Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • Fair-goers can watch amusement riders' reactions on a large-screen TV set up at a local fair.
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  • A portrait of a man and his daughter.
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  • Father and daughter share a tender moment on their boat which is home for the family during fishing season off the coast of Prince of Wales Island in Alaska’s Southeast. When not the fishing for salmon, the family lives on nearby Marble Island and the children are home schooled.<br />
Alaska’s largest and most valuable fisheries target salmon, pollock, crab, herring, halibut, shrimp, sablefish, and Pacific cod.<br />
The total value of Alaska’s commercial fisheries is $1.5 billion for the fishermen, with a wholesale value of $3.6 billion. Economists estimate the commercial seafood industry contributes $5.8 billion and 78,500 jobs to the Alaskan economy. Fisheries management in Alaska is based on scientific assessments and monitoring of harvested populations and is regarded as a model of successful natural resource stewardship.
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  • The bride and groom put their heads together and share a private moment at their wedding party.  Weekends are full of celebrations complete with traditional food and dancing in the street. After the church wedding, the couple walked through the streets of town following musicians. They collected family members who carried food to the street blocked off for the party. <br />
Mexico's narrowest point is the Isthmus of Tehuantepec--flat, country where the Zapotec culture is still strong.  Women take leading role in business and government.  The Isthmus never became part of the Aztec Empire and resistance to the Spanish was strong in the mid-1500s.
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  • Disco lights and dancing and drinking at a club in Shanghai.
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  • This is a pick up club for mistresses and there is a room of male prostitutes that get signaled to come over to a table where the women will choose.
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  • After the church wedding, the bride and groom are escorted through the streets of town following musicians. They collected family members who carried food to the street blocked off for the party. <br />
Mexico's narrowest point is the Isthmus of Tehuantepec--flat, country where the Zapotec culture is still strong.  Women take leading role in business and government.  The Isthmus never became part of the Aztec Empire and resistance to the Spanish was strong in the mid-1500s.
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  • A couple talk and laugh at an outdoor restaurant at night.
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  • This scene is a mix of young folks, mistresses, and male and female prostitutes. Bars are a little crazier in the south of China where there is new wealth.  Young people demand nice places to eat and drink. By 2015, the number of Chinese adults under 30 is expected to swell 61%, to 500 million, equivalent to the entire population of the European Union.
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  • Disco lights and dancing at a club in Shanghai.
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  • This is the Armani Club in the Liu lin Road area. This scene is a mix of young folks, mistresses, and male and female prostitutes. Bars are a little crazier in the south of China where there is new wealth.  Young people demand nice places to eat and drink. By 2015, the number of Chinese adults under 30 is expected to swell 61%, to 500 million, equivalent to the entire population of the European Union.
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  • Dancing at a pick up club for mistresses and male prostitutes.
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  • Figurine with female headdress and male body, carrying an infant.
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  • A couple at at a table visit with a friend and his dog.
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  • A couple talk and laugh at an outdoor restaurant at night.
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  • A teenage girl and her parents relaxing.
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  • Farmhands that care for the horses take a break from chores with games and refreshments. The workers become close like family and get together for informal parties and pot luck dinners where they bring dishes from their countries Columbia, Lithuania, Australia, Mexico, Ireland and the U.S.
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  • Farmhands that care for the horses take a break from chores with games and refreshments. The workers become close like family and get together for informal parties and pot luck dinners where they bring dishes from their countries Columbia, Lithuania, Australia, Mexico, Ireland and the U.S.<br />
<br />
DARBY DAN
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  • Farmhands that care for the horses take a break from chores with games and refreshments. The workers become close like family and get together for informal parties and pot luck dinners where they bring dishes from their home countries Columbia, Lithuania, Australia, Mexico, Ireland and the U.S.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720970.jpg
  • Aborigine grandmother with child in stroller, and man with body paint.
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  • Farmhands that care for the horses take a break from chores with games and refreshments. The workers become close like family and get together for informal parties and pot luck dinners where they bring dishes from their countries Columbia, Lithuania, Australia, Mexico, Ireland and the U.S.
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  • Singers and actresses get ready for an opera performance at a hotel.
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  • Hamar, wearing body paint, stand on stilts and beg from tourists.
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  • A young woman adjusting hair and makeup.
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  • A cattleman and his herd in a muddy pen preparing for coming rains.
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  • Gonnison Beach is the only nude beach operated by the National Park Service. It provides ranger patrols and lifeguards. Park Ranger John A. Cahill Jr. talks with nude sunbather.
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  • Each Wednesday these friends gather for skiing and homemade wine away from the trendy ski resorts in the Swiss Alps.
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  • Flower girls and ring boys and a ringbearer at a wedding.
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  • A brother and sister compete in a logging show wheelbarrow race. A throwback to the heyday of the logging industry, the competitions bring communities together for fun and games on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • The Miller and Caudill family prepare string beans from the summer garden for canning.
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  • A Mursi woman and child in village of Galap.
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  • An Australian Aborigine man and a young Aborigine girl.
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  • A day and boarding school in the Nakulabye neighborhood of Kampala.
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  • American tourists don sombreros and sing with a mariachi band at a cantina bar in Nuevo Laredo, a quirky border town.
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  • A bride and groom deliver food and drink and greet shut in villagers in their homes.
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  • An Australian man and his Chinese fiance ride in a taxi on their way to purchase their wedding clothes. Susanne is marrying her boyfriend in Hong Kong next week and they went to the knock-off mall to get clothes made for the wedding.
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  • Negotiating bicycles and buggies on a dirt road are part of life in Kjailino, a remote village in Kamchatka.
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  • A baby is born at the Moscow Planning Center and Maternity Home.
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  • A baby is born at the Moscow Planning Center and Maternity Home.
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  • A baby is born at the Moscow Planning Center and Maternity Home.
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  • Two cowboys in black and white hats sit at the doorway of a cabin in Beef Basin. The ranch hands are taking a break from moving cattle to higher range with more plentiful water for summer months.
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  • A man and his daughter clowning around.
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  • Underwater explorer Robert Ballard with scientists and  crew.
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  • A bride and groom talk with neighbors as they go through various rituals after their wedding.
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  • A pet lover with her dogs and friends.
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  • A pet lover with her dogs and friends.
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  • Hairstylist discuss a young model's hairstyle for a charity event fashion show held at Badrutt’s Palace Hotel, a luxurious retreat in St. Moritz. The Swiss hotel, internationally known for its glitz and glamour, opened in 1896 and is still<br />
owned and operated by the same Badrutt family, now in their third generation. Funds were being raised to support a local hospital.
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  • October Holiday week along the Bund on the Puxi side of Shanghai where this couple is one of the lucky ones. “Bare Branches”—a phenomenon where a boy just cannot find a girl is becoming more and more of a social problem. According to the 2010 census, there were 118.06 boys born for every 100 girls. For the population born between 1900 and 2000, it is estimated that there could be 35.59 million fewer females than males. Maybe everyone eventually can have a car, but can every boy find a girl?
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  • Model takes a smoke break backstage as she is styled for a bridal fashion show. Wedding dresses and evening gowns were part of the formal wear shown off to eager young fashionistas in Monterrey, Mexico.
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  • A couple steadies themselves with crampons and kiss while waiting for their wedding on the icy Mendenhall Glacier in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A mother and daughter and other family members visit at the end of a reunion of the Caudill/Miller family at their homestead in Mud, West Virginia. The family fought Arch Coal Company in court to keep their 26 acres where they plant a garden and spend weekends. The home stood in the way of Hobet 21, a 12,000-acre, mountaintop removal mine. After a long battle in court, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that a Lincoln County family was wrongly forced to sell its home to make way for the surface mine. Justices said a lower court was wrong to discount the family’s ‘sentimental or emotional interests’ in the property in favor of the economic concerns of a coal operator.”<br />
<br />
The mining operations expanded to surround the Caudill property.
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  • The Armani Club is in the Liu lin Road area attract a scene of young people.
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  • In a complicated family life, the grandparents were farmers and lost the land and their occupations to development. If the grandparents did not have a child they would be homeless. Ironically, the same development that took his home now supports their daughter, Ding, who works in the industrial park occupying the land that was once the father’s farm.
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  • After a candle-lit bath in milk and honey, a couple is served champagne, then they snuggle down in a straw-filled bed. Luxury spas find unique ways to attract tourists.
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  • Cradling his puppy, “Meatball,” a youth hangs out on the dock of the float house. The family built their home off the coast of Prince of Wales Island which is only accessible by float plane or by boat. The houses are characteristic of Southeast Alaska, tied down with ropes and floating on the water in an isolated bay.<br />
Life in remote Alaska offers adventures and an atypical lifestyle rich in experiences.
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  • Judy Bonds was an environmental activist that fought mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia. Daughter of a coal miner, Bonds was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her efforts to end contamination to drinking water and destruction of rivers and forests. Outside her home she cuddles her dog as a white-tailed deer grazes nearby.
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  • The Logger of the Year winner hugs his girlfriend in red boots to celebrate after he won in the annual logging show held in Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island. The Southeast Alaskan competition is the “real thing”—not a tourist show—where loggers, former loggers, and “wannabe” loggers compete, climbing trees and sawing timber.
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  • Dust Buster environmental activist Mary Miller embraces her granddaugher while her grandson rides his bike near the elementary school in Sylvester.<br />
Miller helped document problems and joined a lawsuit when the community faced degradation from a coal processing plant that covered their town in soot.
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  • Couples weather fog while lounging on a rocky beach in Miraflores, an affluent neighborhood in Lima. Some read newspapers and others sleep while a food vender carries treats looking for sales on a Sunday morning.
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  • Mary Miller gives a warm hug and greets a young boy at a church ramps dinner.
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  • A Pygmy girl does chores for a wealthy Bantu family in Beni. <br />
<br />
This is the daughter of Kenge-known because of a book, "The Forest People." Kenge is possibly the most famous pygmy.  His daughter was traded off to a wealthy Bantu family when the father had a good job with GIC and his wife needed help with the kids.  During the war, the family moved to Beni, because it was a little more secure than Epulu. They brought their pygmy with them.  She does various chores around the house-laundry, sweeping, mopping, washing children.
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  • A bride and groom are fitted for crampons before taking a helicopter flight to the Mendenhall Glacier to be married in the icefield.
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  • A couple shares a milk-and-honey bath in a bathroom lit by candles at a luxury spa in the Alps. Tourists are attracted to unique experiences offered at various, unique resorts.
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  • Refugee Pygmies wash near their leaf huts. They are under threat from logging companies and a rapidly changing world with little concern for indigenous people and their traditions.
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  • A couple relaxes in a milk-and-honey bath at a luxury spa. They follow this by relaxing with champagne in a bed of straw. Small mountain towns in the Alps reach out creating novel attractions for tourists.
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  • People relax in Central Park's Sheep Meadow, a 15-acre lawn where folks gather to picnic, people-watch and sleep under large Sycamore trees. After Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed Central Park, a flock of sheep was added to reinforce the quiet nature. In the 1870s a shepherd drove a flock of sheep across the drive to and from the meadow until they were banished to Brooklyn.
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  • Elevated view of sunbathers in New York's Central Park. Shadows sweep across Sheep Meadow, a 15-acre space where people congregate for picnics on in New York City on Sunday afternoon. Until 1934, a shepherd stopped traffic on the west drive so his flock could travel to and from their meadow.<br />
When Central Park was just an idea, most New Yorkers lived below 38th Street in crowded, chaotic quarters. Frederick Law Olmsted planned the park with Calvert Vaux as a refuge from urban stress in a natural environment. The Park’s design embodies Olmsted’s social consciousness and commitment to egalitarian ideals.<br />
Today, woodlands dwarfed by high-rise buildings line the east boundary of Central Park and modern urban life surrounds the entire perimeter of the pastoral park.
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  • Mer de Glace Glacier in the Alps has lost 1000 meters in 130 years and thinned 150 meters in the last 100.  Children don helmets and clamp on crampons and to run playing on crevices between the last bit of melting ice on the northern slopes of Mont Blanc.
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  • A bride picks up the groom for the kiss completing the wedding ceremony. The couple strapped on crampons beneath their formal wear and flew by helicopter onto the Mendenhall Glacier for a memorable experience in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Drivers using cell phones in a parking lot of a scenic stop in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. The 13-mile drive through ancient sand dunes is a protected area near Las Vegas under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management and Southern Nevada Conservancy.
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  • Waiting in the paddock before a race is Pat Day who had a career win of over 8000 races.  A jockey’s life is not easy—a member of an elite club of professional athletes who maintain a near inhuman weight restriction that most Americans couldn’t pass.  He speaks with a trainer before a race and is surrounded by the trainers’ sons at Keeneland Race track.
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  • A large extended family cans apples from their garden. everyone has a different chore from washing the fruit, peeling and cutting it to put into jars. After a hot water bath, the jars are divided up to store for the winter.
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  • Rose Wedding Festival couples in a motorcade to Century Park. Seventy couples participated in a mass marriage event that started at a shopping mall and ended up in Century Park for the ceremony.
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  • The Huangsha Live Seafood Wholesale Market is popular among the Chinese who the largest quantity of seafood in the world and consequently, imports the most. China's seafood consumption accounts for 45% of the global volume, meaning 65 million tons out of 144 million tons.
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  • Circus performers dressed in their costumes ride on a truck through town to advertise the show in Pisco. Locals watch the parade as 20 performers from Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Uruguay and Chile smile and wave as they ride around in a circus truck the first night in town.
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  • Circus performers dressed in their costumes ride on a truck through town to advertise the show in Pisco. 20 performers from Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Uruguay and Chile smile and wave as they ride around in a circus truck the first night in town.
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  • Monday is laundry day at Val Mustair as nuns fold a flowered sheet in the convent courtyard. The world-famous Benedictine Convent and a UNESCO World Heritage Site is in the Swiss Alps. Founded in the 8th century, the Christian convent is home to Benedictine nuns since the 12th Century. Eleven make their home behind closed walls, living a life of commitment to poverty and celibacy. Each nun has her work and they come together for meals and prayer.
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  • Mother teaches her daughter to cook traditional foods in their family's restaurant in the small Ladin village of LaVal in the Dolomites.
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  • A farm woman takes a break from baking biscuits and taps on a window to get the attention of her nephew. Ladin village of LaVal is small and the people speak their own ethnic language in this isolated region of the Dolomites. They also speak German and Italian.
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  • Zapotec Indian women wearing colorful, traditional clothing dance into the night at a wedding party in the streets of Juchitan, Mexico. Weekends are full of wedding celebrations in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow and flat part of the country where the Zapotec culture is still strong. Women are noticeably open and confident, taking a leading role in business and government in matrilineal traditions. The Isthmus never became part of the Aztec Empire and resistance to the Spanish was strong in the mid-1500s. After the church wedding, the couple walks through the streets of town following musicians. They collect family and carry food to where the street is blocked off for the party.
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  • Marriage is different in China, from mass weddings like this, to the “bare branches” phenomenon where there are not enough women for all the men to marry. Couples aspire to the ideal of the billboard above them—the one-child family. But will their son be able to find a girl? According to the 2010 census, there were 118.06 boys born for every 100 girls, which is 0.53 points lower than the ratio obtained from a population sample survey carried out in 2005. However, the gender ratio of 118.06 is still beyond the normal range of around 105 percent, and experts warn of increased social instability should this trend continue. For the population born between 1900 and 2000, it is estimated that there could be 35.59 million fewer females than males. So maybe everyone eventually has a car, but can every boy have a girl? It is important for China’s leaders to placate the Comfort Class. From issues of grave consequence to trivialities, the government has made clear that it will do whatever it takes to keep the swelling middle class happy. In Beijing, for example, newly prosperous residents are snapping up automobiles at a rate of 1,000 a day. The number of vehicles on the capital’s sclerotic roads has doubled in the past five years, to 3 million, or about a million more vehicles than in all of New York City.
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  • A customer holding a large fish at the Guangzhou Fish Market.<br />
Tourists and locals shop from vendors who line their stalls with fresh catch at one of the largest fish markets in the world.
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  • A blanket is rolled onto the Pitztal Glacier to keep ice from melting and  protect the ski industry in the Alps.<br />
Glacial melts first recorded at the start of the 19th century—a point that also coincides with the start of the industrial age and burning of large amounts of fossil fuels. Since then the glaciers have lost between 30 to 40% of their area and nearly half their volume.  The coverings remind us of little mountains they are creating out of felt.
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  • Two Ladin women dress in traditional clothing that is often worn on Sundays and for ceremonial occasions linked to the ancient customs. Ladins in the small village in the Dolomites divided from other ethnic relatives to the far reaches of the mountains further away from German influences. The people living here speak Italian and German, but Ladin in their first language.
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  • Restaurant patrons are inspired to join mariachi bands in song at a restaurant  in Garibaldi Plaza. Since the 1920s, traditional musicians have dressed in their finest matching suits and brought their guitars to serenade locals and tourists with heartfelt ballads and earn a few pesos.
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  • This is outside of Total Fitness Club in the mall in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. There are 900 million cell phones in China and the West has long predicted that economic growth would eventually bring democracy. As James Mann points out in his new book, The China Fantasy, the idea that China will evolve into a democracy as its middle class grows continues to underlie the U.S.’s China policy, providing the central rationale for maintaining close ties with what is, after all, an unapologetically authoritarian regime. But China’s comfort class could shatter such long-held assumptions. As the chief beneficiaries of China’s economic success, young professionals are more and more tied up in preserving the status quo. The last thing they want is a populist politician winning over the country’s hundreds of millions of have-nots on a rural-reform, stick-it-to-the-cities agenda. All of which means democracy isn’t likely to come to China anytime soon.
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  • Friends come together at The Riggin Shack, a general store that is one of a few businesses in Coffman Cove, Alaska, population 200. The community on Prince of Wales Island was settled as a logging town and people stayed although the industry declined. The community offers services for visitors that include a fuel station, liquor store, lodging, guiding for hunters and fishermen, a library with Internet service and outdoor tours.
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  • Attorney Brian Glasser briefs some of the 152 frustrated Sylvester, West Virginia citizens who banded together in a lawsuit in an effort to halt the assault on their air. Armed with video taped evidence, photographs, and testimony, the residents proved that black dust blanketed their town from a coal stockpile and preparation plant.<br />
They won but little has changed (the company bought a street sweeper for the community) but it was a moral victory for a group of people who saw property values plummet in the black cloud that hung over their town. None of the 152 mostly retirees had ever been involved in a lawsuit.
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  • The first Wal-Mart in China is in Shenzhen, the city where Deng made his famous “to be rich is glorious” speech. This store sells all that a family needs or wants. The cosmetics area is much more plush than any Wal-Mart in the U.S. The signs that hang overhead in this store proudly announce, “Made in China.” This is very different than the best store I could find in China 17 years ago. The best store then was a government “Friendship Store” that had a photo of a female employee on the wall with a sign underneath, “Worst Employee of the Month.” The way they decided to motivate workers at that time was to shame them. Cosmetics are a major business in China and women in the China Middle Class see this as an important part of their lifestyle. Wal-Mart aims for the Comfort Class consumer earning between $5,000 and $20,000 a year.
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  • Hand and hat over his heart during prayer, a Confederate soldier in uniform honors his relatives that have passed at a family reunion.  The Tatum family at Waycross, Georgia, meets annually at the homestead and as many as a thousand blood relatives gather for a weekend of music, food, and socializing.
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  • Tourists mug for a friend's photograph on the streets of Zermatt.<br />
Zermatt grows from 5 thousand to 20 thousand people from tourism in high season.  There is a tension between welcoming the tourists, which drives the economy, and yet limiting the impact.  Zermatt bans cars from the street—visitors take a train or tax from a nearby town and the streets are filled mostly with foot traffic except a few buses.
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  • A blanket is rolled onto the Pitztal Glacier to prevent snow from melting. It is a method workers use to combat the effects of climate change and global warming.  Integral to the local economy, ski resorts need protection from higher temperatures that melt the ice.
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  • Beijing at the time of this photo had a "one dog policy." The dog on the treadmill is a Siberian Husky and Beijing police are starting another crackdown on large dog ownership. These folks are starting to train their pet on their friend’s treadmill because if they take it outside for a walk, they risk having it beaten to death in front of them by a Beijing policeman. Owners of big dogs (over 35cm) that live within the sixth ring in Beijing have an illegal pet. Many have purchased treadmills after the crackdown began when pets were pulled out of the hands of their crying owners. A group protested in front of the zoo because there was suspicion that some of the dogs were being fed to the tigers. The activists claim dog owners tried to take policemen to dinner to bribe them, but it did not work. They say the policemen sold some of the nice animals and sent the rest to the zoo.
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  • Susanne is marrying her boyfriend in Hong Kong. They take a cab to the knock-off mall to get clothes made for the ceremony. Statistics show that there are many more western men marrying Chinese women, but you don’t see that published in the media. The government promoted a soap opera about the opposite situation, however, called “Foreign Babes in Beijing,”  featuring western women falling for Chinese men.
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  • Health clubs are surging in popularity, partly as an antidote to work stress. The Total Fitness Club, with 11 branches in Guangzhou, offers six kinds of yoga, and classes in salsa and pole dancing.
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  • A busload of Japanese tourists are directed out after they walk into a private home by mistake in Heidi village. They were touring by bus through Heidiland, which gets its name from Johanna Spryri's fictional book titled "Heidi." The collection of statues depicting Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is part of the communities lore.
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  • There are 2.6 billion armpits in China, according to an ad man, and someone has to sell them deodorant. This shop-owner (right) thinks a guy wandering Nanjing Road in a full knight suit will do the trick for his snack shop.
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  • Mbuti Pygmy women dressed in clothing of traditional patterns and work together in the Ituri Forest.
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  • Music is a vital part of the annual June reunion of the Tatum family at their Waycross, Georgia homestead. A woman tuned her guitar then stopped to look at portraits on the "memory table" honoring deceased relatives. Red, white and blue flag decorates the front porch when as many as a thousand blood relatives gather for a weekend of music, food, and socializing.
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  • Villagers in the far north of Sudan greet each other before a family wedding in Karima, a northern village. These men rarely see each other. There is no work for them in their villages and most of them work in neighboring countries. Sudan is a difficult place to live if you a not a member of the elite few in Khartoum.
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