davidabelrandom.blogspot.com
Random: Plugging Leaks
http://davidabelrandom.blogspot.com/2013/12/plugging-leaks.html
What led a man to write a 1,905-page suicide note? What does it mean to have a library without books? What happens when the state makes it easier for neighbors to seek restraining orders against each other? Over the years, I have written a wide range of stories that don't fall into neat categories. Here are the highlights. With gizmos and grit, technicians detect leaks, protect labyrinth of water pipes under Boston. December 20, 2008. Over the past decade, as erosion and widespread construction have weak...
davidabel8.blogspot.com
Book Reviews: Finkel: “The Good Soldiers”
http://davidabel8.blogspot.com/2009/10/finkel-good-soldiers.html
A critique of fiction from Milan Kundera to Garrison Keillor, biographies about Yeats and Che Guevara, and political works that advocate torture and question monogamy. Finkel: “The Good Soldiers”. The Good Soldiers;”. By David Finkel;. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; pp: 284. The Suffering Behind The Surge. By David Abel Globe Staff 10/14/2009. In his powerful account of one Army battalion’s struggle to stanch the violence roiling several neighborhoods in Baghdad, David Finkel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning. Despi...
davidabel5.blogspot.com
Kosovo War Stories: Risking the Gunships
http://davidabel5.blogspot.com/2005/06/risking-gunships.html
For 78 days in the spring of 1999, some 1,000 NATO aircraft flew more than 38,000 sorties in an effort to force Serbian forces out of Kosovo. I covered the war from Washington and Macedonia, writing about the first Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a non-U.S. ship, the flood of refugees to flee Kosovo, military plans to launch helicopter gunships, etc. Gunships poised for battle, but risks may keep them grounded. By David Abel The Boston Globe 5/22/1999. The reason: The copters, which cost $14 million ...
davidabel7.blogspot.com
Travel stories: Egypt: Before the Revolt
http://davidabel7.blogspot.com/2011/05/egypt-before-revolt_6692.html
A sampling of first-person pieces from Asia to Latin America to Africa, including accounts of scaling a mountain to Fidel Castro's secret rebel headquarters, nearly getting stranded in the deserts of Namibia, and failed efforts to camp in Iceland. Egypt: Before the Revolt. Click here for more pictures of Egypt. By David Abel Globe Staff 4/15/2011. 8212; In historical terms, it was eons before Tahrir Square became a symbol of liberty. When we met Adel at the cafe and invited him to sit for a drink, he tol...
davidabel4.blogspot.com
Academia stories: The Nonbelievers
http://davidabel4.blogspot.com/2005/05/nonbelievers.html
For more than two years, I wrote about academia in New England, covering everything from organized labor's efforts to unionize graduate students to oddball professors pushing lonely causes. Some scoops made national news, including Harvard professor Cornel West's row with Larry Summers, a cheating scandal at Dartmouth, and admissions errors at Northeastern University. In his position, which is endowed, he has helped marry and bury fellow atheists. He has presided over baby-naming ceremonies and organ...
davidabel10.blogspot.com
Photographs: My Photo Ops
http://davidabel10.blogspot.com/2005/06/my-photo-op.html
With mainly point and shoot cameras, I have shot deserts and jungles, mountains and salt flats, underwater and in the air. My subjects include blue-footed boobies in the Galapagos, the red dunes of Western Namibia, and children at play and adults at work from the Middle East to Southeast Asia and beyond. JESSEY DEARING FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE. While reporting on the inside of the Massachusetts prison system, Globe reporter David Abel tastes the "seafood surprise" at MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole.
davidabelcity.blogspot.com
City Stories: Powder Keg
http://davidabelcity.blogspot.com/2006/06/powder-keg.html
As an editor and writer for City Weekly, I looked for the idiosyncratic, stories about those such as a 97-year-old hitchhiker, a hairdresser who very carefully cut the pricey wigs worn by Orthodox Jewish women, a meth dealer who went from driving an Infiniti to the brink of homelessness, and tugboat captains battling with sea pilots for respect on the harbor. By David Abel Globe Staff 1/22/2006. The case exposed a loophole in the city's latest effort to control student drinking. With little fanfare a...
davidabel12.blogspot.com
Latin America Stories: Silencing Critics in Venezuela?
http://davidabel12.blogspot.com/2005/05/silencing-critics-in-venezuela.html
From the glaciers of Tierra del Fuego to the ports of the Caribbean, I spent several years chronicling everything from people smuggling in the Dominican Republic to the rise of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez to the effects of the drug trade in Mexico and beyond. Silencing Critics in Venezuela? By David Abel The Boston Globe 9/14/1999. But Rolando Salazar, who caricatures the president with studied detail, is not sure if his play is a comedy or tragedy. Chavez says he respects freedom of expression, but you don'...
davidabel6.blogspot.com
Military stories: Preparing for Casualties
http://davidabel6.blogspot.com/2005/07/preparing-for-casualties.html
For a year, I lived in Washington and wrote about the military, covering exercises aboard aircraft carriers, the controversy surrounding the Navy's testing range just off Puerto Rico, and arcane issues including problems with submarine warfare and missile defense, the nation's war strategy, and everything from pork in the defense budget to fraud by contractors. Bringing Good Medicine to Bad Places'. By David Abel Globe Staff 10/23/2001. As military planners prepare for the first large-scale US ground com...
davidabel11.blogspot.com
Cuba stories: A Cheap Thrill
http://davidabel11.blogspot.com/2005/06/cheap-thrill.html
Before being deported during the first legal celebration of Christmas Eve, and despite harassment by Cuban officials, I spent several months in 1998 writing about the regime’s flirtation with capitalism, budding dissident movements and the limits of free expression, and the many ironies 40 years after the revolution, including the regime promoting golf and welcoming U.S. tourists. A Sweet Promise Communism Fulfilled. By David Abel Newsday 7/12/1998. So the revolutionaries knocked down an old hospital on ...
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT