Breaking the News

‘Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose.’ Scene from the play Perderse in Bogota, Colombia, two years ago. It shows my own spirit animal. (Photo Juancho Torres/Anadolu via Getty.) Through my decades in journalism, I’ve written in a variety of cadences. -I spent most of my time in college at the student daily newspaper, often there until the presses rolled at 2am.

Going local, to address the universal. The renowned composer and pianist Philip Aaberg, in a kayak on the Marias River near his home in tiny Chester, Montana, when we visited him there. His music expressed the spirit of the place he loved. (Except as noted, all photos by Deborah Fallows.) Over this past weekend, Deb and I got the sad and unexpected news that our friend Philip Aaberg, a brilliant musician and influential civic and cultural leader, had died of complications from cancer, at age 77.

Four ways of thinking about what comes next. A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie by Albert Bierstadt. During the Civil War, Bierstadt traveled the West and began sketching out this view. He finished the painting soon after the war ended: Violent storms all around, but a promising shaft of light. (Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty.) People may look back on this past week as a milestone in political awareness. It’s not only that public opinion keeps turning against Donald Trump.

Donald Trump arriving today in Beijing. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Here are five quick points about Donald Trump’s quick visit to China, with meetings scheduled to start in a few hours as I type. By the end of this week, we may have a clearer sense of how much—or how little—came out of this toe-tap foreign excursion. My bet is on “how little”: Recall how little came out of the humiliating “Putin Summit” in Alaska last summer. But we’ll see.

Less than 11 years ago, representatives of major European powers, plus the US, Russia, and China, signed an agreement that gave outside inspectors 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear sites, and capped its uranium stockpiles at 300 kgs, enriched to a paltry 3.67%. Three years later, thanks to Donald Trump, their work was ashes. Now Iran’s uranium stockpiles and enrichment levels have soared, and the world is at war.

Less than 11 years ago, representatives of major European powers, plus the US, Russia, and China, signed an agreement that gave outside inspectors 24/7 access to Iran’s nuclear sites, and capped its uranium stockpiles at 300 kgs, enriched to a paltry 3.67%. Three years later, thanks to Donald Trump, their work was ashes. Now Iran’s uranium stockpiles and enrichment levels have soared, and the world is at war.

At right, Alireza Taghdarreh of Tehran. At left, Don Henley, of Eagles and Hotel California. They met and both spoke at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, on the Institute’s 25th anniversary in 2015. This happened to be the very day that the US and Iran announced the now-abandoned JCPOA nuclear deal. (Photo by Matt Burns of the Walden Woods Project.) This is another installment on the “public memory” gap between the US and Iran.

In the mid-1980s, this was one of the most recognizable faces in the world. In 1987, then-USMC Lt. Col. Oliver North was the star witness during 40 days of televised Congressional hearings about the “Iran-Contra” scandal, which led to indictments of 14 Reagan administration officials, and convictions for 11. In today’s US, the episode is barely mentioned or remembered. Not so in Iran.

What a difference two years can make: In first photo, from Washington in 1951, Dean Acheson (on left), as US Secretary of State, warmly greets Mohammad Mosaddegh, the recently elected prime minister of Iran. Then in 1953, the CIA engineered a coup to overthrow Mosaddegh and replace him with the Shah. Mohammad Mosaddegh spent the rest of his life in prison or house arrest, as shown in second photo. Most people in today’s Iran knows this story. Few people in today’s America do.

Talk about one picture being worth 6,000 words: Detail from an illustration by JC Suares, for my Atlantic article 45 years ago. (Image from home archives.) As mentioned in my post last night, for paid subscribers here is the full text of my Atlantic article about being taken for a ride in an F-15, 45 years ago. I still have the before-and-after photos from that day. Before, I’m jauntily going up the ladder to the cockpit in my fresh flight-suit.