Kami Rice – Anthrow Circus

When the Fallout of Political Winds Affects Real Lives: Afghan Edition

BY KAMI L. RICE

It’s been a wearying couple weeks for volunteers working with Afghans pursuing pathways to safety in the United States. In addition to being the editor of this fine publication, I count among those volunteers, assisting Afghans resettling in the U.S. and Europe as part of the NGO Allied Shepherd. This work began “accidentally” three and a half years ago when Kabul fell to the Taliban and journalists needed help to reach safety.

The day after President Trump’s inauguration, I woke up to messages from devastated Afghan friends as word of the president’s executive orders spread across the globe. Two of these orders in particular affect America’s wartime Afghan allies. The new president’s right to review policies and expenditures isn’t disputed, but advocates for Afghans are disheartened by the slash and burn governance method that is endangering people who, in the case of Afghans, literally protected American lives and supported America’s values.

What Happened When I Tried to Like Arizona

STORY BY HEATHER M. SURLS

PHOTOS BY MARY VENDEGNA & KAMI RICE

Rain spattered the windshield as Austin turned into the Water Wheel Trail parking lot. Driving the two-lane highway here from Payson, we had seen charcoal clouds emitting a fine scrim of rain, but we’d decided to hike even if it were sprinkling when we arrived. In the passenger’s seat, I folded down my striped socks, pulled on my sneakers. We would not be stopped. Not when our boys were overnight with their grandparents for the first time. Not on our first getaway in two years.

My Normandy Summer: A WWII Diary, 80 Years Later

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAMI RICE

It had rained all morning. Poured. Despite this, I arrived to a large crowd at the Mémorial de Montormel just as the first plane, trailing black smoke, puttered dramatically overhead. The clouds were low, but the airshow went on. Five post-war planes took turns swooping and banking in the open air, sometimes in formation, sometimes alone, sometimes teasing us into thinking the show was over before reappearing to make another pass in front of hundreds of upturned faces.

Standing in that umbrellaed crowd on the bluff above the pastoral Dives Valley, with the D-Day Ladies playing swing tunes on a stage behind us and cows dotting the fields below us, I felt transported. Located around 35 miles inland from the historic Normandy beaches breached by the Allies on June 6, 1944, this rural farmland around Mont-Ormel was the final pocket of the Normandy region to be liberated from the Germans in late August 1944. The music and planes, the reenactors and exhibits were assembled to commemorate the last violent gasps of WWII in this part of France.

MicroView: The Magic of Lost Teeth

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAMI L. RICE

Last night my roommate du jour lost a tooth.

She’s 9, so it’s nothing to be concerned over. Her dad helped pluck it out in the kitchen after having a go at it in the living room the night before, without success. Tonight, the napkin-wrapped fingers of Dad met such little resistance that we onlookers weren’t sure whether to believe the little tooth had really given up the game.

To Market, to Market With France’s New, Young Prime Minister

ARTICLE BY KAMI L. RICE

“C’est lui?” exclaimed a dark-haired boy of roughly nine years old from the market stall sidelines as a commotion passed in front of him. Fuzzy microphones on long handheld booms and news cameras poked above the crowd as it tightened to fit the narrowing space between vendors of vegetables and antiques and records and roast chicken.

The man beside him smiled toward the boy as he affirmed that it was indeed the new French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, come to the Sunday market in Caen after President Emmanuel Macron appointed him last Tuesday to replace Elisabeth Borne as head of the French government. In the scant days since his appointment, Attal has been busy selecting ministers to form his government and taking his first trips outside the capital as he begins his new role of determining and implementing the nation’s policies. Scant too is Attal’s age—the 34-year-old is France’s youngest ever prime minister.

Channeling Hemingway One Autumn Night

CREATIVE PROJECT CURATED BY KAMI L. RICE

One fall night last year, we created a project for ourselves. The American students were studying abroad in Paris, and I was a mentor in their program. Two artists and three writers, we assigned ourselves homework. We’d spend an evening all together at one of Ernest Hemingway’s famous haunts. The writers had to choose someone, or someones, from among the clientele as their inspiration for a short story. The artists’ drawings would be similarly inspired by someone who was there that night. We’d package the works together and discover what we’d jointly created
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MicroStories: A Venetian Screenplay

PHOTOGRAPH BY JC JOHNSON & STORY BY KAMI L. RICE

A tiny fictional tale inspired by a magically miniaturized photo of a real-life place.

MicroView: Sagrada Família Was What I Needed

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAMI L. RICE

I hadn’t even stepped inside yet but had already declared Barcelona’s Sagrada Família my new favorite place in the world.

From the stony stations of the cross built into the façade on one side, to the splashes of color in just the right places all over the exterior, to dripping, stony incarnations of gingerbread house icing, to engraved names here and there of characters in the Bible stories the building tells—it was all magnificent. It was a storybook come to life.

Losing Naïveté While Advocating for Afghans on Capitol Hill

STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAMI L. RICE

I spent a May afternoon rushing through the wide halls of the U.S. Senate office buildings. It wasn’t the first time I was on Capitol Hill this past spring, but this time I chanced being late for an important flight because the clock was ticking on this issue that kept me coming back to the Hill. The next morning, I learned that day’s meetings had seemingly been for naught.

Clashing Conceptions of Statehood Mean Civilians Suffer

ARTICLE BY KAMI L. RICE
PHOTO BY JOEL CARILLET

Hours after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, Douglas Webber, emeritus professor of political science and a Europe specialist at the prestigious business school INSEAD, framed the conflict starkly.

“It’s really a decisive turning point we’re looking at here, and for me certainly I think that it’s the most dangerous moment in international politics if not since the end of World War II, at least since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962,” said Webber to an online meeting of the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris.