The Help tells the story of a plucky young writer, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, who has decided to write a book about black maids who raise white children in her hometown. We are in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963. Jim Crow. Segregation. Lynching. Medgar...

This may be one most significant elections in the Haiti's history. After a hotly contested first round in November, the top two candidates, pop star Michel Martelly and the experienced doyen Mirlande Manigat faced each other in a tight race to become Haiti's next president.

Martelly supporters who

It seems like every major event in the world is now connected to, if not passing directly through the internet. It is impossible to talk about the grassroots efforts and demonstrations that toppled Egypt's Hosni Mubarak after 40 years in power without talking about the Web.

Twitter, once maligned...

To someone who lives in a democratic republic, a dictator is that cancerous sore in the body politic that Teddy Roosevelt warned the world about in 1910.

Of one man in especial, beyond anyone else, the citizens of a republic should beware, and that is of the...

The Spectacle of the News.

This week Jared Loughner's creepy mugshot has been ubiquitous in the TV news broadcasts. The story attracted the attention of the entire nation because it was a brutal incident that nearly took the life of a public leader. But as the hard facts...

Recently I saw a woman on the bus carrying what looked like a rallying call for New Year's resolutions. On her sagging beige tote bag she carried the slogan: "FOLLOW those things that you truly believe in. Those things that have this incredible power to drive YOURself beyond where you...

As the debate over education heats up, everyone is talking about the new Davis Guggenheim film, "Waiting for Superman." Whether or not you agree with the position the personalities featured in the film take is one thing. Another thing -- the more important thing -- is the fact that this...

When I try to practice mindfulness, sometimes I feel the same way I did when I read a book called "The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way" about metaphysical truths. It's as if I am having all the thoughts I have ever had at once and yet trying to get...

Twitter is the pinnacle of the context-free information ladder. In this contest, it beats out television, which used to take the brunt of the abuse from communication technophobes. Judging by his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman was one such technophobe. Back in 1985, he maligned television for encouraging...

The National Museum of African Art, the Smithsonian Institution and the Haitian government have brought a project to Washington D.C. to showcase the artwork of some Port-au-Prince children after the January quake.

The project that produced the exhibit Plas Timoun is a humble venture standing against staggering statistics. According to...

Summer reminds me of being young. Grown-ups made a big deal of New Year resolutions but for kids summer was the bridge between what we were and what we would become. In childhood, we made outlandish goals for summer (and for our lives). "I'm gonna build the biggest chewing gum...

This week First Lady Michelle Obama unveiled a report on childhood obesity. Since the 1980s childhood obesity has grown on the exponential curve and now about one in three kids is overweight and nearly one in five is obese. The goal of the White House Task Force on...

When Haitian President René Préval visited the White House earlier this month, I had the pleasure of listening to him speak. I was not surprised but I was dismayed that he had chosen to speak in French. The night before his White House visit, I had spoken to some of...

When I got back from Haiti last week, people who had seen the news coverage on television in the States greeted me with sympathy and the greedy eyes of performers anxious to deliver what they had been rehearsing. They rubbed my shoulder and scanned my eyes for signs of distress....