Lifestyle

Dear Lebanon, I wanted to write to say Happy 70th birthday. I know that in reality you have been around thousands of years, and were trading and writing long before my ancestors. But that moment of your birth in November 1943 was special, different – you took your first steps as a new nation founded on uniting principles rather than lines of division. I’m proud that my predecessor, Edward Spears, was there to support that, and that we believed as strongly then as now in the idea of Lebanon. The thing is, Lebanon, do you still believe in that idea? This is a question only you can answer. Without doubt, it has been a bumpy seven decades, with troublesome teenage years and plenty of midlife crises, to put it mildly. You now face another tough year, and rising anxiety that...
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Dear Roberto, My name is Steve Stobie and I warrant that you will not have heard of me, and unfortunately, I have to say that I am not a regular visitor to Goodison Park either. With a family of three children, all 7 years and under, and living down here in beautiful Berkshire, a trip up to the mighty Goodison Park is not on my radar at the current point in time. However, I have supported Everton since 1985 and have therefore seen some of the best teams in Everton Blue, including players the likes of Southall, Ratcliffe, Reid, Bracewell, Sheedy, Steven, Heath and Sharp, and also some of the worst, especially throughout my school years, with players such as Tiler, Ward, Thompson, Farrelly and Angell gracing the team. But there were always heroes as well, Hinchcliffe, Ebbrell,...
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Dear Community: Over the past four years, Hendrick Health System worked diligently to bring our Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas reimbursement rates to a level comparable with rates provided to other Texas hospitals our size and similar in services. In 2014, Hendrick made numerous offers to Blue Cross for new contracted rates. Although we made every effort to accomplish a satisfactory outcome, to date, no resolution was reached and Hendrick was forced out of the Blue Cross network effective July 1, 2014. Blue Cross positioned our 2014 deliberation as a one-year negotiation, although we actually asked every year since 2011 for a medical inflation increase. Blue Cross refused to negotiate new rates over those years and brought us to the decision point that continuing with four-year old...
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Dear Paula Deen, So it’s been a tough week for you… believe me you I know something about tough weeks being a beginning food writer and lowly culinary historian. Of course honey, I’d kill for one of your worst days as I could rest myself on the lanai, the veranda, the portico (okay that was really tongue in cheek), the porch..whatever…as long as its breezy and mosquito-free. First Food Network now Smithfield. (Well not so mad about Smithfield—not the most ethical place to shill for, eh, Paula?) I am currently engaged in a project I began in 2011 called The Cooking Gene Project—my goal to examine family and food history as the descendant of Africans, Europeans and Native Americans—enslaved people and enslavers—from Africa to America and from Slavery to Freedom. You and I are both...
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Dear Mr Dacre, I am writing to express my deep disappointment in the insinuation in your newspaper that Dr Hiranya Peiris was selected to discuss the ‘Big Bang’ breakthrough on Newsnight for anything other than her expertise. In Ephraim Hardcastle’s column on 19th March, he asserts that Dr Peiris and Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock were selected based on gender and birthplace because ‘Newsnight’s Guardian-trained editor, Ian Katz, is keen on diversity.’ The implication that anything outside of her academic record qualifies Dr Peiris to discuss the results of the BICEP2 study is profoundly insulting. She is a world-leading expert on the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background, with degrees from Cambridge and Princeton, so is one of the best-placed people in the world to discuss the finding. Dr...
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Dear Ben, I am writing to you today as a woman who was born and raised in Islam. I saw your discussion with Bill Maher and Sam Harris, and I must say you did me a great disservice that day. Your heart was in the right place, of course, and it was lovely of you to step up and defend ‘my people’. What you really did though, perhaps inadvertently, was silence a conversation that never gets started. Two people attempted to begin a dialogue and you wouldn’t even listen. Why should any set of ideas be above criticism, Ben? Why are Muslims being ‘preserved’ in some time capsule of centuries gone by? Why is it okay that we continue to live in a world where our women are compared to candy waiting to be consumed? Why is it okay for women of the rest of the world to fight for freedom and...
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Dear Times of India, There are times when one should keep quiet. If most of the online world is lambasting you, even if you think you’re right it wouldn’t hurt to introspect a little and wonder why people are reacting the way they are. Your response to Deepika Padukone’s fuming tweet and post on Facebook against your article on her, or more specifically on her breasts, is both shocking and unexpected. You could have chosen to apologise. Or you could have chosen to keep quiet. But by doing neither and by misunderstanding the issue entirely, you’ve only dug yourself deeper into a hole. You’ve started your article in Bombay Times (‘Dear Deepika, our point of view,’ Sept. 21) saying, “As one of the largest media houses in the world with interests in print, TV, radio and online, we...
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Dear Soon-To-Be Graduate, Hi, my name is Fitz Villafuerte. I’m sure you don’t know me because most of my readers are OFWs and young urban professionals – so I’d like to welcome you here, to my blog. I’m an entrepreneur, an investor and a personal finance advocate. This blog, which I’ve been writing in for eight years now, is where I teach people about money; and occasionally, it’s where I talk about life and share the lessons I’ve learned. Today, I’m doing the latter part. Your last semester You are now on your last semester, and probably stressed about your exams and thesis, or anxious about your board exam or job applications. And then there’s that everyday, bittersweet feeling that you’re spending your last days with your college friends – I know because I felt it...
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Dear Prime Minister, M Rogge, Lord Coe and Members of the International Olympic Committee, I write in the earnest hope that all those with a love of sport and the Olympic spirit will consider the stain on the Five Rings that occurred when the 1936 Berlin Olympics proceeded under the exultant aegis of a tyrant who had passed into law, two years earlier, an act which singled out for special persecution a minority whose only crime was the accident of their birth. In his case he banned Jews from academic tenure or public office, he made sure that the police turned a blind eye to any beatings, thefts or humiliations inflicted on them, he burned and banned books written by them. He claimed they “polluted” the purity and tradition of what it was to be German, that they were a threat to the...
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Okay, let’s admit it. Life sucks! You often utter these words, you might have said it a number of times in a day that, “My Life really sucks.” I’m amazed by the people, who are so dissatisfied with their lives as if they never had anything in their lives. They are not at all contented with the things they own, their relationships, the food they are eating, the clothes they are wearing, house they are living, jobs they are doing and there are ‘n’ number of things of which they are so ungrateful off. And I’m sorry to say, you too fall in the same category. You’re not at all happy with your existing life and eventually you accept it in your heart that your life sucks too. You know why? Because you don’t stand a chance, you think that you don’t deserve to be happy....
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