Refractions

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gail-hamburg/paris-on-the-brain-books_b_569442.html?view=print After a dark, cold, and rainy winter, warm weather has finally come to Paris, brightening its days and turning even the most crabby Parisian's mood sunny. Daffodils are in bloom and the cafés, parks, and banks of the Seine fill with people, animating the city. But whatever the weather, the City of Lights has always inspired writers, and there is a wealth of literature on the subject. With the euro at a recent low, travel to France is now more affordable than it has been in recent months. But whether you're planning a visit or you're an enthusiastic virtual traveler, here's a list of some excellent Paris-related books, from food-related novels to cookbooks to psychological analysis of the cultural differences between Americans and the French. Of course, this is a highly idiosyncratic list, by no means exhaustive--and, fair warning to the wise, though the most obvious ones (...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gail-hamburg/looking-beyond-technology_b_756869.html?view=print I recently attended social enterprise and impact investing summits on both coasts, where social entrepreneurs, impact investors, changemakers and change-agents gathered to discuss new developments in the field. In addition to conventional development initiatives addressing a range of social problems including the building of civil society, there were smart solutions impressive for their specificity. In parts of rural India, where people must frequently wait at home all day for trucks to bring clean water, a social enterprise created by students at Stanford and UC Berkeley, NextDrop.org sends SMS water alerts to neighborhood residents in advance of the trucks, based on computational models and predictions. Other interesting initiatives included the provision of portable housing for slum dwellers in Kenya, the recycling of jeepneys into classrooms in the Philippines, and the use of pets as...

"Kissing" Books Could Have Saved Borders First published in Huffington Post In his essay, "Is Nothing Sacred?" novelist Salman Rushdie examines the importance of literature in society, laments the state of fiction (he penned it during the nuclear fallout from his own novel), and recalls his early relationship with books. "I grew up kissing books and bread," he begins. An enchanting sentence that guaranteed my attention. "In our house," Mr. Rushdie wrote, "whenever anyone dropped a book or let fall... a 'slice,' which was our word for a triangle of buttered leavened bread, the fallen object was required not only to be picked up but also kissed, by way of apology for the act of clumsy disrespect. I was as careless and butter-fingered as any child and, accordingly, during my childhood years, I kissed a large number of 'slices' and also my fair share of books. Devout households in India often contained, and still conta...

First published in Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gail-hamburg/stem-education-_b_1100474.html By page 41 of Walter Isaacson's important biography of Steve Jobs, I wanted immediately to score some LSD to replicate Mr. Jobs experience, which he called, a profound experience and one of the most important things in his life. "It reinforced my sense of what was important -- creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could," he said. Between Jobs' LSD and Proust's petite madeleines, one could surely achieve sartori and self-actualization, I felt. By page 526, after reading Jobs' intention in designing the iPad "I would love to help quality journalism... we need real reporting and editorial insight more than ever," I longed (as a former journalist who left print just before it keeled over and died) for an iPad 3. Who knew the iPad wasn't jus...

First published in Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gail-hamburg/clara-may-band_b_1127227.html Gail Vida Hamburg In 2007, Chicagoan, Nicole Sotelo, a Harvard-trained theologian and author, read a searing account of Congolese rape victims. The women, young girls and grandmothers among them, had suffered extreme sexual violence at the hands of the Inerahanwe and Hutu men responsible for the genocide in neighboring Rwanda, the Congolese army, armed civilians, and occassionally, U.N peacekeepers. Sotelo remembers weeping when she read the experience of one woman identified only as "Nadine," talking to Eve Ensler, writing for Glamour. "She was fleeing her village after her family had been slaughtered and she had been raped, when she saw an infant girl lying on the ground next to her slain parents," Sotelo said. Ensler had written: "Nadine rescued the girl; now having a child to care for gives her reason to keep going. "I can't go back ...

"There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." "This line from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater comes as part of a baptismal speech the protagonist says he's planning for his neighbors' twins: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." It's an odd speech to make over a couple of infants, but it's playful, sweet, yet keenly precise in its summation of everything a new addition to the planet should need to know. By narrowing down all his advice for the future down to a few simple words, Vonnegut emphasizes what's most important in life. At the same time, he lets his frustration with all the people who obviously don't get it leak through just a little." Fo...

There are some stories one can't bear to hear, for to hear them is to lose a slice of our solidarity with all humanity, and to feel a sense of utter cosmic loneliness. Last week, the world seemed to have gone mad entirely. Along with stories about cannibalism and severed body parts, horrors not from some faraway place but right here in North America, there was the chilling video testimony of 11 year old Ali el-Sayed , a survivor of the Houlah killing spree carried out evidently by Syrian President Bashar Assad's shadow militia. The gunmen killed his mother, father, and eldest brother. Ali witnessed the slaying of his younger siblings--brothers' Aden and Nasser, 6 and 8 years old, and his sister, Rasha. "I put my brothers blood all over me and acted like I was dead," said the boy. According to Reuters, "Among the dead were infants and toddlers with bullet and knife wounds to the head." I read this crisp, clean, unemotional, neutral exemplar of preci...