Dispatches | Page 32

Currency Exchange

November 9, 2011 Dispatches

There’s a big church conference in West Berlin and the streets are amazingly crowded, but many shops are closed. It’s the perfect day, we decide, to visit East Berlin, the land of Godless communism, as my husband Bob calls it. We hope to find bookstores selling cheap editions of classic books (Marx, Goethe). Also, because we are traveling on a tight budget, as always, we hope for some inexpensive but substantial meals. The Wall has been down for about seven months, but East and West are not yet unified, and they still have separate currencies.

La France Sauvage

November 2, 2011 Dispatches

By JULIA LICHTBLAU

David and I leave our children, thirteen and ten, watching television in our rented house in Barjac, a village in southern France, to go hiking. They often fight like scorpions in a jar, but are best friends right now. “Bye,” they wave, eyes screen-ward. We don’t expect to be long. But after ten days of family vacation, we crave time alone together.

The Longnook Seal

October 26, 2011 Dispatches

By STEPHEN HAVEN

That summer I was reading Henry Adams, the Gulf bled crude
That did not quite wash up in Louisiana bayous.
I tracked his mind forward and back in time. The gist of it
Did not rise. Adams thought the planet would survive

In Search of a Ghostly Sea

October 20, 2011 Dispatches

By TARA FITZGERALD

Fifty years ago the white-crested waves of the Aral Sea broke over the top of the bluff I am standing on. Today there is not a single drop of water here. This place is called the graveyard of ships, where skeletal vessels marooned on sand dunes wait for a sea that will never return. The rusting hulks of twelve ships covered in chalk graffiti are the remains of what was once a thriving maritime and fishing industry in the now-defunct port of Moynaq, which lies in the northwestern corner of Uzbekistan. I climb down from the bluff to examine the ship corpses. The air is heavy and stultified; I feel so light-headed that I lean against the sun-baked metal for support. Looking up at the wall several meters above me, I imagine the weight of the water-that-was pressing down upon me.

Dickens in Paris

October 12, 2011 Dispatches

By MANISHA SHARMA

We had no plans to visit Paris that winter. I was at the end of the second trimester of a difficult first pregnancy, when a few hours away from the comfort of home were all my hundred-pound body could afford. We were living in Salem, Virginia, five thousand miles from all our family in India.

October 8 – The Dow Closes Up 11006

October 5, 2011 Dispatches

By SUSAN BRIANTE

3 things were called into the somehow of morning
two dissimilar metals + moisture = electricity
and me here dimmed, all yesterday I wrote

The DMZ Sanctuary

September 28, 2011 Dispatches

By LYNNE WEISS

Some say it’s the most dangerous place in the world, but that might depend on your species. Surrounded by barbed wire, minefields, and soldiers, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea seems anything but, yet this strip of land a couple of miles wide and about a 160 miles long is a safe and peaceful haven for plants and animals. There has been almost no human activity within it for over 50 years.

The Cabin

September 21, 2011 Dispatches

By JIM KROSSCHELL

In 1964, as a kind of recompense for, or salvation from, moving us to the treeless, waterless plains of Minnesota, my parents joined with Henry, my mother’s brother, in the purchase of a cabin in northern Michigan, and for seven summers thereafter we escaped. It was three months of heaven after nine months of hell. I remember it, vividly; the memories are icons, glassed-in and shimmering like relics of the Church.

The Flower Bar

September 14, 2011 Dispatches

By PETER J. STERN

Shuji Kawashima stood at the door of his Tokyo flower shop, bowing at a three-quarter angle with sharp, reflexive motions to a female customer who returned the gesture. She backed out into the street, clutching a sheaf of flowers wrapped in heavy cellophane. Kawashima reentered the shop, edged his way past a workbench, and ducked behind an impromptu counter. Peering out from behind a row of tall vases topped with multi-colored roses, he reached for a wine bottle and began pouring drinks.

In the West

September 7, 2011 Dispatches

By MICHAEL LESLIE

I remember how the air smelled, of eucalyptus and the Pacific. I was sitting under green corrugated fiberglass panels in an open-air classroom a mile from Santa Monica beach when President Kennedy got shot in the head and neck. Dallas was my hometown, and I started fourth grade back at the scene of that crime. A year later, we moved again, this time to New Hampshire.

All posts tagged: Dispatches

Currency Exchange

La France Sauvage

The Longnook Seal

In Search of a Ghostly Sea

Dickens in Paris

October 8 – The Dow Closes Up 11006

The DMZ Sanctuary

The Cabin

The Flower Bar

In the West

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