*

website statistics

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The only constant in life is change.

For sharing family photos, Facebook is good but I find it cluttered. I share images quickly by including them in blog posts. The picture of Fiona at the end of this post was downloaded within minutes of hitting the Net.

But the speed at which we share stuff today is not today's story. Today we look at milestones and the changes I've noticed in Fiona. I checked the Internet and discovered . . .

Motor skills: At first Fiona was a "Wobbly Head." But little ones are exercise crazy and all that vigorous stretching and kicking quickly pays dividends.  At three months she holds her head high, her Wobbly Head days are behind her.

Vision: Most newborns focus best on objects about 12 inches away, or the distance to mom's face during a feeding. But by age three months, according to the experts, Fiona is ready for art. The experts agree that Fiona is ready to appreciate more complex stuff, like intricate, geometric Navajo designs in rich earth-tones. Her preference for a big, beautiful red painting done by a friend in Montreal is real. I am not imagining things. (Whew!)

Hearing: Even newborns respond to loud noises; They blink, act startled, even frown. But today Fiona responds with noticeable discernment. She smilesa relaxed, contented smileespecially whenever mom or dad are speaking.

Communication: At three months communication skills are definitely non-verbal but they are present nevertheless. There is a new tone to her cries, the coos. One best pay attention or soon the tone will take a nasty turn and Fiona will get downright insistent: "Now, listen up!"

When pleased the little queen will measure out a smile and if bored she will entertain herself by blowing bubbles. Waving hands and wiggling feet can be quite captivating. If you are going to hold Fiona's attention you've got to prove yourself a more interesting companion than her ten toes. This is not as easy as it sounds.

(This makes me think of a picturea close-up of her little lips, so perfectly formed, pursed, puckered and blowing bubbles. Could be beautiful.)

Which brings me back to our walks down the hall. The experts say simple conversation, and mine can be as simple as they come, lays the groundwork for language development. Describing sights, smells and sounds around the house is good. Fiona may not understand a word but she is sensitive and picks up stuff from just the tone of your voice. (I've actually used a firm tone to ask her to stop crying and she has stopped. I immediately headed for the hallway to view the art on the walls and to reward her for good conduct.)

Which brings us to the flip-side of all this. Babies reach developmental milestones at different ages, but by three months one should consult the baby's doctor if any of the following red flags are flying:
  • No improvement in head control
  • No attempts to lift the head when lying facedown
  • Extreme floppiness
  • Lack of response to sounds or visual cues, such as loud noises or bright lights
  • Inability to focus on a caregiver's eyes
  • Poor weight gain
 Like I said, Fiona has passed some important milestones.

Update: Fiona at 21-months

Milestones are still being reached and passed. "You go, girl!"

Monday, November 30, 2009

Fiona soon to be three - months!

For those who are waiting patiently to see Fiona and daddy John. Here is a post just for you.

Fiona has passed a milestone; She is no longer a newborn baby. She is now simply a baby. She now is holding her head up, checking out her surroundings. So far everything seems to have passed inspection.

Judy calls her a pothead as she is quite taken with the stainless steel pots hanging from the ceiling above our kitchen counter.

I think of her as more of an art buff; She quiets right down when I stroll around our home and discuss the art with the obviously intensely interested little girl cradled in my arms. She is especially interested in the various sculptures that sit on our livingroom mantle.

Cheers,
Rockinon

You're more powerful than you think.

Note: the video has been changed. I was told that my first was like a feel-good e-mail message. That was enough for me; I changed the video immediately. I removed the cheese.
__________________________________________________

What we do in life is important. We've all heard of the "Butterfly Effect." If conditions are right, small actions have big effects. 

Your actions reverberate in the world much longer than you would ever imagine. You truly are more powerful than you think.

This post and the video were inspired by a passage in the book The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. Troubled by the unfairness of the biblical injunction that wicked acts by the fathers will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation, Jacobs, after much thought, arrived at a generous interpretation, and came to appreciate the passage with his new insight.

As a young boy I, too, was troubled by the unfairness of this Biblical passage. My mother had an interpretation which was in agreement with Jacobs. Years later I chatted with a minister who would go on to become a bishop and he confirmed my mother's interpretation.

Our actions influence others. A father's bad actions set a bad example not just for his children but  for generations to come. Set a bad example and your children and your children's children may very well suffer. 

But why stop with fathers?


Cheers, 
Rockinon.


Saturday, November 28, 2009

Modern Dance_a burning obsession

Years ago I shot some pictures for a gentleman and his wife; Both were movers and shakers in the art scene here in London, Ontario. As payment for my work they gave me not just cash, always nice, but tickets for two to each show at a local theatre.

Of all the theatre stuff I was exposed to in those 12-months, I think the modern dance nights were my favourites. I knew very little about modern dance but by then end of the year I was making the drive to Toronto to catch the Danny Grossman Dance Company and attending the Joffrey Ballet in New York. When the touring arm of the Joffrey stopped in London, I made sure I was there.

For me, the best modern dance was imaginative and visually witty with a patina of surrealism. I would go on about the "incongruous juxtapositions" but I never felt comfortable with that talk in art school and I am not about to get into it now.

The only way to make such a conversation work is to get a good group of friends, a couple of jugs of beer and lots of pub-popcorn and peanuts and then, and only then, is it possible to launch into a discussion of what it means to conduct an entire dance routine under a bright red sheet of lycra stretched tautly over an entire stage. The dancers are never seen. All we see are the moving, expanding and contracting bulges, the result of the dancers performing under the distorted fabric.

All the foregoing was an introduction to this video by Memo Akten.

This video is an off-shoot from a visual performance accompanying the Rambert Dance Company at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank, London UK . . . When the clip starts, you probably won't recognize a human shape, but your eyes and mind will be searching, seeking mental connections between abstract shapes and recognizable patterns, like looking for shapes in clouds. You'll be questioning what you see, is that him? is he sitting? is he crouching? is he kneeling? until all of a sudden, he'll be crystal clear . . .

The dancers are Robin Gladwin and Miguel Altunaga. Choreography by Alexander Whitley.


Reincarnation from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Enjoy,
Cheers,
Rockinon

Christmas in Norway

I have linked to this site so often in the past that I am beginning to feel pangs of guilt. Oh well, I can handle them.

I saw Elle's tweet and thought "ho hum" but no, it's a" ho ho ho." What gives this post an edge? - the picture of the helicopter placing a Christmas tree on a bridge. It is just such a neat thing to do on so many levels.

The lights are starting to appear in London and soon I'll go out and get some shots of the local crazies who light their homes better than Niagara Falls.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Friday, November 27, 2009

Social Networking

Last night I blogged on my reaction to women wearing hijabs in London, Ontario. My thoughts had me thinking about how I treat Muslims and why I treat them that way.

This morning I heard from a blogger in Iran! A woman who goes by the name of Shahrzah, and she gave me permission to use some art from her site. She also took the time to enrich my knowledge concerning the attire of Muslim women.

Here are her comments:

Salam/Hi/Peace

I read your post and it's thoughtful. You have permission to use photos from my blog if you want to. And i am so happy that you've decided not to treat Muslim stereotypically as some few people do.

However i would like to give you few information about the hijab and hijab law in Iran. Actually based on law, Iranian women must cover their head by scarf, but it does not include forcing to wear burka or things like that. There's no force to cover the head thoroughly as well. There was a religious police since some years after revolution, but now after coming for second term, Ahmadinejad has eliminated that ancient religious police!

Nobody wears burkas in Iran. Burkas are popular in Afghanistan and some other Asian countries. In fact Iranian women never cover their face, bcs religiously they're not recommended too. (Iranians follow a different sect of Islam, name as 'Shia or Shiite Islam and women are not recommended to wear face cover.)

There's a traditional way of hijab with the name "Chador" and this chador has a history related to pre-Islamic era when Iranians used to follow Zoroastrian religion and women of rich families were obligated to wear chador. Nowadays nobody is forced to wear chador, but some women 'chose' to wear it.

Best Regards,
Shahrzah


My addition: Years ago, while still working at the newspaper I shot pictures of two sisters who were practising Zoroastrians. At the time there were about four or five dozen Zoroastrians living in London, Ontario.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Just a scarf?

The young woman wore a dark, long-sleeved, floor-length dress with a matching hijab. She was working behind the counter at a local store. She smiled at my wife and at me and started totalling our purchases.

This was my second contact with this young woman. She had checked me through a few days before, when I bought a large, wooden toy stove for my new granddaughter. The hijab wearing woman had asked if I would need help carrying the stove to my car and I had laughed that I was not that old. Well, I allowed, I might be that old but I wasn't that out-of-shape.

She had asked who the stove was for — a granddaughter perhaps? I had replied, "Yes." As she taped the loose parts, ensuring I would reach home with the complete stove, we had chatted. I paid, we parted and soon I was struggling through the parking lot with a stove that grew bigger and heavier with every step. I was that out-of-shape.

Driving home I thought about her head covering, her colour coordinated scarf, her hijab — a traditional headdress worn by Muslim women. But before I worked through my thoughts, I was home.

Now my wife and I were back and we had the same young woman checking us out. I think she recalled me — the foolish old man, too proud to accept help carrying an immense, heavy, wooden toy stove to his car.

My wife had a number of delicate canisters and each had to be individually wrapped to make sure they wouldn't knock together and break. As the young woman worked, she chatted with my wife and with me. She asked about our family and Christmas. She confided that her family was quite large and if they celebrated Christmas it would be one expensive festival.

The hijab, unlike the burka, does not cover a woman's face. This young woman's charming and disarming smile was not hidden. When we took our bags filled with Christmas gifts to leave, her thank you followed by the invitation to come again, had the warmth of sincerity.

I'd like to say that I treated this young woman exactly the same way that I would treat any counter person, but I didn't. I tried to be friendlier than usual. I went out of my way to not look at, and to not react to, her obvious Muslim attire.

I mentioned this to my wife and I told her how, if a Muslim family was approaching a store door immediately behind me, I would walk through and then hold the door open for them. I will wait a few moments longer for a Muslim family. I go out of my way to let Muslims see that I treat them just like I treat others.

I see my actions as my own, small way of fighting terrorism. I will not be bullied into treating my Muslim neighbours differently because of the actions of a few nasty extremist crazies living, and dying, many thousands of miles away.

My small, positive actions don't seem like much, almost nothing.

But then I think of France. Last June President Nicolas Sarkozy said, "In our country (France), we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity." The burka — the all-concealing Muslim dress, with mesh covering the eyes — is "a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement," he said. " . . . it will not be welcome on our territory."

In 2004, a law banning the Islamic headscarf — the hijab — and other highly visible religious symbols from French public schools sparked heated debate. He's not smiling and ignoring the head scarf. He's not holding any doors.

Interestingly, in Tunisia — Muslim North Africa — a similar ban has been enforced and ignored in waves since 1981 when a government decree prohibited women from wearing Islamic head scarves in public places. Tunisian human-rights activists accuse authorities of depriving women of a basic freedom guaranteed by the Tunisian constitution.

Photo credit: Shahrazad. [The two images of Iranian women wearing hijabs.]

When I was in Tunisia about a decade ago I would see women walking together, some wearing hijabs, some wearing western dress, while still others in the same group wore body-covering robes hiding all, including their faces. I thought it was pretty cool.

At one point during my visit, I was able to slip into a women-only-club in downtown Tunis. Dozens of western dressed Tunisian ladies held a business luncheon from which all men were barred but for some waiters, the musicians in the band and a smooth talking Canadian photographer. How I managed smooth talk my way in using my limited high school French, I don't know.

But I do know that those women would agree with Sarkozy. They talked about how Saudi and Iranian women must wear the hijab by law and often wear the full burka, not by choice, but out of fear. These ladies might not hold the door for a woman wearing a hijab.

Confused? Me too. But, I think I'll keep smiling, chatting, and holding doors.


Addendum:

"I go out of my way to let Muslims see that I treat them just like I treat others." My wife thought this too subtle. If I go out of my way, I do not treat Muslims as I treat others. My behaviour has been changed by the events of this decade.
The picture on the left accompanied the story I wrote for the paper on Tunisia. This woman had passed on the hijab in favour of the cap and white cuffs of the Police de Circulation, or traffic cops.


For more info on Muslim dress, check out my post "Social" Networking. A lady from Iran contacted me and has added first-hand info. Ah the virtual world is a wonderful place, and that's reality.