Browsing through my latest copy of Town And Country, I learned some facts that surprised me.  Normally, I don’t expect to be enlightened by the magazine.  Mostly, I hope to be amused. What I discovered wasn’t earth-shaking.  I’d heard about power lunches before, but I didn’

Here’s the overwhelming question.  How can a combination of amino acids write a symphony or join the Republican party or commit stock fraud or feel patriotism for a section of the earth which is, itself, no more than a combination of amino acids?  (“Science reveals the code of t

Shakespeare created many memorable phrases like, “to thine own self be true,” or “it follows as the night the day”– so many that I am hard-pressed to avoid the Bard from time to time. Yet there is one expression I couldn’t do without, particularly during the waning mon

I haven’t seen my friend in over two years.  The reason has nothing to do with the pandemic.  She’s ill and in pain. Accommodating guests isn’t on the agenda.  Even the bed is her enemy. She lives and sleeps in a lounge chair. At least, she did until two weeks when she was se

Mubarak Bala, head of the Humanist Society of Nigeria disappeared in late April of this year.  He’d written earlier on Facebook that “the Prophet Muhammad was a terrorist.” Now his friends worry he’s been targeted for retribution.  Blasphemy in that country is punishable by

My mom’s death was a long goodbye. I’d anticipated her passing since she’d reached her late 70’s, after her bout with breast cancer and her heart attack. But she surprised me, as she sometimes did. She died at 104 in a care facility where she’d resided for 16 years. Througho

  If some people can’t handle the truth, it may be because the truth is hard to find.  Too often there’s an understory. A number of understories appeared in the February 14 edition of The Week. Because they are amusing, I’ll share them, starting with male myths: A man driv

A while ago, a woman dropped me from her Facebook friends list. I could see it coming. She was an alt-right believer, while I was not. Simply put, our views didn’t mesh. Beliefs, like black holes, seldom emit light. Reason forces us to reevaluate ideas according to new information.

I sat down to coffee, recently, with a couple who’d lived in Albania after the  Russians withdrew. The husband was serving as U. S. Ambassador at the time and during our conversation, his wife recounted a story about an event she hosted for some of the country’s political lea