You probably can’t identify these two men but they are going to have a profound impact on your life.

On Tuesday Americans re-elected Barack Obama to the US Presidency, and on Thursday, the Chinese Communist Party Congress gets underway in Beijing to choose the new leadership that will lead China for the next ten years. It’s been twenty years since these two nations transferred power at the same time, and it will be 20 years before it happens again. Two systems, two processes, two changes in government – but the transfer couldn’t be more different. read more

It’s the first of November and the summer honeymoon is over. Seattleites were blessed with an extended summer and a short gloriously beautiful fall, but last week everything changed and now we’re looking at six months of drizzle with occasional drenching downpours. Suddenly we have to recalibrate and refocus. There’s a sort of climatic amnesia in Seattle that helps us keep the memory of Sunlight Affective Disorder (SAD) at bay while we spend a few months on the lake or riding our bikes on the Burke-Gilman Trail. But, every year about this time we are driven indoors and we have to develop survival strategies for the next six or seven months. read more

In March, during the Republican primary season and in the run up to the selection of Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate, I returned to Saigon and felt such relief to get out of the American news cycle where every media outlet was consumed with stories about the Republican debates and delegate counts. I returned in May, just in time to see the candidates from both parties redirect their messages to the November election. Right now, I wish I could opt out again and clear my head of the hype and contentiousness that will overload the news cycles until November 6th. read more

This is what I looked like 40 years ago. Standby for the updated version

In July of 2009 I retired from the Alliance for Education, a Seattle non-profit supporting public education, and in August I accepted an offer to become the Development Director for East Meets West Foundation in Saigon. For 30 years I told people I wanted to write and for 30 years I used work as an excuse not to write – so in August of 2009 I started blogging about the experience of living and working in Saigon. The blog became my discipline and for three years I posted reflections on the Saigon experience at http://jackbernardstravels.blogspot.com. read more