Kim Ponders : MyBlogHer Profile

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Shaha Riza Cries Wolfowitz

Why do so many smart women get mixed up with the wrong men? By all accounts, Shaha Ali Riza seems like an incredibly intelligent and successful women. Educated at the London School of Economics and done gone to Oxford for International Relations. Senior Communications Officer (and acting manager of external affairs) for the Middle East and North Africa Regional Office at the World Bank, she speaks at least five languages and is a noted supporter of women’s rights in the Arab world. Immediately before joining the World Bank, she worked at the National Endowment for Democracy, where she led the endowment’s Middle East programs. Yet, evidence indicates that in the affairs of the heart, she was not quite so proficient. This daughter of Libyan and Syrian parents fell for Paul Wolfowitz, the bad boy son of Polish Jewish immigrants. They first met in the early 1990s while each was married. By 2001, both had divorced, and though rumors flew, it wasn’t until 2005 that that “RizaWitz” was a sure item.  Read more >

And they're off...Democratic candidates "hem'd-and-haw'd" through Debate #1

I spent the night at a Debate Watching Potluck Extraveganza, so called by the hostess who is leading a local New Hampshire push for the election of Barack Obama, and the mood was...decidedly quiet. Despite the abundant food, adequate watering, and comfortable seating, I found myself biting an imaginary wooden spoon as the candidates hem'd-and-haw'd through a number of uncomfortable questions put to them by the inimitable Brian Williams. Obama started two lengths back and never quite caught up with Hillary, God help us all, who was on cue, on message, and on time with every question that came her way. (Did she not look just a teensy bit like Elisabeth I with that huge faux-pearl necklace?)  Read more >

Speaking of Heroes

After lamenting in my last post about the lack of women heroes in the military, Ms. Jessica Lynch has gone on record along with the family of deceased Army soldier Pat Tillman, to denounce the military's propaganda machine and debunk what were perhaps the last myths hanging by a golden thread from the war in Iraq.  Read more >

To Two Sisters in Uniform: Thanks for Nothing

Those of you who read my blog know I’m no war-hawk. However, as a part-time reservist I sometime wrestle with my inner-Patton. Both of my novels deal with the issue of being a woman in the military and, consequently, what it’s like to live under a spotlight and have all of your actions reflect on every other woman in uniform. We’ve had some doozies. Anybody remember Lieutenant Kelly Flynn, for example? And we have two new hall-of-famers—US Air Force Colonel Lisa Nowak and British Royal Navy Leading Seaman Fayne Turney—to make the rest of us look, er, like we’re wearing shoes we can’t quite fill.  Read more >

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Full Name
Kim Ponders
Member Since
January 2006
About Me: 
Kim Ponders grew up near Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Syracuse University. In 1989, she was commissioned into the Air Force as a second lieutenant. She flew as an air weapons controller on the E-3 AWACS during the Gulf War, becoming one of the first American women to fly in combat. She spent several years flying missions in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, providing air supplies to the Kurds in northen Iraq and monitoring the Iraqi no-fly zone. These experiences formed the basis of her first novel, The Art of Uncontrolled Flight. She later lived in Korea and Germany, where she earned an M.S. in international relations. After returning to the United States, she attended the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers. Still a reserve officer, she teaches fiction for A Room of Her Own, the largest women’s writing foundation in the country. Her new novel, The Last Blue Mile, is due out in May, 2007.
BlogHer Conference '06: 
I attended
 

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