New Orleans       Ok, bear with me, even if this won’t be exactly what you were expecting.  There’s a new bi-monthly journal of very long articles about a lot of very different things.  I’ll stay away from the culture and art, about which I know little, but the New Voyager is very intentionally devoted to long form essays about international topics in our wide and varied world.  This is a new publication in a time when it seems there are few willing to dive into the wild marketplace.  I took a flyer when I read a casual mention somewhere or saw a picture of someone going to their launch or something, I really don’t remember.  It was pricey, but I thought what the heck, ACORN International is working around the world, and I cobble stuff together from various sources from The Economist to Jacobin to try and at least be on the trailing edge.

I don’t come to just praise Cesear, so on the negative side, the price can be a bit foreboding or at least was in the beginning, though now each issue on their website looks more in the $30 range.  The format is also difficult.  It’s big, thick and ungainly.  This was a problem for me.  It’s not made for plane travel, and it doesn’t sit snugly on your lap or next to your plate.

Whatever, if you get past those annoyances and dig into the journal, which I did at some length recently while in Arkansas, it’s worth the climb.  I focused on the last issue #3.  I read a fascinating, deeply observed and researched article about the crises attendant to development on all sides of the question on a small, remote Greek island of Amorgos called “Breaking Ground” by Alia Malek.  The pressure of tradition and what’s left of agricultural and husbandry as it confronts to develop of tourism were fairly presented from all vantage points.  More sobering was a horrific report on 2020 genocide and ethnic conflict in Mai Kadra, a small town in Ethiopia called “The Reckoning” by Jean-Baptiste Gallopink, who had been one of a team of collaborative human rights researchers interviewing victims from all sides.  He went back after some years still perplexed at finding the hard truth of which side had started the killing that evidentially in rumor and fear engulf all sides in a massacre.  Not an easy read, I’ll admit, but helpful.  I had glazed over articles elsewhere on the conflict between the Ethiopian military and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) over its hold on the regional government of Tigray, in the northwest of the country.  I knew an earlier ceasefire some years ago had won a Nobel Peace Prize for the leader of the country and never understood how it had all fallen apart.  I’m still not clear, but who among us would have a clue without adding through a report from the ground like this.

All of which made me even more excited and proud in issue #4 to read the lead article by excellent and insightful article entitled “Cotton Currency:  Benin and Senegal want to transform their textile industries.  The Communaute’ Financiere Africaine franc is getting in the way.” Ok, maybe you say, this isn’t for everyone, but, just maybe, it should be.  An entire industry and one could argue economic development in these countries and Western Africa is being strangled by the French domination of the currency, dating back to their colonial empire, which is costing locals more money and restricting their ability to trade and export high quality cotton outside of the domestic market.  Deep in the reporting was a rage for change, and that’s where I had to admit some pride.  The article was written by Hannah Mae Armstrong, the daughter Dewey Armstrong, one of the central organizers in ACORN’s expansion from Arkansas and the first head organizer in South Dakota, and then the political director of ACORN from New Orleans, where Hannah was born once year exactly after our son was born.  She and her family are based in Dakar.  Dewey passed away in Florida a couple of years ago.  He would be over the moon.

There a lot of meat on these bones.  I hope New Voyager makes it.  It brings new voices and subjects from around the world in stories from remote corners that we might have never discovered on our own.  For my money, that makes it all worthwhile.