4:53:09 PM Tuesday January 12th was the last moment of Old Haiti. The nearly 200,000 people who were going to die in the next few minutes did not know it and the survivors did not know they’d carry the burden of saying goodbye. read more »

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Walking through the tent cities of Port-au-Prince, one sees in the hobbling amputees, skull-faced children and hungry people the aftershocks of “The Event.” read more »

Glass crunches underfoot. We walk into downtown Port au Prince, a jagged valley of collapsed stone. A chunk of wall was split loose from the building by the latest earthquake and fell in the street like a giant boulder. People scamper around it. Electric cables sway around us like a web. We follow the hundreds of [...] read more »

Old men with creased faces watch us enter the cemetery. A solemn air blows through the arch as the four of us walk in, cameras aimed, pen angled and stop at a woman’s body being nibbled by flies. Over the face, someone lifted her shirt as a makeshift veil. She is what death has become in [...] read more »

I’m sitting in the Toussaint L'Ouverture International Airport. Around me are red-eyed, sweaty reporters hunched over laptops, trying to squeeze the chaos of a ruined city into words. Outside are hungry young men, circling anyone who walks in or out, offering to drive and translate. Beyond them are families perched on broken walls, waiting for food or water or news. Beyond them are thousands of people digging through the rubble of a collapsed city for the corpses of their loved ones. Beyond them is a world who glimpses this tragedy in the words we create here. read more »

This past summer, On TV, I watched President Obama speak inside a New Hampshire high school. Outside angry protestors waved signs and one man, handgun strapped to his leg, made a veiled threat to kill him as he waved a sign, “It is time to water the tree of liberty.” I knew his type. He’s one [...] read more »

Can it be a year ago that we celebrated Obama’s victory? I danced in Harlem where cars honked like a wild jazz band. A woman climbed on a hood and screamed. People flooded the streets of cities around the world as a great love surged through us and swallowed the planet whole. In the midst of celebration I raised my arms and yelled, “This is who we really are!” A year later, why do we still have faith in him? read more »

Last Christmas Eve, I stayed over-night at a Manhattan Shelter. The following article is based on my experience. “Step up,” the cop waved a metal-detector wand over me. I didn’t bring weapons but thought about it. When I told friends my plan to sleep at a homeless shelter Christmas Eve, they said don’t. [...] read more »

My face feels like a cold rubber mask. I trot down the street to Pequena, a Mexican restaurant of colored lights and puppets dangling from the ceiling, where enchiladas come in blankets of cooked cheese, where it’s warm and I can be alone. It’s the day before the day before Christmas. I’ve rushed through stores [...] read more »

The President was handed the Nobel Peace Prize, shook hands and smiled as the cameras flashed.  When the photographers finished, security men glided back into orbit around him. After he left the presenter saw a red smudge on his fingers, shrugged and wiped it on his pants. On the flight back, the President took the medal [...] read more »