Vision Quest  

Story and Photographs By John Murray 

Steve Schrag, center.

   Steve Schrag has spent his life as an organizer and activist fighting for positive change in the work place. For the past 30 years in Waterbury, however, Schrag has repeatedly found himself in opposition to major development projects.

    He was against EWR in the 1980s.

    He was against a super mall.

Out Of Control

Is this the price of victory?

Story By John Murray

Photograph originally appeared in the New York Times

   It was a crisp autumn evening in 2006 and Hasheem Thabeet was about to begin his basketball career at the University of Connecticut. Thabeet spent the first 16 years of his life 7,600 miles from UConn, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, where sultry air wafts into West Africa from the Indian Ocean and the average temperature in November is a toasty 86 degrees.

Climb Your Own Tree
By Chelsea Murray

Julia Butterfly Hill
   

    Activism isn’t dead.

    While it’s true young people aren’t inspired the way America’s youth were in the 1960s by Bob Dylan, nor are they protesting the war in Iraq with the same passion and conviction that their parents and grandparents opposed the war in Vietnam, by no means is activism dead.

Atomic Nightmare

A Column by Marilyn Aligata

   Well well, my hardnosed censors, Henry Grenier and Alan Stein are back. The August column with the headline that read, “Ned Lamont Where Are You?, provoked them to write letters to the editor. That column laid out why I think it would have been better if Ned Lamont was elected to the senate and not Joe Lieberman. I feel Lieberman has become a war-monger and that Ned Lamont would not be calling for military action in Iran. Henry and Alan were very critical of me and my “drivel“ as Henry called it, and Alan said I have my head in the sand because I fail to see that using military aggression to deal with the world is okay. If only they would read my words and stop making up what they want to see. Henry and Alan, like so many other Americans, see only what they want to see when reading the news. “It‘s not what they say. It is the context in which you misinterpret it“ - Wiley, Political Science 101.

American Living In El Salvador

Column by Chris Romero

   Blood-stained scars above and below the eyes. Deep scratches stretch the length of the face. A jagged cut marks the center of the forehead. This can’t be me, I thought. A shot of anger springs from confusion: God, give me myself back. This isn’t me. My blood ceases to boil, senses ease. Although I’m hesitant, I begin to touch my face. Some of the scars begin to shed their shells of dried blood. I don’t recognize myself.

Big Dogs

Column By Chelsea Murray

   My six year old eyes could hardly see what was going on 50 rows in front of me. I could see and hear some men running around in shorts, bouncing an orange ball up and down off the floor. The Hartford Civic Center was almost silent and a man caught my eye down on the court. The man was jumping up and down and I could hear his bellowing screams all the way from where I was sitting.

OUT OF THE ASHES
Jewish Couple Survived Holocaust, Built Home in Waterbury

Story By John Murray

   The odor in the boxcar was piped in from hell. Vapors of death filled the men's nostrils as they crammed inside the train like sardines in a tin. Dead bodies of Jews were hurled from the train as it clattered down the tracks, leaving a trail of corpses along the German countryside.

   David Singer lay down on matted straw to rest and ease the strain on his hideously swollen knee. He hadn't eaten in a week. After six years of relentless Nazi persecution Singer's ravaged body weighed 100 pounds.

Photo: Freelance writer Dave Howard hiked 40 miles through the largest tract of rain forest left in Central America to reach the lost city of El Mirador, and interview Dr. Richard Hansen.

Hiking Eighty Miles Through A Guatemalan Jungle To The Lost City Of El Mirador

              Story and Photographs By John Murray 

Editor’s Note: The following story is an account of a 12 day adventure that transpired in July 2003 when Observer publisher, John Murray, travelled into the jungles of northeast Guatemala with his friend, Dave Howard, who was on assignment for Travel & Leisure Magazine. Murray was invited along to photograph the expedition and fired off 45 rolls of film. Murray damaged his Canon EOS camera during the journey and 60% of the images were unusable, and totally out of focus. After emerging from the jungle, the good film languished inside the photo department at Travel and Leisure for ten months, and was ultimately never used in Howard’s feature story. By the time the images were returned to Murray, and he had gathered notes, tapes and recollections from Dave Howard, nearly a year had elapsed. For the past 18 months the story lay buried beneath a jungle of details inside Murray’s head. Thankfully, and with great joy and relief, the story has been extracted from the thicket of Murray’s brain. We hope you enjoy the adventure.