On Flag Day, I can't help but think of Majidreza Rahnavard, the twenty-two-year-old hero who had the Iranian flag — the real Iranian flag, not the one the occupying regime has imposed on the Iranian people — tattooed on his arm and who was brutally tortured and hanged on December 12, 2022, by the barbaric invaders of the country where I was born.
I just finished reading The Ocher of Abundance, another captivating collection of poems by Wendy E. Slater. The author's masterful command of language transforms ordinary words into extraordinary poems, each allowing the reader to explore the complexity of the human condition as well as a tapestry of feelings. I give this book five stars and recommend it to souls who want to immerse themselves in words that speak directly to the depths of their heart.
On November 30, 2023, I published a short post about #ToomajSalehi:
https://nooshasblog.blogspot.com/2023/11/eleven-days-later.html
Toomaj is still in prison since he was kidnapped on November 30, 2023, only eleven days after his release from his detention, nine months of which he had spent in solitary confinement.
Now he has now been sentenced to death for "corruption on earth"... That's what the Islamic Republic, the regime that has occupied Iran for the last forty-five years, assigns to every person who speaks the truth.
Through his lyrics, this thirty-three-year-old singer speaks of the problems of the working class in Iran, war crimes, and corruption... and for that, he has been detained several times and each time beaten, tortured, and injured. The #IRGCterrorists, the Islamic Republic Guard Corps also known as the murderers currently ruling the country, has recently decided that Toomaj must die.
Many international artists, including Sting and Coldplay, have called for the release of Toomaj Salehi. I can only hope that more artists and writers speak up against his execution and stand with him.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/8055/2024/en/
The Islamic Republic regime occupying Iran, led by Khamenei, has threatened to attack Israel and apparently launched drones and missiles.
Everything this bloodsucking machine, a.k.a. the occupying regime, does puts the people of Iran in danger — people who have been held hostage in their own country for the last forty-five years, people who have been fighting the regime in the streets since Mahsa Amini's death, people whose loved ones have been tortured, raped, and murdered by the fighting against the occupying regime — while the supreme leader himself is safely hiding in his hole, wherever that is, and the guy who funded him is safely hiding in the White House.
What are the consequences of these greedy old farts' actions? More innocent people will die, not the people responsible for these atrocities, not the people in charge. And, of course, the media, controlled by said greedy old farts, as usual, make Iran and Iranians look bad, not the real culprits, who should be held accountable for war crimes: the leaders of the Islamic Republic regime occupying Iran, those holding Iranian people hostage.
I wish the real decision makers paid the price and the people responsible for all this violence suffered the consequences of their actions, not my family or friends, not children, not innocent animals...
Today I saw a total solar eclipse for the first time. I knew through social media that the eclipse would be visible in Arkansas, so I checked the exact time and bought special glasses to watch it.
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With my glasses, I could see the moon gradually covering the sun, but a total eclipse would take over an hour, and I felt anxious about my vertigo kicking in while I held my head up looking up at the sky, so I decided to lie down on the ground to watch the eclipse more comfortably.
Things got more exciting around 1:48 p.m. as the sun disappeared. I tried to take a photo of the wonderful sight before me with my phone, but I couldn't capture the magic of it. Finally, at exactly 1:52 p.m., the moon covered the sun completely and a spectacular total eclipse appeared. I had to take off my glasses to see the sky. Everything went completely dark in the middle of the day, and there I was, lying on the ground in total darkness in the middle of the woods, looking at the sky and watching a few stars that happened to become visible in the darkness.
Since I couldn't see anything, I decided to use the light of my cell phone to find my way back inside my cabin, but just then a few security lights set on automatic around my cabin turned on, and I went in, feeling amazed and awestruck... and so grateful for witnessing the event and having had the opportunity to experience it.
I couldn't capture the view with my camera, but several images and videos of the eclipse appeared online shortly after, and I'm sure everyone can find pictures of the eclipse on their favorite platform with a quick search.
My Hoppoo turned fourteen today.
This is his first birthday without his sister (from the same litter), Koochooloo — bittersweet.
Thankfully, it's a sunny day, so he got to spend the entire morning outside, doing what he loves most: playing ball and sunbathing. Now Mr. Sleepyhead is inside...
My students taught me the most valuable lessons I learned as an ESL teacher — my students, not any book or professor or training or university. Everything I learned about teaching, I learned from my interactions with my students.
For example, during my earlier years as an ESL teacher, decades ago, I learned never to use "never" (or "always") when teaching grammar.
One day, while teaching adjective clauses, specifically restrictive versus descriptive clauses, I told my students that we never put a comma before the relative pronoun "that" in adjective clauses.
At the next class meeting, someone brought me a sentence with a comma before "that" and asked me why a comma appeared before the word "that" in the grammar book. I immediately understood the student's confusion and explained that what I said was about adjective clauses and didn't apply to the sentence he had brought to my attention in the grammar book because it was not an adjective clause — it was a noun clause connector in a series separated by commas.
Another time, during a lesson on modal verbs, after teaching could have, should have, and would have, I told them that the "have" may sound like "of" and explained that these get misspelled quite often because of how they sound: could of, should of, and would of... even by American writers.
It's important to teach ESL students the correct structure and warn them about what they might encounter (just so they don't doubt themselves and their own abilities, which can easily happen when they are faced with a person they believe should master the language).
Shortly after I taught my students to pay attention to the spelling of past modals and that it's never could "of," I came across a correct sentence with "... could of..." and thought of my students and the lesson I had just taught them. I don't remember what that sentence was years ago, but I recently came across another sentence like that, which brought this memory back.
That day all those years ago, I learned to never use "never" or "always" in my grammar classes. Why? Because some students may lack the knowledge to distinguish structures, clauses, etc., and the misunderstanding created as a result of this might confuse the students or make them lose their trust in their teacher, which can be extremely frustrating for anyone trying to make sense of a new language.
In case you're wondering what the sentence was, here's the one I recently saw while editing a book:
"He reached down, picked up what he could of the brown bag, and walked on home."
(Of course, the could and the of are not "together" (meaning they don't form a phrase), but the two words are close enough in the sentence to confuse English learners who have just learned modal verbs.)
