November 2008
A Historic Election – For Women Too!
Much of the world rejoiced last week at the news that the US had elected its first African-American president. But that major milestone was not the only historic achievement of this political season. Advances by women, less euphorically trumpeted in the media, should also be noted, celebrated and emulated – starting with Hillary Clinton’s historic primary campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The following firsts, reported by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University, are also worth cheering:
• The number of female U.S. Senators has…
September 2008
Georgia, Chechnya and the Babushkas: Thoughts on Sokurov’s “Alexandra.”
Another urgent email from Oxfam America’s Tim Fullerton has just landed in my Inbox, awakening me from the constant Obama-McCain news-stream; Tim is asking for donations to respond to the Georgian crisis, among other disasters. I am reminded that just two weeks ago our constant surfeit of Olympic news was also interrupted – though only sporadically – by reports of violence in South Ossetia. Where? South what? We had barely heard of this region, whose name sounded more like a fictitious location in some Lehár operetta or Walt Disney production. But soon enough we were hearing…
August 2008
Nordic Walking – the next Olympic Sport?
We’ve been saturated these last weeks with television images of sweating beach volleyballers, quivering gymnasts and sleek divers with more or less splash, not to mention the flying, crashing BMX bikers, newly added to the Olympics this year. Media coverage (at least that of NBC) has often focused on the personal stories behind the athletes’ feats, and we frequently hear how inspiring it is that such and such a race swimmer is competing again, although she’s already 41. Or a diver is trying one last time for gold, even at age 30, against those half her age.
Such stories are indeed…
Interpreting Maladies: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri and Other Timely “Texts”
These days we can’t seem to get enough of films and books about intercultural experience: A few years back it was The Kite Runner (2003), Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling first novel and then film about a boy growing up in Afghanistan who is transplanted to California after the Soviet invasion of his country. In 2000 Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for her first collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, about characters moving between traditional East Indian culture and east-coast life in the U.S., while her novel The Namesake (2003), dealing with similar themes, was…
Not so savage after all: Thoughts on “The Savages”
“That was so depressing.” “What a depressing movie!” The comments of the mostly late-middle-aged patrons exiting the theatre in West Newton were uniformly negative. My sister’s were no different. Still in her seat as the credits for “The Savages” began to roll, she had blurted out, “I didn’t like that! It reminded me too much of everything we went through with Mom.” Like Lenny Savage, the aging father movingly played by Philip Bosco, our mother had spent sad and difficult weeks in a nursing home before she died, almost exactly ten years past. Like him, she showed signs…
