Richard Johnson

Washington Post — This classroom is much like any other-there are tables, benches, a whiteboard, students, and a teacher up front. There is also gravel, and a smell of wet dog with a hint of gun oil. The classroom is a big green tent buffeted by wind and rain on the abandoned remains of what was once a Soviet military base in the former Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine. Within a hundred paces of the tent, 1980s-era rubber gas masks lie in the dirt around an entrance tunnel leading down to a bunker with a blast door as thick as my torso.

Washington Post — On morning and evening rounds, a team of doctors and specialists wheel mobile terminals, like robots from "Star Wars," from room to room discussing each patient, balancing what can be done with what should be done. Although care sometimes begins in utero, many children are diagnosed after they are born, and if all goes well, doctors follow these tiny patients to adulthood. "I believe that there is a certain amount of suffering that all of these kids go through," says Jamie McElrath Schwartz, an attending physician. "All of these things we do to them hurt, but the suffering is for a meaningful end.

Washington Post — I had so many misconceptions about homeless people that it is almost embarrassing to write about it now. I mean, I was an idiot. The only salve to this realization is that most of us are idiots. We don't know anything about what it is like to be without a home. But a couple of months back I determined to find out. One of the first things that struck me when I moved to D.C. was the number of homeless people here. They seem to come close to outnumbering the tourists - in wintertime at least.

Washington Post — Standing up as a witness for the good character of someone who has already admitted guilt in attempted mass murder cannot be easy. A few must have thought long and hard about whether they wanted to go through with it at all. For those who have, possibly reluctantly, acquiesced to step into the witness stand, it is difficult for me personally to see them as anything but brave.

Washington Post — Richard Johnson is in Boston to draw the final days of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's trial.

Washington Post — Some approach slowly on crutches, some in wheelchairs, some on prosthetics, and some with the damage only visible in the hollow recesses of their eyes and the sunken creases in their faces. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sits right of center in the court with his back to the public seating. Twenty feet to his left are the knees of the jury. Twelve feet to his right is the witness stand. For many of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 this is their one opportunity to face the man who is responsible for their disfigurement and pain.

Washington Post — I don't consider myself a bloodthirsty person. I like to think that I could rise above the need for revenge even if it were personal which of course for much of Boston it is. I am not sure I even favor the death penalty for any crimes. But in just one day in court spent listening to the testimony of the horribly maimed and the horribly bereaved - while seeing the already convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev look mostly bored - and I begin to understand the challenge that the jury will face in remaining objective. Tsarnaev is not making it easy.

Washington Post — On Friday, Vice President Biden addressed the New Democrat Coalition Political Action Committee in Cambridge, Md. Here's a look at the event through the eyes of someone who cut his teeth in U.S. politics a decade ago when he obsessively binge-watched "The West Wing."

Washington Post — Hordes of climbers are about to spend months scaling the world's highest mountain. Our look at the most popular route up Everest takes far less time and includes a yeti.

Washington Post —

Washington Post — The video crawled forward on the screen, frame by frame. The angle was from a building on Boylston Street looking out over the heads of a throng of people pointing, waving, laughing and cheering for loved ones or complete strangers finishing the 2013 Boston Marathon. As the frames ticked by I found myself willing everyone to be moving out of frame - away from the bag containing the second bomb. But everyone moves on a preordained trajectory, nothing can change what is about to happen. Then the video pauses at the critical moment. One side of one tenth of a second and the scene remains the same.

The Washington Post — On March 16, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon gave a speech in Tokyo marking this year’s 70th anniversary of the United Nations. The world institution, he said,“was created after the Second World War to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. We have to acknowledge that that vision by our founding fathers of the United Nations has not been fully realized.” March16 also marked the four-year anniversary of the start of the conflict in Syria. The war began after the government of President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on peaceful pro-democracy protests. The conflict gradually took on a sectarian character,with members of the Sunni majority opposing the Shiite Alawites around the president. Outside powers began supporting various armed groups, and extremist organizations such as the al-Qaeda aligned al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State took advantage of the chaos, seizing large amounts of territory. Millions of Syrians have been displaced as the war has dragged on, but humanitarian groups worry that the world’s attention has turned elsewhere. In the secretary general’s own words in Japan last week:“There is no more painful example of the failure of collective action of the United Nations than the conflict in Syria, now in its fifth year. More than 220,000 people have been killed.” The image below is made of exactly 220,000 dots. Each dot being one life lost to the conflict in Syria.

Washington Post — What makes us draw what we see, those of us that do? What is it that keeps us drawing? Sure, there is the 'oooh and aaaah' audience factor, but long after the girl you were trying to impress, or your grannie, or your dad are gone you will still have all of those sketches in a box, in the leaves of a book, or maybe - if it was particularly good - in an old picture frame. And every once in a while you will open that box, or book or the picture on the wall will catch your eye, and in studying those pencil marks you made so long ago you will be transported back to the moment.

Washington Post — At the stroke of the hour in walked Mac. Mac was a seriously iffy looking sketchy Dundee individual if you ever saw one. The kind of sketchy where if you were drowning and he was on the riverbank you’d look around for another option. He was probably in his early 60s with a full head of slicked back black hair, and a slept outside — seen everything — hard drinking — 20 smokes a day, face. I remember thinking “I hope that is the lecturer.” No such luck.

Washington Post — So much of the United States still feels foreign to me, but not your Thanksgiving holiday. It's something I wholeheartedly get behind. I mean, is there another public holiday anywhere in the world where almost 50 million people suddenly migrate home just so they can see and embrace the people they love? I like its pure simplicity, its honesty and its familial focus. No finery. No pomp. No gifts required. Just get yourself home by any means possible. And turkey. On Wednesday, we set off with the migrating multitudes on our first-ever Thanksgiving car journey from Washington, D.C., to Michigan.

Washington Post — There is a spot. At a bend in the river. Where a path leads down from the forested heights above. There, for a few hundred yards, the sun often shines on a meadow of ferns, moss covered boulders, and a few old oak trees. This was their place more than any other, and while the dog harried for rabbits they would sit together, dappled by sunlight and listen to the rush of the river. This is where he buried her ashes. And this quiet spot is where he comes - when he is well enough to walk the distance - less often now since the new hip, but he still comes.

Washington Post — At 92 years old Thomas W. Miller is still mentally as sharp as a bayonet, although after a fall last week he admits to feeling a little worse for wear physically. Sitting somewhat comfortably in the living room of his home of 54 years in Arlington, he periodically rubs his side under his thick Aran knit cardigan as we talk. "The doctor says I didn't break any ribs, but every now and then I get a shooting pain," he explained. Miller, a USMC Private First Class, was fast asleep when the Japanese struck.

Washington Post — Well, getting out of Afghanistan turned out to be a wee bit harder than I expected. Standing at the immigration counter at Kabul Airport - just before I hit the lounge - I was already daydreaming about my two hours of actual dreaming on the flight to Dubai. I was quite taken by surprise when the nice man behind the thick glass handed me back my passport and said, "No." "No what?" I remember thinking, I hadn't asked anything. It turned out that my visa had run out and that without a proper visa to be in Afghanistan I was not allowed to get out of Afghanistan.

Washington Post — They are only translucent distorted shadows of the soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen they once were. They are now addicts at the very edges of their addiction - singularly focused on the need to feed their habit, be it cocaine, meth, heroin, crack, or good old alcohol. Their drug-induced lives dull their histories of medication prescribed for diagnoses of bipolar, manic tendencies, depressive, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, antisocial, and attention deficit disorders. A hundred miles southeast of Denver in a shallow Colorado river valley of lush man-made crop circles there is an old military base.

Washington Post — If you spend enough time in newspapers and newsrooms you begin to notice certain distinct personality types. And I am not just talking in general about the neurotics, workaholics, geniuses and drinkers. I mean that when I enter a new newsroom and meet someone, I actually find myself mentally filing them in an "oh yeah, he is that guy" kind of way - in my own mental Rolodex of similar people I have met before. There is the sweating local police beat reporter with in yesterday's shirt, sleeves rolled up and a somewhat manic look around the eyes. Check.

Washington Post — OSO, Wash. - Driving up the north fork of the Stillaguamish River valley in the pouring rain it almost feels like the road is shifting beneath my wheels. The ribbon of macadam seems to flow with the land, but not because it was laid down that way. The valley is wide and flat and fertile and malleable. Fantastic farmland fed with mountain nutrients from hundreds of years of seasonal floods. Last weekend a landslide the size of a small moon rolled down a hillside, across the Stillaguamish, and flattened over 50 homes and structures. It was a Saturday morning.