Iraq is back. . .

. . .in the news, and Colin Powell's famous Pottery Barn Rule seems more prudent than ever although, quite obviously, we cannot undo the past.

It could just be timed counterargument to opening up a Benghazi investigation, but articles on Iraq are depicting the recent situation as quickly deteriorating. Novelist and professor Jay Parini contributes here, and in "Iraq, three years after U.S. Withdrawal" The Week portrays Iraq today as, by some criteria, just as bad or worse as it was during Saddam Hussein's rule. The situation for women is particularly bizarre, as they are guaranteed 25 percent of of the seats in parliament, but are seen as having fewer rights than women held during Saddam's time:

Are women at least better off?Their political situation has improved: Under Iraq's postwar constitution, women are guaranteed 25 percent of the seats in parliament. But as conservative Shiite forces have gained a foothold within the government, the average female Iraqi has found herself with fewer rights than under Saddam. More than a quarter of women over the age of 12 in Iraq are illiterate; only 14 percent are either working or actively seeking employment. Perhaps the greatest symbol of Iraqi women's plight today is the Jaafari Personal Status Law, draft legislation approved by Iraq's Council of Ministers in February that lowers the marriage age for girls to 9, forbids women from leaving their homes without their husbands' consent, and legalizes marital rape. "This law means humiliation for women and for Iraqis in general," said female legislator Safia al-Suhail. "It shows that we are going backwards."

In 2014, car bombings are in the news quite regularly, and 2013's death toll of almost 9,000 rivals the peak of sectarian violence in 2007 and 2008.

Meanwhile, the friendly neighbors in Iran are merely announcing that have copied a U.S. spy drone. Most of us, I'm sure, would prefer peace and Genoa salami over this assessment from General Salami:

"No nation welcomes other countries' spy drones in its territory, and no one sends back the spying equipment and its information back to the country of origin," Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of Iran's military, said at the time, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency.

It never ends.

vintage selfie

Colin Powell took time to post a vintage selfie, and it reminded me of my dad's efforts at such from the 1970s.

Below my father's photo rests his college copy of The Sun Also Rises, which I enjoyed rereading in Suzhou, China in May of 2012. The book, as in the copy depicted (originally posted two years ago), figures prominently in "My Old Man," a story included here, about visiting my father when he had only forty dollars in his pocket but was happily living by the beach, writing poetry, and soon to return to the world of work as a cashier at a local gas station's convenience store. That was twenty years ago when I first plucked it off Jay's shelf near St. Augustine, Florida, began reading, and took it back with me to Philly (not my first time through that novel, but my first time through my father's copy).

In Suzhou, among other places, I read from it in a faux Italian gelato cafe in a small shopping mall near my daughter's four-year-old kindergarten. Alas, I'd feel I was dissembling if I didn't also confess to doing much of my editing and proofreading at a McDonald's in the same "retail environment."