I grew up in Kentucky, an American treasury of high European culture. Following a year abroad in Spain in 1988/89 that changed my life, I pursued studies in international relations and ended up working as a speechwriter for the NATO Secretary General. I left that job in 2015, but remained in Brussels to stay with my partner, who works here. This blog is meant as an outlet for my interests including topics as varied as transatlantic security, climate change, and the problems inherent in creating meaningful political language that appeals to people while actually addressing real problems. (Today, more often than not, those two characteristics have little to do with one another.) But I also hope to give my readers information that they might not find elsewhere — or, at least, a take that connects information in a way that more mainstream media outlets do not.
If you sign up using the widget below, then every month or two I’ll send you a short newsletter with interesting notes about North American-European relations, European Union, and local Belgian affairs. This newsletter won’t repeat widely reported mass media stories. (As you may have noticed, most daily morning newsletters from big media outlets tend to say more or less the same thing.) Instead, I’ll try to pick out stories that flew slightly under the mainstream radar. There is, of course, no charge for this newsletter, and you are welcome to forward it around. I do ask that you occasionally click on the Google advertisement located on the home page because, sooner or later, I’m going to have to pay off my student loans.
Thanks for reading, and please don’t hesitate to leave comments or get in touch.
Best,
Patrick Stephenson