Of Barbies and Guns: A mom in the crossfire of gender stereotypes

When my daughter was a baby, I swore we would have no pink. I never liked pink in the first place. It reminds me of overly sweet synthetic medicine and being sick as a child. 
And it promotes gender stereotypes. 

But then I was given baby clothes. My family lives on modest means and it’s against my religion to be wasteful. When you’re a new mother in a circle of friends at the lower end of the middle class, you're in the baby-clothes rotation system whether you like it or not. It’s silly to buy new when your friends are desperate to reclaim their closet space. 

The problem was that mostly I was given pink. Some boy clothes turned up but mostly I had garbage sacks full of tiny pink dresses.

When I—on rare occasions—actually bought baby clothes, they were never pink. And my daughter wore the non-pink clothes we acquired to rags. Every day I told her she was strong and smart. (And she was.) She was also very pretty and I tried not to tell her that too often. 

I had the dream that my children would grow up without the limitations of sexism and gender stereotypes. When I was a child my parents were firmly anti-establishment and I never had pink dresses. I owned only one doll before the age of seven and I played swords with my brothers. I am convinced that this played a positive role in my development. 
But my daughter had other ideas. 

My daughter adored pink from the beginning. Before she could talk, she would watch me pick out her clothes and she would reach down under the pretty blue and green dresses to the pink ones hidden at the bottom of the drawer. She’d howl any day that I insisted she where something not pink. Pink was the first color she learned to name. 

Let’s be clear. I was a “good” mother. I listened to the American Pediatric Association. My child never saw a lighted screen before the age of two, except in passing at someone else’s house. We don’t own a TV. Our storybooks were about nature, boys and very non-princess-like girls.  She didn’t get this infatuation with pink from the media. 

When I was growing up, “feminists” were people (like my parents) who insisted that men and women are exactly the same on the inside. I simply couldn’t believe that a little girl could be inherently drawn to the color pink by something encoded in her DNA. 

But as much as I am a feminist, I’m not a controlling parent with an ideology to force down my child’s throat. So, I relented and let her wear pink. I even started buying pink clothes. I even allowed a few princess books to sneak into the house, even though I still buy the anti-princess books too. 

You see. I have these troubling memories from my own childhood. Yes, I grew up out in the sticks with two wild brothers and no TV. Yes, I enjoyed playing swords and army and building forts and Legos and sled racing. 

But deep down inside, I longed for dolls and dresses. I loved my first doll and still own her, ragged and bleached by time as she is. And I notice that when we drew pictures as children, my brothers drew pictures of complex military battles and underground hide-outs. I drew ladies with amazing princess dresses and little high heels. 

Where in the world had I even SEEN high heels at that point? (Seriously. I not only didn't have a TV,  was also legally blind.)

I remember the day my daughter saw high heels for the first time. My adult niece was living with us then and she was dressing up to go to a traditional European winter ball. So, she pulled out a pair of bright red heels from a deep closet and put them on under her dress. 

My two-year-old’s mouth dropped open and her eyes literally went as round as quarters. She reached out her little hands and nearly fell over in a swoon of ecstasy. And that was the beginning of a true obsession.

It only took seeing them once and my little girl was hopelessly enthralled. For the past five years, not a day has gone by without my hearing about high heeled shoes, who has them, what color they are, what they sound like, "when when when when" she will be allowed to destroy her feet with them. 

I may have drawn pictures of high heeled shoes as a toddler, but I grew out of the interest long before I was a teenager. I have never even been tempted to wear them. As a young adult I simply thought they were ugly, stupid and a plot by patriarchal men to slow women down. Now I really and truly hate them, but I have to admit that I haven’t been able to find a man who likes them either.

Over the years, I have given in inch by inch, because I AM NOT one of those controlling parents who doesn’t accept their child for who he or she really is, now am I? (Written with gritted teeth.) 

My daughter now owns more princess dresses than will fit in the jumbo dress-up box. We’ve spent a small fortune trying to lure her away from high heels with sparkly pink, shiny black, frilly white, red-hot and every other imaginable type of princess slipper. She owns a dozen very pretty dolls (very multicultural, mind you), a play kitchen and boxes upon boxes of ignored puzzles, legos, blocks, train sets and books. She even owns pretend make-up, real nail polish and many tubes of organic lip balm (organic because she likes to eat it rather than just wear it).

I eventually simply gave up on trying to raise a non-stereotypical girl. My hope lay in my son. 
I couldn’t very well dress him in dresses in the conservative Eastern European country where we live. But I did everything short of that. He had dolls before he could crawl. He wore diverse colors, including pink. He got stories about strong women and kind men (along with all the stories read to my daughter). And the first time he saw fictional violence on TV during a visit to someone else’s house, he ran to me crying that someone was hurt. 

The truth is that my son is very kind and sensitive. At age five, he is still confused about why some kids at preschool insist that boys can’t wear pink when he and his best friend really like pink along with lots of other colors. But he likes camouflage more. A lot more. Sigh.

And his initial reaction to toy cars was very similar to my daughter’s reaction to high heels. His first word was not “Mama” or even “Papa,” but “backhoe.”

Having kids will always make you rethink your beliefs one way or another. And for me, it has meant the grudging conclusion that at least some boys and some girls do have hardwired stereotypical tendencies. 

If there was ever an environment that would have promoted a more balanced division of clothing and toys between children it was ours. Being an immigrant and unable to drive, I spent most of my children’s toddlerhood isolated from society as well as TV media. I was very careful in my approach to the issue, neither pressing one way or the other, providing many different toys and books.

But the preferences of my children were clear from an early age and stated in no uncertain terms. 

Today, my son is a camo-crazed truck and soldier enthusiast with a heart of gold, who wants to rescue the vulnerable and chase away bad guys without actually hurting them. He’s a quick reader and loves to draw things with wheels. He hordes dolls and stuffed animals but doesn’t actually play with them. My daughter is Elsa-obsessed and yearns to watch make-up videos on YouTube. She’s also reasonably good with numbers and puzzles, extraordinarily strong-willed and the more violent of the two. 

Parents, you can’t win.

There are things I draw the line at--primarily toy guns and Barbies. Sometimes unwise friends or relatives gift the children such objects. I quietly discourage the adult offenders and grit my teeth through a few days of domestic disgust until these objects are carelessly left lying around and then they are disappeared. I have talked to my kids about both issues, quite openly. I don’t like toy guns that don’t shoot projectiles because they promote unrealistic ideas about firearms and play into a violence obsession in our society that I find extremely harmful. Barbies are ugly, difficult to dress and promote ideals of women being anorexic, clumsy, appearance-focused and brainless. 

My son gets to have bows and arrows and swords because these are not quite as poorly used by the entertainment media, but it’s a fine line. He also gets to have toy soldiers and tanks because they can be used to talk about history and real warfare. Hiding from the hard things in life will do us no good. But Mama has to draw the line somewhere.

As for my daughter, beyond clothes, shoes and make-up, she is sometimes interested in drawing and music. I promote these interests with great gusto, as somewhat more wholesome gender stereotypes. She does get lots of pretty stuff and lots of dolls. Just not Barbies. She gets to watch Disney princess movies but not Barbie or Lego Friends and other things that portray girls as cliquish and ditsy. She’ll get to wear high heels when she’s reached her full height. 

These are my lines and my husband’s lines, where we have been able to draw them. Every situation is different. Would I outlaw all military toys and pretend make-up until age twelve if I could? Probably. I’m not judgmental of other parents who are trying to find balance in other ways.

It isn’t easy trying to bring up well-balanced children in a media-saturated, fashion-aware world. If you come up with any nifty secret strategies, please let me know.

Flight attendants can prevent children from being sold into slavery, especially at Superbowl time

The agent at the airport check-in desk was taking an awfully long time to input the information from my children's passports. Her hands moved slowly and clumsily. I sighed as patiently as I could.

Photo courtesy of Julie Farnam

Then I heard someone stop to talk to my two children, who were waiting behind me with their miniature roll-on suitcases. Being a watchful mother, I turned around to check it out. A woman in an airline uniform was asking my five-year-old son where he was traveling to. I thought her manner was a little too officious for talking to young children, but I wasn't really worried. She wasn't offering them candy or trying to lure them away. 

My son mumbled something but she gently insisted that he answer her while studiously ignoring me. And finally a light bulb went on in my tired brain. 

So, that was why the check-in agent was so slow. We'd been flagged.

My kids are trans-racially adopted and they have my husband's last name, which is different form mine. Of course, we tripped an alarm somewhere. I watched with interest. How well would my kids pass the "I'm not being sold as a sex-slave" test?  I was secure in the knowledge that I had birth certificates and adoption records stashed in my own carry-on just in case.  

My son finally managed to articulate clearly that we were going home to Papa and we had been at grandma's house. The uniformed lady moved on, the check-in agent was suddenly done and we were free to go. 

It might seem disconcerting to some parents to have their children questioned right in front of them in such a manner, but I was actually glad to see it happening. My kids could stand some practice in overcoming shyness when I'm standing right next to them.

Finally! A children's story that actually prevents harm to children! Shanna and the Raven teaches children how to use their intuition to avoid dangerous situations.

But more than that, I know what's happening. As a journalist some years ago, I interviewed a few victims of human trafficking who had been able to escape a life of terror and slavery. If my kids can help stop such things by answering a few questions, all the better.

As it turns out, there was another reason for this special check. And that was our timing. Apparently the days and weeks before the Superbowl are the prime period for human trafficking in the United States and many of the victims are young children sold (and often resold several times a day) as sex slaves. The connotations of why this timing is so crucial are a bit too disturbing to dwell on in great detail but the fact is that airlines are on high alert looking for passengers who may actually be slaves being transported for sale at this time. 

While an adult traveling with children who don't match in terms of family name or physical appearance may seem like the most obvious way to tell, it isn't actually the best test. Flight attendants have a special set of criteria that can't be forged or falsified. Even other passengers may be able to notice the signs of human trafficking.

Here's what they look for:

1. A passenger who can't or isn't permitted to speak for themselves,

2. Someone controlling what another person says,

3. a child who avoids eye contact,

4. a passenger who is fearful, nervous, depressed, submissive,

5. inappropriately dressed young passengers with few possessions on a long flight,

6. a passenger who is constantly accompanied by someone who controls their every move, such as when going to the restroom.

One of the most common ways women and children being sold as sex slaves are discovered and helped is actually in flight. Flight attendants have a lot longer to observe the interactions than most other people a slave might encounter and trafficking rings often have to use commercial airlines. So, it is often actually up in the air where a flight attendant notices something is wrong, rather than during check-in.

Still, that was one reason I let my children speak for themselves. The bottom line is don't panic if uniformed personnel at an airport question your children. Do tell children where they are going when they're on a trip. It relieves anxiety for children in general (and you'd be surprised at how often we adults forget to tell children even the most basic things about plans that affect them). It also saves time and hassle if they are questioned. 

If you travel with children who don't share your last name or who differ from you in physical appearance or if you travel without both parents present, you may want to take the extra precautions I take and carry birth certificates and other documentation of the children's identity and reason for travel.

We're all just people: Culture shock between America and Europe

I very recently flew over the Atlantic after a long visit with my family in the United States to reclaim my normal life back in Europe some kilometers from Prague. It was so recent that I still have jet lag and I'm doing most of my writing at 3:00 am. after a limited amounts of sleep. 

Neither of my homes is in a large cosmopolitan center. Both are salt-of-the-earth places where most people who are born there expect to die there. Both are conservative and traditional in their own very different ways. And both embody many of the stereotypes that Europeans and Americans hold about each other. 

In Eastern Oregon where I was visiting my family, the main excitement was the militia that had taken over a local wildlife refuge. Ranchers, guns and American football made up prominent parts of our holiday experience. And in the shops, there was always someone smiling and ready to help us part with our money in the most pleasant manner. 

Don't get me wrong. I love going into American stores. I am legally blind, and shopping is a nightmare for me if there aren't helpful shop assistants. This trip to the land of "the customer is always right" has meant that I have a nice, professional wardrobe for the first time in... well, forever really.

My luggage always weighs twice as much going east as it does going west. America is good at consumerism and I'm not immune to its charms, despite my anti-materialist leanings. This time my suitcases bulged with things like candy with natural food coloring, brown-skinned dolls, clothes that last more than a year, environmentally friendly and extremely nice-smelling soap, English-language books, real maple syrup and an ice cream maker--all things I couldn't get in Central Europe or at least not for any affordable price. 

Not coincidentally all of those things are also things that help me live the sustainable, open-minded, earth-friendly lifestyle I want to live. So, even my lapse into consumerism is still essentially in character.

And there is even more to love in American culture. I also brought back new CDs that prove that the music of my homeland just continues to get better. And I had more hugs in five weeks in America than I'm likely to encounter in the next two years in Europe--if I don't count my children.

Amsterdam Airport -- Creative Commons image by Nikodemus Siivola

As soon as I touched down in Amsterdam, on the shores of Europe--my home for the past twenty years--I got wallopped in the face with the cold, harsh reality of this continent. Not only is Amsterdam airport highly sophisticated and sleekly professional, it insists that passengers must all have highly refined tastes and be at least forty years old. The stores are all for expensive chocolates and alcohol. And according to the cleaning staff that I cornered and questioned at the beginning of my four-hour layover with two exhausted preschoolers, there is no place in the entire airport that is friendly to children, no place to even slightly recline in a chair, no soft area at all and "no lounging" allowed.

For the gods' sake! This is supposed to be Western Europe where everything is more progressive and family friendly than in Prague. But no. I might as well have landed smack in a provincial business center in Poland for all the support there was for the softer side of humanity. 

After our four-hour wait on hard tile floors and hard chairs with mandatory armrests between each seat (to prevent any sort of lounging or children sleeping at what is to their jet-lagged bodies 2:00 am), we approached the gate for our flight to Prague. Although boarding was supposed to start in fifteen minutes, there was not one KLM employee in evidence anywhere near the gate. But Europe has taught me to be patient. This is NOT the land where customers can make demands. 

Boarding time came and went and still there was no appearance of staff. I asked at other gates but none of the personnel there were KLM and they had no interest in a KLM customer with a white cane. Finally, in desperation I approached the gate for the sixth time and began inspecting it in detail with a small telescope that allows me to see things at around ten feet away. And then I saw the very small sign behind the desk saying, "Gate changed." There were plenty of announcements on the intercom but not one for this--not even once, as later admitted by KLM. They didn't consider it to be important enough to announce the change.

I frantically ushered my children up the stairs and down long hallways to the next gate and made it just in time. We don't coddle customers or people with disabilities or children here in the land of "sophistication" and "no lounging."

We made it home to Prague, utterly exhausted, and the very next day I had an appointment with an eye specialist for a check-up. There's the rub, of course.

Make that the land of "no lounging" and "free health care." Damn good, free health care.  The highly competent doctor spent over an hour with me because it's necessary once in a great while to ensure that my extremely weak eyes won't get even worse and to make sure I have absolutely the best prescriptions possible. She's conscientious, professional and, yes, sophisticated--which is very nice in an eye specialist.

Despite American stereotypes to the contrary, European health care is exceptionally good, technologically cutting-edge and rarely requires much of a wait. The throat-and-nose specialist who shares a waiting room with my eye doctor is the exception to that last rule. He doesn't believe in appointments. You just show up and wait, even if your issue is not acute or infectious. And the waiting room--which is shared by all the elderly people trying fill their glasses prescriptions--is always full of miserable sick children with ear aches and coughs.  Hey, it's a small town of only 10,000 people, so some doctors share facilities. 

The line for the throat-and-nose specialist is always huge at this time of year and even though the pediatrician had asked me to take my five-year-old son in to have his nasal tonsils checked, I was procrastinating. Even though I had to be there for the eye doctor anyway, I didn't want to drag him through that chamber of infection until spring, if I could avoid it. 

But this particular day I noticed that the line on the other side of the waiting room was oddly small by a freak chance. There was only one mother waiting with a sick child. I watched as another mother came in.

"Good day!" she said formally to the room at large.

"Good day!" we all chorused. This is Austro-Hungarian Central Europe and we are very much into polite greetings among strangers.

She walked to the door of the throat-and-nose specialist and glanced around in confusion. She turned back to look at me and the elderly people on the eye-specialist's side of the room.

"Who is the last in line for Dr. Mrazek?" she asked as standard polite behavior demands.

"I am, I think," the woman with the sick first sick child answered.

The second mother stared at her in amazement. "But how is it possible that there is no line?" she asked.

"I have no idea," the first one said with evident delight. "Have you ever heard of such a thing?" 

My husband was nearby waiting for me with our children and a surge of hope shot into me. I stood up and came over to the two women. 

"Does the doctor even know anyone is here?" I asked. "I think I might get my husband to bring my son in, since it's such good timing." 

They nodded encouragingly, but the first one said softly, "I"m not sure if he knows, but I'm too afraid to knock. You know they'll often shout at you. I don't think I can take being shouted at today. You go ahead and knock if you want to." 

The other one made a noise of understanding under her breath. "I'd be too afraid too," she admitted, clutching her coughing child closer. 

I steeled my nerves and knocked.

There was no response as is the norm, so we waited for the nurse to get around to coming out to see what the "commotion" was about. Patients don't make demands here anymore than customers do. 

"I do wish they wouldn't shout," the second mother continued.

"Yes, but I also understand," the first one comforted her. "We're all just people. Them too. They get harried and everyone has a temper, you know." 

I did get my son in with the specialist and saved a great deal of time. As I left the waiting room, I nodded and said, "Good bye" to all those still present and they all chorused back at me, "Good bye and have a nice day." 

No one smiled or tried to make me part pleasantly with my money. The "have a nice day" is a thing said from patients to other patients. And it reminded me that despite the cultural differences between Europe and America we are all just people. 

Climate Change and Conspiracy: A Video Interview with Arie Farnam

Are you fed up yet? Ninety-seven percent of peer-reviewed scientific papers that touch on the subject are certain climate change (global warming and increases in extreme weather) is happening at a rapid rate and it's caused by human industry and specifically the burning of fossil fuels. 

Ninety-seven percent. This isn't much of a controversy among scientists, at least not among those who aren't directly backed by oil and coal companies. And yet, when Fox News reports on climate issues, seventy percent of the mentions of climate change deny its reality or the role of fossil fuels. Fox News doesn't have a lot of scientists to choose from with only three percent inflated to seventy percent, but they try. 

But why do they try? The producers and owners must have children too? Can they really be ignorant or are they willfully lying in a dangerous betting game with mass starvation as the stakes? Whatever their motives nearly half of the American public believes that climate change is a hoax and that we can go on burning fossil fuels with impunity. This is what Fox News and others have done.

In this next interview on the burning issues of today's dystopian world, I discuss the facts on climate change, the anonymous donor's association that provides the lion's share of the funding for pro-fossil-fuels media and lobbying, what we can do about it and who is the real-world equivalent of J. Company from the Kyrennei Series.

This is the second video interview in which I take a look at the factual real-world issues that lurk in the pages of the dystopian fantasy thrillers of the Kyrennei Series.

Kyrennei Series readers, please comment below and nominate individuals or organizations as your personal heroes. Who do you think is the real-world equivalent of J. Company? Who do you think has the courage and the audacity to go up against the worst injustices in our world?

A video interview with Arie Farnam on the US media, corporate power and dystopia today

This is the first in a series of video interviews by the hearth on issues of social and environmental justice and how I deal with them as a writer. Please share this far and wide and add your voice in the comments. 

While the vast power of corporations often feels indomitable and the manipulation of our culture and media is often depressing, it is worth remembering that we can use their tools to connect people. People have made progress in the past fifty years. Civil rights, the ADA and the beginnings of independent media were built by the quiet hands of many people like you and me. I'm not exactly a celebrity and my interviews reflect that. I'm a writer and mother by the hearth, speaking truth to power and being true to spirit. You are welcome here and we'll find common ground.

I write my stories because I can't help myself. Writers must write. But I also write them to reach out and wake up the world from the malaise of apathy and despair. Mine are stories of hard-won and authentic hope and these video interviews tell how and why.

What a white cane really means

"You're a faker!" the lady on the train berated me while my two small children looked on.  "If you can read that book, you aren't blind."

I was reading a picture book to my kids on the commuter train that takes us to my six-year-old daughter's choir practice. Neither of my kids can read very well yet and besides I love reading to them. The problem was that my white cane was hanging by its thong from the coat rack. 

Many blind and visually impaired people avoid using a white cane for a number of reasons, the stigma, the comments, the weird interactions, the physical hassle and the occasional idiot like this one. (For the record, yes, I'm very visually impaired but not totally blind. I can see well at about two inches, where I hold the book. The steps on the train are significantly further away.)

Most people in society assume that a white cane means that the person carrying it is totally blind. Some cane users are but many - most according to statistics - are not.  I've personally struggled with the issue all my life.

To cane or not to cane? That is the question. The unhappy answer is that you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

An image of a woman's hand holding a white cane with the tip in fallen autumn leaves and a cat playing with the end of it - by Arie Farnam

There are a great many legally blind and significantly visually impaired people--like myself for the first thirty years of my life--who don't use a cane because we rarely trip on steps and don't need a cane to keep from running into walls. (Good hearing and a lot of experience with echolocation is usually good for both even for many totally blind people.) 

Obviously, some of us make ourselves vulnerable to physical hazards (especially motor vehicles) by not using a cane. Some totally blind people don't use canes but they often simply restrict their movements to areas that they know well. That is... well... restrictive.

As a teenager and then an adult in my twenties, I felt self-conscious about using a cane. The thought of someone calling me out for "faking" blindness was so mortifying that I couldn't face the possibility. And besides, the cane was clunky and I only need it every now and then, mostly to cross streets and alert drivers that I can't see their car. Carrying the thing the whole time was just too much of a hassle. 

And then there was my job. For several years I worked as a newspaper correspondent and I went into dangerous areas and conflict zones. I had editors who gave me a bullet proof vest and sent me there. They had no idea I was legally blind. Whenever I met them face to face, I went out of my way to hide it. I know this will make some people uncomfortable, but it's called equal opportunity in employment. Deal with it. I was very good at my job and no one ever had reason to doubt me. 

I used a cane once when I went for my first journalism interview just before I graduated from college and was told in no uncertain terms that blind people need not apply for this type of job. (And that was tame journalism in small-town America in 1998.) So after that, I hid my disability and did the best I could on my own. 

Thus, my aversion to canes was deeply ingrained. But as I got older, my enjoyment of risk-taking diminished. And besides, seeing doesn't really help you avoid mortar shells. In a war zone, I'm not really that much worse off than everyone else. Seeing does, however, help you avoid speeding drivers. And on the average city street, I'm at a distinct disadvantage. 

And then I had kids. And it's one thing to risk your own life streaking across busy streets on the basis of hearing and gumption. It's quite another thing to do it with an infant or two. 

To add to the dilemma, I was increasingly having conflicts with random people when I went out in public. I no longer looked like a teenager and people were less forgiving of my mistakes. People in the check-out line at the grocery story would say nasty things because I was just a bit slower counting money or bagging groceries. Once I was physically seized and accused of stealing by a store clerk because of how close and long I looked at the labels on ketchup bottles. No one would answer when I asked for help reading the bus numbers zipping by at a busy city stop.

A teaser showing four fantasy-inspired book covers featuring a young woman. The text reads, "A fragile hope in dark times, a struggle against all odds, a voice that will touch your soul, a story that will change how you see your world..." The book titles are The Soul and the Seed, The Fear and the Solace, The Taken and the Free and Code of the Outcast. The author name on all is Arie Farnam.

I found myself prefacing half of what I said in public with a very uncomfortable, "I'm visually impaired and I can't see very far, please understand..." I was tired of it.

The combination of the danger to my kids and the exhaustion of minor conflicts finally beat me into submission and I started using a cane, not just occasionally but all the time. It was awkward. Even my eye specialist was upset because he thought my vision must have degenerated. I had to have A LOT of complicated discussions with my friends and acquaintances, many of whom had never entirely believed that I couldn't see much until the moment they saw me with a white cane. 

No, my vision had not suddenly taken a turn for the worse. No, I still won't run into the wall if I'm not carrying a cane. But yes, I do actually need it. 

Worse than that, I was once accosted by a very confused woman from our local community center when she saw me riding a bike with my family. She was sure I must have had eye surgery, because now I could obviously see and she'd seen me with a cane the week before. 

Well, no, no surgery. I just ride very carefully and follow my husband. Same funky eyes.

Soon the comments of neighbors and people who know me by sight in our small town whenever I didn't carry a cane built up another kind of pressure. And that forced me to carry it every time I left our yard, even though I don't physically need it to skip down to the corner store, where I know the pleasant Vietnamese lady behind the counter will always read out the price to me instead of just waving at the screen and expecting me to read it off of her cash register like some do. 

So, there are times when I now carry the cane when I don't actually technically "need" it, except as a means to avoid complicated and repetitive conversations and accusations of fakery.

On the other hand, I've found that I do sometimes trip on curbs at dusk without the cane and it is very handy for judging how high the step is at an unfamiliar train platform. But the real surprise for me when I started to carry the cane was in people's reactions to me. It wasn't just that store clerks no longer grab the back of my shirt and shout for security when I try to identify the merchandise. I also immediately had different and better relationships even with friends. Most people now believe me when I say I can't recognize them, instead of being insulted and insisting that I forgot them. A larger percentage of people reserve harsh judgments when they first meet me, because they realize that my lack of correct eye contact isn't due to my being "strange" or "aloof" but rather a vision problem.  

At the same time, I try not to bow to social pressure and to only carry my cane when I truly need it physically or socially. But the repetitive conversations make that hard. There are many moments, when I stand by the front door struggling with myself. I'm not going anywhere with cars or I'm going to be with my husband every minute and I don't really need the cane to tell people I can't see in this circumstance. And yet I know I'll have to explain myself and the thought of the embarrassment makes me tend toward the cane. And the cane keeps me moving slow and cumbersome. I miss the days of freedom when I could have my hands free and move quickly without getting comments. 

An image of Arie Farnam with her hair pulled into a bun, wearing very thick glasses and a patterned black and white poncho

It has made me think. I do want the general population to associate white canes with blindness. That's the lion's share of the point. Yes, canes are somewhat helpful for physical navigation, but less than you might think. Their primary purpose is often social, letting drivers and others know that a person can't see. But that useful stereotype then gets in the way in so many ways.

So, what does a white cane really mean? How should the average person react? 

It is actually pretty simple. A white cane means that the person using it has significant vision loss, but that is all it means. It doesn't tell you what kind of vision impairment the person has. Some see quite well within a small field and can read street signs just fine, but use a cane so they don't have to constantly look at the ground to see steps. Some are very nearsighted and see well close up but little at all a few feet away. And some, of course, are totally blind or close to it. There are all sorts of other issues that I can't list here. 

If drivers see a white cane, they should be aware that the person using it likely won't see them or their hand signals. Storekeepers should be aware that a person with a white cane might peer closely at things or need more time with something. Friends should know that a person with a white cane may not recognize them even if they are really good friends. That's the sort of thing a white cane means. But it may not mean one or more of those things in a specific case. You can't necessarily assume because vision is changeable and complex.

What it certainly doesn't mean is that a person is faking blindness. Okay, I have read about a few studies conducted by people using white canes to study social reactions to blind people. But barring that... seriously, think about it.  Carrying a cane is a pain. It's cumbersome and in the way. It doesn't actually give you any advantages. Even if blind people do very occasionally get a disability discount on something like public transportation in some countries, they get it based on an official disability card obtained through lengthy and involved investigation, not based on the fact that they carry a cane.

There is no reason a person would go to the trouble of faking blindness by carrying a cane everywhere. So, why is that the first thing people think when they see a person with a cane and a printed book?

Please share this. By putting this out there, I'm hoping to make it just a little bit easier for people who use canes to use them when they really need them, rather than being chained to them. I'm hoping to make busy streets safer for people who can't see well and prevent conflicts of the type I've experienced. 

You are most welcome to add to the discussion with your comments below. I love hearing from you

The breaking of humanity: What can we do about the refugee crisis in Europe?

One cold, wet night in February of 2003, I sat on the steps of a church on Náměstí Míru (the Square of Peace) in Prague. I was half frozen and almost ready to cry. Two years earlier I had been a rising star as a young journalist, but 9/11 had put an end to journalism as we knew it and my career was as good as over.

The war in Afghanistan had already killed several of my journalist friends and the drums of war were beating a frenzy again in the media. This time the target was Iraq. The pretext was clearly fabricated and the results were easily predictable to those of us who had been through conflicts. I couldn't go there and write heartbreaking accounts of this war because this was a new sort of hyper-technological war, where only journalists with big budgets could hope to survive. I had the deaths of friends who tried to cover the war to prove it. 

Original image creative commons by Photog_at of Flickr.com - Refugees near Hungarian border in Sept. 2015 

So, instead of being a journalist, I was sitting on those church steps by a line of candles in the freezing rain. I was an American expat in Europe - in a country politically beholden to the US. The media was gung ho for war. None of the journalists I knew who still had jobs were saying anything dissenting.  But I was out of a job, so I could speak my mind... not in print, not to any sort of audience, but to the night. 

Throwing bombs at a problem will only make it worse. I'm not a pacifist on absolute principle. There are times to fight - when aggression is clear. And this was not one of them. I was against the war in Afghanistan and against the looming war in Iraq. I had spent the entire previous winter going to frigid candlelight vigils with a small group of hard-core peace activists--an Egyptian carpenter, a German lawyer, a female Czech-Syrian business professional, a Romanian teenager and a handful of fellow American expats. 

Creative Commons image by Anand Krishnamoorthi

I wasn't doing it for the Afghans or the Iraqis. I cared and I knew what war is. I had seen a small war in Kosovo and Macedonia. But I was there more for my own country than for theirs. I may be an American living outside America, but I care what happens to my country. I could see no good could come from a continued reliance on the economy of the military budget and fossil fuels. Beyond that the very politics of war would poison us and our much touted freedom.

And I didn't want my friends who were soldiers to come back in body bags. I also didn't want them to come back with PTSD and nightmares about the horrors they would have to participate in with such a war. Little could I imagine over 120,000 veteran suicides at the time, but that was in the mix of reasons.

But I knew that there was no turning the media and political direction of my country and I was in despair that night. I sat apart from the small group of activists at the vigil with my head in my hands, until someone came and sat down beside me.

I looked up, forcing myself to be polite. I hadn't seen him before. He was brown-skinned with long curly black hair. We got to talking and he turned out to be a refugee from Iraq. He wasn't a Muslim or into religion at all. He understood my perspective on things and he agreed that war would solve nothing. 

Smiling sheepishly--obviously self-conscious but braver than me--he started to sing the old American spiritual "We Shall Overcome" there on the steps of an ancient Czech church in the rain.  I'm not brave enough to start such a thing, but I did have the gumption to join him. And soon we were both singing for all we were worth and hanging onto each other's shoulders. 

"Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall live in peace some day."

It was corny and it was incredibly deep at the same time. That one moment probably gave me half the strength I needed over the next four years of antiwar activism. We didn't win. None of us won. Not the peace activists and not the soldiers who went to war and not the people whose homes were ripped apart by the war that we couldn't stop. Sometimes you don't win. 

Creative Commons image by CAFOD Photo Library

It's been more than ten years. The friends of that night are scattered to the winds. And this week started on Sunday morning with a horrific article and series of photos from the beaches of Lesvos, Greece where thousands upon thousands of refugees from the destroyed nations of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are landing in tiny rubber boats. They are so desperate to avoid being sent back that when people in motorboats approach them to try to rescue them, many of the refugees throw themselves into the water in a panic.

They are fleeing certain death, whether by violence or starvation. Local people say they see drowned people - including the bodies of children - in the water every day. It is a massive humanitarian crisis but the media and the large international aid organizations are largely silent about it. No one wants to touch this political hot potato. 

This is what came of those wars that we protested. The brochures I formatted for Czech anti-war organizations on my clunky computer warned about the inevitable waves of refugees, about the deaths by violence and hunger that would drive them.  And very unfortunately those scenarios are being born out.

Climate change has played a role in spurring on the current wave of refugees. On top of war, the region has been hit with several years of drought and what little ability to recover there might have been has been swept away by hunger and economic desperation. And that desperation has fueled the violence begun in 2001 and 2003. 

Even here in Prague, I'm close enough to randomly run into people who describe scenes of terror and grief as adults and children alike drown or splash onto the rocky shore of Greece. And as I write about it, I am often asked by people back in the US and Western Europe what we as individuals can do to help. They want to know which aid organizations are credible and where they can send donations. And this once I had few answers. 

What I hear from eye witnesses is that many of the volunteers - many of them doctors, nurses and swimming lifeguards from other countries - are simply individuals. Many of them have taken unpaid leave from work to go to Lesvos to pull people from the gray water and try to revive them. 

Helpful links:

Doctors Without Borders campaign on the emergency in the Mediterranean

 A group of sea rescue workers from Spain called Open Arms, who have bought rescue boats with small donations and use them to pick up drowning refugees

Refugee Child: a Facebook group with members who are volunteers in Lesvos

What can we do?  Realistically?  Some may be able to leave their everyday lives and homes behind and go to Lesvos, if they have significant resources and the necessary skills (mostly medical and boating). There are a few places to send donations. But these activities are tiny against the mountain of this problem. Even those refugees who reach land in Greece have a long road ahead of them, often walking across entire countries to places where they might be able to get asylum.

Meanwhile, both the wars and the drought continue and there are tens of millions of others teetering on the edges of this disaster. Another flare up of conflict or another year of drought and the next wave of refugees could easily be ten times this flood. It's a situation that breeds hopelessness, among ordinary people and political leaders alike - a problem so enormous it defies all logical problem solving. This is the result of those wars.

I can't predict exact events. What I know is that people in history have stood at such moments before and their words have helped us avoid disaster, when we listened. And that is why I say that sending a donation is good and  volunteering is necessary, but these things are not enough. When I feel the despairing pull of depression over these issues, I recall the primary thing we have to do. We have to tell our friends and neighbors why we should oppose the next war, even when we war met with hostility and patriotic fervor or ridiculed for holding unpopular views.

We owe this because we are warm and dry and not starving. Tell others what the inevitable wages of war are. Waves of refugees are simply the echoes of too much silence.

What a billionaire can do and missed opportunities

I was recently asked to answer the following question on online forum: "What can billionaires do that multimillionaires cannot do?" And my answer was possibly the most controversial thing I think I've ever written. It has been debated, slammed, erased, defended, banned and promoted in various quarters. And given that my blog is called "A Rebel with a Pen" it's time I posted it here. 

Some people were angry that I answered this question at all because I'm nowhere close to a billionaire or even a millionaire (let's face it, I'm not even a hundred-thousandaire--if that were a word). What could I contribute to such a discussion? 

My answer is that I didn't fail math and I even have a calculator. There are things a billionaire could do that a multimillionaire couldn't and I don't need to be one to do the numbers. It's astounding what a controversy a little logic can turn up. Here it is then.

What can billionaires do?

They can...

Destroy democracy, cause a whole nation to starve, spoil a huge swath of the earth without ever realizing it, pick your war. Have not a friend or real relationship in the world and yet be surrounded by smiles and beautiful acts that resemble relationships. Be born, grow up, live to be old and die without ever learning the basic ABCs of ordinary life.

There are plenty of things a billionaire can do. It isn't that millionaires can't come close to some of these things, but their impacts are a bit more local, less global and they usually have to work harder at the psychological denial part because they don't have as many people paid to please them.

Another person who answered this question was Omar Sayed and he primarily explained the mind-blowing difference between a millionaire and a billionaire with this simple statement, "One million seconds is approximately 12 days. One billion seconds amounts to 32 years!  Just imagine what you can you do in 32 years vs. 12 days."

And it's true. For many of us time is money, but wealth beyond the level of the comfortable survival of one's family is no longer time. It is most concisely the ability work one's own will.

A family can live comfortably in the United States on $100,000 a year, including the high-quality education and healthcare which are out of reach for most of the population. Given that, everything beyond $100,000 lies in the realm of what a person "can do" voluntarily. And a billionaire has A LOT of money beyond that first $100,000.

Yes, a billionaire can do fun things like buy a private island or a couple of private jets. A billionaire can have candlelight dinners on a platform far out in a lagoon with just one special person and servants in rowboats to bring them whatever they desire. A billionaire can spend years sailing or bungee jumping or golfing without having to work. And possibly a billionaire can do these things and avoid those terrible things that they could do that I mentioned earlier.

But there are even more things that a billionaire can do.

A billionaire can stop a famine in a particular country, invest in the process and regain most of the money and do it again in another country. Sure, it's a risk and it is unlikely to be as high of return on investment as businesses that cause famines, but it can be done.

There are things that might not even cost too much money that a billionaire can do that others cannot. A billionaire could make true democracy possible again simply by speaking out and telling what billionaires are doing with financing candidates and media. At least a billionaire could have a huge impact on that and be remembered as a hero for generations. 

A billionaire could turn an entire economy to green energy, creating countless high quality jobs and making an impact to combat climate change that the billionaire's grandchildren would be able to equate with the actions of Oskar Schindler. And the billionaire probably wouldn't even lose money.

Some things a billionaire can do might lose money, but they might be worth it anyway. A billionaire could buy a large enough piece of the Amazon rain forest to make sure that there still is an Amazon rain forest in 100 years. 

A billionaire could live a normal, modest life with no private jets and be remembered forever as the person who funded anti-cancer research and kept the price of the resulting medicines affordable or who made possible the nation-wide switch to effective solar power. A billionaire could make it impossible to ever again claim poverty as a reason you couldn't get a college education. 

A billionaire can't do all of these things all at once. Like all of us a billionaire would have to choose. Money is choice.

In researching for my latest book, I had to ask in wealthy circles what sort of shenanigans the children of billionaires get up to. The answers were confusing and sad. The list of common self-destructive behaviors among the children of the very rich are no less horrific than among the children of the very poor. Rampant drug use, extremely risky behaviors, racing expensive cars--a statistically high probability of tragedy. 

And why is this?

It's often blamed on the stifling lack of challenges and a mistrust in relationships that are often more about money than about heart. People who have that much wealth somehow cannot find something to fulfill them, something worthwhile and full of passion. It isn't my place to judge others, and I don't. It is more with compassion that I offer this. 

There are many things a billionaire cannot do. A billionaire cannot stop all wars or all hunger. A billionaire cannot make people just be kind to each other. A billionaire cannot make their own parents or siblings or children stop bickering. A billionaire may not even be able to save someone they love.

But there are things a billionaire can do. Worthwhile things, full of passion, challenge and risk. Things that would do a person honor.

I can easily see where a life without challenge can become empty--even with private jets and prestigious islands. I can see where it would get old knowing that many of the people who befriend you only want a piece of the pie, rather than real friendship. Trying to identify a real friend could be hard.

But there is a choice a billionaire can make that others cannot. A billionaire can become a real life hero for millions--not coincidentally or by dying heroically but simply by making a choice about what to do with their money.