The bombings at the Boston Marathon raise a central question. Why, after centuries of fruitless war and genocide, does the human race continue to use violence as a means to settle conflict? Women are less inclined to employ it, but they are by no means immune, (“An Appetite for Aggr

Last week, (5/9), I wrote that a squirrel had chewed through a power line outside my home, creating a huge electrical surge. I don’t know what became of the squirrel but it fried much of my electronic equipment. As I complained then, reading the manuals that came with the replacemen

It had to happen. I forgot my password on a financial account and had to create a new one. The young man who helped me closed off our conversation with the admonition, “Now that you can access your money again, don’t start spending it.”  I laughed because at my age I don’t ha

Sometime ago, I ranted about complicated tech manuals that require consumers to have a degree in engineering to use. Of late, I’ve had to read a few more of these publications because squirrels demolished the utility wires that feed electricity into my house and my electronic device

When I was ten, I broke a glass coffee table in the small apartment where my mother and I lived. Horrified, I covered the crack with a book, foolishly hoping it would never be moved and my carelessness would never be revealed. Unfortunately, my mother discovered the damage as soon as

“Most American high schools are almost sadistically unhealthy places to send adolescents,” writes Jennifer Senior for New York magazine (http://nymag.com/news/features/high-school-2013-1/ze. Jan 20, 2013.) One reason, according to sociologist Robert Fari, who is quoted in the arti

I met with a group of friends for brunch recently. Several of them are in their sixties and worried about their weight. One friend announced he’d given up sugar to lose pounds, so I directed him to a good book called The Yeast Connection by William G. Crook. Crook talks about sugar

A number of people on my Facebook page say they suffer from depressions from time to time. The condition leaves them debilitated but they usually apologize for having shared their pain. When I read these Mea culpas I wish I were close enough to give them a hug. Today, however, I can d

Last week, I took a friend to lunch to celebrate her 73rd year. She’s as fit as anyone half her age and has kept her figure so that she wears clothes well and always looks stylish. Her one concern about getting older is Alzheimer’s, a disease that afflicted her father. She doesn�

When I was younger, I avoided reading books by Willa Cather. Like the average teenager, I looked askance at stories of middle age or frontier drudgery. What had any of it to do with modern life? Even while she was alive, her stories weren’t considered in the vanguard of her century.