Your neice's death occasionally comes to my mind...very sad and quite a reminder that no matter what we do, we are never really in control of our lives. I had such a lesson long ago when I got hit by a car on an otherwise bright and sunny and happy day. But I survived and in survival comes some degree of frogetting that lesson.

Lebanon is a tough one for me...my default is always Israel, but I never assume Israel is entirely in the right. I don't want to go into my complex feelings about the Lebanon crisis this last year, but I do want to mention that Anthony Bourdain's Lebanon episode was amazing to watch. He went there to film a regular episode. His show is not one I watch. But I did watch his Lebanon one. Watching events unfold from regular Lebanese watching the celebrating Hezbollah supporters and saying something like, "we will all pay for their foolishness" to the lame US political response but excellent performance of the US troops who carried out the evacuation, was all riveting. Caught in a war that has nothing to do with you and you have a film crew with you. That's what Bourdain accidently was able to do and it was very interesting to watch.