Not An Idea

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Mary Griggs, Rant

(c) by Mary Griggs

Today, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Pakistan’s former Prime Minister died Thursday in the wake of a suicide bombing that killed at least 14 of her supporters at a rally that had attracted thousands to hear her speak.

Benazir, who had graduated from both Harvard and Oxford, took over control of the Pakistan People’s Party and dedicated her life to restoring democracy after a military coup forced her father out of power and then had him hanged in the late 1970’s.

In 1988, she was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. In 1990, her party lost their majority and it was not until 1993 that her party again won plurality in the elections. At that time, she regained her position as Prime Minister and held it until1996 when her government was deposed amid corruption charges. She went into exile rather than face five years in jail for crimes of which she claimed innocence.

At the beginning of October of this year, President Musharraf dropped the charges in an effort to gain an ally (her conviction had already been overturned years earlier). On October 18, a suicide bomb was set off near her motorcade and killed 136 people and injured her. Twice in November, Musharraf placed her under house arrest, supposedly for her own protection but, more likely, to quell the groundswell of supporters that had turned his ally into his rival.

And today, she is dead from another suicide bomb.

It is a sad commentary on the state of the planet that, as we close the year 2007 (year 1428 of the Islamic calendar), this is way that political discourse is still being carried out. Extremists from both sides of the spectrum know that the only way to win support for their views is to eliminate their opposition. Bhutto knew that her life was in danger but she refused to run from it. As she said once, “You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea.”

Today, a brave woman died. It is important that the idea of free and fair elections does not die with her.

Love Me, Love Books

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Mary Griggs

(c) by Mary Griggs

Okay, I was reading the following blog: Love me, Love my Favourite Book

The author ended with the following paragraph:

“There’s no shame, I don’t think, in holding out for someone who understands one’s literary tastes: relationships may be temporary, but books – really good books, the books you really love – stay part of your life a good deal longer. So, go on then: which books are your romantic dealbreakers?” 

I would love to live in a world where my favorite books and/or authors meshed with those of my love interest. However, I’ve just been so damn grateful when I find a reader to fall in love with that I don’t care if they don’t think that To Kill a Mockingbird or Montana 1948 are quintessential examples of American literature, or that theParable of the Sower speaks best to my growing fears of where the world is heading.

If they read at all, it is a miracle and, if they are not readers, that they give me the time and space to do so is a cause for joyful celebration. We all have known those people who just can’t understand the importance of getting lost in a book. They are jealous of the time we spend with the written word and, it is that failure to understand my need to read, that is the real deal breaker.

I do tend to make gifts of Norman Juster’s Phantom Tollbooth and Dorothy Gilman’s Maze at the Heart of the Castle to my love interest during the courting stage. That is more to find out if their heads and hearts are open to the playfulness and power that lurks within a tome than to scare them off.

I do have a list of my favorite books (in an excel file, ranked accordingly). I occasionally add to it and can sit for hours determining if this particular title is worthy enough to knock one of the others out of the top 25. They don’t fall off the page, though, because something made them important enough to include in the first place.

Some of the books are on the list because of when I read them—they might have spoken to the person I was then and it is mere nostalgia that keeps them on the list today. Others are true classics that I’m a better person for having read.

I find that my list of books is so eclectic that to gong someone because they did not find The Last of the Wine orPossession to be as compelling as I did, to be incredibly supercilious and would be like cutting off my nose to spite my face.

My final answer then is Love me, Love books and, together, we can make all the other stuff work.