BLOGGING AS FIVE-FINGER EXERCISES: For

BLOGGING AS FIVE-FINGER EXERCISES: For some reason, two of my sisters have both expressed a concern that my blogging “might be taking too much of my time”. (All three of my sisters live on the far side of the Atlantic Ocean, in England. Sometimes I wonder how much they talk about me behind my [very distant] back, as it were. I don’t spend much time speculating about it though, because– well, you know– I have a life.)
So anyway, my general response to that is that, for me, blogging is like doing warm-up exercizes for my formal writing. (Sorry about the atlantically indeterminate spellings around here.)
Case in point: my lengthy thinking-out-loud post last Friday on the subject of comparative military occupations.
Today, I needed to consult w/ my editor at the CSM about the topic I would be writing a column on, for a probable spot in this Thursday’s paper. “Comparative military occupations” was my main suggestion– and the one she leaped at. (Leapt at?)
Of course, cramming my main points on this into 800 words, while translating the text from blog-ese into CSM-ese, will still be quite a task. But writing the column will be a darn’ sight easier because I really have done a lot of thinking-it-through while– and since– writing about the subject here.
And now to bed. Lots going on around here that I don’t have time to write about. But when I go to bed, I start thinking about– all the poor benighted souls in the hell-zone that the warhawks have turned Iraq into; my Syrian journalist friend Ibrahim Hamidi who got arrested back in December, shortly after I talked with him in Damascus; all political prisoners everywhere– what is “going to bed” like for them, every night? — and the tortured souls in Palestine and Israel who seem so incapable of escaping from their ever-turning treadmill of fear and violence.
So I just give blessings after blessings that I can have a great home and family in such a calm place as here. We had a wonderful Meeting for (Quaker) Worship this morning. Luminous! And we have daffodils now– finally– blooming around the blue peace signs in our front yard…
And another blessing: my dear old friend and erstwhile colleague in the Middle East peace-and-justice movement Saad Ibrahim was acquitted last week, by the Egyptian courts, of all remaining charges against him. Hallelujah! (It’s over a year now since I wrote a column in Al-Hayat that gently mocked the Egyptian government for continuing to pursue its case against him. I don’t know whether that column had much good effect. Let’s hope so. Last month, when my husabnd was in Cairo, he got a little bit of time to catch up with our old friend Ahmed Maher, the Egyptian Foreign Minister. AM told Bill that he often reads my Al-Hayat columns with some enjoyment– but he thinks I’m still “ways too idealistic”. That makes me so happy! I would just hate it if some event– turning 50, say– had caused me to lose that idealism. Actually, I’m working pretty hard on becoming a Raging Older Woman for Peace, or something.)
Whoa. Didn’t I say it was time for bed?