Haiti's pre-Carnival Celebration, two days before the quake. A chicken burns in the fire. (photo E. Parker)

OH MY GOD! Are you alright?!” It’s the morning after the earthquake and my wife answers the phone. She’s frantic. In the twelve hours since the quake hit, she’s heard nothing from me. I’ve been trying to get a call out every 20 minutes or so, but this is the first time my phone has rung. I search for words.

“Yeah,” I tell my wife. “I’m alright.”

“I found out you were alive from Twitter,” she says, not bothering to clear the

frog from her throat at this ungodly 4 a.m. hour.

“Huh?”

“Do you know a man named Richard Morse? He was tweeting from the Hotel

Oloffson and he told me that the photographer you were with said you were

okay. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Really, I am.”

“Oh my God, I’m so glad to hear from you. Where are you?”

“I am with Vladimir in Carrefour. We walked here last night after the quake. It

felt like forever.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to walk back to Port-au-Prince in a little bit. I’ll call you later

when I get better reception.

“But are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I promise.”

Despite my reassurance, nothing is settled in Haiti. The ground rumbles at irregular intervals. Cries of Jezi! [“Jesus!”] cap off each tremor, while people sleep on the ground in open spaces out of fear of falling buildings.

With the threat of another quake looming, a new group shuffles into the yard where I’ve holed up with Vladimir Laguerre, my Haitian guide. The latest arrivals are bursting with whispers and nervous energy. Words are exchanged in Creole. Gasps emanate from a dark corner, and the voices speak quickly, with fervor.

Vladimir emerges from the huddle with a slow gait, looking off into the night. “These people who just came,” he says, as he sits down beside me, “they came from the area near water.” He breathes deeply. “They say the water is rising near the ports. I don’t know how true it is.” He pauses as if to process what he has just said. “This has never happened to Haiti before.”

A veteran Haitian journalist, Vladimir, 34, has been working as my translator and driver. His career as a TV sports broadcaster was stunted after he ran into a burning building to rescue three children. He pushed the final child out the door before the whole place erupted, leaving him with burns over 40 percent of his body. His disfigured hands have only limited motion and his ability to walk long distances is impaired. Vladimir is no stranger to horrific stories, but he furrows his brow at the news of a potential tsunami, ruffling his usually calm demeanor. “I don’t know how true it is,” he repeats, shaking his head slowly, “but this is what they are saying.”

Vladimir was here in 2008, when tropical storms and hurricanes flooded Haiti, swallowing large swaths of the country, drowning most of the crops, damaging more than 100,000 homes and killing nearly 800 people. Malnutrition and disease continued to claim lives over the following months. Vladimir need not mention this recent history. The memory swims in the minds of everyone here.

Awake through the night, set in the open space of a back yard in Carrefour (photo: V. Laguerre)

I lie back down and strain my eyes in the dark, searching for an escape route in case the water makes a move onto land. A two-story building looks like the only possibility, yet I can envision the water splashing through the window and swallowing the structure. With no tall trees or high mountain roads in sight, my mind maps out the quickest path to the building’s roof. The exercise does little to make me feel secure.

I place my head on the concrete, unable to sleep. My mind races, recalling the decimated buildings, the mangled bodies and the quake itself. I flash back to the one-woman triage we encountered when we first arrived in Carrefour after the quake. She was sewing up a lady who had several wide gashes streaming down her arm, exposing what appeared to be bone and muscle. The victim’s husband, a large dark figure, held up a bag full of clear fluid that dripped into an IV tube. She laid on a blanket spread out on the side of a dirt road. Cars and motorcycles rolled by, kicking up dust near the wound as they passed.

Vladimir and I took turns holding a light on the operation while using our free hands to shoo away flies and pour the reddish-brown iodine solution the nurse gave us to clean the wound. Whenever I grew restless and moved slightly, the nurse would bark: Limye! Limye! [“Light! Light!”]. With each poke of the blunt needle, the patient cried out as the nurse steadily stitched the wounds, squatting over her patient for hours until the job was done.

As we lay staring at the sky, everyone waited for another tremor, another quake, or even worse—in the name of Murphy’s Law—a tsunami to come sweep away all remaining earthquake survivors. Seeing no reliable escape route, I asked Vladimir if he’s ready to walk back to Port-au-Prince. “Let’s go,” he said before I could finish my question. I collected my camera bag with no time to process what I had experienced and no idea what horror I would soon witness. As Vladimir grabbed his own digital camera, I pulled my shirt over my head and wiped off the pale gray dust kicked up by the quake.

Before we hit the road, the ground vibrates softly. Cries of Jezi! fade in the distance as we walk off.

The band Relax during Haiti's pre-Carnival 2010. (photo: e. parker)

TWO DAYS BEFORE the quake, Haiti’s pre-Carnival celebration was underway. Haitians of all stripes put their differences aside and individual worries on hold. A live chicken was tossed onto a fire in the middle of a downtown Port-au-Prince intersection. A man who claimed to be a voodoo priest said it was a sacrifice to Erzulie Dantor, the fierce protector of women and children. “She’s a mean black woman,” he told me in English. “You sacrifice the chicken to make her happy. She don’t play around.”

The unlucky fowl flapped its enflamed wings. The more it struggled, the higher the flame grew, digging deep into its feathers until the bird flopped out of the pit and thrashed against the asphalt. It was a brief moment of relative relief for the pitiful bird. But this is Haiti, a country where lucky breaks are often met with deeper, more intense suffering from which no bird nor human is immune. Before the chicken could stamp out its burning wing, a man scooped it from the ground and tossed it back onto the fire.

This cruel lesson of pain, struggle—and then worse pain—is one that the people of Haiti have learned the hard way. Since Haitian slaves won their independence from the French in 1804 with a bloody slave rebellion, the first free Black republic in the Caribbean has suffered a string of false starts and setbacks. Political unrest, epidemics and natural disasters have been compounded by man-made brutality that exacerbates every other ill. Some 78 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day, resulting in the oft-quoted stat about Haiti being the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.

Daniel Morel (at right) captures the burning chicken at Haiti's pre-Carnival celebration 2010 (photo e. parker)

In such an extreme climate, celebrations like Carnival are vital to the national morale. This wild time of pre-Lenten partying allows for camaraderie. As the music blares, the trappings of poverty are wiped away with the blissful sweat of revelers. The chicken’s snap-crackle-and-pop was drowned out by a marching band’s triumphant horns and tambourines as jubilant Haitians chant along.

Daniel Morel, the noted Haitian photographer, chased after the commotion with his camera. We had spent a week together traveling from low-lying Port-au-Prince to the mountainous city of Jacmel investigating Haiti’s restavek condition (or “child slave” system) for my masters thesis at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. In the days before the earthquake, I busied myself tracking down interview subjects: restavek children, their families, politicians and social service workers. It was a dizzying experience.

One restavek child, a pretty 13-year-old girl who hadn’t seen her parents in four years, spoke of abuse and mistreatment. “Other kids can go to school,” she explained. “They have nice clothes. Me? I am dirty and have lots of work to do. And I don’t get to go to school.”

One family in the rural area of La Vallée gave birth to eight kids. When the father fell ill he couldn’t do any work in his garden. The goats and pigs he was raising died. The family couldn’t afford to feed all their children, so they gave away four of them to live with other families in Jacmel and Port-au-Prince. “It doesn’t make me feel good to send my kids to live with someone I don’t know,” the father told me. “I miss them a lot. If I can find a mandarin here and eat it, I think, ‘My kid could be here and we can eat the tangerine together.’”

Researching the story was a heavy undertaking for us all. So when Daniel dashed off into the street amidst the blaring Carnival music, I followed his lead, snapping pictures with my own university-issued camera. Sometimes I tried to document the moment. Other times I got swept up in the sweet vibration of the tuba and the joyful feeling of oneness as we all marched along.

All day and into the night, kids tossed up their hands and marched in short choppy steps.

(photo: e.parker)

Girls jump-stopped, pushed their bottoms in the air and gyrated to the pace of the thundering tuba. Wide smiles accompanied the dances as everyone stomped through the streets of Port-au-Prince in a rhythmic trance.

Two days later, the people of Haiti would be confronted with the reality of their precarious circumstances. An earthquake of 7.0 magnitude would turn an already ailing country upside down. The official Carnival celebration would be called off; some band members would be crushed under buildings. No one dancing that night could have fathomed the unsteadiness of the ground beneath their feet or the haunting tremors that refused to let anyone put the horror behind them. Who could have imagined any of it? The National Palace broken. The Ministry of Justice building, the jail, the cathedral, all reduced to rubble. The streets we marched on, littered with dead bodies. And Haiti, heavy with poverty, helpless against the destruction.

All of these things would soon come crashing down on Haiti. But that freewheeling night it was the chicken’s turn to feel the pain. As we made our way through the darkness, one fellow I met—a deportee from Miami—pointed to the crispy chicken, now lying in a lonely lot next to the headquarters of a Haitian band named New York.

“See, now you can write that Haiti is not a poor country,” he said with a smile. “There is so much food on the street and no one even eats it.”

We laugh at the absurdity of his statement. The laughter didn’t last long.

The broken palace (photo: e. parker)

RUNNING THROUGH PORT-AU-PRINCE is the Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines, something of a main road known as Grande Rue to the locals. In the midst of this hub of commerce Andre Eugène oversees an art gallery he calls E. Pluri Bus Unum. Tap-Tap [taxi] trucks rumble over the street in ornately painted blues, oranges and bright reds. Likenesses of celebrities—a pensive Wyclef Jean or Chris Brown smiling broadly—find prominent placement amongst the geometric designs. Art is everywhere in Haiti and Eugène and his “Resistance” collective of progressive Haitian artists is keeping the creative spirit alive.

The gallery sits in a dirt lot between homes. There is no roof, just cinderblock walls from which pieces of art hang while sculptures seem to grow from the ground. Human skulls taken from a nearby graveyard are reincarnated as gnarly statues. Truck tires are engraved, stretched and recoiled into mangled masterpieces. An old antifreeze jug contorts into an angry face. Automobile manifolds, fuel cans, a dented hubcap—first-rate junk is transformed into third world art. The pieces are filled with voodoo themes and speak to the paradox that is life in Haiti: There is beauty, there is poverty and there are delicate moments when the two overlap.

I came here with Daniel to buy some art from two young boys who work under Eugène’s tutelage.

I met them on my first day in Haiti. Alex was the cool kid who made sure to put on sunglasses before he posed for a picture. Racine was the taller boy who smiled brightly, laughed a lot and tried, in broken English, to communicate with me. He took care to teach me many Creole words in our first hour of meeting. Mache [“walk”], he said when we took the trip to the gallery at night by foot. He and Alex would laugh at my pronunciation of mwen [“my”]. “Mwaaaain?” I’d ask. Laughter. “Mweeen?” “Mwwwain?” Laughter and more laughter.

When I arrive, unannounced, Alex grabs my attention. I follow as he points out his pieces. “Mine,” Alex says, tapping his chest with an open hand. He points to a cluster of hanging art before ticking off the list of materials in stilted English: “Wood. Tire. Paint. Metal.” A proud hand pounds his chest. “Mine.”

Racine (left) and Alex are the two young artists proteges of Andre Eugene's.

Eugène sits at his table in a small room with a blue sky above, surrounded by gruesome statues stacked higher than the walls. Daniel absent-mindedly snaps a few pictures of him. I put my camera down, with only minutes of battery charge remaining. Before I can take a seat at the table with Daniel and Eugène, a dull roar starts up from outside the walls. At first, it seems to be rising from next door, then it seems to be marching down the streets toward us.

First thought: A train, a train. Wait. A TRAIN in Haiti!?

“Au-Oh!” Eugène yells, then bolts to the door, which slams shut behind him.

The walls begin to wave. Mounds of earth see-saw, rising and falling in turns. The statues dance an angry dance until they dive at me from their posts. I fall to my knees and take cover.

Last thought: Oh shit! This is an earthquake. An EARTHQUAKE in Haiti!

Just like that, the earth steadies itself, for the time being at least. I let out a breath and look over at Daniel who, like me, has been fending off toppling statues. Realizing that we’ve lived through the drama, we do what comes most naturally. We laugh. A gigantic laugh of relief. Unaware of the devastation beyond the walls that enclose us, Daniel and I replay the hilarious image of Eugène bolting to the door. But our laughter is interrupted by sounds of misery rising over the partitions.

I climb a mound of statues and peek over the wall. Down on the street, we see arms raised to the sky. Calls for Jezi can be heard all around. There is singing. There is chanting. There is screaming. There are cries. And then more pleas to Jesus.

Daniel and I push away statues and cut a path to the exit. As soon as we get out, he aims his camera and fires away, frantically capturing the tableau of wreckage along Grand Rue. Having spent a lifetime photographing unimaginable things in Haiti, he runs directly into the madness. I trot to the car, where Vladimir is parked on the side of the road.

“Where is Daniel?!” he asks. “Where is Daniel? We’ve got to go.”

The car parked in front of Vladimir’s is buried under a building that has spilled over onto the street. I walk around looking for Daniel, but I know he’s already gone. Running back to the gallery, I see a lady trying to get out of a building nearby. She’s elderly and heavy. White dust masks her face and blood is smeared over part of her arms. I duck into the building and try to help her along. She falls, slips right from my hands. I help her up and begin walking with her again. It strikes me that there must be many others trapped in buildings. Without a ceiling to fall on us, Daniel and I were fortunate. Many others around us were not.

From Andre Eugene's gallery (photo: e. parker)

With all my equipment out of memory or battery power, I start recording the scene with my iPhone. One man continues to polish his shoes in the midst of the ruin, as if his simple fastidious act—carrying on as usual—could restore normalcy to this broken mess. Another stops before me, gestures toward the heavens. He grabs my arm, the one controlling the iPhone, and speaks to me in Creole, wildly, loudly. He forces my hand toward the clouds, gesticulating madly. I don’t understand his words but the message is clear. “Say his name,” he seems to be saying. I oblige him. “Jesus,” I say once. Then again, this time louder. He looks at me with moist eyes. Apparently satisfied with my testifying, he glares at me for a beat before rejoining the mass migrating north.

Some limp by, completely covered in dust, their powder-white arms reaching to the sky like zombies in a B-movie. The injured are carried, or walk along with gaping bloody gashes. One man holds a limp infant in his arms, not sure if he is alive. A few people surround the man and child. Vladimir puts his head to the baby’s mouth to check for breath. “He is breathing, I think,” Vladimir says. The man shakes the baby, whose tiny limbs flail lifelessly. Another pokes a finger into the baby’s face and lifts one eyelid. To everyone’s relief, there is a trace of movement. The child is alive and sleeping soundly while adults in all directions despair.

Before long, we head back to the car to assess our position. “Haiti has never seen this before,” Vladimir says as he leans against his car. This is the second time he’s said this. The cries of Jezi come in waves as people walk north along Grand Rue toward Carrefour.

Vladimir’s bewilderment is understandable. The tectonic plates that lie beneath the Caribbean islands and the North American region have been connected since the 1700s, when the island experienced the last series of major quakes. The Enriquillo-Plantain Gaurden fault line runs from the Dominican Republic through Haiti to Jamaica. When it shifted below Haiti, it displaced all the earth that rested above. “This earthquake is not too uncommon,” says Dr. John C. Mutter, a professor at Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “What is uncommon is the extent of destruction which is entirely due to buildings collapsing. There have been level seven earthquakes in California but the death toll has been about 50 or 60 people. That is because we have much stronger buildings and we can build stronger,” he says. “But we shouldn’t wag our fingers at these people. In very poor countries you have to prioritize where you put your scant resources.”

Despite the facts and clear science explaining the quake, there will be some—Haitians among them—who supplant scientific method with spiritual reasoning. Most famously, the controversial televangelist Pat Robertson overlooked centuries of oppressive history to make the impossible claim that Haiti was “cursed.” According to Robertson, Haitian slaves entered into a “pact with the Devil” in order to thwart their French colonizers. As far-fetched as his claims sound, he wasn’t alone in his dubious supernatural assessment. “There is no possible response to people like Robertson who have their beliefs. They won’t change their minds no matter what,” Dr. Mutter says. “People who are educated from an early age can maintain a faith but they understand a difference between the things they believe as a matter of faith, such as an after life, and what you can learn from science.”

But Robertson isn’t alone. Amidst the commotion in Grand Rue, an elderly lady stops in front of Eugène’s place with a point to make. She begins to lecture. Perhaps our position in front of the voodoo art shop draws extra attention in this time of crisis. Vladimir translates: “Everybody wants to worship voodoo and now look what happens.” She waves her fists in the air. “God comes and punishes us.” The lady turns and walks against the traffic down Grand Rue.

With no clear way out and no real idea of where to go, we turn our attention to the surrounding wreckage and the people trapped inside. Scurrying up the street, we encounter a group coming out of a home: a man carrying a child on his back, a woman following with dusty grey hair.

“Ask them if there are more inside,” I say to Vladimir. And of course there are. We rush up to a home and peer down a dilapidated corridor, lined with the rubble of a fallen building. One man squats over a hole where a floor used to be.

“Do you need help,” Vladimir asks in Creole.

The man yells back and gestures toward the pile of rubble he sits above.

“There are others inside,” Vladimir says to me. “But you must be careful.”

The building is mostly destroyed. What has not fallen is hanging, sagging or cracked. Another shake may come and finish the job. I rush in as another man, the actual rescuer, emerges from the rubble with the child. Struggling to keep his footing on the jagged rocks, he passes her off to me. The child is ghostly white. Her body trembles as she squeezes tight around my neck. An entire group is praying in the middle of the street. I carry her out. Her head knocks against a low-hanging slab of concrete as she chants, uninterrupted, Jezi Sove’m! [Jesus saves me!]

A group, sitting in the middle of the road rejoices at the sight of the child. Her energy is contagious, electric. The street erupts in praise.

DARKNESS FALLS FAST, as it does this time of year. The car inches along. When not creeping slowly, it sits still in post-earthquake traffic that goes nowhere. “I have to get home to my daughter and my mother,” Vladimir says. He has not been able to get a line out to confirm their safety. “I’ve got to get back home.” I try to comfort him with a few words of encouragement. “Where they are, I’m sure they are alright,” I say. Vladimir is unmoved.

Our getaway vehicle, a 1996 RAV4, has transformed into a makeshift ambulance. We have picked up one lady, holding a crying young boy in her arms who is bleeding from somewhere. Her other child, a little girl of about 4 years, sits on my lap for lack of space. Another lady, who sells hot food on the street, was burned badly. She now occupies the front seat while her husband squeezes next to me in the back. As we creep along, there is a sad symphony of sound. The baby cries, the lady moans in pain, her husband tries to comfort her in hushed tones. There is singing from outside. Horns blow. Meanwhile, this car’s engine hums, but we go nowhere.

With no other rational choice, we decide to walk. I’m overcome by a feeling of helplessness as the lady repositions her son on her hip and grabs hold of her daughter’s hand. She gestures with her head in the direction of Carrefour. “Mashe,” [Walk] she says to the little girl. “Mashe.”

Man sits outside Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) the day after Haiti's earthquake. "God gives them and God takes them away," he said. (Photo: Vladimir Laguerre)

THE MORNING AFTER the quake, with the tremors still shaking our brains and the threat of rising water flooding our thoughts, we begin our descent into Port-au-Prince. Schools are decimated, a funeral home is destroyed and there is a fire at a gas station that people sprint past, scared it will blow any minute.

Before we make it out of Carrefour, we come upon two dead bodies lying on the sidewalk across from the United Nations base. Unaware of the magnitude of the disaster, I cross the street and ask a UN representative what they can do about the bodies, about the suffering. A women emerges who speaks to me in English. “We got a lot of people inside also, some of them already died,” she says. “If you want, you can go to the other side. You will see a lot of people on the street. We cannot count how many,” she continues. “It’s a lot of people and we have already done what we can do for them.”

It’s a matter of grim strategy for emergency forces to take care of the wounded before concerning themselves with the dead. After all, nothing can be done to revive a carcass on a street. But this fact doesn’t make the deaths any easier to bear for the living who walk among them.

In front of the Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) hospital, there are bodies scattered on the ground. People step over an elderly lady’s carcass. A young girl’s small body lies unattended. Her battered head is turned to one side. Her eyes are slightly open as flies exploit the gap. One man lies prone near the door of the hospital, a bloodied tourniquet tied around his leg in a failed attempt to save him. Another man sits on the ground in front of the hospital, smoking a cigarette. Next to him are two little boys covered in a sheet. He pulls back the cover to reveal their faces and tiny bodies. Their eyes are closed, as if not yet awakened by the morning sun. He’s expressionless in the way only shock victims can be, as if his features have turned to stone—that is until he’s asked about his sons. Tears come to his eyes and his voice whines out in pain. “What can I do,” he replies. “God gives them and God takes them away.” He repeats this maxim again and again, soothing himself with words that offer cold comfort to any grieving parent.

(Photo: V. Laguerre)

People stand on cars and try to look inside. But the hospital is overwhelmed, as are the capabilities of the UN, the many social service organizations and the Haitian government. An international outpouring of generosity has yet to reach the ground here in Haiti. The nurse who set up a one-person triage on the dirt road last night has made her way out here on the street, and is working on a patient. She looks in my direction and opens her arms expressing the enormity of the suffering and her own feeling of helplessness.

Despite the destruction everywhere, Hotel Oloffson’s structure built in the 19th century still stands on the hill. From there, Daniel Morel and Richard Morse have been tweeting the first dispatches, including photos, updates and information about survivors. In time I will take a seat in the Oloffson’s makeshift newsroom to add to their on-the-ground accounts of the devastation before I am evacuated to the Dominican Republic.

I’ll fly over the chaos in a helicopter. The beautiful scenery will hide the misery below. The sound of the engines will drown out the cries of the people I’ll surely leave behind. The gorgeous views may scrub away the stench of the bodies, but nothing can erase the looks on their faces, or the feeling on the streets just days before when everybody was dancing and singing their troubles away. [V]

[Originally published in VIBE magazine April/May, 2010]

Along Haiti's Gran Rue (main street), this lady and her family, mourns the loss of her brother, who was killed in the earthquake. Her brother lies dead just out of camera view. (photo: e.parker)

The video posted here was captured on the walk back from Carrefour to Port-au-Prince. My fancy-shmancy video equipment ran out of juice just before the quake and my iPhone followed suit shortly thereafter. We were left with a thin kodak digital camera, that belonged to Vladimir. An outdated model, it had no special gadgets or doohickies. But it did allow for video recording, which helped us to show the magnitude of the suffering. It is taken precisely at day break. In Haiti, at this time, the sun rises in a rush and disappears in an instant. As you can see, it starts out very dark and the sun takes a look at the wreckage and exposes the tragedy.

These were the first unattended bodies we came upon that morning. Shortly after the quake hit and the buildings shattered, the sun fell as well. You could catch some glimpses of a few dead bodies, but most were still trapped inside. So, when we set out the next day on our journey back to Port-au-Prince, we were unaware of how many people had died, which is why you see me pleading with the UN to “do something” about the dead bodies.

But, as in all disasters of this magnitude, they are focused on taking care of the living. It’s a matter of emergency policy to tend to the living. The dead cannot be helped. But that fact didn’t make it any easier for us who were walking among the bodies that  morning.

After baking in the sun, the stench of the carcasses tormented all in smelling distance. In Port-au-Prince, that was everybody. Many were rubbing toothpaste under their noses or shielding their noses with scarfs, kerchiefs, or napkins. By the time I was being evacuated–about 4 days later–the body clean-up had just begun.

When I returned in March, the stench of dead bodies was replaced by the smell of despair, as the rainy season was approaching, threatening the many citizens who now lived in tent cities.

Man sits outside Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) the day after Haiti's earthquake. "God gives them and God takes them away," he said. (Photo by Vladimir Leguerre)

Yes, I’m very late in posting this video from the morning after the earthquake struck Haiti. When the earthquake hit, I was in Port-au-Prince with Vladimir Leguerre, my fixer (and a journalist in his own right). We walked from Port-au-Prince to Carrefour, where he lives. In short, the video in this post, is a continuation of what we saw on our way back the next morning.

While I was documenting this, my heart sank into my stomach. And it stayed there, tucked out of reach for the most part, which enabled me to continue pushing my camera or microphone into the faces of these victims.

But I was also astonished by how much many of them wanted to share their losses. They wanted to reveal to the world, or some stranger with a camera who seemed to care, that they were in pain. Perhaps talking to a person in some sort of official capacity helped validate their loss, allowed them to record the lives and deaths of the people they loved. After all, in a few days, many of the bodies would be  scooped up by trucks or dropped off at dumping locations to be buried in mass graves, unidentified. At the risk of sounding all pseudo-psychologist-y, it did seem like it was their first attempt at therapy, talking out their grief. I saw this time and again. There were people gazing at the bodies of their loved-ones who were buried up to their heads in the rubble. And sometimes without breaking gaze, they would talk to reporters willingly.

The man in this video with his young sons lying next to him was mourning all alone. Smoking a cigarette. He wanted someone to see his pain, I’m sure. Someone needed to check it off a box on a checklist of hurt, register his loss. It appears, based on his words –”God gives them and he takes them away”–that he had chalked it up to God’s will. But there was the need to convey that to anyone who would listen.

I shed no tears while in Haiti. Maybe I was simply scared for my own safety or perhaps I was in reporter mode and saw the tragedy as a story that needed to be mounted and conquered. But when you come home, safe in your own environment, the wall that held back any emotion is shattered to pieces. Every reporter I talked to who covered the quake mentions at least one image they cannot quite shake, their personal tipping point. The image or the moment that comes to represent the thing to them. For me, it was the little girl in the picture above. Even with my heart in my stomach, that image was hard to set aside. Naturally, it would seem to connect because I am the father of two girls. But I didn’t feel it on that level. It was because she was alone there. No one sat with her. As sad as the image of the man and is two sons were, I felt weirdly comforted knowing that the two boys had someone there, even though they were not alive to see. But this girl, carefully dressed and randomly placed, laid there with no one to even shoo the flies from her eyes.

I buried this image for the next few days as I went about the dirty business of snapping pictures of the pain and documenting the fall-out. I pushed it away as I took an adrenaline-fueled helicopter flight, which launched from the lush PetronVille Country Club–over the mountains, beyond bodies of water and through picturesque landscapes, which included a rainbow.

(Photo: V. Leguerre)

While on the flight back home the images played in my mind, as if for the first time. Deconstructing these images is a heartbreaking exercise the mind cannot easily resist. There was the lady chanting as she stared helplessly at the torso of her daughter, who can be seen holding her grand daughter tight to her bosom under a pile of rubble. The lady could only look on from a distance and share that it was her daughter there, the second one she lost this year.

Another man protested me taking pictures of his brother, whose head and arms stuck out of a fallen building. He later relented, through tears. “I’m sorry,” he said, “He just wasn’t supposed to die this way.” He hadn’t come to the cycle of grief that seemed to reach the man with his two boys who resigned his loss to the workings of a greater force.

And then there was the image of the little girl. Her eyes slightly looking on, the flies preying on her solitude. The little girl has come to represent, to me, the worst possible outcome of the tragedy–dying alone. And the man who sat with his dead sons represents the equally horrifying flip side–living alone, grieving alone. It is very likely that the little girl was buried in some mass grave unidentified. It is also possible that she was not alone at all. That her loved ones–realizing, much like the spokesperson at the UN, that there was nothing more to be done for the dead–had made their peace with the child and turned their attention to the living.

Datwon Thomas has tendered his resignation as XXL magazine Editor-In-Chief yesterday. While we’re at it, King magazine has tipped its crown and—alas—is no more. I didn’t blog about Kings’ downfall—or anything for that matter—when it was announced. But the latest turn of events speaks volumes to anyone who wishes to listen: Old-school media is a shrinking Island. The shores are disappearing and the tides are rising fast.

When I heard that Datwon stepped down, just a year after Elliott “YN” Wilson slammed the door, I realized the “urban” media institutions are crumbling around us and there is little one can do to stop the demolition.

Like any seismic shift, the falling didn’t begin this year. “Taps” started playing at least back as far as June 2006, but I was just too preoccupied to hear the horns. I wasn’t alone.

Back then, I was serving as Vibe magazine’s music editor when the publication was sold to the Wicks Group. The take-over came in the form of swift hatchet cuts that shredded the masthead into thirds—nixing the top-editors in one fell swoop. The new owners huddled us into the conference room. They gave the floor to Kenard Gibbs, the president of Vibe who, it turns out, was also caught the business end of the hatchet that day. He softened the blow for us all with a few well-placed words. In the end he gave a thoughtful, moist-y eyed speech, and exited the room to a hero’s standing ovation. It was bitter sweet.

Over the course of the next week, we were called in one at a time to discuss our severances (You’ll pay me to leave? Sweeet!). Those of us who were let go sighed the sigh of freedom. Those who were left behind were shell-shocked, doomed to ponder what side of the masthead the axe would fall upon next (and it did fall, again and again). Associate music editor Rondell Conway, deputy editor Jamie Katz and Lakeba Holler, assistant to the editor, helped me carry out my boxes of CDs and my collection of utterly ridiculous hats (I used to wear them in meetings for no good reason). We said our goodbyes, vowed to stay in touch (we did, for the most part) and I closed the chapter on Vibe, but I had no idea the book was ending on magazines altogether. At the very least, it was being re-written.

This wasn’t the first time I left a magazine job (a music editor one, at that. Another story for another time). But this time, I welcomed the new opportunities. I had already taped the first version of The Parker Report and posted it to Youtube. Aside from that project, I had great relationships with editors at XXL, The Source, and King magazines. I figured I would always be able to keep my byline and a check circulating in the print world.

Fast forward. In the time since I left Vibe, I have written for all of the above publications (and more) including KING’s final cover story. Who knew then, “The Illest Men’s Magazine Ever” would be no more.

King was a victim of an advertising pinch, not necessarily—as you booty hounds know—a faltering audience. Dennis S. Page, publisher of XXL and King confirmed this fact to targetmarketnews.com.

King reported an average circulation of 173,530 for the six months ending Dec. 31, down 11.3 percent from the year before. “Advertising, not circulation, was the problem,” Page said. “The publication’s revenue staples were automobile and alcohol ads.”

Page said XXL, as a music magazine, did not have the same problems and that there were “no concerns” about it folding.

This is good news in a catch 22 sort of way: It says that there is still an audience for King. Unfortunately, there are no advertisers to support the product. Therein, as they say, lies the rub.

Meanwhile, The Source and Vibe—while still making newsstands each month—are losing on both fronts. The audience is shrinking and the advertisers are looking the other way. In February, Vibe cut back its staff and hours in order to save money. A smart holding strategy, given that it will cut its rate base 25 percent in July, from 800K to 600K.

“We have to run our business, including circulation, more profitably and we have to be smart about it,” CEO Steve Aaron said in a statement. “Part of that is eliminating less profitable subscriptions while maintaining our significant circulation leadership in the urban lifestyle space.”

Thing is, the “urban” lifestyle space is still viable. But times are a changing. And the mighty brands like XXL, Vibe and The Source will survive the new media revolution but surely they won’t remain wholly in their present forms. Nor will we, the journalists who have displayed bylines in these mags, come out unchanged.

Chloe Hilliard, the spirited journalist who created journalisticks.com because, she tells me via email, “I felt mediabistro, gawker, and all the other ‘media sites’ did not address my needs or share my view as a journalist of color.”

Her site recently hosted an awesome tweet chat, in which new and seasoned journalists pondered the great questions of our time and answered them in 142 characters or less.

Chloe is an NYU grad and can get to finger wagging and neck swiveling when discussing the state of—gasp!—“urban” journalists (I say “urban” for lack of better word. Got any suggestions?)

Most recently Chloe was let go from The Village Voice, which has been making cuts for some time now. “I did not sense that I was going to be next,” she says. “From the time I was hired at The Voice I learned never to feel settled in. Folks were fired quite frequently. My Co-workers and I figured it out: They let go of someone once every 3 weeks.”

But don’t dare imply that Chloe was fired from her previous job as an editor at The Source.

“Let’s get this straight,” she says. “I quit my job at The Source in Feb 2007. I was burnt out and fed up. I worked so hard there and the majority of us did but it got to the point where it was beating a dead horse.“

Two years later and The Source is once again touting new management. Time will tell if it will creep back into the psyche of its former audience. Presently XXL has taken the first position in hip-hop publications. But if you examine the mastheads of all three publications, you’ll find a skeleton crew. Less than a handful of writers and editors are responsible for the brainpower of these storied institutions. Freelancers are getting less money per word, editors are being forced to do more writing, and “content” is stretched thin across all platforms.

In all this, we are all learning, feeling our way in the dark. Many new journalists at magazines will have to do so without the guidance of journalists who have seen the space evolve. Elliott’s and Datwon’s departures as well as Jermaine Hall’s cut from King—a magazine he helped make more smart than smut—signals a change in the landscape and perhaps a changing of the guards.

But what’s a magazine to do when facing budget cuts and a shrinking ad market?

Chloe has a few suggestions:

“The future of publications should be to reduce to bi-monthly or quarterly, making each issue a collectors item chock full of amazing features, outside the box packages and essays.”

I think Chloe has a good strategy, here. I also say go longer with stories, more in-depth. More analysis, investigative work. Either that, or hold your breath and wait for for the coming tsunami.

*If you were the editor in chief or your favorite magazine, what changes would you make?

**And is there a better way to say “urban journalist”? Do tell.

When Goodie Mob released “They Don’t Dance No Mo’” in 1998— it sounded as if they were simply imploring screw-faced wall flowers to bust a move. They were onto something about the lack of dancing in hip-hop, I thought.

It took me some time to realize that Goodie Mob wasn’t simply talking about the waning popularity of great hip-hop dances like the Wop, the Biz Mark, the Fila, and the Steve Martin. (Okay, maybe some of those dances weren’t so great.)

Big Gipp, Khujo, T-Mo and Cee-Lo weren’t really talking about stepping in the club at all. The song is thick in metaphor, admonishing gun-shooting in place of shooting the fair one (i.e. “dancing”). Despite the bouncy beat, the bare-knuckled message didn’t make you want to bust a move. A head nod, a bounce, a shake, yeah. But no big dancing.

Now, I’ve got nothing against dances or the rappers who create them. I’ve tried to crank that dang Soulja Boy a few times myself. Who can resist hopping on one leg and leaning to one side then the next for a happy-faced yuuuule? (We all know Lyfe can’t).

Plus, Souja’s latest Shoot Out dance–where partners point and shoot make believe guns at one another–is a clever remix of the Shot Gun dance groovy teens used to rock back when. In the video, Soulja Boy and crew shoot each other’s imaginary brains out and live to do it again…and again.

Harmless enough, I think. But my inner grump can’t help but connect these playful routines and all their 1, 2, 3, 4 steps, with a few line dances I refused to try like, say, the Cha Cha or Electric Slide. (Not even at weddings)

This brings us to the present episode of “The Parker Report,” in which we—Lyfe, Project Pat, TJ , Yung Berg and I—ask if there is too much of this stepping going on? While we poke fun at the multi-stepping dance demands of Soulja Boy and others, there is no doubt that it’s a better day when hip-hop kids can find joy in a simple dance step (or four).

After all, when the last record is played at the club, I’d rather see Soulja Boy Crank that dance than crank that gat. And 10 years later, I’m sure Big Gipp, Khujo, T-Mo and Cee-Lo would prefer Souja Boy’s “Shoot Out” dance to the real thing.

Even if all they do is this.

…Or this!

This is the first episode of “The Parker Report” for MTV Jams. It was a pain in the ass putting this thing together, too. We shot several panels, which will be airing on MTV Jams over the course of the next few weeks. If there is any debate that NYC has lost ground, it’s worth noting that I had to go to ATL to shoot the Dipset, who are from Harlem.

But hey, it was worth it. However pained the Dips appear when they have to sit still for any amount of time, these guys always entertain. I’m not talking about when they are in the studio pounding out records. But when the music is off and the mic is left on, them dudes captivate.

Back when I originally had Jim Jones on “The Parker Report” he broke from his disinterested demeanor to defend Oprah’s honor and to speak out against the war in Iraq.
“If Oprah wanna get me on the show, she gonna have the realest show that the world going to see,” he said on that episode. “Until I get that invitation, I’ll holler when I see her and I’ll blow a kiss at her.”

Jimmy has the whole rock star thing down cold. It’s like dude doesn’t recognize that there are different rules of etiquette for different settings. When he sat down for TPR back then, he splayed his phone, blunts and lighter out on the table, slumped in his seat, and shifted back and forth without making much eye contact.

At the same time, he always says something to keep people talking. It’s as if he likes the attention but doesn’t want you to know he’s enjoying himself—that’s the effortless mantra of the “rock stars.”

For this go-round with the Dipset, we shot a few subjects. All classic material. Though he’s silent in this first episode, Freaky Zeeky even shares a word or two—something about Jordan and the Wizards and retiring rappers. Without giving away too much (Comcast heads can check it on On Demand in a few weeks), Jigga seems to figure prominently into the Dips’ points.

Then there is this time—within the well-worn discussion of NYC rap—with the hilarious tag-team at the end.

Jim: “Most of these rappers is so much of a facade / they wait until they deal to get they first charge”

Juelz: “It’s like New York’s been soft since Jay fell off”

If you look really closely, you can almost see Jim Jones’ lips mouthing the words to Juelz’s line. It’s like he knew it was coming. If I didn’t know better—and I don’t—I’d think they rehearsed the whole thing.

Either way, it’s no less entertaining if they did. They’re still pulling of the image of reluctant talk show guests, and New York rap is still what it is—whatever that is.

Obviously, this type of programming doesn’t lead to real answers but allows for a few questions to be raised. Each episode you’ll see a panel or rappers and industry folks creating a new “Hip-Hop Law” to live by. Sometimes the topics will be based on serious issues, other times the discussions will be strictly for entertainment purposes. And then there are talks like the one above where both can be accomplished with little or no effort at all—apparently that’s the Dipset way.

Despite what they’d have you believe, Kanye West and 50 Cent (and Osama Bin Laden) aren’t the only shows in town on 9-11. What about country boy Kenny Chesney, for example? I posed that question to 50 Cent recently, and he got his tight manzier-styled wife-beater bent all out of shape.

“Listen,” he barked. “Do you listen to Country music!?”

“No,” I said.

“Nether do I. So why are we talking about him,” he snapped. “Chesney sees an opportunity to make himself popular by putting himself in the race.” He sighed. “It’s marketing, dayum!”

You don’t say, Mr. 50? And since when did the king of marketing begrudge a fellow opportunist seeking a little bump in sales the right to exploit a situation. Beyond that, why should inflated heads like 50 and Kanye (and Osama) get all the 9-11 attention? Why shouldn’t we expand the pool and include some left-out hawkers of discs on this national day of mourning? If Kanye and 50 are like Ali-Foreman, then why not have some warm-up matches to keep it interesting and to, at least, give some ring-time to the lightweights?

But this “SoundScan Showdown” lead-up was so successful, the two discs blanketed every other release on that day and beyond. And it was all good, mostly because it was an original idea and appropriate for the magnitude of artists involved.

It could possibly work once again, like say with Ludacris and T.I. The two rappers have been at each other for years now, the latest being a dispute over the Grammy for Rap Album of The Year, which went to Luda, and emboldened T.I.’s contempt for his ATL counterpart (see Luda’s “I Get Money” diss remix below”). So, eh, I can see the people deciding in a 50/Kanye Scan-off.

While a T.I.-Luda showdown sounds enticing, the problem with all this hoopla is that other, less significant, rappers and their handlers will eventually insert their releases into this nifty new formula. If we’re not careful, it’ll become the next bullet-scar promotion made trendy by 50’s 9-shots story won him the adoration of the public. So, before some record company dimwit gets the bright idea to make this SoundScan face-off a part of the usual marketing plan, we might as well start getting used to it.

For example, if you’re like me, you’ve probably totally overlooked good ol’ 40 Cal’s release. Okay, so he’s not Cam’Ron, Jim Jones, or Juelz Santana, but dude is still Dipset, dammit, and he’s got Chickens in the coop (see video below). And yes, his album comes out right alongside Kanye’s and 50’s (well, stacked somewhere near them, in a choice number of locations).

Yet, he can be found on no pages of Rolling Stone, his disc is absent from discussions of 9-11 album releases, and it’s missing from any of the betting sites—no odds offered.

So, if you’re thinking like a record company marketer, here’s an idea: 40 Cal will face-off against B5, P. Diddy’s Goya-flavored Jackson Five impersonators, who will also be coming out today. Sure, the odds are in favor of the Bad Boy R&B creampuffs, but at least there are some odds there.

Likewise, Krayzie Bone, of the multi-platinum Bone Thugs N Harmony, and Young Bleed, from No Limit fame, both have discs that are being largely ignored this day. Exhibition match, anyone?

So back to Kenny Chesney. Since 50 edged him out of the competition, Chesney will have to pick on someone his own size (and music style, perhaps). While he figures that out, we’ll surely see another rap sales battle come along. When it does, let us hope it’s more like Luda and T.I. than Krayzie and 40 Cal.

Either way, it will happen. Like 50 said, “It’s marketing, dayum!”

George W. Bush didn’t knock down the towers. (See Proof below)

Nas and Jay-Z didn’t plan their battle behind doors all cloak and dagger-like. And it’s about time you realize that Kanye West and 50 Cent didn’t come together and cook up some hairbrain scheme to sell more records.

On second thought, scratch that last one…This just in:

But the point you conspiracy kooks should know is that Bin Laden is real. Mos Def recently sat up in front of perfectly rational white folk and proclaimed Osama “the boogie man.” When Jadakiss asked why George Bush knocked down the buildings in “Why,” we all knew he was just reciting something his crazy uncle told him at the family barbecue. What we didn’t know was that the uncle was Mos Def. Even Uncle Ruckus, the self-hating white skin-worshiping character on The Boondocks would say that accusing Bush and company of concocting an Osama gives too much credit to this president.

On Reel Time with Bill Maher, alongside Dr. Cornell West, Mos showed off his comedic chops. Not only is Mos the best actor of the hip-hop generation, he’s funnier than a mug. But, really Mos, gotta tighten up your conspiracy game.

I know what you conspiracy types are saying: What proof do I have that Osama did indeed blow up TWC? How do we know that Dick Cheney and Karl Rove didn’t manufacture this character in order to make those bullshit orange alerts seem more credible? You think it’s peculiar that you never see Dick Cheney in the same place as Osama. For all I know, you say, Dick Cheney takes off his fat suit and puts on a grizzly (or vitality black) beard and begins wagging his finger at the Amercan cameras in some hidden cave at his hunting grounds.

Well, here’s proof, silly kids. We’ve uncovered some outtakes of the recent Osama Bin Laden tapes. If this doesn’t hush all your Niglet rap paranoia with government goings on, nothing will.

Hold the presses. Kanye West and 50 Cent (and country singer Kenny Chesney) aren’t the only ones planning to release their big hits on September 11. Osama Bin Laden, the man who made the date infamous, plans to drop his latest tape in time to remind Americans that “Curtis” and “Graduation” are but minor distractions to his war on terror.

It’s not like we’re not all affected by the actions of Osama and George W. Bush. When Jim Jones visited The Parker Report, he revealed how his family felt the effects of the Anti-Osama war in Iraq (that has little to do with Osama, I must add). “My step brother’s leg got blown off in the Iraq war,” Jones said. “They blew up the truck he was driving…You don’t think of the war until it hits home, then at the same time there’s a war going on in the streets right here.” [Check Jim out here]

This ain’t the first time Mr. Bin Laden challenged one of hip-hop’s major releases. When Jay-Z dropped “The Blueprint” on September 11, 2001, I was music editor of The Source. Weeks earlier, the staff unanimously agreed to give the album a 5-mic salute. Nas was on the ropes, plotting a comeback that would give new meaning to the word ether. Hip-hop was all abuzz about the biggest rap battle since Big and Pac. And what did Osama do? He devised a plan to overshadow one of rap’s classic releases. Leave it up to ol’ playa hatin’ Osama to hijack hip-hop’s big day. Can’t see that happening this time with Team Ye and Team Fif on the case.

Next week General David Petraeus will be giving his assessment of the latest troop surge to congress. Democrats and Republicans will squabble about how many troops will remain in Iraq fighting a war that has no real connection to Osama or 9-11. And Osama will be all over the news calling for death to the infidels (especialy rappers making it rain on his 9-11 parade).

Meanwhile, there are wars going on in the streets right here.

I admit, I half-way rolled my eyes through the whole T.I. vs T.I.P. marketing campaign, mostly due to “T.I.P” overkill. A little too much theater to witness Mr. Harris smiling like T.I. one moment and then scowling as T.I.P. the next. But looking back, I now recognize the genius in the strategy. As he (the label/management) did with T.I.’s proclamations of Southern King on “King,” T.I. was able to control the conversation surrounding this project. And in marketing, that’s difficult to pull off.

Otherwise probing journalists didn’t get a chance to frame dude as a hothead rapper, or peg him as an overly confident MC. The label created such a curious—if not ludicrous—storyline, it was almost too inviting not to explore further. Even when T.I. acted out at the Kevin Liles Luncheon, attacking Luda’s mild-mannered manager Shaka Zulu, it all played into T.I.P.’s realm, keeping T.I. clean as a whistle while blurring reality and theater that much more.

It’s no “War On Terror” or “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” I must add, but as far as rap campaigns go, “T.I. vs. T.I.P." wins The Hip-Hop Karl Rove Award for the year.

Still, after selling 460,000 records in one week, T.I., T.I.P or Clifford Harris can’t save Atlantic Records, Warner Music Group, or Chairman Edgar Bronfman, Jr. from the steady downward spiral that the record biz has taken. Can you really compete with free music? Bronfman seems to think so in this clip.

It’s hard to imagine that things have gotten so bad that we may one day see Beyonce Knowles on Koch, as her attorney Ken Hurtz says, below. (Kelly Rowland, on the other hand…)

Layoffs, firings, restructurings are but band aids across the chest of a cardiac arrest patient. Bronfman, who traded the long dollars his father made from Seagrams liquor for the dwindling music money, bought Warner Music for 2.3 billion in 2003. In this report, Bronfman is straightforward and thoughtful in his answers. He seemed sincere about acknowledging the problems he and the industry faces. However…

…What’s all this talk of racing to the bottom as being a good thing? As Bill O Reilly would say, “The spin stops here, sir.”

It’s true that record companies are moving closer to the bottom every day. But when those huge record companies reach the bottom, it may have already fallen out. No one who has to answer to angry old-monied stock holders wants to see any parts of the bottom.

Wait. Rewind, er, scroll up. Did I just quote Bill O Reilly? On second thought, Mr. Bronfman, spin it any way you like. After all, a little spin worked plenty well for T.I. and T.I.P.

ps. (See you Syd, Latrice, G, and the rest of the Atlanticians)