JULY 2009

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Up the Creek

by Joy E. Stocke

Blind Faith

Imagine a world where every word our leaders utter is the truth and all their actions are for the greater good, that our friends are always looking out for our best interests as we look out for theirs, and with compassionate negotiating skills, problems - from border disputes to issues of race, religion and gender - will easily be solved.

In that world, we would clearly be practicing blind faith - belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination. Blind faith, and faith – sincerity in our intentions – are two different things.

As the saying goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." But engaged faith is another animal altogether. What can engaged faith accomplish?

In his essay, Obama in Me for WRR@Large, Dubai-based WRR columnist, Vibhas Tattu interprets U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to the Middle East, sharing a perspective of the United States that requires the lifting of blinders.

No, I do not have any delusional or schizophrenic tendencies. The ME in the title is actually the accepted acronym for the Middle East here in Dubai and the Gulf region. The ‘Obama’ in the title is of course that guy with the cool talk and cooler walk. That guy who exudes oodles of charisma, charm and chutzpah. What’s more, he has the world holding its collective breath in expectation, but that last probably comes with his job as the President of the US of A.

Contributing editor, Angela Ajayi, covers a tribute to Nigerian Activist, Ken Saro-wiwa at the 5th annual PEN World Voices Festival. Saro-wiwa’s son and the American author, Richard North Patterson spoke to Saro-wiwa’s life as a writer and activist. The Nigerian government executed Saro-wiwa nearly 15 years ago for opposing the actions of Royal Dutch Shell, which put pipelines through the villages of his people, the Ogoni. On June 8th, a lawsuit against the oil company following his death was settled out of court in New York City.

“Sadly,” writes Ajayi, “this reality continues to grip the region, immorally perpetuated by those caught up in an unending cycle of corruption and greed. Patterson, whose novel Eclipse is loosely based on the life of Ken Saro-wiwa, also marveled at the scant US response to this travesty, calling it, essentially, a “failure of empathy and imagination.”

Executive Editor, Kim Nagy, returns with her series, Triple Goddess Trials, In The Goddess of Milk and Honey she addresses breastfeeding, how an article in the Atlantic Monthly turned biology into a media event, the realities of breastfeeding in the 21st century , and the many shades of mother-love.

“In the April Issue of The Atlantic Monthly,” writes Nagy. “Contributing Editor, Hannah Rosin published an article called The Case Against Breastfeeding.

The title was a bit misleading, which Rosin herself later admitted in a Podcast on the Atlantic’s website, Mother’s Milk. In fact, the author isn’t arguing that breastfeeding is bad (Rosin herself was still breastfeeding when she wrote the article) but rather that breastfeeding is not as good as we’ve been hearing.

However, the title worked like a charm in provoking a predictable polemic and media uproar, with a surge of traffic in the blogosphere, including a post from the American Academy of Pediatrics who expressed concern over Rosin’s “omissions.”

Meanwhile in his latest column, Desk Jockey, corporate tool that he is, has been traveling for business and learning much about his fellow Americans living on the other side of the Hudson River.

Such experiences have convinced me to forget about eating healthy, or well, when you are traveling outside New York. Most times, you are so consumed by work that you are fortunate if you have time to do more than run down to the office’s cafeteria or the local fast-food joint.

In Dallas, with all of five minutes to spare, I had a truly inviting choice: 1) order lunch from Quizno’s, a mediocre Mexican chain, 2) run over to the pizzeria that served huge calzones of indeterminate age, or 3) opt for a barbeque ribs place. Since the rib place offered free ice cream with my jalapeno baked beans, I chose the ribs place.

Katherine Schimmel Baki brings us to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where she visits the studio of artist Bill Mathews.

“A particular painting draws me in,” she says, “a large work in which three women chat and laugh. One woman is so ‘into the moment’ that her head is thrown back in utter abandon with eyes closed, lips parted in a wry semi-smile, while the other figure emits a full-bellied laugh to yet a third smirking, I just swallowed the canary-looking, friend.”

What Schimmel-Baki wants to know is why does Mathews, an admired abstract artist, prefer to paint women?

Diary of a Writer in Midlife Crisis blogger and contriuting editor, Jill Sherer, finds herself immersed in a different kind of crisis, that of adolescence when she reads her award-winning friend, Pamela Todd’s book, The Blind Faith Hotel. In a far–ranging interview, Sherer finds out what those in midlife and adolescence have in common.

I was on an airplane flying back to Philly from Austin when I read The Blind Faith Hotel (Margaret K. McElderry Books, Simon and Schuster, 2008) by Pamela Todd, a coming of age story that’s obviously for young adults -given where I found it in the bookstore and its cover illustration of a teenage girl.

As I looked over at the well-coiffed woman sitting next to me doing Sudoku, I hoped she didn’t peek over at what I was reading and think me juvenile or slow. After all, I’m clearly out of the author’s age-demographic.

For those of us who have our basic needs covered, the moment we cross our thresholds we're tempted to close the doors and turn a blind eye to the wider world. There is simply too much information, we argue. Why bother sorting through it? And who and what should we believe believe, anyway?

But if we seek to engage and understand how we might make a difference, it is essential to resist the temptation to put on those blinders. We might choose, instead, to enter a river of stories ever-watchful for what is around the bend.