emilicious

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I read pages 70-79 in Baghdad Burning and those pages did not answer the questions that I was asked to answer for homework 41. The post on September 19, 2003 talked about the raids. It sounded absolutely horrible. Troops coming into your house and tearing it apart. Riverbend talked about how sometimes it would be in the middle of the night and so sometimes the owner of the house might think it was a robber or something and pick up a gun for protection. Apparently that was the worst thing to do. She talked about how people were being killed in these raids and it just seemed really wrong to me. Even one of her neighbors was raided in the middle of the night. Riverbend watched from her roof while reminiscing about the last time she had seen her neighbor. The grandfather of their house was taken away and Riverbend wasn’t sure why. Her neighbor still hasn’t returned and she feels bad for the family. The post on September 21, 2003 talked about how a member of the governing council, Akila Al-Hashimi, was killed. This was a big upset because she was apparently a good member of the council, not to mention a female member of the council. The post on September 24, 2003 she talked about oil and such. This post was confusing and I didn’t understand it. I’m sorry that I couldn’t answer the questions you had asked.

I watched “Iraqi Teens Work to Help their Families” from Alive in Baghdad 10/15/07http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/10/15/iraqi-teens-work-to-help-their-families/. The podcast was about a few different teens that work to help their families. It said that 50% of Iraqis are jobless so a lot of teens need to help their families with work. They do things such as build or paint furniture. Some have been doing it since they were really young. One of the teens in the video was Hussein Kamal. Hussein is a fifteen year old who helps his dad with carpentry and furniture painting. It takes him an hour to get to work when it use to only take thirty minutes because the ride has become so dangerous. The video didn’t show much scenery, but the little scenery I saw wasn’t too bright or cheerful. It was sandy and plain. People viewing this video will become educated on what its like for an Iraqi teen. It will show the viewer some of the differences that the war is putting on their country verse ours. This was different from news clippings that I have seen previously about Iraq. It showed it from an Iraqi’s view rather than an American in Iraq filming Iraq. I think the most memorable part of the podcast was the teens call to action at the end of the video.

Works Cited Riverbend. Bagdad Burning. New York: The Feminist P At the City University of New York, 2005. 1-286.  Baghdad Burning is about a twenty four year old woman living in Iraq with her mother, father and brother in present day. Every day she constantly has to deal with the war. She hears and sees it from her rooftop. Her and her brother sit on the roof and identify ammunitions from their sound. If they need to go to the store to get crayons they need to gather up a crew of friendly soldiers to help. The woman calls herself Riverbend and she blogs when she has electricity, which can sometimes mean the middle of the night. The book is made up of her blogs. She will blog about her feelings about the war and what has gone on that day. If she felt sick, or she saw something crazy that day. Baghdad Burning is a great way to get a different side of story you haven’t heard yet. 

I am going to summarize the forward and introduction to Baghdad Burning by Riverbend. The forward (vii-ix) was by Ahdaf Soueif and it gave me a little insight to what I would be reading about in Baghdad Burning. “This book should shame all those with a lingering imperialist bent of mind who see Iraqis (or Arabs, or Muslims, or “third-worldeans”) as somehow lesser or, at best, “developing”,” (Soueif ix). It talks about how the book is mainly placed in Iraq and doesn’t really venture outside of it. It doesn’t give a theory on why the Bush administration invaded Iraq. It is simply a look into what the invasion feels like. The introduction (xi-xxiii) was by James Ridgeway and it described a little about Riverbend and the background of the situation she is in the middle of. She is in her mid-twenties and lives with her mother, father, and brother (E), in Baghdad. Before the war she was at a job that involved computers. She now sits on the roof with E and they have “learned to identify different types of of automatic weapons by the sound of their volleys,” (Ridgeway xi). It said sometimes she had to jump out of bed in the middle of the night because the electricity would come on and she would need to do laundry or update her blog. It gave some background of the war and she calls the efforts of America to help with the government a pro-American puppet show government. I don’t really keep up with the news on what has been and what is presently happening in Iraq. It was really good to get some background on that stuff. Honestly I have no right to have an opinion on the background information they gave in this book. It seems like this book will be really interesting and I am excited to read it.

I live in the dorms at Keene State with my roommate. Therefore I have no room of my own. We have a lounge on our floor that is supposed to be for quiet time, but mine is always filled with people. At home I have my own room. I never really went there to do homework or anything. I don’t think I need a room of my own. I like being around people, I like noise, and I like commotion. My room here is very distracting but I manage. “She may be begining to use writting as an art, not as a method of self-expression,” (Woolf 80). In this quote I believe that Woolf is takling about how woman (after they have a room of their own) could now use their writting as an art form. “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say,” (Woolf 106).  

“With Apologies to Virginia Woolf”

As I was browsing the internet for something of value I stumbled upon an article that made me turn all shades of green. I was on the celebrity blog, Jezebel. There was an article called Cover Lies: ELLE’s “Intelligent Women” Issue is Kinda, Well, Dumb. ELLE magazine had an “intelligent women” article where they spoke of celebrities, hair stylists, make-up artists, as intelligent women. There are millions of intelligent women on this earth, scholars, poets, authors, and so on. This magazine that is speaking to the women of our country is displaying our hair stylists as the intelligent women of the world. Now I’m sure these women are smart people, but there is just many people that have achieved so much more. Natalie Portman went to Harvard, so what, so did a million other people, it doesn’t make you such an intelligent person that you should have an article on how intelligent you are. I think that the world has so many intelligent women and this article down plays that fact and it makes me ill.

In “Web of Influence” in the book BLOG! by David Klien and Dan Burnstein I really enjoyed reading one informational paragraph that started on page 84 and ended on page 85. The paragraph basically explains what a blog is and little bit of its history. I liked the part where it said in 1999 there were an estimated 50 blogs and in 2004 there were somewhere between 2.4 million to 4.1 million! My point is that it is so crazy that between those five years so much could change. I think that this paragraph is important because it really shows how blogs have advanced. The paragraph also speaks about what exactly blogs are. If someone didn’t know what a blog was they could read this paragraph and get a great understanding of what it really is. For example they say “They are usually presented as a set of “posts,” or individual entries of news or commentary, in reverse chronological order.” In short, this paragraph is important because it addresses every aspect of a blog from someone who may have no idea what a blog is.