Harry Potter and Stoning

Now that I've started blogging, there are two things I'd like to post about since we're nearing the weekend.

The first thing is the opening of the new movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.  I hate crowds for the most part (the crowds in the malls at Christmastime do nothing to make my season bright), but I may just brave them this weekend to see the last Harry Potter movie.  After all, this is the end of an era.  For the past 10 years, many of us have been following the movies that are based on the wildly popular and successful book series that began in 1997.  Thanks to Harry, books became the "in" thing with kids again and brought families together to share in a good read.  Even though I may not be a kid myself, I have to admit it's sad to say goodbye to Harry and the whole world J. K. Rowling imagined.

The second thing is the movie, The Stoning of Soraya M.  I started watching this movie last Monday night expecting to watch only the first half hour of it; I planned to finish watching it the following day.  Once I started, though, I couldn't stop.  I was mesmerized and shocked by the true story of a woman in Iran who was stoned to death in 1986 for adultery.  Her husband, who wanted to marry a 14-year old girl but was unable to support two wives, needed to get Soraya out of the way.  He did this by implicating that Soraya was having an affair with a widower for whom she worked as a housekeeper.  How can anyone--woman, man, child, or any other living creature, for that matter--be treated the way Soraya was treated by her husband?  How can anyone put aside his humanity and throw stones at an innocent, defenseless person buried up to her shoulders?  It's hard to believe that such things happened and are still happening in some parts of the world.