Upside Down Notebook

I have started a Facebook page where I will be sharing articles, writing and information about my forthcoming book:
Click here to connect on Facebook

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Hey Folks,
Sorry I’ve been off of this blog for so long. I had some technical problems with the site. So now I’m back. Please stay tuned for more - finally!
I have been writing elsewhere and you can see the articles at this site: http://bendangl.net/
- Ben

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I will be teaching the following course for the 2009 fall semester at Burlington College in Burlington, Vermont. To sign up for this class email Sandy Baird: sbaird@burlington.edu
I hope to see some of you there! If you have any questions about the class, email me at Bendangl@gmail.com
The Government Palace and the Street: Introduction to South [...]

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Please take a look at my new website which has a collection of most of the articles I’ve written in recent years, all organized by topic and theme. I felt like it would be a good idea to start this up as sometimes old articles get lost, or the websites that published them disappear, the [...]

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[Graffiti in Mendoza]
The heavy air of Buenos Aires is antique and electric. The history of this country is calloused from being run over and reconsidered so many times by the memories of millions.
In Mendoza, Argentina, the exhaust is eaten up by the city’s many trees. Here, conversations, steak and wine remind me that political [...]

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Bus ticket sellers at the station yell their destinations like prayers. The wind outside makes the Bolivian flag tight. Exhaust fills the air like confetti. We inch into the dark, dank womb of the bus with orange seats that sink with our weight. All around us the air smells like strawberry perfume at the bottom [...]

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Here are links to a few recent articles I wrote.
One was published in last week’s print edition of The Nation:
Lessons From Latin America
The other was published in Indian Country Today:
Bolivia’s new constitution empowers indigenous majority
This one on Common Dreams:
Grassroots Beer Brewers Score a Victory in Utah

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Outside the window is a wall of sound. People on the street talk through microphones to sell mangoes and religion. Trees cling like hair to the sides of old, bored mountains. Laundry flaps outside the neighborhood’s windows. Those clothes drying in the wind are the flags of a family, more relevant to what’s important in [...]

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[Photo: Street scene in El Alto]
A message on the window of the bus promises “Tourism, Peace, Love.” The radio sprinkles out a cumbia jingle.
At the bar the musicians pounding drums send ripples into the smoke-filled air.
Lightning hits like a strobe light, beating the night into a false day.
The hail collects in little streams [...]

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Here are a couple of photos I took on a recent trip to Lake Titicaca

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[Photo: Tiny computers for sale at Alasitas here in La Paz]
So I’ve been writing some columns lately (on a computer bigger than the ones in this photo) for The Guardian in the UK. If you’re interested in checking them out, they are all here at this link.

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The street has a borrowed memory. A single string of red lights hovers above a row of stalls wrapped in blue tarps. The sticky, heady mouthful of the smell of raw meat is everywhere. The romance of fried chicken, the ground sticky with the sludge of life
From a hardware store, all lit up, goods spill [...]

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