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Moving people illegally from one country to another requires an extensive network of international contacts and an ability to outwit immigration and law-enforcement officers. With a well-connected family, acute entrepreneurial instincts, and a callous, life-is-cheap attitude toward the poor migrants who were her customers, Sister Ping was well suited to the job. Working with associates in China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Belize, Kenya, South Africa, Guatemala, Mexico, and Canada, she helped create the China-to-Chinatown route in the early nineteen-eighties and ushered thousands of undocumented Chinese emigrants to America. According to the F.B.I., over the course of two decades she made some forty million dollars.

#patrick radden keefe #the new yorker #april 2006 #immigration #china

Why receipt but deceit? Water but daughter? Daughter but laughter? What is the logic behind the ough in through, dough, and cough? Instead of trying to get the letters right with imperfect tools, it would be far better to loosen our idea of correct spelling.

#anne trubek #wired #february 2012 #writing #language #culture

When a New York Times reporter asked Harold Bloom a couple of years ago what he thought of audio books, the great Yale humanist told her that “deep reading really demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear.” It requires, he continued, the use of “that part of you which is open to wisdom. You need the text in front of you.” This sounds to me somewhat peculiar, but a lot of people basically agree with it. They believe that whatever part of you is “open to wisdom” is a part that can be activated only through the eyes. Unless, of course, you are blind. In which case everything is obviously completely totally different.

#maggie gram #n+1 #february 2012 #books #technology

“Professional Writing Expertise,” by Ronald Kellogg, contains enough writerly insight to fuel a thousand Iowa workshops. And the opening words could not be more comforting: “Writing extended texts for publication is a major cognitive challenge, even for professionals who compose for a living.” See, Dad! This is hard work.

#michael agger #slate #august 2011 #writing

On January 2 1958, I departed from Cape Town railway station to take up an appointment with the colonial government in what was then Zomba, Nyasaland.

#arnold clarke #times live #february 2012 #africa #railroad #travel

If the work of contemporary Latin American novelists, sprinkled with trees that move and birds that talk, is magic realism, Kapuscinski, a Pole, has created a kind of magic journalism.

#adam hochschild #the new york review of books #november 1994 #journalism #ryszard kapuscinski

People — American people — might actually start calling "soccer" by the moniker of "football."

#tyler cowen #kevin grier #grantland #february 2012 #sports #football #medicine

The entire day is testimony to Sky's creativity, a street party in celebration of destabilising uber‑commerce erected on the very fringes of a firewall designed to prevent destabilising uber‑commerce, like cold war Moscow street capitalists doing a roaring black market trade in Red Army bearskin hats.

#barney ronay #the guardian #january 2012 #sports #soccer #football

"I arose from my table on the cargo batch, wiped my hands on my trousers, and was introduced by Roumain as "the greatest Negro poet who had ever come to honor Haitian soil." Each man bowed gravely. I bowed too.

#langston hughes #1956 #haiti #writing

So, South Carolina? Make the repetition a memory. Heed the orders of General Lee. On retiring from the field of battle, brave enough to weep in plain view of his men, admitting defeat while somehow maintaining his own indelible sense of human honor, he called back, "Furl the flag, boys.''

#allan gurganus #the new york times #december 1996 #civil war #south

Southern food is a celebration of the people within the community, using the agrarian bounty that is constantly around them. It pays homage to the past but is a constantly evolving, ebbing with the seasons and flowing with the constant progression of the South.

#hugh acheson #cnn #january 2012 #food #culture #south

Even worse, she said, was “the élitism that passes itself off as inclusiveness.” She went on, “The rules are so esoteric, so hard to follow, that no one else could fit in. And what you’ll never admit to yourself is that you don’t want other people to fit in.” That’s a good summation of what “Portlandia” lampoons.

#margaret talbot #the new yorker #january 2012 #portland #portlandia #television #music

“You are not writing about the white man. That’s not the person you grew up with. This is not the person I have a beef with. The guy I have a beef with is the shebeen owner.” And so he has found African writers, Francophone and Anglophone, still living in Africa, who write mostly about a lower-middle-class Africa that almost never gets described.

#simon kuper #financial times #january 2012 #africa #journalism

It’s much better to decide who gets to eat than to let the people feed themselves. If you lower taxes people will do more work, but then people will get rewards that aren’t coming through you. Everything good must come through you.

#alastair smith #the economist #january 2012 #politics #political economy #government

Sitting at the bar at the Spirit, Champagne emphasizes Martelly's ability to attract fans across the political and social spectrum. "Sweet Micky is the only one who brings everyone together," he claims. "I don't care if you are from the slums of Cite Soleil or from Petionville; Sweet Micky brings everyone together in peace and they enjoy his music."

#elise ackerman #miami new times #may 1997 #haiti #politics #sweet micky #music

Often tears on a football pitch feel self-indulgent, the spoiled multimillionaire brat bawling because he's missed out on yet another medal. Here, though, as the fans who remained gently applauded, it was easy to have sympathy for a man who clearly felt he had let his country down—and a country that will probably never have a better chance to win the Cup of Nations. Who can imagine the pressure when the president's wife wears your shirt?

#jonathan wilson #the guardian #february 2012 #football #soccer #sports #africa #war

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming.

#hunter s. thompson #february 2005 #football

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