Tag: Poland

  • World Cup Dispatch: Argentina v Saudi Arabia, and Other News

    I’m excited about the World Cup, but I’m not so rabid that I would get up at 5am to watch the first match of the day. My friend Shawn might, but not me.

    And then Saudi Arabia goes and creates the first upset of the Tournament. Oh, Messi, always the bridesmaid at World Cup, even with a goal in the 10th minute. But at the end of the day, props to the Saudi Arabian squad, because they clearly believed they could win.

    As for other matches, I’m looking forward to Mexico v Poland. I have lots of respect for the Mexican team, as they have been the bane of Team USA’s existence. Yet, I feel a level of loyalty to our continental neighbor, as Mexico has a huge football fan base who does believe they should the first North American men’s team to win a Cup.

    In other World Cup news, team Iran did not sing their national anthem at the opening of their match against England yesterday. Apparently, the team is standing in solidarity with Iranian women, and the protests back in their home country. It’s an important gesture that the team is making on the world biggest sporting stage, as we shouldn’t forget about the brave and courageous women of Iran who are standing up, and being murdered but the authoritarian Iranian regime, for demanding their basic human rights. This also shows that no matter how hard Qatar and FIFA try, you can’t stop all the protests.

    (And, thanks for reading all the way to the bottom of this post. If you could do me a favor, hit that like button over there. It will help me out, with rankings and stuff.)

  • Talking to My Daughter about Ukraine

    It’s been very hard over the past week to talk to my daughter about the war in Ukraine. A hard conversation, but one that I know we need to have. She’s seven, and sees the world as good guys vs bad guys, which I do think makes explaining this war to her a little easier. Putin is the bad guy for starting this war, that’s the easy part. Everything else has been challenging.

    I have found that the “Mr. Rogers Rule” works really well. That rule is simple, “Look for the helpers. When things are bad, there are always people wanting to help.” Luckily, there are still parts of humanity that aren’t garbage, and we have been pointing out how the people of Poland, and other nations as well, are helping with the refugees; giving food, shelter, medical care, and safety. We have even talked about what we can do here, to help all the people over there.

    Now, we don’t purposefully have her watch the news. Most of the time, when we tell her that we are going to put the news on, she will leave the room as that stuff is boring to her. But now and then, she’ll walk into the livingroom and catch something, an image; a building on fire, a blown up tank, or a dead body in the street. My gut reaction is that I don’t want her to see these things, but I don’t want to shield her, nor stop her from asking questions about difficult subjects.

    The one thing that I think she is grasping is that war is not good. Even the “good” wars were still awful.