HW 35: Letter to my readers

Hello readers,
This is and was my first blog. I'm proud of it! I like it, I have learned much about my writing skills, that I do have a voice, that this is me, that if I can write what I feel about books, I can write about anything. I have always had trouble understanding books, so with this blog I was able to write what I truly felt about it all. I am so proud of what I have read, and learned and grew to understand. If anyone out there is loyal to reading my blog, (which I doubt but hey, it could happen) then I hope you got to see what I mean, that this is me, I am writing what I feel, just like Riverbend. (That is the most recent book I have been reading and it made sense so I just I had to write that) I'm sorry to say though that in a couple of weeks, I will not be writing anymore about books, or much of anything, this was an experience that I have never had with the technological world. I'm happy I tried it out though, like I said, it was quite the experience. If I were to have a blog, I would write every-so-often, not religiously like I did on this one; and it would only really be about my life. So thank you for reading this blog that I had for a period of time. I hope you enjoyed reading it, as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Your writer.

HW 34: Responding to Riverbend

Gold plays a huge role in families in Iraq. “Gold is a part of our culture and the roll it plays in ‘family savings’ has increased since 1990 when the Iraqi Dinar began fluctuating crazily.” (Riverbend 100) Gold is an importance to the Iraqi people; they are converting their money into gold. By doing this they are eventually making items to sell, money rates can change, but gold will always be valuable. The Iraqi people are so hurt, continuing in the reading, there was a statement made about how some troops only money our of their homes because they didn’t even bother looking for gold because people like “that” didn’t own gold.


Riverbend talked about how in Iraq a garden is not complete without a palm tree in it. “From kilometers away, you can see the vivid green of proud date palms shimmering through the waves of heat and smoke reaching for a sky, rarely overcast.” (Riverbend, 103) It is evident that she is very right about there being an incomplete sense about a garden, or just any area around Iraq without a palm tree. It seems almost weird to me that there such a lavish amount of palm tree’s because when I think about palm trees I think of relaxing tropical Islands but when I think about Iraq, I only think of the war of terror. Maybe that is wrong of me, but that is how I feel I guess, and it is really good to read that from someone’s mouth.

HW 33: Responding to a Podcast

The title of this podcast is Iraqi Teens work to help their families, and it is part of the Alive in Baghdad podcast. This was released on the Internet on October 15, 2007, and I will provide anyone who wants to see this with a link (http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/10/15/iraqi-teens-work-to-help-their-families/) This podcast covers the topic of how kids work to help support their familes, the first young boy is named Hussein Kamal and he showed us some of his carpentry skills, he said that he works with his dad during holidays and showed us his work. Also there is Mustafa Malek and he is fourteen years of age, he also works with his father in carpentry and said that there "was no security" and that "you have to protect yourself." The Iraqi background was as I have seen on TV from the war, dirt, houses made of clay and brick, there was no green grass, very dusty and muddy. This is a very interesting podcast, because it is all in the Iraqi language, it makes it more interesting to hear what they say, not understanding it of course but putting words together. I remember most when Hussein Kamal said "It takes me an hour to get to work, but it should only take a half hour, the route is not secure." I felt bad for him, that he had to walk out of his way to get around the dangers of his home.

HW 32: Responding to riverbend

Aquila Al-Hashimi I found out through reading Riverbend's book, is a part of the Iraqui counsil. Riverbend talks about Aquila just after there was an attack on her. I read that she was walking somewhere with her not so helpful bodyguards (becasue women cannot leave their homes without them) which were her brothers, when a couple of trucks flew past her and hurt her. Apparently, right after that happened, she was taken away in an 'American Ambulance" and was operated on her stomach and had an injured her foot and an injured shoulder. This is terrible! I had no idea thinks of this sort was going on. Riverbend talks about how upsetting it is, she said that this shows how unsafe her world is, how unsafe every women actually is. People liked Akila Al-Hashimi, and that didn’t stop anyone from taking her away. She elledgely did not wear a hijab, which could have been a reason why she was targeted, that’s definitely not the only reason, because she was part of the governing council and that could have been a huge factor.
(Riverbend 75-76)

HW 31: Responding to Riverbend

I would really like to know more about “Depleted Uranium”. When I first read this, I had no idea what it meant, I still don’t really understand. But Riverbend described as a term that all Iraqi’s knew of and it was something to deal with the cancer rate rising. I guess, Depleted Uranium Poisoning could cause children to be born with no face, one leg, or even just one eye. (Riverbend 47) According to Wikipedia, Depleted Uranium is is uranium remaining after removal of the isotope uranium-235. It is a waste product of the uranium enrichment process. That’s a nice technical definition that they gave us, and I basically got out of it that it is a very dangerous material that can cause dangerous affects on everyone, especially children. Wikipedia says that because it is weakly radioactive, the “natural uranium” has never been able to be proven and this has been known to cause cancer.

HW 28: Letter to Riverbend

In the book Baghdad Burning, you talks about your views of the war in Iraq at this specific time. As I began to read the book, and read the blogs that you have written and I am just in awe of how you handle your composure and utter sanity. On page sixteen, I quote “Females can no longer leave their homes alone.” I had heard this through a discussion I had had with someone, that women were not aloud to leave their homes due to men snatching them and raping them I believe. I couldn’t believe it the first time, but to hear it from reading what you had said, it just makes it more real. Reading your blogs is weird, because I live in the United States, it’s my home that you are fighting, the war is between my country and yours. Being in the country where nothing affects my life is easy, yes, we are in a war, but I’m not banned from outside without an escort, and I am not having to deal with children every day getting killed, you have the hard part. “Today a child was killed in Anbar.” (Riverbend 8) that is ridiculous. It makes me so sad to see innocent children who honestly has no real idea what is going on, to get killed.

HW 30: What kind of democracy do we want?

Yesterday I attended a citizenship symposium at Keene State College, the main speaker of this event talked about Democracy, and what kind of democracy we wanted in the U.S today. The talk was basically about democracy. It started with her explaining herself, where she was from, which is Lexington, MA (the birthplace of American liberty). She then took us to even further back into history and started talking about Moses, I was actually confused as to why she brought up Moses, why? She basically said that 'Distrust' was what everything that had to do with democracy was based on.The only thing she said was "democracy is based on distrust." with no further explanation. I sat there and tried to understand what she meant by this, but got really confused as to what 'distrust' actually was, and what it had to do with democracy. She never really defined the word, and just expected everyone to understand how it had to deal with the topic of her speech. An interesting fact I learned through going to this was that who is really counting our votes when we go to the polls. That it's not the people voting that make a difference, it was the the people counting the votes. I also learned about Secret Vote Counting Software and that Nationally 80% of states do this, and in New Hampshire alone, 81% of people do this. It was interesting when she brought the audience into it and asked for a raise of hands who thought this software should be used and only one raised their hands.