January 2008

The Archives

• holydays

  Lapatastic dot com

  01.28.08 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  Thanks to Sepoy, my new website is up and running. The website currently displays only the work that will be in the show; my Flickr site will continue to display all my pictures. Some new paintings are not yet posted anywhere, as they will make their debut at the opening on Feb. 7. [...]

• noted

  The Young Kipling

  01.25.08 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  As you know, The Atlantic has opened up its archives for free - following NYT etc.
  I recommend, The Young Kipling, December 1887 - extracts from letters and diaries of a young American girl living in Allahabad and getting to know Kipling.
  “How Kipling does love those wild men of the North! He calls them [...]

• homistan

  From the Inbox

  01.23.08 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  The good folks at The Century Foundation sent this word:

  Are the United States and wider international community partly responsible for Pakistan’s political meltdown? Even before the year-end slaying of Benazir Bhutto, General Pervez Musharraf’s abrupt imposition of emergency rule triggered a downward spiral in Pakistan, upending the country’s legal institutions and putting in doubt the [...]

• noted

  Facts

  01.22.08 | Permalink | Comment?

  We came here from Georgia. Our family did. Horse and wagon. I pretty much know that for a fact. I know they’s a lots of things in a family history that just aint plain so. Any family. The stories get passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that [...]

• holydays

  Let There Be A Celebration

  01.19.08 | Permalink | 14 Comments

  I have been waiting, patiently and with bated breath, for this moment for a while now. Those close to me can attest that I am not a patient man, so this has been a rather Amir Hamzaish effort on my part.
  Lapata is having a show!
  Let me state that a bit more emphatically:
  Lapata is having a [...]

• univerCity

  In Review: Academic Tools

  01.16.08 | Permalink | 17 Comments

  I haven’t really rolled the mental rolodex over into 2008. Something scares me about that number. It portends change, maybe dislocation, perhaps an end to the way things were. I embrace change with the same fatalism as when a human, lacking the natural means to flight, jumps out of a plane strapped to a parachute. [...]

• noted

  Let Them Eat Cake

  01.14.08 | Permalink | 5 Comments

  Of course, one needs flour to make cake. The Dictator Formerly Known As The General recently opined that the flour crisis is not real and that the cost of flour in Pakistan is, in fact, cheaper than neighboring countries. Let it be noted that the price of flour in Pakistan is 3 or 4 times [...]

• homistan, optical character recognition

  Prison Lyrics

  01.12.08 | Permalink | 4 Comments

  In 1953, when Dast-i Saba (Wind’s Palm) was published, Faiz Ahmed Faiz had been in jail for almost two years. He would remain in jail for another two. He was charged with conspiracy to overthrow the nascent state of Liaqat Ali Khan and arrested in early March, 1951.
  You can read about Faiz’s prison days and [...]

• homistan

  Nicholas Schmidle

  01.11.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  For crying out loud. Hadh hoti hay. Our mango republic, ran by the Dictator Formerly Known As The General, has lost its mind.
  I have often highlighted the reports and writings of Nicholas Schmidle, a freelance journalist, reporting from Pakistan on numerous occasions. I have often exchanged emails with him. He was, contra majority, writing, [...]

• homistan

  Lahore High Court

  01.10.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  The last afternoon before I left the country, we snuck to the rooftop of Lahore High Court to cast a parting glance at the city. The image still remains imprinted. A while ago, I highlighted the photos of rizwan on flickr, who had some amazing - yet routine - captures: perhaps my favorite photo, a [...]

• noted

  DWM

  01.09.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  CM friend Baraka thinks that there is a stereotype about Muslim women out there that does not show them as the thinking, feeling, lively people with loving hearts and independent minds that we know them to be. And she is doing something about it by calling for real-life stories about Muslim women in relationships/dating being [...]

• imperial watch, straw polls

  Yea, that’s right! That’s right! We bad!

  01.09.08 | Permalink | 3 Comments

  The assumptions nested in our electoral punditry are astounding. What’s more astounding is that we do not question them, especially when they barely conceal true, noxious racialist thinking. Why, for instance, is Don Imus a pariah, when Dick Morris and Chris Matthews can proceed without pause with lines of questioning based on the assumption that [...]

• univerCity

  AHA

  01.08.08 | Permalink | 6 Comments

  This past weekend, I was on a panel at the annual historian’s shindig, the AHA: Contested Pasts and Constructed Presents: Memory in the Local. It was the last panel on Sunday afternoon - colloquially termed the “Luggage Panel”. And yet, it still managed to be a good one - with up to 6 attendees!
  Dresner’s [...]

• imperial watch, straw polls

  Omerica

  01.06.08 | Permalink | 8 Comments

  The media’s pontificating talking heads and some sorry campaign managers trying to pull their candidates from the muck have got it wrong. They’re obsessing over the difference between two abstractions: change and experience, assuming those labels define the persons to whom they’re applied, and the voters enthusiastic about voting for them. True to narrow-casted [...]

• homistan

  Free Fouad الحرية لفؤاد

  01.03.08 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  “In Saudi Arabia, there is no guarantee that you won’t be arrested because of your frankness and speaking your mind on your blog.” posted Fouad al-Farhan on his blog. He was correct.
  He has been detained by Saudi authorities for over 24 days.
  There is no power, we bloggers hold over states or royals. [...]