Raisa Nastukova
Bio
Freelance journalist focused on stories of both Kashmir culture and society as well as the rising tide of climate change.
Stories (16/0)
The Ghost Ship of Kentucky
Petersburg, Kentucky isn’t known for much. Aside from the divisive Creation Museum, “a cathedral of willingness ignorance” as one TripAdvisior reviewer wrote, it’s a quintessential small town. Well, it’s not even a town but an “incorporated community,” and there isn’t much drawing tourists here. Paranormal experts and lookie-loos alike put this community on their map because of a supposedly haunted abandoned ship run aground in a backwoods river. The ship blips through the history pages like a nautical Forrest Gump, hosting Edison, Madonna, and two presidents, in addition to helping the fight in both world wars.
By Raisa Nastukova3 years ago in Wander
Thousands Have Vanished in the Arizona Borderlands
Not many people are searching Arizona’s isolated, scorching desert for the remains of missing migrants, whose families hundreds or thousands of miles away wait with bated breath for news. Finding missing migrants or searching for corpses isn’t in the Border Patrol’s job description, so a volunteer group called the Aguilas del Desierto bears the family’s sorrow. At least once a month, the volunteer group, many of them Mexican-American, solemnly comb the wasteland for bodies. Desperate families often reach them through Facebook and inform volunteers of the path their loved ones took, along with any identifying information. On one of their searches two days before Christmas, they found nine bodies together; all died of dehydration. On another day, they found 11 bodies in a single afternoon. The Arizona-Sonora borderlands are a graveyard.
By Raisa Nastukova3 years ago in The Swamp
Tripping On Peyote In The Arizona Desert
Kevin, a 43-year-old substitute teacher from Page, Arizona, had no idea what he was getting into when he gulped down another sip of a disgusting drink made from the psychedelic cactus peyote, native to parts of Texas and Mexico. The liquid slugged down his throat as he took in his surroundings, a solitary spot under a canopy protecting him from the daylight’s harsh Arizona sun, a fireplace that would be crackling as soon as night fell, cozy spots to lay down and collect his thoughts, and a sleeping bag, completely surrounded by the isolated desert. As the substance began influencing his consciousness, he was awestruck by subtle hallucinations dancing across the desert scene.
By Raisa Nastukova3 years ago in Potent
The Troubled History of Psychedelic Research
Amid the world wars, Cold War, and culture wars, Swiss writer Walter Vogt called LSD “the only joyous invention of the twentieth century.” The psychedelic drug that would come to define the counterculture of the 1960s got its beginnings not as a recreational substance thrown around at music festivals, but instead as one of the century’s most exciting discoveries for academic fields as diverse as neuroscience, psychology, and psychotherapy.
By Raisa Nastukova3 years ago in Potent