Every reporter will tell you that good editors are difficult to come by. Out of those handful, a rare breed is one who is not only a strong wordsmith and advocate but one who shows the kind of sensitivity needed to produce powerful human dramas. Non-fiction that reads like pure poetry. I had the privilege …
In the wee hours of the night, when all was quiet outside, the newsroom was sheer madness. Teddy was gone. Sen. Edward Kennedy died late Tuesday after battling brain cancer for many months. Friend and foe remembered him as the greatest senator of his time, a liberal lion whose roar will be sorely missed. When …
The Taliban chopped off the index fingers of two women who braved threats of violence and cast a ballot in Afghanistan’s presidential and provincial elections Thursday. That was the word today from the country’s top monitoring group. In Afghanistan, voters must dip their fingers in ink as they leave the polling station. This prevents a …
Continue reading “My finger! My finger! My finger for a vote”
I heard a report on NPR this afternoon about the difficulties of getting a job. The story focused on young people who apply for jobs and never hear back from potential employers. The commentator’s point was this: Rejection is part of life but rudeness doesn’t have to be. Take the time to write three sentences …
Seven people died for no reason today in Kabul. In the scope of Afghanistan’s bloody history, seven lives are inconsequential. But the effect of today’s suicide bombing is significant. It will, to some extent, have the effect that Taliban desires: keep people away from the polls on August 20, the day of Afghanistan’s presidential elections. …
How to solve India’s population problem: Supply every village with electricity so that every villager will watch more television late at night and have less sex. Huh? This is the brainchild of India’s new health and welfare minister. Let’s all think about this one for a minute. I know firsthand how overpopulation can ruin good …
This morning, I interviewed a Kenyan man who is offering 40 goats and 20 cows in dowry for Chelsea Clinton’s hand in marriage. She would be wife no. 2 — he married a college mate, Grace, in 2006, while waiting for a response from the Clintons to his initial offer back on 2000. The dowry …
Once again, thousands of Indians have been affected by flooding in the monsoon season. It’s become a regular sight to us, and we saw it here in America in the aftermath of Katrina. But few of us can imagine the forceful nature of water as enemy. I remember my father’s aunt putting her bed up …
The British are fully withdrawing from Iraq today, leaving a legacy, for the second time in a century. They were occupiers of Iraq once before, after World War I; their dead lie still in a north Baghdad cemetery. Now they leave 179 more dead. Their legacy this time: Basra, the southern port city and Iraq’s …
After the military ceremony, after the body comes home quietly, unseen by most of the world, after the remains forever join the earth — that’s when the suffering surfaces in ways too cruel for most of us to imagine. I wrote in my last entry about the wretched July days of 2005 when the Army …
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