Rania Abouzeid. Picture by Dalia Khamissy. All rights reserved. Rania Abouzeid, the Lebanese-Australian reporter based in Beirut, has covered the uprising and subsequent conflict in Syria since the very beginning. Branded a foreign spy by the government of Bashar al-Assad in 2011, she has largely been confined to rebel-held areas. Over the past seven years…
Category: News
New York’s Suicide Prevention Program Is The First Of Its Kind In The U.S.
As the national debate on mental health continues after the suicides of fashion designer Kate Spade and television host and chef Anthony Bourdain in June, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced the adoption of a cutting-edge program for those struggling with a history of suicide attempts. Rates of death by suicide have been rising in…
Van Gogh’s Holland
Some deaths are such cultural touchstones that they become imprinted on our own memories too, like a personal tragedy. That, at least, is the case with Vincent van Gogh. Our collective image of the artist’s last morning, slashing away at a canvas in that Provençal wheat field, the angry crows wheeling above like a beaky…
“The Refugee,” by Bernard Malamud
Bernard Malamud won a National Book Award in 1959 for his volume of short stories, “The Magic Barrel.” “There seems to be no writer of his background,” comments critic Alfred Kazin, “who makes one feel so keenly the enigmatic quality of life.” Read “The Refugee,” by Bernard Malamud. [PDF]
America's fantasy relationship with itself is tearing us apart.
What does it mean to love one’s country? I found myself asking this question upon reading an article in the New York Times last week: Trump’s America: Aggrieved and Adoring Voices From Inside the Presidential Bubble. I was taken in by the accompanying photograph: two women decked out in head-to-toe USA paraphernalia. They look like…
Tobacco lobby and smugling in Mexico
Image: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. While Mexican authorities pretend to be complying with the international treaty promoted by the World Health Organization, very little has actually been done to meet two fundamental principles of the agreement: the reduction of tobacco consumption and exposure to smoke. The most recent example of this inaction is the system…
Post Travels: Big, Beautiful, Bucket List Alaska
Alaska is big and beautiful — loaded with glaciers, animal life, and snow-capped mountains — and visitors coming in droves to see it all. Sailing with Windstar Cruises, long summer days presented once-in-a-lifetime opportunities over and over again, from kayaking around icebergs in Tracy Arm Fjord, to watching harbor seals lounge nearby Aialik Glacier, to…
20 years ago, a doctor published a study. It was completely made up, and it made us all sicker.
Once upon a time, a scientist named Dr. Andrew Wakefield published in the medical journal The Lancet that he had discovered a link between autism and vaccines. After years of controversy and making parents mistrust vaccines, along with collecting $674,000 from lawyers who would benefit from suing vaccine makers, it was discovered he had made…
Europe in Egypt: the white man’s burden
On the 23rd of February, the Egyptian Red sea city of Sharm El Sheikh hosted the first European- Arab League summit. The two-day summit covered topics like, security, counter-terrorism, and socio economic cooperation. It took place a mere three days, after Egypt carried out a mass execution of 9 men, on the 20th of February,…
How America Is Falling To Pieces Around Us: 1928 Version
The following is an excerpt from “The World Does Move,” from July 7, 1928 [PDF]. The author is listening to a judge’s outrage at the state of the nation’s youth. “I’ve been going to the same barber shop for fourteen years,” he said harshly, as I sat down. “I went to it for the last…