Category: Weekly Challenges

CALL OF (Parental) DUTY: Part I

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Best of The Human Rights Warrior, Family, Memoir, Parenting, Weekly Challenges10 Comments

Target PracticeIt’s pretty rare that a national debate mirrors so exactly one that is raging within my own family circle.  But in the wake of the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary – and subsequent comments by National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre blaming gun violence on video game makers – a public discussion has been reopened  about violent video games and their impact on society.  It is the same discussion that has been going on, on a micro level, all fall in our household.  Although, frankly,  “discussion” is too mild a verb to capture the emotions surrounding the debate between the parents and the teenager about whether he can have CALL OF DUTY: Black Ops II.

My oldest son turned 13 years old in October.  He is a great kid, the kind of kid that other parents want their own kids to hang out with.  He’s smart and self-confident, has good friends and does well at school.  He is, I think, exceptionally mature for his age.  And he likes to play video games.  He has always liked to play video games, going way back to when he would choose to play Freddi Fish rather than watch a movie for his screentime.

His father and I don’t enjoy playing video games, so we start from a position of divergence.

Allowing for a difference in entertainment preferences (which I do), there is a second preliminary point that we don’t see eye to eye on: I don’t understand why it is fun to shoot at things.  We’ve got a couple of BB guns at the cabin, and the kids are allowed to shoot them at targets.  I’ve tried target practice and found it completely boring.

When my son was born, I was very clear that we would never have toy guns in the house.  Then one day, when he was about 20 months, he saw a kid at the coffee shop make a gun with his thumb and index finger.  The kid pointed his finger at Sevrin and said,”Pew! Pew!”  And that was all it took.  Fingers, sticks, Duplo legos – it seemed like everything was turned into a “shooter”.  Before long, I had caved in to the reality of nature over nurture.  Over the years, I not only allowed, but I myself purchased, a vast assortment of Nerf gun products for birthday and Christmas gifts.  I didn’t understand it, but I saw no harm in it.  So again, I have to acknowledge that others, including my son, might find it entertaining to shoot at things.

But all of this seemed was a long way off from first person shooter video games like CALL OF DUTY: Black Ops II.   So when he asked for it for his birthday, we immediately said, “NO!”

Then I realized that, my general prejudice against video games and shooting things aside, I didn’t know anything about video games.  I didn’t know what standards were used for rating them or whether there were parental controls.  I realized that my son is a reasonable, intelligent person, even if he is still only 13 years old.  I thought that he did have a point – it wasn’t fair that we were banning the games without knowing anything about them.

So in November, I began to dig deeper.  My son and I both did research on violent video games and the impact on the brain.  We shared our findings with each other, emailing back and forth.  I spent hours not only doing research, but also reading comments by both parents and teenagers on the pros and cons of letting your kids play violent video games.

In the end, I came to the conclusion that CALL OF DUTY: Black Ops II is not appropriate for my 13 year old.  My son was bitterly disappointed, and I am truly sorry for that.  Sometimes a parent has to play the ultimate trump card, but I think it is important that we went through this process together.

This week, I will be writing about our experience in a series of posts I am titling CALL OF (Parental) DUTY.  I think my son deserves the opportunity to voice his opinions to a wider audience, so he will contribute his writing to the series as well.  Stay tuned!

Here are the links to other posts in this series:

CALL OF (Parental) DUTY: Part II “Freedom to Game is Important” (in which my 13 year old son expresses his point of view).

(I’ve been thinking about doing this series for some time, but it took a Weekly Writing Challenge: Just Do It – and a weeklong holiday – to get me motivated to actually do it.  That, and a promise to my son that I would try to be fair and accurate.)

Best of My Facebook Status Updates 2012

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Humor, Memoir, Weekly Challenges9 Comments
Cinderella sure has an interesting way of drying her gowns.
Cinderella sure has an interesting way of drying her gowns.

It’s that time of year again.  That special time of year, when the treetops glisten … and children listen … and the”Best of ” lists come rolling out. You won’t find me in the Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums of 2012 or The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2012 (numbering 28, down from 37 last year).  I am not one of  the E! Top 10 Stylish Stars of the Year (thankfully, though, I am NOT on either E!’s list of Top 10 Wardrobe Malfunctions OR their list of Top 10 Mug Shots).  My name cannot be found on ANY of the many 2012 Forbes Rich Lists – not even Richest Pastors in Nigeria.   Unlike Honey Boo Boo Child, I am not one of Barbara Walters’ 10 Most Fascinating People of 2012.  Gawker’s 10 Least Fascinating People of 2012 list isn’t out yet, so I may still have a shot at that. Salon’s 2012 Hack List? Nope.  The Best 140 Twitter Feeds of 2012?  Sadly, no.   And I just learned that President Barack Obama beat me out for Time’s 2012 Person of the Year.

Last week, this appeared on my Facebook timeline:

Year in Review
Jennifer Prestholdt
A look at your 20 biggest moments from the year including life events,
highlighted posts and your popular stories.

So, I checked it out.  How could I resist my life events, highlighted posts and popular stories?  But  my 2012 Year in Review was an utter and complete disaster!  I don’t know what kind of random generators are at work here, but this app most certainly does not capture my “20 biggest moments from the year”.   Some of the pictures were not even from 2012!  In short, Facebook Year in Review app is like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas: “The three words that describe you are as follows, and I quote: ‘STINK. STANK. STUNK.'”

These days there is precisely one thing in my life that is entirely within my control and that is my Facebook status update. So I’m taking charge of my Year in Review and creating my own”Best of My 2012 Facebook Status Updates”!

Best of My 2012 Facebook Status Updates

# 25   This sugar is not just pure.  It’s DHAM pure!

dahm pure

#24     Me (to my 10 year-old): “Simon, turn off the TV. Your screen time is done.”
Simon: “It doesn’t count as screen time if it is football or Barack Obama.”
Well played, son. Well played!

#23  Some people have Elf on the Shelf. I have cat barf on the Playmobil nativity scene.

#22  To the gentleman crossing against the light while reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I say, “Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?”

‎#21  Chickie (my 7 year-old daughter): “Mom, do you know why we light candles at this time of year? It’s to keep the trolls out of the house. It’s true. It says so in the Bible.”

#20 I did not realize that I even had a granddaughter, much less such a thoughtful one!

happy anaverse

#19     As I was jaunting around this morning with my bike helmet pushed back and dangling down my back like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s sunbonnet, it suddenly struck me that perhaps I did not look as fetching as I would hope.

#18     Fortunately, I left the restaurant for another meeting BEFORE my colleagues ordered the “head chips”- at Kathmandu, Nepal.

#17     Further proof of my bad hockey mom status: Packing Simon’s gear for hockey camp, I couldn’t remember what the thing that they wear on the chest is called. So I called it a “breastplate”.  (I also called his nut cup a “codpiece”, but that was on purpose.)

#16     Note to self:

go to work

#15     Chickie: “Where is everybody?”
Me: “They went to Sev’s hockey game.”
Chickie: “WOOHOO! Girls’ night! Let’s get into our jammies and READ!!”

#14     Went to gym. Worked out. Took shower. Realized I had forgotten to bring a towel. Dried off with my sock. Keep calm and carry on!

#13     Bonnie Tyler, reincarnated as a 10 year old boy. Turn around, bright eyes!

#12     These are the kinds of conversations that go on in my head:

Me: Why did I buy this Empire-waisted dress? I look terrible in this style?
Myself: It was only 7 dollars.
I: Ooooo! Excellent bargain shopping

#11       I keep reading the UN Millennium Development Goals – MDG – as – MGD – Miller Genuine Draft. It must be Friday!

#10     To flush or not to flush.  That is the question.

flush

#9     I waited a couple of decades and read the book again. Same conclusion. Mr. Rochester is an a-hole. Run, Jane Eyre, RUN!

#8     Overheard Chickie giving a friend a tour of our house: “This is mom’s closet. Or as I call it, My Shoe Store.”

#7     Future God’s Gift to Women: “Girls don’t like AXE, they like Old Spice. Wait, no. AXE was invented by women because they like the smell. I need some AXE. Girls like AXE.”

#6     Last day of summer vacation.
         “What’s left on the school supply list, Chickie?”
         “We’ve got everything but The Lorax wipes.”

#5     My rule:  You forget your lunch box at school and you get the Lunch Box of Shame the next day.

lunch box of shame

#4     7:10 am and I’ve already had to answer the questions “Is this a scalene triangle” and “Can you make me an omelette?”

#3     My Mother’s Day present:  The Napoleon Dynamite Dance!

#2     Chickie: “Mommy, what is a Miley Cyrus?”
          Me: “It’s a person.”
          Chickie: “Really? I thought it was a body part. One of the private ones.”

#1     I found this in my grandma’s apartment today. Also found out that she had voted absentee before she died. I don’t know if it still counts, but I’m proud that, at 98, she made sure to vote. And that she voted No on both state constitutional amendments (one that would have limited the right of same-sex couples to marry and one that would have limited the right to vote). Go Edna!

obama family

This post is in response to the Weekly Writing Challenge: Wrap It Up!  Check out other original “Year In Review” posts by following the link.

Dust of Snow

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Culture, Photography, Poetry, Weekly Challenges3 Comments

snow

Dust of Snow

by Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

I was hurrying to work this morning, thinking about all the deadlines crashing down upon me, when I was stopped in my tracks by a shower of snow.  The first snowstorm of the year dumped 10 inches of snow on us last Sunday, blanketing the city, making everything pure and white and still.  Now rising temperatures are causing the heavy snow to melt.

Such a minor thing – wet snow falling from a tree in a downtown parking lot – but it reminded me of this poem by Robert Frost.  With this morning’s beautiful Dust of Snow,  my day fell suddenly into perspective.

Onward and upward!

Change your perspective – let a little Dust of Snow fall on you today as well.

Some mornings, I wake up with an image or a poem in my head.  Sometimes, a song.  I do my best thinking in the morning, too. These Morning Musings are a new (and irregular) feature here on the Human Rights Warrior. 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons in Kathmandu

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Photography, Travel, Weekly Challenges16 Comments
himalayas
The clouds suddenly cleared, showing the towering Himalayas over the Kathmandu skyline.

When I arrived in Kathmandu in mid-September, I was surprised to find that it was still the monsoon season.  (Truthfully, up until a few years ago, I would never have guessed that this landlocked, mountainous country even HAD a rainy season.)  In Kathmandu, the hot and wet monsoon season is in the summer – usually between June and August.  This year, however, it lingered into the third week of September.  I asked numerous Nepalis if this extended monsoon season was a common occurrence and I always got the same response.  “No, it is not common. This is the result of global warming.”

After several days of slogging about in the steady rain, I resigned myself to the fact that monsoon season might outlast my visit to Nepal. But unlike my previous visits, which had been during the dry season in winter, I marveled that everything was so beautifully and luxuriantly verdant.  Much of the green could be attributed to the rice paddies that were everywhere, even tucked into vacant lots in the suburbs of Kathmandu.  It was time for the rice to be harvested, but it was impossible to do so in the rain.

Suddenly one  evening, near sunset, there was a change.  The dense clouds, which had hung low and heavy over the city, suddenly began to lift and separate, like cotton candy being pulled apart by unseen hands.  Watching the Kathmandu skyline, I realized that what I had thought was just another cloudbank was in reality the snow-covered Himalayas that ring the city!  “Ah,” said a Nepali at the TEWA Centre where I was staying in Lalitpur, “the seasons are finally changing.”

The seasons are changing for the city of Kathmandu, as well. In the photo above , you can see the many housing construction projects being built in this area on the outskirts of the city.  The Kathmandu population grew during the conflict as internally displaced persons fled the Maoist rebels in the countryside. The population has continued to grow due to the country’s high unemployment.  People come to the capital looking for work.  There are now 3 million people living in the Kathmandu valley, driving too many cars and motorcycles on streets that were designed for oxcarts.  Traffic is a huge problem, making it difficult to get anywhere.  The air is polluted and many people wear masks over their lower faces. Traffic accidents are common. Many Nepalis ride motorcycles as they are cheaper than cars and easier to maneuver in traffic.  From goats to refrigerators, you never know what you might see people carrying on one!

motorcycle

Nepal is peaceful now. The violence has ended and the Maoists have been in a power-sharing coalition government since 2008.  But the coalition government is gridlocked.  In May 2012, Nepal’s political parties failed to reach an agreement on a new constitution before the deadline. (Nepalis have been waiting more than four years for a new constitution. When the committee drafting the constitution gets paid by the month, where is the incentive to finish the job?)  The Constituent Assembly, the members of which had been serving under extensions after their terms expired in 2010, was dissolved, creating a political crisis. Most of the basic civic and municipal functions have now essentially ground to a halt.

President Ram Baran Yadav of Nepal gave the parties a deadline of November 29, 2012 to come up with an agreement on how the (long overdue) elections should be conducted.  When they failed to meet that deadline, he extended it for one more week.

Nepalis are still waiting for the political season to change.  In the meantime, much of daily life goes on as it has for centuries.

A woman looks out her window near Sankhu, in the Kathmandu Valley
Preparations for a cremation ceremony at Pashupatinath

IMG_0763

Swayambhunath
IMG_0792
Goats abound in Nepal, even in the city (and particularly before festivals like Dashian)

Here’s hoping that the sun comes out soon for Nepal’s political situation.

Rice fields in the Kathmandu Valley
Rice fields ready for harvest in the Kathmandu Valley

For more about life in Kathmandu, read my post on Family Life in Kathmandu.

This post is a contribution to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons.  Too see more contributions, click here.

Weekly Photo Challenge: A Parable of Renewal

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Human Rights, Photography, Weekly Challenges16 Comments

I practiced asylum law for the first seven years of my career, representing refugees who were fleeing persecution and human rights abuses in their home countries and seeking safety in the U.S.  These are people who are not easy to forget and whose stories shouldn’t be forgotten.  Many of their stories – the details of their lives, their losses, their dreams – have stayed with me over the years.  The remarkable thing about the refugees I have known is not only their ability to survive incomprehensible losses, but also the strength and hope and determination they have to remake their lives in an entirely new country.  To learn new skills, speak new languages, adapt to new cultures.  To me, the refugee experience symbolizes this week’s Photo Challenge theme:  Renewal

 The picture above was taken in Buduburam Refugee Settlement in Ghana, which I visited three times between 2007 and 2010. Buduburam was home for 20 years to more than 30,000 Liberians who fled the bloody conflict in their West African country.  Officially closed this year, Buduburam was a small, bustling Liberian city in the countryside outside of Accra.  Life was hard on the camp, where refugees even had to pay for water to drink and for access to the latrines. To improve their opportunities, many of the refugees at Buduburam enrolled in skills training courses; the photo shows some of classes offered by the New Liberian Women Organization (macrame being one of them, as you can also tell by the colorful plant hangers).  Even in a time of limbo, the refugees at Buduburam were striving for renewal. Those refugees who could afford it sent their children to school as education offers a chance for a new life.

I still hold many former asylum clients in my heart. I’d like to share the story of one refugee family I represented.  For me, it is a parable of renewal.

 James and Julia (not their real names) had been politically active in their native Kenya. Julia, in particular, had been very active in speaking out against an oppressive government.  They had a young son, who I’ll call William, who had huge, solemn eyes.  When the police came to their house to arrest Julia, a police dog bit William on the head. You could still see the jagged scar on his scalp more than a year later when, having left everything they owned behind to escape Kenya, they were seeking legal assistance with their asylum claim in the U.S.  

 In police custody, Julia had been brutally beaten.  She was also repeatedly raped in custody, including with objects such as the muzzle of a rifle and a Coke bottle.  This testimony was critical to the success of their asylum case, so we had worked with Julia to prepare her to tell her full story, with as much accuracy as possible and as many details as she could remember.  “Just tell the truth about as much as you can remember of those weeks,” I urged. We all knew it would be painful.

 Julia testified about her experiences in a straightforward manner and in excruciating detail, but with such poise and dignity that both the asylum officer and I were in tears. Asylum officers are specially trained federal officials who make decisions about asylum cases based on a written application and an in-person interview.  During my time practicing asylum law, I rarely saw an asylum officer actually cry during an asylum interview. 

 I remember well how James sat next to her, utterly still. Not touching her, not looking at her, but supporting her as she spoke. Anguish is the only word that could possibly describe the look on his face as he listened to her testimony.  I had to look away. Even in my role as their attorney, a role which requires a special intimacy, I felt the need to give their family some small space of privacy as they recalled those terrible days.

 Years later, after they got their citizenship, James and Julia had a party to say thank you to all of the people who had helped them. In addition to their attorneys, there were people from their church and other members of the Kenyan community. They now lived in a big, new house out in the suburbs. Julia was close to graduation from nursing school. William, who I hadn’t seen since he was three, was now in middle school.  He was a straight-A student and talented musician who had just gotten braces.  They had another child, too – a daughter born here in America. She was wearing a pink tutu.

It had taken a lot of hard work for James and Julia to get to where they were.  They had experienced many challenges and frustrations with adapting to life in this strange, new country.  But they persisted and, through sheer effort and determination and a bit of creativity, slowly but steadily they moved forward, finding healing for themselves and building a new life for their family.   It wasn’t easy, but James and Julia had managed to make something new out of nothing. 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Geometry/γεωμετρία

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Memoir, Photography, Weekly Challenges28 Comments

And now for something completely different.  While I’ve never participated in The Weekly Photo Challenge before, the theme “Geometry” this week spoke to me.  This week’s challenge “is about the shapes and rhythms that make up the geometry of our world.”  This week, I have found the normal shapes and rhythms of my world disrupted. In the midst of a major storm in the East  and a bitter, divisive election, we buried my grandmother this week.  She was 98, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it kind of was.

This week I have found myself almost longing for a bit of predictability, a return to normal patterns and rhythms.  A rational ordered life; a practical science made up of points, lines and planes.  I find myself searching for theorems that explain life and loss the way geometric formulas allow you to compute volume, surface and area.

Of course, contemporary geometry goes well beyond Euclidean principles, taking us into contemplation of multiple dimensions and space.  This also fits with thoughts of life and death. Maybe I’ll think on that later.  But in this week of turmoil and endings, I find comfort in what the early Greek mathematicians Euclid and Archimedes called γεωμετρία. Geometry.

I took this picture recently on the Greek island of Hydra.  When I look at it, I can’t help feeling that the early Greek geometers were right: there is some order in the world and we can figure it out. And it is all going to turn out just fine.

Image

For more entries to this week’s challenge: Geometry click here.

Mind The Gap: Would You Bring Your Child(ren) To Work?

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Family, Famous Activists, Human Rights, Parenting, Weekly Challenges, Women's Rights6 Comments

The current Weekly Writing Challenge got me thinking about children in one of the most adult-oriented of all places – the workplace.  Yes, I admit that I have brought each of my three children to work with me at various times, usually because of an unlucky confluence of sickness and pressing work deadlines.  It certainly isn’t my first choice, but in my experience it has worked out fine for short periods of time.  (Unless you count the unfortunate incident when my co-worker Peder accidentally got his finger chomped by my oldest son, who was teething.  New baby teeth are razor sharp. Peder claims that he saw stars, just like in the cartoons.)

But whether or not to bring children to work is an issue that many working mothers have grappled with at one time or other.  It is, in fact, the issue that has made European Parliament Member Licia Ronzulli so popular with moms like me. The photo above, taken in September 2010, of Ms. Ronzulli at work with her baby has made her a cause célèbre for working mothers around the world. 

Although she doesn’t bring her daughter to the European Parliament regularly, there are other photos of Ms. Ronzulli and her daughter Vittoria.  During a vote on the Eurozone debt crisis on February 15, 2012, reporters snapped several photos of Vittoria with her mom at the European Parliament.

Now two years old, Vittoria was back in Strausborg – and the European media – just this week. I think that the reasons that these photos resonate so much with moms here in America is that they symbolize so perfectly the work-family balance that all of us working moms struggle with every day. Ms. Ronzulli’s employer, the European Parliament, has rules that allow women to take their baby with them to work. Unfortunately, this is just not an option for most working moms. So we share the photos on Facebook and hope for a day when working mothers have better support. 

Support such as adequate parenting leave, for example, is important.  But Ms. Ronzulli herself was entitled to a parenting leave, but chose to take only 1 month of it.  She makes the point that it is about personal choice.  In 2010, she told The Guardian “It’s a very personal choice. A woman should be free to choose to come back after 48 hours. But if she wants to stay at home for six months, or a year, we should create the conditions to make that possible,” she said.   

I think that Ms. Ronzulli is right. I think that we should create the conditions to make it possible for a woman to choose the best thing for both her family and her career.  Sometimes, that might mean bringing the kids to work with her.  (And yes, I think this goes for dads as well.)

So what do YOU think?