What are we to make of Sinead O’Connor? The Irish singer who rose to fame at age 21 with her 1987 release, “The Lion and the Cobra,” has in ensuing years acquired a reputation that seems to obligate journalists to affix some pointed adjective before every mention of her name. Thus, we have the “troubled”
Growing up in a family with ties to founders of the Mormon Church, I learned at an early age a little about the church’s teachings. I read Mormon comic books for children that claimed humans in the Garden of Eden used to live to the age of 900 or so. I learned that God in
AN UTNE MAGAZINE COVER STORY I traveled to downstate Illinois recently to visit a friend and her 8-year-old daughter, Lillian. Early one morning, Lillian and I were sitting in the living room as she waited for her mother to drive her to school. Lillian asked me if I was planning to stay another night. I
Healing in Community: Finding Health and Freedom in a Palestinian Refugee Camp Mateo Bernal (CreateSpace, 2011) 256 pages. Treating illness involves getting to the root of a health condition. Or, ideally at least, it should. In the real world much medical practice is geared toward ameliorating symptoms, without necessarily curing the underlying condition. Certainly the
There is a new kind of democracy at work in the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s the kind that doesn’t involve asking for permission to exist from the political establishment. Instead many thousands of Americans have taken to the streets, often for the first time in their lives. They’ve risked arrest, been subject to harassment
MARK HARRIS 