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New York’s Homeless Outreach Mission - Death Prevention - NYTimes.com
On nights when the wind chill dips to 20 degrees, the city’s Department of Homeless Services declares a Level 2 “Code Blue.” Starting at 8 p.m., its outreach teams divide the city into zones and drive around in vans, armed with lists of the most vulnerable homeless people. They visit, or try to visit, each person every two hours, all night long.
The outreach workers try to persuade the homeless to climb in the van to be taken to a shelter. Only a small fraction say yes.
The teams’ real mission, a city official said, is “death prevention.”
G.I.’s in Iraq Try to Heal Ancient Site, St. Elijah’s - NYTimes.com
FORWARD OPERATING BASE MAREZ, Iraq — When the 101st Airborne Division captured this base back in 2003, an American tank blasted the turret off a T-72 tank, catapulting it into the side of St. Elijah’s Monastery.
The force buckled a wall of mortar and stone that had stood for more than 1,000 years here in one of the earliest redoubts of Christianity. Such is the tragedy of war.
The division then made the site a garrison and painted its emblem on the stucco above the low door to the monastery’s chapel. The insignia remained there until a chaplain contemplated the righteousness of having “Screaming Eagles” adorn a house of God.
Op-Ed Contributor - Whose Christmas Is It? - NYTimes.com
But I was wrong. Minutes before I walked onstage the second night, a nervous representative of the orchestra board appeared in my dressing room to tell me that my program was “too Jewish.” Wow, I thought, who knew that orchestra management played practical jokes on artists moments before their shows? My laughter turned to disbelief when the stuttering gentleman said that there had, in fact, been complaints.
Between numbers the night before, I had mentioned that almost all the most popular Christmas songs were written by Jews and then riffed on the idea that the Gentiles must have written mostly Hanukkah songs. The audience was enthusiastic, so I assumed it was somebody on the board who had been offended.
In Bolivia, Water and Ice Tell of Climate Change - NYTimes.com
The retreat has outpaced his wildest predictions. He had predicted that one glacier, Chacaltaya, would last until 2020. It disappeared this year. In 2006, he said El Alto water demand would outstrip supply by 2009. It happened.
But global warming alone cannot be blamed for the longstanding woes of this exotic but desperately poor landlocked country, where per capita income is around $1,000. Urban water supplies are also taxed by population growth as well as checkered management, in part because there is little money to manage anything, but also because the government nationalized the water company a few years ago, having declared water a human right. El Alto still does not employ a full-time water technician.
Giorgio Carbone, Elected Prince of Seborga, Dies at 73 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com
But the true miracle of Seborga may have been the 46-year reign of Prince Giorgio I, the constitutionally elected royal ruler of its five square miles and 2,000 people, about 350 of whom are enfranchised citizens.
Prince Giorgio, a bewhiskered grower of mimosa flowers from a family of mimosa growers, was seized by a glorious vision: that Seborga was not part of the surrounding Italian nation. It was an ancient principality, cruelly robbed of its sovereignty.
Two Nepalese Cabdrivers in New York - NYTimes.com
Each man had come from Nepal over the past decade, and attended the same taxi-training school in Jackson Heights. For a year, they had split the $1,400-per-week leasing fee on a yellow cab, Medallion 6M83, trading 12-hour shifts behind the wheel, seven days a week.
They seemed to be running side by side on a familiar treadmill. But their lives were actually mirror images of the immigrant experience in New York.
Mr. Sherpa, 28, drove days, chauffeuring strivers bound for business meetings, power lunches and auditions. Mr. Chhantyal, 30, shepherded the denizens of New York’s nightlife, the decadent and the dangerous.
For Elderly in Rural Areas, Hard Times Get Harder - NYTimes.com
LINGLE, Wyo. — Norma Clark, 80, slipped on the ice out by the horse corral one afternoon and broke her hip in four places. Alone, it took her three hours to drag herself the 40 yards back to the house through snow and mud, after she had tied her legs together with rope to stabilize the injury.
A dutiful farm wife, Ms. Clark somehow even got to her feet to latch the gate. And her first call when she got to the house was not to 911, but to a daughter 30 miles away.
“I told her she’d better come feed the horses,” said Ms. Clark, telling the story from her living room overlooking her 900-acre wheat farm.
Representative Obey See Echoes of Vietnam in Afghan Troop Surge - NYTimes.com
Mr. Obey came away from the speech unconvinced that Mr. Obama’s strategy could succeed — not because he doubts the president, he said, but because he has little faith in the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. After 40 years in Congress, a career that has spanned eight presidents, he is not about to quit asking questions now.
“I didn’t come here to be Richard Nixon’s congressman, Reagan’s congressman, Obama’s congressman,” Mr. Obey said. “I’m here representing the Seventh District of Wisconsin.”
Illegal Immigrant Students Publicly Take Up a Cause - NYTimes.com
Behind Mr. Padilla’s case — and others in Florida of students who fought off deportation — is activism by young immigrants, many of them illegal, which has become increasingly public and coordinated across the country, linked by Web sites, text messages and a network of advocacy groups. Spurred by President Obama’s promises of legislation to grant them legal status, and frustration that their lives have stalled without it, young illegal immigrants are joining street protests despite the risk of being identified by immigration agents.
With many illegal immigrants lying low to avoid a continuing crackdown, immigrant students have become the most visible supporters of a legislative overhaul, which Mr. Obama has pledged to take up early next year. In the meantime, their protests are awkward for the administration, with young, often high-achieving illegal immigrants asking defiantly why the authorities continue to detain and deport them.
Defiant Chinese Muslims Keep Their Own Time - The New York Times
In this far western outpost, where a Muslim majority lives restively under Chinese rule, you can tell a lot about a man's politics by how he sets his clock.
For the last half-century, China's Communist leaders have required the entire country to mark the hours by Beijing time, even though this far-flung city of veiled women, spice markets and donkey carts should be two, probably three, time zones behind. In Kashgar, in Xinjiang Province, really living by Beijing time would mean getting up in total darkness nearly 365 days a year.
Its Population Falling, Russia Beckons Its Children Home - NYTimes.com
The government is trying to head off the country’s severe population decline by luring back Russians who live abroad as well as their descendants. Mr. Reutov and several dozen other members of his religious community from Uruguay have become among the most striking examples of this policy.
In Russia, New Times Are Reason for Debate - NYTimes.com
In today’s economy of constant communication, it is hard to manage businesses and other affairs when one region is waking up and another is thinking about dinner. Mr. Vodyanitsky, for example, has his plant on the Kamchatka Peninsula, nine hours ahead of Moscow, and his office in Vladivostok, seven hours ahead. But his business often depends on decisions by regulatory and banking officials in the capital. “It’s extremely inconvenient getting anything done through Moscow,” he said in a telephone interview. “For any activity, we often have to wait a day, wasting a whole 24 hours.”
Taishan Journal - Fortresses Inspired by West Crumble in a New China - NYTimes.com
It is a sight found nowhere else in China: rectangular towers, some made of concrete, some built of stone or other materials, jutting four or five stories high from the flatlands. They have balconies and turrets and Roman-style arches. There are metal shutters to keep out criminals and portholes where defenders can take aim at assailants, explaining why the locals call these buildings “pao lou,” or cannon towers.
Religion Journal - Montana Rabbi Lends an Ear to an Officer and His Dog - NYTimes.com
HELENA, Mont. — In Montana, a rabbi is an unusual sight. So when a Hasidic one walked into the State Capitol last December, with his long beard, black hat and long black coat, a police officer grabbed his bomb-sniffing German shepherd and went to ask the exotic visitor a few questions.
Op-Ed Columnist - A Generation in the Balance - NYTimes.com
Recessions, it seems, only benefit liberals when an activist government is perceived to have answers to the crisis. When liberal interventions seem to be effective, a downturn can help midwife an enduring Democratic majority. But if they don't seem to be working - or worse, if they seem to be working for insiders and favored constituencies, rather than for the common man - then suspicion of state power can trump disillusionment with free markets.
Forest Kindergarten at Waldorf School in Saratoga Springs - NYTimes.com
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Fat, cold droplets splashed from the sky as the students struggled into their uniforms: rain pants, boots, mittens and hats. Once buttoned and bundled, they scattered toward favorite spaces: a crab apple tree made for climbing, a cluster of bushes forming a secret nook under a willow tree, a sandbox growing muddier by the minute.
Consumed - Sleeping Gag - NYTimes.com
The Tauntaun sleeping bag’s back story is more complicated, because it’s a product that ThinkGeek was quite serious about selling from the start. Mostly a retailer, ThinkGeek does very little licensing and manufacturing, and its attempts to get a meeting with Lucasfilm to work out the rights to make the sleeping bag went nowhere. “We’d really pretty much given up,” Ty Liotta, the company’s senior merchandiser, said. “We decided: ‘We’re not doing anything else with this, and it’s funny. Let’s make it an April Fools’ product.’ ”
On Language - Against Camel Case - NYTimes.com
In other words, though camel case may have been spurred by recent technology, its effect is regressive — in fact, medieval. It harks back to an era when reading was effortful, public and loud — like a visit to a contemporary shopping mall. Perhaps camel case, like intrusive music, baffling floor plans and aggressive fragrances, is deployed to weary and bewilder us, to render us so addled that we have to say corporations’ trademarks aloud to be sure of what we’re looking at. It doesn’t have to be this way. Put some distance between you and your Master Card; don’t let your Iphone make the rules. You don’t have to buy their language. It already belongs to you.
Runaway With Asperger’s Syndrome Spent 11 Days on Subway - NYTimes.com
Day after day, night after night, Francisco Hernandez Jr. rode the subway. He had a MetroCard, $10 in his pocket and a book bag on his lap. As the human tide flowed and ebbed around him, he sat impassively, a gangly 13-year-old boy in glasses and a red hoodie, speaking to no one.
After getting in trouble in class in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and fearing another scolding at home, he had sought refuge in the subway system. He removed the battery from his cellphone. “I didn’t want anyone to scream at me,” he said.
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