by Patricia Smith Melton
Founder, Peace X Peace
Editor, Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women

Below is Part One of a conversation I had with Hari Ravikumar, co-author of a modern English version of the Bhagavad-Gita, an ancient text that is structured as a dialog between two friends before an epic war. All verses quoted come from the translation, which will be available mid-2011 at Amazon and as an e-book at http://newbhagavadgita.in.
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In the West, we tend to think of the three great religions as the Abrahamic religions: …

by Patricia Smith Melton
Founder, Peace X Peace
Editor, Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women
“Power is a mighty magnet for the human psyche to distort and indulge. People suffer. And one day they rise, en masse. That day in Egypt is now.”
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Just as the protests of the people of Egypt reached critical mass last week, Peace X Peace was launching Connection Point, our initiative to raise the voices and spread the wisdom of Arab and Muslim women to everyone in the Internet world, which is …

by Patricia Smith Melton
Founder, Peace X Peace
Editor, Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women
On December 1, 2010, NASA told us there are three times as many stars as we thought there were. Our common equation before the first of December was that there were 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars each.
Now we know that about a third of all galaxies are elliptical (instead of spherical like the Milky Way) and that elliptical galaxies have 1 trillion to 10 trillion stars each. This ups the number …

by Patricia Smith Melton
Founder, Peace X Peace
Editor, Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli and Palestinian Women
Young Playwrights Theater (YPT) of DC has a lot to celebrate. On October 10, it was one of 14 organizations across the U.S. to receive the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from Michelle Obama at the White House. And 2010 is its 15th anniversary year.
YPT gives voice to students in the Washington, DC area by teaching them how to express themselves through writing plays. Then it matches the plays with professional …