I’m a fan of J. K. Rawling’s and hope to see her newest fantastic beasts film soon.  Still, when I stop to consider, we humans are fantastic beasts, too.  Artificial Intelligence (AI) won’t be a threat to us in the near future, if ever.  The reason is we harbor my

As I mention in my upcoming memoir, for a time I lived in a pub in an English village.  Quaint and cozy, it was of note because of a  monk’s face, carved with a wink, that peered into the serving room.  Behind it was a passageway, long since blocked, that in early day

Late one afternoon, after my gym workout,  I stopped for a cool glass of water in the retirement center’s lounge.  With no one around, I sank into one of the padded chairs and stared into empty space.  A couple strolled by to read the menu posted for dinner.  &nb

I saw no mystery in it.  When I was a child of 5 or 6, I made perfume by gathering sweet-smelling flowers, roses, daphne, and honeysuckle, and dropped them into a bowl of cold water.  Next, I crushed them with a wooden spoon and after a few minutes, I had perfume for my moth

With so much political turmoil around the globe, much of it spawned by our President, I wonder if anyone is thinking about the future? All this concern for North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear capabilities, for example. How does it compare to the growing cyber threat?  Are nuclea

Whether or not Albert Einstein gave his brain to science may be a matter of debate, (Click) but it would be fascinating to compare his mind to Donald Trump’s.   Einstein’s IQ is 160 while Trump claims his is 156.  The number means less to me than how well a person g

A woman quit Facebook today, after saying goodbye to her friends.  She’d have enough of the growing incivility.  I admit some of the messages on my news feed sound like word bombs from Syria.  Surprisingly, much of this foaming at the mouth comes from liberal democrat

Recently, I left my dental office with a generic drug prescription and paid less than $3 for it.  Medicare paid the major portion, but I admit, I had reverse sticker shock.  After the EpiPen scandal, where a generic drug that normally sold for $50 suddenly shot up to $300, I

The easiest way to affect social change is to affect the flow of money.  Talking about women’s rights and equal pay may get lip service from politicians and civil rights groups but it won’t move the pay needle a jot until Wall Street sees a reason to respond.  Universal

I love sinking into a new book from Alexander McCall’s First Ladies’ Detective series. Set in East Arica’s Botswana, the area around which I lived for two years, I am well acquainted with the rhythms of life in that part of the sub-Saharan desert.  Each new book is like a t