Word: firsthand
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...Nevertheless, Denette Mason, a former Chicago teacher, says she will keep her two children out of school Sept. 2, though she's not sure yet where or how they'll spend the day of protest. Having taught on Chicago's hardscrabble South Side for years, Mason has seen firsthand what educators are up against. Often, she remembers, students had to share textbooks because there simply weren't enough to go around. "[Kids] deserve to be in schools where they can learn all they can and have proper materials," she says. "They deserve to have a chance in life...
...Canadian doctor of Vietnamese-Chinese origins, and uses his firsthand experience of the world of medicine to underpin the dozen stories in this book. The pieces are interrelated, lightly and adroitly, by the recurrence of four common characters, Fitzgerald, Chen, Ming and Sri, all doctors. In some stories, Lam writes about his characters in the third person; for others, he uses the first. In less adept hands, this technique could easily seem affected. But Lam's handling of the quickly shifting perspectives is deft and gives the collection an agreeable dynamism...
Moscow's intentions were never secret. I can attest to that firsthand. During Tajikistan's civil war in the early 1990s, I was assigned to the embassy in Dushanbe and was evacuated out of the country by Russia's 201st Motorized Rifle Division. The Russian officers who commanded the unit were proud that the Red Army had held together through the breakup of the Soviet Union and was called to come to the aid of a superpower like the United States. They had no inkling that Washington would ignore the facts on the ground and deny Russia's true influence...
...industry is an excellent way to learn about extreme poverty, an issue that today affects around three billion people all over the world. It is nearly impossible to come to grips with this issue by just looking at it from an academic perspective. It is important to see it firsthand. Working in Cambodia opened my eyes and taught me that microfinance is not a panacea for global poverty but rather a respite. No obvious solution to the problem exists, but it is a problem that I am confident can be ameliorated by our generation. —Charles LaCalle...
...City of God as Siddhartha, like Augustine, abandons adolescent excess (and, don't forget, his new wife and son). The fateful decision is made when his curiosity about life outside the palace walls overwhelms him and he decides to take a look for himself - only to witness firsthand the ravages of disease, old age and death. Disillusioned with "the perishable world," he suddenly renounces his princely surroundings for a life of famished mendicancy...