August of 2022 brought the passing of George Comninel, a dear colleague and friend. As I did not make the celebration of his life held last month in Toronto, I wrote the following tribute, which was shared in written form at the event. George served as the acting supervisor of my dissertation project from its earliest inceptions in 1993-1994 down to its completion in 2008. During those years, the wealth of knowledge which George shared with me is difficult to describe. I will have more to say in...

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For those of us who grew up during the Cold War, it was something of a coming-of-age moment to realize that at any second of any day, one might perish in the kind of hellfire often preached of in churches but resulting from a strike from a thermonuclear missile launched from the Soviet Union, or if you lived there, from the United States or Western Europe. Of course, at any second of any day, one might perish from an infinite number of causes: a brain aneurism, a heart attack. What is so differe...

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Prior to 9/11, all of my visits to New York City left me in awe of the vastness of the city. Used to the wide open spaces and small towns of the Midwest, in New York I felt totally anonymous, just another human being amongst millions, dwarfed by soaring skyscrapers and chilled by cement, glass, steel and granite structures everywhere one turned. In the days after 9/11, those feelings were turned upside down. Most amazing was that when riding the subways, once they parti...

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On the morning of September 1, 2001, the other members of the Voices in the Wilderness group protesting the sanctions against Iraq had left early for the protest site outside the US Mission to the UN when I woke up, maybe around 8 am. Kathy had stayed behind to work on some writing and answer some emails. Shortly before 9 am, the youngest member of our group, whose name I have forgotten but who was from, of all places, Harlemville, a tiny hamlet in upstate New York, where I had coincidentally sp...

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In late August if 2001, I traveled to New York City to visit a group of people who were protesting the sanctions against Iraq at the US Mission to the United States. I was not, initially, a member of the group. I was there to interview Kathy Kelly, who directed a group called Voices in the Wilderness out of her Chicago apartment. The UN was preparing to welcome dignitaries from all over the world to celebrate the UN Decade of the Child. That same UN, strong-armed by the...

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