1) Brenda's Song - America (From Songs From The Women Of The L. O. M.) Poem by Otradom Pelogo

Brenda's Song
I had either lost my debit card or it had been frozen by the bank, thus almost literally being stranded in the Middle East, not being able to get to my funds, which would have easily turned a progressing nightmare, once again into an overdue vacation, but the former, disaster, was vying incredibly hard to be victorious, and the only person that I knew on the outside who could help me figure out what was going on, was Brenda, my youngest sister, who would have to call banks, foreign currency exchanges and struggle with the time zones to constantly try to track and coordinate the differences; though because of the time differences, at one, two and three o‘clock in the morning so that the exchanges would be open after transactions had been sent and completed.
She is no advent at taking care of business, for if I had her mental dexterity, I would have twice as much completed, in just about everything that I pursue; seeing her work around the clock, literally, and quite often; and by the age of forty, already having put in twenty years in the same business. Starting from the bottom and climbing the vertical ladder, breaking through, whether it being glass ceiling or removing the proverbial top from the metaphoric glass jar that many of us struggle with on a day to day basis, while teaching and working with children; a most fastidious affair.
In the below piece on the pope, suddenly, in retrospection, did I remembered writing that there was a strange relationship between women and myself; a message that they were trying to communicate to me, and later below, in a prayer that I had written, so not to forget such an astounding message, that at that moment I could not do anything with, I put in a prayer, stating that it was the Year of the Woman. And only until recently could I truly put the pieces together that I had struggled to try and understand after seeing how arduously, myself, my sister Brenda and this small group of women worked through a trying austerity to keep calm a worsening affair or should I say a worsening foreign affair, until recently.
I was reading a book by Joseph Stiglitz, believe or not, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, and former board member of, I think, the World Bank, and ironically enough, thinking about this dilemma, where he states that it represents a regime and later even more explicitly stated, a mindset change, and though it's one that takes time to come about, and it‘s not an understatement, for I have thought about it frequently; though the dream is wished for so often to see, without obstacles and prejudices; women working with and alongside of men at every level to, as they say, achieve the desired outcome.
Joseph Stiglitz (Foreign Affairs: Why Women Matter) 2003)
'Much like human rights a generation ago, women's rights were long considered too controversial for mainstream foreign policy. For decades, international development agencies skirted gender issues in highly patriarchal societies. Now, however, they increasingly see women's empowerment as critical to their mandate. The Asian Development Bank is promoting gender-sensitive judicial and police reforms in Pakistan, for example, and the World Bank supports training for female political candidates in Morocco. The United States, too, is increasingly embracing women's rights, as a way not only to foster democracy, but also to promote development, curb extremism, and fight terrorism, all core strategic objectives.
The resolution will be critical to progress in these countries, for those that suppress women are likely to stagnate economically, fail to develop democratic institutions, and become more prone to extremism.
Female education also boots agricultural productivity. World Bank studies indicate that, in areas where women have very little schooling, providing them with at least another year of primary education is a better way to raise farm yields than increasing access to land or fertilizer usage. As men increasingly seek jobs away from farms, women become more responsible for managing the land. Because women tend to cultivate different crops than their husbands do, they cannot rely on men for training and need their own access to relevant information. As land grows scarcer and fertilizers yield diminishing returns, the next revolution in agricultural productivity may well be driven by women's education.'