"Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect." - Alan Cohen

"I don't think Christmas is necessarily about things. It's about being good to one another." — Carrie Fisher

“Education is not a filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” — W.B. Yeats

“A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself”

- Oprah Winfrey

On August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote, and the 100th year was just celebrated.  In addition, The Voting Rights Act was signed into law on August 6, 1965. This year celebrated just the 55th year that all Americans were granted the right to vote regardless of race, which is within our lifetime.

I’ve always wanted a venue to expose the delightfully distinctive aesthetics and harmonies from Bulgaria, my second home, to the insofar uninitiated. For too long the country’s formal, folk-like modesty has allowed its art and music to be overshadowed by Western Europe’s overwhelming cultural confidence.

Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11.

This is a special election year. This August marked the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment in the United States, which guaranteed American women the right to vote.

There is something very special about Accra that gives me hope and inspiration for the future. I’m reading more and more about an international, bright young contingent of social media-savvy entrepreneurs who congregate in cafes, running start-ups from their laptops.

There's a cautious, serious note that the city has struck that may characterize the rest of everyday life in most places, but has always been deliriously absent in Miami’s downtown and South Beach.

Every Tuesday, which is on July 14th, it is Bastille Day in France, as well as in the French-speaking Canadian provinces, and African countries whose French colonial history still imbues the tongue and culture of the Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Cameroon and Senegal.

Bastille Day marks the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, a prison and symbolic institution of the absolute and arbitrary power of Louis 16th. The event was the advent of the French Revolution that so famously spawned the phrases “Off with their heads” and Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake.”

In a country as diverse as ours, Independence Day should be about inclusivity. We’ve all seen the iconic images of the day and know how powerfully they resonate with how this American holiday is celebrated.

The cusp of a new era does not announce itself elegantly. When it finally gives birth -- painful, bloody, beautiful birth -- the era has already been gestating for some time. The Emancipation of American Slaves -- to whom today’s African-Americans are directly descended -- did not happen overnight. Nor did the seemingly sudden recognition of what is quickly becoming America’s second Independence Day.

Today is Juneteenth.