• "Suitcase on the Loose," Alex's first album, is making its debut. You can hear the single "Too Too Much" now at VanityFair.com. The single is now available for download at Amazon and emusic. The full album is available in a few weeks. Check here for updates. This bag of tunes has been forty years in the making!

• 'How can I become part of this effort?'  Click here to see the June, 2007 report and here to read a lecture Alex recently gave at the McGill school of business.

• March, 2008: The dispatches are now host to some astounding performances of traditional gypsy music from Rajasthan. Take a listen to them here.

• February 28, 2008: We've just heard from Marylise Lefèvre,one of our far flung interns, who is volunteering at a chimp sanctuary in Cameroun. In the summer she will resume her study of the movements of returning salmon in eastern Quebec. Here is a photo of her with three chimps, orphaned by poachers, that she is taking care of.

• February, 2008: Bob Dylan airs an old blues song about the death of FDR and Shoumatoff's grandmother, Elizabeth Shoumatoff, and talks about her afterwards on his radio show. Click here to listen to the broadcast and here to read about Alex's grandmother.

• Fantastic news ! the Shoumatoff's hairstreak lives ! The following e-mail was received on February 9, 2008 Click here.

• January, 2008: Two new Dispatches are up and the music section is coming to life. You can now see and hear bushmen in the Kalahari desert and four Botswanan women singing ‘One morning soon’ on our YouTube video feed 'DFTVW.'

• January, 2008: Dispatch #38 was re-printed by Vanity Fair in a booklet called "A Guide to Green Living" and in an anthology for English 101, the college composition course, called The Reader, edited by Judy Sieg

• January, 2008: Dispatch #41 has been submitted by Walrus Magazine for two Canadian National Magazine Awards.

• October, 2007: A new Dispatch, and this month a record 9,631 readers from 93 countries dipped into the Dispatches.

• October 20, 2006:  The Bulletins have become a resource to be reckoned with! Four interns from McGill Universityhave redacted and catalogued 50 more pages of them. There are still boxesof clips waiting to be processed. Anyone who wants to get into them, please get in touch with AlexShoumatoff@Shoumatopia.com. It is very interesting, harrowingly educational work.  Each bulletin is like a piece of the enormous puzzle of what it happening to the world,and it is not a pretty picture. But one that has to be made available toeverybody. Which is what the Bulletins, and the more detailed Dispatches,are all about.   Click here tocheck out the Bulletins...

Dispatches, News and Updates

January 20, 2008 : Dispatch #44 : Traveling Light. This is not just a matter of reducing your baggage to a small backpack, but reducing your carbon, ecological, and cultural footprints. Originally published in Travel + Leisure's November, 2007 green issue.Click here to read the Dispatch

January 20, 2008 : Dispatch # 43 : The Rats Are Back. Every 48 eight years a certain species of bamboo flowers in a remote tribal state in India, triggering an explosion in the rat population. What happens to the rats could be a ghastly parable for us. Originally published in the December, 2007 issue of Vanity Fair under the title, "The Coming Plague." "The Rats Are Back" was suggested my good buddy John Nichols, the Taos Novelist.With a postscript on a huge new species of palm discovered in Madagascar that flowers every 100 years and then self-destructs.Click here to read the Dispatch

November 9, 2007: Dispatch #42:  (Product) RED provides life saving drugs to Africans with AIDS. Could the future of philanthropy be consumer driven? Originally published in Vanity Fair's July, 2007 Africa issue as "The Lazarus Effect." Click here to read the Dispatch

November 1, 2007: Dispatch #41:  Dead Villages: Russia's Rural Exodus, Demographic and Health Crises.   Originally published in the June issue of Walrus Magazine as "A Russian Tragedy." In fact, I was just in Russia for three weeks in September, 2007, and despite the very real and unresolved issues in this Dispatch, the people are happier and nicer than I've ever seen them in the 25 years I've been visiting my erstwhile motherland. The country is normalizing. Click here to read the Dispatch

October 29, 2007:   A powerful new version of "One Morning Soon" from Botswana, captured in this slideshow by David Hampton. Listen to the deep richness and beauty of the singing of Patricia Kamasena and Olefile Sefofu and their two friends. Click here to watch and listen

August 9, 2007: Dispatch #40:  Brazil's Mata Atlantica:The Critically Endangered Coastal Rainforest of Brazil, With a Postscripton the Musicality of Birdsong.  Clickhere to read the Dispatch

August 9, 2007: Dispatch #39: "The Dehydration of the Amazon Rainforest,"originally published in Vanity Fair's May, 2007 green issue as "The GaspingForest."  Click to read the Dispatch: Part1 and Part 2
 

August 9, 2007: Dispatch #38: "A Day in the Life in an Ordinary Consumer,"originally published in Vanity Fair's May, 2007 green issue.  Click here toread the Dispatch

July 5, 2007: Dispatch #37: A Writer Looks At His Career.   Clickhere to read the Dispatch      

April 23, 2007: Dispatch #36: A Miraculous Meeting With My 22nd Cousin
Clickhere to read the Dispatch

April 20, 2007: Dispatch #35: Reinhold Messner's Longest Ordeal
Clickhere to read the Dispatch

Dec29, 2006: Dispatch #34: The Improbable Jew, by Clara de Melo Castelar.
Clickhere to read the Dispatch.

Nov6, 2006:  Dispatch #33: The Amazon Research and ConservationCenter on the Rio de Las Piedras, in the Peruvian Amazon. Clickhere to read the Dispatch.

June16, 2006:   Dispatch #32: The Tribulations of St. Paul'sSchool.  As originally published in the January 2006 issue ofVanityFair Magazine.  Click here toread the article...

Dispatch#31: The Desertification of Mali,Clickhere to read the article...

Dispatch#30: A Profile of the Lepidopterist Camille Parmesan,Clickhere to read the article...

Dispatch#29: The Grand Cascapedia and Its Endangered Atlantic Salmon,Clickhere to read the article...

Dispatch#28: The Fall of General Stroessner,Clickhere to read the article...

June9, 2005: Dispatch #27: Manitoba's Many-Headed Hydro Originallypublished as "Who Owns This River?" in the Spring 2005 issue of NRDC'sonearthmagazine.Click here to read article...(AdobeAcrobat PDF  File) 

May16, 2005: Dispatch #26: A Profile of Monaco  Clickhere to read article...

April12, 2005: Dispatch #25: Bamako: A Blues Lover's Pilgrimage tothe Motherland  with apostscript on the universal language and the cognition of music, and thewestward migration of the pentatonic from Rajasthan Clickhere to read article...

January10, 2005: Dispatch 24:  A slideshow from the Congo by CraigLapp     Click hereto see slideshow...

September15, 2004: Dispatch 23: Cultivating Culture: Emergence or Emergencyby Jonathan Golick     Clickhere to read article...

June27, 2004: Dispatch 22: Matchwork by Sasha Chavchavadze Clickhere to see artwork
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June27, 2004: Dispatch 21: Introduction to  Keeper’s Memory : The KimEsteve Art Collection and a Narrative History of Chacara Flora, by EdwardLeffingwell     Clickhere to read article...

June24, 2004: Dispatch 20: The Rape of the Cumberland Plateau Clickhere to read article.

June2004:  A 1985 piece for The NewYorker  distilled from Alex Shoumatoff's sixth book, The Mountainof Names, has been added to the Past Dispatchessection. Click here toread this incredibly interesting dispatch about the history of thehuman family, kinship systems, genealogy, and Mormonism.x

May20, 2004: Dispatch #19: On the Question of Animal Awareness
Clickhere to read article

Apr07, 2004: Dispatch #18: Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide     Clickhere to read article

Apr07, 2004: Dispatches gets a new Song.
Seethe Music From Many Landssection to hear One Morning Soon.

Feb22, 2004: Dispatch #17: A Long Weekend in Armenia
Clickhere to read article

Dec3, 2003: Dispatch #16: The Gartersnake Dens of Manitoba
Clickhere to read article

Oct25, 2003: Dispatch #15: The Decimation of the Amazon Indians
Clickhere to read article

Sept2, 2003: Dispatch #14: A Speech Given for AdirondackVoices For Peace at the John Brown Homestead, North Elba, New York, on August 16, 2003      Clickhere to read article

Dispatch#13: Prairie Dogs and Conservation Easements on the Chihuahua-ArizonaBorder,June 25th, 2003
Clickhere to read article

Dispatch#12: Annals of Investigative Golf : 
The Gavea GolfClub in Rio de Janeiro
Clickhere to read article

Dispatch #11:The Alcoholic Monkeys of St. Kitts
Clickhere to read articlex

Dispatch #10:A Report for the J.M. Kaplan Fund on the 
TransborderEffort to Create Marine Protected Areas in the Gulf of Maine
Clickhere to read article

Dispatch#9: The World’s Largest Swamp : Brazil’s Pantanal do Mato Grosso Clickhere to read article.

Dispatch#8: A Report on the Prairie Churches of Saskatchewan, Manitoba,and North Dakota. Clickhere to read article.
 

Dispatch#7: A Report on the PhilanthropicPossibilities of Cuba.  Commissioned by the JMKaplan Fund, a foundation devoted to transborder collaborations in architectural preservation and biodiversity conservation.

Dispatch#6:Journal of the Flamingo
MidsummerNight’s Sex Comedy in the Galapagos.

Dispatch#5, December 9th: What Have We Done ToThe Weather?
Aboutthe Kyoto Protocol

Dispatch#4, November 30: Postcards from Elizabeth Fisk

Dispatch#3, October 27: Europe's AfricanArt Treasures

Dispatch#2, October 10: A Report on the Wildlife of Eastern Congo
 Part 1: A shortened version for RollingStone magazine
 Part 2: The original report for the UnitedNations Foundation

Dispatch#1, September 27: On Loss
Aboutloss of  species and cultures in the context of loss in general.
 Part 1: A Sylvia Plath Moment at the CharlesHotel
 Part 2: Hellsapoppin about the horrendousevents of 9/11