The Maya were great observers and interpreters of the planets. Their pantheon included figures like the Nine Lords of the Night. Their gods might be human or animal or a combination of the two. The Maya believed the world would end every 52 years, and their lives and ideas were shaped by this central perception […] Read more

The Maya, an ancient South American culture, predicted that time would end in a violent apocalypse on December 21, 2012. They created an elaborate astronomical calendar called “The Long Count,” which stops abruptly in 2012. This date, which is also the winter equinox, coincides with an incredibly rare galactic alignment that happens once every 26,000 […] Read more

The land of the Maya spread from parts of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala in the south, to Belize and Mexico in the north. It was covered with hundreds of small kingdoms, each with its own unique history. The heartland of what scholars call the classic Mayan civilization lay in the southern lowlands. It is […] Read more

The meadow is full of life. Tall, yellow wildflowers called Goldenrod grow in the meadow. In the morning, a hungry, green grasshopper nibbles on a wildflower. Nearby, a big, brown toad is watching. Soon, the hungry toad catches the grasshopper with his long, sticky tongue and eats him right up. Toads can do that. At […] Read more

Like most other Mediterranean cities, Athens must be seen by day, but experienced by night. This is the time to enjoy ones self and meet people. Parties go on ’til dawn. The Greek government is trying to impose early closing hours in the interest of daylight productivity, but this initiative has been very unpopular […] Read more

At a certain point, every religion must explore its sacred past. What shards of history have survived? What is myth? What is symbol? Where does man end and God begin? And what is the shadow side? It took Christianity almost 2,000 years to look at its founding stories with modern eyes. The Mormon sacred stories […] Read more

Berry Gordy, founder and CEO of Motown Records, had a notorious reputation for not allowing his artists to flex their creative muscle. This is not to say that Gordy was indifferent to the natural evolutionary process that most creative artist experience. Berry Gordy’s often times unrelenting position to the hit-making machine that was Motown was, […] Read more

And I asked myself, frightened and rapt, who was she who rose before me like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, radiant as the sun. Then the creature came still closer to me, throwing into a corner the dark package she had ‘til then held pressed to her body; and she raised her hand to […] Read more

…She wants to know what I study, what I plan to do in the future, what I think of private schools in Manhattan, what my parents do. I answer with as much filigree and insouciance as I can muster, trying to slightly cock my head like Snow White listening to the animals. She, in turn, […] Read more