Newsspot – With Help, Afghan ‘Honor’ Victim Inches Back

To be honest, I was going to leave it a photo today, but seeing this post while browsing The New York Times made me rethink and decide to post this. It’s incidents like these that remind me, and should remind all of us, how lucky we are to live in western society where none of these ‘Honor’ killings take place, especially with Women. I honestly hope that Gul can make a full recovery, and that someone will find it in them to take care of her, now her family have seemingly abandoned her.

With Help, Afghan ‘Honor’ Victim Inches Back

Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

Gul Meena, who was reportedly attacked by her brother for dishonoring their family, recovering at a hospital in Jalalabad.

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

Published: December 1, 2012

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — It is doubly miraculous that the young woman named Gul Meena is alive. After she was struck by an ax 15 times, slashing her head and face so deeply that it exposed her brain, she held on long enough to reach medical care and then, despite the limitations of what the doctors could do, clung to life.

“We had no hope she would survive,” said Dr. Zamiruddin, a neurosurgeon at the Nangarhar Regional Medical Center in the eastern city of Jalalabad who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. After she was brought in, he worked for more than six hours in the hospital’s rudimentary operating theater, gently reinserting her brain and stitching her many wounds.

For weeks afterward, she was often unconscious, always uncommunicative and, but for the hospital staff, utterly alone, with no family members to care for her. That is because, if the accounts from her home province are true, she is an adulterer: though already married, she ran away with another man, moving south until her family caught up with them.

Locals say that the man who wielded the ax against her, and also killed the man with her, was most likely her brother.

That she reached a hospital and received care at all is the second part of the miracle: the villagers, doctors and nurses who helped her were bucking a deeply ingrained tradition that often demands death for women who dishonor their families.

Such “honor killings” of women exist in a number of cultures, but in Afghanistan they are firmly anchored by Pashtunwali, an age-old tribal code prevalent in the ethnic Pashtun areas of the country that the government and rights advocates have fought for years to override with a national civil legal system. This year, six such killings have been reported in Afghanistan’s far east alone, more than in each of the past two years, and for every one that comes to light, human rights advocates believe a dozen or more remain hidden.

Gul Meena’s story, as best it can be pieced together from relatives, tribal elders and others, gives insight into that deeply entrenched tribal culture. But it is also a story about a society struggling to come to terms with a different way of thinking about women.

The Americans and Europeans have put a special emphasis on programs to help Afghan women and raise awareness of their rights. Now, as the Western money and presence are dwindling, women’s advocates fear that even the limited gains will erode and a more tribal and Taliban culture will prevail, especially in the south and east of the country, where Pashtun tribal attitudes toward women are strongly held.

It is a credit to many people — villagers, doctors, the police, rights advocates — that they chose to help Gul Meena, overcoming centuries of distaste for dealing with so-called moral crimes. The doctors at the Nangarhar Regional Medical Center who first treated her and cared for her for weeks were aware of her likely transgressions and chose to ignore them. However, the doctors, who say Gul Meena is about 18, were also bewildered about what to do with her.

“She has no one; no mother has come, no father, no one from her tribe has come,” said Dr. Abdul Shakoor Azimi, the hospital’s medical director, as he stood at the foot of her bed looking at her. “What is the solution? Even the government, the police, even the Women’s Affairs Ministry, they are not coming here to follow up and visit the patient.”

A patient in an Afghan hospital without a family member is a neglected soul. Most hospitals are so impoverished that they offer only the bed itself and limited medical care. Gul Meena lay in her own urine when a reporter first visited her because no relative was there to change her sheets. Hospital staff members were able to tend to her sporadically, but they are overstretched. Without a relative, the patient has no one to pay for drugs, drips, needles or food, no one to bring fresh clothes.

 

Are you feeling grateful yet?

I sure am.

Not trying to go all Biblical, but this whole story reminds me of the woman ‘caught in adultery’ when Jesus intervened before they could stone her. What did he say then?

‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’

Now, I’m not justifying what she did, but ‘Honor’ killings, is definitely not the way to resolve the issue, and nor will it be anytime soon. Ever.

As you can probably tell, this is only page one of the article. I whole-heartedly encourage you to go and read the rest of it too, over here: NY Times – With Help, Afghan ‘Honor’ Victim Inches Back

亞歷克斯的！

Newsspot – A Father’s Example Guides Tebow

Hello there! You know, this article caught my eye today. Now I dont’ have much deep to say about it, but it always warms my heart when I hear stories like this. The bond between the west and places like this is pretty weak at its best, so when I see things like this, it’s an instant improvement to my mood, seeing how people actually go out of their way, take time to visit these children, and treat them like brothers and sisters. The be honest I’d never heard of Tim before, but to me he seems like a good, decent guy…but I’ll leave you to be the judge of that, seeing as I only know him from this article.

A Father’s Example Guides Tebow

 

Children at an orphanage founded in the Philippines by Bob Tebow.

By SETH MYDANS

Published: May 15, 2012

LAMSUGOD, the Philippines — The last time Tim Tebow visited his father’s orphanage here in the remote hills of Mindanao island, he stood at the edge of a grassy yard and told the children to make a loop with their arms. Then, to their amazement, he threw a football right through them.

“He’s really good at throwing!” said the Rev. Roberto P. Gauran, 67, who runs the orphanage with his wife, Raymunda, 65. “At 30 meters he could hit dead center, or even farther.”

That was three years ago, before Tebow’s professional stardom cut down on his time for travel to the Philippines. But the boys and girls here still toss around a football he left behind for them — among the very few youngsters in the country who know how.

“Kuya Timmy taught us how to throw it,” said Jessa Berbo, 16, using a local term for big brother. The word here at the orphanage is that Tebow himself singled her out as the child with the best arm.

Tebow’s father, Bob, founded the orphanage in 1992 as part of his missionary work in the Philippines with the Bob Tebow Evangelistic Association, headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla. He visits several times a year, sometimes bringing with him a group of American volunteers to preach in distant towns and villages.

On a recent visit, Bob Tebow showed the children a video of his son on the field and the orphans watched with a mixture of excitement and puzzlement, said Roberto Gauran Jr., 28, the oldest of the pastor’s seven children, who also works here.

“The children here know he is famous, but we don’t play football in the Philippines and sometimes we don’t know what is going on,” he said. “We watch Fox News sometimes, so we know what is happening in the States with Tim and we know that people are mocking him for his faith.”

But most Filipinos, obsessed with basketball rather than football, have not heard of Tim Tebow, or of his father’s foundation. His name rang a bell with one academic here who said, “Oh, is he the one who puts biblical verses under his eyes?”

 

As always, this is only a long excerpt from the real thing. To carry on reading, go over here: NY Times – A Father’s Example Guides Tebow

Newsspot – Rocket Plunge to Deep End of the Planet

Science and exploration is awesome, i’ve gotta admit. David Attenborough tops my list of best narrators when it comes to nature documentaries and the like…the sea included. Today’s nesspot is, of course, from the New York Times, and centers around something I found a little odd. Now, I know James Cameron made movies, as everyone in the western hemisphere does, but I didn’t ever at one point even begin to imagine that he was interested in deep-sea exploration…

I’ll let you be the judge of whether it’ll be a success or not, but for me, I think his little endeavor holds great promise, but also great risk…

As always, if you want the full sandwich, look no further than here: NY Times – Rocket Plunge to Deep End of the Planet

Rocket Plunge to Deep End of the Planet

Mark Thiessen/National Geographic

RECORD BREAKER  In a test dive, James Cameron’s submersible broke the depth record for piloted vehicles, going down more than five miles.

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: March 19, 2012

 

For centuries, the daredevils known as submariners have slipped beneath the waves in vehicles made for horizontal travel. Their craft are basically underwater ships. Even submersibles, small vessels that dive unusually deep, follow the horizontal plan.

Until now.

In a stroke, James Cameron has upended the field — literally and figuratively. A man known for imaginative films (“Titanic,” “Avatar”), he has reinvented the way that people explore the deep ocean.

This month, Mr. Cameron unveiled his unique submersible and announced plans to ride it solo into the planet’s deepest recess, the Challenger Deep in the western Pacific, nearly seven miles down.

He calls it a vertical torpedo. The axis of his 24-foot-long craft is upright rather than horizontal, speeding the plunge. His goal is to fall and rise as quickly as possible so he can maximize his time investigating the dark seabed. He wants to prowl the bottom for six hours.

“It’s very clever,” said Alfred S. McLaren, a retired Navy submariner who helps to run a company that makes submersibles. “Nobody has done this kind of thing before. It’s a great idea, a tremendous idea.”

He likened Mr. Cameron to “an underwater Steve Jobs — difficult to get along with but very creative.”

“He’s driven,” Dr. McLaren went on. “He put together a hell of a technical team.”

Just as bullets are spun to steady their flight, Mr. Cameron’s craft rotates on its vertical axis — another first. In a test dive, he has already broken the modern depth record for piloted vehicles, going down more than five miles.

“He’s done something radical,” said Peter Girguis, a biological oceanographer at Harvard and head of a panel that oversees the nation’s fleet of deep-research vehicles. “He’s set aside the conventional wisdom.”

Newsspot – A Harlem House That Can Baby-Sit

Afternoon UK-based readers! To the Americans, however…I’m not sure what to call it…

Today I thought I’d go for a bit more home and design for the newsspot today, seeing as (to me) a well planned out house and living space is everything in a home, and the house below certainly has it. I always have, and still do love good architecture and design. This article drew me in with the picture more than anything, but the article itself is just as good. So, since I haven’t really got much else to say…dive in! Oh, by the way, since this is only three fifths of the entire story, look no further than here, to continue on.

ON LOCATION

A Harlem House That Can Baby-Sit

Trevor Tondro for The New York Times

The renovation, by the architects Gregory Merryweather and Lawrence Blough, cost $675,000. The sofa is from Design Within Reach, but most of the furniture was inherited or bought at thrift stores, and much of it has been freshened with new upholstery. More Photos »

By JOYCE WADLER

Published: March 14, 2012

 

EXPANDING the footprint of their houses and apartments is a luxury few New Yorkers have. So it is not surprising that when Nicole Betancourt and Bray Poor, an artistic couple with two young children, decided they wanted a courtyard in their Harlem brownstone, they created one inside the house: By removing parts of the floor and ceiling, they carved out an interior opening that permits light, sound and smells to travel up and down three floors, keeping the family connected.

“We lived in Mexico a couple of years, and all the houses had internal courtyards,” Mr. Poor says. “We talked a lot to the architects about what could be done to make our house like that, and they came up with these huge holes that go all the way up to the third floor. A lot of our friends said, ‘That’s going to drive you crazy with the kids yelling,’ but when they start to go at it like kids, we get to talk it out before they draw blood.”

“And when I’m cooking, I know when things are done,” adds Ms. Betancourt, who founded the Web site Parent Earth, which promotes healthy eating for families, and who therefore happens to do a lot of cooking. “If the smell reaches up there,” she says, referring to the children’s floor above the kitchen, “it is totally done. What is not great is that if you do burn something, the bedrooms smell like burned food.”

The stair rails and the exposed beams might stop a child or an errant adult from falling through, but what about toys from the children’s room?

“Roll-y toys can fall through,” Ms. Betancourt says. “We have had parties where people are having cocktails, and toys come through the roof. But the wrath follows afterward.”

Ms. Betancourt and Mr. Poor, who have been married 12 years, are a creative couple. Mr. Poor, 46, is a theater sound engineer, former actor and musician. And yes, Bray Poor is his real name. His father “was very WASPy,” he says. “WASPs love using last names. People ask me all the time, did I make up that name. Why would I make up a name that combined the sound of a donkey and poverty?”

Ms. Betancourt, 44, is a documentary filmmaker whose mother was once a nun and whose father renovated town houses in Brooklyn. She won an Emmy for her 1996 documentary,“Before You Go: A Daughter’s Diary,” which dealt with the death of her father, secretly gay for much of his life, from AIDS.

They have two daughters, Pilar, 8, and Biúlu, 4, and making time for family is not something they simply give lip service to. They left SoHo to live in Mexico for two years, renting out their loft, not just because they were disgusted with how commercial the neighborhood had become, but because they wanted to be able to enjoy life together.

“It was the typical New York story,” Mr. Poor says. “There wasn’t enough time to be parents, enough time to be lovers, enough time to work properly.”

In SoHo, Ms. Betancourt says, everyone seemed to be 33 and “sort of beautiful.” There were no old people or extended families or bands of children running around having a good time. But in Mexico, where “families in general move as a unit,” Mr. Poor says, their priorities began to shift.

Newsspot – A Survey of a Different Color

Morning! Yeah, I know I said I would leave this till later, but I’m a huge fan of art (even if I only appreciate it, not make it), and when I fired up Safari this morning, I couldn’t help but look at the article. Sure, the picture of a horse doing an altered version of the moonwalk didn’t look too appealing, but you know what they say? You can’t judge a book by it’s cover. And so I didn’t!

ART REVIEW

A Survey of a Different Color

2012 Whitney Biennial

Librado Romero/The New York Times

2012 Whitney Biennial A dancer in Sarah Michelson’s “Devotion Study #1 — The American Dancer.” More Photos »

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: March 1, 2012

 

One of the best Whitney Biennials in recent memory may or may not contain a lot more outstanding art than its predecessors, but that’s not the point. The 2012 incarnation is a new and exhilarating species of exhibition, an emerging curatorial life form, at least for New York.

Possessed of a remarkable clarity of vision, a striking spatial intelligence and a generous stylistic inclusiveness, it places on an equal footing art objects and time-based art — not just video and performance art but music, dance, theater, film — and does so on a scale and with a degree of aplomb we have not seen before in this town. In a way that is at once superbly ordered and open-ended, densely structured and, upon first encounter, deceptively unassuming, the exhibition manages both to reinvent the signature show of the Whitney Museum of American Art and to offer a bit of redemption for the out-of-control, money-saturated art world.

Largely avoiding both usual suspects and blue-chip galleries, this Biennial tacitly separates art objects from the market and moves them closer to where they come from, artists, whose creative processes and passion for other artists’ work are among the show’s unstated yet evident themes, along with documentary, color, collage, sexual identity and abstraction. It is a show in continual flux, and will to some extent be different each time you visit, right up to its final day. Multiple visits are warranted, in fact necessary, to get a true sense of this show’s richness and the improvisatory energy it brings to the Whitney.

The Biennial has been organized by Elisabeth Sussman, the Whitney’s curator of photography, and Jay Sanders, a writer, independent curator and former art gallery director known for his erudition in areas of poetry and performance. They have worked in tandem with Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, of Light Industry, a film-and-electronic-art space in Brooklyn, who guided the exhibition’s ambitious film and video program. From what I had time to preview, the film selections include at least two of the show’s major works: Frederick Wiseman’s 2010 excursion into unnarrated documentary, “Boxing Gym,” and Thom Andersen’s three-hour “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” a meditation on the discrepancy between movies and real life in largely architectural terms that is as enthralling as it is dispiriting.

Another filmmaker who stands out is Werner Herzog, who contributes “Hearsay of the Soul,” a ravishing five-screen digital projection, to his first-ever art show. An unexpected celebration of the handmade by the technological — and a kind of collage — it combines greatly magnified close-ups of the voluptuous landscape etchings of the Dutch artist Hercules Segers (1589-1638), whom Herzog considers “the father of modernity in art,” with some justification. The shifting scroll-like play of images is set to sonorous music, primarily by the Dutch cellist and composer Ernst Reijseger, who also appears briefly on screen, playing his heart out. I dare you not to cry.

 

And there you have it! Quite interesting, I have to say! I’d definitely go if I could get there, but alas, I cannot. Ah well, I suppose the Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and Walsall art galleries will have to placate me for now. I have to say though, American art is somewhat different from that over here. Yes, I’ve seen abstract art and the like, but there seems to be a subtle change when comparing the two. Maybe it’s culture? Maybe it’s the artist’s background? It’s probably the latter, but it’s great to see different styles of art from different people around the world.

However, if you want to read the whole article in all it’s two-page glory, instead of my little snippet, then look no further than here: NY Times – A Survey of a Different Color