Start the Presses!
Well, it took seven years (almost to the day) but the book Eternal Harvest is finally off to the publisher. Whoo hoo!
Mr. Magnet stands in the crater created by a 750lb bomb detonation.
Karen and I began the project documenting the continuing deadly aftermath of the American bombing campaign in Laos back in March, 2005, on an assignment to the Plain of Jars. All told, the project distills work from roughly 13,058 exposures on two cameras (I counted), at least 15 notebooks for 110,451 words written in the field (she counted), seven trips to Laos lasting more than seven months, several months of first drafting in between other work and three solid weeks of final drafting with no other work. That’s all.
What we saw when we first flew into the Plain of Jars on vacation in 1998: 25-year-old bomb craters.
We first visited Laos, and first saw the aftermath of the war, on vacation from Phnom Penh in 1998. We saw the craters and the bomb bits, but didn’t know enough to piece the whole story together. But when we started looking, it was impossible to miss the effects of war scattered amid the peaceful scenes of daily life across the country.
Frangipani tree framed in the window of a downed American helicopter in Phin, Phonsavanh province.
Fingers crossed, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos should be out by the end of the year.
