My Page: Nathaniel Hoffman
Where Xutos gets in touch with the tree
Burying Placenta in Boise
Rolling into Boise with my California plates felt treasonous in so many ways.
I was abandoning the Mission District, months of my life wasted commuting over a bridge and through a tunnel, barely making ends meet. I was leaving the Third-World pulse of San Francisco, the sustainable market corners, the wealth of cultures and tongues that made our little Petra the most cosmopolitan of toddlers.
Driving through the Nevada and eastern Oregon desert pulling a 5x8 trailer with our still-meager accumulated possessions, I tried to distance myself from all the other white people leaving California for more suburban, more white, more affordable corners of the heartland. "We were adoptive Idahoans, moving back to Idaho," I repeated to myself. We longed for the hot, dry air and looming hills of the Boise front. Still, the basic truth of this move eluded me. Then I stepped out of the car and it hit me.
I left San Francisco for a place to be barefoot again.
A hot, leafy place where in a few weeks time I’ll be running on rocks, no shoes or socks, oblivious to the pain. But Petra, the cosmopolitan was confused. Her favorite word was still shoes.
I guess that was a summertime dream. Now that there's snow on the ground, Petra keeps pulling her shoes off.
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Where Xutos meets members of a purported terror group and brings home a kinda cool t-shirt
Meeting Hezbollah in Beirutwww.flickr.com
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On 10 November I flew to Beirut to participate in the Reuters Foundation international news writing course. On the first day, two retired Reuters foreign correspondents showed us Fox News and Al Jazeera footage of the Iraq War. The six American reporters in the room worked hard to justify why our news appears so cheerleady and sanitized: It's market driven. We don't want to desensitize folks to gore. We have short attention spans.
Of course, none admitted to watching Fox News either.
The six Middle Eastern reporters, Christians and Muslims from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt, weren't buying it.
The 24-hour bloody babies and rubble shown on Al Jazeera is based in fact. Americans must see this.
I made the point that if Americans saw this there would be no war in Iraq. It's market driven.
The trip was funded by the Reuters Foundation and the Stanley Foundation, an Iowa based outfit that promotes multilateralism. Thanks guys. Let me know when the next trip is planned!
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