PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

saco-indonesia.com, Wakil Gubernur DKI Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) telah mengungkapkan penerapan 3 in 1 untuk bisa membatasi kendaraan di Jakarta tidak efektif. Pada kenyataannya juga masih banyak pemilik kendaraan dengan menggunakan joki untuk bisa melaluinya. Sehingga ini saat yang tepat menerapkan sistem pembatasan kendaraan dengan sistem elektronik.

"Itu nanti akan dihapuskan 3 in 1 sudah sangat tidak efektif. Sudah disurvei tidak efektif. Makanya nanti akan menerapkan ERP (Electronic Road Pricing)," katanya di Balai Kota DKI Jakarta, Senin (23/12).

Dalam penerapan ERP, Kepala Dinas Perhubungan DKI Jakarta Udar Pristono juga mengungkapkan sepakat dengan pernyataan Ahok. Setelah diterapkan baru kemudian ditentukan bagaimana cara untuk membatasi kendaraan. Namun Pristono belum dapat memastikan kapan rencana ini akan bisa dilakukan.

"3 in 1 itu sudah tidak efektif. Karena hanya mengandalkan mata. Hanya mengandalkan orang. Jadi repot. Sekarang yang sedang yang akan diterapkan itu adalah pajak kemacetan atau biasa terkenalnya ERP," ungkapnya.

Pristono juga menambahkan, penerapan ERP sendiri itu tidak mungkin dilakukan dari perbatasan. Tetapi harus dilakukan secara bertahap, dimulai dari tengah dahulu. Dimana angkutan masalnya juga sudah kuat.

"Jadi ERP itu tidak mungkin dilakukan dari pinggir dulu. ERP akan dilakukan dari tengah dulu. Di mana di tengah itu ada massa angkutan umum nya sudah kuat," katanya.

Tujuan dari penerapan dari tengah dulu supaya orang-orang yang menggunakan kendaraan bisa memarkir kendaraannya di pinggiran kota. Karena jalan raya yang ditengah kota sudah menggunakan ERP.

"Jadi terbalik, bukan dari perbatasan dulu tapi dari tengah dulu. Supaya orang markir mobilnya di perbatasan dia naik bus," tandas Pristono.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

    saco-indonesia.com,

    telah aku maafkan semua kesalahanmu
    asal kau mau berjanji tidak mengulangnya lagi
    telah aku terima sakitnya dikhianati
    sedalam cintaku ini, selama hidupku ini

    hatiku cuma ada satu, sudah untuk mencintaimu
    tolong jangan sakiti lagi, nanti aku bisa mati
    cintaku cuma sama kamu, sayangku cuma untuk kamu
    tolong jangan hancurkan lagi, nanti aku bisa mati

    telah aku terima sakitnya dikhianati
    sedalam cintaku ini, selama hidupku ini

    hatiku cuma ada satu, sudah untuk mencintaimu
    tolong jangan sakiti lagi, nanti aku bisa mati
    cintaku cuma sama kamu, sayangku cuma untuk kamu
    tolong jangan hancurkan lagi, nanti aku bisa mati

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    let only one … just let me your lady
    don’t break my heart please please please
    …

    hatiku cuma ada satu, sudah untuk mencintaimu
    tolong jangan sakiti lagi, nanti aku bisa mati

    hatiku cuma ada satu, sudah untuk mencintaimu
    tolong jangan sakiti lagi, nanti aku bisa mati
    cintaku cuma sama kamu, sayangku cuma untuk kamu
    tolong jangan hancurkan lagi, nanti aku bisa mati
    tolong jangan hancurkan lagi, nanti aku bisa mati

    Editor : dian sukmawati

Berikut ini adalah, 50 pelajaran berharga dari Rukun Islam Kelima untuk kehidupan manusia. Semoga Alloh memberikan taufiq, bantuan, dan menunjuki kebenaran pada kami dalam menyelesaikan tulisan ini.

1. Pendidikan untuk mentauhidkan Alloh, baik dalam ucapan maupun amalan, hal ini terlihat jelas dalam beberapa amalan berikut ini:

a. Bacaan talbiyah, yang disebut juga dengan kalimat tauhid: Labbaikallohumma labbaik…

b. Dimasukkannya dalam talbiyah kata: la syarika lak (tiada sekutu bagi-Mu).

c. Kata la syarika lak yang diulangi dua kali dalam bacaan talbiyah, ini menunjukkan adanya penekanan dalam hal tauhid.

d. Kata-kata: “Innal hamda wan ni’mata laka wal mulk”, maksudnya adalah: “Sesungguhnya semua pujian, segala nikmat, dan seluruh kekuasaan hanya bagi-Mu ya Alloh”, dan ini juga mengandung nilai tauhid.

e. Larangan thowaf di selain Ka’bah, itu artinya kita dilarang untuk thowaf di arofah, di jamarot, di pemakaman, tempat keramat, tempat bersejarah, dll. Ini semua bukti keyakinan kita, bahwa tiada sesembahan yang berhak disembah kecuali Alloh, dan itulah diantara bentuk nyata mentauhidkan Alloh.

2. Pendidikan untuk banyak memuji Alloh. Hal ini tampak pada kata hamdalah yang ada dalam talbiyah. Meski saat datang ke tanah suci, jamaah haji sedang dalam keadaan tertimpa musibah, didera cobaan, sakit, miskin, dan terasingkan… mereka semua tetap memuji Alloh, seakan-akan mereka dalam keadaan lapang, sehat, dan kuat… Sungguh tak diragukan lagi, memuji Alloh dianjurkan bagi setiap muslim, baik di saat suka, maupun duka.

3. Pendidikan untuk selalu membasahi lisan dengan dzikir, ini tampak pada:

a. Disunnahkannya membaca talbiyah hingga sampai di masjidil harom, atau sampai melihat ka’bah, atau sampai memulai thowaf. Meski para ulama berbeda pendapat tentang kapan harus mengakhiri talbiyah, tapi semua pendapat itu mengisyaratkan anjuran untuk memperbanyak talbiyah.

b. Saat thowaf, kita dianjurkan untuk memperbanyak doa, atau dzikir, atau pujian pada Alloh, dan semuanya merupakan bentuk dzikir.

c. Dalam sai juga demikian.

d. Doa di Hari Arofah yang berupa dzikir: “la ilaaha illallohu wahdahu….

e. Hari-hari di mina adalah hari untuk makan, minum, dan berdzikir.

f. Disyariatkannya melempar jumroh adalah untuk berdzikir mengingat-Nya.

g. Disunnahkan untuk membaca takbir dalam setiap lemparan kerikilnya.

Dan masih banyak lagi tempat dan kesempatan lain untuk memperbanyak dzikir dalam ibadah haji ini. Itu semua mengajarkan pada seorang muslim agar lisannya selalu basah dengan bacaan dzikir.

4. Mengajarkan kita untuk mengingat mati, yaitu dari pengenaan kain kafan dalam pelaksanaannya. Dengan ini, seorang mukmin akan teringat dan merasakan bagaimana akhir hidupnya, sehingga hal itu akan mempengaruhi hati dan amalannya.

5. Mengajarkan manusia untuk zuhud pada dunia dan kenikmatannya. Baik dia seorang yang kaya, presiden, atau menteri, ia tidak akan mengenakan kecuali baju putih itu. Seandainya ia ingin mengenakan baju lain yang dimilikinya, tetap saja tidak diperbolehkan baginya.

6- Mendidik manusia untuk qona’ah, sekaligus memberi pelajaran bahwa kekayaan yang hakiki adalah pada sifat qonaah itu. Oleh karena itu, para jama’ah haji dilatih untuk cukup hanya dengan mengenakan pakaian yang menutupi auratnya, cukup dengan tidur sekedar bisa menghilangkan lelah dan malas, dan cukup dengan makan sekedar bisa menopang tubuhnya.

7. Mengajarkan pada manusia, bahwa kekayaan duniawi tidaklah memiliki kedudukan di sisi Alloh bila dilihat dari dzatnya. Oleh karena itu para jamaah haji sama-sama dalam pakaian dan amalannya. Adapun kekayaan, kefakiran, kedudukan, dan tempat tinggal mereka, sungguh hal itu tidak punya pengaruh apa-apa. Yang mempengaruhi mereka hanyalah keikhlasan dan mengikuti sunnah dalam beramal. Sungguh demi Alloh, betapa banyak para masakin di tempat itu yang lebih mulia, dari mereka yang kaya dan memiliki kedudukan yang tinggi!!.

8. Mengajarkan pada manusia dasar Persatuan Islam, hal ini tampak dari seragamnya perbuatan, amalan, tempat, dan waktu mereka.

9. Mengajarkan pada manusia untuk sabar dalam menghadapi kemaksiatan, hal itu tampak pada hal-hal berikut ini:

a. Sabar untuk tidak melakukan hal-hal yang dilarang ketika dalam keadaan ihrom.

b. Sabar untuk tidak melakukan kefasikan, sebagaimana firman-Nya: “Barangsiapa berkewajiban menunaikan ibadah haji dalam bulan-bulan haji, maka janganlah ia berbuat fasik dan keji”. Sehingga ketika ia pulang ke negerinya, ia telah terdidik dan terbiasa sabar dari segala kemaksiatan, sebagaimana ia sabar menghadapinya pada hari-hari itu.

10. Mengajarkan pada muslim untuk sabar dalam ketaatan. Dan barangsiapa mau merenungi masalah-masalah tentang haji, tentu ia akan menemukan makna ini. Hal itu terlihat diantaranya:

Ketika jama’ah haji ingin bersegera kembali ke negerinya, ia tidak diperkenankan sebelum tanggal 12 dzulhijjah.

Pulangnya juga harus setelah melempar dan thowaf wada’, meski ia berasal dari negeri yang jauh, tetap saja ia harus menjalani semua amalan ketaatan ini, baru setelah itu diperkenankan untuk pulang.

11. Mengajarkan pada manusia, agar menyiapkan diri sebelum melakukan ketaatan, oleh karena itu disunnahkan bagi yang ingin memulai ihrom, agar mandi, membersihkan diri, memotong kuku, membersihkan rambut kemaluan dan ketiaknya, dan memarfumi badannya, sebagaimana dituntunkan oleh Nabi -shollallohu alaihi wasallam-. Begitu pula ketika sudah tahallul awal dan akan melakukan thowaf ifadloh, disunnahkan baginya memakai parfum, sebagaimana dicontohkan oleh beliau. Tak diragukan lagi, tentunya hal ini akan berpengaruh terhadap jiwa ketika menjalani ibadahnya, sekaligus menambah kekhusyu’annya.

12. Mengajarkan pada manusia untuk ikhlas dan tulus hati, yang keduanya adalah puncak amalan hati, dengan keduanya sebuah amal akan diterima dan mendapatkan tempat yang mulia di sisi-Nya.

13. Mengajarkan pada manusia untuk tawakkal dan menyerahkan urusannya hanya pada Alloh semata, terutama dalam menunaikan dan memudahkan ibadahnya. Lihatlah bagaimana seorang muslim yang datang dengan meninggalkan keluarga, anak, dan hartanya, tentunya ia akan menyerahkan urusan harta dan sanak keluarganya pada Tuhannya, ia juga tentunya banyak meminta permohonan pada-Nya dalam menjalani beratnya perjalanan, terutama mereka yang datang dari negeri jauh.

14. mengajarkan manusia untuk bertawakkal yang benar, tentunya tawakkal yang tidak mengesampingkan usaha lahiriyah yang diperintahkan untuk mencari rizki, oleh karenanya Alloh berfirman: “Tidak ada masalah jika kalian ingin mengharapkan kemurahan (rizki) dari Tuhan kalian”. Ayat ini turun pada mereka yang menyangka bahwa makna tawakkal adalah dengan meninggalkan berdagang dalam haji.

15. Mengajarkan pada manusia untuk mewujudkan semua amalan-amalan hati. Sungguh tiada ibadah yang tampak padanya semua atau sebagian besar amalan hati seperti dalam haji ini. Terkumpul dalam ibadah haji ini amalan ikhlas, ketulusan hati, roja’, tawakkal, zuhud, waro’, muhasabah, keyakinan… dll”

16. Mendidik manusia untuk menundukkan hati dari apa yang diingininya, selama hal itu dilarang oleh syariat. Parfum, tutup kepala, dan semua larangan ihrom haruslah ditinggalkan oleh jama’ah haji padahal hatinya menginginkannya. Ia meninggalkannya bukan karena apa-apa, tapi karena syariat melarangnya.

17. mengajarkan manusia untuk taat dengan aturan dan batasan syariat. Hal ini nampak dalam aturan miqot dan batasannya, aturan waktu melempar, aturan waktu meninggalkan arofah, dll.

18. Mengajarkan pada manusia untuk membuka pintu qiyas yang shohih. Pelajaran berharga ini, bisa kita ambil dari ucapan Umar r.a. pada penduduk negeri Irak ketika mereka mengatakan: “Sungguh dua miqot itu, tidak pas dengan jalan kami”, maka Umar r.a. mengatakan: “Ambillah tempat yang sejajar dengannya di jalan kalian” (muttafaqun alaih).

Dengan ini, seorang muslim tahu bahwa aturan syariat bukanlah aturan yang kaku, dan tak bisa dirubah sama sekali. Tapi terbuka juga dalam aturan syariat ini pintu qiyas, tentunya hal ini hanya dikhususkan bagi mereka yang memiliki syarat dan ketentuan dalam ber-ijtihad.

19. Mengajarkan pada manusia tentang rukun kedua diterimanya suatu amalan, yakni mengikuti tuntunan Nabi -shollallohu alaihi wasallam-. Oleh karena itu, beliau menyabdakan: “Ambillah cara manasik kalian dariku!” (muttafaqun alaih). Beliau juga mengatakan dalam kesempatan lain: “Melemparlah dengan kerikil yang seperti ini!”. Begitu juga perkataan Umar r.a. pada hajar aswad: “Aku tahu, kau ini hanyalah sebuah batu, yang takkan mampu memberi manfaat atau mendatangkan bahaya, andai saja aku tidak melihat Rosululloh -shollallohu alaihi wasallam- menciummu, tentunya aku takkan menciummu” (muttafaqun alaih).

Dengan itu semua, seorang muslim akan lulus dari madrasah hajinya, dalam keadaan telah terbiasa mengikuti tuntunan Nabinya -shollallohu alaihi wasallam-, baik dalam hal yang besar, maupun yang paling kecil sekalipun.

20. Memberikan pelajaran akan mudahnya ajaran syariat, sehingga keyakinan ini bisa tertanam dalam hatinya dan terasa ringan ketika menerapkannya. Hal ini, bisa terlihat dalam amalan-amalan berikut ini:

a. Letak miqot yang menyebar dan terpisah-pisah, hingga memudahkan para jama’ah haji dalam memulai ihromnya.

b. Cara manasik haji yang bermacam-macam.

c. Adanya hukum khusus bagi para jama’ah yang lemah dan lanjut usia.

21. Mendidik manusia, agar memperhatikan adanya perbedaan diantara mereka. Sungguh tidaklah mereka berada pada derajat yang sama. Hal ini tampak pada adanya cara manasik haji yang bermacam-macam. Diantara mereka ada yang tidak mampu menunaikan hajinya, kecuali dengan cara ifrod. Diantara mereka ada yang hanya mampu melakukannya dengan qiron dan hal itu menjadi lebih mudah dan lebih utama baginya. Dan diantara mereka ada yang bisa menunaikan manasik dengan cara yang paling utama, yakni tamattu’.

Sungguh ini menunjukkan tingginya perhatian syariat pada keadaan, kemampuan, masalah, dan perbedaan mereka. Sekaligus merupakan bantahan bagi orang yang menuntut bersatunya umat dalam segala hal, baik dalam amalan maupun dalam hal kepentingannya.

22. Mengajari manusia bagaimana fikhul khilaf dalam kehidupan nyata, hal itu tampak pada hal-hal berikut ini:

a. Perbedaan para jama’ah dalam dalam memilih cara manasiknya.

b. Perbedaan para jama’ah dalam menjalani amalan yang dilakukan pada hari ke-10 bulan Dzulhijjah.

c. Perbedaan para jama’ah dalam hal dzikir yang dibaca ketika meninggalkan Mina menuju Arofah. Sebagaimana disebutkan, para sahabat dulu ada yang bertalbiyah, ada juga yang bertakbir.

d. Perbedaan waktu bolehnya beranjak dari Muzdalifah ke Mina, melihat keadaan masing-masing, bagi yang lemah ada waktu tersendiri, dan bagi yang kuat ada waktu tersendiri.

e. Perbedaan para jama’ah dalam memilih nafar awal atau nafar tsani untuk ibadah hajinya.

f. Perbedaan para jama’ah dalam memilih menggundul atau memendekkan rambutnya ketika hendak bertahallul.

Semua contoh di atas, mengajari para jama’ah bagaimana menyikapi perbedaan dan individunya. Sungguh, tidak ada nukilan tentang timbulnya cekcok atau tuduhan antara satu sahabat dengan sahabat lainnya, karena sebab memilih cara manasik tertentu, meski pilihan mereka adalah cara manasik yang kurang utama.

23. Mengajari manusia, bahwa tidak semua yang diterangkan oleh syari’at itu mungkin dicerna oleh akal, tujuannya adalah agar syariat tetap menjadi pemegang kendali hukum di atas akal, bukan di bawahnya.

Lihatlah sebagai contoh sabda Nabi -shollallohu alaihi wasallam-: “Perbanyaklah haji dan umroh, karena keduanya bisa menghilangkan kefakiran sebagaimana mampunya tengku pembakar menghilangkan karatnya besi. (Diriwayatkan oleh para pengarang kitab sunan, dan dishohihkan oleh Albani)…

Padahal jika di nalar dengan akal, memperbanyak haji dan umroh itu, akan mengundang banyak kebutuhan dan tentunya akan banyak menghabiskan uang, tapi syariat malah mengatakan seperti itu. Sungguh akal tidak akan bisa menerangkan secara rasional, bahwa orang yang memperbanyak haji dan umroh akan menghilangkan kefakiran, Alloh lah yang tahu akan hakikat di balik itu semua.

Dengan ini, seorang muslim akan terdidik untuk selalu menghubungkan dirinya dengan Alloh dan ilmu-Nya, sekaligus melatihnya untuk berjiwa besar dan mau mengakui kelemahan dan kekurangannya.

24. Mengajari manusia, bahwa yang paling afdlol, adalah yang sesuai dg syariat, bukan yang lebih berat dan susah, misalnya: Memulai ihrom dari miqot, lebih utama dari pada memulainya dari tempat sebelumnya, meski itu lebih berat dan susah. Sehingga dengan ini, seorang muslim terdidik untuk memuliakan syariat dan memperhatikannya.

25. Melatih manusia, untuk terbiasa tertib dan taat aturan. Budaya tersebut bukanlah keistimewaan negeri kafir, sebaliknya itu merupakah nilai Islam yang telah kita abaikan. Nilai ini tampak dari hal-hal berikut:

a. Harusnya tertib dalam menjalani amalan-amalan Umroh.

b. Sunnahnya tertib dalam menjalankan amalan-amalan pada hari ke-10 bulan dzulhijjah.

c. Harusnya tertib ketika melempar jamarot.
Tapi yang sungguh mengherankan, di zaman kita ini, justru ketertiban itu malah dijadikan cemoohan!…

26. Mendidik manusia untuk menekan syahwatnya secara khusus, oleh karena itu akad nikah menjadi larangan saat dalam keadaan ihrom, bahkan sampai rofats[1] dan jima’ pun dilarang. Tidak diragukan, ini mendidik seorang muslim agar waspada dan hati-hati dengan syahwat ini.

27. Mendidik manusia untuk menunaikan ibadahnya sesempurna dan sebaik mungkin, oleh karena itu Alloh berfirman: “Barangsiapa yang berkewajiban haji, maka janganlah ia melakukan rofats, kefasikan, dan debat (kusir) dalam ibadah hajinya”, beliau -shollallohu alaihi wasallam- juga bersabda: “Haji yang mabrur itu, tiada balasan lain baginya kecuali surga” (Muttafaqun Alaih). Ini semua mendidik muslim untuk menjaga kualitas ibadahnya.

28. Mendidik manusia untuk menyesuaikan dirinya saat keadaan dan kebiasaan lingkungannya berubah. Tentunya sepanjang tahun jama’ah haji terbiasa melakukan sesuatu di negaranya, lalu ketika datang haji, ia harus memaksa dirinya untuk menyesuaikan dengan waktu dan jam yang sedang ia jalani. Inilah maksud dari arahan Umar r.a. saat mengatakan: “Prihatinlah, karena nikmat-nikmat yang ada itu tidak akan langgeng selamanya”.

29. Mendidik manusia untuk banyak berdoa. Dalam manasik haji, disunnahkan bagi muslim untuk berdoa pada Tuhannya, di kebanyakan tempat yang dikunjunginya, misalnya:

a. Saat thowaf.

b. Saat sholat sunat 2 rokaat setelah thowaf.

c. Saat minum air zamzam.

d. Saat naik ke bukit Shofa dan Marwa.

e. Saat di tengah-tengah pelaksanaan sa’i.

f. Saat Hari Arofah

g. Setelah terbit fajarnya hari nahr (tanggal 10 dzulhijjah) hingga langit menguning.

h. Setelah melempar dua jamarot, Shughro dan Wustho.

Dan tempat-tempat lainnya, itu semua mendidik seorang muslim untuk selalu mendekatkan diri pada Tuhannya dalam doa dan selalu kembali pada-Nya.

30. Mendidik muslim untuk ta’abbud dengan sifat maha mendengar dan maha melihatnya Alloh ta’ala, sebagaimana madzhabnya Ahlus sunnah wal jama’ah dalam menetapkan sifat dan maknanya, ini tampak dalam hal-hal berikut ini:

a. Banyaknya bahasa yang beraneka ragam, suara yang berbeda-beda, kebutuhan yang bermacam-macam, pun begitu, Dia yang maha suci tetap mampu mendengarkan doanya ini, dan mengabulkan doanya itu, serta mengetahui seluruh bahasa mereka.

b. Dia maha tahu niat para jama’ah haji yang berbeda-beda, dan seberapa tulus dan ikhlasnya mereka, meski jumlah mereka sangat banyak.

31. Melatih manusia, untuk tidak menganggap remeh apapun yang diharamkan Alloh, oleh karena itulah dalam ibadah haji ini, ada beberapa kalimat yang diulang-ulang, diantaranya:

a. Tanah haram.

b. Bulan haram.

c. Larangan-larangan ketika sedang ihrom.

Dengan begitu seorang muslim terlatih untuk mengagungkan apa yang diharamkan oleh Alloh ta’ala dari sekian banyak sesuatu yang diharamkannya.

32. Melatih manusia untuk meneguhkan prinsip “loyal pada kaum muslimin dan berlepas diri dari kaum kafirin”. Oleh karena itulah disunnahkan dalam sholat sunat setelah thowaf untuk membaca surat alkafirun, yang didalamnya menekankan dan menuangkan dasar prinsip ini.

Termasuk diantara bukti paling nampak dari petunjuk menyelisihi kaum musyrikin adalah, beranjaknya para jama’ah haji (dari Muzdalifah) sebelum terbitnya matahari.

33. Mendidik manusia untuk tenang, tertib, dan mempraktekkan prinsip itsar (mendahulukan orang lain dalam hal duniawi). Oleh karena itulah dahulu Rosul -shollallohu alaihi wasallam- ketika meninggalkan Arofah menyabdakan: “tenang dan tenanglah”, karena saat itu merupakan momen yang biasanya rame dan memungkinkan terjadinya saling menyakiti antara kaum muslimin.

Sifat waqor dan tenang adalah sifat yang selayaknya melekat pada diri seorang muslim, sebagaimana Alloh memberikan sifat itu pada mereka dalam kitab-Nya: “yaitu mereka yang berjalan di atas bumi dengan sopan”

34. Mendidik manusia untuk menyatukan kata, meski keadaan dan cara manasik mereka berbeda-beda. Ini merupakan dasar yang agung, dan ditunjukkan dalam banyak nash syariat dan juga tampak dari keadaan para sahabat -rodliallohu anhum-.

35. Melatih manusia untuk mengingat hari kiamat, yakni dengan banyaknya orang yang berkumpul saat itu, bahkan pada hari kiamat nanti, Alloh akan mengumpulkan manusia dari awal hingga akhir penciptaan. Tak diragukan lagi, dengan mengingat hari kiamat, hati seorang muslim akan hidup dan memiliki pengaruh besar dalam kekhusyu’an dan ibadahnya.

36. Mendidik manusia untuk memperhatikan dan menghargai waktu. Hari arofah adalah kesempatan yang tak ada gantinya bila telah hilang, hari-hari tasyriq adalah hari-hari yang diperuntukkan untuk berdzikir (mengingat Alloh), dan di 10 hari pertama bulan dzul hijjah amalan ibadah dilipat-gandakan pahalanya, itu semua melatih seorang muslim untuk memanfaatkan waktunya untuk apapun yang bermanfaat baginya.

37. Mendidik manusia untuk menjaga ukhuwwah imaniyyah, itu tampak dari bertemunya raga, yang akan menjadikan berkumpulnya hati, dan tentunya akan terlihat pengaruh pertalian persaudaraan itu dalam tingkah laku dan kehidupan sehari-hari.

38. Mengajari manusia untuk mewujudkan lahan yang riil untuk mendidik jiwa, misalnya:

a. Haji adalah tempat untuk mendidik jiwa untuk menjaga pandangan mata dari sesuatu yang diharamkan.

b. Haji adalah tempat untuk mendidik jiwa untuk itsar (mendahulukan orang lain) dalam urusan duniawi)

c. Haji adalah tempat mendidik jiwa untuk memberi bantuan dan sedekah.

d. Haji adalah tempat mendidik jiwa untuk menerapkan amar ma’ruf nahi mungkar.

Sungguh haji merupakan pusat praktek nyata dan tempat pelatihan untuk menguji kepribadian seseorang.

39. Mendidik manusia untuk membuktikan taqwanya, karena tempat ketakwaan adalah hati, dan sebagian besar amalan haji itu bertumpu pada hati dengan derajat paling tinggi, oleh karena itulah Alloh menyebutkan redaksi takwa dalam ayat-ayat haji, Alloh berfirman: “Sempurnakanlah haji dan umroh itu untuk Alloh…” di akhir ayat disebutkan: “dan bertakwalah kalian pada Alloh!”… Dia juga berfirman: “Siapkanlah bekal (untuk haji), sungguh sebaik-baik bekal adalah taqwa”.

40. Mendidik manusia agar berakhlak mulia, yang merupakan sesuatu yang paling berat dalam timbangan amal di hari kiamat nanti, hal ini tampak dari firman-Nya: “Janganlah berdebat (kusir) dalam haji!”. Maka anjuran untuk meninggalkan debat merupakan pendidikan untuk berakhlak mulia. Hal itu juga tampak pada anjuran Nabi -shollallohu alaihi wasallam- kepada para sahabatnya untuk tetap tenang ketika meninggalkan Arofah.

41. Mendidik manusia untuk mencintai seluruh Nabi -alaihimus salam-, hal ini tampak dari:

Pemenuhan panggilannya Nabi Ibrohim ketika memanggil manusia untuk haji.

Menziarahi ka’bah yang dibangun olehnya bersama Ismail.

Dan sa’i di jalannya siti hajar ketika mencarikan air untuk Isma’il.

42. Mendidik manusia untuk menjalankan macam-macam ibadah, seperti: Thowaf, sa’i, sholat, mabit, melempar, menyembelih, menggundul, dll. Sehingga seorang muslim terdidik untuk tidak hanya terpaku dalam satu macam ibadah saja, tapi menjadikan agar ibadahnya bervariasi dan merasakan nikmatnya melakukan ibadah.

43. Mendidik manusia untuk mengagungkan Alloh, hal ini tampak dalam beberapa hal berikut:

a. Kepala yang di… dan digundul untuk mendekatkan diri dan bersimpuh kepada Alloh.

b. Hadyu yang disembelih untuk beribadah pada-Nya, dialirkan darahnya karena wajah-Nya, dan nama-Nya juga disebut ketika menyembelihnya.

44. Mendidik manusia untuk mencintai Alloh. Siapapun yang mau merenungi pemandangan jama’ah haji yang mencapai jutaan, dan merenungi bagaimana Alloh memberi mereka rizki, mengatur, menjaga, dan menanggung kebutuhan mereka, ini akan menuntunnya untuk mencintai-Nya. Dengan ini dan poin sebelum ini, akan terkumpul kecintaan dan pengagungan pada Alloh, dan inilah hakekat dari ibadah.

45. Mendidik manusia untuk mengetahui jasa Nabi -shollallohu alaihi wasallam- dan para sahabatnya -rodliallohu anhum- dalam menyebarkan agama ke seluruh penjuru dunia. Ketika anda merenungi jumlah jama’ah haji yang sangat besar itu, mereka memiliki daerah, warna, dan bahasa yang beragam, tentu anda akan tahu jasa para pendahulu dalam menyebarkan agama Alloh ini. Lihatlah bagaimana ia bisa sampai ke negara-negara Asia Timur, Afrika, bahkan Eropa. Semoga Alloh membalas mereka dengan balasan yang paling baik atas tugas berat yang diembannya dengan sebaik-baiknya, dan semoga Alloh memgampuni kita atas kekurangan kita dalam meneruskannya, dan kita memohon kepada Alloh agar membantu kita dalam urusan ini.

46. Mendidik manusia untuk berusaha membuat jengkel kaum musyrikin, dengan cara apapun, oleh karena itulah beliau -shollallohu alaihi wasallam- menyariatkan roml ketika thowaf hanya untuk membuat jengkel kaum musyrikin saja, yakni saat mereka mengata-ngatai kaum muslimin ketika datang ke Mekah: “Mereka itu mendatangi kalian, dalam keadaan telah dilemahkan oleh Humma Yatsrib“.

47. Mendidik manusia agar merasakan pengaruh ibadah dalam kehidupan ini. Meski dengan banyaknya jama’ah haji, adanya keramaian, berdesakan, berat, dan lelah, tetap saja jiwa orang-orang itu lembut, dan jarang terjadi masalah, suara tinggi, dan saling marah. Sebabnya adalah -wallohu a’lam-, karena ibadah yang sedang mereka lakukan, mempengaruhi keadaan jiwa mereka, hingga merubahnya menjadi jiwa yang tinggi, yang tidak peduli dengan hal-hal yang remeh.

Beda halnya dengan pemandangan di pasar misalnya, banyak sekali terjadi jeritan, dan suara yang tinggi, banyak pula terjadi masalah dan hal-hal buruk lainnya. Itu semua memberikan pelajaran berharga bagi seorang muslim, tentang adanya perbedaan yang jelas terlihat antara dua keadaan itu.

48. Mendidik manusia untuk selalu sadar tanggung jawab. Ketika terjadi kesalahan dari para jama’ah haji -kadang sebagian kesalahannya dalam hal-hal yang diperkirakan semua orang tahu bahwa itu salah-, ini mendidik muslim untuk sadar tanggung-jawab yang dibebankan di pundaknya untuk memberitahu saudaranya, menyodorkan sesuatu yang bermanfaat bagi mereka, dan menghilangkan kebodohan yang ada pada mereka. Penulis yakin inilah yang bisa memberi manfaat, bukan malah mencemooh atau menuduh yang bukan-bukan pada mereka yang salah.

49. Melatih manusia untuk berjihad, dengan adanya masyaqqoh, lelah, dan keinginan hati  yang tak dituruti. Oleh karena itulah Nabi -shollallohu alaihi wasallam- menamainya jihad, sebagaimana dalam sabdanya: “Bagi kalian (para wanita) ada jihad yang tanpa perang, yaitu haji dan umroh” (HR. Bukhori)

50. Mendidik manusia untuk bangga dengan agama dan keislamanya. Ini tampak dari keadaan setan di Hari Arofah, telah disebutkan dalam kitab Al-Muwaththo’ karya Imam Malik, bahwa Nabi -shollallohu alaihi wasallam- pernah bersabda: “Tiada suatu haripun, yang saat itu setan terlihat paling kerdil, paling hina, dan paling marah, melebihi Hari Arofah” (dihasankan oleh Ibnu Abdil Barr -rohimahulloh-). Hal ini juga tampak dari bagaimana Alloh membangga-banggakan hambanya yang sedang wukuf di Arofah di hadapan para malaikat, sebagaimana disebutkan dalam shohih muslim.

Baca Artikel Lainnya : TANDA-TANDA HAJI MABRUR

Jika memang berjodoh, ayahanda Bella Shofie, Hamzah Nasution, tidak hanya menganggap Adjie Pangestu sebagai menantu. Tapi akan menerimanya sebagai anaknya sendiri, sekaligus teman yang bisa diajak sharing.

"Kalau saya sih lihatnya bukan menantu. Kalau jodoh anak saya, ya saya anggap seperti anak sendiri, jadi teman sharing," kata Hamzah Nasution ketika dijumpai di Kawasan Ancol, Jakarta Utara, Minggu (2/6) malam.

Meski sudah diterima secara terbuka, bukan berarti dalam waktu dekat Bella akan melanjutkan hubungannya dengan Adjie ke pelaminan. Mereka masih akan melanjutkan beberapa agenda yang harus diselesaikan. "Kalau untuk nikah, nanti dulu ya tapi kalau sudah jodoh mau dibilang apa," tegas Hamzah.

Hal senada juga terlontar oleh Bella. Saat ini masih ingin menikmati perjalanan hubungannya, tapi dia tidak dapat menolak jika Tuhan berkehendak lain. "Kita nggak bisa nolak jodoh juga, kalau memang jodohnya dekat mau gimana lagi. Kalau sekarang sih jalanin saja dulu. Pengenalan juga dan saling support," pungkas Bella. (kpl/aha/dis/dar)

sumber : saco-indonesia

devan.

Borussia Dortmund benar-benar melakukan persiapan terbiknya untuk melawan Real Madrid, Tim Jerman Itu tampil sangat memuaskan dengan mengalahkan Real Madrid 4-1.

Dortmund Menerima Kedatangan Madrid di Signal Iduna Park dengan tenang, Kamis (25/4/2013) dini hari WIB, Alhasil empat gol dilesatkan oleh Robert Lewandowski Pada menit kedelapan, 50, 55 serta penalty di menit ke-66. Sementara satu gol Madrid, diciptakan lewat Cristiano Ronaldo di menit ke-42.

Dengan kemenangan ini Dortmund memperbesar peluangnya melaju ke babak final. Pasukan Kuning-Hitam tinggal membutuhkan hasil seri atau seandainya kalah tak kebobolan lebih dari tiga gol tanpa balas saat bertandang ke markas Madrid, di Santiago Bernabeu, pada semifinal leg kedua, pekan depan.
 

Susunan Pemain
BORUSSIA DORTMUND
R Weidenfeller (Gk); M Hummels, Piszczek (Großkreutz 83′), N Subotić,  M Schmelzer, J Błaszczykowsi (Kehl 82′) , Bender,  Gündogan (Schieber 90+2′), M Reus, M Götze, Lewandowski

REAL MADRID
Diego López (Gk); Sergio Ramos, Pepe, Fábio Coentrão, Varane, Xabi Alonso (Kaka 80′), Modrić (Di Maria 68′), Özil, Khedira, Cristiano Ronaldo, Higuaín (Benzema 68′)

“It was really nice to play with other women and not have this underlying tone of being at each other’s throats.”

Late in April, after Native American actors walked off in disgust from the set of Adam Sandler’s latest film, a western sendup that its distributor, Netflix, has defended as being equally offensive to all, a glow of pride spread through several Native American communities.

Tantoo Cardinal, a Canadian indigenous actress who played Black Shawl in “Dances With Wolves,” recalled thinking to herself, “It’s come.” Larry Sellers, who starred as Cloud Dancing in the 1990s television show “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” thought, “It’s about time.” Jesse Wente, who is Ojibwe and directs film programming at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, found himself encouraged and surprised. There are so few film roles for indigenous actors, he said, that walking off the set of a major production showed real mettle.

But what didn’t surprise Mr. Wente was the content of the script. According to the actors who walked off the set, the film, titled “The Ridiculous Six,” included a Native American woman who passes out and is revived after white men douse her with alcohol, and another woman squatting to urinate while lighting a peace pipe. “There’s enough history at this point to have set some expectations around these sort of Hollywood depictions,” Mr. Wente said.

The walkout prompted a rhetorical “What do you expect from an Adam Sandler film?,” and a Netflix spokesman said that in the movie, blacks, Mexicans and whites were lampooned as well. But Native American actors and critics said a broader issue was at stake. While mainstream portrayals of native peoples have, Mr. Wente said, become “incrementally better” over the decades, he and others say, they remain far from accurate and reflect a lack of opportunities for Native American performers. What’s more, as Native Americans hunger for representation on screen, critics say the absence of three-dimensional portrayals has very real off-screen consequences.

“Our people are still healing from historical trauma,” said Loren Anthony, one of the actors who walked out. “Our youth are still trying to figure out who they are, where they fit in this society. Kids are killing themselves. They’re not proud of who they are.” They also don’t, he added, see themselves on prime time television or the big screen. Netflix noted while about five people walked off the “The Ridiculous Six” set, 100 or so Native American actors and extras stayed.

But in interviews, nearly a dozen Native American actors and film industry experts said that Mr. Sandler’s humor perpetuated decades-old negative stereotypes. Mr. Anthony said such depictions helped feed the despondency many Native Americans feel, with deadly results: Native Americans have the highest suicide rate out of all the country’s ethnicities.

The on-screen problem is twofold, Mr. Anthony and others said: There’s a paucity of roles for Native Americans — according to the Screen Actors Guild in 2008 they accounted for 0.3 percent of all on-screen parts (those figures have yet to be updated), compared to about 2 percent of the general population — and Native American actors are often perceived in a narrow way.

In his Peabody Award-winning documentary “Reel Injun,” the Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond explored Hollywood depictions of Native Americans over the years, and found they fell into a few stereotypical categories: the Noble Savage, the Drunk Indian, the Mystic, the Indian Princess, the backward tribal people futilely fighting John Wayne and manifest destiny. While the 1990 film “Dances With Wolves” won praise for depicting Native Americans as fully fleshed out human beings, not all indigenous people embraced it. It was still told, critics said, from the colonialists’ point of view. In an interview, John Trudell, a Santee Sioux writer, actor (“Thunderheart”) and the former chairman of the American Indian Movement, described the film as “a story of two white people.”

“God bless ‘Dances with Wolves,’ ” Michael Horse, who played Deputy Hawk in “Twin Peaks,” said sarcastically. “Even ‘Avatar.’ Someone’s got to come save the tribal people.”

Dan Spilo, a partner at Industry Entertainment who represents Adam Beach, one of today’s most prominent Native American actors, said while typecasting dogs many minorities, it is especially intractable when it comes to Native Americans. Casting directors, he said, rarely cast them as police officers, doctors or lawyers. “There’s the belief that the Native American character should be on reservations or riding a horse,” he said.

“We don’t see ourselves,” Mr. Horse said. “We’re still an antiquated culture to them, and to the rest of the world.”

Ms. Cardinal said she was once turned down for the role of the wife of a child-abusing cop because the filmmakers felt that casting her would somehow be “too political.”

Another sore point is the long run of white actors playing American Indians, among them Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn and, more recently, Johnny Depp, whose depiction of Tonto in the 2013 film “Lone Ranger,” was viewed as racist by detractors. There are, of course, exceptions. The former A&E series “Longmire,” which, as it happens, will now be on Netflix, was roundly praised for its depiction of life on a Northern Cheyenne reservation, with Lou Diamond Phillips, who is of Cherokee descent, playing a Northern Cheyenne man.

Others also point to the success of Mr. Beach, who played a Mohawk detective in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and landed a starring role in the forthcoming D C Comics picture “Suicide Squad.” Mr. Beach said he had come across insulting scripts backed by people who don’t see anything wrong with them.

“I’d rather starve than do something that is offensive to my ancestral roots,” Mr. Beach said. “But I think there will always be attempts to drawn on the weakness of native people’s struggles. The savage Indian will always be the savage Indian. The white man will always be smarter and more cunning. The cavalry will always win.”

The solution, Mr. Wente, Mr. Trudell and others said, lies in getting more stories written by and starring Native Americans. But Mr. Wente noted that while independent indigenous film has blossomed in the last two decades, mainstream depictions have yet to catch up. “You have to stop expecting for Hollywood to correct it, because there seems to be no ability or desire to correct it,” Mr. Wente said.

There have been calls to boycott Netflix but, writing for Indian Country Today Media Network, which first broke news of the walk off, the filmmaker Brian Young noted that the distributor also offered a number of films by or about Native Americans.

The furor around “The Ridiculous Six” may drive more people to see it. Then one of the questions that Mr. Trudell, echoing others, had about the film will be answered: “Who the hell laughs at this stuff?”

As governor, Mr. Walker alienated Republicans and his fellow Democrats, particularly the Democratic powerhouse Richard J. Daley, the mayor of Chicago.

Mr. Bartoszewski was given honorary Israeli citizenship for his work to save Jews during World War II and later surprised even himself by being instrumental in reconciling Poland and Germany.

A former member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Smedvig helped found the wide-ranging Empire Brass quintet.

Mr. Pfaff was an international affairs columnist and author who found Washington’s intervention in world affairs often misguided.

THE WRITERS ASHLEY AND JAQUAVIS COLEMAN know the value of a good curtain-raiser. The couple have co-authored dozens of novels, and they like to start them with a bang: a headlong action sequence, a blast of violence or sex that rocks readers back on their heels. But the Colemans concede they would be hard-pressed to dream up anything more gripping than their own real-life opening scene.

In the summer of 2001, JaQuavis Coleman was a 16-year-old foster child in Flint, Mich., the former auto-manufacturing mecca that had devolved, in the wake of General Motors’ plant closures, into one of the country’s most dangerous cities, with a decimated economy and a violent crime rate more than three times the national average. When JaQuavis was 8, social services had removed him from his mother’s home. He spent years bouncing between foster families. At 16, JaQuavis was also a businessman: a crack dealer with a network of street-corner peddlers in his employ.

One day that summer, JaQuavis met a fellow dealer in a parking lot on Flint’s west side. He was there to make a bulk sale of a quarter-brick, or “nine-piece” — a nine-ounce parcel of cocaine, with a street value of about $11,000. In the middle of the transaction, JaQuavis heard the telltale chirp of a walkie-talkie. His customer, he now realized, was an undercover policeman. JaQuavis jumped into his car and spun out onto the road, with two unmarked police cars in pursuit. He didn’t want to get into a high-speed chase, so he whipped his car into a church parking lot and made a run for it, darting into an alleyway behind a row of small houses, where he tossed the quarter-brick into some bushes. When JaQuavis reached the small residential street on the other side of the houses, he was greeted by the police, who handcuffed him and went to search behind the houses where, they told him, they were certain he had ditched the drugs. JaQuavis had been dealing since he was 12, had amassed more than $100,000 and had never been arrested. Now, he thought: It’s over.

But when the police looked in the bushes, they couldn’t find any cocaine. They interrogated JaQuavis, who denied having ever possessed or sold drugs. They combed the backyard alley some more. After an hour of fruitless efforts, the police were forced to unlock the handcuffs and release their suspect.

JaQuavis was baffled by the turn of events until the next day, when he received a phone call. The previous afternoon, a 15-year-old girl had been sitting in her home on the west side of Flint when she heard sirens. She looked out of the window of her bedroom, and watched a young man throw a package in the bushes behind her house. She recognized him. He was a high school classmate — a handsome, charismatic boy whom she had admired from afar. The girl crept outside and grabbed the bundle, which she hid in her basement. “I have something that belongs to you,” Ashley Snell told JaQuavis Coleman when she reached him by phone. “You wanna come over here and pick it up?”

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In the Colemans’ first novel, “Dirty Money” (2005), they told a version of this story. The outline was the same: the drug deal gone bad, the dope chucked in the bushes, the fateful phone call. To the extent that the authors took poetic license, it was to tone down the meet-cute improbability of the true-life events. In “Dirty Money,” the girl, Anari, and the crack dealer, Maurice, circle each other warily for a year or so before coupling up. But the facts of Ashley and JaQuavis’s romance outstripped pulp fiction. They fell in love more or less at first sight, moved into their own apartment while still in high school and were married in 2008. “We were together from the day we met,” Ashley says. “I don’t think we’ve spent more than a week apart in total over the past 14 years.”

That partnership turned out to be creative and entrepreneurial as well as romantic. Over the past decade, the Colemans have published nearly 50 books, sometimes as solo writers, sometimes under pseudonyms, but usually as collaborators with a byline that has become a trusted brand: “Ashley & JaQuavis.” They are marquee stars of urban fiction, or street lit, a genre whose inner-city settings and lurid mix of crime, sex and sensationalism have earned it comparisons to gangsta rap. The emergence of street lit is one of the big stories in recent American publishing, a juggernaut that has generated huge sales by catering to a readership — young, black and, for the most part, female — that historically has been ill-served by the book business. But the genre is also widely maligned. Street lit is subject to a kind of triple snobbery: scorned by literati who look down on genre fiction generally, ignored by a white publishing establishment that remains largely indifferent to black books and disparaged by African-American intellectuals for poor writing, coarse values and trafficking in racial stereotypes.

But if a certain kind of cultural prestige is shut off to the Colemans, they have reaped other rewards. They’ve built a large and loyal fan base, which gobbles up the new Ashley & JaQuavis titles that arrive every few months. Many of those books are sold at street-corner stands and other off-the-grid venues in African-American neighborhoods, a literary gray market that doesn’t register a blip on best-seller tallies. Yet the Colemans’ most popular series now regularly crack the trade fiction best-seller lists of The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. For years, the pair had no literary agent; they sold hundreds of thousands of books without banking a penny in royalties. Still, they have earned millions of dollars, almost exclusively from cash-for-manuscript deals negotiated directly with independent publishing houses. In short, though little known outside of the world of urban fiction, the Colemans are one of America’s most successful literary couples, a distinction they’ve achieved, they insist, because of their work’s gritty authenticity and their devotion to a primal literary virtue: the power of the ripping yarn.

“When you read our books, you’re gonna realize: ‘Ashley & JaQuavis are storytellers,’ ” says Ashley. “Our tales will get your heart pounding.”

THE COLEMANS’ HOME BASE — the cottage from which they operate their cottage industry — is a spacious four-bedroom house in a genteel suburb about 35 miles north of downtown Detroit. The house is plush, but when I visited this past winter, it was sparsely appointed. The couple had just recently moved in, and had only had time to fully furnish the bedroom of their 4-year-old son, Quaye.

In conversation, Ashley and JaQuavis exude both modesty and bravado: gratitude for their good fortune and bootstrappers’ pride in having made their own luck. They talk a lot about their time in the trenches, the years they spent as a drug dealer and “ride-or-die girl” tandem. In Flint they learned to “grind hard.” Writing, they say, is merely a more elevated kind of grind.

“Instead of hitting the block like we used to, we hit the laptops,” says Ashley. “I know what every word is worth. So while I’m writing, I’m like: ‘Okay, there’s a hundred dollars. There’s a thousand dollars. There’s five thousand dollars.’ ”

They maintain a rigorous regimen. They each try to write 5,000 words per day, five days a week. The writers stagger their shifts: JaQuavis goes to bed at 7 p.m. and wakes up early, around 3 or 4 in the morning, to work while his wife and child sleep. Ashley writes during the day, often in libraries or at Starbucks.

They divide the labor in other ways. Chapters are divvied up more or less equally, with tasks assigned according to individual strengths. (JaQuavis typically handles character development. Ashley loves writing murder scenes.) The results are stitched together, with no editorial interference from one author in the other’s text. The real work, they contend, is the brainstorming. The Colemans spend weeks mapping out their plot-driven books — long conversations that turn into elaborate diagrams on dry-erase boards. “JaQuavis and I are so close, it makes the process real easy,” says Ashley. “Sometimes when I’m thinking of something, a plot point, he’ll say it out loud, and I’m like: ‘Wait — did I say that?’ ”

Their collaboration developed by accident, and on the fly. Both were bookish teenagers. Ashley read lots of Judy Blume and John Grisham; JaQuavis liked Shakespeare, Richard Wright and “Atlas Shrugged.” (Their first official date was at a Borders bookstore, where Ashley bought “The Coldest Winter Ever,” the Sister Souljah novel often credited with kick-starting the contemporary street-lit movement.) In 2003, Ashley, then 17, was forced to terminate an ectopic pregnancy. She was bedridden for three weeks, and to provide distraction and boost her spirits, JaQuavis challenged his girlfriend to a writing contest. “She just wasn’t talking. She was laying in bed. I said, ‘You know what? I bet you I could write a better book than you.’ My wife is real competitive. So I said, ‘Yo, all right, $500 bet.’ And I saw her eyes spark, like, ‘What?! You can’t write no better book than me!’ So I wrote about three chapters. She wrote about three chapters. Two days later, we switched.”

The result, hammered out in a few days, would become “Dirty Money.” Two years later, when Ashley and JaQuavis were students at Ferris State University in Western Michigan, they sold the manuscript to Urban Books, a street-lit imprint founded by the best-selling author Carl Weber. At the time, JaQuavis was still making his living selling drugs. When Ashley got the phone call informing her that their book had been bought, she assumed they’d hit it big, and flushed more than $10,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet. Their advance was a mere $4,000.

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Those advances would soon increase, eventually reaching five and six figures. The Colemans built their career, JaQuavis says, in a manner that made sense to him as a veteran dope peddler: by flooding the street with product. From the start, they were prolific, churning out books at a rate of four or five a year. Their novels made their way into stores; the now-defunct chain Waldenbooks, which had stores in urban areas typically bypassed by booksellers, was a major engine of the street-lit market. But Ashley and JaQuavis took advantage of distribution channels established by pioneering urban fiction authors such as Teri Woods and Vickie Stringer, and a network of street-corner tables, magazine stands, corner shops and bodegas. Like rappers who establish their bona fides with gray-market mixtapes, street-lit authors use this system to circumnavigate industry gatekeepers, bringing their work straight to the genre’s core readership. But urban fiction has other aficionados, in less likely places. “Our books are so popular in the prison system,” JaQuavis says. “We’re banned in certain penitentiaries. Inmates fight over the books — there are incidents, you know? I have loved ones in jail, and they’re like: ‘Yo, your books can’t come in here. It’s against the rules.’ ”

The appeal of the Colemans’ work is not hard to fathom. The books are formulaic and taut; they deliver the expected goods efficiently and exuberantly. The titles telegraph the contents: “Diary of a Street Diva,” “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” “Murderville.” The novels serve up a stream of explicit sex and violence in a slangy, tangy, profane voice. In Ashley & JaQuavis’s books people don’t get killed: they get “popped,” “laid out,” get their “cap twisted back.” The smut is constant, with emphasis on the earthy, sticky, olfactory particulars. Romance novel clichés — shuddering orgasms, heroic carnal feats, superlative sexual skill sets — are rendered in the Colemans’ punchy patois.

Subtlety, in other words, isn’t Ashley & JaQuavis’s forte. But their books do have a grainy specificity. In “The Cartel” (2008), the first novel in the Colemans’ best-selling saga of a Miami drug syndicate, they catch the sights and smells of a crack workshop in a housing project: the nostril-stinging scent of cocaine and baking soda bubbling on stovetops; the teams of women, stripped naked except for hospital masks so they can’t pilfer the merchandise, “cutting up the cooked coke on the round wood table.” The subject matter is dark, but the Colemans’ tone is not quite noir. Even in the grimmest scenes, the mood is high-spirited, with the writers palpably relishing the lewd and gory details: the bodies writhing in boudoirs and crumpling under volleys of bullets, the geysers of blood and other bodily fluids.

The luridness of street lit has made it a flashpoint, inciting controversy reminiscent of the hip-hop culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s. But the street-lit debate touches deeper historical roots, reviving decades-old arguments in black literary circles about the mandate to uplift the race and present wholesome images of African-Americans. In 1928, W. E. B. Du Bois slammed the “licentiousness” of “Home to Harlem,” Claude McKay’s rollicking novel of Harlem nightlife. McKay’s book, Du Bois wrote, “for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath.” Similar sentiments have greeted 21st-century street lit. In a 2006 New York Times Op-Ed essay, the journalist and author Nick Chiles decried “the sexualization and degradation of black fiction.” African-American bookstores, Chiles complained, are “overrun with novels that . . . appeal exclusively to our most prurient natures — as if these nasty books were pairing off back in the stockrooms like little paperback rabbits and churning out even more graphic offspring that make Ralph Ellison books cringe into a dusty corner.”

Copulating paperbacks aside, it’s clear that the street-lit debate is about more than literature, touching on questions of paternalism versus populism, and on middle-class anxieties about the black underclass. “It’s part and parcel of black elites’ efforts to define not only a literary tradition, but a racial politics,” said Kinohi Nishikawa, an assistant professor of English and African-American Studies at Princeton University. “There has always been a sense that because African-Americans’ opportunities to represent themselves are so limited in the first place, any hint of criminality or salaciousness would necessarily be a knock on the entire racial politics. One of the pressing debates about African-American literature today is: If we can’t include writers like Ashley & JaQuavis, to what extent is the foundation of our thinking about black literature faulty? Is it just a literature for elites? Or can it be inclusive, bringing urban fiction under the purview of our umbrella term ‘African-American literature’?”

Defenders of street lit note that the genre has a pedigree: a tradition of black pulp fiction that stretches from Chester Himes, the midcentury author of hardboiled Harlem detective stories, to the 1960s and ’70s “ghetto fiction” of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, to the current wave of urban fiction authors. Others argue for street lit as a social good, noting that it attracts a large audience that might otherwise never read at all. Scholars like Nishikawa link street lit to recent studies showing increased reading among African-Americans. A 2014 Pew Research Center report found that a greater percentage of black Americans are book readers than whites or Latinos.

For their part, the Colemans place their work in the broader black literary tradition. “You have Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, James Baldwin — all of these traditional black writers, who wrote about the struggles of racism, injustice, inequality,” says Ashley. “We’re writing about the struggle as it happens now. It’s just a different struggle. I’m telling my story. I’m telling the struggle of a black girl from Flint, Michigan, who grew up on welfare.”

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Perhaps there is a high-minded case to be made for street lit. But the virtues of Ashley & JaQuavis’s work are more basic. Their novels do lack literary polish. The writing is not graceful; there are passages of clunky exposition and sex scenes that induce guffaws and eye rolls. But the pleasure quotient is high. The books flaunt a garish brand of feminism, with women characters cast not just as vixens, but also as gangsters — cold-blooded killers, “murder mamas.” The stories are exceptionally well-plotted. “The Cartel” opens by introducing its hero, the crime boss Carter Diamond; on page 9, a gunshot spatters Diamond’s brain across the interior of a police cruiser. The book then flashes back seven years and begins to hurtle forward again — a bullet train, whizzing readers through shifting alliances, romantic entanglements and betrayals, kidnappings, shootouts with Haitian and Dominican gangsters, and a cliffhanger closing scene that leaves the novel’s heroine tied to a chair in a basement, gruesomely tortured to the edge of death. Ashley & JaQuavis’s books are not Ralph Ellison, certainly, but they build up quite a head of steam. They move.

The Colemans are moving themselves these days. They recently signed a deal with St. Martin’s Press, which will bring out the next installment in the “Cartel” series as well as new solo series by both writers. The St. Martin’s deal is both lucrative and legitimizing — a validation of Ashley and JaQuavis’s work by one of publishing’s most venerable houses. The Colemans’ ambitions have grown, as well. A recent trilogy, “Murderville,” tackles human trafficking and the blood-diamond industry in West Africa, with storylines that sweep from Sierra Leone to Mexico to Los Angeles. Increasingly, Ashley & JaQuavis are leaning on research — traveling to far-flung settings and hitting the books in the libraries — and spending less time mining their own rough-and-tumble past.

But Flint remains a source of inspiration. One evening not long ago, JaQuavis led me on a tour of his hometown: a popular roadside bar; the parking lot where he met the undercover cop for the ill-fated drug deal; Ashley’s old house, the site of his almost-arrest. He took me to a ramshackle vehicle repair shop on Flint’s west side, where he worked as a kid, washing cars. He showed me a bathroom at the rear of the garage, where, at age 12, he sneaked away to inspect the first “boulder” of crack that he ever sold. A spray-painted sign on the garage wall, which JaQuavis remembered from his time at the car wash, offered words of warning:

WHAT EVERY YOUNG MAN SHOULD KNOW
ABOUT USING A GUN:
MURDER . . . 30 Years
ARMED ROBBERY . . . 15 Years
ASSAULT . . . 15 Years
RAPE . . . 20 Years
POSSESSION . . . 5 Years
JACKING . . . 20 YEARS

“We still love Flint, Michigan,” JaQuavis says. “It’s so seedy, so treacherous. But there’s some heart in this city. This is where it all started, selling books out the box. In the days when we would get those little $40,000 advances, they’d send us a couple boxes of books for free. We would hit the streets to sell our books, right out of the car trunk. It was a hustle. It still is.”

One old neighborhood asset that the Colemans have not shaken off is swagger. “My wife is the best female writer in the game,” JaQuavis told me. “I believe I’m the best male writer in the game. I’m sleeping next to the best writer in the world. And she’s doing the same.”

As he reflected on the festering wounds deepened by race and grievance that have been on painful display in America’s cities lately, President Obama on Monday found himself thinking about a young man he had just met named Malachi.

A few minutes before, in a closed-door round-table discussion at Lehman College in the Bronx, Mr. Obama had asked a group of black and Hispanic students from disadvantaged backgrounds what could be done to help them reach their goals. Several talked about counseling and guidance programs.

“Malachi, he just talked about — we should talk about love,” Mr. Obama told a crowd afterward, drifting away from his prepared remarks. “Because Malachi and I shared the fact that our dad wasn’t around and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn’t around and what had happened. But really, that’s what this comes down to is: Do we love these kids?”

Many presidents have governed during times of racial tension, but Mr. Obama is the first to see in the mirror a face that looks like those on the other side of history’s ledger. While his first term was consumed with the economy, war and health care, his second keeps coming back to the societal divide that was not bridged by his election. A president who eschewed focusing on race now seems to have found his voice again as he thinks about how to use his remaining time in office and beyond.

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Obama Speaks of a ‘Sense of Unfairness’

In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.

“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”

Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.

Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.

The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.

“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”

The alliance was in the works before the disturbances last week after the death of Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, but it reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s presidency. For him, in a way, it is coming back to issues that animated him as a young community organizer and politician. It was his own struggle with race and identity, captured in his youthful memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that stood him apart from other presidential aspirants.

But that was a side of him that he kept largely to himself through the first years of his presidency while he focused on other priorities like turning the economy around, expanding government-subsidized health care and avoiding electoral land mines en route to re-election.

After securing a second term, Mr. Obama appeared more emboldened. Just a month after his 2013 inauguration, he talked passionately about opportunity and race with a group of teenage boys in Chicago, a moment aides point to as perhaps the first time he had spoken about these issues in such a personal, powerful way as president. A few months later, he publicly lamented the death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, saying that “could have been me 35 years ago.”

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That case, along with public ruptures of anger over police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have pushed the issue of race and law enforcement onto the public agenda. Aides said they imagined that with his presidency in its final stages, Mr. Obama might be thinking more about what comes next and causes he can advance as a private citizen.

That is not to say that his public discussion of these issues has been universally welcomed. Some conservatives said he had made matters worse by seeming in their view to blame police officers in some of the disputed cases.

“President Obama, when he was elected, could have been a unifying leader,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, said at a forum last week. “He has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions.”

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, some liberal African-American activists have complained that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help downtrodden communities. While he is speaking out more, these critics argue, he has hardly used the power of the presidency to make the sort of radical change they say is necessary.

The line Mr. Obama has tried to straddle has been a serrated one. He condemns police brutality as he defends most officers as honorable. He condemns “criminals and thugs” who looted in Baltimore while expressing empathy with those trapped in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

In the Bronx on Monday, Mr. Obama bemoaned the death of Brian Moore, a plainclothes New York police officer who had died earlier in the day after being shot in the head Saturday on a Queens street. Most police officers are “good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities,” even as they put their lives on the line, Mr. Obama said.

“Which is why in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that if we’re just looking at policing, we’re looking at it too narrowly,” he added. “If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that’s not fair to the communities, it’s not fair to the police.”

Moreover, if society writes off some people, he said, “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in; that’s not what America is about.”

His message to young men like Malachi Hernandez, who attends Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts, is not to give up.

“I want you to know you matter,” he said. “You matter to us.”

The career criminals in genre novels don’t have money problems. If they need some, they just go out and steal it. But such financial transactions can backfire, which is what happened back in 2004 when the Texas gang in Michael

Imagine an elite professional services firm with a high-performing, workaholic culture. Everyone is expected to turn on a dime to serve a client, travel at a moment’s notice, and be available pretty much every evening and weekend. It can make for a grueling work life, but at the highest levels of accounting, law, investment banking and consulting firms, it is just the way things are.

Except for one dirty little secret: Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it.

Many of them were, at least, at one elite consulting firm studied by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. It’s impossible to know if what she learned at that unidentified consulting firm applies across the world of work more broadly. But her research, published in the academic journal Organization Science, offers a way to understand how the professional world differs between men and women, and some of the ways a hard-charging culture that emphasizes long hours above all can make some companies worse off.

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Ms. Reid interviewed more than 100 people in the American offices of a global consulting firm and had access to performance reviews and internal human resources documents. At the firm there was a strong culture around long hours and responding to clients promptly.

“When the client needs me to be somewhere, I just have to be there,” said one of the consultants Ms. Reid interviewed. “And if you can’t be there, it’s probably because you’ve got another client meeting at the same time. You know it’s tough to say I can’t be there because my son had a Cub Scout meeting.”

Some people fully embraced this culture and put in the long hours, and they tended to be top performers. Others openly pushed back against it, insisting upon lighter and more flexible work hours, or less travel; they were punished in their performance reviews.

The third group is most interesting. Some 31 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women whose records Ms. Reid examined managed to achieve the benefits of a more moderate work schedule without explicitly asking for it.

They made an effort to line up clients who were local, reducing the need for travel. When they skipped work to spend time with their children or spouse, they didn’t call attention to it. One team on which several members had small children agreed among themselves to cover for one another so that everyone could have more flexible hours.

A male junior manager described working to have repeat consulting engagements with a company near enough to his home that he could take care of it with day trips. “I try to head out by 5, get home at 5:30, have dinner, play with my daughter,” he said, adding that he generally kept weekend work down to two hours of catching up on email.

Despite the limited hours, he said: “I know what clients are expecting. So I deliver above that.” He received a high performance review and a promotion.

What is fascinating about the firm Ms. Reid studied is that these people, who in her terminology were “passing” as workaholics, received performance reviews that were as strong as their hyper-ambitious colleagues. For people who were good at faking it, there was no real damage done by their lighter workloads.

It calls to mind the episode of “Seinfeld” in which George Costanza leaves his car in the parking lot at Yankee Stadium, where he works, and gets a promotion because his boss sees the car and thinks he is getting to work earlier and staying later than anyone else. (The strategy goes awry for him, and is not recommended for any aspiring partners in a consulting firm.)

A second finding is that women, particularly those with young children, were much more likely to request greater flexibility through more formal means, such as returning from maternity leave with an explicitly reduced schedule. Men who requested a paternity leave seemed to be punished come review time, and so may have felt more need to take time to spend with their families through those unofficial methods.

The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply.

It would be dangerous to extrapolate too much from a study at one firm, but Ms. Reid said in an interview that since publishing a summary of her research in Harvard Business Review she has heard from people in a variety of industries describing the same dynamic.

High-octane professional service firms are that way for a reason, and no one would doubt that insane hours and lots of travel can be necessary if you’re a lawyer on the verge of a big trial, an accountant right before tax day or an investment banker advising on a huge merger.

But the fact that the consultants who quietly lightened their workload did just as well in their performance reviews as those who were truly working 80 or more hours a week suggests that in normal times, heavy workloads may be more about signaling devotion to a firm than really being more productive. The person working 80 hours isn’t necessarily serving clients any better than the person working 50.

In other words, maybe the real problem isn’t men faking greater devotion to their jobs. Maybe it’s that too many companies reward the wrong things, favoring the illusion of extraordinary effort over actual productivity.

With 12 tournament victories in his career, Mr. Peete was the most successful black professional golfer before Tiger Woods.

A 2-minute-42-second demo recording captured in one take turned out to be a one-hit wonder for Mr. Ely, who was 19 when he sang the garage-band classic.

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Last summer at a writers’ workshop in Oregon, the novelists Anthony Doerr, Karen Russell and Elissa Schappell were chatting over cocktails when they realized they had all published work in the same magazine. It wasn’t one of the usual literary outlets, like Tin House, The Paris Review or The New Yorker. It was Rhapsody, an in-flight magazine for United Airlines.

It seemed like a weird coincidence. Then again, considering Rhapsody’s growing roster of A-list fiction writers, maybe not. Since its first issue hit plane cabins a year and a half ago, Rhapsody has published original works by literary stars like Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Moody, Amy Bloom, Emma Straub and Mr. Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction two weeks ago.

As airlines try to distinguish their high-end service with luxuries like private sleeping chambers, showers, butler service and meals from five-star chefs, United Airlines is offering a loftier, more cerebral amenity to its first-class and business-class passengers: elegant prose by prominent novelists. There are no airport maps or disheartening lists of in-flight meal and entertainment options in Rhapsody. Instead, the magazine has published ruminative first-person travel accounts, cultural dispatches and probing essays about flight by more than 30 literary fiction writers.

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An airline might seem like an odd literary patron. But as publishers and writers look for new ways to reach readers in a shaky retail climate, many have formed corporate alliances with transit companies, including American Airlines, JetBlue and Amtrak, that provide a captive audience.

Mark Krolick, United Airlines’ managing director of marketing and product development, said the quality of the writing in Rhapsody brings a patina of sophistication to its first-class service, along with other opulent touches like mood lighting, soft music and a branded scent.

“The high-end leisure or business-class traveler has higher expectations, even in the entertainment we provide,” he said.

Some of Rhapsody’s contributing writers say they were lured by the promise of free airfare and luxury accommodations provided by United, as well as exposure to an elite audience of some two million first-class and business-class travelers.

“It’s not your normal Park Slope Community Bookstore types who read Rhapsody,” Mr. Moody, author of the 1994 novel “The Ice Storm,” who wrote an introspective, philosophical piece about traveling to the Aran Islands of Ireland for Rhapsody, said in an email. “I’m not sure I myself am in that Rhapsody demographic, but I would like them to buy my books one day.”

In addition to offering travel perks, the magazine pays well and gives writers freedom, within reason, to choose their subject matter and write with style. Certain genres of flight stories are off limits, naturally: no plane crashes or woeful tales of lost luggage or rude flight attendants, and nothing too risqué.

“We’re not going to have someone write about joining the mile-high club,” said Jordan Heller, the editor in chief of Rhapsody. “Despite those restrictions, we’ve managed to come up with a lot of high-minded literary content.”

Guiding writers toward the right idea occasionally requires some gentle prodding. When Rhapsody’s executive editor asked Ms. Russell to contribute an essay about a memorable flight experience, she first pitched a story about the time she was chaperoning a group of teenagers on a trip to Europe, and their delayed plane sat at the airport in New York for several hours while other passengers got progressively drunker.

“He pointed out that disaster flights are not what people want to read about when they’re in transit, and very diplomatically suggested that maybe people want to read something that casts air travel in a more positive light,” said Ms. Russell, whose novel “Swamplandia!” was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.

She turned in a nostalgia-tinged essay about her first flight on a trip to Disney World when she was 6. “The Magic Kingdom was an anticlimax,” she wrote. “What ride could compare to that first flight?”

Ms. Oates also wrote about her first flight, in a tiny yellow propeller plane piloted by her father. The novelist Joyce Maynard told of the constant disappointment of never seeing her books in airport bookstores and the thrill of finally spotting a fellow plane passenger reading her novel “Labor Day.” Emily St. John Mandel, who was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction last year, wrote about agonizing over which books to bring on a long flight.

“There’s nobody that’s looked down their noses at us as an in-flight magazine,” said Sean Manning, the magazine’s executive editor. “As big as these people are in the literary world, there’s still this untapped audience for them of luxury travelers.”

United is one of a handful of companies showcasing work by literary writers as a way to elevate their brands and engage customers. Chipotle has printed original work from writers like Toni Morrison, Jeffrey Eugenides and Barbara Kingsolver on its disposable cups and paper bags. The eyeglass company Warby Parker hosts parties for authors and sells books from 14 independent publishers in its stores.

JetBlue offers around 40 e-books from HarperCollins and Penguin Random House on its free wireless network, allowing passengers to read free samples and buy and download books. JetBlue will start offering 11 digital titles from Simon & Schuster soon. Amtrak recently forged an alliance with Penguin Random House to provide free digital samples from 28 popular titles, which passengers can buy and download over Amtrak’s admittedly spotty wireless service.

Amtrak is becoming an incubator for literary talent in its own right. Last year, it started a residency program, offering writers a free long-distance train trip and complimentary food. More than 16,000 writers applied and 24 made the cut.

Like Amtrak, Rhapsody has found that writers are eager to get onboard. On a rainy spring afternoon, Rhapsody’s editorial staff sat around a conference table discussing the June issue, which will feature an essay by the novelist Hannah Pittard and an unpublished short story by the late Elmore Leonard.

“Do you have that photo of Elmore Leonard? Can I see it?” Mr. Heller, the editor in chief, asked Rhapsody’s design director, Christos Hannides. Mr. Hannides slid it across the table and noted that they also had a photograph of cowboy spurs. “It’s very simple; it won’t take away from the literature,” he said.

Rhapsody’s office, an open space with exposed pipes and a vaulted brick ceiling, sits in Dumbo at the epicenter of literary Brooklyn, in the same converted tea warehouse as the literary journal N+1 and the digital publisher Atavist. Two of the magazine’s seven staff members hold graduate degrees in creative writing. Mr. Manning, the executive editor, has published a memoir and edited five literary anthologies.

Mr. Manning said Rhapsody was conceived from the start as a place for literary novelists to write with voice and style, and nobody had been put off that their work would live in plane cabins and airport lounges.

Still, some contributors say they wish the magazine were more widely circulated.

“I would love it if I could read it,” said Ms. Schappell, a Brooklyn-based novelist who wrote a feature story for Rhapsody’s inaugural issue. “But I never fly first class.”

Gagne wrestled professionally from the late 1940s until the 1980s and was a transitional figure between the early 20th century barnstormers and the steroidal sideshows of today

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Children playing last week in Sandtown-Winchester, the Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Gray was raised. One young resident called it “a tough community.”

Hard but Hopeful Home to ‘Lot of Freddies’

The neighborhood where Freddie Gray came of age has survived harrowing rates of unemployment, poor health, violent crime and incarceration.