Stories Short and Strange
17 short stories for general audiences ranging from the unusual to the unbelievable to the just plain strange.
Why Can’t People Find Work When Unemployment Is Low?
On the surface, it’s a real mystery. The nation’s unemployment rate has been below five percent for months, but as of April, 2017, 1.6 million people have been out of work for six months or longer; almost a million of them have been without jobs for a year. Economists call it “long-term unemployment”; they calculate
How To Clean Up The Ocean
The oceans are huge, right? Unfortunately, they’re not big enough, because the trash we’ve been dumping into these largest of waterways is becoming a real problem. In fact, there is an area of floating junk that’s become known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch ( https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/). Except there is actually more than one. But how
A Better Way To Budget
For many people, making a budget — and trying to stick to it — is one of the most frustrating experiences of day-to-day life. But in an article on the Science of Us website, Brad Klontz, a psychologist and certified financial planner, says the main problem with budgeting is its approach. “I think the entire
The Bank That Was Small Enough To Jail
If you’ve been losing faith in our judicial system, I have good news. Today I learned that one bank was actually charged with fraud in conjunction with the mortgage scandals of 2008. Abacus Federal Savings Bank was founded in 1984 to serve the Chinese-American community in New York City. In May, 2012, the bank and
A Word For Today — Retronym
I have on occasion written about the English language, especially how it morphs to keep up with changing times. Today I have another example — The relentless advance of technology has necessitated the creation of a new word — retronym. Google it, and you get this definition — a new term created from an existing
Definitely Not Fading Away
The June 2017 issue of Runner’s World magazine has an article that caught my eye. It’s entitled “Not Fading Away” about runners age 50 and older, which is definitely me. Included are “Tips for Running In Your Later Years”, like “Backing Off” and running on soft surfaces. But what really got my attention was that
Some Facts About Mother’s Day
Sunday, May 14 was our annual national Mother’s Day. In commemoration, the Writer’s Almanac published some background information about how we got here. Like so many milestones, it can be traced back to one determined person. Mother’s Day was first celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia in 1908 when a woman named Anna Jarvis held a
Pardoning Jefferson Davis
Civil wars a horrible, brutal ordeals that can scar for decades, if not centuries. The Spanish Civil War was especially traumatic, and I’m beginning to doubt that Syria will ever be a viable political entity again. Which is another example of how unique our nation is. We endured our own civil war, and yes, it
Another Reason To Like Bugs
Disney’s California Adventure and Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme parks both have an audio-animatronic and video theater show entitled “It’s Tough To Be a Bug”. One of the show’s messages is how essential bugs are to our world (“We’re Pollinators!”). Recently I’ve found another reason why bugs are so good to have around. According to the
Wild Worlds Around Us
I have always been fascinated with the stars. Now technological breakthroughs are giving us tools to explore the star systems around us, despite the unfathomable distances involved. What we are finding is stranger than fiction. These include huge black holes, colliding galaxies, and planets with bizarre orbits. One source for information is Astronomy magazine http://www.astronomy.com.