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Hancock Stories: Final Witness

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I was invited to the final service of the First Presbyterian Church of Hancock by one of my Writer’s Group members, Alice Prince who is Clerk of Sessions at the church. She handed me an invitation. It was late fall in upstate New York and the Maples were fading green to yellow and Sumac blazed spiky red and Oak tree leaves were rusty and bronze and the acorn harvest was heavy this year, scattered and crunching under foot along the sidewalk as I made the short walk from my house, paralleling the railroad track to the old Presbyterian church on the hill. As I walked I could see the cupola and bell tower through the trees now that the leaves have scattered.  I noticed there was no cross nor spire atop and then the white clap board church came into view and the car park was packed. Today was the Closing Witness Service and there would be no more singing and sermons in that venerable old church.  For nearly two-hundred years, the Presbyterian Church on the hill near my house tolled...

Guatemala Stories: The Winds of Socialism under the Ceiba Tree

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Guatemala 1988. The Mitsubishi was shining iridescent gray and had smokey windows. It was parked across the narrow avenue outside the Colonial Hotel's heavy swinging wooden doors in downtown Guatemala City. With a courteous nod the driver opens the door ushers us inside the car. The seats are soft and the carpet lush and when the door slides shut its quiet, cocooned. Behind the windows, outside, the glint and flash of chrome and glass and gritty clouds of diesel smoke inky thick. And the crackling motor cycles and blue police jeeps and people streaming past the sun drenched fractured walls and shadowed corridors, merchants selling fruit and postcards and music washing past. And there's a truck passing loaded with fresh empty coffins simply carved with swirls and varnished shiny brown stacked in rows - I can see it through the smokey glass. Traveling south towards the coast with Mario Solorzano Martinez, secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Guatemala. Victoria later a...

Biology of Information: Iran Contra Redux.

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  Iran Contra Redux Performed at the Museum of Sound Recording Saturday October 19th, 1996 Lab´y-rinth, n. [ Labyrinthus; Gr. labyrinthos ,  from laura ,  labra , an alley, lane.]      1. an intricate structure or enclosure containing a series of winding passages hard to follow without losing one's way; a maze.     2. [L-] In Greek legend, such a structure built by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete, to house the Minotaur.     3. a complicated, perplexing arrangement, course of affairs, etc.     4. in anatomy, that part of the internal ear behind the cavity of the tympanum, or drum; the inner ear.     5. in metallurgy, a series of troughs in a stamping mill through which water passes for washing, pulverized ore.     6. in architecture, a design in the tiling of a floor. On Form and RadioText  Much of the sound in this performance comprises radio documentary material included in ...