The bag Madonna took with her to the premiere of “Evita!”
My favorite Prada bag and shoes.
Many years ago, I walked through the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, mesmerized that the history of mankind could be told through footwear — from caveman to Christian Laboutin. I was fascinated, given my penchant for shoes. (Yes, I have way too many.)
So when I stumbled upon the Tassen Museum Hendrikje in Amsterdam recently, I had to go in. Housed in a beautiful old building on Herengracht, the museum pays homage to, what else, handbags. It’s not as extensive as the shoe museum but tells a 500-year-history of handbags and purses in the Western world. Through bags, you get a good idea of how social norms changed for women.
And the museum shop is terrific if you are in the market for a good bag.
Frederick Douglass: “This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
On the Fourth of July, I ask you:
Should African-Americans celebrate this day? They were slaves when the Declaration of Independence was crafted. Should Native Americans celebrate this day? The white man obliterated them from their lands.
Or perhaps the right question to ask is: How should people of color celebrate American independence? The answer is varied and often, personal.
I am proud to have become an American citizen. I love this country.
But I also understand its brutal history of racism. I know that this day means many things to many people.
Noor, in a happy moment, at the school for disabled kids she attends in Baghdad. March, 2013
As a reporter, I have numerous conversations every day with people I don’t know that well or at all. Once in a while, those conversations strike a chord. That’s what happened a few days ago in my 30-minute discussion with Col. Kevin Brown.
I’d met Brown in Baghdad in 2005; he was commander of a 10th Mountain Division battalion (Triple Deuce), to which a Georgia guard company I was embedded with was attached. I saw him now and then when he interacted with the soldiers I was writing about and then in the context of “Baby Noor,” an Iraqi girl with spina bifida who the soldiers flew to America for life-saving treatment.
I knew Brown was a smart man. He was now a retired Army colonel pursuing a PhD in security studies. He was a high-ranking officer who was well-liked by his soldiers — I didn’t hear that often about battalion commanders.
Brown at a medal ceremony at Camp Liberty, Baghdad, in March 2006.
But our phone conversation struck me. Brown was forthcoming and deeply philosophical about his years at war and how Iraq had affected him and others. Though he is largely unfamiliar to me, at times in the conversation, I felt I was talking to my best friend. I knew exactly how he felt. I felt comforted by the words on the other end of the phone.
“Perhaps the Noor story shines that light on a time when we were good men and earned our nation’s respect whether they were looking or not … whether they knew it or not, and it gives us some comfort amongst the shades of gray we experienced there,” he said.
At that moment, I knew that my follow-up story on Noor had to center on Brown. He had captured the essence of the story with his words. I hope you will read it on CNN.com.
It’s not a big, bad, breaking news story. And in the grand scheme of things, Noor’s story, as I say in my piece, is a blip in the overall chaos and sorrow of the Iraq War.
But it’s stories like these that keep me going as a journalist. Because in the most basic way, they confirm our humanity and keep me believing there is good in people. Without that, after all, there is little meaning in our lives.
The New York Times published an interesting story today about bicycles in Amsterdam. In a city of 800,000 people, there are 880,000 bicycles. The Dutch have led the way in pedal power but as the story points out, and as I found out firsthand when I was there a couple of weeks ago, the bikes can make for chaos on the streets.
I almost got mowed down by one on Herengracht.
I opted not to fight to find parking places for my bike. Not to fight for space with other cyclists on crowded streets. Instead, I walked.
And did things you cannot do on a bike. Like meander through the city’s Zuid district and soak in the annual sculpture show. I got off Tram 16 and walked south on Minervalaan, stopping at sculptures made by artists from all over the world. Among them: China’s Ai Wewei and Nigeria’s Sokari Douglas Camp. In all, there were 66 pieces on display under the summer sun.
“In 2008, Cintha van Heeswijck took the initiative to draw greater attention to the urban expansion of the south of Amsterdam, known as the Plan-Zuid, designed by architect H.P. Berlage almost a hundred years ago. This world-class platform for sculpture adds a jewel to Amsterdam’s crown of leading cultural events.”
After my two-hour stroll, I agreed.
Read the New York Times bike story here: http://nyti.ms/10BPQcq
Michael and me at Camp Striker near the Baghdad airport in September 2005.
Michael Hastings died Tuesday in a car crash in Los Angeles.
The news hit me hard. He was 33. He was a great journalist. He was a friend.
Most people know his name for the Rolling Stone story “Runaway General,” the profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal that exposed him as a loose cannon, chiding his civilian commanders in the Obama administration.
“Great reporters exude a certain kind of electricity,” said Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana, “the sense that there are stories burning inside them, and that there’s no higher calling or greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell those stories. I’m sad that I’ll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write, and sad that he won’t be stopping by my office for any more short visits which would stretch for two or three completely engrossing hours. He will be missed.”
Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed praised Michael’s incredible instinct for a story. He also said this:
“Michael was also a wonderful, generous colleague, a joy to work with and a lover of corgis — especially his Bobby Sneakers.”
Michael was known for his aggressive reporting. He believed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were misguided and didn’t for a second let any U.S. official — whether it was McChrystal or Hillary Clinton — get away with an easy answer.
His fiancee, an aide worker, was killed in Iraq when Michael was a Newsweek correspondent. He wrote about that relationship in his first book, “I Lost My Love n Baghdad: A Modern War Story.”
I never met his wife, Elise Jordan. I cannot imagine her grief today.
As much as I respect his journalistic prowess — I leave it up to every media outlet to give him the proper reporter’s eulogy — the Michael I will cherish the most is the one I met in May 2005 at a hostile environment training put on by AKE in Virginia. I was there with AJC colleagues. He was there, I guess, on his own, determined to make a career for himself by going to the wars America was fighting.
He entertained us with his NYC white-boy rap — he was really good — and acerbic wit. Not bad, I thought, for a 28-year-old kid.
Three months later, Michael messaged me. “I am in Baghdad,” he said. “Going to Camp Striker tomorrow. I hear you are there. Lunch?”
So we ate standard military fare at the chow hall and shared stories about being embedded with the U.S. Army. He made me laugh when I hadn’t laughed in weeks. For that I will always be grateful.
An incredible young man robbed of life. An amazing journalist who will never again be able to write all the words that were within. Or expose the world for its sins.
Ezequeil Zeff (left) and Lautaro Rivas of Buenos Aires.
Empanadas at La Stego.
Indonesian yummyness.
I didn’t like them looking at me.
I thought I was in Amsterdam until I sat down to dine at Kantjil & de Tijger on Spruistracht. On the menu was an Indonesian feast: Pangsit Goreng, Ajam Sereh Pedis and Oteh Oteh. I ordered a sampling of savory stuff. Hadn’t eaten since breakfast and had walked all over the canal city. I was hungry.
Just as I’d finished dinner, a couple of guys sat on the other end of my outdoor table. We struck up a conversation.
They were in search of beef. Naturally — they were from Argentina.
Ezequeil Zeff, 30, and Lautaro Rivas, 46, had been in Amsterdam for a week. They were software guys from Buenos Aires. They liked Amsterdam but the Dutch, they said, were lacking soul. The people here needed a lesson in life from the Latinos. They might have coffee shops here but no tango.
The two Argentines had tired of bland food and come upon this Indonesian place for a little fire in the belly. They wanted meat, like any good carnivorous Argentine. I was worried. I’d eaten at the Pampas-style steakhouses in Buenos Aires. They are the finest in the world. I was worried these two ravenous Argentinians would be more disappointed in the meat dishes here than a Japanese person at Benihana. But they liked it. Whew.
Oddly enough, the next night I strolled into an Argentinian restaurant quite by accident and continued my South American adventure right here in Holland. The empanadas were deelish. So were te jump prawns. Just that they looked at me the entire time that I ate them.
Our first view was just five minutes after we got off the train from Copenhagen. There it was, in all its magnificent glory, though less ominous than I had imagined it perhaps because of this glorious day. There was hardly a cloud in the sky; the brisk breeze whipped my hair about my face as we walked toward the grand.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles…
My companion for the day, journalist Jacqui Banaszynski, and I walked up to the castle, crossed the moat and looked out to the sea that separates Denmark from Sweden. How cold it must be here in the middle of January, we thought. An equally chilly history accompanied us through our tour. We learned of a fire that ravaged the castle, an attack and capture by the Swedes, of Bubonic Plague halving the nearby town’s population.
We climbed to the top and stood awed by the majestic views of sea and sky. And then descended on the stairs thinking of the madness, rage, grief, revenge and moral corruption Shakespeare so eloquently gave us in his play.
We didn’t have time to stick around for the Hamlet tour. Instead we walked back to the town of Helsingor, where we stopped for a drink at an Italian cafe in one of the town’s main streets. From bard to beer, Jacqui announced.
The last day of a 12-month deployment in Iraq for the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Infantry Brigade. The long journey home started with an incredible thunderstorm over Baghdad.
Even at the height of Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars were but a rude blip in the minds of a majority of Americans. Our military is made up of those who volunteer their services. Most Americans are disconnected from the men and women who serve in uniform.
A smaller share of Americans serve in the Armed Forces now than at any other time in our history except for the period between the two world wars. Unless you have a loved one of friend in the military, unless you live by a military base, you probably don’t think much about the sacrifices of service members. Aside from the magnetic yellow ribbons that adorn cars, there’s not even many visible reminders that America has been at war for a dozen long years.
How many families are separated? How many children are growing up without daddies and mommies? How many lives are broken by wounds that cannot heal? How many lives, lost?
In 2010, on the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan war, I traveled to Watertown, New York, to write a CNN story about a place I knew was constantly reminded. Fort Drum, home of the 10th Mountain Division, sits on the edge of Watertown. The division’s soldiers led the charge into Afghanistan and its many brigades and battalions have done multiple tours of both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Watertown is also my husband’s hometown of sorts. He was born in nearby Carthage but as a boy, he lived in Watertown for nine years. I had been visiting the area for a number of years and knew very well that war’s toll was greater here than where I live in Atlanta.
Up there, in the North Country as the locals call it, war makes unwanted, life-arresting visits; crashes into homes and entire neighborhoods just as assuredly as a January blizzard. If you like, you can read my CNN story.
In Watertown and in military homes across America, war is a constant. Let us make it a constant in our homes just for one day.
This is the closest I will come to emulating Frida. Ha.
If you live in the Atlanta area and have not seen the High Museum’s Frida & Diego exhibit yet, you are missing out. The show closes Sunday, so GO!
I became a fan of Frida Kahlo after reading Hayden Herrera’s biography in 1983. Fan might be an understatement. I should say I became obsessed with Friday. I went to Mexico City and spent hours in the garden of the Blue House in Coyacan, where Frida and Diego lived for many years.
I’d seen most of the paintings on display at the High before, but I never tire of seeing Frida’s work. The exhibit also includes numerous photographs.
In her life, Frida, of course, was overshadowed in every sense of the word by Diego Rivera. He was larger than life — already established as one of Mexico’s finest painters and commissioned to paint his murals in important places. I am glad to see Frida take her place next to him in this exhibit. As an equal, if not more.
“Oh, oh Telephone Line, give me some time, I’m living in twilight.”
That was Electric Light Orchestra singing a song about a man wishing his love would just pick up the phone. Back then, it was probably a phone that looked a lot like this one at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina.
I was so happy to see it, one among an entire row of them hanging on a wall. I didn’t really need to call the front desk but I did anyway. Just to pick up the shiny black hand-set and say: “Hello.”
I miss old-school telephones. I miss them at airports and in booths along the street. Sure, I use an iPhone. But I don’t enjoy chatting on end on a mobile device. I used to do that with a regular phone, one that was attached with its own umbilical cord to the earth.
To quote ELO again (what’s come over me?): “I just can’t believe … They’ve all faded out of view yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Doowop dooby doo doowop doowah doolang.
