by Patricia Lee Sharpe | May 23, 2016 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee Sharpe Lu marries Tham, but Chen marries Healy. Flannagan marries Kennedy, but Roberts marries Maheshwari. So the U.S. is still a melting pot, ethnically. But wait: birds of a feather—East Asian as well as Irish—are definitely flocking together. Both,...
by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Jan 18, 2016 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee Sharpe Today’s Sri Lanka is the ancient land of Serendip, which gave rise to the modern English word serendipity. Sri Lanka is still a stunningly beautiful island surrounded by white sand beaches that rise up through tropical forests into blue...
by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Aug 31, 2015 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee SharpeThe Greek island of Kos can’t accommodate all the refugees who land on its shores. Nor can Greece alone deal with all those who turn up on its sea-washed territories.Though incessantly berated for hard-heartedness, Europe, collectively, can’t...
by Patricia H. Kushlis | Jun 22, 2015 | Monitor
By Patricia H Kushlis I was skeptical about the durability of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement when I first saw the news of its signing. It seemed to be too good to be true. The bitter civil war between the Ulster government and the IRA that had engulfed Northern...
by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Jan 20, 2015 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee Sharpe Take a good look at the photo of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the two term president of Sri Lanka who called a snap election, expecting to win by a landslide, then lost, decisively. Note the aggressive mustache, the arched eyebrows, the bug eyes. Shift...