Accidental Blogger

No time for real blogging.  Here are links to some interesting stories without the benefit of my wisdom – at least not the usual dose.

A Painful Aural Memory:  Author Nadeem Aslam recalls growing up in a fundamentalist Muslim family in Pakistan where learning the Quran in Arabic was accompanied by beatings and scoldings -resulting in an aversion for the Arabic language itself. The revulsion grew stronger when Pakistan turned increasingly towards fundamentalist Islam and in an effort to minimize its South Asian heritage, became increasingly "Arabized."  Years later, as an adult living in Europe, Aslam heard a Syrian poet recite a verse about love in Arabic.  Although he did not understand a word, the childhood memory of pain and humiliation brought tears to his eyes. (via Amardeep Singh)

I found this story fascinating. The few languages that I know, have no unpleasant associations. But I remember an Israeli friend saying something similar to me years ago. Both her parents had lost their entire families in the Holocaust. As a young college student she visited Germany. Upon her arrival at the airport and hearing German spoken all around her, she remembers that her blood ran cold and she was gripped with panic.

"In Turin, Italy, in the spring of 2005, I went to a reading given by the Syrian poet Adonis. He would read a few verses in Arabic and then pause while they were translated into Italian for the audience. I know neither language and yet, not long into the reading, I discovered that my eyes were full of tears and realized that if I did not exert control I would be weeping openly. I was puzzled and when I told my friends about it later, they were amused. It is only now, months later, that I think I know what made me cry.

As a child I was made to read the Qur’an without any understanding of the grammar or idiom of Arabic. I had to learn the words by heart simply because they were sacred. My mind, even then, did not work like that, and I was regularly slapped or beaten with a cane on the hands and body by the clerics for not having memorized the verses. Even more frightening than the thought of being punished myself, was the thought that my brother would be beaten. I remember him crying out under the blows one day at the mosque. My uncle, who was feared by everyone, including my mother, would sometimes wake me at dawn with his loud chanting of the Qur’an. As a result of such associations, the very sound of Arabic came to sicken me.

I have read widely in Arabic literature, beginning, yes, with the Thousand Nights and A Night. I have read the Qur’an several times as an adult, and of course there are the novels of the magnificent Naguib Mahfouz; pre-Islamic pagan poetry; the wounded and wounding lines of Mahmoud Darwish. But I have read them all in English, silently in my study. The aural connection was severed long ago. Until that day sitting in front of Adonis. And then there was confusion because how could a sound that spoke to me of brutality, express words of love, of kindness, of longing? There lay the source of my tears."

The Texans lose again? : Over the weekend, I was preoccupied with the Stephen Colbert eruption. I didn’t have time to report that the Houston Texans, the losingest team in the NFL for two years running, created an earthquake of sorts here by hopscotching over the top two draft picks and going for the third. The Texans opted for Mario Williams of North Carolina State, bypassing Reggie Bush (whom most Texans fans wanted) and Vince Young (the hometown hero who would have liked to play here). Sports commentators and fans went ballistic. Who knows, may be the Texans want to retain their spot at the bottom of the NFL ranking for some more time to come. Many are wondering if the Williams pick will qualify as one of the worst in Major League draft – in the same league as the Portland Trail Blazers picking Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan in 1984. Only time will tell. (I couldn’t care less).

The five worst draft picks in sports history (according to the sportswriters):

1. Sam Bowie, Portland Trail Blazers, 1984

2. Tony Mandarich, Green Bay Packers, 1989

3. Steve Chilcott, New York Mets, 1966

4. David Clyde, Texas Rangers, 1973

5. Dan Wilkinson, Bengals, 1994

Shorter widowhood and more meals to cook:  Men are catching up with women in the longevity department. If true, old age dynamics and demographics will change in some interesting ways -apparently more so for women than men.

"MEN are catching up to women in the life expectancy game; the National Center for Health Statistics reports this month that the gap between them has shrunk to five years, the narrowest since 1946. If current trends continue, in 50 years men and women will live the same length of time.

This is better news for men than for women, if you believe some economists and therapists. It’s not just the extra years; it’s all those extra meals to prepare.

"Men have this expectation that women should take care of them," Dr. Gray said. "And she has her own expectations, that she should be there for him." Particularly after retirement, she is not used to having him around quite so much. "It’s different taking care of him for dinner, as opposed to him being home all the time, and expecting her to make every meal," Dr. Gray said.

Though some may object to the assumption that sex roles will be this traditional by 2040, recent studies have shown that among husbands and wives who both work, the woman still does the much larger share of the housework. As one Connecticut woman in her 70’s was heard to retort recently when her husband asked if they were ready to move to an assisted-living facility, "You’ve had assisted living for 40 years."

This dynamic is reflected in the statistics: men are four times as likely as women to remarry after the death of a spouse, experts on aging say. (Men who divorce also remarry faster; within three years, compared with nine for women.) They’re looking for love, Dr. Gray said, but they’re also looking for lunch.

People have traditionally felt sorry for older widows, thinking they had so few prospects for remarrying, she said. The truth is, they may not want to remarry.

The full article here:

"MEN are catching up to women in the life expectancy game; the National Center for Health Statistics reports this month that the gap between them has shrunk to five years, the narrowest since 1946. If current trends continue, in 50 years men and women will live the same length of time.

This is better news for men than for women, if you believe some economists and therapists. It’s not just the extra years; it’s all those extra meals to prepare.

By necessity, women have gotten used to a life lived for long periods without men. They have had the advantage in life expectancy since the late 19th century, when overall longevity started to climb. More than men, women have developed strong friendships to support them in their frailest hours. They have forced doctors to pay attention to their health concerns. They no longer have to cater to men. 

But for all that, consider how women would be better off. Men living longer means women are less likely to suffer the fate that Miranda from "Sex and the City" so feared: dying alone with only the cat to rake over her rotting bones. With the existing gap, women are more likely than men to be widowed — 71 percent of people over the age of 85 are women, and the majority of them will have been married. And being alone increases their risk of dying or getting sick. No one is there to help when they fall; they eat less, and poorly.

"Even given the limited capacity of men, having a surviving spouse is going to mean that women do not go as early to nursing homes when they have chronic illnesses," said Ronald D. Lee, an economist and the director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at the University of California, Berkeley.

And a shorter widowhood means women will be better off financially, largely because, as Heidi Hartmann, a labor economist and the president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said, "Money attaches to the men." Men, typically the higher wage earners, get bigger Social Security checks. And if the couple is living on his checks alone, she gets less when he dies. Men are much more likely to have pensions, too, leaving women dependent on them, and one-third of men, Ms. Hartmann said, do not leave theirs to their wives. (That number used to be higher, she said, until wives were required to sign off on the deal.)

But men and women growing old together is not always easy.

"Men have this expectation that women should take care of them," Dr. Gray said. "And she has her own expectations, that she should be there for him." Particularly after retirement, she is not used to having him around quite so much. "It’s different taking care of him for dinner, as opposed to him being home all the time, and expecting her to make every meal," Dr. Gray said.

Though some may object to the assumption that sex roles will be this traditional by 2040, recent studies have shown that among husbands and wives who both work, the woman still does the much larger share of the housework. As one Connecticut woman in her 70’s was heard to retort recently when her husband asked if they were ready to move to an assisted-living facility, "You’ve had assisted living for 40 years."

This dynamic is reflected in the statistics: men are four times as likely as women to remarry after the death of a spouse, experts on aging say. (Men who divorce also remarry faster; within three years, compared with nine for women.) They’re looking for love, Dr. Gray said, but they’re also looking for lunch.

Marriage lowers everyone’s risk of death, Professor Lee said, but the benefits go mostly to men; women lower their risk only slightly by marrying. Similarly, a man’s risk of death increases sharply after the death of a spouse; a wife’s does only negligibly.

"Women are very helpful for men," he said. "Men are not very helpful for women as spouses."  Women not only do fine despite a spouse’s death, they may even do better.

"In married couples, women tend to be the ones who manage the social sphere," said Laura L. Carstensen, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and director of the Life-span Development Laboratory there. "They’re the ones who make dinner plans and invite friends over for weekends. So a man loses a social network, whereas a woman continues to make plans and see people."

People have traditionally felt sorry for older widows, thinking they had so few prospects for remarrying, she said. The truth is, they may not want to remarry.

"They’re the ones taking care of everyone; they’ve often taken care of a frail husband, and doing it again isn’t necessarily appealing."

Then there are the disputes over sex. Dr. Gray said a woman’s sex drive increases as she ages, while a man’s declines. But then, is Viagra upsetting that balance, putting men in retirement homes permanently on the prowl?

On that count, at least, things may even out. And that may be true over all.

"There is a lot of poverty among older single women, so if men live longer, that’s good economically, for women and men," Ms. Hartmann said. "Men are generally happier when they’re married. The women may not be happier, but at least they’ve got more money."