Dove's Eye View

Arab Feminist Art in San Francisco

Don't miss this weekend of poetry, music and art: Prologue and Epilogue: Arab Feminism Past and Present.

Where:
Blue Studio Gallery
2111 Mission St. (@17th St.), San Francisco

When:
Friday May 5- Sunday May 7

Opening Reception:
Friday May 5, 6:30PM

Opening Event:
Saturday, May 6, 7:30 pm
Night of Art, Live Poetry, & Music
$10-25 sliding scale (no one turned away for lack of funds)

Gallery Hours:
Friday 11-6; Saturday 11-4; Sunday 11-6
Admission: Free, donations welcome

From the website - Sunbula:

The Arab world has a rich and long history of feminist activities and movements that extend back to ancient civilization. Yet, Arab feminism is rarely visible in American culture and excluded from public discussion, dialogue and decision-making. This exhibition promotes knowledge by and about Arab and Arab American feminists and artists that are not disguised by archaic Orientalist or patronizing discourses.

This major exhibition identifies significant movements and discourses within the Arab community and affirms Sunbula's dedication to promote awareness and counter ignorance. As topical as today's news headlines, these artworks serve as catalysts to challenge the current and predominant images of Arab and Arab American women and their art.

Featured artists: May Hariri Aboutaam, Andrea Ali, Doris Bittar, Sandra Estafan, Simone Fattal, Kinda Hibrawi, Dima Hilal, Happy Hyder, Hiba Kalache, Kendall Karam, Aisha Mershani, Maysoon Salah, and Nada Shalaby.

No Nukes: Iran Version

Seymour Hersh has written a report in the New Yorker about Bush's plans for Iran. The folks at Firedoglake are organizing to pressure Senators about it: Join Us to Stop Bush and Rumsfeld on Iran.

Talking points from Firedoglake about nuking Iran:

1. Starting a nuclear war against Iran is seriously nuts. It won’t just destroy part of Iran: its consequences will destroy America.

2. Through Iraq, Bush and Rumsfeld have proven they are weak failures who can’t be trusted to do the right thing with Iran. Even our military establishment is against Bush and Rumsfeld and is demanding a change in leadership. Rumsfeld must be replaced. Bush’s reckless rush to war must be stopped.

3. Strength begins with leadership, and yet leadership has not yet been tried on Iran. America must cooperate with our allies to contain Iran and promote its democratically inclined people through engagement and tough negotiations. Congress must act to be sure this occurs. Only people who lied about Iraq deny Iran is many years away from developing a nuclear weapon.

Armenian Genocide

PBS is airing a special on it tonight, but I'll be in class and will have to miss it. (No we don't have Tivo, and the VCR is broken).

Micheline Aharonian Marcom has written two books dealing with the horror of this Armenian experience. I've been reading the first of them, Three Apples Fell From Heaven, off and on this month in between my assigned reading for school. It's devastating. It's human, it's beautiful, it's real and it's emotionally devastating. The format is many short chapters from the point of view of many different people - a boy in hiding from the massacres, a girl who has been adopted by a Muslim family and remembers her past, an American consular officer bumbling away at his duties, writing letters, playing bridge with the Turkish officials in charge, lusting after his maid. If you want to explore human consciousness in the most extreme of historical moments, then read Three Apples Fell from Heaven.

Disclosure - Miss Marcom is my teacher but she has no idea I'm posting about her book on my blog.

If you're a prospective Mills MFA in English - we have an amazing lineup of fiction teachers this year, and Micheline is on fire. Everybody in our class is writing like crazy. An incoming student sat in on class tonight and heard about half of us read our short pieces we write weekly. "Does everybody just give it everything they've got in this program?" he asked. Well, I don't know, but in Micheline's class we're all burning up the page. We weren't trying to impress him - we just write and read to each other - but we impressed him.

Other great teachers leading fiction workshops in the Fall: Yiyun Li, Daniel Alarcon, and Cornelia Nixon.

Personal Pictures

Oh what the heck - only my relatives and friends read this blog anymore. The latest snaps:

Update: My dearest mother-in-law Celeste reports that plenty of people I don't know read this blog - friends of friends, strangers, bloggers. She thinks I shouldn't post self-deprecating remarks like the above. Noted!

at my friend's wedding, mid-March.

With first cousin Nabil, who lives in Qatar.

With first cousin Karen, a native Californian now living in Birmingham, Alabama.

Women In Black Against the Occupations

Bay Area Women In Black came to my neighborhood today. A dozen women, most of them middle-aged or seniors, all dressed in black, processed slowly on MacArthur Boulevard, past shops, banks, hardware store. Three women carried large puppets; all carried signs:

Not in Our Name
Women Against War

One woman beat a slow cadence on a hand drum. Two more gave out fliers detailing where our tax dollars go.

From their website:

BAY AREA WOMEN IN BLACK, a group of Jewish feminists and allies, stands in solidarity with Israeli Women in Black who have held vigils weekly since 1988 to protest the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem and to mourn the Israeli and Palestinian lives that have been lost.

We wear black as a symbol of sorrow for all victims of war and as a way to join in spirit with the nearly 200 other Women in Black groups around the world who protest against militarism, violence, oppression, anti-Semitism, and racism, wherever it occurs.

We oppose militaristic and fundamentalist leadership in all countries, including our own, and are committed to nonviolent resistance against tyranny. We believe all people must have the right to security, home, education, and freedom.

Today's march was against the Iraq war and occupation. The Women in Black, who have protested the Israeli occupation of Palestine for so long, must now protest the American occupation of Iraq as well.

According to the flier they gave me, the average Oakland household pays some $6,500 in federal taxes, and about $1,900 of that goes to the military.

California has paid over $40 billion towards the Iraq effort. The flier listed what $40 billion could provide for us - health insurance for 17 million; 600,000 elementary school teachers; college educations for 8 million students, and on and on.

Our teachers are about to go on strike because of health care costs.

Our universities are aching from cutbacks, our bus system is ditching bus lines just as oil prices spike. The numbers of uninsured and under-insured spiral upward. Meanwhile we're building an embassy complex in Iraq that is bigger than Vatican City.

Just the other day, a neighbor and I were talking on the sidewalk in front of his roses about how wrong this war is and how helpless we feel to stop it. Do puppets and drums change anything? I don't know, but those women can go to their graves knowing they did something to witness against war and for peace.

My Arab readers - if you haven't encountered Women in Black before, please read about them. I first saw them seven years ago, standing in silent protest at the front gate of UC Berkeley, with a large sign that said "End the Occupation." Bless them.

Some People Just Never Give Up

Will you look at these guys? 120 former Israeli, Palestinian combatants in new peace drive-Haaretz - Israel News.

By Reuters

After a year of meeting in secret, 120 former Israel Defense Forces combat soldiers and Palestinian militants unveiled a unique peace group on Monday, hopeful their union will spur dialogue and end bloodshed.

Formation of the "Combatants for Peace" is a rare sign of comradeship at a time when separation increasingly characterizes relations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Read more here.

The group's web page is Combatants for Peace.

The Dove hasn't felt very hopeful for some time now. Bless these fellows - IDF veterans, Palestinian fighters - for doing this. It's humble and quixotic and who knows if it matters. But it matters. Because not everybody is completely rabid with fear.

It actually takes guts to meet your enemy. These fellows are braver than whole battalions of soldiers.

Health Care is a Human Right

According to Physicians for a National Health Program - Health Care is a Human Right.

"Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity and there is an obligation for society to ensure that every person be able to realize this right."

- Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, Chicago Archdiocese

Physicians for a National Health Program believe(s) that a single-payer system (where the government finances health care, but keeps the delivery of health care to mostly private control) is the only solution to solving the United States' many health care problems: 43 million citizens with no health insurance, many more with only limited coverage, skyrocketing health insurance premiums, malpractice costs, long-term care issues, and relatively poor health indicators, when compared to similar industrialized nations.

Again thanks to cousin Randy, a most knowledgeable blogger California state politics.

Single Payer Health Insurance?

Steve Young writes about California's single payer health care bill: Health Insurance Wars Ready to Break Out: Let the Facts Win Out - California Progress Report.

Universal Healthcare Insurance under Senate Bill (SB840), shouldered by State Senator Sheila Kuehl, is meant to be a single payer system that has no preexisting exemptions, no deductibles and no copay. That means that everyone, no matter their medical condition, no matter their financial standing, will be covered Who could be against that?

Virtually no one, except for those affiliated with the health insurance industry who stand to lose out if they are no longer the middleman between the public and proper healthcare.

Step one of SB840- how the coverage will be administered - has passed both Houses of the California legislature. Now, the hard part; itemizing how the program will be funded. And when it does, it must show itself to be more cost efficient than the present system that continues to cover less while costing more. The war is about to begin in earnest. The public vs. the insurance industry. Proper healthcare for all vs. insurance profits. Fact vs. Fabrication. And it won't just be in California, because if it succeeds on the West Coast, so it will be copied through the country.

Hat tip to my cousin Randy.

California targets global warming

Individual states and regions are acting where the Federal government won't: Proposal targets global warming.

California is poised to become the first state in the nation to enforce a comprehensive limit on the air pollution that causes global warming, under legislation announced Monday.

The bill, which mirrors the goal set by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last summer, would limit greenhouse gas pollution to 1990 levels by the year 2020, and require the state's Air Resources Board to establish a mandatory reporting system to track and monitor emission levels.

If it becomes law, the limit means power plants, refineries and other large-scale consumers of gas, oil and coal would need to reduce use of those fuels, install costly equipment to prevent their byproducts from escaping into the air, or adopt cleaner, alternative energy technologies.

Proponents say the limit would spur development of those technologies -- possibly subsidized by a new fee on gasoline sales. And as happened with California's pioneering limits on auto emissions, the goal is to inspire other states to impose stricter limits on all greenhouse pollutants.

Climate of hope

Here's one guy's attempt at some problem-solving around climate change: Climate of hope - in Salon.com, you'll have to watch an ad if you don't subscribe.

We could change our ways significantly, and it could help our economy and the environment in the long run. I hope the tipping point arrives soon, when enough people wake up and think it matters.