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.

Mama's got eyes in the back of her head... which is good since the front ones are busted

My six-year-old daughter has finally figured out that I'm legally blind. 

"Mama! Mama! Get that wasp!"

"Mama! Mama! What is that up in that tree?" 

"Mama! Mama! Why are people staring at us?" 

Image by Ember Farnam

I've gotten around these issues for years with basic Mama-hacks. Wasps?  Keep the doors closed, skillfully wave towels and keep the baking soda handy.

Things up in trees or across the street?  Ask detailed questions of the child until you can figure out what it is. Teach them letters and numbers early.

People staring?  Sigh.

"Honey, some people are confused when they see someone who is different. They might be staring at my stick or at my eyes. That's okay. They aren't hurting anything."

(What I don't say--yet--is that they might also be staring because we're speaking a foreign language or because our skin tones don't match the way families "should." There are so many reasons to stare. Pick one.)

But now my daughter has got the idea. I've explained,"My eyes don't work very good. If you want me to see things, you have to bring them really really close."

We're currently reading the American Girl books about the Native American girl from our neck of the woods in Oregon, Kaya, and her adopted sister Speaking Rain.  My daughter was a bit confused about why Speaking Rain couldn't run away from the bad guys who captured her when Kaya could. She didn't accept that Speaking Rain had to be led around all the time.

"Mama, you can't see and you run around by yourself anyway," she argued. 

The American Girl books did a decent job on including a blind character, although there are a few points that might be a little unrealistic. Mostly they do well. I try to explain that the girl in the story can't see anything at all. Whereas I can see some. But that is hard for a six-year-old to work out. She looks really confused again. 

And she's not the only one who is confused. It seems like every month or so, someone asks me how I parent while legally blind. So I've decided to set down the issues here for quick reference. There are a few points I'd like to emphasize about blind and visually impaired parenting:

Illustration using a Creative Commons image by Jake Stimpson

1. It isn't impossible, and no, I don't have a nanny or a cleaner or a cook.
2. There are physically hard parts and parenting is possibly the most difficult thing I've ever done in terms of adapting to my vision impairment. (Sighted parents usually say parenting is the hardest thing they've ever done too.)
3. We've never been to the emergency room and my kids have never been injured because I couldn't see a danger.
4. As with everything involving disabilities, the hardest parts are social and coming from other people.

I've built rock walls with my bare hands. I love bicycling. I have hiked in remote areas of the Himalayas alone. I have worked as a newspaper journalist covering the war in Kosovo and Macedonia. I have navigated traffic in Moscow, Russia and Dhaka, Bangladesh alone and on foot, and that should be considered an extreme adrenaline sport. 

I'm not totally blind, but I'm definitely legally blind. And my own personal opinion is that parenting is the single most challenging task I've tried when it comes to the difficulty of adapting it too my vision impairment. It has been harder than all of those other things when it comes to the specific difficulties of a vision impairment. So, yes, there are some difficulties. 

Let's see, here are the physical issues:

• Choking hazards and similar toddler dangers: I had to design my living space so that there simply aren't any choking hazards, sharp objects and medicines within reach when my kids were babies and toddlers. Otherwise my days would have been full of constant worry and mouth sweeping. I quickly learned to tell what my children were doing by sound. While sighted parents would watch their kids and have trouble when they hid under the table to draw on the floor with a sharpie, I listened. I learned to listen for the sounds of pen lids, scissors and batteries rattling on the floor. It only took my toddler cutting up a ten-dollar bill left on the table once before I hid all scissors and all money. I will often be cooking with my hands full and tell my kids in the other room something like, "Bring me those batteries right now, You don't take the batteries out of your toys and batteries aren't toys." My kids ask "Mama, how did you know?" I tell them, "That's a Mama's trade secret." By now I know the sounds made when my kids play with dolls, trucks, sticker books, anything. They may be small sounds but if they're playing with something legitimate, there is always some sound. Utter silence, as all parents know, usually means it's time to check on them. 
• Eye contact and attachment: Eye contact is a big attachment mechanism for infants. They can do it in other ways, but most of these require a lot of physical closeness. So, instead of eye contact I did a lot of snuggling. My children sat on my lap to eat until they were at least two. Food plus physical touch and/or eye contact equals attachment brain chemistry. 
• Physical safety and falls: Gates are a very good thing for toddlers. I can keep toddlers from falling without gates but it is too much work. It makes more sense to gate an area and let the kids loose. Then I can get some cooking done. On the other hand, kids will fall. Sighted parents rarely catch tumbles. I have miraculously caught toddlers vaulting head first off the couch just as many times as my sighted peers. I could feel and hear there the kid was and where he/she was headed. I've also had them crash when I was across the room, just as sighted parents have. I keep a well-stocked first aid cupboard. And my kids are now older and have a good sense of physical safety because they know that it hurts if you do overly risky things.
• Traffic:  I didn't always use a white cane. I traveled around in my twenties and just used sound, luck and speed to get across busy streets. But as I got older I knew the odds were rigged against me. I started using a white cane for traffic safety a few years before I had kids and I have to say to anyone who is legally blind and cane-resistant as I was: If you have kids, you need to get with the stick. Kids don't run very fast when they're little and they don't always listen. Canes make drivers pay a bit more attention and what parent wouldn't want an extra safety device. I taught my kids about the dangers of traffic at a very young age. I still make them hold my hands to cross roads at the ages of four and six, but they are getting rebellious, so I'm teaching them how to cross. Soon they'll probably be holding my hand to keep me from getting run over. 
• Combining strollers and canes: This is a special kind of issue, just one of sheer logistics. If I thought cars and pedestrians would use their brains sufficiently, I would simply attach a cane to the front of the stroller as a signalling device and let'er rip. But in my town the thinking abilities of drivers are not to be trusted with the safety of infants. So, I resort to the somewhat ridiculous method of carrying a cane while pushing a stroller. Obviously the cane is just in the way at that point and not doing me any good in terms of physical navigation, but I mostly need it as a signalling device for traffic anyway. When I approach an intersection, I turn the stroller around and pull it while walking with the cane out in front, to make sure that the drivers can get the message. I have also used a sling and a baby carrier but I have problems with my feet and knees that make long treks while carrying a toddler impossible and then there was the era when I had two toddlers. So, I just used a stroller most of the time. Oddly enough, no one ever seemed to notice that my cane wasn't helping me to navigate. Sighted people usually don't really know much about how white canes are used.
• Deep water: Yes, parents should teach their children about the dangers of deep water early too, as well as teach them to swim early. But unlike drivers, water won't ever "be careful." My kids and I are out and about in nature a lot and there have always been rivers and ponds around.  My approach that I stay very close to a small child around water. And I've learned that sighted parents often underestimate the dangers of water precisely because they think they will be able to see everything. When my son was a baby, I was sitting one day by a noisy rushing river with my husband, toddler and infant. I was changing the diaper and my fully sighted husband was reading while our two-year-old daughter played by the bank of the river. I happened to glance up and see her shadow against the water and then glance back down to tuck in the diaper and then glance up again and her shadow was gone. There was no audible sound at all because the rushing of the water drowned out her scream, but I knew with mother's instinct. I leaped up and launched myself into the river and grabbed her while she flailed in the water. She had already been swept away behind bushes and trees where my husband couldn't see her. The first my husband knew of the problem I already had her. He never saw her go in and because of the noise of the water neither of us could hear her splash or scream. It was only instinct and my attention to the bits of shadow that I can see that saved the day that time. And it emphasized to me that neither sight nor hearing is a guarantee of protection, especially if you take it for granted. The best protection is paying attention and being aware of your surroundings. 
• Finding children: There came a time when my toddlers realized that they could hide from me. This was annoying but never actually dangerous. I did get one of those beepers that sound an alarm when the child gets a certain distance away from you. But I never found it very useful because my kids are too curious and they'd just take the bracelet off and play with it and lose it and only the parent's side of the device beeped, not the child's side. This seemed very odd to me. I would think the child's side would beep but the manufacturer assumed that the need would be for an alarm showing when the child had left a certain radius, rather than a noise identifying where the child was. I could have attached one of those devices for finding keys to my child's clothing, but I generally didn't find the problem to be big enough to merit extraordinary measures, even with fairly independent kids. Now they roam around our dead-end street the way other kids do, out of sight for even the sharpest-eyed parents. 
• Emergency plans:  I never had to use an emergency plan but I have one. If my husband isn't there and I need to take a child to the emergency room, I can call an ambulance or a taxi. I sometimes worry about the issue of getting a child who is too big for a stroller to the pediatrician's office with a bad flu. It's over a mile to walk to our pediatrician but the issue hasn't come up yet. I generally know how to handle the flu at home, so doctor's visits tend to be either routine check-ups. Some people have asked what I would do if our house caught fire. This is a confusing question to me, because when the electricity goes out at night, I am always the one to say, "Everyone calm down. I'll get the flashlights." Then I walk calmly upstairs in the dark and reach into the box with camping supplies and feel around for the flashlights, just as I would in the day time. Obviously when visibility is low, my ability to get around without seeing much is an advantage. I know my home well and if there was a fire, I would have at least as good of a chance of getting me and the kids out as my husband would. 
• Reading aloud:  Okay, Braille readers have got this one over me. One could even get a Braille copy of the book plus a picture book for kids to look at while you read and you'd have less fights over looking at the pictures than other parents. But I don't read Braille. I read very close and I need significant light. It has taken a long time for me to find the perfect way to handle this. I wanted to lie down with a kid on either side of me, the way my mother did, but I simply couldn't position a lamp close enough so that the book doesn't shadow the print from the light, especially with two little heads poking in from the sides, trying to see the pictures. When I'm reading for myself I'm almost always listening to a text-to-speech program or audiobooks. But small children will listen much better if their parent reads and they need the reading to be much slower and more relaxed than most audiobooks. So, I finally found the perfect way for my particular eyes. I positioned an armchair between the heads of their beds with a lamp right behind the armchair and I sit in the chair while they lie down on either side of me. With a little tilt of the book they can each look at the pictures and over the years they have become a lot more patient about that. 
• Dirty faces and wardrobe:  I have enough vision to coordinate my kids clothing fine. Still, there are some issues. Kids have an incredible ability to mess up their clothes and get dirty faces. It's embarrassing to have someone else point out that your child needs his or her nose blown. I carry handkerchiefs and blow them a lot, but its just bound to happen that my kids occasionally have a spot or some snot on their faces and I don't notice for a few minutes. These things are not life threatening. The same goes for spots on shirts or tags hanging of the back of shirts. If you haven't learned to live with imperfection, kids will teach you. The other people who get it are the real friends. I avoid the people who don't get it. 
• Picking up and dropping off: You'll always hear parents complain about driving their kids to music lessons, dance classes and play dates. Driving. Right. They should try it with a backpack and a marginally functional public transportation system. This is the hardest of the physical issues. I have had to slog through snow drifts with two toddlers and a stroller (which is way harder than it sounds) to get my kids to one social activity per week because the city thought that our sidewalks didn't need to be plowed "because everyone drives anyway." Even in good weather, getting my kids to school and to good enrichment opportunities is hard and that's with having a husband who can drive and do some of it. There is a silver lining to the cloud because my kids are in immeasurably better shape than the norm. At four my son can hike eight miles and he just started soccer where he is expected to run non-stop for an hour and a half with kids nearly twice his age, and he keeps up. 

So much for the easy parts of parenting while legally blind. The hard parts are those having to do with other people.

• Getting play dates: I started out with one friend who had a child my daughter's age. But she lives two-hours away. We did play dates but obviously it wasn't constant and my daughter begged for more. We attended mommy-and-me classes whenever we could but the reception we got was far from cordial. Once I was told by another mother, "You are supposed to look at people you already know and let them know you're glad to see them." We never made one friend in three years of local mommy-and-me classes and never enticed someone to come to our house for a play date. I not only don't do eye contact and visual social cues the way other mothers do, my eyes also look odd and move erratically. Obviously motherhood wasn't the first time I ran into social problems due to these issues, but I found that all the problems I had before becoming a mom were magnified once the people I was trying to befriend were other mothers. My theory is that mothers are protective of their children and instinctively reject anyone they feel is strange. While they might want to be tolerant and open-minded at other times of their lives, motherhood makes many of us feel that prejudices are a "better safe than sorry"safety issue.  The result was that for several years my kids had severe cabin fever and wanted more social activity. Now that they are a bit older and attending preschool, they have started to make their own friends. I still get some weird reactions from their friends' parents, but so far I have been able to turn them around. Mostly all I need is a bit of contact to convince others that I am in fact a good person to be friends with. 
• The reactions of people on the street: There are the people who ask, "How dare you get pregnant and risk passing that on to your kids?" and the people who grab my children at intersections because they are afraid that I won't keep them from getting run over by cars. Both are a test of nerves and quick reflexes. Especially when I had babies in a stroller, it seemed like every time I went to town we had some sort of extremely negative encounter and it added a lot of stress to the regular pressures of mother hood. While this may seem small compared to the physical issues of parenting, I have found that the studies about the adverse health effects of social exclusion have a basis in reality. A person's mind and body can only take so much of this before it takes a significant toll.
• People who shove their view that a blind person is not safe with children in my face: There are very few comments I can imagine which are more stressful for a parent than having someone question your fitness to parent or say (or imply) that you aren't safe for children. This issue came up for me most acutely with extended family, both in general discussions and when a situation arose in which one adult would end up watching several other children and chance had it that the adult was me. I have had my fair share of hard knocks in the social world but I was utterly unprepared for the problems to come from those who were close to me and knew me well. My friends and family know that I have never had to take my kids to the ER. I have pulled a silently drowning child out of a swimming pool on three occasions when I was the fastest to react (the first time when I was twelve years old). I have taught preschool and elementary classes for ten years and I have a clean safety record there as well. So, the first time I was told that I was not capable enough to watch other children because of my vision impairment, it momentary knocked the breath out of me. Quickly my reaction changed to anger and then to icy fear.  Yes, fear. For a very simple reason. If, heaven forbid, there ever is an accident while I am watching children, I had been put on notice that I would be blamed specifically. Accidents do happen with children, even when adults are vigilant. But I can't afford to have a child that isn't mine fall and scrape a knee, because it is very possible that others will not shrug and say, "Well, that's part of being a kid," as they might if the babysitter were someone else. Instead there would be specific blame. The result has been that although I am very open to watching other people's children to give my kids more fun, I have to be very cautious about it, because of the prejudices around the issue of my vision impairment. 

It's never a good idea to end on a very negative note, so I'd like to offer a couple of unexpected advantages to parenting while legally blind as well.

• Mama really does have eyes in the back of her head: My kids still can't figure out how I know exactly what they were touching in the other room. I think the whole thing about mothers having eyes in the back of their head is just sighted mothers developing some of the attention to sound that most blind people develop. I can tell very specifically what my kids are doing in the other room, what toy they're playing with and what they're doing with it. I can often multitask and "watch" kids from the other room more effectively than sighted parents because I don't have to be looking to tell what's going on. 
• Lower gross-factor parenting: Kids sometimes do gross things that I'm glad I can't see. My children are not always well-behaved and my daughter has been known to chew up her food and then open her mouth to display it in order to try to annoy adults. She also does a lot of sticking out her tongue and "giving the evil eye" when she's angry (according to my sighted friends). I can now even tell when she is doing these things and I am just as glad to have one less thing to push my buttons. When I was changing diapers the same thing applied. While sighted people ask how I can wipe off gross things without seeing them, I have a hard time understanding why you would want to see them. Just wipe the whole thing several times carefully, so as not to get anything gross onto other objects and have done with it. I can tell if there is something to wipe even through the rag. There is no need to examine the mess too closely.
• Mommy fashions: Fashion is not a hobby of mine. I dress cleanly and presentably and that's the end of it. Sometimes I'll wear a wild scarf or skirt for fun, but I don't want to be in the mommy-glamour contest on at the playground. I know it is going on but I find that I am just as happy to miss out on the whole thing. 

So, what are your parenting challenges? Anything to add or gripe about?  Every parent I know feels a bit over their head. Here's a chance to share. Add your comments below. I always love your comments on these posts.