A Chinese proverb about the butterfly effect teaches that small changes can have great consequences.  Who would have thought that a farmer drilling a well to tap groundwater for his crops would cause the earth to wobble on its axis?  Yet climate scientists report that farmers, towns

  Bigfoot isn’t likely to be hiding in the forests surrounding Mt. Hood in Oregon.  Even so, scientists speculate many of earth’s smaller creatures are waiting to be discovered.  One portion of the earth that until now has been beyond human reach is the Twilight Zone, ocean

Recently, I learned a bumble bee is a fish. California, wanting to extend environmental protection to pollinators, tucked them under laws pertaining to scaly creatures. What did the two have in common? According to officials, both were invertebrates. Ingenious!  As a writer and forme

  …the dogma lives loudly within you, and that is a concern. These were Senator Diane Feinstein’s words to Amy Coney Barret in 2017 when the latter was a candidate for a position on the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The reference was to Barret’s Catholic faith and her

The anniversary may have escaped many of us, but 2022 is the year in which the film, Soylent Green is set.  The story depicts a time when human activity has so depleted natural resources, humans can no longer grow crops to sustain themselves.  The living survive by eating the dead.�

   David Brooks, commentator for the New York Times  says issues surrounding abortion are “hard and complex.” Two chief concerns are:  a) He believes a “piece” exists within every human being that gives them dignity—a soul. And b) He has no confidence that he knows w

As I mention in my upcoming memoir, for a time I lived in a pub in an English village.  Quaint and cozy, it was of note because of a  monk’s face, carved with a wink, that peered into the serving room.  Behind it was a passageway, long since blocked, that in early day

I may have been born before my time, but  at 82, I’m not too old to rejoice in the recent development of  fertility phone aps.   How wonderful that a young woman can have at her fingertips a device to help her decide when and if she wants to become pregnant.  Or, how to avoid p

The woman in this coroner’s photograph was called Gerri.  She died in 1964 attempting to give herself an abortion with a coat hanger.   Something went wrong and she bled to death alone on her bathroom floor.  If the picture offends anyone, I am sorry, but the circumstances shoul

Sarah Jones, a writer for The New Republic  offers advice on how to seek a compromise to end the abortion war.  (“Turning Pro-Life Blue,” by Sara Jones, The New Republic, Jan. 8, 2018, pgs. 9-10)  Unfortunately, being young, she fails to recognize her advice is alre