By Charles Kwuelum In a recent conversation with some friends, we got into an argument about the relationship between extreme poverty and hunger. “There is malnutrition and hunger because of extreme poverty,” argued one friend. Another retorted, “Even if extreme poverty is eradicated, over 800 million people will remain malnourished and hungry.” The argument points out the need to address both the accessibility and the availability of food. In the end, extreme poverty and hunger are inseparable. People need to have the resources necessary to buy food for their families. At the same time, food production needs to keep up […]

Traditional power dynamics get the inside-out treatment in Thomas Vinterberg’s Far from the Madding Crowd, a historical film drama based on the 1874 novel by Thomas Hardy. The English author (most famous for Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure) was about a hundred years ahead of his time as a feminist thinker. This sweeping rural opera makes an unforgettable case for giving Tess a break from the high school English class spotlight and letting Bathsheba Everdene, the heroine in Madding Crowd, have the reins for a change. As romance-heavy as all that sounds, this isn’t your usual dances-and-horses […]

My head was pounding. My eyes hurt. My stomach didn’t feel so hot either. I marvel at the creativity of human beings and how—even in our off hours—we tackle difficult challenges. There were still gobbledygook lines showing very prominently on the site of “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,” which looked very much like Latin. But I’m told it is actually nonsense, used as fill-in lines that a designer uses to illustrate a typestyle, or “font,” until a writer writes the real thing. A writer like me, not a Web guru. So what was a 60-something woman, a […]

By Joshua Russell A recent article in the Washington Post showed a map of “the most racist parts” of the United States. This map was determined by data from Google, who had tracked the frequency of searches for a particular racial slur in media markets across the country. Markets that had a higher search rate were classified as more racist than those that had a lower search rate. The map classified Baltimore as less racist than average. If this methodology is taken at face value, then apparently the recent protests over the death of Freddie Gray were mistaken. In reality, […]

Set to become the year’s biggest blockbuster (and one of the highest-grossing films of all time), The Avengers: Age of Ultron has continued the world’s love affair with Marvel superheroes that began with Iron Man. “You want to protect the world, but you don’t want it to change. There’s only one path to peace . . . your extinction.” I watched the film in a full theatre and listened closely to the post-film comments made by the people in my vicinity. I heard not a single negative comment. People were thrilled; some even clapped. When I suggest that the masses are being […]

Most of my Another Way followers know of my book Whatever Happened to Dinner (Herald Press, 2010), which looks at the ways eating together regularly strengthens families and children. A number of you actually helped me write the book with your wonderful examples, stories, memories, and ideas about what keeping family meal time as often as possible did for your family. In groups where I’ve talked about this topic, audiences have no trouble coming up with ideas about what eating together as a family does: fosters togetherness, establishes traditions, and leans toward better nutrition, companionship, conversation, and camaraderie. In churches as in […]

Lost and Found: Buena Vista Social Club Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes Two recent musical releases dig into hidden gems and leftovers to create new albums. Lost and Found, from the Buena Vista Social Club, and Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. On Lost and Found you will experience a wonderful mix, from Manuel Guajiro Mirabel’s trumpet solos of “Habenero,” taken from the vaults when it didn’t make it onto a planned solo album in 2004, to the infectious live tune that starts the album, featuring Ibrahim Ferrer and more than a dozen other musicians. […]

Lost and Found: Buena Vista Social Club Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes Two recent musical releases dig into hidden gems and leftovers to create new albums—Lost and Found, from the Buena Vista Social Club, and Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. While these musicians are old by any standard and the music they play is thick with tradition, the sounds always make my body feel like moving. On Lost and Found you will experience a wonderful mix, from Manuel Guajiro Mirabel’s trumpet solos of “Habenero,” taken from the vaults when it didn’t make it onto […]

Last year I paid passing tribute to two of my daughters’ first Mother’s Day without going into detail. For those of us who are privileged to get to the place in life (and it is a great privilege that I hope I never take for granted—no one should) where we get to see our kids being parents, well, as they say, it is a very happy place. Mostly. When it’s time for me to go to bed and they’re visiting or I’m at their house, I can just go to bed and not worry about having to get up for them. […]

A ruler with absolute power. A rigid aristocracy with no avenues for advancement. And in the very lowest classes, a struggle to survive that borders on starvation. That might sound like 18th century France, but it also describes the world of the newest Disneynature documentary, Monkey Kingdom. Fellow Media Matters reviewer Matthew Kauffman Smith beat me to it by consulting with his young daughters, so be sure to check out his review for an accurate take on how kids will absorb this film. Unlike Matthew and his daughters, I came into Monkey Kingdom with no prior experience with Disneynature. I hope […]