Stories

Camp Anaconda: Balad, Iraq
Charleston is home base for many troops sent to Camp Anaconda, a huge military base in Balad, Iraq. The 19,000 service men and women who wind up here in the heart of the Sunni Triangle face daily mortar and rocket attacks inside its fences. When they leave the base, their lives are threatened by improvised explosive devices and sniper fire. I spent a quick three days documenting life at, around and in the skies above the massive base.

Planning for Eternity
Patricia Hall picked out her casket a month after she learned that she had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Her doctor estimated that she'd live eight to 10 months. Days later, she told her pastor exactly what she wanted her funeral to be like -- a real praise party. And no tears. Except for the tears, that's what it was.

Behind the Big Top
The Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus is among the last of a breed: the traditional three-ring circus. For nine months a year in two shows daily, the clowns, the trapeze artists, the human cannonball and all the other acts continue to lure 21st-Century audiences under a yellow- and red-striped tent for this, the circus's 118th year. Look quickly, for shows like this one are fading from the modern landscape.