Somewhere along my 8 years of blogging, I picked up a gaggle of folks from East Africa..  I’ve learned they are deeply religious, possibly members of the same church.  Most of the time, I read their  patter about what God wants from us and what we must do to be good Christians. 

For me, computers pose a mystery.  They are as confusing as a black hole or as simple as a line of 0s and 1s.  When we get to algorithms, life gets tricky.  I haven’t a clue about computer programing, but I remember something from calculus about the difficulty of choosing random

Six years ago, I wrote that Moby Dick was being translated into emoji. (Click)  I hardly knew what emojis* were at the time.  Since then, Facebook emojis have become familiar, but I’ve never given much thought to how they came into being or how there could be enough to translate a

During an In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)  segment of Public Broadcasting Service news (OPB),   Amanda Petrusich,  music critic for the New Yorker, spoke about the “outdated” notion that a work of art stands apart from the person who created it.  The theory is long-standing and k

Last week,  I wrote about the return of midwifery to this country, and its underground movement to teach women to perform self-induced abortions.  (Click) Another option exists for the same purpose, but it isn’t widely known. The drug, Mifepristone, can be effective if self-admini

Because we have access to more information than at any time in human history, it’s easy to uncover facts which align with our perceptions. Once we do, we cling to them with the tenacity of a dying woman to her rosary.  Facts that don’t align, we view with suspicion.  That’s wh

I live in an urban area.  My doctor is so close, if I touch the end of my nose, my elbow brushes against her office.  To be precise, she’s a block and a half away.  My dentist is 6 blocks away.  Three 3 hospitals are within spitting distance of my residence.  When it comes to m

In her essay, “Musical Chairs,” Rebecca Solnit parses the numerous splits in American politics. I  particularly like her description of the Republican party.  She charges it “preaches the gospel of austerity while running up deficits,” and extols individual rights, “except

While women have been helping other women have abortions for centuries, self-induced abortions have an equally long history.  (“The New Abortion Underground,” by Nina Liss-Schultz, Mother Jones, March/April, 2018, pg. 49).  Generally, the procedures were safe. Nonetheless, in th