Start Spreading the News

New York — I made it inside the New York Times, by way of a science journalism award from the Journalism Resource Institute at Rutgers University. 

Sitting in the modern, natural-light-permeated new home of what's considered the nation's best newspaper I heard about the troubled financial times affecting even them. 

Deputy science editor David Corcoran and science writer Don McNeil spoke. It was an eye-opening experience. 

"Our writers are at the top of their game," Corcoran says. "They come from either a top journal (Science, Nature) or one of our competitors (The Wall Street Journal)."

The next stop was the Associated Press national desk.

Malcolm Ritter is an incredibly down-to-earth and fascinating guy. If he is representative of AP's national writers then I'm a bigger fan than I thought.

Click here to find my philosophy on science journalism essay. 

Off the Beaten Track

We put down the Frommer's and headed to less-touristy Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans' for a day with Hands On New Orleans.

The city's rebuilding efforts are evident.

We ended up hunched in a hot elementary school hallway scalping old paint for seven hours. Our hands throbbed. Our fingers kept a claw-like shape until manually straightened.

What struck me most about the experience was that the neighborhood reminded me of a school in North St. Louis I used to visit weekly. I could just as well been back in Ms. Maclin's class dressed as the Cat in the Hat on Dr. Seuss' birthday. Maybe that's one reason why New Orleans' story struck a chord. It's that universal recognition of others in our own experiences. And our need to reach out.

Here's the story I penned for National Geographic Traveler's Intelligent Travel blog.

Death in New Orleans

Death sleeps in New Orleans, tucked in with a jazz funeral lullaby. It seems only appropriate to talk about the town's tethering to the spirit world before examining its modern soul and rebuilding following Katrina.

Marie Laveau's remains lay within a plaster tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Her grave

is one of the most visited in the United States.

She is  New Orleans' voodoo queen. With her name comes the tales of cures she brought sickness and hexes she made to enemies. In Martha Ward's biography of her "Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau," she is portrayed as that eclectic mix of good and evil, multi-cultural heritage and religious hybrid of which the town is known. Laveau was a Creole who lived in the early to mid 1800s. Her ancestry ranged from French to American Indian to African American. 

To me, she was one of our country's first feminists. She, a woman of color, married a pedigreed husband from French lineage. She kept her name, even named her daughter Marie #2. 

She carved her own spiritual path, mixing Catechism with African spiritual traditions that resulted in her version of voodoo. She led upper crust women into Congo Square, where they writhed and twisted "like snakes," according to historical references. But she was so mythical it is hard to distinguish her good deeds in helping with cholera epidemics to the vengeful deeds she passed along to clients who had an axe to grind.

Tourists leave Mardi Gras beads at Laveau's tomb. A few have carved "XXX" symbolizing favors they are asking the queen. Her decomposed body lies among the stone, plaster and marble tombs, among other prominent families from Old New Orleans. Today's voodoo priestesses and curious travelers keep her memory alive.

Saints March In

I will never comprehend the loss of human life nor the sheer hell residents along the Gulf Coast faced over those days. I, like many others, have only my limited, yet vivid, experiences of New Orleans. So many stories — both real and myth — to tell.

Hurricane. That word meant something entirely different the last time I was in New Orleans.

Hurricane then was a hazy, pinkish, rum-laced drink downed by the glass at Pat O'Brien's. A few of those and Bourbon Street became a surreal fraternity - the brass instruments playing an intoxicating, ethereal tune; the party buzz growing as the crowd swelled. It was an atmosphere oscillating between revelry and debauchery, an exciting and mischievous mix.

Anyone spending a bit of time there has a tale to tell of the eclectic, ethnic-rich place. It's a wacky, wonderful world.
Where else would a Jackson Square performing clown take you to listen to raw jazz with locals and then feast on late-night soul food? Where else do you wait outside while your sensible, law-student friend gets his fortune told by a psychic? Where else could you chase a muffaletta with a beignet? Where, but the Jazz Fest gospel tent, does a choir move one to tears while clapping and dancing along? Where else is crawfish considered a delicacy? Where, but there, do the vibrant colors of people and their backgrounds meld so haphazardly right, just like dangling, metallic Mardi Gras beads, available to all who show up.

The soul of New Orleans lives on. And we arrived on a sunny afternoon last week, ready to see for ourselves the resurrection.

Memphis Barbecue meets Tennessee Basketball

We rolled into Memphis Saturday mid-day, greeted not by blues and barbecue, but a clash of Memphis Tiger Blue and Tennessee Volunteer Orange. Memphis sat undefeated at #1 and Tennessee was set to knock them off (which they did that night. Then Vanderbilt humbled Tennessee two days later. Tennessee is the place for hoops these days). 

We elbowed our way through the trash talk to the Rendevous Room -- it was to be a pilgrimage for Jason. It was packed. They rushed us through dinner, quite opposite of the slow-cook process of our meal. Tiny entrees included half-dollar-size beans and slaw. But "a nice dry rub," Jason concluded. 

Beale Street's blues beats were silenced for basketball watch parties of the game playing just a block away in the Fed Ex Forum. We prepared for the next leg of the trip.

The next day we were off to New Orleans, to bear witness, to volunteer and to absorb the southern city's unexpected cultural twists. 

Malaria and Africa

Like most journalists, I read a lot. Then I think about the stories to tell. For the last two years I've been following the U.S. efforts in Africa regarding health and fighting malaria. Yesterday's 

New York Times article highlights Bush's visit in Eastern countries there. 

I wrote the below as an essay for an international reporting fellowship, which I later learned was canceled for the session I was going to apply. Times are tight for all journalistic budgets, I'm finding. But it's still a good story with a lot of unanswered questions. I'll give you a preview here:

If Rachel Carson were alive, she’d be in Africa. Tanzania, Uganda or possibly Kenya —sub-Saharan countries where prolific malaria missiles from parasites within mosquito bombers explode on a quarter of the continent’s population. She would probably wonder how with 40 years of science and medical innovations behind us, more than million people, mostly babies and children, continue to shake incessantly with the chills and drift into a coma with liver failure from the fever-inducing parasite.

Carson might go to Uganda to revisit her findings from Silent Spring in which she revealed how heavy applications of DDT were “catastrophic” on the coffee bush there during the 1960’s, a practice that devastated local farmers. She might wander if today’s flower growers in nearby Kenya are shunned from European import markets because their government and international health officials decided to once again use the pesticide. She might question the routine DDT spraying inside and outside African family dwellings.

She’d agree it’s a significant health and environmental story: How are the African people dealing with the reintroduction of DDT, a decision funded and supported by the United States, which banned its use stateside more than 30 years ago?

My project seeks to answer these questions posed by this health conundrum through the words of the Tanzanian people whose country receives funding through President Bush’s Malaria Initiative that began in 2005. As DDT again sprinkles across the African landscape, and mostly inside families’ homes, I want to speak with the Tanzanians whose homeland is a U.S. governmental stronghold for malaria control.

Background

Thirty-five years ago the EPA banned DDT – or dichloro-diphenyl-tricholoroethane, a member of the chlorinated hydrocarbon family — which previously helped eradicate malaria stateside and showered farmland throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s. Other countries also forbid its use as pressure spread that spraying could disrupt ecosystem and harm the environment. Scientists continue to question long-term health effects it has to humans. What is known is that the chemical doesn’t biodegrade, or break down in the environment, but passes from soil to waterways to animal and humans.

Although spraying in Africa has been going on off and on for decades, the mosquitoes, and deadly parasites return, perhaps the ancestors of genetically resistant ones.
South African officials initiated the DDT comeback seven years ago when they chose to spray it liberally to kill mosquitoes as an effective and inexpensive way to control malaria. The move proved to be highly beneficial from a heath standpoint, wrote Richard Tren and Roger Bate in their March 24, 2004 Policy Analysis report “South Africa’s War against Malaria: Lessons for the Developing World.” Later that year in April, a week before Earth Day, New York Times editorial writer Tina Rosenburg suggested DDT bans were actually killing African children.

So, could DDT actually save lives? The pendulum, at present, swings in favor of spraying. The World Health Organization stands behind President Bush’s Malaria Initiative began in 2005 in Angola and Tanzania. Then the Bush administration said a year later that United States Agency for International Development was expected to fund projects in Zambia, Mozambique and Ethiopia. Uganda president Yoweri Museveni also announced his country would reintroduce the spraying, despite warnings from the European Union about the risk. Bush called for more malaria funding in 2006 to bring the government's investment to $1.2 billion initiative. The Gates Foundation also donated $83 million to fight the disease in the last year.

So with all of this money and these resources going to Africa, questions loom: Who manufactures this DDT that is sprayed? What about the mosquito net solution? And, back to my original question — what about the people? How is it affecting their daily lives?

To touch a blog

I keep journals — hardboard, spiral, coffee-stained paper binders — for everything. I have an old-fashioned date book. It's chocolate canvas with "2008" in baby blue. I have a story idea notebook that's scaly like faux-snakeskin. That's for the blog, freelance and writing ideas. My friend Catherine gave me a candy-apple red, ring journal. It's reserved for the most deep and philosophical of musings, at least by my standards. Then there's the gift-bag Association of Health Care Journalists diary for keeping track of freelance and job queries. I know, I know — why not post directly to this blog? Why not an organizational Excel spreadsheet? That's what it's for, after all.  I don't know. There's something therapeutic about pressing a pen's point to blank canvas. I get a kick out of the worn pages over the weeks.

Podcast entry

In an effort to be objective following the previous post, here's a podcast on Edward Klein's book, The Truth about Hillary, about Clinton and why she is unfit to be president. Klein has been criticized because he uses unnamed sources.

Here's the link to the podcast:

www.trumix.com/download

Super Tuesday

My friend Elizabeth had the chance of seeing both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speak this weekend in St. Louis. She forwarded her friends the observations she took away from hearing each speak.  I wanted to include some of her e-mail because it's a good example of what every voter should do when faced with a tough decision at the polls — become educated.

Here's the NY Times article she references:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/magazine/03womenvoters

"I don't know about you, but I've been on the receiving end of a peer-pressure campaign by local hipsters in favor of Obama. So I emailed about 10 people and asked them why they are pro-O. Everybody agreed that on policies, Hillary and Barack share nearly identical positions. So the rationale comes down to "he's likeable, and thus more electable." Folks are afraid that it's going to be another nail-biter election, and they want the Dem candidate who can win. Me too! But I still wasn't sure who that candidate was.

Thanks to Missouri's swing position in the primaries I had the opportunity this weekend to see both candidates. Obama on Saturday, and Hillary on Sunday. They were both excellent, but in terms of forward-thinking progressive policies, mastery of nuances, warmth and charm and authenticity, there was no comparison: Hillary won hands-down. 

Is that a shock? It was to me. Here was a woman - articulate and bright, interacting with warmth and candor, tackling questions from young black women, senior citizens, laid-off factory workers, gay couples undertaking adoptions, and more. She listened actively and handled all comers with natural grace, quick wit, real empathy, and above all, a thorough master of the issues.

The NY Times magazine ran a story today (see above link) -- It presented some depressing statistics about female political involvement, or rather, the lack thereof. When I was in 7th grade, I played the part of Geraldine Ferraro in a social studies skit about the election. My teacher, Sister Elaine, told us, "After this election, we'll have a woman president in no time." Well, 24 years later, here we are with the first-ever nationally viable female presidential candidate."

Rainy Days

Dublin rooftop,

not enough 

time spent there.