It's possible things with Kosovo might turn into a battle of litigation and protests rather than physical battles. I hope to God it does. There's definitely people on both sides who want peace, despite the press coverage to the contrary.

My best friend floated the idea of me teaching history once. I think it'd be rewarding, but I never got the chance to finish high school, so it's not likely. Parents don't typically want their child taught by someone without a degree.

My parents were ranchers. Goat farmers, in the countryside. We lived in a massive house with another family who worked the same land. I won't say we were ever rich, but we always had enough to eat and things seemed to make a lot more sense then. No geopolitical quandry this or ethnoreligious tension that, just goat milk to gather, cheese presses to work and fur to shear. Markets to set up at every Saturday, church on Sundays.

[She aches for it. Those days were so kind to her, so gentle. She lived without fear for herself or others and took for granted that it would always remain that way, always assumed that she'd stay in her sleepy little slice of the mountains. No one ever told her how fragile all that could be, how easily taken away it all was.]