Night-time ritual

Before falling asleep and going to bed, my husband reads to me. Right now we are dealing with the various St. Paul's letters to communities. I believe we started with one of the gospels and then picked random NT parts. For Advent he used the devotional my church had around, then for our anniversary we read Song of Solomon. We read that as he had me read the girl parts.
It is a ritual that goes forward, through sickness, health and travel. There have been very few times when he hasn't read a scripture to me, even when I'm trying to deal with pain, or I'm about to fall dead asleep, he'll read. If I'm alseep, then all bets are off. He reads a study bible so then he reads the commentary after scripture. I give commentary while he's reading.
Following scripture and the commentary is prayer. Sometimes I ask for a short prayer, which doesn't seem to make much of a difference because everyone still gets included and it is still long, winding and Presbyterian, then we do a relay Our Father, where I say part, then he says part, and then back to me. We kiss goodnight and crawl back into bed.
Not as good as compline, but better than nothing.

What is poor?

I'm reading a book "The Beautiful Tree" about private schools for the poor in Africa and India. I've gotten to a part where logic is tested. There are people telling the author that there cannot be private schools for the poor because the poor are too poor to pay, thus there cannot be schools where the poor are paying to send their children. When the author found schools where the poor were paying to send their children to school, then the nay sayers said those people aren't poor. Never mind that they have no electricity, running water, work as fishermen, live in one room shacks with tin roofs, and make about $1 a day. No, if they are paying for schooling, they aren't poor.
There is more I'd like to write, but I am not done with the book. But there is a attitude that I am disliking, and it is the author's bias, but development people seem to fail to acknowledge that the poor have agency. Yes, the poor make bad decisions, but it's their decision. Another thing, I'm also sensing international poverty pimping. Send millions of dollars to support middle and upper class bureaucrats to make reports and studies about the poor and call it helping the poor, though the poor see a little of the results, and get little ownership of the process or the results. How many abandoned clean water projects dot the world?

The importance of privacy

I blog some parts of my life. But not all.
In the NSA spying on Americans brugh-ha-ha, some people have stated they don't care if certain benign aspects of their life are known.
My problem is the last century is filled with examples of the State or groups deciding to kill or imprison people because they happened to be  X.  Who cares if your parents came from Haiti and you're living on the Dominican border. Or that your father was an intellectual or shop owner in China? Or when you were 20 you flirted with Communism in America? Or in this same country you're of Japanese decent? Or you're Armenian in the Ottoman Empire? The 20th Century is filled with examples (notice how I'm avoiding the biggest one?) of the State or someone deciding that this or that set of people is the problem or will be a problem, as with the Japanese internments, and going after them.
So yes, now it doesn't matter that the world knows you are or were X. But if the winds change, and blow in a force or a set of know it alls who feel X is bringing the country down or holding the great cause back or endangering the people, is that knowledge so benign?

Also the tools and systems that allow this government to spy on its citizens and others can just as well be used by other nations. I was listening to a podcast of a person who got a FOIA request about the travel information the government had on him. As expected it showed him the flights he took from here to there, but what he didn't expect was there was also information about the hotels where he stayed and local contacts. It also had international travel information. It was supposed that the Chinese had access to this same information by legally demanding an airline, with a presence in China, at their Chinese offices, pull information from this big travel database. And if the Chinese can track people this way, then who else can as well? The Russians, the French (yeah, I know who cares?), the Israelis, and so forth. This endangers activists, which is concerning.

Is it a white guy thing? Protecting "their" women

I've encountered a sentiment up close a couple times to make me wonder if it is a 'thing'. First time was with a roommate, the white straight male one. He was talking about the future, his concerns about the future with his then girlfriend (now wife). He liked the neighborhood we were in, but had some concerns about living here with her. He had very strong concerns about her safety, about her walking on the streets alone, afraid she'd be raped or something. They wound up in another part of DC, with (as far as I'm concerned) the same crime issues, but much hipper and a better selection of retail and restaurant options. At the time, I was in 'strong independent woman' mode. I was slightly offended of the idea of woman as weak thing that without man at her side will constantly be at the mercy of the criminal element.
The second was with my own husband, the Help. Now the Help and I had been platonic friends for about a decade, so we had a relationship before amor came in. After marriage I noticed he was trying to take on more of the protector role, to which the 'strong independent woman' that was me responded with, "what the Hell?" In an animated discussion about my safety, he expressed concern (despite my years of being safe when the neighborhood was more dangerous) and I countered with asking about the safety of a single female neighbor. He responded that the neighbor I mentioned was not his wife.
In the two examples, the males were white and the females, black. I've heard similar sentiment from other white guys regarding their live in girlfriends and wives, where the guy was white. And from some women inquiring about moving to the neighborhood, hinting that they can't be safe without a guy (bf or husband).
My own father, a black man, never seemed to take on this role. It wasn't protection but honor and respect, where his interests. Other black women seemed to take on protection, in a motherly fashion. There are issues of manhood and masculinity in the Black community that I really can't address here, so I won't.
After marriage, I'm letting go of parts of the 'strong independent woman' and submitting (as I've decided to interpret it) to my husband. I've grown too attached to my husband to think of living independently without him. I allow him to drive me to work, so he can protect me from the bus ride I'll have to take after work. I allow him to be concerned about aspects of my safety that are much in his thoughts, while I continue to maintain and strengthen those areas of our safety that have not crossed his mind.