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Lady of Limbo Land
She looked like a human crucifix — arms outstretched, left hand grabbing the wall while the right hand grasped the door, legs clamped. Maria Guadelupe Aranda was in labor.
I didn’t know Lupe when I put my hands on her belly. I didn’t even speak her language.
Importing Nuns to Save American Monasteries
PHILADELPHIA – The monastery’s gray stone mother house stands stoically amid lonesome pine trees and statues of saints. At one time, the Sisters of St. Basil the Great on Fox Chase Road numbered about 150. Today most sisters have quietly retired from
The Politics of the Habit
Faint voices floated from behind the faded drapes that separated the nuns’ portion of the parlor from their visitors’. On my side, an armchair was stationed in front of the curtains, like a theater set for an audience of one. I could only wonder what was waiting on the other side.
Risking the Pope’s Wrath
Pope John Paul II, who recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of his papacy, has issued strong denunciations of women who have tried to widen their role in the Catholic Church. Just a week before the liberal Loretto Sisters met, he called for “just punishment,” including excommunication, for those who support ordination of women.
The Masada Complex
(JERUSALEM) — Readers have been exposed to a great many words lately about the Islamic resurgence, some of them coming from this very typewriter. A rebirth of Koranic zeal helps explain to Westerners the recurring episodes of what looks to us like bizarre
End or Begin?
CAIRO – Hassan AI-Tuhami is one of those men who, at first sight, conveys to you a special presence, and even something more. I had asked for an interview because he is known as Anwar Sadat’s eminence grise, and apart from Sadat himself
Israel: Revisionism Resurgent
(JERUSALEM) – It came so suddenly, this surge of power from the Revisionists, and no one expected it at all. Menachem Begin, their political leader for so many years, was an authentic hero of the war of independence. Vladimir Jabotinsky was Begin’s intellectual
Islam As Raison D’Etat
What is this religious fervor that is gripping the Islamic world? Institutional Islam has toppled a government in Iran, threatens a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, executed a former prime minister in Pakistan. Interpreters say that the huge influx of wealth from
Impossible Dreams
(JERUSALEM) – The “melting pot” is an American concept, without bearing in the Holy Land. In the Old City of Jerusalem, where the great religions exalt their symbols of spirituality, Moslems, Christians and Jews rub shoulders in crowded streets, and barely stop to
Defining Islamic Terms
This article was written before the seizure of the United States Embassy in Teheran by student followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Some time ago, writers adopted the convenient habit of categorizi
Adapting on the Atoll
(Alicia Patterson Reporter, Spring 2009) Tuvalu Map FUNAFUTI, TUVALU – Karl Tili joined the Tuvalu Philatelic Bureau in 1976, when the former Ellice Islands colony first began to produce its own stamps in the early years of self-government leading up to independence. He
The Complicated Problem of Stopping the Poaching of Wild Animals
March, 2009 – GORONGOSA NATIONAL PARK, Mozambique — For years, the rangers at this long-struggling national park knew about Tato Alexandre. They knew how the slim farmer crossed the muddy Pungue River into their protected area, and how he looped wires around trees
Trying Out a New Country Before Climate Requires They Move
In a Strange Land August, 2008 – BAY OF PLENTY, New Zealand – Of all the adjustments she’s had to make since arriving in New Zealand, Annabelle Lolo Palota says one of the biggest struggles has been getting acclimatized to the climate.
Against the Rising Tide
(Alicia Patterson Reporter, Summer 2008) WELLINGTON, New Zealand — On October 1, 1975, the British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands officially split in two, with the nine small coral atolls of the Ellice Islands reclaiming their traditional name of Tuvalu. Exactly
Canadian Wetlands Produce Fuel for U.S.
Like a great silver snake, the Athabasca River glides though a spongy-wet wilderness of spindly forests, lakes and marshes 650 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border. Breathe deeply, though, and you catch a whiff of fresh, hot tar. In the river, fish are
Investigative Report: Promises and Poverty
Starbucks calls its coffee worker-friendly,but in Ethiopia, a day’s pay is a dollar Text and photos by (APF Fellow) Tom Knudson – Bee Staff Writer APF fellow Tom Knudson’s article on Starbucks was published jointly by the Sacramento Bee and the Alicia Patterson
How the Bush administration reversed decades of progress on mine safety
On the afternoon of September 23, 2001, thirty-two miners were repairing drilling machines and hoisting tunnel supports into place in the No. 5 mine of Jim Walter Resources Inc., in Brookwood, Alabama. The No. 5 is North America’s deepest coal mine, tracking the
A Union Once Again Woos Underpaid Farmworkers
April, 2007 – Lerdo, California — Ryan Zaninovich is standing in the middle of his vineyard, surrounded by the men and women who pick his grapes and tend his vines. In khaki pants, work boots and his favorite cap, the blond boss has
White Ceiling: The Alarming Result of 50 Years of Integration in Corporate America
Five decades years after President John F. Kennedy launched an ambitious effort to integrate the workplace, a white ceiling still exists. The difference now is that white women are part of the problem. In 2009, more than 40 percent of the Fortune 100
“Gone Time” Lives Anew in Alabama
MARION, Alabama – Reese Billingsley, insurance salesman and member of the county’s tiny black middle class, eased his Model-T Ford off the dirt road into the cotton field, and blew the horn. “You see, she told me not to come up to the
Gang Life In Los Angeles: The East Side Story
Good Intentions Gone Awry: The U.N. Leaves Cambodia
Bad Comedy at America’s Biggest Environmental Mess
Sexism in Washington: Breaking the Silence
Jailing Juveniles
Revisiting the Thomas-Hill Hearings
Peacekeeping in Cambodia: Breathing Space
Fringe Banking
Willie Brown: The Play for Power
Willie Brown: The Early Years
Photo Essay: Gangs of East Los Angeles
Adding Up The Latino Fractions
The Costly “Banks” That Welcome The Poor
“Rent-to-Own”: The Slick Cousin of Paying on Time
Chaos Unlimited: The Gap Between Theory and Practice in the New Hungary
Children of Rescue
Opportunity’s Dance with One North Carolina Family
Loan Scams
Life and Death in St. Petersburg
Project Rachael: Regretting Abortions
Staying in the Southern Highlands Against the Odds
Happiness and Despair in Guatemala
How a Campaign for Racial Trust Turned Sour
Approaching Financial Meltdown
How a Campaign for Racial Trust Turned Sour
A Gay Family
The Ways and Means of Holding on in the Highlands
Bill Brock’s Global Visions
How the Soviets Destroyed a Sea in Thirty Years
Living at Home: Money and Migration
How It Was: The Bedrock of the Appalachian Dilemma
The Quiet Renewal of the Japan Chip Pact
The Fulcrum that Could Rock Russia and Iran
The Suffering of Guatemala’s Indigenious People
The Future of Black Colleges and Universities
The Failed Crusade Against Airbus
The Strange State of Soviet Central Asia
Outlawing Chemical Weapons
Aftermath of a Massacre in Guatemala
Tropic of Illusions
Re-Inventing the Wheel
Queer Rage
Guatemala’s Refugees
Pity is a Four-Letter Word
Help for Strangers in a Strange Land
The Devastating Power of Racial Belligerence
