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Street Fighters
A neighborhood in central Caracas bears the marks of dueling political groups. Armored vehicles roll down the street, ringed by dozens of police in riot gear. Further down on the palm tree-lined...
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Unearthing Another War
Separatist fighters survey the steppe after recapturing Saur-Mogila from Ukrainian forces. In the frigid autumn sunlight I climbed the stone steps of Saur-Mogila. The burial mound, located atop a bluff...
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Mazatlán
Mazatlán. Eli Duke, via Flickr, edited The sun was sinking, the day finally ending. I sat on the beach in Mazatlán, propped against my pack, swim trunks still damp under my jeans. At this hour, the...
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Helpers
At a vigil in Paris the night after the November 13 attacks. Garry Knight, via Flickr It was the last night of my conference in Paris, and I was sitting with some new friends in a Brazilian restaurant...
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Halva with Tea
It’s a small coffee shop, a Shingle-style shack with blue trim, listed by Yelp as one of Laguna Beach’s best. Cookies and biscotti lie in a basket in front of the order window. The barista, an upbeat...
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Choosing What to Trade
“H ey, Ching-Chong. Bus fee.” The driver’s words slapped me across the face. I handed him some money and waited for my change. Everyone on the bus was silent, watching. “Here you go, Chong-Chong,” he...
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Only Poor People Take the Bus
Hopewell-Mann is a predominantly Latino neighborhood in the predominantly Latino city of Santa Fe. Close enough to downtown to make it a short commute, yet a world away so that tourism doesn’t quite...
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Waiting in Antalya
A Free Syrian Army soldier walks down a ruined Aleppo street in 2012. Voice of America, via Wikimedia It’s the late morning, and my wife Mardena and I are headed back to our hostel in Antalya, a city...
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Failing Grades
Photo by Patrick Emerson, via Flickr Man, I don’t know any of this stuff!” It was Lamar, one of my fifth-grade students. He and his classmates were taking a reading assessment. Within minutes, Lamar...
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Human Subjects
Photo by Amy, via Flickr In 2013 I moved to Ndola, a city in northern Zambia, to work on an HIV research project. Ndola is the hub of the country’s copper mining industry, a bustling commercial center...
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Ghost Lives
The city of Oaxaca’s zócalo, or central plaza. M. Thierry, via Flickr “Mira!” Erika wagged a slim forefinger toward vendors, gawkers, and ice cream-smeared toddlers moving through the city of Oaxaca’s...
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Canary in the Coal Mine: A Conversation with First Nations Activist Carol Prior
Carol Prior, a key activist in a grassroots movement to stop the Carmichael mining project in Australia. Photo by Alex Bainbridge, Green Left Weekly. In Australia, a new mining megaproject threatens to...
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Collateral Damage: A Review of Helen Benedict’s Wolf Season
Wolf Season By Helen Benedict Bellevue Literary Press. 320 pages. In her latest novel Wolf Season, Helen Benedict tells the stories of three women in a small town in upstate New York coping with the...
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All Your Bases Belong to Us: A Conversation with Japanese Activist Hiroshi Inaba
More than six decades after America’s post-World War II occupation of Japan officially ended, more than 50,000 US troops remain there. Over half of them are stationed on the southern Japanese island of...
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Back to the Wall
It’s noon during an Arizona July, the temperature upward of 115 degrees, and I’m in the middle of my shift at a neighborhood bar off I-10 in Marana, just north of Tucson. The screen door bangs,...
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Street Fighters
A neighborhood in central Caracas bears the marks of dueling political groups. Armored vehicles roll down the street, ringed by dozens of police in riot gear. Further down on the palm tree-lined...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Resilience
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | September 2020: Resilience The pandemic has forced everyone to reconsider how to live, survive, and cope during a time of loss, economic upheaval, and...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Frenemies
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | August-September 2014: Frenemies “Frenemies”: friends with fewer benefits. It’s often an apt term to describe our working lives, where polite interactions...
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Call for Submissions: Openings and Closings
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | December 2021: Openings and Closings For many people, life nowadays is a state of continual transition. Economies shut down, then reopen, then shut down...
View ArticleCall for Submissions: Frenemies
In The Fray Magazine | Call for Submissions | August-September 2014: Frenemies “Frenemies”: friends with fewer benefits. It’s often an apt term to describe our working lives, where polite interactions...
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