George W. Bush often spoke of Freedom and bringing democracy to other parts of the world. I think he opened a Pandora’s Box, releasing troubles into the world. But, as in the original myth, Hope remains.

So much going on in the world, and somehow we seem to hear mostly about the negative. What about the positive news? Does it actually outweight the negative?

A view of the Chesapeake Bay area. Take a good look at the crescent world above our thin atmosphere; it is not the moon, but an ideal of our own home planet, covered mostly by oceans and clouds. Is it unreachable?

Inspired by a short story by J.R.R. Tolkien, about the pursuit of artistic perfection and its just reward.

On April 7, 2007, I read an article in The Washington Post about Saad Eskander, who was the director of the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad. It was about his struggle to maintain the Library despite looting and violence. He calls the Library “the historical memory of the country.”