Prospects for peace seemed especially bleak at the beginning of 1989. Detente appeared on the brink of collapse. Washington showed a clear hand in the Soviet Union’s protracted war in Afghanistan. A scheduled meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping meant a possible end to the Sino-Soviet split, and a renewed alliance against the US. More»
Hollywood’s White House
The Academy Awards had its share of surprises, but none more significant than the end of broadcast cutaway to the White House, where the First Lady helped presenter Jack Nicholson announce the winner of the Oscar for Best Picture. Like many of the media events sculpted for the Obama Presidency, this high-tech exchange stopped many viewers short. More»
Turkish Psych Mix
Not long after 9/11, San Francisco’s best record store began stocking up on reissues of Turkish psychedelia. The third wave of musical imports from the Middle East taken up by US hipsters (beginning with their adoption of Ofra Haza in the mid-1980s,) the timing was entirely appropriate. Amidst the wreckage of the World Trade Center, Americans were finding themselves drawn to the sounds of the Islamic New York. More»
Seoul Bomb Attack
My first impulse was to run. Seeing the footage on the video screen, I feared for the worst. The North had attacked, and we were watching it on TV, somewhere deep underneath Seoul. “I’m gonna have to photograph that,” I erupted, hoping that I was being neurotic. As the sequence of events flashed in front of me, depicting a staged raid on South Korea’s capitol, I came to my senses. This was just a training video. More»
Italy for Latinos
Versace. Benetton. Dolce and Gabbana. Whenever foreigners utter the word ‘Milan’, it usually conjures up luxury brands. Not Ecuadorean migrants. During the year that I lived there, Italy’s fashion capitol became synonymous with an entirely different set of signifiers: Colorful Spanish-language flyers for charismatic Christian festivals, and Peruvian big band gigs. More»
Death of a Promise Keeper
The flag should have been the give-away. For the past eleven years, the Stars and Stripes had been flying over the house across the street from dawn till dusk. Sometimes I’d see my neighbor putting it to bed, carefully folding it into the triangular shape they taught us to use in the Cub Scouts. More»
Spectacular Bondage
Because we didn’t want our two-year-old daughter’s head to be filled with disturbing images, we had avoided them ourselves. When I headed out to pick up a video for her to watch, it had been hours since the first attack. Walking into Blockbuster, I expected to see what I always saw, with new movie releases playing on its many television screens. But every single one of them was tuned to CNN. They were showing the footage of the second plane’s strike that had just become available. More»
The American Monopoly
The morning I returned from the US, every paper was carrying the same cover story: Six Italian soldiers had been killed by a suicide bomber in Kabul. Corriere Della Serra, La Repubblica, even the local edition of The Metro, all seemed to be working with the same set of photos of the event’s aftermath. For the first time since we’d moved to Milano, it was like overhearing an entire country sighing, simultaneously. From left to right, the reaction was the same. Everyone was in a state of shock. More»
After the Storm
When my mother’s worsening health recently made it necessary for my parents to relocate from the Washington D.C. area, where they had lived for over three decades, to be near me in Tucson, Arizona, I volunteered to drive both their cars across the country. More»
A Pyrrhic Victory
It is no surprise that the assassination of Osama bin Laden has brought a wave of celebration in the United States. I, however, found my sentiments best expressed by 9/11 survivor Harry Waizer:
“If this means there is one less death in the future, then I’m glad for that,” said Mr. Waizer, who was in an elevator riding to work in the north tower when the plane struck the building. He made it down the stairs, but suffered third-degree burns. More»
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