A rape story out of France is causing many people to drop their jaws.  Gisèle Pelicot, married to her husband for 50 years, discovered he had drugged her regularly during their marriage and invited strangers to enter their bedroom and rape her. A story of betrayed vows and broken tr

At the retirement center, a woman approached me to compliment a  blog I had written.  My reply was to shrug and say the words hadn’t amounted to much.   Later, I recanted, realizing my false humility had made light of her opinion. To be honest, I’d worked hard on that blog. Wh

The two tall men pulled out chairs on either side of me as we sat at the lunch table.  Former colleagues from my political days, Covid had severed our connection three years ago. Now we were reviving the contact.  Happily, both men looked well though one admitted he was struggling w

Cancer’s plasticity, meaning its cells can change from one form or function to another, gives the disease its endurance and makes it difficult to cure.  Big tech has the same plasticity, morphing to address new conditions. Big tech isn’t a disease, of course, but it does have a d

Checking the headlines, my eyes fell upon an article about President Joe Biden’s delight in ghostbuster burgers. Ghostbusters are toxic towers of meat, cheese, red onion, pickles, and sauce. While some wonder if Biden is too old for a second presidential term, a better question

I felt as if I’d dropped down Alice’s rabbit hole. The daughter of friends I’d known for years had one name, but I’d called her by another. I even invented a tag to remember it as we seldom meet: “M is for music.”  As it turns out, the girl’s name doesn’t start with �

A gentleman at my retirement facility returned from a visit with friends in Australia recently.  One of his hosts took him to a remote part of the country where they were joined by others who were his host’s friends.  As might be expected, the conversation turned to American polit

Words matter, and the right words matter most of all, according to writer John Birmingham.  History bears this out. During World War II, Winston Churchill’s speeches galvanized Londoners with hope despite the German Blitzkrieg. Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duties, and

As I relate in my upcoming memoir, Getting Lost to Find Home, during the rainy season in Sub-Saharan Africa deluges force creatures to rise from their holes in the earth to escape being drowned.  A person out of doors at such times is likely to encounter black mambas, scorpions, flyi

Who doesn’t love Michael J. Fox the scallywag actor from Back to the Future?  As most of us know, he’s fighting a losing battle with Parkinson’s disease and gave up acting last year because the illness now impairs his speech.  Even so, he remains active, writing books whil