Friday, October 18, 2024

The Israeli General’s Plan in Gaza: Genocide by Starvation

October 18, 2024
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Image by Emad El Byed.

George Orwell’s dystopian foresight could easily find new expressions in the ongoing Israeli wars of genocide in Gaza and Lebanon. Much like “war is peace,” the Biden administration and the European Union have contributed to creating phrases such as “aggression is self-defense,” “murder is collateral damage,” “safe areas are death traps,” and “humanitarian aid is a starvation diet.”

After enduring a full year of Israeli terror, extreme torment, and military occupation, fear never conquered the well of the Gazans. Despite the complete Israeli blockade⎯abetted by the Egyptian regime⎯and the stark imbalance in military power, Gaza’s collective resistance, by all means necessary, remained steadfast and resilient.

Notwithstanding the above, Benjamin Netanyahu has not succeeded in achieving any of his declared objectives. For instance, less than 7 percent of the freed Israeli captives⎯outward Israeli objective⎯ were recovered by force. Perhaps because the Israeli prime minister’s undeclared Zionist objectives, such as land grabs in the West Bank under the shadow of the Gazza genocide, took precedence over pursuing a proven venue for the release of Israeli prisoners.

Netanyahu’s war success can be only measured by Israel’s scale of vengeance, as the toll of the murdered and injured has reached one hundred and fifty thousand. Gaza has been turned into a living hell. A war that pervasively and systematically diminished Gaza’s economic capacity, following an 18-year blockade that crippled the economy and forced upon it an ever-increasing sense of dependency.

Yet, Israel failed to bring any part of Gaza into submission. As a result, several Israeli generals, led by former national security adviser Israeli Maj-General Giora Eiland, contrived a new approach, “General’s Plan,” to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza.

The General’s Plan is not exclusively a military strategy but rather an orchestrated noncombatant action, euphemistically termed to mask its true intention: genocide and ethnic cleansing through starvation. It calls first for the complete isolation of northern Gaza from the rest of the Gaza Strip. Second: compartmentalize northern Gaza into separate quarters and declare each section as a war zone forcing civilians to leave or become legitimate military targets.

The initial phase, which began in early October, blocked aid trucks from reaching the north and then segregated the Jabalia camp from its surroundings. In other words, genocide by attrition, one quarter at a time, in a slow motion.

As part of the General’s Starvation Plan, Israel bombed the only UN distribution center in Jabalia camp on Monday October 14, 2024 murdering 10 civilians queuing to receive food aid. Since last October, around 400,000 civilians remain in northern Gaza out of the original 1.2 million. Many refuse to evacuate despite the unbearable conditions. They know from historical experience that evacuation is an Israeli alias for ethnic cleansing. Once they leave, they may never return, as happened in 1948. They also saw what happened to those who evacuated, many were killed during their trek while others murdered in the Israeli death traps, otherwise known as designated “safe areas.”

The Biden administration has been whitewashing Israeli use of starvation as a method of warfare since October 9, 2023 when the Israeli Minister of War declared “no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” However, on October 15, 2024 a little over a year since the Israeli minister’s declaration, the American Secretaries of State and Defense sent Israeli officials a letter giving them another grace period of 30 days to allow food aid into north Gaza or risk a restriction of U.S. military assistance to Israel.

The new warning feels like a classic case of a Déjà vu. In April 2024, the Biden administration issued a similar warning to Israel ahead of a report that was being prepared by American officials examining Israel’s violation of the Leahy Law, particularly subsection 6201(a). The law stipulates that the U.S should not provide assistance to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

Following that warning, U.S. government agencies and officials concluded that Israel was blocking American humanitarian aid to Gaza. The US Agency for International Development notified the State Department of Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction and impediments” of U.S. aid to Gaza residents. In addition, the State Department’s refugee bureau issued a similar opinion stating that “facts on the ground indicate US humanitarian assistance is being restricted.”

Even after those palpable reports from the two U.S. agencies, the Israeli Sayanim and American Secretary of State, told Congress on May 10 that Israel does not restrict “the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” in Gaza.

Empowered by the Israeli firsters in Washington, the General’s Starvation Plan aims to block the delivery of medical aid, food, fuel, and water to the besieged quarter, currently Jabalia camp where more than 20,000 people live. This is part of what appears to be a gradual genocide, while creating the illusion of allowing aid trucks into the northern area, as the U.S. Ambassador informed the UN Security Council on Wednesday, October 16.

The entry of aid trucks does not guarantee the delivery of food to the starving population. It means that Israel retains complete control over what section is fed and who is left to starve. It also confirms that American officials continue to be Israel’s willing enablers to carry on with its General’s Starvation Plan in a systematic and phased mini-genocide.

Jamal Kanj is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries.

‘Text Me You Haven’t Died’ – My Sister was the 166th Doctor to Be Murdered in Gaza



 October 18, 2024
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Dr. Soma Baroud, was killed on 9 October when Israeli warplanes bombed the taxi that carried her and other tired Gazans somewhere near the Bani Suhaila roundabout near Khan Yunis.

“Your lives will continue. With new events and new faces. They are the faces of your children, who will fill your homes with noise and laughter.”

These were the last words written by my sister in a text message to one of her daughters.

Dr. Soma Baroud was murdered on October 9 when Israeli warplanes bombed a taxi that carried her and other tired Gazans somewhere near the Bani Suhaila roundabout near Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

I am still unable to understand whether she was on her way to the hospital, where she worked, or leaving the hospital to go home. Does it even matter?

The news of her murder – or, more accurately assassination, as Israel has deliberately targeted and killed 986 medical workers, including 165 doctors – arrived through a screenshot copied from a Facebook page.

“Update: these are the names of the martyrs of the latest Israeli bombing of two taxis in the Khan Yunis area ..,” the post read.

It was followed by a list of names. “Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud” was the fifth name on the list, and the 42,010th on Gaza’s ever-growing list of martyrs.

I refused to believe the news, even when more posts began popping up everywhere on social media, listing her as number five, and sometimes six in the list of martyrs of the Khan Yunis strike.

I kept calling her, over and over again, hoping that the line would crackle a bit, followed by a brief silence, and then her kind, motherly voice would say, “Marhaba Abu Sammy. How are you, brother?” But she never picked up.

I had told her repeatedly that she does not need to bother with elaborate text or audio messages due to the unreliable internet connection and electricity. “Every morning,” I said, “just type: ‘we are fine’.” That’s all I asked of her.

But she would skip several days without writing, often due to the lack of an internet connection. Then, a message would arrive, though never brief. She wrote with a torrent of thoughts, linking up her daily struggle to survive, to her fears for her children, to poetry, to a Qur’anic verse, to one of her favorite novels, and so on.

“You know, what you said last time reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude,” she said on more than one occasion, before she would take the conversation into the most complex philosophical spins. I would listen, and just repeat, “Yes .. totally .. I agree .. one hundred percent.”

For us, Soma was a larger-than-life figure. This is precisely why her sudden absence has shocked us to the point of disbelief. Her children, though grown up, felt orphaned. But her brothers, me included, felt the same way.

I wrote about Soma as a central character in my book “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter”, because she was indeed central to our lives, and to our very survival in a Gaza refugee camp.

The first born, and only daughter, she had to carry a much greater share of work and expectations than the rest of us.

She was just a child, when my eldest brother Anwar, still a toddler, died in an UNRWA clinic at the Nuseirat refugee camp due to the lack of medicine. Then, she was introduced to pain, the kind of pain that with time turned into a permanent state of grief that would never abandon her until her murder by a US-supplied Israeli bomb in Khan Yunis.

Two years after the death of the first Anwar, another boy was born. They also called him Anwar, so that the legacy of the first boy may carry on. Soma cherished the newcomer, maintaining a special friendship with him for decades to come.

My father began his life as a child laborer, then a fighter in the Palestine Liberation Army, then a police officer during the Egyptian administration of Gaza, then, once again a laborer; that’s because he refused to join the Israeli-funded Gaza police force after the war of 1967, known as the Naksa.

A clever, principled man, and a self-taught intellectual, my Dad did everything he could to provide a measure of dignity for his small family; and Soma, a child, often barefoot, stood by him every step of the way.

When he decided to become a merchant, as in buying discarded and odd items in Israel and repackaging them to sell in the refugee camp, Soma was his main helper. Though her skin healed, cuts on her fingers, due to individually wrapping thousands of razors, remained a testament to the difficult life she lived.

“Soma’s little finger is worth more than a thousand men,” my father would often repeat, to remind us, ultimately five boys, that our sister will always be the main heroine in the family’s story. Now that she is a martyr, that legacy has been secured for eternity.

Years later, my parents would send her to Aleppo to obtain a medical degree. She returned to Gaza, where she spent over three decades healing the pain of others, though never her own.

She worked at Al-Shifa Hospital, at Nasser Hospital among other medical centers. Later, she obtained another certificate in family medicine, opening a clinic of her own. She did not charge the poor, and did all she could to heal those victimized by war.

Soma was a member of a generation of female doctors in Gaza that truly changed the face of medicine, collectively putting great emphasis on the rights of women to medical care and expanding the understanding of family medicine to include psychological trauma with particular emphasis on the centrality, but also the vulnerability of women in a war-torn society.

When my daughter Zarefah managed to visit her in Gaza shortly before the war, she told me that “when aunt Soma walked into the hospital, an entourage of women – doctors, nurses, and other medical staff – would surround her in total adoration.”

At one point, it felt that all of Soma’s suffering was finally paying off: a nice family home in Khan Yunis, with a small olive orchard, and a few palm trees; a loving husband, himself a professor of law, and eventually the dean of law school at a reputable Gaza university; three daughters and two sons, whose educational specialties ranged from dentistry to pharmacy, to law to engineering.

Life, even under siege, at least for Soma and her family, seemed manageable. True, she was not allowed to leave the Strip for many years due to the blockade, and thus we were denied the chance to see her for years on end. True, she was tormented by loneliness and seclusion, thus her love affair and constant citation from García Márquez’s seminal novel. But at least her husband was not killed or went missing. Her beautiful house and clinic were still standing. And she was living and breathing, communicating her philosophical nuggets about life, death, memories and hope.

“If I could only find the remains of Hamdi, so that we can give him a proper burial,” she wrote to me last January, when the news circulated that her husband was executed by an Israeli quadcopter in Khan Yunis.

But since the body remained missing, she held on to some faint hope that he was still alive. Her boys, on the other hand, kept digging in the wreckage and debris of the area where Hamdi was shot, hoping to find him and to give him a proper burial. They would often be attacked by Israeli drones in the process of trying to unearth their father’s body. They would run away, and return with their shovels to carry on with the grim task.

To maximize their chances of survival, my sister’s family decided to split up between displacement camps and other family homes in southern Gaza.

This meant that Soma had to be in a constant state of moving, traveling, often long distances on foot, between towns, villages and refugee camps, just to check on her children, following every incursion, and every massacre.

“I am exhausted,” she kept telling me. “All I want from life is for this war to end, for new cozy pajamas, my favorite book, and a comfortable bed.”

These simple and reasonable expectations looked like a mirage, especially when her home in the Qarara area, in Khan Yunis, was demolished by the Israeli army last month.

“My heart aches. Everything is gone. Three decades of life, of memories, of achievement, all turned into rubble,” she wrote.

“This is not a story about stones and concrete. It is much bigger. It is a story that cannot be fully told, however long I wrote or spoke. Seven souls had lived here. We ate, drank, laughed, quarreled, and despite all the challenges of living in Gaza, we managed to carve out a happy life for our family,” she continued.

A few days before she was killed, she told me that she had been sleeping in a half-destroyed building belonging to her neighbors in Qarara. She sent me a photo taken by her son, as she sat on a makeshift chair, on which she also slept amidst the ruins. She looked tired, so very tired.

There was nothing I could say or do to convince her to leave. She insisted that she wanted to keep an eye on the rubble of what remained of her home. Her logic made no sense to me. I pleaded with her to leave. She ignored me, and instead kept sending me photos of what she had salvaged from the rubble, an old photo, a small olive tree, a birth certificate ..

My last message to her, hours before she was killed, was a promise that when the war is over, I will do everything in my power to compensate her for all of this. That the whole family would meet in Egypt, or Türkiye, and that we will shower her with gifts, and boundless family love. I finished with, “let’s start planning now. Whatever you want. You just say it. Awaiting your instructions…” She never saw the message.

Even when her name, as yet another casualty of the Israeli genocide in Gaza was mentioned in local Palestinian news, I refused to believe it. I continued to call. “Please pick up, Soma, please pick up,” I pleaded with her.

Only when a video emerged of white body bags arriving at Nasser Hospital in the back of an ambulance, I thought maybe my sister was indeed gone.

Some of the bags had the names of the others mentioned in the social media posts. Each bag was pulled out separately and placed on the ground. A group of mourners, bereaved men, women and children would rush to hug the body, screaming the same shouts of agony and despair that accompanied this ongoing genocide from the first day.

Then, another bag, with the name ‘Soma Mohammed Mohammed Baroud’ written across the thick white plastic. Her colleagues carried her body and gently laid it on the ground. They were about to zip the bag open to verify her identity. I looked the other way.

I refuse to see her but in the way that she wanted to be seen, a strong person, a manifestation of love, kindness and wisdom, whose “little finger is worth more than a thousand men.”

But why do I continue to check my messages with the hope that she will text me to tell me that the whole thing was a major, cruel misunderstanding and that she is okay?

My sister Soma was buried under a small mound of dirt, somewhere in Khan Yunis.

No more messages from her.

Listen to our interview with Ramzy Baroud on the most recent episode of CounterPunch Radio.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

 

Remembering Kris Kristofferson: 1936–2024

Kristofferson was a kind soul with a courageous heart who sought justice. I first met Kris in the late 1980’s when I was asked to tour with him in Moscow. Kris’s wife was an attorney like my wife Jacqueline whom he called ‘Counselor’ after discovering that she was a Public Defender and lawyer for the American Indian Movement.

We all stayed at the Rossiya Hotel, only blocks from Red Square and traveled together in a bus to perform in venues large and small. Our last show was held in an arena with thousands of Muscovites in attendance. Besides us, there were several Soviet rock bands performing.

Kris Kristofferson & Larry Long performing in Moscow in 1987 | Photo by Jacqueline Long. Copyright Jacqueline Long 2024 | All Rights Reserved

This was in the early days of Perestroika when President Mikhail Gorbachev was beginning to open up the Soviet Union to the world though Glasnost. There were rumblings of local bureaucrats being not happy with the fact that performers from the United States were participating. The entire front row of the arena was filled with police officers seated shoulder to shoulder. When the audience got too loud and enthusiastic the police stood up. And when they did everyone in the arena sat down and quieted.  Then the excitement would peak again… This went on all evening like popcorn popping.

We were the last to perform and all of the bands were running overtime. The audience was excited and anticipating hearing Kris Kristofferson, But the local authorities did not allow us to perform. When this was announced from stage, the crowd went angry and wild. We were all waiting in the dressing room not far from the stage.  We were very disappointed but also trapped backstage.  The only way out was to walk through the crowd of several thousand angry people. There was a back door to the dressing room which led outside, but regretfully it was locked. Kris’s security said ‘to heck with it’. They found a screwdriver and unscrewed the glass off the door, so we could safely climb out and get safely to our bus.

Kristofferson had quit drinking, but members of his band had not. His lead guitarist happened to have a bottle of Vodka and began to passing it around. Kristofferson and I were close friends with the late American Indian Movement performer and songwriter, Floyd Red Crow Westerman. We began making up new verses to one of Red Crow’s songs, which we sang out through the open windows of bus while in route back to the Rossiya Hotel.

CIA, KGB won’t you tap my telephone
There’s something I want you to know
Hey-ya-hey-hey-ya-hey-ya-hey-hey-ya

We had a party going on and didn’t want it to end. Jacqueline and I talked Kris and his band into having the bus driver take us to historic Arbat Street and do some street singing. Jacqueline and I had had a wonderful time there a few months before visiting with the young people who invited us into their homes and talked all night long.  It was the beginning of Perestroika.  There was a sense of wonder and hope for the future.  For us, it was like reliving the mood of the sixties in the United States all over again.  We wanted to share that experience with Kris and his band. When the bus came to a stop at Arbat, we grabbed our instruments and marched down the street singing, but something was terribly wrong. Arbat Street was dead silent with nobody in sight. Unbeknownst to us, it was closed down in preparation for the October Revolution celebrations in the coming days.

“We are Glasnost!  We are Perestroika!”

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere hundreds of people descended upon us when Kris started singing Me & Bobby McGee. We were swept up by this sea of people onto the steps of a small building, which became our stage.  More and more people crowded in.  The eight women in our group who were wives of the band members linked arms and formed a semi-circle in front of the steps in the hopes of keeping the crowd back a few feet.  But that effort began to seem futile as the excitement grew. The crowd began to chant, “We are Glasnost! We are Perestroika!”

While looking beyond the edge of the crowd, I saw that our translator, Sasha, who was also a local environmental activist, was being interrogated by the local police. He looked like he was in trouble. Kris and I worked our way through the crowd and over to him. We discovered that the police had taken Sasha’s internal passport. I told the police that it wasn’t Sasha’s fault that we were there. We simply didn’t know that Arbat Street was shut down in preparation for the October Revolution celebration. The police refused to give Sasha’s identification back and began to take him away.  The crowd kept chanting, “We are Glasnost! We are Perestroika!”

Without hesitation, Kris and I locked arms with Sasha and pulled him away from the police.  The crowd engulfed us and pushed us out the other side, not allowing the police through. We ran to a nearby street and caught a taxi back to the Rossiya Hotel.  The entire band followed suit, diving into cabs.

We brought Sasha up to our room for safety and discussed what to do.  Jacqueline made a legal suggestion and Kris turned to her and said:  “Counselor, we aren’t in Kansas anymore!”  Instead, he decided to use a political maneuver,  He called the Russian event organizers and made clear that he was not going to leave the country until Sasha had his paperwork back and was out of trouble.  KGB agents came to the hotel and we ended up negotiating with them in a bathroom to get the passport back. Since neither they nor we wanted an international incident, the KBG agreed.  Sasha’s identification was returned at 3 in the morning.

Performing in Solidarity with Native Americans 

Six months after returning to the United States I was invited to sing in the Quad Cities on the Mississippi River for the first Soviet American Peace Walk. As I began performing, whom did I see, but Sasha!  He had been marching across the United States with the Walk.  He was OK. The Cold War seemed to be coming to an end.

Kris brought me out to Orange County to perform with his band at a star-studded benefit for the the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.  He asked me to play a ballad on my Native Flute.  He stepped off stage during my performance and listened.  Jacqueline says he just beamed during the song and said to her, “Now Counselor, ain’t that something?”  He was always supportive of his band and other performers.  And they were loyal to him.

That following summer through the leadership of Clyde Bellecourt (American Indian Movement), Mark Tilsen (Black Hills Alliance International Survival Gathering & Tanka Bar Foundation), the City of St. Paul, and myself (Mississippi River Revival) we organized the Two Rivers Cultural Explosion. This two-day gathering was held at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers to honor the Dakota Oyote who had been interned there at a concentration camp throughout the winter following the Dakota-United States War of 1862. Kris Kristofferson graciously donated his services to perform, as did John Trudell and others.

You can view a video of Kris singing Knocking on Heaven’s Door with Larry Kegan, Cousin Melvin James (Lead guitar), Gregory Traxler (Drums), Sid Gasner (Bass), and myself.

Kris Kristofferson was everything you would hope him to be. Simply, one of the best songwriters of our time and an incredible human being. May his songs be forever sung.

Larry Long is an American singer-songwriter who has made his life work the celebration of everyday heroes. Larry has written and performed hundreds of ballads celebrating community and history makers. His work has taken him from rural Alabama to the Lakota communities in South Dakota. He has given musical voice to struggling Midwest farmers, embattled workers, and veterans. He can be reached at larrylong@communitycelebration.org.

 

A Question for Women

Dr. Frances Conley, 83, died recently. She was a professor at Stanford and one of the country’s only female neurosurgeons in the 1990s. For decades she dealt with male colleagues fondling her, propositioning her, and calling her “hon,” among other demeaning behavior—even in the operating room. She felt it was the cost of success in a male-dominated field. But at age 50 she’d had enough of being told her opposing opinion was due to her PMS, and of never being taken seriously. She resigned from her position, and it made the news. Dr. Conley regretted not speaking out when she realized how many other women in the medical field were experiencing the same thing. So I ask you, women, why do we continue to allow misogyny in our society?

Case in point: Of all the ludicrous political ads this season, there is one I cannot stop thinking about. It is a video of Bernie Moreno, running to be Ohio’s senator. He is addressing an audience with women. He says that reproductive rights shouldn’t be an issue for women over 50—that it’s a bit crazy. Mr. Moreno is a 57 year-old man—so why is it an issue to him? There is laughing in the background at how crazy older women are.

He goes on to say that “you don’t get in pregnant in the checkout line at Krogers—you need to take personal responsibility.” I’d like to point out to Mr. Moreno that the usual way a woman becomes pregnant is by a man. Yet, where are the laws requiring a man to take “personal responsibility” from the moment of conception? Where are the groups of women making laws for men and their rights?  Take the issue of reproductive rights out of this equation and think about how he disrespects women in his comments—how he, as a man, feels he can judge our feelings and decisions, and make it a joke.

Why are women still voting for misogynists? The VP nominee, J.D. Vance, has made it clear that women are only worthwhile if they have children. He has suggested tracking women’s menstrual cycles and that women should stay in violent relationships for the sake of children—in short, women have no value other than to please men.

The presidential nominee has called Kamala Harris retarded, even though she is far more qualified and experienced. He, of course, was elected after saying on tape that he could do anything he wanted to women because he was famous (and was found liable for sexual assault in a court of law). A elderly male senator recently said that hurricane survivors didn’t “give a function” about tampons, as if he’s an expert on women’s periods.

To be clear, this is certainly not all men. It’s a loud minority though, and it seems that it is acceptable to our society. Sexual harassment was brought to light during the #MeToo movement—so why are these men in position to run our country? Moreover, why are women voting for them?

When I was a young teen I developed large breasts. I did not want the type of attention it got me from boys and grown men. There were comments yelled as I walked home from school, and disgusting comments right to my face. Men unapologetically stared at my chest as if it was their right to do so. It deeply affected my self-esteem and body image for decades. I slouched and tried to cover myself when men were around. But men felt free to say whatever they wanted, letting me know that when they saw me all they really saw was my body. I did not have the self-assurance or temerity to fight back or express my discomfort. Like Dr. Conley, I thought that’s just the way it was then.

What happens when a society demeans the value of women? Look at Afghanistan. In the 70s women were wearing miniskirts and enjoying personal freedoms—now they are covered head to toe in burqas, banned from education, and not even allowed to look at men. That’s what happens.

Lilly Ledbetter just died, as well. She filed a suit against Goodyear after learning that she earned less than men doing the same job. The Supreme Court passed an act in her name in 2009—yes, only fifteen years ago. Until 1974 women could not have a credit card in their name without a husband signing off on it. Shall we go back to those good old days? In my mind, the constant disrespect from prominent men is heading in that direction.

Women, consider the lives of your daughters and granddaughters. This election is not just about reproductive rights, it is about respect and value for all of the female citizens of this country. I plead with you—it is up to us to vote discrimination and sexism out of office for good.

There are plenty of respectful men who could be leading this country, men who see women as equals and treat them as such. I know, I was raised by one, I am married to one, and I raised one myselfFacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Diane Vogel Ferri’s recent novel is No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling. Her latest full-length poetry book is A Slow Journey to Totality. Her essays have been published in the Cleveland Plain DealerScene Magazine, and Braided Way Journal, among many others. Read other articles by Diane.