Upside Down Notebook

[A building by the river in Asunción]
In the morning in one neighborhood in Asunción, Paraguay the trucks and buses take to the streets with a vengeance, making up for the night’s lost time. The smell of fresh bread mixes in the air with the heady aroma of burning garbage.
Dogs pace their yards and driveways [...]

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[Photo: Dawn in the Paraguayan countryside.]
When the sun bakes the Asuncion streets, shadows become part of a necessary equation, a currency, a way to get from one side of town to the other.
At the soccer game last night, the beer was ice cold, the lomitos fresh, the bird under the lights confused.
A friend [...]

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Oct. 16, 7PM, Burlington College
Film Screening and Discussion - Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas
Produced by Michael Fox and Sílvia Leindecker
What is democracy? Freedom, equality, participation? Everyone has his or her own definition. Across the world, 120 countries now have at least the minimum trappings of democracy—the freedom to vote for all citizens. But [...]

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Dear Readers,
Here are a few relatively new articles I wrote, published over at the other website I edit, TowardFreedom.com.
Enjoy,
Ben Dangl
Beyond Voting: Guerrilla Gardeners, Outlaw Bicyclists & Pirate Programmers
Communication Breakdown: How Cell Phones Hurt Communities
Brewing Trouble: How to Drink Beer and Save the World

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April 24, ITHACA, NY: At Ithaca College: Earth Week talk by Benjamin Dangl, author of ‘The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia”; 7 p.m., Textor 102. A map of campus can also be found at: http://www.ithaca.edu/map/
(Textor is #4). (call (484) 213-4811 or email akronhe1@gmail.com for more information)
May 4, NEW PALTZ, NY: [...]

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[Photo: Our car in Madison, WI during Spring 2007 Book Tour]
This month marks a year that The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press, 2007) left the presses and headed out into the world to take on a life of its own. Readers of this blog may remember the following [...]

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The sunlight in La Paz at dawn makes the old city look young. The taxi we’re in has camouflage seat covers. A lone bus roars through an empty intersection with a phrase painted on the back of it: “My blood is a river that carries your name.”
A broken blender is for sale at the market [...]

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Early morning in a Sunday market in El Alto, Bolivia.

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(Drinking chicha and dancing in Tarata.)
The taxi driver makes out with someone in his cab next to the hamburger stand while teenagers drink warm beer and a street vendor sells “original” pirated versions of E.T. in Spanish. The multi-colored Christmas lights strung around the palm trees play music and blink. On the way to the [...]

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These photos are from a recent festival we went to in Tarata, a small town near Cochabamba, Bolivia.

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[Chicken in Sorata Graveyard]
If the reggaeton music in the taxi is loud enough, everyone on the sidewalk walks to the beat. Is it raining or is the city sweating? Some people wear plastic bags on their heads.
Layers of graffiti cover La Paz. They tell stories like fossils, geological levels of rock, or pottery from an [...]

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I will be teaching the following course at Burlington College (in Burlington, Vermont) this coming spring semester. If you are in the area, please sign up for the course and/or spread the word. For information on how you can be in the class, visit the Burlington College website or email me at Bendangl(at)gmail.com It will [...]

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