Photographer of the Week: Claire Felicie
(Who took photographs of Dutch soldiers who fought in the Iraq War before, during, and after they were deployed. To read a surprisingly thoughtful article about it on the Daily Mail, click here.)
I found this past week’s New Yorker issue on 9/11 to be pretty boring and irrelevant. Like honestly, who gives a fuck what Jonathan Safran Foer has to say anymore? Isn’t his thing the Holocaust? Also, Zadie Smith’s piece was almost unbelievably unreadable. Was she writing from the perspective of a Muslim school boy? And if so, WHYYYY????
I had almost given up on the issue when I came upon a great photo essay by Christopher Anderson, on New Yorkers ten-years after the event, and an article on the rhetoric of “the war on terror” by George Packer.
Normally I find George Packer to be extremely thorough, if a little paranoid. As much as I’d like to finish his articles, I generally get lost somewhere around the seventh layer of the conspiracy he’s unveiling, and give up. But this piece, called “Ten Years Later: After 9/11 transfixed America, the country’s problems were left to rot” was a pretty compelling picture of what the United States is like today, in the arc of its downfall.
My favorite line, in regards to the government’s abysmal job providing safe armor for soldiers fighting in Iraq: “We put more money on T.S.A. people at the airport screaming at you like it’s the Third Reich than we do protecting the people who are truly protecting us.”
Amen to that. Read the rest of the article if you have the time.
Schaefer Gets Skunked, Even In Hell
(© Chris Hondros)
I first met my friend Andrew in middle school. Our relationship, at first, consisted of me teasing him mercilessly, but eventually evolved into us, both self-appointed loners, sitting in the cafeteria every day senior year of high school, shooting the shit and laughing our asses off.
Andrew did a tour in Iraq as a Sergeant in the Infantry of the United States Army at the beginning of the war. Upon his return home, he started writing stories, some of which he’s sent me over the years. I’ve always loved them—Andrew has the lyrical tongue of an Irishman with the wit of someone who observes life from the outside.
I asked him if I could publish one of them on my blog, and he said yes. So it’s below. I’m really excited about it, and I think that you’ll think its as surreal, melancholy and jarring as I did the first time I read it.
