Cara’s ITW BLOG

here is the link

 Gabcast! <a href=”http://www.gabcast.com/index.php?a=episodes&b=play&id=8538&cast=73325” target=”_BLANK”>A Blog of One’s Own #116</a><br><br><object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”150″ height=”76″ codebase=”http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.gabcast.com/mp3play/mp3player.swf?file=http://www.gabcast.com/casts/8538/episodes/1208996347.mp3&config=http://www.gabcast.com/mp3play/config.php?ini=mini.0.l” /><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” /><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always” /><embed src=”http://www.gabcast.com/mp3play/mp3player.swf?file=http://www.gabcast.com/casts/8538/episodes/1208996347.mp3&config=http://www.gabcast.com/mp3play/config.php?ini=mini.0.l” allowScriptAccess=”always” wmode=”transparent” width=”150″ height=”76″ name=”mp3player” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”></embed></object>
  

HERE IS MY LINK

 Gabcast! <a href=”http://www.gabcast.com/index.php?a=episodes&b=play&id=8538&cast=72674” target=”_BLANK”>A Blog of One’s Own #91</a><br><br><object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”150″ height=”76″ codebase=”http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.gabcast.com/mp3play/mp3player.swf?file=http://www.gabcast.com/casts/8538/episodes/1208732780.mp3&config=http://www.gabcast.com/mp3play/config.php?ini=mini.0.l” /><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” /><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always” /><embed src=”http://www.gabcast.com/mp3play/mp3player.swf?file=http://www.gabcast.com/casts/8538/episodes/1208732780.mp3&config=http://www.gabcast.com/mp3play/config.php?ini=mini.0.l” allowScriptAccess=”always” wmode=”transparent” width=”150″ height=”76″ name=”mp3player” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer”></embed></object>
  

After reading about the Iraqi culture, I have learned about many things important to them. One thing that is very important to their culture is the date palms. This is because the farmers take pride in their work because they are beautiful and now are being cut down. They are very resourceful, in the summertime they are eaten and stored as well. Also, they are not wasteful of the date palm; they use each part of it either for syrup or eating and the leaves to make baskets.

Another thing I learned about Iraqi culture was about evening tea. Most families at 8 o’clock at night drink tea with each other. I feel they do this sort of custom to relax and try to forget about all the horrible things happening around them.

After learning and reading about some of the customs to their culture, I am finding out more about them as people and not what the news makes them out to be.

http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/10/15/iraqi-teens-work-to-help-their-families/ After watching the podcast “Iraqi Teens Work to Help Their Families” 10/15/07, I have learned more about Iraqi lifestyle. This podcast shows the viewers how young teens, ages 13 to 15, working with their families in long shifts, making paintings and furniture. The teens were interviewed and asked to discuss about their working lifestyles and how they have been dealing with the war. One of the teens, Hussein Kamal was interviewed in a plain looking building where he paints furniture for is father. Because the road conditions are so bad it takes him twice as long to get to work then it should, he explained. Some of the other interviews seemed to be taken in places that looked very run down, where I personally would never want to work in. In these interviews the viewer is able to learn about the daily lives of kids in Iraq and what they have to do in order to help their family survive. I could never imagine working at these ages hard labor. An image of seeing the young teens working so hard at a such a young age is something you do not see everday, here you would see them playing video games or out with their friends.

After tonight’s assignment of Riverbend’s blog for August and September I found Al Capone to be extremely interesting. This is not just because of what Riverbend talks about on page 52, but because it was one of the only names I recognized. I searched Al Capone on www.wikipedia.com and found a lot of interesting information. His full name is Alphonse Gabriel Capone and he was born January 17, 1899 and died January 25, 1947. He was only 48 years old when he died. He was an Italian American gangster known as Scarface. His criminal organization (mob) was known as the Chicago Outfit but was covered up as a used furniture dealer. In 1931 he was convicted for tax evasion.  Riverbend. Baghdad Burning. 1st ed. New York: First Feminist Press, 2005.“Al Capone.” Wikipedia. Wikipedia. 8 April 2008

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_capone>

Dear Riverbend,

I have just read your blog posts from August 19 to August 30, 2003. I keep learning more and more about the war from your point of view and it is helping me get a different perspective. I am still having a hard time though putting myself in your shoes but this is because I am on the opposing side.  You give your point of view very honestly because you are there watching everything happening. I am sure you receive positive and rude responses to your posts.

            “You really don’t have to read my blogs if you don’t want to anyway, you certainly don’t have to email me telling me how much you hate it.”

                                                            (August 20, p10)

It’s like saying if people have opposing views that they feel they need to share with you then they should say it in an adult manor or not say anything at all. People who are rude or crude should really learn to grow up. If people are not there in the middle of everything then they should try to learn what exactly is going on and make opinions on things that they know exactly what they are saying. I have heard horrifying stories about what is happening over in Baghdad and the sad thing is I know it has to be all true.

Personally I am not affected by the war directly but I do know people that have gone overseas. I do not hear about the things they have seen. Whenever I have asked they would all change the subject. I honestly if I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t want to know what is happening. It is not like I want to be ignorant of the topic but it is such a controversial issue. I also do not want to sound cold about others that are directly affected by the war, I am sympathetic towards them.

Over all I feel you have helped me see a different side to things and you are helping me make a better idea of Iraqi people.

From,

Cara

Soueif, Ahdaf. Forward. Ridgeway, James. Introduction. Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq. By Riverbend. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005.Baghdad Burning writer is a Riverbend, a girl who is in her mid-twenties. She is in the middle-class and also lives with her father, mother, and brother. She compiled all of the blogs she had written while she was living in Iraq during the time troops invaded. Through reading her blogs you will find out what is happening around her and can feel as if you were there in her shoes. Because she is so intense and intimate while she writes the blog, when there are no entries for a few days or weeks, it seems like she might have been killed. People think of the worst and believe the worst rather than having hope. When she is able leave an entry she explains how she did not have any electricity making it hard to find internet. Her blogs would interest readers who want to know what is happening over seas without any censoring.After reading Riverbend’s blog it makes me open my eyes to what others see and how little I know about certain things. It also gives me a blogger’s point of view making it a little bit better to understand because it is not formal writing or a news cast explaining the story. This blog shows how people can feel so connected with the writer that they become addicted or attached to the life it is following. This blog gives a point of view of the war that not many hear unless you personally were over seas or had friends that told you about it but not in such detail.

After I read the forward and introduction in Baghdad Burning (Riverbend vii-ix), I found the two different authors, Soueif and Ridgeway, to have different memories of the same event. Ahdaf Soueif in the forward discusses about the living status of the blogger Riverbend. To summarize her main views on the war I will quote her:            “He’s the tasteless joke that Bush and Co. sent along the soldiers.”                                                            (Soueif, ix)This summarizes it because she feels as if the blogger Riverbend feels Bush thinks this is all a huge joke and that the soldiers are along for the ride of it. Riverbend feels as if no one is taking the war seriously. Riverbend is living right in the middle of Baghdad where everything is being aimed at.  In the introduction that James Ridgeway writes, he starts off with a small biography about Riverbend. He states how she is not bloging about the news that is broadcasted everyday in the United States, but what she is living through and sees for herself what is actually happening in her eyes. She watches with her brother day in and out their home being destroyed. Ridgeway talks about events leading up to the 2003 invasion into Iraq. He explains how the entries were in the blog. Sometimes it would be hours apart, otheres would be days apart. I really cannot give strongs views of the war. Yes, I did have family and friends fighting in this war and did feel it was wrong, but I couldn’t be over there nor will I. I am not trying to defend my country in any part of the military. So why should I be able to have thoughts about it and say what should have been done if I am not doing anything about it. I feel so many people had opinions but were not doing anything about their feelings, so I just keep out of it as much as I can.

After I read the last two chapters of A Room of One’s Own  by Virginia Woolf,  I found that I really do not have a room of my own. I do not have that one place where I can truly let myself go and be as natural as can be. I do not have that place where I feel at peace and feel protected. Since I was little my parents have been divorced and I have had many rooms that were just mine but never have I had a room where I could show my true expressions. I do not think I will have this room until I am on my own and can express myself without any rules of parents or of the dorm rules.

Here is a quote that explains what I just said:

            “Intellectual freedom depends on material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom… That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one’s own.”

                                                                        (Woolf, 108)

Here it explains on how this room you can have if you have the materials and the freedom to do so. I will have to pay money for this room of my own when I get my own apartment. I will have the freedom to do as I please for the most part to this room.

Another quote that explains how I can eventually show different sides of me is:

            “It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be a woman-manly or a man-womanly.”                                                                        (Woolf, 104)

This is explaining how you need to give and take. How things don’t have to be or mean just one thing. I can have boy things and still be considered girly.

Everyday, we as women are constantly dealing with a male revolved world and it really should stop. Women in power are always ridiculed and never given a real chance nor are they ever receiving fare judgment from the world. Hillary Clinton has been working her way up in politics since she was in the White House. She was involved with politics in New York and now she is running for president and I hope she shows the world what women can do. After reading an article on Jezebel, “Crying at Work: Generally a Dumb Idea, Right?” it is discussing what happens when women cry or show their feelings in a work environment. I feel disgusted because it makes women look lower then men which is what the media wants. It shows how women have to cry to get higher in the workforce. Women should be promoted for who they are and shouldn’t have to use the tears to do so. It shows our weakness to the men like they want to see. I remember I once said:

“For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet”

                                                                        (Woolf, 41)

Women have just now have begun to acquire power which they deserve. Women now just have to adjust to this new found power and adjust to their role in society as powerful women and know there is no need for a tear show in the work place.

This article can be found at: http://jezebel.com/369295/crying-at-work-generally-a-dumb-idea-right