Sydney/Michelle Boston
From virtual memorials and digital keepsakes to Zoom ceremonies and online gravestone archives, technology allows us to reimagine and innovate ways to remember and celebrate the dearly departed.
For Pinchas Gutter, visiting his homeland is a haunting reminder of the family he lost and the life he might have lived. He returns one last time to say goodbye and capture his personal saga in virtual reality for future generations.
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Why are middle-aged white Americans dying at increasing rates? Nobel Prize–winning economist Angus Deaton has uncovered startling data that show mortality numbers are climbing for this group. How can we buck the trend?
When it comes to politics, a dose of comedy can offer some relief from all of the posturing, polarization and news oversaturation, especially during an election year. But can humor also influence our political ideologies?
"Alumna Rabbi Denise L. Eger Is a Voice of the People"
Serving Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, Calif., Denise Eger uses her rabbinate as a platform for social activism, advocating for the LGBT community and other groups.
When Zinahi Rodriguez turned 18, fresh out of high school, she took a retail job in downtown Los Angeles. She was excited. Her plan was to help support her parents, both garment workers, with whom she and a younger brother lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Koreatown.
The experience was demoralizing. She ended up working nine to 10 hours a day without any breaks. Her paycheck barely made a dent in her family’s expenses.
“I worked there for a month until I realized that I was getting paid $22 per day,” Rodriguez said. “It was a real struggle to help my family.”
On the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, Americans were tuned to their televisions watching “NBC Nightly News” anchorman Tom Brokaw report from West Germany. It was a momentous occasion. The Berlin Wall, a 28-year symbol of divided Cold War Europe, was coming down.
Twenty-five years later, the circumstances that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall are still widely unknown to Americans, said Mary Elise Sarotte, Dean’s Professor of History and professor of international relations at USC Dornsife. While many believe it was the result of an agreement between former President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Sarotte’s new book The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall (Basic Books), due out this October, shows how the wall’s demise was actually a series of accidents.
With a farmer’s knife in hand, Richard Martinez knelt by a line of bright green heads of lettuce and cut off one. He snapped off the crispy leaves from the spine. Blanketed by a brilliant blue sky over Oxnard, California, tidy rows of romaine lettuce, kale, Swiss chard and bok choy stretched to the horizon.
“There’s a little dirt, but the dirt’s good for you,” Martinez joked as he dispensed the freshly picked leaves for everyone to sample. “It’s organic.”
"A Lesson in Leadership from the Mayor"
Students in the USC Dornsife course "Case Studies in Modern Leadership" get advice from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.