Everything That Counts

Passionate Politics or Plain Exploitation

2010-11-18T14:34:00.020-06:00

I am not particularly following Sarah Palin. I don't perceive her views enlightening or representative of sensible, reasonably intelligent American electorate. But she has been really hard to avoid lately. While I salute her rise from obscurity as the Alaskan governor who didn't complete her term, I find her increasingly annoying these days. Not because day in and day out she proves to be a nincompoop as Peggy Noonan indirectly and rightfully labeled her recently. It is because she is doing everything in her power to exploit all within her reach including her family, her town, her gender, whatever she can get her hands on.

I truly wondered back in July 2009 why she chose not to finish her term. Wouldn't it make sense to have a complete term of governorship under her belt for a politician with grand aspirations? Her alleged main reasons at the time was to protect her family from being under the microscope of public and media. What Sarah Palin and her family have engaged in since her resignation is a far cry from keeping a low profile. After one published and another about-to-be-published book, a reality show and her daughter being on the Dancing with the Stars show it is clear that Sarah Palin wanted to devote her time and energy to chasing the big bucks. She has seen the opportunity knocking on the door and there was much to be left on the table if she continued to serve as the Governor of Alaska.

I would like her to do one thing for the American public she pretends to care about deeply: go indulge yourself completely with your newly found fame and wealth and leave nothing behind for possibly spending or exploiting for a presidential candidacy race. Talk more and more just to prove how misinformed -or not informed at all you are-, engage in petty talks like attacking the American Idol contestants, comment on whatever seems beyond your comprehension, knowledge or political focus. That would be just super. Because your run in the 2012 presidental race - let alone winning- would be the utmost evidence that the conservative voters and the Grand Old Party have completely gone insane and there is no hope for recovery for neither. I truly wish that I will not witness such a day.

This country has been experiencing lackluster leadership second time in a row and cannot afford another one similar or worse. The sensible people have no patience for mockery anymore. We need people who think (not only talk), act and lead effectively.

Someone Is Fighting The War The Right Way

2009-09-21T09:20:00.009-05:00

Craig and I have stumbled upon this late night documentary on CNN called "Generation Islam". It was gut-wrenching to watch at times as they showed little girls that were sprayed acid on their faces so they would not come near a school again. They showed school buildings blasted with bullets to threaten the teachers, the parents, and the students. There were many more examples of how Taliban is trying to keep the female population uneducated since these little girls (as well as the boys) will be a major obstacle for Taliban to carry on their mission in the future. Just to give you an example, a boy apparently cannot carry out a suicide bomb mission without his mother's blessing. A mother who sees the world without Taliban's spectacles won't allow their son to be a bomber, therefore she shouldn't exist...

We also got to see some very exciting, brighter scenes from Afghanistan: A group of US soldiers whose sole mission is to build schools and provide security to those attending the school, Afghan leaders determined to keep the schools open, and more importantly kids who are very eager to go to school and have a better shot at their future. CNN even showed a village which cleaned out the Taliban and restored safety for their schools with the soldiers' help. Given the brutality Taliban has displayed over the years for these folks, act of bravery falls short to describe their success.

Here is the link to the CNN special: http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/generation.islam/

The report covers a broader topic than I what I described above.

Last but not the least, I wanted to mention a veteran soldier named Greg Mortenson, who we learned about during this TV report. Mortenson dedicated his life to facilitating the education of young girls in places like Afghanistan. His story, his work, his accomplishments are amazing (http://www.gregmortenson.com/) He is the kind of guy who makes you rethink what your goal in life is... I just ordered one of his books (http://www.threecupsoftea.com/) to help his fundraiser and learn more about how he did it. I will keep you posted about the book.

I don't get to see a lot of TV but this was a well spent time on my part as it opened a window into a world that I vaguely knew and very rarely thought about. Certainly made me appreciate the opportunities we all have.

It is clear that the military is thinking the right way about how to win this war. I truly hope that they will have the resources and the ability to increase this type of effort in the mix. They clearly can't pour every soldier, every penny into school building as their mission calls a multitude of tasks, but hopefully we all can do something to help those like Mortenson trying to rebuild a future for the young minds. Ordering the book and recommending it for your book club may be a good start :)

Pittsburghers: Get Dressed As a Superhero to Do Your Good Deeds!

2009-04-07T09:36:00.002-05:00

I wanted to let you know about a fun charity event coming up soon. A former colleague of mine started a foundation called “The Superhero Foundation” (http://superherorun.com/) which aims to fight child abuse. They have launched an annual run in Austin, TX and now in Pittsburgh. The 5K run will start on Saturday, April 18 at 9am at the Oregon Pavilion in North Park. Please do not stop reading if you cannot run a 5K. It is called a “run” but it really is a “walk or run”. A lot of people will be walking (including myself) while they are pushing their jogging strollers or simply chatting.

The fun thing about this run is that you get to dress as a superhero (or dress as whatever character you would like to be I guess) while running. This will give your kids the opportunity to dress up and parade outside well before the Halloween (I know this will not be a hard sell to my kids)! There will also be a DJ, kids race, and face painting for kids’ entertainment following the main walk/run. It sounds like a great way to spend a Saturday morning outside with the kids while helping a great cause.

If you are interested in participating, please register by following the link below. There is a fee for registration which is one of the ways they raise funds for the foundation.
http://www.active.com/page/Event_Details.htm?event_id=1693954&assetId=da6375b5-ada0-4933-a8a0-044a8e84c2e4

Thank you for reading this and please feel free to forward it on to your friends and family.

I hope you can make it!

Emel

Post #2 - Finally...

2009-04-06T20:21:00.008-05:00

I guess you can tell by now that I am not obsessive about keeping a regular blog. It has been a little over three months since I posted the first one. Eh, better than never given the circumstances. I am hiding behind the kids, work, house rehab, trips, you name it...

Let's jump into the topic from the first blog again. After my first posting, I received a bunch of suggestions and tips on an easy transition to become more environmentally friendly. Here is a few from the list of tips I received:

-Sign up with http://www.41pounds.org/ to stop receiving junk mail and catalogs

-Make energy efficient home improvements not only to reduce your utility bills, but also receive tax credit up to $1,500 based on the new ARRA legislation (aka Stimulus Package). More information at http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_tax_credits

-To save money on food, you can get away with conventional produce and fruits if they have thicker skin. I did some research on this and found a very useful one-pager: http://www.foodnews.org/EWG-shoppers-guide-download-final.pdf

-Stop wasting 12" or 15" of paper towel when 6"of it will do the job very nicely. For the smaller sheet option, look for Bounty's "Select-A-Size" or other brands offering smaller pieces to tear

-Here is one for the moms with young ones: rip your baby wipes in half unless you are facing an epic incidence (they need to be sturdy to withstand the mess they clean but they take way too long to degrade in the landfills)

My friend Lori -she is from Portland, OR so she is green by default ;) - recommended that I should hook up with enviromom at http://www.enviromom.com/. It is geared towards moms mostly, but I have to admit enviromom is pretty cool. I've come across hundreds of other blogs on the web with names containing every possible combination of the words "Mom", "Green" and "Environment". I guess it can only be good since this shows that a lot of mothers are thinking about this stuff so their kids are learning about conservation from the right people-their parents!

That's all for now. I will keep posting the tips you send my way and other stuff occupies my mind. I have one that keeps bothering me but I will save it for my next blog. I promise it won't be another three plus months before I get to it.

Best,

Emel

2008-12-24T10:10:00.003-06:00

HISTORY IN THE MAKING: I STARTED BLOGGING

I have been meaning to write this for a long while now but for an unknown reason this afternoon presented itself as the most ideal time. Maybe both of my little ones decided to nap at the same time? Not sure. My thougths you are about to read is a product of my personal battle with myself about being more environmentally friendly. I am sure you know what it is like having an uphill battle with yourself. During my own battle, I usually lose to the convenience-lover, price-sensitive, skeptical, and the style-conscious side of me. But even so, I recently felt that I am making some headway as I reflected on my small wins and wanted to share these with you as my holiday gift. After all, I couldn’t let you all down with that lame holiday picture card with no personal scribbles on it. This is how it goes:

Don’t we all try to be more environmentally friendly deep down inside? But for one reason or another, most of us won’t make it to the nominee list for the Green Person of the Year Award. Sometimes it is the old habits that are keeping us from making the switch and sometimes it is the limited choices of the eco-friendly substitutes for our everyday consumables.

Most of our daily gear includes items from trash can liners to kids’ drink bottles to printer paper which are widely available in environmentally friendly forms. And then there are more personal things such as clothing, make-up, etc. which are much harder to make the switch for as our personal taste and other intrinsic qualities of the products make them hard to give up. It was a no-brainer for me with the food items despite the hefty price tag they carried when I first made to switch to organic food. It was because I could feel the difference in taste, appearance, and the benefits of a pesticide-free diet were scientifically available (I am a skeptic in nature and need to see the numbers to believe).
I know in my heart that I won’t be going green in all aspects of my life anytime soon, but I am making an effort to reduce my not-so-green footprint on this earth. My quest to be more environmentally responsible is broken into three groups:

Reducing the waste (not the stinky kind, just the unnecessary use of everything) at home through switching off the lights when you are not in a room, turning the heat down at night, using energy-efficient bulbs, purchasing grocery tote bags instead of coming home with a dozen of them after every trip to the grocery store, switching to online statements and online payments, etc.
I can’t help paying a tribute to my late father here. He used to tell me that the one who eats the stale bread is the one who can afford the fresh bread. His words may have been lost in translation a little but the morale of the story is that conservancy leads to wealth. It does lead to wealth, not personal only but national and worldwide wealth. Of course, when I was little, I really thought this was all about the bread and resented not being able to have the warm francala (French bread in Turkish) just brought back from the bread shop instead of toasting the crunchy leftovers first. He also used to call me out for not turning out the lights in the rooms I have been to and not closing the bedroom doors, etc. in winter. Now looking back, I see that he was trying to instill on me the habit of cutting out the waste. I’m not certain how successful he was with me but he was my inspiration in doing the same with my kids. I am not going to go into much detail, but after a year or two of brainwashing, I am delighted to see my 4-yr old daughter turning the Christmas tree’s lights of before leaving for school or going to bed, and calling warnings to her little brother for running the water too long in the sink.

Recycling not only the milk bottles but anything that is not worn or used anymore in the household. Once I heard of a good rule-of-thumb: if you haven’t used it in two years, you will never use it again. I know it is hard to swallow for those of you pack rats, but the reality is our homes are full of clothing, gear, tools, books, and more which haven’t seen the daylight in years. Isn’t one man's trash another’s treasure? So I make my quarterly calls to the Vietnam Veterans of America (800-VVA-1316) to pick our treasure. They are fantastic! They come and pick up your stuff at your door at a scheduled time. You don’t need to be there. They will leave a bag for the next time around and a receipt for your tax deduction. It doesn’t get any better than this. Just make sure the donated items are light enough to be carried to the truck by the driver on his own.
Let’s revisit the milk bottles. I certainly didn’t want to make light of the plastic and paper recycling with my opening statement in this second group. To me, it is the pillar of environmentally friendliness and the easiest way to be a proud beginner tree-hugger -as long as your local government has a recycling program in place and most do these days-. Aside from our contribution to preserve our natural resources, recycling paper and plastic has an immediate impact on our pockets: it provides significant sales revenue for the local government which in turn comes back to you as more services or infrastructure improvements. In economically challenging times like we are in now, the domestic or foreign demand for our trash may not be so hot but we will certainly get out this slump sooner or later. I don’t know about your locales but in Pittsburgh there are various paper collection drives to raise funds for libraries and other public resources. If your garbage man is not collecting recycled paper yet, you may want to consider dropping your collected pile into one of these fund raiser collection points. If you want to recycle office paper, especially the ones with confidential information on it, and have no access to recycling bins with a shredder, your spouse may have access to it in his or her office and will be more than happy to schlep it to their office every once in a while (my husband is thrilled with his contribution to the cause!).

Shopping responsibly is another area I recently started getting smart about. I get tired of buying fruits and vegetables at high prices only to go bad after a day or so in the refrigerator. The wilted greens and the moldy fruits take all the fun out of cooking. Buying produce that is in season helps me in two accounts. First, it doesn’t have to be hauled from the other hemisphere with the opposite climate so it is not at the last leg of its life. Second, it is not priced exuberantly that the cost of making a meal is not equal to a cost of fine dining in a restaurant. Familiarizing myself with what is in season has been another learning experience but as I said earlier, this has been a battle and battles are not won easy. And lastly, I finally came to accept the fact that my kids will survive without eating berries year around. We enjoy the berries, watermelons in summer and switch to apples, oranges, pomegranates, and kiwis in winter. I will occasionally indulge with a 6 oz of $99-a-box blueberries in winter but only occasionally.

I am not driving a hybrid or a small Japanese car using a grain of rice for fuel, but driving a rather large car. My only saving grace is the fact that it runs on diesel. Yes, I did get whooped with the recent diesel fuel prices, but at least I get good mileage per gallon and it runs much cleaner than most vehicles out there. I am not composting either or installing a solar panel in our roof anytime soon (we live in Pittsburgh so instead of a solar panel, anything fueled by gray clouds would be perfect) but I am sure my family will consider things of this nature in time. I am also not suggesting by any means that my ideas and practices above are all useful and correct but I really wanted to start somewhere. I wanted to share all this with you because I know most of you can identify with my efforts to go a bit greener everyday. Help me find out both quick and easy ways to become more environmentally friendly, and also the painful, harder ways requiring real and material changes. Correct any fallacies I seem to believe and feed me with the real facts. Help me make this transition easy if you already figured out how.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

By the way, my daughter will be most thankful if you turn off your Christmas lights off inside and outside before you go to bed :)

Happy Holidays to all of you.

Best wishes.