You're reading along in a book you enjoy, when suddenly you notice something wrong. Maybe it's a fantasy story in a medieval setting and somebody refers to "oxygen." Maybe an awkward description makes you think a woman is dangling backwards to the floor instead of being carried romantically across a threshold. Maybe it's The Da Vinci Code , and you notice a character is on the wrong side of the Seine.  Read more

Writing.

Writing is easy, finding a reader is hard. Read more

Way back in the olden days when I was a young(ish) wife and mother living on a farm in Door County, Wisconsin, I joined the local chapter of NOW, the National Organization for Women. We were a small but enthusiastic group in the heady days of the burgeoning women's movement, reading Friedan and Greer and de Beauvoir, religiously consulting Our Bodies Ourselves For The New Century (A Touchstone book) , and attempting to spread the Good News to our fellow [sic] women of the Door Peninsula. It was all about change. Read more

I can remember years ago thinking that the concept of laws not men was, in some way, essentially unfair. The fairness of it, of course, is the concept that no matter who you are, no one is above the law. The men in the concept stands for those who have traditionally thought themselves above the law.

I, in my innocence, interpreted men as people. And people, I thought, should be more important than the law. In other words, the person who steals to feed his starving family should be treated differently than the guy who just wants a Mercedes. Read more

Years ago, when I so wanted to write but had no idea of how to go about getting anyone to read it, I conjured up a little fantasy.

If it came down to it, if I had enough that I wanted to say and nowhere to say it, I would write it down, a paragraph at a time, on sheets of paper, climb to the top of the Empire State Building, and sail them into the world in the form of paper airplanes.

I've become somewhat adept at constructing paragraphs that say what I want them to say, but I never really mastered the art of the paper airplane. Read more

Martin Luther King Jr.. How do we begin to measure his impact?

Ever since the election of President Barack Obama, there has been a lot of loose talk about a "post-racial" world. Any African-American who hasn't been lured into the smarmy embrace of the Republican Party will tell you that's a lot of hooey. Only they probably wouldn't say hooey. Read more

Magical Thinking. The first time I heard that term used as a perjorative, I wondered why. What's so bad about Magical Thinking? This negative definition is, as I understand it, a denigration of religious thinking, of belief in God, belief in an afterlife, belief that an invisible being concerns her/him/itself with one's life, one's friends, one's career, health, and well-being.

And ok. I get that. But still ... Read more

I have to admit that Chris Hedges had not floated into the sphere of my awareness prior to yestereve when I caught up with Book TV's In Depth for January 2012. I was, somewhat against my will, impressed. His bona fides are pretty - well - bona fide. He's been places, done things. I like that he argued with Hitchens and Dawkins. Read more

"Still the same, baby things are still the same,
Some things never change..."

The old Bob Seger tune comes to mind this morning.

Yesterday afternoon, as the Christmas Day discussion drifted into ideas about religion and culture, someone made reference to cultural evolution, as in "we've evolved more than that." I can't remember the exact reference, but it implied that humans have "evolved" culturally. That is, our understanding of each other and the world around us has become broader, more tolerant, more accepting of others.  Read more

Christmas Week. Which every year brings a weeping and a wailing and a gnashing of teeth over how to greet people - not to mention the whole idea of giving gifts, receiving gifts, and shopping for gifts - and leaving aside the entire issue of home decor. And rumbling in the basement, at the foundations, you might say, of the entire enterprise and bringing the general confusion to a boil - religion. Read more