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Sulu Ruin International Headquarters Enjoy our organic, in house roasted coffee. Watch the kids play as you catch up with a friend. Listen to local musicians and relax with a beer or wine. Come see our new space. 3601 S. Congress off E. Alpine Penn Field under the water tower -9637 www.rutamaya.net check our site for monthly calendar it Community Radio Prograntruime For A aulturailii Diverse Otto P.0.13ox 2116 Austin, Texas 78768-2116 Visit Us On The Web 0 Radio Do to Comtmidad www.koop.org TOM BARRY BARBARA EHRENREICH JOHN GERSHMAN Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11 Edited by John Feller Foreign Policy In Focus \(FPIF, online, including order info, at www.fpif.org pleased to announce the release of Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11. “The current team in Washington is acting like fanatics, tearing up treaties and ignoring old alliances in pursuit of a new and dangerous doctrine of preemption. Power Trip powerfully details this sorry state of affairs and, even more importantly, suggests what we can all do to start moving America back in the right direction.” Arianna Huffington author of Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed And Political Corruption Are Undermining America El3N1.121 :1 73VHOIn GIHSVH 03INHV A3NOH VH_LEIVjAl NOY THRUPKAEW COLETTA YOUNGERS MARK WEISBROT STEPHEN ZUNES WILLIAM T. HARTUNG SUSAN F HIRSCH MICHAEL T. KLARE JULES LOBEL the Icarus myth in which the Icarus analogue, Nectario, fails to achieve the fleeting success of his predecessor and instead plummets immediately to the ground after jumping out the window of his apartment building, his wings of funeral-candle wax and turkey feathers utterly ineffective. Nectario is not a victim of hubris, but of banal stupidity; laughing at him seems an adolescent thrill. At times, Karnezis’ heavy-handed irony stifles his characters. Moments of realization, of epiphany are undercut, almost mocked. We wonder if these doomed characters are worth caring about. Perhaps the best story in the collectionand the most earnestis “Sacrifice,” which consists of a conversation between a farmer, Dionysio, his son, and a neighbor. Dionysio has just killed his prize bull, which earlier had gored and killed his young daughter. Dionysio’s sense of loss is so well rendered, so palpable in Karnezis’ deadpan dialogue, that we almost feel ashamed to listen: `I can lend some money,’ the neighbor said awkwardly. It doesn’t matter.’ `I’ll ask the priest for a collection.’ `He had to go,” the boy said. “He killed my sister.’ The father looked out at the dark again. Some blood was round his eyes from the shirt. `I told Father he had to go,” the boy said. ‘He was a killer.’ `Go and start the fire son. We have to burn our clothes. You can’t wash those.’ Here, Karnezis shows moving tenderness towards his characters. In this quiet, painfully intimate moment Karnezis’ considerable talent is most obvious, most affecting. We have witnessed the death of a hope and the beginning of a great unhappiness. For Dionysio, grief has become a hindrance to the survival of his family. His poverty has become more than a poverty of economic means; it has become a poverty of the soul. Dionysio’s honest efforts have backfired and his family has been crippled by what should have strengthened them. Isn’t that, ultimately, one of the most human, most compelling ironies of all? Emmanuel Boulukos recently received his M.A. in creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin. 6/20/03 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 29