Gives Me the Chills

Okay, it helped that the temperature outside had dropped to the low-20s and the wind was whipping through the valley like a Hare Krishna at O'Hare. Yet even inside the warm UMass-Amherst theatre on Wednesday night I had a good-bad case of chills that only enthusiastic clapping and swaying helped me shake.

The Soweto Gospel Choir was in town and they rocked the house. All 25 musicians over 22 songs, dancing and singing, drumming and strumming for the better part of two hours. From the heights of traditional South African music (sung in Zulu, Sotho or English) to the dig-down-deep of Dylan's I'll Remember You, the ensemble kept the mostly-white audience enthralled.

Personal favorites:

For the Fun of It - the "Canteen Segment" in which the men gathered around a long folding table and played forks, knives, plates and glasses. Campy, inspired, playful. Left me hoping to replicate the event at my next dinner party. Better than food.

For the Power of It - the "Amazing Grace" rendition which started as soloists taking on each verse, from soprano to a rich baritone, but ended in a full-fledged chorus of tongues. Closed my eyes and I was back in Sarasota, Florida at the Pentecostal Church that used to excite me and scare me in equal parts.

For the Ecstasy of It - the seamless blending of Afro Gospel, Afro Jazz, disco and rap that tingled my every sense and left me wanting more - even after three encores. O Happy Day, indeed.

Quiet Men They Were Not

So much for The Quiet Man, the movie Hilda's sister-in-law, Ann Daly, sat me down to watch wrapped in a blanket by a splendid fire one cold night near Cork. I had walked the same bridge John Wayne crossed; I dove off the coast where he raced his horse in the film.

No, quiet men they were not.

As the hostel manager told me the next morning, "it's an unspoken rule among hostels in Ireland: never allow groups of more than two Irish, men or women, to stay at one time. It's almost always a hag or stag party, and even when it's not, they're going to come back causing trouble."

Yeah, the lads have arrived, open bottles in hand and shouts of "oyyyyy-heyyyyy" or some posse-tribal-celtic-football bellow eminating from deep in their bowels straight through their foul mouths. Reminds me how happy I am to be a long way out of college dorm life.

Good thing here at the Old Mill Holiday Hostel I opted for the 7-room women's room instead of the mixed-18. Me and the boys, I'm now thinking, would have quickly become a rowdy hell, in contrast to my day of near solitude.

Earlier on the road out of Galway at 6AM, I watched the clouds and rain pelt the coast and, as I turned inland, the fog began to lift with the calling of the sun. Undeterred by the low temps and moist air, I stopped often to pray, photograph, hike and meet cattle and sheep up close and personal. Connemara is gorgeous, inspiring and peaceful.

Rolling into Clifden, one of the most western towns in Ireland, I followed the only pedestrians I saw. They ably guided me to the only shop open in what is usually a bustling tourist town. Lucky me, the one shop open is my favorite kind of shop: a bakery, one with the usual varieties of soda bread but also spelt cakes and flaky scones. Pleasing the eye as well, it offered a bay window with a view of a ring of lakes, mountains and farms to boot. Down the street I could see the sun glowing on the town's two church steeples as I warmed up with a decaf and slice of moist ginger cake.

15 kilometers further north and east along the shore stands the Quaker-founded Letterfrack, one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it villages. Later in the day I will come back here to tramp through Connemara National Park in the driving rain. For now, though, I do blink and pass it by in pursuit of another adventure, an even wetter one than hiking in a November storm on the west coast of Ireland.

On what is considered Ireland's only fjord (although scientists debate whether it was ever glaciated), Killary Harbour's Glassilaun Beach offers year-round SCUBA diving. The surrounding mountains (the tallest, Mt. Mweelvea stands at 819 meters) and orientation of the bay and harbour provide a protected micro-climate with calmer water than much of the Atlantic coast.

While my dive master enjoyed a drysuit, for which I am not yet certified, I squeezed into 12 millimeters of neoprene - 7 mil longjohn with a 5 mil shortie on top - and hood/gloves/booties. Breffni Gray treated me to a VIP (Victim of Insane Planning or Visionary and Intrepid Photojournalist, maybe Very Idiotic Person?) dive with Scubadive west. He and his brother Cillian are the sons of an Irish pioneer, Shane Gray, the first to open a dive center back in the 60's in Dublin. They run a great program and spent hours with me afterwards reviewing what we saw and giving tips on local hikes, pints and grub. Rather than meeting them dead on a dinner plate, I came within inches of lobster and prawn, crab and scallop, thriving in the cold, clear waters of the Atlantic. Potential food sources were fascinating, but my favorite moment underwater was the last of the hour and not a fish but a bird: a cormorant dive-bombed us in search of its next meal, checked us out and then headed back toward the light. Magnificient.

The pleasures of hot shower, coffee and good company notwithstanding, I bitched to myself as my fingers and toes throbbed in their transition from blue numb nubs to stinging appendages. The rain that had started in the last minutes of the dive let up long enough to give me an hour of damp and windy trekking. Slogging through bog and along gravel trails, finishing in a drizzle, made me wish for:

1. waterproof boots. I am still wearing the Brooks trail running shoes I bought at Transports in Oakland back in August).

2. waterproof housing for my Canon 5D, although I've become adept at shooting through plastic bags in rain. No tools yet for shooting surfers or divers, though.

3. waterproof jacket. Gortex, where are you when I need you? Ania's fuzzy fleece pullover just couldn't compete with the unleashing of the sky.

I stopped at the Acora outlet where I discovered that the wool scarf I bought at a thrift store in County Cork for 3 Euro was selling new for 25. I also dropped in at the Kylemore Abbey only because I happened to be passing by, anyway. More than a century ago a couple visited the area on their honeymoon and fell in love with the mountains and lakes, building a castle on the site in the late 1800s. The wife died soon thereafter and the grieving groom couldn't bear to stay without her. It has since served as a boarding school and Benedictine monastery. Now it's a museum with gorgeous gardens. I skipped the entrance fee and just strolled the gardens, no other guests in sight, through the downpour.

Landing in Westport I headed straight to the health store even before looking for a bed to crash for the night. Speaking of crashing, did I mention I fell, hard, three times on rocks in Lahinch while photographing surfers there yesterday? Yeah, well the images I got weren't worth the bruising on the slick black rocks. On the other hand, turning my ankle (sniper attack again!) on the moonscape of rocks in the Burren was totally worth it.

Staying upright isn't my strength even on dry surfaces, but all the falling I've done over the years has taught me one thing: how to hold onto that camera like a receiver in the Super Bowl.

As I reviewed my old-lady-litany in my head (still feeling the pull of my left hamstring from the Dublin marathon, the tightness in my back from thin mattresses on hostel bunk beds and the injection in my arse at the clinic in Ethiopia three weeks ago, believe it or not) I couldn't wait to rub down with some homeopathic ointment.

Across the street, wouldn't you know it, there was a cool, old stone mill, its rock face glowing in the street lamps. Caught my eye and after photographing it, I realized it is now a hostel. Not bad. Had the dorm room to myself, hung the wet clothes on the furnace and headed to O'Malley's for my first (yes, first, and if you know me you know this is remarkable in the land of fish and chips) order of Irish wedges. Nothing like salty, hot french fries, a bowl of sweet potato-ginger soup and a good draft. Yum.

I drifted easily into sleep only to find that my "private" dorm room was now occupied by my favorite chanting posse of pubsence, fond of visiting my floor and vacuuming my room, flipping on and off lights between three and five in the morning. No locks on the doors, and the hostel manager and other guests were in the second building across the courtyard. They ran each time I threatened them, so I was pretty lucky all in all given the ratio of 14 drunk, young men to one sober, creeky woman.

-7 November 2008

Studs Terkel Dies

Chicago Tribune, November 1, 2008
An excerpt from a story in the Chicago Tribune

The author-radio host-actor-activist and Chicago symbol has died. "My epitaph? My epitaph will be 'Curiosity did not kill this cat,'" he once said.

By RICK KOGAN

Louis Terkel arrived here as a child from New York City and in Chicago found not only a new name but a place that perfectly matched -- in its energy, its swagger, its charms, its heart -- his own personality. They made a perfect and enduring pair.

Author-radio host-actor-activist and Chicago symbol Louis "Studs" Terkel died Friday afternoon in his home on the North Side. At his bedside was a copy of his latest book, "P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening," scheduled for release this month. He was 96 years old."

Studs Terkel was part of a great Chicago literary tradition that stretched from Theodore Dreiser to Richard Wright to Nelson Algren to Mike Royko," Mayor Richard M. Daley said Friday. "In his many books, Studs captured the eloquence of the common men and women whose hard work and strong values built the America we enjoy today. He was also an excellent interviewer, and his WFMT radio show was an important part of Chicago's cultural landscape for more than 40 years."

Beset in recent years by a variety of ailments and the woes of age, which included being virtually deaf, Terkel's health took a turn for the worse when he suffered a fall in his home a few weeks ago."My father lived a long, satisfying and fulfilling but tempestuous life," his son, Dan Terkel, said Friday. "It was a life well lived."

It is hard to imagine a fuller life.

--Go to Democracy Now! for interviews with Studs Terkel in 2007 and 2003.

Gravedigging and Flower Grazing

Old iron foot bridges cross tranquil paths. The gold and red of autumn reflects in the lake below. Groves of pine dotted with a giant sequoia serving as backdrop for the Chinese tourist photos, smell grand in the crisp breeze.

The arboretum and greenhouses offer ancient orchids, ferns, English geranium, even coffee plants from Ethiopia on a botanical world tour of steamy beauty.

The stray cat at my feet meows for attention, sorely lacking in this, the somewhat off-season, at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin.

It is the day after the Feast of All Souls and the limestone wall encircling Glasnevin Cemetery next door beckons to be climbed. As the sun descends behind the clouds, I crawl among three- and four-meter tall monuments to the dead and over moss, around headstones tipping over from the weight of two-hundred years.

Where the loved ones of the O'Donovans, O'Malleys, O'Briens and Others once stood, I now close my eyes and lift in prayer the names of all the souls I've loved who have gone before me. Marion and Hazel, Larry and Corrado, Silas and Tommy, Carl, my grandparents... And, ever present in my prayers and on my mind, DJ.

Being Ireland, there is always a pub nearby to drown one's sorrows. Immediately to the left of the cemetery gate I find the Gravediggers Pub (properly referred to as John Kavanagh), built in 1833. Lifting a glass of Guinness to all the Souls, saints and sinners alike, I again thank God for the journey.

From Beijing to Bekoji

Haile Gebrselassie set a new world record on Sunday at the Berlin Marathon, and three days later his hometown was throwing him a party. Damned if I wasn't going to be there...it's not everyday I find myself in the heart of African distance running and with the opportunity to be the only western correspondent within reach of the world's greatest distance runner moments after an epic event.

So, balking all the advice by locals not to go (thieves, breakdowns, accidents, bad water and risk of malaria), I headed south out of Addis.

The road to Asela is one of the best in the whole of Ethiopia. Newly paved and with fewer bandits waiting for stranded passengers (although the full-body frisk by the military at various points feels almost as dangerous), the road south is, amazingly enough, easily traversed.

After only four hours, including transfer in Nazaret from one rickety minibus to another, my pursuit of Ethiopian distance runners carried me to the Oromo region, birthplace of all but one of its best athletes. Gebrselassie, Derartu Tulu, Kenenisa Bekele, Tirunesh and Ejigayehu Dibaba - all of this year's Olympians and the great Abebe Bikila, in fact, were born here or in nearby Bekoji.

While my contacts in Addis were more concerened with my travel between Addis and Asela, it was the ceremony, itself that proved to be my greatest challenge. Although what happened to my body later in my stay may have been the worst I've ever felt, especially while staying in a mud house.

The Oromo people were hosting a program to honor their Olympians. In addition to bestowing flower wreaths and local handicrafts on the athletes, they also gave them land grants with the hope that the current trend of successful athletes investing in the commercial life of the area would continue. Already, there is Haile's restaurant and Tirunesh's hotel. Derartu's was being built while I was there.

At the stadium (a large field with cinder track and seating for, perhaps, 100 dignitaries) quickly became overrun with many, many thousands of people who traversed rutted dirt roads from further in the countryside primarily by foot, but also horse, bus and taxi to catch a glimpse of the country's heroes.

The swarming crowds were pushed up the hillsides and down into the center of the field by baton-wielding militia. Amazingly, no one seemed to get hurt in the melee and all settled down temporarily for the parade of school children, a marching band and a procession of local hopefuls.

The latter got their chance to run in a 5,000m race, with the men's winner running barefoot and most others running in shoes so worn their toes stuck out in all directions.

Men rode bareback in a brief and wild horse race, followed by their friends dressed in a blend of western clothing and animal skins topped off with flowing wigs of monkey hair. After the races, hundreds of children danced in the greens, yellow and reds of the Ethiopian flag. Teenagers performed martial arts moves, scouts waved and sang, adults cheered.

The crowd went wild each time the athletes stepped on the track - to start the races, to had out awards to the local runners, to shake hands with the Mayor. The brief concert by three of the most popular musicians, including Getachew Hail Mariam, was like a non-event in comparison to the athletes' reception. In Ethiopia, runners ARE the rock stars.

Tirunesh Dibaba, the first professional athlete in all of Ethiopia to have her own website, recently wed fellow Olympian Sileshi Sihine. Their late October wedding was hailed as the "wedding of the millennium" throughout the country.

Dibaba is a four-time world champion, a current world record holder and recently added two Olympic gold medals to her collection. She is pictured here in the green and black shirt, her future husband in the black and white striped shirt to her left (photo right). Haile is behind her in the gray suit and red tie. A man heavy in gold medals, Keninisa Bekele (often spelled Kenenisa in the western press) is pictured in red t-shirt and black jacket. The Tiger Woods of Ethiopia these days, Bekele defended his Olympic 10,000m title and set a new Olympic record in the 5,000m in Beijing this summer.

Runners I met in the Bronx, including Abiyot Endale, connected me with their families here. They gave me food, a place to sleep and shared generously with me.

While my contacts in Addis were more concerned with my travel between Addis and Asela, it was the stampede at the ceremony, itself, followed by the intestinal torture that may be related to the food I ate, the water I drank or the fact that on my first morning I woke with my left eye swollen shut from a mosquito bite. Good thing I shoot with my right eye...

Just when they began applauding me for my adaptability to Ethiopian living, I came apart in every direction. Typical American, afterall.

They nursed me to health with "traditional medicine" and rest.

I now believe in the power of tsabel - holy water. More specifically, I saw the power of belief in its curative properties. The locals told me stories of brain damaged children learning to speak again, of crippled men walking, of those with HIV being cured. All from bathing in and drinking the holy water. I'll leave this story for another time...when I have the stomach to tell you all the gory details!

Diving Dahab

Dateline: 19 September 2008

Traveling across the African continent...from Morocco to Egypt to Ethiopia. A few images to go with my last post...

In order to interview and photograph a former professional runner who now manages a hotel, I took the train about four hours south from Casablanca to Marrakesh. Meriem (a new friend, Siham's sister) and I shared the train cabin with a new mother and her baby, an endless source of fascination for my young friend.

Marrakesh, formally the capital of Morocco, is a Berber enclave and tourist trap - but seen arm-in-arm with my Moroccan mate we avoided the traps and enjoyed the charm of this desert oasis. Boasting one of the largest outdoor markets (sooqs) in Africa, the city is bustling with vendors and buyers by day. At night the market square becomes a huge, rollicking restaurant-party with thousands of people eating at the hundreds of food stalls, encircling the street performers (jugglers, acrobats, fortune-tellers, Arab-style-break dancers) and negotiating prices on cheap goods.

Diving the Red Sea off the coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Dahab, Egypt.

After we returned from Marrakesh, I had just a couple of days before leaving for Ethiopia by way of Egypt. Yes, after difficult communication between me and the only travel agent I could find who spoke even minimal English (mostly we communicated in French, and, no, I don't speak French) I booked a stopover in Egypt for three days. It was cheaper than flying directly to Ethiopia and, well, I've been thinking of diving in the Red Sea since Doug first told me about it a few years ago.

Muhammed and Siham put me on a train to Casablanca, and Meriem's family fed me my last Ramadan meal in Morocco before ushering me off to the train to the airport. This time around I could read the signs, knew the stops and had no difficulty navigating the system - a far cry from my initial discombobulation when I arrived ten days earlier.

Flying Egypt Air to Cairo overnight, I woke to a view of the sun rising over the pyramids. Worth the price of the air ticket, alone!

With only 50 minutes between landing and my connection to Sharm el-Sheik, and in response to my pleas for quick assistance, the Egyptian military flew me through customs.

Outside I immediately had to fend off a horde of men trying to sell me their tour packages. Rushing with my bags to the bus shelter, I again fell on the mercy of the military for help getting to the terminal in the absence of the bus. Not having had time to stop and exchange my Moroccan dirham for Egyptian pounds, the men with the guns hailed a taxi for me, instructing the driver not to charge me. I tipped the driver with a few US dollars and made my connection on time. Whew!

Sharm el-Sheik is located on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, the land situated between mainland Egypt/Africa and Saudi Arabia. The Red Sea forms its western border, and the Gulf of Aqaba its eastern definition. Many tourists travel there to visit Mt. Sinai and St. Catherine's Monastery. As early as the third century AD, sans archaeological evidence, Christians have identified the 7,500-foot peak as the place where Moses received the 10 Commandments and witnessed the burning bush. Watching the sun rise over St. Catherine's Monastery, just below the mountain, is a popular tourist experience. The idea of hiking up during the night appealed to me. But after reading the tourist forums I opted out, realizing that the way down would be a mob scene. Reminiscent of riding up Haleakala in Maui to watch the sunrise there, I'd be fighting the crowds on the way down. So, with only two days before flying back to Cairo, I looked for a taxi to take me 85KM north to Dahab; mecca of another sort.

Diving in Dahab - or in many other places along the coast of the Sinai Peninsula, is a unique experience without even stepping foot in the water. Imagine being surrounded by gusty, brown, hot sand on all sides except for the water; local Bedouin men - short, faces dark from the sun, wearing traditional clothing hauling oxygen tanks and driving pasty (or sunburned) Europeans in jeeps as skeletal as the bedouin's skinny body - and you know you're diving in a land like no other.

Booking online in Morocco I found a great deal at the Daniela Hotel and Diving Center. After nearly coming to blows with the taxi driver at the Sharm airport when he tried to hassle me out of an extra 150 Egyptian pounds, we made it through all of the military checkpoints and to the hotel in about an hour. When giving me my change, the driver further tried to swindle me out of 30 more pounds to compensate for the speeding ticket he got along the way. But the sight of the blue water and the gleaming white hotel more than made up for the hassle of getting there.

The staff met me at the door with a glass of fresh-squeezed mango juice and a rundown on the local diving scene. After dropping off my bag and getting set-up with gear rental, I did what every sane traveler does in hot weather on holiday (since I was now officially on holiday for a bit!)...I went to the pool. Ahhh.

Not five minutes after plunking down on my cot I hear the hotel's dog barking and look to see a lone camel strolling along the 10m-wide strip of sand between the pool and the sea. I grabbed my camera and headed over in time to meet the Bedouin boy riding camelback who next came trotting through to harness his stray camel. Dorothy, I am not in Kansas anymore.

Turns out the bedouin, the desert nomads of the Sinai, have found ways to engage in tourism as well, selling rides on camels where no cars yet go. Locals I interviewed shared mixed reviews of this modernization of the local culture, some decrying the loss of traditions and others applauding this typically impoverished tribe for their entrepreneurship. It's the usual story and debate...

After snorkeling for hours just off the resort's shore, I showered and headed into town on the hotel's free shuttle (runs every night, head in at 20:00 and back at 23:00). Walking around with the manager of the hotel, we visited with his friends at various establishments along the pier. I blended in oh-so-well as the only woman at the outdoor cafe specializing in pipes, coffee and backgammon.

The moon was gorgeous and the outline of Saudi Arabia was lit and visible about 20km across the water. We stopped for tea - sweeter and less minty than in Morocco - with his pals and talked about his days as a sharpshooter, a talent that helped him move quickly through military rank and, in the end, saved him from the misery of a bad post during mandatory service.

Having mentioned earlier at the hotel's restaurant that I was practicing Ramadan, I returned to the hotel to discover the staff had delivered a Ramadan feast to my room, including fresh and dried dates, plump figs, yogurt, falafel, pita, slices of cheese and hummus. And, the Egyptian specialty: a fava bean soup ("foul" in Arabic). Their generosity towards me extended to the next day, when the cleaning staff decorated my bed with flower petals surrounding my English-version Qur'an I'd been given in Morocco.

The diving was great - I won't say spectacular, as I would have liked to have done some cave diving as well and been around fewer divers (our group was small, but we were often jostled by other dive groups in the heavily-trafficked waters). The coral reefs were beautiful in the Canyon and Garden dive sites and I fell in love with lionfish, and saw glassfish, eels, barracuda, frogfish and a huge, gorgeous variety of anemone. Good visibility and warm water temperatures added to the pleasure.

Rising after just three hours' sleep determined to catch the sunrise over the sea, I slogged through the sand along the coast, running under the distant watch of Egyptian military (ever-present in the country, but particularly in and around Dahab, the site of a three-bomb attack on tourist areas in April 2006). I was asked a lot more intrusive questions when alone than with the locals, of course, but besides being faced with five men wielding rifles, it was a quiet and peaceful run. And, just as I returned to the hotel to grab my camera, a bedouin man crossed my path, leading a camel back to his village.

Driving back to Sharm I sang along with my driver to the now-familiar Arabic music (I'd heard the same on the TV in Morocco) jamming from his CD player. After the short flight from Sharm back to Cairo, I hopped on a bus into the city center and checked my bag at Ramses train station for a less than a dollar.

The station, built in the 1800s, is an Arab version of Grand Central - Greek columns out front, swarming with passengers hurrying to a multitude of platforms for trains and buses. The sound of their arrival and departure mixes with the constant din of Muslim prayer invoked over loudspeakers. There are public toilets (but, as usual in Africa, you're expected to drop some coins in the outstretched hand of the lady who gave you a sheet of toilet paper on the way in) and a huge section of the marble floor is taken up with men bowing on prayer rugs. Classic Cairo - the western and modern mixed with the eastern and traditional.

Unfettered with baggage, I went out into the streets, climbed a fence (like the locals) to bypass the nastiest traffic circle I've ever witnessed and then pushed my way to the teller's window at the mouth of the subway. No ticket machines or lines, just one mass of sweaty people wedged against each other, fighting to buy a token.

Blessedly, the subway system is well-diagrammed and easy to navigate and in no time I was standing in the area formally known as Babylon.

While I skipped out on some Christian tourism by avoiding Mt. Sinai the day before, I did get to spend many hours exploring the Coptic section of Cairo, also known as Old Cairo, parts of which date back to the 6th Century AD. I also saw Egypt's oldest synagogue and first mosque. Besides having to, as usual, fend off the unwanted "assistance" of the military who were there to guard the treasures and, apparently, hassle tourists for baksheesh, I couldn't have asked for a better afternoon in Cairo.

Before heading back toward Ramses I hiked across the Nile to the Cairo Tower and its panoramic views of the city. The elevator man stops at each floor trying to convince passengers to get out and spend money at the restaurants, but once he understood I was practicing Ramadan his tone with me changed and insisted I come back after sunset to enjoy a free meal with the staff.

Instead, I headed across the Nile to confirm my flight to Addis that evening and broke fast with new friends at an internet cafe. While the chicken kebabs and bean soup were offered gratis, I paid for the meal later, barely making it to the toilet outside of the customs booth later that night.

Between the meal and the toilet run one of the internet workers got me to Ramses in breakneck speed, teaching me how to dodge the crazed drivers by walking - NEVER running - in front of them. He instructed me that all the locals know if you run the driver can't predict your speed as well as if you run and they are more likely to hit you (as they did him when he was ten-years old). After Ramses he hailed a taxi for me and negotiated a local rate, handing me a bottle of coca-cola for the trip. Amazing hospitality for having met him and the others at the shop only thirty minutes earlier. Sometimes it helps to be a woman traveling alone.

Adrift in Addis Ababa

It’s been awhile since I posted due to conditions here in the birthplace of humanity.

After traveling by train with my new mate Meriem to Marrakech in the south Morocco and surviving the Ramadan fast in 108-degree heat, I flew overnight to Cairo.

With a 40-minute window to catch the next flight to Sharm El-Sheik, the Egyptian military went above and beyond to usher me through customs, and given I had no local currency yet, they hailed down a taxi and commanded the driver not to charge me for the rush service to the next terminal. Impressive. Once I landed on the Sinai Peninsula at the foot of Mt. Sinai, the military were much less accommodating and I almost came to blows with the taxi driver when negotiating the price to Dahab, about 100km north of Sharm.

Good thing I didn’t try to rent a car…getting through the armed checkpoints was harrowing enough even with a local speaking Arabic on my behalf. Encountering the gorgeous blue of the Red Sea and the white building of my hotel in this spit of paradise, I finally breathed easily again about 18 hours after leaving Morocco.

Although a short stay, two nights in Dahab were the recharge I needed before heading into the horn of Africa. Diving off Sinai was incredible, all that I had hoped for and worth the extra travel. I also got in an interview with a former sharp-shooter and celebrated Ramadan with the hotel staff who were intrigued by my interest in their faith and decorated my room with flowers and the Koran on my last morning.

Flying back to Cairo for a 9-hour layover and whirlwind through the capital was chaotic but great. Made my way by bus and a lot of walking to the Coptic Christian area of the city, then to the Muslim neighborhood (I left my pack at a luggage room in the main train terminal, Ramses, for pennies and it was still there at the end of the day. Not bad). Also sat by the Nile and then went to the highest point in the city, the Tower of Cairo, where I enjoyed panoramic views in the hot afternoon sun.

I have been in Addis Ababa now for almost a week and this leg of the journey deserves a full entry all its own, so for now I’ll say that conditions are extreme, the athletes are incredible, and the food is constant and filling! It is all that I hoped for and more, but also much more challenging than I anticipated.

The highlight: 36 hours of Ethiopian Orthodox wedding. Wow.

As I continue to make my way through rural living in a big city amidst a sea of taxis, mud and generous people, I will get online again when I can. More to come…

Sooq and Soot

It is good I learned to jaywalk in Manhattan, because every pedestrian - geriatric, handicapped or toddler - takes their lives into their hands when crossing the street in Rabat.

And this is not a comment on Moroccan taxi drivers wielding dilapidated Mercedes from the year I was born across double-lines (where they exist) down four-lane roads through the country's capital city. No, I'm talking about my friend Asmaa, a pretty blonde with two little boys in a Honda SUV purchased with her husband's race earnings driving like a cabbie during rush hour in Times Square - while sending an SMS message - on the way to the market in her residential neighborhood.

Having survived many crossings of Rue Mohammed V in Temera, running across train tracks (no crossing lights or gate to warn of incoming freight) and traveling in a packed-so-tight minibus that it can't close it's doors (at 4 Dirham a ride, you get what you pay for in public transit), I'm beginning to wonder what I might encounter on this continent the further I get from Europe.

If the politically correct and pampered of my adopted city - Berkeley - could experience the commute to the center of Rabat, they might find less to complain about. Here, the bus doesn't even stop to allow passengers to on- or off-board, no matter their state of health or agility. They sure as hell aren't going to announce stops or answer questions.

Yesterday I suffered. The other runners warned me against this foolishness...but I've always been a proponent of "seeing is believing". First, running early in the morning and, second, going with Meriem and Rashid to the great sooq in Rabat. Nothing like being pushed and shoved in hot sun for hours after running in the morning during Ramadan (no food, and worse, no drink, until 7pm). Hours spent fighting crowds, hagglers, and the and smell of every food you are starving for and even more you can't bear the sight of.

I now know a version of torture - mint; dates, figs, cow's heads (uh, yes, really) dangling in front of me at every turn in a open-air market that makes the streets of Chinatown look quiet and empty.

I dared not let out so much as a whimper - well, perhaps I let loose a barely audible whisper of complaint - given that every one of the billion people pusing into me was just as thirsty as I.

We left with swollen feet, throbbing heads and, for me, a lovely jilbab to wear later that evening. I would be meeting Abderrahim Goumri (who came in second at the London marathon last year and holds the Moroccan national record of 2:05.30) and other members of the National Federation over coffee, after Iftar (the breaking of the fast at sunset, also refered to as breakfast, imagine that). While western dress would have been acceptable, it seemed to please my hosts for me to dress as they do. Siham, Mohammed's wife, kept saying my black and red jilbab was beautiful ("zwina") on me. I felt a bit like a pear in a potato sack but, hey, I'll take 'beautiful' in her eyes.

For a good primer on the traditions of Ramadan, see this link.

After the evening's breakfast the men went to the mosque to pray while I napped and the women joked about the usual things women discuss all over the world (need I say more...) The men came back and took me to the coffee house where Abderrahim Gourmi would meet me for an interview.

We had run together the day before when I kept pace for about a mile as he, Hassan Lahsini and two other elite runners warmed up on the trails. Eventually they hit stride and I was left choking dust only slightly less toxic than the soot I have been inhaling since I arrived on Sunday. I kept wishing for water, counting down the minutes until sunset and the break of the fast.

Last night was much more pleasant of an encounter with Goumri as we sat in the cool evening breeze drinking coffee and, for me, good ol' junky sweet orange Fanta. Yummy. Great interview and end to the day.

Ramadan in Rabat

Arriving in the midst of a quiet, hot summer afternoon at Casablanca Airport, I wondered around with a sign I had fashioned in Paris reading MOHAMMED AMYN. In my first hours on the great continent of Africa I could not find my local contact, a mobile connection, nor a scrap of toilet paper.

By 18:00 I found all three and landed happily in the company of Mohammed, his wife Siham, and their friends Fatiha, Asmaa and her 5-year old son Aymam. Soothed by the sweetest, mintiest pot of tea (quintessential Morocco I have come to learn) and more plates of breads (is this heaven or what?!), chick peas, lentil soup, fromage and various sesame and honey desserts than I could even taste in one sitting, we broke the Ramadan fast together in their home.

Mohammed speaks decent English so he translated for all of us. That is, until he went to the mosque for prayer, at which point we women did our best through a combination of the five languages we spoke between us. For example, when asking to use their shower I said in a barbaric combination of French, Spanish and Arabic -

S'il vous plaît, necesito maa' (water) por mi cuerpo, shokuran (thank you) - all as I gestured a spigget of water falling above my head onto my body.

Later, during our Arabic and English lessons, little Ayman got in the spirit of thinigs and began practicing his handwriting in a Spiderman composition book (see photo). An eager student with just 6 days into school, this was the only time he seemed interested in something beside turning cartwheels and falling out of handstands around us!

After about 24 hours of travel since I said goodbye to Hilda at SFO, I fought sleep in order to drive into town to attend an impromptu gathering in the parking lot of the central market (outside what can only be described as a K-Mart crossed with a gourmet food store...Barbie backpacks hung near cookbooks in French, 12-inch wide open wooden bowls overflowing with spices the color of the desert rested near jugs of Tide detergent and fresh fish fillets on ice).

Young women in flowing cloaks and older men with children on their laps sat under a large white tent (think revival meeting in the old south) while teenage boys and twenty-somethings in billabongs and football/soccer jerseys competed in out-tricking each other(think Péle meets the globetrotters) under the bright lights of the parking lot. Music of Algeria and the Moroccan Berbers played behind the cheers of the one-hundred or so gathered.

Back in Temera, the neighborhood outside of Rabat where my gracious host live, we climbed into our pajamas (a universally understood word, it seems) and before going to sleep, I asked the former Olympian where he recommended I run in the morning, hoping he wouldn't offer to run with me at my slow pace. As he generously drove me to the beach and the forest, to show me a route he likes to run, he apologized that he would not be running during my visit - Ramadan is his only vacation from training because of the fast from food and water. Relief for my pride! He said all Muslim runners finish their season for these holy days and I would have the streets, beach and trail to myself in the morning.

Indeed, the city slept off their late night (last meal served at 2AM and prayers at 4) and the only people I saw (not counting the raggedy pups wandering around at the beach) as the sun rose were the national guardsmen stationed outside the walls of the royal palace.

Next dispatch most likely from Marrakech. Ciao

View from the apartment in Temera near Rabat...Atlantic in the distance

War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq

While the U.S. government has tried its best to censor a textbook of military medicine as experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq, authors Dr. David Lounsbury, Dr. Stephen P. Hetz and Dr. Shawn C. Nessen have succeeded in bringing it to bookshelves, at least virtual ones like Amazon.com or the Government Printing Office.

In a New York Times Article on 5 August, journalist Donald G. McNeil, Jr. discusses what it took to get the book published by the U.S. Army, of all outfits. With the help of surgeon generals, the authors were able to present the book with the photos and captions they intended, acquiescing only on the issue of covering the eyes of the wounded who did not give written permission to be included.

“War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq: A Series of Cases, 2003-2007,” is not for the faint of heart. With sometimes gruesome photos of missing limbs, bomber's ribs sticking out of injured soldiers, blood, guts and gore, the authors have pulled together a handbook of the latest findings of battlefield surgeons in our most current conflict. Their hope: medics will hit the ground with a more realistic and accurate understanding of what to expect and will benefit from the knowledge learned by others on the front lines of how to best treat the injured. Often, the old ways are no longer the best ways, at least not with the kinds of injuries and resources available under a medical tent in the middle of Kabul or Baghdad.

I first learned of the book's publication from an email I received from Dr. Lounsbury (who contacted me based on a connection we made when I worked for conflict photographer James Nachtwey). A retired colonel, Dr. Lounsbury took part in both invasions of Iraq in the past two decades, and edited military medicine textbooks at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. According to Lounsbury, the book has garnered attention not only in the New York Times, but also NPR and the BBC. In response to the article in the Science Times section of the NYT, Lounsbury says that he agrees, "with the tenor of the article that 'Americans who choose to do so have the right to see ...the human cost of war'."

I haven't put my hands on the book as of yet, although I plan to. And to share it with as many of you as can stomach it. It's as important a tome as Philip Jones Griffiths' Vietnam Inc., if not more important, given that the warfare it depicts rages on and the book could possibly impact how the wounded - soldiers and civilians, allies and enemies - are cared for. Even better, it could prevent greater loss in the future by bringing our troops home.

Marching to Zion

Well, it doesn't get much more beautiful than this...on a bike, on foot, in a car. No matter how I took this turn, I was awe-struck each and every time.

While some of us had our reservations about heading to Mormon country in southwestern Utah on the annual Black Sheep Adventures "Epic" bike tour, we all returned to the Bay Area as Zion converts. Bryce and Grand Canyons were pretty gorgeous as well, but neither was as majestic as Zion.

Day One: Flew Oakland to Las Vegas. Laura made a new friend with the Southwest flight attendant who wore my helmet while giving safety instructions. I wore it the rest of the flight to make Bubba feel more secure for our inevitable crash landing. Drove from Vegas to Brian Head, a ski resort town at over 10,000 feet in Utah. Reluctantly saddled up to ride a 6-13% grade up to Cedar Breaks National Monument. Great wake-up for the legs (and lungs!) at altitude.

Day Two: Back up the pitch only this time at the top I managed to fall off my bike while looking back for Wendy. Proceeded to vomit. Lovely. Then we went down hill for most of the rest of the way toward Bryce Canyon National Park. Spent a number of miles on a rolling bike path below Hoodoos and red rock, past natural stone arches and beautiful cliffs.

Only interruptions to an otherwise pleasant ride: a sheep crossing (actually, that was a highlight) and an electric storm during the 18 mile climb up to Rainbow Point (okay, that was a highlight too). Nothing like riding uphill through a lightning and hail-size rain storm to feel invincible and kick ass. The nasty hot chocolate recovery drink which Becky, Pat and Laura stirred using Nutter Butters almost made me vomit a second time.



Praise the local non-Mormons at Wasatch Brewery for their Polygamy Porter and Evolution Amber. Washed down the day in style.


Day Three: You'll never guess. Back up the 6-13% grade past Cedar Breaks National Monument for another series of lovely descents to Zion National Park. Easiest riding day of the trip, with easy descent down a not-too-busy State Road 89 and the most lovely ending of any day. See this YouTube video of the road into Zion from West to East. Riding 12 miles along gently inclined road into the park was rewarded with the majestic and monolithic walls of rock surrounding us. Even the 1-mile ride through the tunnel (finished in the 1930s, amazingly) was a superlative experience. Finished up poolside at the Majestic Lodge 2-miles on the other side of Zion in Springdale, UT.

Day Four: A rest day, if so chosen. None of us did, though, with Zion in our backyard there was no way we could stay at the lodge and rest on a few days' riding. Three of us rode the 18-miles roundtrip back up State Road 9 (Zion Mt. Carmel Highway) to the entrance of the tunnel, through which bikes may not pass. Our pre-dawn ride (thanks for the company, John!) was a great start to the day.

After joining the rest of the crew for a cup of coffee, I caught the free shuttle that takes visitors back into the park and disembarked at the entrance to the Emerald Pools trail. Sometimes steep, sometimes shaded, the short 2-mile trail looped me past rocks that wept water, with "hanging gardens" of green vines and flowers thriving along the rock face. Wow. Such life in the middle of the desert.


From Emerald Pools I ran a couple more miles to the trailhead of Angel's Landing, knowing my compatriots would soon come along the same way. Slugging up 21 steep switchbacks known as Walter's Wiggles (some had to be at least 18% gradient), I got to Scout's Landing breathing hard, sweaty and dusty with disposable (!) camera in hand.


Realizing I had arrived far ahead of the hikers in the group, I took a detour and explored the 5 or more miles of the West Rim trail, looping back to Scout's Landing and getting further encouragement from the many foreign (mostly German, French and Italian) tourists who had cheered me on as I ran up the endless switchbacks earlier. Together we made the final .5-mile ascent up the cliff to Angel's Landing, proper.

Traversing a rock face with large-gauge chain bolted into its sides for hoisting only the most intrepid traveler past its sheer drop-offs to the left and right, the sheer ridge brought me, out of water but full of excitement, to a most beautiful panoramic view totally worth the work it took to get there. Topping out at almost 5,800-feet with an elevation gain of almost 1,500-feet over 2.5-miles, the trail is considered the most challenging of all in Zion, although, amazingly, one of the most popular. A couple of strangers re-hydrated me and took my photo (see here...doesn't even look real, does it?!).


As I slowly climbed/slid/shuffled back down the ridge to the landing, I passed my buddies from Black Sheep and choked down a Gu. Replenished, I ran the rest of the way back down to the valley and along the Virgin River to the visitor's center at the eastern entrance to the park near Springdale. I had time to buy some lime tortilla chips and local salsa and diet coke, and make a stop in at the photo museum. Hopping back on the free shuttle, I made one more stop - at the Human History Museum - where I found a pack of my favorite Trident gum on the floor of the theater (yummy for a dry mouth after a 15-mile run!) and watched a 20-minute video of Zion.

The crew met me back at the pool at Majestic Lodge in the early afternoon but only Fana showed for supposed water polo match. She gave me a long lesson in the sport, instead, which was fine by me! She played at Cal, has coached in California at the collegiate level, and played for a few years in Australia on their National Team. Now I can watch water polo in the Olympics and have a chance of understanding!

We ended the day with a Barbara-64th-birthday-surprise (brownie sundae) at Oscar's, a Mexican restaurant in town. Check out our series of hat photos (link below) we took while at the Majestic. The beer or the views must have gone to our heads!

Day Five: Bummer, time to put that sore butt back on the saddle and climb back up to the tunnel in Zion. We unanimously decided to start our day earlier than usual to beat any traffic riding through Zion. The plan worked and we saw only a handful of cars in our first 30 miles of the day. Kath kept me entertained on the road out, Mark came by with his usual witty remarks and nice push from behind as we made our first real climb of the day toward Kanab and Fredonia (which, BTW, is the name the group decided to give to Fred/Becky/Frecky's unborn child).

The 30-mile slow incline along 89A to Jacob Lake (elevation just below 8,000-feet) in Arizona's Kaibab National Forest. After crying on the climb from the pain that started in my left gluteus and rand down to my toes, I was beyond consolation even at the end of the ride. The rooms at the one inn in town (which also served as gas station, restaurant and convenience store) weren't ready for us, so I took a nap next to Barbara on an old sofa-chair.

Once we got settled in, the majority of us caravanned out to Marble Canyon, the Vermilion Cliffs near Lee's Ferry and the Colorado River. Rapid brown water was a bit daunting, so we drove further in and found a damned portion to wade in before chasing another electric storm (see the rainbow shot) out of the canyon and back to Jacob Lake.

Day Six: Our last full day on the bike started with a lovely climb (thanks, Mark, for making my glute capable of enjoying another climb) and sweet time-trial-worth stretches through aspen forests and green meadows. A straight-shot on State Road 67, 45 miles to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Once there, all but Wendy decided we wanted to explore/hike/photograph and so hung-up our bikes on Fred's truck and went to play.


I couldn't leave Bubba alone for too long, so after about an hour, I climbed back into the Suburban with Fana and we became the Bubbster's personal support vehicle. She booked back to Jacob Lake, covering the 45-miles in under three hours. We all survived a stinky/sweaty/hot ride to St. George near Vegas where we spent our last night at the new La Quinta there. Opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, a local beer and a filling dinner delivered by the local Pizza Hut put us nicely to sleep.


Day Seven: Having to leave the hotel by 9am to catch our flight at the Vegas airport, a few of us went for runs (I was nearly run over by semis in the dark of the morning, but joyously discovered ATV trails across sand dunes to run on once light came up) or short rides, met for continental breakfast and packed up. I slipped in my daily dunk in the pool and then away we all went. Sad!!!

Poor Fred and Fana drove the van back to Berkeley while we flew home and all took long afternoon naps before retrieving our bikes and gear from our fearless leaders. Another Epic week with Black Sheep ... until next year!
Photos of trip available on my Flickr page under the Black Sheep Adventures Collection of albums. And our Fearless Fred the Leader posted a fun video on YouTube.

For The Good of the Neighborhood

This is a photo from a story I recently reported on Coach Tyrone Green. Mr. Green founded a non-profit, For the Good of the Neighborhood, utilizing basketball to develop strong moral and academic values for kids of all backgrounds living in the NYC metro area. Here his daughter Ashley holds a locket with a photo of her mother, Cookie, as she tells me about life with her dad since her mom passed in April.

My debut in a NYC publication...Queens Tribune...came out on Friday, 18 July 2008:
link is here.

Standard Operating Procedure

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft will testify today before Congress about the Bush Administration's policies on interrogation of the prisoners of war it refers to as "enemy combatants," a title that has given carte blanche to White House representatives - from CIA operatives to foot soldiers - to abuse, torture and kill those accused of terrorism. In prior comments, Ashcroft defended the Bush administration counterterrorism policies and maintained that harsh forms of interrogation -- including waterboarding -- are not torture.

As the torture debate comes again to the forefront of the public mind (or at least of those paying any attention) I am reminded of a film that was aired in the spring, a documentary of the administration's interrogation protocols and imprisonment of Iraqis as seen through the lens of U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

In Standard Operating Procedure Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris focuses his camera on the soldiers behind the notorious photographs of prisoner abuse at the American-run prison in Iraq, Abu Ghraib. The documentary aired in Manhattan on the opening night of the TriBeCa Film Festival in April; after the showing, we got to hear from the filmmaker, who was present for a Q&A discussion.

Founded in 2002 by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal as a response to the economic impact on the TriBeCa arts industry in the wake of September 11, the Festival's origins coincide nicely with the intent of Morris' film, namely to address the power of an image to affect the world.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are indelibly branded into the minds of all who have seen either the footage on television or the images that have been reprinted the world over. The same can be said of the photos documenting the abuse and torture of terror suspects by military men and women which first became public in 2004.

The film is not about Washington politics, Donald Rumsfeld or President Bush, except indirectly: no one above the rank of sergeant has been brought to trial, and the higher you go up the chain of command the fewer those punished. Instead, through extensive interviews that become monologues in the film, along with re-enactments of what took place in the photographs to fill-in the back-story, the film's concern is less about politicians than about the power of a photograph to conceal and reveal simultaneously.

Take for instance the photograph of the detainee the soldiers nicknamed Gilligan.

On 5 November 2003, an Iraqi citizen who had been accused of killing an agent from the US Army's Criminal Investigative Division (CID) arrived at Abu Ghraib. Refusing to give his name, the prisoner was handed over to Specialist Charles "Chuck" Graner, an army reservist and corrections officer in civilian life who had no training (or clearance) as a military interrogator.

Graner took a photograph of "Gilligan" standing on a small box, wearing a black poncho and pointed black hood, arms outstretched in a crucifixion-like pose, fingers attached to wires. After already having been stripped of his clothes, forced to crawl on the floor and deprived of sleep, the weary prisoner was told he would die of electric shock if he budged. As it turns out, the wires were not live, it was all a show, and later the prisoner not only survived, but became one of the soldiers' buddies the way a kid once bullied on the schoolyard becomes a buddy of his former abuser when another poor sap becomes the picked-upon. Only in this desert schoolyard, the bullying sometimes ended in death, and being a buddy translated only to a few more scraps of food and freedom from physical defilement.

The sinister-looking picture, along with a number of others, when published first in the New Yorker magazine became a symbol of all that was wrong with the American invasion and occupation of Iraq.

It was the embarrassment to the military of what the photo seemed to portray (officially deemed "abuse" as opposed to "torture" and classified as "standard operating procedure") that prompted President Bush to publicly apologize for "the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families."

In comparison to the what other Abu Ghraib prisoners experienced, including men who disappeared in back rooms and body bags, innocent children and petty thieves who were held together with the more threatening general population, all living in horrendous conditions (even the soldiers slept in the same prison cells that were once used by Saddam Hussein's henchman to torture and kill dissidents) and were exposed to daily mortar attacks—compared to that, the photograph of Gilligan was a joke in the eyes of the soldiers playing the game.

According to Specialist Sabrina Hartman who was later sentenced to six months in prison, a demotion, loss of pay and benefits and a bad-conduct discharge for her role in what many of the photographs documented, Gilligan wasn't really hurt--it not only wasn't torture, it wasn't even abuse; it was a harmless game.

Hartman speaks extensively in Morris' film, both in person and through what she left behind - through her photographs and via the letters she sent home to her girlfriend. While at times clearly disgusted with the acts she was witnessing and photographing, she also participated willingly in many of them. Fellow soldiers interviewed in the film describe her as abhorrent to violence, including Sergeant Hydrue Joyner, who said Hartman "would not hurt a fly. If there's a fly on the floor and you go to step on it, she will stop you." What to make, then, of the photos capturing her grinning and giving a thumbs-up sign over dead and mutilated bodies, holding leashes around prisoner's necks, laughing as prisoners were forced to masturbate? Was it just fun? Did laughing at and photographing (making war trophies of) the activities normalize indecent behavior?

Some of the photographs back-up her claim that she was more interested in the forensic investigation of how a prisoner died, or as evidence she could use later to let someone know what was wrong with the situation. But with regard to the notorious photo of her grinning, thumbs-up over the face of a man, bandaged, bloated and bleeding in a body bag of ice her morality and innocence are more suspect. Of this series of photos, including the grinning-thumbs-up one, she says, "I just wanted to document everything I saw. That was the reason I took photos. It was to prove to pretty much anybody who looked at this guy, Hey, I was just lied to." She went back later, alone, removed the bandages from the corpse and made a series of photographs that could be considered forensic in nature, but the one of her grinning for the camera taken by her buddy? There's more to the story than she is letting on.

One of the ironies of the photographs and of the punishment that came as a result of their being published is that in many cases the atrocities they depicted were deemed less criminal than the act of photographing them.

For removing the bandages and taking pictures of the dead guy in the body bag, Hartman was originally charged with the crime of tampering with evidence. Of course, the "evidence" was of a murder by a CIA operative of a prisoner who should have been protected by the Geneva Conventions. The charge against Hartman was dropped only because the government couldn't afford to pursue the death that was evidenced by the photograph. The CIA agents and civilian contractors who dragged prisoners into back rooms without logging them in, who beat this guy to death and then covered up their abuse by bandaging the prisoner and leading him out on a gurney with an I.V. as though he were still alive - for that offense, no one was ever prosecuted.

The pornographic photo-ops of naked men wearing women's panties, forced to masturbate for the camera while hooded and chained, stacked in pyramids or posed in pseudo acts of fornication, became the focus of the administration's outcry (outrage would be too strong a word choice for how the military brass and politicians responded), and served as an easy scapegoat to distract from the more appalling and morbid reality of what went down in Abu Ghraib.

Morris' extensive interviews with his characters manage to provoke revelation and confession. In the discussion after the showing of the film, Morris responded to criticism of his paying people to sit for interviews. His claim: they wouldn't have done it otherwise especially given how successful his documentaries have become - if he's making money, so should they the thinking goes.

"It is difficult to ask people for such an investment of time without taking care of them in some way — and that may involve paying them, " Morris said in defense. "I paid the 'bad apples' because they asked to be paid, and they would not have been interviewed otherwise. Without these extensive interviews, no one would ever know their stories. I can live with it."

Would Hartman or any of the other soldiers and civilian consultants said or done anything different had they gone unpaid by Morris? I doubt it. And, more importantly, the story needed to be told. If earning a day's pay for talking in front of a camera means we are all exposed to the complexities of what went on at Abu Ghraib, then so be it.

The bigger question is what have we learned from the photographs and the photographers who took them? What did the photographs reveal about what really happened there, or of what went on in the minds of the soldiers who participated?

And how, in the end of the film, could the abuse captured in the photographs be defined as Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)? Where official military doctrine exists, SOPs will usually adhere to the official doctrine - and in a war managed from a distance by the likes of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Ashcroft who explicitly accept interrogation "by any means," official doctrine translates to approval of abuse and torture. Among a group of reservists with little military experience and no military police or interrogation training, SOPs and official doctrine were defined by a combination of what they saw anonymous interrogators from the CIA and private contractors perform mixed with their own base instincts in a screwed-up, nasty hovel of a prison-home-base camp in the middle of the desert.

The film also touches, then, on the question of the complicity of officers and administrators high-up in the Bush Administration in the acts of prisoner abuse and torture when the foot soldiers were told to make a prisoner's life miserable, and when prisoners held by highly-trained operatives left the prison in body bags. Will a war crimes tribunal one day bring the men in suits to justice?

At it's most profound and haunting level, the film asks the question of what in the American psyche allowed the women and men at Abu Ghraib to pull the stunts they did, and what's more, to make photo trophies of it all?

The late Susan Sontag, writing in The New York Times Magazine, saw the Abu Ghraib events as evidence of the pervasive sickness of American culture where pornography, violence and an obsession to document and publicize our most personal - even deviant - lives. "Soldiers now pose, thumbs up, before the atrocities they commit," Sontag wrote, "and send the pictures to their buddies. Secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given anything to conceal, you now clamor to be invited on a television show to reveal."

When violence, pornography, humiliation and killing are acceptable in mainstream culture, whether perpetrated against "enemy combatants" in the Middle East or as urban gang members, addicts or immigrant workers trying to "sneak" into America, we will continue to sell television series like 24 and video games like Grand Theft Auto; we will see more Abu Ghraibs and Gitmos - if soldiers are foolish enough to keep taking the pictures.

And if Ashcroft in his testimony before Congress continues to defend the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo and countless other secret interrogation and prison cells around the world, then we know that the sickness in the popular culture of America extends to the highest reaches or lowest depths of our political culture, as well.