The world has become an uncomfortably small place. In the past, habits and cultures of other nations seemed little more than a curiosity to those of us who lived separated from the other continents by two oceans. Our friends in Canada were too like us to bear comparison and, mostly, w

In his article, “Confessions of a Catholic Novelist,” author William Giraldi, believes one cannot be a Catholic and a good novelist simultaneously. “Catholics already have the truth, whereas novelists write novels in part because they don’t.”   (New Republic, July/August,

Sipping lattes in a bookstore, a retired friend and I talked about the exploding global population and the dwindling resources of the planet.   By 2022, India’s inhabitants will exceed 1.4 billion. By 2050, our species will have grown from the current 7.3 billion to 9.7 billion. T

Before I moved to the retirement center, I lived in a 1896 clapboard Victorian home with no central heating or air conditioning. In the winter, I kept warm by using electric wall heaters and in summer, I turned on overhead fans. The system met my needs on most days, but when summer he

In the 1960s, while living and working as a teacher in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), I spent two weeks on holiday in Cape Town. The city was beautiful and modern. Except for apartheid, I might have been in any major center in the world. Nonetheless, the country’s strict adherence t

The small abortion clinic in my community is so quiet, one might assume it had gone out of business. It hasn’t, but the protesters have disappeared like fruit flies in winter. Even the grey-haired old man who used to carry a picket sign to and fro on the pavement has probably gone t

I have a friend who bought animal heads at a garage sale, once. He hung them in his den then invited me to admire the display. Frankly, I found a room filled with decapitated heads to be eerie and could no more understand why a person would hang carcasses on a wall than I could unders

While I admit to worrying about the dark side of robotics, like the loss of jobs for the worker, I rarely imagine a world populated by Terminators bent on destroying mankind. In fact, as writer Charles Taylor points out, robots are likely to improve many aspects of our lives. (“Robo

Gothic Spring, my novel, looks at the stranglehold Victorian values had on women. Nonetheless, my characters enjoy a little hanky-panky before the fall, unlike the outcomes in what is known in the commercial trade as “bonnet books.” Bonnet books, as writer Ann Neumann describes th

People who’ve been reading this blog for a while may have noticed my style changes from colloquial to formal, depending on the topic at hand. If I’m attempting humor, my sentences may include a few contractions and shorten.  When tackling a book review, not only do I sometimes sp