February 2002
I don’t have an American flag on my car or my front door. But I’m more of a patriot than Attorney General John Ashcroft, who studies the U.S. constitution as if it were a menu in a fashionable Washington, D.C., restaurant from which he’s free to pick and choose.
Amid Plenty
Anuradha Mittal On The True Cause Of World Hunger
The United Nations estimates that around 830 million people in the world do not have adequate access to food. Numbers, though, distance us from the real pain felt by the hungry. Hunger is a form of torture that takes away your ability to think, to perform normal physical actions, to be a rational human being. There are people in my own country, India, who for months have not had a full stomach, who have never had adequate nutrition. This sort of hunger causes some to resort to eating anything to numb the pain: cats, monkeys, even poisonous roots.
Hell
Ten minutes into a recent flight from San Jose to St. Louis, I was reveling in a first-class upgrade and a new Margaret Atwood novel when I felt and heard a powerful thump. The aircraft, which had been gaining altitude, rocked vigorously.
Moo
We’re at this motel in Kerrville, Texas, where we’ve come so my friend Shulami can receive her next chemo treatment and have the conversation she’s been avoiding with the doctor. She has neglected to tell me that her cancer has spread, despite the most recent course of treatment.
A Month Without Rest
Travel Notes From Israel During The Intifada
My first night, I am awakened at two in the morning by either a bomb or a gunshot; I can’t tell which. Then at 4 A.M. the Jews start singing their sad song down at the Wailing Wall, followed by the bells from al-Aqsa Mosque at 4:45: the sounds of two great monotheistic religions disturbing a good night’s rest.
How To Prosper During The Coming Bad Years
In the summer of 1979, I fell ruinously in love with a coltish, athletically robust Greek girl of fifteen named Nicole Liarkos . When I think of her now (which isn’t very often), I always imagine her poolside, her creamy caramel skin twice bisected by the triple triangles of her buttercup yellow bikini, her left arm blocking the sun from her eyes.
