The 700-member Pointe-au-Chien indian tribe south of Houma, Louisiana was one of the first communities to take a direct hit from the BP oil spill. For them, the disaster is ongoing—and part of a larger threat to their ancestral home. Produced by Barry Yeoman and Richard Ziglar for KRVS, Lafayette, Louisiana, and the Louisiana Public […]
Vietnamese Fishermen Search for the Monetary Value of a Lost Culture
Kenneth Feinberg, the Boston attorney in charge of reviewing claims for the BP oil spill, says he expects to start paying interim and final claims later this month. But as Louisiana’s Vietnamese-American fishing community has learned, some losses are harder to quantify than others. Produced by Barry Yeoman and Richard Ziglar for KRVS, Lafayette, Louisiana, […]
Louisiana Oystermen: Out of Work, Out of Options
A tight-knit group of oystermen on the bayou are struggling to survive after the oil spill shut down the oyster beds. Will a way of life die out? Part 2 of Losing Louisiana, a series originally published in onEarth. ELTON “HAMBONE” ENCALADE IS ONE OF THE FIRST oystermen to greet me as I pull into Beshel’s […]
Losing Louisiana
Originally published in OnEarth. The BP blowout caused months of pain and suffering for the people and environment of the Gulf Coast. But Louisiana was in trouble long before the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Its wetlands are disappearing at the rate of a football field every hour due to rising sea level, storm damage, and the […]
A Nutty Adventure
Sometimes the best way to discover the charms of a city—even one with as glorious a history as Athens—is to avoid the obvious and start with something much smaller in mind. Originally published in US Airways Magazine. THE FRUIT VENDORS ARE ENTICING US with a singsong pitch: “Parte ta kalitera kerassia!” (“Get the best cherries!”) Sausage salesmen hand out […]
The Wal-Mart Effect
By stocking its shelves with inexpensive organic foods, the world’s largest retailer is about to prove that what’s good for the company is good for the planet and consumers. Or is it? Originally published in Audubon. SEVERAL TIMES A WEEK, A BLUE TRUCK with a stainless steel collection tank drives up a newly blacktopped road in Guilford, […]
Is the U.S. government making children fat?
Originally published in Nieman Reports. WHEN I AGREED TO WRITE about school lunches for the magazine Mother Jones, conventional wisdom tying junk food to childhood obesity was so rampant that I could have produced a serviceable story with very little research. Reading newspapers and talking with food professionals and government officials, I repeatedly heard that the nation’s biggest nutrition […]
Unhappy Meals
School lunches are loaded with fat—and the beef and dairy industries are making sure it stays that way. Originally published in Mother Jones. EVERY WEEKDAY AT LUNCH, courtesy of the federal government, more than 27 million schoolchildren sit down to the nation’s largest mass feeding. If we took a giant snapshot of their trays on a typical […]
Silence in the Fields
The U.S. government is allowing farmers to fill thousands of jobs with foreign ‘guestworkers.’ The conditions are hardly hospitable—and those who speak out can be sent straight back home. Originally published in Mother Jones. THE GREYHOUND PULLS UP TO A TWO-STORY METAL WAREHOUSE in the tiny town of Vass, North Carolina. Efrain Madrigal gets off the bus. […]
Dangerous Food
When Nancy Donley’s son died of E. coli poisoning, she learned how poorly we are all protected from food contamination. Originally published in Redbook. A MOP-TOPPED REDHEAD WITH OVERSIZE GLASSES that magnified his gray eyes, 6-year-old Alex Donley was always on the prowl for someone he could cheer up with a hug and a gap-toothed smile. He […]
