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Neal Conan and I were once briefly roommates in Neal's apartment in a fifth floor walkup on 101st Street in New York. There was a window about the size of a cereal box over a sink that opened onto a gray gravel roof upholstered with pigeon poop. "That's the balcony," said Neal. We both became war correspondents, a New Yorker and a Chicagoan who didn't have driver's licenses, so we hitched rides: with other reporters, soldiers moving to the front, and civilians fleeing towns. Of course, it was when Neal hitched a ride with Chris Hedges (then of The New York Times ) near the end of the 1991 Gulf ..read more

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Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org ..read more

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..read more

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When he first became eligible for the coronavirus vaccine in Illinois, Tom Arnold, 68, says he didn't need any convincing. He raises cattle, hogs and chickens in Elizabeth, a small rural town in the northwest corner of the state. After all, who better to understand why herd immunity matters than a herdsman? "Being a livestock producer, I'm well aware of vaccinations and vaccines," he says. "That's how we develop immunity in our animals. We're always vaccinating the breeding stock to pass on immunity to the little ones." Boosting COVID-19 vaccination rates in rural America is now less a problem ..read more

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org ..read more

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org ..read more