Recently, one of my blog readers sent me the link to comments made by Hannah MacDonald, head of an English publishing house.  She was encouraging her colleagues to be kinder to writers. One wouldn’t want to squelch a budding Emily Dickenson, Jane Austin, or J. K. Rowling.  (Click)

Leslee Urdwin has finished a movie about rape, Daughter of India. Jyoti Singh was a 23 year-old medical student in New Delhi, India who was attacked on a private bus and, after being brutalized by a group of young men, was murdered by them.   One of the offenders died while in polic

When I lived in England in the 1960s, I met a number of Polish people and their children who, having found a haven in England during World War II, had chosen not to repatriate to their home country after peace had been declared.  Some of the parents continued to wear the mantel of a

It might be difficult to feel sorry for an exiled Russian oligarch who: 1) ripped off his native country by cornering some of its most valuable business assets; 2) sold them off for$8 billion and with his money bought equally valuable assists elsewhere in the world; 3) who lives in a

As if she were a character in a short story by Franz Kafka, Emily Dreyfus woke up one morning to discover she was a robot.  Instead of a face, she had an iPad screen.  Instead of eyes, she used a camera to guide her, though it lacked peripheral vision.  Instead of a mouth, she had

Donald Trump says Muslim’s in New Jersey cheered when the 911 towers went down.  Despite the lack of evidence, he continues to say it with great conviction.  Some people believe if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes true in some people’s minds.  Certainly, the dairy indust

I opened my computer recently to find an article about the actor, John Malkovich.  His latest commercial, it said, won’t be released for 100 years.  A snippet of the film provided shows the actor placing a bottle of perfume in a vault, then locking it.  In the next frame, presuma

One of the mixed blessings of the technological age is that we are trained to think in statistics and ratings figures.  A computer can measure and quantify large numbers, so, today, almost anything can be ranked, even the trivial.  “On a scale of 1- 10, how would rate your last oi