The end of 1918 and the beginning of 1919 was a pretty good time for most of the world. For four years, the Great War had ravaged the European continent, leading to the death of close to twenty million people,…
It’s here. I knew it was coming, and I had been on the lookout for it for years, but when it finally showed up, it looked nothing like what I was expecting. What I’m talking about of course is the…
Moskva, Moskva… The 900 year old city sitting astride the Moskva River, with its torturous and at times glorious history, is now the second most populated city in Europe (after Istanbul). The capital of the largest country in the world,…
This is a true story. The name has been changed. Sasha Bazarov never had it easy. He emigrated to the USA together with his parents from Uzbekistan as a young child. His parents had to leave everything behind, and in…
We crossed into Egypt at the Taba Border Crossing around midnight. I was exhausted, dirty, and bone weary after two utterly crazy days in Jordan, but I trudged up to passport control with resigned indifference. If it were up to…
There used to be four seasons a year; spring, summer, fall and winter. But these days we have created many more seasons for ourselves. There is constructions season from April to Nov, Pumpkin Spice Latte season, which had an early…
As a child, Will always seemed to gravitate to more violent forms of play than the other boys in his neighborhood. Even when his mother took away his toy guns and swords, Will always found a way to turn innocuous…
Disclaimer: This email contains depictions of a graphic crime, readers please use caution if reading in front of children. There are two dominant theories about triathletes. The first is that they are supremely cowardly human beings, and spend their life…
Avocado is the headline hogger of the fruit world. There are about 2,000 species of fruit eaten by human beings, from pedestrian fruits like the apple, banana, clementine, and date, to the more exotic ones like the atemoya, bignay, calabash,…
This is a rerun of a previous Shabbos email. My wife did not re-give birth to our eight year old daughter, but there will be an update at the end of the email…. I have seen the writing on the…