Do you believe in second chances?

By CHRISTINE VAN DUSEN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/27/05

Charles "Roscoe" Heaton stood at the freeway exit with a homemade cardboard sign on a Friday morning last February.

His scalp itched. His stomach ached. A mustard sandwich had been his dinner the previous night, washed down by Kool-Aid sweetened with sugar packets smuggled from McDonald's.

This spot, at Clairmont Road, netted him $14.50 not long ago. He needed to make more money this time, or the power and water would be turned off at his apartment again.

Roscoe smoothed his polo shirt and jeans, then looked around; he hoped no one he knew would see him. He raised the sign a little higher.

"Emory University grad, can't get work. Need a job, food, or money. Need help...Thanks." (full story)

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American Teen
Review

Writer: Christine Van Dusen 

7/24/08 

A teen's fate changes from minute to minute, text message to text message, and nothing illustrates this fast and fickle phenomenon better than the shifting skin conditions of a nerd: one minute a veritable lunar landscape, the next a blessedly and surprisingly clear expanse, if a little shiny.

You're cool; then you're not. You're hopelessly in love; then you're not. You're feuding with a friend; then you're not. You're filled with inconsolable rage and a need for revenge; then a day later you're ready to forgive yourself or someone else.

Documentary filmmaker Nanette Burstein skillfully and artfully captures this speedy and perpetual shifting of fortunes for four archetypal teenagers — the nerd, the jock, the popular girl and the artsy outsider — in American Teen, a documentary that is at once MTV slick and earnestly warm. (full story)

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Low-cost laptop experiment under way: Birmingham's pioneering use of XO computers from the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child initiative has captured educators' attention

By Christine Van Dusen

8/18/08 

Ask Amicah Bitten about her home life, and what she likes to do outside of school, and the 9-year-old is cagey, doling out only small details: She reads the J.C. Penney catalog, she likes to swim sometimes, and she knows someone who does drugs and she hates that.

But ask the Birmingham, Ala., girl about her computer and Bitten opens up, smiling brightly and chatting easily as she taps the machine's tiny green keys and shows off what she can do and what's possible with this machine, a small and ultra-light laptop known as the XO.

Bitten was given the green-and-white computer, about the size of a hardcover book, as part of the One Laptop Per Child initiative's first foray into the United States. (full story)

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Women Last: For women who live through disasters around the world, every storm hits twice.

By Christine Van Dusen

Pink Magazine, July/August 2008

Sumatra Dhamadeva's small tent was always spotless. Maybe the cleanliness was her way to stay civilized amid all the destruction of the tsunami – a way to hold on to her identity as a once-successful businesswoman, homeowner and wife.

The massive waves had surged onto the shores of Sri Lanka, pummeling fishing villages, overtaking trains and cars, and killing thousands. Those who survived fled the water with only the clothes on their bodies and the children in their arms. Dhamadeva ended up in a squalid refugee camp, seeking privacy with her 11-year-old daughter in a very tiny but immaculate tent made of sticks and a tarp.

Weeks later, she and other women survivors in the camp were still wearing the same underwear. They had no sanitary napkins. They struggled to get a place among men in food lines. They worried about being assaulted on the way to and from makeshift, unisex latrines and in unguarded showers.

Sera Bonds, founder of the women's health advocacy group Circle of Health International, saw it all and was saddened and discouraged. After so many years and so many disasters in the world, relief agencies were doing a better job of getting food, water and shelter to the general population of survivors. But the specific and important needs of women were not being addressed. "It was so frustrating," Bonds says. "Women should be a bigger priority."

(full story here)

  
Finding her way in the dark

By CHRISTINE VAN DUSEN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 12/12/04

Gloria Morton is afraid of the steel cabinet. She makes jokes, excuses and hasty exits to avoid confronting its contents. But there can be no more delays. She watches as the door squeaks open.

The pungent smell of rubber hits her first, then the sight of dozens of canes. Some have crooks. Others are straight, with black rubber grips or small rolling tips.

All of the canes are white.

Gloria knows how people respond to a white cane. They stare, or flinch, or give a wide berth when they pass. She knows it will be impossible to blend into a crowd if she carries one. It will make her look like an old lady at just 51, and undo all her efforts to appear "normal." A cane will mark her as vulnerable.

She has brought herself here, to the Center for the Visually Impaired on West Peachtree Street in Atlanta, to learn to live with her dimming vision. But she is not ready to accept that any day she may go blind. (full story)

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See Christine's Atlanta dining blog at Examiner.com.

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Dwight Yoakam
Dwight Sings Buck
[New West]
Writer: Christine Van Dusen

Reviews, Issue 37, Published on 12 Nov 2007
Bakersfield disciple pays tribute to hitmaker and Hee Haw host Buck Owens

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Dwight Yoakam’s new album honoring country-music legend Buck Owens, who died at 76 in March 2006, is pretty dang flattering: Yoakam’s renditions stick fairly close to the original honky-tonk hits. When Yoakam does stray from his mentor’s simple twang, the results are mixed. Witness “My Heart Skips A Beat,” where Yoakam goes a little hokey-yokel by scooping each note in the title. But when he adds a sexy little growl to the “aw” of “aw yes / you are my every dream come true,” the affectation actually improves the material. Where Owens’ voice and arrangements were sweet and old-fashioned, some of Yoakam’s add a little pop-country shine and occasionally inspired touches: A syncopated snare gives a kick to “I Don’t Care,” and the organ in “Only You” infuses a gospel quality. Yoakam oversings the tinkling piano and strummed guitar of "Together Again," but all in all, he does Buck proud.

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From the first issue of Kiki Magazine (snapshot), debuting September 2007

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