catharine

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The Beginning of Hope or the End of It (November 2008)

I spent the last month in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), much of my time in Goma. There, I was privileged to be part of the first public testimonies where women survivors of rape and sexual torture came forward in front hundreds to bravely break the silence on the terrible atrocities done to their bodies and souls during the twelve-year conflict that has embroiled the DRC.

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The Gift Paul Newman Gave Me (October 2008)

They were the perfect parents. I was 23. I was depressed and fragile and hardly here in this world. I was writing and writing as a way of survival. They took me under their wing. They pushed me and fed me and criticized my script with red pencils, they nurtured me and encouraged me to be funny. To always be funny. But mainly, they believed in me.

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Drill, Drill, Drill (September 2008)

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears.

Please Don’t Go Back to Sleep (July 2005)

Dear America: I am longing to reach you — crossing this river of indifference and consumption and denial. I am trying to find you, reaching out through the desperate limitations of words and descriptions, swimming through the rhetoric of terror and God.