A master of words; a man of integrity

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Moni Basu

I'm a middle-aged reporter guided by curiosity about the world. I like to write stories that make readers think about people who are unlike themselves. Read my stories at www.CNN.com or www.ajc.com.
Number of posts: 2
Email address: email
Google+: Google+
Linkedin: Linkedin
Facebook: Facebook
Twitter: Twitter

Posts by Moni Basu:

Ron Taylor

A master of words; a man of integrity

by Moni Basu | 4, Add your Comment | Jun 5, 2012

On that afternoon, I didn’t know what to expect inside Room No. 34. I’d seen Ron several days before, at Piedmont Hospital. I hadn’t even fully stepped into his room when he looked up from his bed. “Ah, Moni Basu and Kevin Duffy!” He recognized us instantly and we had a delightful two-hour conversation about things past and present.

At one moment, after Alex showed up and we began talking aboutIndia, the talk veered to Varanasi, an ancient, holy city on the banks of the Ganges River. Many Hindus hope to have their last rites performed there; their ashes scattered in the murky waters; their souls dancing free.

Read on →

Evil Reporter Chick

Tallahassee

by Moni Basu | 1, Add your Comment | Apr 25, 2012

The place where you spend your formative years can draw you back with the pull of a magnet to metal. Or it can repel, the desire to divorce yourself from prickly memories trumping all else.

I have a difficult relationship with Tallahassee, the small north Florida city where my family landed in the mid-1970s. A place that was largely black and white then and had little room for shades of brown. “Is your mama black or your daddy black?” was the first question I heard at Amos P. Godby High School.

Read on →

Music Legend’s Scott Joplin’s Fight Against Racial Discrimination

When music publisher John Stark first heard Scott Joplin play his piano, he knew that ragtime was the music of hope for a new America. But Joplin would never be content with popularity and fame. Joplin committed himself to racial justice in the early 1900’s. He was inspired by Booker T. Washington and the Dahomeyan defeat in West Africa. But due to this earnest pursuit, he was ignored by the masses for writing the music of Civil Rights fifty years before America was ready to listen. King of Rags, by Professor Eric Bronson, is a historical fiction account of the quest for r Read on →

Heritage Inaction

For some reason, a letter from the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation was characterized as having been received by NBC News, as if it were some sort of privileged communication. In fact, the thing was a press release and rather obviously designed to change the conversation about the Heritage Foundation from trying to defend the indefensible "study" of Hispanic intellectual insufficiency to food stamps, a real two-fer issue. Two-fer in the sense of being offensive on two fronts since the dollars doled out represent a subsidy to industrial agriculture, even as they serve to remind the indigent that, if they're Read on →

Summer Sensations

Last Thursday, just before I took my daily two-mile run/walk hunger struck. A few bites of watermelon did the trick. When I bit into that cold sweet watermelon a flood of summer memories rushed in. I recalled the great tastes of summer and with those memories came warm images of youth in the Georgia countryside. I saw stacks of dark green, striped watermelons, red, ripe tomatoes, and heard the beautiful grinding of a hand-cranked ice cream churn. Recalling the great tastes of summer I thought will make a good column. I created a document and titled it “The Tastes of Summer.” I’m Read on →

Time to focus on Southern Crescent of Shame

A few years back, Columbia public relations guru Bud Ferillo made a film about several economically distressed counties that he dubbed the “Corridor of Shame.” This area, which stretched along Interstate 95 in South Carolina from Dillon County to Jasper County, got a lot of attention when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama toured an old Dillon middle school in the run-up to the 2008 election. But did you ever wonder whether South Carolina’s Corridor of Shame was an anomaly -- or whether something similar was happening on the other sides of our state borders? Unfortunately, similar conditions continue, extending north to Tidewater Virginia and curving Read on →

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Moni Basu

Posts by Moni Basu:

Ron Taylor

A master of words; a man of integrity

Evil Reporter Chick

Tallahassee

Worthy of Comment

Also on the Dew

Music Legend’s Scott Joplin’s Fight Against Racial Discrimination

Heritage Inaction

Summer Sensations

Time to focus on Southern Crescent of Shame