Or, Where to Find Cranberries and Sweet Potatoes Abroad.

The first thing every expat must know about celebrating Thanksgiving abroad is that it will be expensive. I won't tell you how much I paid for a pre-ordered organic free range turkey in Paris last year. Try finding cranberries and a...

The Leonard Cohen concert at the Olympia in Paris last night was better than I could have imagined it to be...and it made so much more sense as I listened to every single word of his lyrics. He spoke about the financial crisis and what was going on in the...

I was speaking to a Chinese acquaintance the other day who has spent much of her adult life in San Francisco, is married to an American, yet finds herself these days missing the China that once was and is fast disappearing. They are becoming like us. And the solidarity that...

I love Obama's mother. I love her idealism, her open-mindedness, even her naivete, which lead her to believe the world and her country could indeed be the best it could be. And the election of her son is proving it to be so. I am so sorry she did not...

You can feel it instinctively at first... that odd butterfly feeling in your stomach which tells you to both "Stay away!" and "I can't resist"! Chocolate does it, too much wine, credit cards burning a hole in your pocket... and that guy... the Player... the One you should stay the...

Firstly, congratulations on winning by a landslide. Now there is so much hard work to do!

Where Culture is concerned, I don't just mean paying dues to UNESCO or putting PBS and NPR back on their financial footing or even finally increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the...

It may seem an odd combination to interview both Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and former junk bond trader Michael Milken on the same Charlie Rose show, to talk about the financial crisis, but that is exactly what happened... what is said makes sense... watch here:

http://thecriticalthinker.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/michael-milken-and-muhammad-yunus-on-the-credit-crisis/

Prof....

I awoke this morning in Paris, to text messages from European, Canadian, and other friends, expressing their deep joy that Obama had been elected.

This election was an international one, and we Americans have sent a strong message to the entire planet that we not only want change, but...

The first time I visited Mexico City, I was twenty years old and we drove into town via hillsides of cardboard houses, slums and trash dumps with people scouring through them for whatever they could find. My American companion seemed shocked by the poverty. The poverty did not shock me...

I just read this on a blog today then logged onto the Army Times website this afternoon and verified the content below...a few hours later it was no longer accessible on the Army Times site...this is absolutely frightening. I also spoke to someone yesterday who is in a major deal...

Since some people will have more reading time in the days, weeks and months ahead, here are a few suggested reads. They have helped me during these past two years:

The Crash of '79 by Paul E. Erdman -- Ends with "For the world was now forced...

Denial is pervasive these days. As an ex-pat in New York last week, I could not help but notice the ominous wind which blew into town and the strange, grey weather and permanent fog which hung over the city. A taxi driver let me out at one end of Wall...

Next week, during the Clinton Global Initiative, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Banker to the Poor, Muhammad Yunus, will be meeting with heads of state, CEOs of some of the world's largest corporations and many, many bankers from across the planet. While bankers in the West are presently worried about...

Two weeks of bliss, sunsets that never end, farmers' markets, vineyards, children playing in the waves, the Democratic convention speeches on tv, fresh seafood, friends, conversations on the beach...and the knowledge that we will return next summer. This sums up my late August vacation on the East Coast of the...

The first time I met Jim Gabour, it was at a party I hosted on a canal boat on the Seine in Paris... for the French Bicentennial almost twenty years ago. A bearded wild man throwing dubloons and Mardi Gras beads arrived at 1 AM from London and announced, "I...

What do Snowmass, Colorado and the Cote d'Azur have in common? Just like the Texans who, when I was a child, were disliked in Colorado because they had bought up all the prime real estate for ski resorts, Russian tycoons are buying up select properties from some of the largest...

A few years ago I began spending more time in the U.S., after many years living and traveling abroad. I have always been a fan of the BBC and its calm, cool, and collected presenters. I trusted that the BBC was delivering to me vital information about the world. But...

Having grown up in Texas Bush oil country, and later living and working in and around entertainment and technology economies such as Seattle, Los Angeles and abroad, where a more liberal mind-set supports a future with Obama as the leader of choice, I keep trying to figure out how this...

My father can never stop talking about the small town in Northwest Louisiana, where he is from, to the point that when my parents were searching for a name for me, they named me after his hometown, Vivian, in Caddo Parish. There is a Piggly Wiggly, a Walmart, a First...

I have recently received requests to better explain how microfinance, specifically microcredit loans to the poor, has also become a "good" business for the more well-off humans on this planet. The point, as Nobel Peace Prize winner, Prof. Muhammad Yunus argues, is not to always look at financial profits and...