During a recent lunch date with my mother, who is 98, she admitted to a growing sense of vulnerability.  Her memory was fading and she had difficulty finding the words she needed.   This loss of self, she admitted, was a cruel penalty for having a long life.  Stunned by her candor

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a blog about a group of scientists who decided to break the stranglehold research journals have in deciding whose work receives public recognition and whose work doesn’t (Blog 1/1/13)   What emerged was a suite of journals covering all areas of science a

A small news item with huge potential consequences appeared in the press the other day.  It touched upon the unified theory of everything, the quest for an understanding that would explain how electromagnetism, strong and weak forces in nature and gravity work together. (Blog 10/21/1

I have a friend who in his youth belonged to a comedy improvisational group.  Their performance involved asking the audience to supply plots or characters which the actors would turn into extemporaneous skits.  What resulted always ranked somewhere on a scale between funny to hilari

Cries of alarm, protest and horror rattled New York elites recently when Aby Rosen, the man who owns the Seagram’s building, wanted to remove a wall hanging, originally a ballet theater backdrop, purportedly painted by Pablo Picasso.  The performance ended, the hanging landed as a

Whenever my co-host, Susan Stoner, and I sit down to discuss the venue for another of our YouTube book review series Just Read It,  the air crackles with good vibes.  Collaboration is something novelists seldom get to experience and while I enjoy the contemplative times of writing a

Tonight is Halloween so it’s time for a scary tale. But this one isn’t about ghosts and goblins.  It’s a tale far more horrible.  It’s about a feminine myth that has kept women from reaching their full potential.   We start with Hysteria, the Greek word for muse.  Literal

Haruki Murakami’s new book, Colorless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage, is receiving critical acclaim, most recently from Rivka Galchen.  (“The Monkey did it,” By Rivka Galchen, Harper’s Magazine, October 2014, pgs. 86-89.)  I haven’t read Murakami’s newest work yet,

After the play reading with live actors, I met the director a couple of weeks later.  She had organized her notes from that evening and we began reviewing the play, line by line, scene by scene.  She added comments of her own, indicating places where the language was too stilted mak

Who knew?  Among the government’s millions of documents, the CIA has a style guide to help agents write better reports.   Apparently the MLA Style Sheet isn’t good enough for the spooks, so it’s invented its own.  I’m not surprised.  They’ve bent the language before (Bl