You are a fifth-grade girl who comes home from school to find a doll on your front porch. The doll looks like you, is dressed like you, and there is something about the eyes. Who left it? Why is it here? And what makes this doll so special?
Jim Jenkins is an ace detective who solves the most difficult crimes. Yet he always works alone. Or does he?
Learning how to wiggle your ears is really hard. But you can do it if you keep trying. And if you learn to keep trying, no problem is too big. So if you can wiggle your ears, you can do anything!
The end of summer may be a bit late to think about this, but have you ever wondered why plants don’t get sunburned? Actually, they’ve already thought of that. Plants can make their own sunscreen to protect from harmful solar radiation and yet not interfere with photosynthesis. Specifically, in 2011 a team of scientists reported
My best friend is a psychologist in private practice, so any news about behavior catches my eye. For example, a new study on self-esteem, which analyzed 191 research articles covering almost 165,000 people, suggests this is one trait that gets better with age. Data suggest self-esteem first begins to rise between ages 4 and 11. Levels
Teamwork. It’s important in any organization, essential in the military. And once you learn how important it is, you never forget. Even when you’re 70 years old. My reminder came at the Providence Hood To Coast Relay on August 24-25, 2018 (https://hoodtocoastrelay.com/htc/). Classmates from my alma mater, the Air Force Academy class of 1970,
Now that I’m into my seventh decade, the simple question of how to feel younger is taking on a renewed urgency. So the article “This May Be the Secret to Feeling Younger and Living Longer” by Jamie Ducharme quickly caught my eye ( http://time.com/5363984/how-to-feel-younger-aging/? ). The answer may be simpler than you think. We really have
It’s happened to all of us (especially Disney collectors!). You hear a song, or maybe a couple of bars, and it’s stuck in your head forever. At least it seems like forever. And it doesn’t have to be the actual song; it could simply be a memory trigger, like a movie poster. Your nemesis is
How difficult is it to have a baby? For most people, it’s not all that complicated (and I’m sure I don’t have to explain it to you). But if you are two men from Israel, wanting to be a biological father (in their case a baby for each of them) required two wombs, four countries,
While the music world mourns the death of Aretha Franklin, I was reminded of a recent story about a woman who was lured into impersonating the Queen of Soul. Mary Jane Jones of West Petersburg, Virginia was blessed with a remarkable voice and cursed with a difficult life. Married at 19, her first husband died
Today the test-of-patriotism spotlight is on professional football players, but in 1942 it was on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Specifically, two elementary school girls from Charleston, West Virginia. At that time, West Virginia required all students and teachers to salute the flag. Jehovah’s Witnesses objected because they believed this violated the Bible commandment against worshiping images. Gathie
This is original writing, just not by me. It was sent to me by a friend, and was attributed to the New York Times’s annual lexophile competition. “Lexophile” describes those that have a love for words, such as “you can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish”, or “To write with a broken pencil
We have never completely understood the human brain. In some ways, we’re actually frightened by the strange behaviors we’ve seen around us. Yet out of strange behavior can come remarkable gifts, like extraordinary insight and creativity. Science journalist Helen Thomson has written a book to explore the brain’s unusual characteristics. Entitled Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey
