 Red Room Writer Profile
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Ellen R. Sheeley's Blog
September 29, 2009
- I tuned into the evening news tonight, only to learn that earlier today there was an 8.0 to 8.3 earthquake in Samoa lasting several minutes, followed by a tsunami. Apparently, there have been deaths, but, as I write, the numbers are unknown. One account I read said there was a water surge of over two feet in Apia, the capital of the independent (i.e., non American) side. None of this is ...
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September 23, 2009
- Is it safe to assume that most of us here in the RedRoom are avid readers? I am and have been for as long as I can remember.As a professional marketer, I thought it might be interesting to capture a snapshot of our collective reading habits by conducting an informal, statistically-flawed survey asking, What are you reading right now? If you care to add a critique, all the better. If this is ...
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September 20, 2009
- Today is the first day of Eid al-Fitr in Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim countries where the new moon has been sighted, marking the beginning of the lunar month of Shawwal and the end of the holy month of Ramadan.Last year I blogged about how the holiday is celebrated, but there are also some more personal accounts here.Eid Mubarak (English translation: happy ...
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September 3, 2009
- In some countries, women are killed for not being virgins. In a May 2005 paper entitled, "The Economic Advancement of Women in Jordan: A Country Gender Assessment," the World Bank reported that 95% of the women killed in Jordan in 1997 for alleged violations of family honor were later found to be innocent of immoral behavior. In other words, they were still virgins, even though ...
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September 3, 2009
- In my almost-daily Web surfing of assorted Middle East news sites and blogs, I stumbled upon a blog by a reader-funded foreign correspondent named Michael J. Totten. I neither know nor know of him, but apparently he's written articles that have been published in The Jerusalem Post, LA Weekly, The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, and other mainstream periodicals.According to Mr. ...
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August 26, 2009
- In the summer of 1975, when I was 18, the Hon. Tennyson Guyer, Republican, 4th District of Ohio, appointed me his L.B.J. Summer Intern to the 94th United States Congress. In fact, he appointed me for the first time the prior summer, but when one of his staffers rang to interview me for a press release announcing the appointment, he realized that, although I had graduated from high school, I was ...
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August 22, 2009
- Just want to say a quick but heartfelt, "Ramadan kareem!" to my Muslim readers. For those who may not be familiar with this pillar of Islam, my blog of last year offers a brief explanation. It's the first day of Ramadan in Jordan and, since the holy month commences in accordance with the lunar calendar, I'm not sure whether it's begun yet in Algeria or India or other countries ...
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August 17, 2009
- Yesterday my friend Inca and I spent some time together running errands. We were chatting about this and that when she turned to me and asked, "So what did you make of Hillary's response to that Congolese student?" (See also this article if you missed the news story.) "Inappropriate. Unbecoming. Embarrassing." said I, without skipping a beat. "I thought it ...
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August 15, 2009
- The Financial Times recently published a thoughtful analysis of the Google Books project. Click here to read "Books: A Plan to Scan," by Richard Waters.Is there anyone out there who really understands the implications of this, or are we just going to have to plow ahead and see what happens?
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August 13, 2009
- One of my favorite magazines is The Economist. In its July 23, 2009 issue, it published an interesting leader/editorial and a special report on the Arab world entitled Waking from Its Sleep. The latter is a follow up to a similar report published almost 20 years ago entitled When History Passes By.If anyone is interested in gaining a quick understanding of the region but lacks the time and ...
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August 8, 2009
- My friend--I'll call her Inca--is going through a number of personal trials. Her mother is frail. Her family's beautiful ancestral home in Bangalore is soon going to be demolished under eminent domain to accommodate a new metro line. The family is doing its best to fight it or, at least, receive equitable compensation for their loss, but all the travel between the U.S. and India and the ...
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July 30, 2009
- It was the early 1980s. I was young and hungry and vulnerable and putting myself through six years of university without financial help beyond that which I could do for myself. It was the second semester of my four-semester M.B.A. program, and I was invited to work for the chair of the marketing department at my university. I didn't know it at the time, but he'd hand-picked me because I'd ...
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July 29, 2009
- The Associated Press is reporting that Jordan has established a special tribunal to speed up the trials for dishonor killings cases in the country. That is all well and good, but I've never heard even a single person in Jordan--or any human rights activist, for that matter--whinge that the legal process for these crimes is too lengthy. What most of us wonder is why the victims and the ...
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July 21, 2009
- A Tale of Two ParadigmsKnowing the world's largest special forces training center just opened in Jordan doesn't make me feel any safer. Sometimes I really have to question how my taxpayer dollars are being used and why the mainstream media aren't doing a better job of laying it out for us.Amman Revoking Palestinians' Citizenship The comments following this article are every bit as interesting ...
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July 15, 2009
- Every month, after I tear out all the blow-ins, heavy-stock pages, and perfume strips, the first page I flip to in my new issue of Vanity Fair is The Proust Questionnaire at the back of the magazine. For some reason, I am drawn to the series of questions asked of well-known people to draw them out and reveal some of their innermost thoughts.Several years ago, I took a crack at the ...
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