There’s no place like home.  The trip to Israel and the Occupied Territories was a great experience, but now that I’m back inside the welcoming portals of the stately Mead manor I’m glad to be off the road at least for a couple of weeks.While there was no time to post on literary topics on […]

Volcanoes blast; glaciers melt; economies implode; currencies nose dive and voters revolt.  It is the worst of worlds for the climate change movement, and the outlook continues to darken.None of this dimmed the glory of the majestic moment in Amsterdam yesterday as the part-time IPCC chair and part-time sleazy book author Rajendra Pachauri emerged from […]

Years ago I spent a lot of time studying the state of US-Cuban relations.  I came to the subject with the optimism that most Americans bring to just about every world problem; surely there was a solution somewhere that moderate people of good will could find.  But the deeper I got into the subject, and […]

It has been an exhausting and exhaustive trip, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Once home and on the mend, I will continue to reflect on what I’ve learned anew from my return to this fascinating region, and from meeting with a host of people at the very center of its fate.Until […]

It’s been a quiet two days here in Jerusalem — at least for the Mead team.  For the last two days I’ve had to cancel all meetings and visits due to a vicious stomach bug that has kept me close, very close, to my hotel room.  For most of that time I’ve been too miserable […]

George Mitchell (below) has arrived in Jerusalem and the ‘proximity talks’ have started, but it is not at all clear what will come of them.The Middle East peace process is the longest running piece of diplomatic theater on the world stage.  Dating from World War One, the effort to reconcile the aspirations of the Jews […]

More photos from the Holy Land…Detail from the Dome of the Rock.  The tile is extraordinary.  When I was here ten years ago it was still possible to visit inside the mosque where the exquisite collection of beautiful calligraphy containing the anti-Christian passages of the Koran makes a major political and theological statement.The Western Wall […]

It’s been a busy trip, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to blog more while here; I have a lot to say, however, and hope to get some of it up before my return at week’s end to the temporarily empty Mead Manor. But since a picture is worth a thousand words, I figured […]

From my hotel balcony here in West Jerusalem, I can see the walls of the Old City, and behind them the steeples and minarets of this city that haunts the imagination of the world.  The religions of Jerusalem have been around a long time, and in their separate ways the faiths and the religious establishments […]

With an agreement over a multi-year $146 billion bailout for Greece, the European Union has, for now, staved off disaster.  Problems remain, the worst being that under EU rules, each contributor country now has the right to accept or reject its share of the burden.  Germany, where the public hates the bailout, is the biggest […]