Roxana Saberi Not Forgotten

Sunday, April 5 UPDATE: Roxana's parents have arrived in Iran and reportedly have been granted permission to see their daughter.
.
Saturday, April 4 UPDATE: Read more about Roxana's current circumstances in this LA Times article.
.
Two powerful forces heighten the efforts to gain freedom for graduate student and one-time journalist Roxana Saberi. She has been imprisoned in Iran despite efforts from around the world to gain her freedom.

Now, Roxana's parents are on their way from Fargo to Tehran to personally appeal for her release.

Reza Saberi said he worries about his daughter’s mental health. Roxana was devastated when a prosecutor in Iran told her she would remain in detention for months or even years, her father said.

And in a most unusual step, the U.S. State Department has directly contacted Iranian officials during an international meeting about Afghanistan.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Americans delivered a letter to the Iranians at Tuesday’s meeting in The Hague. The letter asks Iran to help resolve the cases of three detained or missing Americans, including former Fargo resident Roxana Saberi, a journalist working in Iran.

Reaching out, in ways grand and so very personal as only parents can be, with results yet to be determined.
.
crossposted at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette

Of Penguins and Prayer Flags

Years ago, the Sunshine household made a dramatic change in how we celebrate Christmas. Tradition was cast aside by loss, and we decided to create a new tradition. Some twenty-five years later, that tradition is still going strong.

We each pick a country at Thanksgiving time and then draw to select which one we’ll dish up on Christmas Eve. Year in, year out, through joyous times and turbulent ones, we’ve always gathered together on Christmas Eve to share an adventure.

In the process, we’ve learned more about our neighbors in the world, and are the richer for it in treasure money cannot buy.

Some dishes became family stand-bys…we still serve up Greek lemon chicken to welcome family home, as we did the first year that took us to Greece through food and study. Some things become stand-bys, too. The plastic penguin-embellished igloo that replaced the peace dove that was handmade with trellises and twinkle lights and hung high against the side of the house…until the war outlasted it. But the penguin soldiers on.

These days, our wanderlust is tempered by disability, and we travel more via the Internet than the Interstates. But the tradition continues. Burnished by the spirit of inclusiveness we brought to that first new style family dinner.

This year we’re “traveling” to Bhutan, and prayer flags dance on the wind in front of our house amid the snow-covered trees and lawns. A bit of the Himalayas, of the world beyond our doorstep, but not beyond our hearts.

There’s been a lot of hunkering down these days, but there is, too, the promise of new days with fresh opportunities to live in deed the values we profess in words.

If I could reach out and put in your hands two gifts for these times, they would be the gift of thinking—not just hearing what you want to hear to re-affirm your status quos, of opening your heart to new voices and new births of opportunity. And the gift of peace—and quiet…so that you can ponder in your heart and make wise choices and act upon them to help make a better world. Mustard seeds, grains of sand, stars in the universe—each on its own is miniscule, but together we can move mountains and minds and hearts.

Don’t fear change, embrace it. Like that long ago young couple, set out on a new path. Who knows where it may lead….

Merry Christmas, from Prairie

When Nobody's Lookin'

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about honor and dignity. A vow made to us the way a groom promises to his bride on their wedding day. And when the groom turns abusive and instead of honoring his bride and treating her with dignity, he leaves bruises and scars.

Maybe those bruises don’t show on the outside, but they’re there in the spirit and fiber…of a person, of a family, of a nation.

Honor, my dear ol’ dad taught me in childhood, is what you do, how you act, when nobody’s lookin’. These days, it seems honor is in such short supply in some quarters that the nobody’s lookin’ part doesn’t even slow them down.

Senator McConnell’s recent “Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers.” was not an honorable comment. Or attitude.

Down the road a ways here in Fargo is the YWCA’s shelter for women and children. We pass them daily on our commute—all seven minutes of it—from home to Mr. Sunshine’s workplace. The shelter’s bursting at the seams these days, with more women, more children needing shelter day by day. Where’s the honor in that?

Veterans of World War II have been flying from Prairie Country to Washington DC in Honor Flights of late. Spearheaded by local radio talker Tracy Briggs, the trips take cajoling for some of the old vets. Dad never talked much about his Marine years in the Pacific in WW II. But I like to think he would have appreciated the honor his surviving comrades are being shown these days.

WW II vets who did the same intelligence work as is being done today have spoken out against using torture like waterboarding’s controlled drowning as a method to gain information. They honorably serve us all still by speaking out.

Honor means admitting your mistakes, accepting your imperfections while always striving to do better. Senator Edwards says his Iraq vote was wrong. He’s shown both dignity and passion in his campaign to make right that choice.

I have hope right now that the honor I see in talker Don Imus will overcome his mistakes and imperfections. His campaign support for the Boriken neighborhood health care center now exemplifies that honor.

Honor requires thinking. But it also requires an inner spirit of honesty and selflessness that is not valued enough these days. “Greed is good” rules, instead of One America. Changing that will take work. There is much tilling of the soil to be done…not just in Prairie Country, but in Washington and all of America.

We used to value work a lot more than we do now. These days, it’s all about the bravado and the big lie. Talking about the Greatest Generation without living up to it. Like showy annual flowers that wilt at the first drought and die away at the first deep frost.

It’s the deep roots that endure…the well-set roots of community and neighborhood over selfish individuals sucking up all the moisture.

Yesterday, when I drove to my disabled husband’s workplace, a Rochester Armoured Express van was blocking the graded sidewalk. When I waved our disability parking card at him, he ignored me. When my husband wheeled out of the building, and waved the driver forward, he inched ahead.

When I got out of the car and asked the driver to please move, he looked at me and said, “there’s handicapped parking…I’m not blocking that.”

“No, but you’re blocking the sidewalk so my husband can’t get around your van to get to the handicapped parking space.”

The driver stared straight ahead until the courier hopped in next to him, then the van sped away. Honor? None there.

But a man in a wheelchair, disabled and enduring serious diseases, waiting patiently because a driver saw the handicapped parking but didn’t see, didn’t want to see, that he blocked the way…that man in the wheelchair…he has dignity.

There are lots of people in wheelchairs, lots of soldiers with injuries, lots of good Americans treated with dishonor. They deserve better. They deserve our thoughts and our supportive actions. They deserve our honor. It’s not enough to talk about it. It’s time to roll up our shirtsleeves and get back to work.

And that will lead us all back to our own honor and dignity. And the whole country will be the better for it.