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  • The Homelands Blog

    Big plans for Big Oil

    Sandy Tolan made five trips to North Dakota this past fall and winter to document the standoff between opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the pipeline’s supporters in government and business. As he reported on …

  • Karen Michel

    Worlds of Difference

    Seeking the Middle Way

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    Karen Michel

    Worlds of Difference

    Seeking the Middle Way

    For decades, the goal of the tiny Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan has been neither to keep pace with the rest of the world nor to hide from it, but rather to increase what the king calls “Gross National Happiness.”

    Before going to Bhutan, I read as much as possible about the country and talked to folks who’d been there. The published articles agreed on two things: tourism was limited to 6,000 people a year and the country was Shangri-La. The people who’d visited agreed on nothing: being a Western Buddhist was an advantage/would be ridiculed; everything was expensive/everything was reasonable; adjusting to the altitude was difficult/the altitude was no big deal; and it was inevitable that the cold would get to you/wearing layers made everything easy.

    Let me address the tourism assertion first: it’s a myth, wrong, false. In fact, tourist arrivals have been as high as 9,000 people in a recent year, and Bhutan encourages people to come: you just have to write a letter to the Minister of Protocol asking permission, and stating why you want to go. And you have to wire $200/day for the duration of your expected stay. (The idea is that this will keep “the backpackers” out.) The letter, I would learn, is pro forma, getting a visa doesn’t take long, and the $200/day covers your guide (mandatory), hotel, meals, permits (required for visiting monasteries and government compounds) and transportation, and is, therefore, not a bad deal at all.

    As for Bhutan being Shangri-La, well, too many places in that part of the world claim the title. If you ask me, Bhutan is quite amazing; I’ll leave it at that. I prefer the notion that we all have our own vision and version of Shangri-La, whether influenced by James Michener or not.

    What did matter, after all, is that I am a practicing Buddhist, of the Kagyu branch of Tibetan Buddhism; so are the Bhutanese. My guide, Pema Tshering, made a point of telling people that I was a Buddhist: it made a difference to him, and to – it seemed – everyone I met. It meant, among other things, that I was open to a society based in Buddhist principls, a place where generosity was expected, moderation (the middle way) always a goal, loving kindness and compassion a way of life, and stupas, monks and monasteries everywhere. It meant, critically, that – by Bhutanese lights – I knew how to behave in both the secular and sacred realms. And so I was able to meet with high lamas, go into inner sanctums of monasteries, receive blessings, have discussions on the dharma. I had access to aspects of life that, I was told, were generally unavailable to tourists.

    was not really a tourist, of course, but a journalist. Yet I was traveling on a tourist visa. This made me nervous. Getting a journalist visa took much more time, and I didn’t have but a few weeks between assignment and anticipated arrival. I figured that having a small tape recorder was less obvious than a video camera, but still I was concerned: Bhutan maintains a tight control over its internal and external image. So before I left I met with Gyaltshen Penjor, the First Secretary of the Mission of the Kingdom of Bhutan to the United Nations. He was friends with a friend of a friend, it turned out. And that, too, mattered.

    I told him that I was going to Bhutan both as an academic interested in issues of media and cultural change (which was true) and as a journalist. “Should I be worried about that?” I asked him. He responded by querying me about my Buddhist beliefs. Why was I a Buddhist? For how long? What did that mean for my life? My answers satisfied him: he said I’d be fine, that I should use his name as necessary during my travels, that he wanted me to meet his brothers and to spend time with his mother in her village home.

    After our meeting, I sent him an article I’d written several years before, “The Journalist in the Lotus,” about reconciling the practices of journalism and Buddhism. He said he wanted to talk with me more about the dharma when I returned.

    During my too-brief stay in Bhutan, as I tried to understand the impact of recently-introduced media on a profoundly Buddhist culture, I thought often about the conflicting advice I’d been given by visitors, about the falsehoods in the (always gushy) Western press, and about how fortunate I was to have met Gyaltshen. I had a meal with members of his family in Thimphu, and spent an extraordinary afternoon with his mother in her village near Paro.

    What I experienced in those 10 days in Bhutan will take me years to unravel; I hope I’ll be back before too long to add more to the skein.

    – Karen Michel

    Thanks to Valeria Vasilievski, Pema Tshering, Deki Wangmo, Gyaltshen Penjor, Bob Vye, Yeshey Dorji, Tshering Pema, and Hotel Dragon Roots.

    Date

    May 20, 2005

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Economy, Culture
    Regions: Asia / Oceania
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Tags: development, Buddhism, Bhutan, Gross National Happiness

  • Chris Brookes

    Worlds of Difference

    A Map of the Sea

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    Chris Brookes

    Worlds of Difference

    A Map of the Sea

    For centuries, the Newfoundland fishery was hailed as the greatest in the world. Then, in 1992, the cod disappeared. Now the islanders must find a way to keep that culture from going the way of the cod. An award-winning meditation on memory, fishing, music, and dance.

    In Newfoundland today, there are two sounds that haunt me. The first one I heard twelve years ago. I was talking with the great traditional singer Anita Best about the sudden closure of the North Atlantic cod fishery. This cod stock was once the largest fish biomass on the planet. A year earlier Canadian fisheries scientists had belatedly woken up to signs that the cod were in serious trouble. A temporary fishing moratorium had been announced in hopes the stock would rebound. As Anita and I chatted then, one year into the moratorium, the signs were not good. People were beginning to think the unthinkable.

    In public the talk was all about the economic impact. Thirty thousand fishery workers were out of work. But Anita’s concern was cultural. “I fear,” she said, “that the codfish off Newfoundland may be like the buffalo on the Great Plains. When they were wiped out the repercussion wasn’t only economic for the societies that depended on them. It pulled the rug from under their whole culture. And I really think we may have done it here, just like they did to the buffalo.”

    I had asked her to sing a traditional song with the line “Lots of fish in Bonavist’ harbour,” and as I held my microphone her voice broke. “Please turn your tape off,” she said, and her body shook with a great wailing sob.

    Today, the fish haven’t come back, and the cod fishery is still closed. Rural Newfoundlanders have left in droves. Some communities are turning to tourism for survival, and Petty Harbour is one of these. They’ve developed a four-year plan to attract tourists to come and see their 500-year-old fishing history. Central attractions will be a museum and fishery heritage interpretation center. Mayor Nat Hutchings says, “It’s a culture shock. I mean, your culture all your lifetime is the fishery. You’re living and breathing the fishery and all of a sudden, that’s gone. It’s like a death. But after awhile you start thinking I’ve got to do something. And that’s what Petty Harbour is doing. We’ve moved from fishing for cod, to fishing for tourists.”

    Other rural communities have died. The 17th-century fishing community of Harbour Deep vanished from the map three years ago when the last of its residents left. But its ghost survives in the culture, because of a traditional “set dance” that Harbour Deep people had danced for longer than anyone could remember. It was unique to the place. Although the community has disappeared, the dance survives and is now stepped out by other feet – ironically including those of summer tourists looking for an “authentic” taste of Newfoundland outport life.

    The tapping of those feet is the other sound haunting me. A 500-year-old society trying to keep its feet after cataclysmic change. An economy once based on the greatest fishery in the world, now retooling to replay its memory to strangers.

    – Chris Brookes

    Date

    January 28, 2005

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Economy, Culture
    Regions: North America
    Media: Text, Audio
    Other Tags: tourism, music, cod, dance, fisheries, Newfoundland

  • Alan Weisman, Nancy Hand

    Worlds of Difference

    Cotopaxi Pilgrimage

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    Alan Weisman, Nancy Hand

    Worlds of Difference

    Cotopaxi Pilgrimage

    For the Tigua Indians of Ecuador, the spectacular 19,000-foot Cotopaxi volcano is both a sheltering spirit and a source of artistic inspiration. But the Tigua stopped visiting their sacred mountain when the government declared it a national park and began charging admission. Recently two Tigua painters led an improvised pilgrimage to the volcano’s glacier.

    The painter Julio Toaquiza was forced to work on a cacao plantation as a young boy. If he wasn’t in the fields by 6:00 a.m., the boss would come to his house with a whip. There was no local school for Julio to attend back then. He was married at 14 and had 12 children. He learned to paint, he says, in a dream.

    Julio’s was the last generation of Tigua to work under a whip. His children went to school. They helped with the family’s livestock and crops, rather than laboring at a plantation. And they learned to paint from their father.

    Julio’s oldest son, Alfredo, believes the style of painting his father developed is part of a resurgence of ancient indigenous art forms that were interrupted when Europeans arrived in the Andes. “The trunk was cut, but the roots have sprung up in different places among different people,” he says. “Here in Cotopaxi, in Tigua, it sprung up on its own. It’s a new school of indigenous art, where we express the feeling, the thinking, the way of life of our people.”

    Julio’s third son, Alfonso, sees his art as a way of preserving culture, and of sharing that culture with the larger world. “Pachamama, the earth spirit, has pushed us to show our way of life to different parts of the world. Our paintings reveal the hidden parts of the community.”

    For Alfonso, the paintings also tell a more urgent story. “Many people are destroying the forest and we say, ‘Please, don’t destroy that.’ Pachamama is crying. She doesn’t want more destruction. We need people to begin to talk about this so that this land that was once a paradise can return to being a paradise. That’s the idea we are always dreaming of.”

    After thirty years of painting scenes from the daily lives of his people as they live today – their work on the land, their ceremonies and celebrations – Julio has begun to paint about the past. “This is the slavery of the Tigua plantations,” he says, gesturing to a painting in progress. Instead of family plots of potatoes and small herds of llamas, the landscape is dotted with soldiers on horseback. The painting tells the story of a Tigua uprising against forced labor, and its violent suppression. It also tells the story of how much has changed in one man’s lifetime.

    “Our children are educated now. They know what laws are. They know about rights,” Julio says. “This painting is so that my history, the history of Tigua and of our ancestors who lived in this place, can go out from here. I like to paint stories and send them out to the world.”

    – Nancy Hand

    Date

    December 17, 2004

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Culture
    Regions: South America
    Media: Text, Audio
    Other Contributors: Alan Weisman
    Other Tags: Ecuador, indigenous people, Andes

  • Alan Weisman

    Worlds of Difference

    Resurrecting the Zápara

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    Alan Weisman

    Worlds of Difference

    Resurrecting the Zápara

    The Zápara once ranged far across the western Amazon. By the 1970s, anthropologists concluded that their culture was extinct. But a handful of native speakers survived. Now they’re trying to resuscitate their language and culture. But a new danger looms.

    Bartolo Ushigua, leader of Ecuador’s Zápara Indians, was terrified. Not of New York’s massive buildings that towered far beyond the tallest tree in his native Amazon, not of the oily urban stench and stupendous traffic, not of the Babel of people constantly snapping his picture as though he were some exotic zoo mammal. What shook him so deeply was that for the first time ever, he couldn’t dream.

    To the Zápara, a dream is a rendezvous with guiding spirits. It was in a dream that Bartolo’s shaman father saw that his people, down to just a few dozen, weren’t supposed to vanish after all, as prophecy had foretold. It was in dreams that this same father, now dead, kept returning to instruct Bartolo how to lead. Bartolo Ushigua was barely twenty when he assumed his indigenous nation’s helm; within three years he had brought the Zápara practically from extinction to designation by UNESCO as a world cultural treasure.

    The path to recognition had been treacherous, filled not just with old enemies but also new friends whose helpful intentions portended to be equally deadly, should the Zápara come to depend on them too much. Mostly, though, the path was strewn with cash – not a lot, but enough to be tempting and disruptive.

    After a dreamless week at the UN, one afternoon an exhausted Bartolo Ushigua napped. Suddenly images formed in his sleeping mind. “In my dream,” he recalled, “there was a man with two faces, one bloody, one smiling. When the smile showed, people became happy. When the blood showed, their strength waned. Then the face said something intriguing: In time, money could gain a soul.”

    When we met Bartolo, he admitted that he didn’t entirely understand this dream. From our perspective, with the hunter-gatherer Zápara paradoxically now needing money to defend a way of life in which money had never been necessary, it was easy to attribute the dream to wishful thinking.

    After all, we were in Ecuador to document a community facing seemingly impossible odds. The Zápara, once the most numerous people of Ecuador’s Amazon region, had been all but wiped out. Then, in 1998, a 60-year border war ended, and a few Zápara were discovered living in Peru. All had lost their language, but one was a shaman. On the Ecuadoran side, the last shaman had recently died, but a handful of elderly native speakers remained. Each group had what the other lacked, yet could so few people possibly resuscitate a culture? Especially with a new threat hanging over their heads?

    That new threat is oil. The surviving Zápara owe their existence in no small part to the fact that theirs was, until recently, the last sector of Ecuador’s jungle without an oil concession. Bartolo and his siblings and cousins, now responsible for their people’s future, told us that they have just a few years to learn to defend themselves before the road and the drilling rigs arrive.

    It seems impossible – until you meet them. We came away from the Zápara recalling that there’s a name for those people who occasionally confound probability and accomplish the impossible.

    They’re called dreamers.

    – Alan Weisman and Nancy Hand

    Date

    July 30, 2004

    Other Contributor(s)

    Nancy Hand

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Culture, Environment
    Regions: South America
    Media: Audio, Text
    Other Contributors: Alan Weisman
    Other Tags: Oil development, language revitalization, Zápara, UNESCO, indigenous, Amazon, Ecuador

  • Barbara Ferry

    Border Stories

    Borderland Jaguars

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    Barbara Ferry

    Border Stories

    Borderland Jaguars

    On the trail of an elusive cat that used to prowl the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico.

    Jaguars, native to the tropical jungles of South America, used to be found in the southwest deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. Though jaguars no longer live in the United States, occasionally one will travel across the border from Mexico.

    During the past few years, several jaguars have been seen in Arizona. Mexican researchers are taking advantage of Arizonans’ interest in the cats to bolster their own efforts to preserve the species in Sonora.

    Date

    April 2004

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Lives, Environment
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Tags: cat, environment, border, borderland, jaguars, animal, feline

  • Alan Weisman

    Worlds of Difference

    Chiloe: A Bridge Too Far?

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    Alan Weisman

    Worlds of Difference

    Chiloe: A Bridge Too Far?

    The island of Chiloé, off the coast of Chile, is known for its misty beauty, quaint architecture, and distinctive cuisine. Now Chile’s government is proposing to build the longest bridge in Latin America to connect Chiloé to the mainland. Islanders aren’t sure they want to be connected.

    Few human constructs are as innately graceful and pleasing as bridges. Literally and metaphorically, they connect us. Yet natives of Chiloé, an island the size of Puerto Rico off the coast of southern Chile, wonder lately if there may be such a thing as too much connection.

    Isolated from the mainland by a turbulent channel, Chiloé developed its own proud culture, whose music, myths, and charming architecture today entice thousands of tourists each summer. However, Chile’s government now wants to celebrate its 2010 bicentennial by building the longest bridge in Latin America, joining Chiloé to the continent. Many islanders fear this would replace the romantic sea change that visitors undergo during the twenty-minute ferry passage with a non-eventful, three-minute car ride.

    Worse, they claim, it would also end their uniqueness. They reject the rationale that a bridge means they’ll now have quicker access to emergency medical services on the mainland, arguing that it would be far cheaper simply to build Chiloé a decent hospital. The real reason for turning their island into a peninsula, they say, is development: The government has proclaimed that the bridge will make Chiloé the gateway to vast, hitherto inaccessible stretches of southern Chile, to extract lumber – and, especially, to cultivate an exotic fish.

    Chile, which has no native salmon, is now the world’s second biggest salmon producer; with this bridge it could become number one. Marine biologists, already worried over the environmental strains of intensive fish farming, have further doubts about turning Chile’s entire southern coast into a giant salmon factory. Local stocks of sardines, mackerel, and anchovies used to make feed for farmed salmon, they warn, are already dangerously overdrawn. What, they ask, is the sense of building more fish farms, if there’s nothing left to feed them?

    Chilean President Ricardo Lagos has promised that no public funds will be spent on the bridge. Instead, the first forty years’ toll revenues will go to the bridge’s private financiers. Industry projections, however, suggest that tolls could take more than a century to recoup construction costs, so no one is yet willing to undertake the $300 million project without guaranteed government subsidies. In turn, President Lagos, a former Minister of Public Works who won’t abandon the dream for this grand national monument, keeps postponing the construction bidding until a financing plan emerges.

    Opponents say that a bridge makes no cultural, fiscal, or ecological sense—that it no longer symbolizes connection, but a profound disconnect between human pride and human wisdom. Yet many fear the president will renege on his promise not to subsidize, and build it anyway. Chiloé lore tells how local mythic spirits have dealt with hubris in the past: vanquishing the perpetrators with the likes of floods and earthquakes. In such an act of revenge, a legendary sea serpent named Quaiquaí originally separated Chiloé from the mainland. Since the bridge, if built, will be anchored to a notoriously unstable sea bottom, a question heard on Chiloé these days is: Might Quaiquaí strike again?

    – Alan Weisman

    Date

    September 26, 2003

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Culture, Environment
    Regions: South America
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Alan Weisman
    Other Tags: Chiloe, Chile, salmon

  • Border Stories

    Documentaries and features in English and Spanish exploring social, economic, legal, and environmental issues along the U.S.-Mexico border.

  • Alan Weisman

    Border Stories

    LA Ecovillage

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    Alan Weisman

    Border Stories

    LA Ecovillage

    Bringing ecological living to an urban slum neighborhood and a Mexican-American barrio, complete with electric low-riders and solar-powered rap recording studios.

    bldg19The term “ecovillage” evokes pastoral visions of earthen homes and glistening solar panels. But in cosmopolitan Los Angeles, the idea of ecological alternative living gets stretched to include an urban slum neighborhood and a Mexican-American barrio, complete with electric low-riders and solar-powered rap recording studios.

    Date

    June 2002

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Lives, Culture, Environment
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Alan Weisman
    Other Tags: ecovillage, California, los angeles, LA

  • Barbara Ferry

    World Views

    Eco Pilot

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    Barbara Ferry

    World Views

    Eco Pilot

    American flyer Sandy Lanham helps Mexican environmentalists track endangered wildlife. Winner of the 2002 Gracie Allen Award.

    American flyer Sandy Lanham helps Mexican environmentalists track endangered wildlife. Winner of the 2002 Gracie Allen Award.

    Date

    October 2001

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Lives, Environment
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Tags: endangered, profile, airplane, pilot, environmentalist, wildlife

  • Alan Weisman

    Border Stories

    Laguna Madre

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    Alan Weisman

    Border Stories

    Laguna Madre

    A profile of people and place – a fragile ecosystem spanning both sides of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo near the Gulf of Mexico.

    A profile of people and place – a fragile ecosystem spanning both sides of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo near the Gulf of Mexico.

    A Spanish-language version is also available.

    Date

    April 2001

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Culture, Environment, Lives
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Alan Weisman
    Other Tags: rio grande, rio bravo

  • Alan Weisman

    World Views

    Gloria Flora and the Elko Uprising

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    Alan Weisman

    World Views

    Gloria Flora and the Elko Uprising

    A rising star in the U.S. Forest Service runs afoul of monied interests – and her own agency – as she tries to protect public lands from depredation.

    Gloria Flora was a rising star in the U.S. Forest Service, one whom many thought might become the first woman to head the agency. But her promotion to head a national forest in Nevada ended up scuttling her career. The story of Flora’s downfall demonstrates the widening war between local citizens and federal natural resource managers over who should determine the fate of public lands.

    Date

    March 2000

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Lives, Environment
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Alan Weisman
    Other Tags: forest service, resource management, nevada, public land

  • Sandy Tolan

    Gloucester at the Crossroads

    The Paint Factory

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    Sandy Tolan

    Gloucester at the Crossroads

    The Paint Factory

    Townsfolk debate the fate of an abandoned 19th century paint factory on Gloucester’s inner harbor. It’s symbolic of a larger debate over Gloucester’s economic and cultural identity.

    Townsfolk debate the fate of an abandoned 19th century paint factory on Gloucester’s inner harbor. Developers want to transform it into a luxury condominium; some citizens worry that the town is turning its back on its industrial past. It’s symbolic of a larger debate over Gloucester’s economic and cultural identity.

    Part 4 of the Gloucester at the Crossroads series.

    Date

    September 11, 1998

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Culture, Food, Lives, Economy
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: fishing, Gloucester, massachussetts, fish, fisherman

  • Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part V: Negev Ancient Springs

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    Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part V: Negev Ancient Springs

    Part 5 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Part 5 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Date

    February 27, 1998

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Lives, Environment, Peace & Conflict
    Regions: Middle East
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: negev, ancient, springs

  • Sandy Tolan

    Gloucester at the Crossroads

    Lost at Sea

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    Sandy Tolan

    Gloucester at the Crossroads

    Lost at Sea

    Over the last four centuries, Gloucester has lost, on average, one fisherman every thirteen days. The memory of the dead, and the knowledge that there will be more, have always haunted the town and its people.

    Over the last four centuries, Gloucester has lost, on average, one fisherman every thirteen days. The memory of the dead, and the knowledge that there will be more, have always haunted the town and its people.

    Part 3 of the Gloucester at the Crossroads series.

    Date

    January 9, 1998

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Food, Lives, Economy, Culture
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: fishing, Gloucester, massachussetts, fish, fisherman

  • Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part IV: Of Jordan: A River and a Nation

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    Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part IV: Of Jordan: A River and a Nation

    Part 4 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Part 4 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Date

    October 31, 1997

    Other Contributor(s)

    Sandy Tolan

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Peace & Conflict, Lives, Environment
    Regions: Middle East
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: jordan, river

  • Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part III: Collision In Gaza

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    Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part III: Collision In Gaza

    Part 2 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Part 3 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Date

    March 6, 1998

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Lives, Environment, Peace & Conflict
    Regions: Middle East
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: israel, conflict, Palestine, water

  • Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part II: Under the West Bank

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    Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part II: Under the West Bank

    Part 3 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Part 2 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Date

    July 18, 1997

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Environment, Peace & Conflict
    Regions: Middle East
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: conflict, gaza, Palestine, West Bank, water

  • Sandy Tolan

    Gloucester at the Crossroads

    St. Peter’s Fiesta

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    Sandy Tolan

    Gloucester at the Crossroads

    St. Peter’s Fiesta

    For nine nights each summer, the Italian-Americans of Gloucester gather to pray to the patron saint of fishermen. It’s been a tradition since the 1920s. But with the depletion of the fish stocks, townsfolk are beginning to contemplate a very different future.

    For nine nights each summer, the Italian-Americans of Gloucester gather to pray to the patron saint of fishermen. It’s been a tradition since the 1920s. But with the depletion of the fish stocks, townsfolk are beginning to contemplate a very different future.

    Part 2 of the Gloucester at the Crossroads series.

    Date

    August 1, 1997

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Food, Lives, Economy, Culture
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: fishing, Gloucester, massachussetts, fish

  • Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part I: The Politics of Mideast Water

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    Sandy Tolan

    Stories from the Middle East

    Troubled Waters | Part I: The Politics of Mideast Water

    Part 1 of a five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Part 1 of a 90-minute, five-part series examining the role of water in political tensions and the peace process in the Middle East.

    Date

    March 13, 1998

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Lives, Environment, Peace & Conflict
    Regions: Middle East
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: israel, Palestine, politics, water

  • Sandy Tolan

    Gloucester at the Crossroads

    The Penny Fish and the Multinational

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    Sandy Tolan

    Gloucester at the Crossroads

    The Penny Fish and the Multinational

    Gloucester was once one of the greatest fishing ports on earth. Today it’s a gritty place where fishermen struggle to make a living. A debate over a proposed foreign-owned herring processing plant casts light on the challenges facing a town – and an industry – in transition.

    Gloucester was once one of the greatest fishing ports on earth. Today it’s a gritty place where fishermen struggle to make a living. A debate over a proposed foreign-owned herring processing plant casts light on the challenges facing a town – and an industry – in transition.

    Part 1 of the Gloucester at the Crossroads series.

    Date

    May 2, 1997

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Food, Lives, Economy, Culture
    Regions: North America
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: Gloucester, massachussetts, fish, fishing

  • Sandy Tolan

    Searching for Solutions

    Miracle Farmer

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    Sandy Tolan

    Searching for Solutions

    Miracle Farmer

    In India, where signs of faith are everywhere, a deeply spiritual farmer has found a way to grow abundant supplies of rice without the use of harmful chemicals.

    In India, where signs of faith are everywhere, a deeply spiritual farmer has found a way to grow abundant supplies of rice without the use of harmful chemicals.

    Date

    June 2, 1995

    Outlets

    Living on Earth

    Tags

    Themes: Environment, Food, Lives
    Regions: Asia / Oceania
    Media: Audio
    Other Contributors: Sandy Tolan
    Other Tags: India, rice, farmer, spirituality, pesticide