In Boston, we were hoping for a white Christmas. We had a Christmas Eve blizzard for my first Christmas here 14 years ago.             My furniture had not yet arrived from South Africa – it arrived four days later, and two large and cheerful Ukrainians tramped through the snow and up the stairs to my apartment as if it were Springtime.             All the furniture I had that Christmas was a new bed, two new maple stools, an antique Eames chair and a glass Art Deco coffee table bought at a second-hand store up the road. Waking that morning, I couldn’t believe how beautiful everything was. Thick snow lay like…

In 2024, more than half of the world’s nations will go to the polls, or some four billion people in 76 nations, the highest rate ever. Presidential elections, or those for national leaders, will take place in large countries including the United States of America (USA), Britain, Russia, India, and Ukraine, and not one of these is expected to have an easy time of it. Mauritius: The Only Fully Functioning African Democracy The Economist Intelligence Unit categorizes Brazil, India, Indonesia and the United States, as “flawed democracies meaning that elections are free, fair and allow for the possibility of change, but their political systems have weaknesses”. South Africa and Botswana,…