A lot! Haven’t blogged for a while because of so much happening! First of all, on Friday, my oldest daughter gave birth to my fourth grandchild, a little girl who’s the spitting image of her, when she was born more than a quarter century ago! I held the wee thing yesterday when we went over […]

Just got back from Taraweeh prayer and the peaceful state of mind that I’d been for most of the month has returned. Not sure how standing, praying, listening to the Quran being recited in Arabic, for about an hour can make you come away feeling so peaceful, but somehow it does. In terms of physical […]

They say it takes 21 days to break a bad habit. So far it’s only been fourteen, half the month. Usually by this time I’m in a set routine and I don’t even feel the fast. Not one tummy grumble all day, but that hasn’t happened this year. Maybe I’m eating too many refined carbohydrates […]

Sometimes I would wonder why I was ‘friends’ with a pig farmer. Actually the bottom fell out of the hog market a while back and Brent Olson a down-to-earth-no-nonsense-farmer-turned-writer from Minnesota turned instead to crop farming. I’ve never had the pleasure of actually meeting him, but then these days that doesn’t seem to be a […]

I don’t think any Muslim pays much attention to the moon except in Ramadan. In the Quran it says that God created the moon and its phases to tell the passage of time, and last night, when coming out of the masjid after completing the taraweeh prayers, I saw that half the moon was visible, glowing in the clear […]

I was going to talk about some advice I gave to a friend of mine. I wrote him an email and even as I was composing it, I was thinking I should add this to my blog because a lot of people might find it handy. He’s in film and media, completely different field but […]

When Ramadan first begins, the month stretches before you, looking endless, and yet here we are already 2/15’s of it has past. It goes so fast! And it reminds me of an Afghan folktale. There was a good king who ruled with kindness and wisdom, and his people wanted to get together to reward him […]

And so far so good. And yet it troubles me that I can break my fast while others, my own ‘country men’ cannot. They suffer under the disaster of the flooding in Pakistan. May God have mercy on them. My neighbour came back from Pakistan just before Ramadan and said the situation was horrible! He […]

The blessed month has arrived, and even though I should be dreading the long summer fasts without food and water from about 4:44 am till 8:30 at night, I’m feeling excited. Last year was one of the best Ramadans I’ve ever experienced. It was calm and reflective and I’m hoping to carry that sense of […]

I was watching Postcards from the Edge while walking my three miles on the treadmill, and was once again impressed by the quality of the dialogue and writing in the movie. But it was the end scene, where Mery Streep is singing that funky cowboy song I’m Checking Out, that I’ve been replaying and watching […]