The ancient stone walls of Jerusalem’s Old City hold the heat of the day, and too often the heat of politics and religion.

But there is nothing like a snowstorm to chill out the Holy Land.

Freelance journalist Genevieve Belmaker was out and about in Jerusalem, where she is based, and sent along these snowy images of ‘ground truth’ in Jerusalem: A snow cap on the Dome of the Rock. A drift of white powder up against the Western Wall.The faithful playfully throwing snow balls in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. A Jerusalem evergreen toppled by the weight of the snow.

TUCSON, Arizona — It has too often been said that there are two sides to every story, but reporting on immigration from both sides of the fence in the sister border towns of Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico infuses this maxim with fresh, more literal meaning.

For the deported Mexican and Central American migrants biding time at Kino Border Initiative's soup kitchen on the Mexico side and desperately planning an attempt to rejoin their families in the United States, American immigration laws seem unreasonably cruel and heavy-handed, the US Border Patrol predatory and abusive.

PLYMOUTH, Massachusetts – A few of my favorite things for which I am truly thankful: courage, rock n’ roll and diplomacy.

The American tradition of Thanksgiving is, of course, always open to sharp criticism from my friends and colleagues around the world. They love to point out the obvious and bitter irony of Thanksgiving. That is that we celebrate how Native Americans helped a group of religious pilgrims through the early harvests when they first landed on the shores of New England right here in Plymouth.

The bitter part comes, of course, with the history of how these indigenous people were treated in the many decades that followed. These global friends also like to point out just how American it is to have a national holiday in which we over-eat and sit on couches watching football.

Okay, these are fair and important, albeit a bit well-trodden, criticisms.

That said, it is still a great day for families to come together and for everyone to remember to be thankful. I passed through Plymouth last night on my way to Cape Cod where my wife, our four boys, and our whole extended family is gathering for the day.

So in no particular order, here’s a list of ‘a few of my favorite things’ (John Coltrane’s version of this melody is certainly one of them) for which I am truly grateful. 

KAKUMA, Kenya —The Kakuma refugee camp is 60 miles from Sudanese border, in the uppermost reaches of the arid Turkana region of Kenya. It was opened in 1992 to house the 16,000 “lost” girls and boys fleeing the war from Sudan. These days, the overcrowded facility is home to around 100,000 people, driven there by violence not only from Sudan but also Ethiopia, Congo, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi and a handful of other nations.

Kakuma does not look like a refugee camp in the movies, with rows of canvas tents ringed by barbed wire. Or rather, structures like that do exist, but that is where the aid workers live. Most of the refugees live in handmade huts, built of sticks, mud, metal scrap, and materials salvaged from aid packaging.

At the camp’s entrance, myriad signs list Kakuma’s sponsors, which include the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR), The Lutheran World Federation, The World Food Program and Handicap International. The latter advertises a “mine risk education program.” Poisonous spiders, snakes, and scorpions abound in the area.