If life afforded you an open weekend, here’s hoping that it was restorative. You can catch up with recent days’ news – including a look at gyrations of the bond market and investor confidence in the United States, and at the legal fight over Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation – at CSMonitor.com. Missiles again fell on Ukraine and Gaza. 

It’s Monday. Let’s shift into the new week. 

Dominique Soguel writes today about a people’s will to rise up in the aftermath of Syria’s devastating 14-year civil war, and about hopes for rebuilding an economy. She frames that larger story partly through one family’s act of optimism. “The choice to repair a broken bicycle may seem small,” Dominique writes, “but for families like the Saads, such decisions reflect a fragile but growing faith in a life beyond conflict.”