The cover story of Time Magazine speaks volumes. It's a 19th century picture of Abraham Lincoln with a 21st century computer generated image of a tear streaming down his face. The headline: "Why We're Still Fighting The Civil War." It's a headline that really disturbs me after learning that my great-great-great grandfather, Sandy Wills, fled his oppressive slave master, Edmund Wills, in 1863 to fight for his freedom with the 4th Heavy Field Artillery. It was a heroic story that was lost to my family for more than a century until I logged onto Ancestry.com and realized -- once and for all -- just how critical this epic battle was in American history.

What rattles my brain is why so many Americans are still confused about what the North and South were fighting about. Sandy Wills was NOT confused about the true mission of the war when he and five other enslaved teens who were imprisoned on the Wills plantation plotted their great escape and crossed the Tennessee state line into Columbus, Kentucky to enlist in what they were certain was a battle for their emancipation. These Africans were forced into a world of illiteracy -- but they were acutely aware of the high stakes involved.

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Via Curbed LA: Lloyd Wright’s iconic 1927 Sowden House has hit the Los Angeles housing market once again. Perched high above the Los Feliz street lights, this Mesoamerican masterpiece is a stone’s throw from old Hollywood haunts and new Hollywood premieres. The Sowden House joins two other Wright family homes that are also for sale: La Miniatura and the Ennis Residence, both designed by his father, the great Frank Lloyd Wright. In his father's style, Lloyd Wright’s primal, neo-Mayan temple was built to emphasize the surrounding elements and wildness of nature.

Most recently owned and twice renovated by house-flipper extraordinaire Xorian Balbes, the house is in top condition. Down from seven bedrooms to four and up from four to five bathrooms, this home has over 2 million dollars worth of renovations. The textile block home boasts a central courtyard with both treetop and city views. The Sowden House has been featured in films such as “The Aviator” and the TV show “America’s Next Top Model.” This

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Despite a modest downtick in the aggregate unemployment rate due in part to labor force withdrawals, U.S. labor markets remain in a deep recession. High levels of open unemployment and underemployment and nearly 7 million hidden unemployed dominate the scene. The recent release by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics of its January 2010 dislocated worker survey allowed us to identify the extraordinary impact of record high dislocation of U.S. workers over the 2007-2009 period, predominantly in the private for profit sector.

Between 2007 and 2009, there were 15.43 million U.S. workers who were displaced permanently from their jobs. This was by far the highest number of workers displaced over a three year period in the past 30 years for which we have such data. Nearly 11% of U.S. workers 20 and older were displaced from their jobs, the highest dislocation rate in our post-WWII history. While many key demographic groups experienced double-digit or near double-digit displacement rates, they were highest among younger workers (under 30), men, Blacks and Hispanics, those without post-secondary degrees including persons with 1-3 years of college, construction, manufacturing and mining industry workers, and most blue-collar occupations and lower level service occupations (food prep, janitors, office cleaners). Nearly 1 of every 5 White and Black males under age 35 with no college schooling were displaced, contributing to a depression among our nation's youngest male workers.

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When history decides to shift, people are always looking in the wrong direction. That's what makes so-called tipping points so unsettling -- the experts miss them so often. In the case of Egypt, nobody expected peaceful popular uprisings to topple Mubarak. The Arab world was focused on the dangers of Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda or Israel. It was taken for granted that the repressive regimes of the Arab world were here to stay, backed by the military, secret police, and powerful friends on the side like the United States.

History apparently had different ideas, and so we stand at a moment like the fall of the Berlin Wall, where a society collectively says, "Enough is enough." The way in which collective consciousness makes such decisions is mysterious. The day before change occurs, there's every reason to think it won't. Hosni Mubarak had been in place for thirty years, Soviet Communism for seventy. What we will see now is a great deal of backing and filling as the experts tell us all the factors that made this a predictable upheaval, and the pro-Mubarak West eats a little crow for not supporting the protest movement quickly or strongly enough. One of the protesters had appealed to an American reporter, "Why can't you see that we are just like you?" A good question.

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