reality check

last month, the house voted to make drastic cuts in this year's budget. poverty-fighting, cost effective programs were cut.  life saving programs that fight aids, malaria and hunger were cut by 40% and programs that promote long term economic growth were chopped by almost 30%.  these programs - which make up less than 1 percent of the budget - save millions of lives and help lift people out of poverty for the long term.  i'm not sure when the scale was tipped in this country and our elected representatives started debating and voting on whether we should be helping the poor.  why not first try reducing military spending or eliminating corporate subsidies and tax loopholes for the rich? 

here are some statistics: 

• there are 925 million hungry people in the world
• in round numbers there are 7 billion people in the world. thus, with an estimated 925 million hungry people, 13.1 percent, or almost 1 in 7 people are hungry
• worldwide, 4.6 billion people have cell phones, but only 4.3 billion have access to a toilet
• at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day 
• number of children in the world: 2.2 billion - number in poverty: 1billion (every second child)
• according to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty
• for every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment
• some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation
• the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. the richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income
• every year, an estimated 358,000 mothers die from complications during child birth and 8.1 million children die before their fifth birthday
• approximately 12,000 people die every day from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. nearly two-thirds of these people are living in sub-saharan africa

and here are just a few places were you can make a difference, get more information and donate - i am a glass half full kinda girl and truly believe that we the people, not our representatives can make a difference.  

• bill and melinda gates foundation
• care
• kiva
• the girl effect
• unicef
• united nations millennium goals

timing is everything

i heart eggs.  i really really heart eggs.
last night for dinner i boiled an egg and served it, soft and runny, over some left over sauteed zucchinis, mushrooms and sugar snap peas- finishing off with a squeeze of lemon, freshly grated pecorino and a piece of warm chewy crusty bread.  boiled eggs where one of the first things i ever cooked for myself, (perfect after school snack served on top of toast and butter) yet, until recently, i had not consistently perfected the timing of a not too hard not too soft boiled egg. sometimes six minutes was ideal and other times too long.  so i was amused and curious when i came across a website that does all the minute guess work for you.  enter your eggs stats and voila, its ideal boiling time is revealed - its very cute and pretty accurate and i'm eggstatic (insert corny joke drum roll here). bon appetit!

www.eggwatchers.com 

i judge books by their covers

about once a month, usually on a quiet cloudy afternoon, i spend an excessive amount of time wandering around my favorite local bookstore, book soup. I am there for so long that the employees probably think I am casing the joint. There’s just something about being able to pick up a book, flip through the pages, read the first line and run your hands over the cover… it’s one of my favorite ways to pass a lazy day and one of the reasons i have not embraced the digital book craze.  
years ago, after reading the fourth or fifth version of a book that could have easily passed as 'bridget jones's sisters diary', where the female character has a crap job, a bossy boss, a one sided affair, and a flamboyant gay best friend i decided to swear off all chick lit.  i came up with my own set of tools for weeding through these piles of cookie cutter characters and plots; if a book cover has a martini glass, wedding dress, shopping bag, baby bottle or bikini, i pass.  unless i am stuck at an airport gift shop on a 8 hour layover i will stick to these rules because nine times out of ten these covers are the wrappings for chic lit.  


book covers should be original, graphic, beautiful and inspire you to pick them up. they should catch your eye and peak your interest and insist that you take them home and find out what lies beneath. literary cheap first dates. 


here are just a few of my favorite covers - all of which succeeded in coming home with me. 

i judge wines by their labels too, but that's for another day. 

not so free press

the new york times online paywall went up today and it will now cost about $7 a week for unlimited access to all the nytimes online content. the paper is hoping to attract new subscribers by offering the first 4 weeks for 99 cents. so today, for the first time, i have signed up and will pay for online news access. i read the times everyday and had mixed feeling for paying for access to free and fair news, something we are getting less and less of.  i initially balked at the idea, but newspapers are in massive financial trouble and giving away a free product while still needing to pay and sustain a small army of world traveling talented journalists is simply not sustainable. it is only fare to pay my share if it means it will allow journalists like nick kristof and roger cohen to continue doing what they do best.  there are still numerous places where you can get access to free, well written news; huffington post , the daily beast and al jazeera being just some.  but i am, have been for years, a fan of the new york times and think that $7 a week is a fare price to pay if it helps keep rupert murdoch at arms length. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/l28times.html 

6.5

this is a blog and i am a girl and so at some point i had to talk about my new found love for high heeled shoes.  seemingly overnight, i who would live in nothing but ballet flats and havaianas am now falling in love with different shades and styles daily and want to share with you my latest crush - 

simple, curvy, sexy but classic…. and ridiculously overpriced.  but hey, this is my blog and if on a rainy chilly sunday i want to drool at shoes, then so be it! 

louboutins at barneys

revoYOUtion

for eman al-obeidy,  a libyan woman who's story has been all over the (mostly foreign) online news reports this morning…

i drove through dc, past the south african, israeli and old iranian embassies. i thought about the past, when we would come down to protest in front of these fortresses, bright eyed and determined to bring down apartheid and occupation. i was pro intifada and mandela and wore my amnesty international badge proudly. i stuck a "free palestine" sticker on my first cars bumper, only to have someone rip it off one night while the car was parked outside our house.  i believed, and still do, that freedom and free speech and free press are fundamental rights that no government and no people can successfully do without.  today, that girl who naively acted too cool for school and who believed that sting, bono and peter gabriel concerts could change the world would be here, protesting in front of the egyptian, libyan, syrian and half a dozen gulf states embassies and would still insist that we should all read the universal declaration of human rights to understand what it is that people are dying and fighting and risking and protesting for.  it's a powerful document adopted on December 10, 1948 by the united nations general assembly and it altered my world view when i read it in 1985. 

in a couple of hours i will board and buckle, virgin america heading west.  i will listen to some old nothing like the sun and joshua tree and think about ordering an "i am neda/madiba/eman/bouazizi" bumper sticker.   

history, will teach us nothing….

universal declaration of human rights

the blue sweater

i ran into an old family friend while in DC this week who now works at the Acumen Fund in NYC. they are a non-profit venture capital firm who invest in sustainable enterprises in east africa, india and pakistan-helping to provide access to affordable healthcare, water, housing,  energy and services.  he told me about a book which i started to read last night, written by Jacqueline Novogratz, the fund's founder. It's called "the blue sweater" and i recommend it to anyone who cares in the slightest about understanding global poverty and how we all can do a little bit to help break the cycle by helping provide dignity and choice.

www.acumenfund.org 

pholicious

i have two meal traditions when coming back to dc - lunch at moby and pho 75.  the cherry blossoms are in bloom, but it still feels like winter here, so we headed to the original pho 75 - the first place i ever tried my favorite vietnamese noodle soup dish.  pho 75 has lost some of its luster, but its still a great place for a big steamy bowl of delicious cold weather comfort.  there are now better pho restaurants all over town, notably on rockville pike and route 50 in falls church. but just like tastee diner, perry's, au pied de cochon, cafe lautrec, kramers, cities and paper moon, pho 75 on wilson blvd was my first, and will always hold a  special place in my dc dining repertoire.

Pho 75  1721 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, Virginia 22209

my corner

happy norouz, new day. its 1390 and i'm finally started a blog. a place for a little bit of a lot. a little bit of what i see, read, write, eat, love, hate, experience, fear and think. a place to sometimes share, realizing of course that not all of you will give a shit about most of what is in fact shared. but at the end of the day, its just a corner for me to come to, sit at and write on...  so voila,  here it goes - my corner of the world wide welcome web...