Odd thoughts about random things, but with a focus on anti-EU disinformation
A typical but unfulfilled dream for many Americans is to live and work in Europe, at least for awhile. Long enough, perhaps, to learn that language they’ve always wanted to learn — French, Italian, or even German.
Well, guess what. It’s a lot easier to do than you might think. In fact, you could get on a plane tomorrow and find a job in Italy in a matter of weeks, or even days (if you’re lucky).
Continue reading “American, but want to live and work in Europe? Here’s one easy way how”
The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in February 2017.
I was a redneck, but a year in Europe changed my life.
My hometown was Harlan, Kentucky, a coal-mining hub set deep in Appalachia. By 1989, through circumstance and chance, I gained a scholarship to study at a prestigious prep school in Massachusetts. My classmates included a Hilton, a Roosevelt and a son of the King of Jordan. Deerfield Academy offered a career trajectory far higher than I had any right to expect, if I could seize it.
Continue reading “Why Rednecks Should Stop Worrying and Love Europe”
The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in October 2014.
Let me tell you a story.
My father grew up in a small coal-mining town in Appalachia. When he was around 10 years old, he knew a man who was a sign-painter. I’ll call him Earl.
The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in September 2014.
HELL IS REAL, says the billboard on my right.
Driving through Indiana, I think: ain’t that the truth.
As the town of Gary – at this point, just a crumbling monument to U.S. Steel’s past greatness – comes into view, my partner gasps from my Prius C’s passenger seat. A Spaniard, she’s used to seeing clean and modern roadways and pristine infrastructure built, in part, with European Union funds. “It’s like a third-world country,” she says, staring at the abandoned factories.
The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in May 2015.
President Obama is profoundly right to try making community college more accessible. But we need to make studying abroad more accessible, too.
Continue reading “Why High School Students Should Study Abroad”
The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in 2014.
Broader surveillance was supposed to be about catching terrorists, not about eavesdropping on a German leader who’s been one of America’s best friends.
Revelations that the National Security Agency tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s private mobile phone have made a big impression here in Brussels and across Europe. They have given concrete form to a long-held European suspicion: that sometimes when America talks about protecting the West from terrorism, it really means conducting surveillance for its own economic and political advantage. It turns out that it’s not about your security, this example seems to say; it’s about our prosperity.
Continue reading “Are Europeans and Americans Drifting Apart?”
The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in September 2014.
Is NBC’s Today show now a sign of a coming apocalypse? I’m beginning to wonder.
Last Thursday, I tuned in to Today for the first time in a long while. I watched a bright and chirpy correspondent climb about 40 feet of the Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska as part of her epic Journey to some of America’s most iconic landmarks. She gawked at the glory of Mendenhall Lake, paddling around it in a kayak. She waxed trivial about her incredibleadventure, her great guides and how gorgeous and magnificent she found the glacier.
But a fundamental fact was missing from her report.
Continue reading “The ‘Today’ Show: A Sign of the Apocalypse”
The following article appeared in The Huffington Post in June 2015.
Not long ago, I asked a 16-year-old cousin if she liked studying history in high school. “I don’t do history,” she replied with a shrug.
She’s not atypical. Many of our young people are ignorant of basic historical facts – as in, they don’t know who won the Civil War. And they don’t seem to care too much about that.
But I wonder: so what, if our kids know little about the past? Does history really matter anymore?
The answer isn’t so obvious.