Volume V, Issue 2

I don’t have any rational way to explain Oriel Laurent’s presence in my life, but I’ve got to chalk her up to something. When my non-religious friends hear the story, they tend to rationalize it as random chance, pure dumb luck. But they have the luxury of leaving her on the far side of… »

On the beautiful Lago de Atitlán, Guatemala, lies the small and “alternative” community of San Marcos. Home to an indigenous Mayan population, aging hippies and organic smelling backpackers alike, this lakeside idyl offers an experience unlike many others. Having spent brief periods of time there in the past, the most note-worthy of which being… »

Arguably the first aspect of Sergio Valenzuela’s work that strikes the viewer is his choice of palette. The selection of deep reds, running rich between the contrast of whites and blacks, resonates like a minor chord played deep in the psychic register. It is a color scheme that roots us in our corporal, visceral… »

On May 10 2009 a prominent Guatemalan attorney, Rodrigo Rosenberg, was gunned down in broad daylight while riding his bicycle down a busy, tree-lined boulevard in a wealthy residential district of Guatemala City. But this wasn’t just another killing in a homicide-plagued country. On May 11, 2009 Guatemalan television aired a pre-recorded video in… »

Next to an ancestor cross, where Ixil priests make regular offerings, lives one of Nebaj’s better-known financial speculators. Doña Alfonsa (not her real name) has eight children and sells food in the market. She doesn’t own a motor vehicle but she does have a cell phone. Her story is well-known because she has repeatedly… »

The Spring 2011 version of the health care debate has taken on the look of Russian matryoshka dolls, although one measures the risk of conspiracy theory in even mentioning the term. Health reform has become nested within a broader debate about Federal deficits and national debt, which, in turn, is nested in an emerging… »

Nearly half a century ago Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “The Global Village” to describe a world he perceived just beyond the horizon. He was predicting a time when electronic interdependence and constant exposure to a flood of ideas would alter the root structures of human interaction — and though we’re far too close… »

Dried Papaya seeds, Secnidal, Flagyl, perricone tea, cloves of raw garlic, part-time veganism, chlorinated vegetables, wearing green underwear when the moon is full, braiding the pubic hair of a mountain goat whilst performing an Irish folk ballad: I’ve tried almost everything to shift the bastards, from the hardest drugs the man in the… »

Just under a year ago Alex, a former student and close friend, called me with the news that Anna Parachkevova had been murdered by her husband while she slept in their apartment in Brussels. It was never a message I expected to receive about anyone I knew and loved, at least not from that… »

Some 15 years ago, my parents took a trip to the old familial sod in Ireland. They were traveling with my father’s cousin Barbara and her husband Joe. For as near as we can tell, it was the first time a Tallon from our clutch had returned across the pond since arriving in New… »