ModeShift - Part 17

Rome Has 2,750-Year History; It Had Lousy Leaders Too

by Keith SchneiderDecember 22, 2018May 4, 20200

ROME â€” Spending time in Rome, Italy during these last days of 2018 provides a useful reminder of human resiliency, and a note of reasoned assessment after this terrible week of political and financial churning at home. Remember from your history books that during the nearly 1,200 years of their empire, from the 8th century B.C. to mid-fifth century A.D., Romans suffered their share of incompetent, evil, wicked, inane, and miscreant emperors. Nero (54-68 A.D.) …

Rome at Christmas is Citadel of Security

by Keith SchneiderDecember 15, 2018December 15, 20180

ROME â€” Public places all over the world are targets this century for mayhem and bloodshed. In the United States attackers armed with handguns and automatic weapons have put schools, churches, malls, music festivals, offices, and theaters in their gunsights. The country endures a mass killing every week. Hundreds have died. In Europe the risk of domestic mass killings is not nearly as keen as the threat of terrorism, much of it linked to Islamic …

What Keeps Us Sane – Family and Friends

by Keith SchneiderDecember 4, 2018June 22, 20208

SOMERSET, KY — This is the week that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is supposed to make public sentencing memorandums for three Trump allies who pled guilty to various illegal acts committed in and out of service to the president. From what’s been made public, and from what I know from fact-checking Seth Abramson’s book, Proof of Collusion, it’s not going to be pretty or something to celebrate. The country has been in a state …

Half Staff America

by Keith SchneiderDecember 2, 2018December 2, 20180

SOMERSET, KY. — A chilly wind again whipped the flags flying at half staff here in central Kentucky. This time it was for George Bush, who died on Friday. Three weeks ago Jews were massacred in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Collegians were massacred in a bar and dance hall near Los Angeles. The two tragedies are linked by America’s miserable devotion to assault weapons and spilled blood. Flags flew at half staff then, too. There is …

Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum Opens in Owensboro, Kentucky

by Keith SchneiderOctober 21, 2018January 15, 20190

OWENSBORO, KY. â€” This flourishing city of more than 59,000 residents has occupied the high ground on a big bend of the Ohio River so long that its history includes being the winter encampment for the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804. Owensboroâ€™s famous sons include Johnny Depp, who was born here in 1963. Among its notable achievements is surviving the loss of 6,000 General Electric manufacturing jobs at the end of the 20th century, …

Mara Bates Weds Brandon Rushton

by Keith SchneiderOctober 14, 2018October 14, 20183

TRAVERSE CITY, MI —Romance, certainly the most elemental energy we know, flows like human life itself. Its headwaters charge off the slopes of new love, adventurous, boiling, unstoppable. Further along, the currents of romance grow powerful and certain. The way ahead, after all, promises eddies of delight and shoals of distress. There is no way around that. Those fortunate to have married the right partner know that marriage is the sacred pact that ties two …

Californiaâ€™s Fire Calamity

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 25, 2018October 2, 20180

REDDING, CA. â€” Cities along the Carolina coast were under water this month. Neighborhoods in Californiaâ€™s northern highlands were incinerated in July and August. Mother Earth is pushing back hard in this quickly unfolding era of ecological menace and there are twice as many people in the way as there were 40 years ago. Iâ€™m in California reporting for ProPublica on the causes and the solutions to the stateâ€™s wildfire emergency. Youâ€™ve heard something no …

Southeast Asia’s Dam Disasters

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 2, 2018August 13, 20200

Like a herd of wild bulls, raging floodwaters stampeded across a highland plateau in July and tore a hole in the mammoth Xi-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydropower complex dam in south central Laos. The boiling torrent crashed downstream from the nearly completed $1 billion dam, drowning 39 people identified so far, leaving over 100 more missing, and forcing more than 6,600 people out of their homes and into temporary government housing. Little more than a month later, …

Enemy Of The People

by Keith SchneiderAugust 5, 2018October 28, 20210

There are places in the world where being a journalist is dangerous. Last year 65 journalists were killed around the world, according to Reporters Without Borders. Two of the nations at the top of the list for assassinating journalists are Mexico and the Philippines, where I’ve worked. Another is Pakistan, where I won’t work. Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter, was killed there in 2002. Very suddenly, though, it’s become dangerous to be an …

Americans Are Designing Asia’s Future

by Keith SchneiderAugust 3, 20180

One of the many critical details of 21st century change, learned during a decade of global reporting, is that Asia is the dominant continent of the century. Another thing is that development patterns in Asia’s big cities, the glittering metropolises along the Pacific Rim, are different than they are in the West. And the third essential feature of 21st century change is the big role American architecture, engineering, and planning firms are playing in designing …