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My Bling

On April 20, 2011

I recently reviewed bling eez, an As Seen on TV product, and I must confess that it was a half-hearted review. Here’s why: I recently bought the most beautiful jewelry holder from Etsy.

It’s a little shabby chic but mostly just awesome chic!

But. This display case holds a LOT of jewelry. And yet I still have storage issues. It’s embarrassing. Based on all of my jewelry boxes you would think I go out of the house blinged up from head to toe, and yet that’s very far from the truth. Let me illustrate to you the nonsensical jewelry situation…

In addition to the wall case, I have these three jewelry boxes:

I have one jewelry box dedicated to bracelets.

Another jewelry box houses almost nothing but pendants.

The third jewelry box has rings, watches and random necklaces.

And I’m actually not done yet because I still have this old suitcase holding jewelry.

This is my oldest and most anal retentive jewelry storage system. Inside are all of my necklaces.

The necklaces are filed in labelled envelopes…

Tonight I went through everything and tossed a few mismatched earrings or junk jewelry. I have stuff I forgot all about! If you have ways of storing your jewelry that are classier than suitcases, I’d love to hear about them. I’ve made some progress with the wall-hanging unit, but would like to minimize even further.

Hanging My Bling with Eez

By Kate

On April 14, 2011

In reviews

In my ongoing reviews of As Seen on TV gifts I have received, I want to share thoughts on bling eez. As in the past, I will be rating this item based on inventiveness, practicality and, most importantly, does it work.

bling eez comes with 9 racks that you can affix into a flat surface and from which you can hang jewelry. Used at full capacity, bling eez has space for hanging 200 pieces of jewelry. (In that count, I believe one pair of earring counts as 2 pieces of jewelry.)

bling eez comes wrapped in three sets, making it easy to use only as much of the product as you need. Each set has one rack for necklaces, one for rings and one for earrings. You open the packaging and put some stoppers at the end of the necklace rack. Then you peel off the backing on double-stick tape and affix the racks to wherever makes sense. It was a challenge for me as to where to try this. In the end I decided on my door, mainly because I was afraid of having to remove these things from plaster walls.

The racks really hold jewelry well and it’s easy to get your baubles organized using bling eez.

So how to rate the bling eez?

Inventiveness? Some
Practicality: Yes but probably more for people in more temporary housing – these would have been great in my dorm rooms with their cinderblock walls
Does it work? Definitely

Celebrating International Women’s Day

By Kate

On March 8, 2011

In books, reviews

Wonder Boy keeps stealing glances at me while I’m reading my current book and I’m always grimacing or sitting there with my jaw hanging open. And yet, I have to recommend this book to you. I will be a better person for having read it and think the same will apply to you.

This is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. I am gaining a better appreciation of what the day honors. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, is a detailed look at the atrocities affecting women around the world. The stories and statistics are mind blowing because they are all from present day. It is an abomination that these things are still happening.

Below is a short excerpt from page 70 of the hard-bound version of the book published in 2009. A bit of warning that it is very disturbing:

Mukhtar grew up in a peasant family in the village of Meerwala in southern Punjab. When people ask her age, she tosses out one number or another, but in truth she doesn’t have a clue as to when she was born. Mukhtar never attended school, because there was no school for girls in Meerwala, and she spent her days helping out around the house.

Then in July 2022, her younger brother, Shakur, was kidnapped and gang-raped by members of a higher-status clan, the Mastoi. (In Pakistan, rapes of boys by heterosexual men are not uncommon and are less stigmatized than the rapes of girls.) Shakur was twelve or thirteen at the time, and after raping him the Mastoi became nervous that they might be punished. So they refused to release Shakur and covered up their crime by accusing him of having sex with a Mastoi girl, Salma. Because the Mastoi had accused Shakur of illicit sex, the village tribal assembly, dominated by the Mastoi, help a meeting. Mukhtar attended on behalf of her family to apologize and try to soothe feelings. A crowd gathered around Mukhtar, including several Mastoi men armed with guns, and the tribal council concluded that an apology from Mukhtar would not be enough. To punish Shakur and his family, the council sentenced Mukhtar to me gang-raped. Four med dragged her, screaming and pleading, into an empty stable next to the meeting area and, as the crowd waited outside, they stripped her and raped her on the dirt floor, one after the other.

“They know that a woman humiliated in that way has no other recourse except suicide,” Mukhtar wrote later.”They don’t even need to use their weapons. Rape kills her.”

It is because Mukhtar did not commit suicide that Kristof and WuDunn can share this story. And as abhorrent and nauseating as it is, it is not some act of times past. It occurred in 2002, a mere 9 years ago. Stories like this should not be able to be told, and not because the participants involved commit suicide but because they shouldn’t ever occur.

I’d like to say that this is the worst story I read in Half the Sky, but it’s not. The book is filled with alarming statistics but illustrated through countless stories that make me incredibly grateful to live where I do. On this, International Women’s Day, it’s important to ask how my new knowledge can be applied to help women around the world enjoy the same privileges I do. Fortunately, Kristof and WuDunn don’t just assault their readers with grim facts and stories. They also give information about many, many ways people can help improve the status and realities of women.

Reflections on Siblings

By Kate

On February 28, 2011

In books, reviews

The relationship between siblings is especially maddening. No one but my sister can recite my diary entry describing my first kiss. Or has the stolen entry hidden away in her files some 15 years after the fact. Only my brother can quote my side of dramatic of fights with my mother, all in a mocking tone. My youngest sister still recalls exactly where I hid the stash of cookies and candy in my childhood bedroom.

Conversely, siblings form a bond created by years of shared experiences. I will be among the first my siblings call for help when they need to make hard decisions. I nearly always have someone I can go to a movie or grab drink with. And throughout all the relationships in my life, there are three people who know me nearly as well as I know myself and will always be there for me.

Freud’s Blind Spot: 23 Original Essays on Cherished, Estranged, Lost, Hurtful, Hopeful, Complicated Siblings, edited by Elisa Albert, examines the strange forces that bring siblings together and drive them apart. The stories feature siblings as best friends, strangers, bullies, rivals and as memories. The theme throughout, although sometimes not stated, is that regardless of the dynamics, our relationships with our siblings are an important part of the equation as to who our adult selves turn out to be.

Albert does a great job at keeping the book cohesive, even with wildly different styles in writing, ranging from essay to comic to question and answer. The three sets of essays formatted as messages back and forth between siblings are fascinating. In two stories, one sibling will send the other a questionnaire about a variety of things: earliest memories, was it true that you…?,did you like me?, etc. The responses, as well as the questionnaire sent back in reply, tell a story and describe the people involved as well as any prose could. (“Did I make you a lesbian because I was so cute? Was I your first love?” “Yes. You still are, and always will be.”) They also offer a model by which readers can engage in conversation with their own siblings.

In her essay Gender Studies, Mary Norris struggles as she reflects on her relationship with her brother and her sister, one in the same. Her brother Dennis undergoes gender-reassignment surgery and becomes Dee. Is Dee the same person as Dennis? Is it okay for Mary to mourn the loss of her brother before she can accept the new person in her life? How can she adjust habits developed over a lifetime? “This is my brother…. This is Dee.” Because its not portrayed as an after school special, where people confront an issue, struggle but ultimately live happily ever after, the reader is brought along with Mary in her pain and questions.

Other stories are more light-hearted reflections on childhood and growing up. On being too young to know the meaning of phrases, but suggesting to your mother, when she announces being pregnant with your new sibling, that maybe she get an abortion. When your relationship with your sister changes the day she sits behind you in the birthing tub to support you during childbirth. The bond the forms between brothers when they feel like hired help to their mother and turn roofing a house into a summer-long disaster.

Freud’s Blind Spot offers something for every person who has a sibling, wants one or wishes one never entered his or her life. It will cause readers to pause and consider the reason behind their love or hate for the people who grew up with them. To reflect on people who are part of their lives through chance and the effect those people have on them now.

Lady’s Slipper: Both a Shoe and a Flower

By Kate

On February 19, 2011

In books, reviews

The butterfly effect refers to how one small action can affect the future of everything, how one flutter of a butterfly wing can lead to a natural disaster halfway around the world. Or, in Deborah Swift’s The Lady’s Slipper, how picking one flower can disrupt an entire community.

Set in the eighteenth century England amidst a time of political turmoil, The Lady’s Sipper centers on Alice Ibbetson, an artist who is grieving over the recent loss of her baby sister. She starts to see joy in her life again after stealing away in the middle of night to steal a lady slipper, a rare type of orchid, so that she may preserve and study it. The man on whose land she found the orchid, Richard Wheeler, suspects her of the thievery but can prove nothing. Sir Geoffrey Fisk, one of Ibbetson’s art patrons, knows of the flower and starts to harass her to get seeds from the plant so he may grow more and profit from them. In very short time, the plant hiding in Ibbetson’s art room is ruling her life.

Although focused on reclaiming his lost flower, Wheeler, a Quaker, is distracted by having to constantly defend his religion and his fellow Quakers from religious persecution. Swift gives great insight into the bravery shown by the pacifist Quakers and the price paid for defending their religion. The religious and political tension she creates is carefully explained and has relevance still today. (Although not all of today’s issues end with heads displayed on stakes around the gaol!)

Throughout The Lady’s Slipper, Swift writes of things in such detail that you feel like you are holding the lady slipper in your own hand and seeing townspeople as if they are right in front of you. When seeing an orchid that Fisk wants Ibbetson to crossbreed with the lady slipper, she describes the new orchid:

The artist in her followed each part, the curving yellow column with its hairs bristling at the pink-tinged base, the halo of petals flaring like a sunset. … The red orchid was an imposter, Alice though – an imposter in outrageous fancy dress.

Swift deftly layers plots to build a story that is complex and engaging. The whodunit mystery of the stolen flower – although not a mystery to the reader – and religious turmoil lead into a tale of murder, wrongful death sentences and a love story.

If runs into any pitfalls, and it doesn’t see many, it’s in the ending of her story. As the book progresses, it gets more and more action-packed and fast -paced. And just when the storyline should climax, it turns unbelievable. Not all readers will be left disappointed because Swift does tie up every loose end and the “good” characters end up where they should.

But life isn’t that forgiving, is it? If one insect can effect weather throughout the world, and outcome of one plant can wreak havoc on a town, then certainly the outcomes of people will be affected as well, regardless of whether we like them or not.