to bear complete responsibility for the guest.

Even with the invitation, it wasn’t clear that she would get an exit visa from the Soviet Union or a tourist visa from the United States, which was wary of young Soviets who lacked established careers or families at home. They were a risk to over-stay their visas. I liked Sveta and hoped that she would visit me at home so I could share the goodness of my life with her as she had shared the best of hers with me.

I knew Sveta had an Afghan friend, but after the invitation, I heard more and more about Suhaila. I met her briefly. At Sveta’s next party, she served Suhaila’s dumplings and Afghan cakes. Suhaila hung back demurely by the food, her long dark hair gleaming in the light from the table lamp. She didn’t sing when the Russians got out their guitars, but I did. I knew both the ‘80s American pop tunes the young men favored and the Russian folk songs.

Suhaila did not ask, but she knew she was a supplicant.

I didn’t recognize the request until later. When Sveta asked me to issue an official invitation to Suhaila to come to the United States, I figured out that Suhaila had been auditioning for my assistance. When I refused, Sveta looked at me with disdain and asked how I could let Suhaila go back there with her Soviet education. There was civil war in Afghanistan.

I hear Sveta’s words and see Suhaila’s shy smile when I watch news reports from Afghanistan. Did I condemn university-educated Suhaila to wear the baby blue burqa?

I knew about the civil war. I also knew that the United States rarely issued visas to young, single people who applied for visas in countries other than their nation of citizenship. If I had provided the official invitation, then the consular officials would have nixed her visa application. If the plan was hopeless anyway, why not comply? No great principle involved in refusing, no risk to me if she could never turn up on my doorstep.

This would have been just as easy as signing the electronic petition condemning the Taliban’s treatment of women that circulated out of control in the late 1990s. And perhaps modestly more likely to save someone.

I am no one’s hero.

I can only hope that Sveta found Suhaila a hero, someone who would really be able to save her. Maybe someone to marry her and help her stay in the Soviet Union, that alternative, although difficult in its own way, would have been better than civil war and the Taliban.

The Kite Runner features a few larger than life characters that not only sparked these memories of my own distant encounter with the Afghan civil war but got me thinking about character and heroism in general.

At first, I wished I could be like Baba (a term of endearment for the narrator’s wealthy and powerful father) and make good people’s problems go away. I judged the other characters by his standard, and neither they nor I measured up. Baba seemed like the hero I could never be, even if it were in my power to grant people their heart’s desires. Baba gave people money to pay their debts, he built an orphanage and put his own life on the line for others. It was only after Baba almost took a Soviet soldier’s bullet rather than let him rape a young Afghan mother as he and Amir fled Kabul (115) that life began to fray his magic carpet of heroism.

After this incident with the Soviet soldier, Baba’s view of Russians was forever tarnished. He saw them as people without honor. He even refused treatment from a doctor whose people came to America from Russia (155). He, and the other men of his class and Pashtun ethnicity, held Afghan honor in the highest esteem.

Honor is was a necessary component of his heroic life, and even after he could no longer make dreams come true, his ideas of honor motivated his choices.

Amir, the narrator of The Kite Runner, discovered the hard way that Americans hate to know too much about how the story turns out, so I will say only that Baba turns out to be a flawed hero. Amir tries to use his flaws to avoid responsibility, but even he comes around in the end, but Baba’s flaws are the other component necessary to his heroics.

I take away from my thoughts on The Kite Runner, Afghanistan and heroism the conviction that we can use our personal histories, no matter how we may have given in to our flawed natures, to bring out the best in us.

More importantly, no one needs a hero. Heroes save us but leave us feeling smaller than we are. Needier.

Instead, we need compassionate leaders who can help us discover how to use our own resources – internal or external – to resolve our problems and bring our dreams into reality.

We need visionary leaders who can help us see our way to a better world where no Suhaila will think she has to make dumplings to woo a savior.

We need strong leaders who will not allow social movements to provide opportunity for sociopaths to terrorize good people (282-83).

We need to be those leaders.

We need a definition of honor that isn’t particular to one gender or one nation. Exclusive honor is a device to help us project our flaws onto Others, and I think this novel argues convincingly that we need our flaws in order to become all that we can be.

Let’s define honor in a way that won’t let us execute people because they are Hazara (or Croatian, or Apache, or American or you fill in the blank). Let’s define honor in a way that encourages all people to develop their potential to the fullest and to lead when they should and follow wisely.

Dear Tom Brokaw,

While watching The Daily Show last night, I had another one of those moments when I am reminded how out of touch I am with the out-of-touch elite.

Although I have great respect for Comedy Central’s news team for being the only network to call the 2000 election correctly, I have to admit that I have been watching The Daily Show regularly for only a week. I’m usually still at work, still working at home or too swamped to watch TV. This fall I’ve been making time for Mosaic, a compilation of news stories from the Middle East that appears on Link TV (one of the reasons I still pay for the satellite TV although I watch very little of it). I know I am something of a freak in my own society for wanting to know what is going on in the wider world from the perspective of the people who live in the wider world and not just through the filter of American parachute journalists who show up as crisis is unfolding. But that’s another story.

Back to last night. Jon Stewart interviewed Tom Brokaw about his latest news special, Tom Brokaw Reports: To War and Back. Tom said that the country really needs this piece because we have no connection with the military. The program, which runs on NBC Sunday, Dec. 18, focuses on the lives of the soldiers of a National Guard unit. Brokaw said he chose this approach because the only people in the United States who have a connection with the soldiers are their families.

Doesn’t Brokaw read the newspaper? In Texas (and the same is probably true of any other state) we have great coverage of National Guard units that have been in Iraq by journalists for the big-city dailies who spend months in the field with the soldiers. We even have original coverage of military news in our local papers: profiles of soldiers who are leaving for Iraq, follow-up stories when they come home (if they come home). Maybe Brokaw is thinking that no one reads the paper anymore and discounting the work of these non-elite reporters.

Our student newspaper has run profiles of soldiers who are home on leave from the war. Campus readers are eager to know what life is like for their peers in combat. They are much less likely to know, or care, about the politics that took their friends to the Middle East.

Doesn’t he have any friends or acquaintances? Or maybe he only knows people who didn’t choose military service because they didn’t need the education benefit or the training options … or the job. Our university has students who could be called to leave for the theater of war any day. They attend class in uniform sometimes, so we can’t miss them. Other students are anxious for the fates of their friends and relatives who are fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq, or they are waiting for the orders that will send their loved ones into harm’s way.

A student in my photography class did her final project on the deployment of her uncle’s unit to Iraq in the spring of 2003. Yes, the photos depicted soldiers and their families saying goodbye, but non-relatives made up the audience for her fine, sensitive work.

For the last few weeks, my mom’s Tai Chi class has been rooting for and praying for the son of one of the class members whose time was ticking down in Iraq. We all knew where he should be during his last days in the field and his travel out of Iraq to Kuwait and back to Killeen. We started breathing again when we knew he had been reunited with his mother. We have never met this man. I have never met his mother.

I could go on and on with this list, but I won’t. Maybe readers will add some of their connections to the military in comments. I hope so. I’ll e-mail Tom if I can find his address (it seems that he doesn't have a Web site) and let him know we are out here rooting for the men, women and dogs who have been sent into harm’s way. We root for them whether we know them or believe in their mission or not.

I’m sure To War and Back will be a great program and the network was smart not to run it against Desperate Housewives, so a lot of people will watch it. But I wish Mr. Brokaw would look beyond New York and Washington into the rest of the country to find out what we are doing and thinking before he decides what we’re doing and thinking.

Why Woman Hollerin'

I suppose it was wildly ambitious of me to think that I could finish a semester, put up a photo exhibit (the next post will give you a preview, or make a view possible if you don't live near Seguin, Texas), visit relatives for Thanksgiving and launch a blog all at the same time. Lest those of you who liked my first post give up on Woman Hollerin, I will add a couple of new thoughts.

Now that I have had time to breathe since classes ended, I want to start with a few words about the title of this blog. The name comes from a creek not far from San Antonio. I pass it when I head into the city on the weekends or, rarely, during the week for French or Thai meals. I like the notion that a woman spoke loud enough a long time ago that it made a lasting impression. I almost backed off on the name when I started looking into its origins because the first story I found about it was a legend that the eponymous woman of the creek had drowned her children in it, thus condemning her spirit to haunt the area looking for them. This legend says she will call for them forever near the headwaters of the creek.

I didn't want to equate women who write about political subjects with Andrea Yates, so I started brainstorming other titles. But then I asked a colleague who specializes in local history why the woman was remembered for hollering. His investigations of the facts behind the ghost story revealed a woman whose children were taken in an Indian raid. Yes, the ghost returns to the headwaters to call for her children, but I don't mind being associated with someone who has lost something dear to her. I, too, am searching for what is at the very least in danger of being lost (if not stolen): a voice.

Since I'm writing about ghosts anyway, this is probably a good time to write about a dream I had recently. Not a hallucination, but an articulate statement of a lucid bit of analysis (my second thought today).

In my dream I was sitting with a group of senior colleagues and emeritus professors from my university. These were men and women of various ideological persuasions and they were talking about the reasons young people fail to fulfill their civic responsibilities. I tried to present my thoughts on the issue, but they didn't hear me and followed a line of analysis that blamed young people for indulging in irresponsibility or simply not caring. In short, all the things I've heard before that don't help me to figure out why only about 20 percent of the age group I teach vote. I finally hollered, "They don't participate because they believe the system is broken. For them, it's not a matter of good or bad people running things. For them, the system itself lets bad things happen, no matter who's in charge."

When I woke up, I had much food for thought. If this is true, the posturing that they just don't care begins to make sense as a defense. I certainly don't like to admit that I care about people or institutions that hurt me. Generally, I'd rather move on to a place where I can start fresh and rely only on myself. But how far can one go before one runs out of open space? And besides, I've discovered that I enjoy hanging around with the same group of people, even if we can't seem to get much of anything right.

I hope we can keep communicating and keep trying. It's the trying that really matters.

Photos of Armenia

Merci, Hayastan: Photographs of Armenia

Armenians call their country Hayastan and themselves the Hay. Like the Persians beside whom they dwell in the southern reaches of the Caucasus Mountains, the Armenians allowed a few French words, like merci, to slip into their vernacular. One Armenian woman explained the adoption to me by saying that the Armenian sh'norhakal em is just too long to say very often.

This collection of photos is my way of saying thank you to Armenia for wonderful hospitality, for enchanting me with natural beauty and for intriguing me with the dilemma of development in a landlocked spot sandwiched between powerful neighbors Russia and Iran.

Eleven large images make up the core of the collection.

The Armenia has a long Christian history. The ancient Armenian nation was the first to declare Christainity its official religion. A tradition of Christian faith is one of the bonds Armenia shares with Russia. Both interior and exterior walls of the Noravank Monastery are crowded with the carvings of Christian pilgrims in the Middle Ages.

Through the centuries Russians, Turks and Persians have traded the territory that now belongs to the Republic of Armenia. As late as the 1820s the Persian Empire held this land. Now, the only mosque remaining in the capital has been restored by an Iranian foundation. While the front entrance of the Blue Mosque is obscured from Mashtots Avenue by a wall, the back door opens directly onto a side street.

Armenians have rediscovered Christian faith in the post-Communist era. Here, Anahit balances on the wall of Geghard Monastery, which was carved in the mountainside in the 13th century and takes its name from the spear that pierced the side of Jesus as he died on the cross. This artifact is now housed in a museum in the cathedral complex at Etchmiadzin.



While the Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church was in Detroit, other priests took over his responsibilities in Etchmiadzin, the spiritual center of Armenian Christianity.




Ancient Armenians began the custom of placing large carvings, khatchkars, to memorialize events and people. These khatchkars mark graves in the village of Noratus on Lake Sevan. The population of this village has shrunk because there is no work here for younger people. This woman and several other elderly women tend sheep and chickens. They love coffee and opportunities to joke with visitors from Yerevan.

The unique alphabet also bonds Armenians. The monument built this year to commemorate the anniversary of the revelation of the Armenian alphabet to Saint Mesrop Mashtots 1600 years ago is placed at 1600 meters in front of Mt. Aragots, the highest peak in Armenia.

While religion and history are ever present in Armenia, daily life includes work, food and sport as it would in any country. Nevertheless, all of life has the flavor of the Caucasus and the confluence of cultures.



People of every region of Armenia sell produce along the highways. These local delicacies include herbs, honey and a variety of vegetables. This man was selling boiled corn on the highway that leads from Yerevan to Dilijan in the Tavush Marz.



These women clean wool at their home on the road from Goshavank. They gave me strawberries because I wanted to take their picture.
Cleaning wool is difficult work.




These children had just finished playing a soccer match in Surenavan. In this village near the Turkish border, the 2,000 human inhabitants coexist with dozens of storks.


Dried fruit and nuts steal the show at the farmers’ market. This kind vendor helped me clean up after a hot, marinated fig spit all over my shirt.


These men wait at the bus stop in front of the Blue Mosque. They could get cash from the ATM and buy kvas from the yellow tank next to the shelter.