‘Quick! Hypertonic saline!’

‘Fuck that. Get this chick an abbayah.’

… lectures the rest of us on the importance of open communication, the only thing to do is laugh.

Talk about self-loathing. It’s not just imperialist Europeans who ban it; Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria… and Egypt’s been trying to ban them for years.

UD in fact predicts Egypt will be the next place the full face and body veil will fall. Meanwhile, welcome, Tunisia, to the developed world.

It’s all-male and all-amazing!

… UD was approached by a man in line ahead of her who said Ma’am I’ve got the last of the shade up here and I want to switch places with you so that you can have it. UD gratefully accepted his offer and reflected, as she glanced at his MAGA hat (she’d overheard that he was visiting from Tulsa and was here for the festivities on the Mall), that it’s always crude and stupid to perceive other people in broad ideological terms. Leaving your little house in an affluent lefty bubble in ‘thesda and heading into the sweltering city means encountering the actuality of individuals. “Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath,” said Saul Bellow, and for UD you need the bath because money and technology and group-think make it easy to remove yourself altogether from the human story, and that removal really has to be resisted if you want to go on being human.

Today however UD was firmly within her tribe, putting out more and more beach chairs at the end of her driveway so that her Garrett Park neighbors could watch our little parade (theme this year: Garrett Park is an Arboretum) on yet another sweltering afternoon. By the time Mr UD stood up to read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, a crowd had gathered to join us as we saluted, a few minutes later, the parade marshal, 93 year old Barbara Shidler, with whom UD‘s mother gardened and landscaped and helped establish the arboretum (scroll down to Mitzi Rapp).

Love of country; love of town. The day inspires.

It’s one day before the Trumptacular, and as UD took a long hot walk from Union Station to the Natural History Museum, she heard tomorrow’s National Anthem singer rehearse the piece (UD sang along).

Swimming is so good for you that researchers share it may even reduce your risk of death.

UD has been pursuing a couple of new interests lately, but her interest in this blog and the issues – university and non-university – that have evolved as primary to it, remains as keen as ever. So does her gratitude to her readers – for the links you send her, and for the comments you contribute.

A New York Times writer brings our cool calm collected American sensibilities to those hot-headed French.

… [T]he veil … especially exercised France since 1989, when three children were barred from attending middle school after refusing to take off their hijabs, setting off months of anguished, often hysterical public debate.

It was the first of countless “veil affairs,” and in this century successive French governments passed two laws: one from 2004 that forbids the veil (as well as the skullcap and large crosses) in schools, and another in 2010 banning full-face coverings such as the niqab in all public spaces. And the freakouts keep coming, most recently during a heat wave in France this week. After a group of women defied the city’s ban on the hooded “burkini” bathing suit at a community pool, a government minister for equality said the burkini sends “a political message that says, ‘Cover yourself up.’”

Really, those silly over-emotional French (and Austrians, Danes, Belgians, Latvians, Bulgarians, Spanish, Italians, Swiss, Dutch, Moroccans, Sri Lankans, etc., etc., etc.). have so much to learn from us.

At a time when there is so much actual injustice around us — third-rate schools, mass incarceration, immigrants dehumanized — it’s bizarre to see student activists inflamed by sushi or valorizing a shoplifter. This is kneejerk liberalism that backfires and damages its own cause.

… a $480,000 gift to an administrator fired almost as soon as he started is a drop in the bucket. Behold my recent Rutgers posts. Of course you and I know that the gift is rather in the way of a bribe not to disclose the institutional corruption the guy witnessed. I’m sure he’ll play along.

******************

Not everyone plays along.

… lives it up with friends in Hawaii.

‘They [have] this sense that they [are] being watched and on stage and carrying the torch for equality and cultural change for girls and women.”

US soccer.

It little profits a for-profit thing

To make investments that incur a loss.

Match’d with clueless suckers, we mete and dole

Almost nothing, much-blessed by Ms DeVos.

[L]et’s examine why we should want a ban on niqabs. Canada is indeed an open and inclusive society. That quality is maintained and cultivated by the steady and full interactions between its citizens. The more we know each other, the greater our capacity for acceptance. The next time you pass someone on the sidewalk, in the park, even looking toward them from your car, notice how automatic it is to look toward their face, make eye contact and exchange acknowledgement.

This is how we “know” the “other” in our society. This is how our common humanity is transmitted. It’s called familiarity. Family. The visual exchange is absolutely powerful in sensitizing and personalizing all of us to each other’s rights and shared humanity.

The niqab prevents that from happening. It portrays anonymity and evokes uncertainty. It is an act of hiding, isn’t it? Consider for a minute whether there would be any argument at all if there was instead the religious interpretation that men should be wearing niqabs and not women. How many Canadians would be clamouring against a niqab ban in that case? I suspect that no country in the world would allow men to wear niqabs, regardless of religious claims. 

This brings the issue back to the gender of niqab wearers. Does anyone believe that it was women who decided to implement the stipulation that they should only be seen by male relatives, that they should be cloaked to all other eyes on the street? Or was it dictated by a patriarchal society that saw women as being subordinate to their husbands’ preferences? In various Muslim countries today, a woman cannot travel outside of the country without permission from a husband or father. Who originated that custom?