When I was in college, I became aware of a popular publication called, The Family of Man.   Between its covers were photographs from around the world, depicting how people in different countries, cultures and ages lived.  No words accompanied the photographs and  none were necessa

I subscribe to Vanity Fair because it gives me a glimpse of a world I cannot enter, the realm of the entitled and the pretenders.  Sometimes their antics amaze and amuse and sometimes, they confirm what I already know: that people everywhere are pretty much the same, except some make

Like the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland, I’m always in a hurry — which is peculiar because I’m retired.  Tell that to my circadian clock, whichever one it is that keeps me impatient and eager to get on with my invented projects.  When I was a child, my teachers warned m

Unlike Al Qaeda which took pains to avoid the World Wide Web and the digital age, fearing their movements could be tracked, Isis has embraced technology, employing it to inflate the organization’s profile and using it as a recruiting tool.  According to writer Jared Cohen, the orga

I opened an email the other day from my publisher.  Their note said they’d submitted my novel, Heart Land, for some book award.  If they’d had asked me, I’d have told them not to bother.  I don’t have much faith in awards.  Wherever people gather, politics is likely to fol

While standing in the checkout line of a grocery store, recently,  I ran into a friend and stopped to chat.  Engaged in a robust conversation a few paces  from my cart, I noticed a woman with a cane moving ahead of me.  I waved my fingers in the air to indicate the cart she was pa

Somewhere, I read the video camera on my computer could be used to spy on me.  Panicked, I called my technician to ask how I could protect my privacy.  He replied, “Stick masking tape over the lens.”  Okay, that was a cheap, low tech fix.  I got lucky.  But what about all the

When I was in my mid teens, my mother took me shopping for a dress to wear to a school dance.  Never destined to be buxom, in those early days, I had the anatomy of a brick.  Nonetheless, the sales woman at one shop was determined to find an outfit that would flatter my figure.  Sh

Recently, I’ve reviewed two novels that played with time in their storyline for Just Read It, the YouTube book review program I co-host with author Susan Stoner. (Click)  Personally, when plots mix episodes from the past with those of the present, exchanging them one after the othe

Barbara G. Walker, among her many talents, is a Biblical scholar, author of books like The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Man Made God.  Her latest essay, “Deconstructing Religion and Power,” draws  links between the origins of man and the rise of religion. (FFRF, Vo. 32, N