“He has that sense of history that is common among those of us who are graduates of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. What is uncommon, and heroic, is how he has transmuted that…

“Perhaps, there’s a need to revisit another category of heroism: virtuous action and extraordinary bravery that arises out of something other than adherence to a personal code or ruined chivalric hierarchy, or to…

“I see no heroes in high places in our country. The heroes I see today are walking next to me on the street, riding the train I take, working long hours: the single…

Won Over By Reality By Tim Bayer Those injured and those helping after the Boston Marathon bombing. Note: This essay first appeared in Weekly Hubris in 2013. BRIGHTON New York—(Weekly Hubris)—March 2017—The first…

“I have been lucky to live with these storytellers who gave me so much material to write about. One regret is that they rarely wrote things down, themselves.”—Diana Farr Louis Eating Well Is…

“If you’re reading these words and comprehending their meaning, it’s too late for my premier bit of advice: do not use written language. It’s temptingly beautiful, like a flower with thorns or a…

“My ancestor was a product of two distinct worlds, the Christian and the Muslim, the Ottoman and the Byzantine, and such a symbiosis was far from uncommon, though Modern Greece’s national mythology demands…

“Our lives are in constant flux, yet we don’t need to be swallowed up in the buzzing stress. It’s possible to make conscious efforts to keep a strong sense of ourselves, to keep…

“The physicality of writing on paper with an implement that is silent, free from the subversive electronic tension of the screen, and blessedly insignificant, gives me a little purgatory of irresponsibility that allows…

“In this city of Constantinople, in Byzantium, lived my ancestors. In other words, they were the great, great, great, great grandparents of my mother and father, and they were Greek.”—Helen Noakes Waking Point…