Damien Cave (New York Times): In Havana or Rio de Janeiro, well, big deal. But historically this has been a city of formalities, of long-sleeved shirts, not skin-tight skirts. Blushing has generally been the response to overt sexuality, along with a lexicon of double entendres to mask X-rated desires with banal words, like “coger” (which, officially speaking, means to grab).
And yet, despite such reserve — or perhaps because of it — public affection has increasingly become a symbol of what experts describe as a city learning to loosen up. Government officials here now boast about having some of Latin America’s most liberal laws on abortion and same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, sex shops can now be found in even the fanciest neighborhoods; oh, and this month, Mexico City played host to a five-day sex entertainment show that drew 120,000 fans — placing it among the biggest sex fairs in the world.
-eddie
March 31, 2011
Nutrition of insects
Marcel Dicke and Arnold Van Hus (Wall Street Journal): At the London restaurant Archipelago, diners can order the $11 Baby Bee Brulee: a creamy custard topped with a crunchy little bee. In New York, the Mexican restaurant Toloache offers $11 chapulines tacos: two tacos stuffed with Oaxacan-style dried grasshoppers.
Could beetles, dragonfly larvae and water bug caviar be the meat of the future? As the global population booms and demand strains the world's supply of meat, there's a growing need for alternate animal proteins. Insects are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc, and they're low in fat. Insects are easier to raise than livestock, and they produce less waste. Insects are abundant. Of all the known animal species, 80% walk on six legs; over 1,000 edible species have been identified. And the taste? It's often described as "nutty."
-eddie
Could beetles, dragonfly larvae and water bug caviar be the meat of the future? As the global population booms and demand strains the world's supply of meat, there's a growing need for alternate animal proteins. Insects are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc, and they're low in fat. Insects are easier to raise than livestock, and they produce less waste. Insects are abundant. Of all the known animal species, 80% walk on six legs; over 1,000 edible species have been identified. And the taste? It's often described as "nutty."
-eddie
Family over Final Four
Dan Wetzel (Yahoo!): At the age of 15, Thabiti “Bruce” Boone watched Magic Johnson and Larry Bird star in the 1979 NCAA Final Four, and a dream was born. One day, he told himself, he’d play in that tournament, captivate the country like those guys, lead one of those magical teams of March.
“The Final Four,” Boone said, “was the thing to do.”
This was no pipe dream. Thabiti Boone may have been a product of a chaotic childhood in his blighted Brooklyn neighborhood. He was already a playground legend, though, a brilliant point guard coming into his own at Erasmus Hall High School. Within a couple years, he’d garner major scholarship offers, head off to the University of Florida and be certain his March Madness moment was at hand.
Now 47, Boone watched the NCAA tournament this month as he always does, cheering on the kids of today, reveling in the dreams they are achieving and no longer feeling a single pang of regret. He never did reach that Final Four like he expected, never did have his one shining moment.
“I have something better,” he said with a smile last week. “Way better.”
-eddie
“The Final Four,” Boone said, “was the thing to do.”
This was no pipe dream. Thabiti Boone may have been a product of a chaotic childhood in his blighted Brooklyn neighborhood. He was already a playground legend, though, a brilliant point guard coming into his own at Erasmus Hall High School. Within a couple years, he’d garner major scholarship offers, head off to the University of Florida and be certain his March Madness moment was at hand.
Now 47, Boone watched the NCAA tournament this month as he always does, cheering on the kids of today, reveling in the dreams they are achieving and no longer feeling a single pang of regret. He never did reach that Final Four like he expected, never did have his one shining moment.
“I have something better,” he said with a smile last week. “Way better.”
-eddie
Brothers in Gaddafi's war
Colin Freeman (The Telegraph): The doctors at Benghazi's Al Hawari hospital have no real idea how to prepare Ali Senusi for the news that awaits him when he is finally brought out of sedation in Bed No 2 of the intensive care unit.
First, the 26-year-old Libyan will be told that he has lost his left leg, the result of an emergency amputation after it was shredded by a shell during Colonel Gaddafi's siege of the nearby town of Ajdabiyah.
Then, depending on how he copes, will come the rest of the story, which will put his own plight into grim perspective.
Lying over in Bed 8, he will learn, is his brother Abdelbaset, 19, who has lost not one leg but two.
Up on floor three, meanwhile, is his brother, Illafy, 23, who has lost an arm.
Finally, he will be told about his other brothers Ezzat, 33, and Saif, 29, who rest not in hospital beds but in a morgue.
-eddie
First, the 26-year-old Libyan will be told that he has lost his left leg, the result of an emergency amputation after it was shredded by a shell during Colonel Gaddafi's siege of the nearby town of Ajdabiyah.
Then, depending on how he copes, will come the rest of the story, which will put his own plight into grim perspective.
Lying over in Bed 8, he will learn, is his brother Abdelbaset, 19, who has lost not one leg but two.
Up on floor three, meanwhile, is his brother, Illafy, 23, who has lost an arm.
Finally, he will be told about his other brothers Ezzat, 33, and Saif, 29, who rest not in hospital beds but in a morgue.
-eddie
In Japan
Erin Cox (Hometown Annapolis): SOMA, Japan - I was supposed to be flying over the Pacific that day, back to a world of stable ground and familiar comforts. Instead, I was crammed into the back of a taxi heading toward a nuclear meltdown and fretting about how much radiation I would ingest.
-eddie
-eddie
Boy without a cerebellum
Lisa Holewa (AOL.com): Heather and David Britton want everyone to understand a few things about their giggling, bespectacled 3-year-old son, Chase.
"He's happy. We call him the Little Gremlin. He loves to play tricks on people. He loves to sing. His goal in life is to make people smile," Heather Britton told AOL News.
"He's got so much love around him. We're an extremely happy family. His story is not tragic."
But to an outsider, the Brittons' story might seem heartbreaking.
-eddie
"He's happy. We call him the Little Gremlin. He loves to play tricks on people. He loves to sing. His goal in life is to make people smile," Heather Britton told AOL News.
"He's got so much love around him. We're an extremely happy family. His story is not tragic."
But to an outsider, the Brittons' story might seem heartbreaking.
-eddie
A school, a graveyard
John M. Glionna (Los Angeles Times): Workers carried the boy's small frame up a muddy rise from the school, laying it beside several other covered bodies. Masako Karino calmly lifted the brown shroud from her child's face, and she and her husband moved their hands along the body, a silent gesture of reassurance, as if to say, "Everything is going to be OK, son." Then, slowly, they carried his body to a waiting truck.
-eddie
-eddie
After the loss
Barry Svrluga (Washington Post): PALM HARBOR, FLA. — It was after midnight when the last photo slid into the last envelope, and Chad and Jamie Cordero were done, finally, with their Christmas cards. The pictures were perfect: Jamie holding 18-month-old Riley, and Chad, the erstwhile closer of the Washington Nationals, standing and beaming. His right arm — the one the Nationals worked so hard, the one that eventually wore out — tight around his baby daughter Tehya, whose head, wrapped with a bow, reflected the meaning of her name: precious.
With the photos ready to send, the Corderos flipped off the TV in their Huntington Beach, Calif., home. Riley and Tehya were sleeping at Chad’s parents’ house some 40 miles away in Chino, his home town. Jamie was fresh off surgery to fix an old gymnastics injury. The crutches made it difficult to get around. A night off to prep for the holidays. Normal parenting stuff.
Nothing since that night — since the phone rang and they raced to the car and drove like hell, only to discover their baby girl Tehya had died — has been normal. They now know statistics about SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, and have met parents like themselves, with losses new and old, nearly all of them still wondering, “Why us?”
-eddie
With the photos ready to send, the Corderos flipped off the TV in their Huntington Beach, Calif., home. Riley and Tehya were sleeping at Chad’s parents’ house some 40 miles away in Chino, his home town. Jamie was fresh off surgery to fix an old gymnastics injury. The crutches made it difficult to get around. A night off to prep for the holidays. Normal parenting stuff.
Nothing since that night — since the phone rang and they raced to the car and drove like hell, only to discover their baby girl Tehya had died — has been normal. They now know statistics about SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, and have met parents like themselves, with losses new and old, nearly all of them still wondering, “Why us?”
-eddie
Four days of brutality
New York Times: As the four of us headed toward the eastern gate of Ajdabiya, the front line of a desperate rebel stand against the advancing forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, a car pulled up alongside.
“They’re in the city!” the driver shouted at us. “They’re in the city!” Lynsey and Steve had worried that government soldiers might encircle the town, trapping us, but Tyler and Anthony discounted it. We had covered the fall of two other rebel-held towns — Ras Lanuf and Brega — and each time, the government had bombed and shelled the towns for days before making a frontal, methodical assault.
When they did, rebels and journalists fled in a headlong retreat. If Ajdabiya fell, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces would be on the doorstep of Benghazi, the opposition capital, and perched on a highway to the Egyptian border, from where we had entered Libya without visas.
No one really knows the script for days like these, and neither did we.
-eddie
“They’re in the city!” the driver shouted at us. “They’re in the city!” Lynsey and Steve had worried that government soldiers might encircle the town, trapping us, but Tyler and Anthony discounted it. We had covered the fall of two other rebel-held towns — Ras Lanuf and Brega — and each time, the government had bombed and shelled the towns for days before making a frontal, methodical assault.
When they did, rebels and journalists fled in a headlong retreat. If Ajdabiya fell, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces would be on the doorstep of Benghazi, the opposition capital, and perched on a highway to the Egyptian border, from where we had entered Libya without visas.
No one really knows the script for days like these, and neither did we.
-eddie
Suddenly Unwired
Andrew Higgins (Washington Post): ISHINOMAKI, Japan — Nobody tweeted or blogged or e-mailed. They didn’t telephone either. Bereft of electricity, gasoline and gas, this tsunami-traumatized town did things the really old-fashioned way — with pen and paper.
Unable to operate its 20th-century printing press — never mind its computers, Web site or 3G mobile phones — the town’s only newspaper, the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun, wrote its articles by hand with black felt-tip pens on big sheets of white paper.
But unlike modern media, the method worked.
-eddie
Unable to operate its 20th-century printing press — never mind its computers, Web site or 3G mobile phones — the town’s only newspaper, the Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun, wrote its articles by hand with black felt-tip pens on big sheets of white paper.
But unlike modern media, the method worked.
-eddie
March 21, 2011
After the flood
John M. Glionna (Los Angeles Times): Reporting from Nakanosawa, Japan— They covered the body with a child's blanket, a fluffy blue-green cloak decorated with white lilies. Beneath the cloth was a man, maybe in his 40s, missing his right arm from the elbow, a final insult to one of the countless victims of this agricultural town's tsunami nightmare.
On a warm late-winter morning, four recovery workers bent low, slowly lifting the corpse in silent deference, before splashing through the muck and ooze of the rural rice field toward the road.
-eddie
On a warm late-winter morning, four recovery workers bent low, slowly lifting the corpse in silent deference, before splashing through the muck and ooze of the rural rice field toward the road.
-eddie
March 19, 2011
A memorial in his backyard
The Economist: As the smiling customer brought the potted plant to the cash register at DeBaggio Herbs in Chantilly, Virginia, Tom DeBaggio began to panic. The plant was small, with spiny, silvery leaves, woody stems and blue flowers. When rubbed between the fingers it gave off a warm, strong, piney smell, a bit like floor polish. But he did not know what it was. He fumbled for the tag, and when he couldn’t find that, asked his wife Joyce what it could be. She told him, rosemary.
Yet he knew rosemary. He probably loved it more than any other plant in his nursery—though the basils and lavenders were right up there, too. He had once been called the best rosemaryologist in America for the work he had done, combing the world for new varieties or cultivating his own. “Gorizia”, found in Italy, with lobelia-blue flowers; “Madalene Hill”, which could take the worst soil and the coldest weather; “Lottie DeBaggio”, straight and pale-flowered, named after his grandmother; “Joyce DeBaggio”, with gold-edged leaves, named after his wife. The last was possibly his favourite, grown from one small, unusual, yellow branch. But now, in 1999, after 25 years in the nursery, he barely knew any of those familiar friends. Come to that, he was having trouble with the cash register, too.
On a beautiful spring day—weather that urged him into the garden, as if he wasn’t there already potting and watering, planting and selling, for 16 hours a day—the doctor told him he had early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. He was 57. His first reaction was to rage and cry. His second was to go into his greenhouse, where the rosemary plants were in misty, lovely flower, and pull from somewhere the cruel adage that rosemary meant remembrance. But his third reaction was more positive, or desperate. He would try to chronicle for people what having Alzheimer’s was like.
-eddie
Yet he knew rosemary. He probably loved it more than any other plant in his nursery—though the basils and lavenders were right up there, too. He had once been called the best rosemaryologist in America for the work he had done, combing the world for new varieties or cultivating his own. “Gorizia”, found in Italy, with lobelia-blue flowers; “Madalene Hill”, which could take the worst soil and the coldest weather; “Lottie DeBaggio”, straight and pale-flowered, named after his grandmother; “Joyce DeBaggio”, with gold-edged leaves, named after his wife. The last was possibly his favourite, grown from one small, unusual, yellow branch. But now, in 1999, after 25 years in the nursery, he barely knew any of those familiar friends. Come to that, he was having trouble with the cash register, too.
On a beautiful spring day—weather that urged him into the garden, as if he wasn’t there already potting and watering, planting and selling, for 16 hours a day—the doctor told him he had early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. He was 57. His first reaction was to rage and cry. His second was to go into his greenhouse, where the rosemary plants were in misty, lovely flower, and pull from somewhere the cruel adage that rosemary meant remembrance. But his third reaction was more positive, or desperate. He would try to chronicle for people what having Alzheimer’s was like.
-eddie
March 12, 2011
Angel's gospel
Thomas Lake (The Times-Union): BALDWIN -- Imagine being trapped in darkness, unable to speak. Your brain is a mass of blown fuses. Your limbs flail at random. Your only nourishment is a buttery liquid that flows through a hole in your belly.
You will never get better.
But your smile could light a skyscraper.
Music brings you to life. Your chosen songs have more power than the 20 drugs they make you take. But the wrong music is almost as bad as no music at all, and both options make you scream.
This is the world of 11-year-old Angel Rocker, a brown-eyed quadriplegic whose survival seems to hinge on a single playlist. Her mother has burned these 13 contemporary gospel songs to four identical CDs and placed them strategically around the house. They play all day, every day, in what must be one of the most pervasive music-therapy treatments on record.
Mentally challenged children draw comfort from a variety of familiar objects and activities. Many cling to favorite toys or tattered blankets. Others bite themselves or bang their heads. On one level, Angel's fixation looks like another example of classical conditioning -- a sensation-starved child taking pleasure from recognizable rhythms.
But some who know her suggest that Angel's joy goes deeper than sonic waves.
-eddie
You will never get better.
But your smile could light a skyscraper.
Music brings you to life. Your chosen songs have more power than the 20 drugs they make you take. But the wrong music is almost as bad as no music at all, and both options make you scream.
This is the world of 11-year-old Angel Rocker, a brown-eyed quadriplegic whose survival seems to hinge on a single playlist. Her mother has burned these 13 contemporary gospel songs to four identical CDs and placed them strategically around the house. They play all day, every day, in what must be one of the most pervasive music-therapy treatments on record.
Mentally challenged children draw comfort from a variety of familiar objects and activities. Many cling to favorite toys or tattered blankets. Others bite themselves or bang their heads. On one level, Angel's fixation looks like another example of classical conditioning -- a sensation-starved child taking pleasure from recognizable rhythms.
But some who know her suggest that Angel's joy goes deeper than sonic waves.
-eddie
What Time Is It?
Howard Mansfield (New York Times): Not long ago, clocks were thought to be dangerous. Folklore had it that two of them ticking in the same room could bring “sure death.” It’s easy to see how this belief arose. The clocks were almost certain to disagree, and in the space between two chimings of one hour, uncertainty crept in; the machines’ authority was undermined. We don’t like to be reminded that clock time is a convenient fiction.
Daylight saving time, which begins on Sunday, is unsettling in the same way. Winding the clock forward in March and back in November is like biannually changing the measure of an inch.
This tinkering with clocks is our inheritance from a people obsessed with time.
-eddie
Daylight saving time, which begins on Sunday, is unsettling in the same way. Winding the clock forward in March and back in November is like biannually changing the measure of an inch.
This tinkering with clocks is our inheritance from a people obsessed with time.
-eddie
Last words
Leonora LaPeter Anton (St. Petersburg Times): CLEARWATER — They sat around the kitchen table writing his obituary.
"What should we say?" asked his wife, Sherry Old.
His adult son and daughter shook their heads.
-eddie
"What should we say?" asked his wife, Sherry Old.
His adult son and daughter shook their heads.
-eddie
March 11, 2011
Shock and devastation
Chico Harlan (Washington Post): Throughout the country, transportation was halted and mobile-phone networks were jammed. Tokyo's main Narita international airport halted flights for much of Friday afternoon. Stranded salarymen in downtown Tokyo crowded around televisions, watching the NHK network replay a loop of the images: slow-dancing Tokyo skyscrapers and building-blitzing waves. Television footage showed towering walls of water surging toward the shoreline, pulling cars into the surf and discarding ships on land.
-eddie
-eddie
March 3, 2011
The Brief Reads of Eli Saslow
This is our monthly series of briefreads written by some of the most respected bylines to date. It’s a look at how these reporters got to where they are now — at national magazines, writing novels, winning major awards — because they mastered great stories on deadline. We ask: Can you see the evolution of a journalist?
• • •
“Eli Saslow is the best sportswriter in the country. Well, he was.” Now, the Washington Post reporter who covers the life of President Obama will release his first book (“Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President”) this October. Funny, a decade ago, Saslow was cutting vegetables in a college cafeteria.
Here’s a gander at the stories that show how far Saslow’s talents have taken him:
“Saslow bids farewell after heeding words from latest sage,” The Daily Orange, December 6, 2002
My hands blistered from the wooden knife handle. My neck cramped from staring down at the cutting board. My legs ached because I wasn’t allowed to sit down. I made barely $30. . . That’s when I decided to be a sports writer.
“Grabbing Life by the Horns,” The Washington Post, August 13, 2006
There's no room for fear in this business, so Johnny Williams limps onto a field filled with 1,800-pound bulls.
“The Old Ba’ Game,” The Washington Post, December, 2007
He took a swig and handed back the flask. Then he lifted himself up over a wall and dropped back into the riot.
“Three Minutes to Fort Totten,” The Washington Post, June 28, 2009
It was the front half of Car 1079. But in the first instant, it appeared as a rolling, roaring wave that was coming closer and closer. Carpeting near Bottoms's feet began to rise up and crumple like tissue paper. The wave swept within 15 feet in front of Bottoms . . . 10 feet . . . 7.
“Dear Mr. President,” The Washington Post, March 31, 2010
He had always preferred to write by hand, using a yellow legal pad to craft sections of his autobiography and his campaign speeches. Now he took out a black fountain pen and started to write in the top left corner.
"Jennifer," he began.
• • •
Post your favorite Eli Saslow briefreads or tweet us @briefreads. Who else's career should we look back at? (Send us the journalist and the briefreads that made the reporter.)
-eddie
• • •
“Eli Saslow is the best sportswriter in the country. Well, he was.” Now, the Washington Post reporter who covers the life of President Obama will release his first book (“Ten Letters: The Stories Americans Tell Their President”) this October. Funny, a decade ago, Saslow was cutting vegetables in a college cafeteria.
Here’s a gander at the stories that show how far Saslow’s talents have taken him:
“Saslow bids farewell after heeding words from latest sage,” The Daily Orange, December 6, 2002
My hands blistered from the wooden knife handle. My neck cramped from staring down at the cutting board. My legs ached because I wasn’t allowed to sit down. I made barely $30. . . That’s when I decided to be a sports writer.
“Grabbing Life by the Horns,” The Washington Post, August 13, 2006
There's no room for fear in this business, so Johnny Williams limps onto a field filled with 1,800-pound bulls.
“The Old Ba’ Game,” The Washington Post, December, 2007
He took a swig and handed back the flask. Then he lifted himself up over a wall and dropped back into the riot.
“Three Minutes to Fort Totten,” The Washington Post, June 28, 2009
It was the front half of Car 1079. But in the first instant, it appeared as a rolling, roaring wave that was coming closer and closer. Carpeting near Bottoms's feet began to rise up and crumple like tissue paper. The wave swept within 15 feet in front of Bottoms . . . 10 feet . . . 7.
“Dear Mr. President,” The Washington Post, March 31, 2010
He had always preferred to write by hand, using a yellow legal pad to craft sections of his autobiography and his campaign speeches. Now he took out a black fountain pen and started to write in the top left corner.
"Jennifer," he began.
• • •
Post your favorite Eli Saslow briefreads or tweet us @briefreads. Who else's career should we look back at? (Send us the journalist and the briefreads that made the reporter.)
-eddie
When Glenn strikes
NPR: Glenn Beck calls her one of the most dangerous people in the world.
"I'm about 5-foot-6," Frances Fox Piven tells Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. "I'm 78 years old. My hair is partly grey. I'm quite thin."
Piven is a professor at the City College of New York. In 1966, she and her late husband, Richard Cloward, wrote an article for The Nation outlining a plan to help the poor of New York and other big cities to get on welfare.
In their research, they found that not all the poor who were eligible to receive welfare actually did. They advocated that all the nation's eligible poor should apply. They felt such a strain to city budgets would force Washington to address the poverty problem.
Forty-five years later, Beck took to the airwaves of Fox News and his own radio program, warning the public about the obscure article.
"Let me introduce you to the people who you would say are fundamentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system. They're really two people," he said, "Cloward and Piven."
-eddie
"I'm about 5-foot-6," Frances Fox Piven tells Weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. "I'm 78 years old. My hair is partly grey. I'm quite thin."
Piven is a professor at the City College of New York. In 1966, she and her late husband, Richard Cloward, wrote an article for The Nation outlining a plan to help the poor of New York and other big cities to get on welfare.
In their research, they found that not all the poor who were eligible to receive welfare actually did. They advocated that all the nation's eligible poor should apply. They felt such a strain to city budgets would force Washington to address the poverty problem.
Forty-five years later, Beck took to the airwaves of Fox News and his own radio program, warning the public about the obscure article.
"Let me introduce you to the people who you would say are fundamentally responsible for the unsustainability and possible collapse of our economic system. They're really two people," he said, "Cloward and Piven."
-eddie