Technology Woes

I woke up Saturday morning with a revelation - in order for me to devote my life to making a difference I have to have my house in order. By this I mean my work and home life. If I am constantly one step behind or finishing my projects just in the nick of time how will I ever have the time, energy or focus to perform the research needed to make a difference. I decided it was time. Starting today I am going to work towards getting all those pesky little projects out of the way.

Too bad I had this revelation a day too late. I turned on my desktop computer and performed my usual routine; checking my blog stats, reading emails, feeds and tweets. Then my husband checked his and down loaded a song onto his Ipod. The computer locked up, this wasn’t anything unusual locking up has been a regular occurrence lately. I got it going again and continued about my day. Later when I tried shutting it off it acted weird, but I was able to power it down. Now I can’t get it to boot up. No matter what I try nothing.

Then DH was listening to his Ipod and it went into a disk mode and he couldn’t get back to the start menu. No matter how many times he tried - nothing. Panic began settling in. I never backed up his music onto my laptop or his photos - though I do have most of his photos on disk. If we can’t get the computer going again his email contacts and favorites will be gone as well.

I was able to get his ipod going this morning and will have my IT person at my work look at my computer tomorrow, but a lot of aggravation would have been saved if I would have taken a couple of simple backup precautions while I had the chance.

Memorable Vacation Reads

In the Oprah Magazine article 7 books that made a difference to Yoko Ono, Yoko tells us she travels a lot. She says:

So when I arrive in a city, I like to go to good local bookshops and make a selection based on how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. The book I pick usually seems to have a definite karmic connection!

I don't have Yoko’s luxury of having a driver to take me to a local bookshop when I travel, so I need to figure out what my book karmic connection will be before I leave home. For an avid reader like me, a week away from home without a good book can be disastrous and has happened. So when packing for a major vacation, I now take at least four books with me.

When I think back to my most memorable vacation reads, my favorites have been when I got the karmic correction right.

What do I look for in a vacation read?
Ever since I read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, while camping on an island in the Chippewa Flowage, I try to match my vacation reads with the setting or place I am visiting.

A book that perfectly matched subject with setting was:
A Trip to the Beach: Living on Island Time in the Caribbean by Melinda Blanchard and Robert Blanchard which I read while traveling to the Caribbean island Anguilla. The book recounts the Blandchard's experiences including the obstacles they encountered while opening their upscale restaurant in Anguilla. The book provides insights into Anguilla’s culture and its people.

Last year while planning my vacation to Montana, the decision of what books to take was a tough one. I had already read Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West about the Lewis and Clark expedition and Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, one of my all-time favorite reads, about several retired Texas Rangers and their adventures driving a cattle herd from Texas to Montana; both would have made perfect selections. In desperation, I asked Sarah at Citizen Reader for recommendations. She came up with Laura Bell’s Claiming Ground. This autobiographical book takes place in the hills of Wyoming where Laura worked as a sheep herder and cattle rancher. She examines her life and the choices she made. It was a good book to read while sitting on a picnic bench in Yellowstone surrounded by the Wyoming Mountains.

Nonfiction does not always make a good vacation read:
Generally I have found getting the karmic connection right for nonfiction (my preferred genre) to be tricky. A nonfiction book that is a great read at home can seem down right depressing and out of place on vacation. For example, I received a comment from a reader here telling me she was setting Gail Collin's book When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present aside ‘til she wasn’t on vacation anymore . It was making her too angry. I have found in order for nonfiction to work as a vacation read it has to either relate to the place or setting I am visiting or read like fiction.

I read Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession on my recent vacation in Northern Wisconsin. It was an enjoyable book that read like a novel. This book had been on my reading list since Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness mentioned Susan Orlean is a narrative nonfiction writer she enjoys. After she included The Orchid Thief on her reading list for her hypothetical class Journalists who say "I", I decided to take it with me. While reading I kept thinking this book would make an ideal selection for someone traveling in South Florida.

If I can’t come up with a book that matches the setting or place I am visiting, or a nonfiction book that reads like a novel, I look for a really good story. My most memorable fiction read is Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. Atwood’s book which includes a story within a story reads like sheer poetry. Reading it under a palm tree on a beach in St. John was the ultimate karmic connection.

I also find historical fiction to be a safe vacation choice. Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl was a memorable beach read from my Anguilla vacation.

And lastly, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help was my favorite vacation read from last month’s up north vacation. I am usually disappointed with popular mainstream fiction, but this book was outstanding. The book is about black domestic servants working in white Southern households in the early 1960s. I was enjoying it so much; I remained outside in our vehicle reading long after we had returned to our cabin.

What do you look for in a vacation book? Do you have a memorable vacation read?

What is the future of the Roth IRA?

At the conference I recently attended, one of the speakers brought up an interesting point about Roth IRA’s.

As you may know, Roth IRA contributions are made with after-tax dollars and are allowed to grow income-tax free as long as you, or possibly your children or grandchildren, own the account. With that in mind, many Traditional IRA holders are taking advantage of the current low income tax rates, paying income tax and converting their pre-tax IRA’s to Roth IRAs.

So what is the problem?
According to the speaker, government has mortgaged their future. With Traditional IRA accounts, they are guaranteed a steady stream of revenue. When a pre-tax IRA account holder turns 70 ½ they are required to begin taking taxable distributions, thus making income tax payments. In the future, with the majority of Traditional IRAs converted to Roth’s and new money invested in Roth’s (many company 401(k) plans now offer Roth IRA options as well) the government will no longer receive steady income from retirement accounts.

So what will happen to the Roth IRA?
The government, needing money, will change the rules. At the very least, earnings on Roth IRA contributions will become taxable.

For now Roth IRA’s remain a good deal, so take advantage while you can.

Changing the Way I Network

At the prompting of my manager, I attended an accounting conference last week. I was not excited to be going. I had attended this conference a couple of years ago and hadn’t been impressed. In my opinion, the majority of the presenters had been more interested in selling their products than giving a worthwhile presentation.

What was different this year?
The conference organizers had received feedback that the speaker lineup was weak and had made changes. This year there were fewer speakers who spoke more in depth on their topic. Instead of: Here is my service any questions. Next presentation.

It felt good to commiserate with others:
Recently someone stumbled upon my blog via the following search:

How to create passion for accounting

To be honest if you don’t have a passion for debits and credits that goes back to high school, a new found passion for accounting probably isn’t going to happen. If you did, and currently feel as though you are just going through the motions, an opportunity to commiserate with others may be what you need to re-energize. The conference opened with the host asking, “How many of you have spent the last year projecting sales for the next 20 years for your bank?” Everyone’s hand shot up. “If these projections are wrong whose fault will it be? Yours.” I knew I was in the right place.

I attended the after-hours social event:
Typically I skip these. Similar to the introverts who commented on this Ask a Manager post, after spending eight hours of the day “on” I like to spend the evenings in my room recharging. I met several people though out the day who strongly suggested I attend and I realized it would look bad for me and my company if I didn’t go. The social event ended up being quite enjoyable and well worth my time. I made contacts I would not have made if I had stayed in my room.

What will I do differently in the future?

Dress more professionally:
You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. Because I hadn’t been excited about this event, I was nonchalant about what I packed.  I was more interested in the book I was taking (Rebecca Rasmussen's The Bird Sisters) than what I wore. All of the women were wearing jackets. I felt frumpy in my sweaters.

Have my business cards readily available:
I wasn’t planning on meeting anyone, so I hadn’t thought about business cards. Luckily I had several haphazardly placed in my purse. In the future I will be more prepared. You never know who you are going to meet.

Follow up with new contacts:
This is the most important thing I learned. I received an email shortly after returning from a new contact describing her horrific return flight and providing follow up information to an issue we had discussed. This was an Aha moment for me. How thoughtful. I have never followed up with a new contact. How many opportunities for a genuine connection have I missed over the years?

Other networking tips I’d like to share:

Go alone or if you go with others sit with people you don’t know:
You will never meet anyone new if you socialize only with your friends and co-workers.

When you meet someone new don’t talk about you, ask questions:
One of my favorite suggestions from Megan Hustad's book How to Be Useful: A Beginner's Guide to Not Hating Work is to ask, “What project are you working on?” Ask a technical question others can participate in. Ask about the job market or the economy.

What not to talk about (I have witnessed all of these):
How smart you are.
How smart, talented and gifted your children are.
A minute by minute playback of the European vacation your family took in the 80’s.
Also, don’t direct your conversation to one person, talk to the entire table. (He or she wants to hear what everyone is talking about not your problems.)
Don’t monopolize the conversation with talk of your workplace.
Don’t describe in detail the spreadsheet you can’t get to balance.
Don’t give more than one hard luck story (you will be perceived as a train-wreck)

Don’t drink too much:
At the social event, I stuck to my one glass of wine with dinner rule and went home early. The next morning one of the event organizers filled me in on what transpired after I left: Which guests drank too much and who amongst the conference staff had to baby-sit them. And that the 20-something train-wreck from above spilled her drink on a highly respected business owner. He was not pleased. Don’t be the talk of the conference. Limit how much you drink.

Don't spend the entire conference working on your smart phone:
I know you love twitter, but it is rude to spend the entire conference tweeting your followers about how lame the speakers are. (I've witnessed this.) If you need to email or text, do so discreetly by placing your phone under the table.

Change your (my) attitude:
Since your company is paying for you to attend this event and even if they are not, why not get as much out of it as you can.

And lastly, give constructive feedback:
If there is something about the conference that didn't work for you let the organizers know. Nothing will change if they don’t know there is a problem.

Did I miss anything?  Do you have any conference etiquette or networking tips to share?

Going Gray

Motivation for reading: I decided to read Anne Kreamer's book  Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters after Gretchen Rubin mentioned she was a big fan of it on her blog The Happiness Project. Gretchen wrote:

Not dying her hair any more was a sort of happiness-project for Anne that caught my attention.

What is this book about?
Anne who had been coloring her gray hair black for several years realized she wasn’t fooling anyone after viewing a photo of herself:

There she was - behind carefully chosen clothes, meticulously dyed hair, and several rounds of botox - looking exactly forty-nine.

She decides to go gray and wrote this book to document her experience. She explores our perceptions of gray hair. She interviews family and friends asking them if they think grey hair will make her appear older. She posts photos of herself on an on-line dating site, one with grey hair and one with black, to gauge which photo will receive the greatest response. (The grey-haired Anne is more popular) She explores whether those with grey hair are less employable? (In most cases they are). She looks at those who have gone grey in the entertainment and political arenas. She seeks advice from Mireille Giuliano, author of French Women Don't Get Fat, who explains that French men value women of any age who are “bien dans sa peau” (comfortable in their skins). It gives them a quiet confidence and serenity, that seductive je ne sais quoi.

My Thoughts:
Initially, I thought Anne seemed narcissistic. It didn’t help that I’d read a review shortly after bringing the book home that said "Who Cares?" But as much as I wanted to stop reading the book, I couldn't seem to put it down. The more I read the more I liked it and Anne no longer seemed self-absorbed at all. She was just exploring the social and advertising pressures women encounter to look “young.”

Today, three and four decades after the baby boomers’ countercultural transformation of the culture, we have held on to the hedonistic, forever-young part of our Woodstock dreams much more tenaciously than the open-and-honest-and –authentic part. Yes, women really have come a long way toward equality of opportunity and social empowerment. Yet at the same time there has been a narrowing of the range of acceptable looks for women. Women may now be CEOs and TV news anchors, and openly indulge their sexual appetites-but only if they appear eternally youthful. And a main requirement is a hair color other than grey or white. (Pg. 38)

And what a business boom hair color is for the beauty industry:

Some hair-color marketers estimate, hopefully, that as many as three-quarters of women color their hair, although some research puts the number closer to half that, including women in their teens, twenties, and thirties. (Pg. 44)

Anne calculates she spent over $65,000 coloring her hair during the 25 years she did so. She went to the hairdresser on average every three weeks to touch up her grey roots.

I love Anne’s opinion of low-lights:

A friend Betsy was wrestling with the whole low-lights concept of reverse coloring, adding dark streaks to her grey hair. If you search “grey hair” on the internet, a lot of information you’ll discover covers how women can add ‘dimension” to their hair by introducing a wide variety of colors. I personally think this is simply one more way the beauty industry tries to keep us on their regimens. But “low lights” might effectively change the subject from age-versus-youth truthfulness to plain-versus-stylish aesthetics. (Pg. 23)

Anne, now grey, meets with three image consultants. Surprisingly, none of them think she should color her hair, but all feel she needs to update her wardrobe. This gave me another push to clean out my own closet (I, like Anne, still own suits from the 90’s that no longer fit).

Anne realizes every decade of our life is important and that if we spend our time, money and energy trying to look perpetually twenty we will miss out on what is important in each of those decades - but we also care about how we look.

She closes with:
One's character is the result of hundreds of ordinary, mundane daily choices.  And social and cultural progress are the cumulative result of a billion tiny choices.  If each of us tries to tell more of the plain truth in small ways, then maybe we as a society and culture will find it easier to start to recognize and reward the truth in bigger ways. And hair, as ridiculous as our obsession with it may be, is a very real, visible, emotionally central sign of what each of us is trying to be- a sort of personal flag.  To dye or not to dye, that is a question. (Pg. 202)

What about me - do I or don’t I dye?
At 48 soon to be 49, I’ve yet to see a grey hair, but that could be somewhat deceiving since I've been professionally highlighting my mousy, dish-water blond hair since the early 90’s and don’t have plans to stop anytime soon. My hairstylist agrees my hair color hasn't turned grey it is just duller and in my opinion uglier. Other than an occasional teeth-whitening and nightly dose of anti-aging cream when I remember which isn't often I don't partake in any youth preserving beauty regimens. I have friends who have gone grey. They grew tired of the four-week maintenance appointments and their hair is gorgeous. We all do what we works for us. Moderation most likely is the key. 

How about you do you or don’t you?

Should employee report sexual harassment?

An acquaintance confided:

My manager, who I will call Mr. Bully, belittles, intimidates and harasses one of my employees on a regular basis. Yesterday he threatened to write her up for no apparent reason and made her cry. We are both afraid of him and fear retaliation if I speak up or report him to HR. I’ve tried talking to his manager, but he says Mr. Bully is a friend of our company’s President and there is nothing he can do. When I try to discuss his treatment of my employee or other problems in our department directly with Mr. Bully he yells at me. Then he says we are good right and asks for a hug.

Oh and another thing, he touches and gropes both myself and my employee. I know his manager has seen him do this, but he pretends he has not. This manager then told me to tell him to never touch me again. My employee does not want me to go to HR about the touching because she doesn’t want Mr. Bully to find out we reported him. Both of us really need our jobs and are certain our company’s President will not allow him to be reprimanded.

Mr. Bully is from another country and we understand his behavior towards us (we are women) may be influenced by his culture, but we don’t like it. What should I do?

To start with Mr. Bully’s manager is a spineless weasel. The minute you reported the touching to him regardless of whether he witnessed it himself, he was required to take reasonable care to correct the harassment. In saying that, you also have an obligation to protect your employee from sexual harassment. It is your responsibility as a manager to thoroughly investigate a sexual harassment charge even if you are asked not to. If it comes out later you were aware of sexual harassment and did nothing your job could be in jeopardy.

I recommend you go home and write down every harassment incident you recall. Include dates, times, locations, who was present and what occurred. Include the “asking for a hug” incidents. Stick to the facts. Don’t write: he’s a creep and everyone I talk to thinks he’s a creep too. Don’t give excuses like he is not from our country and doesn’t understand our culture. Don’t say: Mr. Bully’s boss witnessed the incident, but refuses to admit it. Just write Mr. B’s boss was in the room.

First thing tomorrow morning pull out your employee manual and determine how to report a harassment incident. Follow the procedures indicated and file your report. Your company, most likely the HR department, will begin an investigation. They are required to make every effort to keep your identity confidential during and after the investigation. However, you or your employee’s identity may be obvious from the facts of the complaint.

It doesn’t matter that Mr. Bully is a friend of your company’s President. There is nothing he can or should do to prevent Mr. Bully from being investigated, but if you think your employer didn't fulfill its obligation under the law, or you experience retaliation consider contacting the EEOC.

In the interim if Mr. Bully touches you or your employee again tell him his behavior is not acceptable and must stop immediately. He is trying to bully and intimidate you as well as your employee and has created a hostile work environment.

It was hard for me to hear blatant sexual harassment such as this is still occurring in my back yard and that managers remain unwilling and afraid to report it. When this acquaintance initially came to me I was reminded of Penelope Trunk’s post Don’t report sexual harassment (in most cases). Penelope states:

After you've filed a report, human resources will protect the company, not you. The law is set up to encourage a company to take proscribed steps to protect itself from liability rather than to protect your emotional stability, or, for that matter, your career.

She suggests employees have a frank talk with their harasser prior to going to HR and to negotiate with him/her themselves. She recommends asking to be transferred to another department and if that doesn’t work to begin looking for a new job.

I am sure Mr. Bully has harassed women who have worked for him in the past and will do so again if he is not stopped. The thought of this manager getting away with this sickens me. I hope Penelope is wrong and HR will be successful in changing his behavior.

What do you think? Should employees report sexual harassment?

Searching for the truth

According to Wikipedia a lie (also called prevarication, falsehood) is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others.

Why am I writing about this?
Last week, liars or those who lie seemed to be the theme of my week:

First, I was filling out an amended form with one of my company’s salesmen when he told me to lie about the reason for the amendment. Our conversation went like this:

“Why would I write that? It isn’t true.”

“It is easier. I tend to do things the easy way.”

Naturally, I refused and we ended up compromising with me just stating the facts: previous form was submitted in error.

Later that day, another salesman asked me why he hadn’t been paid a commission for one of his sales. I spent thirty minutes researching the deal, eventually coming across an email I had sent his manager. (The sale had cost more than the salesman had predicted and I had asked his manager to approve my commission calculation based on the revised cost.) He had done so and I had paid the salesman his commission last month. When I told the salesman he had been paid he admitted he knew that, but wasn’t happy with the amount he’d received. Then why did he tell me he hadn’t been paid? What was his intention? Did he think I would accidentally pay him again?

Both of these scenarios infuriated me. These salesmen have lied to me in the past and I can guarantee I will think twice before I believe anything they say in the future. As my boss says:

When working with a salesman assume they are lying until proven otherwise.*

Which brings me to the story of the week: 60 Minutes and author Jon Krakauer reported Greg Mortenson the co-author of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time lied about events in his book and may have benefited from donations to his charity to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

My first thought upon hearing about Mortenson was thank goodness I had read Citizen Reader's review of the book and had taken it off my TBR list.  My second thought was that lying scum.  One of the reasons I read non-fiction is to learn the truth. If I can't believe a non-fiction author who can I believe? Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness discussed this topic in her post No, Lies Do Really Matter (Especially in Nonfiction)

Kim gives us her thoughts:

What is not inspirational is nonfiction that plays fast and loose with what has actually happened. It’s laziness to the supreme. Not only has the author been too lazy to research a true story enough to tell it accurately and well, he/she has also not been brave enough to write fiction from what is in his/her heart. Both of those types of writing take more effort than nonfiction filled with lies and distortions, and I don’t want to waste my time as a reader with writing that is lazy.

She asks:

How do you view truth in nonfiction — is alteration of the facts permissible if the story is “inspirational,” if the author admits and explains why, or never at all?

I love Kim’s take:

Nonfiction that plays fast and loose with what has actually happened. It’s laziness to the supreme.

My week culminated with me finishing Matt Taibbi’s book Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America which may be the most eye-opening book about what is going on in this country I've ever read. Griftopia begins with

But in a country where every Joe the Plumber thinks he is one clogged toilet away from being rich himself, we’re all invested in rigging the system for the rich and ends with an expose of Goldman Sachs, perhaps the most unscrupulous player behind the Great Recession, walking away pretty much unscathed and intact.

To answer Kim's question non-fiction needs to be true. In this country where more people can rattle off how many times Lindsay Lohan has been in jail than realize they are being conned by fast talking swindlers and bureaucrats pushing the latest bubble (or charity in Mortenson's case) we don’t need “inspirational” alteration of non-fiction. I can accept some alteration of facts for privacy's sake, but if a story is changed to make it more "inspirational" it is fiction.

*Which reminds me of my golden rule. If we (co-workers) think our salesmen are rude, incompetent, liars, etc., so do our customers.

That dress looks great on you!

A member of my husband’s family is getting married this summer which means I have to begin the dreaded task of shopping for a new dress. I asked a friend who’s into fashion where she would look for a dress. She said,

“Funny you should ask I just bought a dress for a June wedding at The Limited. I’m not sure about it though. The dress falls above my knee and I hate showing that much leg. The salesgirl assured me I looked great in the dress and suggested I wear tights with it.”

Tights in June!* She was unsure, but the salesclerk was very persuasive and eventually convinced her to buy it. As she was checking out she overheard one of the salesgirls whisper to another, “Go tell Kelly in fitting room two she looks great in that shirt.” What the hell. They say that to everyone.

What terrible customer service. I’ve had salespeople in the past tell me something does not look good on me and I can’t tell you how much I appreciated it. I would return to a store where I trusted the sales staff any day over a store that convinced me to buy something just to make a sale.

p.s. If anyone has any suggestions where a 40-something petite gal should shop for a dress to wear to an afternoon summer wedding followed by a formal reception let me know.

* Apparently nylons are no longer in style.

Book doesn't hold interest; realize I am not a "foodie"

I finally finished reading David Kamp’s book The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation.

Motivation for reading:
The United States of Arugula has been on my reading list for some time. When I heard it was the current selection for the on-line book club called BookClubSandwich hosted by Kim and Andi I decided it was time to read it.

Synopsis from the book's cover:
The wickedly entertaining, hunger-inducing, behind-the-scenes story of the revolution in American food that has made exotic ingredients, celebrity chefs, rarefied cooking tools, and destination restaurants familiar aspects of our everyday lives.

One day we woke up and realized that our “macaroni” had become “pasta,” that our Wonder Bread had been replaced by organic whole wheat, that sushi was fast food, and that our tomatoes were heirlooms. How did all this happen, and who made it happen? The United States of Arugula is the rollicking, revealing chronicle of how gourmet eating in America went from obscure to pervasive, thanks to the contributions of some outsized, opinionated iconoclasts who couldn’t abide the status quo.

My Thoughts:
This book was not what I expected. I thought it was going to be about “the food” behind the “American Food Revolution.” Instead it is about the chefs who created the movement: James Beard, Julia Child and Craig Claiborne and the food figures who came after them. At times, depending on whom Kamp was covering, the book was interesting and engaging. At others, I found myself bored and barely able to keep reading. This is not the fault of David Kamp. His depiction of the characters behind the American food movement is fair and comprehensive. It's just I am not a foodie (a person inordinately obsessed with restaurant going and cooking fashions (Pg. 63) and wasn't overly interested in the subject matter.

I did appreciate Kamp’s honest portrayal of the chefs he wrote about. He points out how James Beard swallowed his principles and learned to love Niblets. (Pg. 62). That Alice Waters who receives all the credit for Chez Panisse’s success was really just the salad girl and the real credit belongs to Chez Panisse’s first real chef Jeremiah Towers.

The presence of Jeremiah is what changed everything. Jeremiah really made the restaurant. (Pg.146).

I also enjoyed the discussions of food. Especially this one:
In the beginning the quality of American ingredients was pretty lousy. Andre Soltner unable to locate chanterelle mushrooms (girolles) had to order them from Germany. They arrived in a half-liter can. Wanting to only cook with fresh ingredients he didn’t do anything with girolles. Then 15 years later a farmer from Oregon came and offered him fresh girolles. Soltner didn’t understand. You’re telling me girolles just started to grow?

No we’ve always had tons and tons of girolles in Oregon. But we had no market. So we had a contract with Germany for tons of girolles. We packed them up and sent them over. The Germans, they were putting them in cans and sending them back to us. (Pg.116).

Then there was Paul Prudhomme who made blackened redfish so popular the redfish population in the Gulf of Mexico became depleted and regulatory action was required to protect the species.

Most importantly Kamp wrote about where we are today. This is my favorite paragraph of the book:

At its current juncture, the story of American food is dominated by two phenomena: the “national eating disorder.” to use a phrase coined by the food writer and UC-Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan, that finds many Americans obsessing about being thin while getting still fatter, lurching from one faddist diet to the next (such as the Atkins madness that demonized “carbs”), and eating too many processed foods; and the quantum leap forward in ingredient availability and culinary sophistication that is described in this book. The problem is that these two phenomena have been running on parallel tracks, with some segments of the population depending ever more on fast food, and other segments getting deeper and deeper into foodie connoisseurship and/or organic, biodynamic and “slow” foods. (Pg. 359)

Kamp offers a solution:

The trick, the task America faces, is to get these two parallel tracks to converge. For the solution to the national eating disorder lies in the advances and lessons of the American food revolution. The junk-food and diet-food people need to learn that natural and gourmet foods need not be flavorless, expensive or “elitist”; the foodie sophisticates need to lose their smugness and patronizing tone and embrace capitalist enterprise and engagement with big companies as a good thing, the most effective means of proselytizing on behalf of real, healthful foods. (Pg. 359-360)

In the end despite realizing I am not a foodie, I am glad I read the book. It influenced me to think more about my own food choices and the food choices of others. I plan on writing more about foodies, the American diet and the politics of food in the future.

How to Avoid Business Scams

My friend Sally retired from her job a couple of years ago. She has enough money to pay her bills each month, but has little left over for extras. She would like to find some sort of part-time work to supplement her retirement income. She was approached by a gentleman from her church offering to help set her up with an on-line store. He has his own store that generates a couple hundred dollars each month with almost no effort by him. She asked if I thought this would be a good idea. She did not know the name of the company she’d be working with, but did know they charged a nominal set-up fee. Here are the tips I gave her:

1. Just because you heard about this from someone who goes to your church doesn’t mean the business is legitimate. Either the gentleman who told you about it is being scammed himself or he may know it is a scam and plans on scamming you as well. Pat Kiley one of the master-minds behind the Ponzi scheme Jacquelyn Mitchard and hundreds of others fell for presented himself as a Christian. Also, it is a known fact many scammers type the words “God Bless” on the bottom of their phishing emails in an attempt to appear legitimate.

2. Do your homework. Find out the name of the company you will be working with. Type the name of this company into a web search engine with the word scam behind it. Type the name again with the word sucks behind it. How many web results come up? For example I typed in “Monavie scam” (which I wrote about here) 413,000 results came up. “Monavie sucks” brought 444,000 results. Read what these posters have to say. This will give you a good idea of the experiences others had working with this company.

3. Find out all the costs involved. I imagine the nominal fee presented to you is a teaser charge and more fees are to come. Also, think about how you are going to market this site. A new website doesn’t magically attract customers. You will be competing with both EBAY and Amazon. What will differentiate your site?

4. Remember my rule of thumb when you are presented with a business idea. If the idea is so good why are they pitching it to you? If the idea really generates hundreds of dollars each month the presenters would be off making gobs of money not selling their idea to you.

5. On a side note, any business venture that instructs you to cash a check and wire a portion of the money via western union is a scam. THIS CHECK IS A COUNTERFEIT AND WILL BOUNCE. The money from the fraudulent check will be removed from your account; you will be charged a penalty plus be out the money you wired.

Earlier this year, my company’s bank account and routing number were stolen. The scammers forged this information along with our company name onto fake checks as part of a mystery shopping scam. Shoppers signing up for this job received a check for $2,500.00. They were instructed to cash the check, use $50 of the money to make a purchase at any local Wal-Mart store and wire $2000 via Western Union. They would then answer a couple of questions about their experience and keep the remaining $200 for their trouble.

Luckily for my company, none of these fake checks cleared our account. We received a call from our bank when the first check was presented alerting us to the scam. Our bank put a stop on all checks being presented on this account. Approximately fifteen checks were presented and cashed. I received a handful of desperate callers who pleaded with me to cover the bounced check. They really needed the money. Sorry, but that's not how it works.  One even threatened a lawsuit against our company.

6. Finally, any business idea that sounds to good to be true probably is. Be careful Sally. You can not afford to be scammed.

Drinking buddies are not real friends; a lesson for my teenage self.

My husband was a member of a sports league for many years. In the beginning, the members of this league organized a golf outing each summer and attended a holiday party together at a bar. This holiday party evolved into a wine tasting with each interested party bringing a bottle of wine. Eventually the bar’s owners banned wine carry-ins and the wine-tasting moved to individual homes. In the beginning there were lots of laughs and both my husband and I enjoyed learning about wine. Before long we were attending or hosting a party numerous times throughout the year.

After the last party held at our home, we decided we’d had enough. These parties weren’t wine tastings, they were drunken bashes. Couples would bring a minimum of four bottles of wine. This was in addition to the wine we had purchased for the party. They didn’t sip and discuss wine throughout the evening, they slammed it. One guest became so drunk he fell in our bathroom ripping down our shower curtain. And the conversation was always the same. They would discuss previous parties, how much wine everyone had drunk and who had made the biggest fool of themselves. Then they’d hug everyone and say what good friends we all were. We had to tell them to keep it down; their language was not appropriate for our neighbor’s children. We worried about them driving. Even the designated drivers drank.

When the next party invitation arrived we declined, saying we were too busy. We didn’t host our annual party last summer. They didn’t take it well and without our participation the wine tasting group disbanded.

One of these former partygoers invited us to his birthday bash this past weekend. After much consternation, we decided to go. It was the right thing to do. We didn’t dislike these people we just didn’t want to be subjected to their drunken banter on a regular basis.

We did not have a good week. My husband totaled his truck coming home from work Wednesday night. Not liking the way the car in front of him was driving, he changed lanes hitting a patch of black ice. His truck spun out of control, hit a tree and flipped onto its side. He was lucky. He walked away without a scratch and is thankful he didn’t hit anyone else. Kerry, a kind stranger, pulled up behind him, called the sheriff and stayed with him ‘til a tow truck arrived. She even offered him a ride home. Then to add drama to our day, we realized our furnace wasn’t working and had to call a repairperson. $500 and three hours later we had heat.

The rest of the week was stressful; calls to the insurance company, revisiting the crash site to look for the license plate (our insurance company felt it was important we find it), cleaning out the truck at the tow center, shopping for a new vehicle and arranging transportation to our places of work with only one car took a toll on our emotions.

We considered not going to the party, but my husband thought it would be good for us to get out of the house. The first thing the party’s host said upon our arrival was, “It is about time you got here. We were taking bets as to whether or not you’d show up.” I told him about the accident. He acted as if I was blowing it out of proportion. He said he had been in two car accidents and that you just collect your insurance money and move on with life. We didn’t talk to him again all evening. One of our former wine tasting friends asked when we were going to have another summer party. It was on the tip of my tongue to say “never” you guys drink too much. Another asked us to check our schedule; he wants to host a party in a couple of months. I enjoyed catching up with some of our former friends, but as we were leaving, I couldn’t help noticing how drunk some of them were.

My husband is glad we went. He says he now knows for sure he is making the right decision; it is a waste of our time to socialize with these people. It is too late to change the rules. They won’t understand if we say we want to be friends, but in a non-drinking capacity. It is interesting to note my husband received more compassion about his accident from Kerry a total stranger and co-workers who barely know his name than from someone he has known for twenty years.

So here is another lesson for my “Letter to my 18 year-old self:” friends who are friends only if you keep them company on a bar stool are not real friends. They are drinking buddies (and most likely alcoholics).

Is it possible to change the course of a girl's life?

I am currently reading Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx

Motivation for Reading:
This book is on the list of favorite economics books provided by Planet Money on NPR: Must-Read Economics.  Here is the recommendation by Alex:

One of the best books I read about economics is a book which on the surface has nothing to do with economics. It's the true story of two girls coming of age in the South Bronx. It's riveting and devastating, and lays out better than anything else I've seen or read how the circumstances into which you're born affect your economic future. I think about it all the time.

My Thoughts:
When I began reading non-fiction, I came across a list of books called nonfiction books that read like fiction which is a list of non-fiction books that read like novels. Random Family belongs on this list. The story is so engaging I had to flip to the cover to make sure I was really reading non-fiction.* The book's author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc spent ten years living with and interviewing her characters yet she is completely absent from the book. The book is about her characters. The story is harsh. Young girls are molested for years. They begin having babies of their own at 15. The only method available for supporting themselves seems to be dealing drugs or going on welfare. Their mothers are drug abusers. Their boyfriends and fathers are in prison. Their boyfriends beat them, play crazy head games and engage in power struggles. Their situations are so precarious that an impulsive splurge or even a generous gesture toward someone more desperate can send them into a state of emergency. Their state’s welfare service system is no help. They can sit in a waiting room for six hours with three small children for a three minute meeting that accomplishes nothing.

While reading I kept thinking is it even possible to change the course of these girl’s lives. The problem is no one was there to truly protect them when they were children, and now no one is there to go to for real advice and support. One paragraph that strayed with me is about Coco a 20-year old single mother of three:

Coco’s trips to her mother’s and Lourdes’s (her mother-in-law) were searching expeditions – she needed guidance, but Foxy and Lourdes were in no position to help; similar conflicts ruled their own lives. Still, Coco kept returning to the same places for answers again and again. (Pg. 194)

In addition to this book, I want to point you to a moving Dear Sugar column I stumbled across this weekend. While answering a reader’s question, Sugar tells us about her previous work as a youth advocate. She had been assigned to a group of teenage girls in middle school.

Her mission was to help them succeed in spite of the unspeakably harrowing crap stew they’d been simmering in all of their lives. Succeeding in this context meant getting neither pregnant nor locked up before graduating high school.

It meant eventually holding down a job at Taco Bell or Wal-Mart. She tries to help them by getting the authorities to intervene, to protect them, but no one comes. No one intervenes. She is told there is no money for kids over the age of 12. She changes her advice. She tells the girls to survive it. To endure it. She writes:

But I did not tell her it would stop. I did not promise that anyone would intervene. I told her it would likely go on and she’d have to survive it. That she’d have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn’t able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever. I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.

Read Sugar's column. It is amazing.

And read the book too. I wouldn’t call the book amazing, the story is too harsh to be amazing; the story is moving and powerful. I haven't quite finished yet, but I believe Coco, Jessica and their children will endure.  They will survive.

*I can’t help wonder if the book would have been fiction if I'd have tossed it aside thinking the story was too far fetched.

How much can I deduct for donating blood?

Q. Several times this year, I donate blood at the Red Cross. How much can I deduct on my tax return?


Unfortunately, there is no tax break for giving blood. However, a donation that you make to the Red Cross by cash, check or credit card can be written off as a charitable contribution.

A Perfect Book for Women's History Month

                       Motivation for reading:
Gail Collin's book When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present was on my reading list for the Women Unbound reading challenge thanks to this review from Florinda. Although I didn't get around to reading it for the challenge, it remained on my TBR list as an important read especially after reading Susan Bulkeley Butler refer to it several times in her book Women Count: A Guide to Changing the World.

What it is about:
When Everything Changed describes what has happened in every realm of women’s lives from 1960 to the present including Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential campaign. It is a well researched comprehensive book.

My Thoughts:
This book is a perfect read for women’s history month and deserves a spot on my list of non-fiction books every woman should read. Also, it is more readable than Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique which I found to be difficult and repetitive. The book is packed with information that reminded me once again of how far we’ve come.

Here Collins writes about being a stewardess in the sixties which was one of the few mini-career paths available to women at the time and how improper it was to send women on a business trip:

Georgia Panter, a stewardess for United Airlines in 1960, noticed that except for the occasional family, her flights were populated only be men. One regular run, the “Executive Flight” from NY to Chicago, actually banned female passengers. The men got extra large steaks, drinks and cigars which the stewardesses were supposed to bend over and light. (Pg. 19)

After reading:

"The dreaded laundry chores were tamed by the arrival of permanent-press clothing, better steam irons, and those automatic dryers.  "Wash and wear clothing and the steam iron were the real liberation for women,” said Edna Kleimeyer. Once they were all in place, it was possible to get the basic household chores done relatively quickly. (Pg. 51)

I am adding wash and wear clothing and the steam iron to Anita Diamant's list of items (antibiotics, birth control, and the printed page) that gave women more freedom and a higher quality of life. Once women were able to get out from under the iron she had more time to pursue work outside of the home.

Collins covers the famous feminists Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem but also covers others who are lesser known. I particularly enjoyed the Civil Rights chapter and the coverage of Ella Baker and Pauli Murray. In the early days of the Civil Rights movement women were in many cases the drivers of the movement, but were pushed out of leadership positions once the movement got off the ground. The men expected women to be subservient. Also it is interesting to note women had a different vision for civil rights than men:

Ella Baker wanted the students to challenge more than the white segregationist power structure; she also wanted them to take on the class lines within the black community itself, to bypass the black leaders who had risen by mimicking the values they saw in a white society such as snobbishness and self-promotion. She had loved the black neighborhood she had lived in as a child, where everyone knew and took care of one another. Where we lived there was no sense of hierarchy, in terms of those who have, having a right to look down upon, or to evaluate as a lesser breed, those who didn’t have. Both she and the students wanted to live that way forever. (Pg. 120)

Also, I had no idea that the Equal Rights Amendment essentially got its initiative when a legislator who was generally opposed to women’s rights tagged a sex discrimination prohibition on to the Civil Rights Act in an attempt to derail it.

Where are we today?
I had always wondered if work was easier in the 60’s when there was less global competition. My suspicions were confirmed when Collins wrote of Anne Tolstoi Wallach:

Unlike the vast majority of upper-middle-class women, Wallach kept working when her son and daughter were born. In one sense, juggling a job and children was less difficult for her than it is for professional working mothers today because the employers were less demanding. In the postwar era when the U.S. had very little international competition, profits were high and pressure for productivity was low. The whole time I worked it was pretty much 9 to 5, Wallach said. And in Thompson’s women’s group, nearly everybody had a secretary. And when you were promoted you had 2 secretaries, and if you were really important you had 3 secretaries. There was a lot of make-work. (Pg. 26)

Where we are today can be summed up in this statement by First Lady Michelle Obama:

Young women shouldn’t have to give up on either career or children, but it becomes a choice you have to make if child care isn’t available or salaries aren’t high enough to pay off your debt that it took to get the degree, to get the job you’re in. (Pg. 387)

I feel as if I did not begin to give this book its justice; I just highlighted the points I found interesting. If you have any interest in the women’s movement or are looking to read a book for Women’s History Month I highly recommend When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.

NWHM Celebrates Women's History Month

Learn about the origin of Women's History Month and International Womens' Day (March 8th), and the roles American women played in shaping both holidays!

Know your limits and learn to say “NO”

If I were to write “A letter to my 18 year old self” I would need to include:

Know your limits and learn to say “NO”

Last summer, my friend Jess asked if I would help her run a charity event to be held in February. She had received a tip for a cheaper venue and was certain her company would sponsor the event. We came up with some great ideas to “change it up” and attract a larger crowd. Typically, January is a busy month for me; I work as an accountant and have spent many Januarys working 50+ hours a week closing the books and preparing for the year-end audit. Jess was persuasive and I agreed thinking I’ll find a way to make it all work.

The venue fell through; Jess’s company waited ‘til the last possible minute to commit to the sponsorship forcing us to hold off publicity ‘til early February. Everything was more work than anticipated. My year-end audit was a week earlier than usual, a co-worker became seriously ill and I had to cover for her. Much of the communication regarding the event needed to be completed during work hours. My manager pointed out volunteer work pays the same regardless of contribution. I ended up telling Jess I had to scale back my participation during the month of January. I know she was perturbed and I was overwhelmed with guilt.

The event wasn’t well attended and despite making money we don’t consider it a success. My relationship with Jess has changed and all I keep thinking is why did I say yes. I knew last summer working on an event in January would be difficult in the best of years. If only I had realized my limits and learned to say no back when I was 18 imagine how much aggravation I would have saved myself over the years.

I had always thought learning to say “NO” was a “woman” problem or a problem for young adults. Then I came across this post on Satisfying Retirement's blog. One of the things he has learned after a decade of retirement is he is Much Better at Saying "No." His lesson is so good I have to include it in its entirety. He writes:

When someone first retires there is often a rush of requests for that person's time. Volunteering for this or that, heading a committee, helping with the Boy Scout meeting..... the lack of a full time job must mean you are constantly available to help others. But, as the years pass by the ability to filter out the things you don't want to do becomes greater. The ability to say "No" to everything comes more easily. You find the strength to say "Yes" to the things that are meaningful to you and most helpful to others.

Surprisingly, this adjustment has been as difficult as any. Saying "no" is not part of our nature. We all want to be needed, liked, appreciated, and desired. The more things you are asked to help with the more you are validated. To turn someone down is to risk being seen as standoffish or aloof or selfish.

But, just as an awareness of the passage of time grows as you age, so does the understanding of protecting yourself. Spread too thin, saying "yes" too many times, and you will drown in all that validation. By becoming more selective you will do a better job at whatever you do agree to do, and be happier in the process.

As for me, I feel as I did at the end of a semester when I was attending college while working full-time. I need to take some time to kick back and take care of myself for awhile. In the future I will consider my limits before committing to volunteer work and I will never volunteer for anything that requires me to work during the month of January again.

Composed A Memoir

Motivation for Reading:
I became a Rosanne Cash fan the day I listened to this interview on NPR where Rosanne talks about the songs she wrote for her album Black Cadillac. When I heard she had written Composed: A Memoir I knew I had to read it.

What this book is not:
If you are looking for a tell-all memoir in which Rosanne Cash spills the dirt on the Cash family or her fellow musicians this is not the book for you.

What this book is:
The book, which began as a series of essays Rosanne wrote after she temporarily lost her voice to polyps, is an inspiring look into Rosanne’s transformation into the artist and person she is today.

My Thoughts:
Despite being the daughter of a music icon, Rosanne seems ordinary and down to earth. While reading I felt as if I was having coffee with a friend. She describes her girlhood foibles, her crushes, and her insecurities. I could relate to her vulnerability. She writes of coming to terms with her appearance and her thoughts on having it all.

On her decision to quit acting school:

I recognized that I could not bring myself to go on auditions, and the idea of drawing so much attention to my physical appearance, a significant part of getting a job, was absolutely horrifying. I was already obsessed with the worry I had the wrong kind of nose to be a great actress. After comparing my ski-slope nose with that of every actress I could think of I found that not a single one shared my exact shape, which I interpreted as a fundamental indication of my acting ability. (Pg. 66)

On having it all:

After I had my first baby, Caitlin Rivers Crowell I felt a constant slow burn of panic; I just didn’t know how to manage it all. Was I really supposed to quit being a musician now and be a mother? Is that what the anxiety was trying to tell me - that I had to give up something? I didn’t want to end my career, but how did a person do both? (Pg. 88)

Although her essays on her childhood, her marriages, her children and the death of her loved ones are interesting my favorite is her essay on the dream that inspired her artistic growth:

It began with a dream:
Carl Jung said that a person might have five “big” dreams in her life – dreams that promote a shift in consciousness.

She had read an interview with Linda Ronstadt in which Linda said that in committing to artistic growth, you had to "refine your skills to support your instincts."

Shortly after reading this interview Rosanne had a dream where she was at a party sitting on a sofa with Linda and an elderly man.

The man turned his head slowly from Linda to me and looked me up and down with obvious disdain and an undisguised lack of interest. "We don't respect dilettantes" he spat out. From the moment I changed the way I approached songwriting, I changed how I sang, I changed my work ethic, and I changed my life. (Pg. 112)

She signed up for voice training.

Instead of toying with ideas I examined them, and tested the authenticity of my instincts musically. I stretched my attention span consciously. I read books on writing by Natalie Goldberg and Carolyn Heilbrun and began to self-edit and refine more and went deeper into every process involved with writing and musicianship.

I started painting so I could learn about the absence of words and sound and why I needed them and what I actually wanted to say with them. (Pg. 113)

The interview on NPR that I mentioned above was not my first encounter with Rosanne Cash. I had seen her perform earlier in her career on Austin City Limits; I had been curious to see if she looked and sounded like her father. I have to admit I wasn’t overly impressed. Her voice was pretty, but didn’t have the range and depth of her later music. Last night, I watched a more recent Rosanne Cash performance also on Austin City Limits where she performs songs from her album The List. After this viewing I must say Rosanne Cash has truly been transformed.

Rosanne was only 55 when she completed Composed: A Memoir. Imagine how much more is in store for Rosanne and how many more hurdles she may have to endure. She has recently announced on twitter @rosannecash that throat polyps have reappeared and once again doctors have restricted her from using her voice.

In closing, this book is a great selection for my Making Women Count Project. Rosanne is a strong woman willing to do the work required to transform her life into the best it can be.  She provides us with the inspiration to compile a road map for our own journey.

She offers hope for us all:

Maybe some of the other burdens I had carried from the past into my adult life had also been based on equally false assumptions, and maybe I could review some of them now, find a fatal flaw in my logic, revise my prospects for the future, make my way through my personal mazes and put away some of my regrets and obsessions. It was never too late to undo who you had become. (Pg. 157)

See also:
TJ's Top Songs Discovered in 2010

My Life in France

Motivation for reading:
I added Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme's book My Life in France to my reading list after a friend recommended it. He found Julia’s story fascinating and was convinced her husband Paul worked as a spy while they were in Europe. The book is also included on the list of 50 Books Every Young Woman Should Read.

What is the book about?
The book was written by Julia Child in the last few years of her life with the assistance of her grand-nephew, writer Alex Prud'Homme. It is based on the letters Julia and her husband Paul wrote to family and friends while living in Europe most notably the letters Paul sent to his twin brother Charles. The book begins when Julia moves to France in 1948 and covers her life while emphasizing her passion for French cooking.

My thoughts:
This book is a delightful read; there is so much to learn and enjoy from Julia's story:

First, I have come to the conclusion there is not a woman out there who has not suffered from imposter syndrome at some point during their lives.

When Julia and Paul first arrive in France:

Paul strode ahead, full of anticipation, but I hung back, concerned that I didn't look chic enough, that I wouldn't be able to communicate, and that the waiters would look down their long Gallic noses at us Yankee tourists. (Pg. 16)

And:

My biggest problem was my continuing lack of worldliness. Maybe if you concentrate on the fact that you are 41 years old. I scolded my reflection; you'd remember to be more worldly. (Pg. 177)

Maybe there is hope for me yet ~ Julia was a late bloomer:
Julia married Paul Child, the love of her life, when she was 34. Upon arriving in France, she didn’t know a word of French, nothing about the country or French cooking. She was 37 when she enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school:

Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which caused me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, “scientific” thought. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was. (Pg. 67)

Julia's success has to be attributed to her perfectionism and her uncompromising work ethic:
While working on her first book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which took her almost eight years to complete, she tested, and re-tested the recipes, sometimes dozens of times. All of this was done with no guarantee that the book would ever be published.

I had to iron out all those questions of how and why and for what reason: otherwise we'd end up with just an ordinary recipe- which was not the point of the book. I felt we should show our readers how to make everything top notch, and explain, if possible,, why things work one way and not another. There should be no compromise. (Pg, 133)

Her cooking advice ~ don’t make excuses:

I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one's hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as "Oh, I don't know how to cook...," or "Poor little me...," or "This may taste awful...," it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one's shortcomings (or perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, "Yes, you're right, this really is an awful meal!" (Pg. 71)

And have fun:

My hope was that readers would use From Julia Child's Kitchen as if it were a private cooking school. I tried to structure each recipe as a class. And the great lesson embedded in the book is that no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing. This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun! (Pg. 297)

On why she never opened a restaurant ~ she knew herself:

I had long ago decided not to go into the restaurant trade myself, because it required total commitment; furthermore, in a restaurant one is restricted to cooking what’s on the menu, and I preferred to experiment with many different dishes. (Pg. 294)

A lesson on moving on ~ giving up La Pitchoune her beloved home in France:

People seemed surprised when I told them that it wasn’t an especially difficult or emotional decision. But I have never been very sentimental. La Pitchoune was a special place, but the heart had gone out of it for me now. It was the people I shared it with, more than the physical property, that I would miss. (Pg. 300)

In closing:
Julia’s success in a male-dominated field came at a time when few American middle-class women worked out of the home. There are many business and life lessons to attain from her story, for example how Julia used her network to get Mastering the Art of French Cooking published, how she managed working with her two partners and her graduation from Le Cordon Bleu despite initially failing the final exam. In addition to her incredible work ethic, Julia was gracious and had fun. Read her book to learn how she did it.

Muslim Women Reformers

Motivation for reading: I came across Ida Lichter’s book Muslim Women Reformers: Inspiring Voices Against Oppression on Lisa’s Online Publicist blog. Thinking it would be a great read for my Make Women Count Project I requested a review copy. Thanks Lisa for providing me with this opportunity.

Summary (from the press release): In a world where the strident demands of Islamic extremists capture the media’s attention, the courageous protests of Muslim reformers barely receive any notice. These include a surprising number of women who are prepared to challenge institutionalized persecution, risking derision, arrest, physical harm, and even death.

In this inspiring compilation of Muslim women’s stories from around the world, the voices of these long-oppressed women ring loud and clear as they question ideology and culture, patriarchal and religious beliefs, and demand the social and political rights women lack in many Muslim countries. The reformers speak out with passion, humanity, and sometimes humor in these compact and often poignant biographies, bringing alive the harsh realities for women in many parts of the world.

By surveying a wide range of Muslim reformers, not only in the Middle East but also in Europe and North America, author Ida Lichter uncovers some significant emerging trends. For example, she notes that the majority of Muslim feminists would like to see reform contained within Islam. Many criticize their patriarchal culture for suppressing egalitarian views that they believe the Koran expresses and so they advocate a reinterpretation of the holy text. Some demand changes to discriminatory Sharia-based laws. Others campaign openly for political and educational reforms.

Complete with a glossary and a list of helpful Web sites, this vibrant anthology makes use of reliable translations from original languages to demonstrate the groundswell of grassroots change that promises eventually to bring even the most conservative sectors of Islam into the twenty-first century.

My Thoughts: My first thought was the stories of the courageous women detailed in this book were both eye-opening and disturbing; I’ve since come to the conclusion that that was an understatement. I’ve read other books covering the lack of women’s rights in Muslim countries, but I had no idea how widespread the problem is or how horrific. Women working for reform in the Muslim world are imprisoned, tortured, burnt, attacked with acid and even murdered if caught educating other women or speaking out against their government. Not to mention the honor killings, polygamy, genital mutilation, child rape, gang rape, and stonings that appear to be common occurrences in some Muslim countries.

Why do these women risk their lives and security to reform Islamic restrictions on women’s freedom?
They have everything to lose if the extremists take over and everything to gain if they succeed. In the current social structure women are considered third class citizens at best and have no avenues for recourse open to them to seek justice for the atrocities committed against them:

In Afghanistan rape is not an offense under the criminal code (Pg. 50)

In some countries women have even lost ground. Reforms that were previously put in place were lost when extremist governments came into power.

Is there anything those of us in the western world can do to help?
According to Algerian feminist Khalida Messaoudi:

We are dealing with an influential fundamentalist international that has a clear strategy. In order to secure women’s rights, we need a democratic international of women- otherwise we have absolutely no chance of conquering this beast. Not only Algerian, but Sudanese Iranian and Afghani women know what I am talking about. They know the horror of “God’s state” all too well. But alone, without your support, without the women’s and human rights movement of the countries of the West, we are losing this battle of life and death.” (Pg. 70)

In my opinion, true reform will not occur without the assistance of global human rights groups. It is important for westerners to know of these Muslim women reformers and help spread their message.

A caveat:
Although this book is an important read and the stories of these women have to be told this book is not an easy read. It is organized like an encyclopedic reference book and reads like one as well. I attempted to glean the important messages from each country and story, but the more I read the more difficult it became.  The stories began to blend together. I came to the conclusion it would be best to read this book in small doses preferably one country at a time.

For example:
Last week, I read the stories of the women of Egypt with interest particularly the story of Nonie Darwish adding her book Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror to my TBR list.

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