I finally did it. I cut the subscription cord for two ladies magazines and have replaced them with one for Mother Jones. The change, I thought, would stir up the little grey cells. When the July/August edition came, it didn’t disappoint. One article by Josh Harkinson featured the ha

On my way to the park, there’s a news box where I often stop to bend down and scan the headlines. If a story interests me, I crouch a little more to peruse the fine print. Part of me feels guilty about reading the news for free, knowing people had to be paid to gather the informatio

“She threw Trompe l’Oeil against the wall when she’d finished.” The confession came from a friend whose daughter had read my novel for a book club. Her mother wanted to know if I had any consoling words.  My first reaction was to be delighted that the daughter had read the bo

I love it when my blog readers send me articles. One I received, recently, was in reference to my remarks about J.K. Rowling’s new mystery, The Cuckoo’s Calling, which she wrote under the pen name, Robert Galbraith. (Aug 6, 2013) The book sold 1500 copies before the identity of th

“…as China is building modern infrastructure, we are looking to build our own Great Wall.” So writes Sheila Bair, former chair of the FDIC and author of the best seller, Bull by the Horns.  That our Congress is intent upon walling immigrants out rather than building a transport

“Are we approaching a literary Singularity, when every human being on earth will, in fact, have written the book they have in them?” So begins Mark Kingwell, a Canadian professor of philosophy in his essay, “Beyond The Book” printed in the August issue of Harpers. (pgs. 15-19)

Now that Edward Snowden has given us an inkling of how far our government will go to invade our privacy , we are also learning that the oversight of that surveillance seems little more than a rubber stamp. Records reveal that members of the FISA* court, which grants the government the

While the media continues to entertain us with crime stories or pictures of England’s new prince, the United States is facing a growing nuclear crisis. Congress has delayed designating a storage facility for radioactive waste, and so power plants are keeping the spent rods in coolin

Like Phillip Roth, Alice Munro, short story writer and winner of many literary awards, has decided to retire her pen at the age of 82. She’s not doing it because she’s run out of ideas, even though she’s been scribbling for 40 years. She’s retiring because she wants to leave t

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter book saga, has been unmasked as the author of a new detective mystery, The Cuckoo’s Calling. She wrote it under the pseudonym, Robert Galbraith, hoping to escape inevitable comparisons between her youth series and her adult fiction. Her first