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THIS YEAR’S PULITZER Prize in the “feature photography” category tells the heartbreaking tale of Strider Wolf.
Living in Maine with his grandparents, Larry and Lanette Grant, Strider (now aged six) suffered severe physical abuse from his mother’s boyfriend at the mere age of two.
Poverty-stricken, Larry and Lanette were evicted from their home when photographer Jessica Rinaldi began documenting their story for The Boston Globe.
During the summer, the family lived in various campsites out of their cluttered mobile home. The series was nominated by The Boston Globe’s editor Brian McGrory.
“In the chaos and deprivation, Wolf had a simple and abiding wish: to be loved,” wrote McGrory in his entry cover letter.
Displayed below is the moving series and The Boston Globe’s original reporting, courtesy of the Pulitzer Prizes:
Strider Wolf was born poor in rural Maine. When he was two, his mother’s raging boyfriend beat him nearly to death. He managed to pull through, ending up in the care of his grandparents who became homeless trying to provide for Strider and his younger brother, Gallagher.
After two years of not paying the rent, the family was given 30 days to pack their things and leave. On the night of the eviction, Strider’s grandparents move their possessions into a storage space.
On the night of the eviction, Lanette and her son’s fiancée Ashly take a break from packing up the family’s belongings. As the night goes on, it becomes clear that they are not going to be able to take all of their possessions with them.
With nowhere else to go, the Grants told the boys they were going camping and the family of four squeezed into the 24-foot camper with their cat and two dogs.
After moving into a campground, Strider struggles as he carries gallons of water filled from a spigot to the camper.
Strider looks for Lanette with a flower behind his back to apologise after she yelled at him for wetting the bed. His therapist has explained that his bed-wetting is a response to trauma, either the unfolding upset in their lives, or some resurrecting memory. Lanette knows this, but their living situation is starting to take a toll on her patience.
Lanette often laments that she and Larry aren’t able to be grandparents to Strider and Gallagher because they have to play the role of Mom and Dad, enforcing rules and making sure they are provided for.
According to the state, living in a campground means they no longer have a house payment. Because of this, their food stamps have been cut by $100 (€88).
Often left to their own devices, Strider and Gallagher played on an abandoned Ford at twilight. Strider holds a broken automotive hose to his eyes like a pair of binoculars and asks: “What’s on the moon?”
During Strider’s sixth birthday party, Lanette and her mother make the 15-minute drive to Walmart to pick up his cake. Having waited for them over two hours, a disappointed Strider sits beside Larry until he can return to begin his party.
During this unsettling time for the family, Strider wanders into his old bedroom and looks around at many of his belongings that will not make the next move and will be left behind.
After living in several campgrounds over the summer, the Grants appear in Maine District Court to try to retrieve their belongings from the mobile home. Without a lawyer, the Grants have few options for recourse against their former landlord. The Grants were only allowed to reclaim a few personal possessions.
Gallagher cools off with a drink as Larry and Lanette scramble to pack by the light of their car headlights as the midnight eviction deadline inches closer. The landlord has cut the power and put locks on the electrical boxes in an attempt to force them off the property.
After months of searching for a new place to live, the Grants finally find a home they can afford on Craigslist in Lisbon, Maine. Anna Cunningham arrives at the family’s new home with a donation of beds for the boys. Lanette grabs her and pulls her in for a grateful hug.
On the first morning, Strider plays in the backyard of his new home, an old rectory in Lisbon, Maine. The yard was fenced and tucked into a neighborhood, so different from the woods he called home.
Strider, who takes multiple medications resulting from his early childhood abuse, gets his morning meds from Lanette in their new home. “We haven’t been here 24 hours, and I’m tired already,” Lanette said.
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So ireland is importing millions of tonnes of soy to feed to cows to export 85% of beef and dairy produced abroad while being an overall net importer of calories and barely growing any of our own fruit and veg. Sounds a bit precarious.
@eoin fitzpatrick: zero linked up thinking.
@eoin fitzpatrick: Not true, I grew a few apples and had a great crop of rushes this year.
@eoin fitzpatrick: Lol! beautifully put. All so a handful of people can earn more profits.
@eoin fitzpatrick: there are no govt handouts for growing fruit. Farmers follow the handouts of OUR taxes to them to pollute and chop down trees.
What would happen to Irish milk production if all this imported feed wasn’t available?
If one was to believe the hype it’s all based on our “grass based system “. ….but grass alone won’t provide the nutrients that Irish cows need to produce the large volumes of milk the dairy industry requires …..this article highlights the shallowness behind the “grass based system” propaganda that the Irish public consistently hear from the dairy industry in this country…
@Padraig G: It is grass based as you call it. The bulk of what cattle eat is grass, be it fresh during the summer or preserved during the winter. But dried and fermented grass (hay and silage) during the winter does not provide everything. This is when animal feeds are used. After all, milk production runs 12 months a year, and proper fresh grass is only available for half that.
@Padraig G: BTW, I forgot to say, Maize and Barley, along with all the other cereals, are types of grass.
@Joe x: thanks for your feedback but most dairy farms I visit provide meal to their cows 12 months of the year….but your missing the point of the article, Ireland’s high intensity dairy model is totally reliant on overseas animal feed….there is no way the average dairy farm in Ireland could sustain the level of milk production we have at present on grass alone …Look at the wet summer we just had , plenty of farmers were providing meal rations to keep milk yields up ….
@Padraig G: But most of the animal feeds are grass based, which is what you were contending in the first place.
To me, the point of the article has nothing to do with what the animals are being fed anyway. By highlighting it in the title and being the first section they discussed, they turned it into a climate issue when nothing is further from the truth, especially when you look at how it is transported, as much as they can fit on one ship.
The real issue is why the farming sector has taken the route it did, which is simply down to cost. The dairy and beef sectors find it cheaper, and the tillage farmers can’t let it go any cheaper. Otherwise, none of them can make a living in modern Ireland
@Padraig G: We’re not meant to drink calves milk, we don’t have 4 stomachs.
I wonder if there is any mention in the article of the restrictions placed on beef farmers. An animal has to killed before it is 24 months otherwise there are big penalties. The beef barron and the factories have access to all the farmer data. The know how many animals are in the country and what age they are. Now if you want to have a beef animal factory fit for 24 months you have to feed grains. There is no alternative and yet farmers want the 24 month rule lifted and its not. It was bought in during the BSE scare back in the 2000s. The rule makes the factories richer and bad for the environment because we have to import feed. What is the difference between 24month and 34 month beef. There is no difference. Beef in Ireland is a monopoly. The same animal in the UK makes €400 per head more than in Ireland. Our farmers are being robbed by the processors and the only profitable sector left is milk.
@Washpenrebel: my point is that its not financially possible to finish our beef of just a grass based diet because the rules in place. Man made rules that are worse for the environment.
Funny how the first thing they concentrated on was the carbon footprint of importing the feed instead of asking why so much is being imported and not grown locally. Stating that it could be grown at home is stating the obvious, after all cereals have been grown on this island for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The problem is cost for both dairy farmers to buy it local as it is cheaper to buy it in, so that they can have a living wage and tillage farmers to sell it local as animal feed as they cannot afford to sell it any cheaper, otherwise they will not have a living wage either. It’s the cost of things in this country that affect everything else as usual. .
Give the farmers a break and treat them as if they were Data centers or even better the Aviation industry whose emissions are also overlooked as they are not considered in our national emissions targets.
@john dennehy: Are you actually admitting that farming is causing serious issues for the planet. WoW!! The I.F.A. will love you for that!
Great article and FOI providing a great service to inform the public to make their choices. Our dairy cows are fed too much imported meal despite not yielding very much. Denmark produces 2/3 as much milk with 0.5m cows as we do with 1.7m cows. The answer is obvious.
@john mounsey: do you know that Ireland is one of if not the best place for milk in the world. We have some of the toughest restrictions in place which is why we produce a huge amount of the world’s baby milk. Grass is key to top quality milk and we grow grass better than anywhere else in the world. Its something we should be proud of but we have a group of people that love hammering farmers who work on average 14 to 18 hours a day.
@Washpenrebel: Our infant formula exports are dropping, was 620m euros to China in 2017, dropped to 266m last year. Hence poor milk proce for dairy farmers here.
@john mounsey: Dairy farmers all over the world are suffering because of the prices. There are many farmers in the leaving because its not paying enough. Same in Australia. Governments all over the world are making it harder for farmers and there will be a food shortage in the future. This is guaranteed. We live in the age of the internet and we can see what’s happening in other countries
@Washpenrebel: Its not the ‘player’ it’s the game.
Humanity, for what it is worth, is foolish in a particular way.
Climate is far too technical for most people, so retreating to the Earth science of biology is perhaps the best course to undo considerable damage to research by scientific method modelling.
Origin of Species attempted to use prejudice as a means to control perspectives of humans and who constitutes the title of superior and inferior ‘races’.
Just like carbon footprint, carbon emissions or some other buzzwords, natural selection/eugenics was once a major topic in society and found its full implementation in WWII as the Holocaust.
People are so distracted with the symptoms of modelling that they hardly are aware that scientific method modelling is the only issue.
So people with stature to deal with a serious topic just do not exist, and that is no insult but stated with deep dismay.
People want to consume dairy products and Ireland is one of the most climate friendly countries in the world to do this.
It is nonsense to say by supposed academic leaders that we should participate in solving this global problem by exporting dairy production to much less climate efficient countries.
The media climate B/S never ends,
Lovely emissions heavy feed, the best kind of feed
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