In August 2019, I announced the publication of a story about a girl and a very special doll. One story has led to three, and now all three are available at Amazon.com in multiple formats — Kindle downloads ($1.99 each), Kindle Unlimited (free to members), and in paperback ($4.99 each). They can be accessed at
I know this is ferociously bad timing, but once we get past this pandemic, what will be the next problem to hit us? There are many ways to approach this, depending upon which experts you listen to, but here is one viewpoint, under the catchy title “Experts Knew a Pandemic Was Coming. Here’s What They’re
Earlier today, I was talking politics with a friend and the question of supporting President Donald Trump came up. Should you support him in this time of crisis because he is the president, even though you don’t agree with him? In doing so, are you supporting the country for a greater good, or just him
As a Disney fan, I know all about Richard and Robert Sherman, the Academy Award-winning songwriters with credits like Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book. I’ve read all about their lives in the autobiographical Walt’s Time (Camphor Tree Publishers, 1998). In this book they relate how they longed to follow in the footsteps of their
The coronavirus pandemic is causing a serious reexamination of our lives, including our priorities. At times the need for medical supplies has become so acute we’ve been forced to deal with some very uncomfortable questions. For example, if the curve isn’t flattened and the hospitals are overwhelmed, who gets priority treatment? Should it be the
It’s not unusual to regret one’s actions; in my life, it’s a semi-regular occurrence. But how many people actually come to regret their inventions? You might be surprised. One invention we’d all be better off without is the atomic bomb. Two of the principal figures in its creation were Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Recently I found an article with the provocative title of “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting” by Julio Vincent Gambuto (https://forge.medium.com/prepare-for-the-ultimate-gaslighting-6a8ce3f0a0e0). I realize English is a flexible language with many manufactured words and slang terms, but I’ve never heard of this before. What is gaslighting? It’s actually a relatively old expression. Wikipedia defines it as “a
One part of our language we all take for granted is numbers, beginning with Sesame Street’s Count von Count. Numbers play a critical role in virtually every aspect of our civilization. But what if there were no words for numbers in English? Believe it or not, some languages do lack words for numbers. When you
We can’t ignore this one. This is thought to be Shakespeare’s birthday, although no one know for sure. The Writer’s Almanac for today (April 23, 2020, https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-writers-almanac?) has an excellent summary of his life, better than anything I could write, so I’m just going to copy it here. “It’s the assumed birthday of William Shakespeare (books by this
There is a term for everything. For example, that little plastic sleeve on the end of your shoelace is an aglet, probably invented by Harvey Kennedy in 1790 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglet). So yesterday when I was reading about astronomy, I found a word that piqued my interest — gnomon. According to Miriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gnomon), it’s “an object that