a few weeks ago
i moved a Ho Tai statue
from the back yard
to the front, and
faced it east.
sometimes when i leave
i see a cat
who lives with us
sitting quietly and still
near the statue.
i think of us
all sitting together
getting quieter
and more still
as leaves fall.
Hong Kong is a global financial center, and a city famous for its “laissez-faire” economic policy. However, it is also a city with one of the highest income gaps in the world. The United Nations’ 2006 human development revealed that the Gini index of Hong Kong was 43.1, the highest among developed countries and cities in the world.
The best way to discover the difference between lives lived by the rich and the poor in Hong Kong is to spend a whole day following individuals and watching them earn their income in the city. Read More
The degeneration of logic, sanity and innocence has caused enormous chasms in the configuration of normal life and in this chapter we cite three more logic-deficient frustrations which American society appears unwilling or unable to cope with: the conflict in Iraq, the issue of gun regulations, and the growing threat to our environment. Read More
(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)
I fell asleep on the couch the other day while watching TV. When I woke up, the first thing I heard was a line from a very weird movie whose characters were upsetting the flow of my dreams with their noisy science fiction weapons. Don’t you hate it when that happens, when outside noises or actions intrude upon your dreams and become part of them? I’m sure you have all experienced this annoying amalgamation of reality with fantasy. You’ll be about to kiss a beautiful model on a secluded beach and then she suddenly starts punching you in the face for no reason, only to wake up and discover that it’s your little daughter who crept into your bed at night and started kicking your nose in her sleep. Don’t even try to re-dream that moment from where you left off. It just never works.
Anyway, in this movie, which I later found out was the screen adaptation of”The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, planet Earth was apparently destroyed and was now being rebuilt from scratch. The line I caught when I opened my eyes was of the main character being asked by the re-builders of the planet whether he would like any changes to be made to the new Earth (I did say that the movie was very weird). At this point, I immediately went back to sleep on the same couch. Of course, as I said, you can never hook up to that paradise oasis you just unwillingly departed. No, it’s that recurring plane crash instead. Or even that painfully protracted drowning scene where, after losing hope, you suddenly discover that you need not have panicked because you can breathe effortlessly underwater after all – and that you can actually talk to dolphins. Where the hell did that kick-boxing model go, for God’s sake? And what am I doing alone in the cockpit of a crashing jet diving into the ocean? Read More
You know what? Here’s what I’ve been thinking about. Life does NOT have to be one long, relentless learning experience!
I’m thinking of the parenting issue right now in particular. I know people online who are soon to have babies, and have expressed concern at ‘getting it right’ wherein being a parent is concerned.
I get that, I really do. I wanted to get it right, and for the most part my kids seem to have turned out OK. None of them are in jail; no one has gotten a girl knocked up (hush! I don’t want to hear it!), and they all seem to be relatively well balanced individuals.
I didn’t follow all the rules. My family doesn’t own the biggest, most excessively safe vehicle available. I did not feed the kids organic baby food. I didn’t research which pre-school would get them into Harvard or MIT. I didn’t even buy clothes from Gymboree or a similarly overpriced venue. I used a simple umbrella stroller, while the Escalade of strollers was taking up the entire back end of my special Parenting Magazine-Approved, Safety-Rated Minivan. Read More
The State of Israel is a Jewish nation. Every Jew is guaranteed “the right of return.” Yet, inside the Jewish state, there are 1.4 million Arabs. Most of the Arabs live in Golan Heights, Haifa, Galilee, the Negev and Jaffa, the seaport next to Tel Aviv. The majority of them are Muslims, with 9% of the overall Arab population being Christians. Most of the Arabs have immediate family members who have lived in West Bank, Gaza and refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan since 1948 and 1967. Read More
Life inside Boston’s easternmost ring road, west of its massive suburban mosaic, is more than the meets the eye of Google earth.
This outer ring of habitation, tucked inside the burly bark of the interstate, is the next woody circle out from suburbia - exurbia – an as-yet unsung layer in the tree rings of the great trunk of metropolitan American life. Here, west of Boston and east of Worcester, tumbled grey stone walls still trace roads without sidewalks and the big yellow school buses lumber picturesquely past the odd apple orchard. Here is where middle-class New England families hunt acreage and the faded fantasy of small town community. Let me sing you the song of this exurban ring – some notes soar and others plummet. As Julie Andrews taught us, when you sing you begin with do re mi . . . . Read More
I’ve lived in Georgia and Alabama since 1974. I was nine when we moved here during Christmas break. I want to describe life here, so people who don’t live here won’t think we’re all uneducated hicks…then again maybe you will, but if you do, I can tell you with certainty that we don’t care.
I’ve lived in both large and small towns. The large towns are, for the most part, pretty much like any other large town in other parts of the country. There’s ethnic, racial and economic diversity, opportunity for employment, even lemongrass in the grocery store sometimes! Small towns have diversity as well; it’s just usually not culinary diversity. That’s another topic, though.
One thing this town does right, and I mean that in all sincerity, is the Parade. Read More
