Category: Personal Essays
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4H First Aid
Heartbroke, homeless, heatwaved and how? Here is a handy recipe: In a Fourth of July morning bowl, mix the following fresh ingredients: Sous-chef’ing green-and-red bell peppers, kabobs and corn A spin around the linoleum with one loca señora to Spanish melodies while a lurking polyglot frau tries to debate the radio off Practicing foreign-language phrases…
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The Science in Property
Being homeless is many things . . . invisibility, hyper organic networking, a byzantine paper procedural, sensory overload, protracted process for simple tasks, truncated opportunity, frustration, default wrongness, loss, social justice 101 streaming live, instant family, and a variable-but strangely-rather equal measure of humility and bravado. It is fluidity and forgetfulness. It is the new…
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Homesickness and the Endless War on Terror
Every spring, the mist over the shallow lakes across Kansas settles quietly in the early morning hours. During the long winter months in Massachusetts, the ponds and bogs encased by bent willows are sprinkled with slipping ducks on slick ice patches. On the mountaintops in California, in early fall, snow kisses their rocky tips, while…
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All Right
There is mourning in America, all right. Curses and slurs and the speech of red-faced hate dominate the broadcasts that appear on our television screens, large and immense black rectangles hung on small walls, the beer cans and whiskey bottles piled high beside the old couches covered with blankets and white sheets. The images, sharp…
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What’s Really Going on in Bahrain: An Interview with Activist Ala’a Shehabi
Ala’a Shehabi is not a woman to be trifled with. Born in the U.K., she earned a Ph.D. from Imperial College London and has worked for prestigious institutions like Rand Europe and the Bahrain Institute for Banking and Finance. At the same time, Shehabi has been active in Bahrain’s ongoing uprising. She was at Pearl…
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Bahrain Shows Two Sides of Ambitious Economic Development
MANAMA, Bahrain—”The name ‘Bahrain’ means ‘two seas,’” our tour guide explained as we walked away from the old Portuguese fort on the outskirts of Manama. “There’s the saltwater sea that surrounds Bahrain. Then there’s the fresh water that bubbles up in the middle of the sea to our north.” The fort itself is breathtaking, set…
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From Local Author to Homelessness and Back Again
I never thought I would end up a homeless veteran. By society’s standards, I did all the right things; I joined the Army, graduated college, and published my first children’s book, The Pet Mouse, on Amazon.com. But time and circumstance can change anyone’s life. In 2009, my life began its unraveling descent into homelessness. Earlier…
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Ev’olutions
In advance of a new release frommultiple awards winning playwright and author Eve Ensler, I attended a production of her seminal work “The Vagina Monologues.” Produced by Cambridge Cooperative at the Central Square YMCA, the play was staged as a V-Day benefit for non-profit My Life, My Choice (MLMC). Created in 1998, V-Day is an…
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Time for Big Green to Go Fossil Free
The movement demanding that public interest institutions divest their holdings from fossil fuels is on a serious roll. At last count, there were active divestment campaigns on 305 campuses and in more than 100 US cities and states. The demand has spread to Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and Britain. And though officially launched just six…