As I was finishing dinner last night, I realized the sun had already set by the time I put down my fork and knife. A few weeks ago, the sun was still shining long after we finished dinner. Not so much now. Yesterday, the sun set at 7:22 p.m. and the day was 13 hours and 2 minutes long. A month ago, the sun set at 8:08 p.m. on August 1 and the day ...
Continue Reading → ShareDag Hammarskjold was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 until his death in a 1961 plane crash while trying to resolve the Congo Crisis. Hammarskjold is remembered for his efforts to ease tensions between Israelis and Arabs following the establishment of modern Israel in 1948. He also was instrumental in resolving the 1956 Suez Conflict or Second Arab-Israeli War. Hammarskjold ...
Continue Reading → Share“Bread,” the Croatian essayist Predrag Matvejević writes, is “the condition of peace and the cause of war, the promise of hope and the reason for despair.” Bread, he observes, is older than writing itself. No one knows when some Neolithic household first gathered wild grains, crushed them, and accidentally left them near their campfire. Later, when they gathered the first bread from among the ashes, they tasted something unimaginably nourishing. It was sustaining enough ...
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