Kim Ponders

All Posts

  1. Shaha Riza Cries Wolfowitz

    5/18/07 6:41pm by Kim Ponders
    • 6
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    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 >

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

    4/26/07 6:09pm by Kim Ponders
    • 2
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    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 >

  3. Speaking of Heroes

    4/25/07 4:11pm by Kim Ponders
    • 0
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    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 >

  4. To Two Sisters in Uniform: Thanks for Nothing

    4/11/07 1:41pm by Kim Ponders
    • 16
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    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 >

  5. An Iranian Coup?

    4/4/07 4:12pm by Kim Ponders
    • 0
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    By now, the 15 British troops held captive by Iranian forces should be on their way home. I'm glad to see them safe and well, but what should have been a political scandal for the Iranians may well have turned into a victory.  Read more >

  6. A Sad Case: David Hicks’s Conviction at Guantanamo

    4/1/07 4:36pm by Kim Ponders
    • 3
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    Here we are in this heavily-armed, no-frills courtroom at Guantanamo Bay, feeling rather victorious after successfully convicting the first of the worst of the worst. Which worst is first? Hicks was first—the worst of the first—not exactly the roughly-shorn, thick-bearded, Koran-carrying terrorist we’ve been holding our breath to see tried over these past four years, but close enough for the books. He’s from Australia, after all, which is somewhere near China, and he did plead guilty, and that’s somethin’, ain’t it?  Read more >

  7. Women in combat: a moot debate (despite what some people say)

    2/25/07 8:35pm by Kim Ponders
    • 0
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    Last weekend, Marine Captain Jennifer Harris, 28, of Swampscott, MA, was honored in a funeral procession in her home town after her helicopter crashed in Iraq. As her horse-drawn hearse made its solemn way to the cemetery, the chilly streets were packed with neighbors, police and firefighters. But what was extraordinary was that none of them seemed to be there to mourn, as the Boston papers obligingly put it, the death of the first Massachusetts female to be killed in the war. They were there to mourn the loss of a soldier.  Read more >

  8. Iran: Crying Wolf?

    2/16/07 6:11pm by Kim Ponders
    • 0
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    This past Sunday in a secretive meeting held for the press in Baghdad, US Defense and Intelligence officials presented evidence of Iranian meddling in Iraq. The collection consistence of spent munitions and assessments from unidentified annalists. The conclusions were damning, if not predictable. Iran is producing special armor piercing weapons (explosively formed penetrates, or EFPs), smuggling them into Iraq with the intent of killing Americans, and to top it off, it's being directed from the "top levels" of the Iranian government. Slam dunk, right?  Read more >

  9. Lust In Space

    2/7/07 3:07pm by Kim Ponders
    • 5
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    Bubble pops for love-sick astronaut. I’m sure it happens every day. I know it happens in the Air Force (and, in fact, wrote a novel, called The Art of Uncontrolled Flight, all about how it happens). Maybe it’s the long hours away from home, or the risk inherent in the work, or the feeling of power that comes from having the word “astronaut” on your resume. Employer: NASA. Maybe you feel invincible. The normal rules suddenly seem irrelevant. And what could be more romantic than circling the earth with the man you love? Setting the new record for the “mile-high” club. In that light, can you blame Captain Lisa Nowak for trying to discourage a would-be rival? Anyone standing in the way of that dream deserves a good pepper spray.  Read more >

  10. The A-10 friendly-fire tape: tragedy or titillation?

    2/6/07 6:00pm by Kim Ponders
    • 6
    • Sparkle (
      )
       

    A note showed up in my inbox this afternoon with a link to a video from the UK Telegraph, prompting me to "take a sober look before the link gets removed", and because the note came from a reliable source, I did, and I was horrified.  Read more >

Kim Ponders

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.
 

Conferences


BlogHer '12

The BlogHer Annual Conference is heading back to New York City on August 2-4, 2012! Join thousands of other bloggers, writing on every topic under the sun, for 3 days of learning, networking, and fun. Register today!

Learn more about BlogHer conferences.

Subscribe to our newsletters.
Follow our RSS feed.