“It Is Not Down on Any Map; True Places Never Are” – Herman Melville

1. The End of the Affair - Well it’s time. Time to go. Time to step away from this little corner of the world and somehow say goodbye to all the people who have been like family to me for the last two years. The next two days are going to be incredibly hard– there have already been some tears and I can promise you there will be plenty more — but as sad as it is to go, I also feel extremely lucky to be leaving a place that has truly become a part of who I am. I’ll never forget this experience and all the incredible people I met along the way. It has been an honor and a privilege. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

2. Because I Couldn’t Say it Any Better Myself – “I had never had any idealistic illusions about my Peace Corps ‘service’… I wasn’t there to save anybody or leave an indelible mark on the town. If anything, I was glad that during my two years… I hadn’t built anything, or organized anything, or made any great changes to the place. I had been a teacher, and in my spare time I had tried to learn as much as possible about the city and its people. That was the extent of my work, and I was comfortable with those roles and I recognized their limitations.” – Peter Hessler

3. More Going Away Presents – If anyone at home is looking for a new purse or clock-lamp (they’re combined) please let me know. I feel bad throwing any of this stuff away, but I don’t know how I’m going to pack it? I’m probably going to have to bring it all into Phnom Penh and get rid of it there.

4. Tragic - Yesterday afternoon a kid in my village stepped on a landmine. He was walking in a newly constructed ditch on the side of one of the main roads (a road I had run on that morning) when he triggered an explosive that had in all likelihood been buried for over thirty years ago. Thankfully it didn’t kill him, but he’ll most likely lose at least one of his legs.

5. Facebook – There’s something kind of amazing about the fact that the most popular song in Cambodia right now is about a guy who catches his girlfriend cheating on him on Facebook. I mean nobody here even owns a computer, but every single kid knows about Facebook because of this song. It’s a crazy world you’ve created Mr. Zuckerberg.

6. David Brooks Calls Out His Own Party - “But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.

The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name. Economists have identified many factors that contribute to economic growth, ranging from the productivity of the work force to the share of private savings that is available for private investment. Tax levels matter, but they are far from the only or even the most important factor.” (The Mother of All No-Brainers)

7. Frank Rich is Back - Frank Rich is back this week with A MUST READ in New York Magazine: Obama’s Original Sin. The article looks at Obama’s “capture by the corporate axis of influence” and his failure to address the major problem in our country: joblessness. It’s Rich at his best…

What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they “are burnt and purged away.”

While I’ll always be an Obama supporter and I’ll be devastated if he loses in 2012, it’s hard to read an article like this and not be disappointed in the job he has done. It’s not that he’s been a bad president, but he had the potential to be great and missed his opportunity to really turn this country around. Maybe if he gets a second term he’ll be more bold. Lets hope…

8. How To Land Your Kids in Therapy – Dear Mom, it turns out I’m screwed up because you loved and nurtured me too much. Or at least that’s what Lori Gottlieb says in the article she wrote for the Atlantic: How To Land Your Kids in Therapy. It’s an interesting look at parenting and the kids of my generation…

And yet, underlying all this parental angst is the hopeful belief that if we just make the right choices, that if we just do things a certain way, our kids will turn out to be not just happy adults, but adults that make us happy. This is a misguided notion, because while nurture certainly matters, it doesn’t completely trump nature, and different kinds of nurture work for different kinds of kids (which explains why siblings can have very different experiences of their childhoods under the same roof). We can expose our kids to art, but we can’t teach them creativity. We can try to protect them from nasty classmates and bad grades and all kinds of rejection and their own limitations, but eventually they will bump up against these things anyway. In fact, by trying so hard to provide the perfectly happy childhood, we’re just making it harder for our kids to actually grow up. Maybe we parents are the ones who have some growing up to do—and some letting go.

9. Things I Love About 2011 - Now that 2011 is halfway over, here’s a short list of the people/places/things that have made me happy during the first six months of the year…

• The Arab Spring
• Game of Thrones
• Yingluck Shinawatra
• Shameless
• Planking (What is Planking?)
• Rory McIlroy
• Andrew Cuomo
• Fast Five
• The Ryan Plan
• The Dallas Mavericks
• Weinergate
• James Blake
• Grantland.com
• The WTF Podcast
• The Navy Seal Team Six

10. The End - And finally,  some of my favorite pictures from my life in Prey Sundek….

And now it’s time to go. I’ll be back again on Friday or Saturday. Thanks for checking in.