COFFEE BREAK
Saturday, March 21, 2015
PARENTS TALK BACK
How do you
get married if
you can’t date?
W
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“marriage crisis” in the melting
pot of America.
By we, I mean Muslim Americans.
By crisis, I mean the challenge faced by
any smaller community within a larger
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VSHFL¿FDOO\WKH³FULVLV´ZLWKLQHWKQLF
communities refers to either a rising
rate of intra-marriages across ethnic and
religious groups, or an excess of eligible
single women with fewer
prospects within their
own particular group.
For those who
self-limit their choices
to others of the same
religious or ethnic
background, the pool of
viable candidates shrinks.
Aisha
Orthodox, practicing
Sultan
Muslims have another
challenge on top of living Parents talk back
in a land of slimmer
pickings: Dating, in the American sense of
the word, is off-limits. You’re not allowed
to cavort with the opposite sex until it’s
time to get married. But how exactly is
that supposed to happen for generations of
children less comfortable with the idea of
arranged marriages than their parents may
have been?
Long before there were niche dating
websites or location-based hookup apps,
there were meddling parents, friends,
professional matchmakers and mere
acquaintances setting up single people.
Then came the Internet. Jewish
singles found JDate. Mormons could
visit LDSPlanet. Many sites like
ChristianMingle cater to Christians,
although it seems like you’re just as likely
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Christians on generic sites like eHarmony.
Marriage-minded Muslims have their
own matchmaking websites, but many
American Muslims have found those
culturally out-of-touch with their own
values. They may seem too conservative,
too regressive in gender expectations
or too focused on physical appearance.
Ghazala Irshad, a social media editor,
wrote about this dilemma and new
technological solutions on the horizon.
All the “rishta aunties” (yentas of a
different faith) are complaining about
older, educated, single Muslim women
and the shortage of eligible men, she
said. Irshad, a 30-year-old writer who has
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this crisis demographic in the eyes of these
aunties. Most certainly, she does in the
eyes of her grandmother.
The shortfall of eligible partners has
launched all sorts of creative workarounds.
Forget Silicon Valley; nothing spurs
innovation like a mother needling her child
to just get married already.
Irshad recently published a piece on
BuzzFeed about a rise in location-based
matchmaking apps for Muslims — like
a tame version of Tinder, with a different
endgame in mind: a walk down an aisle,
not the walk of shame.
“If you’re a single Muslim in North
America, you know the thirst is real,” she
writes.
Irshad describes the efforts of
enterprising Muslim millennials offering
apps that widen social circles but stay
within like-minded communities.
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men and women to express interest, so
girls don’t have to be passive and wait for
a guy to come court them,” she said. Her
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she’s climbed the highest mountain in
Indochina, dodged bullets while reporting
on the revolution in Egypt, celebrated
Eid with Libyan rebels in Benghazi after
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orphans in Cambodia.
Currently, she’s traveling in Jordan
and Lebanon, teaching photography to
Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi refugee girls
as part of trauma counseling.
This is a woman who says she “hasn’t
had anything going on” in the dating scene
for years. Previously, prospective suitors
have described her as “too alpha female,
too well-traveled, too ambitious.”
Irshad, who is moving from Chicago to
Boston, signed up with Bliss Marriage, but
the app is so new that there isn’t anyone
else within a 200-mile radius of her yet.
She also joined Ishqr.com, a site and
forthcoming app that doesn’t share photos
until both parties express mutual interest in
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are also SalaamSwipe and Crescent apps
in the works, both of which will allow the
spousal search to go mobile.
Irshad didn’t expect her BuzzFeed
Community self-published article to
spread so far. She’s gotten messages from
Muslims in Europe who related to the
story, and she’s been interviewed by BBC
World about the subject.
“I wanted to get the word out,” Irshad
said. She wanted other Muslim Americans
who might be interested to sign up. It never
hurts to increase the pool of candidates.
It may even prompt her grandma, who
collected Irshad’s biodata (basically a
resume) to pass out to her own old-school
network of possible suitors, to rethink her
marketing strategy.
Ŷ
Aisha Sultan is a St. Louis-based
journalist who studies parenting in the
digital age while trying to keep up with her
tech-savvy children. Find her on Twitter:
@AishaS.
East Oregonian
Page 9C
Flawed Social Security data
say 6.5 milliion reach age 112
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Americans are getting
older, but not this old: Social Security records
show that 6.5 million people in the U.S. have
reached the ripe old age of 112.
In reality, only a few could possibly be alive.
As of last fall, there were only 42 people known
to be that old in the entire world.
But Social Security does not have death
records for millions of these people, with the
oldest born in 1869, according to a report by the
agency’s inspector general.
Only 13 of the people are still getting Social
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their Social Security numbers are still active, so
a number could be used to report wages, open
bank accounts, obtain credit cards or claim
fraudulent tax refunds.
“That is a real problem,” said Sen. Ron
Johnson, R-Wis. “When you have a fake So-
cial Security number, that’s what allows you to
fraudulently do all kinds things, claim things
like the earned income tax credit or other tax
EHQH¿WV´
Johnson is chairman of the Senate Commit-
tee on Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs, which plans a hearing Monday on
problems with death records maintained by the
Social Security Administration.
Johnson said he is working on legislation to
make it easier for Social Security to use infor-
mation from states to maintain more accurate
death records.
“There’s got to be a legislative solution here,
and that’s the thing that we’re going to try and
determine,” Johnson said. “The best death sta-
tistics really come from states, the vital statis-
tics agencies.”
The agency said it is working to improve
the accuracy of its death records. But it would
be costly and time-consuming to update 6.5
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when the agency used paper records, said Sean
Brune, a senior adviser to the agency’s deputy
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management.
“The records in this review are extremely
old, decades-old, and unreliable,” Brune said.
The internal watchdog’s report does not doc-
ument any fraudulent or improper payments to
people using these Social Security numbers.
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For example, nearly 67,000 of the Social Se-
AP Photo, File
In this Aug. 14, 1935, file photo President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Social Secu-
rity bill in Washington.
curity numbers were used to report more than
$3 billion in wages, tips and self-employment
income from 2006 to 2011, according to the
report. One Social Security number was used
613 different times. An additional 194 numbers
were used at least 50 times each.
People in the country illegally often use
fake or stolen Social Security numbers to get
jobs and report wages, as do other people who
do not want to be found by the government.
Thieves use stolen Social Security numbers to
claim fraudulent tax refunds.
The IRS estimated it paid out $5.8 billion in
fraudulent tax refunds in 2013 because of iden-
tity theft. The head of the Justice Department’s
tax division described how it’s done at a recent
congressional hearing.
“The plan is frighteningly simple — steal
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ing a false refund claim, and then have the re-
funds electronically deposited or sent to an ad-
dress where the offender can access the refund
checks,” said acting Assistant Attorney General
Caroline Ciraolo.
In some cases, she said, false tax returns are
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The Social Security Administration gener-
ates a list of dead people to help public agen-
cies and private companies know when Social
Security numbers are no longer valid for use.
The list is called the Death Master File, which
includes the name, Social Security number,
date of birth and date of death for people who
have died.
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payments.
But none of the 6.5 million people cited by
the inspector general’s report was on the list.
The audit analyzed records as of 2013, looking
for people with birth dates before 1901.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the
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Many of the people cited in the inspector
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they were assigned Social Security numbers so
spouses and children could receive them, pre-
sumably after they died.
OUT OF THE VAULT
Shower of sticks and stones baffles police
P
endleton police were
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1802 West Railroad Street
[S.W. Frazer Ave.] reported a
rain of rocks, pebbles and sticks
falling onto the roof of their
house, apparently out of thin air,
on April 2, 1915.
The house was occupied
by Mr. and Mrs. Henderson
Crowner, their daughter Helen
and Eldon Hutchinson, the
16-year-old cousin of Mrs.
Crowner. Sometime during
the afternoon of April 2, Mrs.
Crowner, Helen and Eldon heard
what sounded like stones hitting
the roof of the house. When they
went outside to investigate, rocks
ranging in size from pebbles to
boulders were rolling off the
slanted roof to the ground. A
search turned up no one who
could have been throwing rocks
on the roof,
and the shower
continued while
the investigation
was being made,
seemingly
coming from all
directions.
Alarmed,
Renee
Mrs.
Crowner
Struthers
Out of the vault called the
police. Chief
Kearney
arrived soon afterward, but was
unable to locate the cause of the
shower. The barrage continued at
intervals throughout the evening
and the next morning, and the
next day the police returned to
continue their search for the
source of the rocks, to no avail.
A neighbor, Ben Pierce, who
lived at 501 Maple Street [S.W.
16th St.], was skeptical about the
story until he witnessed it with
his own eyes. Pierce described
rocks rolling to the ground off
both sides of the roof, but said
he was unable to see any of the
missiles until they were within a
few feet of the roof. Sticks were
also strewn about the roof. He
went inside the house and found
stones, chips and a handful of
dirt that had come down the
chimney. Another neighbor,
Thelma Coffman, had a boulder
the size of a man’s head land
near her feet, but it hardly dented
the ground. When another rock
hit her in the head she “felt it no
more than if it had been a feather
bag.”
The house, a small three-
bedroom building with no
attic, sat by itself in the center
of a large lot. High bluffs rose
behind it about 50 feet away
with several clumps of bushes at
the base, but the police beat the
bushes and found no one hiding
there. According to neighbors,
anyone throwing stones from
that distance would have cracked
the shingles, but no such damage
was found on inspection of the
roof. And there was no way for
anyone to hide on the roof itself.
The incident frightened the
house’s occupants so much that
they refused to sleep there. A
search of the East Oregonian
archives did not turn up any
information that the mystery was
ever solved.
Ŷ
Renee Struthers is the
Community Records Editor for
the East Oregonian. See the
complete collection of Out of
the Vault columns at eovault.
blogspot.com
ODDS & ENDS
Suspect spray-paints
face in failed attempt
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MADERA, Calif. (AP) — A
man suspected of stealing a car
spray-painted his face black in an
attempt to evade police in Central
California.
The Fresno Bee reports
Monday that 23-year-old Jose
Espinoza ran from police after
being caught with a stolen car.
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Espinoza and arrested him
Saturday night with his face
painted black.
Police booked Espinoza into
the Madera County Department
of Corrections, where he
remained Monday morning. It
wasn’t immediately known if he
has an attorney.
Ikea nixes massive
hide and seek games
at Dutch stores
THE HAGUE, Netherlands
(AP) — Ikea has a message for
people wanting to converge on
its stores for giant games of hide
and seek: Go play someplace
else.
The phenomenon has taken
off online in the Netherlands
where a whopping 19,000 people
signed up to a Facebook group
promoting a game at Ikea’s
Amsterdam branch next month.
Another 13,000 signed up for a
game in the Ikea store in the city
said a man and woman were
hospitalized after Thursday’s
incident.
The blast occurred at a
“cheburechnaya” — a restaurant
serving fried pastries — that also
offered duckpin bowling, which
uses a ball without holes on a
relatively short lane.
East Ukraine has been
wracked by war for almost a
year, during which time the
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small arms and grenades.
This combo of booking photo released by the Madera Police
Department shows 23-year-old Jose Espinoza.
Bill sent out in 1969
returned to Maine
water district
of Utrecht.
But the Swedish retail giant
has bad news for folks wanting
to hide among its room-like
furniture displays: The numbers
signing up are getting out of
hand and the events have been
blocked.
“We have contacted these
pages on social media and
humbly asked them to have their
hide and seek games somewhere
else,” Ikea spokeswoman
Martina Smedberg in Sweden
said Tuesday.
Ikea doesn’t want to be a
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“In general we are happy that
our customers are playful and
want to have fun together with
friends and family,” Smedberg
said. “But unfortunately this
hide and seek phenomenon
BRUNSWICK, Maine (AP)
— A bill for $1.40 sent out by
a Maine water district almost a
KDOIFHQWXU\DJRKDV¿QDOO\EHHQ
returned.
The Brunswick and Topsham
Water District mailed the bill to a
resident of Topsham in October
1969. The bill was supposed to
be returned to the water district
E\WKHSRVWRI¿FHEHFDXVHWKH
FXVWRPHU¶VSRVWRI¿FHER[KDG
been closed.
+RZHYHULWGLGQ¶W¿QGLWV
way back to the district until last
Tuesday, 46 years later.
Linda Deacetis, the district’s
executive secretary, tells The
Times Record she was quite
surprised to receive the bill. The
district believes that the customer
has since passed away. The bill
had a 6-cent stamp on it.
AP Photo/Madera Police Department
has reached proportions where
we can no longer guarantee
the security of those who are
playing or our customers and
employees.”
Bowler throws
grenade instead of ball
in Ukraine, 2 injured
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Two
people have been injured while
bowling in a rebel-controlled
area of east Ukraine after a player
rolled a grenade instead of a ball.
A separatist-run news agency
cited emergency services
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saying Friday that the separatist-
held parts of Luhansk region
have seen a spate of accidents
recently because of careless
use of explosives. Ivanushkin