Shakespeare often threw his characters into the green world of the forest.  After stumbling through acres of trees, they eventually discovered their inner selves.  Midsummer Night’s Dream is an obvious example, but the king in King Lear, after being pummeled by a storm, also gains

My father lived with my mother and me until I turned 7.  Every Sunday, he and I would jump into the car, always an Oldsmobile, and we’d drive to the center of town to buy the newspaper.  If the first vendor we met was black, my father drove on, until he came to a white man

I sat down to coffee, recently, with a couple who’d lived in Albania after the  Russians withdrew. The husband was serving as U. S. Ambassador at the time and during our conversation, his wife recounted a story about an event she hosted for some of the country’s political lea

One of my favorite Shakespearian lines comes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream when Puck says to his Lord, “What fools these mortals be.” (Act iii, Scene 2.)  He spoke at a time before psychiatry existed, and no one had coined the term cognitive dissonance disorder.  

I’m a fan of J. K. Rawling’s and hope to see her newest fantastic beasts film soon.  Still, when I stop to consider, we humans are fantastic beasts, too.  Artificial Intelligence (AI) won’t be a threat to us in the near future, if ever.  The reason is we harbor my

As I mention in my upcoming memoir, for a time I lived in a pub in an English village.  Quaint and cozy, it was of note because of a  monk’s face, carved with a wink, that peered into the serving room.  Behind it was a passageway, long since blocked, that in early day

Late one afternoon, after my gym workout,  I stopped for a cool glass of water in the retirement center’s lounge.  With no one around, I sank into one of the padded chairs and stared into empty space.  A couple strolled by to read the menu posted for dinner.  &nb

I saw no mystery in it.  When I was a child of 5 or 6, I made perfume by gathering sweet-smelling flowers, roses, daphne, and honeysuckle, and dropped them into a bowl of cold water.  Next, I crushed them with a wooden spoon and after a few minutes, I had perfume for my moth

With so much political turmoil around the globe, much of it spawned by our President, I wonder if anyone is thinking about the future? All this concern for North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear capabilities, for example. How does it compare to the growing cyber threat?  Are nuclea

Whether or not Albert Einstein gave his brain to science may be a matter of debate, (Click) but it would be fascinating to compare his mind to Donald Trump’s.   Einstein’s IQ is 160 while Trump claims his is 156.  The number means less to me than how well a person g