Spirit of the season(ing): counterculture recipe for family harmony

American culture
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Around our holiday table in 1979, my fractious family were gifted with a sudden ability to perceive each other as the loveable characters we truly are. The secret ingredient: an unseen substance in the stuffing.

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Dress like a local: taking on the idiosyncracies of style

American culture
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Israel’s finely delineated cultural dress code requires an American transplant — who dresses for comfort — to retool her style.

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Great White People Book Club: stumbling on our false cosmopolitanism

ANASTASIA ASHMAN
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Global thinkers must navigate and find a way to bridge worlds that might make only a sinister kind of sense.

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Food communion: finding lost rituals

American culture
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A global nomad now back in the USA misses the special status of food.

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Reading travelers: find your historical context

ANASTASIA ASHMAN
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Cultural wisdom historically pools at the intersection of women and travel

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Passion plays: defending our identity and a future that looks like us

American culture
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Most of us would agree that passion fuels our aims better than discipline or elbow grease alone. Passion’s dark side — anger — may be the best defense of our identity, and a future that looks like us.

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Decomposing self: misplacing your most valuable expatriate possession

ANASTASIA ASHMAN
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Life abroad can test our sense of self. Realizing we’re part of an adventuress continuum can restore it.

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Reacting to taboo: how avoidance can make us complicit

ANASTASIA ASHMAN
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Taboo’s unintended cloaking effect: we banish from our thoughts the most unimaginable human acts, making us blind to them in our midst.

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Monster brawl: when Gagaism meets totalitarianism

American culture
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Lady Gaga urged the Czech audience to get up and dance on the 21st anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. But totalitarianism lives on in Prague.

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