| THE DISPATCHES |
|
June 20, 2010: Dispatch #57: Presenting General Aidid. Suitcase sneaks behind enemy lines in Mogadishu in l994 and interviews the "warlord" Mohammed Farah Aidid, whom the U.S. blew off in much the way it did Pancho Villa, and with remarkably similar consequences. Click here to read. (Adobe PDF) March, 2010: Dispatch #56: Notes on the Dialect and Culture of the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York. A 100-page treatise that Shoumatoff has been working on for 30 years. Click here (Adobe PDF) March, 2010: Dispatch #55: Sometimes You Gotta Buck The Tide: A Call to Action To All Who Care About the World. Click here (Adobe PDF) July, 2009: Dispatch #54: In Search of the Source of AIDS in Africa. With swine flu spreading around the world, and mankind bracing for the second wave in the fall, here is a 1988 Vanity Fair piece about another virus and its devastating effects and the race to understand and contain it. Click here to read the Dispatch (Adobe PDF) April, 2009: Dispatch #53: Bohemian Tragedy. Shoumatoff/Suitcase gets arrested in the Bohemian Grove while trying to help an old college buddy save its magnificant redwoods. Click here to read the Dispatch on VanityFair.com or pickup the May issue at your newsstand. April, 2009: Dispatch #52: Dining on Russian Polaroids. By Montreal photographer John Lucas. Check here to see the Dispatch (Adobe PDF format). March, 2009: Dispatch #51: An Epidemic of Teenage Suicides in Wales. Click here to read the Dispatch on Vanity Fair.com. February, 2009: Dispatch #50: New Sorrows for the Rio Dolores. My son Andre and I take a rafting trip with some experts on the toxicity of uranium mining on the Dolores river, which runs through Southwestern Colorado. A new uranium boom is starting to materialize here. We also have a slide show - make sure you check it out. Click here to read & see the Dispatch March, 2009: Dispatch #49: Rhopalocera (butterfly and moth) paintings by Zoe Viles. Click here to see the Dispatch July, 2008 : Student Dispatches: Dispatch #48: A Primer on Cambodia, by Hajnal Kiss. Hajnal is a 32-year-old woman from Budapest, Hungary, who was an exchange student for the winter term at the McGill School of Business. She heard the talk I gave to Karl Moore's class see the link above "how can I become involved." Her primer on Cambodia, written with a warmth and compassion that reminds me of the late Ryszard Kapuscinski, is the first of what will hopefully be many Dispatches by McGill students who have been doing fantastic work at DFVW. Hajnal has returned to Budapest and has promised to send us more Dispatches on the Roma (gypsies) and other cultural and environmental subjects in Hungary. Click here to read the Dispatch > New! Click here to see her slideshow May, 2008 : Dispatch #47: The Scramble for the Arctic.(As it appeared originally in Vanity Fair’s May Green issue.) Click here to read the Dispatch May, 2008 : Dispatch #46: The Thistle and the Bee. Donald Trump wants to put a luxury golf resort on a gloriously unspoiled swath of Scottish seacoast. His plan has come under fire by environmental activists and led to a battle that has reached the highest levels of government. Plus, he's up against another character: local fisherman Michael Forbes. (As it appeared originally in Vanity Fair’s May Green issue.) Click here to read the Dispatch April, 2008 : Dispatch #45: Tracing the interconnected origins of world music—from flamenco to the blues—Alex Shoumatoff travels to India in search of the Gypsy music of Rajasthan. Originally published in Travel + Leisure's April, 2008 issue. Click here to read the Dispatch and here to listen to recordings of the artists January 20, 2008 : Dispatch #44: Traveling Light. This is not just a matter of reducing your baggage to a small backpack, but reducing your carbon, ecological, and cultural footprints. Originally published in Travel + Leisure's November, 2007 green issue.Click here to read the Dispatch January 20, 2008 : Dispatch # 43: The Rats Are Back. Every 48 eight years a certain species of bamboo flowers in a remote tribal state in India, triggering an explosion in the rat population. What happens to the rats could be a ghastly parable for us. Originally published in the December, 2007 issue of Vanity Fair with the title, "The Coming Plague." "The Rats Are Back" was suggested my good buddy John Nichols, the Taos Novelist.With a postscript on a huge new species of palm discovered in Madagascar that flowers every 100 years and then self-destructs.Click here to read the Dispatch November 9, 2007: Dispatch #42: (Product) RED provides life saving drugs to Africans with AIDS. Could the future of philanthropy be consumer driven? Originally published in Vanity Fair's July, 2007 Africa issue as "The Lazarus Effect." Click here to read the Dispatch November 1, 2007: Dispatch #41: Dead Villages: Russia's Rural Exodus, Demographic and Health Crises. Originally published in the June issue of Walrus Magazine as "A Russian Tragedy." In fact, I was just in Russia for three weeks in September, 2007, and despite the very real and unresolved issues in this Dispatch, the people are happier and nicer than I've ever seen them in the 25 years I've been visiting my erstwhile motherland. The country is normalizing. Click here to read the Dispatch October 29, 2007: A powerful new version of "One Morning Soon" from Botswana, captured in this slideshow by David Hampton. Listen to the deep richness and beauty of the singing of Patricia Kamasena and Olefile Sefofu and their two friends. Click here to watch and listen August 9, 2007: Dispatch #40: Brazil's Mata Atlantica:The Critically Endangered Coastal Rainforest of Brazil, With a Postscripton the Musicality of Birdsong. Clickhere to read the Dispatch August 9, 2007: Dispatch #39: "The Dehydration of the Amazon Rainforest,"originally published in Vanity Fair's May, 2007 green issue as "The GaspingForest." Click to read the Dispatch: Part1 and Part 2 August 9, 2007: Dispatch #38: "A Day in the Life in an Ordinary Consumer,"originally published in Vanity Fair's May, 2007 green issue. Click here toread the Dispatch July 5, 2007: Dispatch #37: A Writer Looks At His Career. Clickhere to read the Dispatch April
23, 2007: Dispatch #36: A Miraculous Meeting With My 22nd Cousin
April
20, 2007: Dispatch #35: Reinhold Messner's Longest Ordeal
Dec29,
2006: Dispatch #34: The Improbable Jew, by Clara de Melo Castelar.
Nov6, 2006: Dispatch #33: The Amazon Research and ConservationCenter on the Rio de Las Piedras, in the Peruvian Amazon. Clickhere to read the Dispatch. June16, 2006: Dispatch #32: The Tribulations of St. Paul'sSchool. As originally published in the January 2006 issue ofVanityFair Magazine. Click here toread the article... Dispatch#31: The Desertification of Mali,Clickhere to read the article... Dispatch#30: A Profile of the Lepidopterist Camille Parmesan,Clickhere to read the article... Dispatch#29: The Grand Cascapedia and Its Endangered Atlantic Salmon,Clickhere to read the article... Dispatch#28: The Fall of General Stroessner,Clickhere to read the article... June 9, 2005: Dispatch #27: Manitoba's Many-Headed Hydro Originallypublished as "Who Owns This River?" in the Spring 2005 issue of NRDC'sonearthmagazine.Click here to read article...(AdobeAcrobat PDF File) May16, 2005: Dispatch #26: A Profile of Monaco Clickhere to read article... April12, 2005: Dispatch #25: Bamako: A Blues Lover's Pilgrimage tothe Motherlandwith apostscript on the universal language and the cognition of music, and thewestward migration of the pentatonic from Rajasthan Clickhere to read article... January10, 2005: Dispatch 24: A slideshow from the Congo by CraigLapp Click hereto see slideshow... September15, 2004: Dispatch 23: Cultivating Culture: Emergence or Emergencyby Jonathan Golick Clickhere to read article... June
27, 2004: Dispatch 22: Matchwork by Sasha Chavchavadze Clickhere
to see artwork
June 24, 2004: Dispatch 20: The Rape of the Cumberland Plateau Clickhere to read article. June 2004: A 1985 piece for The NewYorker distilled from Alex Shoumatoff's sixth book, The Mountainof Names, has been added to the Past Dispatchessection. Click here toread this incredibly interesting dispatch about the history of thehuman family, kinship systems, genealogy, and Mormonism.x May20,
2004: Dispatch #19: On the Question of Animal Awareness
April 07, 2004: Dispatch #18: Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide. Click here to read article April
07, 2004: Dispatches gets a new Song.
Feb
22, 2004: Dispatch #17: A Long Weekend in Armenia
Dec
3, 2003: Dispatch #16: The Gartersnake Dens of Manitoba
Oct
25, 2003: Dispatch #15: The Decimation of the Amazon Indians
Sept2, 2003: Dispatch #14: A Speech Given for AdirondackVoices For Peace at the John Brown Homestead, North Elba, New York, on August 16, 2003 Clickhere to read article Dispatch#13:
Prairie
Dogs and Conservation Easements on the Chihuahua-ArizonaBorder,June 25th,
2003
Dispatch#12:
Annals
of Investigative Golf :
Dispatch #11:The Alcoholic
Monkeys of St. Kitts
Dispatch #10:A Report for
the J.M. Kaplan Fund on the
Dispatch#9: The World’s Largest Swamp : Brazil’s Pantanal do Mato Grosso Clickhere to read article. Dispatch#8:
A Report on the Prairie Churches of Saskatchewan, Manitoba,and North
Dakota. Clickhere
to read article.
Dispatch#7: A Report on the PhilanthropicPossibilities of Cuba. Commissioned by the JMKaplan Fund, a foundation devoted to transborder collaborations in architectural preservation and biodiversity conservation. Dispatch#6:Journal
of the Flamingo
Dispatch#5,
December 9th: What Have We Done ToThe Weather?
Dispatch#4, November 30: Postcards from Elizabeth Fisk Dispatch#3, October 27: Europe's AfricanArt Treasures Dispatch#2,
October 10: A Report on the Wildlife of Eastern Congo
Dispatch#1,
September 27: On Loss
|