Voices

The Dark Night: walking home alone

I hadn’t felt safe at night since the eighth grade, when I was taught to be afraid of the dark. The class was technically called self-defense, but it focused much more on fear than survival skills. Our co-ed gym class was divided for the month or so it took to teach us girls to cross the street, walk with our keys in hand, and not talk on the phone. Not to mention the Miss Congeniality-esque defense maneuvers that I would never, ever use. It became clear that the point of the class was to learn how to avoid dangerous situations, not to learn what to do if such a situation actually occured. It’s a valid point, and many of the pointers were useful for teenage girls growing up in a big city like Chicago. By the end of the unit, though, we were all convinced that we would get mugged if we took the El after dark, and God help us if we didn’t have a twenty in our wallets for the mugger.

By Allie Reiner September 11, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

Give me liberty or give me death?

The poverty-stricken masses of Cairo are fed-up with an oppressive government that doesn’t care, a supposedly “grand America” that supports this negligent regime, and a city that doesn’t offer so much as clean air. “Religious” leaders seeking power use the compelling context of Islam to attract these people and to convert them into devotees. These figures augment their status in relation to the government and obtain a personal following. They promise a sanitized political system and a chance for people to have greater ownership over their own lives. Social services, like the hot meal that government welfare rarely provides, entice the average person to keep coming for more.

By Mark Lerner September 11, 2008

Voices

The lives of others

Podcasts of This American Life and other radio shows devoted to making real-life snippets into stories got me through my bus commute this summer. Call it voyeuristic, but I’m fascinated by the simple truths of other people’s lives. I love to hear a stranger laugh about night terrors that had him convinced there was a jackal in his bedroom, a woman talk about the time she tried to write a break-up song despite her lack of musical abilities (and got in touch with Phil Collins for pointers), a man explain how he unwittingly became a paid spokesman for California foster kids at the age of 17.

By Simone Popperl September 4, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

McCain chose VP for style, not substance

More significantly, it seems that McCain doesn’t respect women for their qualifications but simply uses their gender for political advantage. Is this McCain’s way of telling us that he believes women can be easily manipulated for political gain instead of being respected for their own career accomplishments? McCain has shown us that he doesn’t respect women, and that he will go to desperate measures to get himself elected, an occurence that would put our country at risk.

By Sasha Wasserstrom September 4, 2008

Voices

Moscow: all grown up and out of vodka?

During our chats, I found that all but one of my workmates were married or engaged, two of them had children, and one was already happily divorced. The oldest of them was twenty-five. They spent their evenings in cooking dinners to feed their growing families, their Saturdays at the zoo in lieu of sleeping off a monumental clubbing night, and their salaries on the latest eco-summer camps and environmentally-friendly living instead of on live-in lovers and python handbags.

By Anastasia Stepanova September 4, 2008

Voices

Bullfights? “Não.” Espresso? “Sim!”

Walking up to the Moorish-style stadium in Lisbon, camera in hand, I was prepared to see a small drove of burlap-clad animal-rights activists banging on tambourines and chanting about respect for all living beings. What I did not expect to see was a group of average-looking citizens of all ages, standing respectfully behind barricades and police lines, holding signs reading, “Bullfighting is neither art nor culture.”

By Lynn Kirshbaum September 4, 2008

Voices

Biloxi, three years later

Biloxi is the cultural center of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a region that has always been more New Orleans gumbo than Mississippi catfish. In fact, it was the original New Orleans, founded around twenty years before the Big Easy ever came into existence. It is a city settled by French, Croatians, Cajuns, and Vietnamese, a city that is proud of its Catholic heritage and cannot live without its Mardi Gras, a city where a po-boy is always lunch and no dinner is complete without French bread.

Three years ago, it was all swept from under my feet.

By Dylan Richmond August 28, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

Dispatches from the Obama campaign

With deepening gloom, I had continued to call people, hoping I’d strike gold and find a volunteer. The next day passed uneventfully. I paced the room, talking eagerly to whoever picked up their telephone. Occasionally, pedestrians would slow down or stop when they saw that someone was walking around inside the office, but they’d soon move on again, and my hopes for a walk-in volunteer would dissipate into the sweltering August air.

By Nick Wertsch August 28, 2008

Voices

Unpaid? Uninterested

My dad never went to college. My siblings and I were raised on the tenets of hard and honest work, no matter how much we hated our jobs. In high school I bagged groceries at a local supermarket. For two years, I bit my tongue as suburban moms complained about the rising price of peaches and the bruises on their cantaloupes. But I never regretted taking the job, because even though I absolutely loathed standing for five hours ringing up groceries, I had one thing to be grateful for: I was getting paid.

By Madeline Reidy August 28, 2008

Voices

The last person on Earth without a cell

As time wore on, I got attached to the idea that rejecting technology signified a bohemian, responsibility-free existence. Everyone with their cell phones and iPods and fax machines could just go work at Merrill Lynch and rape the earth. I would be barefoot and bake vegan cupcakes, the American answer to Amelie, sprinkling joy wherever I went, free from the onerous burden of communicating with others.

By Sarah Harman August 28, 2008

Voices

Chernobyl’s concrete ghost town

Several miles, two passport checks and one release form later, I stood 500 feet from the reactor—known as The Sarcophagus—that released uranium dioxide into the bodies of 50,000 people in fewer than 36 hours.

By Chelsea Paige August 22, 2008

Voices

Carrying On: Plumage Pilgrimage

I didn’t know it before I took the job, but the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge where I worked sees 325 different species of birds throughout the year. As a result, it’s a world-famous birding site, drawing visitors from allover the globe. Late spring though August is the prime time for migratory birds, and the number of birders following them made it feel similar to what I imagine it must be like to work in Mecca during the Hajj (that is, if Mecca were visited primarily by upper-middle-class, middle-aged white couples).

By Dan Newman August 22, 2008

Voices

Pride of the People’s

In the last two weeks I have heard the Chinese national anthem more times than I have in the rest of my life put together. Although I’m sure any avid Olympics viewer is starting to become familiar with the song, being in Beijing this summer means that those notes follow you everywhere. Not only is every television in the city tuned into the Olympics, but the new buses, subway stations, and subway cars are all equipped with TV screens so you won’t miss a single moment. Montages of gold medal moments air in between all programming, so in a given day I could see the same flag rise at least twenty times. It’s gotten to the point where I saw a group of inebriated Germans singing the Chinese national anthem on the Olympic Green and wasn’t surprised that they hit all the right notes.

By Vivian Chen August 22, 2008

Voices

This Georgetown Life: First days of school

On the last day of summer before the start of second grade, I sat at the pool with some friends playing with a bee sting remover. The device is like a plastic syringe and uses suction to pull the sting out of the flesh. Who knew that suctioning the thing to your chin could be so outrageously fun? Prancing around in my little Speedo, I exclaimed, “look, I’m a Pharaoh!” as it dangled from my chin, or “now I’m a unicorn!” when stuck to my forehead. What I should have anticipated is that I’d be showing up on the first day of school with perfectly round purple dots about one inch in diameter all over my face.

By the Voice Staff August 22, 2008

Page 13 Cartoons

Play honest, not nice

It would be much more helpful for all of us if our papers left those classrooms in shards. Instead, it seems like the barrier to raising your hand is having some point of praise to help the criticism go down easier. At twenty-one, I’d rather leave this Mary Poppins treatment behind; in a writing class for upperclassmen, criticism is neither rude nor unnecessary. Even good writers sweat out bad pieces, and I hope they’d like to know it when they do. The decision we make everyday in those classrooms is to value politeness over honesty, and it leaves us victims as much as perpetrators.

By Mike Stewart April 24, 2008

Voices

Collecting homes in Cairo

In the last nine months, I have shuttled between Cairo, Dublin, Vienna, and Haifa. I’ve climbed Mt. Sinai, danced in an Irish ceilidh, been force-fed schnitzel by my Austrian family, played billiards with Bedouins in Jordan, and wandered through Jerusalem at night.

I haven’t been back to Portland, but somehow home has found me anyway.

By Simone Popperl April 24, 2008

Voices

Primaries a primary lesson

As our plates steadily emptied of their honey-baked ham and sweet potato pudding last Christmas, I suddenly realized my family had nearly exhausted our usual yuletide conversation topics (including plans for escaping the grimy winter months ahead through trips to Pennsylvania’s version of the Riviera—Florida) and was headed directly for that reliably disastrous discussion topic: politics.

By Sara Carothers April 24, 2008

Voices

This Georgetown Life: Crazy little thing called summer love

Elektra always wore a sailor hat on top of her short auburn hair that swayed when she drove home a contention in a debate. She was a year older than me and the hottest thing at debate camp in Cameron, Oklahoma. Best of all, she wanted me. Bad.

By the Voice Staff April 24, 2008

Voices

A Papal visit without pontification

On the first day—well, Tuesday—the Pope crossed the Atlantic, and he saw that it was good.

By Tim Fernholz April 17, 2008