Articles
Essays
A Motown 'Silent Night' That Echoes Down the Years
In the winter of 1989, I lost my mind and moved from the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Detroit, an inexplicable adventure that led me to discover sub-zero temperatures, some of the best musicians in the Western Hemisphere and my nominee for the best Christmas songs ever recorded... (read more)
A Sense of Red Petals and Snowfall
When the heavy snows fell this month, making the red roses and carnations of street vendors seem a deeper shade than the store-bought variety, I bought the next to last rose from the man in the rusty wool cap at the corner of Beaubien and Monroe... (read more)
In a Mississippi Town, A Late Summer
They got Edgar Ray yesterday. Not the black people he so detests. Not the reporters from New York and Washington and London, whom he loves to taunt and threatens to shoot. Not the card-carrying ACLU commies... (read more)
People
In Sri Lanka, a New Wave Of Pain; Doctor Tries to Ease Mental Devastation
Ganesan is a rare man in Sri Lanka.
He is a father, husband, and the only psychiatrist for 1.3 million of the world's most traumatized people. His roving practice along this island nation's eastern shore stretches over 150 miles, all of it devastated by last week's tsunami... (read more)
Denyce Graves, After the Low Notes; D.C.-Born Mezzo-Soprano Reclaims the Stage, Her Life
Night is falling outside, somewhere far above a small dressing room in the bowels of the Kennedy Center.
Denyce Graves closes the door. A dim fluorescent light glows overhead. The impossibly long fingers of her left hand spread over an octave on an upright piano. She hits the notes, once, twice, warming up her throat by blowing out through her lips. Bbbbbrrrrrr. Bbbbbbrrrr... (read more)
Work Zone; For Kenneth Glover, Making a Life After Prison Is a 24/7 Job
The life of Kenneth "Boo" Glover started with broken glass and a fistfight, and then it got worse.
As an infant, he was abducted by his father in the bitterness of divorce. His mother, Barbara Jean Glover -- lean, gravel-voiced, hard-knuckled, of East Capitol and 58th streets -- found her child at her mother-in-law's house. She shattered the glass front door, knocked the woman down, kicked her in the face, punched out two of her teeth and walked out with her baby boy... (read more)
Croom Redraws The Color Line; SEC's First Black Football Coach Alters South's Racial Perceptions
Sylvester Croom is sitting in the front seat of the Mississippi State football team bus, watching the pasture land roll by, the fields given over to cotton and hay and hardwoods and now and again a lonesome stand of pine, trees stretching 60 feet into the late autumn sky... (read more)
Dispatches
Rwandans See Justice in Bullets Firign Squads Claim 22 Genocide Leaders
Six executioners in a white van came through the angry crowd of 30,000 people jammed around a red dirt soccer field. They stopped 30 feet from where four condemned prisoners stood lashed to stakes... (read more)
Village Of Lost Souls; The Waters Recede, Along With Hope
The dreams of the nine-fingered man are filled with visions of the dead. There are hundreds of bodies in these dreams, rag dolls that no longer dance and sing but only float along with the tide amid the palm trees and rubble, grotesque puppets with the strings cut loose... (read more)
A Final Journey Home Saved From Darkness, Survivor May Be Last
The explosion at the U.S. Embassy that killed nearly 200 people picked up Samuel Nganga, lifted him into the air and shot him down a hallway into what should have been a grave of collapsed steel and concrete... (read more)
