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Friday, 29 January 2010 23:49 |
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By Michael Madill
Stop for a minute and reflect on Haiti. It’s a mess, isn’t it? Poverty, disease, corruption, crime, environmental destruction and now an earthquake. But turn your mind to Africa, because Haiti is richer than Rwanda. That’s right. Haiti’s per capita GDP is around $1,300 per year. Rwanda’s is little over $1,000. That means that the Haitian economy is thirty per cent bigger than Rwanda’s.
Suffering plays really well on TV, so when you watch the misery broadcast from Haiti you might think, ‘How could anywhere be worse off?’ You wouldn’t know it by looking, and it’s true that the devastation caused by the earthquake will trim Haiti’s fortunes considerably. Now, rewind a few weeks, to before the catastrophe.
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Thursday, 21 January 2010 18:14 |
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 By Robert Rudner
It was 1776 when Haitians started shouting USA! Now, we hear our nation's name in praise in Haiti when assistance is delivered after a 7.0 Richter scale quake in the capitol. But it was our founding father Thomas Paine who openly advocated revolution in Haiti and among slaves. He rooted them on, as the author of "The Rights of Man," during the tricolor of 18th century revolutions from ours to France and the island in between.
The year 2009 was the bicentennial of Tom Paine's death. His bones were not allowed to rest in the nation whose name he invented. Some say his bones were tossed in the Thames, perhaps leaving a pair of femurs, mandible and skull for someone's trophy collection.
He was wise beyond his years and unfortunately ahead of his time. As for Haiti's cry of USA during the 1789 to 1804 uprising and liberation, most Yankees North and South thought the way Pat Robertson still talks today. Back then, many a Bible believer, which Paine was not, justified slavery in Biblical proportions.
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Thursday, 21 January 2010 03:36 |
By Eve Brownstone
Mom and I were there together in Washington. We made the 20 hour journey on the bus with our favorite Congressman. (Mom spent the previous two years tirelessly volunteering at the Obama Headquarters and criss-crossing the country knocking on doors.) The road to the Inauguration was exhausting and cold but our hearts were warm and our spirits embraced each other and our new President.
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Friday, 22 January 2010 01:49 |
By Francis Scudellari
There's some interesting music being birthed deep in the bowels of the building at 1515 W. Howard Street in Rogers Park.
A group of guitar players and artists are letting their imaginations transform the seemingly simple studio space into a roomy mountain lodge with a fire blazing and a snowy riverbank just outside the window. The posh surroundings may exist only in their minds, but the music these day-dreamers create is very real.
Guitar Friends Studio offers a new approach in learning how to play the guitar. The Affective Immersion Project (AIP) was invented by the studio's director, Ron Scroggin, though he gives a lot of credit for the discovery of its technique to earlier work he did with guitarists Howard Roberts and Jessica Galang.
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Monday, 11 January 2010 18:31 |
By Michael Madill
There is a countdown clock on the official website for the 2010 World Cup. As I write this, the clock is passing one hundred fifty-four days, four hours and thirty-seven minutes. I can hardly wait. What’s the World Cup? Who cares? Typically American questions. You see, we don’t really get the World Cup here. That’s because we don’t really get football. Not the real kind, anyway.
Football is played with the feet. That’s why it’s called football. The ball is round as balls should be. The game is simple. It’s played in every country in the world. In this country, the collision of armored refrigerators who grapple for an oblong inflated pig’s bladder with their hands every autumn weekend is a mire of rules, diagrams and instant replays. It’s more like rugby. Attempts to interest the rest of the world in our version always fail. There might be strategy involved in American football, but it will never be much to look at.
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