Readers and Book Lovers Announcement
I am so excited to announce a couple of changes in our Readers and Book Lovers Group Schedule.First, Chitown Kev has offered to restart the weekly series, What Are You Reading? on Wednesday mornings at...
View ArticleZika: This summer's blockbuster
Somewhere far outside of the primary battle bubble, a mosquito is busy reproducing, just to make your summer a little bit less enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. Only this year there is...
View ArticleKenneth Starr, or how I learned to stop worrying about Republican attacks on...
So, Kenneth Starr was fired from his position as president of Baylor University due to the university’s failure to properly address accusations of sexual assault against members of the Baylor football...
View Article'You've got to be carefully taught'
Our students may not be learning calculus, music theory or art history, but they are learning that racism is acceptable, that it is part of our society’s institutional culture. They witness it from...
View ArticleBy gchaucer2: 'Stilled Lives: The T-Town Murders' Updated
For those who missed this review when it was originally published in February, and for those who are interested in the novel written by gchaucer2, enjoy:Stilled Lives: The T-Town Murdersby Anna...
View ArticleCommunities, large and small
Communities are groups in which we participate, sharing a common interest, identity, or locale. They can be as small as a family, or as large as a nation.Until a tragedy strikes, and the community...
View ArticleThe mysteries of women's health
For too many American women, working a 40-hour per week job (if they are fortunate enough to have one), commuting, and then caring for a home and family can be exhausting. And so they stop to pick up...
View ArticleHow Republicans celebrate the National Park Service's 100th anniversary
In 2015, the two million annual visitors to California’s Joshua Tree National Park spent almost $97 million in the surrounding communities. Those same visitors created 1,341 job,s which had a...
View ArticleSextortion: Virtual sexual assault
The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines sextortion as:...a serious crime that occurs when someone threatens to distribute your private and sensitive material if you don’t provide them images of a...
View ArticleSextortion: To convict a creep
In addition to the cases highlighted last week in Sextortion: Virtual sexual assault, wherein predators victimized women and children of both sexes and extorted sexual content, another aspect of online...
View ArticleShe wore white.
Her nomination always seemed inevitable. At a holiday meal in 2007, I remember saying as much to family members who were excited about this newcomer, Barack Obama. I wasn’t as excited about the...
View ArticleThe first lady gives a speech
The first wife of a presidential candidate to address a political convention was Eleanor Roosevelt, who, when asked by her husband to address the 1940 Democratic Convention in his place, promptly got...
View ArticleThe epitome of Republican ideology
The mainstream media doesn’t always report the way that we want, the news that we want, or all that we want—but they do represent the last link we have in the chain that extends more than 200 years...
View ArticleCircling the drain of the opioid addiction epidemic
“I have been living with survivor’s guilt for years now.”We were lingering after dinner in an upscale restaurant in a small New England city, discussing the heroin epidemic that has ravaged the region...
View ArticleThe opioid epidemic: How bad is it and who does it hurt?
Last week I introduced you all to a friend of mine whose son has been struggling with heroin addiction for 12 years. It began with a car crash that caused traumatic brain injury. He began using heroin...
View ArticleIt's time to stop criminalizing a medical issue
The first step in recovery from our national opioid epidemic is probably the hardest: To accept that addiction is not a moral failing, but rather “a chronic disease of the brain,” as described by...
View ArticleDispatches from the drug war: Or, why are Americans subsidizing the Europeans?
Let’s talk about other drug war: The one being waged against the American consumer by the pharmaceutical companies who benefit from our tax dollars that fund basic scientific research and make up the...
View ArticleA closer look at those in Hillary Clinton's other basket
Vanity Fair writer Abigail Tracy, in discussing Elizabeth Warren’s impact on Hillary Clinton’s future cabinet picks, includes this incorrect phrase in her very first sentence:and her ill-advised...
View ArticleThe triumph of ignorance
We lost.Because misogyny. (See image above)Because racism.Because xenophobia.Because of voter suppression.In North Carolina:Even after a federal appeals court struck down the state’s outrageous...
View ArticleWe must not forget Flint
In October, CNN reported on an outbreak of shigellosis in Michigan’s Genesse County, which is home to the city of Flint. Shigellosis is an infectious bacterial disease that spreads when people fail to...
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