Columns

It’s Halloween and my favorite TV special is, “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.” I was two years old when it premiered in 1966 and I never missed an airing, and the DVD is watched at least twice a year. But upon closer inspection, Charlie Brown’s world is a little odd, and that got me thinking (never a good thing on a slow news day) what if Charlie Brown and his world was real?

For a long time many people saw the developing world as an empty pit, pouring in skills, goods, and money to fill it. More and more, this pit appears bottomless, basic human conditions within it only worsening. Project benefits are not lasting. Little seems sustainable.

Why?

Perhaps because these failed projects depend too heavily on foreign funding and skills.

Anger or hatred is like a fisherman's hook. It is very important for us to ensure that we are not caught by it. --His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Anger... or anguish?  

About Friðgeir Helgason

Friðgeir Helgason lived and worked as a chef in New Orleans from 1990 to 2004 before moving to Los Angeles where he currently studies photography.  Helgason returns to the 'greatest city on earth,' his New Orleans, every 6 months to visit family and friends.

The advantage of a federal prosecution is that prosecutors are immune from petty party politics . [ . . . ] State prosecutions that are the result of partisan politics are suspect in the minds of American jurors who deliberate not only upon the facts but with respect to issues of fairness.¹

When I first started publishing, I was advised never to look at my work in print: whatever the problems I would spot (and I would spot them), there was nothing I could do about them, I was told. The piece of paper, the artifact, was final. All hail the printed page, for it is final, glorious and sacrosanct! And I bowed with the rest.

Need I tell you that things have changed?

My first experience with gainful employment was at age 7 as the "clip file" librarian. In 1967, clip files were constructed of news stories which were cut out neatly and taped, along with the dateline from the newspaper, to a paper backing. They were destined to accompany a written query to a publisher.

Editor's note: Mr. Barratt's distinctive style is in part a product not only of his gifted writing, but of the British flavor of his syntax and spelling. Rather than practice a "foolish consistency to style guide gods," we've left his voice intact.

Were US Attorneys purged also in part because they resisted Bush Administration pressure to federalize law enforcement?