Currently embarking on an intimate US tour, check out Lauryn Hill‘s recent live renditions of a plethora of Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill classics and hits “Lost Ones,” “To Zion,” “Final Hour,” “Ex Factor,” “Lost Ones,” and “Doo Wop (That Thing)” [along with fond Fugees numbers "Killing Me Softly" and "How Many Mics"] at a show in New Haven, Connecticut last week.
Mostly flipped and revamped, as is now her norm, the footage comes courtesy of Terry Lee, who basically caught the whole damn show on camera. Eight songs for your viewing pleasure:
The Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction includes a $2,000 cash award, publication of a collection of short stories, novellas, or a short novel, and a standard royalty contract. Our contest begins January 1st and ends February 15th. See below for page requirements. Also, please note our entry fee ($25) and P.O. Box number below.
Eligibility
Contest is open to any writer of English who is a citizen of the United States. Employees and board members of Sarabande Books, Inc. are not eligible. Submissions may include a collection of short stories, one or more novellas, or a short novel. All manuscripts are required to be a minimum of 150 pages and are not to exceed 250 pages. Works that have previously appeared in magazines or in anthologies may be included. Translations and previously self-published collections are not eligible. To avoid conflict of interest, students in a degree-granting program or close friends of a judge are ineligible to enter the contest in the genre for which their friend or teacher is serving as judge.
Anonymous—the author’s name or address must not appear anywhere on the manuscript (your title page should contain the title only).
Between 150-250 pages.
Typed on standard white paper, one side of the page only.
Paginated consecutively with a table of contents and acknowledgements page (a list of publications in which stories or sections of the manuscript appeared).
Bound with a spring clip or placed in a plain file folder. No paper clips or staples, please.
* Also, please keep the following in mind:
Retain a copy of your manuscript. We cannot return manuscripts.
Submission of more that one manuscript is permissible if each manuscript is accompanied by an entry form and handling fee.
Once submitted, manuscripts cannot be altered. Winner will be given the opportunity to make changes before publication.
Simultaneous submissions to other publishers are permitted, but Sarabande Books must be notified immediately if manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
Finalists will be asked to send additional copies of the work. Winner will be notified in early July. Sarabande Books will consider all finalists for publication.
All manuscripts must be accompanied by our entry form which contains all the necessary identifying information. Do not send your manuscript without this form.
Submission Information
Electronic Submissions
Sarabande will accept manuscripts submitted online through our Submissions Manager software. Manuscripts submitted electronically must conform to the same guidelines as print manuscripts. Instructions and FAQs are located at the Submission Manager page,
* Manuscripts must be postmarked between and including January 1 and February 15.
* Include a self-addressed, stamped postcard for notification that manuscript has been received.
* Include a self-addressed, stamped, regular business-sized envelope for contest results.
* Please send your manuscript in a plain or padded envelope. No boxes please.
* No Federal Express, Overnight Mail, or UPS.
* We strongly advise that you send your manuscript first class.
* There is a $25 handling fee, check made payable to Sarabande Books, Inc.
Please send entries to:
The Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction
Sarabande Books, Inc.
PO Box 4456
Louisville KY 40204
● The Short Story Challenge is an international writing competition and is open to writers around the world.
● There are 2 rounds of competition.
● 1st Round (February 4-12, 2010) : Writers are placed randomly in heats. Each heat is assigned a genre and a subject. Some examples of past genre and subject combinations are: Comedy / Hunting, Fantasy / Steps, Horror / A family reunion, and Sci-Fi / A blind date. For other examples of genre / subject combinations, check out past competition pages here [ 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 ]
● Writers have 8 days to write an original short story (2,500 words max).
● Winners are chosen from the 1st Round to advance to the 2nd round and compete for thousands in cash and prizes.
●2nd Round (April 1-2, 2010) : All of the writers receive the same genre and subject at midnight (EST time) and have just 24 hours to write an original short story.
● A panel of judges review the final round stories and winners are chosen!
HOW TO REGISTER
It's easy to register. First, download and read the Official Rules & Participation Agreement. Once you have read, understood, and agree to the terms you are ready to register by clicking here. The entry fee is US$39 until the Early Entry Deadline of Thursday, December 23, 2010 and US$49 until the Final Entry Deadline of Wednesday, February 2, 2011.
GIFT THE SHORT STORY CHALLENGE
Looking for a unique gift idea for the holidays? Give the gift of inspiration and register one of your favorite people in the Short Story Challenge 2011! Click here for more information.
FEEDBACK [Judges + Peer]
Every registered writer has a great chance to receive feedback.
JUDGES COMMENTS / CRITIQUES: NYC Midnight provides judges' comments and critiques for every entered story in each challenge of the competition.
PEER REVIEW: During the judging, a special Review Forum will be available for the participants to submit their screenplays for review from fellow writers. During the 2010 Short Story Challenge, there were over 2,200 comments made on the 170+ stories submitted on the forum. Click here to check out the forums.
The American Poetry Journal Book Prize Guidelines & Information for 2011
The postmark deadline for entries to the 2011 The American Poetry Journal Book Prize is February 28, 2011. To enter, submit 50-65 paginated pages of poetry, table of contents, acknowledgments, bio, email address for results (No SASEs; manuscripts will be recycled), and a $25.00 non-refundable fee for each manuscript entered. The winner will receive $1000, publication, and 20 copies. All entries will be considered for publication. All styles are welcome. Multiple submissions are acceptable. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but if your manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere you must notify The American Poetry Journaland/or Dream Horse Press immediately. Fees are non-refundable. Judging will be anonymous; writers' names should not appear anywhere on the manuscript. Please include your name and biographical information in a separate cover letter. Please be sure to include your email address. The winner is chosen by the editor of The American Poetry Journal, J.P. Dancing Bear. Close friends, students (former or present), and relatives of the the editor are NOT eligible for the contest; their entry fees will be refunded.
The American Poetry Journal Book Prize entries may be sent, following the guidelines above, to:
The American Poetry Journal book prize P. O. Box 2080 Aptos, California 95001-2080
Please make checks payable to: Dream Horse Press.
Or, you can now submit your manuscript in email, save on postage, paper, and envelopes by paying online: email
Dee Rees and her feature film debut, Pariah, have received many-a-pixel on this blog, so you should be familiar, if you’ve been a regular reader. Regardless, get to know her and her film a little more, because I’m sure we’ll be talking about both in 2011, given that Pariah makes its worldwide debut at the Sundance Film Festival next month. I’ll be at the festival, and will be seeing the film. So, exactly a month from now, you’ll have my firsthand reaction to it.
Dee Rees‘ feature film debut, Pariah, makes its worldwide debut at the Sundance Film Festival next month. I’ll be at the festival, and will be seeing the film. So, about a month from now, you’ll have my firsthand reaction to it.
Now, some may think that just because the film got into Sundance (the premiere film festival in these United States), the work is all done; it’s smooth sailing from here; Dee’s film will debut, make a splash, get picked up for distribution, open on 3000 screens next year, win lots of acclaim. do well at the box office, and Dee will sign a 3-picture deal with Sony Pictures worth millions.
RIIIIGHT!
The film has to first get through the circus that is Sundance; and to do that, and do it well, money will have to be spent! And that’s were YOU come in.
Dee has set up a Kickstarter page to raise $10,000 which will go towards the film’s premiere at Sundance.
The money will be used for the following: Paying for music clearances, a sound mix, and air and hotel to bring the film’s fabulous, hardworking cast and crew to the festival – all in an effort to help ensure that there’s a continuous awareness of the film, which will only help with distribution.
As someone who’s going to Sundance, I’ll add, in support, that it is quite an expensive affair. So, if you can contribute to Dee’s cause, please do so. At the time of this post, they’ve raised $435, with 27 days left to go. CLICK HERE to be taken to the film’s Kickstarter page, and give whatever you can.
Here are Dee and producer Nekisa Cooper, talking about the fundraiser.
Congolese-born Noella is an internationally acclaimed model and activist
She's set up a foundation to empower young girls and women through education
The organization is building a school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Every week CNN International's African Voices highlights Africa's most engaging personalities, exploring the lives and passions of people who rarely open themselves up to the camera. This week we profile Congolese-born model and activist Noella Coursaris.
(CNN) -- Her image may have appeared on billboards and magazines across the globe, but Noella Coursaris has passions that extend far beyond the glamorous world of fashion.
The internationally acclaimed model is now using her celebrity for the benefit of underprivileged children and women in her birthplace of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Passionate about the DRC, Coursaris is concentrating her efforts on empowering young girls through education and raising the literacy rate for Congolese women.
"I think it's very important that people have education, to stay in the country to make progress, to make the country progress," Coursaris says. "If everyone who has education leaves, the country will stay the same."
The organization sponsors the education of young girls from the DRC who have been abandoned, sexually abused or accused of witchcraft. It pays for the girls' school, food, orphanage and uniform fees.
The foundation is also involved in a major project that will see the construction of an ecological school for 100 children in the Katanga province in the south of the DRC, the area where Coursaris was born and spent her early childhood.
"We believe that showing the culture and the creativity of the Congolese orphans and girls through education they will know how to manage themselves -- they will have an education, they will have work one day and they will be able to have a voice politically, economically, socially," she says.
Coursaris says it was her personal experience that prompted her to get passionately involved with improving educational opportunities for young Congolese girls.
After losing her father at the age of five, Coursaris was sent to Europe to live with relatives, since her Congolese mother lacked the resources to raise her. She didn't go back to the African country before turning 18, but now she returns three or four times a year to visit her mother and oversee the progress of the foundation's projects.
"I believe that if my mother had an education at the time my father died, she would have been able to support me and keep me," Coursaris says.
Coursaris was educated in Belgium and Switzerland before moving to London to learn English. It was there where she "unexpectedly" sprang to fame as a model after following her friends' suggestions that she enter a competition held by lingerie retailer Agent Provocateur.
She soon started appearing in international magazines like Vanity Fair and GQ, posing for brands such as Virgin and Apple.
Now, she spends less time in front of the camera and more time campaigning for the country she loves, using her modeling experience to stage fundraising events for her foundation.
If my mother had an education at the time my father died, she would have been able to support me and keep me. --Noella Coursaris
Her hard work is starting to pay off. "Girls are less probable to reach in the streets, where they can be raped, they can become street children. Being at school completely covers that and, educated, they will have less chances of becoming pregnant at such a young age," she says.
Recently, Coursaris addressed UNICEF and the Congolese parliament about issues that confront underprivileged children in the country.
She believes there are still a lot of things that need to be done to help young girls in the DRC.
"At a young age they got pregnant, got married, so how do you resolve the problem of a girl being pregnant at 12 years, if she's at school, if she cuts her education?
"If we give her power to have education I believe she won't be a mother at a young age."
Despite the DRC's well-documented problems, Coursaris remains upbeat about the country. She hopes her son Mapendo, whose name means "love" in Swahili, will experience the DRC as a very different country.
"When he is my age I want him to see a new Congo, with a strong leadership, with a lot of schools all over Congo," she says.
"In Congo it is important that we have infrastructure and that we are developed but it is very important that we keep our integrity, that we keep our identity. It's important that we keep our culture."
Quietly moving through the Anselm Kiefer show at the Gagosian gallery on its final afternoon were eight people wearing black T-shirts that bore the show's portentous title—“Next Year in Jerusalem”—in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. They didn't speak unless spoken to; they took pictures of themselves standing before some equally portentous works of Holocaust-evoking art. (Everyone was taking pictures; the catalogue cost a hundred dollars.) Only if approached did one of the group explain that they were part of an organization called U.S. Boat to Gaza, which plans to sponsor a ship in the next flotilla to sail against the Israeli blockade. Half of the group had left, and they were reduced to four by the time that gallery representatives asked them to leave, unimpressed by their claims to be extending the discussion that Kiefer had begun. Morality. Guilt. Jewish tragedy, past and present. (“This is private property,” a gallerista in towering heels shot back. “We're here to sell art.”) A call to the police was threatened. In response, the activists put on their jackets—covering the offending Passover phrase, even while complaining that it had not, to their knowledge, been copyrighted—and asked if they might stay. Without reply, the representatives walked away.
Ingrid Homberg had gone to Gagosian that day to lift her spirits. A delicate blonde woman in her late fifties, she grew up in Germany—she is roughly of Kiefer's generation—but never felt that she belonged there; she moved to New York with her young daughter in 1980, and the city has proved a much happier fit. In recent years, however, she has been ill (fibromyalgia, arthritis) and suffers frequent pain. Still, she was immediately buoyed by Kiefer's magisterial landscapes, in which massive wings overhead suggest the judgment of God. The gallery was filled with such disturbing images. She had earlier noticed the people in the T-shirts, and now she approached them, hoping to discuss the feelings that the artist's work provoked.
But there was no discussion. Two police officers arrived just a moment after Homberg did, and ordered the group out. Including Homberg. She said that she had no reason to leave. She asked one of the officers—“Young man,” she addressed him, and he did look very young—why they did not allow the group to speak. And that was it. His partner grabbed her by the arm and began to pull her out. The force of the motion caused her to lose her balance; she fell. And the Gagosian's chamber of artful horrors came to appalling life, as crowds of gallery goers, on a busy Saturday afternoon, watched a police officer drag a frail and terrified woman, howling with pain, across the floor of two long rooms to the doorway.
Many people might have assumed that her cries were part of a staged scene, since the protesters were shepherded out behind her, loudly bemoaning their deprivation of freedom of speech. But on the street, Homberg pulled off her coat and rolled up her sleeve to reveal an arm thickly blotched black and blue. The officer, she explained, had not merely grabbed her arm—thin enough, and easy to grab—but had strongly pressed his fingers into the upper inner muscle as he dragged her. The result, she said, was agony.
A sympathetic bystander informed the officers that they had made a mistake: the sobbing woman was not with the group and no one had ordered her out of the gallery. They replied that they had ordered her out, and she had not complied; therefore, no mistake was made. Homberg asked to speak to someone from the gallery, but her request, when relayed, was met with conspicuous disinterest. A Gagosian representative has since expressed regret that anyone was hurt during the “unfortunate disturbance.” The New York Police Department, however, insists that Homberg was merely “escorted” from the gallery, and denies that she was dragged or mistreated in any way.
As she was bundled off for medical attention following the incident, Homberg continued to cry. She was upset, she said, because of the terrible pain, because of the shock, and because she had not been able to finish looking at the exhibition. The service of a car was offered by one of the protestors, who had somehow found time to change into a T-shirt that read “Greed Kills.”
Editor's note: It is alarming to reflect that in the last 24 hours we have seen three instances of the suppression of free speech when it comes to the Israel/Palestine issue-- and all in sophisticated western settings. This is why Jewish Voice for Peace launched the website Muzzlewatch, because JVP understood the special censoriousness that surrounds this question, much of it inside the Jewish community. The three episodes: 1, Seattle bus ads being pulled, 2, Julian Assange's statement that he held back Israel disclosures in the Wiki-drop because western publications were reluctant to run them, and 3, the story that follows, about an action taken at the Gagosian gallery in New York a few days ago (covered atHuffpo here, and in the New Yorker also).
In response to the title of the exhibition and the content of the work [occupations/historical memory] a small group of artists and activists decided to view the show wearing a shirt with the words Next Year In Jerusalem in the three languages Arabic, Hebrew and English.
After about one and a half hours, half of our group left and four of us remained to continue to view the show. I walked around on my own looking at the work. I noticed that two other visitors had engaged two of my friends in a conversation that was lasting a long time. Curious, I wandered over to where they were standing to join them. The atmosphere in the gallery was very peaceful and calm. The conversation that they had struck-up was warm and all of them were very interested talking together. Suddenly, out of nowhere, two representatives from the gallery approached us. One of them asked who our leader was. It was an odd question and I responded that we had no leader. She then asked us who was in charge. And again I emphasized that no one was in charge and said that there was nothing happening. She then said that she had to ask us to leave the gallery. We, including the lovely couple we had just met, were dumbfounded. At that point, the gallery employee ordered the guards, the same ones that had observed us for close to two hours with no incident, to surround us and escort us out. I told her that there was no reason to have us removed. The gallery employee explained that they had received complaints about the words on our shirt, which were causing confusion, and therefore we would have to leave. We then decided to cover the language even though it was very disturbing to do so and we did this reluctantly, understanding the profound irony against the back-drop of the Kiefer exhibition which embodies a life's work supposedly concerned with the horrors of state-sponsored repression, the brutality of occupation, racism, abuse of power, fascism and the consequences of forgetting history, not allowing for keen reflection in regard to current strains of unchecked power. I mentioned to the gallery employees that I thought we were in the realm of ideas inside the gallery space to which she replied that it was a private gallery in the business of selling art and that they wanted us to leave. On principle, something no longer that valued or defended in the public or private sector, we stayed, acting again in no way that could be deemed disruptive. The guards went back to their corners and we went back to our conversation. We thought that the incident was over. To all our shock, several minutes later the police arrived and completely disrupting the calm atmosphere in the gallery began to order us to leave and threatened us with arrest for trespassing.We spent about one to two hours looking at the exhibition, mainly individually, silently and respectfully with full consideration of others viewing the exhibition. We simply wore the words on our shirts and did not engage with anyone unless they struck up a conversation with us. A number of people asked some of us about the meaning of the message, gave positive feedback, showed interest, asked where they could get the shirts or occasionally questioned our political attitude toward Israel and Palestine. We made it clear to those who asked that we were not affiliated with the gallery and this was our own personal response to the work. All our conversations were at a low level, similar to all the other visitors talking with one another while viewing the show. We never had an incident, raised our voices, disrupted anyone, and were not approached by the multitudes of guards that were there. We took photographs as was permitted and similar to many other people photographing the work and each other without flash or disruption to people's passage. We thought we were in an arena of ideas and that words on a t-shirt without any other provocation would be an acceptable method of free expression in response to Kiefer's work. We were so very wrong.
Within minutes after the police arrived an incident unfolded that could only be described as brutal. Upon reflection, it was like a staged scene, depicting what happens when the very forces Kiefer warns us about go unchecked. The police came on very strong and at first directed their warning at us, overseen by the gallery personnel, who pointed us out to them. I asked them to explain the complaints being made against us and rationale for our expulsion. The only explanation given was that it was a private space just like one's home and that we were no longer welcome and would need to leave. A woman witnessing the event and standing at a distance to my left, who I did not know, asked for an explanation as to what was happening. The police officer was very rude and belligerent to her. All this unfolded rather quickly, within seconds and suddenly I saw him grab her forcefully, pinching the muscle of her arm as he began to drag her from the gallery. It was shocking as she was screaming that she was being hurt and yet he wouldn't remove his grip. I heard her cry in pain all the way out as she was being removed to the entrance. I couldn't see what happened behind the wall between us but have heard an account from another witness that she fell to the floor and was dragged all the way to the door and outside on the floor by the police without complaint and in full view of the gallery personnel. She was badly bruised and needed medical attention and was taken to a hospital emergency room.
These are the facts of my experience as it unfolded. It was and still is traumatizing to recount and to attempt to grapple with all the implications of these events unfolding against the backdrop of the Anselm Kiefer exhibition. What happened there can not be explained away simply by the gallery stating that they received complaints. The question should be asked by whom? What was the content of those complaints? What was the confusion they pointed to and why couldn't the gallery personnel clear those issues up? What warranted setting into motion this course of action that led to a brutal assault by the police and the shutting down of ideas and speech embodied on a personal t-shirt? These (art) corporations are about money - rank and extreme consumerism. That they invoke the culture of private property as justification for their repression of inconvenient thoughts and ideas must not obscure the fact that they have no right to cause actual physical harm to members of the public or to violate the rights of that public. Our peaceful engagement with the Kiefer exhibition was not a demonstration that day in the gallery but the gallery deserves now to be shown what a real demonstration looks like in response to what it did.
I can only wonder what Anselm Kiefer would have to say about what happened in his exhibition because of the presence of those words that inspired him and led to an inspired idea, Next Year In Jerusalem, strung together in Arabic, Hebrew and English?
Published on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 by the BBC
Arabic T-shirt Sparks Airport Row
by Tony Pugh
An architect of Iraqi descent has said he was forced to remove a T-shirt that bore the words "We will not be silent" before boarding a flight at New York.
A demonstrator wears a similar T-shirt at a New York protest in July. (Photo: AP)
Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked in for a JetBlue flight to California on 12 August.
Mr Jarrar said he was shocked such an action could be taken in the US.
US transport officials are conducting an inquiry after a complaint from the US Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
JetBlue said it was also investigating the incident but a spokeswoman said: "We're not clear exactly what happened."
'Authoritarian regimes'
Mr Jarrar's black cotton T-shirt bore the slogan in both Arabic and English.
He said he had cleared security at John F Kennedy airport for a flight back to his home in California when he was approached by two men who wanted to check his ID and boarding pass.
Mr Jarrar said he was told a number of passengers had complained about his T-shirt - apparently concerned at what the Arabic phrase meant - and asked him to remove it.
He refused, arguing that the slogan was not offensive and citing his constitutional rights to free expression.
Mr Jarrar later told a New York radio station: "I grew up and spent all my life living under authoritarian regimes and I know that these things happen.
"But I'm shocked that they happened to me here, in the US."
After a difficult exchange with airline staff, Mr Jarrar was persuaded to wear another T-shirt bought for him at the airport shop.
"We Will Not Be Silent" is a slogan adopted by opponents of the war in Iraq and other conflicts in the Middle East.
It is said to derive from the White Rose dissident group which opposed Nazi rule in Germany.
KIPTUSURI, Kenya — For Sara Ruto, the desperate yearning for electricity began last year with the purchase of her first cellphone, a lifeline for receiving small money transfers, contacting relatives in the city or checking chicken prices at the nearest market.
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Beyond Fossil Fuels
Starting Small
Articles in this series examine innovative attempts to reduce the world’s dependence on coal, oil and other carbon-intensive fuels, and the challenges faced.
Solar power for Ms. Ruto’s hut in Kiptusuri, Kenya, means her toddlers no longer risk burns from a smoky kerosene lamp. More Photos »
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Charging the phone was no simple matter in this farming village far from Kenya’s electric grid.
Every week, Ms. Ruto walked two miles to hire a motorcycle taxi for the three-hour ride to Mogotio, the nearest town with electricity. There, she dropped off her cellphone at a store that recharges phones for 30 cents. Yet the service was in such demand that she had to leave it behind for three full days before returning.
That wearying routine ended in February when the family sold some animals to buy a small Chinese-made solar power system for about $80. Now balanced precariously atop their tin roof, a lone solar panel provides enough electricity to charge the phone and run four bright overhead lights with switches.
“My main motivation was the phone, but this has changed so many other things,” Ms. Ruto said on a recent evening as she relaxed on a bench in the mud-walled shack she shares with her husband and six children.
As small-scale renewable energy becomes cheaper, more reliable and more efficient, it is providing the first drops of modern power to people who live far from slow-growing electricity grids and fuel pipelines in developing countries. Although dwarfed by the big renewable energy projects that many industrialized countries are embracing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, these tiny systems are playing an epic, transformative role.
Since Ms. Ruto hooked up the system, her teenagers’ grades have improved because they have light for studying. The toddlers no longer risk burns from the smoky kerosene lamp. And each month, she saves $15 in kerosene and battery costs — and the $20 she used to spend on travel.
In fact, neighbors now pay her 20 cents to charge their phones, although that business may soon evaporate: 63 families in Kiptusuri have recently installed their own solar power systems.
“You leapfrog over the need for fixed lines,” said Adam Kendall, head of the sub-Saharan Africa power practice for McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm. “Renewable energy becomes more and more important in less and less developed markets.”
There is no reliable data on the spread of off-grid renewable energy on a small scale, in part because the projects are often installed by individuals or tiny nongovernmental organizations.
But Dana Younger, senior renewable energy adviser at the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private lending arm, said there was no question that the trend was accelerating. “It’s a phenomenon that’s sweeping the world; a huge number of these systems are being installed,” Mr. Younger said.
With the advent of cheap solar panels and high-efficiency LED lights, which can light a room with just 4 watts of power instead of 60, these small solar systems now deliver useful electricity at a price that even the poor can afford, he noted. “You’re seeing herders in Inner Mongolia with solar cells on top of their yurts,” Mr. Younger said.
In Africa, nascent markets for the systems have sprung up in Ethiopia, Uganda, Malawi and Ghana as well as in Kenya, said Francis Hillman, an energy entrepreneur who recently shifted his Eritrea-based business, Phaesun Asmara, from large solar projects financed by nongovernmental organizations to a greater emphasis on tiny rooftop systems.
In addition to these small solar projects, renewable energy technologies designed for the poor include simple subterranean biogas chambers that make fuel and electricity from the manure of a few cows, and “mini” hydroelectric dams that can harness the power of a local river for an entire village.
Yet while these off-grid systems have proved their worth, the lack of an effective distribution network or a reliable way of financing the start-up costs has prevented them from becoming more widespread.
“The big problem for us now is there is no business model yet,” said John Maina, executive coordinator of Sustainable Community Development Services, or Scode, a nongovernmental organization based in Nakuru, Kenya, that is devoted to bringing power to rural areas.
Just a few years ago, Mr. Maina said, “solar lights” were merely basic lanterns, dim and unreliable.
“Finally, these products exist, people are asking for them and are willing to pay,” he said. “But we can’t get supply.” He said small African organizations like his do not have the purchasing power or connections to place bulk orders themselves from distant manufacturers, forcing them to scramble for items each time a shipment happens to come into the country.
Part of the problem is that the new systems buck the traditional mold, in which power is generated by a very small number of huge government-owned companies that gradually extend the grid into rural areas. Investors are reluctant to pour money into products that serve a dispersed market of poor rural consumers because they see the risk as too high.
“There are many small islands of success, but they need to go to scale,” said Minoru Takada, chief of the United Nations Development Program’s sustainable energy program. “Off-grid is the answer for the poor. But people who control funding need to see this as a viable option.”
Even United Nations programs and United States government funds that promote climate-friendly energy in developing countries hew to large projects like giant wind farms or industrial-scale solar plants that feed into the grid. A $300 million solar project is much easier to finance and monitor than 10 million home-scale solar systems in mud huts spread across a continent.
As a result, money does not flow to the poorest areas. Of the $162 billion invested in renewable energy last year, according to the United Nations, experts estimate that $44 billion was spent in China, India and Brazil collectively, and $7.5 billion in the many poorer countries.
Only 6 to 7 percent of solar panels are manufactured to produce electricity that does not feed into the grid; that includes systems like Ms. Ruto’s and solar panels that light American parking lots and football stadiums.
Still, some new models are emerging. Husk Power Systems, a young company supported by a mix of private investment and nonprofit funds, has built 60 village power plants in rural India that make electricity from rice husks for 250 hamlets since 2007.
In Nepal and Indonesia, the United Nations Development Program has helped finance the construction of very small hydroelectric plants that have brought electricity to remote mountain communities. Morocco provides subsidized solar home systems at a cost of $100 each to remote rural areas where expanding the national grid is not cost-effective.
What has most surprised some experts in the field is the recent emergence of a true market in Africa for home-scale renewable energy and for appliances that consume less energy. As the cost of reliable equipment decreases, families have proved ever more willing to buy it by selling a goat or borrowing money from a relative overseas, for example.
The explosion of cellphone use in rural Africa has been an enormous motivating factor. Because rural regions of many African countries lack banks, the cellphone has been embraced as a tool for commercial transactions as well as personal communications, adding an incentive to electrify for the sake of recharging.
The cheap renewable energy systems also allow the rural poor to save money on candles, charcoal, batteries, wood and kerosene. “So there is an ability to pay and a willingness to pay,” said Mr. Younger of the International Finance Corporation.
In another Kenyan village, Lochorai, Alice Wangui, 45, and Agnes Mwaforo, 35, formerly subsistence farmers, now operate a booming business selling and installing energy-efficient wood-burning cooking stoves made of clay and metal for a cost of $5. Wearing matching bright orange tops and skirts, they walk down rutted dirt paths with cellphones ever at their ears, edging past goats and dogs to visit customers and to calm those on the waiting list.
Hunched over her new stove as she stirred a stew of potatoes and beans, Naomi Muriuki, 58, volunteered that the appliance had more than halved her use of firewood. Wood has become harder to find and expensive to buy as the government tries to limit deforestation, she added.
In Tumsifu, a slightly more prosperous village of dairy farmers, Virginia Wairimu, 35, is benefiting from an underground tank in which the manure from her three cows is converted to biogas, which is then pumped through a rubber tube to a gas burner.
“I can just get up and make breakfast," Ms. Wairimu said. The system was financed with a $400 loan from a demonstration project that has since expired.
In Kiptusuri, the Firefly LED system purchased by Ms. Ruto is this year’s must-have item. The smallest one, which costs $12, consists of a solar panel that can be placed in a window or on a roof and is connected to a desk lamp and a phone charger. Slightly larger units can run radios and black-and-white television sets.
Of course, such systems cannot compare with a grid connection in the industrialized world. A week of rain can mean no lights. And items like refrigerators need more, and more consistent, power than a panel provides.
Still, in Kenya, even grid-based electricity is intermittent and expensive: families must pay more than $350 just to have their homes hooked up.
“With this system, you get a real light for what you spend on kerosene in a few months,” said Mr. Maina, of Sustainable Community Development Services. “When you can light your home and charge your phone, that is very valuable.”
Global Voices Online sent a team to Haiti in the earthquake's aftermath, primarily to offer support for citizen media, since we believe that there is a real need to amplify Haitian voices when it comes to relief and reconstruction efforts. Our Managing Director, Georgia Popplewell, and former GV Lingua Team Leader, Alice Backer, “[made] contact with Haitians using citizen media tools, and [identified] others with the potential to participate in and enrich the online conversation, given the right resources”, with a view to increasing the amount of local citizen media activity. Visit our Special Coverage Page for various perspectives on the earthquake and subsequent relief efforts.
As if the devastating effects of the earthquake on the local food supply weren't enough, Haitian farmers also had to hurriedly mobilise against Monsanto, a company that produces genetically modified seed and wanted to get a foot in the door, via “a donation of conventional corn and vegetable seeds to farmers in Haiti, to help increase food production and aid long-term earthquake recovery.”
Towards the end of a trying year, the country faced a debilitating cholera crisis, braced for a hurricane and, when it appeared that the cholera epidemic was brought into the country by (largely unwelcome) UN peacekeepers, tried as best it could to function in the midst of violent protests.
Natural disasters and health challenges were not the only challenges the island nation faced. Its annus horriblis came to a climax with the staging of the country's controversial elections; bloggers are still questioning the transparency of the process, even as results continue to be verified.
The Puerto Rico Student Protests Puerto Rico battled a severe economic crisis during 2010. The despair and angst caused by conservative public social and economic policies provided the context for the student strike that paralyzed the main campus of the state-run University of Puerto Rico during two months starting in April 2010. Students of campuses from all over the island joined the protest against educational budget cuts, and their plight catalyzed a national social movement.
Students protest at the main campus of the UPR. Photo by Ricardo Alcaraz of Diálogo. Republished under a CC License.
In December 2010, students of the main campus in Río Piedras, San Juan, declared a second strike, this time specifically against an annual $800 fee. The government ordered the Police to occupy the university’s campuses, which has led to violent confrontations with students. During both strikes, students have creatively used online platforms, blogs and social media networks, to express themselves.
The Jamaica State of Emergency The eyes of the world were focused on Jamaica from late May, as the Prime Minister finally stopped trying to escape the inevitable and allowed the US extradition request for alleged drug don Christopher “Dudus” Coke to be signed, setting in motion a series of events that practically held the country in a vice grip for over a month. As @anniepaul put it:
The pact between the criminals and the state has been broken, we are being shown the consequences of that rupture…
Citizen media did a stellar job as a reliable source of information throughout the unrest. Our Special Coverage Page has all the details.
This was not the only important story to come out of Cuba this year: soon after Fidel Castro admitted to a reporter (and subsequently retracted his statement) that the Cuban economic model no longer works, the government began the process of cutting 500,000 state jobs, in an effort resuscitate the island's struggling economy.
Interestingly, the government also announced that a submarine fiber optic cable linking Venezuela, Cuba, and Jamaica, will be operating by January of 2011. Although this will greatly enhance the quality of Internet connectivity, it will not necessarily lead to more access.
Plane crash in Central Cuba. Courtesy of Escambray.
Sad Farewells Several regional territories had to say goodbye to national icons this year: Barbados lost its relatively new and certainly youngest-ever Prime Minister, Jamaica - and indeed the world - lost reggae icon Gregory “Cool Ruler” Isaacs to cancer and Monserrat (and calypso fans everywhere) said their final farewell to Arrow, the man who brought us the mega-hit “Hot, Hot, Hot”.
In other music news, reggae star Buju Banton was a regular topic of discussion in the regional blogosphere, as he went to court in the United State to defend himself against drug trafficking charges. After the judge presiding over his case declared a mistrial in September, the singer is scheduled to go through the process again, with a new trial beginning early in the New Year.
From natural disasters to political wrangling, 2010 was a busy year - and as 2011 approaches, the Global Voices Caribbean Team will continue to monitor the regional blogosphere in an ongoing effort to facilitate meaningful conversation and understanding throughout the Caribbean archipelago.
Each morning for 5,546 days, Jabbar Collins knew exactly what he'd wear when he awoke: a dark-green shirt with matching dark-green pants.
The prison greenies of a convicted murderer, he says, were "overly starched in the beginning, but as time wore on, and after repeated washes, they were worn and dull, like so many other things on the inside."
Today, Jabbar Collins works as a paralegal at the Law Offices of Joel B. Rudin in Manhattan. But for 15 years, he sat in prison, convicted of the 1994 murder of Rabbi Abraham Pollack. Mr. Collins, who maintained his innocence, spent much of those 15 years in a computerless prison law library.
For most of those 15 years, Mr. Collins, who maintained his innocence, knew the only way his wardrobe would change was if he did something that's indescribably rare. He'd have to lawyer himself out of jail.
There was no crusading journalist, no nonprofit group taking up his cause, just Inmate 95A2646, a high-school dropout from Brooklyn, alone in a computerless prison law library.
"'Needle in a haystack' doesn't communicate it exactly. Is it more like lightning striking your house?" says Adele Bernard, who runs the Post-Conviction Project at Pace Law School in New York, which investigates claims of wrongful conviction. "It's so unbelievably hard…that it's almost impossible to come up with something that captures that."
Mr. Collins pried documents from wary prosecutors, tracked down reluctant witnesses and persuaded them, at least once through trickery, to reveal what allegedly went on before and at the trial where he was convicted of the high-profile 1994 murder of Rabbi Abraham Pollack.
The improbable result of that decade-and-a-half struggle was evident on a recent morning in a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper. Mr. Collins sat in a small office he now shares, wearing one of the eight dark suits he owns, a white shirt with French cuffs, a blue-and-gray striped tie and a pair of expensive wingtips. "Every day is beautiful" now, he said, smiling. "I don't have a bad day anymore. I think that my worst bad day out of prison will be better than my greatest good day in prison."
After more than 15 years behind bars and now free after getting his murder conviction overturned, Jabbar Collins starts his day like so many other New Yorkers: He takes the subway to his job in Manhattan. WSJ's Jason Bellini reports.
On March 13, 1995, as Mr. Collins was led by officers through a side door of a Brooklyn courtroom to a holding cell, his mother let loose a wailing sound that he'd "never heard before or since." Her son had just been convicted of murder.
He was 22, a father of three and facing at least 34 2/3 years behind bars. Three witnesses had implicated him in the midday shooting of Mr. Pollack as the rabbi collected rent in a building at 126 Graham Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Mr. Collins said he was home getting a haircut at the time.
To that point in his life, Mr. Collins had been drifting. His father died when he was 12 and his mother worked two jobs while also studying nursing. Under-supervised, he skipped school often, smoked a lot of pot and fathered the first of his children when he was 15.
When he was 16, he was arrested for a robbery. He says he was just waiting outside the store where a robbery took place. Mr. Collins accepted a youthful-offender adjudication under which he got probation and the arrest could eventually be purged.
Mr. Collins later obtained a general-equivalency diploma and took some classes at Long Island University. He was trying to transfer to John Jay College of Criminal Justice when he was arrested for Mr. Pollack's murder.
During his trial, Mr. Collins recalls being mystified. "I felt like a child," he says, "everyone talking over my head." But hearing his mother wailing as he was taken away suddenly cleared his head. "You have a life of misery ahead of you," he remembers telling himself. "The only way you're going to get out is to become your own lawyer."
On returning to Rikers Island, the city jail complex, Mr. Collins headed to the law library. There and later at Green Haven prison north of the city, he spent most of his free time in law libraries, pouring himself into legal books: "Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure," "McKinney's Consolidated Laws of New York," "The Legal Research Manual."
A thick text for paralegals called "Case Analysis and Fundamentals of Legal Writing" became his bible. He devoted two months to mastering the intricacies of federal and state law on access to public records.
_________________________________
Who Did What
Jabbar Collins achieved the rare feat of lawyering himself out of prison, 15 years after he was convicted of murdering a rabbi in Brooklyn, N.Y. Here are some of those involved.
PROSECUTOR:
Michael Vecchione denied any witnesses were rewarded or pressured.
JUDGES:
Robert Holdman rejected appeal at state level.
Dora Irizarry heard federal appeal where conviction was overturned.
WITNESSES:
Adrian Diaz testified at trial he saw Collins with a gun. When Collins much later called him, posing as a D.A. investigator, Diaz talked about his route to becoming a witness.
Edwin Oliva testified at trial that Collins had said he planned to rob the rabbi. When Collins wrote to Oliva years later, Oliva wrote back describing what lay behind his testimony.
Angel Santos testified at trial he had called 911 and said he saw Collins run past. His voice didn't seem to Collins to match any voices on the 911 tape.
LAWYER:
Joel Rudin helped Collins after his own 10-year legal effort.
_________________________________
His first request for trial records under New York's Freedom of Information Law, in July 1995, was denied. He would go on to file six more requests, five more appeals and a lawsuit before a judge gave him some of the records over two years later.
Finally succeeding in a request, gaining 239 pages of documents and 94 audio tapes, emboldened him. "It kind of refilled the tanks," he says, "gave me the confidence to fight on."
Over time, Mr. Collins would file a dizzying number of records requests. If they were denied, he appealed. If he lost, he'd add his requests to those he prepared for other inmates.
"The mosaic of intelligence gathering," Mr. Collins calls this. "You collect one item at a time and you add to the picture piece by piece until you create what is a stunning mosaic of what really happened."
He picked away at his case for eight years, but by the fall of 2003 he had hit a wall. That's when he carried out a ruse to trick Adrian Diaz, who had testified to seeing Mr. Collins tuck a gun in his waistband after the murder, into talking to him.
"I became Kevin Beekman, district attorney's investigator, for about 25 minutes," Mr. Collins says. The fictitious Mr. Beekman said he needed to recreate documents lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack. When Mr. Diaz agreed to talk about his testimony, Mr. Collins routed the call through a phone in his mother's home so it could be recorded.
Mr. Diaz said that before the trial, he had gone to Puerto Rico, in violation of his probation for marijuana possession. He agreed to return and testify against Mr. Collins, he said, only after prosecutors promised they would make sure his probation wasn't revoked.
That account, which Mr. Diaz later attested to in a signed affidavit, wasn't provided by prosecutors to Mr. Collins's defense counsel, who could have used it to undermine the witness by showing he was given an incentive to testify.
In 2005 Mr. Collins wrote to another witness, Edwin Oliva, who had testified that before the murder, Mr. Collins said he was going to rob the rabbi. "I really need to know what happened between you and the District Attorney's Office," Mr. Collins wrote.
"I always knew I was going to hear from you sooner or later," Mr. Oliva wrote back. "And to tell you the truth, I am glad you wrote, now once and for all I can settle the record."
Mr. Oliva wrote that he had been arrested a few weeks after the Pollack murder for a robbery he pulled in the building. He said the police asked about the rabbi's killing and he told them all he knew was that Mr. Collins had been arrested.
Detectives threatened to charge Mr. Oliva as an accessory, he wrote, and then made up a statement implicating Mr. Collins. Mr. Oliva wrote that he was so strung out and sleepy from a month-long run of "smoking & sniffin' dope" that he signed the statement, adding he "didn't even know what...I was signing."
But now, Mr. Oliva added, he wanted to help Mr. Collins, "because I know you got a rotten deal."
Mr. Oliva granted access to his records. They included a Legal Aid document that referenced, without elaborating, a "deal" being discussed between the judge, a prosecutor and Mr. Oliva's attorney. Mr. Oliva was allowed to plead to a lesser felony than he had been indicted for. He received a sentence of up to three years. The other charge could have kept him in prison longer.
At the trial, lead prosecutor Michael Vecchione stated that no key witnesses had received anything for testifying. "Oliva's motive is simple," the prosecutor said. "Just like all the rest of the witnesses, he saw something, he heard something, someone asked him about it, and he is telling what he saw and he is telling what he heard. Nothing else." Mr. Vecchione declined requests for comment.
Mr. Collins, though a skilled jailhouse lawyer who helped many other inmates, could take his own appeal only so far without help. In late 2005, after 10 years working alone, he contacted Joel Rudin, a civil-rights attorney known for winning what was then the largest wrongful-conviction settlement in New York, $5 million.
"I was amazed" at Mr. Collins's file, Mr. Rudin says. "I've never seen anything like this. There was so much documentation."
As the lawyer began reworking the appeal, Mr. Collins gathered another piece of his mosaic. He obtained a tape of calls to 911 after the killing.
A witness had testified he called 911 and told of seeing Mr. Collins run past. But when Mr. Collins listened to the tape of 911 calls, none of the voices sounded like what he recalled this witness sounding like at the trial.
Mr. Collins obtained a tape of a prosecution interview with this witness, Angel Santos. He hired a voice expert to compare the interview tape with the tape of people calling 911. No matches.
Mr. Santos and the other two main witnesses, Messrs. Diaz and Oliva, couldn't be reached for comment. Michael Harrison, Mr. Collins's court-appointed trial lawyer, said he couldn't remember whether he ever received the 911 tape because it was so long ago.
In March 2006, Mr. Rudin asked a state judge to overturn Mr. Collins's murder conviction on the grounds of newly discovered information the defense should have been given.
Mr. Vecchione, the prosecutor, swore that claims authorities had either coerced witnesses or failed to turn over potentially exculpatory information "are, without exception, untrue."
Then the roof crashed down. Learning of Mr. Collins's impersonation of an investigator, state Justice Robert Holdman dismissed the appeal, declaring it to be "wholly without merit, conclusory, incredible, unsubstantiated, and, in significant part, to be predicated on a foundation of fraud." For good measure, he barred Mr. Collins from filing future requests for information.
"Just devastating," Mr. Collins says. "This had been my life's work for the last 10 years."
He didn't have the luxury of wallowing. State law allows only 30 days to appeal such a ruling. As he wrote his appeal, he couldn't keep out his bitterness, and Mr. Rudin had to redo it. The state appeal failed.
In what amounted to their last shot, they filed a motion in federal court in Brooklyn seeking to overturn the conviction based on prosecutors' "knowing presentation, at trial, of false or misleading testimony" and withholding of evidence that might have been used to discredit the main witnesses.
This March, after two years of legal wrangling, federal Judge Dora Irizarry approved Mr. Rudin's request for additional material from prosecutors. Information Mr. Collins had spent more than a decade trying to get his hands on suddenly began pouring in.
One document concerned Mr. Oliva, the witness who wrote that under police pressure he signed a statement implicating Mr. Collins in the murder, even though he knew nothing about it. The document suggested that as the murder trial neared, Mr. Oliva had balked at cooperating. It said his work release for a robbery conviction was revoked "after he failed to cooperate with D.A.'s office regarding a homicide."
Other newly discovered information suggested Mr. Oliva had briefly recanted his statement implicating Mr. Collins. A prosecutor preparing to fight Mr. Collins's appeal learned this from a retired detective, who said that Mr. Oliva recanted, then changed his mind again and stuck to his statement after the detective and several prosecutors spoke with him at the Brooklyn D.A.'s office.
This prosecutor turned that information over to Judge Irizarry, acknowledging it should have been provided to Mr. Collins's murder-trial defense. (Mr. Vecchione had denied at Mr. Collins's state appeal that any witness ever recanted or "had to be threatened or forced to testify.")
Four days before a scheduled hearing in Judge Irizarry's federal court, the D.A.'s office offered to reduce the charge against Mr. Collins to manslaughter, allowing his immediate release.
Mr. Collins rejected the offer.
Later the same day, prosecutors informed the court that they wouldn't fight Mr. Collins's effort to overturn his conviction, but said they planned to retry him.
A retrial would move the case back to state court, a venue where prosecutors had known nothing but success against Mr. Collins.
Mr. Rudin, desperate to keep the case in federal court, persuaded Judge Irizarry to hold a rare hearing on whether the D.A. should be barred from retrying Mr. Collins because its misconduct had been so pervasive.
The hearing's first witness was Mr. Santos, the man who had testified about making a 911 call after the murder, but whose voice didn't seem to match any of the voices on the 911 tape.
Mr. Santos told the hearing that in the period when the murder occurred, he was using drugs "every day. Twenty-four hours."
He said that as the murder trial neared a year later, he told Mr. Vecchione he didn't want to testify, but Mr. Vecchione began "yelling at me and telling me he was going to hit me over the head with some coffee table."
He said he was threatened with prosecution, then locked up for a week as a material witness. When he agreed to testify, he said, he was taken from jail to a Holiday Inn, which he described as "paradise."
The federal hearing was due to resume a week later with testimony from Mr. Vecchione and other prosecutors. Instead, the D.A.'s office gave up. It said its decision was "based upon the weaknesses that now exist with the witnesses," but added that its "position, then and now, was that we believe in this defendant's guilt."
Judge Irizarry was not pleased. "It's really sad that the D.A.'s office persists in standing firm and saying they did nothing wrong here," she said. "It is, indeed, sad." Judge Irizarry declined to be interviewed; the judge who turned down Mr. Collins's state appeal didn't return a call seeking comment,
Brooklyn D.A. Charles Hynes stood firm. "Michael Vecchione is not guilty of any misconduct," Mr. Hynes said at the time. He, Mr. Vecchione—who is now chief of the rackets division—and a spokesman for the D.A.'s office all declined to comment, citing likely litigation by Mr. Collins.
Mr. Collins walked out of prison on June 9, to an emotional welcome from his family. He has had many Rip Van Winkle moments. Swipe cards have replaced tokens on the subway; coffee shops called Starbucks are everywhere; there are these devices called iPhones.
But some things haven't changed. Mr. Collins is back in a law library. His attorney, Mr. Rudin, has hired him as a paralegal.
Mr. Collins is first concentrating on his own case. He has filed "notices of claim" announcing an intention to sue the city and state for $60 million.
As a paralegal, he can't give legal advice to the many inmates who have written seeking it. He hopes one day to change that, by becoming an attorney.
Editor's note: It is alarming to reflect that in the last 24 hours we have seen three instances of the suppression of free speech when it comes to the Israel/Palestine issue-- and all in sophisticated western settings. This is why Jewish Voice for Peace launched the 
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