Archive - July 7, 2022

The Boy in the Boat by Jamie Kirkpatrick (Tunisia 1970-72) July 5, 2022 This photograph haunts me. It came to me out of the blue, sent by an old pal I haven’t seen in over fifty years. The light is diffuse, almost ethereal; it looks more like a painting than a photograph. It must have been taken in that dreamtime before cell phones, when cameras were really cameras and you had to send a roll film off to be developed. The images would come back a week or two later, 3×5 or 4×6 snapshots, but by then, the moment was already a memory. Little did I know… I have no specific memory of this moment, but I can tell that’s me—fifty years younger and sixty pounds lighter—sitting in that bleached rowboat, looking back at my now-self. My hair is thick and tousled; my Fu Manchu mustache is faintly visible. I’m . . .

    By DERRICK OKUBASU on 6 July 2022  Residents of Iten, Kenya in the Rift Valley have their life upended after an athlete who rose from the village to find success in the United States returned with a life-changing gift. In May, the doors of Simbolei Girls’ Preparatory Academy, a high school built by athlete Richard Kaitany and his wife Andrea, open its doors for the first time to accord the girls a chance at an education. In an interview with Runner’s World, Kaitany noted that he was touched to give back to the community out of his own childhood experience. Born at the edge of Iten, the athlete attended primary school and transitioned to St. Patrick’s High School where he was not so keen in pursuing athletics as a career. His high school coach, however, encouraged him to take the career path since at the time, in 1974, most American universities were . . .