Time for our big dinner show, Sep 20th

I hope some of my tribe buddies will come out and support us for our big annual show!

Latifa’s “Magic Carpet Ride” Show Starring Latifa and Banat al-Beled, presenting an exciting variety of solo and group Middle Eastern dance performances.

Saturday, September 20, 2008 7 PM


Hellas Restaurant

8498 Veterans Highway

Millersville, MD

Full buffet with a variety of delicious dishes (spanokopite, Greek salad, crab balls, spinach and ricotta ravioli, Greek chicken Lemonatho, Beef Stroganoff, mashed potatoes, Italian stewed zucchini, variety of desserts)

Dinner and show $40 per person

(Tax and tip included, alcoholic drinks extra, kids 10 and under $20)

Reserve online at www.bintbeled.com. If you wish to pay by check please contact me.


For information, contact Latifa Latifa@bintbeled.com.

Price for tickets at door: $45. Limited availability.



Hellas Restaurant is located just off I-97. Take the Benfield Blvd/Severna Park exit, then turn left on Veterans’ Highway. The restaurant will be on your left, just after the light at Frye Rd. The party room is on the far side of the restaurant and has a separate entrance.

Doors open at 6:30 PM. Dinner at 7. Show starts at 7:30.

BUY YOUR TICKETS EARLY — OUR LAST SHOW SOLD OUT!

If you would like to have a JPEG flyer for this event, just ask and I would be glad to send you one.


Latifa

Latifa’s School of Middle Eastern Dance

www.bintbeled.com

Snow, snow, snow

I love this essay from today's Washington Post:

Let It Snow, Let Drifts Grow, Let Us Slow

By John Kelly
Tuesday, February 13, 2007; Page B03

Bring it on.

Bring on the breathless TV weather drones. Bring on the frantic milk-and-toilet-paper shoppers. Bring on the desperate homeowners fighting for the last snow shovel, stick of firewood or bag of ice melt at the hardware store. Bring on the school-closing second-guessing. Bring on the endless chorus that "no one" in Washington knows how to drive.

Bring it on.

Bring on the snow.

Silence, if only briefly, the honking and the squealing and the rubber-on-asphalt moan that is our daily soundtrack. Force us to hear the hush of falling snowflakes, an almost imperceptible sound, like two hands being rubbed together.

Throw a thick white blanket over all our human imperfections: our cracked sidewalks, our crooked shingles, our dented cars, our stinky dumpsters, our towering billboards, our trash-strewed riverbanks, our ugly strip malls, our mute and unblinking bollards.

Whiten all our window ledges.

Frost our gardens and our hedges.

Obscure all the city's edges

With your powder so sublime.

Inspire in us a primal longing for food and shelter. Engender in some long-suppressed strand of our DNA a nervousness that drives us to the market to hunt and gather. Convince us that a few talismans -- a gallon of milk, a bag of Bugles, a roll of toilet paper -- will appease the spirits, will help us survive the storm.

Let us succumb to our primitive urges.

Gather our shamans -- Toppershutt, Bobryan, Suepalka -- and make them chant and fall into a trance and summon forth the magic SuperDoppler.

There! On the flickering screen! It's a bird's-eye view of our village, etched with lines of barometric pressure and wind chill temperatures, the squiggly portents of our future, as reliable as the goat intestines our augurs once spilled.

Remind us of Nature.

Remind us that Nature isn't our creation; we're Nature's, subject to its immutable rules, occasional victims of its nonchalant shrug. Remind us that Nature doesn't care if we're inconvenienced by winter, any more than a tree cares when we cut ourselves shaving or a stone that we sat on our cellphone.

Slow us down. Make us decide what's really important -- what trip, what task, what so-called necessity. Challenge us to find new ways to reach the nearest store, ways that don't involve driving the paltry three-quarters of a mile.

Compel us to pull on socks and lace up boots, to bundle up and sally forth. Make us lean into the wind and hike, our footprints leaving temporary traces of our passage (for are they not a metaphor for our very lives?).

Encourage us to see the world anew, to notice how the fresh white mantle both blurs and transforms all that it covers: parked cars turned into lumpy hillocks, curbs turned into mere suggestions of the granite underneath.

Force us into close proximity with our families (without wringing one another's necks).

When the power goes out, challenge us to somehow entertain ourselves (without wringing one another's necks).

Shush the whiners who can't recognize that a snowstorm is a gift. Quiet those who would have us power through the day as if it were like any other. Shut the traps of people who believe a day off school for a kid is the end of the world. Silence those who are ticked that they're "essential personnel" -- or that they're not.

Allow us just a few hours of communion: with the huddled masses in the checkout line, with all the people shoveling off their stoops, with Nature itself.

So bring it on.

Bring on the snow.

Ice, however, we could do without. And sleet. We don't want any of that. Ditto freezing rain.