I think it is easy to underestimate the power and pervasiveness of symbols in our daily lives. Humans are a symbolic creature. The first works of art, paintings drawn on the walls of caves 20 millennia ago, are symbols of people, buffalo, animals. It is an amazing power to be able to look at something and represent it with something else, and it is this power, as much as anything, that makes us human. Our language is symbols, our writing is symbols, our art is symbols, our religion is symbols — the world we live in is replete with symbology, and we use them to such a thorough extent that it is easy to forget something is a symbol and not the reality.

This month we take a look at signs and symbols. We begin with Emily Ann Epstein’s look at anti-Semitism in Argentina, My first swastika. Colette Coleman gives us a glimpse of Tortola in her piece Finding the belongers. In Haiti, before the ground shook, Gergana Koleva takes us to Haiti and shares her experiences of the country before it was changed unalterably in the recent earthquake. Chelsea Rudman reviews Barbara Ehrenreich’s newest book in Getting negative about thinking positive. Finally, we close with four poems from Terry Lowenstein, titled March hare and Eire green.

In a world dominated by symbols, I find it refreshing to remind myself that although symbolic thinking can be a useful and frequently essential shorthand, it cannot replace the urgency of direct, immediate experience. While we are quite adept at using symbols to communicate and share our internal states with one another, I am constantly reminded experience — that which is most pure, that which is most direct — cannot be shared, but rather only reflected, like the sun’s rays reflecting from the full moon.

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

On a sunny day in May, I sat on the side of the highway, feeling sorry for myself and watching cars zip by. I’d been coaxing an old Jeep Cherokee into motion for the past six months, and about three-quarters of the way between Duluth and Rochester, my best arguments failed, leaving me stranded. As I crested the hill on the south side of the Cannon River valley, the car’s engine roared, much too loud, then coughed and died.

This is my story of recovery. It is not as dramatic or grandiose as A Million Little Pieces or a million other recovery stories, but it is mine and it is true. I was drinking too much and not going to school enough. I was broke, my credit cards were maxed out, and I was exhausted. I was living my life for each individual moment, neglecting any subsequent moments, and paying a price for such self-indulgent behavior. As I sat waiting for the tow truck to pick me up, I realized the time had come for me to put away childish things and grow up.

In our February issue, we turn our eyes to recovery. Mark Murphy writes of love, loss, and recovery in his poetry titled Pomegranates, singing telephones, and night’s cloak. In her piece Toasting Poe, Cynthia Pelayo finds disappointment and recovery when she visits Edgar Allen Poe’s grave. Chelsea Rudman tells of her trip to Israel and her conflicting emotions in her piece, The Kotel. Jillian C. York reviews Footnotes in Gaza, a comic art take on life across the border in Gaza. We end with a look at Iceland’s recovery from its recent economic meltdown in Kekoa Kaluhiokalani’s Iceland after the fall.

Recovery is, by definition, the opposite of trauma, be it self-inflicted or imposed by the outside world. I would like to think the two are correlated: that every trauma has a corresponding recovery. But I know that this is not true. There are always those who do not recover, who will not recover. That is what makes recovery so precious: It is not like spring; it does not always come. There are no guarantees, and therefore it is always to be treasured.

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

Inertia, as a physical force, seems capable of exerting influence over the events of our lives as well as movements (or lack thereof). Once set on a path, we tend to continue toward an inevitable end, each step of a progression as typical as the last. It is the path of least resistance. Anything else would require a choice, an action, and everything would change. The life that I’ve led until now would come to an end.

This month, we take a look at endings. In Sentenced, Buffy Charlet takes a look at the sweeping changes occurring in state marijuana laws from the inside as she works at a medical marijuana farm. Jillian York departs from Morocco in Leaving Meknes. Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt reflects on the most devastating of endings in her series of poems titled Alexis, stone walls, and butterflies. In Airborne anxiety, Ellen G. Wernecke reviews two different books about air voyages with very different motivations and very different endings.

And so here we are. Inertia moving us along in the same channel, through the same endless routines, and grinding away our lives a second or a year at a time. We can persist. This much is clear. The question is, do we want to? Isn’t it time to put an end to these patterns that bring us nowhere?

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

When you move into a 98-year-old house, it is the house that owns you and not the other way around. No matter how attentive or inattentive the previous owners may have been, after most of a century, gravity has had a long time to do its worst, and even the best-kept homes will start to sag at the corners after nine decades. Since moving into the aforementioned house three months ago, I’ve learned that no project is as simple as it seems it should be.

Of course, there are few things that come easily that are worth having. I was 19 before I discovered the uncomplicated joy that hard work can bring, and with each task, I am thankful that I not only have the work to keep myself busy, but the good fortune to have a home to live in and a job to work at. There, but for the grace of God, go I, I think as I watch the "human interest" stories on the news of job loss, foreclosure, and the pain of a struggling economy. I do my best to remain thankful and to take nothing for granted.

This month’s issue of InTheFray features a piece from Suzanne Farrell, titled Spotlighting the neighborhood, about the effect of the recent U.N. General Assembly on ordinary New Yorkers. Shelley Horner shares her opinions of Elsie Sze’s new novel in her review Chick lit, Bhutan style. We will once again feature the exquisite poetry of Rae Pater in her collection Circles of memory. We also have an impressionistic, behind-the-scenes look at a recording session in the short video The marina is too shallow.

As is in keeping with the season, we at InTheFray are thankful for our wonderful contributors and our wonderful readers. It is you who make this site what it is, and we humbly thank you.

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

I repeat the words carefully, trying to match the timing and intonation of a cathedral full of people who clearly know the routine, have said these words before, and could probably recite them in their sleep. I am the stranger, I am the interloper, the lapsed Protestant in a Catholic church, trying to mimic the rituals well enough to blend into the background. The rituals are familiar, yet different. The prayers are similar, but they leave off the endings, and I continue alone, speaking into the reflective silence that sits over the congregants. I am feeling out of sync, out of place, and alone.

It strikes me that we are all ultimately alone in our lives. It is not an original thought, nor is this the first time I’ve had it. We can never know what goes on in another’s mind, and we can never fully share any experience, not completely. We can rely on others to buoy our spirits, but it is always up to us to make of our own lives what we will. Happiness is an internal factor, not external. Growth is always from within.

This month’s issue begins with Elsie Sze’s piece Belgrade: city of monuments, which explores a few of the Serbian city’s monuments from an outsider’s perspective. Jaya Padmanabhan explores the intersection of art and intellect in Idol nerd. Kate Hassett shows us a summer passing in a few moments in Shoots and leaves, and Patricia Hawkenson shares a few summer reflections in her collection of poems titled Hooks, knives, and slivers of smoke. Finally, Sarah Seltzer takes a look at two books about Pat Tillman in her review One soldier, many stories.

While we will all face death alone, and while all of our triumphs and despairs along the way will be uniquely ours and ours alone, it would be foolish to then stipulate that there is no need for others. Joy might be a flame that burns from within, but others may be the catalyst, the spark that ignites the blaze of happiness. However weak we may be as individuals, together we will always be strong.

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

Try to remember your earliest memory. The further back I think, the more fragmented and shattered my memories become. Sometimes, they’re memories that have been cultivated by my family, and I suspect their careful tending to each early image in my mind has shaped the events, changed it to match our shared stories more closely than the actual events that occurred. Human memory is strange like that: What seems real may be based more firmly in fantasy than anything else. The earth’s memory, however, is much more reliable.

As those of us in the northern hemisphere ease into autumn, the earth begins a familiar routine. Loons, hatched this spring, race across the surface of great northern lakes and take flight, heading to Florida for the winter without being told that the cold weather is about to come. Their instinct is their memory, and they need not be told. Wild rice ripens and falls, in a more bountiful version of the leaves of maples, oaks, birches, the trees of Frost and Thoreau. All around us are signs that the summer is ending, yet in this ending is a glorious, shining beginning: the start of fall, the season of the harvest, the reaping of the seeds that have been coming to fruit all summer.

This month, InTheFray explores stories of beginnings. In Floating through space and time , Francis Estrada looks at Filipino culture in the United States and various representations thereof. During Ramadan, the end of the day signifies the beginning of a meal for Muslims. Kyle Boelte tells the story of a family from Darfur living in Maine in his piece Ramadan dinner. David Xia explores the connections between endings and beginnings and his only family history in Un/certain trajectories. Finally, Ellen G. Wernecke reviews The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream.

We hope that you enjoy the change of the season and this time of beginnings and endings. Thanks for reading InTheFray!

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

There lies within me, and, I suspect, within many people, a strong sense of fairness, coupled with a powerful desire for justice. I want the car that goes speeding around me on the highway to be pulled over; I want the thief to be caught; I want the U.S. health care system to treat the rich and the poor equally well; and I want the bad guy to lose. One of the more difficult lessons I learned in my childhood was that sometimes, maybe even often, this doesn’t happen. To paraphrase a cliché, all too often, nice people finish last. Some people learn this early, and learn to let such petty injustices slide, and some internalize such unfairness and burn with it from within.

In this month’s issue, we look at a few such injustices. In Left behind, Stephen Maughan explores the fate of orphans in Romania. Sarah Seltzer reviews Shanghai Girls, in which two sisters face the injustice of war to escape World War II China and eventually end up in San Francisco.

This month’s issue also features a collection of three videos from Belinda Subraman, titled Gardenia petals and ugly art dolls. Finally, Through the Looking Glass editor Naomi Ishiguro shares a few of her experiences in Japan in her piece Haru/Natsu (spring/summer).

Fairness and justice are one of the earliest abstract ideas young children grasp, and were once considered uniquely human concepts. Recent studies have shown that dogs, monkeys, and other animals also understand what is fair and what isn’t. It would seem, then, that the universe has a sense of fairness. It is a shame that it is so often violated, but it is also something we must all learn to accept.

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

Do you use something powerful and dangerous, like drugs or firearms? Or do you prefer something a bit more mundane, like television or food? Perhaps you prefer the sweet bliss of a good novel or a fine sonnet, or maybe you’re a runner or a biker. Maybe it’s the pure joy of a melody, or the sublime ecstasy of harmony. Or maybe, for you, it’s simply the sweet freedom of sleep, the ultimate escape.

Whatever your mechanism of choice, the need for escape is essential to the human experience. In fact, during traumatic events such as war or abuse, your brain will dissociate from your body, escaping with your consciousness while the rest of you suffers. It is how our body protects our mind from the most extreme circumstances.

In this month’s issue, we explore the different techniques people employ to escape, and what they wish to escape from. Our journey starts with Matthew Kongo, a Sudanese refugee who is building a new life in Maine. Kyle Boelte tells Kongo’s story in To a home unknown. Next, Alexis Wolff tells us how her work in a treatment center for adolescent girls helped her escape a bit of her own past in Youth behind walls. In A soul with nothing up its sleeves, poet Larry Jaffe escapes his body and shares his venture with us.

America’s meth addiction is a problem that is rooted in the escapism of a large swath of the rural parts of the country. In Matthew Heller’s review of Nick Reding’s book Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, he explores Reding’s chronicle of how one town in Iowa is trying to fight back against the drug. In Nature’s waltz, artist Maureen Shaughnessy shares with us a selection of digital collages. Finally, Rachael Jackson gets off the beaten path in Costa Rica, in her story Hidden Costa Rica.

So, what about you? What do you need to escape from? How do you get away? Tell us your story below, in our comments section.

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

In any economic crisis, it is always the poorest that feel the effects the earliest, suffer the most, and begin to recover last. It is also true that in any economic crisis, it is always those who make the most noise who receive the most aid. The voices of those in abject poverty have long ago been silenced, and so it follows that the United States government hands hundreds of billions of dollars to bankers and other wealthy men, while food shelf stocks shrink, unemployment aid is exhausted, and welfare recipients are denigrated as deadbeats regularly on national television and radio networks.

I was in rural Nepal when a schoolteacher asked me, "Is it true that there is no poverty in America?" As he explained to me how he and the majority of his countrymen lived on less than $1,500 per year, how many lived on far less than that, how could I explain that poverty does exist in the United States? "But you are so rich," he said. "How can there be anyone who is poor in America?" Yet poverty exists. It is as grinding, as crushing, and as punishing in the United States as anywhere else in the world. Today, in the midst of this economic turbulence, tent cities are popping up just down the road from the McMansions. The voice of the poor may be a quiet one, but it is growing in numbers.

In this issue, we share stories of these difficult times. Gregory Wilson provides the historical context of government involvement in economic development in his piece Bailout. Iceland’s financial crisis has been far more severe than much of the rest of the world, and newly-elected MP Birgitta Jonsdottir shares a mini-documentary called Icelandic financial crisis, about how and why everything fell apart. In Day laborers, Gayathri Vaidyanathan looks at how the crisis has affected undocumented immigrant workers in New York, and in ”Where’s my bailout?”, Dean Stattmann shows us how the crisis has affected graffiti in SoHo. In Mexico, where a war rages over the trafficking of drugs, violence is increasing. Patrick Corcoran documents the challenges of reporting on the violence without getting killed in Reports of violence.

The economic crisis, of course, has inspired some to greater things. In Today, finance and trade bailouts are too often in the headlines, Terry Lowenstein shares two poems drawn from the headlines. Others, such as Nathan Bahls, view the crisis as an opportunity to take a risk. He shares the details in Six short hours.

It may be a few brief months, or it may be a few long years, but eventually, like all things, this crisis, too, will pass. The question is, when it does, will we go back to our old, profligate ways, or will we learn a lasting lesson. Will we remember what it is like to be without, and share what we can with the women and men around us who are still struggling? Or will we turn our backs, return to the table, and continue to gorge ourselves on the excesses of a civilization?

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

Human infants are uniquely fragile at birth. Many animals, such as deer, horses, cattle, and elephants, are able to stand and walk within hours of their birth. Other animals, like dogs, cats, and bears, are born naked and blind, but grow quickly and reach maturity in a year or two. Because humans have such an extended childhood, the bonds between parents and children are far more developed and far more important than in most animals.

In this issue, we feature stories that explore this bond. We begin with Venkat Srinivasan’s look at undocumented African immigrants and the sacrifices these parents make for their children in Skilled undocumented workers in New York City. Bob Lee shares his reflections on fatherhood in the wake of the birth of his second child in Fatherhood = salvation. We also get a look at the life of a mother and son who live on the streets of Hanoi, Vietnam with Ehrin Macksey’s visual essay Simple happiness.

In Travels with Pa, Nancy Antonietti takes us with her as she accompanies her maternal grandfather back to Sicily for the first time since he left at 16. Colin Wilcox shares three poems in his collection Landscapes. Finally, Emma Kat Richardson brings us to China with her review of Susan Jane Gilman’s Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven.

Of course, as with all things, there are exceptions to the rule of the nurturing parent. For every story of sacrifice, there is another story of abuse and neglect. Some children find the world to be a frightening, abusive place, and their mothers and fathers to be the source of many of these problems. Because their first relationship, their attachment to their parents, is so dysfunctional, every subsequent relationship they form is often also dysfunctional. In this way, abuse and neglect become a recurring issue and are passed down from generation to generation. It is a reminder of just how important the bonds between a parent and child really are.

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

I’m a sucker for those Internet advertisements that promise a free iPod, laptop, or camera. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’ve clicked on them enough times to know by now that what they promise and what they deliver are two different things. Usually you have to sign up for a few credit cards, maybe register for Netflix, and then spend $1500 or so on airplane tickets or home furnishings. So you do get a free iPod, but only if you spend $1500 first. What a bargain.

It’s a lesson that I must learn again and again: There is nothing in this life that comes for free. Everything must be earned, everything must be worked for and all must be built. There are no shortcuts, not in dieting, in exercising, in education, in relationships, or in anything else in this world. Yet it is human nature to search for an easier way.

This month’s issue of InTheFray features stories that explore the value of hard work. Sarah Hart takes a look at first-year architecture students preparing their final projects in Charrette. In The delicate art of Facebook snooping, Preethi Dumpala looks at how Facebook has made keeping up with former classmates, old friends, and ex-partners easier — and what this means. In my piece Tourism vs. Backpacking, I tell how my trip through Kashmir has taught me the difference between the two modes of traveling.

In Ashish Mehta’s short story Aliens, we are shown how the difficult moments of our childhood become the defining moments of who we are. Niclas Rantala presents photography that makes a powerful use of light in his slideshow Into the light. Finally, poet Lynn Strongin shares four poems in her series Lean over: there is something I must tell you.

In some senses, it is humanity’s desire for an easy way out that is behind thousands of years of technological development. Early farmers wanted an easier way to break the soil and invented the plow. The desire to move across the country quicker than by horseback drove the development of modern transportation. And the need for increasingly accurate counting and calculating machines resulted in the development of the modern computer. Yet each of these innovations was itself the result of hard work. There is no way around it: progress must be earned.

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.

Education level is one of the best predictors of quality of life around the world. Education level is tied to health, income, crime, and global equality. Globally, 85 percent of primary-school-age children attend school, not far from the goal of universal primary education. The most work remains in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 18 of the 20 countries with the highest share of children out of school are located. Still, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that this goal can be reached by 2015, an optimistic and encouraging assessment.

In this issue, we’ve taken a look at teaching and learning in several of its different forms. We start with Suzanne Farrell’s piece exploring the difficulty teachers face in keeping children politically correct, called The Indian in the classroom. We hear about Colette Coleman’s experiences as a teacher in urban Los Angeles and at an international school in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in From the inner city to Indonesia. In Teenage bohemia, Kaitlin Bell visits with the families of several New York children who are homeschooled in the fashion of the burgeoning unschooled movement.

As Kaitlin’s piece touches on, there are many teachers and learning experiences that exist outside the traditional educational system. In Approaching autism, Jennifer Leahy introduces us to Cain, a golden retriever who works as a service dog for three boys with autism, teaching them what he knows about keeping calm in the face of a confusing world. Kimberlee Soo tells us the story of a woman who learns something unexpected on the el in Beakman. Finally, we meet Paola, a displaced Colombian woman who teaches an outsider about her adoptive home of Máncora, Peru, in Amy Smart’s piece Displacement.

While every student needs a teacher, the opposite is true as well. It is up to each of us to ensure that we are ready to learn, attuned to those around us who may instruct us in the ways of this world.

Thank you to all of you who donated to our recently concluded donor drive! Each of you was generous enough to keep us publishing for another year. Just like NPR, PBS, ProPublica, and every other nonprofit media organization, we owe our existence to our readers. Thanks for your support!

Aaron Richner I am a writer/editor turned web developer. I've served as both Editor-in-chief and Technical Developer of In The Fray Magazine over the past 5 years. I am gainfully employed, writing, editing and developing on the web for a small private college in Duluth, MN. I enjoy both silence and heavy metal, John Milton and Stephen King, sunrise and sunset. Like all of us, I contain multitudes.